the beginning of a story i started to write
I stole jellybeans from the grocery store when I was seven and I got away with it. My mom used to take me to the grocery store with her, as moms tend to do, and I’d stroll by the candy aisle like a shark surveying his prey. Or hers. Sharks can be female. Why do I assume sharks are male? Would you rather get attacked by a male shark or female shark? It doesn’t matter, but I think it would matter to some people. I wonder if there’s a way to find out who those people are. I wonder if there’s a correlation between people who care what gender shark attacks them and people who like to use the term “nonconsensual sex” instead of just calling it rape. OKCupid does data analytics about correlation between things like that, maybe they have some data on it.
Anyways, I don’t care what gender the shark is, I just hope it has small teeth when it attacks me and I hope I’m strong enough to tell people about it after it happens. So, my mom was getting coffee beans from the coffee dispenser and I was surveying the candy. I did this several times for the next few grocery store trips. Every time I went, I would play with the candy bags. I’d take them off the shelf, stack them up, then put them back carefully before I left. I made sure to do this where the cameras could see me, and in plain view of the store clerks. I always made sure to do this in plain view, to prove I had nothing to hide. Then, after several weeks of doing this at the candy aisle, I made my move. As my mom went to ground her coffee, I popped around the corner to the candy aisle. I took the candy off the shelf again, like I always did. I made sure to stack them on top of each other, just like I always did. Then, I started to put the candy back in their place. Only this time, when I went to put the jellybeans back, I let it fall off the shelf and into my jacket pocket. I put the other candy bars back on the shelf.
My mom popped her head around the aisle and called my name. I walked slowly over to her and waited for her as she paid for her groceries. Then, we walked outside and I helped her load the groceries into the car. We drove away. On the car ride home, I reached into my pocket and touched the bag of jellybeans. When I got home, I threw the bag of jellybeans in the box where I kept my stuffed animals without opening them. Eventually, I gave them as a gift to my friend Allison on her birthday, because she was having a pool party and I didn’t think the gift I got her was good enough, so I threw the jellybeans in there as well. I never even ate one.
Am I a bad person? I wish someone would just tell me. Whenever you ask your friends, they assure you that you are not. I think this is because everyone is a bad person, and secretly they are afraid to judge you for fear of you judging them. Your friends want to forgive you because they hope you will forgive them too. The jellybean incident was my litmus test for the world. I wanted to see if justice existed, how it would manifest. I wanted to understand that doing something wrong meant facing consequences. Unfortunately, the world failed me. There were no consequences, and that’s when I realized that I could get away with so many things, and there would never be any consequences. I didn’t want that kind of power. So I decided I wouldn’t accept that reality. I wanted to live in a world with consequences. So I didn’t steal again after that. Even though nothing bad happened when I did.
I don’t know why I told you that story. I’m supposed to be doing my laundry right now, but it’s such a nice day and laundry feels like a waste of the outdoors. It’s one of those days where you step outside and you can just feel the birthdays and anniversaries and happy moments happening around you. You think about your friends and all the people you want to sit by a pool with, and you think about calling some of them up to see if they want to get together. Maybe you’ll finally watch that movie you’ve been saying you want to see. Or maybe you can catch up on a classic movie you haven’t seen yet. Or The Wire. You still haven’t seen The Wire and everyone says it’s good.
Anyways, I’m supposed to be doing my laundry, but instead I’m at this taco stand. I decided I wanted to eat tacos instead of cooking, even though I just did groceries. So here I am. I feel kind of fat, even though I’m really skinny. I’m only 115 pounds but I am almost 5’8”. I wouldn’t say I have a thigh gap, but I’ve never had my thighs get chafed in the summer, so I probably do have a thigh gap. I’m not really sure. But I don’t really work out anymore, and my stomach isn’t as flat as it used to be. [not really 115 pounds, I don’t know why I lied] I ordered two chicken tacos, even though I really wanted beef. But I’m allergic to beef. But it’s not deadly, I just get canker sores when I eat it.
The guy selling me the tacos is a little older than 40. He doesn’t look like anyone I know. Sometimes I think about that, you know? Whether we are drawn to a certain type of face in our friends. Most of my exes have similar faces. And a lot of my friends do their makeup the same way. I don’t mean their race or ethnicity. I have Mexican friends too. But none of them looked like this guy selling me tacos. He had pock marks on his face and greasy eyebrows. The grease was probably from working in the truck all day though. Who knows, maybe he cleans up nice. I bet he has a family and I bet most people he knows see him when he’s all cleaned up and not working in a truck. Isn’t that strange? If you work in a job like that, more people in the world know you as the person who sells tacos than as who you really are.
“Can you tell me if you’ve ever seen this guy?” I asked him. I pulled out my phone and opened up a picture to show him.
The guy stares at my phone, then looks back at me. “Yeah, I think so.”
Pock mark face looks at me and thinks. “Tuesday.”
Pock mark face shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”
“I think he’s trying to kill me.”
I don’t really think that. But I just wanted to see what the taco guy would say. He doesn’t really flinch. He just shrugs and wiggles his mustache.
I thank him and I leave. I stare down at my phone. The photo is a picture of a handsome man wearing a blue flannel shirt. He’s holding a beer in one hand and he has his other arm around a pretty girl in an angel costume. He has a handsome face with a small beard. His eyes are piercing blue and his hair is messy, like Indiana Jones. At least I assume Indiana Jones would have messy hair. Rugged, I guess, is the word I’m looking for. A little bit of a rescuer, without the dirty fingernails.
See, the thing is, this guy isn’t real. I mean, he is real because he exists. This photo exists. But I made him up. I made up this person. His name is Jason Zasich and he is 28 years old. I’ve been making people up since I was in the 2nd grade, but really ever since I was born if you want to get technical. But the first time I started writing them down was in the 2nd grade. I’ve come to the conclusion that they have to be written down in order for them to exist, but anything is possible at the point so I’m not ruling any possibilities out.
Most of the time, when you write down a made up person, they stay made up. They don’t spring into existence in the middle of an elevator on your way up to the 26th floor of a fancy building downtown. But there was no mistaking what I saw. She was tall, abnormally tall for a woman of her age. Not that height discriminated in age, but you so rarely see a tall woman over 40 with that much grace nowadays. She had a green and pink floral dress on with large toucans on the sides. In her hands she clutched a single cupcake in a box with the words “for Rebecca” written on top. She was about to tell the woman she loved how she felt, and with every floor the elevator went up, her heart seemed to beat faster and faster.
Yes, I saw her, exactly as I had written. She stepped into the elevator a few Saturdays ago, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was Eleanor Voorflap, all 5’11” of her. At least I was pretty certain her name was Eleanor Voorflap, because everything else about her fit perfectly with my description of her.
It happened several more times throughout the week that I came across a character I had written. Some were from years ago, there was no rhyme or reason to it that I could gather. I was appalled. At first, I left them alone. I didn’t want to do anything. What could I do? What could I say? “Excuse me, but I made you up”?
