this is what friends are for.
There are so many of these books about the boy who met the girl that became his whole world and I always find myself closing the cover after reading the O in "Once upon a time." But among all the he screwed me over's and the she's a 'just friends' kind of girl's I found this one book called Us and I'll have you know, I scoffed at the title too. But I thought Oh, what the hell and picked it up, scanned the first page for the happily ever after's Disney's always talking about and didn't find it. I kind of fell to the floor and propped it up against my legs with my back to a section dedicated to the why doesn't he call me?'s and the kiss and tell's, and the story went a little something like this.
The boy's a hotheaded Italian with a dislike for seafood because he's never tried any worth a damn, and he's all black hair and clandestine dimples and bright eyes that go ha ha ha when he knows you're wrong and he's right, which is always. And the girl's some sort of mutt, a mix of people and places and she's stubborn as hell just like her father, and she never really smiles but smirks and has a quick tongue that keeps spitting venom until you're beyond the wrongest of wrongs with no hope of being right. Of course, they're separated by a mediator of sorts who we're going to call the Netherlands, but they all sit at the same table in Anatomy and study the bones of the skeletons they dragged out of their closets. And to cut to the chase, Netherlands is the only happy fellow with his best friends on either side of him and a girlfriend that swallows and a job that pays well and a family that loves him. He's all smiley and shit while Italian and Mutt have their arms crossed and eyes narrowed, dropping negative comments like they're in World War II. But that makes them, well, them, the three of them. Which isn't surprising, because most stories have some trace of happiness in them, and they normally end fairly quickly with that happiness in mind.
No, not this little diamond in all the rough. I found myself flipping through the last pages after the sixth chapter and they're all blank, but if you catch the pages off guard you'll see they're being filled. Slowly and surely and all that good stuff, because the book's still being written. Now isn't that sweet?
So over the course of the year, Italian and Mutt get pretty close while Netherlands is in the backseat of his girlfriend's van fogging up the windows, and they decide they want to try something. And they go to this secret place wedged between the curve of his lip and that pocket of skin that just so appropriately dimples in, and they get high and laugh about everything from how many bones are in the face to the way a lung looks ridden with tumours. And he kisses her (right, yes, finally, I know). But he shouldn't have though it's about time he did, because she has a boyfriend and the lyrics to "Scotty Doesn't Know" by Lustra are going through her head and it's funny because neither Italian or Scotty know, that's how shitty the relationship was. Yes, was. Guilt gets her to break up with this Scotty kid for all the right reasons and one wrong reason pushing it over, and it's probably the smartest thing she does because she's back at that secret place again, swapping stories and spit and body heat to "Walking Disaster" by Sum 41. Because that's the kind of people Italian and Mutt are, walking disasters among the dead. According to Us, and Netherlands and their stoner friends will agree, they're something special. Something that's hard to come by because he moved a year before and he was never supposed to meet her, and she moved a year after and was never supposed to see him again.
And I guess somewhere within all the trappy sappy, Nicholas Spark's romance novels whose cover backgrounds range from Grey Shade One to Grey Shade Fifty and with every thing you see and do and hear and read really, you'll find that life can be a bit too funny sometimes. So I wedged my finger between chapter double-digit and chapter double-digit because I don't remember which, and I stood up and I took that book home to laugh a lot and cry a bit and to learn a little more about life and how to win an argument and how to get someone to like seafood, because that's just what works for us, y'know.
