Antsy Does Time

“Roll camera,” the director shouts, and Jaxon looks at me, doing the bring-it-on gesture with his fingers.

“C’mon, what are you waiting for? Do I get an official welcome, or not?”

I can see Crawley gri

“Omigosh!” says Kjersten. ‛You’re going to dump water on JAXON BEALE!”

It’s the first time I ever heard Kjersten, star of the debate team, say “Omigosh.” All at once I realized that, for this wet, shining moment, our roles were truly reversed. Not only was I Mr. Mature, but now she was the goofy fourteen-year-old.

“Well,” I said, smooth as a Porsche on ice, “if my buddy Jaxon wants water, then water he shall have.” I strode up to him as Kjersten squealed with her hands over her mouth, and I said, “Welcome to Paris, Capisce?, Mr. Beale.” Then I emptied the pitcher over his head.

He stood up, shaking the water off, and for a second I’m worried that maybe he’ll get mad and punch me out, but instead, he just starts laughing, turns to the camera, and says, “Now, that’s celebrity treatment!”

From here, I didn’t need a road map to know exactly where this was leading and why. Crawley had paid Beale a small fortune for this publicity stunt, and it was money well spent. Say what you want about Creepy Crawley, but the man is a marketing genius.

“It’s all about spin,” Old Man Crawley said while Jaxon Beale signed a waterlogged autograph for Kjersten, and other arriving guests. “There are lots of egos out there. Once this piece airs, celebrities, politicians, you name it, will be climbing over one another to get drenched by you.”

Thanks to our celebrity encounter, it became a date to remember. Even more special, because I knew it would be our last. I tried not to dwell on that, though, because we’d shared enough sad occasions together. We deserved for this one to be happy. I ordered in Italian!-^ don’t speak it all that well, but I can order like a pro. Still on her Jaxon Beale high, Kjersten was all gush, flush, and blush for a while. “I probably looked so stupid!” she said. “Like one of those lame adoring fans.”

“Naa,” I told her. ‛You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

By the time dessert came, everything settled down, and the dating balance was restored. It was different now, though. For the first time, I felt more like her equal. Maybe now she saw me that way, too—and it occurred to me that a relationship isn’t about being two distinct kinds of people—it’s about feeling comfortable in whatever roles the moment required.

I guess that’s why my friendship with Lexie survived through Norse gods and echolocation—we always seemed to be what the other one needed.

“Tell you what,” Lexie told me as we sat in her living room one afternoon, pla

I think it was good for both of us to know that as long as we were both there for each other, we’d always have a social life, even when we had no social life.

On the morning of the Ümlauts’ flight to Sweden, we had a funeral.

I’d like to say it was symbolic, but, sadly, it was all too real. Ichabod, our beloved family cat, finally went to the great windowsill in the sky. We decided to bury him in the Ümlauts’ backyard, since there was already a sizable gravestone available that otherwise would have gone to waste. Gu

Christina had written a heartfelt eulogy that I suspect she had been working on for months, the way newspapers start preparing obituaries the instant a celebrity gets a hangnail. With all the family pictures covering the little wooden crate, and the solemn air of the occasion, Ichabod’s memorial service actually brought a few tears to my eyes. I didn’t mind that Kjersten and Gu

With Ichabod laid to rest, we went inside to find Mrs. Ümlaut sweeping the empty kitchen, because “I don’t want the bank to think we’re slobs.”

“She’s just like our mother,” Christina noted. I think all mothers are alike, regardless of cultural background, when it comes to illogical cleaning.

Christina wanted to go home and mourn privately, but I made her wait, because I wanted to see Kjersten and Gu

Gu

“There’s something I forgot,” she kept saying. “I know there’s something I forgot.”

Eventually Kjersten gently grabbed her, and gave her a hug to slow her down. “Everything’s taken care of, Mom. Everything’s ready.” The two rocked back and forth for a moment, and I couldn’t tell whether Mrs. Ümlaut was rocking her baby girl, or if Kjersten was rocking her anxious mother. Kjersten gri

There’s no question I was going to miss Kjersten, but the kind of sadness I felt wasn’t the kind that brings up tears, and I’m thinking, Great, I cried for the cat, but I’m not crying for her—but I think she was okay with that.

I think we both knew if she stayed, our relationship wouldn’t have gone much further. Ours was like one of those fireplace Duraflame logs that burns big and bright, then drops dead an hour before the package says it will. I think it’s best that we left it here, before it became useless.

“So,” I asked her, only half joking, “once you get there, do you think you’ll start dating guys your own age?”

She looked at me with a grin, then looked away. “Antsy, I think you’ve aged at least two years over the past few weeks,” she told me. “No matter what, you’re going to be a hard act to follow.”

For that, I gave her the best kiss of my career—during which Christina said, “Oh! Is that why you brushed your teeth this morning?”

The taxi finally arrived, honking from outside in repeated little blasts like a fire drill. Gu

Thanks to all the horn blasts, neighbors had come out onto their porches to watch the Ümlauts’ departure. Then Mrs. Ümlaut threw up her hands “Ah! Now I remember!” She ran back into the house and came out with something in her hand. “This is for you,” she said to me. “Someone wanted to buy it last Saturday, but I told them it wasn’t for sale.”

She handed me the stainless-steel meat tenderizer.

“To remember us by,” she said with a wink.

This was the first hint that she had a sense of humor—and a twisted one, too. I was impressed.

“It’ll be one of my prized possessions—I’ll keep it with my rare paper clips,” I told her, and she looked at me fu

“You must visit us!” she said, which I figured was about as likely as me visiting the International Space Station, but I nodded politely and said, “Sure.”

Then I heard a gruff voice from somewhere down the block intrude on our tender farewell moment.

“What about our plants, hah?” I turned to see the same paunchy, beady-eyed man, who had made nasty comments before, peering down from his second-floor balcony. From this angle, the guy looked like what you might get if you crossed a human being with one of those potbellied pigs. “You go