It was still like a crinkly paper fuzzy when I saw your missed call on the lit screen. One Missed Call-Al-9:11 AM. So ironic, I don’t even make a little joke in my head. Pointing out the elementary level irony just sinks me to such a mundane intelligence level. The 911 is just to easy.
You know you make it hard for me to return your calls. Actually, I should probably phrase that as a sentence. Did you know you have made it hard for me to return your phone calls? I can’t leave anything to assumption with you anymore.
At the same time I fantasize about exchanging books at my locker, right before math or Spanish or gym, and seeing a blinking message like a ghost in LED. It’s a voicemail from an unknown number. I slide my phone into my shirt pocket and hurry to a bathroom stall like some loser so I can listen to that waiting words. I have a feeling its of some significant importance, like some kind of connection between myself and the waiting caller.
Your voice feeds through the speaker. You’re in jail. Again. Just like in every movie-book-TV episode ever seen, you got just one call. The only person you could think of to call was me. Your fifteen year old teenage daughter you’ve seen three times over her entire life.
And I’ve never been so happy with you. Because you picked me.
Granted, your drug dealer probably wouldn’t have answered at such a ghastly sun lit hour, and your mothers phone connection was spotty from her grave, but still. You picked me.
Is that sick? Is it wrong or a sin or shameful or some twisted dream that combines everything that is dark and bad? Probably. But its mine, about you. And that is a rare, precious find. And if that’s sick, well, I wish to God I was terminally ill.
The other treasured fantasy of us runs in different versions through my head. They’re all the same happenings, just different places and props and times. Its actually been a secret dream since I was just a little kid, before I knew what a fantasy even was, before I knew why I had to hide it.
One version is at school again, around ten minutes after the last bell of the day has rung. Just like everyday, I lean against the painted concrete wall and wait for bus #45 to pull up and drag me home. The main office and front steps are just around the corner.
Everyone turns their heads to try and see where the yells and curses are coming from. We all recognize Dean Wymann’s voice, familiar with detentions and scolds echoing down the halls. But the other voice, we don’t know that one, brave and bold, in no way a student’s. Even the most rebellious of the rebels.
You tear down the hallway with your arms out. You’re going to grab me. Behind my frozen face I’m crying smiling tears.
I never know exactly what your plan is here. Kidnap me? Hurt me? Help me? Kill me? Cry, yell, hug? Love?
I don’t know, even know, looking in on my dream with wide awake eyes. But it has to be something. If it actually came true, of course I would have to look scared and sad and all those. But the whole time, I would be farther than happy. I would be so excited-you want me-for something. In the best case you obviously want to kidnap me so I can live with you. Try and imagine that. You breaking laws and taking risks and taking time to figure out where my school is and when the bell rings and everything-because you want me to live like your daughter. Pretending I was scared would be closest to impossible.
So when I woke up to a fuzzy smudged phrase on my screen saying I missed your call, I pretend I haven’t seen it until I’ve thought about it a couple days. I told you, you make it hard to call back.
But eventually, I do. I have to.
And you tell me, “your crappy ass phone makes calls from your denim pocket all the goddamn time. Sorry about that.”
Well then I’m just sort of glad my number is still saved in your contacts after all these hollow silent years. And I’m just happy.