First Mover Advantage

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm not exactly the best at texting guys.

Like, it's a lot easier to be cute and quirky in person. All you have to do is smile and laugh at their jokes and you can basically survive any conversation. But over the phone, it's just weirder, if anything. You get all the benefits of not having to be in physical proximity of someone who's hitting on you but at the cost of not having any idea if they're actually hitting on you or if they're just as bad at texting as you are.

Case in point, I have no idea how to respond to the guy from last week.

My memories of last weekend are kind of hazy. I've been through eight different classes five times over, an interstate soccer match, and a mathletes quarterfinal to boot—so you could forgive me for being a bit out of the loop. But I have a feeling that even if I had the memory of the world's smartest elephant, I still wouldn't know what to make of the meme that arrived in my inbox this morning.

I stared at it for a while as I laid in bed with my eyes still crusted over, as if I could decipher its multifaceted cultural nuances without at least a latte or two in me. Having been sent at 1:30 A.M., the image featured what appeared to be a brown cartoon dog wearing a poorly clip-arted cowboy hat. The comic-sans font text below the great dane's soulless mascot grin read, "Howdy do-be doo". It was a mystery, to be sure. But I didn't feel like splitting up my brain cells to look for clues.

I replied, "You can just say hi."

And I haven't heard from him since.

So I'm just sitting here, loading the dishwasher before mom calls me a "typical liberal slacker" for the fifth time this week, when I get his reply:

"Noted."

Okay. Guess he didn't take that too well, then. Not my problem.

I'm about to shove my phone back into my sweatpants when I pause. Generally speaking, when a guy starts to get passive aggressive, that's your signal to get the hell out. But there's the slight chance that he's as bad at texting as I am. And I'm nothing if not charitably empathetic. Plus, it's 11 in the morning on the first Saturday I have nothing planned for in months, and the sudden appearance of the boredom void on the horizon is suffocating me.

So I say, "You text like my dad."

And I set down my phone, expecting to at least wait out the wash cycle so I have time to get the detergent out from under my manicure.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

I can’t help but snort. “How would that be a good thing?”

He responds with two words. Two words that might be an instant block for anyone else. But they tickle just the right combination of my few remaining brain cells, which just so happen to have been raised on a steady diet of Adult Swim.

“Daddy Issues.”

I cackle, reflexively kicking the side of the washing machine with a deafening bang. There’s a thunderstorm of heavy footsteps upstairs, and I book it from the laundry nook beneath the basement stairs with the speed of a thousand snails. That is to say, my mom’s already blocking the entryway to the kitchen, which is the central artery of this funhouse maze.

“Is everything good, hun? Did you hit your head?”

Her hands-on-hips roundness and three-layer tiramisu of blond hair prevents any escape routes moving forward, under, or around. To backtrack now, though, would be a sign of weakness.

“I’m peachy, ma.”

She does not look convinced. “Didn’tcha have a dang-ol’ soccer thing today?”

“That was last week, ma.”

“D’you put on makeup? You ain’t plannin’ on leaving the house dressed like that, are ya?”

“I didn’t and I don’t, ma.”

Remembering that I left someone on seen, I have to find even the narrowest opening. If I don’t, my dad’ll wake up any minute. Which means my sister will wake up. Then my brother. And by that point, it’ll be too late.

My mom’s round face twists into one massive smile. “Oh, wonderful! What’dya want for family brunch then?”

I feel the trap closing in around me. Why did I have to go and come downstairs just to do my chores like a good little girl? But there’s no time to panic. Think, think! Alright. I guess it’s time for the emergency ejector seat.

“Ma, do you know if we have any spare pads?”

Mom turns towards the closet with a finger to her lips, giving me just enough room to crouch and burst through the gap between her belly and the archway. I make it to the hall, hang a left around the bathroom corner, and book it to the staircase at the end. There, I breathe a sigh of relief. For the first time in my entire life, I feel gratitude towards Coach Werfer for the wind sprint drills. And then I hear a rumble, like thunder.

Tumbling down every individual, padded step like a human liquid, my little brother arrives at the foot of the stairs with his eyes still glued to the iPad in his hands.

“Morning, Aiden,” I say, to no response.

I run a hand through his embarrassing auburn bowlcut—the kind that only either a 12 year old boy or a 50 year old woman can pull off—and peek over at his screen. He’s on a twenty kill-streak and there’s only one opponent left before he gets a victory royale.

Considering that nothing short of a thermonuclear bomb on our front porch will snap him out of it, I step over his contorted body and straight into someone else. Unbeknownst to me, my sister had padded down the stairs with a grace made possible only by a healthy serving of years spent chronically cheerleading and a dash of anorexia for extra flavor—A fact that I can hardly appreciate as I plow right into her chin nose-first.

I stumble backwards, tripping over Aidan’s spindly legs, and get a buttfull of hardwood flooring.

“Watch where you’re going-” I yelp, only now noticing that she’s dressed like a cross between a bridesmaid and a pallbearer.

Mom’s voice closes in on us, and I wince in defeat. “Where are you going all dolled up like that, sugar? Church ain’t until tomorrow.”

“Father Mac is hosting the kid’s chorus today,” Stella says, dusting herself off, “And I couldn’t miss it for the world.”

My sister always speaks with that ridiculous tone that pitches up at the end of every sentence, and her even rows of infuriatingly perfect teeth have made me want to go fist-bowling more often than I’d like to admit. I rub my nose in pain. She looks down on me from the stairs with that smile, as if I’m not even worth the trouble of having been shoulder-checked. I can never tell what—or if—she’s thinking behind those vacant, sapphire eyes of hers. Then again, she’s the type of person who can gel going to church and pounding poppers at a rave back to back. Both without fail, and at least two times a week.

I always said I’d go live under a bridge before I became anything like her. But, well, look where I am now.

Stella steps over me to kiss mom on both cheeks, taking care to accidentally step on my hand on the way there. But I do not react. And there, between my sister’s utter vacuum of an ass and Aidan bending in half to bite his toenails, lies my chance. I scramble off of my goblin of a brother and book it up the stairs. Two doors and a near-slip on a pool noodle on the floor later, I’m home free.

I slam the door and shut my eyes. Breathing in the peace and quiet of my little nest, it feels like I can reclaim the pieces of myself that go into hiding whenever I interact with my family. Honestly, if it weren’t for mom’s embarrassing stretch-mark stories whenever her “wine friends” are over, I’d have a hard time believing we’re all related.

No dirty clothes hanging over chairs. No mysterious, sticky stains that don’t go away. Just tasteful posters, color-sorted makeup, and alphabetized study notebooks as far as the eye can see. Between the heavy door that mercifully blocks all the arguments in the hall and the sawed-off bottom of a bunk bed shoved in the corner of the room, this place is my domain.

Here, I’m not “Annie-May”, Dariah from church’s ‘other’ daughter. Or “Anne-Marie Pulasky-Zamenhoff” from homeroom prefect 1B-5. Nor am I Teddy, Tristana, and Wendy’s “Amy”. In fact, I’m not even “that dumb-looking girl with the ridiculously thick ass”, as I overheard some guys agree in PE one time. In my room, no matter how long of a day I’ve had, I’m just me.

And, though my decisions for the last five years might scream otherwise, I like being me.

My phone dings. Even though I still have a headache from going downstairs, I check the notification. No digital blackboard updates. No practice cancellations. No like or follower notifications, either. Oh. Thank god, it’s just Brian.

“yo are u free dude? im stuck on this dumb trig hw.”

I laugh, and tell him to snap a picture, knowing full well that he probably means the same one he asked me about last week. He’s a good egg, that Brian. Definitely fell a bit far from the tree, considering he’s the exact inverse of his two-masters-degrees-taped-to-a-stop-sign dad. But we love him anyways—Even if his gaggle of bros doesn’t quite strike the same endearing balance of meat and head.

The math problem is simple enough, and surprisingly not from the exact same homework as before. I solve it for him and then work through the two worksheets I had for calc. Even after I’m done, I can still faintly hear mom and Stella yammering on about tomorrow’s service. They haven’t moved an inch in the last- half an hour.

Oh shit.

I whip out my phone and open up the chat. But all the messages between me and that guy were long gone, sent to that void between earth and The Cloud. What the hell were we talking about, again? I remember he made some kind of joke, and then I got distracted…

I start texting, “Hey,” only to realize that I forgot his name. The nickname above the chat only says ‘Goggles’, and of course he doesn’t have a profile picture. His face wasn’t exactly memorable, either, so I can’t even recall if he’s cute or not. All I can remember is what we talked about, and that it’s been lingering in my mind ever since. Is this even worth the trouble, though?

Sometimes, you can have a long, deep convo with someone new for hours only to never see them again. It’s like you know each other better than best friends for just a single night. And then it’s back to reality. It’s happened like a dozen times to me-be it at school, in public, online, or even during those summers when my folks held me hostage at bible camp. So what makes this time any different?

I start holding down the delete key, only for his bitmoji to peek over the chat window.

Shit. Now he sees me typing. What do I even say that doesn’t make it look like I’ve been staring at the screen for the last half an hour like a creep? Wait, but if he brings it up, that means that he was staring at the screen for the last half an hour like a creep. And if that’s the case-

What am I doing?

“Hey, wanna meet up today in an hour or so?”

I hit send with the determination of an artillery officer ordering his last volley and then collapse from my desk chair onto my bed. Part of me cringes, realizing that “in an hour” makes “today” superfluous, but I hold fast. If the guy is already starting to fade into the haze of last weekend, there’s no better refresher than meeting up.

“Works every time,” comes the response.

I raise an eyebrow, figuring that I must be missing the context. If we’re meeting up for the first time, it’s probably a bad idea for him to know where I live. So I send him the address of that one jewelry place on main street that’s always under renovation and ask:

“11’s good?”

“Yes.”

He really does text like my dad. It’s kinda scary. And speaking of my dad, he’d probably agree that it’s not the best idea to go hang with someone whose face I don’t even remember. So I pull up my chat with Brian and write:

“Yo B-dog, you free at 11?”