Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me - Gae Polisner Page 0,1

should be a compliment but, instead, the electricity fizzles as if short-circuited, and my chest fills with an inexplicable sense of dread. Your admiration feels somehow fragile and conditional, and impossible to live up to.

“No I’m not, don’t be stupid,” I say, irritated. I want to untangle my fingers, get up, and sprint across the lawn, but you squeeze harder to hold on.

“Yes you are. Admit it.”

“Aubs—”

“Well, I think you are. I wish I were more like you. Pretty and free, and not afraid of anything, like your mother.”

It feels worse when you add this, because you don’t know me if you think I’m like her. I’m nothing like her, off-kilter and unfettered, nor half as beautiful. I’m plain, but I’m solid. And, yet, it isn’t about me, suddenly. It’s what you have decided. You have judged me as one thing, and at some point, I will disappoint you by proving you wrong.

“I am not,” I say again, to right things.

“Are too,” you insist, making my face redden in protest. But you don’t notice. You don’t see. And even if you turned and looked at me, you couldn’t tell the flush of anger in my cheeks from too much sun. “I just wish I could be more like you. Geesh, that’s all.”

“You do?”

You nod, and squeeze my fingers even harder, and we both close our eyes. I leave them there in yours even though a few are starting to go numb.

“So much,” you say.

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

So, maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe you’re not judging me at all.

I squeeze back, letting go of my unease, wanting to hold on to whatever spell has you enamored with me, instead.

Or maybe I’m weak and don’t have the heart to call out the lie, and tell you how afraid of everything I really am.

MID-APRIL

TENTH GRADE

I move the bent paper clip loop toward the butterfly’s abdomen, my thumb and forefinger pressed gently on her wings to steady her. My eyes dart nervously to the image paused on my laptop screen, and my hand trembles.

I stop.

I can’t do it.

These kinds of videos always lie. They make it seem easy when it isn’t. And when you try it yourself, it never works like the guy on the screen said it would. There’s no way pinning this poor creature down like this won’t kill her. But she’s as good as dead with this break in her wing, so it’s either this or do nothing and watch her struggle and die.

I press play, wishing Aubrey were here to calm me, trying not to glance at the photo of Mom and Dad and me together on the shelf above my desk. Smiling after eighth-grade graduation.

A lot can change in more than a year. And he originally promised he’d be back in six months.

“End of May, sweetheart,” he promised again last week. “Less than six weeks left to go.” But how many times in the past eighteen months had I heard that?

“By fall, JL, I promise.”

“By Christmas.”

“Just a few more weeks.”

Then, the inevitable phone call, and the same old explanation that the company still needs him, that there are options in his contract he can’t avoid.

Followed by more of Mom’s tears, and her slipping further and further into oblivion.

* * *

I move the cursor back to the beginning and hit play again. The video starts over and I try to focus on the man’s calm English accent as he moves me through the instructions: “Use the paper clip to gently restrain the butterfly around its abdomen … now that you have it immobilized … use your toothpick to dab a dot of glue over the break site…” Like it’s no big deal that I will kill the poor thing if I mess up. Like he’s explaining how to fix a flat tire.

Shit.

I take a deep breath, fighting the inclination to close my eyes. I’d better move faster. I’m already too far behind. I press the metal loop down over her abdomen, and her wings pulse instinctually—once, twice, against the restraint like a heartbeat.

“… glue over the surface of the cardboard splint … dry a minute or two to set. Now, using your tweezers, and making sure the wing is lined up perfectly, carefully place your card stock splint over the fractured area … no ability to redo, so take your time … dusting powder gently over the wing to counteract excess glue.”

Is he kidding me going so fast?

I need to pause the video, but don’t have a hand free, so I plow forward, coaching