Peter Li-Chapter 6

Chapter 6- Remember?

I stare at the front of But I’m Still Young, my favorite burger joint. Its polished glass doors gleam like incisors, swallowing unknowing customers with predatory precision.

“Any day now,” I say to myself, fingers clenching. I half-expect a text from Sam asking why I haven’t moved from the door in five minutes. Maybe his friends are eyeing me through the glass like sticky-fingered toddlers at a petting zoo, tossing around weird slang and monotone one-liners about the Korean boy who cried wolf. On second thought— they can’t actually see me from the back, can they?

I stifle a groan. Lord, thank you for this opportunity to reconnect with Sam, but I honestly don’t know what to do.

Finally, I step into the glass maw and meander my way to the back, enveloped by the buzz of smalltalk and the funeral march of my footsteps.

“Hey, Pete!”

Swiveling around, I spot Sam waving at me. He half-smiles, opens his mouth, changes his mind.

“Hey.” I wave back.

Sam reaches for his cap, then stops himself, hand flung back to his side. Somehow, the reminder that I’m not the only human in the universe awkward enough to stand in front of a restaurant for five minutes allows me to slide into the booth next to him and say to the pair across me, “I’m Peter. Nice to meet you.”

A quiet boy with a mousy thatch and a U2 T-shirt introduces himself as Aaron, while a striped-shirt girl with her ebony hair in a disheveled bob introduces herself as Jo. For a moment, we all stare at the stained, mustard tabletop.

“Well, I guess we should order?” Jo says. I find myself breathing again. “I’ve never been, but Sam said the cheeseburgers here were really good. Maybe we could share some fries, too?”

“Sure, that works.” Sam’s features pinch. “I can order, and y’all can Venmo?”

As I make a mental note to google the word “Venmo,” Sam catches my slightly panicked expression and amends, “cash works great too.”

“Sounds good,” I say. “The cheeseburgers here are my favorite. They’re, uh, really good. Really.”

Nailed it, by which I mean into the coffin.

Over the course of our meal, we discuss a variety of fluff. Sometimes, small talk frustrates me, but too much adrenaline buzzes in my veins for boredom. Jo loves volleyball and crochets keychains, while Aaron likes to paint and plays cello. Jo likes winter, while Aaron prefers summer, and so on. Next to me, Sam stirs the straw of his milkshake, cracks jokes. His friends reference a lot of stuff on social media I’ve never heard of, but he usually steers the conversation back to Christopher Nolan or Nintendo, finding the overlap of our Venn diagrams. I think I use the word “maybe” in every other sentence and talk a grand total of four times.

As I stare at my half-eaten burger, the weight of my silence drills down on my skull. I should probably talk, right? But what do I even have to say? Why talk for the sake of saying something?

Arghhhhh. Stop. Thinking.

Finally, I ask, “What type of music do you guys like to listen to?” then stuff a fry into my mouth.

“Like, tons of R&B,” Jo says. “I used to listen to a lot of Hillsong, but yeah, just after the allegations and everything—” Sam and Aaron nod as she gesticulates vaguely. “I can’t. It makes me sick.”

What allegations?

“Yeah, honestly, that type of music seems a little extreme. Like blind devotion,” Aaron says. “I mean, it sounds really nice, but sometimes it also all sounds the same.”

I find myself nodding reflexively, watching my fingers fold under the table.

We finish up our meal; Jo and Aaron leave Sam and I at the train station. A breeze whisks past, stirring the emerald boughs above us. The rasping of leaves fills the air as sun shards dance on the concrete. Fiddling with my phone, I stare at the pockmarked streets, the ice cream-slurping seven year old in the prime of life, the rust on Brown House railings. The silence crackles.

“Want to get boba?” Sam asks. “We can always make the next train.”

I let out a sharp, little laugh and shake my head. “I’m good, but thanks.”

“So, uh, what did you think?” Sam asks, sticking his hands in his pockets.

“Umm, nice. It was nice,” I say, grasping for some slick observation. “Didn’t know non-Christians listened to Hillsong.”

“Well,” Sam scuffs his shoe on the concrete. “Jo left the church, actually, so…” His silent “me too” curdles the air.

My chest constricts a little as I watch cars whizz past.

“These people,” Sam pauses, wringing his cap. “I know you don’t know them well, but I hope you can. They’re like my new-found family, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say, swallowing hard. “I do know.”

“Not to say that I don’t care about my old family,” he amends hastily, stealing a glance at me.

I hold his gaze and smile. “No, I get it.” And weirdly enough, I do. “Thanks for telling me. I appreciate it.”

Sam half-smiles and returns his cap to his head. Our conversation drifts to sports cars, bounces between soccer and Monet, dwells on VeggieTales. He still draws, but appreciates abstract sketching more than the detailed realism of before. Although he really did enjoy The Giver in English class, Tom Sawyer from seventh grade is still king of his heart.

The knot in my stomach loosens as I settle into the warmth of being known like the back of a burger joint, like the bookend of a summer day.

Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/dublin-home-house-ireland-europe-4955342/