For whatever dumb reason, I unlock my phone and open up the message chain between me and Kevin. It’s . . . confronting. The last three messages were all sent by me: a stack of shameless blue bubbles.
Hey, how are you? Are you going to Steph’s party this weekend? Hope to see you there. *beer emoji*
Kevin! Fancy a drink tomorrow night? My dads are out of town. And there’s red wine in the refrigerator. (I know. They’re criminals. Room temperature or bust.)
Hey! Just a quick message to say I hope your big move to Penn State goes well. Hit me up when you’re next home and we can catch up.
My skin crawls, reading them back. But they’re not that awful, are they? I obsessed so hard over striking the right balance between casual and flirty. Between upbeat and sarcastic. Between perfect and, well, perfect. And it still wasn’t enough to get his attention.
I can’t help but feel, like I do 201,674 times a day, that it’s all because of the way I look. The blank stares, the ghosted messages, the everlasting feeling of irrelevance. It has to be. Because I’m smart, I’m interesting, I’m funny (when I have the guts to actually crack jokes within earshot of other human beings). I’m a nice fucking person. And yet no guy has any interest. Why?
I’m about to shove my phone away when, as it always does, temptation strikes. What if this is the one time Kevin will reply? What if he’s drunk at a daytime frat party, and I send a message at the perfect moment, and he actually responds? It would soothe my self-hatred, if only for a moment. And hey, if he ignores me – what’s new? It can’t suck any more than it already does.
So I do it. I fire off a quick, breezy text, watch as the ‘delivered’ sign appears, and bury the phone back into my pocket. Maybe if I don’t look for a while, there will magically be a message waiting for me later tonight.
My pretty, faux-Edwardian house is detached and modestly sized. Vati – Dad #2 – is out front gardening, and as I’m walking up the driveway I almost don’t see him. He’s about two inches from the soil, hacking away manically at the border with a pair of secateurs. He’s a godawful gardener. Like, imagine you gave a donkey a pair of scissors and told it to go to town on your flowerbeds. That’s how our garden looks.
But Vati loves it, so Dad just lets him crack on and do his thing. That is love, right there. And not that I’ve ever, you know . . . rated the hotness of my fathers, or anything, but they are pretty similar levels of good-looking and socially desirable. The Matching Hypothesis never fails.
‘Bärchen !’ he calls, dropping his tools and kneeling back on his haunches. Vati – Dr Felix Kerber – is Austrian. He’s always called me Bärchen, ever since I was teeny. Little bear. It still warms my heart.
‘Hey, Vati,’ I say, stopping just short of the front door. ‘How goes the gardening? Zu heiß, nein ?’ That’s about as far as my German goes. Gabriela is the language goddess of our friendship tripod, and is completely fluent. Vati always loves when she visits.
‘Ja, this heat is ridiculous,’ Vati replies. ‘And I’m making a real mess of this. I never did know what to do with bushes.’
And then he guffaws. Actually guffaws. At his own disgusting joke.
I mime gagging, and shout back, ‘Is Dad inside? I would like some sensible conversation, for once in my life.’
Vati is too busy guffawing to respond.
Our dog Sirius – a one-eyed cockapoo – greets me at the door with a half-hearted tail wag. He is very old and very lazy, and his depth perception is very bad on account of the one-eye situation. Also, his face smells like a rotting corpse. Apart from that, I love him very much. Unfortunately, Sirius loves nothing but barbecue ribs.
I find Dad washing potatoes in the kitchen sink. Dumping my backpack on the counter, I immediately raid the fridge, as I do every night. And, as he does every night, Dad says in his dulcet Bostonian tones, ‘You will ruin your dinner.’
He’s the sensible one, Dad. While goofy Vati plays the clown, cracking inappropriate jokes and generally throwing caution to the wind, Dad is more subdued. As a world-leading expert in experimental hepatology, Dr Michael Murphy is not interested in your scatological humour. He is painfully smart, painfully literal, and affectionate in his own special way.
‘Dad, there’s every chance that the Higgs Boson being made over at the Large Hadron Collider are becoming unstable at this very second,’ I say dramatically, while peeling a string cheese into my palm. ‘By the time I’ve finished this sentence, one could have triggered a catastrophic vacuum decay, causing space and time, as we know it, to collapse.’ Triumphantly, I cram several pieces of stringy deliciousness into my mouth. ‘In which case, dinner will be ruined regardless.’
‘Very good,’ Dad grumbles. ‘But since you have finished your sentence – and your snack – without a black hole in sight, you can close that fridge door, grab a vegetable peeler, and tell me about your day.’
3
Thanks to a potent dinner-table combination of intelligent conversation and creamy mashed potatoes, I manage to avoid checking my phone for a good couple of hours.
As I traipse upstairs, belly full of schnitzel, I’m almost dizzy with the anticipation of pulling my phone out and seeing Kevin’s name light up my screen. Or Haruki’s. Or anyone’s, for that matter.
It’s been two hours. I’ll probably have several messages in my group chat with Keiko and Gabriela, comprising pre-show selfies like we always get from Keiko, and witty comments from Gabriela about the spoilt rich kids she tutors. Possibly even a missed FaceTime call, if Gabriela’s particularly mad. Perhaps Leo, my brother, has tagged me in a nerdy meme only he and I would find funny. Maybe Haruki has reached out via Instagram to apologize for dropping me in the shit this afternoon. And surely Kevin will have replied by now, right? It’s been two hours. Two hours!
For no real reason, I make a slight ceremony of the phone-checking. I get into comfy sweats and an oversized T-shirt, throw my hair up into a messy pony, switch on a couple lamps and my fairy lights, and curl up cross-legged on my bed. Dad must’ve put fresh bedding on this afternoon, because the plain white duvet cover with tiny pink flowers smells of lavender and camomile. That’s when you can tell Dad is getting bored on sabbatical. He does all the laundry imaginable, instead of finishing the book proposal he’s supposed to be working on.
When I’m finally ready, I press the home button on my phone.
Nothing.
Just the time – 9:01pm – and my background photo. Keiko and Gabriela’s shiny faces smile back at me. We took that picture after Keiko’s first ever gig, when we were all sweaty and high on adrenaline and good music. I’m sandwiched between the two of them, and you can barely see my face through Keiko’s blue hair.
No texts. No calls. No notifications. Nada.
I shouldn’t care. I know I have people around me who love me. Keiko and Gabriela, and my dads, even my big brother, although he’s usually far too busy studying to pay me any attention. I know they care. It’s just . . .
Technology today makes it so easy to constantly communicate with your loved ones. So when they don’t communicate, when they all ignore you at once, it’s the worst feeling. They could get in touch with you. They just don’t.