Chapter 32: Mitch

There was always something I couldn’t explain and there was always something to feel bad about. Well, maybe not always, but the phenomenon didn’t begin with Jo Beth. It began in middle school, specifically in math class. With math, you couldn’t have an opinion and you couldn’t have faith. What if I didn’t believe that two plus two always equaled four or that the sine function’s maximum and minimum values must stay consistent to find a solution? At twelve years old, I’d already learned that solutions came from a belief in the inconsistent and in the faith that irregularities occurred every moment of every day.

Speaking of irregularities, Amanda Butler had made me promise to call her. Amanda wore pink flip flops to school, to show off her toes, which were always painted purple. This was a dress code violation but the teachers were too scared to lecture her. She floated through the halls of Sanford Middle School, always elevated an inch off the floor, so her flip-flops never got dirty and her toenail polish never chipped.

“Hey Mitch,” she’d said to me one day. With all the familiarity in her voice, it was like we’d been friends for years.

“Hi,” I mumbled, scared that my voice would turn all Peter Brady and I’d squeak instead of grunt.

“Whatcha doing later? Walk me home?”

“Definitely.”

It didn’t matter that she lived in the opposite direction of my house, or that I’d be skipping band practice. Amanda wanted me, so I was there. On the way home, we talked about our favorite vegetables. Amanda said she liked broccoli with cheese, but I preferred Brussel sprouts. “What about eggplant?” she asked. “That’s also a good one.”

I looked into her eyes and saw that they had changed to a deep purple, just like eggplant, just like her toenail polish, just like the Vikings jersey that my dad still kept in the closet after having moved from Minnesota to Florida. “Eggplant is great,” I told her. “I love it with spaghetti sauce and cheese.”

She laughed. “You mean eggplant Parmesan?”

“Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

When we reached her door I handed her books to her. “Thanks for carrying them for me. You’re the sweetest.” She stepped in close and stood on her tippy toes, making an L shape with her feet and flip flops. Then she kissed me, once on the cheek and once on the lips.

One plus one equaled a million.

We were a couple for almost ten days. Then, one night I was supposed to call her but I had math homework. In middle school, ten days equaled several years, at least when it came to romantic relationships, and I’d gotten comfortable enough to take her for granted. Besides, I’d noticed how other girls were now looking at me. If Amanda had chosen me, I must be valuable.

My phone rang at 9:30.

“Mitch,” my dad said. “It’s for you.”

I could hear the scowl in his voice. I shoved my math book closed, wandered out into the hall, and he handed me the phone. “It’s after your bedtime. Make it quick.”

“Hello?”

She was already laughing. “You have got to get your own cell.”

“Yeah…” My dad just stood there, glaring. “Um, sorry I didn’t call you but I just got busy. Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Tonight,” she answered. “Meet me at Plymouth beach in two hours.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can. You will. Just sneak out.”

I swallowed, my throat suddenly sore, and looked away from Dad, who stood there being imposing. He’d never lost his Minnesota lumberjack look though we’d been living in South Beach for years.

“Sure,” I told her, because I wanted the conversation to end. “Talk to you then.”

I hung up.

“You’re too young to have a girlfriend, Mitch,” said my dad.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

I brushed my teeth and went to bed, but seventy-five minutes later I stealthily traipsed over our shag carpet and out into the hallway of our apartment complex. Plymouth beach was not far from where I lived; it was adjacent to a public park and playground, and Dad and I would picnic there when it wasn’t too hot out. I arrived first, so I lay down on the sand and looked up at the stars, summoning my courage to make out with Amanda. All I had to do was kiss her and the rest would just follow naturally. That’s what I told myself, but the longer Amanda took to arrive, the more nervous I became.

Finally, a pair of pink flip flops was in my line of vision. I sat up.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” I said.

“I know.”

When she didn’t sit down next to me, I stood. “Amanda, I love you.” I took her hand and tilted my head down to kiss her but she giggled and took a step back. The tide was coming in and the waves kissed the inch of pink foam that separated her feet from the sand.

“Mitch, it’s time we go our own ways. I didn’t want to have to tell you at school and I thought you should have a chance to digest the information before we see each other tomorrow in math class.” In the moonlight, her eyes shone like dark ocean waves, so blue they were almost black. I couldn’t speak. No words would come so I just stepped closer to her again. This time my effort to kiss her would work and we wouldn’t have just broken up. She put her hands against my chest and pushed me back. “I mean it, Mitch. Our relationship has run its course. Time to move on.”

After a week and a half?

Her words echoed what my mother had said to me, right before Dad and I had moved out of our Minneapolis home. “Why can’t you come with us?” I’d asked.

“Your dad and I aren’t getting along anymore,” she’d answered.

“Then I’ll stay here with you.”

She’d shaken her head. “No. I have things I need to do, Mitch. This life doesn’t fit me anymore. I need to move on before it’s too late.”

But dad and I were the ones who’d moved, from the polar vortex to the land of endless summer. I’d wake up every day sweating and the heat would linger underneath my skin no matter how high the air conditioner ran.

“You don’t get to do that,” I told Amanda now. “You can’t just end things whenever you feel like it.”

“Of course I can.”

Then the ocean jerked back like it was having a seizure. For a moment, the water receded into a jet-black funnel, just like Amanda’s eyes, but immediately it shot back up, erupting into a massive tidal wave. A tidal wave in Florida is a huge irregularity; oceanographers had declared the possibility all but impossible. But I was drenched by water that reached as high as the moon. Salt filled my mouth and I gagged. I tried to swim, struggling against the waves, but my feet sank into the sand and I couldn’t move from the spot where I had stood when Amanda Butler broke my heart.

I’m not sure how much time passed before the tidal wave receded, but I do know that it swallowed Amanda whole. One moment she was standing on the beach with me and the next she was gone. I walked home, changed out of my wet clothes, and went to bed.

The next day at school, the principal came to our class. He cleared his throat, pushed his index finger against his glasses so that they rested further up his nose, and let his hand skim his balding head. “Class, I’m afraid I have bad news. Amanda Butler is missing. Her parents called this morning and said she was not in her bed when they went to wake her. There is no trace of her and we could use your help. Have any of you seen or heard from Amanda in the past twelve hours?”

I sat on my hand to keep from raising it. On the board, Ms. Palmer had written an equation, one I had spent hours the night before trying to figure out. I had worked on this equation when I could have been calling Amanda. At the time, I was sure that I knew the values of x and of y, but now the numbers crashed like waves before my eyes and I realized that they had absolutely no value.

None at all.

Fast forward fifteen years. I was no longer a child, no longer too young for a girlfriend, no longer too young for a wife. I had become a father but still I was a bereft young boy, confused and alone, stuck on land while a tidal wave swept away everything that mattered most.