Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner

alone?”
    “Neil’s in the bathroom.”
    We stand there in silence. Can’t she sense that this is an uncomfortable situation, or is she just too caught up in her newfound happiness to recognize the misery she has caused me?
    “I feel like vacation started, and we never really had proper closure,” she says.
    I look toward the bathroom. Where the hell is Neil? Why does he always have to take a crap before every movie? “It’s okay,” I say. “It wasn’t meant to be.”
    Jordan calls out to Celeste, and I use the moment to say good-bye and slip off into the theater. Neil and I have come to see
Bloody Battle II,
and I am more than ready for some graphic violence and gratuitous bloodshed.
             
    I spend most of vacation finishing up college applications, working on my memoir, stressing out about the poem Ms. Rigby has confiscated, seething with resentment, and feeling sorry for myself. On New Year’s Eve, I get drunk with Neil and Katie, make a clumsy pass at her, vomit, and end up passing out on the bathroom floor. Three days later, school resumes.
    I sit as far away from Celeste as I can the first day back. I want her to feel guilty. I want her to feel rejected. I want to win the memoir award and I want her to lose. I want her to realize what she has given up. I want her to beg me for another chance and I want to tell her she had her chance and blew it. She catches my eye during class and smiles. I smile back.
    Mr. Parke returns our writing. He writes on my paper that the humor is wonderful, but I am using it as a defense mechanism to avoid confronting myself in a more substantive and honest way. He says I need to spend time reflecting on who I am and why I always cast myself as the victim in my life’s story. He sounds a lot like my mother. She’s been pushing me for years to see a therapist.
    My mother is a great believer in therapy. She is also a vegetarian, a practitioner of yoga, and an aspiring Buddhist. Since therapy has performed such wonders for her—or so she claims—she is convinced that it could also perform wonders for me.
    “It could change your life,” she is always saying.
    “Maybe it could,” I say. “We’ll never know.”
    “Why are you so resistant?”
    And my standard reply: “I don’t know. I bet a therapist could help me figure that out.”
    The truth is I know exactly why I’m resistant. I don’t want a therapist to tell me things about myself I don’t want to hear, and I don’t want to admit that I have problems I can’t deal with myself. It would be one thing if I could just go in and complain about my life, but having to confront and take responsibility for my shortcomings and insecurities is something I have no interest in.
             
    Charlotte has been in and out since we came back to school. She always looks tired, and she is always working during lunch, probably trying to make up all the assignments she’s missed.
    “Is everything okay?” I ask her about a week after we’ve returned. It is the end of the day, and she is slumped against her locker with her head resting on the door.
    She quickly stands. “I’m just tired.”
    What is she hiding? I wonder. Why does she keep herself so closed off? I ask her how her memoir is coming.
    “Slowly.” She looks at the floor and pushes her hair out of her face. “It’s opening up a lot of things that are hard to write about.”
    “I know what you mean,” I say. “My life’s been one disaster after another.”
    She gives me a sad smile.
    “Do you want to get together sometime and give each other feedback on our memoirs?” I ask.
    This seems to catch her off guard, and she takes a moment to answer. “I don’t know. Maybe when we know each other a little better.”
    The crowd by the lockers is thinning out. I spy Lisa Kravitz making her rounds, exchanging greetings and good-byes with everybody, and when she sees me she flashes a wonderful smile and waves. “Hey, Shakespeare,” she says,