The Perks of Being a Wallflower

start applying to “safety” schools in case the good ones don’t work out. And then she started saying that gray was a good color for me.
    I understand how my mom thinks. I really do.
    It’s like when we were little, and we would go to the grocery store. My sister and brother would fight about things that my sister and brother would fight about, and I would sit at the bottom of the shopping cart. And my mom would be so upset by the end of shopping that she would push the cart fast, and I would feel like I was in a submarine.
    Yesterday was like that except now I got to sit in the front seat.
    When I saw Sam and Patrick at school today, they both agreed that my mom has very good taste in clothing. I told my mom this when I got home from school, and she smiled. She asked me if I wanted to invite Sam and Patrick over for dinner sometime after the holidays are over because my mom gets nervous enough as it is during the holidays. I called Sam and Patrick, and they said they would.
    I’m really excited!
    The last time I had a friend over to dinner was Michael last year. We had tacos. The really great part was that Michael stayed over to sleep. We ended up sleeping very little. We mostly just talked about things like girls and movies and music. The one part I remember distinctly was walking around the neighborhood at night. My parents were asleep along with the rest of the houses. Michael looked into all the windows. It was dark and quiet.
    He said, “Do you think those people are nice?”
    I said, “The Andersons? Yeah. They’re old.”
    “What about those people?”
    “Well, Mrs. Lambert doesn’t like baseballs going into her yard.”
    “What about those people?”
    “Mrs. Tanner has been visiting her mother for three months. Mr. Tanner spends his weekends sitting on the back porch and listening to baseball games. I don’t really know if they’re nice or not because they don’t have children.”
    “Is she sick?”
    “Is who sick?”
    “Mrs. Tanner’s mother.”
    “I don’t think so. My mom would know, and she didn’t say anything.”
    Michael nodded. “They’re getting a divorce.”
    “You think so?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    We just kept walking. Michael had a way of walking quiet sometimes. I guess I should mention that my mom heard that Michael’s parents are divorced now. She said that only seventy percent of marriages stay together when they lose a child. I think she read it in a magazine somewhere.
    Love always,
Charlie         
    November 23, 1991
    Dear friend,
    Do you enjoy holidays with your family? I don’t mean your mom and dad family, but your uncle and aunt and cousin family? Personally, I do. There are several reasons for this.
    First, I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other. Second, the fights are always the same.
    They usually start when my mom’s dad (my grandfather) finishes his third drink. It is around this time that he starts to talk a lot. My grandfather usually just complains about black people moving into the old neighborhood, and then my sister gets upset at him, and then my grandfather tells her that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about because she lives in the suburbs. And then he says how no one visits him in his retirement home. And finally he starts talking about all of the family’s secrets, like how cousin so-and-so “knocked up” that waitress from the Big Boy. I should probably mention that my grandfather can’t hear very well, so he says all of these things really loud.
    My sister tries to fight him, but she never wins. My grandfather is definitely more stubborn than she is. My mom usually helps her aunt prepare the food, which my grandfather always says is “too dry” even if it’s soup. And her aunt will then cry and lock herself in the bathroom.
    There is only one bathroom in my great aunt’s house, so this turns to trouble when all the beer starts to hit my cousins. They stand twisted in bladder positions and bang on the door for a few minutes and almost coax my great aunt out, but then my grandfather curses something at my great aunt, and the cycle starts over again. With the exception of the one holiday when my grandfather passed out just after dinner, my cousins always have to go to the bathroom outside in the bushes. If you look out the windows like I do, you can see them, and it looks like they’re on one of their hunting trips. I feel terribly sorry for my girl