The Perks of Being a Wallflower

figured it was probably best for her to sleep it off a little in the car before we went home.
    Just before she fell asleep, she said, “Well, if you’re going to smoke, crack the window at least.”
    Which made me start laughing again.
    “Charlie, smoking. I can’t believe it.”
    Which made me laugh harder, and I said, “I love you.”
    And my sister said, “I love you, too. Just stop it with the laughing already.”
    Eventually, my laughing turned into the occasional chuckle, and then it just stopped. I looked back and saw that my sister was asleep. So, I started the car and turned on the heater, so she would be warm. That’s when I started reading the book Bill gave me. It’s Walden by Henry David Thoreau, which is my brother’s girlfriend’s favorite book, so I was very excited to read it.
    When the sun went down, I put my smoking pamphlet on the page where I stopped reading and started driving home. I stopped a few blocks from our house to wake up my sister and put the blanket and pillow in the trunk. We pulled into the driveway. We got out. We went inside. And we heard our mother and father’s voices from the top of the stairs.
    “Where have you two been all day?”
    “Yeah. Dinner’s almost ready.”
    My sister looked at me. I looked at her. She shrugged. So, I started talking a mile a minute about how we saw a movie and how my sister taught me how to drive on the highways and how we went to McDonald’s.
    “McDonald’s?! When?!”
    “Your mother cooked ribs, you know?” My father was reading the paper.
    As I talked, my sister went up to my father and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He didn’t look up from his paper.
    “I know, but we didn’t go to McDonald’s until before the movie, and that was a while ago.”
    Then, my father said matter-of-factly, “What movie did you see?”
    I froze, but my sister came through with the name of a movie just before she kissed my mother on the cheek. I had never heard of this movie.
    “Was it any good?”
    I froze again.
    My sister was so calm. “It was okay. Those ribs smell great.”
    “Yeah,” I said. Then, I thought of something to change the subject. “Hey, Dad. Is the hockey game on tonight?”
    “Yeah, but you’re only allowed to watch it with me if you don’t ask any of your stupid questions.”
    “Okay, but can I ask one now before it starts?”
    “I don’t know. Can you?”
    “May I?” I asked, corrected.
    He grunted, “Go ahead.”
    “What do the players call a hockey puck again?”
    “A biscuit. They call it a biscuit.”
    “Great. Thanks.”
    From that moment and all through dinner, my parents didn’t ask any more questions about our day, although my mom did say how glad she was that my sister and I were spending more time together.
    That night, after our parents went to sleep, I went down to the car and got the pillow and blanket out of the trunk. I brought them to my sister in her room. She was pretty tired. And she spoke very softly. She thanked me for the whole day. She said that I didn’t let her down. And she said that she wanted it to be our little secret since she decided to tell her old boyfriend that the pregnancy was a false alarm. I guess she just didn’t trust him with the truth anymore.
    Just after I turned out the lights and opened the door, I heard her say softly,
    “I want you to stop smoking, you hear?”
    “I hear.”
    “Because I really do love you, Charlie.”
    “I love you, too.”
    “I mean it.”
    “So do I.”
    “Okay, then. Good night.”
    “Good night.”
    That’s when I shut the door and left her to sleep.
    I didn’t feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour-long commercial that advertised an exercise machine. They kept flashing a 1-800 number, so I called it. The woman who picked up the other end of the phone was named Michelle. And I told Michelle that I was a kid and did not need an exercise machine, but I hoped she was having a good night.
    That’s when Michelle hung up on me. And I didn’t mind a bit.
    Love always,
Charlie         
    March 7, 1992
    Dear friend,
    Girls are weird, and I don’t mean that offensively. I just can’t put it any other way.
    I have now gone on another date with Mary Elizabeth. In a lot of ways, it was similar to the dance except that we got to wear more comfortable clothes. She was the one who asked me out again, and I suppose that’s okay, but I think I’m going to start doing the asking from time to time