She was the kind of girl that any guy would want. The way her hair flowed around her face–well, maybe that’s not true. I should probably set it straight. My psychiatrist says I’m always exaggerating things, and–well, that’s not true either. My psychiatrist is always telling me I’m always lying. He says I lie through my teeth because I’m just trying to hide from the way things are. The way things are is how I see them and how I see them isn’t so great, so sometimes I just change it.

He’s right about lying. You can milk a cow only so many times. At some point it ain’t white anymore. I’ve churned some good lies. But I’m not going to do it this time. This time I’m going to tell the truth. This time I’m going to tell exactly what happened. Monica deserves that. She was good to me. She still is good to me. I love her.

Monica wasn’t that great to look at to be honest. She was a little heavy — I like to say a little pillowy, and she had a round face, and maybe she had a little bit of acne. But you know I’m no spring chicken either, although I guess I am because I’m fifteen.

Monica lived down the street from me. Then we moved in together.

I first met her when I used to stand at the bus stop. She had a boyfriend before then who’d come and pick her up. I don’t know if it was her boyfriend or not, but some guy used to come and pick her up. One day he just didn’t make it, so…maybe I should talk about that, but maybe I won’t for now.

But anyway, one day he didn’t make it, so I wound up standing next to her at the bus stop. Which was my really good fortune. Heh. Except it wasn’t, was it?

When she came and waited at the bus stop with me, she gave me one quick smile. It was the nicest smile I think I ever saw, and that is the truth. I mean–I’ll take a polygraph test for my psychiatrist and he’ll see I’m not lying. She had a smile that just opened up wide. A giant gash across her face. But instead of blood coming out there was teeth. Beautiful, bright shiny teeth. It was the kind of smile I just wanted to bury my face into. I wanted to make that smile mine.

Well anyhow that wasn’t so smart because the first thing I said to her when I saw her was: “I want to make that smile mine.” And I think she sort of took it the wrong way because she stopped smiling. Well, we didn’t really talk much after that.

So after a while of waiting there the bus finally shows up and I get on at the very front of the bus, and I didn’t know she had friends that took the bus, but she went off to the back even though I tried to squeeze over and make a space for her. She sat next to some other kids who looked a little like her, with black clothes and spiky hair and tired faces. They didn’t smile much.

That was the first time I talked to her. The second time I was following her down the hallway. She walked up to some black girl and was asking about her boyfriend or somebody. I think she saw me following her. I didn’t really mean to follow her.

Well, actually, yes I did mean to follow her. I really did mean to follow her. It’s funny because all those things used to be a big problem, but they’re not much of a problem anymore. We’re really getting along so much better now.

She looked at me, and she said: “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Well, gosh, yeah! Heck, yeah ya do! I live right down the street from you.” I grew up kind of in the sticks all the time before I moved to the Bay Area here in California, and you know, I think she thought I sounded like a rube. I suppose I did, but that’s who I am and I’m not going to change who I am for anybody. Except of course when I lie, which of course I’m not going to do anymore because my shrink says I shouldn’t. My psychiatrist.

So I said “I live down the street from you. Don’t you remember me? My name’s Theo.”

“Oh yeah. Hi.”

And then she went back to talking to her friends. I didn’t really like that much at the time, but I let it roll off my back.

A few days went by. I was taking Roger for a walk. I called him Roger after Roger Moore. He was so smooth, and I kind of thought I was kind of smooth like that or something. I was taking Roger for a walk, and she happened to be leaving her house at the same time and she was taking her dog for a walk too.

Well actually, that’s not really true, is it? We were both taking our dogs for a walk because I saw her taking her dog for a walk and I thought maybe I would take my dog for a walk too, and that’s just what I did.

What I did was, I said “Hi there, Monica!” and she said “Oh!” and then I remembered that she didn’t give me her name. I had to say something. I can’t remember what. I think I said, “I met you, Monica, when I was standing next to you the other day.”

 “Well, I don’t remember telling you my name,” she said, looking kind of worried.

I didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I guess you must’ve, because I got it, don’t I.’

She stopped looking worried. “That really is just the way you talk, isn’t it?”

“What the dickens do you mean?”

She said — well, she didn’t say nothing because she was laughing so hard. She had that big, toothy, gashy smile of hers. That made me smile too. Then she said, “I think you’re okay.” And I smiled back.

I’m actually not a bad looking guy, and that ain’t no lie. I’m about six feet tall, which is pretty tall for my age, and I think I’m just about as sharp as a whip. At least that’s what everybody says. There’s a whole bunch of high-falutin fancy smart people in all my advanced placement classes, but, none of them ever get better grades than me — well, not very often. I don’t let them for very long.

Anyway, like I was saying, we were going out for a walk together with our dogs, me with Roger and Monica had a dog named–you  know, I don’t know what her dog was named. It’s funny, I know every little inch of her face, but when I think about her I can’t remember all the stuff around her so well. It just all sort of goes away. Like when you almost get hit by a car and you don’t really notice that you peed on yourself. 

I know Monica didn’t have a big smile that day, but it changed when I said something or another to cheer her up with my stupid way of talking.

When we got to the pond I wanted to show her the trick my dog can do.

I said, “You gotta watch this.” I grabbed the biggest dead branch I could find.

Roger’s a pretty small lab. He’s not like a normal lab. He’s a runt lab.

And so–actually he’s not really a runt lab. He’s sort of a mutt. I think he’s got a little lab in him. The labs are the best bird dogs around. Although I’ve never taken him out bird hunting, I reckon that if we still lived up north I could probably take him out and we could go shoot some pheasants together.

She asked me what kind of dog he was and I said he was a lab. She started laughing and laughing again, and she said, “I thought you told me you were supposed to be pretty smart.”

I didn’t change the way I looked, but on the inside I wasn’t so happy about what she said.

But then I tried to let it slide, and we both relaxed. The frown on the inside of me just leapt off my face. Like my foster mom Sam used to say about frowns. She used to say that.

“You gotta watch what Roger does,” I said, showing her the stick. 

“Really? What does Roger do?”

“Well, you got to watch, don’t you?”

She looked at the stick in my hand and looked doubtful. “There’s no way Roger can pick that up.”

I said, “Sure as heck he can.”

Roger liked to retrieve, so I knew he’d try. But to tell you the truth now, that’s what I’m supposed to do, to tell you the truth I’ve never had Roger pick up a stick that big before. Frisbees, small branches, that kind of thing was really his cup of tea. This thing was really more like a twenty pound log with branches.

I thought I’d make her laugh a little bit more because I liked to make her laugh. I made like I threw the stick, but I didn’t throw it. Roger went tearing down the slope after it. He dove in, slamming so hard into the water that for a second even his head was under. He bobbed up and swung his head left and right, paddling hard to lift his neck out of the water and give him the best view of the pond. He was desperate to find that log I hadn’t yet thrown for him, whining and circling. He looked so funny that both of us just laughed and laughed and maybe we laughed a little too much.

I smiled at Monica and said, “Ok. Now watch this.” I wound up back with that stick in both my hands and then unsprung as hard as I could. I was aiming to huck it in there a couple feet to the left of him, hoping for a big splash that would make Monica laugh more.

That was a mistake though. The log cracked Roger on the snout. Old Roger started kicking his legs all around, splashing and waving his head, and his eyes all rolled up. Kind of like a goose that I saw Uncle Theo shoot when I was a little kid.

And I thought, “Oh, heck, Roger’s going to die just like that goose did.” I’d seen Roger’s whole family die, and I even had to kill his mom, so I knew what was at stake. I even held one of his brothers as a puppy as it died in my palm. We’d been through so much together, me and Roger, and I knew a thing or two about death. So I went charging down into the pond to try to save him.

I remember hearing Monica laugh behind me. I don’t know why she was still laughing, but anyway I dove into the water and grabbed old Roger around his belly. The water was only waist deep. I lugged him back up to the bank.

I laid him down to get a look at him and Monica’s dog came up and sniffed Roger and made a face like it didn’t like him, and then I decided that I didn’t like that dog.

We both stared at poor Roger, and Monica stopped laughing because we could both see there was some blood coming out of his nose and one ear. I picked up Roger and threw him over my shoulder. He was droopy and runny and cold. I carried old Roger home on my shoulder the whole way. It wasn’t that far, but it was far enough.

We get back to my house and Roger is starting to come together by that point. He didn’t have the feel of death about him, and I was plenty relieved.

She pet Roger and I pet him too. We decided then that maybe we didn’t have to tell nobody what happened to him. It was kind of nice, because now Monica and I had our own secret. I think Monica and I both kind of liked that. The best way to become good friends is to share a secret.

It’s a way to share something, and sharing’s pretty nice. I think that’s why I like this recorder so much.

I went down to the store the other day to go buy one and I had to go through this electronics boutique. You always hear about how people are so busy that they don’t have time to think, but the first thing I noticed was a huge bank of cell phones in the front of the store. I asked them about these recorder systems, and the feller who sold it to me said, “Well, I think we’ve got a couple of them way in the back.”

I think it’s kind of funny that everybody says they don’t have time to think. I suppose it’s true. But everybody sure as heck has time to talk at each other.

Anyway, I felt like maybe Monica and I had done a little talking and maybe a little thinking that day. Which I reckon is really probably the best way to be with a girl.