A Photograph of Nathaniel

By Leah Budin

Matilda stared at the picture of Nathaniel in his beauty. He was standing with one leg pushed up against the wall behind him, holding up a flamingo. Once, she had been in his room, to pick up a computer game she had lent him, a very intense version of Tetris. There, she had spotted the picture, of him and some lanky, angry looking Asian boy with the same "I am apathetic, yet beautiful" look on his face. She’d asked who he was as she slipped the picture into her purse.

"Him? That’s Pete," he had replied offhandedly. "My best friend. He’s a queer."

She sighed and looked at the picture. Yes, it was posted on the wall by her door, so that whenever she left her room, he’d stare at her.

Sometimes she’d talk to him. She talked to him in person, sometimes, when she got the courage to drop by his house, or when she ran into him in JoAnne Fabrics, but this was hard to do and she would rather just stare at him because that was much easier on her. But the picture wasn’t intimidating; she could talk to it quite easily.

Today was her first day of summer school. She had spent the last night listening to Nathaniel rant about how he needed new computer games, hated television, hated capitalism, and hated some fat kid at the library. He’d tugged on his hair for emphasis at points and kept slipping his Birkenstocks on and off. She’d stared at him with wide eyes until he asked if there was a something building a nest in his matted braids.

"Well?" she asked his picture nervously. The queer Asian glared at her. He had red streaks in his spiked hair. She wondered if she could cut him out of the picture and not feel guilty about it. She really only wanted Nathaniel; this guy was too distracting.

She tried to focus her attention on Nathaniel. He stared blankly out at her, holding one of his plastic lawn flamingoes, this one being the infamous "Jesus With Horns" that so disturbed the neighbors. "Well?" she begged. She looked at herself from the side.

Perhaps she should drop from a size four to a size two. For good measure. She was starting to put on the pounds. No lunch today.

"Do I look okay?"

He glared at her.

"Don’t be an ass. I don’t need this from you. I need self-confidence."

She sensed a twinkle in his eye.

"Fine. I’ll see you tonight," she snapped. She walked out and slammed the door behind her.

"I can’t believe I am stupid enough to be going to summer school!" she shrieked at the picture when she got home. "You and your friend are at home right now, him in ASIA or something, and here I am coming home from school when I should be out swimming with my friends!" she wailed.

"Who are you talking to?" her fat mother in a muumuu asked her through the door. Matilda threw it open. Her mom was clutching an opened romance novel in one hand, a cordless phone in the other. A cigarette dangled from her lower lip.

"My crush!" she said angrily, pointing at the picture.

Her mother nodded slowly, shrugged, waddled back downstairs to start cooking dinner, all the while talking to her best friend since third grade.

Nathaniel (the real one) rocked back and forth outside, drinking his grandmother’s "famous" homemade lemonade. Slippers sat on his lap, snoring lightly and drooling on his left thigh. Suddenly, he glanced up and there she was, running to him with an expression of pain and joy at once crossing over her face. Slippers sat up, looked at her, then lay back down.

"Hey," he said simply, offering her some of his lemonade.

She imagined putting her lips at the same place that his had, the idea of sharing the same germs, the idea of getting ill from the same place at the same time, and nodded. He handed it to her and she rubbed her hand over the condensation as she sipped and looked out at the street.

"Like the new flamingoes?" he asked, playing with one of Slippers’ ears.

He had added three new flamingoes to the flock, and, unfortunately, they were a slightly lighter pink. "I just hope that they don’t get all prejudiced and gang up on them, or that they don’t get all aloof."

"I’m sure that everyone will get along fine," she said.

"Don’t get communist on me."

She snorted inelegantly. He grinned out of the corner of his mouth in a way that made her heart melt. "I won’t."

"How was summer school?" he asked her finally, taking the lemonade glass back to sip on it.

She cringed. Her heart skipped several beats; in fact, it did hopscotch. "How did you know about that?"

"I somehow managed to get in a conversation with… your mother."

She smacked her hand into her forehead.

"In between terrible grammar and poor usage of language," he continued, "I managed to decipher something about you having to go to summer school for flunking out of Geometry."

She nodded wearily.

"Want to talk about it?"

We already did, she thought. "No, not really. I should go study."

He nodded at her and petted Slippers as she ran away, losing feelings in her arms.

"Really," she said angrily at the queer Asian, "your attitude is pissing me off." She cut him out of the picture. Now Nathaniel could have her undivided attention.

"I really like you, you know. It’s pathetic that I can’t say this to you in person," she told his picture. He held the flamingo at her. "Yeah. I know."

"You think you’re special just because you’re so unattainable, don’t you?" she shrieked, throwing her stuffed Alf doll at him.

She growled, ripped the picture off the wall, and set it on fire.

"Whoops!" she shrieked as it began to burn him. "No!"

She raced into the bathroom and submerged the picture in water, which blotched up the colors. She sighed, blew it dry with her blowdryer, and walked back into her room, where she put it right back onto the wall where it was.

"Be that way," she hissed.