Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 17:28:43 -0600 From: Karla Schulz Subject: Carrots and Celery Chapter 11 Um yeah. Been kind of busy and insane lately. And thus the lateness. But, that's over for now. This is chapter 11. You can read it if you want. Thanks as always go to my editor Nick Perhaps this one time only, I'm going to let you make fun of me. Go ahead. Have a ball. Really. Do the take no prisoners thing. Oh right, about what? Yeah. Um, I don't have Jonas's phone number. Like, not at all. What's more, I don't know his dad's first name, or even his last name for that matter. So what this means is, I can't call him. What THAT means is he's going to think I totally flaked on him. You see, there's a good reason I've only had one really good friend all these years. I'm not very good at it. The friend thing. With Cel I've got it pretty much down pat, but that's taken us 10 going on 11 years now. I'm not entirely sure Jonas is going to be willing to stick around that long to get broken in. When I hear Kyle thumping around I actually hope he won't stop by cause I'm afraid if he looks at me he'll just like KNOW in some freaky way, and then, lecture. But do I get what I want? Of course not. That would be silly. "Hey bro," "Hi Kyle," "Where's your boy?" It's a legitimate question, considering Celery's been pretty much a constant around here lately. Also, I always know where Celery is. I mean, when he's not with me, I always know why and where. "At the house," our house is universally labelled home, the other place is 'the house'. Calling it home would be like blasphemous when considering the meaning of the word. "Huh." I wait for him to say something more but Kyle just stands there with a neutral look on his face. "Not to be rude or whatever, but is there like a purpose to why you're here that you got off track from or are you just paying me a visit because you missed the melodious sound of my voice?" "Well, the horrible ache caused by the missing, but also this dude called the bakery a few hours ago leaving his number, and some weird message with a lot of laughing. He said he thought you might find that it came in handy. Some wack job or a friend of yours?" "Probably both, I think it was Jonas. I was supposed to call him but then like the steel trap that I am, realized I don't know his number. I guess he didn't know mine either, but I've talked about the bakery, and like, there's how many all organic bakery's in Winnipeg? So yeah, it must have been Jonas." "This isn't a bizarre love triangle thing is it?" "What?!" "Kidding. Learn to take a joke Care. Here's the number," He hands me a folded piece of paper. "Thanks Kyle. Got your fix of the old melodious?" He rolls his eyes. "Yeah dude I think I'm set, night or whatever," "Sweet dreams," Shaking his head, Kyle makes his exit. Not surprisingly, Jonas makes fun of me for a few minutes before we get down to business when I call him. "So I've been approved?" He asks. "Yeah, or, yeah. Welcome to the insanity." "I'm excited already." "I don't really, uh, know..." "We just hang out, like friends do," "Yeah, but, I really only have one friend, and the things we do, well, they may not be normal friends things," "Sure they are, you guys just make them your own, which is the thing we'll have to work out somehow. You guys not totally changing with me not totally being excluded." "We're also going to try to like, have fun right? This is sounding more like therapy than friendship," Jonas laughs. "Sorry. Fun, right. I promise. Hours of it in fact. Really and truly." "You can just let us know when you're feeling lost and stuff. Plus..." "We have to have our first date." "Um, yeah. We might all hate each other," "We're not strangers, dude." "I know," "Are you worried about this?" "Yeah, sort of," "Which part, you don't think we'll get along?" "Oh I don't know. We're all pretty likeable guys," he laughs again. "What then? There's no chance either of you will like me better than each other, you can't be worried about that," "No, I just, like, worry. About stuff, for no reason. It's a big part of the me experience. You should be aware of that, you know, so you can watch out for it, give me a slap every once in awhile." "Maybe I'll leave that to Celery." "That works too." "Really, this is eventually going to stop feeling weird and like a job and start being relaxed and fun. I have all the confidence in the world." "I'm sorry I'm not sounding more excited about it, I'm just..." "Worried for no apparent reason, got it. I'm a very fast learner." "That'll come in handy." "Oh I'm sure you guys will keep me on my toes," He says, but lightly. "But it's settled, friends?" "Yep," I'm slowly relaxing, understanding more and more Jonas is the right fit for us. This really might work. "Ex-clam. See you tomorrow at school," "Okay. Great. Bye," "So long." My freak-out after the phone call is mild to moderate, and very short lived. This is like, REALLY going to work. I can feel it in my bones. We kiss immediately when Celery shows up during breakfast, like any day, and keep going like any other day, but I've just noticed Kyle's staring us with little narrowed eyes like he thinks we're up to something. "What?" I demand. He keeps right on staring, until suddenly he shuts his eyes tight and goes, "Oh ga! Mental picture! BAD mental picture!" "What is your problem?" He peaks at us with one eye, shudders. "Kyle," I say sort of laughing in my confusion. "What's going on?" "You're," he pauses like he's not sure he can go on before he blurts, "having sex! Both of you - with each other!" "KYLE!" "Well, you are!" Celery's laughing, and me and Kyle are dying a death of mutual embarrassment. I guess for some stuff, blood matters. Sex and my brother in the same topic of conversation just do not work. And they never will. And oh my goodness Celery stop laughing and help me! "Relax you guys. Yes Kyle, we're having sex, so what?" "You're... he's... dehih," I'm about the same as Kyle, but without the talking. "Baby," Celery says, prying my hands off my face and holding them. "Breathe," He kisses my cheek. "Is this really such a big deal?" YES! Oh, I don't know. I guess not. "We're in love with each other, it's sort of what people who are in love with each other do. Kyle knows that, he's a big boy." Kyle and I manage to look at each other, and there's another moment of pain before we burst out laughing. "Dude, you should have seen your face!" He says between trying to laugh and breathe. "Oh yeah, mine! Sure Kyle! You were the one who started having like a panic attack," Celery sighs. "Another crisis averted." I kiss him. "Thanks sweetness." "My pleasure." Are you wondering about why Celery said sex and not something like 'making love' back there? You are? I thought you might be. Well, we talked about it and decided that while that is what we were doing, making love - CREATING it between us - saying it is too Soap Operaish. And neither of us can stand to even THINK of it as fucking, so we've opted for good old clinical S-E-X. The next week of school and the befriending of Jonas both go surprisingly well. Cherrie and Meghan continue to ignore the pants off us, and we soon forget to cringe in horror every time we see them. They'll always have a special place in our hearts (the part of your heart you hate someone with) but they're also in the past. Over and done with. They only matter if we keep letting them, so we just aren't. Jonas has been fitting in as well as hoped, but the real test won't come until Sunday. He's going hang out with us for the afternoon. Of course we're not giving up Saturday. That's like a holy day with us. Jeez. But I think it's going to be fun. I'm feeling almost totally calm about it, and Celery seems to be doing okay. All other new, er, areas of our relationship are coming along, um, let's dramatically understate and just say 'quite well', so life's pretty fantastic all around. A sure sign that Kyle's recovered from his trauma is that he's making fun of us now, but only when we're alone, because though I'm half sure they know anyway, I'm not really ready to talk about all this with my parents. Not because they'd be upset, but because of how scarringly supportive, and possibly graphic they'd be. On Sunday, as soon as Jonas arrives saying, "Let's get this party started," in a dry tone, obviously mocking that gag-worthy PINK song, I know things are going to be okay. It's like, so natural feeling. The three of us. We take it casual and don't launch into big speeches about what it all means, and how this is all going to work. He doesn't try to compete for our attention or wedge himself between us. Hanging out with him really sort of makes me feel closer to Celery. More secure about us. Like we really can have other friends and not totally fall apart. And whenever we go off on some bizarre whatever, Jonas will periodically let it slide or just ask what's up. We try to explain the first couple of times, but then we actually start doing stuff on purpose, just cause, and Jonas doesn't seem to mind. Actually, I think he kind of likes it. His favourite way to handle an unexplainable fit of laughter is to make fun of us about it. And I mean, how much more right for us could the guy get? We spend the afternoon mostly talking and goofing around, getting to know each other better. It really does end up being hours of fun. Just before he's getting ready to leave, Jonas tries to explain us to ourselves a little better, and by that token, how he hopes us to all get along. "You two, well, you've read Burger Wuss right?" We nod, it's like the funniest book alive. Fall out of your chair funny. I kid you not. "A lot less annoying, but you guys are like Rick and Jen. You're your own little nation with your own separate language. It excludes people a lot of the time. For example, do you remember what you said when we met?" Celery and I raise our eyebrows at each other. "Um, 'hi'?" I say with an 'and this is important WHY exactly' shrug. Jonas shakes his head. "No. Or, yeah, but after that." I shrug again and so does Celery. "Please enlighten us," I say, only partially sarcastically. Choosing bravely to continue, Jonas says, "It went like this. Alex and Brian were around but mostly it was you boys doing the play the charming welcoming committee to the poor new guy thing," "We liked you, it wasn't like we were trying to be jerks about it," I protest. He smiles. "I was mocking myself there, not you. Have no fear," I give him a 'go-on' nod. "We got to the part where I asked you how the school was and Celery listed some stuff like evil cafeteria food and who all the bad slash insane teachers were, and then he said, 'but all things considered, it's an okay school - I mean, it's not like we have any serious problems...' he drifted off and Carrots you jumped in saying, 'like the spontaneous combustion of cheerleaders!'. That's what I'm talking about. I know what you were talking about NOW, but at the time I was like, 'huh?' The thing is that's really cool, it's just the way you guys are, but what you are is exclusive. Pretty much anyway. Cel you weren't there but what I basically said to Carrots over here was that I don't believe you should or need to water down your relationship, just that you could stand to try and broaden yourselves a bit. Let some other people in on the fun - not ALL the fun," we laugh. "I didn't even mean it like that, but that's certainly also a good point. What I did mean was you don't have to tell all your secrets, you don't have to include people in every one of your inside jokes. It's important that you keep some of that just between you. But there are some cool people in the world - me especially," We laugh again. "And the fact that you're freakish soulmates does not necessarily mean you shouldn't get to know a few of us." I'm staring at him, I can't help it. "What?" He asks, noticing. I shake my head. "You're like a nice version of my brother," Celery's eyes widen. "You're SO right!" He looks at me gravely. "We can't let them meet - ever. The lectures and life lessons will never stop," I nod with equal gravity. Jonas sighs. "He'd better be as cool as me cause I'm thinking I'm going to need an ally against you two and the craziness," He grin. "Even with Kyle, you'd be no match for us," "That's right - for we are," We both leap up, posing heroically. "The Super Vegetables!" Jonas shakes his head. "That's just not funny boy," Celery and I light up. If there was ever a doubt about whether or not Jonas is the right man for the job, hearing him say that makes it fly straight out the window. "Oh! The guy was from Torwranna!" We start to laugh so hard we need to sit down and Jonas joins in. Sorry. You're confused again aren't you? I guess I could explain, you know, in keeping with this whole trying to be a smidgen less exclusive thing of Jonas's. You'll try to contain your excitement will you? Maybe I won't tell you after all. Ha! You were bluffing. You see? I knew you were bluffing. Dude, the record is broken. RENT A PRINCESS BRIDE! In fact, don't rent it, BUY it. But if you won't do that, this if of course if you're insane, at the very least rent it. It would be so much easier for everyone. Digressing again eh? But whose fault was it anyway? Don't look at me. We both know who's to blame here. I'm right, you're wrong, let's move on. What was I talking about? Oh right. Why we were laughing. Major points for anyone who can guess? No? Okay, I'll just tell you. It's from a commercial. An annoying phone commercial. Annoying, but also hilarious if you happen to be making fun of it. Happy now? No? Not even a little bit? There's no pleasing some people. Jonas leaves soon after we've all stopped laughing, and I'm still wearing the grin left over from my laughter when I turn to Celery expectantly and say, "Well?" "I like him." "More than me?" I gasp. He purses his lips in mock disapproval. "You're making fun of me," He whines. I laugh. "Would I do that?" I widen my eyes innocently. He wraps his arms around my torso and starts rubbing his nose along my cheek. "Of course you would, but when I deserve it, it's okay." "But you like him?" "Yes." "Good." "And you?" "Oh I love him." Now it's Celery's turn to play the mock hurt. "More than ME?" "No dripweed. Not even a little bit. But I really like him and I think we should hang out. Do the real friends thing. He's cool," "He's extremely cool." Celery agrees. Feeling suddenly up for a little fun, I scrunch my face, adopting of look of indecision. "I don't know about extremely cool," "What do you mean, he's really great," Celery's puzzled, having failed catch on to me yet, which of course makes me the champion of the world, but it's not time for victory dancing quite yet. Instead, I hide my face in my hands and pretend to cry uncontrollably. "It's happening already. We're drifting apart," Celery tackles me (none too gently I might add) and pins me to the floor. "You're the worst possible kind of seed," He says, shaking his head. I grin seductively. "So what are you going to do about it?" Sure it's lame, but do you see either of us caring? He grins back. "Let's go to your room and you can find out." Teenage boys remember? With hormones? Who are madly in love with each other? Yes. That's what we're going to do. It's nice to see you're finally catching on. On Monday morning Celery kisses me and eats some of my second bagel, just like always, which is a good thing, because it puts to rest that final .1% of doubt we were both harbouring about life after (or is it with?) Jonas, leaving us relaxed and even excited about the day. We keep our relaxed and excited feelings as we enter the cafeteria and locate Jonas drinking coffee with Brian and Alex. I like Brian and Alex, and can't help feeling a little guilty or disloyal for not really ever thinking about including them in the real friends plan, but I'm barely keeping my head above water with one extra friend - three I just couldn't handle. You saw what happened with the phone number. With three, well four with Celery, life would just be one phone number-like debacle after another. "It's the Super Vegetables," Jonas says with a wry grin, making us smile. "Hey Jonas," I say, sitting down. Celery just nods, sharing his grin between us. I feel guilty all over again, seeing the 'huh' faces of Brian and Alex, but I don't think explaining it to them would really make them feel any better. "Working out today Celery?" Jonas asks, sneaking a peak at me, and winking. "Don't encourage him!" I admonish, glaring at him. It's been quite awhile since his attack, but Celery's still not back to 100%. He's still feeling it sometimes. Physically and emotionally. I guess we both are. "Not yet," Celery says, placating me and saving Jonas. Once it's over, the exchange makes me smile. This is the way it's supposed to be, isn't? I've heard about this. Friends and stuff. Damn. I kind of like this. In class, when Jonas and I talk, it's like it has so much more meaning than it usually seemed to. Like all this talking and getting to know each other stuff has a point, a purpose. And then at lunch when we ALL talk, it's even better. Over the next few days we do a pretty good job of hammering out a decent sized dent in our lives for Jonas without either of us experiencing the desire to cling to each other and stop acknowledging the presence of all other sentient life. Jonas IS cool too, just like we thought he was. What's more, he's a lot like us. Not an exact prototype, not some generic sameness, but where he's like us it works and where he isn't it works too. The way it works is, it's like, Celery's my best friend and I'm his, but Jonas is OUR best friend. Collectively. Like he's our kid or something. It's a joint thing. We only hang out when it's the three of us so it can stay that way. Jonas is great though, let me reiterate. Really crazy. I said he was like us didn't I? That didn't tip you off to the craziness? You really haven't listened to anything I've said, have you? I can't say I'm surprised. Let me give you the visual Jonas. He's like 5 8" or something, skinny. His hair is incredible. I mean it - Jonas has some of the best hair I've ever seen. It's bleached this terrifically light almost white colour. Except he uses this weird herbal stuff (I swear his mom makes it for him) that washes out, so from day to day his hair is like this weird version of varying degrees on an all-blonde rainbow. But that's hardly the best part. He has dreads. Not the dirty, really thick kind and not the wimpy ugly really thin kind like posers. Just the perfect, slightly wispy kind. They're always all over the place, but he hardly ever bothers or pays attention. The longest ones are only like down to his jaw, but they can get in his face pretty good. His eyes are naturally brown - I think - but he wears an array of coloured contacts. The unnaturalness about them makes him even more striking. He's as much of a bundle of energy as me, if not more so. I'm thinking his times of more even weirdness than me could be because he hasn't had the benefit of Celery's soothing presence in his life since he was 6. I find that's been really helpful. But it's only certain over stuff (like, the God Father movies for example, who knows why) that he gets crazy, wild and me-like about. Other times - most times really - he's got of sort of Oz like stoicism about him. You know, calm and like unaffected. He gets a lot of our jokes without us even having to explain them to him, and like the first day, when he doesn't get something, sometimes he'll ask, sometimes he'll let it slide, sometimes he'll mock us, and sometimes when we act especially crazy just for the hell of it, Jonas always takes it with good humour. Despite the fact that I found him first, Jonas sort of turns into Celery's advice-go-to guy, but I guess that's just because Kyle's already mine. And just like Kyle, Jonas's advice usually consists of a few quick words and then the order to go talk to me about it. We're a pretty happy three part family until Kyle shows up one afternoon (we agreed having Jonas join us for our after school homework sessions wouldn't be too traumatic) and they click instantly. From that point on it becomes us against them in the best possible way. As pairs we team up on each other in the teasing, lecturing, and mockery thing, but it's all in 100% good clean fun. A big topic for the endless ragging is gay verses straight. They have a field day with our kissing and moony eyes, and have also taken it upon themselves to promote a positive heterosexual image around us, in hopes that we will one day forgive the orientation as a whole for the wrongs committed against us by Cherrie and Meghan. You have by the way, entered the deliriously happy zone. Welcome. It's really nice here, I think you'll like it. Cause you know, it's chalk full of love, joy, pure happiness, all that good stuff. Happiness. My names isn't Carrots Vasskez if the air doesn't reek of it. This is like, exactly the way life is supposed to be but usually never is. It's almost like being reborn or something, in the all the good ways, like everything seems new and fresh and beautiful, but none of the bad ways like having to go through all the crap again to get to where you are. The airs not the only thing that stinks of happiness, I'm pretty much in eau de it myself. It's like fucking walking on sunshine man. Happiness to it's zenith and love as it was designed to be experienced. All corny lyrics and movie lines apply. Nobody, I mean, ESPECIALLY not an idiot like me, deserves to be this happy. --- It's been almost two weeks since Jonas's been hanging with us now, and we're all feeling pretty, bordering on totally, comfortable with each other. I'm comfortable enough to finally ask him something I've been wondering about for awhile now. "So what's under there dude?" "Huh?" He asks, lazy grin. Jonas is almost always wearing a lazy grin these days. It's like his grin gets a little lazier every day. He's a happy, mellow guy. More and more all the time, his attitude tempts all of us to call him the Zen master. When teased about it he'll just calmly informs us he's merely content with his life. 'What's not to love?' He always says. 'I've got you three hot looking guys all totally in love me,' chuckle, chuckle, ha ha, 'plus this pretty all right sort of girl friend, good grades, good health. So what if I'm I'm happy - which one of you slobs isn't?' His pretty all right sort of girlfriend, by the way, is this more than pretty alright girl named Sam Roberts. She's a very cool girl I know from the paper. Smart, and extremely funny in a sharp way. Heart of gold though. A great match for Jonas. They're sort of in casual mode so far, but she's awesome. "You know. Take away the contacts and the hair dye and what do you get?" He shrugs. "Not much. It's all pretty average. Light brown hair, light browny-green eyes. I've always figured that if I can't be good looking, I can at least be interesting looking." I doubt that and that's exactly what I tell him. "Seriously my veg," that's something he calls us, Celery and me. "Nothing special about little old Jonas. Except of course my charisma and dizzying intellect." "At least you've got that going for you," Celery quips, looking up from his math homework and adding his voice to the conversation. Kyle has a class at the moment, otherwise, he'd be right in here, standing up for Jonas and all his alleged average glorious fabulousness. There was this another thing on my mind about Jonas, but we've already covered that. Feeling extremely awkward and dumb about it Celery and I once forced ourselves to ask about his sexuality. Not for the because we cared either way reason but for the dying of (admittedly lame) curiosity one. Jonas took the potentially explosive topic in his usual laid-back manner. All he said was, "Basically, I'm straight, but I think it's wrong to put labels on people. You guys, you love each other. Your gender falls second to that basic fact. As far as I go, I haven't loved anyone yet, but so far my crushes have been strictly on the ladies. However, one day in the future if some dude comes into my life and totally rocks my world, I'll be cool with that. Keep options open you know?' That's Jonas to a tee. He's your regular laid-back, free thinking guy. I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that his parents used to be hippies, and still kind of are. That's another reason why I like Jonas so much - his parents are almost as insane as mine. And I mean, I haven't even met them. But just going by the stories he tells us, I know his and mine and birds of the same reality challenged feather. A lot of it (the insanity) is just Jonas though, and has nothing to do with his upbringing. The guy is this mass of inner calm, and yet he's also got this totally insane energetic side that I already mentioned. But he handles all the big stuff with the calm side of the coin, and lets loose the insanity when he wants himself and those around him to have a good time. Or, also when he's watching the God Father.