Pen Pal

My name is Vic Fuentes. I’m your regular, mild-mannered seventeen year old Mexican boy. I’m a good kid. I have a perfect record, volunteer at an animal shelter on weekends, don’t drink or smoke, have an all-A average in school, play soccer and guitar, and try to set the best example I can for my younger brother.

Yup, I’m every parent’s dream child.

I have a great group of friends who I love dearly, and go to a great school where I’m not the most popular person, but I’m not the nerd who gets beat up. My life is pretty sweet.

“C’mon Vic, we’re gonna be late,” my younger brother, Mike, yelled from downstairs. I was stuffing my books in my backpack in my room. Since he was yelling from downstairs chances were that he had scarfed down breakfast in record time and was eager to get on with the next thing, which was the walk to school.

School wasn’t Mike’s favorite thing in the world (is it anyone’s?), but he enjoyed the walk. We always passed the house of a certain girl, Alysha Nett. Mike had such a crush on her. Every time we passed he would hope that we’d bump into her. We never did.

“Calm down bro, I’m ready,” I answered as I walked down the steps.

He tapped his foot in annoyance. “If I miss Alysha walking out again I’m gonna be so mad,” he said. He just wanted to catch her once so he would have an excuse to talk to her. He figured she left for school earlier than us so he would try to leave earlier than we usually would. Unfortunately my body still didn’t agree with getting up so early.

I checked the time on my phone. “Dude, we’re still fifteen minutes ahead of our usual schedule,” I said.

“Well time’s winding down. Let’s go.” He pushed past me toward the door and walked outside. I shook my head and followed him out, locking the door behind me.

“I don’t get what your obsession with Alysha is,” I began as we walked down the street. “You’ve never even spoken to her. You don’t even know what her voice sounds like.”

“It sounds like angels singing,” he responded dreamily. “And her skin is soft and her hair smells like peaches.”

“And you know all this how?”

He shrugged. “You can just tell these things about a person. It’s not that hard to figure out.”

I shook my head. My brother had always been girl crazy, so his recent obsession with Alysha wasn’t much of a surprise. What was a surprise was the fact that this crush had lasted longer than usual. The last few crushes he had lasted at most a couple weeks before he found someone more interesting. This Alysha thing had been going on for a month with no signs of slowing down. Maybe it was because she was a new student who hadn’t seemed to click with a group at school. Maybe he actually deemed her worthy of his undivided attention. Who knows.

“You know, you need to find someone,” he said.

“Why do you always bring this up?” I asked in vague annoyance. “I like being single. Besides, being in a relationship would distract me from college applications.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re just afraid that you’ll fall for someone and it’ll end badly again.”

He was referring to my last crush. Nothing too terrible happened; I just told them that I liked them and it wasn’t reciprocated. Worst part was that they led me on up until their graduation last spring. I haven’t heard from them since.

“I’m not afraid,” I mumbled. Mike just shot me a smug look. He knew he was right, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me say it.

Mike began to slow down suddenly, as if he were being reluctantly dragged down the sidewalk. I sighed; I knew the reason why. We were about to pass Alysha’s house. He didn’t want to miss the moment Alysha stepped out and graced Mike’s world with her presence.

Unfortunately she didn’t come out.

“Mike,” I said when I noticed that he had completely stopped about a foot away from her house.

“Just five minutes, please?” he begged.

“C’mon Mikey, let’s go.” I walked back to where my brother was standing and put a hand on his back to guide him forward.

“But Vic,” he whined.

“You know we can’t stand here like some stalkers. The neighbors would call the cops.”

He sighed. “Yeah.” He slowly dragged his feet forward, seeing as there was no longer a reason for him to move quickly.

“You’ll catch her one day,” I said, “and when you do, you’ll never let go.”

***

The day went by quickly, with Mike texting me about how pretty Alysha looked today (I barely knew the girl so it made me a little uncomfortable). By the end of the day I knew that Mike had pretty much been staring at her in his classes (they had every class together today), and hadn’t listened to anything any of his teachers had said.

I shut my locker and flung my backpack over my shoulder. The school day was done but I had soccer practice today. I usually love going to soccer but after waking up early to catch a girl who never showed up and hearing about it all day, I was exhausted. I just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and sleep until tomorrow.

“Vic!” I turned in the direction of the voice. It was my friend Jaime.

“What’s up, Hime Time?”

“Not much,” he said with a shrug. “We’re going out in a bit, probably to the mall for some junk food and babe watching. You in?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got soccer, then homework, and definitely a nap.”

“Dude, all you ever do is homework, soccer, and play with dogs-”

“Volunteer,” I corrected.

“Whatever. My point is that you need to get out more. Do something fun.”

“I do a lot of fun things,” I countered.

“Fucking lies!” Jaime and I looked toward the source of the voice, our friend Curtis. I rolled my eyes at his outburst but smiled.

“You don’t know my life,” I said.

“’Course I do,” he said nonchalantly. “I don’t know why you act like we aren’t close or something.”

Curtis had a point. He and I had been friends since birth. Literally. Our mothers were pregnant at around the same time, not to mention we’d lived next door to each other since then. We’d always gone to the same school and participated in the same activities. We were practically brothers. It wasn’t uncommon for us to spend days at each other’s houses, or go to school from one house and go home to another. We were lifelong partners in crime.

“Whatever,” I said with a dismissive wave.

“No, but seriously,” Jaime said, “you need to get a life. You can’t always spend your time doing things for your resume. Get out of your comfort zone.”

I shrugged. I guess I needed to get out more, do something different. But on the other hand, why? I had everything I needed within my “comfort zone”. Why fix what isn’t broken?

“I’ll see you guys later,” I said with an uncomfortable chuckle.

Curtis sighed. “Sure dude. You coming over after?”

“Probably not. I’ve got a paper to write.” He shrugged but let it go. With a wave he and Jaime walked toward the school’s exit, leaving me to ponder what they had said.

Was I really boring?

***

“I wouldn’t say boring, but you do need to spice up your life. Do something out of the ordinary.”

I rolled my eyes at Mike’s response. I was home from practice and sitting in the chair in Mike’s room.

“It doesn’t have to be big,” he continued, “just something that you wouldn’t do.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“I don’t know, talk to someone you wouldn’t normally talk to.”

“You’re one to talk,” I said with a smirk.

He frowned. “If I talk to her at school it’ll mess up the plan. I have to talk to her randomly. It’s the plan.”

I rolled my eyes again. Mike’s “plan” didn’t make much sense. According to him, the first time he would talk to Alysha had to be when we bumped into her on our walk to school. Apparently it had something to do with romantic comedies that girls like watching or something like that. I never understood, but Mike was certain that this plan would work out. So far in the last month it hasn’t but Mike’s optimistic enough for the both of us.

“Who am I even supposed to talk to?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Make a new friend; someone who likes the same stuff you do.”

“I already have friends who like the same stuff I do.”

“Well make a brand new friend who likes the same stuff you do.”

“How?”

“The internet’s full of people.”

I looked at him with wide eyes. “You want me to talk to strangers on the internet?”

“Yeah…” I could tell he thought I was stupid, but our parents weren’t exactly fans of us talking to random people. You know, what with stranger danger and all that.

“I don’t know…,” I trailed off.

“Just do it,” he said sternly. “What’s the worst that could happen? As long as you don’t give these weirdos our address you’ll be fine.”

I thought it over. Could it really be that simple? Most likely no, what with IP addresses and weirdos around every corner who knew how to use them.

“Please, Vic,” he pleaded. “I’d hate for you to go to college and be thrown in a trashcan because you had no friends to bail you out because you didn’t know how to make them.”

I gave him a look. Although I doubted that I would be tossed in a trashcan by anyone, I could see that this meant a lot to him.

“Fine,” I sighed, “I’ll make friends with a stranger on the internet.”

He smiled widely but I didn’t catch what he said. I quickly made my way out of his room and into mine to avoid talking about the matter any further.

Was it really that simple, making new friends online? How was I to be sure that they weren’t creepy forty-year-olds looking for young kids?

I sighed. No need to be pessimistic, Vic.

I opened the Twitter app on my phone and began scrolling, hoping to distract my mind. I saw that one of my favorite bands had tweeted, which caused me to stop. Usually the individual members of the band tweeted on their own accounts and the band account hardly was used, except to announce new music or shows, or a member’s birthday.

The tweet was about an online community they had formed on Facebook. Apparently it was a closed group where fans could talk to each other about the band, food, personal problems, whatever, as long as there was no hate involved.

I was intrigued. This wasn’t something I would normally do, but it was exactly what Mike thought I should do. It was his idea to connect with someone who shared the same interests. Well, this band was one of my interests.

I clicked the link which opened the Facebook app. I requested to join the group and was send a two question quiz. After answering the questions with ease (I just had to complete the titles of the band’s two albums), I was allowed into the group. I saw that there were already some posts on the timeline.

It didn’t take me long to find the standard “introduce yourself in the comments” post, so that’s what I did:

“Hi, my name’s Vic. I’m 17 from San Diego and am semi-being forced into this group by my brother and friends because apparently I’m boring and need to make friends with strangers.”

That should make me some friends, right?

That didn’t matter. It was late and I was exhausted. Between having to wake up earlier because of Mike, school, soccer practice, that paper that I had started as soon as I got home, and the worry in the back of my mind that I was the most boring person in the world, I was in desperate need of some sleep. I plugged my phone in, turned off my light, and crawled into bed.

That night I wished for peaceful, dreamless sleep, and for at least one person to find me the least bit interesting.

Notes