MY VERY OWN ALMOST MEET-CUTE
Before I met Epstein, if my life were a movie it would've been something in the vein of Elizabethtown or The Family Stone: good actors, terrible plot. On paper, my family might seem like a great reality TV show: hardworking restaurateur parents, a newly-in-love grandma who lives downstairs, the perfunctory blond twin boys, the handsome older brother and his high-school high jinks. Technically, we don't have actual next-door neighbors, but my best friend, Ray, can definitely compete with famous television neighbors. She smokes cigarettes, is really into clothes and fashion, and isn't scared to speak her mind. Although her home life isn't the best—her dad left when she was three months old, and her mom is kind of paranoid and really overweight—I think my mom thinks Ray is a good friend for me because, unlike me, she's very takecharge. Ray got an after-school job when she was only fourteen, bought herself a car the minute she turned sixteen, and pays for most of her stuff.
The thing is, even with this supposedly interesting cast of characters, most days I hit snooze, stumble into the shower, and exert a lot of energy bumming rides. I'm not debilitatingly unpopular; I don't cut myself, puke on purpose, or spend an unhealthy amount of time texting, gaming, or doing drugs. I don't have a reputation like Jessie Eaves, who, although she's my age, is pathologically obsessed with Hello Kitty. When my mom says I could stand to be more adventurous, maybe watch fewer movies, I say something like "should I take up rock climbing, get a motorcycle, or send a naked picture of myself to the football team?" Then she says, "Jesus, no, Amelia. You're perfect."
My dad says I'm his rock, tells me to hold down the fort, and often calls me a good egg.
I don't know if it's because I'm sandwiched between my very charming older brother and Thing 1 and Thing 2, but I've basically been in the chorus all my life: I've never had or wanted a solo.
Then I met Epstein.
Here's what happened. This mom down the road, Claudia Carter, frantically asked if I'd consider babysitting her daughters in Montauk this summer. Their regular sitter had just quit and she was really desperate and said it didn't matter that I didn't drive. I was kind of nervous about being away from home, but my mom thought I should try being on my own for a change.
It was a great job. During the week, I'd make sure Selena and Sabrina were ready for camp and walk them to the bus stop. Back at the house, I would clean up, do their laundry, and basically just wait around until it was time to pick them up, which is why I was able to text 24/7 with Ray. Ray works at CinnaYum! in the mall and all day she'd text pictures of mall weirdos, vats of disgustingly gooey icing, and things she was bidding for on eBay. I'd text her pictures of the pool, the ocean, and beautiful blue skies, and she'd text back that I sucked.
I also texted with Emily Moffet, aka Muppet. Muppet started hanging out with me and Ray back in eighth grade. Neither Ray nor I are exactly sure how it happened, but one day we were like: Wow, we've been hanging out with Muppet for three years?! Muppet is this slightly spacey girl who just sort of bops along to a whistling soundtrack in her own brain. Ray secretly started calling her Muppet when she realized that she had an uncanny resemblance to a combination of Beaker, Gonzo, and Kermit. But she's not a bad person or anything. She's just kind of there.
After I walked the Carter girls home from camp, we'd hang out at the pool, paint nails, and play Uno. The worst thing about the job was dealing with wet towels and bathing suits every day, which wasn't really that bad. Mrs. Carter, who painted huge, blobby pictures in a studio about twenty feet from the main house, was there a lot of the time and was always telling me to go relax or offering to make me a kale smoothie, which is as gross as it sounds. On the weekends, when Mr. Carter came down, the family would take trips around Long Island or go into Manhattan. They always invited me, but I'm not a city person and felt kind of weird tagging along, so I'd mostly hang out at the house by myself, or walk to the beach.
What saved me from complete weekend boredom was the enormous movie collection. The owners of the house that the Carters rented had practically every DVD from the Criterion Collection. It was heaven. At least, for the first two weeks, when I had a blast with my self-curated themes like: The Wednesday (and Part of Thursday) Wes Anderson Special (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Royal Tenenbaums), Bonding with Michael Bay (Armageddon and The Rock), Indie Chick Flicks (Tiny Furniture and Frances Ha), and My Dad Will Be Happy I Finally Watched Some Hitchcock (Notorious and Rebecca).
On my third Sunday, when I finished two of my all-time favorite films for the fiftieth time, David Gordon Green's George Washington and David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which coincidentally also fit into a Directed by David theme), and literally could not watch another movie, I decided I would jog to the lighthouse, a famous Montauk landmark only four miles away.
I have no idea what I was thinking. Maybe my brain was sun damaged and chlorine-logged and didn't remember that, unless it's a leisurely walk with my dog, I hate exercise. I set off "running" at 12:30 PM, and by 12:45 PM I was completely dripping with sweat and cursing myself for not bringing any water and for wearing Ray's hand-me-down pink slip-on Onitsuka Tiger sneakers, which are not meant for running. I must have been totally dehydrated, because it took me over two hours to get there. I Instagrammed a selfie by the stupid lighthouse, which took up about seven seconds. Then I remembered that I had to actually get back to the Carters. I would've cried, but my tears were all evaporated, so I sat there for an hour, beyond thirsty, in this weird spaced-out denial funk where I was only able to come up with two running-themed movies: Forrest Gump and Unbroken. This was a personal low. I texted Toby, Ray, and Muppet my sad story, but only Muppet wrote back with a weird string of emojis. Eventually, I started to walk back, cursing myself each step of the way.
It started to rain, which was actually kind of nice since I was so hot. I even opened my mouth trying to catch some drops. But then the wind picked up and I could feel my blisters getting bigger with each step. Cars full of disappointed beachgoers kept whizzing past me. When I was still about three miles away from the Carters' house, a red Honda Fit pulled over. And the driver rolled down the window.
I know. You never get into a car with a stranger. When it comes to important life stuff, I'm not an idiot. In addition to being forced by Toby to watch horror movies, I hear enough news to know that there are a lot of sickos out there.
But the guy who was driving looked around my age with red hair that fell in his eyes, freckles on his tan arms and face, and rectangular brown glasses. He was wearing a green T-shirt that said "Reading Is Sexy" with a picture of a girl with big glasses on it. He looked like the opposite of a killer/rapist. It's a stretch, but he looked like a combination of Ansel Elgort and Jason Segel but with bigger ears. Much bigger ears. His ears seemed unusually big, and I stared at them until he said, "Hello. I know you never get into the car with a stranger. It's one of the stupidest things to do. Your mother would probably kill you for even considering it. My mother would kill me for sure. But, listen. My name is Epstein Boffee-Barnes. Boffee has two Fs and two Es. Barnes has an E, too. I'm seventeen and not a killer. I don't like horror movies. I've been a vegetarian since I was nine. You look really wet and really tired and I saw you walking like three hours ago. Um … I have a car."
I couldn't speak because my brain felt like it had been submerged in water. It felt good not to be moving, but even though this guy didn't look or sound psycho, how could I know for sure?
"I'm not a rapist," Epstein said, reading my mind. "I think rapists should be killed. Except I'm against the death penalty so it's actually a little confusing. But really, I'm not a killer. I teach kids to sail."
I put my hand on the rear door and hesitated.
"You're soaking wet. Rain is coming into my car. Let me drive you where you need to go."
I thought about the girls in Cleveland who had been locked up for ten years, which made me think about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Then I wondered what Tina Fey would think if her daughters got in a car with a guy named Epstein Boffee-Barnes. That made me wonder about Amy Poehler, but then I remembered that she has sons, so I wondered what Toby would do. I knew right away that he'd get into a car if a cute girl offered him a ride in the rain. He wouldn't for a second consider the dangers, because in the movie version, you get in. So, even though my heart was pounding, I got in. But, even though I knew it wasn't the movie version way to do things, I got into the backseat, figuring I'd have a better chance of escaping.
I told him where the Carters lived, that I was a babysitter for the summer, and that I'd never been to Montauk before.
He told me he'd spent every summer in Montauk with his aunt and uncle who had no kids, that he worked at the sailing camp he used to go to, and that he lived in Manhattan.
I told him my summers were normally spent making sure that my twin brothers weren't inventing new forms of psychological torture tactics on each other, or burning the house down. Sometimes, I'd bus tables at my parents' restaurant, and, since I didn't drive, I'd watch a lot of movies with my dog.
"Does your dog like movies?" Epstein asked.
I nodded. "She has her own Netflix queue."
He laughed. "What's on it?"
"101 Dalmatians, Bolt, Space Dogs."
He laughed again and told me he had a cat, loved sesame bagels, comedy podcasts, and jam bands.
"Jam bands?" I asked, kind of surprised, since he didn't have a hippie vibe.
"Don't judge."
"Okay. I won't judge." I smiled so he didn't think I was a judgey music snob. I pretty much listen to whatever pop music Ray puts on, and the Beatles with my brother because he's obsessed with the Beatles.
I told Epstein I was a junior at Washington Lincoln High School. I didn't mention that I have never listened to a comedy podcast.
Epstein said Washington Lincoln was a weird name for a school. "They couldn't decide which president to name it after?"
"No, they couldn't decide so they named it after both."
"What's your name?"
"Amelia."
He pulled into the Carters' driveway. "I like watching movies too, Amelia," he said, as if it was an unusual thing for two American teenagers to like.
I liked the way Epstein said my name even though he pronounced it totally normally.
Epstein Boffee-Barnes tapped on his iPhone. "I don't only listen to jam bands," he said. "This is my current favorite song." In the movie version we would've listened to the entire poppy-indie song so the director could make it clear that I, the main character, felt totally comfortable listening to a song with a guy she'd just met. What really happened was that ten seconds in, I realized that I needed to pee and that the Carters were home. I wasn't sure how I would explain sitting in the car with a random guy after trying to run in the rain. I didn't think they'd be mad, but the whole thing seemed random. So I awkwardly mumbled thanks to Epstein, ran out of his car, and burst into the house to get to the bathroom. But in my awkward hurry to flee, I left my phone in his car. Luckily, Epstein brought it back a few hours later.
"You get a lot of texts," he said. "I didn't read them, but your phone has been vibrating like crazy."
"My best friend hates her job," I told him. "It's in a mall. We text a lot."
He smiled. His smile made his ears look smaller, which made him cuter.
"I didn't leave it on purpose," I explained. "In the movie version I would've left it intentionally, but I didn't."
"What's the movie version?" Epstein asked.
"It's the better version," I said, which I immediately regretted. Except for Toby, who kind of invented the idea, I don't think I've ever really told anyone about the movie version.
"Better?"
"Better like the audience is willing to pay ten dollars to see it. Not better like happy. There are plenty of sad movies, like The Fault in Our Stars, which was amazing, or If I Stay, which I didn't like. But movie-sad is way better than non-movie-sad. For one thing, there's a soundtrack, which helps you get right to the heart of the sadness. Violins and stuff."
Epstein smiled, and even though I was talking way too much, I kept going. "In real life when someone gets a cancer diagnosis, there's tons of time just waiting. You have to wait for weeks to get results for like a million terrible tests. My grandfather was sick with cancer for three years. In the movie version you never see the bedpans."
Epstein laughed. "That's a great line."
I was shocked. This guy was standing on the porch, and even though I was talking nonstop about nonsense like bedpans, he seemed kind of interested. I couldn't believe it. That stuff doesn't happen to me. I wondered what Ray would think of Epstein. She has a lot more experience, and at least once a week some random mall weirdo asks her out.
When the cute big-eared guy asked me out, I stopped wondering what Ray would think and said yes.
We went to a movie.
Of course.
