The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 30

"They're here," said Caleb as he darted out of the apartment, narrowly colliding with Lizzie, and bounded down the stairs to the front door.

When the door opened, the stairwell filled with loud male voices and loud males, high-fiving and jabbering away like they were tailgating.

Lizzie sprung to her feet from her seat on the fifth step and covered her ears with her hands.

Caleb pointed toward the second floor. "Up this way." He jogged up the stairs with four big guys following.

Ms. Margery Brennan poked her head out into the hallway from her first-floor apartment and scolded them. "This isn't a fraternity house! People live in this building so behave yourselves."

"Sorry," said a guy wearing a backward baseball cap. They cackled and rumbled up the stairs like a small stampede.

As they drew closer, so did their primitive odor, the smell of guys in a confined space.

Androstenone. While reading an assignment on hormones, the word stuck in Lizzie's head.  Androstenone, a derivative of testosterone, could be found in male urine and perspiration. To some potential mates, androstenone was described as having a sweet, vanilla smell, while others, like Lizzie, described the odor as foul, and nauseating.

Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, Lizzie and her classmates were bombarded with information on puberty, human sexuality, and physical and emotional changes. Girls got their periods and guys got lower voices, which seemed like a terribly inequitable trade-off. Puberty was the transition to adulthood, a time when acne ran rampant, girls got boobs, guys grew hair on their bodies and, according to her science teacher, Mr. DelVecchio, everyone was thinking about having sex all the time. As far as Lizzie was concerned, the courses were full of generalizations, much of the information relatable, and a whole lot of it irrelevant and detached from what Lizzie considered rational thinking.

Puberty didn't seem to have a lot of upsides. Lizzie noticed that her 14-year-old classmates did a lot of crying and not because their dog died. It was usually something bafflingly stupid about a boy who didn't sit next to them on the bus.

"This your sister?" A guy in a bright green T-shirt gestured toward Lizzie.

"Oh, geez," she said.

"She's the upstairs neighbor," said Caleb stacking a couple of boxes. "Dan-O and Greaves. Let's relay these mofo's." He slipped into the apartment for more boxes.

"Ready to rock 'n roll," said Dan-O. He clapped his hands loudly.

Lizzie winced.

"Let's do this!" Dan-O squatted, wrapped his arms around the first box, and then down the stairs he trundled.

"You're too loud," she said but he was too far down the stairwell to hear her. "Ms. Brennan's gonna be mad."

The guy in the green T smiled, pointed his finger gun at her, and cocked his thumb. She looked away, imagining a fingernail projectile headed in her direction. She climbed the stairs to the third floor, peering over the banister.

When Lizzie returned to the apartment, Sonya was putting the finishing touches on her apple pie pinching and crimping the rim of the crust, creating a decorative edge.

"It sounds like they're very busy down there," said Sonya.

Lizzie didn't respond. Her aunt had stated the obvious. But then Lizzie reconsidered. Maybe adding an acknowledgment was the socially acceptable thing to do. "Yes, they're very busy," she replied.

And sure enough, Sonya gave her a smile before opening the oven door and placing the pie on a rack.

"They wanted to give me Mr. Gibbs' bike," Lizzie said, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

"Mr. Gibbs had a bike?"

Lizzie nodded.

"Well, that was very nice of them," her aunt said.

Lizzie shrugged. "I understand the need for exercise. It's well-documented that a sedentary lifestyle can lead to multiple types of illnesses and diseases that could be prevented by simply exercising. I've been avoiding the topic of exercise. It's troubling to think about because I think I have one of those bodies that's incompatible with working out."

"No, you don't. You have a very trim body."

Lizzie prattled on. "First of all, I don't want to sweat. It's gross."

"That's one of the reasons people shower," said Sonya.

"I don't like water splashing on my face. Second, I would never ever go to a gym. That doesn't even make sense. It would be like phys ed class but with a whole bunch of strangers spreading germs and perspiration all over the place. Are you aware of the number of diseases and viruses that can be transmitted through droplets in the air?"

"A lot of people exercise without going to the gym. They ride bikes, or they jog, or they do exercises in their own homes."

"I'm convinced that I don't need to sweat while I'm exercising. I need to do some further research." As she crossed the kitchen to the hallway, she added, "And I don't want a bike. No, thank you."

"Well, it was nice that they offered you the bike."

Halfway down the hallway, Lizzie said, "And now I have a friend."

That caught Sonya's attention. "What's that about a friend?" She followed her niece into the bedroom.

Lizzie went to the window, her aunt trailing. Down below, Caleb, Greaves, the guy in the bright green T-shirt, and Dan-O loaded boxes into the rental truck.

Scott lugged a small end table down the porch steps and set it on the sidewalk beside the truck. He turned and looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. When he saw Lizzie at the window, he smiled and then flexed his lanky arms like he was posing for a muscle man magazine.

"Is that your friend?" Sonya asked.

She didn't know him well, but Lizzie was pretty sure that Scooter was making a joke. She felt her cheeks rise and suspected she was smiling.

In hundreds of stories (also not police stories), at this pivotal poignant moment, a character such as Lizzie would practically glow, and perhaps some cringey, saccharine romantic playlist might be suggested to accompany the scene. But this isn't a romance novel, which is a shame since romance novels are enormously popular. In a story such as this one that is practically genre-undefinable, adopting romance novel cliches would be inadvisable and, as Lizzie would probably say, "Oh, geez. That wouldn't even make sense."