Karissa

The Past is Not So Far Behind....

"So, what is your real name?" Karissa had asked casually, sitting cross-legged on my bedroom carpet and braiding her hair. I felt like she'd punched me in the gut, it came so out of the blue, but I was flattered that Karissa had respected my privacy enough to wait with the question.

I told her the backstory first

"Before Mom met Dad and became a secretary, she was an English major, specifically a British Literature major." I pushed away the pictures of my mom going all Maggie Gyllenhaal-in-Secretary on Dad; even the old me wouldn't have liked these perverted imaginings, just because they were my parents, and....ew. Their bedroom life was not my business and I'd made a secret vow that I wouldn't bring it up if I couldn't hear them. I was always thankful that they weren't as sexually reckless as Gillian Beaumont. Jesse complained, and, in the old days, my friends and I had fantasized about what it was like behind those closed - or possibly open - doors. Most of it was illegal, and very dirty. I just felt gross thinking about it now.

Karissa smiled.

"No wonder you love books so much, and that you're such a good writer. Editor of the student press for the second year in a row - wow, 'Cutch!"

"So, after she let Dad name Artie - for his old football coach - when I came along, she begged to use her literary character names on me. Her favorite writers are Jane Austen and Shakespeare. Maybe it's just frustration attached to my name, but I've always been more of a Brontë fellow."

"So, what is your real name?" Karissa repeated, anxious.

"You have to see it written out," I said, leading her to the safe in Dad's office, twisting the dial as I pictured the sucession of numbers in my head.

"Here's my old birth certificate. Mom still thinks I should man up and use it, but no. The jokes would be incessant."

"Ariel Darcy McCutcheon," Karissa read carefully, then busted out laughing, but her eyes showed pity.

"Oh, that's awful! It makes you sound like a girl! 'Cutch...." She was in tears laughing, but I'd known she would, and finally could laugh along. All the years I'd spent petrified on the first day of school  and whenever we had substitutes, terrified someone would find out my name and my popularity would vanish completely, like water evaporating...they were done. Over.

Thank goodness!

Karissa went with me when I got it changed to AJ. I've always been more of an initials kind of guy. People still called me McCutcheon occasionally, but it was more of a nickname now.

It was just the beginning of December - my last high school December - and Karissa and I were waiting around for the friends to come get us. Apparently something fun and important was happening tonight. I was kind of excited. Life with Jesse, Dominic, Lavender and Rosemary was always a big, clean, adventure, so much so that I usually wasn't tempted by my old life of wanton drinking, partying, and sexual encounters. I'd left the door slightly open, but swung it back all the way when I heard that voice.

"So, in case you didn't hear...." Jesse waved the latest issue of the New York Times in front of my face, paging through the sections. The front page of the Arts section was almost entirely filled with a picture of Coriana in a skintight, spangled, dark green dress, slit up practically to the top of her leg, that big, full-lipped smile gleaming out at us.

"Broadway's reviving Chicago, and Coriana's playing Matron Mama Morton. Typecasting, if you ask me, but it's a good role, and she might be up for another Tony. You know how well The Little Mermaid went over....They wanted her so much that she gets to be in 'Cell Block Tango', which is messing with the original format of the show, but she has to be in it to make it perfect. Coriana's belt was built for that song, and she'll dance it well, too. Apparently she gets to work with Taye Diggs, which is huge, considering he was in the movie, and hasn't done Broadway in a few...." Jesse was jittery with undiluted excitement; it was contagious, and now I actually wanted to see the show. Artie had been following her career, just because they'd went out, but no one knew that but me - show tunes clashed with his image.