Enchilada Ed

14

"Okay little buddy, you're all set," Yessica slammed shut the back door of Ed's Malibu, walked around to the driver's side, and set her elbows on the rolled-down window. "You good?"

"I think so," Ed checked his rearview mirror. A bundle of balloons bobbled in the backseat. He had woken up at six that morning and driven to Yessica and Mike's apartment, where Yessica had helped him fill up a dozen balloons with helium and tie each with a ribbon. After Ed wrote his prom message on three of them, Yessica packed them into the Malibu's backseat. She even arranged them with plastic wire ties so that they wouldn't obstruct the rearview.

"Look at you!" Yessica pulled at Ed's cheeks, "growin' up, goin' to prom, so adorable."

"I haven't even asked her yet," Ed swerved his head out of Yessica's reach, "you don't even know she'll say yes."

"Of course she'll say yes. You're adorable."

Ed exhaled.

"Come on, think rationally. Emily told you to ask Audra, right?"

"She forced me to buy the tickets last Thursday." Ed shuddered as he thought about the never-ending "male-prom-date" GroupMe, which, for some reason, Emily was a part of. Ed could only guess that she wanted to supervise. Brian had never seemed to like Emily all that much, at least since he started dating Katie sophomore year. He spammed the conversation with "esoteric memes" as a way of getting on Emily's nerves. She fell for it. Her subsequent "why-can't-you-be-normal-like-Ed-and-Phil" lecture took many, many text messages. Too many.

"And she's in on your balloon plan, right?" Yessica asked.

"She approved of it, yeah," Ed ran his fingers up and down his steering wheel, "but I gotta get to Audra's locker before she does and make sure the balloons are arranged so the writing's readable and-"

"Don't be nervous."

"I can't not be nervous," Ed's voice rose, "I can't help what I feel."

"Sure you can," Yessica knelt to the ground so that she could look Ed straight in his eyes. "When you get to school, all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other."

Ed studied Yessica's steady brown eyes. A warm calm fell over him for the flicker of a minute.

"Thanks, Yessica," Ed's gaze fell back onto his steering wheel as that passing calm faded.

"Glad I could help," Yessica stood up. "Mike said I would never use the helium again after my stint as a birthday clown. Guess who won that bet."

"You worked as a birthday clown?" Ed had a vision of Yessica in a red ball nose and white face paint and a thousand screaming children all around.

"Living in Philly as a broke college student is rough," Yessica shrugged, "You do what you gotta do."

"There's actually a market for birthday clowns?" Ed's eyes widened.

"Just go to school," Yessica said, "and if you get nervous, try to imagine me as a birthday clown standing behind your girl."

"That sounds like a shot from a horror film," Ed mumbled as he turned his key in ignition.

"See, you're still snarky," Yessica lowered her brows. "You'll be fine."

***

Ed had never felt so self-conscious in his life.

Sure, he wouldn't have ever described himself as confident, but he had a social ease that allowed him to interact comfortably with almost everyone. The notable exception was Audra, who made his tongue feel thick and fuzzy before he started every conversation with her. Ed thought those conversations were in some way magic; by the time she said goodbye, the knot in his stomach would have unraveled itself and his stiff, immovable tongue would have relaxed. It was a lovely power for a person to possess- the ability to soothe someone else word-by-word, eyelash-by-eyelash. Ed wondered why it was that whenever he saw her, then, he swore he felt a little more nervous than he had the time before. Maybe, he began to think, the fear he felt when he sat beside Audra first thing in the morning at English class, or when her name popped up on his phone's lock screen, was the same sort of fear he associated with SAT tests and college application essays. That, as he had been told over and over again, the closer you get to adulthood, the faster all magic things fade away.