Love You Like A Madman

[Feedback is appreciated--I feel this is more an outline than a full story but am curious what others think. Is it too much tell and not enough show? Does it flow? Are Payne and Sarah both too unlikable?]

“Finish the book for class tomorrow.” Mrs. M said as she erased the discussion points from today off of the blackboard.

Sarah had already finished Catcher in the Rye and reread it twice. She was impatient for the discussion. On one hand, she loved the book. Holden reminded her so much of her boyfriend, Payne. So lost and yet so smart and sensitive. Yet on the other hand she hated it because it confused her and it didn’t have a tie-it-up in a pretty bow and package ending that she needed. Then she started wondering if Holden and Payne were just tragic and pathetic losers.

She needed to listen to the discussion tomorrow and hopefully Mrs. M could help her figure it out.

She did not like the push-me-pull-you feeling the book gave her. Sarah liked concrete beginnings, middles, and endings. She liked to know where the characters stood and what happened at the end of each page and each chapter. Catcher had her all over the place and Holden kept shifting tenses, which made her eyes itch.

The worst part is with Catcher, Sarah didn’t understand the ending. She thought she knew where the book was going, then she was just bewildered by it all.

She picked up one of her journals and reread yesterday’s entry. She wrote about how she wanted today to go with class--especially the hope to understand the book and her life better. She also wrote "Tonight I will tell Payne I love him and he will say it back to me! Finally!!"

Her journals were filled entries like that. She wrote about how she wanted every conversation and every day and every action to be from start to finish. She worked hard to plan everything and keep her life under her control. She knew that need for control frustrated Payne who was a free spirit and didn’t like having things planned for him.

Last week, he told her he likes his grungy jeans and Led Zeppelin shirts. Those were his best clothes, he said, and it didn’t matter to him that he was one of the only kids in his school that liked "grandpa" music as she called it.

“Stairway to Heaven speaks to me, “ he told her as they listened to it from her phone. He didn’t have smart phone. Said it was too boujee.

She just wanted him to look nice in clean jeans and a nice button up shirt when they were with her friends and their boyfriends. And, a smart phone was a necessity. How else could he post photos of them together and text her when she needed him?

Up in her room before dinner and waiting for Payne’s call, Sarah opened the Wordle archives and started solving the old puzzles like a madman. She laughed because solving the puzzles made her feel like Holden. He was always doing something like a madman.

The puzzles gave her comfort because she had six tries and then they ended. You either got the word or you didn't, but the game always told you what the word was if you missed it. She needed that closure.

Sarah found the puzzles to predictable and with her eye for Scrabble, she almost always got the answer on the 2^nd or 3^rd try. You get an L as the second letter—most of the time the first letter will be S or B or P or E or I. The few times she didn’t get the answer after the 6^th try caused her so much anxiety that she wrote out new combinations her journal so she could solve it quickly there.

She was on her 20^th puzzle in a row when her stomach growled. Sarah realized that not only had Payne not called at 5:30 like he promised, but Sarah hadn’t heard her mother call her for dinner.

She went downstairs and there was a note on the table next to her plate. “Off to your brother’s baseball games. Here is your dinner, Your Mother.”

The mashed potatoes on her plate had hard edges and the peas and carrots had coated the side of the Salisbury steak, which sat in a pool of glossy, hard gravy. Sarah recognized the meal from the picture on the box.

Her mother stopped making homemade meals when Sarah’s dad left two years ago. She said TV dinners were fine for her when she was young, so her kids would have to eat them too. Sarah didn’t understand why her mother called them "TV dinners". Her mother forbid them from watching TV at the table, but she still always called frozen dinners, TV dinners. Sometimes her mother could be a real phony.

Sarah dumped the plate into the trash, covering it with the box and some crumbled papers so her mother wouldn’t see it. She rummaged through the cabinet and found a silver pouch of strawberry Poptarts. They were stale and crumbled as she took tiny bites. With each bite, she hit redial until Payne answered his phone. 

“Hey. It’s me.”

“Me who?” he asked cackling. 

“Me, me, your best girl.” Sarah brushed pop tart crumbs onto the floor so her dog, Boo Boo could get them. “You go to school today?”

“Nope. Went downtown with Bear.”

Sarah winced. “Bear? I thought you weren’t friends anymore.”

“Nah. It’s all good. We went to the Point and walked around for a while.”

“What about your English paper?”

“You read that mouse book last year. Didya keep your paper?”

Sarah loved Of Mice and Men and got an A+ on her paper, which had a Mickey Mouse pushpin holding it to her bulletin board. She chewed the last bite of stale Poptart. “Nope. Tossed it.”

“You never toss anything. See if you can find it.”

“My mom is trying to break me of being a pack rat. Made me toss all of my papers.”

“You must remember some of it. You can help me write my report tomorrow after school. Gotta go. See you at the bus stop in the morning?”

“OK. I love you, Payne.”

Sarah stared at her phone waiting for an answer, but the green light had already turned red and Payne hadn’t said "I love you too". Boo Boo whined for more crumbs. Sarah turned the silver Poptart wrapper inside out and let Boo Boo lick the gummy strawberry jelly from the wrapper. 

She jabbed at her phone again, and punched up the Wordle archive for the next puzzle. A-N-G-R-Y. She watched as all five letters turned gray.

She flipped the phone over and reread the last chapter of Catcher AGAIN. She was hoping this time she could figure out if Holden really loved Sally or Jane or anyone for that matter. The more times she read the book, the angrier she was with Holden for getting kicked out of school just like she was mad at Payne for flunking out of their public school and being sent to private school, repeating 9th grade.

She picked up the Wordle again and punched in L-I-A-R-S and five more gray letters flipped. Sarah got agitated since she burned two of her six chances and was no closer to knowing the outcome. She clicked the next button on the puzzle and turned off her phone.

She pulled her Of Mice and Men paper off of her bulletin board and stuffed it under mattress. She went back to started pouring over the last chapter of Catcher, hoping to figure out what it all meant and if Holden would every be happy with the women in his life and tell anyone he loved them.

The next morning, Sarah’s mood darkened when Payne wasn’t at the bus stop as he promised. He also didn’t answer his phone. His bus came and went. She got on hers and as the bus bumped through the neighborhoods, she tried another old Wordle. She entered the word P-I-S-S-Y. The I and S turned yellow, so she typed W-I-S-H-Y and they were still yellow with no green letters. She sighed loudly and shut her phone off.

At 1 PM she plopped into her seat in Mrs. M’s English class. She looked up and written on the board was the question “What is Holden’s feeling about women (Sally, Jane, his mother, Phoebe, etc.) and why? Use up to three quotes to support your answer.” YES! She thought, Mrs. M read her mind and came through again!

“Okay class! Pop quiz,” Mrs. M said looking like a madman who was so pleased with herself. “You can use your books.” We will discuss this after the quiz.

Sarah stared at her tablet and typed the words "Pissy and Wishy". The quote to support it is “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”