Caroline Armstrong, Class of 2020

“Friday”

Fiction
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Friday

Last Friday, I got out of school and walked to a pizzeria I’d never been to before to try

their Hawaiian pizza because I’d heard it was good. Last Thursday I heard some kid in my class

say that he went there with his girlfriend and that they split a Hawaiian pizza and that it was

really good. I don’t have a girlfriend, but I like pizza, and pizza is kind of a Friday-y thing, so I

thought I should go check it out.

So I went. It was pretty homey there. They had friendly waitresses and the tables had red

and white checked tablecloths. The walls had this tacky wallpaper that was kind of like a bunch

of little maps of Italy showing a bunch of places and cities where I bet the owner of the

restaurant has never been and doesn’t know how to pronounce. The paper was nice, though,

anyway—it had a cozy kind of feel. And the booths were cozy, too. I mean, I was just sitting

alone at this booth, so it was actually kind of spacious, and not cozy. But I don’t mean crowded-

cozy or up-close-cozy. I just mean nice leather with an old kind of smell cozy. I like that kind of

cozy.

After I had my pizza and everything (and it was pretty good), I walked home and talked

with my mom for a little while, and then I watched TV until I got kind of bored, so for about ten

minutes, and then I went to bed. Then I repeated my usual weekend and school week routine.

So now it’s Friday again and I’m sort of reminiscing about this pizza place because it

really was kind of nice. I’m thinking maybe I’ll go again today. Maybe this can become a thing

for me—a Friday thing—kind of like going to toss around a football in the park every Friday, or

going out to a “Friday-night football game”, or watching some football on TV and ordering

pizza. I guess my thing would have the pizza part! What I just said all has a lot do to with

football, though. I guess my thing would be missing the football part.

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It’s kind of hard for me to incorporate the football part into my thing, though, because to

be perfectly honest, I don’t really like football all that much. It’s fine and everything, don’t get

me wrong, but it just doesn’t really get me that excited. When I listen to people telling their

friends how they “had so much fun at the game last weekend,” I really, in all honesty, just don’t

see why and how their experience was so terrific. I don’t know. I personally just don’t think that

it’s all that fun to stand in the same place for three hours and try to remember all the different

chants and things and chant them in sync with everyone else and also cheer as if you’re the

happiest and most excited person alive when you really don’t know why you’re even cheering

because the rules of football can really be kind of confusing sometimes. I’m trying to understand.

(The rules and why it’s so terrific. I guess mainly why it’s so terrific.) I don’t think I’ve really

been succeeding, though, because I still don’t understand.

Anyway. Maybe I don’t have to make my Friday thing a football thing. There’s other

Friday things that seem a little more “fun” and exciting. Like going to a disco party. Or going to

a cocktail party and wearing a tuxedo. Or going to a night club and dancing the night away. Do

people really do all these things?

They at least seem a bit more exciting than the football games.

I decide when the bell rings that I’ll head over to the pizza place again. Everyone’s

filtering out of the classroom in a real excited, sort of babbly way, and then jangling their car

keys as they walk with their friends to the parking lot where they turn on their radios and turn up

their radios and head out to go do their respective Friday things. I guess most of them will drive

back here for the football game in a few hours. (I don’t get it! Maybe I will someday.) And then

some of them are probably going to go to a hip disco party or a wild night club in the city or
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something. I try to look into all the cars as they leave the parking lot and guess which people

might be going to the disco party or the night club or taking some limo with a big group of

friends to a cocktail party or whatever. Maybe I can try and join their Friday thing next Friday.

I keep thinking about this sort of stuff as I walk down the sidewalk that runs from Harry

S. Truman High School (that’s my school) to town. It’s nice walking on this sidewalk. It’s good

to feel some fresh air after a day of school inside. It’s also kind of cool hearing all the different

songs playing in the cars leaving my school as they speed by. One second it’s a cool classic rock

song, and then that fades into the distance, and there’s this cool upbeat pop song. It’s the Doppler

effect! I learned that in Physics yesterday. It really is pretty neat. I was listening to people talking

to each other after the lecture ended when everyone’s clustered into groups waiting for the bell to

ring, though, and they were all saying to each other how they were so bored and were trying not

to fall asleep and it made me think maybe it wasn’t actually that cool. But now I’m walking here

listening to this symphony (it really is like that!), and I can’t really stop myself from thinking

that the Doppler effect is cool.

The sidewalk wraps into town and I make a few turns and walk some more blocks and

then I’m back at the pizza place. The same friendly waitress with red hair up in a ponytail and

bright gold hoop earrings seats me. She puts me in a booth by the window. It’s different from

where I was last time, but that’s okay. I’m just glad she doesn’t ask me how many more people

are in my “party.” She didn’t do that last time, either, which I thought was nice. I don’t know. I

just feel like it’s rude when people make you feel like it’s not okay to do something by yourself.

It’s kind of like when I went to the dentist last year and he asked me if my family had any

vacation plans for the holidays and I told him no and then he asked, “Do any of your friends have

any crazy trips planned?” and I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t want to tell him that I
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don’t have any friends but I also didn’t want to lie. I was about to say “Madagascar,” but then

my conscience got in the way, so I ended up just pretending I needed to spit the fluoride into the

tube thing, and then he didn’t even realize that I never answered the question he had asked me.

Stuff like that just makes me feel bad about myself. I don’t know. I just think it’s kind of mean

when people just assume everyone has friends.

While I’m waiting for my pizza I get to do some pretty good people-watching. I have a

view of the whole restaurant and also the sidewalk and everything outside since I’m right by the

window. People-watching is one of my favorite hobbies. When I went to New York with my

family a couple years ago, the best part of the whole trip was getting to look out the hotel

window at thousands of people passing by. My mom had a hard time tearing me away from that

window every morning we were there.

There’s this one guy off in the corner reading a newspaper and eating a slice of plain

cheese pizza. He’s old, and his scalp is completely hairless. He’s by himself, too, which makes

me feel kind of reassured but also kind of concerned. He looks pretty familiar, actually. I think I

recognize him from the retirement home I used to volunteer at. He must be out for an outing.

I would normally be at the retirement home right now, actually. I only stopped going

there recently. I started going a few months ago after our school guidance counselor came and

talked to my social studies class about “ways to give back to the community” and “being an

engaged citizen.” She talked about volunteering at the retirement home, and I thought it sounded

nice. I knew all those people living by themselves must have felt awfully lonely, so I figured I

might be able to help them just a little.

I stopped going because my mom said I needed to “start acting my age.” She didn’t mean

like stop being immature or throwing temper tantrums like a little child or something. She thinks
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I act like an old man and wants me to be doing “normal high school activities.” She doesn’t think

volunteering at a retirement home is a normal high school activity for a Friday afternoon and

evening, although she does think it’s “a sweet thing to do.” She wants me to go to the football

games.

I know she’s really concerned and has my best interest in mind and everything like that,

but I feel like she doesn’t really understand. I’ve told her that I don’t really like football, but she

doesn’t seem to get it. She told me she doesn’t like football, either, but that she loves football

games and that everyone loves football games. I don’t get how that works.

She told me she wants me to have a healthy, normal high school experience and to be

happy. I’m trying. I really am.

She also wants me to do things on Fridays. So here I am. I kind of feel like I’m cheating,

though, because this isn’t really a Friday thing like she was talking about because I’m actually by

myself. I think last Friday when I got home and she asked me what I did that evening and I told

her that I went to a pizza place, she didn’t think that I went by myself. She seemed so happy,

though, that I went to this pizza place, that I didn’t want to tell her that.

Anyway. I also can see inside the kitchen a bit from where I’m sitting. I can get glimpses

of the pizza-making process! There’s a girl flipping pizzas in there who looks kind of like she’s

around my age. She has light brown hair and is flipping the pizzas in this timid sort of way. It’s

kind of strange, really. She’s also kind of pretty.

The waitress brings out my pizza and I eat it slowly, trying to alternate bites of pineapple

with bites of ham so that everything is all balanced and mixes nicely. It tastes good again—just

like it did last week.

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After a while, after I finish eating and after I keep people-watching for a good bit, the

waitress brings out the check and I pay and leave a 25% tip with the money I made mowing

lawns last weekend. Then I look at the girl in the kitchen again and at the bald guy from the

retirement home, who’s still there, just reading his newspaper now, and get up from the booth to

head out. I have to pass by the guy’s table on the way out, and he stops me.

“It’s good to see you out, son!” he says in this grandpa-like way. “You got a date?”

It’s like the dentist question.

I greet him and tell him no. He was facing my booth from where he was sitting in the

restaurant, so he must have seen me and seen that I never had a date. So I don’t know why he

asked me that.

We make some small talk and it’s pretty pleasant and I forgive him in my head for asking

me that. It’s nice talking to people, especially when they ask you questions about yourself and

wait for your reply and seem like they care what you say. After a good bit he tells me, “Well,

son, I’ll let you get on with your evening. It was swell seeing you out and about.” I return the

sentiment and head toward the exit. As I leave, it looks like he does this sort of wink thing in the

direction of the kitchen. Huh.

I walk out and go on the sidewalk and turn down a country road towards home. I watch a

pretty beautiful orange sunset as I walk. I also listen to some quieter Doppler effect stuff—just

the sound of a few cars whizzing by now and then along this road. I keep thinking about stuff—

lots of stuff, like normal. One thing I think about is how maybe this pizza place is a good

temporary Friday thing until I can get in with one of the limousine wild night club groups.