Becca Russel isn’t particularly tall, nor is she wide, but she always seems to occupy more space than you’d think, her personality deciding that it doesn’t want to be squished. Her laugh itself must be at least 30-lbs. of her existence. She makes up for it with her little feet and hands. She has a well-proportioned face with a sweet smile and slightly chubby cheeks all surrounding her bright blue eyes. She’s athletically built with strong legs and what she would call a big butt. (I don’t go around measuring people’s butts, so I’m not really an expert.) But, having been friends with Becca for two years, I hope I’m enough of an expert on her to encapsulate not only who she is, but also what she has been for me.
***
“Hey!” I half-shouted across the loud bus, “Becca!”
Eventually the freshman looked up from her book, glancing around and looking for whoever was calling her name. I kept saying, “Becca!” and started waving my arms. When she saw that I was beckoning her, she looked nonplussed. “Yeah?” she returned.
“Um…” I stalled, feeling intrusive. “Is that—is that a graphic novel?” It was Becca's 16th birthday on Sunday, April 13th. When I showed up, late for her sleepover party, at 3:30 on Saturday, Becca burst out of her room, her friend Josie in tow, and then roared, "Well look who decided to show up!" To this I said, "I got you cupcakes, you little turd. Shut up." She quickly dropped the angry act and bounced up and down exclaiming, "Cupcakes!?!?!" then she decided that we needed to go to Ben and Jerry's for a Vermonster.
A Vermonster is about 20 scoops of ice cream.
Twenty. They brought out the tub for us while Becca cackled maniacally, half-shouting, "I REGRET NOTHING!" before spooning copious amounts of whipped cream into her mouth. I laughed as I told her she had ice cream on her face.
The next morning, after a night of horror movies, because they’re Becca’s favorite, and a breakfast of donuts, because it’s a birthday tradition in the Russell household, I asked Becca what she wanted to do on her birthday. I listed off the options, barring another game of Scrabble because Becca is a cheater. After mulling over the choices, she said self-consciously, “Whatever you guys want to do is fine.”
“No, Becca,” I insisted. “What do you want to do? It’s your birthday.”
“Yeah… it is,” she said, flopping the tattered book shut, keeping her hand on the page.
“What’s it called?”
“Watchmen.”
“Can—can I see?”
She nodded and then came to share a seat with me. Maybe it’s her affinity for superheroes or her spastic way of being, but I’ve always liked Becca. Everything that she’s interested in, she’s passionate about. For instance, she made me drive twenty-five minutes out of the way, making us late for softball practice, so she could play with her hamster because she was so excited about her new pet. Even though she didn’t play more than a few innings all of last softball season, she was still invested in how the team did: instead of being offended by her lack of playing time like some of her teammates, she cheered us on and was visibly upset by our predictable loss at the semi-finals. Despite this, she is also capable of approaching things with a lack of seriousness. She jokes and goofs all through softball practice, being distracting and endearingly counterproductive, standing in centerfield and begging for one more pop-fly after her turn is over.
Becca always comes to practice in something other than the prescribed softball uniform: without long songs and generally opting to wear her Converse All-stars that have the Flash, her favorite superhero, printed on them, instead of her cleats. Flash is her favorite superhero “because he's a happy person even though he didn't start out that way. ‘Cause his mom died. Also ‘cause he could kick any other super’s ass.” (I have no evidence to the contrary.) Her superior knowledge of superheroes gives her the upper hand in any superhero-based discussion we have, but she’s always kind when I don’t know something. She treats ignorance with sympathy; hoping only to educate, not ridicule a lack of knowledge.
“Who’s he?”
“That’s Rorschach. That’s Doctor Manhattan. That’s the Comedian,” she explains as I read over her shoulder. She is smaller than me and her mousy-brown hair plaited into a braid falls over her shoulder and chest. Becca’s words quickly fly into one ear and out the other as she launches into long explanations of each character and their backstory, where they came from and why they’re doing what they’re doing, also touching on the plot line of Watchmen itself; she smiles the whole while. It’s an 1000-watt smile and her cheeks grow on her round face as her grin stretches. Peering from under her perfect eyebrows, her blues eyes are excited: slightly wet with all the wind on the bus, they twinkle in the sun.
“Whoa,” I said, my brain not able to keep up with the speed and fervor with which the words were leaving her mouth. I don’t think she can tell, the glint of excitement in her eyes blinding her from my bewilderment. I used to be very interested in superheroes as a kid and I had forgotten how complicated their lives could be.
“I know,” she says. “I’m doing a report on Rorschach for English class soon, but you can borrow it for now.” Becca’s not one of those kids that likes school very much; she complains about the simple act of going and her mother nags her about her grades and effort in school regularly. Only art class seems to entertain her. She also enjoys art outside of school, her paintings and sketches covering the walls of her room; she has the Flash drawn in red and yellow on her chalkboard. “When I'm bored or upset I do art. I like it because it's kind of a way for me to vent how I feel.” Becca’s also one of those people who’s sort of good at everything. She plays softball, basketball, mountain bikes, and she’ll be playing volleyball at the start of her junior year next fall. She’s an artist, a good singer and cook, intelligent, athletic, and funny; she’s simultaneously cool and a total dweeb. She makes a fool out of herself to make people laugh, but is sweet and compassionate when you have a problem. Always understanding and willing to listen, her passion shines through again when the people she cares about are in distress; her voice turns from its normal, loud, sarcastic self into something quieter and her eyes lose their gruffness.
That being said, Becca can be a bit rough; punching and pushing are not uncommon even when interacting with her amicably. She’ll say, “Goddammit Sammi,” when I’ve made a bad joke that she found funny anyway or poked a hole in her logic. She says it while laughing so it’s easier to accept it as an expression of endearment. She’s rough on the things she cares about as a way to show that she cares about them, using them over and over again; loving them by having them constantly in use, near and around her. Her Flash converse’s lightening bolts are faded and the cover of Watchmen is tattered and folded. Her Deadpool (he’s this rogue, sort-of-superhero guy) videogame won’t work; I assume from scratches. But this roughness evaporates immediately when you demonstrate that you are in need of kindness. She can be either one, whatever you need her to be. She’ll be calling you a “dumb idiot” one minute and declaring her love for you the next. This caring, sweet Becca requires more energy to embody, I think, so that’s why she falls back on her gruff act, but she doesn’t consider herself a rough person.
We arrived at the softball field early. I put my bag down and watched as Becca walked from the dugout toward the field, kneeling where the grass met the dirt and drawing on the infield. I walked up behind her; her fingers traced the outline of the Flash. I knelt next to her and drew a rudimentary cube. Eventually we were running around the entire infield, drawing in the dirt as more people started arriving, giving us strange looks, but generally accepting our weirdness. Becca and I knelt on the sandy field until the coach yelled at us to run. We joined the tail end of the group of girls running out to right field, laughing about something I don’t remember. Becca hops into my car regularly and promptly promotes herself to the position of DJ/Navigator. Mostly she just plays the same five pop songs on my iPod and forgets to tell me directions to wherever we’re going. She’ll laugh when I half-shout her name because I’ve heard the same song fifteen times this week. If I put up a big enough fuss, she’ll change the song, but I’d rather not ruin her fun like that. She puts on a light, bouncy song. It obviously puts her in a good mood and she easily puts the singer’s voice to shame; the same sort of music used to be what I listened to and her affinity for those songs reminds me of why I used to like them, her passion rekindling mine. When we eventually arrive at our intended destination, after having to turn around at least once and definitely making a few sudden, hard turns because of Becca’s inability to stay focused on giving directions, Becca always leaves my iPod plugged in, letting the songs play and the battery die. She always leaves the sunvisor down on the passenger side and frequently leaves her shoes, sunglasses, or backpack in my car. Needless to say, she’s forgetful, but not in a disrespectful way.
Last week, at the drive-in movie theatre, which Becca begged me to take her to, she ordered a large popcorn, which she promptly spilled all over my front and back seats. (How she spilled in both places is beyond me.) As soon as a cascade of popcorn kernels soaked in fake butter and salt (because how could Becca ever eat anything without an extra helping of salt?) hit my upholstery, Becca was apologizing and promising to vacuum my car. I let her pick up the kernels from the backseat. Gently and earnestly, she assured me that my car would be clean; her knees ground some of the kernels further into the fabric.
During a water break, Becca noticed an injured bird. After catching the rendered-flightless robin, she dried it off. Eventually, she placed it on a perch and some time later, toward the end of practice, we watched it take off, gliding gently on its newly-dried wings. It flapped for a bit before flying over the cars and away. Becca waved good-bye to her bird-friend who she had held gently, cooing and petting it until it had stopped shaking. At the end of practice, Shannon, a girl on our team, shouted, “Becca! You’re goddamn bird shit on my car!” Becca could do nothing but laugh. Becca is sweet, kind and ridiculously mean, innocent, naïve and terribly perverted, she’s outrageous and goofy, serious and intellectual; she is so many wonderful things, and all at once. She’s simultaneously extremely passionate and able to take a joke. She is fantastically contradictory and yet her personality is easy to pin down and not only identify, but to identify with. Becca is younger than me, experiencing high school as I have already done. She has so much time left to change and grow into an entirely new person and everyday she is reminding me how I became who I am.
Everything Becca does in an effort to help someone or something ends up having ramifications that she wouldn’t have imagined as she promised to vacuum my car while simultaneously grinding kernels into my car’s seat or as she dried off a poor, helpless bird who would in time come to defecate on a friend’s car. She would not understand how she has rekindled my love for superheroes and bouncy, pop music; I like looking at her art because she loves it so much; I don’t mind driving halfway across town just to see her new hamster, the light in her eyes making me want to get there as fast as possible. These things are not omnipresent, but remembering that I don’t have to give up everything that I was to continue becoming who I want to be, has been fantastic. There is so much in Becca that I have been, that I am now; she is a better version of me and she reminds me all the time how to be tender and rough, artistic and crude, but most of all she reminds me of what it means to love something purely and wholeheartedly with an innocent, seemingly never-ending passion and what the effects of caring so deeply and unreservedly about something are: inspiration.
Wow, who would have thought it would rain the weekend of CCYWC? Certainly not all of us who spent the weekend inside because of the torrential fucking downpour last year...
