The Manifesto

On Friday, Elizabeth saw Grant in the hallway, and he nodded at her, friendly. She nodded back, navigating towards him. They would be walking in the same direction for approximately three minutes if she wanted to be on time to class, six if she was willing to be late.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Good, you?”

“Good.” She tilted her head to look at him properly—he was tall in the gangly, accidental way of boys his age—and hoped he’d look at her, too. “What are you, um, thinking about?”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

A desperate, shameful part of her mind hoped he would say You, charmingly, a cocksure smile on his face. He did not.

“I was thinking about that restaurant downtown they’re closing down,” Grant said. “They tried fresh and local, and then the freaking corporations screwed them over. Like, of course Applebee’s is cheaper. Applebee’s is also worse.”

Elizabeth attempted an understanding nod. “That’s capitalism, I guess.”

Grant turned his head and now his eyes were on her, narrowing, and she sucked in a breath.

“Pretty flawed system, wouldn’t you say?”

She could hardly listen, hardly think. “Oh, sure.”

He said, “Have you read The Communist Manifesto?”

Elizabeth’s heart fell to her stomach and from there to her shoes.

“No,” she admitted, “I haven’t.”

He said, “You should give it a shot. You might like it.”

He was close enough for her to see the faint spray of freckles across his nose and the tree-ring layers of brown and amber in his eyes.

Elizabeth said, “Okay.”

***

Then she went to the library, the local library, not the one at school, because the school librarian lived down the street and knew her parents.

So now Elizabeth was reading The Communist Manifesto as she lay on her bed, a red pamphlet against her pink duvet. She was realizing that there were words she didn’t know that she probably should.

Not that Elizabeth thought that reading The Communist Manifesto was a sin or something. She lived in a very progressive area, and she knew an unquestioning love of capitalism was the kind of thing that made the smart kids who read The New York Times roll their eyes in silent judgment. She had even briefly been on Tumblr, where there were many hip young Marxists. She hadn’t liked it very much, but she’d been there.

At the same time, Elizabeth sensed a faint stink around The Communist Manifesto. Perhaps of pretension, perhaps of naïveté. Or perhaps she just knew in her bones that Marxism wasn’t the kind of thing to get into as a reason to text a boy.

***

So now Elizabeth was reading The Communist Manifesto as she lay on her bed, a red pamphlet against her pink duvet. She was realizing that there were words she didn’t know that she probably should. She was thinking that she’d thought too little about feudalism. And burghers. And the bourgeoisie.

Elizabeth was also starting to worry that she knew too little to talk to Grant. What could she say about cities and towns, about commodities and artillery, about production and exchange? What could she say at all that was interesting or clever, that would make Grant stop and say, “I’ve never thought of it that way, but you’re right”?

Once, two months ago, she had been sitting alone in the courtyard during lunch. It was still winter, still freezing, but she liked to be outside, and, moreover, her friends were all on student council and busy telling freshmen to be civically engaged.

She heard the door to the courtyard open and looked up. There was Grant, cafeteria tray in hand, wearing a thin, tan-colored trench coat; he must’ve been even colder than she was. He came and sat beside her.

He asked, “Hey, is the Spanish test today?”

She knew, from this, that Grant Healy was a tender soul. He had come to her in her aloneness and been tactful or embarrassed enough to come up with an excuse. If he could be so generous, so sweet, then she could surely read a little Marx and a little Engels. She hadn’t even known there was an Engels. It seemed unfair that Marx got all the credit when Engels had done a lot of the writing, too. Maybe she could talk to Grant about that.

***

In the afternoon Elizabeth had a shift at Pizza Papa in the strip mall across from the school. Her coworker Shanae was shaping the dough and spreading the tomato sauce, and Elizabeth was to her right in charge of toppings.

“Does that look like eight inches?” Shanae asked, after one of the pizzas came out particularly misshapen.

Elizabeth nodded and added a neat ring of pepperoni to the pizza she was working on.

“You’re quiet today.”

Elizabeth shrugged.

Shanae raised her eyebrows. “All right, then.”

The pizza was done. Elizabeth set it carefully on the track that ran through the oven. New Guy would shovel it out and slice it on the other side. She did not know New Guy’s name and was unlikely to learn it as long as he was relegated to the far side of the oven.

“Shanae,” said Elizabeth, hesitantly, pausing between words, “You know things about boys, right?”

New Guy called over, “I’m a boy!”

“I mean boys our age,” Elizabeth said, “sorry,” because New Guy was a grade below them and therefore irrelevant.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Shanae, her long, black ponytail swishing over her back as she grabbed more dough. “What’s up?”

Elizabeth sucked her bottom lip. She sprinkled cheese over another pizza. Eventually, she asked, “How do you make guys think you’re smart?”

She thought she heard New Guy mutter, “You be smart,” but it was difficult to tell from this far away.

“You’re smart,” Shanae said, but Elizabeth shook her head.

“I’m reading this… book,” she said, “This book he likes, and I don’t think I get it.”

“Well, what’s the book?”

Elizabeth wilted. “It’s kind of political.”

Shanae glanced over, a suspicious expression on her face. “Who’s the guy?”

Her face entirely directed at the pizza, Elizabeth whispered, “Grant Healy?”

Now Shanae was laughing, her dough-shaping paused. “Grant Healy? Elizabeth, free life advice. Don’t worry about being smart enough for guys who wear black skinny jeans and smoke non-electronic cigarettes.”

“Grant doesn’t smoke.”

“Okay, but he would.”

New Guy said, “Is that the Grant Healy in Chess Club? I heard he smokes, but like, weed.”

“I don’t believe that,” Elizabeth said, but quietly she sort of did.

***

On Saturday Elizabeth finished reading The Communist Manifesto. She stared at those last words on that last page—“Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”–-and then her gaze swiveled to her phone.

Cautiously, tenderly, she picked it up.

She drafted her texts in the Notes App, lest Grant see that she was typing. Which would only be a problem if he was currently thinking about texting her, the screen open, his mind racing as he tried to think of what to say.

Well, she could dream.

Elizabeth tried, hi!!!, then pressed backspace. hi grant! No, hey Grant!, because what if she made his name lowercase and he thought she didn’t respect him?

hey Grant! this is Elizabeth.

hey Grant! this is Elizabeth (I had your number from that project last semester lol)

hey Grant! This is Elizabeth :) just wanted to let you know i finished the communist manifesto! soooo interesting, and i’d love to hear your thoughts!

Good, but should she add: i totally have a better grasp of communism now

No, i definitely have a better grasp of marxism now

No, wait, best yet: i feel like i definitely have a better grasp of marxism now, so thanks for that :)

She surveyed her message. The double smiley faces were perhaps excessive, but it couldn’t be helped.

She copied and pasted it into the text bar and pressed send. Then she threw herself onto her bed and pressed her face into her pillow.

***

Saturday at 3 PM: no reply.

Saturday at 6 PM: no reply.

Saturday at 11:39 PM, just before Elizabeth gave in and went to bed: no reply.

Sunday at 9 AM, as Elizabeth reached, heart pounding, for her phone, moments after waking up: no reply.

Sunday at 3 PM, twenty-four hours later, twenty-four full hours in which, to her knowledge, Grant was neither lost at sea nor halfway down the Appalachian Trail nor stranded at a no-screens mindfulness retreat: no reply.

Sunday at 9:17 PM, during a viewing of The Happiest Millionaire with her family, while her hand was halfway to the popcorn bowl: a text.

Elizabeth stared at her phone, breathing hard. Her heart was tearing itself into little pieces, fresh with hope and fearful with knowing that she had to come up with a reply.

hey elizabeth! sorry for the late reply (i routinely forget i have a phone lol). so glad you enjoyed the manifesto!!! def lots of food for thought there i mean like obviously it’s dated, they acknowledge that in the preface, and there’s a certain level of idealism/eurocentrism you have to recognize BUT absolutely incredible thinkers and in our economy it’s more relevant than ever if you look at income inequality and tax structures etc

Elizabeth stared at her phone, breathing hard. Her heart was tearing itself into little pieces, fresh with hope and fearful with knowing that she had to come up with a reply.

Grant was still typing.

***

She saw him in the hallway at school. He nodded, hand lifting in a wave, and with it something inside her lifted, too, riding the air.

Then she saw him after school as they walked to their cars—she had to race out of math class to catch him, but it was worth it—and he said hey, and she said hey, and she was thinking through the paragraph she’d sent him the night before, the point by point response much aided by supplementary Googling and articles on Marxism and Eurocentrism and inequality she’d found online, and now he was waving again because it was time to get in his car and drive away.

***

As soon as Elizabeth said, “We started texting” that afternoon at work, Shanae was drowning her out with a groan.

“When will you understand the humiliation you are providing to yourself,” she said.

Elizabeth flushed. “It’s actually really interesting! I’m learning all this stuff about, like, class warfare. Did you know George Orwell didn’t make up the proletariat for 1984?”

“You’ve read 1984?”

“I skimmed it. For class.” Elizabeth lowered her voice to a whisper in case the one loitering customer heard. “Have you ever really thought about capitalism, though? And corporations? Why do random rich guys own all the means of production instead of the people using them?”

A look of alarm twitched across Shanae’s face. She glanced at the customer, then back at Elizabeth. She said, “I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about that here.”

Before Elizabeth could reply, New Guy was hollering, “Hey, we’re out of folded pizza boxes!”

Elizabeth said, “You’re on cut table. That’s your job.”

“Oh.” New Guy’s face crumpled. “Well, how do I fold them?”

Shanae gave Elizabeth a look. “You’re the shift leader.”

Elizabeth sighed. She was fifty-cent-per-hour pay raise and all, so she went over and showed New Guy how to fold pizza boxes.

***

Grant had sent her several long text messages before school about revolutionary leaders she hadn’t had time to Google yet. She wasn’t sure she could research at all tonight; she had a math test at the end of the week to study for, and the presentation for AP Spanish was coming up.

She saw him in the hallway. That three-to-six-minute window. She came up to him, shyly, and said hi.

“Hey,” he said, a benevolent smile on his face. “I was just wondering—what do you think about God?”

She blinked. “I don’t know. I guess I’m Lutheran.”

He said, “Have you read Thus Spoke Zarathustra?”

“Is that by Marx?”

“Nietzsche.”

“Ah,” she said, faintly, the press of exhaustion at her sternum.

***

Elizabeth looked up Thus Spoke Zarathustra (“God is dead,” the blurb proclaimed), but could not bring herself to read it.

She could, however, send Grant a text. A bolder text than she had previously sent, but not so much bolder: do you like pizza?

When he got around to replying, the next evening, the answer was but of course

She breathed in deep, steeling herself. i work at pizza papa. you should visit, i can give you some for free

She saw him in class the next day. He made finger guns at her. “Pizza,” he said. “It would be my honor.”

***

New Guy was being annoying again. He was refusing to listen to Shanae’s playlist on the grounds that he had just learned it was illegal to put on streaming services in public.

New Guy was being annoying again. He was refusing to listen to Shanae’s playlist on the grounds that he had just learned it was illegal to put on streaming services in public.

“Elizabeth,” Shanae told her, “pull rank.”

“But it’s illegal,” New Guy complained.

“I’ll take all the responsibility, okay?” said Elizabeth, knowing that the manager would not show up and that, if she did, she would not care. “I’m the shift leader, and I’m saying we listen.”

New Guy groaned. Shanae whooped.

“This is the kind of leadership I like to see in the workplace,” she said.

They turned on the playlist. They made their pizzas. Occasionally, a customer would come in and compliment their musical tastes, and Shanae would glare triumphantly at New Guy, who would shrink.

Always, Elizabeth kept one eye on the door.

Near the end of the shift her phone buzzed in her pocket. Grant: on my way

She thrilled.

“Can we make a Six-Cheese Sausage for my friend?” she asked Shanae.

Shanae said, “Girl. Really,” but started rolling out the dough.

New Guy asked, “Is your friend paying?”

Elizabeth ignored him and checked the topping proportions.

“I said, is she paying?”

“He,” Shanae muttered, “I’ll bet.”

“He is not,” said Elizabeth, her voice as calm as she could make it.

“That’s not allowed,” New Guy said, with a finality that suggested his word would be law. “Playing the music is one thing, but giving out free stuff–”

“Is fine.” Elizabeth stood as tall and straight-backed as she could. “I’ve seen the manager do it.”

“But that’s the manager.”

Elizabeth had had enough. She was tired, and Grant was coming, and she wanted him to like her, and she didn’t want to read Thus Spake Zarathustra. She really, really didn’t.

She said, “I am the shift leader. I am in charge ,” and saying that felt good, so she repeated it, “I am in charge. So we’re going to listen to Shanae’s music, and I’m going to give my friend free pizza, and you are going to stop bothering me about it!”

New Guy froze.

Across the room, she heard the door closing.

Elizabeth turned. There, inside, a shocked expression on his face, was Grant.

Slowly, he said, “You’re the shift leader.”

“Grant–”

“I thought…” He shook his head. “Dude, abusing your power is not cool.”

He turned and left the restaurant. Elizabeth stared after him.

Shame. Grief. Anger. A vision in her head of all the pages she’d pored over, all the -isms she’d Googled, all the articles on left-wing sites filled with German compound words that meant concepts she’d never heard of. Her burning tiredness. How easily he’d turned away.

And, beneath it all, something of relief.

She knew, deep in her soul, two things. One, Grant Healy would never text her again, and two, she would never read Thus Spake Zarathustra.

She was, she saw, the bourgeoisie after all.