We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarassingly, A True Story

When Sundquist is in eighth grade, his crush, Sarah Stevens, confesses in a game of truth or dare that she does not like him. The truth or dare request happened in a van during a church youth group camping trip, thus humiliating Sundquist in front of 15 people.

The question Sarah answered came from Sundquist’s best friend Tony, the nine-year-old boy who remained his steadfast friend while he was undergoing cancer treatment. As a result of his cancer, Sundquist had to have his leg amputated from the hip. He wears a prosthetic leg for un-athletic activities to better fit in, but opts for crutches instead of the prosthetic for athletic ones because it is easier to run. Although he can participate in activities, Sundquist is self-conscious about not being useful enough on sports teams.

Sundquist’s youth-group leader, Joe Slater, has noticed that Sundquist is forever asking about what the group will do next. Joe, who does not realize that Sundquist is asking to gauge whether he will need to wear his prosthetic leg, feeds him the platitude that he should have faith in God that “sometimes the best moments are the spontaneous ones you don’t plan for” (19). Sundquist, who sets himself the rules of being neither a burden nor different, does not enlighten Joe as to why he is unable to be spontaneous. As a result, at the talent show, Joe awards Sundquist the superlative: “Most likely to ask, ‘What are we going to do next?’” (22).

Meanwhile, Sarah Stevens sits next to him in the van on a field trip, and stares at him during the talent show. Sundquist wonders whether this means that she does in fact like him.

Sundquist finds out through Instant Messenger that Sarah Stevens likes him. He is thrilled, even though his conservative Christian parents will not allow him to date until he is 16. They warn him not to touch Sarah. Sarah agrees to be his girlfriend in person. However, 23 hours later, she tells him via her friend Eileen that she only wants to be friends. This incident wrecks the previously close relationship between the Sundquists and the Stevenses. Sundquist determines to find out why Sarah did not give him a chance as a boyfriend.

Sundquist hypothesizes that Sarah broke up with him only 23 hours after they started going out because she never had romantic feelings for him.

As part of his investigation, Sundquist meets Sarah in a Starbucks when they are both home for the Christmas holidays. By this stage, Sarah is an actress in New York. Sarah informs Sundquist that she wrote about him in her diary and had a “huge crush” on him (43). When Sundquist asked her to be his girlfriend, she said yes, but privately freaked out because she had never had a boyfriend before, and worried that a new relationship would damage their friendship. Sarah reveals that she was crying in the bathroom because they were both awkward at the time they agreed to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Sundquist notices how “she seemed to struggle with the words to describe our breakup, as if she was having to dump me right now all over again and wished she could call on a BFF to come to her rescue” (45).

Sundquist manages to convince his parents that he should go to public high school by telling them that it is what God wants for him. Although Sundquist saw the advantage of homeschooling in elementary school, when he was able to finish his work long before his friends were out of school, by middle school he felt that he was missing out on the opportunity to meet pretty girls.

He judges that his most socially awkward behavior on entering public high school was memorizing all the names of his classmates from the yearbook. Most notable is the beautiful Liza Taylor Smith, who he looks out for on his first day. While his parents have led him to expect that he will face the dangers of gangs at public high school, in truth, he only contends with a boy who trips him up for walking with a limp, and a pop quiz.

When Sundquist asks about Liza Taylor Smith, his peers inform him that she is the hottest girl in school and draws the guys’ attention because of her sizeable chest. The sexual frankness shocks Sundquist, but he finds that public school kids are “for the most part, nice people who were very similar to me, other than the fact that they had two legs and talked about girls’ breasts” (62). Still, he has trouble finding a place in the school’s fixed social hierarchy and rotates around different tables in the cafeteria, wondering where he fits in.

One day, unexpectedly, Liza’s friend Lauren Baker, “a pretty, aloof girl who generally deemed me worthy of only a slight smile and nod” (63), passes him a folded note with his name on it. He wonders what it will say.

The note turns out to be not from Lauren, but from Liza Taylor Smith. She writes to tell Sundquist that her Bible study leader at the Young Life club had used Sundquist as an example of someone whose faith had helped him get through hard times. Liza closes the note by stating that she hopes that they will meet soon.

Although Sundquist’s parents have a rule about him not dating until he is 16, he begs them to be allowed to take Liza to the homecoming dance. They say no because they have heard that many girls get pregnant at homecoming dances. They worry that Sundquist will fall under the influence of teenage hormones. Sundquist is so upset that he crumples Liza’s note in his hand.

Just by chance, a boy called Miller invites Sundquist to Liza Taylor Smith’s Young Life group. She spots Sundquist immediately and tells him that they should catch up after the group.

As it is near Thanksgiving, Miller announces that there will be a competition: a race where participants will run with a pumpkin on each foot. He nominates Sundquist for the race. Sundquist must break his rule of not talking about his amputation and privately tell Miller that he will be unable to compete because a pumpkin around the foot would be incompatible with his prosthesis. Miller apologizes, embarrassed, then further embarrasses himself by asking Sundquist if he can participate in a game that has no bearing on his amputation. After this incident, although Sundquist sees Liza at school, “everything had changed; it had become impossible to believe she could be interested in me, even in my most optimistic of daydreams” (81). He feels that Liza sees him as undatable, owing to his amputation.

Sundquist hypothesizes that Liza may have been attracted to him, owing to her use of a blue sparkly pen when she was writing the note.

Throughout the rest of his high school career Sundquist never dared to ask Liza out because she seemed out of his league. Ten years later, he is still too intimidated to ask her for a coffee. However, when he bumps into her at the mall whilst Christmas shopping, Liza makes it clear that she never had any romantic attraction for him. She meets his compliment that she was one of the most beautiful girls in school with the statement that he was one of the most “interesting,” indicating that she thought Sundquist was weird (91). He does not ask her about why she sent the note, thinking that she would have forgotten she ever sent it.

Sundquist has reached 16, the age where he can finally date. He longs for a girlfriend, and hopes that Francesca Marcelo, the hot, arty girl who sits in front of him in geometry will be the one. He finds it difficult to have even the briefest conversation with Francesca and worries about facing rejection if he asks her out.

Although people have tried to console Sundquist by telling him that rejections are inevitable and that dating is a numbers game, he finds rejection to be “pure pain,” and trying to fight emotion with logic “is like bringing a calculator to a knife fight” (99).

On the last day of his junior year, Sundquist spots Francesca clearing out her locker and asks her out with the line “we should hang out sometime” (104). He judges the phrasing of his request to be perfect because “it’s a statement, not a question” (104). Francesca agrees to hanging out and Sundquist finds her number in the telephone directory. He asks her to play par-three golf with him. She says yes, and when he picks her up in his car, he is so nervous that he asks her to bring music with her. She chooses a CD by Ani DiFranco, whose music creates a “mood of politically charged man-hating” (109). Once they arrive at the golf course, things are going relatively smoothly until the sixth hole, where disaster strikes.

At the golf course, Sundquist is so impressed with his shot off the sixth tee that he jumps around with excitement. Then, he falls flat on his back and Francesca does not know what to say to him. Things get worse when he realizes that the foot of his artificial leg has turned backwards. Sundquist must kick vigorously against a tree—chopping up its trunk in the process—before he can turn his foot around again. He feels deeply embarrassed, and that he has ruined his chances with Francesca. To his surprise, she tells him that she wants to hang out with him more.

Sundquist has been going to Francesca’s house twice a week to play pool and they get skilled at talking to one another. He decides to take her to Shenandoah National Park, where he went with his eighth-grade church group, to initiate a first kiss. He is disappointed that Francesca does not go swimming with him, and is too timid to pull her into the water. He finds a picturesque rock and they sit together and talk about why adults give up on their dreams. He worries that if he kisses her he will become aroused, and that it will be obvious because he is wearing swim trunks.

On the way back to the car he tells her that his dream is to become a Paralympic skier, which impresses her. However, they lose the trail and get lost for a while. Sundquist later finds out that Francesca’s father is worried, but tells his father that “there’s actually no young man I’d rather have my daughter out with than your son” (125). The approval that Sundquist elicits from parents does nothing to boost his popularity with girls, who prefer rebels. He wonders whether his disability makes parents think that their daughters will be safer than with someone who doesn’t have a disability.

Although Francesca drops the obvious hint that she would like Sundquist to drive her to DC to see a concert, he misses the hint completely. Still, they keep hanging out, and Sundquist looks for the perfect opportunity to kiss her. Given that he has figured out that girls like a combination of romance and danger, he engineers a way to have a picnic on the roof of the old office building on Court Square with her, the closest thing Harrisonburg has to a skyscraper.

While Francesca likes the idea of a picnic on a skyscraper, their schedules are incompatible, given that vacations and work get in the way of meeting. She mentions that she has been hanging out with a guy called Andrew. Although Sundquist is curious, he disciplines himself not to ask about Andrew because he knows that asking a girl about other guys will relegate him to the friend zone. Sundquist is depressed, feeling that he has missed his chance. He thinks that “once school started, I would be reminded of how popular she was, and how, according to the social order of things, I wasn’t supposed to be cool enough to go out with her” (136).

The night before school starts, Sundquist accompanies Francesca to a punk-rock concert. He really wants to kiss her but is too nervous. Even after he goes home from the concert and drives back, he is too nervous and says gushing things about his gratitude that she hung out with him.

In senior year they share no classes and merely exchange cheery greetings in the hallways. He graduates high school a semester early to become a ski racer. By the time he returns it is March and he senses that it is too late to strike a romantic note with Francesca.

He hypothesizes that Francesca may have been interested in him, but that her interest waned owing to his hesitancy in kissing her and his fear-induced awkwardness.

Sundquist tracks Francesca down through Facebook and meets up with her. They play pool in her parents’ basement. He confesses that now that he is a motivational speaker, he still tells people about the awkward story of his foot turning the wrong way during their golf date. He tells Francesca that people ask him about what happened between the two of them. Unexpectedly, she returns the question to Sundquist, leaving him with further ambiguity. He realizes that “this was a question I would somehow have to answer for myself” (152).