“I’d like a raise.”
His bushy eyebrows shot straight up. “A raise!” He slapped his forehead. “Kid walks in and asks for a raise!” I shrank in my seat. “You must have balls the size of a gorilla.”
“No, sir, just—normal-sized balls, at least, as far as I know—”
“You think I’m made of money?”
“Well, no. We are all made of molecules, my old friend Stewart told me that—”
“Why do you want a raise?”
I could actually feel the sweat dripping from my pits. “Well, specifically, I’m saving for a school trip. But generally, I’m asking because I’ve been here for over a year. I work hard for you. I supervise the other employees—”
“You’re not getting a raise.”
I slouched farther down in my chair. I’d hardly had any courage to begin with, and now it was officially used up. “Okay. I’ll see myself out—”
“But I like you,” he continued. “You’re a hard worker.” He smoothed his pencil mustache with his pinkie finger, thinking. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you more shifts. You can work Saturdays and Sundays, and a couple more evenings a week on top of your regular shifts. Hopefully that will help pay for this trip of yours. And I’ll try to give you overtime, how’s that sound?”
“Will I get paid extra for the overtime?”
“Hell no! You know what my profit margins are like?” Then he leaned in conspiratorially and lowered his voice. “But here’s what else I’m going to do for you. I’m going to promote you.”
“Um. You already promoted me, sir, I’m a Submarine Sandwich Creation Expert.” I showed him the plastic badge on my uniform.
He paused. Blinked. For a moment I wondered if he’d forgotten he’d done that. But then he said, “Well, now I’m going to make you a Submarine Sandwich Creation…PhD.” He slapped his hands down on his desk triumphantly. “You’re the first, Wilbur. The very first. You may not think it’s worth anything right now, but I promise you, when you put that on a résumé, it’s gonna stand out. Congratulations.”
“Wow. Thank you, sir.”
As I left his office, Mr. Chernov shouted after me: “Balls the size of a gorilla!”
“So, let me get this straight,” Alex said later that night. “You’re doing more work. For the same hourly pay.”
“Yes.”
“And you see this as a victory.”
“A partial victory, yes. I did the math, and I should make just enough to pay for the rest of the trip before we leave.”
“Then congratulations, I guess.” He finished setting up his keyboard.
I was in Alex’s rec room for the first time in ages. It’s an awesome space with orange shag carpeting, orange beanbag chairs, and a huge collection of his and his parents’ LPs. I was pretty sure I was only there because Fabrizio had had to fill in for a sick actor at his dad’s dinner theater, but so what? As a beggar, I couldn’t be a chooser. Alex’s parents were at the opera, and he’d whipped us up a delicious shakshuka, which was a very fancy egg dish he’d seen Yotam Ottolenghi make on TV, for a late dinner.
“Anyway, you did it,” said Alex. “You stood up for yourself.” He held up his glass of iced tea.
“Well…I sort of stooped…but still.” I held up my glass too, and we clinked them in a toast.
We ran through a couple of our songs, and even though I still hated the sound of my voice, it was fun.
“The band is back together,” Alex said with a laugh.
“We’re like Paul and John from the Beatles,” I said. “And Fab is, like, our Yoko Ono.”
Alex stopped laughing. “Why do you dislike him so much, Wil?”
I blinked. “Sorry, what? Who?” He just gave me a hard stare. “I don’t dislike Fab.”
“Please. Wilbur—I know you. You don’t have a poker face. Your feelings are so obvious.”
I struggled to explain. “I don’t know. You and I—for a while there—I thought we were really good friends.”
“We were. We are—”
“But then Fab came into the picture, and poof! It was like I didn’t exist. You just cut me out of your life.”
“That’s not true—”
“It totally is! Think about it. When was the last time you had me over?”
“…last month—?”
“November fifteenth. It’s now March.”
Alex absorbed that. “Okay. Your point is taken. I did go rather cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs when Fab and I first got together.”
“Yeah, you did—”
“But I also tried to invite you to do things with us. And every time, you’d be kind of rude.”
“That’s not true—” I began. Then I remembered the time they’d invited me to watch Rocketman with them.
“I always thought Elton John wrote his own lyrics,” Fab had said afterward.
I’d snorted. “Seriously? Everyone knows it was Bernie Taupin.”
“Well, I didn’t. But I didn’t grow up with Elton’s music. Not exactly my era.”
“Your era? Anyone who knows anything about music knows Elton is timeless.”
Then there was the time Alex and I had tried to teach him how to play Carcassonne. I’d lost it. “For the last time, your meeple can be a knight, or a farmer—he can’t be a fashionista, dummy!”
I had a few more rapid flashbacks in succession. Like the time I first saw Fab in his red pleather pants: “I love how you wear whatever you want, without caring what other people think.” Or the time I said to him, “Is your voice naturally that loud, or is it your theater training?”
“I guess…,” I said. “I guess I was kind of a jerk. I guess I felt like he was stealing you away.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“It doesn’t have to be either-or, you know,” Alex said. “I can have a boyfriend and a best friend.”
“I already have a best friend,” I said. I knew I sounded like a petulant baby.
“Well, maybe you can have two best friends. I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”
“Deal.”
We sealed it with our secret handshake.
“I’ve been wanting to show you something,” I said. “I have a new poem. It’s called ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ ” I handed him my notebook.
Alex read it. “It’s good, Wil.”
“You think so?”
“I do.” For the next half hour he plunked out the start of a melody while I sang off-key.
When we were bored with that, we decided to watch an episode of Parts Unknown. I flopped down into one of the beanbag chairs. “Chips!” I shouted. “My kingdom for some chips!”
“Oh, no, my friend,” said Alex. “No chips for you.” He pointed to some old weights and a bench in the corner, stuff his dad had bought but that no one ever used, including us. “Tonight, we are going to do a workout while we watch, then eat chips.”
I groaned. “Come on. It’s been a long day. And I already had a good workout at aquacise—”
“Wilbur. No offense. But you are approximately sixty years younger than anyone else in that class. It is not a workout. It’s ‘range of motion’ for the elderly, to reduce their chances of breaking a hip.” He pulled me to my feet and handed me a set of weights.
“Whoa, these are heavy.”
“They’re five pounds each. C’mon, I’m going to do them, too. I got the routine from one of Fab’s self-help books.”
Alex and I did repeat rounds of bicep and tricep curls, something called the butterfly, abdominal crunches, and push-ups. After a half an hour of this insanity I asked, “Can we rest now? My muscles are on fire.”
“Mine are, too!”
He ran upstairs and came back down with a bag of chips. We flopped down into the beanbag chairs and tore
it open. “I’m glad that’s over,” I said as I stuffed a handful of pickle-flavored heaven down my throat.
“Oh, but it isn’t,” he grinned, his mouth full of chips. “It’s only just begun.”
* * *
—
The next morning at eight a.m., Templeton and I ran toward the lakeshore with Alex. Well, Templeton ran. Alex and I shuffled. The sky was flat and gray. I ran through a puddle and got a soaker in the first couple of minutes.
“This—is—horrible!” I squeezed out as I tried to gulp in some air. I’d dug out a pair of ancient sweatpants and wore a windbreaker over a moth-holed T-shirt; I unzipped the windbreaker, already sweating.
“The worst!” Alex gasped. He looked more presentable, in a navy blue Adidas track suit, paired with a neon yellow sweatband to keep his hair from flopping into his face. His watch beeped. “Phew—we get to walk for one minute.”
“How long did we run for?”
“One minute.”
“Ugh! It felt like forever.”
“But that’s how we build up. One minute run, one minute walk.”
“I don’t think I can—”
“That’s the language you have to stop using, that I have to stop using. I read all about this in one of Fab’s books. Run Your Way to Happiness. It says not only is running good for your health; it’s good for your mental health—something about endorphins—and that we need to reframe how we think—oops, minute’s up.” We started running again. “Plus it’s something we can do together.”
“I guess.” I thought of all the other things I’d rather we do together, like play board games, go to movies, play music, lounge in his beanbag chairs doing absolutely nothing—anything would beat this. Templeton was having a great time on his four stubby legs; I was almost puking on my two. “How long do we do this for?” I wheezed.
“Thirty minutes total.”
By the time we hit ten minutes—which was just five minutes of running—I was dying. I had to stop to catch my breath. Templeton and Alex were forced to stop with me. I was doubled over, trying not to puke up my morning bagel, when someone said, “Wilbur?”
I looked up. It was Mitzi, her long, red hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was in full running gear, earbuds in. “Hi,” I managed on an exhale.
“I didn’t know you were a runner,” she said.
“He’s not,” Alex said cheerfully. “Neither of us are. First time out!” He introduced himself.
“Well, good for you,” she said. “It gets easier, kind of.”
Templeton started barking for attention. “Hi, wiener.” She bent down and scratched his ears. “What’s his name?”
I opened my mouth to respond.
And barfed a little onto one of her bright blue shoes.
Alex’s eyes opened wide.
Mitzi glanced from me to the barf. She rubbed her shoe in a patch of snow. “See you at work.” And off she ran, looking like a gazelle.
Alex burst into peals of laughter. “You barfed on her shoe!” he said, like he thought I’d somehow missed it. Then his watch beeped, and he started running again. “C’mon, Wil, get your butt in gear! Twenty minutes left to go!”
* * *
—
Later, at work, I told Mitzi Templeton’s name, and apologized for puking on her shoe. She just shrugged and said, “What’s a little barf between friends?”
It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me.
Time went by in a flash. Just a few weeks earlier I had been in a heartbroken funk; now, even if I wanted to wallow, I couldn’t fit it in.
Alex, Templeton, and I did a run/walk three mornings a week. After school I either worked at Foot Long or went over to Sal’s. He was doing his best to teach me some basic French.
“Where is the bathroom?”
“Où sont les toilettes?”
“Excuse me, do you speak English?”
“Excusez-moi, parlez-vous anglais?”
“I am warm.”
“Je suis chaud.”
He shook his head. “For the hundredth time. It’s j’ai chaud. I have warmth. You just said, ‘I am horny.’ ”
He also loaned me translated novels by famous French authors, like The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo.
Charlie texted me often, and I kept my promise to check in with Alex and Fab first before responding. It didn’t take me long to get the hang of it; I sent her a lot of bland emojis.
Alex also started inviting me over on the weekends more often, along with Fabrizio. I knew it was a kind of test: Could the three of us hang out without one of us (hint, usually me) acting like an ass? Mostly, we could, even if Fab was still hopeless at Carcassonne.
One night, after we’d played a frustrating game of Scrabble (Fab insisted that farkly—a combination of fun and sparkly—was a word), Alex said, “Come on, Wil, let’s play a few songs for Fab.”
“Nope. No way. I sing for no one.”
“Just one song. ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ ”
“No.”
“Please,” said Fab. “No judgment, I promise.”
“Seriously? You’re always judging me.”
“True, but that’s because we’re on a mission, Wilbur. If you sing for me, I promise I’ll keep any judginess to myself.”
“This is a perfect and safe way for you to work on your self-confidence,” coaxed Alex.
Eventually I caved. We performed “Charlotte’s Web” for an audience of one.
When we were done, Fabrizio had that familiar look on his face, like he was sucking on a lemon. “You don’t have a great voice.”
“I know—”
“And you keep your eyes closed way too much.”
“Okay, well—”
“And you sometimes get this look on your face like you’re straining to poop—”
“Okay! I thought you said you’d keep your judginess to yourself—”
“But aside from all that? It wasn’t terrible. It’s a good song. The music, the lyrics…I’m impressed.”
Coming from Fab, this was high praise indeed.
* * *
—
Five weeks into my regimen, the four of us met up at my house after aquacise. We had the place to ourselves; Mup was still teaching at the JCC, and Mum, who had gotten the gig as “Receptionist,” had to go in for a wardrobe fitting.
Sal pulled out all the treats the ladies had given us and put them on our Formica table for us to enjoy. Then they sat me on a kitchen chair while Sal put newspaper on the floor. “I cut my dad’s hair all the time,” said Alex. “You’re in safe hands with me.”
“But your dad hardly has any hair,” I began, just as I saw the first swath of dark, wiry curls hit the floor.
I tried not to panic as more and more tufts of hair landed at my feet. It freaked Templeton out too, because he barked at the tumbleweeds but didn’t dare touch them.
When Alex was done, he handed me a mirror.
It was like I was staring at another person. I looked…not half-bad. My face was still my face. But still. “It looks amazing. It’s like you made me less…”
“Asymmetrical?” asked Fab.
“Yes!”
Alex beamed.
Once we’d swept up my hair, we traipsed upstairs. I carried Templeton. Fabrizio took in my bedroom. “I love the decor,” he said, gazing at my posters of poker-playing dogs and Hermione Granger.
“Really?”
“No.” He sat on my bed while Sal and Alex perched in the window seat.
“You look fitter than you did a month ago, Wil,” said Alex.
“Which means your clothes look even worse on you than they did before,” Sal added. He saw my pained look. “Sorry, but when you’re my age, you call it like
you see it.”
“We’ll make a keep pile and a toss pile,” said Fab.
He and Alex headed into my closet. They tossed heaps of clothing onto my bed while Templeton barked. Sal started picking up items for inspection. He began with my all-time favorite gray sweatshirt. “Verdict?”
“Revolting,” said Fab.
“Toss,” said Alex, and Sal threw it onto the floor.
“Um, I wear that a lot—”
“And these,” said Alex. He held up my beige pants and waggled his finger through a hole in the bum. “Why, Wilbur?”
“I figured I’d patch up the hole eventually—”
“On a pair of hideous, ancient, shapeless pants?” Alex tossed them onto the floor.
“You know that expression clothes make the man?” asked Sal as he picked through the heap of discards. “What do you think these clothes say about you?”
“That I have more important things to think about than fashion—” I started.
“That you have no respect for yourself. That you’re trying to disappear,” said Sal.
“That you’ve given up on life!” Fabrizio added, as he and Alex threw item after item onto the floor.
“Hey, no way am I tossing that.” I plucked an oversized light brown sweater from the floor. Fab grabbed it from my hands. I saw him signal to Sal.
Sal opened the window. Fab threw the sweater. Sal caught it—
And tossed it right out the window.
“I—you can’t—”
“Aaaaagh, these are disgusting!” Fabrizio had opened my top drawer. He held up a pair of my ancient, droopy underwear. “These are the color of hopelessness. The shape of loneliness.” He pulled out the drawer, ran to the window—and emptied the entire contents onto our front yard.
* * *
—
When we were done, I looked at my bed. Aside from a couple of T-shirts, the rest of my clothes were all discards. “Great. Now I literally have nothing to wear in Paris. I’ll be walking around the city pants-less! I’ll look like Winnie the Pooh!”
“Let’s go to my place,” said Sal.
“Why—”
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