The Boy Recession

by Flynn Meaney

  “You guys go shopping together?” I ask them.

  “I got us all a deal from Brooks Brothers,” Eugene says. “They’re our team’s corporate sponsor now. The Senators, brought to you by Brooks Brothers.”

  “The Senators? What Senators?”

  “Our school mascot, Huntro,” Eugene says. “What are you, a Brazilian exchange student? How long have you been at this school?”

  “I sleep through a lot of stuff,” I tell him. Then I think about it for a second and laugh.

  “The Senators. Really intimidating,” I tell them. “Look at you guys. You look like fuckin’ senators. I bet you kick some ass in those ties.”

  “Hey!” Chung points his finger at me. “These ties are Italian silk.”

  “Happy homecoming!”

  Bobbi Novak comes bouncing up to us. She’s got her team warm-ups on, and she’s drinking some healthy protein thingy.

  “Happy homecoming!” Eugene exclaims, and throws open his arms, forcing Bobbi to hug him. She goes right up and presses her miracle tits against his damned Italian silk tie.

  “Were you so tired this morning?” Bobbi asks Eugene.

  “We were all up ’til midnight last night, decorating the hallways,” Eugene explains to me.

  “Hunter, you have to give us your unbiased opinion,” Bobbi says. “What do you think of the decorations?”

  She looks really excited to hear what I think, so I say, “Uhhh… I like the balloons.”

  “Yay!” Bobbi claps her hand against her protein-drink thingy. “Then it was totally worth it! We were up so late, I just hope I have enough energy for my match this afternoon.”

  Eugene jumps in as soon as she says that.

  “Your match is at four, right?” he says. “I can make it, I’ve just gotta sprint back to our team dinner as soon as it’s over.”

  “And I’m going to, like, sprint home and shower in between my game and your game,” Bobbi says, laughing. “You’re coming tonight, right, Hunter? We can be, like, a cheering section for Eugene!”

  Before I answer, I look back and forth from Bobbi to the smug bastard in the Italian silk tie.

  “You gonna root for me, Huntro?” Eugene asks suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows.

  I grin. “Oh, I’ll be cheering you on,” I tell him. “I really hope you score.”

  “Raise your right hand if you’re a little gingerbread boy who got injured on the bench,” I say to Eugene.

  It’s Friday night, and I’m standing on the football field sidelines, holding Eugene’s helmet by the face mask with one hand and a bag of Cracker Jack in the other. In front of me, Eugene is lying on a white stretcher in his full football uniform—cleats, white pants, and white home jersey with green number 53 on it. His uniform is so clean he could be in a Tide commercial, but he’s groaning in pain and his right arm is crossed over his chest.

  “You know I can’t raise my damn hand,” Eugene says, glaring. “Look at me!”

  Since he doesn’t seem to be really hurt, I feel free to mock him.

  “That’s righhhhht,” I say, grinning really wide. “You can’t raise your hand. Which, ironically, makes you the little gingerbread boy.”

  “I’m the little gingerbread boy!” Eugene says. “Fine, I admit it. I’m the damn gingerbread boy!”

  He’s red in the face. I hope I’m aggravating that ulcer of his. Man, I’m sorry I missed all this crap last year. I love homecoming.

  Up until Eugene’s injury, the actual football game was a nonevent. I guess the Julius athletic directors were looking for a team who wouldn’t beat us at our homecoming, so we’re playing a team called the Farmers: two lame mascots and two lame teams.

  “This is like the Olympics of incompetence,” Dave said during the second quarter, after their receiver dropped a pass.

  “I think it’s so great,” I said, stuffing my face with Dave’s Cracker Jack. “It’s like watching the bloopers show on ESPN.”

  Damian was leaning forward and analyzing all the action.

  In the stands, there were girls drinking brownish-orange liquid out of Tropicana bottles. The contents were probably 4 percent Tropicana and 96 percent Captain Morgan, booze provided by Eugene. Close to halftime, we actually scored a touchdown, and everyone went berserk. Derek started snatching Cracker Jack out of Dave’s giant bag and throwing it all over the people around us, yelling, “Ticker-tape parade! Ticker-tape parade!”

  “Stop,” Dave grumbled, swatting at Derek’s hand. “Stop throwing a parade. I bet there’s a flag on the play.”

  But there wasn’t a flag on the play. Down on the field, Josh, who scored the touchdown, was running toward the bench… right at Eugene, who was waiting to give him a high five.

  Except Josh wasn’t going for a high five. Josh was going for the chest bump. And that’s when Eugene went down.

  The kid went down so hard, I’m telling you. According to Chung, who was right there next to them, there was this crunch sound, like what you hear when you sit on a bag of pretzels. That was Eugene’s collarbone.

  So here we are. The paramedics are taking Eugene’s insurance information when Josh comes jogging over.

  “Oh my God, dude,” Josh says, coming around the side of the stretcher with his helmet jammed under his arm. “I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eugene says in a dramatic, croaky voice. “It was for the good of the team.”

  Josh leans in toward Eugene.

  “Hey, uh… Eugene?” Josh says in a low voice. “You’re not gonna, like…”

  “Die?” I suggest loudly, spitting a few pieces of Cracker Jack out of my mouth.

  “… sue me,” Josh finishes. “You’re not gonna sue me, right? Because last month I smashed my dad’s car, and I’m still paying off—”

  “Hey, hey,” Eugene interrupts. “We’re teammates. We’re, like, brothers.”

  “Italian silk,” Josh says, smiling.

  “Italian silk,” Eugene agrees. Then he crosses his left hand over his body and extends his fist toward Josh. They fist-bump. Apparently, Eugene can fist-bump adequately. It’s just the chest bump he can’t handle.

  Just as Josh leaves, Bobbi wobbles toward us in her dumb high-heeled shoes. It probably took her twenty minutes to climb down from the bleachers and get across this grass.

  “How is he?” she asks me first, gripping my arm like we’re outside an operating room together or something.

  “Uh…” I’m confused, so I just gesture to Eugene. “He’s… right there.”

  When the paramedic steps away from his side, Bobbi approaches Eugene.

  “Does it hurt so bad?” she asks, with huge eyes.

  “I’m toughing it out,” Eugene replies. The croaky voice is back now.

  “Do you have to go to the hospital?” Bobbi asks, looking at the ambulance, which has its back doors open.

  “The emergency room,” Eugene says.

  I think Bobbi is actually about to cry. Holy shit. Maybe she actually likes him.

  “Can I come with you in the ambulance?” Bobbi asks. She takes his hand.

  “I don’t want you to see me like this,” Eugene tells her.

  “Do you think you’ll make it to the party at Pam’s house later?” Bobbi asks.

  “I might be in a cast,” Eugene warns her. “But I think I’ll make it.”

  “I’ll be waiting there for you,” Bobbi says. “Text me?”

  “I will,” Eugene says.

  Then something happens that’s even more mind-blowing than a touchdown by our crappy football team. Bobbi kisses Eugene. And it’s not a one-second “bye” kind of kiss, either. This kiss lasts a solid five seconds.

  Then the paramedics roll the stretcher away and load Eugene into the back of the ambulance. Halftime is over, so the players are back on the field. As for me, I just stand there shaking my head, eating Cracker Jack, and thinking, Well done, little gingerbread boy.

  CHAPTER 10: KELLY

  “Is She Really Going
Out with Him? What Julius Hotties See in Grimy Guys”

  “The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth, The Julius Journal, October

  Five dollars,” Amy Schiffer tells us at the barn door.

  “We have to pay five dollars to hang out in someone’s barn with a bunch of pig shit?” Darcy asks, crossing her arms over her blazer.

  “It’s organic pig shit,” Amy informs her.

  This is homecoming in Wisconsin. Whitefish Bay is definitely suburban—it’s just north of Milwaukee—but, for some reason, whenever homecoming rolls around, we end up on the semirural outskirts of town, like all those stereotypes of the Midwest. In a good year, the party is at someone’s lake house. In the worst years, everyone drinks in a field or the woods. I guess this year is in between—we’re at the two-story barn in back of Pam’s family’s organic farm. They have a lot of property on the edge of town, and to get back here we had to walk through yards and yards of mud in our new boots.

  Plus, it’s freezing. I can see my breath, and Aviva is looking down her shirt, checking for goose bumps in her cleavage. Aviva pushes in front of Darcy, unzips her wallet, and asks Amy, “Do you take credit cards?”

  “Seriously?” Amy says, zipping her bomber jacket up to her neck. So I take ten dollars out of my purse and hand it to Amy. The money was from my mom, who thinks that I was going to Applebee’s before spending the night at Aviva’s house.

  “Here. That’s for me and Aviva,” I tell Amy. “Darce, do you have cash?”

  Just then a group of freshman boys comes up behind us.

  “Hey, guys!” Amy says, sounding very perky all of a sudden. “Welcome to the party! We’ve got a huge selection of drinks in there. There’s a keg and a bunch of cups near the door, and there’s a whole table of hard lemonade and local beers and stuff. Help yourselves!”

  Then she opens the door, smiles, and ushers them in. The smell of Axe body spray lingers in a trail behind them.

  “Excuse me!” Darcy pushes up to Amy as she’s closing the barn door. “Why didn’t they have to pay?”

  Amy takes her place as barn bouncer again and crosses her arms.

  “They’re guys,” she says.

  “So what?”

  “Girls have to pay to get in,” Amy says. “Guys don’t.”

  “Those guys?” Aviva says. “They’re freshmen. And they’re stinky! They’re stinky freshmen.”

  Reaching into her enormous purse, Aviva pulls out a full glass bottle of Ralph Lauren perfume. She starts spraying it in the air between Darcy and Amy.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Amy says, waving the perfume away. “In case you guys haven’t heard, we’re in a boy recession.”

  “What?” I ask. I choke on Aviva’s perfume. “Where did you hear that—the boy recession?”

  “Eugene told Bobbi, and Bobbi told us,” Amy says.

  Ah. She heard it through the spandexer grapevine.

  “But it’s true,” she adds. “You’ll see when you go in there.”

  Inside, the barn actually looks very girly. Pam strung up these red Christmas lights on the walls to decorate it, so the whole place has a pinkish glow, and the spandexers bought a bulk case of plastic cocktail glasses, so I guess they’re drinking cosmos. I have no idea what’s in a cosmo, but I’m pretty sure Carrie Bradshaw never drank one in a barn while wearing UGGs.

  It doesn’t just look like a boy recession in here, it sounds like a boy recession. From a rung of the loft ladder, a pink iPod is blaring Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” Pam, who obviously started drinking back when she put up those Christmas lights, is grabbing any senior she can find and announcing, “This is, seriously, our last homecoming!”

  “You wanna play How Many Minutes ’Til She Pukes?” Darcy asks me, nodding at Pam.

  This is our favorite Julius party game.

  “Hmm, I don’t know if I can do minutes,” I say. “But I’ll give her one and a half more Wisconsin cosmos.”

  Darcy, Aviva, and I veer off to the closest corner of the barn and end up by the keg. We don’t drink, but a lot of people in Wisconsin do. So in order to be loyal to our state, Darcy, Aviva, and I hold red Solo cups and pretend to get into the spirit of things.

  “Watch it,” Derek Palewski says, seeing me looking at a bottled drink that has a label printed in Japanese. “That Tokyo Pomegranate Surprise was imported by Eugene for Bobbi only. But”—he cheers up and smiles—“you may select from any of our other delicious beverages.”

  “Are you the bartender?” Aviva asks him.

  “I delivered all this crap,” Derek says. “I work for Eugene now. He paid me in beers. You can have one of mine, if you want.”

  Derek holds out the can he’s drinking from, and Aviva reads the label.

  “Milwaukee’s Second-Best?”

  “Is that a real brand?” I ask him.

  “MSB? Hell, yeah, it is,” Derek says. “Official beer of slackers.”

  Derek tilts his head back to take a gulp and then lets out a huge burp. Darcy says, “Ew,” glaring at him.

  “Sorry, wife,” Derek says as he comes around from behind the table to sling his arm around Darcy’s shoulders.

  When Derek was in freshman bio class with us, he told our teacher he had to sit out the evolution unit because his parents were evangelicals. When our teacher found out that Derek lied and the Palewskis are full-blown Darwinists, Derek was forced to catch up on the entire unit in three days. Darcy was his tutor. He promised he’d pay her back by marrying her someday.

  Now, when Darcy pushes his arm off, Derek wheedles, “C’mon, we could be a power couple. You’ll be president, I’ll be a rock star….”

  “A rock star?” Darcy raises one eyebrow. “Your band is fictional.”

  “Currently fictional, yes,” Derek says, nodding. “But until we get our record deal, I guess I could be a stay-at-home dad.”

  Over at the other end of the table, Aviva is pouring us three no-rum-and-Cokes.

  “Someone needs to put these freshmen in their place,” she says. “I just got hit on by Axe-body-spray guy.”

  As Darcy takes her plastic cup from Aviva, Derek looks offended.

  “President Ryan!” he says. “You’ll drink that, and you won’t drink my MSB?”

  “No, thanks,” Darcy says, and meets his eyes with a smirk. “I don’t settle for the second best of anything.”

  “Hi, girls! Happy homecoming!”

  Bobbi Novak comes skipping up to us in her tiny T-shirt, frayed denim miniskirt, and UGGs, holding a Wisconsin cosmo. She kisses each of us on the cheek.

  “Darcy, are those new boots? So cute! And I wanted to tell you you’re doing such a great job as president! Finally, some girl power!”

  Aviva and I look on with amusement as Bobbi gushes to Darcy, who’s trying not to roll her eyes.

  “Bobbi,” I say. “How’s Eugene doing?”

  “He’s going to text me when he leaves the hospital,” Bobbi says. “He had to go to the emergency room!”

  “What’s going on between you two?” Aviva asks.

  Aviva is less subtle than I am. She loves gossip.

  “Well, I guess we’re just friends for now,” Bobbi says with a giggle. “But he’s such a great guy! He’s, like, the biggest sweetheart. I never knew him that well before. I mean, last year he got me these organic hair extensions that are only available in Canada, but that was just, like, a business transaction….”

  “How can hair extensions be organic?” Darcy asks.

  “They take hair from someone who’s on an all-organic diet,” Bobbi says. Then she adds, “With their permission, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Eugene’s just so… different from the guys I’ve been with before,” Bobbi says, looking down at her phone.

  Just then, Eugene comes in, sitting high on Josh’s and Chung’s shoulders. Once they’re inside, we can see Eugene’s right arm is in a sling. Hunter is behind them, holding a piece of paper and shaking his head.
r />   “Ladies and gentlemen,” Eugene calls out. “Ladies and gentlemen!”

  A freshman girl turns down the iPod so everyone can hear Eugene. “I give you…” Eugene begins dramatically as he reaches down and takes the piece of paper Hunter’s holding.

  “My clavicle!”

  With a flourish, he waves his X-ray, with the bones glowing pink from the red Christmas lights behind them. A huge rush of applause goes up, and Bobbi emerges from the crowd, streaking through like a comet with a fake blond extension for a tail. As soon as Eugene gets down from his human throne, she jumps on him and starts to make out with him.

  “Ew, look at his tongue. He’s like a snake,” Aviva says, sipping her no-rum-and-Coke.

  “The way people react to football players is beyond ridiculous. What would they do if the team had actually won the game?” Darcy asks.

  “They would take their tops off,” Aviva says. “Or at least unbutton a few buttons.”

  I hate to give pervy Eugene credit, but after those guys arrive, the party changes. Before, we were separate people in a cold space. Now everyone’s all pressed together, warm and touching, sharing breath and body heat. Girls are getting wild and unwinding their scarves, and all the people bumping into me makes me feel like I’m actually drunk. At one point, I see Hunter sitting on the loft ladder, next to the iPod speakers. His neck is flushed red, and he doesn’t seem to notice that Diva Price is standing next to him. I glance away for a second, and when I look back, Diva is on his lap. He looks as startled by the sudden movement as I am—did she fall on top of him? But then Hunter shrugs and relaxes, even though Diva’s got her arm around his shoulders.

  I usually don’t think about Diva too much, but right now, her thick thighs are making me irrationally mad. Why would you wear see-through tights when your thighs are that big? And her skirt is way too short. Then I look at Hunter and feel a familiar tug when I see his hand on her shoulder. I guess I’ve been watching his drum lessons and I’ve gotten to know his long, careful musician’s fingers. When he taught the kids to hold drumsticks, he told them, “You gotta let your hands be loose. Nice and easy.” And even though Hunter isn’t playing the drums right now, that’s the right phrase for him: nice and easy.