by Barry Lyga
"Can I go with?" Speedo asks.
"Shut up, guys." They're talking too loudly and I don't want someone to overhear my buddies acting like the horn-dogs they (OK, OK, we) really are. It's embarrassing.
"I wanna go with," speedo says.
Tit reaches out for the invitation, but I shove it in my pocket before he can grab it. "stop it, guys. No one's going."
Tit shakes his head. "You saved her life and stuff. You should go."
"Yeah," Jedi says. "Maybe she'll give you a special reward." He mimes oral sex with a french fry.
I look around, panicked, making sure no one notices. The guys crack up. They don't know. They don't care.
Later, in science class, I examine the envelope. I'm supposed to be taking notes, but I sit in the back and for once no one is looking at me.
A little cream envelope, very lightweight. My name written across the front in what must be Leah's handwriting: "Kevin." I like the way she makes the K, with a sort of flourish, like it's something special.
Green ink. Green is her favorite color.
It isn't sealed. I pry out the card inside. It's a stiff piece of matching cream paper, preprinted—in green, of course—with Leah's name and address and the time of the party. Leah has written at the bottom "Don't forget a bathing suit!" and I think for a second that I might pass out.
And then, off to one side, is another handwritten note. Did she write this on all of them? I don't think so—the handwriting is slightly different here, as if she jotted this last part down quickly, in an uncertain rush.
"Please come."
That's all it says. Two words.
God, how do I get into these things?
Chapter 4
The Council of Fools
OK, I'VE HAD ENOUGH MIND-NUMBING WEIRDNESS for one day, so after bio I decide to skip math. I head off to the auditorium instead. There's a janitor's office back there, behind the stage and off the wings. It's locked, but Speedo scammed a key last year and made copies for all of us. The office is always empty at this time of day because that's when the custodians all head out to McDonald's for lunch.
I'm not the only one who needed some time away, it looks like. Flip and Fam are here, slobbering all over each other on one of the pitted metal desks.
"Whoa, sorry, guys." I start to back out.
"No, no!" Flip jumps up. Fam looks a little annoyed, but she just runs her fingers through her hair and straightens her clothes. "Hail, Fool! Dude, stick. Stick."
I sort of want to leave because I'm sure they have better things to do than hang with me right now, but Fam doesn't look annoyed anymore, so I guess I'll stay. I wish I were alone, though. I really just want to be alone right now.
"Hail, Fool," I say back, and Fam repeats it.
"So today's the big day, huh?" Flip gets this gleam in his eye, and for a second there, I'm worried. As soon as I knew about it, I begged him—honestly begged him—not to pull any pranks at the ceremony this afternoon. Bad enough I'll be on display for everyone in town; I don't need some craziness interrupting it and stretching it out.
No sooner do I think it than the door opens and in comes the rest of the crew: Speedo, Jedi, and Tit. The gang's all here, and the room's a confusion of "Hail, Fool!" as everyone says hi.
And then Tit starts chanting, "Kross! Kross! Kross!" and the rest pick it up, except for Flip, who just looks bored, and I don't blame him.
"Guys, come on." But they're not listening to me.
"Guys, you're making too much noise. Someone will hear."
They don't care. They just keep chanting.
"We're proud of you, Kross," Flip says once the chanting has died down.
"Yeah, man." Jedi chimes in. "Vvvvvvvhhhn. You put Brook-dale on the map!"
"I did?"
"Sure," says Flip. "It's freakin' hilarious. I mean, people are talking about Brookdale. When's the last time that happened?"
"Uh, that whole thing with that teacher screwing Crazy J," speedo says.
"Crazy J" is a senior named Josh Mendel. He gets into a lot of fights and it's generally agreed that he's a class-A nutjob from way back, when he had sex with a teacher back in middle school.
Flip waves it off. "Whatever. There's one of those in, like, every town, so who the hell cares?"
"I was just in the right place at the right time, guys." It feels like a lie when I say it, but it's true in its own weird way. I sort of wish I could be Josh Mendel, even with all his problems. He's tall and good-looking; he takes no crap from anyone. I take a moderate amount of crap and I wish it was less. He could have any girl in the school. I only want one. I don't see why it has to be such a big deal.
I guess I should explain about the Council of Fools and all of this "Hail, Fool" nonsense.
See, back in middle school a bunch of us decided that school was crap. school was for fools. so we became the Council of Fools, an organization dedicated to proving the absurdity of school and all aspects of social life.
If that last bit sounded rehearsed, it's because it's part of our charter, which every Fool has to memorize. Yes, we have a charter. We're pretty scarily organized, tell the truth. Especially considering that there were five of us at the time (Fam joined later, in high school), and you try to get five middle-schoolers to do anything for any length of time. The fact that we're still together speaks well for us, I think. of course, we're dedicated to generally messing with people's heads, so maybe it's not all in the best cause, but you can't have everything.
We all have Fool names, like Kross. Bill Yingling became Jedi because he's constantly making this vvvvvvvvhhnnn noise, this weird little humming thing that sounds just like a light saber, so we all decided he's a Jedi. speedo and Tit are tied for most embarrassing names—Tit got his because his last name is Titus, so how could he not be Tit? Speedo got his name because when we all took swimming classes a few years ago, he wore this nearly gone Speedo while the rest of us wore surf shorts. You can't let a guy forget that kind of shame, not if you're a real friend.
Last but not least, there's Fam and Flip. Fam's our only girl member—and she's only a member because she's Flip's girlfriend. she joined at the beginning of this school year. she was just this little freshman chick who for some reason glommed on to Flip. I don't get their relationship—it's like all sex and Flip driving her places. But I don't try to figure it out. Her real name's Julia, which became Jules, which became Jewels, which became Family Jewels, which ... You get the point.
Joseph Brenner—our fearless, peerless leader (his own words)—is "Flip" because his mom was always telling him to watch his mouth and "stop being so flip!" which seemed really hilarious back in, you know, seventh grade. He's sort of our Head Fool because even though he's in the same grade as the rest of us, he's the oldest. He flunked out of third grade, not because he's a dummy but because he's so smart. He would get bored in class and zone out all the time and his teachers thought he was a retard or something because he never did his work so they "held him back." That's such a stupid phrase, but it's so accurate, too. I mean, on the one hand it's totally teacher-talk for "flunked." On the other hand, in Flip's case they really were holding him back. Literally.
Fortunately, Flip didn't let it stop him. He just kept on doing his thing, but he was careful to wake up in school long enough to get a C average and keep on plugging ahead.
"No way I'm staying in school one day longer than is strictly necessary," he told me once.
Repeating third grade was pure torture for him. He already knew everything there was to know up to grade six by then, but he couldn't be bothered to do the tests because he thought they were boring and stupid.
Which they were. Most of us don't have the balls to say so, though.
Flip doesn't suffer fools gladly. Which is why we sort of went with an ironic twist and called ourselves the Council of Fools. And the best part of Flip being in charge is that he could drive earlier than any of us, so we've been pretty mobile ever since we started high school.
"Because it's a Foolish thing to do," he said. sometimes when Flip talks, you can hear capital letters in his voice.
I got his point, though. usually you hack into a computer to do damage, right? But Flip was doing something wrong that was actually helping someone.
"It's a moral, ethical, and philosophical paradox," he told me, puffing away on a cigarette, hunched over his computer. "And besides, why not?"
The whole thing became the Council's greatest triumph/ failure (they're sort of the same thing to us, really). Someone found out about the hacked grades and assumed that the lacrosse team was responsible (we never clued them in, of course) and they had to forfeit the entire season.
"Unintended consequences," Flip intoned when the news broke. "Not just a good idea, but the law." I didn't quite get that one. But that's OK. If you understand half of what Flip says, you're on solid ground.
Probably Flip's finest hour, though, was the amazing kidnapping and debut of Officer Sexpot.
Chapter 5
The Incredible True Secret Origin of Officer Sexpot
NO, SERIOUSLY. I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP. You think I could make this stuff up?
See, all kinds of speeding and stuff goes on here in Brookdale, but no one ever wants to pay for more cops. And when folks do get pulled over, they just bitch and moan about getting pulled over anyway. So I guess it's a Catch-22 for the mayor and the cops.
A couple of years ago, someone got the bright idea to do like they do in other towns and put a dummy on the road dressed as a cop. No, really. They actually do this. They take one of the town police cars and stick it along the highway like it's just parked there. And they stick a dummy at the wheel and people seeing it think they're busted so they slow down and by the time they drive by and realize they've been had, it's too late—they've already slowed down, mission accomplished, no money spent, no overtime, yadda yadda.
It's not a bad plan because you never really know if that cop car up ahead is legit or a fake. so you slow down no matter what.
Or at least, you used to.
See, six months ago Flip stole the dummy.
Well, that's not how he put it.
"I kidnapped Officer Sexpot," he told us all triumphantly. "But really, she wanted to come with me. she was pretty tired of sitting in that car all the time. She craves excitement. She wants a life, boys." (He said "boys" even though Fam was right there.)
And when you see her up close, she sort of does look like one of those blow-up dolls. I don't know where the town got her, but she looks like she sort of had a shady past, you know?
So she became our unofficial mascot, and then one day Flip got this brilliant idea: we would start dressing her up in outrageous outfits and pose her places and take pictures and then Flip would hack the pictures into people's e-mail accounts and websites.
It's a blast! Honest! The lovely and wooden OSP has done time as a call girl (in front of the First Baptist Church), a French maid (bending over a grave marker at the cemetery), and—my personal favorite—a very naughty Mrs. Claus on Christmas Eve.
On the mayor's roof.
Doing something very jolly with the mayor's Santa statue that put the "X" in "Xmas."
And let me tell you, it was a bitch getting that thing up to the roof and back down before the mayor and his wife got home from church, but it was worth every sore muscle on Christmas morning.
These are the things we do, we Council of Fools. We're bored a lot.
Chapter 6
A Big Moment (Oh, Joy)
BEFORE LEAVING THE JANITORS' OFFICE, I secure another promise from Flip not to mess around today.
He looks at me like I just kicked him in the shin. "Kross. I'm hurt. How could you think I would embarrass a fellow Fool like that?"
His expression is so sad and forlorn that I almost feel bad for bringing it up. But then his face splits into the grin I know so well. "Besides," he says, "it'll be much more fun watching you go through the whole thing. If I pranked it, you'd get a break."
Fam slaps his shoulder. "Be nice."
I go to my last two classes and try to focus, but when the day ends, I feel no relief because there's more to come.
The ceremony takes place on the football field. I can't say "football stadium" because that would imply that South Brook High has, well, a stadium. And the truth of the matter is that all we have is a field with a bunch of hard-on-your-ass bleachers and two goalposts and a scoreboard that isn't even digital—it still has those numbers cut in half horizontally that flip over themselves to update.
So, this is how Brookdale treats its hero-types: it tortures them.
They've put up some kind of stage at one end of the field, and that's where I stand, along with the mayor, Dr. Goethe, and a bunch of other people I don't know. I think they're aldermen or councilors or something. I guess if I cared, I'd ask to be introduced.
All I know is that the entire town of Brookdale is sitting on the field on folding chairs or on the bleachers. Or at least that's how it feels. There's a whole hell of a lot of people out there, and I squirm every time I think about it, which is all the time at the moment because they're right in front of me, so I'm basically one big ball of squirm.
Leah is up here, too, standing near me. She smells nice—like lilacs. I guess. I don't really know what lilacs smell like, so it's tough to say. But in poems and stuff, people are always talking about the smell of lilacs and they say it with this sort of emotion that makes me think lilacs must be just about the best thing in the world, and that's what Leah smells like right now—the best thing in the world.
OK, settle down, Kross.
I don't even want to think about what I smell like. I think my deodorant gave up a couple of hours ago and it's hot out here and I really hope that some of the funk I'm detecting is just radiating from the crowd.
Flip was right: If he suddenly overloaded the speakers with feedback or had the Council set off firecrackers over by the parking lot, I'd at least get a minute without everyone staring at me.
But there's no break in sight, so I have to stand here the whole time, while Dr. Goethe introduces me and talks about what I did and how I'm Brookdale's new TV star, which gets some laughs—Ha ha, the ugly kid is a TV star. Then the mayor takes the mike and babbles for a while about Civic Pride and Lending a Hand and how I am, apparently, the New Face of Today's Youth, which, let me tell you, does not bode well for Today's Youth's chances of ever getting laid.
Thankfully, I'm not asked to speak. Because I would probably puke.
Unbelievably, it turns out there's a key to the town—the key to Brookdale. This makes me think of a big dome over the town, with a little door and a teeny, tiny keyhole. Now that would be cool.
Leah is the one who gives me the key. Of course. She's wearing a cream dress with green trim. She wears it at least once a month, usually for something special. She wore it today for me.
She hands the key to me and she's smiling and she's beautiful and she's lilacs and I think—no, no, wait, I'm pretty sure—I'm going to pass out here and now, which would just be perfect, wouldn't it? Right there in front of Leah, in front of the entire town of Brookdale and probably half of Canterstown, too.
But I manage not to pass out. Leah gives me a little hug that sends sparks all along my body and makes me rigid with fear that I'm going to pop a boner right here on stage. oh, man, that would suck.
Fortunately, Little Kross decides to behave. Leah steps away from me, leaving a fog of lilac confusion in her wake. There's applause as I perform the supremely heroic act of standing there with a dumb loo
k on my face, holding the key in one sweaty hand. Looking out at the crowd, I see Dad and Leah's parents and Tit's mom and the Council, everyone applauding except for Flip, way in the back, his arm around Fam's shoulders. She's clapping and cheering, but Flip just looks sort of bored and isn't applauding at all, which is cool because this is so not a big deal.
Now what do I do with the key? I feel like everyone expects me to hold it up over my head like a trophy or something, but it's sort of small, only a little bigger than a real key, so no one would even be able to see it. It's sort of a brassy color, but it doesn't feel all that heavy, so that's probably just paint. It has a little red stone set in it, and it's engraved Brookdale, MARYLAND with the date.
God, this is stupid.
And, sadly, it's not over yet. Because now there's more speech-making. People saying incredibly stupid things about me, going back to the whole hero thing, making me sound like I tracked the Surgeon from his lair with my trusty bloodhound and a sniper rifle before besting him in hand-to-hand combat on top of a speeding bus filled with orphans and nuns. And ninjas. Ninjas are involved somehow, too.
I zone out long enough to imagine all of that and snap out of it to more applause. I have, apparently, just been offered free manicures for life at a local salon. Why would I want a single manicure, much less a lifetime's supply? (And how many manicures are there in a lifetime's supply?)
It gets better: free DVD rentals (I don't have a DVD player!) and free meals at some local restaurants (yeah, because I love eating alone in public) and a bunch of other crap.
By the time it's over, there's sweat soaking through the back of my shirt. My armpits are a swamp. I imagine my zit cream running down my face like melted makeup.
"We have one last surprise for you, Kevin," the mayor says, and beckons for me to join him at the microphone. oh, Lord.
"You turned sixteen last week, didn't you, Kevin?"