Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You
Page 16
4. THE HOUSE
The second they went inside, Darren said, “I’m super tired. I think I’m going to bed.” Which wasn’t a lie, because he could barely even stand up straight anymore. His mom said, “Of course,” so he gave her a hug and said good night. She kissed his cheek, held him by the shoulders, looked up at him, and almost smiled.
Darren’s first priority, once he got upstairs, was to take a serious shower, because he felt beyond nasty by that point. But about two seconds after getting under the awesomely warm water, he turned it off in a sudden panic. Because of his arm, which luckily only got a little wet. He quickly grabbed his towel, carefully dabbed at some menacing drops clinging to his forearm, and actually breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the design hadn’t been ruined at all.
The next thing Darren knew, he was—despite being naked—on his hands and knees, rummaging through the cabinet under the bathroom sink. It took him a while, but he located a bag of cotton balls and a couple of rubber bands. Thirty seconds later, the cotton balls had been liberated from the bag, the bag had been pulled over his forearm (Darren used his teeth and fingers to rip open a hole in the bottom of the bag), and the rubber bands had been enlisted to keep the barrier in place. Though the bags and rubber bands would change, Darren would, with religious devotion, employ such a system all the way into June.
After his shower, Darren sat down in front of his computer and logged on to Facebook. Zoey had a page, including one with a picture of her that showed almost a full third of her face (but not the third with that spot on her lip). Darren just sat there opposite the screen and that picture for a few minutes. He maybe nodded off for a minute or two. Plus he kept staring at the design, which he would spend approximately seventeen hours in total doing during the next six weeks (by which time it somehow faded all on its own, despite his efforts to preserve it). Darren felt a little squashed by a vague conviction that being heterosexual, assuming the term does indeed describe him, isn’t exactly a walk in the park, despite it probably being way easier overall than being gay.
Zoey had the privacy settings in place, so all he could do was try to add her as a friend. Plus send her a message. He wrote, Zoey, Where are you? I’m back home, my mom picked me up. I hope you’re okay. Please call or something. And he left her his cell number. And, for some reason, his street address.
He wrote her once the next week and twice the next month. She never friended him, though. The picture of her there made him crazy, in part because her hair was all one length in it, which made her look even more beautiful.
7 Labels Darren’s Schoolmates Might at This Point Assign to Him, Seeing How He Pretty Much Gave Up on Finding a Replacement for Bugs, Doesn’t Really Talk Much to Anyone, and Usually Eats Lunch in Mr. Keyes’s Office, Where the Two of Them Don’t Really Talk a Lot but Just Listen to Old Jazz Albums Instead
1. Freak
2. Loner
3. Creep
4. Loser
5. Weirdo
6. Nut job
7. Reject
4 Experiences He Bets Feel Somewhat Like How He Feels Sitting in the Back of History Class as the Medication and His Respiratory System Battle It Out for Control of Darren Jacobs
1. Being really high at four in the morning
2. Floating in outer space
3. Deep-sea diving in one of those old suits that include a spherical metal helmet
4. Having your brain and sinuses replaced by straw but somehow not dying
17 Days That Passed Before Darren Found the Note Zoey Left Him, Which He Only Found When He Was Cleaning His Room (at His Mother’s Request/Demand) and Dropped When Things Fall Apart in Such a Way That It Landed with the Cover Kind of Bent, Because Otherwise He Never Would Have Even Noticed It at All
1. April 26
2. April 27
3. April 28
4. April 29
5. April 30
6. May 1
7. May 2
8. May 3
9. May 4
10. May 5
11. May 6
12. May 7
13. May 8
14. May 9
15. May 10
16. May 11
17. May 12
1 Corporate Symbol Darren Feels a Bit Like Today
1. THE MICHELIN MAN
The guy that’s made just out of those white tire-looking rings. Which is weird, because lately he’s been feeling like less of a fatty. Even though he still feels like a bit of a fatty from time to time. But not Michelin-man fatty.
Must be the cold, or whatever this is.
8 Facts about Rachel Madsen and Darren’s Possibly Ongoing Relationship with Her
1. THEY MET AT GREEN RIDGE CAMP FOR THE ARTS IN NECEDAH, WISCONSIN
After the whole thing in Ann Arbor, his parents (even though they were obviously divorced) still managed to agree that it was time to get a little stricter about stuff. Like how late he could stay up and if it would ever be okay for him not to answer his phone when they called to check in (it would not be) and that the time had come for him to wash that thing off his arm already (though Darren refused this last one). Plus, they basically just told him (his mom told him, but said both of them had decided this together) that he had to go away to camp this summer.
Darren put up a pretty big fight, saying kids his age don’t go to camp, but still, he could tell almost right away there was no way he was going to win this one, because his parents had somehow anticipated this response and had, like, five names of kids he knew who did go. But at least they gave him a choice, so he chose Green Ridge, because its session was shortest and because he’d get to play music there and because it was really, really expensive.
As it turned out, the camp was actually all right. Most of the kids were kind of weird and nerdy, but being all alone together out in the middle of Wisconsin sort of made this not matter, kind of like how it feels during ensemble rehearsal, but times about two hundred. Darren was probably one of the coolest kids there, mostly because he really didn’t give a shit about anything by that point.
2. SHE PLAYS PIANO.
She’s pretty good, even if she’s mostly into classical. Also, she has big green eyes and super straight light brown hair, and other than an extremely loud laugh that always makes her blush, she was pretty shy, at least at first.
3. THEIR RELATIONSHIP STARTED BECAUSE OF A VISITING CELLIST
One day after lunch, Jackson Yates, a drummer from his bunk, said, “Hey, man, I heard that Rachel Madsen thinks you’re cute.” The next night some big-deal cellist from New York flew out to give a recital, so Darren tried to sit near Rachel. And he could tell by the way she kept looking at him all the time that Jackson was right.
So then he went up to her at snack after the recital and asked her what she thought. She seemed really happy that he asked (she said the recital was amazing) and sort of glanced quickly over at a friend of hers, who smiled and disappeared instantly.
4. THEY HOOKED UP INSTEAD OF WATCHING DRUMLINE
The next night was movie night, because that’s what Sunday nights always were. They’d show them some movie with a lot of people playing music in it, even if most movies with a lot of people playing music in it come across as really stupid to actual musicians. Anyhow, that Sunday the movie was Drumline, which Darren had seen parts of about twenty-five times on cable, and he was strangely kind of excited to have an excuse to see the whole thing straight through.
But then this girl Krista, the one who smiled at Rachel and disappeared, came up to Darren after dinner and said, “In Drumline tonight, when the main character makes a one-on-one challenge, go behind the piano building.” Darren just looked at her confused, so she repeated her instructions and added impatiently, “Rachel will be there.”
So he did as she said, in part because the movie turned out to be better if you didn’t watch it straight through. Sure enough, Rachel was waiting behind the piano building. She even had a sleeping bag in her hand. She said, “Hi.”
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Darren said, “Hey.” Then he started trying to think of things to say. But she just turned around and started walking back into some trees. He followed and they soon got to a small hill that was pretty flat at the top. Darren was still trying to think of something to say, when she started kissing him. Within about a minute they were down on the sleeping bag, making out. Unlike the times with Maggie and Zoey, Darren thought it might make sense not to go crazy all at once. So he just kissed her a lot, and he could taste how she had definitely brushed her teeth within the past ten minutes, probably more than once. Her tongue was almost too soft, but she licked his teeth a couple times, which he thought was kind of cool.
After about two minutes he figured it would be okay to touch her boobs, which were small and pretty hard. Two minutes after that he went under her shirt, and two minutes after that she sat up and undid her bra. Watching her do this (it was dark out, but the moon was almost full) definitely woke up his boner all the way, but he still managed to avoid humping her thigh for real.
5. SHE WASN’T SHY ABOUT EVERYTHING.
They kissed for a while, until Darren stopped to adjust his weight (the ground was hard and his left arm had pretty much fallen asleep). Then, just before they started kissing again, she said quietly (this may have been the first full sentence she ever said to him), “If you want to, you can kiss them.”
She made her offer so politely that he almost felt like it would be rude to decline, not that he had anything against kissing her boobs. So he lifted up her shirt and saw her boobs, which were the general size of Hostess Ding Dongs (though rounder, of course) and (in the moonlight) incredibly pale. He started kissing them, especially the nipples, which seemed to be light brown.
Even though it was a pretty fun thing to do, kissing a girl’s boobs after being invited to kiss a girl’s boobs (not to mention licking and sucking them, which he wasn’t officially invited to do but figured was probably allowed anyway), he mostly just noticed how much they tasted like soap, like she spent that afternoon diligently cleaning her boobs in the shower, and not the way actual women with giant boobs clean their boobs in the shower in movies (when the point isn’t really cleaning them so much as looking extremely sexy).
Plus, he just wasn’t getting the feeling Rachel was enjoying whatever it was he was doing to her boobs that much. It’s not that she was suffering or anything, but the way she just lay there and played with his hair (slowly and gently and steadily) like nothing all that interesting was happening, even though he was kissing her boobs and everything, sort of reminded him of how she sounded on the piano, which was like she’d rehearsed a ton but just wasn’t all that great in the end.
6. SHE ASSUMED THAT THEIR DRUMLINE RENDEZVOUS MEANT SOMETHING.
The next day at breakfast she came up to him with this sweet smile that made him realize she now thought he was her boyfriend, which seemed like a pretty reasonable assumption on her part, but that didn’t excite him all that much. Still, he tried, because she was nice and laughed easily and let him kiss her boobs three out of the next four nights.
7. THERE WAS MORE TO COME.
The following Sunday (without any warning and when most everyone else was watching Once, which Jackson Yates said was pretty solid), she placed her hand on his boner (over his pants). A minute later he turned over on his back and helped her unzip his shorts.
It had never occurred to him how good he had become at giving himself a hand job or how bad someone else could be at it. The only way he enjoyed it at all was by reminding himself of what, in general, was happening, because the hand job itself was actually quite painful. Much too much friction, and a good bit of yanking, too.
8. BEING WITH RACHEL DIDN’T MEAN STOPPING THINKING ABOUT ZOEY. IN FACT, IT WAS KIND OF THE OPPOSITE.
It was at this moment, when he was sort of both trying and not trying to concentrate on what was happening, that he thought of Zoey. It wasn’t that he had entirely stopped thinking of Zoey before then, but something about being in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin with tons of new people had a little bit finally knocked her out of the center of his head, where she had sat stubbornly for the last couple months. But now she was back in a major way. Which doesn’t mean he said a word to Rachel about her, or even really felt that he should.
And it also wasn’t so much that he was thinking, Wow, if I could replace Rachel with Zoey, this would be more enjoyable (though it probably would have been), it was that—it was hard to make sense of it, exactly—he suddenly missed Zoey in a way that made him wish he could just fall asleep for a very, very long time.
The rest of camp, even though it included two much better hand jobs with hand moisturizer (Rachel’s idea) and a pretty excellent jazz trio concert the last night, wasn’t all that much fun, because (in addition to not really knowing what to do with Rachel or why he didn’t like her more) he realized that as far as Zoey was concerned, Green Ridge Camp for the Arts was like an island prison. Wherever Zoey was, there just wasn’t any way she was going to show up here.
10 Diversions Darren Explores While Killing the Last Twenty-Five Minutes of Mr. Cowens’s Exam, the Results of Which Are Not Going to Be Pretty
1. Counting the number of X’s on the exam (twenty-seven)
2. Blowing his nose
3. Staring at the thin line of Megan Brougham’s pink underwear that becomes visible whenever she leans forward to write an answer
4. Watching the clock until he’s pretty sure he can see the minute hand moving
5. Using his pencil to trace the initials (A.R.; D.D.; K.M.) engraved in his desk
6. Closing his eyes and listening to the sounds of learning
7. Staring at his forearm, wishing the design was still there, and tracing out parts of it with his pencil from memory and wondering, yet again, just how likely it is that he will one day walk into a tattoo parlor with all the pictures of it he keeps on his phone and his hard drive and pay a professional to redraw it on his arm, permanently this time.
8. Observing Mr. Cowens as he tries to remove a stain from his tie, which, even spotless, would be an astonishingly ugly tie
9. Concluding, through the process of elimination, that no more than four people in this room (excluding Mr. Cowens) will ever have any use for the material covered in this exam
10. Envisioning possible scenarios involving Rachel later today
10 Albums Mr. Keyes Has Played during Lunch That Darren Hopes to Hear Again
1. Duke Ellington, Money Jungle
2. Bill Evans, Waltz for Debby
3. Joe Henderson, Page One
4. Wayne Shorter, Adam’s Apple
5. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Moanin’
6. Horace Silver, Song for My Father
7. Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage
8. John Coltrane, My Favorite Things
9. Charles Mingus, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus
10. Miles Davis, Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet
1 Place, 1 Person, and 1 Idea, All Directly Tied to Zoey
1. THE PATIO
After math Darren goes down to the Patio. It’s not his first visit to the place since he asked Zoey to drive him to the El way back in April. Closer to the tenth time at least, if Darren had to guess.
Because once a whole week had passed without Zoey showing up after the Ann Arbor thing, Darren thought he was going to die. But he figured if anyone knew what had happened with Zoey, it would be the citizens of Patiostan. He wasn’t too eager to go down there, but he was even less eager to keep googling her name every day, just to see if she was dead or something. So he went down to the Patio in early May sometime to look for Derek Schramm. This was even before he found Zoey’s note.
Derek was playing with a silver metal lighter, flicking it open and closed. Flicking it open somehow caused it to light. Derek flicked it open again, showed Darren the flame, and said, “No idea, dude. You should ask
1. GRACE PEARSON—
they were pretty tight.”
“Do you know what happened to Zoey?” Darren asked.
Grace turned her head away from him quickly, looked around, and lit her cigarette. Then she exhaled her smoke really hard. “Her parents sent her somewhere.”
“Where?” Darren asked.
“I don’t know”—Grace turned back to him—“some kind of hard-core boarding school probably.” Then she squinted her eyes, which seemed to Darren like a twitch maybe.
“How do you know?” Darren asked.
“She texted me, but just one time, real early in the morning before I was up, but then that was it.”
“What did she write, exactly?”
Grace reached into her enormous bag, which hung open and seemed to contain about three hundred objects no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. She dug around in there for a while and eventually pulled out her phone. After pressing a bunch of buttons, she passed it to Darren.
Parents are shipping me to New Mexico crazy farm fuck me. That was all it said. The text had been sent at 6:32 a.m. on Wednesday, April 30. Just seeing her name on Grace’s phone made his hands shake a little.
“Can I take her number?” he asked Grace.
“Go ahead,” she said, “but don’t bother calling. Wherever they put her, she probably can’t have a phone there.” Grace looked over his shoulder and maybe mumbled, “Oh shit.” Then she took a drag and said, “That’s how it was with Miles Fagen, anyway.”