The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion

by Chris McCoy

  It was July 10 when I walked to the mailbox and found a thin envelope stamped in the upper left with the Princeton logo. I opened it in the driveway and discovered that I had finally made it off the wait list and straight into the rejection pile.

  After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that Princeton University will not be able to offer you admission to the class of…

  I stopped reading, ripped up the letter, and tossed it in the trash can, which was conveniently located next to me on the curb. After that, I went inside and watched the entire second season of Cupcake Wars on the Food Network, which I had never watched before. I don’t even have a sweet tooth. I had no idea what else to do.

  The next day, while we were watching Pretty in Pink on my couch, I told her. It took me until the end credits to get up the will to do so, because I knew that saying it out loud meant when the summer ended, we wouldn’t be together anymore. That, and I couldn’t do it during the climactic prom scene. It wouldn’t be right.

  She rubbed my arm and kissed my neck and told me everything was going to be okay, which is how it went for the rest of the summer. With no job, no college prospects, and no idea what I was going to do next, I gave my full attention to making out with Sophie as much as possible.

  On the day she left, at the end of August, I had to see her in the morning, because I knew that her parents wouldn’t want me around while they finished packing the car for the cross-country drive to her college. We’d already agreed that this was the end—she needed to get on with her future and have the freedom to date whatever geniuses and sons of industry and well-dressed European students she met in the dorms, while I had to start looking around for a damp, dark room in which to spend the next few years wallowing in depression and watching daytime television, because I had no idea what else I was going to do with myself. No college, no job, no girlfriend. Maybe I would take up Internet poker, or start sniffing glue.

  Sophie and I were sitting on the edge of my porch near my telescope when we said goodbye.

  “I can’t believe you’re leaving,” I said.

  “You can visit whenever you want.”

  “I would, but I have no money and my truck is in a junkyard in Roswell.”

  “And you might strangle someone in the admission office.”

  “That would be the main reason to go, aside from seeing you.”

  Sophie checked the time on her phone and put it back in her pocket. She tapped the dirt in front of her with the heel of one of her zip-up riding boots. No matter the moment, she always looked cool.

  “I’m glad you saw me through the telescope that day,” she said.

  “I wish it was strong enough that I could see you on the other side of the country.”

  “What about your rule against stalking?”

  “I’m reconsidering it right now.”

  Sophie leaned in and kissed me. Every time, it gave me the same feeling that it did on the rock in the desert. My vision still blurred and I always saw stars, morning, afternoon, or night.

  She stood up from the porch. She didn’t have to tell me—I knew it was time for her to go, and I knew we were breaking up. I walked her back to her driveway. I was glad it was far away.

  Her parents were waiting in the car when we got there, all her suitcases crammed inside. I kissed her until her father’s honking became unbearable.

  “I wish we still had the bus,” she said. “I’m bringing more stuff than I thought I would. It would make this move easier.”

  “And then I could have used it to store the cans and bottles I’ll be collecting in my new career as a homeless man.”

  “HA…hehhhhhh. At least you’d be a cute homeless man.”

  She took her arms from around my body and walked to the car. Her father was grinning at me from behind the wheel, delighted that I was no longer going to be in his daughter’s life. I might have seen him high-five her mom.

  Sophie got in the backseat and rolled down the window to stick her hand out and wave goodbye. The window shot right back up, nearly cutting her arm off in the process. I could read her father’s lips saying he was turning on the air-conditioning, and with that, the car pulled out of the driveway. I walked out into the street to watch it go…

  …and immediately regretted letting her leave, especially knowing that she was now single once again.

  “Sophie, no!” I yelled, running after her. “I changed my mind. I don’t want you to have new experiences and expand your horizons. Come back.”

  But by the time I made it to the middle of the road, the Gilkeys’ car was already speeding away, Mr. Gilkey’s round face grinning at me in the rearview mirror. He might have even flipped me off, but I couldn’t be sure, because my eyes were wet.

  And there you go. Sophie’s gone, and I have fully slid into the I-am-a-complete-piece-of-crap existence that goes along with being simultaneously a local pariah and the only kid around who isn’t going to college, or the workforce, or the military, or anywhere at all.

  Anyway, at least now I’ve gotten this story down on paper, in case thirty years from now somebody discovers me in my childhood bedroom, holed up like Howard Hughes, my fingernails overgrown, hair down to my ankles, surrounded by filthy blankets, having forgotten how to speak because nobody has talked to me since Sophie and I said goodbye. This story can explain how I got that way. I’ve got my guitar—and any guitar worth its wood needs a few tears on it.

  Shit…I just broke a string.

  Hey. So I’m picking up this book again, after quite a bit of time. I can’t believe I even brought it with me. Things have changed since the peak of my depression—to say the least—and I thought I should finish it out to reflect new developments.

  As October started, with Sophie gone a month, I found myself in the same place I’d spent the previous four years—in my bedroom, with my guitar, writing songs. But at least I knew how to finish them now. I just pictured myself onstage in a tight jumpsuit, and that generally worked.

  Unfortunately, imagining myself performing was as close as I was going to get to utilizing my new songwriting confidence. There weren’t a great multitude of musicians in Gordo who were into dance-rock, and I wasn’t sure when I was going to be able to leave my town, if ever.

  My photograph—the unflattering Most Awkward picture from the yearbook—had been in the newspaper so much during the Sophie saga that I couldn’t walk into the supermarket without seeing shoppers whisper about me or having little kids point and ask their parents if I was the man who’d gone to space.

  If I wanted to attend college, I was going to have to restart the whole application procedure—figure out which schools I wanted to go to, get new recommendations from my teachers (which might be difficult, given the fact that they thought I was a criminal), write new essays, wait for responses. And if I was honest with myself, I knew that I didn’t want to go to some backup school. I wanted to go to Princeton. I wanted to be with Sophie.

  I thought about her constantly. She sent the occasional email talking about the autumn weather or how the leaves were changing, but I got the sense that she was holding back on saying too much about the school in order to spare my feelings. I didn’t ask her if she was dating anybody new; she didn’t ask if I had taken to wandering the desert, waiting to be attacked by coyotes in order to end my misery in a manner that didn’t technically count as suicide, which had crossed my mind. We wrote less and less as the days went on, with her life moving forward and mine still a corpse.

  It was Halloween when I walked downstairs from my room after waking up at my now-customary two in the afternoon—depression!—and found my parents standing at the front door, dressed as Robin Hood and Maid Marian, about to go to a costume barbecue before starting the night’s parties. I hadn’t been invited to any parties.

  “Look who’s finally decided to show himself,” said my mom. “What time did you go to bed last night?”

  “Sorry, I was working until dawn. I tried not to be too loud.”


  “The new music sounds good,” she said.

  I’d finally started playing my music in the house whether my parents were home or not. After I’d performed for a crowd of thousands and thousands at Dondoozle, it didn’t seem like such a big deal to have people hear what I was doing. I also had the ability to actually finish songs now, some of which I thought were pretty good—though if I didn’t get out of New Mexico, they were all going to end up rotting in my head, unheard by anyone.

  “If you get a job, you’ll be able to buy better equipment,” said my dad.

  “I’m looking for a job,” I said. “I’ve tried everywhere.”

  “Then you’ll have to start trying other towns,” said my dad. “We can’t have you here doing nothing forever.”

  “Now’s not the time to discuss this,” said my mom. “Bennett, your father and I need to head out, but there’s chicken salad in the fridge, so help yourself. Also, a letter came for you in the mail…. Did you apply for a credit card or something?”

  “No. Why?”

  “It’s from Bank of America,” said my mom. “It’s probably junk, but it had your name on it. Don’t sign up for any credit cards without talking to us first.”

  My parents left, and I looked at the envelope on the counter. Nothing came to the house specifically for me anymore. I used to get Rolling Stone magazine but I had to let my subscription lapse because I couldn’t afford it. There were a couple of months when I would get weird letters from UFO hunters asking for information about what had happened to me, but pretty soon those stopped too. I could feel myself slipping off the grid, becoming nothing.

  The envelope didn’t seem junk-mail-ish—there was nothing on it advertising interest rates or special offers or anything like that—so I sliced open the top with a butter knife and read the letter inside.

  What I saw made me sit down.

  It was a Welcome to Bank of America package informing me an account had been opened in my name. There were only a few sheets of paper—the first was the boilerplate describing the benefits of being a Bank of America customer, the second was a receipt describing how the account had been opened (c/o The Perfectly Reasonable LLC / The Sophie Album), and the third was the number stating exactly how much money I now had at my disposal.

  I had never seen so many zeros. The universe was a big consumer market, and apparently the record was a hit.

  I looked in the envelope to see if there was anything that I had missed, and discovered a creased magazine page. I opened the page, which contained a list showing the Perfectly Reasonable holding the position of ninth-best band in the universe, just behind Radiohead.

  I don’t know how the band had managed to exchange their earnings from space into dollars down here. Maybe there were wire transfers from space that only financial institutions knew about—somebody had to keep banks in business—maybe the band bought gold wherever they were and exchanged it for cash, maybe they showed up at some Belgian outpost with a suitcase of diamonds and told the teller to turn it into a number. However the band had opened my account, the end result was that I was now rich.

  “Thank you,” I said to space. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

  I had an idea. I picked up the phone and dialed Information.

  “What city?”

  “Princeton, New Jersey.”

  “What listing?”

  “Princeton University Admission Office, please.”

  “Do you want to dial the number yourself or be connected? It’s a fifty-cent charge for being put through.”

  “You can just put me through. I think I can afford it.”

  I heard the clicking sound of the operator connecting me, and then a ringing phone.

  “Undergraduate Admission Office.”

  “Hello, my name is Bennett Bardo. I was on your wait list to get in before I got rejected at the start of the summer, and I was just wondering if there’s anything I could do to make you change your mind.”

  “I’m sorry to hear you were rejected, but the semester has already started and the class is full.”

  “There’s no way to get in?”

  “We’d be happy to have you apply again, but I’m afraid there’s nothing else you could do at this time.”

  I was waiting for that.

  “What if…I donate a building?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to joke around.”

  “What if I’m not kidding?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Please hold.”

  —

  It would have been tacky to put my name on the new auditorium, especially as a current student, so I asked the Princeton administration to call it the Perfectly Reasonable Center for the Performing Arts. They thought it was a strange choice, yet inoffensive enough that they went with it, so long as I used small letters on the facade.

  The plan was for the building to be constructed in a corner of the campus near the Engineering Quadrangle. I asked the university to build it with brick because I wanted it to fit with the classic, tree-lined aesthetic of the rest of the grounds, which I adored so much. Inside, it looked like an empty ballroom; while seats could be set up for more formal gatherings—quartet recitals, poetry readings, violin concertos—the main idea behind the center was that it would be a place where bands could play.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  After springing my pickup truck from the junkyard where it had sat since that night at In-N-Out, I retrofitted it with forty thousand dollars’ worth of aftermarket parts so it would never break down again, and then I drove across the country to my new school, staying at a couple of fine hotels along the way, ordering room service each night.

  Oddly enough, on the day I pulled up to Princeton in my truck, Sophie was the first person I saw. She was running in the street outside the main gates, waving a piece of paper above her head and screaming, “Oh my God.”

  I pulled up next to her.

  “Why, hello,” I said.

  She launched herself through the driver’s-side window to hug me.

  “Bennett.”

  “Let me guess—you got your royalty check from the band.”

  “Yes. Oh my God.”

  “What are you going to buy?”

  “Looking at this, either an island or a city, I’m not sure yet. This is incredible. Is the money real?”

  “It’s real,” I said. “I’ve already started spending it. You may even start noticing a few improvements around campus soon.”

  “You bought your way in, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Gloriously so.”

  “Good move. Rich snots here do it all the time.”

  “You want a ride?”

  “Yeah, to an ATM.”

  “Not to a mall?”

  “Don’t joke about that. I never want to see a mall again.”

  She climbed in the truck.

  “This is nice,” she said. “Is this the same truck you had before?”

  “Same truck, but the interior is all new and the engine could be in a race car. I couldn’t leave it behind. I made it across the country in two days.”

  She looked at the shining, newly installed stereo, then back at me. She raised an eyebrow.

  “New sound system…,” she said.

  “Try it out.”

  She pressed the power button, and all at once, the voice of the Phantom rang out of the speakers.

  Sing once again with me…Our strange duet…

  “I knew you were listening to Phantom of the Opera by choice,” she said.

  “It’s hard not to,” I said.

  “It sounds amazing.”

  “No more cassettes.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I can’t believe this.”

  “What city are you going to buy?”

  She looked down at her check again, shaking her head.

  “It seems like with this, my options are pretty open,” she said. “Maybe Barcelona? Rome?”

/>   “I hear Stockholm is nice, and it might be more manageable because it’s smaller. A starter city.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’ll get used to paying the mortgage somewhere like Stockholm, and then move up to something like Paris or Tokyo.”

  She hugged me again.

  “It’s amazing that you’re here. Where are you living?”

  “The dorms,” I said. “I brought flip-flops for the shower and everything. I may be extremely wealthy, but I’m a man of the people.”

  “What about your guitar?”

  “Yeah. I brought my guitar. I also brought all my new guitars.”

  “What did you have to do to buy your way in?”

  “Donate a building. Part of me wanted to buy the whole place and rename it Bennett College, but it turns out there already is one in North Carolina.”

  Sophie fell silent, pondering her riches.

  “I guess I can change my course of study to something impractical now,” she said. “I’d been doing finance, but now I have all the money, so it’s hard to see the point.”

  “You could always endow a department and create your own major,” I suggested.

  “I’ve always liked history,” she said. “Think they’ll let me dig up famous figures and clone them so I can ask questions?”

  “I don’t see why not. Who would you pick?”

  “Maybe Hannibal of Carthage. I mean, anybody who can lead a battalion of elephants over the Alps to fight the Romans seems like a guy who would have some interesting ideas.”

  “I love that Hannibal’s your number one.”

  “I’m sure a lot of people would just want to clone Einstein or something, but I’d rather hear about the elephants than theories about gravity. I’m done with facts about space.”

  Outside the truck, elm trees and brick buildings rolled past. My tires kicked up flame-colored leaves. I could smell the earthy eastern air. Sophie leaned over and embraced me—surprisingly firmly, I might add. I guess she was still kickboxing.