The Great American Whatever

by Tim Federle

  You have to understand: Usually humans forget even the most crippling events if they’re not personally inconvenienced themselves. My sister’s blazing car blocked the only open exit from school that December afternoon, and thus Liz Morgan and every other student became a kind of victim. Trapped for an extra hour on the last day before winter break. . . .

  “Um, I’m okay,” I say, remembering to cover the buzz mark in my hair.

  Then: “Liz!” Geoff says, reappearing, thank God, and trailed by the kind of Home Depot employee who looks like he majored in Hating Teenagers at some junior college in Ohio.

  “Mm, hey,” Liz says. She might not know Geoff’s name. Regardless, I catch him checking her out—though, frankly, Stevie Wonder could probably catch Geoff checking Liz out.

  “Uh, is someone buying an air conditioner or not?” the Home Depot employee says, and Liz giggles and covers her mouth and goes, “Well I’m not,” and then she backs away and takes off like this is the most hilarious and embarrassing mix-up in the history of comedy. Girls, man.

  Geoff sighs in her wake. He’s never had a girlfriend. I mean, look at his shorts.

  The Home Depot guy casually puts his hand on the single most expensive air conditioner out of about a thousand options. “So, how big a room are you cooling off?” he asks me, and I realize I should stand up and pretend to be a human.

  “Um.” I look at Geoff like maybe he’ll just sort of intuitively know my bedroom’s square footage—his mom is an architect—but then I tell myself to answer this question. Seriously, I go, Answer the question, Quinn, to myself. Because maybe answering an easy question like this one will help build my confidence up to the harder ones I’m bound to be getting any day now, like: Do you think you’ll graduate with the rest of the seniors next year? or, Are you still planning on making your famous movies now that Annabeth is gone? or, Speaking of Annabeth, why didn’t you show up to your own sister’s memorial?

  “The room’s big enough to fit a twin-size bed and eleven pizza boxes,” I say to the Home Depot guy, fast, and Geoff busts out laughing in a way that’s so musical, it practically borders on “inappropriate underscoring” for the scene we’re having.

  In other words it’s the best song ever.

  The employee narrows appropriate AC models down to two, and I blindly point at the one that I think looks the “cutest,” God help me, and then Geoff goes, “Let’s pay for this thing,” and whaps my shoulder pretty hard. I act like it hurts, but it actually feels good. It feels like another person.

  We make our way to the parking lot. It is so unbelievably hot out that I can smell my Speed Stick wafting up like an Alpine fog. Beats the alternative.

  “Hey, you did good back there,” Geoff says, after we slide the air conditioner box into his trunk. And I do mean his trunk. When your dad owns the biggest car dealership in town, you get your own car, and it’s not even “pre-owned.”

  “What do you mean I did good?” I say. “You bought this damn thing.”

  “It was your first time being spotted in public,” he goes. “And you didn’t even flinch.”

  He’s talking about Liz, of course. But he’s wrong: I did flinch. I flinched when I saw Liz clicking her nails against her phone screen, because she has the exact same panda bear phone case that Annabeth has. Had. It’s weird how you remember the little details. I don’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

  “Quinn,” Geoff says.

  Actually: lie. I had a microwaved burrito and one spoonful of plain yogurt, having mistaken it, tragically, for vanilla.

  “Hmm?” I say.

  “I said, do you wanna get an icy or something?”

  That sounds really good, actually. “Nah,” I say. “I think I just want to go install this thing and take a nap. I had a really long night.”

  Of sleeping, I don’t say. A long night of sleeping. Like: thirteen hours. I’m telling you, Theraflu works.

  “Okay, no problem,” Geoff says, unlocking the car doors.

  But then his phone dings as we’re climbing in, and he checks it, and he grins. Geoff has four distinct grins. This is his “trouble grin.”

  “What?” I say.

  He looks at me. He’s still grinning.

  “What?”

  He turns on the car. “Sorry,” he says. “Our plans just changed.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Forget what I said earlier. Best friends very much do care what you look like. Especially when they are dragging you to your first ever college party, tonight.

  “Yeah, you guys, this is going to be tricky to fix.”

  Meet Zoë Phillips. Geoff and I are in her parents’ basement, three neighborhoods over behind the park. Zoë is circling me like she’s a trainee witch who’s been left alone with the cauldron for the first time.

  “You just have to be kinda quick about it,” Geoff says to her, “because Quinn and I have to get downtown before traffic hits.”

  Zoë is a former classmate of ours who got her GED and is going to cosmetology college this fall—not “beauty school.” Do not call it beauty school in front of her, believe me.

  “Just don’t do anything too crazy,” I say to her. Zoë’s own haircut seems to have been achieved by . . . setting fire to it? Sticking her head into a food processor? Hard to tell.

  Zoë gathers most of my hair in her hands and then bites her lip. “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she says, grabbing a strangely large pair of scissors. Like, the kitchen kind. “Demanding miracles after you left the house looking like this.”

  That makes me feel kind of bad. If there’s one thing I’m usually not that self-conscious about, it’s my looks. I even did some modeling when I was little. I mean, just local stuff, but it was still modeling. Apparently there’s a whole new thing to question about my life now: if the way I feel inside is actually eroding my shell into something legitimately ugly.

  I watch Geoff collapse into this fugly love seat and act like he’s having a seizure, just to make me laugh. It works.

  “So, big plans tonight, guys?” Zoë says. Her voice is unsteady. A single clip of hair falls to my shoulder. She takes a step back. Here goes everything.

  “Just some party,” Geoff goes, “at my sister’s new place, in Squirrel Hill. Had to make sure Quinn didn’t show up looking like a lost bet.”

  He gives me the thumbs-up in a way that’s so earnest, I have to look away. Too much kindness in one day and I might internally combust, or worse: cry.

  I don’t cry in front of people.

  “Cool,” Zoë says, in a drone. She gives up on the scissors, reaches for electric clippers, and looks at me in the mirror. “You ready?” she asks, with a tone that suggests that she, in fact, is not ready.

  “He’s ready,” Geoff says, when I realize I haven’t answered yet, probably a full thirty seconds later. Perhaps I’m just hypnotized by how hard Zoë’s hands are shaking.

  • • •

  I could have just given myself a buzz cut, of course, but at least Geoff got to hang out around a real live girl for twenty minutes (he’s never really “been” with a girl). Anyway, that’s the most optimistic way I can frame my new haircut. And believe me—they all got cut, every one of them. Picture a cue ball with lips.

  Geoff’s tapping his fingers against his steering wheel and humming, attempting to “add harmonies” to a song on the radio that’s in an entirely different key. When he makes a surprise right out of Zoë’s parents’ subdivision, I use the moment as an excuse to crank down the volume.

  “Wait, why aren’t we going left?” I ask. “Why are we taking the parkway?”

  Geoff keeps drumming right along, still hearing a song that I’m not. “I thought we’d take the long way. To, like, avoid going past the school.”

  Oh. That’s pretty thoughtful of him.

  “Oh.”

  Geoff knows I still haven’t been back, not since the day before Christmas break, and so I still haven’t seen the guardrail that Annabeth crashed into,
headfirst, dying “instantly or close to instantly.” Those were the last words I heard about her final moments, after the principal himself ducked into my health class and pulled me into the hall and told me he had some “difficult news” for me. I was sure it was going to be about my mom—I’m always stressing out about her health, because of her weight—but no, it was Annabeth: “Your sister, Quinn, has been in an accident, Quinn.” I’ll never forget that, the way the principal said my name twice in the same sentence, before he explained how Annabeth had run the red light at the bottom of the hill outside school. How she had gotten sideswiped and spun on the ice into the guardrail. How, incidentally, she had died “instantly or close to instantly.” And right then, I smelled the smoke from her car.

  That’s the same day I started wearing earplugs. That’s the same night I gave up on becoming a screenwriter, or an anythingwriter, or an anything.

  “Well, maybe we can drive by it sometime later this summer,” I say to Geoff. He’s still tapping his hands. This generic brass-and-fake-leather bracelet he always wears is adding annoying tambourine sounds.

  “Sure thing,” he goes, “but, just a heads-up: There’s this, like, weird portrait of Annabeth painted on the side of the school now.”

  “Okay?” I’m not following.

  “The principal had the middle schoolers do it. As a spring art project tribute thing.”

  “Okay?” He’s stalling. “And?” There’s always an and with Geoff.

  He pulls onto the parkway. “Dude: Your sister kind of ended up looking like a . . . like a giant pug.”

  Somehow, this makes me laugh. If you think I’m a confusing person, imagine actually being me.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “That’s just ridiculous with a side of ridiculous,” I go, opening his glove compartment to get a Jolly Rancher, which is melted beyond oblivion. “It sounds like a straight-to-DVD Disney release: My Sister, the Pug.”

  Oof. No reaction. That can’t be good. People used to say I was witty. The guy who could find the funny in any situation.

  “Anyway,” I go.

  It’s quiet for a little while, and when I reach to adjust the volume back up, I catch Geoff wiping his nose against his arm. I should be the one crying, but I’m not. It never dawns on me that as an American, you’re legally allowed to cry in front of others. Maybe I’ve just seen too many old movies. Tough guys never cry in old movies.

  “Hey, actually—can you get off at the next exit?” I say. “I should swing home for a sec. I wanna put on a clean shirt for the party.”

  “Quinn, we both know you don’t have any clean shirts.”

  “Ha.”

  I’m thinking of so many mean things I could say about his “mustache.”

  I punch his arm, instead, and his car swerves, which makes my stomach nervous. My stomach is like a weather vane. It knows what I’m feeling before I do, always. Maybe that’s why I’ve been the emotional equivalent of a Hot Pocket for half a year. “I might not have any clean shirts,” I say, “but my dad does.”

  “D’okay,” Geoff says, using his turn signal like the responsible young man he apparently turned into during my recent absence.

  “I’ll be two seconds,” I say, when he pulls into our rocky driveway with no lemonade stand in sight. But he doesn’t stay in the car. He follows me right up the front steps, and right into our foyer, and right past the powder room with the broken toilet seat, until we find Mom—with her head in the freezer like she’s an ostrich who couldn’t find any suitable sand.

  “Babe?” Mom says, pulling her beautiful face out. Seriously, she’s beautiful. Fact. “Where did you go?” She shuts the freezer door. “And what happened to your gorgeous hair?”

  That’s a stretch. My former hair was about as gorgeous as bathwater after a bath, after a rugged hike. My current haircut is, at least, practically see-through.

  “It’s the new trend, Ma,” I say, running my hand over the stubble. “All the cool kids are doing it.”

  “Well . . . at least I get to see that handsome face again.”

  “Hi, Mrs. R.!” Geoff says, pushing past me and giving Mom the kind of hug people write songs about.

  “Geoffrey, Geoffrey, look at you. A regular man.”

  Geoff feigns a whole aw-shucks routine, but you can tell he’s secretly thrilled to be getting attention from a female, any female.

  Mom reaches her hand forward and tries wiping Geoff’s upper lip. “You’ve got something there, Geoffrey,” she says, and he pulls back and hops up to sit on our counter, where he attempts to say with a totally straight face: “It’s a mustache, Mrs. R.”

  But that just turns Mom into an instant giggle machine. It is so good to hear her feeling good about something.

  “Sure it is, Geoffrey,” she says, winking at me. “Sure it’s a mustache.”

  I take off. “Geoff and I are hanging tonight”—backing out of the kitchen before she can put up a fight that I didn’t ask for her permission first—“so I’m gonna throw on a clean shirt.”

  Wait for it. Waaait for it.

  But she doesn’t put up a fight or say I can’t go. She just looks at Geoff and right away both of their eyes are watery, like it’s been their big secret plan all along to get me out of the house. Which, who knows, maybe it has been.

  “Call me if you’re going to be later than eleven!” Mom yells when I’m hopping up the stairs three steps at a time. Six months of inactivity have suddenly turned me into a well-rested iron man.

  “You bet!” I yell back.

  Except my phone isn’t charged. It isn’t even plugged in. I don’t even know where it is, to be honest, because I sort of blocked that day out. I haven’t turned my phone on since the accident, when I figured out why Annabeth got into the accident to begin with, dying “instantly or nearly instantly,” as if the timing of somebody’s death matters. They’re dead. Roll the credits.

  I ransack Dad’s old closet to try and find his least offensive shirt. It’s a delicate proposition: This is my first college party, and I agreed to go only because it’s a group of people who don’t know anything about my past, and won’t look at me like I’m the only surviving seabird after a devastating oil spill.

  Also, there’s going to be beer.

  But the Asshole Formerly Known As Dad’s shirts always tended toward Hawaiian prints and polyester button-ups. These are not the shirts of a man who owns the area’s number-one car dealership or hugs his kids. These are the shirts of a shifty junior manager who walks out on his wife on her birthday. I’m stuck.

  I give up and go to Dad’s shelf in the medicine cabinet, grabbing some okay-looking Polo cologne and giving my T-shirt a solid five pumps, figuring three of them should mellow out by the time we show up to the party.

  “You kids done catching up?” I say from the bottom step, rounding my way into the kitchen like everything’s normal again.

  But I don’t think they heard me, because they’re . . . whimpering? No—because they’re whimpering, period. Mom is holding Geoff and rocking him a little bit, each of them acting out the very scene I still haven’t had with her myself yet.

  I study my shoes and pull off a pretty good pretend cough. “Let’s go,” I say. “Before traffic gets bad.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We’re on the street outside Geoff’s sister’s place in Squirrel Hill, looking up at a couple of big-shot college kids who are leaning out a window, smoking. I had the bright idea to stop and pick up something “nice” for the party, so when someone finally buzzes us in and we trudge up the four floors (without an elevator), I count it as a minor setback when a girl in a fedora swings open the door, looks at what I’ve brought, and calls back to the group: “Great. Another hummus.”

  “Dude, let’s go in,” Geoff says.

  The place is awesome. Like, I can’t believe in a couple of years I could actually live like this. You know, if I start doing my homework again and actually apply to college, ha.

  “We d
on’t have to stay long,” Geoff says. Now we’re standing just inside his sister’s doorway, at the beginning of a long hallway that hopefully leads to unlimited fun. And beer. Tonight is The Night I Try Beer and Maybe Pot.

  “It’s cool,” I go, noticing a tea-colored stain in the ceiling. “I’ll be okay.”

  “I actually can’t stay that late, to be honest,” Geoff goes, starting to lead me toward a room that’s boomeranging with voices. “I have the first shift at Loco Mocha tomorrow.”

  “Wait, you got a job?” I go. I stop him beside a bathroom that’s got this giant Yankee Candle going. Classy place.

  “Yeah, I got a job,” Geoff goes. “Turn on your phone sometime. It will deliver mysterious things to you, like news.”

  “No, I just can’t believe you got a job.”

  We used to make movies together, every day, all day, every summer. I’d write them, Annabeth would direct, Geoff would star. He was a terrible actor. So terrible it was funny, and somehow seemed like a version of good.

  “My dad made me get a job.”

  “But your dad is, like . . .” I consider how to phrase this. Geoff and I don’t talk about money. He just . . . pays for stuff, while I look away. “Loaded.”

  Geoff laughs, heads into the bathroom, and swishes with Listerine right out of his sister’s bottle. Straight boys, every last one of ’em a mystery.

  Anyway, he’s back. “We do fine, but we are not exactly loaded. That’s just what people think.”

  “You drive a brand-new Toyota, Geoff.”

  “You don’t know anything about cars, Quinny. It’s not exactly a Tesla.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Exactly.”

  We keep walking. It is a seriously long hallway, made emptier by how there’s nothing in it but us, no furniture or posters or anything. I can’t believe college kids can afford a place with such a long hallway.

  “Well, whatever,” Geoff goes. “My dad said that in order to ‘learn money, you’ve got to earn money.’ So, like I said. Whatever.”