“Maybe we want to come.”
Treat stops walking. “Look, they just want me this time.”
“Who are they?” I say, but he won’t answer. “Do they think DikNixon is just you?”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t matter.” He gives me a good, friend shove. “No one’s getting sacrificed here. I’ll straighten them out.”
“Sure,” I say. “Sock it to ’em.”
.
Me and Keith spend the whole afternoon at the public library doing homework and quizzing each other. When Keith’s out of notebook paper to fold into airplanes and toss at junior high kids, I give him the pizza party flyer so he can do one more.
I’m home after dark, the house pretty quiet and smelling like meat loaf. My mom and Packy are watching TV, Colleen’s playing in her room, and Brendan’s on his bed, a Sports Illustrated lying over his homework.
With my homework already done, I’m at my desk thinking a letter to Uncle Ryan. Even if Dylan Long is nice to Edie, he’ll never take her seriously. It’s not like she can drive up and see him at college next year. And if she gets a ride there, he can’t even take her to an R-rated movie. So it can’t work. The numbers don’t add up. But I don’t write any of that down. It’s not like Uncle Ryan can do anything about any of that.
.
Wednesday morning at the wall: no Treat.
“The border guards keep getting him,” Keith says when he gets down the sidewalk to me.
I turn around and we start walking to school. “You think he’s quitting the band?”
“I don’t know,” Keith says. “He sort of is the band. If he quits, we’re screwed.”
Keith’s serious, not even a little grin or stupid joke after, and that makes me think his I don’t know is really an I think so too. But at least Keith’s sort of got Sascha/Karen. I’m right where I started. Or maybe even farther behind. Astrid definitely knows who I am now, and I don’t think it matters at all.
So I’m sort of desperate to talk to Treat by the time I get to English.
He’s in the middle of a story and flicks his head to me as I walk in the room. The Mohawk is freshly bleached, as tall as ever, and he has some new orange streaks in it. It’d be nice to hear how the promotional stuff went so I can know DikNixon still matters, and so I can stop thinking about the stupid United Nations Club pizza party and how great it was, and how much money they raised, and how Dylan Long asked Edie to stay late with him to help count the money. There was more to that story and Edie was ready to tell it until I said I probably had a quiz coming third period and needed to get in an extra couple minutes of studying, which is true even if I couldn’t have cared less right then if Don Quixote made it home.
.
At lunch, the Bog fills with people who want Treat to tell them more about the cops and jail and the party, and he spends the whole time talking to everybody except me and Keith.
Right before the bell, right after I ask Treat about the promotional stuff and he says it fell through, he says he’s got too much going on again today for band practice.
“What the hell?” I say. “Are we a band or not?”
“Hell, yeah, we are,” Treat says. He looks right at me and it’s hard to say he’s lying. “We’ll practice tomorrow.”
“Really?” Keith says.
The bell rings. “Totally,” Treat says.
He starts to take off toward the cafeteria but I grab his arm. “Why aren’t you at the wall in the morning?”
“I will be,” Treat says and shrugs free. “I gotta go now.”
He fast-walks through the crowd of people heading out for their lockers and fifth period. Like I said, it’s hard to lose a guy with a bleached Mohawk in a crowd. Especially if he wants to be noticed. Treat steps up on a planter and when Cherise comes out of the cafeteria he throws out his arms and bows to her. Everyone over there laughs and Cherise smiles; then he hops down and they walk off in the direction of her locker.
And now I see the pattern: no Treat at the wall in the morning, no talking to him in English, no talking to him at lunch, no band practice. Ever. He is Dik-Fucking-Nixon now. I’m Vice Idiot Nobody. Keith is Secretary of Stand There and Stay Quiet.
Twenty-four hours later, my hypothesis is playing out perfectly: no Treat at the wall, no real conversation in English, and now he’s a no-show in the Bog. “Did he say anything to you?” I ask the Secretary of Stand There and Stay Quiet.
Keith talks through a mouthful of sandwich. “I haven’t seen him today.”
I haven’t touched my food. “Should we go over to his house after school?”
“He won’t be there,” Keith says.
He says it so confident I figure he must know something. “Did you hear that from Edie or Cherise?”
Keith shakes his head. “I haven’t seen them today either. I can just tell.” He takes another bite, calm, and shrugs, like, That’s that.
Me and Keith hang out at the library again after school. We get all our homework done and he shows me the note he’s working on for Sascha/Karen. It’s eight pages so far with what he’s done every day this week, pictures, lists of places they can meet to kiss so her boyfriend won’t find out, and the lyrics to a punk rock love song that go, “Missing kissing / got a mission for kissing / you, you, you / Frenching and necking / scarring my neck again / for you, you, you.”
“How are you going to get it to her?” I say.
He slides it over to me. “You, you, you.”
I pull my hands away like it’s radioactive. “I don’t know where she lives.”
“Yeah,” Keith says. “But Astrid does and—”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “I’m done playing pony express for people. You’re on your own, cowboy.”
Keith takes the note back. “I’ll find a way. Like Romeo did. Our forbidden love will triumph.”
I haven’t read Romeo and Juliet yet—we’re supposed to read it and see a production sometime in the spring—but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t go the way Keith thinks it goes, though I don’t say anything.
.
Nothing changes on Friday except that Treat doesn’t even look at me in English. After class, he says he’s in a hurry and we’ll talk at lunch, which would be fine if he actually showed up at lunch. So me and Keith wait for him at his locker after school. He walks up with Cherise, all smiles and both her arms wrapped around one of his biceps. “Hey,” he says, “I’m glad I caught you guys so you can be the first to know.” He looks at Cherise, who squeezes into him a little tighter, and then back at us. “I’m resigning from DikNixon.”
It punches me right in the heart even though I knew it was coming.
Keith looks at me, then Treat. “There’s no DikNixon without you.”
“Sorry,” he says. “No band should play past its prime. Why do you think the Beatles broke up?”
“Yoko Ono,” I say.
Keith gives me a Who? look, but I shake him off.
“Yeah, well,” Treat says, “if the Beatles never break up we never get ‘Imagine’ or ‘Band on the Run.’”
Keith says he’s never even heard of those bands, then looks at me, like, Right? I shake him off again.
I want to ask Treat who he thinks is going to cover for him the next time he messes up. Does he know it’ll take him down? Then I think, Good, be your own worst enemy. Which isn’t nice, I know, so instead I say, “What if we just put it on hold awhile?”
Treat shakes his head, the Mohawk making the no look huge. “It’s got to be a clean break. I’m moving on to other things.”
My arms flail out, Jesus-like. “Come on, at least think about it.”
“I already did,” Treat says, kind of quiet, like he’s afraid he’ll scare Cherise. “It’s over for DikNixon. There’s no coming back this time.”
Keith steps forward, his finger right at
Treat’s face. “You said we had to care about each other like we were brothers, and that even if we didn’t care about ourselves on something, we couldn’t do that to our brothers.”
You might think Treat would swat his finger away, but he just stares at the ground.
Cherise looks at all three of us, and she looks just as sad as Treat. “You guys can still be friends. You don’t have to be in a band together to be friends.”
“I know,” I say. “But a band is something different. It means more.”
“Brothers,” Keith says, nodding at Cherise, and I want to say, Don’t talk anymore. You’ll ruin what you already said.
Treat finally looks up, says, “Sorry. I gotta go,” and leaves so fast Cherise has to fast-walk to catch up.
Keith starts saying what a jackass Treat is, what a dickhead move that was, how we should call him Been-a-Dick Arnold now. He’s right about all of that, and I’m angry too, but mostly now it feels like it did when Uncle Ryan died, where your face is heavy and stopped up so you can’t laugh or cry or hardly breathe. Everything just aches.
.
Keith’s dad drops us off at Wonder Bowl Friday night, saying he had no idea kids still liked bowling and to call when we’re ready to come home. There’s a sign outside the banquet room with four bands on it, including Filibuster. After the first band, people come up and ask us if Treat really left DikNixon because he got a solo record deal or if it was because of his probation. Nobody asks what we’re going to do now without Treat.
Van Doren gets there after the second band plays and tells us why the bands he missed suck and why the next one is worth getting in the slam pit for. Then he points out which guys to stay away from in the pit because they just want to hit people. “Assassins,” he says.
The next band is good, and me and Keith are huffing and sweaty when van Doren calls us over to the side of the stage. He tells Keith that Filibuster needs a roadie tonight, which means he’ll be running guitars and picks and strings out to the guys as they need them. “And you’re going to introduce us, Reece.” When I ask what he wants me to say, he says, “The truth.”
From the stage, you can see how long and skinny the banquet room is. It’s crammed full of people, but I’m not nervous. I step up to the microphone, a real one, and even though I’m not sure what I’m about to say, it just comes out: “This is what you’ve been waiting for, you sick bastards.” There’s a cheer, not too big, but it gives me a beat to think, and everything comes together: “Get ready for the band your dad likes best, because it scares the pants off your mom . . . Filibuster!”
Van Doren’s next to me right as the words leave my mouth. He wraps his arm around my neck for a second, a weird little hug, then shoves me into the pit as the music explodes.
Filibuster plays a great set, people thrashing everywhere the whole time, Keith keeping up with breaking strings and shouts for The blue guitar! The brown guitar! No, not for me, for him, and Good job, dude.
Afterward, we help the guys load up their stuff; then van Doren drives us to a Denny’s restaurant and we all eat breakfast at one in the morning. We sit around the table, the six of us drinking off the two coffees we ordered, everybody talking about the gig and bands and school and college and whatever else. When it gets quiet, Keith starts talking about how his mom wants him to garage sale all his Star Wars action figures and I’m sure that’s it—van Doren will never hang out with us again. But one of the guys in Filibuster says Keith will probably make some serious bank if he has some vehicles too. Keith says he has the Millennium Falcon and the Death Star and van Doren looks at him like he’s mad. “You can’t sell that stuff yet. Tell your mom to put it all in Ziplocs, and in about five years some freak will give you enough money for all that stuff to pay for college.”
Van Doren is serious, and everyone agrees, and now I know Edie was right when she said it sucks to be cool. I mean, talking about Star Wars toys or debating whether or not the two girls in the B-52’s are cuter than all four of the Go-Go’s is a million miles away from cool. Just like gas station shirts and the sixteen-hundred-meter race. But whatever all this is, it’s real, and it’s nice, and it makes me feel like I matter.
[Encore]
Since fall, I’ve been depending on californium to keep the state pretty warm just like Keith said it would. And it has. I got through Thanksgiving and Christmas with long-sleeve shirts over the new band T-shirts I’ve been getting at gigs and record stores. My mom says she doesn’t see how a couple of shirts can keep me warm enough, especially since I’m always ripping holes in them on purpose, but there’s no way I’m going over to Treat’s house to get my Packy jacket, and it’s not like he ever does anything more than say, “Hey,” to me in English, and I say, “What’s up,” and he says, “A preposition,” and we laugh, but that’s it.
On rainy days my mom’s at the door with my Yankees jacket, which I wear as far as Keith’s house before stuffing it into my backpack, but I can’t complain. It’s only cold in the morning. Even on days when our front lawn is crunchy with frost, I can shove my hands into my ripped jeans and squeeze myself warm all the way to school.
It’s a late winter morning like that, cold but not exactly freezing, when we get into the heat of Mr. Krueger’s classroom and everyone’s quiet. Keith’s in the middle of a story about Sascha/Karen deciding if she’s going to break up with her boyfriend for spring break so she can ditch school some days and go to the beach with him.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “If she has a different spring break, why would she need to do that?”
Keith doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the front corner of the room, which does look different somehow. Mr. Krueger isn’t sitting behind his desk like he usually does until seven seconds before the bell rings, but that’s not it. “Oh my God,” Keith says, and then I see it too. The periodic table chart is covered in butcher paper. Mr. Krueger is at the podium, a stack of papers in his hands. This is it.
Right after Christmas, Mr. Krueger told us we needed to get the holidays out of our heads. The periodic table test was coming soon now and we needed to know, in case we didn’t already, that life doesn’t take a vacation. “The elements keep doing what they do whether you got what you wanted for Christmas or not. Whether your team won or lost. Whether you got a date for the big dance or stayed home.” He tapped the chart. “Life goes on, people. So you have to as well.”
It was good that he reminded us. Me and Keith had stopped studying even a little bit on the weekends. Sometimes we had Filibuster gigs. Sometimes there were parties van Doren told us about. And there were two times Sascha/Karen broke up with her boyfriend for the weekend so Keith could come over to her house to practice things she said any girl would want Keith to be good at and her boyfriend wouldn’t do. On those weekends I’d go to some G-rated movie with my family, maybe a recital or some little show Colleen was in, and let Packy give me a lesson on making brunch if he didn’t have to be up too early for his overtime Saturday shift.
So me and Keith started going to the public library again most days right after school to get our homework done and get ready for the test. You might not think Keith would still want to do that, but if all his homework is done when he gets home, his mom lets him talk if Sascha/Karen calls, which isn’t all that often, but when she does call, it’s these two-hour conversations where Keith mostly just listens.
When Mr. Krueger hands out the test seven seconds before the bell rings, it’s just like he promised: a blank periodic table and that’s it. “Show me what you know,” he says.
The thing about a big test is even if you know it’s coming, you don’t actually know how it’s going to go or what exactly you’ll do until you’re doing it. I number all the boxes first, 1 to 103. It’s easy. The top left one is 1, top right is 2, then back to the left for 3 and on like that until you get to 57. Somehow, 57 is magical and starts the lanthanide series, the separate table at the
bottom of the sheet. The first row there goes 57 through 71; then you run out of room and have to pop back up to the regular table for 72.
I fill in the easy stuff next—hydrogen and helium, ones like that. The periodic table on my desk is looking like the real one now even if a lot of things are still missing. There are people around me whose pencils aren’t scratching and clicking anymore, but I knew I’d get to this moment where the easy stuff was done and I’d have to let things get a little weird, trust that my instincts will get it right.
I can remember 19 on the chart is K because in baseball scoring you make a K when a guy strikes out and the record for strikeouts in a game is 19. And if 19 is K, 18 is Ar so it can spell out ArK. And Noah needed a forest of trees to build his ark and a famous forest is the Argonne, and so 18 is argon. It’s right; I know it is. Then I remember to go back and write potassium under the K and that reminds me there’s a lot of potassium in bananas and so 20 is calcium because I like to put bananas in my cereal before the milk.
I’m getting all the answers like that, the ones that make sense to me in ways our textbook never tells us. I even get californium right because of Keith, then berkelium because you always put the city right before the state.
It probably sounds crazy to anyone listening when me and Keith are talking about it later in the Bog. You might even think we liked it the way we’re interrupting each other to tell different things we each did on the test the way guys talk about making a great catch or getting some girl to kiss them. Then Keith says he guesses we don’t have to go to the library every day anymore and I say, “Yeah, thank God for that,” and we both get quiet.
.
In my journal later, I write about how it’s weird to think I’m going to miss studying at the library every day. I know what it is, though. Everything’s changed. A couple times a week, Astrid gives me a wave or says, “Happy Wednesday,” which is nice and makes me look good in front of other freshmen, but it’s not like she’s waiting at my locker after school or abandoning the Senior Circle to have lunch with me in the Bog.
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