Losers

by Matthue Roth

  I leaped up from my stool. The spoon clattered on the edge of my cereal bowl indecisively, wavered for a moment, and finally plunged the wrong way down onto the unfinished surface of the kitchen counter. I felt nervous, but I was afraid to even feel that. It was probably nothing. A letter from our family in Zvrackova, a request for a parent-teacher on the subject of my increasingly lousy grades.

  My mother held it up to the light and started to read.

  Her face went through a series of emotions. Confusion, impassivity, meditative pleased-ness. “Is us!” she cried, finally, triumphantly. “Is ours!”

  “What’s ours?” I exclaimed, although the sensation in my chest was a curious buzz, as though my lungs and nerves had thrown themselves a preemptory victory party and were well on their way to getting drunk. I hesitated to think that I already knew the answer.

  “The factory!” she cried. “The letter is from Goldberg, says that company has found another factory to sell! Our company is going to buy—we don’t got to move!”

  She ran to my father, flung herself with arms wide, small trails of fat wobbling near her elbows, and squeezed his scant chest tight. He adjusted his glasses. From behind, a single solitary tear gleamed, and in the space of a second—before he waved at me with a still-hugging arm, calling me over to join in the family celebration—I thought it was a diamond, rolling down his cheek.

  The next morning in the special schoolwide assembly where a 9/11 survivor recounted his tale of horror and lectured us about how to be upstanding citizens, Devin Murray walked right up to the front row where I was sitting and planted a big, loud, and not totally embarrassing kiss on my cheek. Her lips lingered there for several seconds. It wasn’t at all like the hard, quick kiss that my mother gave me on the forehead every night before bed. Devin’s was soft, gentle, sensual, and gummy—almost like, in those few seconds and those few centimeters, her entire body had glided against that small square of cheek, stimulating me almost to the point of physical materialization. I shot down fast into the foldable wooden seat, hoping that none of the 690 freshmen in the rows behind me would notice my manifesting arousal. Luckily, they were too busy hooting me on to pay it any heed.

  I mean, I didn’t even know what my reward was for.

  It wasn’t until that night, sitting on the roof of the factory—our factory—that Vadim told me how a 150-gallon beer keg had spontaneously materialized in the second-floor corridor, directly in front of Devin’s locker, when school had opened that morning. And it had sat there, uninterrupted—although several teachers and Dr. Mayhew demanded to know how it had gotten there, what it was doing, but since it was empty, there was no point trying to suspend anyone—until the middle of second period, when Devin phoned the deposit place and had two men in brown delivery uniforms pick it up.

  “And that, my friend,” Vadim finished with a flourish, “is how cool you really are. You solve up the whole case, and you don’t even have to be there to do it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, surprised by the sudden weariness in my own voice. “But I don’t really feel like being cool anymore.”

  I said it, thinking that it was just a basic statement of fact, like not being hungry anymore at the end of dinner, or not feeling like playing baseball anymore, now that summer’s over. But it felt right. Ever since I moved to America, I had teachers and parents and guidance counselors telling me, You’ll find your place. At first, I thought that it was something you had to win, like first place. As if once I scored an A on five straight tests, then I’d get to hang out with Reg or Devin as a reward.

  Now that I had—not that I’d scored any As on tests, but now that I’d hung out with both of them—it didn’t feel like such a thrill. The whole idea of finding your place seemed to make more sense, at least in my head, but I still hadn’t settled on any one place yet. Hanging out with Crash and Bates seemed fun. It wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Hell, it wasn’t even what I wanted to do with the rest of my week. But it was cool to know that, whenever I wanted to hang out with them, they were there to be hung out with. I could pretty much go on whatever path I wanted, end up in whatever place I wanted to be in. Even Margie probably was hang-outable—and she wouldn’t be that hard to find.

  But, for now, here was where I wanted to be. In my own little world, and on top of it. We were well into September by now, and the sunsets were definitely getting earlier. Beneath Vadim and me, the Yards twinkled like the inverted sky of an alternate universe, dull yellow streetlights and fluorescent white factory lights glowing instead of stars. The minty green glow of Vadim’s laptop illuminated our faces as we gazed out into the universe below us.

  “Dude,” Vadim said, “I bet I could hack into your family’s factory software and get all the machines to form little steel Js if you wanted.”

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “Cool idea, but we’d have to reprogram everything before work tomorrow.”

  “‘We’? Does this mean you’re rejoining the corporate workforce?”

  I offered up a wry grin. “Maybe,” I admitted. “For now, anyway. I figure, if I want my life to continue in the manner to which I have become accustomed, I’d better start making some money to keep it that way.”

  Vadim mulled that one over. “Good idea,” he announced, finally. “Hey, you think I could get hired by the CIA? As a computer person or something?”

  I shrugged. “If you want it hard enough, you could do anything you want.”

  “Cool,” Vadim agreed absently. He turned back to his computer, hit a few keys, then passed through screens silently. After a few minutes, the reflection of the screen on his face lit up, changing from pale green to a vivid, liquid red, and so did his eyes. “Hey,” he said, the lowercase o of his mouth widening. “Nessa Greyscole’s having a party tonight over at a warehouse on Delaware Ave. You want to crash it with me?”

  By the time it occurred to me to answer, the streets had turned a deep, dark, cat’s-eye shade of gray, and the activity was dim, limited to a few old men playing chess under the streetlight, the wino down the street tapping out an old jazz song on his empty malt liquor bottle.

  “No, thanks. I might catch up later,” I told him, knowing full well that I didn’t intend to catch up at all. “But you should go.”

  “Really? You think so?”

  I had a momentary thought, the briefest flutter of an idea—that I should tell him what I really thought of it—but the notion passed, and it was too late. He was already throwing one foot over the wall, scampering all the way down to the street.

  Curiously, though, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t offended at all, as a matter of fact.

  I lay down, threw my arms over the steel pipe, and stared up at the stars.

  THANK YOUSE

  So this story started at Central High in Philly, the geek school, the school that kind of saved my life. Thanks to my Northeast crew, for getting me out of there, and to the downtown and Mt. Airy kids, for giving me somewhere to land.

  This book, though, started off right after I got engaged, and Itta had to get back to Australia, and we got to the airport two hours early because I am paranoid. She went to sleep on the bench and I started writing. So this book is kind of hers—for putting up with my geekiness and not letting it outshine her own, and for sharing our nuptials with my iBook.

  Yalta, my bouncing ball of light. My next of kin. For sitting tight for nine months and listening to me read my book out loud and sing Ani Difranco songs to you.

  Mom, Mum, Tuddy, and Dad. Grandmom. Alyssa. Cuz. Brothers, sisters, and all the outlaw in-laws from Oz.

  Dr. Pavel, Ms. Schroeder, Mr. Zeff, and all the MG teachers who kept me on the right side of trouble. Zack and Liz. Berwin, the most eligible bachelor in Melbourne. DJ Odin Smith (www.myspace.com/odinsmithlabs). Fred Chao & Johnny Thro (half Asian, all hero). Mat (www.wanderjew.com). Prowler (www.myspace.com/prowler1). CJ and my band, Chibi Vision (www.myspace.com/chibivision).

  Grandpop, and the War of 1066.

&nb
sp; Cristin, Kim, Adams & the O’Donnell family, Michelle, Eric, Shmop. Ludacris, Tori, and The Cure.

  The team at HQ. Erin, Ranya, Jody, and the notorious S.M.E. The original Joshua Gee. And David: You are my Mr. Patterson, and you can rescue me from evil thugs any day of the week. And you do.

  Luke, Richard Nash & Anne Horowitz at Soft Skull. Big tovaritschsky love to Jake, Ellen, Kas, Uncle Chaim, and all the hidden Russian tzaddikim out there.

  This book is for Mike, who was right with me on every step of the journey, from getting beat up together in the Northeast to sneaking into Central (sorry, Dr. Pavel). You taught me how to dress, how to dance, and you let me let my nerd light shine. No fair, ducking out before our big finale.

  GO THERE.

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  A Little Friendly Advice

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  Getting the Girl

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  You Are Here, This Is Now

  EDITED BY DAVID LEVITHAN

  Where We Are, What We See

  EDITED BY DAVID LEVITHAN

  We Are Quiet, We Are Loud

  EDITED BY DAVID LEVITHAN

  This Is PUSH

  EDITED BY DAVID LEVITHAN

  Copyright

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

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  Copyright © 2008 by Matthue Roth

  All rights reserved. Published by PUSH, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc., 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  E-ISBN 978-0-545-23182-4

  First printing, October 2008