“I gotta tell you, Polly-O, I love that you were going to break up with me because I said faggot.”
“Break up with you?”
“Of course. A friend breakup. Those happen just like other ones. And you were going to do it because I used the word faggot. That takes balls, man. Big balls.”
Alek blushed. “I have to do what I think is right.”
“Like cutting school today? Was that the right thing to do?”
“Not like that. I mean, when I have two options, and one of them is obviously the capital-R Right thing—the honest thing, the thing your gut tells you is right?”
Ethan nodded yes.
“Well, in those situations, I have to do that thing. It’s like something inside of me stops me from doing anything else. Trust me. I’ve tried. It’s not possible. I have to do the Right thing.”
“I get it, man. You’re gonna stick by your principles.” Ethan grinned at Alek. “I admire a man with principles. But still, I gotta ask you. Was cutting today the Right thing to do?”
Alek thought for a moment.
“Yeah.” He smiled. “I think it was.”
8
“Do you mind signing this?” Alek asked his father before anyone else came home, sliding over the math test he’d salvaged from the wastepaper basket under his desk. His father unglued his eyes from the computer screen where he’d been reformatting his résumé.
“Why do I need to sign a ninety-three?” he asked.
“To prove I showed it to you. Mr. Weedin is a total nazi about these things,” Alek said.
“That’s not funny, Alek. You shouldn’t go throwing around words like that so casually.” His dad absentmindedly signed the test. “Now, you think you can help me with this?” His dad gestured to the computer screen. “I can’t get the fields to line up.”
“You’re such a dinosaur,” Alek said, grabbing the keyboard and aligning the tabs. “I don’t know how old people like you get anything done.”
Alek’s father chuckled. “You know, I felt that way when I was your age and I had to help my parents with typewriters. And your children will feel that way, too, when the technology has evolved faster than you can keep up with it.”
After saving his dad’s document, Alek ran up to his room, making sure the yellow MetroCard Ethan had given him and the Metropolitan Museum Sticker were discreetly hidden in the drawer where he kept all of his sentimentally valuable objects, like the tennis ball from the final match with Seth and the silver Armenian cross he’d received from his grandmother when he was baptized.
He took out the printed excuse note he’d already typed up and placed it over his dad’s signature on the math test, just as Ethan had told him. When he held the documents up to the lamp, he could trace the signature from the test perfectly on the forged note. Then he stood in front of his bedroom mirror, practicing exactly what he’d say to Principal Saunder’s secretary the next day when he handed her the note. “I woke up with a fever yesterday and my dad thought it would be better if I stayed home. It broke last night, and he said I could take another day off just to make sure I was feeling okay, but I didn’t want to miss any more school.” He spent the entire night preparing his speech.
He even got to school fifteen minutes early, but all of his precautions proved unnecessary when Principal Saunder’s secretary accepted the note without even asking for an explanation. She made the appropriate mark in her computer, and, just like that, Alek had been excused for his cut day. He floated through English in the morning, barely able to concentrate on the lesson. Everything in South Windsor felt insignificant and two-dimensional now, like an outdated video game version of itself.
When Alek walked into the cafeteria for lunch, he went to his usual seat by himself. For a second, he thought about what it would be like if Ethan invited him to sit at the D.O. table, but he knew that would never happen. One by one, they strutted into the cafeteria, performing even mundane activities aggressively. Alek couldn’t imagine how to make the act of buying a soda from the machine menacing.
Finally, Ethan walked in. But his swagger didn’t have its usual bounce. His eyes were bloodshot, his floppy hair disheveled, and his clothes were so rumpled, it looked like he’d slept in them. The other Dropouts didn’t appear to notice or comment on Ethan’s mood. A guy with spiky bleached-blond hair delivered the punch line to a joke, and the guys erupted with laughter, pounding their fists on the table.
Alek continued watching Ethan for the entirety of lunch. A few minutes before the period ended, Ethan walked over to the ice cream machine, and Alek jumped at the opportunity to approach him alone.
“Hey, Ethan!”
“Wassup, Alek.”
“Not much.”
Ethan was staring at the ice cream machine. His body was turned away from Alek, slumped against the machine, as if deciding between an ice cream sandwich and a Popsicle were as important as choosing which college to attend.
“Well, I just wanted to tell you that I had a great time yesterday, and I really wanted to thank you for…”
Alek stopped speaking when he saw Ethan turn and look past him. Jack and another D.O., with a red knit cap pulled down to his eyes, stood behind Alek, looking like ravenous hyenas that had just spotted a fresh carcass, ripe for devouring. Alek prayed that they hadn’t overheard what he had said.
“I had a great time, too, Ethan,” the one with the red knit cap said to Ethan coyly, then started faux-kissing Jack, the meaty D.O. who’d shoved Alek in the parking lot. Jack cracked up in response. “Thanks for last night,” he managed through cackles. Ethan started laughing along with them. Alek could feel his face turn bright red, and he froze with embarrassment.
The two guys walked past Alek, giving him a shove on the way, like he wasn’t even there. “Eth, we’ll see you on the ramps after school.”
“Don’t think I’m gonna make it, Pedro. Catch you tomorrow.”
“No prob, dude. Later,” Pedro called back, throwing Ethan a peace sign goodbye. “And I really did have a great time yesterday,” he snickered. Pedro and Jack started cracking up again as they bounded out of the cafeteria. Ethan turned back to Alek.
“Alek, why don’t we chill later? Maybe—”
“Maybe what? We can hang out again when you’re not around your real friends?”
“What the hell are you talking about, dude?”
“Go to hell, Ethan.”
Alek ran back to his table, grabbed his despised green book bag, and bolted out of the cafeteria. He knew that he was supposed to go to Algebra class, but there was no way he would be in the same room as Ethan, let alone sit next to him, after what had just happened.
* * *
An hour later, cars whizzed by Alek on the highway shoulder as he faced the large red Dairy Queen sign. He hadn’t known this was where his feet would take him.
He snuck his way to the side of the building, hiding behind a large human-sized banana split cutout. He spied Becky serving a stick-thin middle-aged woman whose gray roots showed through her patchily dyed orange hair.
“Do you know how many carbs the Blizzard has?” the woman asked in a piercing, nasal voice.
“Ninety-two grams per serving,” Becky answered dutifully.
“And how many ounces in a serving?”
“Ten and a half.”
“And do you base that information on the Oreo Cookies Blizzard or the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard?”
Becky’s eyes narrowed. Through gritted teeth she managed, “Let me find that out for you, ma’am,” before ducking into the back.
Becky didn’t suffer fools gladly. After a waiter at the local diner got Becky’s order wrong for the third time, she embarked on a mission to get him fired. “I’m not doing it because of a personal vendetta,” Becky insisted. “I’m doing it for all the other innocent South Windsorians like myself who specifically requested the sweet potato disco fries with gravy on the side, not normal disco fries drenched in the stuff. What’s so hard to un
derstand about that?” Becky pursued her mission by calling the diner daily under the guises of different dissatisfied customers and complaining about the waiter until he was finally let go.
A few moments later, Becky returned to the window. “Ninety-two grams of carbs per ten and a half ounces is based on the Oreo flavor. The Cookie Dough has one hundred and three per serving.”
“Well, I’m glad I asked now, aren’t I? How many ounces in a medium Oreo Blizzard?”
“Thirteen, so that comes to one hundred and seventeen grams of carbs.”
“One hundred and seventeen! Why didn’t you just tell me that? If I got one of your Blizzards, I wouldn’t have any carbs left for the rest of the week.” Alek wondered if this woman and his mother had attended the same difficult customer course.
“Would you like to try some of our delicious low-carb frozen yogurt?”
“No, thank you.” The woman snapped her purse closed.
“What! You’ve blabbered for half an hour and you’re not even going to buy anything?”
“Excuse me, young lady, but you really shouldn’t speak to customers that way,” the woman huffed.
“Well, since you’re not buying anything, you’re not really a customer, are you?” Becky shot back.
Alek waited for the woman to retreat before he approached the window. “Can you tell me how many carbs there are in two-thirds of a traditional thirteen-ounce Dairy Queen Oreo Cookie Blizzard?”
Becky looked up sharply. Strands of her hair had fallen out of her red paper DQ hat, and a smudge of fudge was smeared across her right cheek.
“Alek, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to execute my God-given American right to achieve obesity.”
“You must find it hilarious to see me in my stupid uniform.”
“It’s certainly a nice perk.”
“I’ll show you a nice perk. Now get out of here before you get me in trouble.”
“Becky, please. I need to talk to you.”
“It’s that easy? You disappear for a week, then just show up here and say that you need to talk to me?” Becky hissed.
“You kicked me out! You’re the one who should’ve called me,” Alek protested.
“Look, when you miss someone enough, it doesn’t matter who should’ve called who. You just do it.”
“Well, this is what I’m doing, Becky. I’m making first contact. It’s your play now.”
A thick-limbed woman lumbered up to the service window from behind. “Becky, you know what the policy about friends visiting you at work is.” Alek didn’t need Becky to tell him that this was Laurie, her infamous manager. The red DQ hat barely fit on her gargantuan head, and her small, beady eyes stared at Becky accusingly.
“You know what, Laurie, I think I’m going to take my break now, okay?”
“But I need help filling up the Arctic Rush machine.”
“Laurie, I have three breaks saved up today,” Becky continued, the hatred in her voice simmering.
“You’ll take your breaks when we have nothing else to do,” Laurie insisted smugly.
Becky took the red DQ paper hat off her head. Then, slowly ripping it into little pieces, she addressed Laurie. “I can forgive you for many things, Laurie. The way you need to take the scrap of power you get being a manager at a Dairy Queen and use it to torture all us hapless innocent employees. Your obvious lack of social graces and the way you envy other people’s friends because you don’t have any. I can even forgive the slurping sound you make when you try to get the last drops of a milk shake out of the container. All those things I can forgive. But it will take me years—do you hear me?—years to be able to have ice cream again without thinking of you. This association will destroy one of the world’s greatest gifts.” She threw the red scraps that used to be her red DQ hat on the floor at Laurie’s feet. “That, I will never forgive.”
9
“So what do you want to talk about?” Becky demanded.
“Well, what if you know somebody who—”
“Enough of the hypotheticals, Alek. That’s what got us in trouble last time, remember?”
For the first time Alek could recall, Becky wasn’t complaining about having to skate alongside him slowly. She looped him lazily as they made their way home along the highway shoulder.
Then, abruptly, she stopped in front of Alek. Even on her blades, she barely reached his chin. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked him directly in the eye.
“Tell me what you really want to know.”
“There’s this guy.”
“Who?”
“Ethan Novick.”
“Ethan Novick of food-fight fame?” Becky asked.
Alek nodded yes. He told her everything, from Ethan’s saving him behind the tunnel to the surprise New York adventure yesterday.
“So you just wanted to brag about the new friend you’ve made?”
“No, Becky, there’s more.”
He worked his way up to what had happened earlier that day with Ethan in front of the ice cream machine.
“So I walked up to him and…”
“And what?” she asked urgently.
“You know what? Never mind.”
“You bore me stupid with backstory and you’re not going to give me the ending?”
Alek stopped walking. “I’m sorry you think my story is stupid.”
“I was just kidding.” Becky held out her hand and steadied herself against him. “Just tell me what happened. You know I want to hear. I’m your best friend.”
Becky had never used that term before. It didn’t surprise Alek necessarily, but invoking the actual title was a commitment. A friend was someone you talked to in school, joined a club with, or who went to your church. A stupid fight in a basement could end a normal friendship. But a best friend was someone you could trust with your life, someone who you knew would be there for you. Being best friends was a promise to work through things no matter what. And why couldn’t a best friend be a girl?
Alek and Becky reached the intersection of Etra and Orchard.
“I can go down the rest of the way by myself,” she said.
“But I haven’t finished telling you what happened with Ethan!”
“You dumb-ass!” Becky screamed. “‘I can go down the rest of the way by myself’ is what I always say when we reach this point in our walk. We go, like, seven days without talking and you’ve already forgotten.”
“Say it again.”
“What?”
“Say it again.”
“This is stupid.”
“Just do it,” Alek insisted. He didn’t know why, but he knew that if he could get Becky to play along, everything would be fine.
“I can go down the rest of the way by myself,” Becky repeated flatly.
“Why don’t I walk you to your door? You know how dangerous South Windsor can be on a weekday afternoon,” Alek recited.
“That would be lovely, Alek.” Becky said it almost as playfully as she usually did.
Alek filled her in on the rest on the way to her house. As humiliating as it was, he even included the heckling from the other Dropouts, because Alek decided that best friends could tell each other about their most embarrassing moments. They reached her front door as Alek finished the rest of the story.
“So what do you think?”
“I think you like him.”
“Of course I do. He’s so cool.”
“No, Alek, I mean I think you like him like him.”
Alek stopped. “You think I what?”
Becky opened her front door without responding.
“Becky, what do you mean?” Alek pursued her into her house.
“Yes, Becky, whatever do you mean?” Becky’s mother’s voice echoed from inside.
Alek walked through Becky’s front door and into her living room. Becky was popping off her Rollerblades, and she had already managed to open a Diet Dr Pepper. Her parents were sitting on the backless yellow Dutc
h sofa.
“Alek, we haven’t seen you…”
“… in forever. Welcome back.”
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Boyce.”
The Boyces were older than Alek’s parents. Still dressed in their white lab coats, they sat in the living room sipping tea under the Ivorian tablecloth hanging above them.
“Alek, help yourself to anything you’d like…”
“… in the kitchen. You know where everything is.”
Age wasn’t the only difference between the Khederians and the Boyces. Alek’s parents would never let a guest just help himself. They would tell the guest what options were available, ask him which he preferred, and either serve him themselves or have Alek do it. Alek remembered his mother making him practice when he was barely in elementary school.
“Alek, you forgot to ask me if I wanted ice in my water,” his mother gently reprimanded him during their first session. Both he and Nik had to learn the difference between a water glass (tall) and a juice glass (short) as soon as they were old enough to drink from one.
“You never serve fruit juice with ice, because it’s always chilled. And you never serve water in a cup or mug—water is always served in a glass. With water, you have to ask if they want bubbly or flat, room temperature or chilled, and with or without ice.”
The Khederians always kept one bottle of sparkling water in the refrigerator and another in the pantry just in case a guest happened to drop by, even after his father got laid off. But Becky’s home, like most of these American households, was much chiller than that.
“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Boyce,” Alek said.
Alek wanted to be alone with Becky so he could ask her what she meant about him liking Ethan, but he hadn’t seen the Boyces since they had returned from the Geneva conference, and it would’ve been rude to run down to the basement. So instead he helped himself to some cranberry juice, walked back into the living room, and sat down opposite them on an overstuffed chair, his feet dangling just above the floor. “How was your trip?”
“Just exhilarating, thank you for asking.”
“We got to see some…”
“… great friends at the conference…”
One Man Guy Page 8