10th Grade
Page 1
PRAISE FOR JOSEPH WEISBERG’S
10th Grade
“In a coming-of-age story ultimately shaped by sexual awakening, Mr. Weisberg fondly and hilariously brings every tiny detail to life.”
—The New York Times
“Gritty, realistic … The narrator’s voice is stunningly authentic.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“An inspired and inventive story.”
—The Oregonian
“Weisberg has successfully sidestepped the cynicism and picked open the assigned lockers of the 10th grade that mold us all.”
—The Seattle Times
“Weisberg has written a warm, funny, wise and charming book that is a journey back in time on a familiar path.”
—Tulsa World
“A difficult, painful, and painfully funny novel.”
—Booklist
“A fun romp through the eyes of a 10th grader … Weisberg’s work is refreshing … just plain fun to read.”
—The Tampa Tribune
“A pitch-perfect novel about a boy’s sophomore year.”
—Chicago magazine
“10th Grade offers its reader a knowing glimpse into the mind and life of a young man alertly immersed in the early high school years. This wonderfully humorous account will be a gift to students, parents, and teachers across the country.”
—ROBERT COLES, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
Children of Crisis
This is a work of fiction. The characters and events in it are inventions of the author and do not depict any real persons or events.
2003 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2002 by Joseph Weisberg
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This work was originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., in 2002.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
BMG Music Publishing, Inc.: Excerpts from “All Out of Love” by Clive Davis/Graham Russell/Lewis Martinee. Copyright © 1980 by Careers-BMG Music Publishing, Inc. (BMI), and Nottsongs Catalog (BMI). All rights o/b/o Nottsongs Catalog (BMI) administered by Careers-BMG Music Publishing, Inc. (BMI).
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Edward B. Marks Music Company c/o Carlin America, Inc.: Excerpt from “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” by James Steinman. Copyright © 1977 by Edward B. Marks Music Company.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC: Excerpt from “Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill and Barry Mann. Copyright © 1977 by Sony/ATV Songs LLC, Mann & Weil Songs Inc., Sony/ATV Tunes LLC and McCauley Music Ltd. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Warner Bros. Publications: Excerpt from “Another Brick in the Wall” by Roger Waters. Copyright © 1979 by Muziekuitgeverij Artemis B.V. (BUMA). All rights on behalf of Muziekuitgeverij Artemis B.V. (BUMA) administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI). All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc.,
Miami, FL 33014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weisberg, Joseph.
10th grade : a novel / Joseph Weisberg.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-198-1
1. Teenage boys—Fiction. 2. High school students—Fiction.
I. Title: Tenth grade. II. Title.
PS3623.E45 A615 2002
813′.6—dc21
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1: The End of Summer
Chapter 2: 1st Day of School
Chapter 3: I Meet Gillian
Chapter 4: The Big Game
Chapter 5: The Mall
Chapter 6: Halloween
Chapter 7: Gillians Basement
Chapter 8: The Banana Maloosa Fiasco
Chapter 9: Gillians Basement Part II
Chapter 10: Christmas Vacation in Great Britain
Chapter 11: Will I or Won’t I Follow the Herd?
Chapter 12: Douglas Hero For a Day
Chapter 13: Our Day in the City
Chapter 14: Our Day in the City Part II (Secret Addendum)
Chapter 15: I Screw Up But It Turns Out Ok (Chain of Events)
Chapter 16: Gillian Makes Her Move
Chapter 17: Chain of Events
Chapter 18: The Fan Gets Hit by Shit
Chapter 19: Baseball
Chapter 20: Kaths Grandmother Bites the Dust
Chapter 21: The Knicks Game
Chapter 22: The Convertible
Chapter 23: Prom
Dedication
About the Author
Come on Angel
My heart’s on fire
—Rod Stewart
DEDICATION
To my Mother and my Father
THIS IS NOT MY ACTUAL FAMILY
CHAPTER 1
THE END OF SUMMER
I’m starting right before the beginning. That way you’ll get to know some of the main characters like my parents and my 2 sisters even though they’re not really the main main characters. Anyway I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a camping trip in a National Park or anyplace like that so let me describe The Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming where it’s the end of summer. Believe me it gets very very dark there darker than in Hutch Falls or wherever you live because there aren’t any houses with lights and stuff and you’re surrounded by all the stars they’re talking about when they talk about there being billions of stars. And craters in the moon. Also the moon gets really low when you’re out there almost like it’s right over your head.
So picture this it’s a night like that but even darker it’s so dark we can see everything up there but not much down on the ground except our tents which were in our basement non-stop for about 2 years since the last time we used them and are glowing the color orange now because of the lanterns inside. So we can see them. And the tents are glowing and I swear it looks like we’re just floating out in the middle of space right in the middle of all the stars and planets and other stuff out there which in a sort of cosmic way I guess we are.
All the main characters in my family are here including my Dad my Mom and Claire and Beth (my 2 sisters). My Mom and Claire and Beth are inside 1 of the tents they’re whispering then laughing then sort of laugh-whispering you can see them moving from outside like shapes. My Dad’s with me by the campfire which by the way is burned out and he keeps getting up and walking around he’s wearing what he wears camping which is this blue mesh undershirt he thinks is the greatest undershirt ever yellow shorts black socks pulled up high and this is the worst a pair of old black dress shoes he used to wear to work.
“It’s alright” he says and he goes over to our car which is a station wagon which is parked a few feet away. The station wagon is yellow and it’s about 10 years old my Dad bought it 2 years before from my Uncle Henry who was selling it because no one in the world would want it because it was such an old yellow piece of crap except my Dad. He walks around the car looking at it like he’s checking it out like he did when he was thinking about buying it from Uncle Henry because if you ask me he had no idea how to look under the hood or check the e
ngine or anything like that then he comes back to the fire.
“It’s OK it’s natural. Women” he says.
He comes back over to me.
“Women it’s OK you have to understand them very emotional” he says.
A few minutes before all this Claire came out of the tent and whispered something to my Mom my Mom was sitting there singing this song she sings that I hate about a guy who plays the saxophone and he finally finds this great girlfriend but she goes somewhere and then they can’t find each other again so I’m like shut up. Then Claire comes out and whispers I just hear the word “blood” and “panties”. But I’m not an idiot unless the tent exploded and Claire got some kind of weird piece of tent stuck in her upper upper leg she’s having her 1st Period. Which is fine with me I took Sex Ed in 8th grade and I know what’s going on even though it was hard to think in Sex Ed you’d be trying to think but everyone was trying to be so mature all the time and not laugh and you’d have to look around to see who was going to laugh and pretty soon you didn’t even remember the question then a girl would say “VAGINA” and everybody would be like “Hmm do I laugh now?” and before you know it all Hell breaks loose and it is not a learning environment. But it’s pretty easy to deduce that Claires panties have her Period all over them.
Here’s what my Mom looks like: She’s medium height with brown hair that’s short sometimes and long sometimes. She isn’t big or small. She doesn’t wear glasses. I don’t know if she’s pretty or not.
Anyway my Mom and my older sister Beth stood up and the 3 of them went into the tent Mom comes out later and says “everythings fine” and so Dad goes off to the bathroom which is about a 1/2 mile away by the ranger station not to go to the bathroom but because it’s the only place with lights so he can read. My Dad loves to read I mean loves. You can hear him laughing from all that way over there because he’s really into some book by a guy from England that he thinks is the funniest thing in the world and he laughs like crazy whenever he’s reading it. He always tells us everything about what he’s reading and when he was telling us about it he said it started with a scene of a guy “krepitating” which I had no idea what that was and I guess nobody else did either because we all looked at him which was when he informed us it actually means fart but he didn’t say the word fart I think he said passing gas. Which is not usually what my Dad thinks is funny but I guess this guy was so smart he made it funny. My Dad by the way always wants me to read more and I think it’s 1 of the great disappointments of his life that his only son me doesn’t like to read every second but would rather do stuff including watch TV sometimes.
Anyway this incident is very symbolic of Claire becoming a woman and my summer and my whole family sometimes they just treat me like I’m some kind of moron. Even though I think they usually think I’m pretty smart. And the girls and Mom are always like “Oh you men” so I guess we do sort of gang up on them or something but I don’t know what we’re ganging up on them about.
Anyway later when I was already in bed Dad came in the tent. He got in his wooly underwear and lay down on top of his sleeping bag and put his hands behind his head and started breathing in very slowly through his nose and out through his mouth which is what he learned from a book called Light On Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar for when you want to relax. I pretend to be asleep.
School was starting in a few days. Once when I was a kid and my Mom was sick my Dad made my lunch and he made sardines or more like he wrapped them up and I took them to school and ate them. Then I thought about Caroline Zisko. You know those girls who wear all black 100% of the time? That’s Caroline black fish-net stockings through which you can see her legs but also you can’t at the same time black pants black skirts black shirts. But her face is totally white so it’s like all this black and then this white face coming out of it like a dead body. Kind of a good looking dead body though. She’s got this blond hair that’s really nice even though it looks like she never combs it or washes it her face is sort of pretty even though it’s got these little pock marks all over it. Caroline was nice and I talked to her 1 time in 9th Grade it was near the end of the year and I was standing at the top of the stairs by the freshman lockers about to go home I guess it was Friday Caroline was walking by and then she stops and looks at me.
“So what are you doing this weekend?” she asked.
“Um I’m gonna go see a movie” I said pretty much because I knew “nothing” was a bad answer “nothing” was like “I never do anything I never have done anything not once with anybody.”
“A movie. Cool” she said nodding her head up and down like she totally believed me.
And then she went down the stairs and right before she turned I saw her black T-shirt pulled very tight over her Breasts which were small but looked huge in that shirt.
I stood there and wondered if I should of said a specific movie like Raiders Of The Lost Ark. I wondered if there was any chance that she was going to invite me somewhere if I gave a different answer when she said “what are you doing this weekend?” or if maybe it wasn’t a question but it was more like she wanted for me to ask her to do something like “I’m just hanging out want to go see Star Wars?” Or maybe she meant that her and a bunch of her friends (who all wore tons of eye-shadow everywhere and had gross yellow cigarette stains on their teeth that were supposed to be white) were going to hang out in a basement and light candles and play creepy music and they wanted me to come over and sit on the couch and hang out and even though they were weird and freaky they were kind of hot too.
My Dad was snoring now with lots of little whistles in it you could see the moon through the tent I didn’t want to go to sleep because the summer even if it hadn’t been so great was over. I thought about Coach Kurlyeskus huge forehead and everyone totally thirsty because in Romania you can’t have any water until soccer practice is over and all of us about to puke from windsprints. I wondered if things would be different this year in 10th Grade I would make friends and kiss a girl and I would take a girls shirt off and all that stuff. I probably would in 10th Grade you’re more settled in the High School environment and everything.
The next morning my Dad stuck his head in the tent and he was mad I was still sleeping and he said “Gnug” which is like Hungarian for “enough” (my Dad’s not Hungarian I don’t know why he says this 1 word in Hungarian). Because I was late all I got was granola bars sloshed down with powdery powdered milk then for 4 days we drove exactly exactly the speed limit not 1 mile over with my Dad concentrating on the highway and my Mom Not Smoking In The Car because my Dad won’t let her smoke in the car so she put her arms in front of her then she put 1 leg over the other and put her nose and face between her finger and her thumb and then she put her legs up on the seat with her arms around them and her head on her knee trying to forget smoking. In the back Claire and Beth and me sat there I could feel all the Coke I had sloshing around in my stomach and we were too tired to do anything finally we pulled into the driveway and pretty much fell out of the car.
The next morning we went to the mall. When once in a million years my Dad goes to the mall with us we have meeting times and meeting places all of which is his specialty and also breaks for Orange Julius which he also believes in. I bought underpants and bags of socks because they are a better deal than buying separate socks pens small medium and large spiral notebooks 2-pocket folders for every subject plain paper lined paper graph paper and pencil sharpeners even though I never really use pencils. (I know there are supposed to be about 40 million commas in that sentence and everywhere else too but whenever I put them in they’re in the wrong place so screw it. Mr. Rasfenjohn says the most important thing is to express yourself anyway. He’s my Creative Comp I teacher. Most teachers every time you make a single mistake correct your whole paper so much you can’t even see your paper anymore under all the corrections but Mr. Rasfenjohn might circle 1 place and put “do you want to use a comma here” because he doesn’t want to interfere with your craft. Besides I’m no
t writing this for class anyway I’m just writing it. I’ll just give myself an A on it.)
CHAPTER 2
1ST DAY OF SCHOOL
Here’s what happened the 1st day of school. Even if you don’t talk to too many people 1 on 1 you hear things when you’re going up and down the halls and the 1st day of school I keep hearing people whispering stuff like “Japan” and “Tits” and “Blond” and “Blow.” Normally that would all be pretty normal except for the Japan part but there was something weird going on everybody was really excited about something. Here’s why:
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker. Renee Shopmaker.
Yes it was Renee Shopmaker. You’d know what I mean if you came out of 2nd Period Math II 1 day on the 1st day of school and you were walking down the hall and suddenly walking down the hall right past you was this incredible unbelievable girl with really long hair going way down her back in the back and very big Breasts and she was wearing believe it or not (you’re pretty sure) a kimono. A purple 1.
But that didn’t happen yet. 1st let me tell you something about Hutch Falls High everybody’s got an attitude people are just very in to who they are and what they’re like. The girls for instance are all running around the halls pulling their shirts down to show off their tans and they’re giggling and they’re just very pleased with who they are. Other girls like Beth of course are more moving around seeing every second who they can say “Welcome Back!!!!!” to and keeping track of how cool each person they talk to is. The jocks who in a sense I almost am 1 because I play soccer but I’m not really are standing around and they’re like “Yo” and they think they’re pretty cool and they just have all this attitude the real jocks usually play 2 sports like soccer and baseball or football and baseball or even tennis and I just play soccer but it’s really more a state of mind the Jock State Of Mind which I don’t have.