10th Grade

by Joe Weisberg

  Let me tell you right now as we drive through Hutch Falls that it’s a wonderful place to raise a family. It has many of the advantages of the city like restaurants and culture but also has low crime and other problems like dirt. Some kids are always like “This sucks!” about everything but they’d hate it anywhere and there is also a variety of people. I guess wherever you live you’re like This Is My Universe but Hutch Falls is a place I’ll always remember. In particular also places like Nierbeck Woods and the movie theater are cool and you don’t have that anywhere else.

  There’s a yard behind our house and you can see some of the other yards on the block and in the summer people are out there a lot bar-b-qing and playing with their dogs and playing Frisbee. But now it was definitely Fall and cold so no one was out and I was sitting there on the tree swing my Dad put up when I was a kid and it was about the most macho Dad-type thing he ever did and I still remember how happy he was when he took me out there and showed it to me I think it was like he’d built our whole house by himself to him. You could still smell peoples dinner from other houses on our street especially potatoes and carrots and stuff like that if you looked at some of the windows they were blue from the TV going. The pain in my balls was getting better but it still hurt if I moved. I kept thinking about Coach Kurlyesku telling me to go slow I don’t know why but something about Coach Kurlyesku makes me think he’s 1 of the teachers who I like better than the other teachers which is weird because I swear to God the guy doesn’t even talk much. The 1st day of soccer practice last year and that’s his 1st year at Hutch Falls he showed us this movie of a World Cup soccer game from 1970. “You must see great Pele” he keeps saying like we didn’t hear him the 1st 10,000 times he said it. Anyway Pele scores the winning goal with about 2 seconds left in the game he dribbles around all the fullbacks from the other team and then makes a perfect shot right into the corner of the net. So later we have this big debate in the locker room and we decide Coach Kurlyesku is the last fullback Pele went around he was younger and he had very long hair and he looked like a hippie but we were pretty sure it was him. We figured he was really embarrassed about Pele going around him so he didn’t want us to know. So nobody said anything.

  Sitting there swinging away on the tire swing I started to wonder if Pele said anything to Coach Kurlyesku after that game. Like “Coach Kurlyesku I am sorry for dribbling around you.” I wondered if Renee saw any of the good plays I made. Things happened pretty fast so I understood if maybe she didn’t. Maybe she’d say something about it the next day in Spanish like “You were so great.” Maybe I’d just sit down with her and her friends at lunch I pictured what they’d do. They’d be about as surprised as if a huge elephant walked into the Lunchroom and sat down.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE MALL

  My Dad calls The Mall a big vacuum cleaner for money. When you tell him you’re going he just looks at you and you wait a second and then sure enough he says “it’s just a big vacuum cleaner for money” like he never said it before or sometimes he just says “don’t get vacuumed.”

  I’m not a major mall person anyway it’s just all the same people from school going there and doing nothing and I’m not into that but I usually go on Saturday or Sunday or if there’s nothing else to do both.

  I went on Saturday after the Holy Brothers game. My Dad of course stayed home (to read) and as soon as we got there my Mom and Beth went to look at bedspreads or something for bedrooms and I started walking around alone with Claire. Claire is very cool she is 5 Foot 2 and has black hair and sad eyes. We went up to see what was going on at McDonalds (1 great mystery is why McDonalds isn’t in the Food Court with all the rest of the restaurants). Then we went to The Limited Claire wanted to find a blue dress for this Halloween Dance at her Middle School she was going to I was psyched to go because there are always a million girls there they talk about The Limited all the time too at school like “It’s from The Limited” and “Oh I got this at The Limited” or “They’ve got the cutest fill in any type of girls clothes you want here at The Limited.” Inside Another 1 Bites The Dust is playing which goes:

  Another 1 Bites The Dust

  Another 1 Bites The Dust

  Another 1 Bites The Dust Hey Hey

  Another 1 Bites The Dust

  and the whole place feels like Europe or something because of the fluorescent lights like at school but darker. Sales ladies in tight sweaters are everywhere and a lot of girls but from schools all over because I don’t recognize most of them. Let me describe my clothes. I should of worn my soccer jacket but for whatever reason I just wore a green Alligator shirt there are mirrors everywhere so you see yourself every 10 seconds and my hair’s very curly so it always looks messy. My Aunt Ruth said once it was like I had a birds nest on my head but I don’t think about my hair much.

  “Jeremy” Claire says.

  She’s holding this blue dress up to herself. Claire’s very small partly because she’s young partly because she’s just small and she’s got the curly black hair like me but it looks good on a girl and she’s got a very dark face so sometimes total strangers ask her if she’s from Greece. She could probably be the Lenea or Cindy of her class if she wanted to but she’s too good for that that’s versus Beth who would give her life to be the Lenea or Cindy of her class but could never even come close. But she’s always trying and it’s pathetic in the way she’s always hanging around certain girls and hoping to be like them. Claire holds the blue dress up and I think it looks good but I don’t say anything because I’m a guy and what do guys know about it. Except she says “do you like it?” so then I say “definitely” and then she puts it back anyway proving what I said.

  Claire’s looking around and I’m looking around and believe me there isn’t much for a guy to look around at in The Limited except the hot girls from all over who don’t know me at all. Then I look up and Claire’s gone and there’s this girl in my aisle looking at sweaters for a second I think she’s about 23 because she’s got this very straight red-brown hair that’s feathered and this face and she just seems old but then I realize I’m crazy and she’s my age too. She’s checking out sweaters and I suddenly wonder what I’ll say if she asks me what the hell I’m doing there and I suddenly wish again I was wearing my special occasion corduroys which are blue and I got Freshman Year and I keep in my bottom drawer and never wear to just The Mall and my soccer jacket.

  I’m running out of girls sweaters to look at like I’m looking for my girlfriend or something and I keep looking at the girl and her hair and she’s wearing Calvin Klein jeans just like Amanda Posher wore every single day in 8th Grade and her butt is really round in them just like Amandas was and her Breasts are really pointy in this very orange sweater she’s wearing and I see her start to look over at me and I look back at the sweaters fast then I sort of freeze and she starts to go behind me and she’s tall not as much as me but more than most girls and the aisles are very thin because there are sweaters everywhere and I just feel some part of her kind of touch me a little on my back as she goes by. Her Breasts I think. Or maybe her arm or shoulder or something not on purpose and then she goes off to another part of the store.

  “Do you like her?”

  Claire’s next to me all of a sudden.

  “What?”

  “Do you like her?”

  “She’s OK” I say.

  “You should go talk to her.”

  “You have to play it cool” I say.

  Claire gives me this look she gives me sometimes that’s like “You’re my brother but you’re a total moron”.

  Claire doesn’t find a dress she wants and we head out of The Limited. We go to the big center part of the 2nd floor at the end over the Food Court. There’s a big long hole down the middle of the 2nd and 3rd floors here so you can look down to the 1st floor I’m always picturing someone falling over the side and then splatting down on the floor downstairs about an inch from the big fountain there that could of saved them if they’d landed
in it. I wonder if that happened if I could jump over before they kept falling and keep 1 hand on the railing and grab them with the other hand so they’d be hanging there and pull them back up and over and then myself. You’d have to time it perfectly. Anyway there are benches and big plants all over we sit down and Claire doesn’t say anything and then she says “I heard Mom and Dad talking last night.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “About college.”

  “Fuck college.” I don’t say anything then I say “I’m not even going.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Nope.”

  “Does Dad know?”

  “No.”

  “He’ll flip.”

  We sat there for a second then Claire says “How come you’re not going?”

  “It’s just what everyone does for no reason except everyone’s doing it” I said.

  Right around then I look around and I see Gillian and Carolines friend Douglas going by. He sees me and he stops. He’s wearing his glasses.

  “Hello” he says.

  “Hey” I say.

  He looks at Claire then he says to me “We’re meeting at the Food Court in a couple minutes.”

  I nod and I say “cool.” He goes down the escalator and Claire stands up and says “Go be with your friends.”

  “Do you think?” I say.

  “He was definitely inviting you.”

  Claire goes off to look for Mom and Beth and I go into B. Dalton because he said they weren’t meeting for a couple minutes I stood by the magazines. The ones for women always have models on them and they’re fake smiling but you can see a lot of cleavage. They have tons of make-up on too which I don’t like. My Dad loves bookstores and should love B. Dalton because it’s got so many books except it’s in the mall so even though if he has to go to the mall with us for something he’ll spend all his time in B. Dalton he won’t go to the mall just to go there he’d rather go to a bookstore somewhere else including especially a used 1 where everything’s cheaper.

  Then I go downstairs. I can’t even stand 1/2 the stuff in the Food Court like the fruit drinks with 50 kinds of fruit in them and Steak ’N Brew and really bad wet cheese and sausage pizzas but anyway there are about a 100 tables in the middle of the Food Court and food all along both sides. I’m looking for them and it’s totally packed and I don’t see them but then I see them pretty far back by King Burger which I guess is where they would sit because it’s the grosser part of the Food Court in the back with King Burger and Orange Julius and all the stuff that’s been there since The Mall opened. Versus the salad place “Salad Patch” and the Frogurt place “Frogurt” up in front where you’re more likely to see Lenea Vovich throwing her hair around and with a straw in her mouth drinking a fruit drink like she thinks she’s on the deck of a big cruise ship or something like The Queen Elizabeth.

  So they’re sitting back there and I start to walk towards them but suddenly I’m not sure if Gillian and Caroline know Douglas invited me and if they’re psyched or if they were like “Why’d you invite him???” and there’s another kind of very plump girl sitting there with them too and I’m getting ready to cut out and go to King Burger like that’s where I was going anyway when Gillian looks at me and says “Hi.”

  So I keep going and I walk up to them and stop.

  “Hey” I say.

  The other girl who’s the girl Kath they were talking about at lunch the other day says “I’m Kath.”

  She crunches her face up like she feels bad about something like if she just hit you in the face with a baseball bat or something.

  I say “Hey. I’m Jeremy.”

  “Douglas get a chair” Gillian orders him and Douglas pulls a chair over from another table and before I know it I’m sitting down between Gillian and Kath with Caroline and Douglas. Caroline of course is in all black and Gillian is wearing blue jeans and she looks different than at school even the way she’s sitting is like she’s a little more something but she has the same red lipstick on her big lips.

  “How are your balls?”

  Kath said that and then she giggled and put her hands up in front of her face but not that same sorry face a more “oops” 1 and said “I’m sorry I’m sorry. Sorry.”

  I say “they don’t hurt anymore.”

  Kath says “I heard about it you got clobbered. Anyway sorry.”

  “Is that your sister?” Douglas says.

  “Yeah” I say.

  “You have a sister?” Gillian says.

  “Yeah.”

  “How old is she?”

  “12” I say.

  “That’s so cute” Gillian says.

  “Oh right you don’t have 1” Caroline says and she reaches into her purse and takes out a pack of Marlboro Lights cigarettes. I look around for The Mall security guards to come bust us and she lights 1 blows out the smoke and she crosses her legs and says “They’re not so cute. They make little jokes about you smoking in front of your Mom they’re always around in your face.”

  She took another puff a really long 1.

  Gillian said “Like your Mom doesn’t know you smoke. Besides she’s a smokestack what’s she going to say? She’ll take a big long drag on her cigarette” and now Gillian imitates taking a big long drag on a cigarette “and she’ll go “No Smoking”” she said this in a really deep voice then blew out the pretend smoke. Everybody starts laughing and I laugh too. “Can I have 1” Gillian said and Caroline pushes the cigarettes and the matches over to her and Gillian takes 1 out of the pack and lights it up. She looked different smoking than Caroline Caroline looks like a grown-up but sort of an old 1 like she was 30 or something and has been smoking since she was 1 Gillian sat up super straight and smoked more like “I’m smoking now”.

  “I don’t smoke either” said Kath and she put her hand out and put it down on my arm I wasn’t sure what to do but then she moved it.

  “Oh my God so my Mom listen to what she did. She had a date last night with this lawyer guy so she buys this whole new outfit this really cute skirt and a silk Gianni [I’m not sure that’s the right name] blouse and she’s already getting ready when I get home at like 2:30 and she’s running around yelling and smoking like non-stop and then she’s finally ready at 6:00.

  And she blows him off” said Caroline. She took a puff on her cigarette and looked upwards. “She calls him and cancels she says she’s got a virus then of course she starts yelling at me I’m just like Mom.”

  “Your Mother is fucking insane” says Douglas.

  “Hello you’re telling me” Caroline says.

  “My Mom has no identity as a woman” Gillian says.

  She looks at me and I kind of nod.

  “She used to be my Dads slave she did whatever he wanted cooking cleaning. Walking Lefty.”

  “Lefty?” I say.

  “My dog.”

  “He used to be named Leif” Kath says.

  “Oh shut up” Gillian says.

  “After Leif Garrett” Kath says.

  Gillian put her hand in front of her face.

  “It’s so awful. I was young I didn’t know” she says.

  “Leif” Kath says.

  “So why can’t anyone let me forget it?”

  “Pretty much because we’re talking about Leif Garrett” Caroline says flicking an ash right on the floor.

  “You named your dog after Leif Garrett” Kath says.

  “Well he’s named Lefty now” Gillian says.

  Caroline and Kath and even Douglas are laughing but I didn’t know if Gillian thought it was funny or not.

  “What kind of dog is he?” I asked her.

  “He’s a beagle” Gillian said.

  “A beagle named Leif Garrett” Kath said and they all started laughing really hard.

  I say “My sister’s allergic to dogs so we can’t have 1 but when she leaves next year maybe we can get 1. Then I could take it to college with me or something.”

  “Where’s she going?” said Gillian. />
  “College.”

  “I thought she’s 12.”

  “That’s my other sister this is the other 1. Beth.”

  “Oh. I was like who’s this 12 year old girl that’s going to college?”

  “What’s her name?” said Douglas.

  “Beth Reskin.”

  “She goes to Hutch Falls?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s a senior?” “Yeah.”

  Gillian said “Does she have black hair? And she wears Preppy sweaters?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Who does she hang out with?” Caroline asked.

  “This girl Kathy. Not you” I said looking at Kath. Everyone laughed and I laughed too seeing where as these jokes just come out of me sometimes.

  “Is anybody hungry?” said Caroline.

  “I’m gonna get a Taco Salad” said Kath.

  “Does anybody want a Chicken King?” said Gillian.

  “Can I just have like the tomatoes from your Taco Salad?” Caroline asked Kath.

  “I’m really tired of all the shit at The Mall” Douglas said.

  “Are you getting anything?” Gillian asked me.

  “I guess I’ll get a Orange Julius.”

  They all looked at me.

  “You eat disgusting food” said Gillian.

  When everybody got up I thought about just blowing off the Orange Julius but then I got it. After everybody came back with all their food we just sat around talking about stuff. Then I saw Kaths watch and it was 10 minutes before 4:00 and I was meeting my Mom and Claire and Beth at 4:00 and in some sort of weird tribute I guess to my Dad we were meeting at Orange Julius. Especially after before with them knowing about my Mom making me lunch every day and all that I didn’t want my whole family suddenly showing up like 1 of those really close families so I’m freaking out and Caroline starts digging around like crazy in her purse and then she says “I’m out.” Everyone looked kind of worried. Gillian said “Let’s just go” and everyone stood up and I stood up too. Gillian gave me this little wave and Caroline seemed too messed up because of not having cigarettes to say goodbye and Kath smiled and said “it was nice to meet you Jeremy I’m sure I’ll see you again.” And they all walked off into the mall and I stayed a little behind but Douglas was still there as we went by The Athletes Foot he said “those girls have to stop smoking. The problem is basic science smoke get lung cancer get lung cancer die.” He shook his head and then without saying anything he went to the Exit. This left me with 5 minutes after all to walk around and then come back because thank God unlike me and my Dad the girls in my family never come anywhere early. Mr. Rasfenjohn said to “Spice things up” by saying exactly what I’m thinking about and using my imagination so here’s what I was thinking about. (Mr. Rasfenjohn by the way isn’t the most popular teacher because he’s from Iran but I think he’s cool and knows a lot about writing and the world and Iran and just how to be smart and philosophical in life.) Anyway I was thinking about that girl in The Limited I was thinking about what if she was coming towards me and just before we passed each other a bunch of guys from some other school came up and pushed her and said “Hey Bitch”. Then 1 of them grabbed her Breasts. And then I went up and punched the guy who grabbed them in the face and he went flying and then I just looked at the rest of them and said “Not today guys.” And they all looked at me and they couldn’t decide what to do and then they picked their friend up from the ground and left. And me and her walked to the parking lot because I had to get her to her car safely and she said “thanks” and looked out the back window of her car as her mom drove her away at me. I don’t always think about these things but sometimes I do. Then I thought about if instead we were still in The Limited and some psycho with a gun came in and said “Everyone Dies!” and started shooting the place up and she’d already left the aisle with the sweaters and gone to the back of the store and I got down on the ground and crawled through the aisles back to her and Claire wasn’t there anymore so I didn’t have to worry about her and just as I got to the back the psycho did too and just as he pointed his gun at her and was about to shoot I jumped up and grabbed the gun and we were both trying to get it and shots were going off into the ceiling and finally I got it and I didn’t really mean to but we were still fighting and I shot him right in the middle of his forehead and blew his head off. And then I went up to her and she put her arms around me and she was crying so hard she couldn’t say anything.