by Joe Weisberg
CHAPTER 6
HALLOWEEN
Now there’s a big banner hanging from the ceiling in the Lunchroom with big smiling pumpkins all over it “Halloween Dance - Get Spooky”. I’m not saying everyone’s thinking about Halloween in fact people pretty much don’t think about it at all because who really cares about Halloween but you know it’s coming with the pumpkins.
Things are going OK with Renee I see her Monday Wednesday and Friday in Spanish and she definitely knows my name and sort of who I am—the guy in Spanish. 1 day we’re sitting there and Mr. Eller announces “Dialogue Drill with the verb IR1.” I suck at the verb IR because it doesn’t sound like itself when you use it it’s like “voy” and “vaya” and 2nd of all it doesn’t even sound like a word. “IR.” Versus say
“Comer”2 which is Spanish for to eat but at least sounds like a word so anyway he says “Dialogue Drill with the verb IR” and me and Renee get partnered up and I go over and sit with her.
“Hi Jeremy” she says. “Hey Renee” I say.
So then Mr. Eller announces “begin drill” and Renee usually goes 1st so I just wait she looks at the ceiling for a second then she says “Yo voy a la escuela.”3 I nod and I say “Si”4 but like a question “Si?”5 so that then she says “Si” because that makes it a dialogue. So she says “Si” and then it’s my turn and before I forget how she conjugated the verb “IR” I say “Yo voy la casa”6 (casa is pretty much my favorite word in Spanish because 1st of all it’s easy to remember and 2nd of all unlike “IR” which when you use it doesn’t sound like “IR” anymore casa always sounds like casa and 3rd of all because there’s a restaurant “Mi Casa” which I’ve gone by about 10 million times). Anyway I say “Yo voy la casa” and Renee says “Si?” and I say “Si” but lately Mr. Eller expects us to say more even after we’ve had a dialogue and Renee looks at me and she says “Tu vas Halloween Dance?”7
I’m not sure for a second what she said but I think she’s asking me if I’m going to the Halloween Dance and it turns out I’m right. So I say “Si” except then I realize I’m probably not going I just say Si because you pretty much say Si no matter what anybody asks you and what if she’s saying “Do you have a date for the Halloween Dance?” which I don’t want to say no because then I seem like a loser but don’t want to say “yes” because what if even though it’s about the last thing that would ever happen even now that we’re sort of Spanish friends she wants me to go with her so I say “I mean no”. No is no in Spanish and English and Mr. Eller just came over and started to listen to us so I want to explain my “No” was the Spanish No and not the English no (even if the rest of my dialogue sentence was in English) and I say to Renee “I mean Si. No. Si.” Like I’m insane. Mr. Eller is right over us and it turns out he heard the whole thing and he looks at Renee and says “Tu vas A la Halloween Dance.”8 Then he gets this mad look on his face with his eyes and everything and he says “I mean Tu vas a la Halloween Baila.” And then Renee looks at me and repeats it (because he wasn’t asking her he was telling her the right way to say it) and she says “Tu vas a la Halloween Baila” and I say “Si” and she says “Si?” and I say “Si”.
Mr. Eller goes away to bother some other people and we sit there for a second and then I look at Renee sort of down in the middle but I’m not looking at her Tits and I say “Tu vas Halloween Dance?” she shrugs her shoulders and looks down at her notebook. I almost feel a little bit like I just asked her to go to the dance but I know there’s more I’d have to say now like “Do you want to go?” but for 1 split millionth of a billionth of a millisecond I have the feeling like I might actually almost say it. Then the millisecond’s over I look over at Juan Ramirez on his poster Mr. Eller says “Termine Dialogue”9 which means the dialogue is over.
The next couple days I’m walking around the halls and whenever I see Renee she looks sad she’s looking down a lot and her face is just sort of stuck in the down position. I’m wondering about her and is it possible she doesn’t have a date for the dance and that’s what’s wrong and it makes me kind of sad for her. I think about her a lot and how she is and does she like Hutch Falls or does she wish she was still in Japan and is she happy and sometimes I think I’m thinking about her more than I think about anything else. Because what else is there to think about all the time? I know Renee is nice to me in Spanish because she’s that kind of a person or maybe she just thinks I’m nice and she likes me but sometimes when a person is a certain way you just know it means something like they could make you really happy or maybe vice versa but what isn’t meant to be also isn’t meant to be except in the alternate dimension where we don’t live where everything’s the opposite. Don’t get the wrong idea I’m not going to kill myself for her like Romeo who I probably sound like but maybe I would if I had to. Like if she needed me to. But I know it’s stupid. Anyway John McKnight who is basically obviously the guy who’s going to take her to the dance hasn’t said anything in the locker room or at soccer practice or anything I heard to Randy and I don’t know who else would ask her but still people don’t always mean what they say or they don’t mean the way they look. So who knows?
Anyway something happened. The Halloween Dance was Saturday and Wednesday I saw Gillian in the hallway by herself by the library. Nobody else was around we smile and wave whenever we pass each other ever since the day we had lunch and we do. I was wondering by the way if they were going to all eat with me again but they weren’t in the Lunchroom that much I think they were always out smoking on the balcony and bringing their lunch and eating it there. It was either that or they snuck off campus to eat which I wouldn’t be too surprised if they did or they didn’t eat at all.
Anyway Gillian 1/2 stopped like when you’re not sure if you’re going to stop or not and said “Hi Jeremy.”
“Hey” I said.
“How are you?”
“Good. What about you?”
“OK you know.”
She sort of bounced around a little.
“We’re going to the city this weekend” she said.
“Oh” I said.
“Saturday for The Halloween Parade.”
“You’re not going to the dance?” I said.
“No we’re going into the city.”
“Oh” I said.
“We’ll probably go in the afternoon and then come back on the last train.”
“Uh-huh” I said.
“If you’re going all the way there you might as well stay late.”
I nodded.
“So I’ll call you” she said.
“OK” I said.
“When we know when.”
“OK.”
“I don’t think I have your phone number.”
I told her and she pulled the top off her pen with her mouth and wrote my number down sideways in huge letters on a whole piece of paper in her notebook.
The next few nights I was downstairs a lot because I wanted to be there when she called so I could get to the phone fast hopefully 1st but that was pretty much impossible with Beth and my Mom alive on this planet. But at least in time to keep them from getting it and asking who it is and especially Beth from the top of her lungs shouting “Jeeeeremyyyy” I just wanted to go to the phone fast like it was no big deal and just say hi.
She didn’t call that night and she didn’t call Thursday night I was going downstairs a lot and my Mom was starting to look at me like I was crazy she was sitting in the living room reading womens living room digest or something and wearing her blue jeans which my Dad never wore and when I went through 1 time she said “What ARE you doing?”
“Nothing” I said.
“You’ve been in and out of that KITCHEN 10 times in the last hour.”
“I’m getting a dri”
“Are you sick?”
My Mom interrupts a lot.
“No.”
“Do you feel alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“Nothing’s wrong?” “Mom!”
&n
bsp; “But you’re going up and down the stairs so much.”
Friday night we were eating dinner. Here’s what dinner’s like at my house. We eat in the dining room which is next to the living room all sitting at a rectangle shaped table in the middle of the room. We have matching placemats but every night the placemats are different because that’s 1 of my Moms things I don’t mean they’re different every night because you get back to the same placemat you had about a month ago but they’re different every night. Here are some of the things on them: Plants, fish, Big Ben from London with the rest of London behind it, famous paintings by famous painters like Vincent Van Gogh, and Rembrandt, Monkeys, the Bronx Zoo with a lot of animals, just their heads, flowers, The Age Of Radio with a picture of an old radio in the middle and then heads of old radio people around it in a circle like Jack Benny, NY Mets which Mom breaks out on my birthday even though I haven’t liked baseball since I was about 10, Lizards Of The Nile, Lizards Of The SouthWest (I guess they had a Lizard sale), The Ten Commandments which sometimes in 1 of his funny moods my Dad points to the 1 about honoring your father and your mother and makes a face, Chinese Zodiac, Great Battles of World War II, Wine Growing Regions Of Northern France, Mickey Mouse and about a 100 others that she got on family trips and from kitchen stores. Anyway we’re all sitting at our placemats and my Mom is serving dinner and you have to start eating because everything is according to her going to be totally ruined if it cools off even a little bit so we’re about 1/2 way done by the time Mom finally gives a big very dramatic sigh and wipes her hands on a napkin and then sits down.
Then almost every night unless my Dad’s totally exhausted we go around and tell about our day. Beth goes 1st. There used to be like a rule that you just talked about classes and what you studied that day or something you read or what my Dad called something “worthy of discussion” but about a year ago Beth had this kind of revolution where she started telling about her friends and stuff going on even with other kids that had nothing to do with her at all which my Dad didn’t like but Mom put her foot down and Beth and Mom won. Not that my Dad is against friends. Just he likes stuff that’s more serious for dinner table discussion. So from then on you could talk about anything you wanted and it even could be a little bit of a joke so I could say “I ate a pickle” or something and Dad didn’t get so mad anymore. And Claire sometimes won’t go.
OK so there we are and the phone rings. Beth when the phone rings I swear could get there before Bruce Jenner. It’s not like she gets so many calls or anything but she likes to answer it even if it’s for Mom or anybody else because then she knows what’s going on and who’s calling who and everything about everything about the phone.
But the thing is we’re having Liver that night. You might think Liver is really gross but not my Moms. At soccer sometimes the guys give each other shit and a lot of times it’s about mothers like “Your Mother this and Your Mother that.” 1 time Chris Halal said something to me that sort of implied my Mom has sex with every person on the soccer team and I said “Your Mother can’t even cook”. Which I guess was kind of lame. But he didn’t say anything else.
So anyway my Mom really can cook especially when she doesn’t make fish I don’t care what you say about her and probably her best thing of all is her Liver which isn’t gross at all it’s better I swear than the best steak and it’s got this pepper sauce on it that’s really great and onions which normally I don’t like or not like all over the top and they just rock and when we have Liver my Dads mouth is practically watering and even Claire who doesn’t even eat anything eats a lot and Beth has about 20 helpings the whole time she’s trying to take more so nobody notices by sticking her fork out low at the Liver and looking over at something else when she forks it over to herself like then nobody’ll notice. So the phone rings and Beth now is in this big Liver versus phone conflict which with other food you don’t usually have because usually the phone always wins and in the 1 second she sits there not knowing what to do I start to get up but then before I’m even all the way up she’s gone and through the living room like The Flash or more like Reverse Flash who’s evil and in the kitchen I hear “Huh-low??????” with a big question mark at the end in this totally fake Beth voice and then there’s a pause. And then of course Beth says “Who’s calling pleeeese???” which she always does but with a different kind of like she doesn’t quite believe it sound in her voice and then there’s another pause and I know it’s Gillian. I wait and there’s this pause and then Beth comes in and really loud so whoever’s on the phone can still hear looks at me and says “Jeremy it’s Gillian!” like she’s announcing the President of The United States is calling and I get up and go to the kitchen and the receiver is hanging there.
“Hello” I say.
“It’s Gillian.”
“Hey.”
“Are you eating dinner?”
“No.”
“OK. Well I wanted to tell you about the city we’re meeting at the station at 3:00.”
“3:00.”
“Tomorrow.”
“OK” I say.
“So you’re coming?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Great. I wasn’t sure. OK. So” and there’s this pause and I say “Yeah” again for some reason and then there’s another pause and she says “I guess I’ll see you at the station.”
“Yeah” I say.
“OK then. Bye” she says.
“Later” I say.
She hangs up the phone and so do I.
I go back in the dining room and everybody’s holding their forks up over their Liver like some kind of atom bomb just fell on Hutch Falls. And nobody’s eating. Even my Dad. So they’re looking at me and I just sit down and start to eat but of course Ms. Nosy Pain In The Ass says “Who’s Gillian?”
“This friend of mine” I say.
“Is she that girl who wears black every day?” Beth says.
“No.”
They’re all still looking at me and finally I say “A bunch of us are going into the city.”
“That’s wonderful” my Mom says and she smiles this huge smile like good because I’m going places with people. “When are you going?” she says.
“Saturday.”
“Halloween?” my Mom says and now she looks like I just said “The day they do human sacrifices of all the people from Hutch Falls.”
“Yeah” I say.
She says “That’s not a good idea. Can’t you go another day?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That’s when we’re going.”
“But Jeremiah I don’t like you being in New York at night and especially on Halloween with all those people running around in masks.”
“People aren’t more dangerous when they’re wearing costumes” I say.
“You haven’t been in New York on Halloween Jeremy.”
“Have you?”
“No I don’t go because it’s not safe. I want you to go on another day.”
“Mom it’s the only” I start to say but she interrupts me again and says “There are 365 days in the year when you can go to New York but not on the 1 day when people are running around in masks.”
“He’ll be fine” my Dad suddenly says.