10th Grade

by Joe Weisberg

  So we drive about 2 hours to get to this castle. It’s pretty much just like you’d picture a castle big and stone and surrounded by forests and gardens. It’s funny how castles can be pretty cool and totally boring at the same time it’s cool because it looks really cool like a fairy tale and it’s old and you can picture where the kings and queens walked around and where they shot arrows and where they dumped the boiling hot oil on the heads of their enemies from (how much would that suck?). But it’s boring just because it is. There’s nothing to really do there you just walk around and maybe pretend you’re the King and Renee is the Queen and you get whatever you want and she thinks you’re the greatest and sometimes even calls you sire like “Sire perhaps you’d like to have some more sex now.” And when you get pissed off you can behead people even though your Mom’s like “You shouldn’t behead so many people.” When we were walking around I imagined Renee about to be beheaded by rebellious peasants pissed off by the castle and how rich everybody there was and everything when all they had was manure and rice and hard work. I was on their side in terms of fairness but I couldn’t let Renee who was a Princess die when I loved her so much so I rode my valiant steed in and at the last second when the guillotine started falling I jumped under it with my horse and grabbed the rope it hangs from and pulled it out of the big contraption. Then before anybody could do anything I got off grabbed Renee and her head out of the bottom part and pulled her with me onto my horse and took off. They could still burn the castle and they did.

  At night we head back to London my Mom is driving and the roads there aren’t all lit up the way they are in America. And it’s really dark. We’re on lots of side roads and stuff because that’s how you get around in England and basically we get lost my Dad has about 50 maps but you know what? Maps don’t do you much good when you don’t know where you are in the 1st place.

  Now being lost is bad enough but we’re all starving to death too because there was no food at the castle and all we ate was bread and cheese and apples my Dad bought at the lame British grocery store. This is what we eat every day by the way for lunch because my Dad says “Why waste valuable time sitting down to eat when you’re on vacation and you have things to do and you can eat a perfectly delicious lunch of bread and cheese and fruit” which isn’t not true. Especially when you put the cheese on the apple which my Dad invented. It is good but not every day. And not that good. And what my Dad really means is “Why waste money on some real lunch when I don’t want to?” So it’s late and we’re hungry and lost and London and our hotel are nowhere to be found a few times we go through little towns or villages but there’s no one around to ask for directions. My Dad keeps looking at the map and saying “if we’re here then we should do this but if we’re there then we should do that” and my Mom’s not listening to him and then we drive into 1 of the little towns and we go right through it without seeing a single person and then we’re on sort of the outskirts of the town and my Mom makes a turn and suddenly we’re going down. Not fast but definitely down and it’s bumpy we all look out the windows and there’s only a few stars out so you can’t see anything but then Claire by the other window from me says “there’s a rail.” And I squint because it’s dark out the window and there’s a rail right next to the car. I mean right next to it. “We’re on a staircase” I say.

  “Why would there be a staircase here?” my Mom says and she keeps going.

  She’s got a point and we still can’t really see anything but there is the rail and the whole going down evidence.

  “Honey it’s a staircase” my Dad says.

  “No it isn’t.”

  “You should stop” my Dad says.

  “I’m not stopping I want to get back to the hotel” my Mom says. “Everyone shut up.”

  “Annie you’re driving down a staircase” my Dad says.

  Finally my Mom stops and then she growls like a dog which I never heard her do before. She waited a second then we tried to go back up the staircase but the car won’t go back up. Finally we got out and we were 1/2 way down a long staircase that went down to some little park.

  My Dad took over the drivers seat and tried to back the car back up the stairs but it still won’t go. We discussed forward but it was a bad idea too because there was no way out of the park down there finally my Dad said “I’m going to go for help.”

  “I want to go back to the hotel” my Mom said.

  “Well honey the car’s stuck” my Dad says.

  “I know the car’s stuck” my Mom says.

  “Then how come you’re not acting like it” my Dad says.

  “I am acting like it” my Mom says. “This is how I act.”

  “Well it’s not very helpful” my Dad says.

  “Oh is that right?” my Mom says.

  Anyway we decided we would all go and we left the car there 1/2 way down the stairs and walked back to the town together as hungry and pissed off as we all were there was something cool about being on that dark road in the middle of nowhere at night by ourselves walking in Europe. I thought. I drew a connection between that night and the beautiful dark night in Wyoming last summer when I looked up at the stars. Anyway we got to town and we knocked on some guys door (really knocked because they don’t have doorbells in England) and he called a tow truck which took about 2 hours to get there so my Dad asked him for directions to a Pub and it turns out that’s where all the people were and we ate fish and chips which my Dad liked because it was fish and I liked because it was good and then the truck dragged the car back up the stairs and the driver thought it was pretty funny and so did all the people in the Pub who I told about it but my Mom didn’t think it was funny until I was telling about the 10th group of people who wanted to hear the story and then finally she smiled a little and put her face in her hands and said “Oh Abe” and then she just cracked up. We got directions and drove back to London.

  PREFACE

  “You can’t just follow the herd.” My Dad believes that and I think he’s right. Because if there’s a bunch of cows or horses or anything and you’re a cow or a horse and you just follow them you never know where they might go. Off a cliff? Into a valley or some quicksand? Through a minefield? So the theme of this chapter is will I or won’t I follow the herd.

  CHAPTER 11

  WILL I OR WON’T I FOLLOW THE HERD?

  Caroline didn’t go anywhere on Christmas vacation but she didn’t work in The Mall either if Caroline was going to get a job she’d work in a dungeon in the city or something like that. She just hung out the whole time. The 1st day back I ran into her in the hall we were being kind of smushed by everyone going by and I was so close to her face I saw under her make-up like when you look at someone really close and you can see their pores. And I could smell her perfume which I didn’t really know before that second she wore because I guess you had to be really close to smell it. She was holding her red back-pack in her hand and I said “Hey” and then I told her about England and the stairs but not about the horse pissing. She said “Richie went on a trip to The Bahamas he was going to take me but the ticket fell through. But guess what?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Guess what he brought me?”

  “I don’t know. Something from The Bahamas?”

  “A quarter ounce of Ganga. From The Bahamas.”

  “Wow.”

  “They grow like the very best in the world there.”

  “Wow.”

  “We’re going to smoke it Friday night.”

  “OK” I said.

  That night I called Caroline. I never called her before mostly I talked to Gillian and Kath I talked to about 3 or 4 times when she called me and just talked and Douglas and me weren’t talk to each other on the phone guys but Caroline was more off with her idiot boyfriend a lot and besides she was too busy smoking to have a conversation for more than 30 seconds before she had to go outside for another cigarette anyway but it had been really good seeing her in the hall and reconnecting after Christm
as vacation and I decided to call her.

  Her Mom answered the phone and then she got her.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey it’s Jeremy.”

  “Oh. Hi Jeremy.”

  Usually here Gillian or whoever says something but Caroline didn’t.

  “So we’re meeting Friday?” I said.

  “Uh-huh” she said.

  Then she said “So what’s new?”

  “Not much” I said. “How about you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh” I said. Then I said “How’s Richie?”

  “He’s great he’s putting together this big deal for distribution rights right now.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s real busy.”

  “Wow” I said.

  Then I waited another second then I said “Well I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “OK bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Anyway I wish I hadn’t called her and I pictured her calling Gillian and saying “Guess what Jeremy just called me” but Gillian would defend me and say she talked to me on the phone all the time and I was totally capable of having a good conversation. But if she called Kath Kath would say “You know he’s got a crush on you don’t you” because Kath thinks everyone has a crush on everyone and I don’t but try convincing any hot girl you don’t have a crush on her. Not that Caroline is exactly hot. But this all got superseded anyway that Friday night when we met at Carolines. Don’t think I didn’t discuss this with Douglas 1st at school when I said “these girls don’t get that Pot’s bad for you” I said.

  “Pot’s not bad for you” he said.

  “It kills your brain cells and gives you lung cancer.”

  Douglas didn’t like cigarettes so I was assuming he didn’t smoke Pot but then he goes “Pot’s all natural. It’s from Mother Earth.”

  I was like Mother Earth??

  “So you’ve smoked Pot?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “A lot?”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily say I’ve smoked a lot” he said.

  “Huh” I said.

  “It’s quite wonderful” he said. “Have you ever felt like your brain was floating?”

  “Not really” I said.

  I didn’t even really want to go to Carolines because everyone but me would be smoking Pot but I didn’t want to be such an idiot I didn’t even show up so I went. Caroline lives in an apartment complex called Blue Court where the buildings are blue. Her and her Mom and her sister live on the 1st floor of 1 of the buildings. The whole place smelled like it was made out of plastic or something especially in the halls and inside. In their apartment there was the living room where you watched TV and ate and hung out and her and her sister shared a bedroom with all these stuffed animals that I figured were her sisters but then when she was showing me the bedroom she introduced them - “this is Eleanor” who was a rabbit and “that’s Pudge” who was a falling apart dirty and definitely a senior citizen type stuffed animal who I couldn’t tell exactly what animal he once was and she laughed like “I know this is pretty queer” but you could tell she loved them and most of them were hers and not her little sisters. Then her Mom had a bedroom where the bed wasn’t made and there were shoes on the floor which would make my Mom raise her eyebrows and go “Hmmmmm” and there was 1 very little bathroom inbetween the bedrooms but Caroline was obviously used to it and when you’re used to something it doesn’t bother you.

  Anyway 1st her Mom was there and instead of being like a grown-up Caroline she was kind of fat and wore no black at all she looked like someone you kind of think has 32 kids and a husband drinking beer. She seemed nice but mostly she was in the kitchen sitting down at the table reading a magazine until she went out to dinner with her girlfriends.

  As soon as she left we went into Carolines room and we turned on her stereo and sat on the floor and Caroline got some beers from under the bed and passed them out (she didn’t say but I’m sure Richie got them for her). I took some sips because I’m allowed to have basically as much of my Dads beer at dinner as I want anyway but it was warm and gross I wondered why she didn’t put them in the freezer for a couple minutes but everyone else was drinking them and not complaining.

  So of course Caroline puts on Pink Floyd The Wall which is kind of depressing not so much the words which I’m not listening to and which are all about rebellious kids and rebelliousness and school sucking in every song but more just the music which I basically hate but which has some good parts. And then she goes into her closet and comes out and says “OK let’s go”.

  I didn’t know we were going anywhere but we got up and everyone put on their jackets and we left and started walking to Nierbeck Woods instead of going in the main entrance we turned up the hill and went in there but everyone I guess knew where we were going because after going through the woods a little we got to this big rock I’d never seen before where obviously they were going and nobody else was around anywhere because it wasn’t on any of the trails. It was pretty dark but not too dark to see. The rock had a big flat part and Gillian and Douglas sat there and Caroline and Kath sat on the ground and I leaned against it Caroline got a big baggie of Pot out of her pocket and rolling papers and matches. Her and Douglas each got a rolling paper and put some Pot on it and rolled it up and basically licked it all over and closed it which I can’t believe no one is grossed out by not that I’m some kind of Howard Hughes live in a mansion by myself freak but at least if I were going to smoke Pot I’d want to smoke 1 I licked myself or Caroline licked and not Douglas. So Caroline lights a match and lights hers and takes a really long drag and then she leans back and really sucks it in and then she laughs and then she starts coughing like her throats going to come out her mouth and land on the ground but no matter how hard she’s coughing she’s laughing inbetween each cough and the effect of all this I think is there isn’t a whole lot of oxygen going into her head and she turns as red as you can turn and still be alive. Like a tomato. Gillian and Douglas by the way sit on the ground now against the rock and I sit down where I am and lean against the rock too. Meanwhile Gillian takes a puff and she smiles while she holds it inside which is what you do with Pot to get really high and then Kath goes and then she passes it to me.

  “No thanks” I say.

  Kath is still holding her puff in but finally she says “Well just pass it to Douglas” and I reach up and I take it and now I’m holding Pot.

  I pass it to Douglas and then next time when it comes around I’m like a pro at Pot passing and it goes around about 3 times and when it’s almost gone they keep smoking it even though they’re practically smoking their fingers now and I have to pass it 1 time when basically I’m just passing burning fire and I think I didn’t yell “Ouch” and then finally it was gone beyond a shadow of a doubt or at least I thought it was but no it turns out Douglas finds the last little bit of Pot in there at the bottom and taps it with his finger into a new joint he’s rolling. You don’t waste any Pot.

  The next joint goes around and by now it smells like Pot everywhere and Douglas is giggling now even though he’s the only person I know who can giggle and still look depressed. Gillian is like “Oh wow everything’s amazing I love you guys” and she’s looking up at the sky where you mostly see trees and some sky and stars inbetween the branches. Caroline meanwhile has an attitude like “I’m way more a Pot pro than you guys AND you’re kind of stupid but that’s OK for rookies like you.”

  Then Gillian’s like “Let’s take a walk” and Kath who’s in her own world where maybe she’s plotting to secretly murder someone is like “OK” and Douglas gets up to go but Caroline says “I’m too mellow” and I say “Me too” and they go without us. Me and Caroline don’t say anything for a while then she lies down on the ground and starts to hum something I think Pink Floyd this goes on for a while then I lie down too but because of where I’m sitting when we lie down we’re not that
next to each other the ground which is grass and dirt is sort of soft and hard and it’s mellow looking up at the trees and the sky. Caroline stops humming and then I hum a little bit of All Out Of Love but I feel kind of stupid so I hum part of the song so it’s different than it really goes then I stop and Caroline goes “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know” I say.

  “It’s nice” she says.

  “Yeah” I say.

  “Here put your head here” she says touching her head and I kind of spin around and move up so the tops of our heads are right next to each other but our feet are in opposite directions so we’re like 1 long line. Suddenly I can smell her wearing the same perfume I smelled her wearing in the hall at school inside the Pot smell which is drifting away.

  “You get more vibes when your heads are close” she says.

  “Vibes are cool” I say.

  “They come from your whole body” Caroline says.

  “Oh” I say.

  “They’re very soothing. You know it’s like calm.”

  She’s quiet for a long time it seems like she’s thinking about something and then she says “You never got hi?”

  “No” I say.

  “The 1st time I got hi I was like this is the greatest thing in the world.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “It’s the fruit of the Earth Jeremy.”

  Here we go again but I didn’t really think that then.

  “What’s so great about it?” I say.

  “It’s like - it’s like” and she waits a second then she says “my mind is turned off.”

  “It goes off?”

  “I’m a very different person. Still me but not me do you know what I mean?”

  “Are you somebody else?”

  She laughed a little in this short way.