The Book of Moon

by George Crowder

  “That’s where I bing-bizzle,” sighed Boosh. “Is that sucker thirty degrees or a hundred fifty degrees? It says both.”

  “Is it an acute angle or an obtuse angle?”

  “A cute little angle,” said Boosh.

  “Which is what, greater or less than ninety degrees?”

  “Less,” said Wee Wee. “So you’re saying it has to be the thirty?”

  I nodded. Boosh was grinning broadly. “I get it. Four down, on the bolts. But what’s the one-fifty there for, just to mess with you?

  “It’s actually pretty useful. Sometimes you run across an angle that’s looking backwards…” I drew a large obtuse angle with a vertex on the right and a horizontal ray that extended to the left. “Then you use the other zero mark.”

  “Get down, it’s riding fakie,” said Wee Wee.

  “That’s an esutbo angle,” said Boosh.

  “Esutbo?” I asked. “I don’t know that term.”

  “That’s ‘obtuse,’ spelled backwards,” said Boosh. He and Wee Wee grinned at each other delightedly.

  “Even you learned something today, Moon,” said Wee Wee.

  Boosh nodded seriously. “Perhaps you should be paying us. Ever think of that?”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Trashed

  Sarah and I were wrapping up the fourth meeting of the Invisible Children of Uganda Club. We continued to be the sole members of the group; neither of us had made any effort to recruit reinforcements, instead enjoying the chance to get to know each other on the school’s dime. I was beginning to think Club Time was a pretty great idea.

  Sarah was a sophomore, only a year older than me, so I seemed to be ratcheting-down my attraction to older women. It turned out she was pretty good at math, so I couldn’t play the tutoring card. Seems I didn’t have to. Being myself was good enough.

  That, and my appreciation for Sarah’s quirky, intense intelligence. Her father was a corporate lawyer and her mother did legal work for the unions—or, as Sarah put it, “Dad works for the Man and Mom works for the People.” This led to many heated discussions at their house, so Sarah was prone to be argumentative herself. Sometimes I’d play devil’s advocate just to keep her on her toes.

  At the moment, however, I was debating the finer points of the Invisible Children of Uganda by sticking my tongue into Sarah’s mouth. She didn’t seem at all offended, however, since she responded in kind. She pulled back abruptly, gasping for air, her glasses fogged with my breath.

  “Some people breathe through their nose when they’re kissing,” I pointed out.

  “I keep forgetting,” she said. Oddly, I had more experience at this sort of thing than Sarah did.

  “If you lose consciousness, I’ll start CPR.”

  Sarah had a lot of different laughs, but my favorite was her nerdy snort, which she often employed as a form of punctuation, followed by a rejoinder. “No need—my autonomic nervous system will kick in and I’ll breathe on my own.”

  “Rats. I thought it would be another excuse to kiss you.”

  “You don’t need an excuse, Moon.” Sarah looked at me very directly. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Uh…” I should have just said “no,” but I hesitated, thinking of Jasmine, who I hadn’t seen for months. “Not exactly.” Sarah raised her eyebrows inquisitively. “It’s complicated, I guess.”

  “Really. Unfinished business at fifteen?”

  I grinned and shrugged awkwardly, wondering how to explain the situation. Even with my newfound confidence, dealing with girls seemed to require a far better sense of balance than I possessed. I hoped my learning curve with women would be less steep than it had been with unicycling, but I kind of doubted it.

  I caught a break when the bell rang and we both had to hustle to our next class. I headed for geometry, cutting through a seldom-used passage that took me past the parking lot. Moss and his buddies were there meeting with the rest of the Skateboard Club, ollieing up and down the staircases. I hollered at Boosh and Wee Wee to get their butts to geometry class, then cut past the gym.

  There was a knot of big guys wearing letter jackets clustered in front, probably the remnants of the Football Club. I hate to stereotype, but their smirking, hulking, self-satisfied essence gave off noxious fumes of dangerous stupidity that I imagined I could actually smell. Eau de idiot. I gave them a wide berth.

  As I did, something caught my eye. It was a pair of skinny legs, sticking up out of the trash can. The scene began to make more sense, as I realized the reek was actually coming from overripe garbage rather than the jerks clustered around the can to block their actions from the view of anyone who happened to be walking by.

  I stopped, figuring out what to do. The biggest guy, who I recognized as our star linebacker, Brian Doyle, had a small victim by the shins, and was shoving the kid’s head and shoulders deep into the stinking can. One of the other guys noticed me and yelled at me to keep walking. So I did. Right at them.

  Maybe it was the Invisible Children thing that made it impossible to ignore cruelty and walk away. After all, I was wearing my red Joseph Kony T-shirt. How could I protest injustice committed on another continent while allowing a bunch of Neanderthals to terrorize the locals at my own high school?

  Besides which, I was pretty sure I recognized the legs in that trash can. They were sticking out of flood pants usually worn by my friend Solomon MacAndrew.

  The football players regarded me with amused aggression as I approached them. “Let him out of there,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

  “Moon?” Mac’s muffled yell could be heard from inside the trashcan.

  “Yeah, Mac, it’s me.” I raised my voice so he could hear me through the garbage.

  “Moon, go away. I got this under control.”

  The football players laughed, and even I had to smile and roll my eyes. This was not a random encounter between Mac and the jocks. For reasons that would probably have deeply interested a Freudian analyst, Mac had become a manager to the football team. “Manager” is a euphemism for gofer, lacky, lickspittle, slave, toady, serf, and other similarly demeaning terms that were hardly likely to recruit candidates to the position. But we all knew that the main duties of the manager were to allocate jockstraps and pads before practice, fetch water bottles during practice, and shag wet towels after practice. And, of course, to be the object of pranks and derision from muscle-bound bullies at all times. I could only be in awe of the creative ways in which my friend’s masochistic streak manifested itself.

  “He’s got you where he wants you,” sneered the smallest guy, who I recognized as our quarterback. He had a face that reminded me of a big, clean-cut rat.

  “Yeah, he’s pullin’ my arms down,” said Doyle, shoving Mac deeper into the can. The other players hooted and guffawed, like a bunch of sidekicks.

  The ratback looked at me. “You heard him. Leave.”

  “I don’t think so. Get him out of that can. Now.”

  “I can’t,” said Doyle, mugging. “He’s in control. I can’t do a thing about it.”

  “You know what?” said the ratback, looking me up and down. “It’s a big can. I think you’d fit in there, too.”

  “Yeah, he could keep his friend company,” said another guy who had a Mohawk. “C’mon,” he said to the others, moving towards me.

  This didn’t seem to be the way to save Africa, or Mac. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone.

  “Calling for help?” jeered Doyle.

  I shook my head, backing up. “Ever heard of Rodney Allen King?”

  “Uhh…did he play for the Patriots?” joked the ratback.

  “Nah. He got beat to shit by the cops about twenty years ago. They would’ve got away with it, but someone caught the whole thing on video.” I held up the phone and panned the scene. “Now pretty much everybody can shoot footage on their cell phone.”

  “Phones can break,” said the ratback. I stayed just out of his reach as he lunged at me,
but he was faster than I expected. He grabbed my wrist. At the same moment, something much more powerful latched onto my waist and ripped me out of his grasp.

  Somehow I held onto the phone as I staggered and rolled to the ground, wondering what had just hit me. I turned my head and saw Moss getting up next to me. Boosh and Wee Wee stood nearby, holding their boards menacingly like cavemen with clubs. They advanced on the football players, who were no longer yucking it up.

  “Hey, Doyle, let him go,” said the Mohawk.

  “’Cause of those guys?”

  “No, ’cause of that,” he said, pointing at my phone. “We don’t need this.”

  Doyle considered a moment, then appeared to get an idea. He looked at Mac’s legs in the garbage, as if for the first time. “Hey, look at this, you guys. Someone threw away a perfectly good Jew.”

  A couple of the football players laughed, but the Mohawk, who appeared to have marginally more brains than the others, muttered, “You’re making this worse. Shut up and get him outta there.”

  Doyle raised his eyebrows but did as he was told. He pulled Mac out of the garbage and laid him on the ground. Then he and the rest of the football players walked quickly away from the scene.

  The skateboarders tossed their boards to the ground and rode up to Mac. “Dude, you okay?” asked Boosh.

  Mac nodded, getting up. He wiped smelly grime from his face.

  Wee Wee held his nose, and said, “What was in that trashcan—a skunk?”

  “I gotta get to my class,” said Mac.

  “No way,” I said. “You gotta get to the showers. And change your shirt.”

  “I don’t have another one,” said Mac. I looked around at the skaters. They were in T-shirts, but Wee Wee was wearing a hooded sweatshirt over his. He nodded and unzipped it.

  “Here, bro, wear this,” he said, handing it to Mac.

  “You sure?” Mac had a great deal of trouble accepting generosity.

  “Yeah, just get it back to Moon when you’re done with it. And maybe don’t wear the hood.”

  “Well, thanks,” said Mac.

  “So, man, was that like random mischief, or did you tug on Superman’s cape?” asked Boosh.

  “The latter, I guess,” said Mac. “I won a bet with Doyle.”

  “What kind of bet?” I asked.

  “I bet him I could do more sit-ups. And I totally kicked his ass,” Mac said with obvious satisfaction. He grinned through the filth on his face.

  “Yeah?” said Moss. “How many’d you do?”

  “I lost count after three thousand,” said Mac. The skateboarders hooted.

  “Tre grand!” said Boosh. “You a sittin’ up mofo, bro!”

  “How’d you stay awake?” asked Wee Wee.

  “I think I dropped off, but I can do ’em in my sleep,” said Mac.

  “What about Doyle?” asked Moss.

  “He owes me fifty bucks.”

  “Yeah, but how many’d he do?”

  Mac snorted. “Not even a thousand. Then he threw up.”

  I had a terrible thought. “In the trashcan?”

  Mac nodded weakly and there was a collective moan of disgust.

  The tardy bell rang like a sonic punctuation mark ending the episode. Moss said, “Better jet, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, then, to Boosh and Wee Wee, “You guys go. Tell Mrs. Cross I had an accident and I’ll be there in a few.”

  The three skateboarders rode off and left me alone with Mac. I looked at him a bit more critically. “Mac, you knew you could win that bet.”

  “Yeah, but Doyle didn’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “You hustled him.”

  “‘You can’t cheat an honest man.’ W.C. Fields.”

  “‘Well, did you learn anything from this?’ Mom.”

  “Oh, yes, several things.” Mac was surprisingly chipper under the circumstances. “First of all, Doyle eats an enormous breakfast. Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast…”

  I laughed, looking at my friend with the evidence plastered to his face. “I can see you’re not exaggerating. You have a pancake in your ear.”

  Mac nodded. “Unfortunately, I can taste it.” He laughed, too. “You’re gonna love this one. When you were walking over Doyle musta been looking at your shirt. I could hear him talking to himself.” Mac continued in a pretty good imitation of Doyle’s big, dumb confused voice. “‘Kony 2012. I think I went to that concert. I can’t remember if I liked it or not.’”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jasmine

  I can’t explain it myself; but abandoning a lifelong habit of obedience to unreasonable authority, I found myself at Jasmine’s apartment against Mom’s express orders. Though we’d worked on the phone, we hadn’t seen each other since Mom’s ban had gone into effect. Jasmine was taking her high school equivalency test the next day, and we both wanted one more face-to-face practice session.

  We’d been working steadily for two hours, covering all the subject areas, but especially math. I’m pleased to say that it was no longer a weakness, but instead an area of strength.

  “You know, I’ll be surprised if you miss a single problem.”

  “Shut up!”

  “I mean it. You know this stuff backwards and forwards.”

  “Stop,” she said, pushing me. “You’re gonna jinx me.”

  “Good students don’t jinx. And you’re a good student.”

  Jasmine looked at me for a long serious moment. “Thanks to you. You believed in me.”

  “What’s not to believe in?” I said with my best Yiddish accent.

  Jasmine giggled and wrapped her arms around me. We kissed for the first time in months. It was like slipping into a pair of comfortable, but very exciting shoes.

  “Uh, I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” I started.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Kissing you feels sort of…incestuous.”

  “Oh, is that all? I don’t remind you of your mother, I hope.”

  “God, no. Just sort of like the really hot older sister I never had.”

  “Well, get used to it, mister. I see a lot of sisters in your life, older and younger.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I started, wondering if it was a good idea to be sharing this, “there kind of is a girl at school.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “Well, I don’t know yet,” teased Jasmine. “I’ll have to hear more.”

  So I told Jasmine about Sarah. She asked a lot of questions, most of which I didn’t know the answers to. At one point she commented with mild disgust that men never seem to find out about the things that matter.

  “If I asked all that stuff, she’d think I was gay.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. But you’d be her new best friend.”

  “I don’t want to be her best friend.”

  “Don’t worry, she likes you,” said Jasmine with the certainty of one who knows. “Did you tell her about me?”

  “Sort of, but no details. She was surprised by my ‘unfinished business.’”

  “Oh, now you’ll be irresistible. I hope she deserves you.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  Jasmine punched me playfully. “What have I created here?”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you, that’s for sure.” I had a sudden thought. “You and I, we’re like the Wizard of Oz for each other. You might say I gave you brains, and you gave me a heart.”

  “I like that, Moon,” said Jasmine. “And I think this Scarecrow is not done with school.”

  “Oh?”

  “I want to go to college.”

  “Yeah,” I said, warming to the idea. “You should. What do you want to study?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Well…what do you want to be?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe just a waitress. But I want to go to college.”

  “Well, then you will. And I’ll have to stay one step ahead of you.”

  �
��I’m counting on it. Sarah or no Sarah, you’re still my tutor.”

  I realized that I’d kind of assumed that, like a parent might take for granted they’d play an ongoing role in their child’s life.

  “Not that you need one, but I accept.”

  “Now that that’s settled,” said Jasmine, changing the subject, “how’s your mom? I was surprised you came over tonight.”

  “Well, she doesn’t exactly know. She hasn’t changed her position on anything.”

  “Are you talking?”

  “I’d have to say no.”

  Jasmine looked at me soberly. “If she were anyone else, you could take a loss and write it off.” I raised my eyebrows at her unusual choice of words. “I’ve been watching investment shows lately.”

  “Did you come into some money?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. Freddy tipped me a fifty.”

  “Really?”

  “He was drunk and thought it was a five,” she laughed. “I’ll give it back to him tomorrow.”

  “Maybe he won’t take it.”

  Jasmine rolled her eyes at me. “You have a very positive view of human nature. And you’re going to need it to deal with your mother. Someone’s going to have to show a lot of maturity to get your relationship back on track.”

  I sat a moment. “Surely you don’t mean me.”

  “Surely I do. Everyone else took one step back. That makes you the reluctant volunteer.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Howlelujah

  It was late afternoon in early October when Mom and I pulled to the curb in front of the Covenant Presbyterian church on Sepulveda. The summer heat had persisted, with practically every day breaking a high of eighty, and many of them soaring into the nineties. But the days were getting shorter, and you could finally feel autumn taking hold; the temperatures would have to abate soon.

  It was the first time I’d ridden in Mom’s convertible. Though she’d had it for a couple of months, we naturally hadn’t been on good terms, and Moss and I were maintaining as much distance from her as we could. That included taking the bus and bumming rides from anyone but Mom. So transporting via the dude magnet was in itself a step towards détente—a reluctant acceptance of Mom’s new normal. Now that I’d had the topless experience, I had to admit it was pretty cool.