This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Seth Rudetsky
Jacket art: crown image © iStockphoto.com/Samarskaya;
helmet image © iStockphoto.com/Mervana;
disco ball image © iStockphoto.com/Alexander Shirokov
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rudetsky, Seth.
My awesome/awful popularity plan / Seth Rudetsky. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Chubby, Jewish, and gay high school sophomore Justin Goldblatt plans to become popular by the end of the year, but instead of dating the star quarterback he catches the eye of Becky, the quarterback’s girlfriend, while his best friend, Spencer, stops speaking to him.
eISBN: 978-0-375-87324-9
[1. Popularity—Fiction. 2. Gays—Fiction. 3. Best friends—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction. 7. Jews—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R85513My 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011024154
Random House Children’s Books supports
the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
This book is dedicated to
Eric Myers, who convinced me to start,
Schuyler Hooke, who encouraged me to continue,
and James Wesley, who helped me to finish.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
A Note from Seth
About the Author
TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHICH boy I have the biggest crush on. Is it Quincy Slatton, the science genius sure to win a Westinghouse Scholarship? Is it Tally Higgins, the stoner who is always seen at school, but never in class? Is it Gary Burns, the shy introvert who blushes when you say hi but comes alive in the art room?
No, it’s none of them. Why should it be? There’s at least a slight possibility that someday I could date one of them. Instead, I’ve made it as difficult as possible for myself to ever fulfill my dreams of love. Yes, I, Justin Goldblatt, the school loser, have a crush on the oldest chestnut in the book—the unattainable star quarterback, Chuck Jansen! How cliché is that?
FYI, that’s pronounced “clee-shay.” In English class today, David Chasen was reading a Guy de Maupassant story out loud and pronounced it “clysh.” Everybody, including Mr. Fabry, laughed. Even though I felt bad for David, I joined in. It felt good to finally not be the reason the class was laughing. Usually after I speak in class, Doug Gool will cough “faggot” into his fist. He does it in such a way that the teacher doesn’t hear, but everybody else does. He’s been doing it for so many years at this point that he’s started to vary the words that he coughs—sometimes it’s fag, sometimes queer, sometimes gay. I guess I should applaud his creativity. Lately, he’s been using various themes, depending on what the class is focusing on: We’re studying Pilgrims in social studies, so he’ll cough “Thou art gay” in my direction, and since we’re learning the periodic table in earth science, I’ve gotten used to hearing a constant chant of “fagnesium” whenever I speak. Most annoyingly, though, recently in geometry, after I identified a shape as a “trapezoid,” he coughed “fagezoid” and received a round of sustained chuckles. I was outraged … not merely by the insult but at what passes for homophobic rhyming mockery. At least “magnesium” and “fagnesium” have the same vowel and final consonant in the first syllable, but “trapezoid” and “fagezoid” do not rhyme! How dare such shoddy workmanship bring down the house?
Anyhoo, I was raucously guffawing at David Chasen when, at the height of my openmouthed laughter, Doug Gool pointed his phone at me and snapped a shot.
He flashed it around. “Look at the piece of spinach in Goldblatt’s teeth!”
I quickly clamped my mouth closed, but it was too late. The proof was in his iPhone. He sent it to Jeff Horner as the bell rang, and Jeff had just enough time before everyone left to forward it to his entire contact list, which included the whole class. It was the only instance when I haven’t seen everyone rush out of the room. Instead, they suddenly had all the time in the world to stand around and look at their phones. The mild laughter about David Chasen’s pronunciation of cliché was nothing compared to the belly laughs my spinach-filled teeth got. That is what my friend Spencer calls instant karma.
“I’ve told you before, Justin. Karma means that whatever you do, the same is done back to you.” Spencer explained it to me (for the tenth time this year) in gym class later that day. He was wearing black shorts with a black Gap V-neck that, combined with his orange hair, made him look like a Halloween centerpiece. I know orange hair sounds crazy, but it’s eye-catching, fall-foliage orange, not Ronald McDonald orange.
Looks-wise, we’re totally different; he resembles a Midwestern farmer while I could easily be mistaken for someone applying to rabbinical school. On top of that, he’s around six inches taller than me but weighs twenty-five pounds less. I don’t know which I’d rather be: tall and crazily skinny like him or short and chubby in all the wrong places like yours truly. Also, I’m jealous of Spencer because when he gets older and fills out, he’s going to be great-looking, with his cute face and good hair. Since I’ve known him, I’ve seen his hair automatically style itself into something hip and trendy whether he’s sweaty from gym class or soaked from a sudden rain shower or refusing to put in any product in protest of the destruction of the Amazon.
I, however, spent all of seventh through ninth grades trying to straighten my hair every morning, but by third period, it would always go back to its natural curl. And I don’t mean the fun, bouncy curls you want to run your fingers through. I mean tight, Brillo-pad curls like … well, like a Brillo pad.
Spencer and I were essentially by ourselves outdoors. We were supposed to be running track, but we weren’t. We were jalking, which is a word we invented that means moving much slower than jogging but one iota faster than walking. That’s why most of the word is from walking, but the j is thrown in because there’s a little essence of jogging. Once in a while, Mr. Hasley would blow his whistle at us and we’d go from a jalk to a jog.
Spencer continued explaining. “You were laughing at David Chasen, so your karma was to then have people laugh at you.”
I didn’t want to hear the rest of the explanation, so I feigned being out of breath and waved for him to keep moving. He stopped. He considerately waited until I stopped panting to finish his lesson in why I deserved what I got.
“Sometimes it takes a while …,” he continued, and then took a moment to think of an example. “Like when DeeDee Gosling returned that wallet she found and months later was crowned homecoming queen even though everybody thought T
ricia Hansberry was going to get it.”
He was right. That crowning had to be DeeDee’s good karma. It certainly wasn’t based on her twice-monthly-washed hair.
“Sometimes, however, it’s immediate, or what’s called instant karma.” He stopped and pulled out his phone to show me what he meant. “Like this.”
I stared at the shot of my gaping mouth that featured what looked like a whole head of spinach in my two front teeth. I spoke with detachment. “I’m glad to see your phone has such good pixelation. I can see not only the spinach but also remnants of the processed cheese used in the cafeteria’s vegetarian lasagna.”
He peered at the photo. “I don’t think that’s because my phone is so great. I think that would be pretty obvious even with half the pixelation.”
Mr. Hasley blew his whistle three times to signal the end of class, giving me a break from learning more details about why my school-wide humiliation was my own fault. The other boys hit the showers, but since Spencer and I broke nary a drop of sweat, we just went to the locker room and put our school clothes back on.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Hmm … maybe if I cut my hair short, my natural perm wouldn’t be so big. And if I ixnayed my enormous post-homework bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I could lose some of my gut. As the saying goes, “My diet starts tomorrow.”
But I didn’t mean that as a homily that people mysteriously found humorous enough to reproduce on refrigerator magnets. I was serious! I’m sick of looking the way I do. Spencer appeared in the mirror behind me. His hair was a mess … and it looked great. While he fixed it for no reason, I waved and left the locker room quickly so none of the boys could accuse me of lingering and looking at them (which I wanted to do). Spencer joined me in the hall and told me he wanted to get a PowerBar from the vending machine before his next class. I watched him sprint toward the cafetorium. Ironically, his running after gym class was thirty times faster than his “running” during gym class.
I had the next period free and decided to go to the library. The reading area has super-plush chairs, and I wanted to snuggle down and lose myself in A Tale of Two Cities. I hoped the plight of Charles Darnay would help me forget my latest school-wide humiliation. I got there right after the bell rang, and luckily my favorite chair was available. I opened my Charles Dickens but couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking about the latest picture of me being texted to everyone. Was it passing through the air particles surrounding me? Why did this kind of thing keep happening to me? I closed my eyes and tried to focus on what exactly was keeping me on the bottom of the social ladder.
On the surface, this would be a perfect problem to work out with Spencer because he’s so smart, but I always have to remind myself that his advice starts out helpful and then gets annoying. Especially about social issues. Yes, last year he helped me accept being gay, but two minutes later he couldn’t understand why I wanted to be popular. Infuriating.
And yet, maybe there was something helpful he said that day that I’ve forgotten.
Hmm … I decided to remember back to that afternoon in the park to see if there were any nuggets of wisdom I’d let slide by me.
I had spent all of freshman year in denial of the growing feelings I was having toward boys. I absolutely didn’t want to grow up to be gay. I had been called a fag ever since fifth grade, and it had always made me feel awful about myself before I even knew what it meant. Realizing that I probably was what the name meant was too much for me. By the spring, I had successfully suppressed thinking about it.
Until that afternoon in late June.
Right after our algebra final exam, I was walking home with Spencer. We were both in a good mood because we only had one more final and it was in health, which would cover such difficult topics as “Can you get pregnant from a toilet seat?” and “Is showering good?”
We were laughing as we made up new topics—“Should you set your hair on fire?” or “How many venereal diseases equal a bushel?”—when we passed by Doug Gool and his friends in front of the Ben & Jerry’s. Even though the other boys in his gang tower over him, Doug is clearly the leader. He’s my height (short) and weight (heavy) but it’s all muscle. He’s always sported his white-blond hair in a scary crew cut, and two years ago he broke his nose in a big fight with a wrestler from Woodmere Academy. His beady eyes, army haircut, offcenter nose, and bulging muscles equal terrifying-looking.
“Hey, Fag Goldblatt!” Doug said as we walked by. “Laughing about faggy things?”
I sped up and Spencer followed. It was one thing to be called a fag when I was by myself, but to have a friend witness it was awful.
When we got a block away, I started talking about health class again, hoping Spencer would pretend that nothing had happened. Instead he said, “Doug Gool is a douche bag.”
I tried to laugh but couldn’t; I still felt so embarrassed. I wanted to say, “I hate being called a fag,” but I said, “I hate being a fag.”
Suddenly, complete silence. We were in front of the park, and the only noise was from the toddlers on the swing sets.
Spencer looked at me seriously. “Justin, you’re not a fag.” He said it firmly. He obviously wanted me to believe it. But at that point, I was sick of denying it to myself.
“Spencer, I am a fag.”
I expected him to be disgusted. But he wasn’t. He gave me the same look he had just given me. “Justin, you may be gay, but you’re not a fag. Fag is a mean word that douche bags use to make gay people feel bad about themselves.”
“What?” He was confusing me with his not caring about my announcement. I decided to reiterate it. “Spencer, listen to what I’m telling you—I like boys. I am what they say I am. I’m a fag.”
“And, Justin, I’m asking you this—you’re Jewish, right?” I nodded. “Does that mean you’re a kike?”
Hmm …
I began to see what he meant. It was the first time I separated being gay from being called a fag.
He continued. “Just because we’re not what the majority is doesn’t mean we have to take on the a-hole-like words they attach to us.”
Good point, I thought. Then, Wait a minute! He had said, Just because we’re not what the majority is … Spencer wasn’t Jewish.
I managed a weak “We?”
He stood up taller. “Yes, Justin. I like boys, too. And I’m not a fag.”
OH MY GOD! My best friend was gay! Now I could discuss all the guys I’d been harboring crushes on! I began to calculate in my head … We needed at least two to three hours for grades six through eight and then four more hours just for ninth grade!
Suddenly a thought hit me: Spencer seemed so sure of himself. Did that mean …
“Spencer, you say you’re gay like you’ve … you know … proved it.”
“Proved it?” he asked. “Do you mean have I quote-unquote been with anybody?” He laughed. “Hardly. The only boys I’ve been with remain in my Abercrombie and Fitch catalogs.”
I knew what he was driving at and didn’t want the details. Health class at least taught me it didn’t cause hairy palms.
Then I got annoyed. “If we’re both gay, why am I always the one being called a fag?”
He thought for a minute. “I don’t know … I’m quieter than you. People don’t seem to notice me. You’re certainly more ‘out there.’ ”
“Meaning what?” I asked indignantly.
“Well, you were pretty public about wanting to make the day of the Tony Award nominations a school holiday.”
I was incensed. “They announce them at eight-thirty a.m. sharp! It’s unfair that I have to wait until first period ends to check my phone and find out what’s up for Best Musical!”
Spencer smiled and held up his hand to stop me. “You don’t have to convince me, but most teenage boys don’t care about Broadway. Or if they do, they don’t admit it.”
He had a point. Most boys in our school were obsessed with sports and not the latest Sondheim revival.
He continued
. “Broadway is thought of as a girl thing, and if a boy likes it, the narrow minds in school will label him a fag.”
He was on to something. “So,” I reasoned, “if I start pretending I like different things, the other kids’ll stop making fun of me?”
Spencer looked annoyed. “I guess … but why do you want to be who you’re not?”
We started walking into the park. It was a gorgeous day and we loved sitting by Goose Pond and watching the rowboats.
“I don’t want to be who I’m not.… I just want people to like me.”
Spencer stopped walking. “People do like you.”
Was he crazy? I was one of the most unpopular kids in school. The only ones less popular were the hippie guidance counselor’s daughter and that ten-year-old who started high school when he was nine.
“People like me?” I asked. He nodded emphatically. I couldn’t believe he was trying to make me believe a lie. “People like me?” I was getting angry. “No one likes me!” I yelled.
“Oh, really?” Spencer yelled back. I knew I’d pissed him off. Spencer hardly ever yells. Except at Young Republicans. “I guess I’m no one—even though I’ve been your friend since Mrs. Gibson’s class!”
He was right. We met in fifth grade and first bonded over The Simpsons. We were the only boys in our class who were more obsessed with Comic Book Guy than with Bart. Yes, “Eat my shorts” is funny the first few times you hear it, but “Worst (fill-in-the-blank) ever” is always hilarious.
“Spencer,” I said, calming down. “I know you’re my friend and I appreciate it, but you just don’t know what it’s like to have everybody—mostly everybody—dislike you.”
We had walked all the way to the pond. It was one of those global-warming super-sunny days, so we sat on a bench with a huge tree shading it.
“Maybe I don’t have people actively dislike me like they dislike you, but you never even try to make friends.”
That was a lie! “Yes, I do! I’d love to hang out with the Michelle Edelton group or Ty and his eleventh-grade friends.”
“Exactly!” Spencer said, pointing at me. “You only want to be friends with the super-popular kids, whether or not they’re dicks. You’re never friendly to any of my friends.”
My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan Page 1