For example.
There’s the fat girl. I don’t even know her name. I don’t think anybody does. She’s one of those girls who goes around with her head down, hoping no one will notice her, and she succeeds at it. But you can tell by the end of the first week, she’s totally, madly in love with Twom. She sort of plants herself in the right places, and when we pass her in the hall, she goes into some kind of fugue state. Her vision seems to blur, her mouth hangs open. She trembles. You can’t help but notice. He puts up with this for about a week.
“Hey, how you doin’?” Twom says.
He’s stopped and walked over to her. She stares at him, turning forty shades of crimson.
“What’s your name?” Twom says.
She can barely get it out. “Ophelia,” she says. It’s a tough name to give an overweight, sweaty girl with badly cut, mousy blond hair.
“C’mon, I’ll walk you to class, Ophelia.”
And he does. He chats with her the whole way, asking her questions about herself. And after that, every time he sees her, he makes a big deal about saying hello and talking to her and walking with her. He’ll even go over and sit with her while she’s having lunch. She doesn’t eat a bite. And it might be my imagination but, after a while, she doesn’t seem nearly so heavy. Maybe even kind of cute.
Twom turns out to be an amazing athlete. We’re in High School High’s overcrowded, mandatory, biweekly phys-ed class one day, where half the students always loiter off to the side in their regular clothes, waiting for idiot time to be over, and all of a sudden, grabbing a football, he tells me to go long. And I don’t know why, maybe because I want to impress him, I take off, running as fast as I can, which is actually pretty fast. Twom waits about ten seconds and then casually lets it go. It’s on a string, at least thirty-five yards, a perfect buzzing spiral, and it hits me in the hands, just about breaking them or at least that’s what it feels like. They go totally numb. But somehow I hold on. And it’s stupid but I’m really pleased that I do. I’m pleased that he’s thrown this bullet of a pass and that I’ve caught it.
“Brutha!” yells Twom.
Twom can run like a track star, can dunk a basketball, and can probably throw a baseball through a wall while walking on his hands. It’s only a matter of weeks before every coach at High School High is asking him to come out for their team. Twom just laughs at them. “Dickhead club,” he says later. “Like that’s ever gonna happen.” He pretends he’s toking on a joint.
One thing Twom doesn’t do very well is schoolwork. Which is odd because most of the time he seems like a pretty bright guy. But then one day Mr. Monaghan asks him to read a paragraph out loud in class and Twom suddenly looks like someone’s asked him to jump off a steep cliff. He quietly refuses in a way …
“I don’t think so.”
… that says if even slightly pushed, it all might get ugly very quickly for Mr. Monaghan.
“Let’s talk about it after class,” says Mr. Monaghan, nervously. But Twom doesn’t stay.
When I ask him about it later, he just shrugs.
“I don’t read good, dude. The letters don’t look right.”
Point of reference.
Dyslexia or developmental reading disorder is when the brain doesn’t recognize certain information. It has nothing to do with the ability to think or understand ideas.
“No big deal,” Twom says. “I’m just in school till they throw me out.”
“Then what?”
“Then I join the rest of the bottom feeders.”
It makes you realize how so much of standardized education just completely sucks. It’s all about what educators think they should stick in your head so you’ll be a so-called productive member of society, and if it doesn’t stick, even if it’s not your fault, you’re written off as a failure. And then, you pretty much begin to think of yourself as one.
I start doing Twom’s homework for him. I write essays for him to turn in. I summarize reading assignments and lectures so he can understand them. One day he even raises his hand in class. He gives the right answer, sending shock waves through the room. We get a surprise quiz and I slip him the answers. I partner with him in chemistry and we get an A on a lab experiment. We’re the only ones that do, and because people have no reason to think of me as the brightest bulb in the lamp, Twom gets all the credit.
Much to my surprise, it’s sort of fun, not holding back. And even though we both pretend to think it’s hysterical, Twom is sort of thrilled. And I’m not used to helping people and find it’s not an unacceptable feeling.
What’s not so funny is that after years of trying to avoid him, I’ve suddenly inherited Ephraim.
Unlike Ophelia, he doesn’t stay in one place, waiting. He constantly follows us, tagging along behind. Twom doesn’t encourage him. If he does an Ephraim thing, like walk into an open door and knock himself senseless, Twom won’t wait up for him. But if he gets himself up off the floor and catches up to us, Twom won’t tell him to go away.
Twom and I go into the showers after gym class one day just in time to see Chris Hardy push Ephraim out of the way so he can take his shower. Ephraim, who is nearly blind without his glasses, slips on the wet floor and falls. His head hits the floor. Twom goes over and helps him up.
“You okay, buddy?”
Ephraim nods. They’re both naked and Ephraim looks surprised and embarrassed at the physical contact. And now Twom turns to Hardy, whose eyes are closed under the spray. Hardy is huge from weight lifting. There are pimples all over his shoulders and back, even his ass.
Reaching out with one hand, Twom grabs Hardy by the cock and balls. Hardy screams and tries to jerk away, which is a mistake because Twom has his nuts in a death grip.
“You like pushing people around?”
Hardy just screams some more. Everybody’s watching. The vast majority of kids in the shower room have never touched anyone’s dick but their own and I’m sure they’d all now agree that it seems a good way to put a guy on the defensive. Ephraim’s eyes are like saucers.
“What are you, a faggot!?” screams Hardy.
“You tell me, after I shove it up your ass,” says Twom, squeezing hard enough to make Hardy bellow again. All the younger kids shudder. The thought of an erect dick going anywhere near them is terrifying. Twom finally lets go of Hardy and shakes his hand as if there’s something funky on it.
“Play nice from now on. Especially with my friends.”
You can tell Hardy wants to throw a punch but he’s in too much pain. Cupping his balls and groaning, he hightails it out. Twom gives Ephraim back his shower. He turns to wait for one of his own. Needless to say he’s now the hero of every kid in the locker room, especially Ephraim who now has heard the unhoped-for magic word. No one has ever called him a friend before.
He talks about the event for days.
16
It’s a Monday study period and I’m in the school library where nobody ever goes, surrounded by books that nobody ever reads. I like the library. I like thinking that I’m a book nobody ever reads. I’m still trying to get through Being and Time, which is proving to be one tough nut to crack. All it seems to be saying is that life is a bitch and then you die, and frankly, it seems pointless to write an entire treatise trying to prove something that any moron could tell you is true without thinking twice. I’m just about ready to pack ol’ Martin Heidegger in for good when somebody sits down across from me. When I look up I see it’s the girl with the light red hair and green eyes and my stomach lurches.
Fact.
Red hair is a genetic mutation. Less than four percent of the world has red hair, and by 2050, geneticists predict that because of global intermingling, it will be practically nonexistent.
Sidebar.
Red is the color of blood and fire. The Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that redheads were emotionally unhousebroken. Redheads are sensitive to physical pain.
The girl with the light red hair and green eyes stares at me. She didn�
�t have to tell me the first time that her name is Gretchen Quinn.
“Have I done something to offend you?” Gretchen Quinn says.
“No,” I say. At least I think I say that. My mind is not quite sure if my mouth is talking.
“Am I stupid?” Gretchen says. “Ugly?”
“No.” She isn’t. Not even a little bit.
“So why do you act like you don’t even know me? Dorie was my best friend. I thought you were my friend too, Billy.”
“I don’t really know you anymore,” I say. It’s a totally moron thing to blurt out, but spur of the moment, it’s the best I can do. Gretchen Quinn stares at me. She quietly nods. She rises and moves away from the table. She leaves the library as quietly as she came in. The side of my face is freezing cold.
Point of reference.
Dorie and Gretchen met in the second grade and from that moment on were pretty much inseparable. There was this old bedtime story Dorie and I had read as kids about two sisters, Snow White and Rose Red, who were crazy about each other and did everything together and that’s what I’d call them. Dorie was Snowy and Gretchen was Rosy. Rose Red was chatty and cheerful and Snow White was quiet and thoughtful and that sort of suited them too. In the fairy tale Rose Red and Snow White had this bear that would come and visit them. And they’d ride him like a pony and pull his fur and tie his feet together and then tickle him. And the bear would yell out, “Snowy-White and Rosy-Red! Will you beat your lover dead?”
A lot of times I’d pretend to be the bear.
The other thing about Snow White and Rose Red is they promised they’d never leave each other. That didn’t happen. Dorie—Snowy—died.
Gretchen and I didn’t see each other much after that. I sort of had to take a little time off, and then after that, I got stuck in the special, big-deal middle school before ultimately bailing on it. In the meantime, Gretchen’s father, who was a hotshot doctor of infectious diseases, took the entire family off to Africa so they could save people who were dying of AIDS and whatnot. So she really was gone. But now, she had said it all that day on the beach. “We’re back.”
It goes without saying that girls make you do insane things. One minute a guy can be, if there is such a thing, normal, the next, he’s cracking stupid jokes and running and dancing in place like a babbling, mindless idiot. Another word for this is “dating.”
This had to be immediately nipped in the bud.
17
“Your parents ever let you out of the house?”
It’s later in the day between classes and Gretchen Quinn is at her locker. If she’s surprised to see me standing there, she doesn’t show it.
“No, they keep me in a cage in my room,” Gretchen says.
This is called “flirting.” Flirting often precedes dating and is an equally sinister endeavor.
“To do what?” Gretchen says.
“How about I drag you to a deserted cabin in the dark woods and do a vivisection with a chain saw?”
Actually, I don’t say that. In all honesty, it freaks me out that I even think it.
“The movies?” I say. I sort of shrug. I hate the movies. Vivisections with chain saws are the basis of a lot of movies.
“They’d want to meet you,” Gretchen says. “My parents.”
“They have already,” I say.
“They’d want to meet you again,” Gretchen says.
“Why?” I say. “To see if they can still trust me?”
“They’re funny that way.”
The side of my face begins to feel warm, but it’s not unpleasant. “How do you know you can trust me?” I say.
“I just do,” Gretchen says.
Fact.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. The ambiguity of her expression is often described as mysterious.
Not anymore.
Looking at Gretchen Quinn, the stain on my face just about glowing, I know, without a doubt, what Mona Lisa was smiling about.
Me.
18
From having been there before, I know that Gretchen and her family live in this old-fashioned, Craftsman-style house that looks as if it was actually built with materials and colors that in all probability exist in nature. It’s not really superhuge but, still, it sits on almost a half acre of land, which is pretty much unheard of in High School Highville. Inside it’s open and clean with hardwood floors and throw rugs and shelves with books and walls with framed children’s drawings. There’s a living room that looks like people sit in it as opposed to visit it on rare occasions. There’s even a fireplace that has the remains of actual wood logs in the grate.
I like it.
Gretchen’s parents are in the kitchen and they immediately jump to their feet, all smiles, as if they’re happy to see me. They don’t seem to have changed much or gotten any older even though I’m sure they have. Dr. Quinn—Jim—is still this guy who you can tell was a terrific athlete when he was young. He probably made about a million baskets and led his team to the state championship before going on to college and then medical school, where he no doubt graduated first in his class. And now he gets up every morning and runs five miles without fail, does pushups and calls it quality time. He’s the one Gretchen gets her red hair and green eyes from. Mrs. Quinn—Kath—is the sort of no-nonsense woman who’s smart and organized as hell, and you just know she was the one who decorated the house and that she has a ton on the ball because not only was she once a big-deal hospital administrator, she also landed Dr. Quinn, who was a catch.
Don’t tell me all people are created equal because they’re not.
Dr. Quinn crushes my hand and Mrs. Quinn gives me a smile and asks what I’ve been up to.
“Not much,” I say.
“A senior,” says Mrs. Quinn. “Any plans for next fall?”
“Not really,” I say.
“How are those folks of yours?” says Dr. Quinn.
“How are they supposed to be?” I say, wrinkling my brow as if I don’t quite understand the question. I’m coming off like a real ignoramus. At least I hope I am. My problem is I like the Quinns. This might be seeping through and so I make a point of being especially rude as we leave.
“You two be careful,” says Mrs. Quinn.
“We’re just going to do drugs with used needles and have unprotected sex,” I say.
Actually, I don’t have the balls to say that.
“We’ll try,” I say.
“And have a good time,” says Dr. Quinn.
“As opposed to what?” I say.
It’s just starting to get dark when Gretchen and I come out. Gretchen is starting to look a little uncertain. So far, so good.
“Listen, there’s something you should know,” I say.
“What?” she says.
“I don’t drive,” I say.
“Oh. Well, I could probably get the car,” Gretchen says. She doesn’t sound too sure.
“No, it’s covered,” I say.
I point and Gretchen turns to see the old hulk of a Cadillac parked at the entrance of the Quinn driveway. It’s like something out of an Elvis Presley in his grilled-peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwiches period—a faded beast with pointed fins, rusting chrome, stained whitewall tires, and a grille that looks like a bum with several teeth knocked out. The chauffeur is waiting by the rear door, grinning like a bloodthirsty fiend.
Twom.
“He offered to drive,” I say.
Gretchen sort of slowly nods. “Okay,” she finally says.
I make the introductions.
“Little Red,” says Twom, looking as if he could eat her. Gretchen is polite but it’s tough. It’s not so much the tattoos, spikes, and hoops, which are actually sort of normal these days, it’s the wild eyes and the deranged, high-octane grin. With a bow and a big sweep of his arm, Twom opens the rear door of the Cadillac.
“Your chariot awakes,” he says. Gretchen quickly slips in past him.
“Awaits,” I
say.
“Huh?”
“Not wakes—waits.”
“Get your ass in there, dude,” Twom says, “before I do.” I can tell he’s more than a little impressed with Gretchen, and for some weird reason, I feel annoyed about it. The car, which belongs to Twom’s grandmother, smells of dogs, pine freshener, cigarette smoke, and molding leather. There’s dog hair and bits of crumbled kibble on the seats and floorboards. Gretchen’s hands are tight in her lap and her knees are up and together as if she’s trying not to touch anything.
It’s really perfect.
Twom gets in the front, slams the door behind him with a crash, and ignoring his seat belt, starts the car. Elvis turns over, falters, starts again, and with a billow of blue exhaust, settles into a deep, ragged thrum. Twom turns the radio on.
“How about some tunes!” he yells.
It’s a crazed speed metal station and he turns it up full blast. The song, if you can call it that, sounds like someone whipping a horse to death. It makes further conversation all but impossible and is a totally terrific choice for the occasion.
Twom puts the Caddy in gear and we back up and out of the driveway. There’s a horrible grinding sound as the undercarriage of the car hits the street.
“Next stop, AMC12!” Twom screams over the sound of the radio.
The evening can’t get any better. I’m counting on it.
19
In 1891, Thomas Edison, the so-called inventor of the lightbulb, designed and patented the Kinetoscope. This was a simple box device that was the predecessor to all film projectors.
Better he should have electrocuted himself with his fluoroscope.
Exploding cars bear down on me. Exploding planes immolate in front of me. Exploding, bullet-riddled people scream and show their insides. And we haven’t even gotten through the coming attractions yet. I look around and, much to my dismay, see nothing but enraptured faces.
What is good, though, is that Gretchen looks as awkward as I feel. This is because on the other side of Gretchen, Twom and Deliza Baraza are sitting together, heads close, whispering and giggling about something. By sheer luck, the evening has turned into a double date. In fact, it’s a double date plus one because on the other side of Deliza and Twom sits a forlorn-looking, totally ignored Ephraim.
The Tragic Age Page 5