My eyes are drawn to the first question—Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way.
That’s the question I should answer. I glance at the notes from my admissions coach. He said I should write about someone who moves me, who inspires me, who makes me feel like I could be a different person, a better person. He suggested I use Hillary Clinton and he helped me come up with a bunch of supporting arguments.
But hers is not the name that’s on my mind.
Hers is not the name on my lips when I wake from a turbulent dream.
The mention of her name neither causes my pulse to race nor sits like a stone in the bottom of my stomach.
I pull at my pajama top. The fabric feels humid and oppressive, despite how cold my room is.
What if I were to answer with what’s in my heart? What if I were to answer honestly? Not honest honest, with a wink and a nod, but just regular old honest.
Focused on Braden, I take a deep breath, positioning my shaking fingers over the keyboard.
I begin to type.
Sometimes the pressure to be perfect causes us to crack in the most devastating of ways.
Simone
6:11 PM
whos ready 2 par-tay
Kent
6:11 PM
me me me STOKED
Stephen
Read 6:11 PM
Simone
6:12 PM
k 2 meet up @9:30 under streetlite
Kent
6:12 PM
SLAP
Stephen
Read 6:13 PM
Simone
6:15 PM
what r u wearing
Kent
6:15 PM
swim fins & a ball gag
Stephen
Read 6:15 PM
Simone
6:16 PM
me 2!
Kent
6:31 PM
need 2 bring anything, like gift 4 his mom/appetizer?
Stephen
Read 6:31 PM
Simone
6:31 PM
r u kidding?
Kent
6:31 PM
no...new 2 ths
Stephen
Read 6:32 PM
Simone
6:32 PM
maybe some crisps?
Kent
6:35 PM
hmmm, how bout crudité?
Stephen
Read 6:39 PM
Simone
6:44 PM
like chopped carrots & celery??
Kent
6:45 PM
y
Stephen
Read 6:46 PM
Simone
6:46 PM
just brng u
Kent
6:47 PM
k, then ready 2 par-tay
Stephen
9:01 PM
no one actually says par-tay
19
KENT
“Yeah, I don’t feel good about it.”
“Come on Stephen, we never do anything like this. We’ll have fun,” I say in my most persuasive, authoritative voice.
No dice.
As we walk east toward the biggest homes on the lake, he stops under a streetlight and crosses his arms over his chest. Oh, good. He’s going into statue-mode again, that’s just what we need.
Simone says, “Check out how the light reflecting on Stephen’s hair gives him a halo! You’re downright cherubic-looking, that is, if angels wore Death Row Records T-shirts.”
She fails to convince him to budge and I quietly cluck my tongue. Aw, Simone. Sweet, naïve Simone. Stephen’s bought himself a one-way ticket to Funk Town and it’ll take more than a throwaway compliment to pull him out of it.
Simone then pokes Stephen and he goes rigid, which I’m sure is the exact opposite reaction she hoped to inspire. We need him to move not to freeze. When her fingers grazed his arm, he became a turtle retreating into his shell. She’s still way too new at handling Stephen to know that being all touchy-feely-jokey is the wrong move.
She persists. “What’s the matter? The boy in my study hall said it would be fun when he invited me. You allergic to fun? Do we need to find a fun EpiPen to inject you, just in case small traces of fun spill over and contact your skin?”
Stephen lets out a ragged breath. “Yeah, but you’re dope, Simone, you have a tattoo and everything.”
He begins walking again, ever so slowly, literally dragging his feet as we head to the party. Technically, while this is considered movement, he’s still impeding our progress. At his .0001 MPH speed, we won’t even arrive at Jasper’s before the town’s curfew.
Stephen shuffles and argues, “The cool kids and athletes don’t want us at their party. We don’t matter to them. We don’t exist. If we died tomorrow, they wouldn’t even care.”
“Stephen, what an awful thing to say, especially in light of everything! Of course you matter. Of course you exist. Everyone cares,” Simone argues. “We care so much.”
Stephen’s super sad-trombone right now, but I wonder if he doesn’t have a point about not being wanted there?
“Wait, how do you actually know anyone will be happy to see us there?” I ask. Do I need convincing we’ll be welcome, too?
She replies, all matter of fact, “Because Jasper invited us.”
“Um, no,” Stephen says, “he invited you, sis. I feel like his crowd is going to thrash the two of us just for showing up.”
“Every shitty ’80s movie can’t be wrong,” I add. “The nerds always get their asses handed to them when they breach a popular-kid party.” I find myself mentally pumping the brakes, too. Maybe going to a party is a bad idea.
Wait, hold up, I say to myself.
No.
I refuse to be dragged into Mr. Cho’s Deep Dark Hole of Dire Doom again. I feel like attending this event may be my line in the sand. Do I want to keep hanging on the side of the beach where it’s calm and safe and nothing bad ever happens, but nothing interesting does, either?
Or am I willing to take a risk and see what’s on the other side of the line?
Maybe I’ll get my ass handed to me, but what if I don’t? What if the reward’s worth the risk? What if there’s an awesome, I don’t know, clambake or something on the other side of the sand? Ooh, or Mallory in a bikini? And what if the popular people like me once they get to know me? We were all friends as kids. Maybe we could hang out again. I let Stephen talk me out of doing stuff so often that our default mode is to turn and run. We reject everyone long before they can reject us.
So, what if we don’t run tonight?
Stephen has worked himself into a full-on lather. “You think those films were based on nothing? They were written as some dork’s revenge for having this very thing happen to them in high school. Seriously, name me any big writer/director right now and I will show you a guy who stayed home on the weekends to watch Star Trek reruns as a kid. I will show you a nerd. Thesis statement, Wes Anderson, J.J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino. Quentin? His name is Quentin. He got his ass kicked on the reg in high school, I guaran-goddamn-tee it.”
With far more patience than I can muster, Simone says, “Jasper said, ‘Hey, come to my house on Friday. Bring your friends.’ At no point did he mention or imply he planned to kick anything but back. Didn’t specify who to bring and he always sees me with you guys before study hall. Do the math. I can’t imagine you two showing up is going to be a shock.”
“This is ridic. Stephen, you’re being a huge wuss, bigger than usual,” I say with a fair amount of venom in my voice. The gloves are off now. I don’t care if his wi
ddle feelers are hurt. This is some bullshit right here. I’m very tired of him dictating our everything.
“Sorry. I’ll try not to be so ridiculous.” His words come out full of peevishness and completely lacking in remorse. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess he’s enjoying screwing up our night. Negative attention’s still attention.
I pull out the big guns—quoting Yoda. “You’ll try not to be? ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’” I tug Stephen along by his sleeve to speed him up, but he’s suddenly immobile again.
“You know what? No. I’m not going,” he says. He turns around and heads back in the direction of our houses.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me, man?” I exclaim. This is exasperating. “Why are you freaking out like this?”
“Because fuck you, that’s why!” He takes off in a run.
Simone looks to me for guidance. “Do...do we go after him?”
Line? Meet sand.
“You know what? No. If he wants to be a drama queen, let him. I can’t even deal with his moods right now. His flouncing is so past the expiration date. You hear about the hissy fit he threw at the last meet? He was so hysterical that his behavior almost made the judges forfeit our win. Luckily our coach talked them out of it. We cannot encourage this kind of behavior. He’s got to learn to control himself or he’s going to have no friends left.”
We watch Stephen retreat, the thwack of his sneakers sounding hollow on the asphalt. “Is that the best idea, though?” Simone asks. “I feel like he’s going through something but between trying to get Owen to speak to me and my ACT test prep, I haven’t been around much.”
I start walking in the direction of the party. “Like any of that is your fault? No. Nuh-uh. This is not on you. And this is not on me, either. For the first time in my life, I’m not gonna kowtow to him. I’m not gonna let him make all the rules. He wants to storm off and sit home alone on a Friday night, let him.” To emphasize my point, I slip into my rapper persona, DJ Wonderbread. “Imma meet me some girls. Imma mack on drunken cheerleaders. Imma find some ladies to be part of my Tunaverse.”
Now it’s Simone’s turn to stop. “Your what?”
I drop the persona.
Yeah. I should probably confine DJ Wonderbread to my bedroom.
“Did I catch that right?” she says. “Your Tunaverse?”
“My Tunaverse—it’s kind of a line from a Run-D.M.C. song? They refer to their groupies as the Tunaverse in ‘Down With The King.’”
Simone gives me a sidelong glance. “Huh. Never considered you a misogynist, Kent.”
“I’m not, I swear! Honestly, on the whole rap-sexism spectrum, Run, Darryl, and Jam Master Jay trended fairly female-friendly. They were never all, ‘bitches and hos.’ Mostly, I think they were looking for a word to rhyme with ‘universe.’ Sure, there were better choices, like curse or asperse or adverse or reimburse but maybe they were in a hurry to finish the song? Studio time is expensive. That’s why Rick Ross could rhyme Atlantic with Atlantic in ‘Hustlin’. So if you look at it in that context, Tunaverse makes sense.”
Wait, they are saying Tunaverse, right? Not tune of verse? Because I’m really going to feel dumb if I’ve been singing the lyric wrong all this time.
No, it’s gotta be Tunaverse. I’m sure of it.
Simone purses her lips and starts to speak a couple of times before actual words come out. Putting her palm on my forearm, she asks, “Kent, let me figure out a nice way to say this—you reckon maybe referring to women as your ‘Tunaverse’ is why you don’t have a girlfriend?”
I nod decisively. “Distinct possibility.”
“Cool. If you’re comfortable with that, then.”
We cross Whitefish Bay Road and head down Eastminster, where the houses are spaced football fields apart, with lawns large enough to host a polo match. The silence out here is profound, but not oppressive, and the only sound is that of our breath and footsteps.
Although the moon’s not yet risen, we can still see clearly because the stars are lighting up the sky like a handful of diamonds spilled across a swath of indigo blue velvet. Gazing up, I seek out the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, which is my favorite fall constellation because it’s so luminous. The ancient Greeks used to know it was time to sail again when they’d see this star cluster appear. Only the six brightest stars are visible with the unaided eye, but the myth is that virgins can see seven.
Braden used to joke at astronomy camp that he and I could see all seven. Remembering this feels bittersweet.
“So...back to Stephen,” Simone prompts. “What’s that all about?”
I explain, “You’ve already figured out that he’s high-strung. This time of year is especially bad because he totally freaks around midterms. Like if there were a giant Easy button on the wall? He’d hurl himself against it to make everything better. Plus there’s the whole factor of his mom. Mrs. Cho is kinda relentless. You know; you’ve witnessed her in action.”
She laughs. “Um, yes. Believe me, we’ll never place our fallen leaves in plastic bags instead of paper again. I mean, we are sort of idiots when it comes to neighborhood stuff, so I understand why she’s been merciless with us. But why’s she like that with poor Stephen?”
“Eh, maybe she feels like she’s gotta be extra-hard on him because his dad is always away on consulting engagements?”
“I guess. Still, your dad travels all the time and your mum is equally bossy, no offense—”
“None taken.”
“And I don’t see you regularly freaking out,” she finishes.
I shrug. “True dat. I’m better at managing her expectations. Like tonight? I told her I was going to a party and she insisted I wear a tennis sweater. A tennis sweater. I’m sorry, is it suddenly 1984? Is Jake Ryan gonna be there? But I didn’t argue, I said, ‘Great call,’ and just pulled it on. Then I borrowed this NWA T-shirt from Stephen when I got to his house. She was satisfied, I didn’t have to spend the effort arguing, and now I’m not showing up at a party dressed like a villain in a John Hughes movie. Problem solved.” I point to the hateful garment currently tied around my waist.
(Mental note: put sweater back on before going home.)
“Why can’t Stephen try that?”
“Because he doesn’t want to. What he wants is to change the way things are instead of accepting reality and finding a way to navigate around it. With someone as strong-willed as Mrs. Cho, that’s never gonna work. You can’t charge at her head-on. It’s like bullfighting. You can’t be all, ‘Come at me, bro’ because the bull’s got more brute force. Gotta dance with your red cape, gotta finesse the bull. Outsmart him. Distract him. What our boy doesn’t realize is he’s just like his mom, just as stubborn, equally unrelenting, unwilling to compromise. He wants to go mano a mano with the bull and the bull’s always gonna win because its strength is so disparate.”
“Does he listen to you when you tell him this?”
“No, never has. He insists on running into brick walls and then gets mad every time he discovers that the wall’s so damn hard and solid. He’d rather bemoan how unfair it is that the wall exists, than dig under or climb over. As his friend, it’s frustrating to stand there and say ‘Dude, there’s a door in the middle of the wall—just go through that instead,’ and he won’t because he’s too wrapped up in being angry the wall was ever built.”
“Poor Stephen, that sounds exhausting.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why he’s always stressed. This year’s worse than usual with our MIT early action apps hanging over our heads. He has his paperwork completed, but he’s all panic at the disco about the face-to-face with an alumnus interview next week. He was so psyched when they scheduled the interview but now that it’s coming up, it’s become too real. He’s worried he’ll crash and burn in front of someone. He says he presents better on paper.”
> “Then how do we convince him that it’s okay to use the door?”
“You tell me. I’ve been struggling with that question ever since we met at Montessori when we were three.”
“You know what would help him so much right now?” she asks.
“What’s that?”
“A BEER. I understand that America’s a lot more stringent about youth and liquor, but if anyone needed an alcoholic beverage... I mean, damn.”
“I feel ya.”
We walk in silence for a couple of minutes.
“Hey, Simone?”
“Uh-huh?”
I can’t look her in the eye as I pose my question. “They’re not going to kick my geek ass like in a shitty ’80s movie, right?”
“I’ve got your back,” she promises, giving me a quick shoulder hug, and I believe her.
Yes, I made the right call, Stephen be damned. I can’t figure it all out for him; he’s gotta want to do it for himself. And this party is going to be great. Way better than playing World of Warcraft, anyway. Maybe this night won’t change my life, but I feel it’s a big step in that direction.
She adds, “As long as you stop saying Tunaverse.”
20
STEPHEN
They’d be sorry.
If that car had hit me, Kent and Simone would have been so sorry.
Or would they?
Would they even care?
Real friends don’t make you do the kind of thing that’s destined to fail, that scares you to death. Real friends don’t abandon you. Real friends are there for you. Real friends aren’t all later, dude when you’re clearly in distress. Real friends chase after you. Real friends ask what’s wrong and listen as you explain and then try to make you feel better.
Tonight was a test and Kent and Simone failed. Big time. They made it clear they only want me around if I’m being “cool,” if I’m low-maintenance, laughing and joking and, like, riffing on Biggie. But I can’t be up all the time. It’s hard for me to be “on” sometimes. Or, a lot of times.
The Gatekeepers Page 17