by Daniel Klein
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Lila said to Mr. Cyzinski. “I’ll stick to study hall.”
Cyzinski nodded slowly, clearly working on how to phrase his next volley. Waiting, Lila felt an unexpected swell of sympathy for Stephanie Cyzinski. The accepted wisdom at school was that Stephanie was lucky to have such a good-natured and caring father, a regular guy who could relate to young people’s problems. But Lila had been privilege to a personal observation of Cyzinski, the dad. The man was a guidance counselor to the core: a control freak.
“It’s a little more complex than that, Lila,” Cyzinski said finally, opening a manila folder on his desk. “You have two consecutive incompletes in gym. You need the credits or you won’t graduate.”
The manic grin reappeared on Lila’s face. Not graduate? Did he actually believe that was some kind of momentous threat? The open folder, Lila’s school record, was obviously meant to give weight to the threat, just as the words ‘permanent record’ had instilled terror in the hearts of Mrs. Paddick’s third-grade students at Grandville Elementary. (“You do that one more time, Billy, and it goes on your permanent record!”) In their precarious minds, the children—Lila included—saw their failures chiseled for all time in tablets that were readily available not only to future teachers and Scout leaders, but to the President of the United States and God. But seventeen and stoned, Lila did not give a flying fuck about either her record or graduating.
“I’ll stick with study hall,” she repeated.
“I’m afraid that’s unacceptable,” Cyzinski said.
“That sounds like your problem, Mr. Cyzinski,” Lila sliced back with a sneer.
“Let me put it this way, Lila: if you have no intention of graduating, I see no reason for you to continue as a student at Grandville High School.”
Before she realized it, the grin vanished from Lila’s face. Had she been asked only one hour earlier what she thought of being permanently liberated from public school, Lila would have cheered and tossed her books in the air. But seated in Cyzinski’s office, Lila once again found herself thinking about her grandfather and how he would take it. It was not as if Wendell was a stickler for the normal way of doing things; hell, he had barely gotten through high school himself and never given a thought to going to college. But Mom’s breakdown had broken something in him too, and on top of that he had lost his beloved booth in the sky at the Phoenix. Even his relationship with Esther had changed, or at least they did not seem to see that much of one another any more. Sure, if Lila dropped out of school she could help him at Mom’s shop, but she knew Wendell would feel as if one more part of his life had crumbled. Even as Lila dedicated herself to a universe of unreality, her flesh and blood grandfather pulled at her.
“Whatever,” Lila said to Cyzinski. “Sign me up for Communications.”
This, then, is how Lila ended up in Mr. Allen’s hyper-expressive classroom sitting in front of an online computer.
Before enrolling in ‘Communications,’ Lila had little idea what a blog was, let alone that MySpace.com, the mother of all teenage blogs, existed. Mr. Allen assigned Jenny Winthrop, the nerdiest girl in the class, as Lila’s mentor, and it was Jenny—she of the pungent armpits—who showed Lila her very own web page on MySpace. “It’s like going to confession, but instead of a priest on the other side of the wall, it’s Howard Stern,” is the way Jenny described it.
Lila spent her first week and a half in Mr. Allen’s class scrolling through web pages on MySpace. She could not believe how self-involved and full of crap her peers were. Honest to God, who gave a shit if Little-Girl-Blue, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, had been dumped by her boyfriend, or if JumpinJack, whereabouts unknown, jerked off while doing his French homework, or if MPD, in New Jersey, was back stuttering again? Lila was convinced that instead of getting a life, these narcissists had gotten a blog, and they could not tell the difference. But on her eighth day of bouncing from one web log to another—it did keep Mr. Allen from bugging her about what her class project was going to be—Lila came to a blog called TheShitStopsHere:
I am still hacking my way thru the lies. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Holy shit, here comes another one now—I can tell it’s a lie because Mr. K is moving his lips. That’s always a dead giveaway. Get this: Mr. K is saying that Athens was the cradle of democracy. S.S.S. (Super Sly Shit) Like anybody really knows what passed for democracy back then, right? But The Big Lie is in that CRADLE shit Mr. K. slips in there. Athens was the CRADLE so, Children, what we must have now in the United States of Assholes is Grown-up Democracy. . . . BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Big Lie Alert! Put on your Big Lie Detectors before another one slips onto the pile of bullshit they’ve already loaded into our brains . . .
Lila breaks out laughing, not that anyone notices in the boisterous classroom. She looks at the top of the web page. Pictured at the left-hand side is the eponymous ‘ShitStopper’—a girl, and one who looks to be about Lila’s age. She also appears to be nice looking, although it is hard to tell from her pose— she is looking at the camera upside down as, bent at the waist, she peers out from between her legs. Lila hits ‘Comments’:
You make me laugh, girl. I’m swimming in bullshit myself (the backstroke mostly). I live in the place that invented it. We actually have a gift shop in town with embroidered pillows in the window that say, “Sharing is Caring.” Yeah, right. How about “Sharing is Getting Ripped Off by a Smiling Asshole”?
But here’s the deal, SS: You gotta see the forest for the trees. (We’ve got trees all over the place here, maybe that’s why nobody can see more than three feet in front of their dumb faces.) Like, your Mr. K is a typical asshole teacher, but he’s just one tiny ass-hole in The Big Asshole called High School.
Here Lila sets down her theory about high school being no different from any other level of public school in that it is just a holding pen to keep kids under surveillance. She thinks of going on to her rap about The Big College Hoax, but stops. Did anybody really read this stuff? Or was it just an excuse for masturbatory ramblings, the kind she used to address to ‘Dear Diary,’ as if ‘Diary’ was some kind of super-tolerant teen god?
Lila feels like some brainless, heartsick girl in a Young Adult novel who mails intimate letters in a tree hollow. She decides to close the page without sending her response. She looks at the wall clock—still twelve minutes to go until lunch period, also known as quick-toke period. What the hell? She will send it. But when she presses the ‘Send’ button, a window pops up that says, ‘Hey, how ’bout signing your letter, Shit4Brains?’
When Jenny had shown Lila her web page, she went into a long harangue about the significance of choosing the right blog name. “It’s like more important than your real name, because you invent it, not your parents,” said Jenny. Jenny had spent several days coming up with her own, ‘Night Owl.’ “Like I am this person who sees everything, even when it’s dark, you know?” Right, Jenny! Mr. Allen had tacked a cartoon to the bulletin board that showed two dogs in front of a computer, one typing while talking to the other one; he is saying, ‘On the web, nobody knows you’re a dog.’ Somebody had crossed out ‘dog’ and inserted ‘nerd.’
The first name that pops into Lila’s mind is ‘Prisoner.’ It has a certain authentic ring to it. She types it in the name space. The next space—‘Where are you?’—is optional, but Lila is inspired. She types in ‘Parolee in Halfway House’ and laughs out loud. Why the hell not? Sure, it is a lie, but all this stuff is supposed to be made-up—a kind of truer-than-reality version of your inner self or would-be self or something like that. And anyway, Mr. Allen gave this whole speech about keeping your whereabouts secret because pedophiles trolled the Net for victims. The last space, also optional, says, ‘What are you?’ Lila writes, ‘Black, and proud of it!’ and pops the Send button. She has not had so much fun in a long time.
Only now does Lila sense that the classroom’s usual din has dimmed. She looks up and sees that everyone is eyeing the open door
where Mr. Allen is talking to Stephanie Cyzinski and a small, freckle-faced girl in a skirt and blouse, a combo that has not seen the inside of Grandville High’s walls for a generation. Blousy Girl is gazing warily at Lila as the three at the door whisper back and forth, and now they are heading toward Lila in a phalanx, Mr. Allen as point man. Lila feels a pulse of panic. Obviously, this girl has accused her of something—probably of smoking weed across the street— although she is not any Grandville student Lila has ever seen before. Still, there is something familiar about her face, especially the apprehensive pucker of her faint eyebrows. Just as they arrive in front of her computer table, Lila remembers that she has seen the girl in Nakota with her parents, the Dowds.
“I guess you two know each other,” Mr. Allen says.
“Not really,” Lila answers. The Dowd girl winces.
“Daphne just transferred to Grandville and she’s going to be in this class,” Allen goes on. “Maybe you can help her get started.”
Stephanie is trying to make eye contact with Lila. Since their after-school encounter a few months back, Stephanie acts as if the two of them have some kind of private understanding, but Lila suspects what is really on Stephanie’s mind is the fear that Lila will blab around school about Stephanie’s little calamity of tears in the gymnasium. Lila has no intention of blabbing about this or anything else to her schoolmates, so Stephanie’s secret is safe, but Lila also has no intention of reassuring Stephanie of this.
“If it’s . . . you know . . . awkward or anything . . .” Stephanie is saying, and Lila realizes that what Stephanie is concerned about is Lila’s feelings about the Dowd family in general considering the role they played in her mother’s breakdown. Actually, that connection had not even occurred to Lila until this moment, and obviously it had not occurred to Mr. Allen, Grandville High’s expert on sensitive communication, either.
“No problem,” Lila says, then adds mockingly, “I’ll teach her everything I know.”
Stephanie makes another vain attempt at eye contact before withdrawing behind Mr. Allen. Daphne remains standing next to Lila’s table, fidgeting with her hands.
“You can probably find a chair somewhere,” Lila says to her.
Daphne nods, but does not move. Despite her Rockwellesque freckles and perky nose, there is something unwholesome about the girl’s face that Lila finds appealing.
“Why the hell did you want to come here?” Lila asks, her eyes remaining on her computer screen.
“You mean ‘Communications’?”
“No, Grandville High.”
Daphne shrugs. “I didn’t have a whole lot to say about it,” she replies.
“Weren’t you at some fancy private school?”
“Hotchkiss.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
“Not really. Anyway, I got thrown out.”
Lila looks at the girl with tentative admiration. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
Lila guesses that the girl failed calculus or Latin, maybe even skipped classes or did not do her homework, the kind of infraction that at Grandville High would, at worst, send you to summer school, but was grounds for dismissal at a posh private school.
“Inappropriate dress,” Daphne says with the barest suspicion of a smile.
“You’re kidding. They can throw you out for that?”
“In extreme cases.” Daphne’s smile is now beyond suspicion.
“Let me guess—dirty tennis whites?”
“Bikini underpants.”
“How the hell did they know?” Lila has a fleeting recollection of her mother’s account of Grandma Beatrice’s regular morning inspections of her underwear when she was a child.
“That’s all I was wearing,” Daphne says. “On the front steps of my dorm in broad daylight.”
“Jesus!” Lila laughs, amazed. “What’d you do that for?”
“Fashion statement,” Daphne says deadpan, and both girls laugh. Before Lila can press her for details, Daphne gestures toward the computer screen and asks, “You got a blog?”
“No. I’m just killing time.” Lila hits the Refresh button as Daphne leans down to eye level with the screen. TheShitStopsHere.com reappears with a new headline: “THE PRISONER SPEAKS!” Right underneath it is Lila’s letter, and under that is ShitStopper’s response:
Okay, Prisoner, you got balls! But are they real or just gum drops? I’m talking about your ‘forest for the trees’ bit. Aren’t all lies created equal? Mr. K’s, the High School Lie, the President’s, God’s (you know the one I’m talking about)? Or lemme put it the opposite way, Isn’t there always going to be a Bigger Lie out there?
So, Prisoner, You tell Me the Biggest Baddest Lie in Amerika you can think of and I bet you I can top it. (That’s a CHALLENGE, girl!)
Shitstopper
Lila has just finished reading this when Daphne says, “You’re ‘Prisoner,’ right?”
“How’d you know?”
“Just guessed. You skipped the letter and went straight to the answer, so I figure you wrote the letter yourself.”
Lila is impressed, but she also feels embarrassed by her ‘parolee’ and ‘black and proud’ pose on the screen in front of them.
A moment later, Daphne says, “Well, I know the biggest lie of them all, if you want it.”
“Yeah?”
“You know, the one they tell you about sex and love—that they always go together. Like sex and love have anything to do with each other, right?”
Lila looks at the Dowd girl, wondering if she is a liar herself with her intimation that she has vast sexual experience or even any sexual experience. But then again, Daphne did do some kind of strip show on her school campus, an act that certainly does not appear to have a whole lot to do with intimacy—unless she made up that whole story, too. It was hard to tell. But if Lila is so enthralled with honesty, how about her own? Does she really know anything about love or sex, let alone what they have to do with each other?
“There’s got to be a bigger lie than that,” Lila says, trying to sidestep the subject.
“Yeah, maybe,” Daphne replies softly, suddenly sounding unsure of herself again. Lila senses that the girl is never very far from self-doubt even if she does make herself do some pretty outrageous stuff. “But the thing that makes this lie so big,” Daphne goes on in almost a whisper, “is it makes people get married and then regret it for the rest of their lives.”
Lila types Daphne’s exact words in her response to ShitStopper’s challenge.
* * *
Stephanie Cyzinski is angry with herself for letting Lila deVries get to her again. Lila always makes her feel so judged, as if the girl is some kind of spy who knows all her dirty secrets. Not that Stephanie has any worth knowing.
But there is more to Lila than just the contempt she puts out about everybody and everything. Stephanie can see it in Lila’s eyes. She always seems as if she is searching for something—something that really counts. It takes a brave soul not to settle for the status quo and Stephanie wishes she had more of that kind of courage. Of course, they say Lila is stoned most of the time and that could account for that perpetual searching look in her eyes.
Or maybe what Stephanie feels has nothing at all to do with Lila. Maybe, Stephanie thinks, she is feeling judged by herself and is just trying to pin it on Lila.
In spite of herself, Stephanie is having the time of her life playing royal tennis. For one thing, she is getting better at it in leaps and bounds, and the main way she is getting better at it is by cultivating the art of sneakiness. With its wacky rules and tricky, off-the-tambour bounces, royal tennis has ten times the bluffs and feints, finesse, and outright subterfuge as modern tennis. Stephanie is fascinated by the rich vein of game cunning she has uncovered in herself; it makes her feel deliciously mischievous.
Stephanie also has come to adore the regular weekend trips to and from Boston with her dad. They chat and joke and make impromptu stops at homey, off-the-beaten-track restaurants,
things they have never done together—just the two of them—before. There is something about being insulated in her father’s Vega coupe that invokes a rare level of candor between them. It was inside that speeding capsule, between Worcester and Framingham, that her father told her how his boyhood dream of becoming a professional tennis player had been thwarted by a Buffalo tennis club that denied him admission based on the last three letters in his name. He had never confided a story as personal as that before.
But, not to put too fine a spin on it, the main reason Stephanie revels in her Saturdays at the Boston Tennis and Racquet Club is Mark Saunders, the Harvard sophomore with whom she is regularly paired in mixed doubles. He is droll, smart, a patient mentor, and terribly cute. Stephanie has a mad crush on him. Not that she knows much about Mark. The closest they have come to a real conversation was when he asked her how she came to play royal tennis and she lied that she had seen a documentary about the game and was instantly fascinated. Mark, in turn, said he learned the game from his father who had also played at Harvard. So Stephanie has done nothing more than play the game and joke around with Mark, but nonetheless she feels guilty about her feelings for him. And that is because she still goes out with Matt Maxwell every Friday night, with all its kissing and fondling, as if nothing in her world has changed. But more has already changed—and will continue to change—than Stephanie can imagine, and that change comes flying at her from the trickiest of angles even now as she and Mark stand at the gallery overlooking Court A, waiting for a match to finish so they can begin theirs.
Over her whites, Stephanie is wearing the loose-knit, V-neck cotton sweater her father bought in the club shop after she won her first match. From her reflection in the gallery window, she can see that the sweater makes her look taller and more shapely than she usually appears. In fact, she decides, she looks very much like other young women at the club, girls with names like Kip and PJ and Alexi. Next to her, Mark is grinning broadly as he watches the game below, another mixed-doubles match. When a long-legged young woman with a blonde pony tail chases down the ball and backhands it off the tambour for a point, Mark cheers and Stephanie feels a thrill of jealousy.