“David does not need a special school,” I say. I keep my voice calm, but really I feel like screaming. I can’t take it anymore. The whole world is upside down and no one else seems to notice.
The football team threatens to choke David with his own balls and he’s the one who might have to transfer?
My dad is dead.
My mom is alive.
And so am I.
So am I.
Why can’t I shut up?
“Kit, would you excuse us?” Principal Hoch asks. Maybe I should pack a bag and go to Mexico. Mexico is a more logical choice, since they speak Spanish, which I kind of know, though I suspect I might speak it with Señora Rubenstein’s same New Jersey whine, and I could drink margaritas there on the regular. I’ve never actually had a margarita, but they definitely seem like something I would like. My dad spent six months living in Oaxaca after college and promised he’d take me there one day. Maybe I should just take myself.
Poof. Disappear. Just like he did. I wonder how long I could get away with using my mother’s credit cards. Would it be long enough for the world to right itself again?
No. I’ve been wrong. Time isn’t the issue. The world will never be right again.
“Can I just say that David is awesome and he shouldn’t get in trouble for this?”
“Please get back to class. Again, no one asked for your opinion—”
“With all due respect, let the girl talk,” David’s dad says. He’s wearing khaki pants and a blue polo shirt, echoes of David’s old uniform. When David wore it he looked like an electronics store stock boy, the person to ask about the best TV. His dad looks like the manager.
Principal Hoch reflexively defends herself and says, “I’m just trying to keep this private,” but then changes her mind. “Kit, go on.”
“Think about it—it’s not David’s fault he got his notebook stolen. It’s mine. I made him a target. And it’s because of the notebook that the whole school hates him. Don’t get me wrong. He is no way normal.” I stop, look at David. Smile a little. “Sorry, it’s true. But who is? And since when is normal a requirement for high school?”
“I like her,” David’s dad says to no one in particular.
“I know, right?” David’s mom says.
—
“I hear you saved the day,” Lauren—aka Miney—says to me as she slides into the booth at McCormick’s. She doesn’t introduce herself. She’s Lauren Drucker. She doesn’t have to. David’s parents are taking us all out for burgers to celebrate, though David and I have to be back to school before the bell for physics.
“Not really,” I say. Lauren looks me up and down. I’m wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and ankle boots, an outfit my mother bought for me, since she’s better at getting dressed than I am. Lauren looks cool even with chipped sunglasses on her head, and messy hair and clothes. I’m too intimidated and embarrassed to ask her how she pulls it off.
“Mom said that because of you, David’s not getting expelled from school.”
“I don’t know. I think David was the one who kicked ass today,” I say.
“Literally and figuratively,” David says.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. He was like a kung fu master.”
“Krav maga, mostly. With a few traditional karate moves,” David says.
“But you had his back. I dig that,” Lauren says, and the part of me that still hasn’t outgrown the insecurities of freshman year gets a thrill from her approval.
“To Kit!” David’s mom says, and the entire Drucker family raises their milk shakes and toasts me.
—
Later, when we are leaving the restaurant and David’s mom stops to say hello to some lady she knows and David and his dad are debating whether it was fair of astronomers to demote Pluto from the status of planet, Lauren pulls me out of earshot of the rest of her family.
“I owe you a big thanks,” she says. “For getting the notebook back. For talking to the principal. Seriously. It’s hard not being at school to help him—I really hate being so far away—so thank you for stepping in. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss him. Or here, actually.”
“You don’t have to thank me for being David’s friend,” I say. “I like hanging out with him.”
Lauren’s eyes narrow and then widen again, and for a second I wonder if she’s tearing up.
“You’re right,” she says. “He’s good people. The best, actually. Just one more thing, though,” Lauren says, putting her hand on my arm to stop me from walking away. I notice that her feet are encased in unfashionable men’s furry snow boots, which somehow look fashionable on her. How does she do that? She’s just made of magic. There’s no other explanation.
“Yeah?”
“You’re probably good people too, but just so you know, I love David more than life itself, so if you hurt my brother in any way, or if you even think about hurting him, I will ruin you. I may not still live here, but I can still do that,” she says in the hurried whisper of a Mafia don, which come to think of it is not unlike a homecoming queen, even an ironic hipster version. Her eyes are dry now and cold. “Understood?”
“I think so.”
“Good,” Lauren says, and then she throws her arm around my shoulders in a weird, semi-friendly half hug. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
—
I am at the weekly newspaper meeting, but no actual newspaper business is getting done because all anyone can talk about is the Fight. People are gossiping about it so much it has earned capitalization.
“Did you see that headlock move? It was like something out of UFC,” Annie says.
“I really thought he was going to kill Mangino. Like ten guys from the football team are in the hospital,” Violet says, who despite being our chief news correspondent tends not to always hew to the facts.
“More like Man-gina,” says a puny freshman boy I’ve never noticed before, making the kind of joke that would have been suicidal if Joe weren’t a safe distance away in the ER.
“How’d he learn to do that, Kit?” Violet asks.
“I have no idea.” I’m only half listening. Mostly I’m trying to come up with a way to ask Mr. Galto to add my name to nominees for editor in chief. Since I’m not skipping town to Mexico after all, I need to get into a good college, preferably one on the other side of the country. I bet I’d like California: sunny skies, boys in shorts year-round, reading my textbooks while lying out on a beach towel. When I imagine West Coast Kit, I am the kind of girl who can rock a bikini and sunglasses and whose entire existence can be described by the word frolic. In other words, the opposite of who I am now.
Mr. Galto, please consider me for EIC. I realize I haven’t been as reliable lately, and I missed the meeting, but I’ve worked my butt off for the past two years, and if you give me this chance I’ll do better. Yes, I’ll ask him afterward, just like that. He’s the type to respond to groveling.
“Unless we’re doing a feature on the fighting prowess of one Mr. David Drucker, which we are decidedly not, I think we need to get this meeting back on track,” Mr. Galto says, and I sit straight in my chair and have my laptop out as if I’m poised to take notes. Taking position as the model student I used to be. I can still fix this. “First order of business, the new EIC. Drumroll, please…”
My stomach drops. I’m too late. My three years of hard work and ass-kissing all down the drain because I couldn’t keep it together and was too distracted to ask Mr. Galto to consider me. I had lost track of the timing.
“Congratulations to Violet and Annie, our new co–editors in chief!” The room explodes in applause and Violet and Annie squeal and hug, because the only thing better than being editor in chief is sharing the position with your best friend. I force myself to smile, to pretend I’m not about to cry, that I didn’t completely and totally self-sabotage.
I’m happy for them. I really am. Still, I not only feel like I lost something, but even worse: I’ve accidentally sol
idified my position as the odd man out in our threesome. Made something I just couldn’t deal with at the moment permanent.
Violet looks over at me, and though she doesn’t say anything, I know she’s asking me for permission to be excited about this. I make my smile brighter. Give her some teeth.
And when Annie gives me a tentative Brownie salute, I give it right back.
Only later, when I’m back home, locked in my room, hiding from my mother and the rest of the world and wondering what my dad would have thought about me screwing one more thing up, do I allow myself to cry. For the third time since he died. That seal is officially broken.
Suddenly people want to talk to me. I’m stopped so often on my way down the halls that I don’t even bother with my headphones. I let them dangle around my neck in that casual way like a rock star necklace.
“Dude, you’re a monster!”
“Yo, man, didn’t know you had it in you!”
“Hi-yah!”
Enthusiastic sentences are shouted in my face, often with crazy hand gesticulations or faux karate kicks. I even get a few high fives, which I don’t think allow for an alternative interpretation other than good job. I’m about ninety-seven percent sure that none of these people want me to die. At least not today.
“You’re late,” José says when I arrive at the decathlon meeting. I am not late. I am twenty-three seconds early. Instead of saying this, I show him my phone, which is synced to Greenwich mean time to the second. “Okay, fine. But traditionally we ask that members arrive by two-fifty-seven.”
“Well, then you should have told me that,” I say, looking around at the group. There are seven people here. Two girls. Five guys, including myself and José. I don’t know their names and can’t look them up because my notebook no longer accompanies me to school. “I appreciate specificity.”
“Noted,” José says. “What happened to your face?”
“How can you not already know this? He, like, demolished the entire football team. Joe Mangino, who is officially the worst person in the world, is in the hospital because of this guy!” a kid with a hairstyle I believe is called a mullet says, and then fist pumps the air. Miney does that sometimes, though she accompanies it with the words Can I get a woot woot? I never oblige. I have no idea what a woot woot is.
I consider correcting Mullet, since there are probably worse people in the world than Meat Boy—like, say, ISIS members, or even Justin—but I remember that it’s rude to correct people. Then again, this is the Academic League, so you’d assume they’d want to get their facts straight.
“I cried every day of freshman year because of Joe Mangino,” José says.
“Drucker, our freakin’ hero,” Mullet says, and stretches his arms out wide. “Meet the team.”
A girl with yellow pigtails and glasses and an awesome T-shirt that says DON’T TRUST ATOMS; THEY MAKE UP EVERYTHING smiles at me and puts out her hand, which I assume means she wants me to shake it, and so I do. Her palms are cool and soft. I search my brain for her name, but all I can come up with is Wheelchair Girl. I consider that she may be the second-prettiest girl in school, though it’s still too early to officialize it, especially because I haven’t spoken to her yet. That T-shirt is too little to go on. She must be a senior, because we don’t have any classes together.
“I’m Chloe. On behalf of all of us, who have endured much verbal abuse from those guys through the years, and also on behalf of José’s copious tears, I salute and thank you,” Chloe says, and does a little wheelie with her chair as punctuation.
“You are very welcome,” I say, and wonder if I’m flirting. Does my ability to banter extend beyond Kit? Probably not, but can’t hurt to try, as my mom likes to say.
“Okay, Drucker, we’re expecting you to kick ass for us at next week’s meet against Ridgefield Tech. The team is all Asian, so they’re amazing,” Mullet says.
“That’s racist,” I say.
“I’m Asian, though. I’m allowed to say it. My people slay at this shit.” I don’t say anything back because I don’t know if being Asian allows you to say racist things about other Asians. I’m not aware of this carve-out.
“Tell us everything you know about quantum mechanics,” José says, and then, just like when I drop-kicked Meat Boy, my whole body sighs with pleasure.
—
“Where have you been?” Trey asks with a big contradictory smile on his face when I come home to find him waiting on my front porch. He has his guitar in his lap, and his feet are, as usual, in flip-flops even though he has been presumably stuck outside for at least seventeen minutes. I do not like looking at his exposed toes and their spritely hair patches.
“Oh no, I forgot about our lesson!” I say, and my heart drops. I never forget prescheduled events, but the meeting devolved from Academic League prep to a debate about the existence of the multiverse and the mechanics of the time-space continuum, and I must have gotten lost in the conversation. Chloe is surprisingly well read in the quantum world and knows almost as much as I do. Mullet is an expert in the field of theoretical mathematics. José is a history whiz. The whole experience turned out to be stimulating in the good way, not in the Jessica’s blond hair or Abby’s perfume sort of way. “Sorry.”
“Seriously? You forgot?” Trey asks as he follows me inside and upstairs to my room, where we practice. “That’s awesome!”
“It’s been a big day.” I’m rattled. How could I have forgotten my lesson? And why would Trey think that’s a good thing? Routine is important. That’s why tonight, like every Tuesday night, is pasta night, and also why, contrary to my mother’s insistence, risotto doesn’t count. (If it was a designated Italian night, not a pasta night, she might have a point.)
“Your sister texted me about the fight. You okay?” he asks, and points to his nose, which is decidedly less blue and swollen than mine.
“Fine.”
“I heard you joined the Academic League. That’s rad.”
“I assume we’ll have to pay you for the full hour even though it’s a short lesson, so let’s get started.” I play a few chords as a hint that I’d like our work to commence, just in case I am being too subtle.
“No rush. Let’s talk a little first,” Trey says, and puts his guitar on the floor, like we have no need for our instruments. “We can go over our time.”
“Will my mom be charged extra?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried. I’m clarifying.”
“No, you won’t be charged extra,” Trey says, and then blows up his cheeks and lets out a deep breath exactly like Miney does. Trey swings to look at me—he’s sitting on my rotating desk chair; I’m on the bed—and he does this weird thing where he forces me to make eye contact. This technique of his invariably precedes a question that will make me uncomfortable.
“David, why don’t you ever ask how I am?”
Phew, I’m relieved. That’s an easy one. I thought he was going to bring up his showcase again. Recent out-of-character events like hanging out with Kit and fighting the football team and joining Academic League notwithstanding, me getting up onstage with a guitar in front of people is just not going to happen. I have my limits.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s polite to ask someone questions about themselves from time to time,” Trey says.
“We have only sixty minutes a week allotted to my learning how to play the guitar and I’d prefer not to waste them.”
“Come on. We’ve been working together almost ten months, and you know almost nothing about me. Whether I have brothers or sisters. What my major is. Where I live. How old I am. Aren’t you curious?”
“Not really.” I assumed he was an only child, since all his insistent chattering suggests he is desperate for company. My mother told me he was a college senior, so that makes him about twenty-one. And as for major, he seems suited for the liberal arts. I’d guess comparative literature or art history.
“Peo
ple like it when you make small talk. It makes them feel like you care,” Trey says.
“What’s your major?” I ask, because though I appreciate efficiency, I do not like hurting people’s feelings. And now that he’s brought it up, I am curious. Could be I have him pegged all wrong. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
“Double major: math and psych.” He says the last word firmly, like if I were transcribing the conversation I should put it in all caps. Math and PSYCH. But I’m distracted by his empty neck. For the first time, he’s not wearing his conch shell necklace, and its absence and the consequent pale expanse of skin—one more break in our routine—bring on a sudden wave of depression and hopelessness. I feel like crying or lying down in a dark room, which is inconvenient given I’m about to start my weekly guitar lesson.
Maybe I’ll buy him a scarf for Christmas. Cover up his neck, which given his toes is surprisingly hairless.
“I wouldn’t have guessed math, and if you’re a psychology major I bet you like reading the DSM too,” I say as a thought forms in my brain the same way I burrow into complicated algorithms. Lego pieces stacking on top of each other until they manifest into something recognizable. Like pointillism.
The wave of depression rolls away and is replaced by a vivid certainty.
For once, I understand. Ten months too late, maybe. But I finally get it.
“You’re not really a guitar teacher, are you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“My dad told Principal Hoch today that I have a social skills tutor. That’s you, right?”
“I like to think of our work together as multifaceted,” Trey says. He picks his guitar up off the floor and fiddles with the strings. “I mean, I do teach you how to play, but I also hope I teach you other stuff as well.”
“I didn’t realize. I feel stupid.” Why is it I have to go through life only seeing part of the picture when everyone else gets to see the whole thing? Like my magnification level is set at fifteen thousand percent. “I wish you had told me. Then I wouldn’t have rushed us through all the talking.”
“Really?”
What to Say Next Page 17