by Ned Vizzini
“Not that bad? Even from a practical standpoint, it’s gonna be, like, all over school. All the parents are going to want to know what was going on in that house and it’s gonna be like a police investigation…what else happened?”
JAKE DILLINGER IS IN THE HOSPITAL WITH BURNS AS WELL.
“Jake Dillinger? _ _ _k! Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
DATA-RATIONING IS TURNED ON. WOULD YOU LIKE IT OFF?
“No, this is enough.…Oh man, it’ll be speeches and counseling and everything.”
IT’LL BE A GOOD TIME TO TALK TO CHRISTINE.
“Shut up! Don’t say that!”
WHY?
“Because two people are in the hospital. You have to have respect when people are in the hospital or when they die or something.”
WHY?
“Because you do.…”
YOU DIDN’T HAVE MUCH RESPECT WHEN EMINEM DIED.
“He’s a celebrity! He’s supposed to die!”
YOU HAVE BAD PARENTS, YOU KNOW THAT?
“Why?” I get up, pace, sit down again.
THEY SHOULD HAVE PREPARED YOU FOR SITUATIONS LIKE THIS. I’M NOT PROGRAMMED TO COUNSEL HUMAN SHOCK AND SORROW. I’M MORE ABOUT RESULTS.
I slump back in bed and think about Rich—Jake too a little bit, but I don’t think about Jake so much because the last time I saw him he was just two feet in a room of sex, while the last time I saw Rich he was smiling at me. I think about how no matter how cool Rich got, he returned to his dork roots at the end, throwing that ashtray at me and whining, alone on a couch.
Oh man. The ashtray. He was drunk with his squip on. That couldn’t have been good. Rich had had a squip for months; he was probably experimenting with it, seeing what it could take.
PROBABLY SO.
F_ _k. I ask the squip for help and it drops my synapses off into sleep, but it can’t control my dreams: Rich all charred up, making fun of me, with no face, holding his head out for me to slap it like a hand, with a pill swimming in alcohol inside.
My phone rings at 8:30 the next day. It’s Michael. “Holy s_ _ _ holy _h_ _ holy _ _i_,” he runs. “Did I wake you up?”
“Yeah,” I wheeze.
“Hello?” Mom chirps, answering the phone downstairs. She knows that I’ve answered—there was a lot of time after that last ring—so she’s just trying to infiltrate my life.
TRUE.
“Mom, it’s for me.”
“Oh, you’re up, Jeremy! We need to talk—”
“Mom, can I have, like, five minutes?”
“O-o-o-kay. You were out very late,” she admonishes. She hangs up. Michael has hardly breathed while she’s been on the line. “It burned, man; the Finderman house burned. Somebody tried to smoke pot near the basement tank or something and one side of the house—fffshsshoo.”
“I had a feeling.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“What, did you do it?”
“No. There were fire trucks, remember?”
“Oh _ _ck.”
“Yeah, those fire trucks that went past at, like, eighty while I was driving for the second time in my life and you were stupid-highway-drunk with Nicole…”
“Jeremy, I’m sorry, but Nicole’s really cool—”
A click comes through the receiver again. “Jeremy?” Mom. “I’m sorry to bother you; have you seen your father’s car keys?”
F_ _ _, they’re still in my pocket!
TELL HER NO.
“No, Mom,” I say. “Let me just finish up with Michael.”
She clicks off: “O-o-o-kay.”
“Listen, man,” I continue, quickly, but Michael has a question: “Did anyone die?” he asks. “I heard Rich died.”
“No! He’s in intensive care.”
“How do you know?”
CHRISTINE.
“I talked to Christine just before you.”
“You did? Well that’s good; I’m kinda freaked out about the whole thing; do you want to come over? I have to tell you about Nicole.”
NOT NECESSARY. HANDLE THE KEYS.
“No, but thanks,” I mumble. “We’ll talk. He’s not dead.” Right?
YES.
“Okay. Bye.” Michael gets off the phone.
LEAVE THEM IN THE BATHROOM.
I hurry in, pee sitting down, splash water on my face (my eyes look swampy), drop the keys nonchalantly by the toilet and rush back to my room. I write a bold note with a Sharpie and tack it to my door (DO NOT DISTURB—THE MANAGEMENT), slide into bed (it hits me all at once—I’m even more tired than last night), pick up the phone and sheepishly dial the number that I have stored in my pocket.
No!
“Hello?”
“Hi, Christine,” I speed through the words. “It’s Jeremy. I just wanted to tell you in case you didn’t hear that last night after we left there was this—”
“It’s not Christine. It’s her mother.”
“Oh.”
“Do you know what time it is? Please don’t call this early.” Click.
“The keys!” Mom yells from the bathroom.
JEREMY, SLEEP MORE.
Yeah. I should. The world isn’t in sync with me yet. I close my eyes for what I want to be an hour, but when I open them because of some noise, instead of streaming in the way it was doing in the morning, the light in my room is just there, shaming me. My arm is draped over my face to protect my eyes against it.
Brrrrring. The phone is ringing again. I pick it up while lying down. “Hmeh?”
“Jeremy?” A girl’s voice.
“Mrrrph.” Christine? YES. “Christine! How’d you get my number?”
“Caller ID, of course,” she says. “From you calling here at like eight-thirty in the morning. What’s up? Are you okay?”
“Holy crap, no,” I slap my face.
THAT’S GOOD. DON’T CURSE WITH HER. IT’S 12:30 P.M., FOR YOUR INFO.
“I’m very disturbed.”
She sighs. “I thought you would be.”
“So you heard?” I sit up. This girl calms me.
“Wait, first, why did you call my house so early?”
TELL THE TRUTH.
“I…uh…I just wanted to talk to you about the whole fire thing.”
“That’s sweet. How did you find out about it? Who told you?”
MICHAEL.
“Michael did. He saw it on the way, driving back to his house.” I feel bad about lying.
DON’T. IT’S NECESSARY.
“Well,” she says. “We don’t get too many phone calls before nine A.M. on a Sunday.”
“Must’ve pissed your mom off.”
“She’ll live.”
“Yeah, maybe she thought it was one of her eight-A.M. booty calls.”
“Shut up!” Christine laughs. Then we both realize what we should be talking about.
“So, uh, the fire thing is super messed up,” I offer. “What did you hear about it?”
“Everything,” she says. “Too much. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Uh…”
EMBARRASSING PARENTAL DETAILS. BORING YET SAFE.
“My Dad eats Peanut Butter Oreos dipped in peanut butter.”
“Waa! He must be kind of…ah…”
“Large? Yeah, he’s large. He’s gotten large lately.”
“My dad goes on business trips and comes back with all the peanuts from the airplanes, including other people’s peanuts, for me.”
“Why?”
“He remembers how much I used to like them when I was little. I don’t even eat them anymore.”
“Is he away a lot?”
“Great Adventure has these strategy meetings in Vegas. He goes there. And he has miles from his old job that he uses to visit family.”
“I’d miss my dad if he was away all the time,” I say, out of bed now, pacing.
STOP PACING. IT ADDS A TREMOR TO YOUR VOICE. AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
“Me too.” Christine says. “I do. But he sends
letters, you know? Not e-mails, real letters with stamps that you have to actually buy.”
“Huh,” I laugh.
There’s a pause. INTERESTING. WE’RE LEARNING A LOT HERE.
I know!
“You still there, Jeremy?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“You know, you and I and Brock and Chloe and Michael are really lucky.” (I don’t say anything. I’m noticing how close I was to her in the sentence.) “We owe you a lot, actually. You were the one that rushed us out of that house.”
“I was tired,” I say, putting boxers on, exceedingly careful not to hang up the phone as it nestles between my chin and shoulder. “I wanted to go home.”
“Isn’t it weird that that’s the kind of stuff that saves you from being hurt?” she asks. “Being tired?”
“Yeah. Life is very random.”
LIKE A QUANTUM COMPUTER.
“Like a quantum computer.”
“Like what?”
“Stupid,” I hiss at the squip. AH, LEAVE ME ALONE.
“Jeremy?” CALL HER “BEAUTIFUL GIRL.” NOW.
“Yes, beautiful girl?”
“Stop it.” Christine blushes over the phone. I knew that could happen. Then she says, “I forgot what I was going to say.”
YOU WERE GOING TO SAY THAT WE SHOULD MEET UP TO GO OVER OUR LINES EVEN THOUGH LYSANDER NEVER TALKS TO PUCK AND PUCK NEVER TALKS TO LYSANDER.
“You were going to say that we should meet up to go over lines even though Lysander never talks to Puck and Puck never talks to Lysander—you just throw dust at me.”
“Jeremy, don’t you think we could just talk on the phone a little while? Like, not so pushy. Remember what I asked you?”
“All right.” And with the help of the squip and my own quick thinking, Christine and I manage to have an actual conversation about movies and our friend(s) and how screwed up the whole fire thing is and how hurt Rich is and what school is going to be like and the play and how Jake Dillinger is a dick anyway even if he’s in the hospital and Mr. Reyes and climate change and parents and homework. NO, NOT HOMEWORK, the squip says when I get there. TALKING ABOUT HOMEWORK IS A FIRST STEP ON THE PATH TO EUNUCH-HOOD. I switch.
The conversation goes so well that I’m surprised, forty-five minutes in, to have the squip order an ending. BE THE TERMINATOR. SHOW THAT YOUR ESSENCES ARE PRIZED IN THIS WORLD, it says. “I gotta go deal with my parents,” I say. “I assume they’ve heard everything by now.”
“They’re gonna be crazy,” Christine says. “Like mine.”
“Well, then, it’ll be fun.”
“Definitely. Bye, Jeremy.” She lilts her voice in an exceedingly pleasant manner.
“Have a good one,” I almost say. But the squip corrects me: ANOTHER RUNG ON THE EUNUCH LADDER. STICK WITH “PEACE.”
“Peace,” I slur, and right on cue, Mom raps on my door. Maybe she was standing outside, waiting for me to end the call.
“Jeremy, we have to talk right now about where my car was last night and what happened to your aunt’s Beanie Babies!”
I crumble into a subordinate chair at the dining room table. Mom and Dad are centurions, in established positions. She’s at the head of the table and he’s behind her, sitting on a radiator in a Godfather-type pose. (I’ve never seen The Godfather…I’ve seen the Sopranos, though—good enough?) He looks like he should be in charge quietly from the background, but I know he’s probably just eating over there by the oval garbage can. This is Mom’s show. I look up at her.
“First things first,” she says. “We heard about the fire at the Finderman house last night. That’s where you were, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, are you okay?” Mom looks at me deeply.
“Yeah. I left before all that stuff happened. You know, whatever happened.”
“Okay,” Mom says. Then, as if they’ve been planning it all morning, she and Dad approach and hug me in sequence. I hug back, almost crying the way I did last night, into Dad’s big body. “We’re happy you’re safe,” he says gruffly. The hug is long and tight.
My parents return to their positions. Mom has her hands on the back of the main dining room chair like a boat wheel. I notice that she’s wearing a very businesslike, nonweekend outfit. She adopts a serious expression: “Now, I have some questions. Are you on drugs.”
NO. NOT NOW.
“No, not now.”
“Don’t be smart with me, Jeremy.” Mom approaches. “What happened at that party last night? What were you doing that kept you up until four in the morning?”
“Nothing.” NO. TELL THE TRUTH. “Well…some stuff…”
“What? Likewhatstuff?” Mom leans forward. It’s easy to forget that your mother is a lawyer until it counts.
TELL HER EVERYTHING.
What do you mean?
TELL HER EVERYTHING. SHE’S SMART. IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO GET OUT OF THIS.
But—
JEREMY, AREN’T WE PAST ARGUING?
“I did ecstasy.…” I mumble.
“Hu-aaaa!” Mom grabs me. “You did? Did someone force you to?”
Dad laughs his ass off. “Did someone force him?” A sandwich quivers in his mouth. “Whoa, huh, yeah, right.”
“No, nobody forced me,” I stare ahead. Mom puts her hands tight around my cheeks, pulling my face up at her, and holds me there. “I just tried it. I’m young. I’m stupid.”
“Jeremy, what is wrong with you?” She looks at me so deeply that I think my body might straighten up to accommodate her gaze, from eyes to toes. “What is this?” She holds up a credit card bill, with the shirt I bought at Advanced Horizons highlighted (I have to stare close to see it). “Why are you abusing our credit card?”
“Mguph.” I answer. Mom still holds my mouth shut.
“Why is my sister missing hundreds of dollars worth of Beanie Babies?”
“Yeah!” Dad seconds, hearing his cue. “I saw you looking at those gay things on the Internet. What have you been doing on the Internet?”
Mom looks back and sighs. “Why was my car parked differently in the driveway this morning than it was last night?” she asks. “Why are there sixteen more miles on it?”
Jeez—she checks that stuff?
YOUR MOM IS REALLY MENTAL. TELL THE TRUTH.
“Because I took it to the party.”
“You took my car to the party! Why would you do that?”
I’ve never seen my mother jump up and down before, but I’ve also never ever seen anything resembling the remotest, tiniest body of water create any kind of reflection in her eyeballs. Until now.
“When did I lose my son?” Mom goes from jumping to kneeling. She’s below me now, tearing up. “When?” She touches my leg.
TELL HER ABOUT ME.
What?
IT’S THE ONLY WAY.
She won’t—
TELL HER.
“I, uh…” Mom looks at me plaintively. “I got a quantum computer that I ate and now it sits in my brain and tells me how to be cool. And it changed me.”
“Oh my gosh.”
I don’t say anything.
“He’s insane. Your son has gone insane.” Mom turns to Dad. “Now we have to get him a specialist and everything.”
“I’m sane!” I stand up. This isn’t something I ever thought I’d have to defend.
YOU’RE DOING FINE.
“I’m really sane!”
“Jeremy, we don’t need to talk about this right now. I want you to go to your room and lie down and take some aspirin or…whatever you need to do to get those drugs out of your system. Your father and I are going to have a discussion and come up with a game plan to get you the help you need.” Now Mom is crying, and I learn something I didn’t know about the human body: if your mom cries, you cry. So there we are, her bawling and me with my auto-bawl feature activated, together at the dining room table; me trying to explain that I just did the ecstasy once and I’m not lying about the squip and Mom holding my head and wondering out
loud where she went wrong and telling me that she loves me so much, her only son, at least I wasn’t burned in the fire.
I’m back in school on Monday. It’s not like you can ignore the fact that there was a tragedy and some people got put in the hospital and a member of the community’s house burned, because right over the entrance, on a big banner put together to look like a quilt, the school administrators have written: WE ARE MIDDLE BOROUGH.
“We are Middle Borough?” Isn’t that what they wrote at Columbine after those two kids shot all those other kids?
THEY WROTE “WE ARE COLUMBINE.”
Well, duh. But weren’t we Middle Borough before?
APPARENTLY NOT.
I walk through the doors. Since there’s no Rich standing outside, there’s no group for me to hang out with before class. I just head in the way I used to, alone and thinking about school, instead of with a group of people, thinking about how I can please/use them. Inside, instead of walking purposefully, wearing their pastiche of name brands, students are standing in medium-size circles by lockers of importance: Rich’s locker, close to the entrance, has a pile of flowers in front; Jake Dillinger’s hosts a larger pile, because Jake was cooler. People are milling around, sad, as if they cared for these people and not just for what they symbolized; as if Jake were useful as a human being instead of just as a signifier that you had gotten into a certain crowd. Like minutes before he got burned, he wasn’t _ _ _ _in_ Katrina in some room with somebody taking pictures. I wonder if those pictures are up yet?
THEY ARE.
I would never look at them. I hate everyone.
CALM DOWN. PEOPLE ARE SAD. WHY WON’T YOU LET THEM BE SAD?
Because I hate them. I still do.
OH, GET OVER IT. LOOK HOW DISTRESSED THEY ARE.
I check out people’s faces, not just their positions and the way they arrange themselves into social strata, which is what I’m used to doing. Everyone has pregnant eyes like Mom had yesterday, and they’re bent over and heavy in a way that’s different from the heaviness that comes with their backpacks.
DON’T YOU THINK IT’D BE HARD TO DEAL WITH THIS IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE ME? REMEMBER HOW YOU FELT SATURDAY NIGHT?
I guess.
THAT’S HOW THEY ALL FEEL. LOOK.
I look, but I don’t think I see what the squip intended. I look and see how the people who aren’t crying or standing in circles chatting—the people like me—are peering around inquisitively in the exact same way that I am. For the first time, I have a feeling for who has a squip and who doesn’t: Nora from chemistry seems thoughtful. Jarrod from gym is looking at people’s feet as if there were clues there. Nguyen, also from gym, mumbles to himself—maybe he hasn’t gotten used to it yet. About a dozen of us are just standing aside, like herbivorous dinosaurs checking out other herbivorous dinosaurs, with the calm that can only come from having a voice in your head, from hearing the news early, from always having someone to talk to. None of us are crying. Maybe we really are evolving.