by David Arnold
“Sure,” I say.
“I don’t,” says Val.
“Actually, yeah, me either. Alan, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The three of us are in our usual spot with the swim team in the cafeteria. Ever since my failed lunch-in-the-car experiment, I notice the guys have stopped asking about my back, and I can’t help wondering if Alan convinced them to drop it.
“We can put a man on the moon,” he says, “but we can’t keep cereal from getting soggy. We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t adequately reheat fries.”
“Sounds like you just use it as a benchmark for what’s possible with food,” says Val.
Alan takes a huge bite from the corner of his slice, clearly savoring the process, and then, shaking his head: “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t make every pizza rectangular.”
Under her breath, Val says, “Chocolate milk on me if you can change the subject in five seconds.”
“Alan,” I say, “I couldn’t help noticing that you’re wearing some pretty short shorts today.”
“Well played,” says Val, dipping a fry in ranch dressing.
Alan stands, turns in a full circle. “I’m bringing back Umbros. If you got it, flaunt it, amarite?” He slaps his bare legs. “Gotta let these suckers breathe.”
Val reaches for another fry. “They’re called Umbros because it’s what you say when you see a guy wearing them.”
At some point last week, Val lifted her shun on me, which, thank God. Things just weren’t the same without her running commentaries.
“Nice legs, douchebox.” Tyler Massey stands behind us, holding a stack of red note cards. I sometimes think Tyler shares genetic makeup with a shark, only instead of smelling blood from miles away, he smells the opportunity to be a dick. “Got a question for you,” he says to Alan. “Could you possibly be more gay?”
Smile intact, Alan pulls up the legs of his Umbros by a few inches, circles the table until he’s right up in Tyler’s space. “I don’t know, Tyler. Wanna find out?”
Tyler Massey’s face goes dark red. “I just came over to give you guys your invite.” He pulls a note card from a stack, hands it to Val, and he’s gone, off to harass the next table.
“‘You are cordially invited,’” reads Val, “‘to participate in the highly anticipated cinematic experience from acclaimed director Tyler Massey.’”
Alan dips a fry in Val’s ranch. “‘Acclaimed’? Is he for real with this?”
“‘A Sex, Lies, and Videotape for the new generation,’” reads Val, “‘The Vagina Dialogues is a harrowing tale of lust and intrigue, love and friendship gone awry, a luscious thriller that brings new meaning to the term coming-of-age.’”
“It does not say that,” says Alan.
Val laughs to the point of shaking, turns the invite around for us to read, and we pretty much lose our shit.
“Oh, hey.” I turn to Val and sing, “Chocolate milk,” like a song. She hands over money, and I head to the line for three milks, and when I get back, I overhear the tail end of a conversation in which Alan says, “Like, how is that even possible? How could I prefer that to artificial lime flavoring?”
“Really, Alan?” I pass around the chocolate milks. “With the earwax thing again?”
Alan mumbles something, and Val tosses a fry at his head. “What, you’re giving me recycled material now? You gotta run conversations through him first?”
“You guys weren’t speaking at the time,” says Alan. “You missed good material, he missed good material. What do you want me to say?”
“Like what?” I ask.
Alan takes a huge bite of pizza. “Hmm?”
“You said I missed good material. What did I miss?”
He nods as he chews, holds up one finger to indicate we should wait, and then wipes grease from his mouth. “Bloody hell, that’s delicious. Okay, so. Your fun guy ballsack? Yeah, we can’t call it that anymore.”
“Okeydokey.”
“I know this comes as quite a blow.”
“I’m okay with it.”
“And you’re probably wondering, What’s it all mean?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Thing is, I saw a Hyundai commercial the other day, and guess what?” says Alan. “It’s pronounced hun-day, not hun-dye, which means fun guy ballsack does not, in fact, rhyme with Hyundai hatchback, and if it doesn’t rhyme, what’s the point?”
“Indeed.”
“Which is why I shall now be referring to your Hyundai hatchback as your fun gay ballsack. Rhyme intact. Plus it’s better, I think. Logical, anyway.”
“I believe we’ve long abandoned the realms of logic.”
“I think we should go,” says Val.
“Go where?” asks Alan.
Val smiles, points to Tyler’s invitation. “The Vagina Dialogues premier.”
“Uh, no thanks.”
“Come on. Remember his movie last year? Harken the Dream, or whatever? It was hilarious.”
“Unintentionally.”
“Still hilarious,” says Val. “Plus, we need to stock up our memory reserves, take advantage of what little time we have left, you know?”
“Please,” says Alan. “You really want to subject yourself to a Tyler Massey movie mere months before heading to the film capital of the world? Talk about tainting the well.”
Sometimes words are spoken that seem to match the tenor and frequency of the words around them, until closer inspection reveals otherwise.
“Wait, what?”
Val’s eyes dart to Alan, then to her plate. “Look, I know we don’t talk about it, and I get it. I’m sad too. But I refuse to mope through my entire senior year.”
“What are you talking about?”
Alan pops the last corner of pizza into his mouth. “It’ll suck, but it’ll work, remember? Global village and whatnot.”
“If we get in,” says Val.
“We’ll get in. And wherever Noah lands, LAX is an easy flight.”
“If we get in.”
Alan rolls his eyes. “Val, please. You were born for UCLA. And once they get a look at these Umbros, I’m as good as blue and gold.”
“UCLA,” I whisper, and for some reason I’m thinking of how my eighth-grade girlfriend dumped me via Facebook Messenger—that little blue note with the it’s-been-great-but, and the not-ready-for-a-commitment—and feeling the bottom drop out of my gut. All that time I was the only one living our shared history.
“You okay?”
I look up at Val. “What?”
Alan puts a hand on my shoulder. “Noah, I’m telling you this as your friend? You need to take a nap, yo. You’ve got these bags under your eyes, like—”
“Big ones,” says Val.
“You spend too much time watching that YouTube video we found of the lady who ages in slo-mo,” says Alan. I had totally forgotten he was with me when I discovered the Fading Girl video, and I guess the look on my face indicates as much. “What, you think I don’t notice you watching it all the time?”
I stand up and wonder: What happens when the keepers of your shared history no longer recognize that history? “I have to go now,” I say, and without another word, I walk out of the cafeteria, through the parking lot to my car, and all I can think of is that woman from the cruise ship who’d been hypnotized, made into a human marionette, and the look on her face in the days following, that blank stare she’d carried with her around the boat. I don’t know what’s going on, but if I have strings attached to my arms and legs, I know who put them there.
32 → Sara, a regrettably brief conversation
“Noah-with-an-H, I was wondering if I would see you again.”
“Yeah, me too. I mean—wondering if I would see you. I see me, like, every day.”
“Oh good. You’r
e squirrely when you’re sober, too.”
“Sorry about that. I don’t usually drink.”
“Wait, did you back into our driveway?”
“Um, yes. Yeah, that’s me.”
“Very efficient of you. Sure you’re not a dad?”
“I know, right?”
“You want a grilled cheese? It’s grilled cheese day.”
“Grilled cheese day.”
“Yeah, pretty sure we’re the only homeschooled kids with a monthly lunch calendar.”
“Actually, thanks—but I need to talk to your brother for a second.”
“Oh. Okay. You wanna come inside?”
“I’ll wait here, thanks.”
33 → Circuit, another conversation
“What do you want?”
“Can you step outside a sec?”
“Can I step outside? What, are you gonna hit me?”
“I’m not going to hit you.”
“Calling me five times a day isn’t enough, you gotta come harass me at my place of residence?”
“Okay, listen. Whatever you did, I’m done being mad about it. I just need you to undo it. Just fix me, or whatever.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Circuit, I’m serious. My brain is fucked up.”
“In what way?”
“Everybody’s . . . different.”
“Ha.”
“What?”
“Don’t look now, dude, but sounds like you got exactly what you asked for.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“I’m having these dreams, Circuit, these weird dreams like every night. And now my best friends are leaving. And my mom has this scar on her face, and I’m just . . . I can’t . . . I can’t breathe.”
“Okay. Noah, calm down. All right, look. Cards on the table. I tried to hypnotize you. It would have worked if you’d given me a minute, but once you saw what was happening, you were gone.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. So unless you wanna come inside and finish what we started—”
“I’m not going in there.”
“Okay, then. My grilled cheese is getting cold. Oh, and, Noah?”
“What.”
“I know you have friends, and I know I’m not one of them. So maybe instead of calling me every day, you should try calling one of them.”
34 → the vase
Me: Dean and Carlo. Your house. Pronto.
I send the text before pulling out of Circuit’s driveway, and it’s a testament to Alan’s loyalty that he responds immediately with On my way, even though it means skipping class and most likely practice, too.
“Good pizza today,” Alan says. “Extra rectangular.”
We’re in his room now. The Matrix is on in the background, and even though we’re not really watching, the movie accompanies our session appropriately. I sit at the foot of his bed, he sits at the head, and both of us stare straight into the eyes of the other. The deal is: we talk. Honestly and openly. We got the idea last year when our class was supposed to read On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, until a few parents got wind of the assignment and put the kibosh on the whole thing. They said it wasn’t age appropriate and had the book banned from Iverton High. Thing is, none of us had planned to read that shit originally, but as it turns out, telling a bunch of kids not to read a certain book is a highly effective way to get them to read that book. Within days the halls were filled with kids bumping into each other, everyone’s head stuck inside On the Road.
Alan and I read it together. He had the idea we should “do it up right,” like a book club, so that’s what we did. We took notes, baked some brownies, and discussed the book’s haphazard sentences, the overall get-up-and-go tone like it had legs of its own. It wasn’t until near the end that we both admitted we actually didn’t like it all that much.
Except one scene.
In it, two of the main characters, Dean and Carlo, sit on a bed and talk through the night—just talk, openly and honestly about anything and everything, so long as it’s real.
“It was fine pizza,” I say. “But what’s with the rectangles?”
“Makes it taste better.”
“I think you’re the only one who thinks that.”
“I am misunderstood in my time.”
“You’re misunderstood in every time, Alan.”
“It is as you say.”
We’re not whispering, but it’s close, a very serene state, almost meditational, which was our mutual interpretation of Kerouac’s characters in that scene.
“You don’t have to talk so quietly,” says Alan.
I swear sometimes he can read my mind. “Talking quietly was our mutual interpretation.”
“Oh.”
“Plus, you’re talking that way too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Stop saying okay.”
“I like saying okay.”
“Okay.”
In the background, Neo meets the Oracle for the first time. She tells him not to worry about the vase, and he says, “What vase?” and then promptly knocks over a vase, which shatters on the floor.
“Okay, rapid-fire,” I say. “Just answer, don’t think.”
“Hit me.”
“One thing that happened today that you loved.”
“Rectangle pizza,” says Alan. “Killed it in my Umbros.”
“Um, bro? That’s two things.”
“You said don’t think.”
“Fair,” I say. “Okay, one thing that happened today that made you sad. Or mad.”
“Someone put a note in my backpack that said, ‘Go back to Mexico.’”
A beat. “Shit. Again?”
He shrugs.
“Was it signed this time?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
“Alan, that’s twice now. You should report it.”
“First of all, no. Actually, that’s it. Just no.”
“Why not?”
“Because I refuse to waste my time on douchesacks who have zero-percent clue what they’re talking about. Of course, I can’t go back to someplace I’ve never been, but I do find some comfort in imagining how that sentence would probably tie the culprit’s brain in knots.”
“I’m staking out your bag tomorrow.”
“Actually, we should go to Mexico, like, for real.”
“We’re talking full-on martial law,” I say. “Skull cracking, the works.”
“Mexico City especially sounds dope. The food and all. Get a couple cervezas. And they’re big into wrestling, right?”
“Noah the Skull Cracker, that’s me.”
“God, I love wrestling. Watching it, primarily. Never actually wrestled myself. Well, I’ve wrestled myself, if you catch my drift.”
“Alan, I’m serious.”
“I know you are, yo. But this isn’t up to you, okay? I deal with this shit in my own way. By mocking the intelligence of the perpetrators.”
For all the ways Alan can be a child—and they are legion—there are times when his maturity knocks me on my ass.
“But thanks for having my back,” he says.
“I really do. I know we haven’t Dean and Carlo’d in a while. I’ve been a little distant, probably. But I do have your back.”
“I know. And you’re hella cute when you’re incensed.”
“It really is sad how much you love me.”
“Please,” Alan says. “That shit is extra-requited.”
“You’re right.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve seen the way you look at me from ’cross yonder room.”
“What yonder room?” I ask.
“Every yonder room. Whichever yonder room I happ
en to be in at the time.”
“I don’t make a habit of looking at people ’cross yonder rooms. And even if I did, it wouldn’t mean what you seem to think it means.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, Alan. Because I can acknowledge someone as attractive without wanting to have sex with that person.”
“You are a Zen master, bro. An example for us all.”
“It is as you say.”
More staring, more not listening to The Matrix, all while I try to bring up what needs bringing up.
Alan says, “Remember when we were kids? And we used to talk about getting married?”
“Basket weaving in the mountains.”
“Eating from iron skillets.”
“Skillet eating and basket weaving,” I say. “That was the dream.”
“Such lofty aspirations.”
Silence again. Thinking, et cetera, very Dean and Carlo. Alan asks what I want out of life, and I say, “Other than basket weaving in the mountains?”
“Obvs.”
I shrug. “You’ll laugh.”
Alan puts his right hand on his shorts. “I swear on my Umbros, I will not laugh at your dreams.”
“I would like to make a living by living.”
“So like a hunter-and-gatherer-type situation?” asks Alan.
“No, like—I just want a job I don’t hate, and family and friends to love. Be less concerned with what I do, more concerned with who I am.”
Alan nods. “Sometimes I worry those are the same things.”
“Yeah.”
“Noah?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s going on with you?”
I take a breath. “UCLA.”
“Yes.”
“You’re both going?”
Alan hesitates, then: “We’ve talked about this, like, a thousand times, No. You don’t remember?”
“When was this decided?”
“I mean, Val’s wanted to go for forever. UCLA has one of the top photography departments. She read some thing about how they value the narrative of photography over technical aspects, and she was sold. Plus, LA’s live music scene is second to none, which sort of combines Val’s biggest interests.”