“Cut what out?” he asked innocently. To Ashley, he added, “I’m Raymond Jardine. Welcome aboard.”
“Do you play on a varsity team, too?” she asked.
“No. I’m a free agent.”
Sean groaned. “Raymond here has no luck,” he informed Ashley. “None at all. Zero, zip, zilch. That’s only until the summer, of course. Then he’s taking a trip to the luck place —”
“My pen’s out of ink!” Raymond howled suddenly, sitting bolt upright in his chair.
Mr. Kerr glared at the back of the room. “Is there something wrong?”
“Uh — no, sir,” stammered Sean.
Ashley was digging around in her purse. “I think I’ve got an extra pen in here somewhere.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Raymond told her. “Mine writes again. It must have been a temporary defect. Thanks anyway.”
Ashley was still fumbling through the many possessions in her purse, a look of consternation on her face. Then she was on her feet, heading for the door. “I left my makeup mirror in the washroom,” she told a shocked Mr. Kerr. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
Sean grabbed Raymond by the shoulder. “The next time you let out a bellow like that in the middle of class,” he hissed, “be prepared to die! Got it?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Raymond challenged. “Let you tell another person about Theamelpos? Haven’t you done enough?”
“Maybe if you weren’t acting like such an idiot, I wouldn’t have to have said anything!”
The two partners were sitting nose to nose, glaring defiantly at each other, and a rough-and-tumble fight seemed inevitable, when Sean noticed that Mr. Kerr had stopped the lesson and was looking straight at them.
“Would you two kindly leave the room?” the teacher requested with icy politeness. “I’ll send someone to bring you back when we study war poetry!”
So it was that when Ashley returned to English class, her makeup mirror tucked safely in the zipper pocket of her purse, she found her two partners standing in the hall in disgrace, involved in a heated argument.
“What’s with you guys?” she asked, interposing her shapely body between them. “You shouldn’t be fighting. Don’t you see? If the three of us get along, we could have an awesome time in class together!”
This made Sean stop and think. “How awesome?”
“Awesome awesome!”
“Well,” said Raymond cautiously, “Delancey and I, we’re really serious students, so we don’t want to spend too much time having — uh — fun in class. Right, Delancey?”
Sean was about to agree when the green eyes fell on him, and he was lost. “Well, we have to show Ashley a good time. She’s new, and —”
“Yes,” Raymond agreed painfully, “but it’s urgent that we come up with a top-notch project for the poetry assignment. Right?” He glared at Sean.
“Well, yeah, but —”
“Right!” Raymond concluded positively. “So, Ashley, what do you know about poetry?”
“Nothing,” she replied in sweet surprise. “I’m a model.”
“Oh, God,” said Raymond.
Sean beamed in admiration.
Ashley touched a hand to her mouth. “Oh! I forgot! I’m not kicked out of class like you guys. What a drag! We were just starting to get along. See you later. And remember: no fighting.”
Sean watched her walk down the hall and disappear into Mr. Kerr’s room. When he turned back again, Raymond was staring at the ceiling.
“That’s right. Keep dumping your boulders and your boiling oil and your nuclear warheads down on Jardine. He can take it. He likes it.”
Sean looked mystified. “What are you complaining about? She’s incredible!”
“Yeah, but this chick is like a death sentence to our English project. Face it, Delancey, we needed a bookworm and they sent us a calendar girl. How could it be worse? We’ll be graded harder because there are three of us now; she’s going to be zero help except to interfere with everybody’s concentration; Kerr’s going to hate her if she carries out her plan to have an “awesome” time in his class; and the bottom line is Jardine is going to wind up with another summer of fish guts in New Jersey!” He moaned in real pain. “Yesterday everything was okay. Not great, but for Jardine that’s the best that can be expected. Today — our new partner has arrived. I might as well get on the bus for Secaucus right away and save myself some trouble.”
“Come on,” said Sean. “I’m sure we can teach her to be helpful.”
“Tell me about it. We’d have an easier time teaching Moby Dick to tap-dance.”
“Listen,” said Sean in growing irritation, “we’re going to do the work with or without her, and we’re not going to let her distract us. We’re grown — teenagers, and surely we’ve got the strength to function despite the fact that Ashley happens to be good-looking. We’re going to be so nice to Mr. Kerr that he’ll forget about today and begin to love us. And never again are we going to fight in front of Ashley, which includes not hanging yourself while I’m trying to talk!” His voice rose in volume. “I promise to do everything in my power to get you to Theamelpos! And I’m making this promise for no other reason than to shut you up! Okay?”
Raymond brightened. “You’re a real pal, Delancey. Jardine needed that boost. And we’re going to work three times as hard as everyone else. We’re going to get to Theamelpos no matter how many curves and spitballs they throw at Jardine. You and me, on the beach, catching rays …”
***
The DeWitt cafeteria was a cramped affair, because almost half the space had been converted into solar energy storage batteries for SACGEN. With these batteries right next door, the temperature in the dining room always hovered in the mid to high eighties. This was ten degrees cooler than the temperature in the food line.
Thompson Food Services had sent out an inspector in mid-September to find out why sales of coffee, tea, hot chocolate and soup stood at zero. The man suffered heat prostration after a day in the kitchen, and was transferred to the Anchorage office some weeks later at his own request.
For a nickname for the new cafeteria, the students had looked to Howard Newman. He did not disappoint them. At an emergency assembly, after Mr. Hyatt had assured everyone the temperature would be under the eighty mark by January, February the latest, Howard had piped up, “Way to go, Q-Dave! We really needed a windmill right next to Miami Beach!” And Miami Beach it became.
Thus the students would sweat their way through lunch in varying stages of undress, captained by the intrepid Howard, at his beachfront poker location. The players would appear daily, dressed in swimming trunks and armed with towels and sunglasses. The house supplied complimentary #18 sunblock for their noses. Like the game in the hall, the toothpicks were flying in all directions and ultimately, most of them would settle in the mountain in front of Howard.
Sean was about to tie into his lunch that day when a tray was placed on the table opposite his, and he looked up into the sea-green eyes of Ashley Bach.
“Hi, Sean. Do you mind I if join you?”
Calm down, Sean told himself. She was new. She needed someone to have lunch with. She was not — repeat, not — hitting on him. Then again, there was the possibility that someone had told her who the hero of Monday night’s basketball game was, who had pumped in that beautiful eighteen-footer. Hmmm. This situation called for casual suaveness and, if it turned out that Ashley was a sucker for a good jump shot, there was Contingency Plan B. According to Contingency Plan B, he would go for it and blow off the poetry assignment and his promise to Raymond, who could spend the rest of his life in Secaucus for all Sean cared.
“Sure, Ashley, sit down. How was the rest of your morning?”
“Bor-ing,” she sang out. “I wish you and Raymond were in my other classes.” She fiddled with her collar. “Why is it so hot in here?”
Sean shrugged. “The windmill.” He had been planning to say something else, but she was looking directly at him, and his mind went
momentarily blank. Suddenly he realized he was staring, and he flushed beet red and diverted his concentration to his hamburger. It was an eighth of an inch from his mouth when she said, “Hey! You’re not going to eat that, are you?”
“Uh — yeah. It’s my lunch.”
She was all concern. “That’s not food! That’s poison! It’ll ruin your health or, worse yet, you’ll get fat!”
“But —”
“Look at that lunch! A hamburger! French fries! And a large soda! I’ll bet it isn’t even diet.”
“Well — uh — no,” Sean admitted. He glanced at her tray. Everything was green but the cottage cheese and the bowl of granola. It looked like an aerial photograph of the Amazon rain forest.
“Now let’s see,” said Ashley, beginning to count on her fingers. “Spinach, 38 calories; plus lettuce, 35; makes — 67; plus 106 for the granola — 148. Plus skim milk, 90 — oh, wow, I must be close to 200.”
Sean took a tiny nip out of his hamburger and chewed inconspicuously. Ashley looked at him in reproach and began to pick delicately at the Amazon rain forest.
“Hi, guys.” Raymond placed his tray on the table and sat down beside Sean. “This day is shaping up into a real lemon. Miss Ritchie just gave us the due date on our Political Science project. Next Monday. Guess who hasn’t started yet? If you said Jardine, you’re right.” He looked down at his tray with great relish. “I need this delicious double-chocolate milkshake — my favorite flavor. It just might prove that it was worth my while getting out of bed this morning.” Eagerly, Raymond sucked on the straw hard enough to pull a softball through a hundred and fifty feet of vacuum cleaner hose. Then he looked up at the ceiling. “Strawberry,” he said with resignation.
Ashley shook her head. “You, too, with the terrible lunch! Do you want to poison yourself?”
“You got poison?” asked Raymond brightly.
This started Ashley laughing so hard that she had to leave the table to fix her makeup.
“I don’t think we should tell any more jokes in front of Ashley,” Raymond decided. “She’s a laugher. If this ever happens in front of Kerr, we can kiss Theamelpos good-bye.”
“Who died and left you Chief Decision-Maker?” Sean asked. “I’ll do what I like.”
“I noticed,” Raymond snapped back. “Where do you get off, Mr. Let’s-Ignore-the-Fact-Ashley’s-Good-Looking, having an intimate lunch with her with love in your eyes?”
“It just so happens,” said Sean, “that I was already here when she sat down. And what if it works out that she likes me, huh? Am I supposed to throw it away? I wouldn’t expect you to hold off if it was you she was after.” This was a lie. Sean knew that if Ashley and Raymond ever became a couple, he would feed himself to SACGEN or, at the very least, cry.
Raymond read his mind. “You don’t have to worry. Girls like Ashley don’t happen to Jardine. Fish guts happen to Jardine. I’ll be satisfied if nobody gets Ashley. That way I won’t be missing out on anything, so there won’t be anyone to be jealous of.”
When Sean caught sight of Ashley making her way back to the table, he emptied the remainder of his French fries into his mouth, cramming the rest of his burger in there, too.
Raymond was not interested in trying this tactic himself. “You want to choke, Delancey, that’s your business. She can see me eating live toads for all I care. She’ll have to accept our religious differences — she’s a model, and I’m Jardine.”
Ashley sat down. “Oh, you guys are so funny! Now, I’m definitely going to have to do something about the food you eat. I’m great at nutrition stuff.”
Silently, Raymond mouthed the words “live toads.”
Sean glared at him.
Three
The DeWitt gymnasium rang with cheers as star guard Sean Delancey sank yet another outside jump shot. Late in the third quarter, the home team held a commanding twenty-point lead over the visitors from nearby Bellmore.
It was one of those games where Sean couldn’t seem to do anything wrong — his best game so far, partly because of his superb play, and partly because Ashley Bach was there to witness it. Mindy was, too, he noted with satisfaction.
Suddenly there was a discordant note in the symphony of crowd noise running through Sean’s mind, an all-too-familiar voice calling, “Attaway, Delancey!” He wheeled. There was Raymond, standing at the gym entrance, waving and applauding.
“Oof!” Distracted by his English partner’s presence, Sean didn’t see the pass, which hit him in the pit of the stomach, winding him momentarily. Recovering, he grabbed the ball and dribbled toward the basket. Seeing none of his teammates open, he pulled up to shoot, but just as he was releasing the ball, Raymond’s voice reached him again.
“Shoooot!”
The ball hit the rim with a resounding boing! and fell right into the hands of the visiting center.
Then Raymond once more: “That wasn’t a very good shot, Delancey!”
The rest of the game was like a nightmare for Sean. Cheered, whistled and chanted on by Raymond, he blew every single shot he attempted, frequently missing the rim and backboard altogether. By end of the quarter, the visitors had narrowed the gap to six points. Raymond kept up a steady stream of chatter as Coach Stryker dressed down his players.
“Sean! What happened to you? All of a sudden you’re stone cold!”
Sean wiped his forehead with a towel. “I’ll get back in it, Coach.”
“It’s your concentration! You’re distracted! Pay attention!”
Sean started off the fourth quarter by missing two foul shots. Five minutes later, when the visiting team caught up and took the lead, he was back on the bench, sitting out the rest of the game, looking miserable.
“Everything you threw up was a brick!” snapped the coach. “You were building a house!”
“Sorry, Coach,” mumbled Sean, positioning himself on the bench at an angle where he wouldn’t have to look at Ashley or Mindy in the rapidly thinning bleachers.
“We’ll get ’em next time, Delancey!” exclaimed Raymond.
After the clock had run out and Coach Stryker had finished the postmortem in the locker room, Sean went to find Raymond and ban him from all future games, but his English partner had already left. So much the better. Sean probably would have gone for his throat, which was unfair. Raymond hadn’t been out on the court putting up lousy shots. Raymond hadn’t single-handedly stunk out the gym. All he’d done was attend — the right of any registered student. Sean sighed. Raymond’s “no luck” apparently meant no luck for anyone he was associated with, too.
He headed out to the transit stop at the end of the school driveway. Heroes ride on the shoulders of their adoring fans; slobs have to wait for the bus.
The trip home did nothing to improve his mood. Dragging his feet, he dropped his gym bag in the kitchen, went to the TV room, and gawked.
The pungent smell of Scrulnick’s hung in the air like a heavy fog. Gramp was following the progress of Hurricane Kevin up the east coast on the Weather Channel, with none other than Raymond Jardine at his side.
“This is the best stuff on TV,” Gramp said positively. “Kevin’s a hurricane you can really get behind and root for.”
“You should see this, Delancey,” said Raymond with equal enthusiasm. “He kicked butt in Florida, but then he got downgraded to a tropical storm, and everyone figured he was in the toilet. But we had faith. Sure enough, he worked himself back to a hurricane and did a number on the Carolinas.”
Gramp slapped his knee and put an arm around Raymond. “That’s real-life drama. Who knows how far he can go? Maybe all the way to Canada!” Gramp’s big ambition was for a hurricane to make it up the coast to level Long Island so he could go back to Brooklyn.
Sean counted to ten. “What can I do for you?” he asked Raymond.
“I came over to cheer you up. I figured you’d be pretty bummed out after all those shots you missed.”
“I don’t need cheering up,” said Sean, tight-lipped.
/>
“Sure you do,” said Gramp. “Sit down. Maybe they’ll show films of some of the damage.”
“Yeah, come on, Delancey,” Raymond added. “Plus we can work on a topic for the poetry assignment. We don’t have much time, you know.”
Sean glared at him. “I’ve already suggested a hundred topics.”
“Yes, but we need one good enough to get Jardine where he’s going,” said Raymond patiently. “There are Nordic beauties who’ll be disappointed if I don’t show up this summer.”
As Sean was racking his brain for something nasty to say, the door flew open and Mr. Delancey stormed into the room, the picture of indignation.
“Don’t blame me!” he exclaimed, throwing himself into an armchair. “It’s not my fault, so don’t blame me!”
“What happened?” asked Sean.
“The new electronic insect trap,” his father replied, shaking his head.
“It doesn’t work?” asked Raymond.
“Of course it works!” snapped Mr. Delancey, highly insulted. “Do you think they’d write it up in Techno-Living if it didn’t work?” He shuddered. “It attracts insects like a charm. In fact, they’re lining up from far and wide to die in it. Our kitchen looks like a bug sanctuary. Ants, grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars — you name it. Your mother found some kind of beetle that, according to the encyclopedia, isn’t supposed to live north of the equator!”
“It serves you right for buying such a dumb thing!” Sean exclaimed.
“Dumb thing?!” his father cried. “This is a technological masterpiece. It’s been turned off for half an hour, and they’re still swarming in like there’s no tomorrow. Just don’t blame me!”
“Who bought it?” asked Raymond.
“Me.”
“But, Dad,” Sean persisted, “we’ve never had a problem with bugs before, and now we do, thanks to your technological masterpiece.”
“That’s not true. Nik saw an ant in the kitchen just last week. The poor girl was very upset.”
“This is a blessing in disguise,” Gramp prophesied. “We’ll open up an insect zoo. We’ll be rich! Who wouldn’t part with a few bucks to see an equatorial beetle infesting a Long Island radar range?”