I rocked the engine back and forth on the track.
“Don’t touch that,” he said. “You know how fragile it is. Was there something else?”
I wiped my hands on the front of my shorts. “Yeah, um…I need to change my schedule.”
“At school? Why? Is there a conflict?”
“Three APs plus Calc is insane. I’m not that smart, Dad.”
“Your grades from last year were good enough to get you in.”
“Just barely and only because you and Mom made a big stink about it. I’m not asking to drop all of them—just one of the APs, or let me switch out of Calc.”
“No. You’re not changing anything.” He sat down and leaned towards the screen. “I have work to do.”
That was Dad code for “go away.” I was supposed to say, “Okay,” and trudge upstairs, grateful he hadn’t yelled at me.
But desperate times call for desperate measures. I stepped closer. “I can’t do that level of work, sir. Not in every class. I’ll flunk.”
The muscles tightened along his jaw and up the side of his skull. He inhaled deeply through his nose and rolled his neck from side to side.
“You want me to take care of your problems again.” His voice was low.
“You guys forced me into these classes. I’m just telling you it’s not going to work.”
“When are you going to grow up, Tyler?”
One punch, a long slo-mo shot to the soft underbelly of the beast to make him double over, just one punch, my fist so far inside him that the knuckles scrape on his spine…
I tried not to clench my fists.
“I’m so sick of this,” he continued. “You expect me to wave a magic wand and make everything all better. Dad will talk to the teacher. Dad will pay for the lawyer. Daddy fix.” He spat the words out.
Step closer, two steps, get in his face and remind him that I have him by six inches and probably forty pounds. Pick up the monitor and bring it down on his head, shove the keyboard down his mouth, cram his skinny butt into the trash can…
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and rolled his neck again. “This discussion is over.” He rolled his chair closer to the desk. “You’re staying in your classes. And you will quit working for that Pierogi fellow.”
“Pirelli. Mr. Pirelli. I like working for him.”
He looked over his shoulder. “This is not about what you like.”
The air conditioner shut down and the room fell silent, sour air suspended between us.
“I’ll be eighteen in November,” I reminded him.
He put the headphones on and turned up the volume.
18.
Mom started with the excuses as I came up the steps.
“—he’s under pressure at work
—he’s depressed again
—he’s not good at communicating
—he’s worried about money
—he’s your father
—you have to give him a chance….”
She was still at it when I closed my bedroom door.
19.
Back in middle school, I had spent a lot of time hiding in the library. The guys who were hunting me down never thought to look there.
One day—I can’t remember if it was sixth grade or seventh—the library TV was tuned to CNN, and the BREAKING NEWS banner was flashing in red. The camera zoomed in on a small plane, the kind with two seats and propellers. It had flown into an office tower in downtown Tampa. Twenty stories off the ground. Smack. Nothing exploded, nobody in the building was hurt, but a massive steel-and-glass wall had the tail end of an airplane sticking out of it. It took a long time before the reporters would admit it, but the teenager flying the plane was dead on impact. DOI.
I watched the replays obsessively, trying to figure what the kid’s last second felt like. Did he feel anything? Did he feel everything? Which would be worse?
I called Mr. Pirelli that night and told him I couldn’t work anymore because my dad wanted me to concentrate on school. He said he understood. I told him that I wished I did. I reminded him to fill out the paperwork for my probation officer. He said no problem and if I ever needed a job, I just had to ask.
Before I went to school the next day, I stole the Wagner CD and broke it into twelve million pieces with a hammer on the garage floor. I swept the pieces into a plastic bag and tossed it in the neighbors’ garbage can.
20.
Bethany Milbury smiled at me in homeroom every day for the next two weeks. The first couple times she did it, I turned around to see who was standing behind me. Then came the day she got up from her seat and hobbled over to sit in the chair in front of me.
“Hi,” she said.
(Stunned silence on my part.)
She blinked her eyes. “Are you mad at me or something?”
I choked out an answer and she smiled so brightly that small holes were burned in my retinas. She let me sign her crutch in an open space close to her left hand. She had a packet of Sharpies in her purse. I chose red.
After that I performed superhuman feats of speed to make it to her fourth- and eighth-period classes so I could accidentally be standing close by in case she decided to smile again. She let me carry her books. People were confused—Why is Beauty with the Dweeb? I didn’t know, either, but as long as she wanted me around, I was going to be there.
Meanwhile, my grades were being sucked into quicksand. I learned that I remembered nothing from Trig, that Paradise Lost was not the book they based the survival reality shows on, and that using search-engine translations is a bad way to do French homework.
Luckily, Dad had to work fourteen hours a day because of some government audit. He left a letter taped to my bedroom door, explaining that I should cut my hair if I wanted people to take me seriously.
If my luck held, he’d have a heart attack before report cards came out.
Yoda’s campaign to make Hannah fall in love with him was in full swing. He drove her everywhere, even to buy tampons. If she had a test, he helped her study. If she sneezed, he appeared out of nowhere with a tissue. Every time she had a game, Yoda was pacing on the sidelines.
But Hannah was holding out. It didn’t matter what Yoda did; she refused to move him from friend-who-was-a-boy status up to boyfriend.
It was killing him. He told me the problem was his lack of jock genes. He had a permanent doctor’s note from gym because he had been hurt in there so many times. But to capture the heart of my sister, twerp jockess that she was, he was willing to do something athletic.
After a lot of pleading and attempted bribery, the JV football coach finally gave in and offered a two-week trial. Yoda could manage the team if he fit with the team’s “chemistry.”
I had a bad feeling about this.
21.
The third Tuesday in September was hot and nasty. The windows on Yoda’s Gremlin were all rolled down, and it felt like the plastic seats were melting. As soon as we pulled out of the driveway, Hannah peeled off the shirt Mom made her wear and revealed a scrap of fabric that was just barely keeping her boobs under control. Yoda drove up on the curb and almost clipped a mailbox.
Sisters should not have boobs.
Or mouths. Hannah spent the whole ride yapping about how evil our parents were because they wouldn’t let her dress the way she wanted or pierce anything interesting or follow her favorite band around the world.
“Do you think that Dad is being a bigger jerk than normal?” I asked.
“How can you tell?” she answered.
“No, really,” I said.
She took a little mirror out of her purse and looked at it while she put on lip gloss. “Mom figures another four hundred years of weekly therapy sessions and he might be able to feel something. Plus his job sucks. Mom said he might get fired.”
“Why?”
“No idea.”
She ran her tongue over her lips, and Yoda hit the curb again. I yelled at him to stop staring in the rearview mirror.
M
y sister had to find a different ride to school or we were all going to wind up dead.
22.
Hannah wasn’t the only seminude girl in school. It was like they had voted for a “clothing optional” day. They weren’t completely naked, but they were showing so much skin that you did not have to use your imagination. All over school, guys were walking into walls and open lockers, losing concentration mid-sentence, and having to stop at fountains to drink a gallon of water while waiting for their boners to calm down.
As I stumbled from the front door to homeroom, I decided that these were the most poetic words in the English language: camisole, strapless, halter, low-rise, thong, belly shirt, peek-a-boo cut-out, and spandex.
It was awesome.
Except that the girls kept getting pissed. An almost-naked hottie would strut down the hall, butt swaying side to side, top of her underwear peeking out of her shorts, hair flowing down her back, jewelry in her belly button, boobs spilling out of her top, big smile, and what would happen? Every guy she’d walk by would say something crude. Or whistle. Or pant or moan or follow her. And she’d get pissed.
Well, duh.
Before the first bell of the day rang, most guys were semiconscious with lust and most girls were ready to slap someone.
Mornings like that could almost make you love school.
23.
Bethany was AWOL from homeroom. Chip wasn’t, but no way was I going to ask him where his sister was. He was deep into his physics textbook, flipping back and forth between it and a handful of note cards. The rumor was that Mr. Milbury never let him bring home any grade lower than a 95. If true, that would explain a lot.
I took the longest way I could between my morning classes but didn’t see Bethany anywhere. She probably heard about the clothing-optional vote and decided to stay home. She was classy like that.
Damn.
Calc was incomprehensible. I could understand irrational girls and irrational parents. But irrational numbers? Numbers usually made sense, even the imaginary ones. I kept reading the page in my math book over and over again. The only thing that felt irrational was my brain.
In Gym, we learned that stretching was important. And that, again, for the record, the school was not responsible for any items stolen from lockers.
Mr. Salvatore handed back my compare/contrast essay about God and Satan. It had a zero on it, and “See Me” written in red pen and underlined. It turned out he was serious about the summer-reading stuff. I had forty-eight hours to read Paradise Lost and write an essay that proved I read it.
“Don’t waste your money buying a piece of garbage from an online essay factory,” Salvatore warned me. “I can smell that junk a mile away. And do not waste my time with a first draft. There is power in revision. It’s about time you learned that. Oh, and have you heard about this little thing called ‘spell check’? You should try it.”
24.
Must. Eat. Food.
The lunchroom smelled like deep-fried fat and sounded like a packed football stadium. I bought as much food as I could for $2.50 and sat near the door.
Must. Not. Think.
My sister threw herself into the seat across from me. “Do you think Calvin is hot?”
“I’m failing senior year, Hannah.”
“And I care? Seriously, do you think Calvin is hot?”
“He’s not my type.”
“Two of my friends think he’s hot because he has a car. Can I have a bite of your cookie?” She took the cookie before I could protect it. “I need five dollars, too, because I lost a bet to Mandy Simpson.”
“What was the bet?”
“Whoever got asked out on a real date first. Some soccer player hit on her when she was at her locker. She’s such a whore. She’ll probably do the whole team by Christmas.” She opened her lunch bag. “God, that means I can’t go out with any of them.”
“Technically, you won.”
“What?”
“Yoda—Calvin—has wanted to ask you out for weeks.”
“He has?” She munched on a carrot stick. “Well, why doesn’t he just ask, then?”
“He’s afraid you’ll say no. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you going out with him or anyone else.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re my sister, you twit. Sisters aren’t supposed to date.”
She rolled her eyes. “Could you be any more ignorant? Tell Calvin I’ll say yes. He’s sweet and he has a car. What is he, seventeen? Mandy’s soccer player is only fifteen. Ha, I win.”
I consumed my cheeseburgers in three bites each. Hannah nibbled her rabbit food and drank her water and my chocolate milk and yakked about guys and hot teachers and her new best friends and the need to go shopping. Her words came out as fast as fully automatic machine-gun rounds. She was making my ears bleed.
I was still in shock because I had two days to read a five-hundred-page poem. I pulled Hannah’s lunch bag closer and munched some celery.
The door to the cafeteria opened. The lunch monitors scowled. I watched, chewing on the celery cud, while Hannah’s mouth flapped. The plastic knob of a crutch poked around the half-opened door. Bethany Milbury hobbled in.
I stared. Why was she here? Bethany never ate lunch with the humans. She went out to lunch with Michelle and Alison from the tennis team, or one of the boys who drove brand-new German sports cars. Why was she here?
She took a few wobbly steps. Even after a couple weeks, she still hadn’t gotten the hang of crutches.
I leap over the table just as she slips on the grease-slicked floor. She falls into my arms and whispers, “Thank you, Tyler.” As I carry her to the lunch line so she can buy yogurt (for her) and fries and cheeseburgers (for her hero, me), everybody in the cafeteria stands and applauds. The lunch ladies are so moved they give us free cookies.
“Hey, Bethany!” Hannah shouted. “Over here!”
Bethany made her way to our table. (It was closest to the door, after all.) She smiled at my sister. She leaned the crutches against the table and put her hand on my shoulder. My shoulder.
She gracefully sat. Next to me.
She was wearing jean shorts that were short enough but not too short, a pink T-shirt that said “Princess” in cursive, and a candy necklace that I was desperate to nibble on. From every corner of the cafeteria, people were watching.
“Oh, God, you guys will let me sit here, right?” Bethany asked. “It’s so hot I can’t stand it. My armpits are blistered, I swear. I can’t take another step.”
I wanted to say something, anything, but by the time I got over the shock, she was deep in conversation with my sister (who I adored very, very much at that point) about crutches and armpit pain. Besides, the wad of celery in my mouth was the size of a grapefruit.
“I love that shirt on you, Tyler.” Bethany lifted her left leg and set her bandaged foot in my lap. “It’s hot.”
Her foot. My lap.
In front of the entire cafeteria.
A collective gasp came out of the crowd.
I was pretty sure that the rest of my life was going to be a bitter disappointment, but at that moment, I didn’t care.
25.
I went to my afternoon classes, but I was having dizzy spells. The touch of Bethany’s foot was still burning on my leg.
Principal Hughes interrupted the beginning of seventh period to state again, “for the record,” the details of the school dress code. Everything interesting was banned, including bathing-suit tops and T-shirts encouraging the consumption of alcohol, drugs, or promiscuous behavior. Acceptable clothing included pants that rode above the belly button, shirts that reached down below the waist and had sleeves, and skirts and shorts long enough to contact the knee.
Mrs. Harrison, my Art History teacher, spent the rest of the class talking about the beauty of the human body and showing a PowerPoint presentation of Botticelli and Rubens paintings. In US Gov, Mr. Clarke hammered home the notion of self-determination and representation.
/> The buzz caused by nearly naked girls and Bethany Milbury’s foot was gone by the end of the day, destroyed by my teachers. I was nut-deep in homework alligators and I needed help. I needed the Jedi Master of George Washington High: Calvin “Gifted and Way Talented” Hodges.
But he was not at his car. I went to field-hockey practice. Not there, either. I checked the parking lot again, then the AV room. No Yoda.
Then I heard it.
Yoda had a very distinct scream.
He was in the locker room.
26.
The lights were off, but I could make out five of them standing in a circle in the second locker bay. They were all skinny, zit-faced sophomores in shorts and shoulder pads. One glanced at me as I walked in, sizing me up.
Crap.
Normally I would have snuck out at that point, pretended I made a mistake, phoned in the assault from the lobby. Yoda would have understood; I’d done it before. He’d done it before.
Except I couldn’t. I switched into gamemaster mode: no thought no conscience no heart no consequence no stopping. I was left with three abilities: breathing, swearing, and pounding JV jerks into submission.
“What the hell are you doing?” I barked in my brand-new 350-pound-NFL-linebacker voice.
Five faces looked my way.
“Get lost,” said the biggest one, who was smaller than me. His name was Parker. He had been at the Milburys’ party.
“Maybe we should go,” said a henchman.