How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (8 page)

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Paula says. “I have a going-away present for you.”

She's the one leaving, but she has a present for me. That's such a Paula thing to do. She rifles through her Mary Poppins carpetbag and pulls out a shirt box. “I made the wrapping paper myself,” she says.

I take time to appreciate the hand-drawn images of nuns and Buddhas, then open the box slowly.

It's a priest's collar.

“Isn't it
splendid
?” Paula says, beaming. “I swiped one from Aunt Glo.”

“Uh, thanks?”

“It's for buying beer, silly.” Paula fastens the collar on me and I look at myself in her compact mirror. The combination of my long curls and the clerical collar makes me look like a hip young Jesuit and I immediately begin to construct a biography of a pot-smoking, guitar-playing rebel priest. Father Groovy.

We begin to run out of things to say, something that never happens to us, but the thought of starting a conversation so close to saying goodbye feels wrong somehow, like when you're sitting in an airport waiting to see someone off or when your mom leaves to find herself and you don't know when you'll ever see her again. Paula says we'll visit the Buddha over Thanksgiving but we both know it won't be the same; tomorrow she'll leave for Manhattan and her life will change and mine won't. I'm stuck in fucking Wallingford for a whole 'nother year.

“I should spend a little time with Aunt Glo before I leave,” she says, even though I know for a fact Aunt Glo is fast asleep downstairs in front of
The Love Boat.
Paula walks me to the gate, then throws her arms around me tight, her soft, pillowy breasts mashed up against my chest. I feel like crying, but of course I can't, so I just hold on for a while and let her cry for both of us. Eventually I pat her on the back, the Internationally Recognized Signal that the hug is over, and we separate.

“This is
absurd,”
she says, pressing her index fingers under her eyes to stop her mascara from running. “The city's only an hour away. You'll be in
all
the time.” She straightens my priest's collar. “I'll see you very, very, very soon.” She kisses the air in front of my face, then turns and walks back toward the house.

“Be splendid,” I say, and she waves her tiny teardrop hand without turning around, just like Liza Minnelli does at the end of
Cabaret.

Paula.

The growl of MoM's diesel engine
reflects my mood. How could Doug blow us off like that? How could he be so insensitive? Doesn't he realize how Paula feels? I stop where Wallingford Avenue dead-ends into Washington Street and try to decide which way to turn. It's too late to go over to Doug's house, but then again, why the hell should I be considerate? He certainly wasn't. Fuck it. I head toward the south side.

Wallingford is separated north and south by train tracks. For the most part there's not that much difference between the two parts of town, but neighborhoods like Doug's definitely contribute to the south side's wrong-side-of-the-tracks reputation—neighborhoods where the number of vee-hicles outnumber the occupants of a house because there's always an extra beater lying around for spare parts. Gone are Wallingford's usual stone walls and picket fences; here we're talking strictly chain-link.

The porch light flashes on when I ring the bell and I swat at moths as Doug's strange foreign mother opens the door. She has the same jagged features as Doug, but the sharp contours of her face curve at the ends, as if her bones were shaped like question marks. She rabbits back from the door and doesn't say anything to me, but calls for Doug.

“Who is it?” barks Doug's dad from the other room. Mrs. Grabowski scampers over to him and I lean in for a closer look. Mr. Grabowski sits in an easy chair, or perhaps I should say an uneasy chair, as his massive shoulders are so constrained by the frame. He grips the thick upholstered arms so tightly it looks like any minute he's going to tear them off and eat them.

“I said, who is it?” he grumbles, never turning his big square head from the television. All that's missing are the bolts on the sides of his neck.

“It's Teen Angel,” Mrs. Grabowski hisses. “And he's wearing a priest's collar.”

Oops. Forgot about that.

Doug clomps down the stairs in his boxers and T-shirt, looking surprised to see me. He steps outside.

“What's going on?” he says.

“Maybe I should ask you the same thing,” I snap, sounding more like Bette Davis than I intended.

“What are you talking about, man?”

I roll my eyes. “Paula's final poolside soiree? The Buddha? Any of this ring a bell?” I hate how I'm acting, but I can't seem to stop myself.

“Oh, hey, I'm sorry, man, but some of the guys from the team stopped by and I, y'know, didn't think to call.”

I don't say anything for a moment, but just stare at him while he scuffs his bare feet across the peeling porch. The buzz of cicadas fills the air.

“That's it?” I huff. “That's all you have to say? You disappoint Paula on her very last night before going off to college and that's the best you can come up with? ‘Some of the guys from the team stopped by'?”

“I said I'm sorry, what else do you want me to do?”

I have no idea. A wave of nausea comes over me and I think for a moment maybe it's all the cake I ate, but then I suddenly feel itchy all over, like I'm going to burst out of my skin, like my body isn't large enough to contain the volcano surging inside me, and if I don't leave right now this very second I might spontaneously burst into flames or wet myself. I start to breathe heavy, like a woman going into labor; if only I could cry, I might feel better, but that is the very last thing I want Doug to see right now.

I stomp off the porch and run to MoM, but the door sticks and I kick it in frustration, then hide my face hoping somehow I'll blend in with the car. I feel Doug's hand on my shoulder.

“You okay, man?”

I'm so ashamed of how soft my body must be to his touch. “So this is how it's going to be?” I say. “It's okay for you to spend the summer with the Play People, but now that school's starting you're going to ditch us to hang out with Some of the Guys from the Team?”

“I didn't say that . . .”

My face is hot and I can't stop my chin from quivering. “Well, what was I supposed to think when you blew us off? Huh? Huh?” I cringe at how I must sound, but I can't stop. “It's like you really
are
Danny in
Grease
and I'm, I'm . . .”

Don't say it, Edward. Just shut up and get in the car.

“. . . I'm Sandy and I'm not cool enough for you.”

I can't believe I just said that. I'm not Sandy; I'm a goddamned idiot.

“I never said you weren't cool enough,” Doug murmurs.

“Oh, you don't need to,” I sneer. “I know everybody thinks we're freaks just because we dress weird and we sing show tunes in the halls. Okay, so we're freaks. We're the
Play People.
And if you're too embarrassed to be seen with us, then fuck you, 'cuz I think we're . . . we're . . .”

“Splendid,”
Doug says, taking me by the shoulders. “You're splendid.”

His eyes are so blue, but with little flecks of white in them, like the world as seen from outer space.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm an asshole.”

“No, you're not,” I say. “They're your friends. I understand.” I give him a punch in the arm in the way I think guys are supposed to.

He smiles. “Say, next time why don't you hang out with
us
?”

Hang out with Some of the Guys from the Team? You mean the guys who, in the fifth grade, set fire to my painstakingly accurate diorama of Heidi in the Swiss Alps? Then peed on it to put the fire out? Those guys? Is he
insane
?

“Yeah, sure,” I say.

Wuss.

N
ow, when they make the movie of my life,
they need to make sure the big end-of-the-summer blowout at my house isn't the usual wilding you see in teen movies. I mean, I am way too smart to let the entire student body show up and destroy my house. Okay, sure, someone lights a couch on fire, and Some of the Guys from the Team (or SOTGFTT for short) play catch with a beanbag chair in the family room until it breaks and covers the floor with so many Styrofoam pellets it looks like a blanket of new-fallen snow, but there's more to it than that.

You see, now that we're all seniors, there are no upperclassmen to look up to, so there's no need to snub one another to get ahead socially. We're
it.
The party almost has the feeling of a summit meeting (granted, a very rowdy summit meeting) as we acquaint ourselves with people we've never even dared speak to.

People like Amber Wright, who arrives with a posse of Barbies, each swinging a six-pack like it's a purse. In an effort to affect a kind of Rat Pack coolness, I greet them at the door wearing a silk smoking jacket and sucking on one of those pipes that blows bubbles, but they just breeze past me like I'm lucky to be at my own party.

Then there are people like Thelonious “TeeJay” Jones, who is, to the best of my knowledge, the first black person ever to enter my house who wasn't there to clean it. TeeJay shows up with some of the black guys from the team (or SOT
B
GFTT for short) and I find myself completely overcompensating to make them feel welcome.

There are 1,500 students at Wallingford High School and less than one hundred of them are black. With the exception of athletes like TeeJay, they tend to keep to themselves, and a surprisingly large number of them seem to be related to one another. When they're not playing sports, they share space at the bottom of the social pyramid with other misunderstood minorities like the Audio/Visual Squad (Nathan Nudelman, President), the Latin Club (Nathan Nudelman, President), and the Chess Club (Nathan Nudelman, President). Also included are male athletes from non-team sports like swimming and track (as well as non-sport sports like golf and bowling), female athletes of all kinds, and, of course, the Marching Band, who everybody hates.

TeeJay enters with a case of beer in his huge cannonball arms.

“Yo, TeeJay, wha's happenin'?” I say, putting out my hand for five.

TeeJay gives me a look like I'm an idiot (which, of course, I am) and ignores my request, so I just make a fist with my outstretched hand to show my solidarity with Black Power. He shakes his head and groans like Lurch on
The Addams Family.
Y'know, I'm sure it sucks to be a discriminated-against minority, but it must be nice having people automatically think you're cool because of it. Not to mention well hung.

I turn the lights down low and go into the living room to put Sinatra's
Songs for Swingin' Lovers!
on the stereo. Normally no one lives in our living room. In fact, it's so stiff and formal my sister and I have always referred to it as the Museum of Furniture. But now it's full of life and I mingle like I'm Hugh Hefner at a sexy, swingin' do at the Playboy mansion.

It's not long before the place looks like Hieronymus Bosch's
Garden of Earthly Delights.
Every room with a door is being used by horny couples; I feel like I'm running a pay-by-the-hour motel. With even the bathrooms being used for carnal purposes, I have to go outside to pee.

I'm just starting to water a rhododendron when I notice Doug at my side. “Excuse me, sir, this bush is taken,” I say.

“Yo, Ed, I've been looking for you.” He unzips his Levis with one hand, reaches deep down inside and proceeds to pull out something that looks just like a penis, only bigger. I mean, it's like a cartoon version of a cock. “Man, you gotta do something about your girlfriend,” he says.

“She can be a very nasty drunk,” I say, trying not to stare. “I think it all comes from being such a doormat when she's sober.”

Doug doesn't hold himself as he pees, but just stands there with his hands on his hips, like his penis could be trusted to urinate all by itself by virtue of its immense size. No wonder he acts so, well, cocky. “Nah, that's not it,” he says. “I was doin' great with Ziba until Kelly showed up. Now I can't get 'em apart.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Don't stare. Don't stare.

“Go fool around with her, will ya'?” He glances down at himself. “The one-eyed milkman here needs to make a delivery.”

Now it just so happens I'm starting to feel quite horny myself, so I go inside where the girls are curled up on the love seat in the furniture museum, bonding in that way that only girls who are equally pretty can. I grab Kelly by the hand in midsentence and motion with my head for Doug and Ziba to follow, leading us out of the kitchen and along the back of the house to the sliding glass door of Al's bedroom. I've locked the room from the inside so no one can fuck it up (I told you I was too smart to let anyone destroy my house), but I've left the slider open for just this reason.