Last December (6 page)

So, Sam, that’s Jenny, if you haven’t guessed, but we didn’t really talk that day, even though when I took her place looking through the microscope I could smell her perfume, and she smelled effin’
out of this world, and I couldn’t even really look at the amoeba, because my brain was on another planet, imagining what
she
looked like even though she was right beside me drawing hers. And then when I lifted my eye from the microscope, I was sort of seeing stars (not real ones like Galileo, Sam), and then I moved over, so that one of the dorks could look through the microscope again, and when I leaned over the lab table to draw the amoeba, my left elbow sort of stretched across to where Jenny was drawing, and our elbows touched (not on purpose, I swear on my life), and I could feel her body heat on that little circular spot where we were touching, and it was like all her positive ions were passing through her skin to mine, because my ions were very very negative (and opposites attract), and then I turned and saw that she hadn’t even noticed that we were touching and she was still drawing, with her long, blondie-brown hair hanging over her shoulders, and her arm also had freckles, which was pretty much the sexiest thing I could ever imagine.

And then I couldn’t handle our elbows touching anymore, because I was kind of getting horny, so I moved my elbow away quickly, like I was ripping off a Band-Aid, and then I just tore back to my desk, and I tried to draw the stupid amoeba that I didn’t even really see, but all I could think about was how crazy it was that our skin had touched, so instead of an amoeba, I tried to draw the shape of the spot where our elbows had touched, which was kind of oval, like the orbits around the Sun, and I couldn’t help looking at her every once in a while, even though I don’t think she even knew I existed.

At lunch that day I decided I wasn’t going to go to the caf with dorky Alan and Brendan. I felt kind of bad about it, Sam, but the thing is Alan and Brendan didn’t feel right to me, like we sort of weren’t meant to be friends or something. Byron said that god with a small
g
started everything in the universe and absolutely everything is connected to that first cause or whatever, but I maybe don’t agree with that because some things that happen almost seem to be pseudo-causes and pseudo-effects, like pseudo-mods and pseudo-rockers, that aren’t really real.

Anyways, all the pseudo stuff causes things that aren’t really important and you can get stuck in pockets of nothingness, like black holes (I think), so when I was going to my locker before lunch, it seemed like lots of really real causes and really real effects were happening to me, so maybe it didn’t make sense to go back to pseudo stuff, like having lunch with Alan and Brendan in the caf and talking about hockey nonstop. So I avoided them in the hallway, and it wasn’t hard to keep my head down because Bobby McIntyre and the mod were also there, and my heart was racing again, because I thought they were going to jump me or something. But they didn’t. They actually didn’t pay any attention to me at all—which is strange but true. Life is weird, Sam, if you haven’t noticed, and totally unpredictable.

So I just grabbed my lunch bag in my locker, went the opposite way down the hall, and flew down the stairs. I went to the front doors of the school where all the older students were, and I was hoping to find Trevor (and I guess Alistair, even though he was a bit of a jerk) but they weren’t there, so I waited for them for a while, but then it felt like everyone was sort of staring at
me because I was young or wasn’t a smoker or didn’t dress cool enough, so I dug my hand in my pocket and pulled out the cig, which was basically an un-cig, broken into three effin’ pieces. But there was still a little bit of it on the end of the filter with these hairy tobacco strands sticking out.

So I saw an older student pulling out his lighter, and even though I was nervous as effin’ hell, I walked over and asked for a light, and he nodded and flicked his silver lighter on his leg, and a flame went up, loose and wavy, just barely holding onto the wick thing inside. I leaned down, but the cig was so short, I had to tilt my head to the side, and then when I finally got the strands to the flame, I sucked in and then inhaled, and it felt like someone took a razor blade to the inside of my throat.

And I couldn’t help it, Sam. I choked and choked and coughed and coughed, like a complete idiot, and a few older students started laughing at me, so I just put my hand up like I was all right and stumbled away. And I kept stumbling along the sidewalk, still coughing, until I suddenly felt my fingers burning, because the cig was still in my hand and it had burned down to the end, and I flicked it onto the road and swore. And I looked at my hand and there was the little red singe mark, and I waved it in the cold air and swore a couple more of times.

And then I was really embarrassed, I guess, because I made myself look like a total goof in front of all the older cool kids, so I just kept walking along the street, replaying the whole thing in my head, over and over and over, and then I suddenly realized that I must have dropped my lunch bag somewhere, because it wasn’t in my hand anymore, and there was no way I was going
to go back to the front of the school and search around for it like an idiot. So I looked around and realized I was just a couple of blocks from the Donut Hole, and I figured I could at least just sit in there for a while and get warm and get unembarrassed, and that maybe, just maybe, the nice girl behind the counter would let me sit there without paying for anything.

Lithium

When I stepped inside the Donut Hole, I was surprised because Byron was there, too. He wasn’t playing Ms. Pac-Man. He was sitting on one of those swivel stools at the front, leaning across the counter. And as soon as I took a step toward Byron, the cute counter girl with pink lipstick and the hoop earrings suddenly stood up from behind the counter, with a box of napkins or something, and she was listening to Byron tell a story.

And neither of them noticed me, like I didn’t exist, so I just watched them, and suddenly she was blushing, and she said something like, “Be quiet, you goofball!” and I couldn’t hear what Byron was saying, because he was whispering, but I could tell that he was whispering a mile a minute again, and the girl finally looked over and saw me, and she blushed even more, and said, “Can I help you?” like she didn’t remember me, and then Byron turned around, almost kind of like he wanted to kill me or something, but then he saw who I was and said, “Why aren’t you in school?” in a blaming kind of way, and I stammered, “Because … because it’s lunch,” and he turned away and he said, “Right, right … Time flies when you’re having a fling.”

The girl just ignored him and smiled nicely at me. “It’s Mr. Twenty-One Cents, right?” and I just shrugged because I wasn’t so into that name, and Byron turned back around and stared at me for a second, like he was trying to make me disappear, and I suddenly felt like disappearing, but then his face changed, and he raised his finger and turned to her and said, “Now that I think of it, kid … It’s good that you’re here because Karen was having trouble handling my super-studly aura and my general brilliance … and my ingenious insights,” and he kept on looking at her and she kept on ignoring him.

“So,” he said, turning back to me, “how about we have another Ms. Pac-Man lesson? You can learn a lot from a guy like me, you know. More than from regular school, anyway. Yeah,” he almost shouted, “the School of Byron is where it’s at.” And the girl finally glared at him and her face went red. “That’s not true, Byron, and quiet down,” and then she smiled at me like she was sorry.

“He’s always making things up,” she said. “Don’t listen to him,” and then she pointed at Byron like she meant it. “Not everyone can afford to skip school and then hang out at a doughnut shop every single day for hours and hours. And any-ways, I loved school and well … that’s exactly why you are wasting your breath on me.”

But Byron was already walking toward the tabletop Ms. Pac-Man and he waved me over. “Come on, kid. Byron’s School of Higher Learning is starting over here,” and I didn’t want to argue because I didn’t have any money for a doughnut and I wanted to stay for a bit to get my head straight, and even though Byron was kind of arrogant or something, he just sort of made
you want to be with him. And so I shrugged at the girl and followed Byron to the tabletop, and I took off my jacket and said, “I don’t have a quarter,” and he said, “It’s on me, kid. I’m in a spending mood these days,” and I said, “Thanks a lot,” and he smirked and waved a hand. “It’s nothing.”

And I don’t know why, Sam, maybe because I was hungry—I can get really grumpy when I’m hungry—but it just sort of pissed me off that Byron said that a quarter was nothing, so I just stared at him, and he didn’t notice, so I said, “No, it’s not,” and he looked up and said, “What the hell are you talking about?” and I suddenly got kind of scared, but I just couldn’t back down, because I guess I just don’t know how to, Sam, so I said, “A quarter is not nothing,” and he just kept staring at me like he was going to kill me or something, and finally he said, “Fine, smart ass. Prove it.”

And my heart started to really race, and I thought and thought and thought, and my tummy was grumbling and I felt a little dizzy and I didn’t think I could come up with anything, but finally I sort of stammered, “Because … because I have nothing … and I don’t have a quarter, therefore,” and I poked my fingers out [ in the mathematical
therefore
sign, “they aren’t the same thing,” and this made him stop staring at me—his eyes sort of crossed—and he didn’t say anything for like five seconds, and then he sort of smirked and nodded. “That’s not bad, kid. Not bad at all,” and my tense shoulders sort of went untense.

But then suddenly Byron lunged across the table and pointed his finger so that it was right in between our two heads, like he did with the skinhead, except he didn’t poke my forehead, he glanced over to see if the girl was watching, and I guess she
must have been because he slowly sat back down and whispered, “But you watch your mouth around me, or I’ll give you a good smack,” and I nodded, and he said, “I will. I promise.”

And I just sat there with my heart thumping like crazy, and then Byron finally just leaned back and forth in his chair, like he was thinking hard about something, and I thought of just getting up and leaving but I knew I couldn’t, and he finally said, “And, anyway, to totally slay your argument about nothing, well, you don’t have ‘nothing.’ We all have
something
, or someone, right? Right?” and I didn’t say anything.

“Right,” he answered himself. “I mean sure, you might say that you aren’t so happy with what you have and maybe you want something else, but you have
something
,” and then his tone went a little nicer. “Anyway, that’s pretty obvious, kid, it’s pretty effin’ obvious,” and I still just sat there silently because I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about and I just wanted to erase what I’d said, because I guess even though Byron was scary, I still wanted him to like me.

And then he looked down at the Ms. Pac-Man screen for a bit, and I was totally relieved when he said, “Okay, kid, so this is The Word. Listen up good,” and he bent forward and slipped two quarters in, pressing two players, and started to play. “Pac-Man, the original game,” he began, “was easy because there were patterns you could just memorize and then you’d just win. Boring. But the creator of Ms. Pac-Man decided to make the game more random, more like Chaos, which is why I love it—anything can happen, and eventually, you just die … or just do yourself in … it doesn’t matter,” and he smiled his big teeth at me, just like a
little kid saying
cheese
, so I couldn’t tell if he was being serious.

“Yeah, so anyway,” he said, talking faster, “there are still little patterns you can do, but they don’t always work. So you have to ad-lib, and I love ad-libbing. I’m an artist, a Ms. Pac-Man artist, and yeah, so I guess I’m the Picasso of Ms. Pac-Man, breaking all the effin’ rules,” and then he sat up straight like a geeky student and made his voice go all nasally. “My dad’s an art historian, you know, like a professor, so I know all this crap about Picasso and cubism and all this stupid stuff that no one needs to know.”

“My dad died when I was one,” I said, and his shoulders sunk suddenly and he went back to his regular voice and said, “Whoa … that’s heavy. … Anyway, you’re not missing much, dad-wise. They suck the big one, especially a-hole art historian ones. And then there’s nagging, alcoholic manic-depressive mothers—what a nightmare,” and then he laughed like the devil. “So, anyway, enough about my depressing, pathetic family life and back to the lesson at hand,” he said, now like a teacher, but his eyes were wild again, and I suddenly thought maybe he was high on angel dust or something.

(We saw a movie in health class about angel dust, which is a drug, Sam, and it makes you jump off buildings, because you think you can fly. At least that’s what happened in the movie.)

“So,” he continued, “I figured out this much on my own: a Ms. Pac-Man artist should play balls-to-the-wall. No effin’ pat-terns, no effin’ rules, just go for it, right?” and I was sitting there nodding, looking at the screen as he played Ms. Pac-Man balls-to-the-wall, and he was finally quiet for a bit so I croaked out a question, “Don’t
you
go to school?” and he shrugged and said,
“Sometimes,” and then I got a little confident and said, “Don’t you get in trouble for not going?” and he laughed and said, “Naw … the teachers don’t really care about you as much when you’re a senior. They consider you an adult or something, and when you are an adult, people stop caring about you,” and I said, “Really?” and he said, “Yeah … they just set you free and say, ‘Figure it out, man. You’ve had all the training we’re gonna give you, you know how to do algebra and how to write an essay, now go out into the—’ Damn!” he said suddenly, smacking the table. “I never die on the second screen.”

And suddenly it was my turn, so I tried to just focus on the game, and when I did, I could tell I was getting better, because I kind of copied how Byron moved, not in a pattern, but using different escape moves. I was about three-quarters of the way through the first screen when Byron said, “So what year are you in?” and I said, “Freshman … at St. Clair,” as I ate my last big pellet, the ones that let you eat the ghosts for a while, and he said, “Freshman year is pretty tough. … You gotten laid yet?” and this made me sort of go red, and I didn’t answer for a while, but there was no way around answering, so I finally just said, “Um … no,” as I ate one of the blue ghosts just before they all turned back to their original colors.