Hold On Tight (8 page)

“Really? Cool,” Mickey said.

“Yes,” she said. “What have you prepared?”

“Well, I gave my slides to that grad student person,” he said. “But really, I was thinking more I'd just freestyle it.” Which was clearly a brilliant idea.

Just for the record, I am not a bad person.

I mean this whole thing with my brother Ted being well-adjusted, much-adored, and possessed of a beautiful girlfriend is great. I really think so. It just took a few hours and a few beers and, okay, a good night of sleep to wrap my mind around the new state of affairs.

But by Saturday afternoon, I was finding my brother's lifestyle changes more interesting than personally threatening. So I asked him if he wanted to spend some quality family time, and then we'd catch Mickey's lecture a little late. This request seemed to impress Ted and make him happy, and as soon as it was out of my mouth I knew that I'd done the right thing by not being upfront with him. My plan was to find a delicate way to ask him if he was drinking a new brand of bottled water, or was perhaps the subject of some college sleep test where they inject you with
coolness, but he didn't need to know that's what I was getting at. Of course, this was a goal made slightly less attainable by the continued presence of Margot.

The three of us were walking across campus, in the fading warmth of afternoon, to have a late lunch at some diner in town. Mickey's lecture was supposed to be starting in half an hour, and I was surprised by how many people seemed to be streaming toward it already.

A somewhat androgynous guy-girl couple in black-rimmed glasses, paint-splattered white T-shirts and Carhartt work jackets were passing us, and as they did I caught a whiff of turpentine and smoke.

“Don't all these people look sort of the same?” I couldn't help but ask.

Margot laughed and tossed one of her braids over her shoulder. “Yeah, that's what art students look like in Vassarland.”

As we came to the edge of campus, I saw a group of guys sitting under a tree. They were all wearing blazers and sweaters over collared shirts and nubby, faded brown shoes. They also emanated a distinctive smell.

“Are those pipes they're smoking?”

“Yeah,” Margot laughed. “Those guys are all Professor Connor's advisees. He's like this ancient, quasi-famous literary critic who teaches this postwar American lit class that is impossible to get into. They're all really, really into being English majors.”

“Wow.”

“That's what college is like—there are more options, and people are more creative. But basically it's just as tribal as high school,” Ted said.

“Huh,” I said. “So what tribe are you a part of?”

Margot was holding Ted's hand, and he was sort of stroking it. She laughed again, which was a good thing—I was really starting to like her laugh. “Oh, Ted's not part of a tribe. He belongs to everybody.”

Ted looked at me seriously. “That's sort of true—I have a really diverse group of friends. But to be totally honest, from outside looking in, I think I probably fit a type, too.”

Margot leaned in toward me and stage-whispered, “Ted is always
totally honest
, by the way.”

“No kidding,” I stage-whispered back.

“I'm being serious, though,” Ted said, gratuitously. “Like, people are always calling me ‘do-gooder Ted,' and I know what they mean when
they say that. Like a bunch of Margot and my friends, I try to be in the world in a nondetrimental way, and I'd like to do some good for other people. So, that's my tribe, I guess.”

Yes, my brother does actually speak this way. Although it seems a lot less silly coming from a guy who has a girl like Margot stroking his arm.

Soon we were sipping milk shakes and eating fries at a booth in an authentic old-fashioned diner. “It's weird,” I said, “there are so many places in New York that just hurt themselves straining to look like this place. But you can tell they've just been doing the same old thing for like a quarter of a century or something.”

And then, since things were feeling very familial, even with Margot there, I went ahead and asked. “Ted, man, tell me what's changed in you. It's like you're the same, but different too.”

“That's a tough question, J,” he said, furrowing up his brow and looking at me like he was about to explain the causes of third world poverty or something.

“I just mean that I'm really into your scene up here. It seems like you have awesome friends. Big stuff is happening for you. It's really nice to see that.” I paused for a moment, and then realized
that my comment might have sounded a little cruel. “Not that you didn't have awesome friends or big stuff in the city.”

“But I didn't really,” Ted said. “I'm going to tell you something—but don't let it go to your head. When I first got here, I realized that college is like this crazy chance to be a whole new person. You have to make new friends, and get new interests, and there's virtually no one around to call you out as a poseur. So I decided I was going to be that New York cool kid who always goes back to the city on weekends for the night life and drinks black coffee and spends all day planning his night on his cell phone. Basically I wanted to be you.”

“But I don't drink my coffee black …,” I said in a very small voice.

“That's not the point. Or maybe it is. Nobody bought my act, because it wasn't me. I realized that if I was going to have friends and be happy, I was going to have to be confident about my
real
self. So that's what I did, but more so—I'm the guy who cares, and I don't mind everybody knowing that,” Ted said. “And what I found out was, if you're not hiding your face all the time, people really like that guy. Caring
is
cool.”

“Wow,” I said.

“You might find this all hard to believe,” Margot said, “because high school can be such a shallow time. But a guy who cares is hot. To care is
unbelievably
sexy.”

“And that's who I always was anyway,” Ted said. Then he did finally laugh a little bit. “So I lucked out.”

“Wow,” I said again, and gave myself a moment of quiet contemplation to take this all in. When I looked up, Margot and Ted were silently gesturing at me to look over my shoulder.

When I looked, I saw a dark-haired guy feeding small bites of grilled-cheese sandwich to a blonde in big movie-star shades. I knew immediately that the blonde was Sara-Beth Benny, but it took me another moment to realize that the guy was my friend David.

As he cut another piece of sandwich with his knife and fork, I heard her ask, “Are you absolutely positive it's okay to eat carbohydrates after two in the afternoon? My trainer said that …”

Then I turned back to Margot and my brother, trying not to laugh, and I saw that she had her forehead rested against his, and their lips were almost touching. Suddenly, I felt a little bit sad. I missed doing things like going to the movies or
old-fashioned diners with Flan—or maybe just with a girlfriend.

I glanced at David and Sara-Beth again, and saw that they were now mid-nuzzle, and then back at my brother, but he and Margot were rubbing their noses together in a really intimate way. I rested my eyes on my greasy fries and sucked the last clumps of milk shake from my glass.

That's when I decided I was just going to have to find a way to follow Ted's advice. If I could find a way to care about
something
, maybe I could have a smart and gorgeous girlfriend to feed bite-sized pieces of sandwich to, too. I mean, that sounds reasonable, right?

Right.

“Mickey!” Arno yelled over the crowd. “Yo, Mickey freaking Pardo!”

The noise around him was intense, however, and there were a lot of people between him and his friend. It felt like his cries were being swallowed up by the crowd. And even though he was being pushed along on a stream of people like he was just anybody, Arno was feeling much less sorry for himself.

He was still feeling the sickly sweet triumph of being treated like a total outsider the night before. Plus, he had changed into new clothes, which had reminded him that he was only wearing a specific shade of lightly faded black these days, and how cool that was. If he wasn't deep yet, he felt confident that he was getting pretty damn close.

And also, he had just watched one of his oldest friends lecture to a crowd of college art students and teachers. The lecture had gone unbelievably well. Now girls were running circles around Mickey, who was being carried
on one of these ancient Aztec chairs that apparently had been on display in the lecture hall's small anthropology museum.

The whole hoopla was bound to reflect positively on Arno. He thought momentarily that perhaps that wasn't his deepest of moments, but then brushed the idea away. Was that girl taking her shirt off right in front of Mickey? Wow.

When he finally caught up to Mickey, his friend jumped off the chair and let out a war whoop in greeting. He was wearing a huge feather headdress that definitely looked like it belonged in a glass case.

“Good job, man,” Arno said.

“You think they bought it?” Mickey grinned back.

“You could say that,” Arno said. “I mean, the fact that there was a spontaneous striptease happening on stage is a pretty positive sign, don't you think?”

All around them, girls were pulling off pieces of clothing and dancing. It reminded Arno of that Greek play he'd read for his literature class—the one where all the women get wasted and pull down a tree with their hands.

“Who knew you could inspire such mayhem, dude,” Arno said. Then someone ran by and told them about a keg that was being set up behind some hall or other.

Mickey's eyes got all red and swirly, and he threw back his head and yelled, “To the beer, dudes!”

By the time Arno had located the keg, there was music blaring from the open windows of the dorms and a line of people, excitedly rehashing the lecture, had formed. They were making a lot of loud, joyously nonsensical noises, too. Arno had lost Mickey again, but he got in line anyway—he figured once he had beer in his hands Mickey would reappear instantly.

It wasn't until he was next in line that he noticed the slender girl with the dark ponytail. She must have been standing in front of him the whole time. She was wearing tight jeans tucked into pirate boots and a shimmery tunic thing and she was bending over the keg. It took Arno several moments to realize that she was the same gorgeous girl from his half-dream last night.

“Need some help?” he said, feeling suddenly like this might be destiny.

She looked back and smiled at him like she knew he would be there. Without saying anything, she stood gracefully and handed him her cup. Arno leaned over and exaggerated the motion of beer pumping, until he had four plastic cups full. The girl waited for him, and when he was done, they walked down the slope together, holding their drinks out in front of them so as not to spill a drop.

“That
was embarrassing,” she finally said, as she sat down on the grass. She shook her head so that her
ponytail danced against her back. They way she did it made Arno think that she wasn't embarrassed at all.

“Nah,” Arno said, sitting next to her. “I've known lots of girls who have that problem.”

She lifted her eyebrows as she took a sip of foamy beer and looked at the mayhem. “The thing is, I never drink beer.”

“Yeah, I've heard girls say that before, too.”

“It's not that I don't appreciate beer, and I'm not, like, frightened of the calories like most girls,” she explained, taking another sip of foam. “It's just that when I drink, I prefer the wine my parents make.”

“Make?'

“Well, you know,
produce
. My parents own a vineyard in Napa. It's gorgeous, and their pinot noir has a really elegant taste. They named one of their champagnes Lara, after me.”

Arno wasn't sure how something could taste elegant, but he liked the way she put a dramatic emphasis on the words
gorgeous
and
champagne
. It made her sound vaguely European. Also, she was even prettier than she had appeared last night, so he just nodded and said, “Must be really beautiful out there.”

“Scorched hills, heavy vines. It's like paradise. I wish I could be there all the time, and just like, till the soil.”

“You don't like college?”

“I like it fine, I just wish it were more about lectures and brilliant ideas. Everyone thinks that college is about
entertaining
us these days and …” She sighed. “It's just a lot of bullshit, sometimes, you know? Like living in a small town where everyone is the same age and has the same interests. And I don't even go here—I'm just visiting from Sarah Lawrence. And if you think this is a small school, you should check out mine.”

“Yeah, there's a lot of conformity out there,” he said.

“You must know all about that.”

“Sure, I mean … wait, what are you trying to say?”

“Oh, you know, Arno Wildenburger, Hottest Private School Boy. Everyone loves you when you have a title,” she said with a delicate shrug of the shoulders. “I didn't mean to bring up a painful topic. I just mean, I know
you know
what I mean.”

Arno nodded, and tried to convince himself that he knew exactly what she meant, although all he could really think about was the fact that she already knew who he was. That had to mean something, right? Arno paused to survey the shrieking, churning, quasi-clothed undergrads. It was dusk, and the girls were dancing on any raised surface they could find. It made him feel sort of sorry for them.

“I have witnessed a lot of really callous behavior,”
Arno said. “Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by … kids, you know?”

“No one really grows up until they've been in love,” Lara replied, doing the shrug thing again, like she was a girl who'd really been out there and lived hard.