How to Win at High School (29 page)

(and hell, even Lisa)

—involved in his mess. He's seen how
Goodfellas
ends. He's not that guy.

(#StopSnitching)

Adam doesn't cop to the drug stuff, either.

(Which drives the VP even nuttier.)

He doesn't cop to the fake ID stuff, or the booze.

(He takes Pizza Man Enterprises off Facebook, and the VP is too clueless to find it anyway.)

Ultimately, all Acton has against Adam is that one Applied Science exam. It should be a suspension, for an honor-roll kid. But Acton throws the proverbial book.

And that proverbial book knocks Adam

all

the

way

to Maryvale.

If Adam was a god at Nixon, he's THE GOD at Maryvale.

Zeus.

Odin.

Captain America.

(Pizza Man.)

Everyone at Maryvale knows Pizza Man. They know about the homework and the exam and the fake IDs and the booze, and they sure as hell know about the drugs.

(Some of them even know about the threesome.)

At Maryvale, Adam's a hero. Fist pounds. High fives. Everyone wants to be friends. Everyone wants a hookup. Everyone has a buddy they want Adam to meet.

Adam's done with it.

Adam smiles and nods and says thank you a lot. Adam puts his head down and doesn't talk much. Adam tries to keep to himself.

Pizza Man is dead and gone.

Adam Higgs just wants to survive.

After a couple weeks, everyone at Maryvale decides Pizza Man the legend is much cooler than Adam Higgs the person. They leave him alone.

Mostly.

Ryan Grant's friends don't leave him alone. Ryan Grant's friends come and find Adam. Ryan Grant's friends pay Adam back for what he did to Ryan.

Adam lets it happen. Hey—once you've had your ass kicked by a big-ass drug dealer, a couple of angry high school kids don't matter so much. Adam keeps his head down. Tries not to find himself in any empty bathrooms. Tries not to let his mom see the black eyes and bruises.

For the most part, it works.

Time passes. The semester ends and summer arrives.

(Not that it means much.)

Adam's grounded.

(Indefinitely.)

No Xbox. No iPhone. No MacBook Pro. No rap music and no gangster movies, just Mom's old Neil Young CDs and, you know . . .

books.

It's a long summer. But Adam's mostly at peace with it. I'm not going to lie; he's not a monk. Sometimes he thinks about Janie Ng and Leanne Grayson together in that Super 8 bed. Sometimes, he dreams about walking into a party and hearing the cheers, seeing smiling faces. Sometimes he misses being a god.

Sometimes—

(all the time)

—he misses Victoria.

But he's relieved, too. He sleeps a lot. He doesn't stress about Rob Thigpen and Paul Nolan and Sara
freaking
Bryant. He doesn't have to worry about being popular anymore.

So he doesn't.

He just sits in his room.

He just . . .

 

is.

Adam's parents get sick of him lurking around the house. His mom makes him get a job at the Tastee Freez down the street. It's okay. It's pretty meh.

(It's a goofy hat and an apron and a lot of soft-serve ice cream.)

It's better than sitting in your room all day, though, even if the money barely buys you a B-minus homework assignment from the Pizza Man. Adam treats work like he treated Maryvale.

He keeps his head down and just does it.

He has nothing to say.

Then, one day in August:

Adam's working in the back of that stupid, oversize Tastee Freez ice cream cone and he hears a couple familiar voices outside. Looks out the window and sees Rob Thigpen's daddy's BMW 335i in the lot.

(Shit.)

Rob Thigpen comes up to the window. Paul Nolan and Sara Bryant and Jessie McGill are there too. They stand and jostle by the counter, studying the menu, and Adam's first instinct is to run and hide.

But he doesn't.

“Hey, guys,” he says, stepping up to the counter. “Can I take your order?”

Paul Nolan steps up. “Yeah, I—” He stops. “Adam?” He turns to Rob and Sara and Jessie. “Guys, look who it is.”

Adam leans out of the booth. Waves. “What's up?”

“Pizza Man.”
Jessie McGill comes up. “We heard you were in prison or something.”

“Or, like, dead,” Sara Bryant says.

“Not dead,” Adam tells them. “Maryvale. Pretty much the same thing.”

He looks at Rob Thigpen. Rob's face has healed fine. He looks normal again.

(He still looks like a dick.)

“I'm sorry, man,” Adam tells him. “I don't know what I was thinking. I just blacked out at that party or something. I'm sorry.”

“It's cool,” Rob tells him. Gives him that cocky smirk. “If somebody slept with my sister, I'd want to kick their ass too.”

Adam doesn't say anything. Decides he doesn't feel so bad about the fight after all.

(Rob's still a dick.)

“You going to Janie's party tonight?” Jessie says.

Adam shakes his head. “I'm grounded for life.”

“So sneak out,” Paul says.

“You should totally come,” Jessie says. “You're a legend now.”

“Pizza Man,” Paul says.

“Pizza Man,”
Jessie says.

“Everyone would lose their shit if you showed,” Sara says.

“For real.”

A Nixon party.

Gods and goddesses.

(“You're a legend now, Pizza Man.”)

It's

so

tempting.

Adam lies on his bed until his parents go to sleep. Then he sneaks out.

The whole party goes nuts when Adam walks in the door. People cheer. Someone hands him a beer. A couple girls want a pic on their iPhones. Adam poses, kind of sheepish.

(Adam thinks,
If my parents see this . . .
)

Paul and Alton and Jessie and Janie and Leanne are there. Wayne
freaking
Tristovsky's in a corner with Sara Bryant. Red cups everywhere. Weed smoke in the air.

(
Jamal's stuff?
Adam wonders.)

Music blasting. People grinding on each other. Making out. It's the hottest party in town and Adam's the guest of honor.

He lasts maybe ten minutes, tops.

Paul Nolan's in the middle of telling Adam a story. Some pretty sophomore is pulling Adam out to the dance floor. It's so easy.

Nothing's changed.

Adam puts down his beer. “Sorry, Paul,” he says. “I'll be right back.”

He kind of shrugs and tells the pretty sophomore, “One minute,” leaves them both standing there like—

(
Wait, what?)

—and pushes through the crowd and out the front door. He makes it to the sidewalk in front of Janie's house before someone calls his name.
“Adam.”

Adam stops. Looks back and it's Victoria coming out after him.

Damn it, she's still breathtaking. She's in a green summer sundress and her skin is tanned and she looks

absolutely

radiant
.

“Where are you going?” she says. “You just got here.”

Adam says nothing. He just looks at her, and it's like every mistake he ever made smacking him in the face—

(Victoria frowns. “Adam?”)

—and he just shakes his head. He can't say anything, can't even
look
at her without feeling like the world's biggest chump.

(Without wanting to throw himself in front of a bus.)

“Hey,” Victoria says. “Are you okay?”

Adam just shakes his head again. “I doubt it,” Adam says. Then he's crying.

Victoria lets him cry. She hugs him tight and holds on to him and lets him blubber and sob and get it all out. And when he's cried as much as he's going to cry, he tells her everything. Pizza Man. Sam. Rob Thigpen. Jamal. Maryvale.

Victoria listens.

“I'm such a tool,” Adam tells her. “I was the dumbest kid at Nixon.”

Victoria kisses his cheek. “Shut up,” she says. “I'm just glad you're okay.”

The door opens behind them. Chad pokes his head out. “Hey,” he says. “What's up?”

Victoria looks up. “Just give us a minute, 'kay?”

Chad looks at Adam. Shrugs. The door closes, and Victoria sighs. “I guess I should get back,” she says. “Sure you don't want to stay?”

“I'm supposed to be grounded,” Adam says.

“Yikes.” Victoria makes a face. “I guess you should go.”

“I guess so.”

Victoria stands. Adam stands too. He doesn't want to go. He doesn't give two shits about the party. But Victoria?

He's feeling it like a knife in his heart.

“I guess I'll see you around,” Adam says. Their eyes meet, and Victoria looks away quickly.

“I'd like that,” she says.

They hug again. Adam clings to her like a lifeline, like he always does. It's over too soon, like it always is. He makes himself let go and walks away toward the road, and just before he hits the sidewalk, she calls out behind him. “Adam?”

Adam turns. She's standing in the doorway, backlit from the party behind her. She fidgets a little. Smiles a little. “Call me sometime?” she says.

Adam hesitates. Adam nods. “I will,” he says. Then he grins at her. “Assuming my mom ever gives me back my phone.”

Adam leaves the party, but he doesn't go home.

Not yet.

He gets on a bus and rides all the way downtown. Gets off at the bus loop and wades through the crowds of drunk people, the lineup outside Crash and Voodoo and every other dope spot. Walks until he reaches city hall and the doughnut shop across the street.

Sam's doughnut shop.

Sam's clearing tables when Adam walks in. He's wearing his silly hat and tie and he's wheeling dirty coffee mugs from the tables to the counter, and the light is too-bright fluorescent and it all suddenly looks so unbearably real that Adam nearly walks out again.

But he doesn't.

He stands at the counter and waits for Sam to see him, and when Sam does see him, he hesitates for a second and then wheels himself over.

“Hey,” he says. “Adam.”

“Hey, Sam,” Adam says.

“I thought you were grounded,” Sam says. “Steph said Mom and Dad have you on lockdown.”

“I snuck out,” Adam says. “There was this party.”

Sam's face gets tense. “Oh.”

“I didn't stay for very long,” Adam says. “I couldn't do it.
I couldn't go back to that—” He looks for the right word. “That bullshit.”

“Oh,” Sam says again. “Yeah.”

“Look, I'm sorry,” Adam says. “I was trying to impress you. I thought you'd be proud of me or something.”

He pauses.

“I just didn't want you to be ashamed of me,” Adam says. “I didn't want you to think you had a loser kid brother.”

Sam shakes his head. “I was proud of you when I saw you with Victoria,” he says. “When I saw how happy you looked with her, man.”

Adam thinks about Victoria in that green dress at the party. Feels it like a ragged wound again.

“I just wanted you to be happy, chill out, relax a little bit,” Sam says. “Meet some friends, find a girl, make some memories. The rest of it? Shit.”

Adam looks around the empty doughnut shop and thinks about those useless hockey tickets. He thinks about Sam at the party with beer spilled on his shirt.

He thinks about calling Sam a cripple.

He's blinking back tears again.

“I fucked everything up,” Adam says. “You didn't ever get to be a god. I just wanted to give you something to be happy about.”

“I'm happy,” Sam says. “You don't think I'm happy?”

“You work at a doughnut shop,” Adam says. “You live in a shitty apartment. You can't use your legs, for god's sake.”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah,” he says, “but I have a life, though.”

“Where?” Adam says. “I don't see it.”

“You haven't seen much, the last few months,” Sam says. “I'm playing basketball again this summer. I met a girl. I'm not entirely dependent on your exploits to keep me off suicide watch, little brother.”

Adam doesn't say anything.

“And it's a good thing, too,” Sam says after a moment. “If all I had to live for were my kid brother's tales from the Tastee Freez, I'd slit my wrists in a millisecond.”

“Don't say that,” Adam says. “Jesus.”

“Why not?” Sam says. “Cut too close to the bone?”

Adam looks at him. Sam doesn't look so angry anymore, or even disappointed.

(He doesn't even look silly in that dumb hat and tie.)

Sam just looks like Sam.

Solid. Secure. Happy.

“Come by the apartment the next time you're not grounded,” Sam says. “Just because you're a legend now doesn't mean I can't kick your ass on PlayStation, Pizza Man.”

Adam smiles, finally.

Adam laughs.

“Don't call me that,” Adam says.

So that's that.

Summer ends. Adam's parents get the school board to release him from Maryvale. He's a good student. His grades are decent and he doesn't fight. The vice principal has never heard of him.

(At Maryvale, that's a good thing.)

The school board agrees to let Adam back into the wild. They tell him he can go back to Nixon if he wants. Adam thinks about it for about fifteen seconds. Then he shakes his head no.

They put him into a school on the south end of town instead. Massey High. It's not far from Remington Park, and the principal agrees to take Adam on, after some serious negotiation.