Juniors (14 page)

After he has gone, it seems so sad and boring. Whitney looks
at her phone, texting someone. “Helping with her thesis, what a joke,” she says.

“So are they going out or what?” I ask.

“I'm sure she thinks so,” Whitney says. “But he likes new things.”

I'm about to ask her to explain, but she clearly doesn't want to talk about him, and I think I already know what she means.

I WATCH THE SENIO
RS FROM THE WINDOW O
F MY
creative writing class. They're kicking a beach ball. Everyone around here is hyper on spring break, coming up in three more days.

Nalani Ogawa kicks the ball, following through with her long-ass legs. She makes facial expressions indicating that she's having more fun than you ever will in your lifetime. From here she's beautiful, even though up close she has the features of a Siamese cat, but if you put a bulldog's head on her body she'd still look good from a reasonable distance. She's one of the Angels—the group of girls who, at the Halloween dance, came dressed as the Victoria's Secret angels. Underwear, wings, and stripper heels. It might not have been such a big deal if they hadn't looked so good, like actual supermodels. They got kicked out of the dance, yet as Danny said, “left everyone's spank bank full.”

Lissa was another one. She's sitting a bit behind me, so I can't look at her, even though I've been trying to. She's magnetic. You're drawn to her face, her body, everything she's wearing, even if, like today, it's just jeans and a white button-down shirt. It would be weird to be the kind of person who's always looked at.

“Lea,” Mr. Spitzer says, “stop looking out the window. You're on the clock.”

The class laughs, which kind of gives me a thrill, and I look back and lock eyes with Lissa, but can't tell if her look is congratulatory or annoyed. I wonder if she knows I live in Will's cottage. I feel like I have so much on her.
Will the Ex
plorer. He doesn't w
ant to be with you.

“As I was saying, folks,” Spitzer says, “we are a country that makes things like pastrami burgers. A huge burger patty with pastrami layered on top of it. Do you understand the implications of this? Do you get it?”

I must have spent too much time looking out the window, because I don't get it at all. Spitzer's one of the younger teachers here, and he tries to emphasize his youth—talking casually, being provocative, chatting with the boys after class. The teachers I like best here all seem to moonlight as coaches after school.

“I grinded one of those last weekend,” Raj says. “With cheese too.” Everyone in class seems to look at him shyly, then back at the teacher.

“Me too,” Jon T. says. “It ruled.” Jon T. is one of those guys who's a bit overweight, but also super athletic and confident.

“But the breakfast burger blows it away,” Raj says. “It's got eggs, sausage, cheese, and then burger.”

“I'd have to be stoned to eat something like that,” Jon V. says. “Weed is insurance. Movies, TV, food—weed guarantees it will all be good, worth the money spent. I learned that from my dad—the importance of insurance. He sells it. Not weed, but life insurance.”

The class laughs, though some of the quiet boys seem annoyed.

“Okay, clearly, you're not understanding my point,” Spitzer says.

I want to tell Spitzer that this is his doing. By trying to be cool, he has allowed students to talk about things that shouldn't be talked about. This school isn't like Storey, where teachers lectured and we sat. We say anything we want here and rarely sit still. There are more investigations, questions, collaborations, and inventions. I haven't been to a lecture yet, only Skype sessions with experts and kids in other countries.

“What is your
point
?” Mikey Sharp asks, giving Spitzer a look I don't think most kids would dare express. He has freckled skin and big green eyes, and his voice is scratchy, like he's been up all night shouting.

Spitzer looks like he always does whenever Mikey says anything. He has a closed-mouth, weasel-like grin that's both condescending and contrite. He doesn't like Mikey. It's pretty clear. He doesn't seem to tolerate kids who attend this school and give no glimmer, present or latent, of intelligence or curiosity.

“My point is I've heard enough about your stress, how you can't come up with anything,” Spitzer says, looking like he's shrunk a few inches.

And how is this connected to the pastrami burger? I wonder.

“Just sit down and write.” He leans against the desk. “You're in America. You have an endless backyard of inspiration and ideas and absurdities to draw from. You are interesting. Your lives are interesting. Write what you know, write your complications, what you're passionate about.”

“Like pastrami burgers?” someone says, just as I'm thinking the same thing.

“If it's so easy, then why haven't you published anything yet?” Mikey asks. He holds eye contact with Spitzer—it's both appalling and amazing.

The whole class oohs and ho snaps, except for Jon T., who is smiling and looking around because he knows someone made a joke, but he didn't hear what it was.

“I have published something, thank you, Mikey. And my next book will come out shortly. Very soon. I take time. I'm not an assembly line. I don't just churn them out like Danielle Steele.”

“I've met her daughters,” Ian says. “In San Francisco. Buns of Steele for real.”

Everyone laughs. We all know Ian also has a home in San Francisco, a kind of second life. I can't tell if Whitney's friend Mari dates him or hooks up with him or if they just hug all the time as so many of these kids do.

“Your authoring project should be fun for you,” Spitzer says. “And from what you've handed in so far, I don't sense that you're having fun.”

“How will it be graded?” Kat Muller asks.

Spitzer seems to deflate. He leans against the desk and takes a drink from his aluminum water bottle. “Don't worry about that.”

This is an impossible thing to ask of us. Many of these kids have been coming here since kindergarten and are primed to excel, and excellence is measured by grades. Grades get you into college. Ninety-nine percent of Punahou students go to college.
Our fates are published in the alumni magazine, displaying what we're capable of—Princeton, Smith, Vassar, Colgate, Williams, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley. The alums here include Steve Case, founder of AOL; Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay; our president, Barack Obama. You can't remind us of the success of the present and past student body, then tell us not to worry about grades.

I've maintained a 3.5 average, and know I could use some more distinguishing marks. I look around and can tell others have been prompted to think about their record. Even the wiseasses care.

“Writing isn't easy,” Spitzer says. “But I promise if you just keep at it, you will start building up enough to work with. You need clay to mold, and once you get enough clay, then you can actually sculpt it into something functional and beautiful, and that part is fun. I promise.”

I look down at my journal, then over at the others. What's in them? I wonder. What in the world are they writing about?

When I think about the books that have been assigned to us—
A Separate Peace
,
The Catcher in the
Rye
,
Of Mice and Men
,
Lord of the Flies
—they're all about complications and longing, I guess. They're also all about boys.

Maybe Spitzer's right. Our lives can be interesting, as long as we show the specifics, the little details.

“Write what you know,” Spitzer says again. “What you're inspired by, passionate about. Write about what frustrates you, confounds you, and all the things that make you feel out of place.”

I look out the window again at the seniors whose
exaggerated expressions of joy make them seem as if they're acting in a play. I look down on them, yet want to be them. I want to have so much fun just kicking a ball, and look cool and sexy doing it. I want to not want that too. Is that my complication?

“So, tonight, write a monologue,” he says. “Pick a topic and write.”

“How will that be graded?” Jenny Hee asks.

Spitzer sighs, probably thinking that the last thing Jenny Hee needs to worry about is grades. I like this assignment because people like Jenny will struggle with it, a task with no right answer, something she can't research. She has her laptop open, fingers ready to type whatever Spitzer says.

“Your effort, okay? I want to see effort.”

She types, her forehead wrinkled with stress. “Could you give us possible topics?” she asks.

Overambition,
I want to say.
Predic
tability. Lack of a
life.

I feel like I don't suffer from this anymore.

“No, I don't have topics,” Spitzer says. “It's your life. You have your topics spread out in front of you.” He opens his arms, displaying our array of topics. Jenny looks angry—like she's going to call someone to fix this.

“Look,” he says. “You have jobs. Write about your jobs.”

Before anyone can correct him, to let him know that they don't have jobs, he continues: “Maybe your job is to be a son. Maybe your job is to be a football player or the most popular girl in school, or”—he looks briefly at Jenny—“the smartest. Maybe you literally have a job as a babysitter or a cashier. Think of it in those terms. Write about your jobs. Write about what it takes to do your job.”

I like this clarification. Jenny does too, it seems. Her eyes are intense, and she's typing rapidly.

My job is to see if Will wants to jump in the water or take the boat out—today. To not overthink it, to say what's on my mind instead of holding it under my tongue like a lump of gum.

We get up and gather our things. I glance back, and Lissa has a smug look on her face, like she expected me to look back because everyone does. It's a strange sensation to feel sorry for someone like that, and it feels kind of great.

• • •

And so I'll do it. I will go to the main house after I change my clothes. When I open the door to the cottage, my mom is there at the kitchen counter, leaning over a script.

“What are you smiling at?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“That's a boy smile,” she says, but then lets it go.

We've never been the kind of mother and daughter who talk about boys. She would be if I let her. Even when I was ten, she'd ask me about the boys at school, teasing out responses, which always brought on a kind of fun mortification. She separates the script into two piles.

“Good scene?” I ask.

“So good,” she says. “I mean, Pulitzer material. Deep characterization, moving dialogue.”

She runs her finger down the page, and I know she's looking for something to read.

“Okay, here,” she says. “‘Samantha: You're an animal, Jenkins. Jenkins is looking through binoculars at a young woman on her knees in a revealing bikini, rubbing wax on her surfboard.
Jenkins: Well, yes, by definition. I am an animal. He looks at Sam with a charming smile and winks. And so are you.'”

“Awesome,” I say.

She picks up a script, but leaves one behind. “And it's a rewrite!” she says. “In the old one, bikini girl has her back to him, but now because of her other assets—which are out of control, by the way—she will face forward.”

I pick up the script. “Can I read?” I ask, picking up the other copy.

“Go for it,” she says. “But homework first.”

“Can I go over to Whitney's real quick?” I ask. I smile and blink, move my shoulders to my ears.

I can tell she's charmed by the way I pleaded, by my sweet face, and by the fact that I have a friend.

“Real quick,” she says.

• • •

I hurry across the lawn, then slow when I get closer to the house. Whitney's not here. She usually parks her Mini Cooper by her room, which has its own entrance, a room I have yet to see.

I've brought my backpack, and my strategy is to go and read by the pool, so Will doesn't think I came over just to talk to him. Maybe I've taken his invitation too seriously. It could have been just friendly conversation, hypothetical. Chitchat, air filler. Or he's still being the good host.

I go around back to the pool. It's windy out, something I didn't feel just moments ago, shielded by the house. The wind thrusts right off the ocean, which is choppy and scattered with tufts of whitecaps. At the edge of the property, a coconut falls
from a tree. The pool water moves in wrinkles. I wish Danny were here to break open that coconut, something he always does when I go to his house. We drink the water, eat the meat. When we were young, we'd pretend we were castaways, foraging in his yard, surviving on coconut and lychee and mint for our breath.

It would be awkward to sit by the pool, like someone sunbathing in a hurricane, so I go to the lanai. I like being over here more now. In a way, it feels silly not to be, like holing up in the locker room at a water park. Since I was planning on sitting on a recliner by the pool, I choose the daybed. This seems like something you'd do when you want to read and be alone, which I ostensibly do.

I look into the living room—empty—then hoist myself onto the daybed and get situated, sitting upright, my legs together at the knees. I didn't want to look like a total nerd, reading for school, so I brought the old draft of the script. I always loved to do this in coffee shops or at a park or even at my old school, how it would make me feel so adult and make people curious about me. They always were. Read a book, no one looks. Read a script in public, and people always do.

Besides, reading this script is actually more appealing to me than
To
the Lighthouse
, which is boring me to death. I open it and am already smiling a bit. I like its badness. Then again, if there's something that draws you in, something you can't help reading or watching, then how can it be bad? It's almost like a villain winning while showing his cards. Not his fault he won.

“What are you smiling about?” I look up, and there's Will, standing on the step down to the lanai, his hands holding the
doorway over his head. I can't imagine being able to do that. I run my eyes down the length of him, then back up to his face. He rubs his chin and looks like he's recalling a good joke.