Thwonk (4 page)

I was thinking about parental power and the rigors of unrequited love. I was doing this while standing in the Benjamin Franklin High Sports Stadium surrounded by shrieking teenage basketball fans who were reacting to every missed Piranha basket as a personal affront. My expert eyes searched the crowds for telling Valentine-cover moments.

It had been a killer game.

At halftime we’d been blistered 33 to 17 by the St. Ignatius Rams, who were, in my opinion, total sheep. Bobby Pershing, our center forward (we’d dated twice) had made a series of colossal dumb throws, causing Coach Gasser to turn purple, sputter, and bounce,
which caused Bobby to miss a rebound and tip the ball perfectly through the other team’s hoop as the Rams’ coach, Father Bacardi, smiled his priest smile. Coach Gasser stormed off the court at halftime making veiled references to “indigent baboons,” and I got several insult close-ups that captured the stark drama of amateur sports.

During halftime I tried to ignore Peter and Julia huddled on the far left bleacher. I tried to photograph him without her, which didn’t work because she kept kissing his cheek. The Purple Piranhas Marching Band played “Finlandia,” which made everyone feel stalwart except me. My heart ruptured as the Piranha cheerleaders leapt onto center court shrieking that artery-pumping Piranha cry:

The cheer was picked up by the home fans and thundered through the stadium. I did deep breathing exercises to cope and hardly even cared when in the second half the Piranhas owned the court and battled their way to a stunning 42 to 42 tie in the final moments of play. That’s when Bobby Pershing was fouled with malicious intent, and why he now stood at the free-throw line dripping with sweat, emotion carved
into his profile. If he missed the throw we could lose the game, which meant the St. Ignatius Rams would win, and everyone hated them, even their nuns. Carl Yolanta hoisted me on his shoulders so I could get a close-up shot of Bobby’s basketball (which better be perfectly aimed) sailing into the net, proving to the world that the Benjamin Franklin Piranhas were
back
from six weeks of degradation and defeat. Peter and Julia stood with the rest of the crowd, their arms around each other so you couldn’t tell where one started and the other began. I checked the shutter speed on my F2 and told Carl to stop wiggling.

The whistle blew; the crowd went ballistic. I readied my flash as Bobby bounced, aimed. The ball left Bobby’s hands. Up, up it went.

I waited, anticipating the peak moment of action.

The ball cleared the rim.

I clicked just as it plopped into the hoop.

The home fans exploded. The visitors sagged. Peter and Julia hugged in ecstasy. Carl put me down gently and ran onto the court. I shouted “We’re number one!” with everyone else, and leaned bleakly against a Coke machine.

“We’re going, A.J.” Trish Beckman placed a determined hand on my shoulder.

I knew what she meant and I didn’t want to do it. “I’m going home, Trish.”

She yanked me out of the stadium. “It’s never too late to change your life!”

The Piranhas’ losing streak had been deadly for business at the Pizza Pavilion, but now that we were back on top, Bo, the owner, was in fat city, doling out free sodas and advice (“Winners think like winners,” “Losers think like losers”). I had allowed myself forty-five minutes of celebration time and then I was going home to develop my film and crumble into abject despair.

Trish patted my shoulder. “You’re always complaining about not meeting any great guys. Well, A.J., here they are!”

I looked across the Pizza Pavilion but was not knocked out by male greatness. A group of senior boys was doing the Piranha Stomp, a dance performed with crazed arm-flapping motions while making loud hissing and glubbing noises.

“David Klein,” Trish announced like a tour guide, “just broke up with that girl in New Leonard. He’s available.”

“He’s making glubbing noises,” I pointed out.

“How about Bill Peck?”

“He’s wearing a hat with fins, Trish. He has a straw hanging out of his nostril.”

Trish sighed. “Let’s consider the basketball players—a key dating source, A.J., since you are almost five nine…”

I shook my head. I was in love with Peter Terris; she
knew
this. Every other male dripped mediocrity.

“There are lots of nice guys out there, A.J., who don’t have chiseled jaws and who aren’t going out with Death Incarnate. Let’s not do the Todd Kovich number again!”

I set my jaw. Okay, so Todd and I had crashed and burned. It was inevitable. I was artsy. He was preppie. I cared too much. He didn’t care at all. One of the many things wrong with Todd and me as a couple was that whenever we were together I wanted to be prettier, more popular, someone he would stay with. I knew all along he wouldn’t stay.

Trish was moving in for her next big hit. “You are a wonderful person, A.J., an attractive person, and you fall for a guy’s image without knowing the person behind it.”

I said I hadn’t asked to be born a perfectionist. I was just attracted to gorgeous.

“Are you going to slump around, A.J., waiting for another impossible guy?”

“Probably.”

Trish bent over our veggie pizza and muffled a Drama Guild scream. She is going to be a psychologist and is always looking for someone to practice on. We’ll be sitting at Duck’s, our favorite junkie cheap food joint. I’ll be about to bite into hot-dog heaven when Trish raps the prefab table with her plastic fork and says, “Now, A.J., about your wounded inner child…” I tell her that my inner child is swell, thanks, and would she please pass the mustard? Trish says I am an intriguing candidate for psychotherapy owing to my manifold resistance and intense denial system.

We became best friends at her eleventh birthday party when we got stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel together. Trish kept me from screaming—you could see the therapist in her even back then. She said to talk and not look down. We talked about never getting invited to Melissa Pageant’s parties. We talked about who we had crushes on. We talked about how much we loved to
ice skate and how someday we would star in the Ice Capades.

We still love to skate. Trish can twirl, but I’m faster. We skate on Pilling Pond early in the morning before the little kids take over, going round and round, surrounded by evergreens and holly, yakking away. Then Trish breaks off and goes into the center to twirl; I blast around the pond, feeling the miracle of ice and speed. When Robbie Oldsberg dumped me last February we went skating together and Trish didn’t twirl once.

A squeal rose from the back of the Pizza Pavilion. Lisa Shooty, Head Cheerleader, was wiggling out of a booth, trying to get away from Al Costanzo, Star Running Back, who was waving a slice of pepperoni pizza at her full, sensuous mouth. All the popular students at the back tables roared, while the rest of us smiled thinly, wondering what was so funny, and why we so wanted to be in on it.

I studied the overflowing booths of popular students lining the back wall. There they were, the movers and shakers of Benjamin Franklin High—the sports stars, the cheerleaders, the good, the great, the gorgeous—bent over their pizzas.

Trish sensed my angst and said, “My mother says girls like Lisa Shooty get the ultimate curse known to man.”

“What’s that?”

“Too much too soon.”

I looked at poor, cursed Lisa, who had been sprayed with sex appeal at birth. She had gleaming teeth and long, raven-black curls. She threw back her head and laughed with diamond-studded joy.

“When do you think the curse takes effect?” I asked.

“Not in our lifetime,” Trish answered.

We contemplated this sickening truth as the cholesterol congealed on our Veggie Supremo. Then the front door of the Pizza Pavilion swung open and Peter Terris floated in like visiting royalty with Julia Hart epoxied to his side.

“
Forget him!
” Trish hissed.

They moved entwined to a window booth that magically emptied, moved right by me, I might add—I, who had just sold him an unusual pie hours before. Peter’s surfer-sandy hair was shining, his ice-green eyes were gleaming. Julia shook her majestic blond hair and beamed at Peter like a politician’s wife. I pushed my plate away.

“There’s no way, A.J.” Trish pushed the plate back toward me. “Some battles can’t be won. Peter Terris is out of your universe and even if you got together,
which you won’t
, he’d make you miserable because he’s in love with himself just like Todd Kovich and Robbie Oldsberg and all the other guys you—”

“He has,” I growled, “a healthy self-image!”

“He can’t,” Trish countered, “pass a mirror without
checking his reflection!” She pointed to Peter, who had caught his perfect image in the window and was smoothing his hair. Trish held her hand up like a traffic cop. “You need to connect with a guy who’s real, A.J., not these model types you get hung up on.”

I rose to defend him, but was stopped short by Pearly Shoemaker, who was standing at our table smiling benevolently—a new approach. Her smile said if I handed over the Valentine’s edition cover shot nobody would get hurt.

“I’m working on it, Pearly.”

“I’m so glad, A.J.” Her neck muscles gripped. “The entire Valentine’s Day edition has been sold
without
a cover shot for advertisers!”

She slapped a poster trumpeting the Valentine
Oracle
with dumpy cupids flying in formation like Canada geese. I said cupids were mythological control freaks,
not
the symbol of a new generation.

Pearly closed her mascaraed eyes. “I’m counting to ten, A.J. I am the editor and my vision has prevailed, a vision that weaves classic love with today’s relationships.
Everyone
likes cupids, A.J.!”

I made the universal barf sign in response.

Pearly turned to Trish. “Talk to her!”

Trish, loyal sidekick, wouldn’t dream of it.

“
I need the cover photo, A.J.!
” Pearly hissed. “
You have thirty-six hours!
” She turned on her designer heel and stormed off.

“The shark woman strikes again,” said Trish.

I looked at Julia. I looked at Peter. I hid my face in my hands.

Trish leaned forward. “There are seven days before the King of Hearts Dance, A.J.! Girls ask boys,
no
exceptions. And if you don’t ask someone soon, you’re going to end up sitting home
again
, being miserable and depressed
again.
You made me promise to bug you about this until you did something. So I’m bugging you!”

“I release you from your promise.” I zippered my black bomber jacket. “Are you ever going to ask Tucker to the dance?”

Trish looked down, embarrassed. Tucker Crawford was her latest heartthrob, the brash, opinionated investigative reporter on the
Oracle
who had uncovered potential food-poisoning problems in the school cafeteria.

“I’m working on it,” she said.

Nina Bloomfeld pulled up a chair at our table, looking bleak. She had just broken up with Eddie Royce, who had been cheating on her.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“As expected,” Nina said glumly, “when you do the really mature thing.”

I sighed deeply with her.

“We should all just ask someone,” Trish declared. “It’s better than sitting home!”

“Who,” I half shouted, “made these rules about sitting home being so awful? I mean, if there’s only one
person you want to go with and that person doesn’t want to go with you, do you have to dredge up a love-equivalent just for a stupid dance? Is this what we’ve sunk to as a free-thinking female society?”

“We shouldn’t need dates to be fulfilled,” Trish insisted. Then she lowered her voice ominously. “But if we don’t hurry up, you guys, only the nerds will be left.”

I was driving Trish home in my almost-classic sixteen-year-old Volvo, zooming down Mariah Avenue. I was beat. A sad love song played on the radio; the singer and I had the same problem: we didn’t understand love. The rules were too obtuse.

I looked at Trish, who was half asleep. I turned left at the Nickleby Novelty Company as a cat knocked over a pile of cardboard boxes. I felt my nostrils clog with vile allergens because just seeing a cat affected me adversely. A box rolled precariously into the street; I slammed on the brakes.

Trish sat up with a start.

A small thing rolled out of the box. It did a kind of half somersault and landed spread eagle in front of my Volvo. “What was that?” Trish asked sleepily.

“I don’t know…”

I kept the headlights on and began to get out of the car…

“
Stay in the car, A.J. It’s late and something’s weird!
”

I peered over the dashboard, turned on my brights.

“Maybe you killed it,” Trish offered.