Virgin Territory

I’m staring out the passenger window of Doug’s banged-up Ford Explorer as we speed along I-95. I am, as usual, late.

“Relax,” Doug says. “You’ll be there in two shakes.”

And by that he means eventually.

The guy on talk radio is yakking about the fact that Pluto, our ninth and smallest planet, was demoted a few years ago to something like a big rock spinning in space. It’s still there, he says, same as always, only now it’s less important; and he’s not happy about that. According to him, a bunch of Plutocrats have been very busy on the Internet insisting that planet Pluto has always been a little weird, too wobbly, smallish, and oddly shaped. And so what? That’s no reason to demote it to a number (134340). They’re claiming that the time has come for them to fight back and get Pluto officially reinstated with a name and a proper place in our solar system.

“D’you hear that?” I ask Doug.

“What?” he says, taking his eyes off the road for a second and
looking around the car as if someone had just said something.

“The radio.”

“Oh,” he replies, and grips the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turn as white as beach sand. “Since when do you listen to the radio?”

He’s right. I don’t usually listen to the radio. But earlier this summer Doug found out that I was trading e-mails with a woman with a filthy screen name. She was thirty-seven. I’m fifteen. You do the math. Doug screamed bloody murder, gave me the silent treatment, and then, as punishment, grounded me until further notice. He stomped around the house, threw things, and acted as though he’d been hired as gravity’s personal assistant. Finally, without warning, he took it upon himself to cancel my Internet service, confiscate my computer, and force me to live like a Luddite. Now I have no e-mail. I use a goddamn pencil to take notes, a pen if I’m feeling fancy. I listen to the radio, because things like gaming and blogging are out the window. Forget YouTube. Good-bye, Google and Twitter. Doug might as well have taken away my name, assigned me a number, and turned me into rock spinning in outer space. But I guess I’ve been that rock for a while now—ever since Kat died.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d get you here on time?” he asks as I grab my backpack and slide out of the car and onto the solid ground of the parking lot. I’m already sprinting toward the clubhouse when I hear him call after me:
“Didn’t I?”

The old duffers at the golf course are trained to ignore me, so
it makes no difference whether I’m late or early to work. While on duty as a lowly caddy, I try to keep from coughing, sneezing, or bringing attention to myself in any way that might announce the fact that I’m alive. The rule is: Do not speak unless spoken to. If the geezers happen to mispronounce a word, use the wrong grammar, or give false information, I keep my comments to myself and pretend to be an idiot.

“Always liked that Pluto,” Mr. Schulman says. He’s not addressing me; he’s talking to a big bald guy named Mr. Loomis, telling him about Pluto. Obviously, he’s been listening to the same radio station. Mr. Schulman stares out toward the wild blue yonder as though he can actually see the nonplanet spinning at the edge of our solar system. Maybe it’s his squint, but he looks kind of wistful. For a minute, I think he might start bawling right there at the third tee.

“Y’mean, Pluto, the Disney character?” asks Mr. Loomis. “The dog with the ears?”

Mr. Schulman pushes his lips forward and shakes his head like he’s a giant fish caught on a line. “Nah. That’s Goofy. I’m talking the planet Pluto. Or what used to be Pluto. People want it back the way it used to be. Heard a thing on the radio about it.”

“No kidding.”

Mr. Loomis doesn’t care; you can tell by the way he closes his eyes and pretends he cares.

“I mean, the scientists shouldn’t be allowed to just give a
planet the hook,” says Mr. Schulman. “Just like that? No questions asked? It’s not right. People want it back.”

Mr. Loomis nods as though he totally agrees.

“And there’s a rumor we’re gonna be the next to go,” Mr. Schulman says.

“Us?” Mr. Loomis’s voice sounds a little shaky.

“Yeah, us. Jupiter. Get it?”

Jupiter is the name of the town where we live. Jupiter, Florida. Mr. Schulman made a joke. This is the kind of lame-ass, LOL, tomfoolery that golf caddies like me are subjected to on a daily basis when they work at a third-rate seaside golf course. But hey, it’s better than looking for stray balls in the underbrush like when I first began working at Spring Hill.

But then Mr. Loomis says that maybe the decision to fire Pluto as a full-fledged planet is not such a bad thing—maybe it’s a triumph of science over sentiment.

“How come?” I ask.

They both look at me as though I am a leather golf bag, shocked that I can speak.

“How come what?” Mr. Loomis shoots back at me. He’s wearing clashing plaids, so it’s hard to look directly at him for too long without getting dizzy. I stare at the grass instead and say:

“How come it would be a triumph of science over sentiment?”

“Because maybe it’s proof that scientists aren’t attached to
Pluto like we are. They see it for what it
is
, not for what they
want
it to be.”

Then Mr. Loomis squints at me and asks, “What’s your name, kid?”

“Dylan,” I say. “Dylan Flack.”

He then repeats my name as though he owns it and tells me that I’d better save my questions for later because he needs to concentrate on his game.

Of course what I really want to ask Mr. Loomis is: What’s wrong with sentiment? What’s wrong with getting attached? Is it such a crime to allow sentiment to triumph over science, to let feelings override the facts? After all, science can’t explain
everything
.

For instance, my mother always used to tell me that I was going to grow up to be a real heartbreaker. I’ve never been bad looking, but I’m not a total hunk, either. I fall somewhere in the middle. I mean, my individual features aren’t bad, but somehow when you put them all together, I just come out looking average. My birth certificate says that my eyes are brown, but if you stand very close and stare at me hard, you can see a thin nimbus of blue edging its way around the pupils. My hair is light brown and shoulder length. My nose is nothing special. And yet still my mother was able to see something in me that no one else could ever imagine, not even me. Love gave her second sight, and I don’t think science has a name for that.

“How about a three-wood?” Mr. Schulman says, his gloved hand stretching toward me. He’s so busy squinting toward the swell and sweep of the green in the distance, he doesn’t notice that I handed him the club two minutes ago. I tell him so, and he inspects the thing as though he’s never seen it before. Then he gazes at the ball, white as a capped tooth, sitting in the grass. Makes no difference what club he uses for which shot; Mr. Schulman is strictly a hit-and-hope player.

The truth is, I don’t hate being a caddy as much as I thought I would when I first took the job. It’s better than sitting around the house and hating my life. Right after Doug banished me from the Internet and took away my computer, I pretty much had nothing to do. My only actual friend, Corey McDermott, had been placed in a French-immersion course for all of June, July, and August somewhere in the Alps. And since I haven’t heard from Corey since the day he left for France, I’m beginning to think that we aren’t such good pals after all. All of June, I was on my own, depressed twenty-four/seven and looking at weeks of summer stretching out before me. On the Fourth of July, I didn’t even bother getting out of bed. I didn’t wear shoes for four days. I forgot to bathe.

Doug came into my room, sat on the edge of my bed, and told me that the time had come for me to come up with “a plan.” If he hadn’t looked so pathetic, I might have laughed out loud. Instead, I explained that I was teaching myself to play “Positively 4th Street” on my guitar. Mistake. He explained that
guitar playing was not a plan and I’d better find a real job or I’d be going to work with him on Monday.

The landscaping outfit that Doug works for is called Down to Earth, and to tell you the truth, I’d rather be buried alive in someone’s backyard than work a day alongside my own father in broad daylight.