Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen (4 page)

Cutting wasn’t the easiest thing to do
at Wesley; even though they didn’t watch you like a hawk or
anything. They placed your education in your lap. They figured you
should want to go to class so you could graduate and go to an Ivy
League school. A lot of the students that attended Wesley were on a
fast track to Stanford. All of the students were required to apply
to at least three Ivy League schools. Let’s just say, most people
would get one of their three top choices when they applied. On
average they send ninety-eight percent of their student body to
higher education and eighty-five percent go onto Ivy League
schools. Bet you could guess where I’d fit in; and it wasn’t the
majority.

“
Wilson, there you are!
I’ve been looking for you.” Joanie my BFF, skipped across the
cafeteria towards me. Her smile filled her face. She was the only
person in the entire world that knew
everything
about me, even how I felt
about
you-know-who.
That explains why she was also very protective of me. She was
the only person in my life that I came to trust with anything. It’s
not very common to have a friend you could tell your deepest most
intimate secrets to without fear they would end up on her Facebook
page or in her tweets on Twitter
.

“
Oh hey J, what’s up?” I
always called her by her first initial. It was always so much
easier than saying Joanie. She locked her arms around my neck and
kept skipping, taking me with her. I was somewhat shorter than she,
so I flew forward—but was lucky enough to catch myself.
I hated when she did that
.

She was a different bird to start
with. Always smiling, always able to find something positive in the
steaming heap of a mess I called life experiences. There had only
been a handful of times I could remember her ever being mad. She
constantly found time to help people when they asked. She always
saw the glass as half full, optimist to the core. Maybe that was
what balanced our friendship. I was the one always trying to find
out what motivation people had for helping me, while she just
bounced around trusting everyone.

“
Oh my God Wilson, Mr.
Goldstein isn’t here today. He left early for the weekend. I
overheard him telling Mr. Weinstein he was going out of town and
won’t be back until Sunday night, something about skiing. I guess
you’re gonna miss your chance to get your fill before the
weekend.”

Great, this was
awkward.
How was I going to tell my best
friend that I was leaving for the weekend tonight with our
roommate, Cindy and there was a slight chance Max could be going to
his family’s cabin and (an even slighter chance) that I am going to
see him without her? Although she was optimistic, it didn’t mean
she wasn’t easily tipped into becoming jealous.
Okay, here goes nothing.

“
Joanie,
CindyinvitedmetoAspenthisweekend.
”
I blurted out in one strung together breath. This was the part
where I started making excuses. “She bought the ticket before she
even asked me. Can you believe it? I wasn’t gonna go, but she
wouldn’t have gone without me. Now, who am I to mess up her
vacation with her father?”

She didn’t say a word as her face went
red. She just stared at the black and white tiled floor of the
cafeteria. I knew she felt left out. Believe me, I knew exactly how
she felt and that was what was so messed up about it. I wish she
had plans this weekend, it would’ve made my life a little less
complicated and I wouldn’t have felt so guilty.

“
I probably won’t have much
fun. You know me and the snow.” Joanie’s head rose, she wasn’t good
at hiding the struggle that blanketed her face.

“
Come on Wilson, I think I
can handle you taking off with Cindy for a weekend. I’ll be fine.
You better text me! I don’t wanna have to go out there and kick
your ass.” She pointed her long thin finger at me. I bounced back
and forth and held my fists in front of my face. She slapped my
hands down.

“
He’s gonna be there, isn’t
he?” she asked. I stopped; suddenly I felt the gap between
us.

“
According to Cindy, his
family has a cabin there. She doesn’t know anything—about him and
how I feel. I wish you were going to be there.”

“
Well I’m not. You’re gonna
be on your own.” One dig, then I waited for her to
apologize.

Joanie grabbed me and pulled me into a
bear hug. “I’m sorry. You text me the minute anything happens. You
know I love ya, miss you already,” she mumbled.

“
Me too.”

Just as Joanie pushed me away, Cindy
came running up. Her eyes wide and bright, a smile held captive by
braces, sparkled in the light. She grabbed my hands and pulled me
to face her. I noticed Joanie’s eyes narrowed and the edges of her
lips bent down. I knew it was painful for Joanie to see Cindy
excited about me going with her for an entire weekend. Especially
since Joanie only put up with Cindy because we all were roommates,
heck I think that was a mutual consensus.

“
You’ll never guess who’s
going to Aspen this weekend too; oh hi Joanie.” She glanced at my
best friend, before she looked back at me. She didn’t wait for an
answer. “Chase Romero.” Her eyes glazed over and I could tell this
weekend was going to be all about him.

Chase graduated from Brown Academy for
Boys last year and now goes to Stanford. Wesley and Brown have a
long standing tradition of arranging dances and social events
between the two schools. The administrators and parents believed it
gave the students the opportunity to co-mingle with like minds, and
social standards. I think it was a way for the wealthy families to
pick and choose who their kids were going to be allowed to bring
into their own socially privileged networks and profitable empires.
It was our first dance in the ninth grade when Cindy fell in love
with Chase. Four years later, she was still so infatuated with him
that she got her father to agree to write a pretty hefty check to
Stanford, a little insurance for her acceptance in the fall. It
must be nice.

I really couldn’t understand what she
saw in Chase. Yeah he was good looking. He had the slick jet black
hair off his ears, ocean blue eyes and a perfect smile, but his
communication skills lacked the finesse to talk himself out of a
paper bag. He thought exacerbate was a type of fishing tackle. Did
I need to say more? ‘To each their own’, that was what my grandma
used to say. Besides, I had my own situation I wanted to focus
on—Max Goldstein. He and I were going to meet in Aspen and have
dinner, even if he didn’t know it yet.

Chapter
Three:

I hugged Joanie goodbye and
grabbed my bag. It wasn’t an emotional goodbye, it was a
see you in a couple of days
goodbye. I promised her I would text her the minute we landed
and when I found Max. It was a remarkable symbol of our friendship.
She had taken the place of a parent figure in my life; and as
inconvenient as it felt sometimes, it was a peerless comfort that
filled my soul when I realized it. We had each other in this world
of ill fated events. I knew she would be there for me; no matter
what.

The dorm room door flew open, Cindy
stood at the threshold waving her one free hand.

“
Come on, we are going to
be late to the airport.” She strutted past me and forced a roommate
hug goodbye on Joanie.

“
We’ll see ya when we get
back. Miss you already!” Her words dripped with a spurious tone to
make Joanie jealous. She turned and grabbed my arm pulling me; I
turned and watched Joanie disappear behind the door.

We all had our own stories
of why we were at Wesley. For all the crap Joanie has lived
through, she was still optimistic, trusting, and open; it boggled
my mind. She was the youngest of four. Her oldest brother was
forty-six, her other brother was forty-three and her youngest
sister was forty, twenty-two years earlier, hello Joanie. Her
parents told her she was an accident because of menopausal
sex.
Can you believe it?
They tried to sue the doctor for lack of
information of how babies were made during freaking menopause. Her
parents were so opposite of mine. They were married, older,
established and had already raised three children. None of her
thirty-something year old siblings offered to take her. They all
thought it best to send Joanie away to boarding school.

So at the ripe young age of eight,
Joanie entered the boarding school system. That was when I met her.
We both liked the scent of sweet peas and the taste of warm
sauerkraut. Our favorite color was green and she loved beanie
babies as much as I did. It was like some power greater than
anything, brought us together; if you believed in such things.
We’ve been best friends ever since.

I tossed my bag into the
trunk of Cindy’s sports car. Her father bought her a 2010 Audi TTS
Roadster. Fire red with black interior, it was an early graduation
present. Heck, I think they go for at least Sixty-G’s. It was
beautiful. I slid my fingertips along the side of the car. It felt
smooth, strong, and expensive.
Where was
she going to park it so it didn’t get jacked from the
airport?
I guess it didn’t matter too much
to her, she was so rich; daddy could buy her a new one; must be
nice.

The ride to the Oakland Airport was
all about how she was going to find out which cabin was the
Romero’s. How this time, she decided to go up to Chase and profess
her love to him. She even worked out telling him how she dreams
about them being together. Please— so desperate. Give me a vomit
bag, the one with the metal tabs to seal it off. Her infatuation
was totally different than my feelings for Max. First, she didn’t
see him every day. Oh, then there was the major fact that he liked
Dena Larson. Who was, by the way, way out of his league. Dena
looked like a model for Victoria Secret. Hello, tiny waist and
D-sized boobs; there was no way Cindy could compete with that. She
could almost fudge a size B on a cold day. The only thing Chase and
Cindy had in common was their names both started with the letter C
and the fact that both of their families were, over the top,
rich.

What was I thinking when I
agreed to go to Aspen with Cindy
?
If the thirty minute ride to the airport was any
indication of how the weekend was going to be maybe I should have
faked the H1N1 flu and lived with the ramifications. Holy cow that
girl could talk, the only saving grace, my thoughts of Max
Goldstein.

She pulled into long term parking and
popped the back. She unloaded a huge suitcase and a backpack that
took up most of the trunk. I just had a duffel bag. I didn’t fly
much, but what I’ve heard was it was better to take one bag and
carry it on with you, so they wouldn’t lose it. Besides it wasn’t
like we were going for a week or anything. A couple of pairs of
jeans and a few shirts worked for me. I flipped my bag across my
shoulder and was ready to go. She pulled the suitcase behind her
and strapped her backpack across her shoulders. Price you pay for
having more than you need, I guess. If the airport offered little
slave boys to carry her bags, I wouldn’t put it past her to do
it.

I watched her fight the suitcase up
the steps. “Oh My God, this sucks,” Cindy griped as I grabbed the
bottom of her suitcase and pushed.

“
What do you have in here,
bricks of gold?”

The suitcase had to weigh seventy-five
pounds.

“
No; just
necessities.”

We crossed the road and headed towards
the Southwest curbside check-in.

“
We can check in with this
outside guy right?”

“
Oh Wilson, they are called
Skycaps,” she chuckled as she looked back at me. That was the part
of this weekend I didn’t look forward to. How stupid she could make
me feel because I wasn’t as traveled as she was. Truth be told,
this was only the second time I took an airplane anywhere. The
first time I went on an airplane I was thirteen and my eighth grade
class flew down to So-Cal to go to Disneyland for our graduation
trip. That was a bust. I ended up with food poisoning and spent the
whole second day of my flex pass in the hotel room with Mrs.
Sheath. She wasn’t nurturing at all; a mother of three obnoxious
boys. In fact, she accused me of faking it; even when I was
up-chucking my guts and hugging the porcelain. She tossed me a
towel and shut the door. I was glad I caught it before it landed in
my vomit. That was the worst trip ever. This trip has to be better
than Disney from hell.

“
Whatever, we can check in
here, right?” I dropped my duffel at my feet and turned to her to
help.

“
Hi ladies, welcome to
Southwest Airlines, where are we taking you today?” a gray haired
clean cut uniformed man said as he grabbed the tickets and loaded
Cindy’s suitcase on a metal carpeted wheelie cart.

“
Aspen,” my voice
cracked.

“
Actually, Denver,” Cindy
corrected me as she looked back and shook her head.

Strike two. I’ve never liked people
who kept correcting the mistakes I made or kept tallies on the
stupid things I did, just so they could bring them up later at an
inopportune time or in the heat of an argument.