Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp (28 page)

“Darling, you’re in Ukiah!” exclaimed Sheeni. “It’s so sudden.”

“I wrecked the Lincoln and trailer, darling.”

“That’s wonderful, darling! I’m proud of you.”

“Yes, darling. And I also destroyed half of Berkeley’s gourmet ghetto.”

“Darling, you set that big fire? We read about it in the paper. That’s incredible!”

“My mother didn’t want to get stuck with a bill for $5 million, so she had to send me away,” I explained. “That was my strategy, darling, and it worked.”

“Darling, you’re a genius!” exclaimed Sheeni. “But wasn’t a $5 million fire a bit excessive?”

“I felt a grand gesture was required, darling. When can I see you?”

“Oh, uh, did you get my letter?” stammered Sheeni uncharacteristically.

“No, I didn’t, darling. Why?”

“Something wonderful has happened, darling,” she replied. “You know how unhappy I was at school because of the envious behavior of my classmates?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, Father and Mother have finally agreed to let me transfer.”

A cold sweat broke out over my hot sweat. “Transfer where, darling?” I asked.

“To the École des Arts et Littératures, a wonderful school with a great reputation. All the classes are conducted in French. Isn’t that marvelous, darling?”

“And where is this wonderful school?” I asked.

“It’s, uh, in… or, that is to say, it is just outside of… Santa Cruz.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “That’s 500 miles away!”

“Not that far, darling! It’s only a little over 200 miles.”

“Sheeni, what are you trying to do to me? Couldn’t you change your mind now that I’m here? Albert’s here too.”

“Oh, darling, I’ll miss you both. But Father’s already paid a full year’s tuition. And all my things have been shipped there. Don’t worry, darling. We’ll have wonderful times together over the holidays and all next summer.”

For some reason, this thought did not lighten my despair. “When are you leaving?”

“That’s the thing, darling. We were supposed to have left an hour ago. I had to sneak out of the house to call you. Father will be furious over the delay.”

I was incredulous. “You mean I won’t be able to see you before you go?”

“Sorry, darling. But I’ll write. I promise. I’ll write every day. Goodbye, Nickie. I have to go.”

“Goodbye, Sheeni,” I said, stunned. “I’ll miss you!”

“I’ll miss you too, darling. Squeeze darling Albert for me!”

The phone clicked. The line went silent. The red welts on my legs throbbed anew. I had endured a $5 million beating for nothing.

6:30
P.M
. While I was masticating my way through an abysmal meal prepared by Dad’s alluring but culinarily untalented girlfriend, the following conversation took place:

“Since you won’t be getting an allowance, Nick,” said Dad, “I think you should start looking for a part-time job.”

“OK.”

“There may be an opening down at my office doing filing and typing after school,” he added.

“Isn’t that what Trent does?” asked Lacey.

“Yes,” replied Dad. “But I understand he’s leaving.”

“Does he have another job?” asked Lacey.

“No. He’s leaving town. He’s going away to school.”

My heart began to palpitate uncontrollably. “Do you know what school, Dad?” I asked.

“I don’t know. His father didn’t say. It’s some French-speaking prep school down south. Santa Cruz, I think.”

I dropped my fork.

“That Trent is a great kid,” said Dad. “Too bad, Nick, you’re not more like him.”

“And he’s so cute!” exclaimed Lacey.

I’ve been stabbed. Stabbed in the back!

SUNDAY, September 30
— Am I grounded? That is the question.

My loathsome father, under whose despotic rule I have come to live while hiding out from the arson investigators, has not stated explicitly that I am grounded. Of course, I dare not ask him. As a test, after lunch I announced I was taking Albert for a walk into town. Dad did not object. He did not comment at all, but continued to gaze fixedly at the sheerly draped bosom of his alluring 19-year-old live-in bimbette.

So, until told otherwise, I am proceeding under the assumption that I am free to do as I please.

This was my first look at my new hometown, hallowed birthplace of The Woman I Love. After exploring Ukiah’s phlegmatic downtown, I walked west along the gracious old residential streets. 2016 Sonoretto Street was a rambling three-story Victorian with tall, narrow windows, wraparound front porch, and a circular tower topped by a conical roof. Albert yipped excitedly, tugging on the leash and jumping up against the old wrought-iron fence. Canine intuition told him this was the home of his (and perhaps someday my) mistress.

On the porch, a handsome but somewhat unkempt-looking man in his mid-twenties was blowing cool jazz on a beat-up old trumpet. This, I concluded, must be Paul, Sheeni’s prodigal, psychedelic-ingesting brother. He put down his horn and took a long drag on a home-rolled cigarette.

“Hi, Nick,” he called. “Want a hit?”

“How did you know my name?” I asked.

“Come on in,” he replied, ignoring the question.

I opened the gate and walked up to the porch. Albert, wiggling uncontrollably, sniffed the landscaping as Paul handed me the aromatic cigarette. François sucked in a big gulp of smoke and our brain cells began to pop like popcorn. This was the real stuff.

“G-g-good,” stammered François, handing back the joint. “How’d you know it was me, Paul?”

“We’ve met,” he said, taking another drag.

“No, we haven’t.”

“In a previous life,” he elaborated, offering the cigarette again.

“Oh,” said François, greedily puffing on the fast-disappearing butt. Even Nick had to concede watching his brain levitate 12 feet off the sidewalk was pleasurable in the extreme. Besides, he told himself, writers should experience
hallucinogenics to get in touch with their previous lives. Somebody might still owe them some money.

“Sheeni cut out on you, Nick,” observed Paul.

I shrugged. “What can you do? I’ll see her at Christmas.”

Paul blew a long mournful blast on his horn. “Nice fire,” he said.

“Did Sheeni tell you it was me?” I asked, shocked.

“No. She didn’t have to.”

“Why? Was I an arsonist in a previous life?”

“No,” replied Paul, making his horn wail. “But Sheeni was.”

“Wow,” said François.

“And is,” Paul added.

Those words seared into my brain. “My God,” I said, suddenly profoundly in tune with the cosmos. “What does she burn?” “Men,” replied Paul.

“Men and boys.”

François was thrilled. “Come on, baby, light my fire,” he exclaimed.

Paul launched into a lyrical solo. I recognized the tune at once. It was Cole Porter’s “Get Out of Town.”

When I got back to the ranch, Dad and Lacey were out. Still feeling chemically levitated, I wandered into their bedroom. The immense king-size bed was in disarray, suggesting recent mixed-sex wrestling. I pulled back the blankets. Yes, there was the telltale wet spot, a geological curiosity that has, alas, never been detected in my bed. How unfair, I thought. Only five years separate Lacey and me, yet she sleeps with a balding creep 25 years her senior (practically a lifetime!).

I opened a dresser drawer: panty hose, brassieres, and a jumbled rainbow of tiny bikini panties. What curious underwear Dad has, I thought. “Put some on,” suggested François. “Why not?” replied Nick. I shed my clothes and slipped easily into lacy black panties. The matching bra required somewhat more effort to don. I switched on the radio and, swaying to the music, studied my reflection in the mirrored closet doors. I liked the way my T.E. bulged through the sheer panties, but I could never hope to compete with Lacey in filling out the dual C cups. “This has to go,” declared François. He unsnapped the bra, draped it over our head, and tied the straps under our chin.

“Ceremonial headdress of the black arts,” commented Nick, boogying to the beat. “Much more appropriate, don’t you think, François?”

“What the…what the fuck?”

I froze. In the doorway stood Dad, openmouthed, crimson-faced, clutching a Safeway bag.

Lacey, carrying another grocery bag, peered over his shoulder. “Is that my bra?” she inquired. She looked lower. “Oh my God!”

I yanked a blanket off the bed. “Hal-halloween’s coming up, Dad,” I sputtered, struggling to wrap the blanket around my torso while simultaneously tugging furiously at the recalcitrant brassiere. “I, I was looking for a costume.”

“Get the fuck out of here, you sicko!” raged Dad.

7:30
P.M
. Dad isn’t speaking to me. Even Lacey still looks miffed. I have a tremendous headache. What was Paul smoking anyway?

Tomorrow I enter Redwood High, scene of brilliant scholastic triumphs by My One and Only Love. If only she were there to introduce me to her elite friends. Instead, I must enter alone. I do not have a single friend (male or female) within 100 miles. This is a daunting thought if you think about it. I’m trying not to.

9:45
P.M
. Dad just walked into my room without knocking (he subscribes to the same parental charter as his ex-wife).

“We’re calling that fruitcake display of yours strike one,” he announced.

“OK,” I muttered, somewhat confused.

“Two more strikes, pal, and it’s back to Oakland for you. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” I replied.

“Now, what do you have to say for yourself?” he demanded.

I gave the question some thought. “Dad,” I said at last, “would you mind knocking before you enter?”

“I’ll knock, pal,” fumed Dad, “when you start paying rent on this room. Two-hundred bucks a month sounds about right to me. What do you say to that, smart guy?”

I say, Dad, when you die I’m going to turn your body over to science. Maybe they can identify a new gene—the one responsible for producing jerks.

MONDAY, October 1
— Today I experienced my second day of second-rate public school education.

My first took place three weeks ago at an inner-city school in Oakland. Were the experiences as different as black and white? Surprisingly not. Again, I encountered the same odorous corridors teeming with bored, disinterested scholars; the same bedraggled ranks of discouraged, harassed teachers; the same officious administrators; the same scrupulously inoffensive textbooks; the same pervasive sense of a relentless institutional retreat from reality.

By lunchtime Redwood High School had made it perfectly clear it proposes to waste the next four years of my life. Furthermore, through a perfidious
combination of ennui, rote repetition, peer pressure, reactionary doctrine, intellectual dishonesty, and school spirit, it intends to extinguish the curiosity of my mind and the independence of my thought. But at least it will be accomplishing these tasks on a pleasant, tree-studded campus surrounded by acres of manicured lawn. And here, at least, there are no uniformed guards insisting that Uzis be checked at the door.

Since I arrived sans transcripts, Miss Pomdreck, my aged guidance counselor, was unsure at first where to place me. But by strategic use of such words as “elucidate,” “rapprochement,” and “quotidian,” I managed to convince her I would not sink like a stone if assigned to the tracked classes.

“Normally these classes are all full by now,” she observed, “but two of our best pupils just transferred. It was quite a shock to us all.”

You’re telling me, lady.

“One of the transferred students was a freshman like you, Nick,” she went on. “Why don’t we just give you Sheeni Saunders’ schedule? Too bad you won’t get to meet her. She was one of our brightest students.”

Yeah, rub it in. I’m used to it.

“That sounds fine to me, Miss Pomdreck,” I replied.

“Good,” she said. “One thing. We’ll have to switch you over to boys’ gym. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to shower with all those girls.”

Oh yeah? Try me.

I was even assigned Sheeni’s very own locker, still redolent with her exquisite scent. Reverently, I placed my lunch bag on the same shelf where, just a few days before, Sheeni had cached her own delicate refreshments. I felt like crawling in and closing the door, but instead I trooped disconsolately from class to class, following the ghost of My Departed Love.

In Physics I, my first class, Mr. Tratinni made me stand up and introduce myself. What a mortification. I turned red and mumbled incoherently to my shoes—almost as if I’d been studying elocution with Wally Rumpkin.

Then, 45 minutes later, I had to repeat the performance in Mr. Perkins’ English class. Of course, since the audience had hardly changed (the ranks of Redwood High’s intellectual elite do not run deep), I felt compelled to reveal something new about myself.

To my horror, each subsequent class began with mumbled redundancies by New Student Nick Twisp. Period after period, I addressed halting autobiographical revelations to the same sea of disinterested, increasingly hostile faces. I’m sure by the end of the day everyone had pegged me for a conceited buffoon, ever boasting of his exotic life in glamorous Oakland.

At midday, I ate my meager lunch alone in the boisterous cafeteria. No one spoke to me, not even the plain fat girls (who in Oakland had a history of
finding me irresistible). I chewed my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, while all around me teen gossips loudly imputed scandalous motives for Sheeni and Trent’s recent departure.

“I hear she’s knocked up and her dad’s making Trent marry her,” said one tittering slandermonger.

“And he isn’t even the father!” interjected her acne-blotched companion. “I hear it’s some college guy down in the Bay Area she’s had the hots for.”

“Serves her right,” said another shrewish teen. “She thought she was such hot stuff. So much smarter than everyone else.”

“I just hope Trent gets away,” said a fourth backstabber. “He’s much too good for her.”