Crash Test Love (4 page)

ME

What class do you have next?

GARRETT

Spanish. I don’t even know why I’m taking it, really. It’s not like I can say anything useful except Creo que vomité por allá. Lo siento.

[TRANSLATION: I think I vomited over there. Sorry.]

ME

Looks good on college applications.

GARRETT

I guess. How about you?

ME

I’m o this period.

GARRETT

Too bad we don’t have lunch together. (She pouts. It’s adorable.) That would be fun.

Duke and Nigel choose this moment to interrupt.

DUKE

Remember us?

NIGEL

Surprise, surprise.

GARRETT

I do. (She laughs, softly.) Nice to see you guys again.

DUKE

(checking her out)

It’s nice to see you again. Isn’t it nice, Nigel?

NIGEL

Sure is. So, what’s your name, mystery girl?

GARRETT

Garrett.

DUKE

Do you have a boyfriend, Garrett?

I wait for her answer.

GARRETT

Why, are you o ering? (To Duke.) Charlie von Huseldorf, right? Oil money?

Duke blushes.

GARRETT (cont.)

What are you doing later, Henry?

ME

Oh … I dunno. Stu .

I feel the burn of Duke’s and Nigel’s eyes on the back of my neck.

GARRETT

(lowering her voice)

Would you maybe want to get a cup of co ee?

Yes, I want to say. But Duke and Nigel think I’ve already hooked up with her. How would I explain myself? I am Henry Arlington. I do not get with the same girl twice. I do not get co ee. I do not have girlfriends.

ME

Maybe some other time. (The second bell rings and whatever hold has been over the hallway dissolves. People start to move.) See ya.

I walk away and don’t look back. I’m scared that if I do, I wil see something that wil make me change my mind.

I don’t dislike being by myself—in fact, I sort of prefer it. Most days, when I get home from school, I sit down at the piano and play, or put my iTunes on shu e and listen to whatever my computer tel s me I should be listening to; or I’l watch random (sil y) YouTube videos on my computer. And do my homework. My dad works late; sometimes we’l have dinner together, but mostly I cook myself something simple (chicken, sh, vegetables, pasta) and eat at the kitchen table with my dog, Max, at my feet. I’l go online for a few minutes, take a shower, ick on the TV in my room, and chil out to one of the hundreds of DVDs I own. There’s not a night in recent history I can remember not fal ing asleep to a movie, whether it’s something indie or big-budget or whatever. I wil watch anything once. I wil watch anything good twice. Or more than twice. (This is a secret: I’ve seen Shakespeare in Love, like, twenty times. Seriously. Don’t tel anyone.) Right now I am working my way through al the Scorsese lms. I’ve been going by decade; I started with the seventies—Mean Streets; Taxi Driver; New York, New York; Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; The Last Waltz; American Boy—and have moved on to the eighties. I’m in the middle of Raging Bul ; I love that it’s in black-and-white, and how Scorsese messes with perspective to get across his point of view. I admire how involved he was in shaping the script. I think he is a bril iant storytel er.

I walk and feed Max every day after school, and today is no di erent. When I’m done, I nish my calculus problem set—why do teachers give assignments on the rst day of school? What’s the point?—and go outside to play a lit le basketbal . I debate whether to cal Duke and Nigel to come over, but I decide against it. Even though they haven’t done anything wrong, I’m a lit le pissed at them. Or at myself. I can’t real y tel which.

The three of us came up with the Crasher Code last year so that we wouldn’t wind up with girlfriends who’d drag us down our last year in high school and make our lives miserable. Because even when it starts out al fun and isn’t-this-so-great?, that is what girls do: complicate things. They make requests and place demands and pret y soon you go from carefree to completely stressed. That’s the very last thing I want for myself. I want my freedom. I want to do whatever I please, whatever makes me happy. So why can’t I stop thinking about Garret ?

I toss the bal into my garage and go inside. Upstairs, I pul out the piece of paper with the Crasher Code that Nigel wrote out one night. I don’t know why I saved it, exactly, but I look at it every now and then.

THE CRASHER CODE

Rule #1: Never tell a girl your real name

Rule #2: No hos before bros

Rule #3: Never get with the same girl twice

Rule #4: Never spend more than ve minutes talking to the same person (unless it’s a chick and you’re about to seal the deal) Rule #5: Never contradict another crasher

Rule #6: Do your research

Rule #7: Never wear spandex or anything that can be mistaken for spandex

Rule #8: Wrap it before you tap it

Rule #9: Always compliment the birthday girl, but never bone her

Rule #10: Always be (kind of) polite

Rule #69: Decide on a meeting spot beforehand, and if there’s an emergency … drop everything and run!

I laugh to myself as I think about some of the ridiculous things I have done with these guys. Stealing the birthday cake at a Sweet Sixteen in Glen Cove and drawing a penis on it in vanil a icing. Pretending to be Danish royalty and dancing with seventy-year-old ladies at a Sweet Sixteen in Lit le Neck. Toasting the birthday girl (while posing as interns for Newsday) at a Sweet Sixteen in Old Bethpage. Dancing, drinking, hooking up, more drinking, more dancing. More hooking up.

Could I give that al up for a girl? Would I have to? Could I have both: independence and a girlfriend? I have gone so long without being responsible for anyone’s happiness but my own that I don’t even know if such a thing is possible. Being happy with someone else. Being with someone else. The notion is completely foreign to me, like somewhere far, far away that can only be reached by a boat or a plane or a hot-air bal oon.

I wake to the sound of my father coming home; downstairs, Max barks in excited yips. I glance at the clock on my nightstand: 10:49 p.m. Is it too late to cal Garret ? I don’t even have her number.

DAD

Henry? You up?

ME

(yelling downstairs)

I am now!

I stumble to our kitchen. My father is rummaging through the fridge. Dad works a nance job in Manhat an. Good pay but crappy hours. He’s up early and gets back late.

DAD

Oh, there you are. How was school?

ME

Fine.

DAD

First day back, eh?

ME

Yup.

DAD

Hard classes?

ME

Sort of.

DAD

You’ll do ne. You always do.

That exchange, I think, pret y much sums up our relationship. We are not buddies and we are not friends. We are father and son, but we keep a safe distance from one another. He cares about me—I know that much—but he was so in love with my mother that when she left, it broke him. We are holding on to each other by threads, he and I, afraid that if we do or say anything too drastic, the threads wil unravel completely.

I watch him make a sandwich and open a cold beer. I imagine how this scene would play out in a Scorsese lm. Some dramatic underscoring? A shot with the brightness of the refrigerator il uminating the dark kitchen? A close-up of my face? Of his?

He goes to sit in the living room, and I hear him turn on the TV. There is nothing stopping me from joining him, but there is also nothing encouraging me to. This is our routine.

I go back upstairs and get ready for bed. I put on a fresh pair of boxers and a clean T-shirt that says the name of my elementary school on it. I turn on Raging Bul . I’m up to the part when DeNiro, who plays Jake LaMot a, a middleweight boxer, knocks down the door to the bathroom where his wife is hiding, demanding to know whether she had an a air with his brother (played by Joe Pesci). DeNiro is an animal and I love it.

I watch for about twenty minutes and then turn it o . Some people like to see movies from the beginning to the end. No interruptions. I get that, but if I have a choice, I like to watch them in pieces, to savor them, like an expensive steak or a good book.

My father has retreated to his bedroom; I can see the light underneath his door. The rest of the house is dark. I go into the hal way and wait, listening. I do this most nights. Sometimes, I hear nothing. Other times I hear sounds that make me wish I’d never listened in the rst place.

Grown men are not supposed to cry. Especial y fathers. They are supposed to be protectors; they are supposed to be strong. But my father is not strong. He is weak. On the outside he looks whole, but inside there are pieces missing, chunks of him that my mother scooped away and took with her when she left us. I’m going, baby. I’m sorry, but I have to go. One day she was there and the next she was not, and my father, who loved her with everything he had to love her with, slowly began to fade. Thanks to my mother, I have always known there is a di erence between loneliness and aloneness. I am alone, but my father is lonely. And if I had to choose one, I would rather be alone.

In my room, I put the Crasher Code back where it belongs. I am an idiot for wasting any time thinking about a girl named Garret who I barely know. Because there is one solid truth about women, and that is this: they never stay.

GARRETT

It takes three ful days before the J Squad asks me to have lunch with them. Part of me thought it would never happen. Overal , I am pleased.

Marilyn has basical y disappeared, and Erica, whose Sweet Sixteen I at ended, hangs out with a bunch of girls who chain-smoke in the student parking lot and seem about as approachable as pit bul s.

I have yet to make a single new friend at East Shore.

Jessica is the one who begins. “We asked you to have lunch with us today because you’re new.” The four of us are at a table smack in the middle of the cafeteria. Prime real estate.

“And you’re pret y,” Jyl ian adds. “Wel , you’re sort of pret y.”

“Pret y-ish,” says Jessica.

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome,” says London. I can’t tel for sure, but I think she’s in charge. She is the only one without a name starting with J or blond hair; the fact that she’s di erent makes her special. “So, what’s your deal?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, what’s your story?”

“My story?”

London smiles at me. Her teeth practical y sparkle. “If you were writing a book about your life, and you wrote a chapter, like, every day, what would the chapter you wrote yesterday be about?”

“Good one,” says Jyl ian.

“I guess it would be kind of boring,” I say. They stare at me with great intensity, waiting for me to continue. Honestly, I think this particular line of questioning is ridiculous (so what does that say about them?), but this is also the rst day at East Shore I haven’t had to sit by myself—or virtual y by myself—at lunch. People are walking past our table and studying me with interest. Noticing me. I decide to play along. “I’m stil unpacking my stu from the move, so it would mention that. My homework. Eating dinner. Watching TV. You know, the usual.”

“Are you dating anyone?” Jyl ian asks.

Jessica widens her eyes. “Yeah, are you?”

I am trying to di erentiate between Jyl ian and Jessica. It’s not easy.

Am I dating anyone? Yes. No. Wel … no. I did, though. Ben. And what about Henry? I haven’t spoken to him since I asked him to have co ee and he blew me o .

I take too long formulating a response; the girls look bored.

“Garret ?”

“No,” I say. “Not at the moment.” I can’t tel if this is the right answer. Was I supposed to say yes so that I didn’t seem like a loser? Or is it bet er to be single—“Miss Independent” (Ne-Yo, 2008)? Al I know is that for the rst time in a long time, I am completely alone. No boyfriends. No friends (family excluded). Just me.

Jyl ian coughs and says, “If I know two things, one of those things is karate. The other is boys. And Garret , you have boy drama. I can tel just by looking at you. I see sadness in your eyes. Spil .”

“You don’t know karate,” Jessica says.

“Oh yeah?” Jyl ian raises a hand in the air. “Tel me that after I karate-chop your head o .”

“Girls,” London says. “Let Garret speak.” She leans forward. “Who dumped you?”

“Is it that obvious?” I ask.

They nod.

“This guy, Ben,” I say. “We dated for a while back in Chicago, but I haven’t heard from him since I got here. It real y … sucks.” Sucks doesn’t sum it up, but I barely know these girls. I don’t need to reveal my life story within ten minutes of meeting them, do I?

Jyl ian dabs her eyes with a napkin. “That. Is. Tragic,” she says. “Actual y, it’s rusty.” She elaborates: “Rusty is when something is so tragic you can’t even use tragic to describe it.” She blinks. “Say it whenever you want. Pay that shit forward.”

“Uh, okay,” I reply.

“Were you in love?” London asks me, bringing the conversation back to reality.