Pass It On (2 page)

“Look dude, I need to stay at your place for a couple of days. My mom's having our apartment painted.”

“Cool. The Rentmeesters are upstairs in the penthouse, but you can stay in my room. This starts when?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, come by for dinner—you'd have probably done that anyway. Ow!”

Arno ended the call. Though I knew next to nothing about Liesel, I figured that a girl who could take center stage in Arno's life so quickly probably wasn't the type to wait patiently for him to get off the phone. As I set down the receiver, I wondered if Arno's dad had told him about my dad and PISS yet. I would have called him back to ask, but I had a feeling Leisel wouldn't let him answer, so I decided to skip it.

I stood up and looked around my bedroom, which was spare and clean. The only things I keep around are a lot of music, my clothes (evenly spaced on a steel rack), and a desk that I sit at while I make my phone calls. I kind of love my room. It's minimal, but very “rock” at the same time. Very “rich punk,” which is how I've been feeling lately.

“Jonathan, we're going to paint your room too,” my mom yelled.

I immediately got up and went down the hall to her bedroom. “Can I ask why?” I asked.

“Because I think we need a change, that's why.”

She was packing and speaking in French to her friend Milla. Her French is more than a little grating.

“No!” I heard her say. “He's using the wedding to come clean about his past? He can't!” She turned toward the wall and leaned her head against it, which was not the kind of thing I'd ever seen my mom do before. She ended the call and looked at me. “I need you home tonight,” she said. “Your father is trying to turn over a new leaf. May God help us all!”

“Why does that mean I have to be home?”

“Well … because if your father does call, I want you to talk to him. There's more going on here than just the marriage or the paint and I feel it'd be best for him to tell you. Obviously if Alec Wildenburger is his best man, then he doesn't have any idea what's really going on.”

I looked at her, puzzled. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

“Nothing, dear. Maybe it's nothing.” She scratched at her hand, which is something she does when she's nervous. “In any case, I'm having dinner tonight with the Grobarts, but you'll stay home for the call, won't you?”

“
Oh-kaaay
,” I said. “Then I'm going to rent some movies.” A Saturday night at home wasn't necessarily a bad thing—Friday night had definitely been wild enough that somebody might
want to just come over and hang out and watch movies or whatever.

“In the meantime, there's one other thing you should know. The painter is starting Monday morning. You remember Gerald and Gina Shanlon? That artistic couple we shared the beach house in Sag Harbor with when you were six? The Always Nakeds, your father and I called them. Remember their son, Billy? He's going to be staying here and painting the house. If you do happen to stop by to pick up clothes or something, you might run into him.”

“Did you tell him to be extra careful in my room?”

“Sure I did—” But her telephone was ringing, and it was probably someone with more gossip about my dad. I threw on my jean jacket and went down to the street to get some food and rent some DVDs—I was definitely up for seeing
Eternal Sunshine
again. And I figured I'd make my walk a long one, because if there was one thing that would take my mind off whatever seemed to be happening, it was the chance of running into that girl with the honey-colored hair and the warm smile.

“What'd you do last night?” Arno Wildenburger asked. He sat back in one of Patch Flood's gigantic white beanbag chairs.

“Went over and watched movies at Jonathan's house,” Patch said. He stood on a skateboard in the middle of his room in the Floods' town house on Perry Street. It was Sunday afternoon, and they'd been watching football, but the Giants were losing by so much that they'd had to turn it off.

Arno was kind of psyched to be hanging out with Patch—he needed a rest from Liesel, whom he'd been with for thirty-six hours straight. He felt pretty lucky to have caught Patch at home.

“Did anybody else come over? Liza Komansky?” Arno asked.

“Nope, it was just us. Apparently she's still annoyed with Jonathan about their friendship.”

“Because they can't be friends since she has a crush on him?”

“I think that was it,” Patch said. “And she definitely
still has that crush. She's always talking about it at school—to the point where even
I
heard about it.”

Patch went to Turner, a private coed school in the West Village. And since Arno and Jonathan both went to Gissing, which was all boys, they always wanted to know about girls from Turner. David went to Potterton, which was all boys, too. And Mickey went to Adele Biggs, on the Upper West Side, which was coed and cool and all, but populated mostly by super-privileged burnouts and problem children who'd been kicked out of boarding schools for drugs and bad attitudes.

Patch smiled the wide, gleeful smile that made people compare him to sports stars like Beckham and actors like Brad Pitt—guys who were always winning and looked really happy.

“Hey did I tell you? I ended up kissing Selina Trieff on Friday night.”

“What about Graca?”

“Graca's twenty-three. She never wanted to just skateboard around under the Brooklyn Bridge or get high and hang out at Sheep's Meadow.”

“I get that.” Arno nodded. “Jonathan's going to stay at my house for a couple of days. His mom's getting their apartment painted.”

“Yeah, he told me.” Patch had his eyes closed and he
was listening to the music, swaying back and forth on the board. He was barefoot. His khakis were hanging halfway off his ass and he didn't have a shirt on. “I think some stuff's going on with him.”

“Like what?” Arno picked up a Pomona College catalog that was on the floor.

“Dunno. He said he was waiting for a call from his dad, but he didn't really go into it.”

“So, what's Selina Trieff like anyway?” Arno asked.

“Selina? She's—” Patch paused. Arno watched him. He couldn't describe Selina either. She was quiet and not very flirty. On weekends she mostly stayed out at her parents' mansion in Oyster Bay. That kind of girl baffled Arno.

“Selina's cool. I think I'm going to see her later. What about you? What happened with that uptown girl, Liesel Reid?”

“I've been hanging out with her since the last time I saw you,” Arno said.

“Well?” Patch asked.

“We're like soul mates, and I think it might be freaking me out.”

“You sound scared, dude.”

“She's a little—” Arno paused, and began the slow search for the right word. “What Jonathan calls people that remind him of himself: pretentious. But
she's really, really fun.”

“So?” Patch asked. “That should work for you. You're the most pretentious guy I know.”

Before Arno could decide if he were annoyed or not and then respond accordingly, someone knocked hard on the door and swung it open.

“David for you,” Patch's little sister, Flan Flood, said. She was in her riding outfit, complete with crop and velvet helmet, which she'd begun to wear around the house obsessively. Arno stared at her. Although she seemed nice enough, he had no idea why Jonathan had been so drawn to her—but this was mostly because she was in eighth grade and way too shy to speak directly to Arno. She banged off down the hall without another word.

“Hey.” David ducked into Patch's room. Arno and Patch nodded at David, who threw himself down on a yellow chair shaped like a paint blob that had somehow made its way into Patch's room along with loads of other assorted family junk.

David sighed. He was in his standard oversized jeans and blue hooded Yale sweatshirt that had been personally sent to him by the Yale basketball coach. He was about six foot four and handsome, with a big hawk-nose and black hair that he was currently wearing in an outdated and messy David Schwimmer-like crew cut.

“Have you seen Jonathan?” David asked.

“Not yet today,” Patch said.

David shrugged. “My parents were out with Jonathan's mom last night. My dad says there's some thing with her that's an emergency.”

“Patch just told me that Jonathan was freaking out last night,” Arno said.

Patch stopped rocking on his skateboard. “I did not say that.”

“My dad says something went wrong with his dad,” David said. “But then he got started talking about all this other stuff and I tuned him out after that.”

The three friends were quiet for a moment. Outside, the crackling November wind was blowing hard and could be heard under the music, so Patch switched over to the new Ebony Eyes CD and turned it up.

Then they heard Flan scream. They all looked at each other and nodded.

“Mickey,” Arno said, staring into a mirror, arching one perfect eyebrow, and then the other.

“Fuck you!” Flan screamed. There was a popping noise, of what must have been her riding helmet bouncing down the stairs.

“Your stupid friend is here,” Flan announced from the hall.

“She's getting cuter by the minute,” Mickey said as
he came into Patch's room. “Jonathan was right about her.”

“What do you mean?” Patch asked.

“Forget it,” Arno said quickly.

Mickey was in a black and silver tracksuit. He'd cut off his blond tips and now his thick hair was nearly an Afro, with corkscrews shooting off in all directions. His goggles dangled around his neck along with a ring of keys to his parents' various houses. His mother had him wearing a beeper now. Ever since he'd tried to eat a freshman a few weeks ago, and nearly gotten himself kicked out of school, his parents were keeping him on a much tighter leash. He was still allowed to go out with Philippa Frady, though. They were still in love.

“Bleeah!” Mickey said, and fell on David.

“Hey you nitwits,” Flan yelled from downstairs. “Mom and Dad said to eat without them. They're not coming back from Connecticut after all.”

“Mmm. Let's get Jonathan and go over to Odeon for some fried chicken,” Patch said, and started to look for a phone.

“Sounds good,” Arno said. He stood up.

Suddenly, there was a ringing noise from under a pile of dirty jeans. Patch started to dig. Then the noise stopped.

“Patch!” Flan yelled. “It's Selina for you!”

“He's with that shy Selina Trieff now,” Arno said to David.

“Wow, I wonder what that's like,” David said.

“They're probably all quiet together—I bet they barely even talk.”

“Like the opposite of me and Amanda.” David's beeper went off. It was Amanda. He rummaged through his schoolbag to find his cell so he could call her.

Mickey and Arno stared at each other.

“Mickey!”

Even though the room was loud with music, they could hear Philippa Frady yelling from her town house across the yard from Patch's. Mickey and Arno looked over. She was waving. She was a tall girl with a loud voice and she always looked extremely prim—now she was wearing a long black skirt and a white sweater—but everyone knew she was kind of crazy underneath it all, which was why she loved Mickey.

“My parents still haven't come back,” she yelled.

“I better get over there.” Mickey nodded to Patch and David, who were both on the phone. “Tell them I said ‘later.'”

Mickey made his way down the stairs. Arno turned and listened to his other two friends as they made plans with their girlfriends. So Arno called Liesel.

“Arno,” Liesel said. “How'd you know to call? You must have ESB. Come uptown right now. We're planning a Monday night party and we could use a little downtown flair.” Which she pronounced
fleah
. She was originally from Germany and often said she missed it terribly. Arno was still a bit awed by her. She went to Nightingale, was stinking rich, and was generally considered to be the most beautiful sixteen-year-old girl in the city, if not the state, and probably, therefore, the country. Except L.A., which didn't count.

“Okay.” Arno ended the call with her and turned to his guys. But David had already left for Amanda's and Patch was looking around for a shirt so he could get over to Selina Trieff's house.

“Let's all hang out later this week,” Arno said as he left the house with Patch, who'd given up on the idea of a shirt. Apparently finding a clean one was just too complicated.

“Definitely.” Patch dropped his board on the sidewalk and stepped on. “I'll call Jonathan and make sure he arranges it.”

Early on Sunday evening, I finished packing the bag I planned to take to Arno's. My mom was still puttering around, waiting for her car to drive her to the eight p.m. flight to Paris. I figured that when she left I would too, since the painter was coming at seven the next morning and I had no reason not to get myself over to Arno's. I checked again through my things—my fall sweaters and the several pairs of shoes I'd fit into red felt bags.

Patch had called in the afternoon to say that we should all get together soon, and I could hear in his voice that he was worried about me, or something. My dad hadn't called the night before when he was over, but I'd told him about my dad and PISS anyway. I knew Patch wouldn't tell anyone before I did, and I really appreciated that about him.

“I've got a good idea!” My mom practically
ran into my room. “You'll come with me in the car out to Kennedy, and then drive back to the city. That way we'll have some time to talk.”

“That'll take two hours.”