Ridiculous/Hilarious/Terrible/Cool (11 page)

Diana's come to school this morning with straightened hair, swooping and fancy. She had it done over the weekend at the salon (named Diana's Salon) next door to her house. Since Diana's hair gets dry in the cold weather, the woman at Diana's suggested she rub an old avocado into it and—

An explosion rips through the high school. Diana, walking slowly up the atrium stairs, does not flinch. In fact, she barely stops the sentence she's working on to explain: “Oh,
ye-eh-es,
they are doing a science experiment.” A chemistry class has been turning plastic bottles into rockets with the help of hydrogen, and shooting them up through the atrium (the height the rocket reaches is the grade: first-floor railing a C, second-floor railing a B, third-floor railing an A). Another explosion rattles the school, but Diana keeps walking to the benches by the windows that overlook the train tracks. As she takes a seat it would seem that very little would rattle her.

Diana's older brother was arrested. Supposedly he threatened some guy in their neighborhood who turned out to be to a police informant. Now her brother is in jail, at Cook County. Bail was set impossibly high. Diana has missed a few days of school going to Cook County to figure out what the family should do. Her mother and father are not confident with English, and it is Diana who handles the translating.

“I've been doing that since I was, like, small,” she says. Insurance, credit cards, refinancing—any communication that came through the Martinez house was Diana's to translate. She never liked feeling she might translate a word incorrectly. It worried her to advise her father. It was a job she didn't want, even as she became better at it.

When Diana first saw her brother she yelled at him. How could he be so dumb? How could he hurt his family? Did he stop to think how this would affect his mother, his child? The whole thing makes Diana so angry. She's angry at her sisters too. Why aren't
they
the ones going to the jail to ask questions? They don't go to school. They're sitting around the house.

They've started working at a car wash a few days a week, but mostly they just go to clubs at night. And they always tell Diana what to do. As she mentions this, she throws out both of her hands in frustration as if shooing away mosquitoes.

This incident with her brother is a distraction from her schoolwork. She's not understanding calculus. Her schoolwork is a distraction from her college applications. She's behind in writing her essay. Her job at the day-care center distracts her by itself, and when Diana comes home she is too exhausted to concentrate on anything, let alone write an essay explaining her life. Everything is a distraction from everything else.

The one thing that used to calm her down, she no longer has time to do. She misses swimming, more than ever.

Emily Harris's friends are freaking out. It's Friday, and colleges are posting online who got accepted and who got deferred. Some friends are in tears. Since colleges don't say exactly when they will post, students spend the whole day stressing and crying and logging on to computers.

Emily is in AP physics on a computer. She decides to check too. She's nervous, but she certainly isn't in tears. Mostly she's curious about when the post will be up. Nothing yet. While she is checking, her physics teacher walks up behind her and sees what she's doing. He says, “I know you're worried about college, Emily, but don't be. Any school would be stupid not to take you.”

After school, she drives home in her green Honda Civic. Her laptop is upstairs, so she walks up and logs on, and there on the screen is the Yale Bulldog singing the Yale fight song, which means that she has been accepted.

The Harris household turns into media central. Her mother makes Emily call her grandparents and other relatives, and that night the whole family goes out to a celebratory dinner (steak).

Emily isn't surprised. She's relieved. Relieved that no one had hurt her chances by neglecting to send in some important form. With her grades, her boards, her soccer, she feels she should have gotten in. It was like a penalty shot. She was
supposed
to make it.
Not
making it would be the bigger story. Emily's father was even more confident, so certain Emily would get in that two weeks ago he bought a bottle of champagne. Emily insists that getting into Yale is no big deal. However, in the days afterward as she walks through the hallways of school, receiving congratulations from teachers and students, the grin on her face, and the length of time it stays there, says otherwise.

Under orange and blue banners, the wooden bleachers of the gym fill with students waiting for the girls' first basketball game of the year. The Grizzlies' opponent today is the Latin School, a nearby private school. The Latin team runs onto the court organized by height and weaves around in finely tuned drills. The Payton team stumbles onto the court, backing into each other like cattle in a chute.

At the gym door, there's more trouble getting in. Admission is two dollars. No one wants to pay. Students try to bargain with the security guard.

“What if I watch through the window? How 'bout one-fifty! ”

Some of the private school parents are upset.

“
Our
school doesn't charge,” gripes a lady in a floor-length fur coat.

“Hey, we're a Chicago public school!” the security guard hoots.

Fur-coat lady shouts to a player on the Latin bench: “Hey, [Unintelligible]. Can I borrow two dollars?” Unintelligible pretends not to hear. The security guy chuckles and waves her inside.

“Two dollars? Are you serious?” says the next parent, rummaging in her purse. “Can you break a hundred?”

The security guy gives her an
are you kidding me
look. She is not, and hands him a crisp Ben Franklin. He pushes the bill away like it's a used napkin and waves her in. He's having a great time.

The game starts. The gym shakes with thumps and squeaks and whistles. One Payton guard, lithe and pony-tailed, is scoring at will. The Latin School can't stop her, so they foul her. She stands at the free-throw line, bouncing the ball, then takes a breath that can be heard from the stands. The gym is as quiet as the library never is. But, as the shot is halfway on its trajectory to the net, a shout comes from the door: “Two
dollars?!
”

Monday mornings are never good, and even worse when your mother forgets to take the toast out of the toaster, sending smoke everywhere, waking you up, making you stumble around with blankets over your head trying to open the windows. All in all, a lousy way to start the week for Zef Calaveras.

“How do you set a toaster on fire?” Zef asks the Toaster Gods from his spot under the stairs. He coughs.

“I have allergies. I can't breathe. And, I smell.”

It's true. Friends approach and hug Zef and say, “What's
that
?”

There's nothing he can do about it, though, or about being late to school for the umpteenth time.

“I don't really know if they'll believe it or not,” he wheezes, nodding toward the administration offices. “It's like totally apparent there was a fire in my kitchen.”
Cough, cough
.

The distinction doesn't matter; Zef will have to stay after school and serve detention, which is a waste of time.

“I mean, it's completely idiotic. You sit alone at a table, doing nothing.”
Cough.
“It's ridiculous.”

At least he has his six shot, half-decaf, no water, iced venti Americano, hiding in his blue plastic Nalgene water bottle.

“I keep it here,”
he says, lowering his voice and looking conspiratorially up and down the hallway as he reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Well, not when there's a hat in here,” he says, pulling a large gray wool hat out of his pocket that had been preventing him from hiding his bottle.

Coffee has a downside. One of his teachers got mad at Zef a few days ago for leaving a condensation ring on the teacher's desk. While Zef is describing how this makes the teacher a complete douche, a friend walks past and mumbles something.

“Shut
up,
Josh Lipinski!”

Things in Zef's social life are going well. The mixing board continues to entertain. So does the girlfriend. And, he got a haircut. Preppy and short, though still longish in front.

“What up, Sumner, you like my haircut, man?” Sumner does. But Zef's friend in the wheelchair does not.

“What
up?
” he calls as she rolls past. “Like my hair?”

She says he looks like “a faggot.” The slur sounds oddly affectionate. He laughs. She wheels away down the hall.

Two girls approach.

“Zef. I love your hair! Let me touch it,” says one girl.

“You look a little cleaner. It's
hot,
” says the other.

More friends sidle up to Zef.

“Zef, did you cut your hair?”

“Yeah, you like it?”

“I hate it.”

“Fuck
you!
”

“Dude. What happened to your hair?”

Despite the new haircut and its benefits, schoolwork is not going so well. Zef is now failing, or close to failing, most of his classes. Sometimes he wishes he could just leave Payton and set up that recording studio in his house. That would be cool.
Cough
.

"Fucking toaster!”

Daniel Patton was selling shoes when he got the call. He had a friend log in to his account, then call him at work with the news. Standing by himself at the sales counter at Nordstrom, he was told he didn't get into Harvard. He was deferred. Daniel didn't come to school the following day. In the next week he does not say that the deferral bothers him, even when other students, friends of his like Emily Harris, have gotten in early to places like Yale, their futures seemingly brightened.

Daniel knows he needs to raise his scores. Out of a possible 36 on the ACT he got a 27. He thinks he needs to get at least a 30 to impress Harvard. He's retaking the test. He must also improve his grades.

Even with being president of his senior class, and a leader in the high school, and youth mayor of the city, and knowing a trustee, and being a stylish dresser, and having an inspirational story, it's not easy getting into Harvard. Daniel will have to wait.

Anthony is sitting against the back wall of the cafeteria with The Girl and three of The Girl's friends, same position as always. When The Girl clears her tray, Anthony informs the other three girls, as soon as The Girl is out of range, that
she's
the reason he smokes pot.

“
Hell
. I gotta go smoke
now!
” he shouts, watching The Girl's backside as it slides through the cafeteria door and out of sight.

The other girls howl. Anthony continues. How come The Girl will not go out with him? How can he concentrate on anything else when he feels what he feels? How can he not smoke? Everything is
her
fault. The Girl's friends are having none of it.

“
Puh-leeze!
Cupid-ass earplugs! You need to take them
out
. It's time to let
go!
” shouts one of the girls as the other two jab their fingers at him, screaming like seagulls around some helpless crab. Anthony protests, but not too hard.

“I ain't got
nothin'
to say.”

“You better calm that
down
.”

“Blame
me
for being a good person.”

This last because Anthony gave The Girl some flowers and chocolates. Despite his giving nature, The Girl has been going out with “some Mexican dude.” Anthony says he's going to kill The Dude.

The loudest of the three girls shouts: “Let it go! Let it go!” Then she starts a five-minute sermon entitled “Why Anthony Better Stop Obsessing about The Girl.”