Ridiculous/Hilarious/Terrible/Cool (19 page)

Then on go the lights, and as at the homecoming dance, the crowd shouts “Oh-
eight!
” “Oh-
seven!
” “Oh-
six!
” at each other before finding their friends and heading off to parties (though it appears some parties have already started in the bathrooms).

On the field next to the high school, a pack of kids gather in the dark. They're the cool white kids: the boys with the pouty-lipped trucker hats, the girls with bodies that chilly weather can't put a wrap on. Some light cigarettes. One girl jumps on a boy's back and they run across the field yelling, “Oh, the
burn!
”

A tall boy trips a girl and steals her boot, holding it over his head as she jumps in the air, making her grab him around the waist. As she tumbles him to the ground, friends pile on. It's a crisp night, but these kids are hot and they know it. Other kids stand around and watch, looking for an entrance into the act. The most indispensable talent is figuring out how to belong.

Daniel Patton walks into the library, glancing at the sign taped to the library door:

He settles into a carrel, sighing, “Senioritis is kicking my ass.” It must be if Daniel is swearing. He is wearing pressed black pants and a blue button-down Polo shirt. He opens a textbook but doesn't make much pretense of reading.

His mind's not in it. Nor is his mind on last weekend's winter ball, which he organized, or on the girl from another high school who invited him to a Bulls game. Daniel's not interested. His mind's not on girls. His mind's not on shoes, or on money. His mind is on the moment he finds out from Harvard.

“I try not to think about it too much,” he says, the flat expression on his face giving every indication that he's thinking about it all the time. On the day he will find out, Daniel has a dentist appointment. Maybe he'll be in the chair, logging on with his Treo, a suction tube hooked into his open mouth. Or he'll find out when he gets back home to his brick house on the South Side.

“I'm going to have my video camera above my computer so I can film my reaction,” Daniel jokes, not laughing. He places a piece of gum into his mouth, and starts turning the pages of the textbook. Daniel is sitting mere feet from the guidance counselor's office, but there is nothing the counselor, nor he, nor anyone, can do now.

“I think I may open up the Harvard e-mail right away,” he says, nodding, looking as if he made a significant decision. “I don't know.”

In a few weeks, he will.

Spring is here. On the sidewalk in front of the high school the snowbanks have thawed, revealing piles of dog shit that had been hiding all winter. Inside the school there's a similar thawing. Long sleeves exchanged for T-shirts that reveal wider swathes of skin. The warming is deeper than skin, though. It's in everyone's brains, affecting students as they bounce from class to class. After school a boy runs through the halls shouting, “School's over!
Weekend!
” even though it is Tuesday. Spring is
here!

Not quite. In Chicago, spring is a tease. The following day it snows.

On the field next to the high school, the girls' soccer team
is holding one of their first practices. Snowflakes swirl above them. The girls huddle in sweatpants and sweatshirts, hands clenched inside their sleeves. Emily, in a gray sweatshirt with
PRIDE
on the back, leads the team in stretches, then a game
of keep-away. She runs around in her duck-shuffle, encouraging her team with shouts of
“Good job!”

Inside the library, Aisha looks out at the falling snow. She didn't go out for the soccer team after all. The practices interfered too much with her Arabic class. So after a month of workouts, on the day before tryouts, she decided not to. Maybe she'll paint sets for the school play, or take up yoga.

Aisha is wearing a lilac shirt today whose oriental pattern and soft fabric make it look as if it would be comfortable for
Ardha Hanumanasana.
It's made by Abercrombie & Fitch.

“I used to hate Abercrombie & Fitch,” Aisha says with a sigh, “but now I just can't help it!”

Her ensemble is also suffering from an absence of Pumas. She's wearing a clunky pair of Keds. It's her sister's fault.

They had a big fight this morning. It started when her sister asked to borrow Aisha's favorite orange pair of Pumas. Aisha said no. Then her sister asked to borrow one of Aisha's shirts, and before she could say anything, went to her closet and just took it. Meanwhile, Aisha was trying to retrieve some perfume she'd loaned to her sister, and locate her favorite Pumas. She settled on Keds instead.

Thus disorganized, the Shaikhs piled into the car. Aisha's sister ran back to the house to get her cell phone, but didn't find it. As they sped to school, her sister grabbed Aisha's phone and when Aisha grabbed it back, she saw, hiding under her sister's backpack, her favorite orange Pumas.

Aisha shouted, “This is the last time you wear my shoes!”

They drove on yelling at each other and when her sister got out at Lincoln Park High School, Aisha's Pumas went with her (it was determined that Aisha couldn't make her sister go to school barefoot). But it's a pattern: Aisha lends her sister things, her sister loses things, then gets offended when Aisha won't let her borrow more things.

“All I know is that when I go home today, I'm taking all my shoes back,” Aisha says, scowling and kicking her Keds in angry little lurches across the library rug. “She's gonna suffer next year. When I take all my stuff, she'll be all like
‘wa wa wah!'
”

Aisha has made her decision about college: She's going to Claremont. She's excited. When her father, who had been hesitant initially, saw that she was being given a sizable scholarship, he got excited too. It's good knowing her plans are settled. It allows her to make other plans, like for summer. The Shaikhs are going to Pakistan for a cousin's wedding.

Whenever Aisha is in Pakistan her relatives try to marry her off. This summer she thinks the effort will be even more intense, especially from her grandfather. Last time, it was non-stop. Mothers came to where the Shaikhs were staying and Aisha had to bring them tea so they could look at her. This never happened to her brother. He wasn't making money, not yet viable. Aisha is fair game. She's past sixteen, and female.

Before any matchmaking can happen, though, Aisha must do some matchmaking of her own: prom.

“I can't
not
go to my senior prom,” Aisha says, lacing up her Keds before heading to art class. “Maybe I'll take my sister.”

The King of Ping-Pong has been knocked off his throne. He was unbeatable, until today. The usurper is old, in his thirties. He's wearing blue Adidas sweatpants, a red Adidas shirt over a small gut. With each shot, the Adidas man backs up until he's almost standing in the cafeteria doorway, and from that position he sends shots that skitter off the edge of the other side, winner after winner. He's
toying
with The King. He begins to hit shots that whoosh into the heights of the atrium with so much backspin that when they land on the other side of the table, they head back toward the cafeteria, sending
The King scrambling. The game is turning into a show.

A crowd gathers. The Payton baseball team, on their way outside to practice, circles the table: hats pushed back on heads, bats over shoulders, mouths slack. A strand of spittle even forms in one boy's mouth as he stares at the Adidas man. Who
is
this guy?

They don't know that he is Ilija Lupulesku; that “Lupi,” as he is known, used to be the U.S. National Men's Singles Champion; that he comes to Payton at the invitation of the Ping-Pong club. But if they did, would that change the expression on their faces?

“We don't have any scoring. That's a problem.” Emily scowls, looking out the atrium window at the darkening clouds. She pops a red Skittle into her mouth.

The team has been winning games 1-0. As the center mid-fielder, Emily's responsibility is to distribute the ball to her forwards. But her forwards are freshmen and inexperienced. One is Emily's younger sister. She's fast and strong, but still learning to score. Emily hasn't scored this season either.

The rest of Emily's game is fine because she's been wearing the same socks. When she plays well, Emily wears the same socks for her next game. When she doesn't play well, she changes them. She also drinks from the same water bottle until she doesn't play well. So far this season, Emily has been drinking from the same water bottle and wearing the same socks.

Payton has a game later today against Lincoln Park, their rivals.
“Northsiders,”
Emily scoffs. There's been some preseason bad blood between the schools. Some Lincoln players said they want to hurt some Payton players, which Emily thinks is foolish.

“We're just better than they are,” Emily says, green eyes unblinking, “and they should accept that.”

One reason the Grizzlies have been playing well is that Emily has made the freshmen feel at ease. When Emily was a freshman there was one senior girl who never said hello to her in the halls. Emily would never act that way. She's made a point of hanging out with her freshmen after games, being the team's big sister in more ways than one.

“Today, after we beat Lincoln Park, we're getting together.”

Emily looks out at the gathering clouds and says, “I just wish we would score more.”

With that, she flips the last Skittle into her mouth, a blue one. Emily saves the blue ones for last, for good luck.