“Well, you only got here like thirty seconds after me, and Mr. Wu hasn’t come out yet, so I think we’re safe.”
They waited for another five minutes, and Mr. Wu finally came out, greeted them, mentioned that he was a graduate of Boston Public Schools and he was excited to be helping them. He was an Asian guy in his twenties who had the sleeves of his white oxford rolled up. He took them to a conference room and asked them what they’d need for their project. Tanya looked at Eddie, who said, “Well, I think we’re going for the print stuff—we’d like some sticker ads and then bigger versions of the same thing for the T and the buses.”
“Okay!” Mr. Wu said. “So it sounds like what you need for today is a little bit of training on the graphic design software, which is good—it’s pretty intuitive, and actually kind of fun to put stuff together with it.”
“Excellent. Thanks!”
Mr. Wu spent an hour showing them how to work the software. Eddie took notes, and Tanya listened, but didn’t write anything down. Eddie hoped Mr. Wu didn’t notice, because he was pretty sure they’d lose points if Lewis got some kind of report about how not everybody in the group was participating.
Mr. Wu left, and there they were, alone in this office which was kind of dark, probably so you could see the big computer screen better, but whatever, it was dark and Tanya was right next to him. She smelled really good, and it was getting really hard for Eddie to think about making ads when all the blood in his body seemed to be running away from his brain.
Eddie said, “Urn, I had a couple of ideas, but I don’t want to, you know, take over everything or whatever.”
“It’s cool. What do you got?”
“Well, I thought for the stickers we could have a real simple slogan—something that will make people curious—and then the Web address so they can find out what it’s all about. Maybe we can figure out a cool font or something, and then we should think about colors—even just two colors will catch more attention and look better than those black-and-white stickers people make in their basements.”
“Okay. That sounds good.” Tanya suddenly dug her phone out of her pocket and answered it. Eddie guessed it was probably on vibrate. “Yeah. Yeah? No, I’m in the middle … yeah. No, I can’t yo, this is a really bad time, I got this project. No, I have to. It’s my grade. Yeah, fine. Tanya will take care of it. Again … okay Yeah. Okay, okay”
She hung up the phone and laid a hand on Eddie’s arm. “Okay, so it turns out I got a situation here I need to go deal with.” What kind of situation? Eddie wondered. A boyfriend situation? A brother situation? A drunk dad situation?
“So I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, okay? I’m sorry, Eddie, you know I wouldn’t do this to you if I didn’t have to …” She was calling him Eddie now, instead of Left Eye. Was that good?
“It’s all right. I’ll just get started, and then maybe you can do the second shift.”
“Thanks, Eddie. You’re the bomb.” She ruffled his hair as she said that, and he felt like telling her she could take hours if she needed to. As it turned out, he should have told her that, because an hour later, after Mr. Wu had checked on him for the third time and raised his eyebrows at Tanya’s absence, Eddie was starving and was just printing out his sticker designs (they said YOU GOT BEEF? in big red letters with the Web address in blue underneath, or else YO SHORTY, WHY YOU WALKIN’ AWAY FOR? in blue with the Web address in red) when Tanya finally came back.
“Yo, I am so sorry, Eddie. I had no idea it was … Well, anyway, that took longer than I thought it would.”
“It’s okay,” Eddie said, and he almost meant it. He did, after all, know a lot about having situations in your life. Still, it would have been nice to be able to talk about the slogans with Tanya before the sticker designs had to get done. He thought maybe the slogans were kind of dumb and didn’t really have anything to do with getting to school safely, except that those were things he figured people might say to you if they were messing with you, and he hoped they’d make people curious enough to check the site. More important, if Tanya had started on the bus ads when he started on the stickers, they’d be finished with their work at Jamison Creative already.
“Yo, these look great! I could see sticking these on every pole in the neighborhood! What do we have to do?”
“Well, I guess we can just resize this stuff for the design for the bus ads and then get something printed and we’ll be done,” he said.
“Oh, good,” Tanya said, “’cause I really need to get myself home soon.” Okay, Eddie thought, I’ll just go ahead and do that because it would take me three times as long to show you how to do this stuff because you weren’t listening and haven’t touched the software yet, and I wouldn’t mind spending all night here with you, but maybe you’ll be grateful if I help you get home earlier.
Eddie worked in silence for the next few minutes, enjoying the way Tanya smelled, enjoying sitting in a dark room with just her, enjoying being good at something in front of her.
When the bus ad designs were printed, Tanya said again how good they were and gave Eddie a big hug. A full-press hug. He blushed and hoped she hadn’t noticed exactly how excited that hug made him while it was going on. He tried to adjust his pants and sat back down.
“Hey, Eddie, before we go let me ask you something,” Tanya said.
Eddie couldn’t hear himself squeak out “Okay” over the pounding of his heart, but he guessed he must have said it, because Tanya leaned a little closer to him, still smelling fantastic, and said, “You know, this ain’t something I would normally do, but you’re mad cool, you know.” Oh my God, Eddie thought, she’s going to kiss me, she’s going to kiss me right here in the offices of Jamison Creative, and Mr. Wu is going to check on us, and Lewis is going to yell at us about how “making out in the office does not constitute professional behavior,” and maybe we’ll even get suspended. It’ll totally be worth it.
But she wasn’t kissing him. She was still talking, and Eddie was pretty sure she had just said something about how she could really talk to him, and she thought of him like a brother or something. Eddie didn’t know much about girls, but he knew enough to know that most of them did not make out with their brothers. His heart that had been pounding so loudly suddenly sank into his shoes.
“This is mad embarrassing, but I know I can trust you to keep it on the DL, you know, ’cause you and me are cool like that. So, you know, do you think maybe Alex would go out with me?”
Well, this was a pretty ugly turn of events. Eddie had no idea how to answer that question, because all he wanted to say was “Why the hell did you hug me? Why did you tell me all that stuff about your life? I don’t want to be cool like that, I want to be uncool like Alex, who I can’t believe you like, except I can because he can pretty much have any girl he wants, and I did all the work for you like a sucker and you were playing me, I’m pretty sure is what Savon would call it.”
Unable to speak, Eddie quickly gathered up his stuff. Tanya stared at him. “Uh … Eddie? Did you hear me?”
He had to get out of this office. “Um, yeah, well, Tanya, I think Alex would go out with just about anybody,” he said, and walked as fast as he could to the elevator without even thanking Mr. Wu, which would probably get him in trouble on top of everything else.
Once he was inside the elevator with the doors closed, Eddie was so mad and so embarrassed that he felt like he might explode. He kicked the side of the elevator. Hard. It hurt his toe.
20
Alex was on the phone with Stephanie when his call-waiting beeped. He looked at the phone, saw it was a restricted number, and almost blew it off, but then he got a weird feeling like he should answer it. Eddie still wasn’t back from Jamison Creative, and while Alex thought he could probably handle himself on the T, there was always the possibility that he was injured and calling from a pay phone near the bus stop or something. He told Stephanie that Eddie needed some help getting his project stuff out of the elevator, and he’d call her back.
�
��Hello?”
“Hey. It’s Eddie.”
“Eddie, where are you? It’s getting late, and while Dad is cool with holding dinner, I think you should try to get home soon.”
“I’m not hungry. You guys go ahead and eat. I’m just calling to let you know I’m okay, I’ll be home soon,” Eddie said, but his voice didn’t really sound all that okay.
“Where are you?”
“I’m hanging out with the only female I will apparently ever get to see naked, which is our friend at the library. I’m on a pay phone.”
“Okay Did something happen with your mom?”
“You know, for once it has nothing to do with Mom. I just feel stupid. Tanya disappeared while I did all the work and then came back and told me she thought of me like a brother and she liked somebody else.”
“Oh, man. I’m sorry. Thinks of you like a brother. You gotta hate that. Ouch. I can’t believe she did that to you. I’m gonna have to regulate on her,” he said, hoping that the unlikely image of him trying to regulate on anybody, much less Tanya, who could definitely wreck him, would get a laugh out of Eddie.
It didn’t.
“Well, you might want to hold off on the regulation, because then she might not like you anymore,” Eddie said, and he hung up the phone.
Great. This was going to screw everything up. What was he going to do now? His big plan to help Eddie blew up in his face. If he hadn’t tried to stick Eddie and Tanya together … well, but he had. He supposed that would teach him to try to be unselfish. It only got you trouble.
Alex told Mom and Dad that Eddie was working late on the project, and then he sat down to eat something gross that involved truffle oil, or so Dad kept telling him.
After dinner, he finished his homework and decided to play video games for a while. He was on the verge of finally beating the boss at the end of the fourth level when the phone rang. It was the house phone and not his cell phone, but Eddie still wasn’t home, and so Alex decided he’d better answer it before Dad got it in case Eddie needed him to cover for him.
He picked up the phone and said hello as the elevator opened and Eddie walked in.
“Sweetie, I’m so glad to finally talk to you! How are you doing?” Aunt Dinah said on the other end of the phone.
“Uh … I …” Alex muttered.
“It’s okay, sweetie, I know it’s hard to talk to me, believe me I do know, and I know I already said I was sorry, but …” and she started to cry and kind of squeaked the rest out, “just hearing your voice makes me …” And she dissolved into tears.
Well, hell, Alex thought, I sure get stuck with some unpleasant stuff for somebody who’s supposedly famous for being selfish. Should he hand the phone over to Eddie?
He waited until there was a little break and then said, “Aunt Dinah, um, this is actually Alex. Eddie is—” and as he said this, Eddie started making these big, cartoonish gestures trying to say no, he wasn’t here, he didn’t want to talk to his mom, lie for me please, Alex, lie for me, you owe me that much after the girl I like just told me she liked you.
Actually, that last part was probably only Alex’s guilty conscience, even though he didn’t really have any reason to feel guilty. Still, he knew Eddie had had a tough day, and they had to look out for each other. “Eddie is still out working on our big marketing project. Um, do you want me to tell him anything?”
“Oh Jesus Christ, I’m sorry, Alex, you probably want to hear me crying even less than Eddie does. I’m sorry, kiddo.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s okay So, anyway.”
“Right. Tell him that I love him very much, and I can’t wait to see him, and things are going to be different.”
“Okay I’ll tell him.”
“Thanks, Alex. How’s he doing, anyway?”
“Good, I guess. He’s getting better grades than me, but you probably could’ve guessed that. But, yeah, he’s doing great. Really great.” Even though he’d said Eddie was great, he didn’t look so great right now: he was actually sitting on the couch with red eyes staring blankly at the pause screen of Splatter-punk 3: The Rivening, but Alex didn’t think that was information Aunt Dinah needed.
“All right. I’m glad to hear it. Thanks, Alex. I’ll see you both soon.”
“Yeah. Okay Bye!” And Alex hung up.
Eddie was still staring at the screen. “You have to use the flaming sword on his toes. You’ll never beat him with the battle-ax. And the toes are the only part with no armor.”
“Um, okay”
“And please don’t tell me anything my mom said, I know exactly what it was.”
Alex didn’t know what to say to that. He knew that Eddie was mad at his mom, but he usually sounded more sad than angry when he talked about her. Not tonight.
“So,” Alex said, “toes. Flaming sword. Got it.”
“Yeah, and if you need another tip, I’ve got Tanya’s phone number in my bag.”
“Aw, man, I’m not gonna call her! You know that, right?”
“I know. I know. I really can’t blame you, or even her. I mean, I guess I’m not the kind of guy who … well, never mind.”
Alex knew that this was the part where he was supposed to tell Eddie that he was really hot, that any girl would be lucky to have him, and maybe open up a pint of ice cream, but that was too girly, so all he said was “Naah, man, wrong girl, wrong time. That’s all. Happens to me all the time.”
“Yeah, but at least you get to kiss them before they dump you.”
“Not always! Sometimes they actually laugh at me when I ask for their number. I figure it’s their loss. Same deal here.”
“I guess. I’m not mad at you, Alex, but I really don’t feel like talking right now, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I finish this battle?”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“Takin’ your sloppy seconds,” Eddie said, grinning, and Alex was shocked to hear Eddie say anything that raunchy. He watched as Eddie dispatched the level-four boss with three strokes of the flaming sword to the big toe and then watched in silent awe as Eddie spilled a spectacular amount of blood on his way to finishing levels five, six, and seven.
By breakfast, Eddie seemed pretty much like his normal self again. He showed off the sticker designs, and Alex told him they looked great. He really thought they were going to get an A on this project, which would be Alex’s first A in high school. It felt good to realize that he had earned the grade, that nobody else on the team could have done what he’d done. Now they had a week to put it all together to look super-professional and impress the hell out of Lewis.
Or so they thought. Lewis, apparently, had other ideas. When they got to class, he didn’t say anything for a long time, and everybody stared up at him, and it started to feel weird. Lewis kept looking like he was about to say something, but then he would stop. It was weird and disturbing to have somebody as tough and formal as Lewis looking like he was about to lose it. It made everything feel unpredictable—like, if this guy can act like this, who knows what else is going to happen?
Finally Lewis spoke. “Well. I have some bad news and some bad news. Do you want the bad news first? Good. Here it is. Due to a”—he paused here and took a breath and a pause that was a little too long—“family emergency, I will not be available in school next Friday when your projects are due. Nor will I be here on Thursday.” Long pause. “I will also be away from school for at least the next week, when your final marks for this quarter are due. And of course the following week is your spring vacation. What this means to you is as follows: your deadline has been pushed up to Wednesday.”
Everybody in the class gasped at the same time, but nobody complained out loud because Lewis seemed so weird today and nobody wanted to be the one to set him off.
“I will say the following three things about this: One. Deadlines do move in the business world. I once had a major campaign to present to a client who was called to Tokyo at the last minute and I had to work for twent
y hours straight in order to take the campaign to the client on the airplane. I flew a total of sixteen hours to Tokyo with an unpleasant bully of a man, slept for three hours on a couch in Narita airport, and flew home for another sixteen hours, arriving at Logan airport two hours before my original deadline. Two. What is happening in my personal life at this moment is of such a serious nature that I will have no sympathy for complaints about a couple of late nights on your part and may indeed lose my patience with anyone who is young, strong, and healthy complaining about losing a little sleep. Three. I am sorry.”
Everybody in class just sat there for a minute letting everything Lewis said sink in. Alex couldn’t decide what was more shocking: the fact that their project was due two days early, or the fact that Lewis had just apologized to the class.
Lewis broke the silence by saying, “You may use today’s class time to touch base with your group.”
After he left the room, somebody said, “Whoa.” Savon was the first out of his seat, and he yelled out, “My group, over here.” Alex was surprised that he didn’t even want to make fun of him for being big Mr. Leader, because he felt like his chance at getting a good grade was slipping away. He was even more surprised to find that he actually did care. Weird.
Everyone pulled their chairs together over by Savon, and Alex looked around and saw the other groups in the class seemed worried. A couple of girls in different groups were crying.
“Okay, people, what’s the plan?” Savon asked.
“Well, I gotta work, yo. I already did my part, so whatever we have now is gonna have to be good enough,” Tanya said. Alex could see Eddie getting angry. After all, Eddie had done Tanya’s part, and all he got in return was hurt and embarrassed. Alex saw an opportunity here to get one in for Eddie and, if he was lucky, make Tanya stop liking him.
“Yeah, who’s gonna slap you so hard your whole family will feel it if you cost us an A? Oh, right, you didn’t really do any work anyway. Never mind. Go braid some hair.”
Somehow this came out meaner and less funny than he wanted it to. He must have been a little too excited about finally being on the giving end of one of those “You’re lazy and we’re sick of doing your work” comments. He wondered if being mean to Tanya would somehow hurt his chances with her cousin. After all, Tanya’s hurting his cousin had ruined any chance she might have had with him, so maybe this would be it for Stephanie. Oh well.
How Ya Like Me Now Page 13
