The Boy Recession

by Flynn Meaney

“What?”

  “Diva Price is in a relationship,” Eugene says.

  “What? She has a boyfriend?”

  Crap. Crap. Is some steroid-chugging douche from Milwaukee gonna come beat me up because his girlfriend forced me into her purple sleeping bag? And if Diva has a boyfriend, why was she groping me on New Year’s Eve?

  “Doesn’t say,” Eugene says. “It just says in a relationship. And… Oh, this is interesting.”

  “What?”

  “She just changed her relationship status to ‘in a relationship,’ like, ten minutes ago.”

  “Huh? What does that mean?”

  Eugene puts his BlackBerry down on his napkin and looks at me intensely across all our breakfast meats.

  “Huntro,” he says. “Tell me what happened last night.”

  “I dunno! She just, like, jumped me. We hooked up on the couch for a while, and then we were in that sleeping bag…. I don’t know! I guess at some point she got my phone number, but I don’t remember that.”

  “Is it possible at some point you asked her out and you don’t remember that?” Eugene asks.

  “Nah. No way.”

  “Or she asked you out and you don’t remember?”

  “Nah…” I hesitate. “I don’t think so. No, right?”

  “I don’t know, Huntro.”

  I stop eating mid-sausage.

  “What do I do?” I ask Eugene.

  “Well, why not go with it?” Eugene says. “I mean, I like being single, but this doesn’t seem like a girl who’s gonna pull a promise ring on you.”

  “Yeah. I guess not.”

  I guess Diva’s not that bad. At times she’s attractive, and she does seem to like me.

  “And this could be your only chance to get a girlfriend. Not that you’re not adorable, Huntro. But you never ask anyone out. I mean, do you have anything else going on?”

  Kelly Robbins pops into my head. But Kelly is really pretty and cool and totally chill. And who the hell am I? A sweaty bacon-eating guy who spent the night drunk in a weird sleeping bag.

  “I guess not,” I say.

  “This girl fell in your lap,” Eugene says. “Lemme tell ya, it doesn’t get much easier than that.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I lean back against the booth and stretch my arms above my head. I guess I’ll just deal with this when I have to. I mean, she didn’t ask me to change my relationship status.

  CHAPTER 19: KELLY

  “Flirting via Facebook: Be a Vixen Without Catching a Virus”

  “The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth, The Julius Journal, January

  Being in Darcy’s room is like being called into the principal’s office. All the shelves above her huge desk are full of binders and not-fun books such as America’s Top Universities and SAT vs. ACT: The Most Important Choice of Your Life.

  “Explain the ‘gospel of wealth’ that was embraced during the Gilded Age,” Darcy demands, spinning around on her imposing desk chair.

  Aviva is sitting cross-legged on the end of Darcy’s bed, flipping through our textbook, looking for attractive men from American history for her special midterm column on historical hotties. According to her, they started getting attractive only after 1805.

  “I think I like the Gilded Age,” she observes. “Amazing houses, rich guys with big mustaches… Maybe I should help to bring the bushy mustache back in style!”

  “You think you have that kind of influence?” I ask. “You can bring back the bushy mustache?”

  “I’m a trendsetter in the blogosphere,” Aviva informs me. “One hundred sixty-three people like my blog on Facebook. Some of them are random Canadians.”

  “How did random Canadians find your blog?” I ask.

  “Excuse me,” Darcy interrupts our conversation. “Are we here to study or what?”

  Every year, we have a two-and-a-half-week winter break at Julius: The first week and a half is holiday vacation, and the next week you’re supposed to spend studying for midterms. Of course, it’s another one of Julius’s terrible ideas; people like Aviva consider it an extra-long vacation, and people like Darcy consider it no vacation at all, because she’ll study the whole time. I try to have one week of fun and one week of studying. But this year I made a mistake: I went on Facebook. I swear I was only gonna go on for five minutes, check a few photo albums, get my distraction impulses out of the way, and then buckle down with studying. And then I saw Diva Price’s relationship status. She had one of those red hearts next to her name—suddenly I hated Mark Zuckerberg for inventing those red hearts—and it said “Diva Price is in a relationship.”

  I hoped she wasn’t in a relationship with Hunter. Then the status updates started popping up.

  Three months until Chicago, starring @Hunter Fahrenbach and… ME!

  Should be studying, but someone keeps texting me…@Hunter Fahrenbach!

  Can’t wait to get back to rehearsals with my boo!

  And that’s when I made a resolution to move on and find a new guy—at least while Hunter is with Diva. I’m going to stop liking him and stop thinking about him. I mean, Bobbi got two phone numbers at Starbucks that night before winter break. If Bobbi can move on from Eugene, then I can move on from Hunter. The only problem with moving on is that everywhere I go has Wi-Fi access, and I can’t stop myself from logging on to Diva’s Facebook page to see her latest gross, annoying status. It seems like there’s only one place I’m safe: Darcy’s house. She shuts off her wireless router for all of study week, to reduce distractions.

  I slide off the bed to check out the snack situation on Darcy’s desk. It’s depressing: dried fruit, pretzels, and nuts. I’m sick of healthy food, and I’m sick of studying.

  “Can’t we take a break?” I ask Darcy. “We’ve been studying for, like, two hours. We need to find me a new crush.”

  “Ooh, the Astors were good-looking.” Aviva is dog-earing a page of her textbook. “Do you think they’ve got some great-great-grandsons kickin’ around? An Astor could be good for you, Kell.”

  “One of them went down on the Titanic, remember?” Darcy says. “Viva, you watch that movie every weekend.”

  “Ooh, right! J.J.! He had that pregnant wife. Did she get in a lifeboat? I can’t remember. Ooh, let’s watch Titanic tonight.”

  “No, we’re supposed to be finding me a new boy to like,” I remind her.

  “We’re supposed to be studying U.S. history!” Darcy reminds both of us.

  “We’re taking a break from that,” I tell her. “Darcy, you’re a good brainstormer. Where can I meet a new guy to like, considering I don’t have a car or a fake ID and our whole town is snowed in?”

  Darcy surrenders and comes over to the bed, bringing her lame snacks with her. Pretty soon all the almonds are gone, and half of the dried cherries, and we still haven’t thought of a new guy for me. “Okay, I have a better book,” Aviva says, getting up to grab something from Darcy’s desk. When she comes back with it, she moves a pillow so she can snuggle between us.

  “What is this?” I take the white booklet out of her hand.

  “The snow-day phone chain!”

  “Oh, that’s romantic,” Darcy says.

  “Well, it has the phone number of every guy at Julius,” Aviva says, and opens it up to start looking. The listings are separated by class, so Aviva flips to the back to start with the seniors. But there are so few available seniors left, and juniors, that she ends up at the sophomores in less than a minute.

  “What do you think about going younger?” Aviva asks, wiggling her eyebrows. “That whole cougar thing?”

  “The cougar trend happened, like, two years ago,” Darcy says.

  “But all trendy stuff takes a while to get to Wisconsin,” Aviva says. “What about really young? Oooh, let’s check out the freshmen.”

  Aviva flips to the front of the book, and I see a familiar name.

  “I guess I could…” I begin, but then I stop myself.

  “What?” Aviva prompts me. �
��Who? Which one?”

  “Well, I know him….” I point to the page. “Johann.”

  “Johann? Ooh, he sounds exotic,” Aviva says. “Is that German?”

  “The piccolo kid?” Darcy asks. “From PMS?”

  “Common interests!” Aviva claps. “You both like music!”

  “Do you know anything else about him?” Darcy asks. “Is he smart? Is he nice? Who is he friends with?”

  I pick some dried cherries off the tray and count them into my palm.

  “I think he’s smart. He knows a lot about music. His dad’s a music professor, he said. He’s kind of shy. I don’t know if he has too many friends. He is nice, though.”

  “Hmmm…” Aviva muses, reaching over to pick a dried cherry out of my hand. “This could really work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, in PMS, it’s only you and him and Hunter, right? So Hunter will be able to witness your budding romance firsthand.”

  “Budding?” Darcy raises an eyebrow.

  “Nothing makes a guy realize he likes you more than seeing you with another guy,” Aviva continues. “And if you date this Johann guy, Hunter will see you with him, for two hours, every week.”

  So after much prodding from Aviva, I pick up Darcy’s desk phone and dial Johann’s number.

  “Hello?”

  This is definitely not Johann. “Hi, um, can I speak with Johann, please?”

  “Who is speaking, if I may ask?”

  “It’s, um, Kelly. Robbins.”

  “Please hold on one moment,” the voice tells me.

  When he puts down the phone, I spin my chair around and mouth to Darcy and Aviva, Johann’s dad sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both of them giggle, so I start giggling, but I have to stop once Johann picks up the phone and says in his quiet, polite voice, “Hello?”

  “Hi, Johann? It’s Kelly.”

  “I know…. Uh, my dad told me. How are you?”

  For some reason, I feel this sudden need to confess to him.

  “I got your number off the snow-day phone chain!” I burst out.

  “Oh…” Johann says uncertainly. “Is school canceled tomorrow?”

  “No!” I say. “Actually, yes, it is canceled, because it’s study week. But I…”

  “Oh, right.” Johann laughs a little, nervously. “Study week.”

  “But I… That’s not why I called.”

  I spin back around to get some support, and Darcy and Aviva look up from a picture of a young Franklin Roosevelt to give me a thumbs-up.

  “I wanted to know if you wanted to go out sometime….”

  “More specific!” Darcy hisses from behind me.

  “… or Friday,” I continue. “Because I wanted to talk to you about teaching music! And… music. And stuff.”

  What a lame ending. And how many times did I just say “wanted”? Ugh. I am so awkward.

  “Oh, to talk about teaching? Is Hunter coming?” Johann says.

  “No. Just you and me,” I say. “I wanted to… get to know you. So Friday is good? What about Kopp’s, to get custard? Eight o’clock?”

  “Okay… That sounds good,” Johann says, polite but cautious.

  “Okay, good! So I’ll meet you there!”

  I’m so anxious to get off the phone and be done with this whole thing that I almost end the call before Johann speaks up.

  “Um… Kelly? Can you… Do you think you could pick me up? Because… uh… I can’t drive, so—”

  “Right! Sure! Yeah, I’ll… I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  CHAPTER 20: HUNTER

  “Caveman to Cutie: What Bio Class Can Teach Us About the Evolution of the Male Mind”

  “The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth, The Julius Journal, January

  I think this place is, like, withering my soul away,” I tell Eugene in the fourth aisle of Office Depot, one of Eugene’s favorite places. He comes here all the time to buy supplies for his business, so he knows what’s in every aisle. But today we’re shopping for me. I, Hunter Fahrenbach, am buying an agenda.

  Eugene ignores the comment about my withering soul.

  “This is a beautiful model,” he says, holding up this fancy-looking day planner. “Full-zip nylon cover, titanium clasp… Ooh, recycled paper! Gotta go green, Hunter. Gotta go green.”

  I take the planner and flip through the pages. There’s already stuff written on a bunch of days. Christmas, Hanukkah, daylight saving time, Canadian Thanksgiving… Ugh. I can’t handle all these commitments. I put the planner back on the shelf and run my hand through my hair. On Saturday, I got my first real haircut since sixth grade. It’s for the musical. Mrs. Martin, Pam, and Amy decided Billy Flynn can’t have hair that touches his shoulders, and they didn’t go for my ponytail idea, either. So it was a haircut against my will. It’s really, really short.

  “Stop messing with it,” Eugene tells me. “It’s supposed to have that part in it. You can’t mess with the part.”

  “I hate having my hair parted,” I tell him. “It’s too neat. I look like one of the Hitler Youth. This is a politically incorrect haircut.”

  I rub my hand all over my head to mess up my hair.

  “Stop!” Eugene says. “It looks good! It definitely looks better than before. You look professional. I’d consider hiring you with that haircut.”

  “No, thanks,” I tell him, shoving my hands into the pockets of my winter coat. “I already have too much shit to do.”

  “So what are you looking for?” Eugene says, turning back to shelves full of agendas. “A weekly? A daily?”

  “I guess I need a daily. People are giving me homework every day, and since I effed up my midterms, I actually have to do some of it. And I have rehearsal every night. Even Fridays.”

  Rehearsing on Friday nights sucks. All my online World of Warcraft buddies are missing my sword-wielding skills, and my actual three-dimensional friends are missing me, too. I have zero time to drive around with Derek, shooting at people’s mailboxes with paintball guns.

  Being in this musical is like living under a Fascist regime. You should see these rehearsals. Last night the choreographer, Amy, screamed at us so much she lost her voice.

  “Box step! Box step!”

  “Kick ball change! No! Kick ball change!”

  “One-two-three-four! One-two-three-four!”

  “Chorus girl in the back! Turn left! Do you not see everyone else turning to the left?”

  “Billy Flynn! Bigger arms, Billy Flynn!”

  “Shuffle step, Billy Flynn!”

  I am so sick of hearing “Billy Flynn.” Every time I hear that damn name, I cringe. While we’re on the subject, I’m sick of my own name, too. In these books my dad reads about how to get a job, they say people love to hear their own names. Don’t try it with me. I’m sick of hearing “Hunter” everywhere I go. In class, teachers are calling on me every five minutes; now that my hair is short, they can see my face, and they remember to call on me.

  In pre-calc: “Hunter, how do you factor this quadratic?”

  In U.S. history: “Hunter, how did FDR fight the Great Depression?”

  In gym: “Hunter, you’re a captain today. Pick your floor-hockey team.”

  In AP chem: “Hunter, where’s your lab report?”

  My lab report is still missing, actually…. Which is where this planner comes in. But I have to look at them myself, because Eugene is screwing around over by the accordion folders.

  “Twenty-four ninety-nine?” I balk, turning one over. “There’s no way I’m dropping twenty-five bucks on this thing!”

  But Eugene is down at the end of the aisle now, opening binders and flipping through them.

  “Yo, gingerbread boy!” I call to him. “I need your help with this!”

  “I’ve got my own stuff to buy,” he tells me. Eugene holds up a big red binder and asks me, “Do you think this will hold head shots?”

  “Head shots?” I groan. “Dude, please tell me you’re not taking pic
tures of girls you’re hooking up with.”

  Eugene has been sharing waaaaay too much about his hookups with me since he broke up with Bobbi.

  “Nope,” Eugene says. “This is for my new business project. I’m selling prom dates!”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed how the lovely women of our school are already worrying about the prom,” Eugene says, reaching for a green binder on a high shelf. “I myself have already been asked three times.”

  Eugene is too short to reach the green binder, so I grab it for him.

  “Isn’t the prom in, like, June?”

  “May,” Eugene corrects me. “And the young women of Julius P. Heil are way ahead of us in thinking about it. Women are planners, Huntro. It’s one of the advantages they have over us. Look at Pam. This girl is already making money off the prom. She’s hawking that overpriced prom contract of hers all over town.”

  “You always make money off the prom,” I say. “You bought, like, five hundred dollars’ worth of beer for the limos last year.”

  “Well, this year I’m selling alcohol and men.”

  “Selling men? Dude, isn’t that a little… illegal?”

  We head back to the planners as Eugene explains.

  “Just think of me like a professional matchmaker,” he says. “I’ll provide a selection of clean, well-groomed, well-mannered young men to serve as escorts for the evening. Well, not escorts.”

  “Where are you gonna find these dudes?”

  “I’m going into Milwaukee to recruit at a bunch of private schools. Then I’m gonna hit up some sports events for the jock types, concerts for my emo guys, support groups for those sensitive new-age men.”

  “Very nice.”

  “And perhaps the rock-star type as well?” Eugene says, pressing an agenda into my chest and looking at me questioningly.

  “What?” I don’t even take the agenda. “What, you want me? To be a prostitute?”

  “To be a prescreened escort,” Eugene corrects me. “You could earn two hundred dollars! Girls like you now, Huntro. You’ve got that guitar thing going on. And I wasn’t totally committed to that well-groomed part of the deal.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks for the compliment,” I say. “But I have a girlfriend, remember? Thanks to you pushing me into it, I have a girlfriend. And I’m pretty sure she would not be cool with me hiring myself out.”