Faster, Faster, Faster

by Jonah Black

  “We are? How come?” I was kind of looking forward to soaking in Dad’s Jacuzzi, eating a whole lasagna, and sleeping for twelve hours. I felt like I needed to unwind.

  “Trust me,” Honey said. “It’s time to go.”

  “Where’s Max?”

  “Max went back to Harvard,” she said, sadly.

  “How come?”

  “Jonah,” Honey said. “He’s got, like—classes?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. I had forgotten that one of the things you actually did at Harvard was go to class. I was starting to think that all anybody did there was hack into computers and play with toy guns.

  “All right,” Honey said, her eyes shifting toward the house. “So go get ready, okay?”

  “What are you doing?” I asked. She definitely looked like she had something up her sleeve.

  Honey grinned. “Something fun,” she said.

  It didn’t take me long to get my stuff out of my room. As I packed up I noticed a few cans of paint, standing in the corner. Tiffany was getting started with her redecorating. The name of the color on the side of the can was Roasted Eggplant. We were getting out of there just in time.

  I went back outside and loaded my stuff into the Jeep.

  Dad came out and watched me pack up. My arm hurt as I put the things in the car, and I thought about asking Dad for help. But I didn’t.

  “You learning what you need to know down there in Pompano Beach?” he said finally.

  “I guess so,” I said. He took a sip of his coffee.

  “Well,” he said.

  “Well.”

  “It’s nice how everything turns out for the best, isn’t it?” he said.

  I tried to think of something that had turned out for the best. I guess Honey meeting Max was kind of nice. For her.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Your sister, going to Harvard. You, a diving star. Your mother, a radio personality and a best-selling author to boot. I’m proud of my family, Jonah, damn proud!”

  I thought about telling him how things really were, but I decided to let him enjoy the moment instead. I almost wondered if he was going to hug me.

  Then, from upstairs, I heard a scream. It was Tiffany.

  Dad looked up at his bedroom window.

  Tiffany screamed again.

  Dad headed inside, but he didn’t seem like he was in too big of a hurry. In fact, he paused to take little sips of his coffee as he trudged up the front steps. I kind of felt sorry for Dad, all of a sudden. He hadn’t mentioned himself when he’d talked about all the things that had turned out for the best.

  Honey came barreling out the front door. “See ya, Daddy-O,” she said.

  “Honor—” said Dad. He looked like he wanted to say something to her.

  “I gotta go,” Honey said. She lifted her chin and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “’Bye.”

  “Honor, wait,” said Dad. “Honey—”

  It was the first time he’d ever called her Honey, at least as far as I knew.

  Tiffany wailed mournfully from upstairs. I couldn’t imagine what Honey had done.

  “Go on inside, Dad,” said Honey. “You’re needed in there.”

  Dad ducked inside and Honey ran down the walk and jumped into the Jeep. A we roared down the driveway I looked back at Dad’s huge house. Dad hadn’t gone upstairs after all. He was standing on the porch, waving as we drove away.

  A moment later we were heading through Gladwynne, listening to Max’s band on the CD player.

  I noticed that Honey’s hands were all purple.

  “Honey,” I said. “What happened to your hands?”

  The corners of Honey’s mouth turned up, wickedly.

  “Oh no,” I said. “What did you do?”

  She snickered, grabbed a Camel from out of her bag, and punched in the lighter. “Dyed her dog,” Honey said.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “You dyed Cuddles?”

  “Yup,” she said. “Dyed him Royal Velvet.”

  “What’s that?” I said. It sounded like one of Tiffany’s paint colors.

  Honey took a drag of her cigarette. “Bright purple. He looked pretty cool, actually.”

  I sat back in my seat and watched the telephone poles zip by through the window. “Wow, Honey,” I said.

  “Honor,” she said. “I’m going to start using Honor. Max says it’s a name with character.”

  I smiled.

  I don’t know if Honey needs any more character, but I’ll try to call her Honor from now on.

  Feb. 9. Baker, Tennessee

  We’re stopped here at a Motel 6 for the night. I have to say I’m looking forward to getting home.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about Molly. Maybe she was right when she said that sex doesn’t matter. Does it matter as much as being with somebody who likes you and cares about you? I wish I hadn’t screwed things up with her. I guess I’ve screwed up with a lot of girls. But now that I really am over Sophie—or maybe she’s over me—I think things are going to be better.

  While we were driving south, we turned on the radio at one point and there was this girl right in the middle of describing her orgasm. “It’s like a wave in the ocean lifting me up and colors bursting in the sun.” And then this woman’s voice said, “That’s good, you shouldn’t be ashamed of that! You’re only being nice to yourself!” Honey—I mean, Honor—and I looked at each other and said in unison, “Mom!”

  Here we are, hundreds of miles from home, and there’s Mom on her radio show talking about sex.

  And I got this e-mail on the laptop when I logged on from the Motel 6:

  To: JBlack94710

  From: Northgirl999

  Jonah, I can’t wait for you to come back. Everything is so boring and stupid without you. I have this funny feeling you are going to be different when you come back, like you will finally have learned something. By now things have probably blown up with Sophie and you’ve realized that she’s the same as anybody else, except maybe she’s more lost. I think this is probably going to break your heart, when you realize that Sophie isn’t some fantasy-perfect chick, but I think having your heart broken is probably good for you.

  That’s how people learn, Jonah. Little Mister Wooden Head.

  I think I’m ready to reveal myself to you now.

  Jan. 11, 9 A.M.

  I looked over at Molly, and she stuck her tongue out at me. I was glad we were next to each other. Her hair was hanging loose, and she kept pushing it back behind her ears and licking her lips. I wanted to lean over to her and say, “Don’t be nervous. It’s going to be okay,” but they yell at you if you talk during the SATs. I was supposed to be concentrating on my own test, not on Molly.

  I looked down at my left arm. Doing the SAT while wearing a cast was a pain in the ass. It’s so big and clunky, I kept almost knocking my test booklet off the desk, and it was hard to hold onto the answer sheet while I filled in the bubbles with my right hand. It still says: MARRY ME, JONAH in big letters on the side of my cast. I wish Molly had written it. That would have made my life much less confusing. But I know it wasn’t her. It was Northgirl999 from the Internet. And I still don’t know who she is.

  The proctor was Miss von Esse, my German and homeroom teacher. She cleared her throat and said, “Please write your names on the answer sheet. After you write your names, enter in all the other information. When you are finished, look up at me so I’ll know you’re ready to move on.”

  I wrote my name in the space. Jonah Black. I wrote down my address and my hometown, Pompano Beach, Florida. Then I wrote down the code for Don Shula High School. I guess one of the few good things about getting kicked out of boarding school, and being sent home to Florida, and having to repeat the eleventh grade, is getting another chance at the SAT. I need all the help I can get.

  When I finished filling out the information on the answer sheet, I looked up at Miss von Esse, but she wasn’t looking at me. I looked over at Molly. She crossed her eyes and stuck her ton
gue out again. I guess she thought she was being funny, but it was kind of distracting. All of the junior and senior girls from St. Winnifred’s were taking their SATs at Don Shula High, along with the girls from the other Catholic girls’ school, Sacred Heart. Because of that there were about three times more girls in the Don Shula auditorium than guys. Which was fine with me, although it definitely made it hard to concentrate on antonyms. I saw where Molly colored in the little circle on the Address section of her answer sheet marked F. I looked down at mine, where I’d colored in the circle marked M, and then back over at the Molly’s answer sheet again. Her eraser was moist.

  Molly winked at me and stuck her eraser in her mouth again, rolling it around on her tongue. Then she takes it out and traces a heart on my cheek. She kisses me where she’s drawn the heart. Sophie’s wrists are so delicate, and her hands flutter like little bird wings around my face. “I love you, Jonah Black,” says Sophie, before she flies away.

  “This first section of the test will take twenty-five minutes,” Miss von Esse said. “When you finish this first section, you may go back and review your work. Do not go on to other sections. Are you ready?”

  Molly ran her tongue around the edges of her lips.

  “All right. Begin!” Miss von Esse said.

  We opened up the seals on our test booklets and began the SAT. My first test was in math, which was good. I like math.

  Two trains are headed toward Kennebunkport, Maine, at different speeds. Train A starts 660 miles away and is traveling at 45 miles per hour. Train B is 450 miles away and is . . . etc. For a few minutes I got all Zen with the math problems, filling in the bubbles like clockwork. I was feeling good.

  Then I glanced over at the girl on my left. She was very tall and thin with stringy brown hair and a big purple bruise on her knee, as if she’d taken a bad fall. Fell off her bike, maybe. It looked like it hurt. I looked back at her face, but now Sophie O’Brien is sitting in her seat instead. She doesn’t have a test booklet. She is just sitting there, chewing on a strand of her golden blond hair.

  Sophie looks over at me with sad, sad eyes, and whispers, “Help me, Jonah.” The diamond studs in her ears glitter in the fluorescent lights of the auditorium.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned back to my test. A team hasn’t won 80% of the 35 games it has played against State. The team has lost 25% of the nine games it has played against City University. If the team plays four more games against State and five more games against City University and continues its percentage of wins and losses against each, how many games will the team have won for the season?

  I read this a couple of times, but I couldn’t get it to gel. I felt my heart beating quickly. Focus, Jonah, I told myself. Focus. On my left, I heard someone whimper softly. I looked over and there’s Sophie again, crying. “Jonah, please. Save me.”

  I forced myself to go back to my test. In the next question they gave us a drawing of a rectangular solid and the length of three of the sides. We were supposed to find out the volume of the solid. I know I knew how to do that, but I started to panic. I was like, I can’t do it, I’m going to freak out. So I went on to the next question.

  The square root of an integer x is twice the square root of a negative real number y. If z = 3x and x = 7/5ths z, what is the square root of . . .

  From my left I hear her whisper again. “Jonah,” she says urgently. “Jonah!”

  Sophie’s eyes are huge and filled with tears. “Sophie,” I whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had to come see you,” she says. She rubs her bruised knee and pushes her hair back behind her ears. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in—?” I say. “I mean I thought you were in Maggins—you know, the—”

  “The loony bin,” Sophie says.

  “I don’t know what you call it,” I said.

  “The looooooooooo-ny bin,” she says, like it’s funny.

  “Whatever.”

  “Jonah,” she says, leaning toward me. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. About what happened.”

  I put my pencil down. “You mean over Christmas break?” I say.

  “Yeah.” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I mean, it was so nice of you to rent a hotel room so we could be together. I know it was like, a risk, for us to actually meet and everything. And I’m sorry I took off like that. I’m kind of screwed up,” she says. “But I guess you figured that out. That’s why they put me in Maggins.”

  “I don’t care if you’re screwed up,” I say.

  “I’m totally in love with you, Jonah,” she says. “Did I tell you that? You’re my hero.”

  I heard a guy clear his throat, and I looked over at him. It was Thorne, my best friend. He was taking his SAT for like, the fifth time. He just wants to make sure he won’t be gutting fish on his dad’s boat his entire life. I don’t blame him. Thorne pointed at his test booklet and mouthed the words, Jonah, dude. Concentrate.

  I looked down at my test. Most of the bubbles on my answer sheet were still not filled in. I glanced over to my left. The girl with the bruise was scribbling away. Sophie had disappeared.

  Miss von Esse jiggled her bracelets and I blushed. I was going to wind up working for Thorne’s dad for the rest of my life if I didn’t start filling in my answers.

  But I still couldn’t concentrate. Posie was sitting two desks in front of Thorne, working hard. She couldn’t see me. Her shirt had a big neck and one side of it had fallen off her shoulder. I could see the straps of her orange bikini top underneath.

  I remembered the time Posie and I were out in her little boat all night long, making out. We’d forgotten to drop the anchor, so we’d just drifted around for hours. Thorne and his dad had to rescue us.

  I hate how I hardly see Thorne and Posie around anymore. The fact that I’m a junior now and they’re seniors doesn’t help. But ever since Posie started going out with Lamar Jameson, she doesn’t have much time for anybody else. And Thorne’s always got his hands full with like, five girls at once. If he messes up the SAT and doesn’t get into a decent college, he could make money teaching courses on how to be a player. He has it down to a science.

  To my left, someone smacks her hand on the desk. I look over and Sophie looks back at me, annoyed. “Hello?” she says. “Do you mind?”

  “Mind what?” I say.

  “Like, focusing on the situation?” she says.

  “You mean the SAT?” I say.

  “No, no, no,” Sophie says, shaking her head like I’m hopeless. “I mean my situation. Me. What are you going to do about me?”

  “Sophie,” I say. “Now is not such a good time. I’m supposed to be doing this test.”

  Sophie gets up and sits down on top of my desk. She takes out one of her earrings, which is one of the ones I gave her in Disney World, then she kisses it, and puts it on top of my answer sheet. “I don’t think so,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say, confused.

  “Jonah,” she says, as if she’s getting tired of explaining things to me. “When are we going to do it?”

  “Do it?” I say.

  “Yeah, do it.” She licks her lips. “How much longer am I going to stay a virgin for you? I can’t wait forever, you know. And what about you? You can’t tell me you don’t want to do it with me, can you? I mean, how long can we stay virgins?”

  My hands feel cold and sweaty. “Okay,” I say.

  Sophie gets a tube of lip gloss out of her purse and rubs some on her lips.

  “So let’s do it,” she says. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Suddenly she drops the lip gloss and it rolls across the floor. She watches it with wide, frightened eyes, as if she’s just dropped a grenade, and then tears begin to stream down her cheeks.

  “Sophie!” I cried.

  I heard my voice echo in the auditorium. Everyone stared at me, even Posie. Molly glared at me fiercely. I think she knew exactly what had happened.

  “Mr. Black,”
Miss von Esse said. I shook my head and looked down at my SAT. I was only on question nine. Everyone else was nearly finished with the section. This is exactly what happened when I took my SAT last year up at boarding school.

  I went back to my test and everyone started working again. A right triangle with a side of 37 inches has one angle of 48 degrees. If the hypotenuse is 47 inches long, what is the degree of . . .

  I thought I could still smell Sophie’s shampoo. It smells like honey and daisies.

  “All right, stop working,” says Sophie.

  She is sitting on Miss von Esse’s desk, unbuttoning her shirt with her birdlike fingers.

  “Jonah Black, she says. “Will you please come to the front of the room and help me?”

  (Later.)

  “Let me guess,” Molly said, as she drove me home in her Dad’s Expedition. “You started daydreaming about Sophie again. You were imagining her taking her top off in the chair next to you.”

  I looked out the window. “Something like that,” I said.

  “Something like that?” said Molly. “Okay, was it worse than that?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Goddammit,” Molly said. The tires of her SUV screeched as we went around a corner and bounced over the curb. Man, is she a bad driver—worse than me, even. Of course, she has a license and I don’t. I don’t even have a bicycle because Molly crushed mine with that monster SUV of hers, just to get my attention. In fact, I haven’t been able to deliver any pizzas or videos in like, a week. I wonder if Mr. Swede is going to fire me.

  “What exactly were you thinking?” Molly asked, speeding up to shoot through a light that was just turning red.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  Molly slammed on the brakes. Behind us, tires squealed and horns honked. Molly gave them the finger and put on her hazard flashers. Driving with her is always a thrill.

  “Listen,” said Molly. “You want me to throw you out of this car? I told you if we were going to hang out you were going to have to tell me the truth. About everything. That’s the way I operate. Okay? No lies, no crap, no bullshit. So tell me what you were thinking, or else I’m letting you out.”