The Great American Whatever

by Tim Federle

  “I’ve been working my tail off at the gym.” Mrs. Kelly tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve lost maybe twenty pounds since the last time I saw you.”

  “Oh, jeez,” I say. “I was kidding, Mrs. Kelly. You look amazing.”

  “Please, Mr. Roberts.” If an entire face could do an eye roll, hers does. “I’ve been married twice. I know when a man is lying.”

  Mrs. Kelly is holding some kind of nutrition powder in a bulk container, and the weight of it seems to be making her arms shake. What kind of gym could she possibly be going to if it hasn’t prepared her for the weight of a jar of powder?

  “Can I help you with that?” I say, and I put the CK One down and she hands the powder to me, and, with no discernible segue, goes: “There’s still time, you know. I haven’t legally been allowed to reach out directly, but as your counselor, I am as committed to getting you into a good college as I am the next studen—”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kelly. Let’s see what happens,” I say. I’ve never liked school. Nobody in my family has ever finished college. Why upset the applecart? “I’ve been looking into getting my GED, and I was thinking about getting a job, so stuff is definitely on the horizon.”

  Mrs. Kelly bypasses my words. “Have you gotten any of the packets I had your teachers send home? You really can start senior year right on track.”

  I keep picturing what it would feel like to drive past The Pug every day, to pull past Annabeth’s dog face and see the school flagpole, which will, no doubt, be permanently at half-mast, as a tribute. Kill me now. As if homeroom wasn’t tragic enough already.

  My phone rings. No idea who it is, but it’s local.

  “I should get this,” I say, handing back the protein powder, which was, by the way, heavy as fuck. My bad! “It’s an important call.”

  Where is her mean face? Where is Mrs. Kelly’s judginess? She is being so kind and patient. She is frustrating me. “Of course,” she says.

  I step away and swipe to talk.

  “Hey,” I hear.

  “G., hey, you have my new number! Cool.”

  “Yeah, I got you the friggin phone,” Geoff goes. “I had to pretend I was you at the Verizon stor—”

  “Are you coming with me to Amir’s party tonight?”

  He sighs. “Uh, no. Just to remind you, he and I aren’t really friends. He was just using me to get you cakes and love notes.”

  “Okay, so what’s up?”

  “Let’s meet up,” Geoff says. “In person. I have to . . . show you something.”

  “Something bad?”

  “No.” He does this weird pause. Like, a suspicious (beat). “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Can you pick me up on Washington Road in Mount Lebo, actually? I got here and then some kids stole my bike.”

  “Quinn, your life story is starting to turn into a documentary that people would walk out of because it’s both too sad and too slow.”

  Fuck you, I start to say, but I realize Mrs. Kelly is only an aisle over, and suddenly I want her to like me.

  “Well, then,” I say, instead. “Can you show me this mysterious whatever tonight? Like, after Amir’s party.”

  “Fine,” Geoff says, and just when I’m about to say, And can you mayyyybe pick me up from Station Square, late? he goes, “Figure out a way to get to my house,” and hangs up.

  I check the time on my new phone and realize I should put some work into making myself as hot as possible for later. I feel an incoming-missile zit situation coming on.

  “Mrs. Kelly,” I say, walking too fast down the aisle and nearly running right into her. She’s been spying on me, I think, hiding behind a tower of sympathy cards, but I don’t care. In fact, I like it. I feel cared for. “Can you give me a ride home?”

  • • •

  Mom is in the sunroom. She’s hugging a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, teeny-tiny Mickey Mouse ears that Annabeth got on our one family road trip to Florida. I can tell Mom’s been sorting through everything—the house is even more turned over than ever, with piles of newspapers and old Life magazines pulled up from the basement—and she’s asleep and lightly snoring, which is normal. But she’s doing something else, at the same time, something headline-making big: LOCAL WOMAN FOUND SMILING FOR LONGER THAN THREE SECONDS IN A ROW. CLICK FOR VIDEO.

  I look to the counter. The postcard advertising men’s haircuts is gone. She started going through the mail, finally, like some kind of grown-up. Sometimes it’s hard to not think of Mom as a kid, herself. Technically speaking, she’s an orphan now. And she isn’t married. I’m kind of the only thing left that makes her seem like an adult, by default.

  One of the lights flickers off in the kitchen. I hope she pays the bill soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  We have this local train thing called “the T” in Pittsburgh. It’s our rickety “mass transit system” and our version of an above-ground subway. Everywhere else in my life, I like complete control. But whenever I’m on mass transportation—the T, like tonight, or an airplane, once, to Charleston, for a choir trip—I’m actually okay with giving over. With letting the pilot steer. I don’t know why.

  For the record, the best train scenes of all time are: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and, duh, Strangers on a Train (1951). I’m not looking these up, by the way. I just know the dates. Can you imagine if I could apply this kind of memory to something genuinely useful?

  The Sunday-night T schedule is usually unpredictable, but tonight we’re going particularly slow, and I really can’t be late to Amir’s party. Apparently it’s on a riverboat, and we’re traversing one (or all?) of Pittsburgh’s three rivers, and it’s a whole thing. I only know I have to be there by “seven p.m., sharp,” according to his voice mail, which I’ve listened to so many times that I have started taking the little breaths that he takes, along with him, when I relisten.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I hear from a speaker mounted directly behind my head—making me hop out of my seat and nearly smash into some lady’s granny cart, “because of an incident near Station Square, the T will stop before the tunnels, with free shuttle buses directly to Station Square. This will cause an approximately ten-minute delay in schedule.”

  Well, this is ridiculous, and I’m about to say as much to the other passengers when this guy in full Pirates regalia goes, “This fucking blows,” and starts kicking at the doors of the train car. He’s really quite violent about it—you can see actual dents forming in the metal—and now he’s talking to the granny whose cart I bumped into and trying to loop her into his anger. And as I’m watching him, I realize I don’t want to be that kind of guy. The one who ropes people into his fury.

  The one who makes fun of his wife’s cooking for how it always disappoints him.

  The one who never watches a single one of his kids’ five-minute-long movies.

  I don’t want to be that guy.

  “This is our last and final stop. Please board the shuttle across the street.”

  And so I choose not to be.

  • • •

  “Does anyone know where Amir is?” I say, pacing around the launching dock off Station Square, right at the edge of the river. Pittsburgh is so pretty. People think it’s not going to be and then it is.

  “I don’t think he’s here yet,” someone says. I’m looking and looking for Carly, hoping to see a familiar face, when a girl in a skirt goes, “Pepé Le Pew!” and I realize she and I were on the team of non-natives in the Celebrity game of doom.

  “Oh, hey,” I go.

  “Cool glasses,” she says, and I touch them like I’m Cinderella, like my fairy godmother put them on for me. Which I guess she did.

  A horn from behind me honk-honks, followed by the halfhearted cheers of a group of people trying to look cool. There’s so little that people get openly worked up about. A few folks stub out their clove cigarettes, and I see one guy swig from a Dr Pepper in a brown paper bag, an
d then a faceless voice calls out: “All aboard!”

  It’s him, Amir, jumping out of the back of somebody’s car and holding Carly’s hand. It makes my stomach shimmy, seeing them touching each other, and I like that—that I feel protective about a guy, for once. Usually I’m the only guy I feel protective about, ha.

  I try to get Amir’s attention, but he and Carly run ahead, onto this old-fashioned riverboat called The Good Ship Lollipop. A line forms after them, to get on too. These three girls in front of me are guffawing at something on one of their phones, and when I turn away from them, that’s when I notice giant floodlights—the kind in stadiums, but also the kind used on film sets. The kind you’d set up if you were shooting a movie on a Sunday night that disrupts the flow of the T, which causes a kid to decide to not react like his dad would, and to hop on a shuttle bus to a going-away party for a boy he was just, well, getting going with.

  My phone buzzes. “Go to the upper deck, mister,” the text says. “I’ll find you ”

  Already, the floodlights are making me dizzy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Pittsburgh routinely falls into the top-ten list of places you should live. Fun fact: I haven’t visited many places, but Pittsburgh is my favorite city regardless. It’s in my blood. I’ve never been west of Ohio, but someday I want to go to Chicago, maybe. I hear it’s like a big Pittsburgh with better pizza, and the lake there is like a small ocean without sharks, which sounds perfect.

  “It’s, like, so nice up here,” some girl says, leaning over the railing on the upper deck of this overcrowded riverboat. And it is nice. I just wish Amir would find me before I’m forced to make small talk with some rando.

  At least the captain of the boat tonight has us going at a full clip, which feels like something. Every time we go beneath a bridge, the captain idles the engine and everyone on the boat lets out a giant cheer, and our voices multiply like bats flapping around in a cave.

  I pull out my new phone and debate text options to Amir:

  “On the roof with an amir-size hole in my conversation”

  Just: “On roof . . .”

  and

  “If u find me and bring me a drink I will act responsible!!”

  The last option makes me smile, and as I’m typing it out, I feel hot beer breath on my face, and look up, and let out a tiny shout, and then I go: “Hey.”

  “Happy,” Amir says, with this weird little break in the sentiment, “birthday.” He looks really good. “Thanks for getting down here tonight! Was it a hassle?”

  “No. Easiest thing ever.”

  Someone brings Amir a drink and he says thanks, but when she turns away, he pours half of it over the side of the ship.

  “Uh.” I laugh. “Why are you doing that?”

  “People give you so much crap if you don’t get shit-faced,” he says. “So I just keep pouring half of it out. I feel responsible for everyone’s safety tonight.”

  He hiccups. He is, actually, a tiny bit drunk. Did everyone arrive at the boat pre-liquored? Is that a thing?

  “Did I make a total jagoff of myself last night?” I say. I’m looking at Amir’s cup and rather than coveting it, my stomach is playing pinball.

  “Naw. You were sweet,” he says. Great. “Sweet” is how you describe a toddler. He goes to touch my hair, but the boat hits a wake and he stumbles a little, and so to cover for the awkward moment, I change the camera angle on our conversation.

  “Ooh, there goes the Incline,” I say, pointing behind Amir.

  We have this really cool train that climbs the side of the mountain in Pittsburgh, up to this restaurant called Le Mont, which means “the mountain” in French, and it’s fancy (you have to wear a sports coat), and Geoff’s parents treated me and Annabeth to dinner there once and we didn’t know what to do with all those forks.

  “Aw, man, I’m gonna miss Pittsburgh.” Close-up, back to Amir.

  “Well, how long is your writing program thing?”

  Amir puts his hand on my waist and it feels wonderful.

  “Do you remember what I said last night, after we bowled, about my, um, going away?”

  Oh, boy. I could fake this, but my timing is off. In my mind, I was going to stand here and reenact a whole funny Le Mont montage—about how Annabeth and I used the forks to brush our hair, like Ariel in The Little Mermaid—and so I’m caught too off guard to lie.

  “Only kind of,” I say.

  Amir sits us down on an ancient bench whose wood gives almost as much as a pool floaty would. The Good Ship Lollipop is like half an iceberg away from disaster.

  “Uh, so I’m not sure I’m coming back to Pitt in the fall,” Amir says.

  Yeah, I definitely don’t remember him saying that, because I’m standing up again, and chugging my 7UP down, fast, and I’m not liking this one bit.

  “Where are you going, then, instead?” I say. I put my foot up on the bench, like I’m posing for a Dockers ad. Idiot.

  “I got into this pre-MBA business program back at U.T.,” he says, running his fingers around the rim of his red plastic cup. “It’s a good opportunity. I mean, it would shut my parents up, at least. They sort of threatened not to keep paying for Pitt, so.”

  “Do you want to go into business?” I say.

  “No, but I’m feeling a little driftless in Pittsburgh, and a lot of my friends are in the program at U.T. By the way, I like your cologne. CK One?”

  You have me, I want to say. I know we are good for each other. “You mean aimless,” I say, and he gets up and places his hand on my knee and goes: “What?” And I say: “Driftless is not a word,” and Amir chuckles and says, “I don’t understand how you’re not a good student! You’re smarter than me.”

  “Than I am,” I say, and we laugh, but I’m not really laughing. I’m panic-flirting, convincing him with little sonic eye-rays to stay here. To stay in Pittsburgh and teach me things and keep telling me I’m smart, I’m smart, I’m smart, until I believe it enough to get out of bed even on days when I have nowhere to go and nobody to collaborate with.

  The song of the summer comes on over a jerry-rigged speaker system. Amir skids his hand over my buzz cut and it makes me shiver. I want to ask him what he sees in me. Why are you even hanging with me at all? I’d like to say—but somehow the letters switch themselves around, the little rascals, and all I manage to get out is: “Was this boat expensive to rent, or what?”

  He makes an offended face, but I stand my ground. “I mean, it’s not cheap,” he goes, “but it’s fine. It’s no biggie.”

  “Okay,” I say, pulling my knee away from his hand and feeling antsy. “It just seems like a really big thing to be doing. To, like, rent a boat to give yourself a going-away party when you haven’t even been in my hometown a full year.”

  “Wow, all right. I mean: I made good friends. I wanted to send everyone off in a big way.”

  “Could you say the first and last names of everyone who’s on this boat right now?” I know he can’t. I know it.

  Amir fake-laughs and puts his drink down on the bench.

  “You threw up on my shoe last night, mister,” he says. I look down. He’s got these bright cream-colored Adidas on, and indeed: There is a tan stain across the toe and bleeding into the shoelaces, like the fallout from a dropped casserole.

  “Whoa, I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “It’s okay.”

  I guess Amir is a good starter guy. Throw up on him, try out some theories, say goodbye. Except I don’t want to even wave goodbye.

  “Have you ever dated somebody as young as me?” I say, and Amir goes: “Oh, are we dating?” and I go, “Oh, no, I mean, I didn’t mean that, I just meant: theoretically.”

  He goes: “No. All of my boyfriends have been a lot older,” and I’m thinking All? when he adds: “And if I dated anyone younger than you”—as he takes my 7UP and puts it on the bench—“I’d have to get paid babysitting money.” I instinctively lunge for the cup, and when I come back up with it, Amir takes my
chin, with this wonderful kind of too much force, and brings my lips to his.

  This isn’t how I wrote our first kiss. And yet.

  His tongue is inside my mouth, and it is simultaneously bigger and wetter and also more delicious than anything I’ve ever eaten. I can taste him, I mean, and our teeth bump, and I’m not sure if I’m doing it wrong, but when he laughs, I know it’s not a mean laugh.

  “A little less tongue,” he slurs, which was precisely the note I was going to give to him. When we go at it again, I’m giving him, like, no tongue, and he pulls away and goes, “The hottest thing about you is you don’t know how hot you even are yet.” He pulls my waist in to his, and the song cuts out, and somebody goes, “Look!”

  A riot of fireworks launch into the night sky, lighting up Amir’s glasses in confetti-green bursts. It’s not the Fourth of July, because my birthday is in June and goddammit, it’s still my birthday, and for one brief, odd moment, I consider whether Amir ordered fireworks for me or maybe for himself.

  Burst. Burst. Burst. The sky is trying to break apart. We both look up.

  “Did you, wait, like, arrange these for my birthday?” I ask. The Hot Metal Bridge, which we’re idling under, looks rusted to oblivion. Like it could collapse on us. And so suddenly I want to get away, out from underneath this dare.

  “Win,” Amir goes.

  “Yeah?”

  “I said no, I don’t know why fireworks are going off. Maybe for some sports thing?”

  But nothing’s playing tonight. If a game were playing tonight, the T would have been littered with more angry people just like that guy I don’t want to be.

  Now the night clouds are red, and now they’re purple, and now they’re yellow, and yet the giant kaleidoscope sky feels smaller, somehow, than Amir’s tongue in my mouth, which is happening again—smaller than the fact that his mustache zone is scratchy enough to be making my lip burn.

  “Can I say something risky?” Amir says, pulling away and hiding a hiccup, and I go, “Anything,” quick and quiet, and he goes, “I think we need to get you laid tonight.”