Crash and Burn

by Michael Hassan

  Dedication

  FOR HENRY AND LENA

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The Club Crew

  Chapter Two: How Burn Became Burn

  Chapter Three: How the Prescriptions Almost Killed Me

  Chapter Four: Another Night of Partying with Jungle Juice and Weed

  Chapter Five: How the Panthers Got Their Spots

  Chapter Six: How Thanksgiving Got Ruined, Part I: Another Day at the Office

  Chapter Seven: How Thanksgiving Got Ruined, Part II: How Burn Literally Saved My Life

  Chapter Eight: Wednesday at the Westchester

  Chapter Nine: How Burn Got His First Kiss

  Chapter Ten: Christina and the Dark Night

  Chapter Eleven: How Me and Burn (and the Rest of Us) Adjusted to Meadows

  Chapter Twelve: The Really Bad Interview

  Chapter Thirteen: How Poker Saved Burn

  Chapter Fourteen: Getting High in Woodstock

  Chapter Fifteen: Cabin Fever, or, Christina and the Really, Really Dark Night

  Chapter Sixteen: How Burn Ruined My Big Night

  Chapter Seventeen: How Burn and Roxanne Dealt

  Chapter Eighteen: How Roxanne Taught Me History

  Chapter Nineteen: How Burn Went Too Far One Day

  Chapter Twenty: How Burn Crashed His Mom’s Car and My Father’s Wedding

  Chapter Twenty-One: Hot Water, Really, Really Hot Water

  Chapter Twenty-Two: How Crash Landed

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Did She Mention My Name?

  Chapter Twenty-Four: How I Saved Meadows High

  Chapter Twenty-Five: How a Fox Is Always a Fox

  Chapter Twenty-Six: How I Made the Cover Page

  Epilogue: The Last Days of Summer

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I’m not gonna lie to you.

  I’m not exactly the hero that everyone says I am.

  Sure, you may have read about me in People or in some other magazine that had my picture on the cover: me and Medusa staring out at the ocean, like we’re deep in thought, me standing, Medusa sitting good-dog style, both of us poised on a jetty by the ocean, waves pounding. What no one can tell is that my sister Jamie was off camera, holding a box of dog treats, or that I’m being totally soaked.

  I’m all Hollywood now.

  Which is totally fine with me since I start college in a few months, at a school in the Northeast that wouldn’t otherwise have even looked at my application, given that I didn’t exactly have spectacular SAT scores, and my GPA, let’s face it, sucked big-time. Only six months ago I couldn’t get a third-rate college to accept me, even with Newman’s incredibly well written essay, and then, surprise surprise, after April 21, a bunch of the first-tier schools that I applied to actually started recruiting me.

  The one that I chose (correction: my parents helped me choose) promised they are going to give me the athlete treatment even though I’m no great athlete, which means that I will have a tutor and all kinds of other privileges not meant for ordinary kids, not even the other LD kids.

  Get this: They even gave me what is essentially a free ride (heavy-duty scholarship money, to all you people who don’t have kids trying to get into colleges, and oh yeah, for you same people, LD stands for “Learning Disabled”).

  As to being LD, no big, as pretty much one quarter of my graduating class at Meadows High can claim to be one or more version of this label. For example, there’s ADD and ADHD and dyslexia and bipolar disorder and a bunch of other syndromes and of course MC, which was Mr. Connelly’s label for any kid with learning disabilities (as in “mentally challenged”). More on Connelly later, of course, except to say that he took pride in creating nicknames for those freshman kids who had the misfortune of getting him for English. He didn’t, however, create mine.

  Kids have been calling me “Crash” since first grade. He wasn’t about to change that. More on that later too.

  But first this . . .

  My name is Steven Crashinsky, and I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD to you. This is the story of how I saved Meadows High. . . .

  Scratch that.

  Actually I’d rather begin this way:

  My name is Steven Crashinsky, and I saved over a thousand people one Monday in the middle of April when a kid named David Burnett went psycho and held the entire school hostage, taking over the faculty lounge at Meadows High armed with assault weapons and high-powered explosives.

  You probably already know this if you’ve read the news-papers in the last two months or bothered to watch the news (if you haven’t, Google me now and my name will come up like two hundred thousand times).

  Of course, me saving the entire faculty and student body at Meadows didn’t exactly happen the way it was described in news reports. There is another part of the story, a secret that only I know. Until now.

  OK, scratch that too.

  Here’s the thing:

  I have this book agent, Sally Levine, who’s a major milf even though she’s probably, like, forty. She got me this book deal of major-league proportions. All because of what she calls “the secret.”

  The Secret, as it turns out, was also the name of another book. I know this because when I suggested it as the title of my book, Sally told me that it wasn’t a good idea, being as there already was a bestseller by that name about something entirely different.

  Whatever.

  The secret, at least my secret, is about the words David Burnett whispered to me that afternoon, which ended the siege at Meadows High School, the words that have plagued me since April 21. Since then, whenever anyone asked what it was that David said to me when it all went down, I always answer, “That’s between me and David Burnett.”

  Actually, I didn’t mean for it to be a secret. I just didn’t want to talk about it at the time. And then Sally ended up making such a big thing out of it, which brings me back to how I got a book deal in the first place.

  Since the newspaper reporters wanted to know the secret, and the television reporters wanted to know, and everyone else I met wanted to know, Sally, being good at what she does, found a way to make sure that I would be well compensated for revealing the now-famous secret.

  In fact, she developed an entire strategy around it and was able to get me onto all those morning TV talk shows where I did so well that she felt that she could not only get me a book deal, but she could possibly also get me endorsements and stuff. Point being, those interviews were cake, basically because I got to say the same thing over and over again, always ending with some reporter asking about the secret and me answering, “That’s between me and David Burnett.” Mostly nodding and making sure I looked good on camera, with my practiced look of concern, heroism, and of course, my mysterious Crash smile at the very end, the combination of which was designed to pretty much guarantee me an unlimited supply of tail.

  Not that I need any help in that area, no complaints from me, but if I should ever need it, no doubt being a hero and having a book out will most definitely close the deal.

  So not only did Sally manage to get a bunch of publishers interested, one of them agreed that I can say virtually anything I want in this book, because she pitched it as the raw truth kind of story, which means, get this: In my contract (seriously), I have a paragraph that says that I have final approval over everything that’s printed, which means that if I write it and I want it in, the publisher can’t cut it.

  Still, she has this vision that the book should be something that high school English teachers would be able to encourage their students to read. S
o she told me, “Steven, while it doesn’t have to be completely sanitized, it should be, let’s call it, a ‘PG work,’ using the movie analogy.”

  She said this to me during a meeting at my lawyer’s office (actually my father’s lawyer), this big huge bald guy in an Armani suit who sat behind his huge desk the whole time, taking notes while Sally went on and on, with me sitting forward on this deep leather couch to avoid sinking in, all wired up, thinking about all of the books I have had to read since ninth grade: To Kill a Mockingbird, Kon-Tiki, All Quiet on the Western Front, ugh, The Grapes of Wrath, whatever.

  And then it hits me for the first time that other kids will actually be reading my book, possibly alongside those so-called classics. That is assuming, of course, that I can actually write it.

  Except, of course, what no one is talking about is how the fuck am I actually going to write a book?

  Trying to put that thought out of my mind, what I tell her is “I don’t think I could do it as a PG version. What about an ‘R,’ as in kids under seventeen will have to get their mom’s permission to buy the book?” (Even though I know kids under seventeen do not need their parents’ permission to read anything.)

  Just so she’s clear, I remind her, no way can certain words be avoided, not if I’m going to tell the story the way it happened. And even though I know she knows what I’m talking about, she still asks:

  “What kind of language do you feel is necessary?”

  Me: “Like ‘fuck.’” (Thinking I’m probably ruining my chance to be like the Moby Dick guy, whose books have been taught for forever, but fuck it.)

  Sally: “Can it be avoided? Or at least used sparingly?”

  Me (thinking about it): “Uh-uh. Ever see Superbad?”

  From the looks of things, Superbad meant nothing to her.

  Sally: “Well, can you refrain from vulgarity in any great doses? Use euphemisms if possible? Substitute suggestive words for the vulgar ones?”

  Me: “I can try” (knowing there is no way I can try, not if I’m going to tell the real story).

  Her. “Good. That’s all we can ask.”

  Me: “So we’re good on ‘fuck’ then?”

  Sally shoots me the enough is enough look, which, if you have ADHD, you’ve seen this look more than a few times in your life. So this is nothing new for me.

  Now my lawyer gets his turn.

  He motions for me to approach his desk, where there are four copies of the book contract laid out side by side by side by side. He hands me a pen, and I pick up one of the contracts and thumb through it. Like no chance in hell was I actually going to read it, but I did want to see the money part in writing. And sure enough, there it was, this big huge number underlined and then spelled out. All because Sally made the secret such a big-time thing.

  Thank you, Sally Levine.

  The lawyer points out where to sign, and that’s when I notice my father’s signature on each of the four copies.

  Four days earlier, my father reluctantly cosigned another contract, one for a new BMW, part of our deal. Except as he was signing for the car, he made it superclear: He does not approve.

  But then again, Jacob Crashinsky has not approved of anything I’ve done since I was born. Since he does not live with us anymore as my parents got divorced years ago—because of me, or so he claimed (more on that later)—I don’t give a shit what he thinks, as he no longer controls my life on a daily basis. And surprisingly, even though he now lives with a young, very beautiful new wife, who has saved my life more than a few times, he hasn’t chilled out even one bit since he was living with us.

  Point being, on his way out of the BMW dealership, he reminded me that he will be in charge of the funds I get from the book deal, and that he’ll be investing the money with the full expectation that I will have to return most, if not all of it, because, like with every other project that I’ve ever started, he has zero expectations about my ability to complete the task.

  That, of course, makes me one thousand percent motivated, just to prove him wrong. Not for the money, not for the fame, not for the guaranteed tail . . . just so I get to wave a manuscript in his face with a big fuck-you smile.

  Can’t wait, is what I’m thinking as I start signing the contracts. And then the lawyer holds me off for a second.

  “Steven, just to confirm,” he tells me, “what you are agreeing to produce is an absolutely truthful account of everything that went on in your life, including the events that led up to the siege on 4/21.”

  I nod. No big. But this is clearly not good enough for him.

  “What is essential here is accuracy,” he goes on. “What that means is, you must avoid writing anything that you cannot verify. Do you understand what libel is?”

  Me: “Sure.” (No idea, actually.)

  Him (knowing I’m bluffing): “It’s writing something negative that is not true about another party, something that injures that party’s reputation. If you libel Mr. Burnett or anyone else, they can sue you. So as long as you tell the absolute, verifiable truth, there will not be a problem. But just so there’s no mistake, if you say something derogatory and it proves false, Mr. Burnett can not only sue you, he can sue the publisher, and he can sue your father, who is signing on your behalf.” He says this like it’s supposed to scare me.

  It almost makes me laugh. But no problem. I don’t need to make anything up. The truth is weird enough.

  OK, so the meeting goes on and they talk about some other terms in the contract and then about timing, and Sally reminds me again that I will need to finish the draft by the end of the summer, before I start college. And then she talks and talks about the structure of the book and what should be in and what shouldn’t and my mind drifts off (no surprise there, ADHD, remember?) and the lawyer is Clear and Sally is Clear and I am Clear: We all have our jobs to do.

  Sounds easy enough, except as I leave the office, I start thinking about actually writing this thing, and how I probably should have listened better.

  Whatever.

  I have the entire summer to figure it out.

  Chapter One

  The Club Crew

  So me and Newman are smoking in my new car, in the lot across the street from the nature preserve, where pretty much everyone goes to bake, and Newman asks me how’s it going with the book and I have to tell him:

  “Not.”

  He takes a long hit on the bowl, hacking up a lung as he passes it back. I snort a major hit, thick smoke out my nose and mouth at the same time.

  Excellent weed. Good start-of-the-summer weed. Smooth, herbal tasting, not resiny or rough, but I cough another hacking lung cough anyway. I am feeling it before the smoke even leaves my lungs. Not that I’m a lightweight or anything. I can go hit for hit with you on the fattest blunt you’ve ever rolled, no flinching. Even when your eyes roll back, I’ll be in for a few more hits.

  This stuff, however, is superdank.

  “What do you mean, not?” Newman going for another hit. The BMW is pretty much filled with smoke by now.

  It’s strange for me and Newman to be smoking by ourselves. Typically, there’s at least four of us, sometimes five, sometimes the entire Club Crew, as in me, Newman, Pete, Evan, Bosco, Kenny, and Bobby, in any combination, core members of the Club, which is what we’ve called ourselves since freshman year. The “Crew” part came later, since Bobby started wearing only J.Crew shirts, which we all thought was totally gay until we all started wearing J.Crew clothes too, since his sister was working there, which of course got us the name Club Crew since we kind of matched, which of course made us all look totally gay, which was what everyone said, and which was nothing but a joke, but it stuck for us.

  Point is, we tend to hang together most nights as we have in the past, when we’re not hanging with other groups or partying with the Herd Girls at Kelly’s or some other house.

  And whenever we hang together, of course, we smoke weed together.

  Mostly every night. And mostly we start in the lot across
the street from the nature preserve. No one ever bothers us there, even though pretty much everybody knows that if there are cars parked by the nature preserve after sundown, some kids are baking there.

  “What do you mean, not?” Newman is asking again. “It’s been two weeks.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  Alex Newman is one of the top five smartest kids I have ever met. He’s not just school smart, which he also is, since he never got anything less than an A– in any class, but he’s also a super-creative genius, which separates him from the other smartest kids I know. David Burnett, for example, was always an off-the-charts genius, but he was also off-the-charts crazy, so you couldn’t count him. Christina is pretty much the smartest book-smart girl I know, but she’s kind of hard to understand sometimes, even though she is mad talented. Kenny is brilliant, half Chinese and all, but Newman, with his creativity and his understanding of real-life shit, totally has them all beat, if you ask me. Facts, weird stuff, languages, whatever, he knows all this shit cold (OK, Burnett probably more in this area, I will concede this).

  Plus, Newman can do one thing that none of the others can do, as in, on the spot, he can make up a perfect story, totally spontaneously, and then turn it into a screenplay in like a single day.

  No one would argue the point about him being a creative genius.

  So it makes sense that he wants to write and direct movies, which everyone believes he’ll end up doing. Not only that, he is going to NYU film school to learn how to do it. Not only NYU, but Tisch School of the Arts. Like a hundred thousand people apply to this program every year, and like a hundred get in. Newman could have gotten into any college he wanted to. Like, Harvard material, which is where his parents wanted him to go and which he actually got into.

  Newman, however, had his own ideas. And so, Tisch.

  With him being the most creative kid I know, I figured he would be the best guy to go to for advice. He was away in California for the beginning of the summer, so this is the first time I have seen him since graduation.