Another hit for each of us.
“What the fuck have you been doing all this time, Crash?” Now Newman is starting to sound like Sally, who emails me asking for an update, like, every day. And every day I tell her I’m working on it.
But I’m not.
I’m playing Grand Theft Auto on PS3, or Guitar Hero or Rock Band or some other game. Or I’m hanging with the Club Crew down at Pinky’s or going down to Rye Playland or baking by the nature preserve. Or partying with kids from some other Westchester town who heard about me or saw me on TV. Thing is, with all these things I’m doing, I am not writing. Not a word since the book contract was signed.
“Why the fuck not?” asks Newman.
So I confess, “Why the fuck not is because I have no fucking clue how to write a book.”
There it is, out in the open. I am in way over my head, thinking will I have to give the Beamer back when they find out I can’t do this, plus pay back the rest of the money. And worst of all, admit to Jacob Crashinsky that his son is a failure, no surprise there.
Fuckme.
My cell buzzes. I look at the number: Bosco. Probably looking to score some free weed. Bosco is always looking to score some free weed. I don’t answer it.
Newman takes another hit. “You are fucked,” he says. “You’ll never get it done in time.” Then he coughs a spitcough, bright yellow lung butter, mostly out the window but not completely. I would not tolerate that from any other friend, but Newman is Newman.
One other thing about Newman: Besides being brilliant, he is absolutely realistic about everything, so when he says I’m not going to get it done, he is probably right, which, tell you the truth, scares me a little more.
I wait for his next words of wisdom.
. . . And wait.
He is playing around with the satellite radio, blasting the Foo Fighters. Switches to some eighties heavy metal, which is practically all Newman ever listens to these days. Adjusting the balance, the treble, then upping the bass until the car is pumping.
Now he can think. I have watched his mind work for four years now. I know his thinking face.
“Have you even tried?” he says, still deep in thought.
I tell him, “I sit there with my MacBook, for, like, at least three hours every day.” True, but mostly with a DVD in it, or iTunes, looking for music, movies, or otherwise checking out porn. C’mon, Alex, I am thinking to myself, watching him think. Come up with something.
Thing is, he’s working on his own screenplay of the siege at Meadows High School. It starts, he tells me, with a shot of the elementary school, camera following down the main hall, panning down the stairs to the basement, all spooky and dark, then into the janitor’s office, where the door opens, then closes, and we see two eight-year-old boys, a mountain of toilet paper rolls, books, and newspapers between them. One kid fat and sloppy, the other thin and wiry. You can tell right away that the fat kid is in control. Fat boy grabs a small bottle off the shelf, pours it on to the paper mountain, then takes a lighter and works it through the pile until the entire thing ignites. Thin boy, looking startled, slinks back, just as . . . the door opens, and a tall, authoritative male figure walks in. Freeze-frame. Titles under the boys, “How David Burnett Got His Nickname.”
It is genius, way better than I can do.
My cell phone buzzes again, this time a text message. Again from Bosco, asking where we are and whether we’re gonna meet him.
I text him back.
Not now.
“So you think I should start all the way back in grade school?” I ask, which had never occurred to me, because I was mostly thinking that the whole book was just going to be about the days that led up to me saving the school, which is what I tell Newman, who says:
“Dude, you can’t make it just about the siege. It’s got to be about your relationship with David from the beginning, the story from an insider’s perspective. Otherwise it’s going to be the same as all the news stories that were already printed. That’s what I’m doing for the screenplay. For me, it’s about two kids who are oddly alike and yet completely different. I even thought about telling the same story from both perspectives. Flash to Crash, flash to Burn. Get it?”
“Sure, I get it,” I tell him, although I have no idea what he’s talking about. Not only that, but I wonder what he meant by “oddly alike,” given that there is no part of me that is like David Burnett. Newman is, to tell you the truth, pissing me off.
He continues. “You should exploit the parallels: both of you guys having your issues with school, you know, your fathers, the Thanksgiving thing, his mom and your mom were friendly, everything, you know, with Roxanne, then there’s basketball and poker and Christina and Massachusetts and the wedding. You have a ton of things to write about. Make them each a chapter. Write about all of that. You admitted that there were times when you two were friends.”
“Not really. . . .” He is further pissing me off.
Newman shoots me a look like I’m missing the point, which I probably am.
My cell phone buzzes again. This time it’s Pete texting,
Where’s Newman? You got trees?
I am now feeling the full effects of the weed, and I’m starting not to care so much about the whole book thing, so I text back,
With Newman now, meet us at Pinky’s
When?
15
You talk to Bosco?
Not yet.
He’s going crazy.
So?
So who’s got the shit?
Now I’m completely annoyed, because they all know I have the shit. The way it’s been going down all summer is Bosco relying on me for weed to always get him high, not working or contributing at all, then complaining that it’s shwag and smoking it anyways, saying he can get better, but never having the money, then one by one, the rest of the Club hitting me up for my stash, all counting on the fact that I have book money to fund them getting fucked up.
We get to Pinky’s. Once an amusement park for kids, now a burger palace/ice cream and coffee store, a combination Johnny Rockets, Starbucks, and Dairy Queen, which is perfect for two things: hanging when there’s nowhere else to go, and eating like an animal when you’re high. Perfect because of its gigantic parking lot where the rides used to be, a parking lot where hardly any adults ever park. Perfect also because for some reason the cops never come around or bother anyone as long as everyone sticks to the Pinky’s Rule, which is, never get high or drunk in the parking lot itself. Pretty much we all stick to that rule, being as we are all high or wasted by the time we get there.
I spot Kenny’s Explorer immediately and we pull up beside it, me trying to figure out who is in the car. They are clearly violating the Pinky’s Rule because the inside of the car is clouded in smoke. Kenny and Evan and Bobby and Bobby’s girlfriend, Ashley, who is in the backseat with Bobby. She has been coming along with him too often for my taste. Not that she’s all that bad, just that she’s real quiet, which makes Bobby quiet, which is annoying because Bobby was never quiet before. Plus she’s a little weird, if you ask me.
Me to Newman: “Doesn’t he go anywhere without her?”
Newman: “She’s kind of like his Yoko.” Which to me is a cool reference, because Bobby is a musician, probably the best guitarist in our school. And from what I’ve heard, he started bringing her around during every practice with his band. And even though I have no proof, I heard he wrote a song about her.
Newman: “Can’t wait to hear his new song.” So I guess the rumors are true.
The Explorer’s windows roll down. Kenny sticks his head out and says, “Yo, Crash, where the fuck is Bosco?” But I’m already getting a text from Bosco that says, “where the fuck r u?” Which means either he was stupid or didn’t see us, because I told him where we were going. So before I text back “Pinky’s” I see him walking over with Pete and two guys I never saw before, which means that they are probably there to mooch off me. Now I am even more pissed off, because Bosc
o, no doubt, has promised to share my stuff with people I don’t even fucking know.
So now I’m sitting in a booth with the P Burger Special with fries smothered in cheese sauce, ketchup on the side, and it is fucking awesome, awesome enough to make me forget how pissed off I am. Newman is across from me, has his own version of the munchies with a Diet Coke and a V Burger, which is the veggie version of my real meal, as Newman is now some kind of vegetarian and has not eaten any animals since the beginning of senior year.
Bosco and the others decided to wait outside, being as they already ate and they are there mainly because they are waiting for my weed. Fuck them, they can wait.
“I’ve been thinking how I would approach this book thing. . . .” Newman is scrunching his eyes with his fingers, either really stoned or really thinking.
“You want some milk shake?” I ask him. He waves me off, still scrunching. I keep forgetting that he’s the kind of vegetarian that won’t even have milk. I mean, like, nothing that has anything to do with animals. No shit, since September, I don’t think I’ve seen him eat anything that I would eat.
Bosco’s coming in now. I knew he couldn’t wait until after my burger.
“So, Crash . . .” Bosco leans over the table, practically dribbling into my fries.
Newman now begins to recite out loud:
“Bosco is a skinny kid, lanky, almost gawky, which makes him look taller than he actually is. Curly haired, freckled with acne, he sometimes looks in the mirror and wonders if a girl is ever going to love him or touch him where it matters. Maybe one day, but definitely not this summer, and definitely not Amanda Jenkins.”
“What the fuck?” yells Bosco, though I totally get it. Now either I’m really thinking clearly or I’m really, really stoned, because I am thinking on Newman’s level for a minute, which I can sometimes do when I’m superhigh, as in see into other people’s minds. And what I’m seeing amazes me, because at that moment I know, I totally know, that Newman can, if he wants, dictate my book from start to finish without blinking, without missing a beat.
I mean, his description of Bosco was a better Bosco than Bosco was himself. I immediately know two things: (1) his screenplay is going to be way better than my book, and (2) he doesn’t care about his screenplay, because he is trying to teach me how to do it on my own. I wouldn’t even have thought to describe Bosco in my book before that very moment.
“Why did you have to bring up Amanda?” Bosco literally snaps at him, like he doesn’t know that everyone knows he loves her and he’s got no shot with her. No way, not ever.
“Give us a minute,” Newman tells him, and Bosco, being majorly offended, is already on his way out anyways.
My mind is suddenly spinning with the possibility that I could, if I continued to think like Newman, actually bang out a book in a few weeks.
“Like I said, I’ve been thinking about how I would approach this if I was you. All you have to do is dictate stuff right into a voice recorder and then have it typed up. It will definitely be better than you think,” he says, shedding absolutely no light on my problem. “Thing is, you need to write about everything, every day, no matter what. Start a journal and put everything in there, absolutely everything you can think of into it, stuff like your thoughts, what’s going on in your life now, whatever you can remember from back in the day. This stuff . . .” He motions around the room to what is going on in Pinky’s at that very moment.
“Pinky’s? I’m not putting Pinky’s in my book,” I say, not getting it at first, but then sort of getting it.
He continues in his Newman way, not even hearing me, being all consumed with his thoughts. “Then, when you have enough stuff, just give the whole thing to your agent. Let her worry about it. I mean, you can definitely do this, Steven, I know what you are capable of when you get your mind going on something. No one knows better than I do. Plus you happen to write really well. Did you forget what you learned? I don’t think so. Why don’t you start by just going grade by grade, building up to the day you saved the school. You can absolutely describe what you felt that day. Hour by hour—we’ve done that before. Use that total-recall thing you can do when you’re high.”
He’s right. I still remember every minute of that day, from the moment that I passed Burn on the steps of the school when he was going in and I was coming out to the exact conversation I had with Jamie when she called me on my cell after I went back to sleep that morning, wasted from the night before and determined not to show up for any classes. After all, it was our unofficial Senior Skip Day.
Maybe it’s just being in Newman’s presence, or maybe it’s the weed, but I’m actually beginning to believe I can do it. I can write a whole book. Starting from that very moment in Pinky’s and working my way backward.
I can do this. No doubt in my mind. All I have to do is to approach this thing the way I do everything else:
Superhigh.
Chapter Two
How Burn Became Burn
William McAllister Elementary School.
The oldest building in the neighborhood. I remember the smell more than anything else. That and the fact that it was supposed to be haunted. I think William McAllister was some kind of general in the Revolutionary War, at least that’s what I remember hearing, but I couldn’t prove this having searched the internet and having not come up with his name.
Anyways, when we started there, the older kids told us that General McAllister’s spirit still lingered in the lunchroom and always made strange noises throughout that building. Point was, you definitely didn’t want to go down those halls by yourself. Not ever. Pete once claimed to see a woman walking on air when he was on his way to the nurse’s office.
And the principal, this super-old guy, Principal Seidman, looked pretty much like a goblin, all pasty and hunched over. Sometimes he showed up in the middle of class and just stood around with his hands clasped together in front of his belt, watching us through these really thick glasses.
He had this saying, which he would blurt out all the time. He would look at one of us (mostly me) and say, “A word to the wise is worth two of the eyes.”
What the fuck was that supposed to mean anyways?
He’s dead now, so there’s no way of finding out.
He knew me by name because I was always getting into trouble. Sometimes he would stop me during recess in the playground and say, “Steven, a word to the wise . . .”
“Yeah, I know, Principal Seidman . . . ,” I would say, trying to get away from him. “Two of the eyes.” I was probably running too fast or throwing a ball too hard or teasing some girl badly enough to make her cry or something. Like I said, I was used to getting yelled at. So I didn’t expect him to call me over with any other kind of question.
But on this one particular fall day, he did.
“See that boy over there?” he asked, squatting to get down to my size. I remember looking past my teacher, Mrs. Henderson, beyond the swing sets and the jungle gym, to where Seidman was pointing, to the very farthest corner of the playground, where this superfat kid clung to the fence, his hands clawed to the chain links like he was planning an escape.
“His mom dropped him off this morning. They just moved into town. From Chicago.”
He said “Chicago” like it was supposed to mean something to me, like it was as important as “two of the eyes.” I didn’t know whether “Chicago” was a city or a state. Or a country, for that matter. And so I wondered if the kid even spoke English.
“His name is David Burnett. His mom said that he’s shy. I would like you to talk to him, maybe introduce him around.”
I looked into Principal Seidman’s thick eyeglasses, trying to figure him out.
“Why me?”
“Because all the kids seem to like you, Steven,” he answered, surprising me.
“Go away,” said the fat kid when I finally got over to him. He was fatter up close, and he had a funny way of talking, almost like he was an adult trapped in a kid’s body. An adu
lt with a really funny lisp. No wonder he was trying to escape.
“Do you play soccer?” was all I could think of to say.
“No. I do not fucking play soccer. Do you think I’d be this fat if I played fucking soccer?”
“What about baseball?” I asked. “Pacelli plays baseball and he’s kind of fat.”
“No, you fucking moron. I don’t play sports of any kind. I have anxiety.” He turned his attention back to the fence, never actually having let go.
I wondered if anxiety was a disease that kept you from playing ball. I think I confused it with asthma. I must have, because I was thinking that he probably carried an inhaler. Like Chris Anders, he had one and so did, I think, Jessica. But Chris played ball, so maybe it wasn’t asthma, except that whenever Chris played, his mom would stand over him and always ask was he OK?
“I have ADD,” I announced, almost proudly, having been recently diagnosed with this disorder. The way it was explained to me at the time, there was a medical reason that I was unable to concentrate, and I had just started taking some kind of medication that would make it easier to listen in school.
“That’s not actually a sickness,” he answered, like he was some kind of authority. “That’s just another way of saying that you’re stupid.”
“Is not,” I answered. “I’m on medicine for it and everything.”
“Well, my cousin has ADD, and he’s, like, fucking retarded,” the fat kid spat back. “My sister makes fun of him all the time and he doesn’t even know.”
I wondered if his sister was another fat kid suffering from some other kind of disease that I never heard of before. At least I had heard of ADD. Like five kids in my grade told me that they had ADD even before I found out that I had it.
“What about video games? I have Sega.” I tried changing the subject, not because I wanted to talk to the fat kid anymore, but because I noticed that Seidman was still watching us.
Crash and Burn Page 2
