by Barry Lyga
I have always been confident in my skills, and the summer has honed them and made me even more confident. That’s what making something like a couple dozen different pizzas in a row will do for you. Still, the idea of a livestream just seems to beg for disaster. “I don’t know. What’s the point? It’s the same thing as a regular episode, just live. There’s nothing exciting about it.”
“It’s the unknown factor. People tune in because they think anything could happen.”
“Listen to yourself. It’s pizza, not surgery. What, do they think I’m going to set myself on fire or burn the house down?”
“I don’t know what they think. I don’t care. I just want them to watch. Maybe…” Her voice bursts into a musical giggle for a moment. “Oh, man, I’ve got it! We make it a challenge! People love stuff like that. We make it a thing where people tell you—live—what ingredients to use and you have to come up with a pizza.”
“Ugh. I don’t know.… That doesn’t sound like fun.”
“You don’t have to do it every time, or all the time. Just every now and then. It’ll get lots of attention drawn to you. Lots of views and hits and comments. We could start pulling in some advertising and make money on this. That would pretty amazing, right?”
“Do we have to let them tell me what to make? I sort of have my own ideas about what makes a good pizza. It all sounds a little too Chopped to me.”
She sighs noisily into my ear. “What if we just make it like a Q&A? We’ll let people ask questions. I mean, a lot of our comments are questions about making pizza. You could answer them live.”
“A lot of our comments are sexist and racist and, and, and—”
“The word you’re looking for is Islamophobic.”
“Right. That.”
“But mixed in there are genuine questions.”
Now it’s my turn to sigh. “You want to open the floor to the idiots who troll you in the comments? For every person who asks about kneading dough or preheating a pizza stone, you’re gonna get ten jackasses promising to stuff you like a grape leaf.”
“That’s an image I’d like to scrub from my brain.”
“I’m trying to impress upon you how—”
“Once again, Sebastian, I don’t need you to protect me. You worry about the cooking—let me worry about the comment trolls.”
I surrender. Sometimes I feel like that’s all I do with her.
I meet Evan at SAMMPark in our usual spot, near the statue of Susan Ann Marchetti. He looks the same, dressed too casually in jeans and a T-shirt that individually cost more than everything I’m wearing, yet designed to look as raggedy as my own clothes. Wish someone could explain that to me.
“How was Illuminati Camp?” I ask him, clasping his hand.
“Man, I missed you and not understanding half of what you say.” He reels me in for a one-armed bro-hug, which I reciprocate. It’s good to see him again. Texts and e-mails and Instagrams aren’t the same.
We break our clinch, grinning, and walk into the park. “Half of what I say? On your best day, you get maybe twenty, twenty-five percent of my references. The Illuminati are these guys who are rumored to secretly rule the world. Have since, like, olden times—”
“Oh, those guys.” He waves at the air. “Sure, sure. Dad has them over for poker on the third Saturday of every month.”
“How was it?”
He groans, annoyed that his deflection hasn’t ricocheted the question into the upper stratosphere, where he doesn’t have to deal with it. “Truth? It sucked. Boring as hell. God, I hate rich kids.”
“Self-loathing is a strange trait in you.”
A grunt and half-smile. “Tell me about your summer.”
“You saw it. It was online.” But I go ahead and give him the basic history of it all, how it started, how it progressed.
He eyes me warily, regarding me with the sort of penetrating vision and comprehension only a longtime friend can muster and project. “There’s more to it than pizza. You’re into this girl, aren’t you?”
By now we’ve walked deeper into the park, not really paying attention to our path. We’ve played here since we were kids; we know this place better than we know our backyards. I manage a halfhearted shrug, an unspoken nondenial.
“Have you been, like, with a girl all summer long and you didn’t tell me?” he demands, half in excitement, half in outrage. “Dude!”
We close in on the fountain at the center of the park, ringed by six benches, each with a dedication plaque set into it. I can recite them all from memory.
“Not so loud,” I reprimand, and sit on TO THE MEMORY OF ALLEN HALEY.
Evan drops a coin into the fountain. The town actually prefers that people not do that, and there is a sign posted to that effect, but Evan does it every time we come here anyway. He leans against the fountain’s rampart and crosses his arms over his chest. “You have a girlfriend. Wild.”
I shake my head. “Nah. Not yet.” And then I proceed to fill him in on all things Aneesa-related that are not specifically pizza-related. Our Fourth of July together. Our sharing of old movies and TV shows (at my suggestion, but she enjoys them). The way she took my hand.
“I’m just waiting for the perfect moment,” I tell him. “To make my move. You know?”
Evan worries his upper lip with his teeth, then shrugs. “Look, I don’t know how to say this, but… you’ve been friend-zoned, man.”
“Have not.” There is more heat in my voice than I intend. How would he know? He doesn’t have a girlfriend. And he’s never met Aneesa.
“Hey, you would know better than me.” He shrugs again. “I’m just saying—you wait too long, they start to think you’re not interested. They stick you in the friend-zone. You know?”
Evan is my best friend and Evan is rich and Evan is smart, but Evan doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know Aneesa.
“Just… never mind about her, okay?”
“Okay,” he says with equanimity. Equanimity comes easy to Evan. He’s never disturbed by anything. “What classes did you pull this semester?”
Our schedules are e-mailed to us a week before school starts, along with recommended reading lists and, if the teacher is on the ball, a class syllabus. We dig into our pockets for our phones so that we can see which classes we’ll have together.
We’ve managed to land in the same Algebra II class, as well as Chemistry I. We’ve also managed to sync up on World History I, Economics, and lunch.
“Who do you have for English?” I ask.
Evan grins, folds his hands over his heart, and gazes with gratitude toward the heavens. “Miss Powell. There is a God, Sebastian, and He has bestowed upon me Miss Powell.”
Miss Powell is not just the hottest teacher at South Brook High—it’s entirely possible she is the hottest teacher in the world. Her hotness is bolstered by the fact that she dresses like a nineteen-year-old and aims her flirting at the whole class at the same time, probably barely skirting the edge of laws designed to keep teachers and students from clawing each other’s clothes off.
“Wow,” I say, for there’s nothing else to add.
“Wow, indeed. Wow, indeed. How about you?”
I look down at my schedule, even though I have it memorized. I’ve got Ms. Benitez for English. More specifically, for a class called “Accelerated Composition and Structure.”
“Tough pull.” Evan winces. “My brother had Benitez for ACAS. She’s a hard-ass.”
“I can handle it.”
“That’s a senior-level class. Why are you taking it early?”
“To get it out of the way, I guess.” The truth is, I’m not sure why I signed up for ACAS so early. I didn’t even think I’d get in as a sophomore. I’ve always taken the toughest classes, the most advanced ones. There’s never been a question. Otherwise, I get bored. So I just figured, Why not? Maybe I should have asked why instead.
“It’ll work out,” I tell Evan.
He comes closer and stares at me for an u
ncomfortable moment. “Your summer was good?”
“Well, yeah.” I’m a little flustered by his sudden intensity. “I told you.”
“Okay. You just seem different.”
“Different good or different bad?”
He takes long enough to answer that I know he’s actually considering. “I can’t tell,” he confesses. “I guess that’s why I had to ask.”
The plan is to record episodes once a week on the weekends during the school year, but for Aneesa’s live-stream idea, we do it the evening before school starts. Mom helps us out since Aneesa needs to be able to ask me questions and hold the microphone to me—we don’t have a clip-on, and I can’t cook and hold a microphone at the same time. We show Mom the best angles to use, and she manages to keep out of our way while still keeping everything in frame.
Aneesa has an iPad with an app where the questions come in. She shadows me, trying to keep from distracting me too much while also staying out of Mom’s shot. We manage to keep things moving, and the few times we collide, it’s funny rather than hazardous. We laugh a lot, and Mom laughs, too, even though we tell her to stay quiet.
By the end, I’ve answered about twenty questions from live viewers, and I take my first on-screen bite of pizza. A basic whole-wheat crust topped with a bianca sauce, wilted spinach, shrimp, and shredded Romano cheese.
“That’s amazing,” Aneesa says as she chews on her slice.
“It’s not bad,” I concede.
“Talent and humility!” Aneesa crows at the camera. “You’ve witnessed it here, folks! Keep watching—it’s school time, but there’s still more to come!”
That night, after kissing my forehead, Mom says, “I really like her.”
“So do I, Mom.”
First day of school, following a summer I couldn’t have expected or anticipated. It happened so fast that I don’t even know what to think of it. And now I have to decide: Sit with Evan or with Aneesa on the bus?
Evan makes it easy for me—he’s on the bus already and sits with another kid, on the aisle. Aneesa and I slip into the empty seat across from him. I make introductions. They nod politely at each other.
“Strange to see you without pizza,” Evan teases gently.
Aneesa flashes her teeth at him and shoots back, “I thought Sebastian invented you.”
They laugh at each other, and I release a breath I can’t remember holding in the first place.
First period is ACAS. I am the lone sophomore in a room full of seniors. I find a seat in the back, near the window, and think of Evan, no doubt already in a glazed-eyes state of lust over Miss Powell’s sartorial selections du jour.
Ms. Benitez is wearing a severe dress with creases sharp enough to slice Romano cheese. Her chin comes to a threatening point, recalling to mind Evan’s dad. I’m beginning to think I made a mistake signing up for this class.
I tune in as she’s ranting about the word nice. Ms. Benitez is apparently a general in a holy war against this word. She seeks nothing less than total annihilation.
“Eliminate this word from your vocabularies,” she insists. “Not just in this class, but in all your classes, in your lives. This is not a word that describes, that evokes, that conjures. It’s useless. It’s meaningless,” she rails, “and you all use it constantly. ‘He’s nice. She’s nice. How was the dance? It was nice.’”
As though possessed by the need to emphasize her point, she scrawls the word on the whiteboard in ten-inch-high letters and then X’s through it savagely.
“Nice is the white bread of the English language adjective breadbox. It’s tasteless, bland, and forgettable. When you speak, when you write,” she says with the air of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, “I want you to do it multigrain.”
I’ve changed my mind. I was totally right to take this class. Evan can have super-hot Miss Powell. I think I’m in love with Ms. Benitez.
I catch up with Aneesa between classes. “How’s your first day?”
“Good. Good.” I’m glad she didn’t say nice, a word that hitherto had seemed innocuous but is now ragingly offensive to my linguistic palette. She’s distracted, juggling her books and a sheet of paper. I help out with a spare hand.
“Thanks,” she says. “Where is ‘Tinselly 2’? I have a class there, like, two minutes ago.”
“Oh, that’s inside the band room. You have to go through the band room, and there’s a little hallway, and Tinselly 2 is back there.”
“How am I supposed to know that? On the map, it looks like—”
“I’ll take you,” I tell her. I march ahead confidently, and since I still have her books, she has no choice but to follow.
“Other than the mysterious labyrinth within which lies Tinselly 2, how’s it going?”
She shrugs, a little more calm now that her destination is no longer a mystery. “Fine. I guess. A little annoyed at how white bread all the reading is.”
Nice is the white bread of the English language adjective breadbox.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s all this old stuff,” she complains.
“Hey, I like old stuff!”
“Oh, so you don’t mind a steady diet of old white men?” The challenge in her voice is unmistakable. There is a right answer and a wrong answer to this question.
And, I suppose, an honest answer.
“I never thought about it that way,” I admit. “I just always try to extract some meaning from what’s in front of me. Whatever it is.”
She considers this. “And I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Someone once told me there’s a reason we’re all different.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a smart-ass, too?” she says drolly. “Band room! Excellent. Thank you, kind sir.” She mock-curtseys, swipes her books, and disappears inside.
I make a mad dash for my next class.
It usually takes a few days for me to adjust to the new school year, and this year is no different. By Thursday of the first week, I’ve figured out when I can listen, when I can tune out. The syllabus for Ms. Benitez’s class is rigorous, but not surprising, so I fade from class for a moment to consider the upcoming weekend and the first filming of a Chef Sebastian video concurrent with the school year. I want to craft something unexpected. I want, to use Ms. Benitez’s parlance, to bake multigrain. To prove to people—and to myself—that being back at school has not dulled my culinary wits.
I’m so focused on possible recipes that I nearly miss Ms. Benitez’s pronouncement.
“I’ve been thinking about this all week,” she says, “and I’ve decided to add something to the syllabus.”
A groan erupts around the room. The workload in ACAS is onerous enough without adding more.
She holds up a hand to forestall complaints, her mouth set in a grim, resolute line. “Enough. This is simply one more assignment. I’m confident you can all handle it. You’ll have the entire semester to work on it, so you can fit it in between other assignments.
“I used to make this particular assignment mandatory,” she goes on, “but I stopped a few years ago. I’ve been thinking recently, though, that most of you could benefit from it.” She stares unnervingly at us, somehow making it seem as though she’s staring at each of us individually. “You’re not babies anymore. You’re not children. You are young men and women, and I expect you to act like young men and women. Which means thinking of your futures. College or whatever your plans are. If you’re in this class, though, I can’t imagine your future plans don’t include college.
“No matter what you do in life, you’ll need to think critically. And you’ll also need to think self-critically. To examine your own actions and look for ways to improve. And to get into college, you’re going to need to write about yourselves.
“So. The assignment is this: You will write an essay about a significant event in your life, and what you would or would not change about it. The essay is not due until the end of the semester, but I expect you to be thinking a
bout it and working on it throughout. You’ll want to touch base with me at least a couple of times through the semester to make sure you’re on the right path.”
And she goes on and on, and then she drops it and starts teaching, but I hear only white noise and see only red.
A significant event in your life, and what you would or would not change about it.
A significant event in your life.
And what you would
Or would not
Change about it.
Are you fucking kidding me?
How about: not pulled the fucking trigger?
When the bell rings, I abandon English like it’s the Titanic, racing from there as though the room were filling rapidly with water and piranha. I stumble through the halls toward my locker, the sounds around me muted, the sights blurred.
She can’t mean—
She can’t want me to—
But what else is there? What else is there?
It’s got to be a mistake. An oversight. She’s thinking about the class, not each student, right?
I can’t do it. I can’t. There’s no way. This is insane. How am I supposed to—
At the lockers, Evan is holding forth with a group of his friends. They’re his friends, not mine, though I spend time with them almost by default. I like precisely none of them, and right now all I want is to get the books for my next class and escape to the mind-numbing pleasantry of my wood shop elective. I can’t tolerate Rich Kid Babble. Not usually. And especially not now, my mind churning like tornado clouds over Ms. Benitez’s assignment.
“Sebastian!” Evan says, as though I am a weary traveler he’s not seen at this tavern in many a fortnight. “How’s Benitez treating you?”
“Not well,” I confess, and spin my combination lock.
“Sebastian?” says Mark Vesentine. We’ve met before; we’ve hung out before. But he has to act as though he’s never heard of me. “Sebastian. Oh, yeah, I’ve seen you online. You’re the guy who makes those pizza videos. Yo, that shit is tight.”
