The Basic Eight

by Daniel Handler

c. I have had some sexual contact with the opposite sex (i.e., petting).

  d. I have had sexual intercourse with only one person.

  e. I have had sexual intercourse with more than one person.

  f. Homosexual.

  Douglas must be living in hell. I circled “d,” for Douglas.

  5. PLEASE CIRCLE THE SENTENCE THAT BEST DESCRIBES

  YOUR USE OF ALCOHOL:

  a. I have never had any alcohol (i.e., virgin).

  b. I sometimes have one beer or one glass of wine.

  c. I sometimes have several drinks but do not get drunk.

  d. I drink fairly often but don’t get drunk often.

  e. I drink and get drunk almost all the time.

  f. Twelve-step program (good for you!).

  I leaned over and tried to see if Natasha had circled “e,” but I still couldn’t catch her eye. I circled “d,” crossed it out and circled “c,” crossed “c” out, and tried to recircle “d.”

  6. PLEASE CIRCLE THE SENTENCE THAT BEST DESCRIBES YOUR USE OF ILLICIT DRUGS:

  a. I have never used illicit drugs.

  b. I have tried drugs once or twice.

  c. I rarely use drugs.

  d. I use drugs fairly often and am addicted to one drug.

  e. I use drugs fairly often and am addicted to all of them.

  f. Twelve-step program (good for you!).

  c.

  7. PLEASE CIRCLE THE DRUGS YOU HAVE EXPERIMENTED WITH:

  a. Marijuana.

  b. Cocaine.

  c. Heroin.

  d. LSD.

  e. Mushrooms.

  f. Angel dust.

  g. Uppers or downers.

  h. Trickettes.

  i. Fingerbars.

  j. Euphoria.

  k. Moonbeams.

  l. Tears of Love.

  m. “Singing Pills.”

  n. Snopes.

  o. Other. (If so, list them.)

  With which you have experimented. Needless to say, I didn’t put down absinthe in case the folks at Rebecca Boone had found something. I wonder if Natasha did.

  8. PLEASE CIRCLE THE SENTENCE WHICH BEST DESCRIBES YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

  a. I have strong beliefs in God in accordance with a commonly accepted religion and follow these beliefs always.

  b. I have strong beliefs in God in accordance with a commonly accepted religion but do not always follow these beliefs.

  c. I have some beliefs in God in accordance with a commonly accepted religion and follow them sometimes.

  d. I have some beliefs in God, but they are my own and not in accordance with a commonly accepted religion.

  e. Other. (If so, list them.)

  f. Atheist.

  9. PLEASE CIRCLE THE SENTENCE WHICH BEST DESCRIBES YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SATAN:

  a. I fear Satan according to my commonly accepted religion.

  b. I am occasionally tempted by Satan.

  c. I do not believe in Satan at all.

  d. I occasionally serve Satan.

  e. Other. (If so, list them.)

  f. Satanist.

  Look, we didn’t know. You have the advantage. You know it’s six days. All we knew was that it was October 25th, senior year, time to really get going on college applications, this last Roewer year stretched out in front of us like a dying whale on a dirty beach. It smelled. Small children were poking at it. Authorities and scientists would arrive soon to chop it into pieces, but we didn’t know that, so all of us, all of us checked “e.” On the horizontal horizon bare before us we wrote variations of the same joke: “Satan is the mother of a friend of mine.” “I know Satan’s daughter personally.” And the chiller. The one highlighted by a thin band of light, so when the entire page was shown on TV the innocent bystanders would know where to look. Often it was credited to me–a possibility that was too delicious for everyone to ignore. “Had I known the warning signs, I could have stopped them. My son would be sitting next to me today on your show, Winnie.” As if you’d even be on the show if he hadn’t been beaten to death in Satan’s lovely garden in the first place. As if your appearance on the show means anything, Eleanor Tert’s book means anything, as if it means anything that no matter what we wrote on an all-school survey, that it means anything to look at question 9 and see written there, in casual inside-joke ballpoint ink, “I am the spawn of Satan.”

  Tuesday October 26th

  Five days. If you were counting on your fingers you’d be down to your last hand. Do a little preview with me, starting with your pinkie: Five, four, three, two, one. Then nothing. Then he’s dead.

  When I woke up this morning I was already on the bus; don’t know how I managed that. I was staring out the window for a few minutes before I noticed that Lily was sitting next to me.

  “Oh, hi. Sorry. I’m so spacey this morning, I don’t even know how I ended up on this bus.”

  “It’s OK. Hey, have you heard the big weekend plan that will save us from this week’s horror?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, believe it or not, V__’s parents are leaving for five days. Sunday we’re going to have a garden party, well into the evening.”

  “Sunday?”

  “Yeah, and we thought we could all call in sick Monday morning, just lounge around Satan’s Palace.”

  “Are you sure I’m invited?” I said. “Nobody mentioned anything to me.”

  “V__ just found out last night. She said your line was busy.”

  “Natasha and I were just gossiping. You should have had the operator break into the line for an event like this.” I had in fact been arguing with Natasha over what she was going to do to Adam, if she should do anything, whether I should do anything, whether I was an idiot. Nothing was resolved, in case you’re curious.

  “Well, of course you’re invited. Everybody’s invited, although the morning-after thing will be just us.”

  “Sounds absolutely wonderful,” I said. It did. Go on, take a minute to count down to Sunday. Count on one hand.

  Wednesday October 27th

  Four days.

  This morning the Spawn of Satan was waiting for me just outside the faculty parking lot, near the side entrance. She was sitting on a bench, fiddling with her pearls and smoking. V__, smoking. Unbelievable.

  “Hello, Flan,” she said, biting her lip. She stood up suddenly, like she’d just heard a loud noise. The smoke wisped into the fog so for a minute it looked like the whole San Francisco sky came from V__’s menthol.

  “Hi,” I said uncertainly. Then, more certainly, “You’re smoking.”

  “Am I?” she said. “I hadn’t checked.” A reference to a joke of ours: Do you smoke after sex? I don’t know, I never check. Weren’t we witty? All those one-liners crumpling like paper. She raised the cigarette to her lips again but she couldn’t puff. It–she–was trembling.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  She blinked. The cigarette dropped. “What?”

  I crushed it out with my foot. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She blinked again and suddenly was crying, just outside the faculty parking lot, near the side entrance to Roewer High School. Shakily she took a tissue out of her pocket, but instead of wiping her eyes she uncrumpled it and gave it to me to read.

  V__,

  It just isn’t working out between us. Please don’t call me. It’s over. I will always remember you,

  Steve Nervo

  “Oh dear,” I said, and then reconstructed it: “Oh, dear, my dear.” Hugged her. “What an idiot.”

  “I’m the idiot,” she said, breaking away from me and slapping her own chest like an Indian brave. “Me. I can’t believe I fell for him.”

  “Everybody in Roewer has fallen for him, remember? He’s Steve Nervo. His name is all over the bathroom walls, for God’s sake.”

  She cried harder. “Oh, dear, sshh,” I said. I hugged her again, patting her stiff, ironed back.

  “Why did he do it? I can’t even call him and find out! How could he
be so mean?”

  In my own delicate state I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle this alone, and as though I’d wished for her, Natasha materialized out of the fog.

  “Because he’s a shit,” she said, munching an apple. “Who are we talking about?”

  I gave her the crumpled piece of paper. She read it quickly, snorted and recrumpled it, throwing it to the ground near V__’s half-finished cigarette. She finished her apple as V__ kept crying and threw the core to the ground. I looked down at our feet: V__’s in expensive, tasteful dark blue pumps. Natasha was wearing bright silver hiking boots. I was wearing something somewhere in between. Natasha’s foot began to tap impatiently; V__’s feet wandered all over as she blew her nose and got herself together.

  “Let’s go buy some shoes,” Natasha said decisively.

  “What?” V__ said. “I have to–”

  “Shoes,” Natasha said, cheerfully and firmly. “The better to kick some butt with, dear.”

  V__ smiled slowly and we all walked to the Malleria. By the time the pencil-thin fluttering salesman found something suitable for Natasha we were all shrieking with laughter and piles and piles of shoe boxes were surrounding us, like coffins for babies, like some infant morgue had suffered an earthquake and the three of us, tipsy from Natasha’s flask, were picking through the rubble trying to figure out which dead person belonged to whom. V__ found a pair of white shoes–“too bad it’s after Labor Day, but I can wait,” she said primly–with little pearl buttons, and I found some sinister-looking black tennis shoes, the soles of which turned out to rub off everywhere in a very incriminating way. Natasha found these ghastly bright orange fake fur things with high, thin heels like spider legs. V__ insisted on paying for all the shoes, like Natasha and I had made some huge sacrifice in cutting school to shop.

  Over a midmorning snack at the Worldwide Food Court (V__ had a quesadilla; I had egg rolls; Natasha had a quesadilla and egg rolls) we ironed out plans for Sunday’s garden party. We’d come over Saturday afternoon to cook a bunch of stuff; it would chill until Sunday. Cold salads because we’d all been eating too much lately, although I was still thinner than Kate. V__ had a tentative guest list, and with great ceremony we crossed Steve Nervo’s name off; Natasha had the idea that if we invited each and every member of the cast except Steve it would insult him further, so we added everyone’s name, from The Frosh Goth to Sweater-Vest Shannon (who’s in charge of props) to Ron Piper himself. Natasha said she was sure he’d be cool about the drinking. V__ was still slightly tipsy and so told me that Douglas had asked her to invite this superskinny boy from her math class named Bob. After much debate Flora Habstat did not get crossed off the list. Fictional characters next: both the Daisys, Buchanan and Miller, were welcome; Gatsby himself was not. Ophelia but not Hamlet. Both Oberon and Titania if they promised to be nice. Phoebe but not Holden. Pearl but not Hester. Desdemona but not Othello. I had to get to rehearsal.

  By the time I walked back to Roewer I scarcely had time to stash my new shoes in my locker and head to the auditorium. We were running through the last two acts. We weren’t doing the beginning part. We were doing the part where it all comes unwound. The part of the plot where all the elements have been clearly established, and put in the right place. The part where you just sit and watch everything happen, where everything goes wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it but wait for everybody to die.

  Thursday October 28th

  Three days, one for each of my eyes. Two outer, one inner. Just kidding. You really thought I believed that mumbo jumbo for a minute, huh? Be honest. That’s one thing I’ve learned: be honest; always be honest.

  “Honestly?” Natasha said, recapping the flask. From the smell of her breath it definitely wasn’t water this time. “Heavens no, I’m not going to speak to you honestly. I’m never going to speak to you honestly. Where did you even get that idea, anyway? I’ve never spoken to you honestly and I don’t plan to start. Get honesty from, I don’t know, Flora Habstat.” She spun the car through a right turn that would have killed us all had we been minor characters.

  “But are you going to do something, or not?”

  “That’s the question you should be asking,” she said, blowing a kiss at herself in the rearview mirror and turning up the stereo. She was playing me her favorite new band, Tin Can. They were loud and electronic, like the noises you might imagine happening inside a computer. Tin Can’s singer sounded like he was singing through a tin can. “Baker’s not even my Math teacher. I have Deschillo, and he never has anything interesting to say, and what does yours do? Gives you the key! You have the key to everything, to everything, Flan, and you ask me if I’m going to do something. Baker’s Rule, Flan: do something. And you have to ask me?”

  “Natasha,” I said. “Natasha! You’re scaring me.”

  She stopped the car suddenly, in the middle of the street. Luckily, there was no one behind us. She stopped yelling and looked at me; everything was quiet except for the traffic and Tin Can, who were shouting either “My heart” or “My art.” “I’m not trying to scare you,” Natasha said. “I’m trying to help you, dammit. That’s what I’m here for. Adam is messing with your brain, and you have to do something back to him, just like Carr messed with your brain, and–”

  “Carr didn’t mess with my brain,” I said, “he–”

  “Whatever.”

  “What about Gabriel?”

  “Save Gabriel. You can be with Gabriel when you get Adam off your back.”

  “He’s not on my back. That’s the prob–”

  “The problem is that you’re not doing anything!” she said. “Do something! Do something! Come on!”

  “All right, all right, I hear you,” Jennifer Rose Milton said, opening the back door and getting in. Where had she come from? “Thanks for the ride, even if it’s only a couple of blocks.” She smiled, and we could see she’d been crying. “Millie’s taking a mental health day, but I had to come in. Bio test. Don’t you hate those? Well, of course you do, Flan. Do you have a tissue or something?”

  “What happened to you?”

  Jennifer Rose Milton sighed. “Oh, you know. Just a little morning cry.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kate didn’t tell you?”

  We shook our heads in unison.

  She swallowed and tried to smile again. “I guess I can’t rely on Kate to disseminate information so quickly. Frank and I–well, Frank dumped me last night.” She burst into tears again. Behind us, someone honked and Natasha started moving again. “He dumped me! He just said ‘It just isn’t working out between us.’ Can you believe it?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve never heard him say a sentence that long. You must be very proud.”

  “Oh, Flan,” she said, laughing, crying. “He was an idiot, wasn’t he?”

  “Well, he dumped you,” Natasha said. “Give him some credit.”

  Jenn swatted her just as she parked. She blew her nose with a long shudder, loud and wet as the gurgling in my head. “I should have taken a mental health day, Bio test or no.”

  Natasha smiled thinly. “Jenn, I’m going to leave you in the Hands Of Flan. I gotta go.”

  Suddenly V__ was knocking on the car window. I opened the door and saw she was crying, too, again. “Oh, Flan,” she said. “He’s such a rat. A rat and a liar. Oh–”

  “Now I really gotta go,” Natasha said, getting out of the car. She walked six steps, turned back and got the flask, and waved it at us, looking at me sharply. “See you guys later.”

  I sat there for a second, but neither V__ nor Jennifer Rose Milton could reach me to their satisfaction, so I got out of Natasha’s car and leaned against it while they both cried.

  “He’s seeing someone else,” V__ said. “This little thin freshman! She’s joined his band now, on tambourine! I can’t believe it! ‘Just isn’t working out between us’ indeed!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I’m sorry too,” Jennifer Ro
se Milton said, and burst out crying again and then V__ burst out crying and then both of them were crying on my shoulder–one on each shoulder, I mean. “I don’t know what to do,” one of them said, I couldn’t tell which. Do something, I wanted to tell them, but it isn’t always that easy. Sometimes you don’t just know what to do, and with that bland cliché I will close this journal and end the entry for Adam’s third-to-last day.

  Friday October 29th

  Two days. Kate filled me in at lunch.

  “Did you hear the latest about Frank?”

  “Yeah, Jenn told me yesterday,” I said. “What a creep.”

  “No, no,” Kate said. Her eyes lit up; she was pleased as punch I hadn’t heard the latest. “He’s seeing someone else.”

  “What? I thought things between them–”

  “‘Just weren’t working out,’” we said in unison.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know. He’s such a rat. It’s Nancy Butler, of all people, remember, Mark Wallace’s old girlfriend?”

  “No,” I said. “Nancy Butler wasn’t going out with Mark. I believe she was going out with Martin Luther King.”

  “Well,” she said, “someone in the triptych, anyway. But now she’s hot and heavy with Frank. Jenn went ballistic when I told her.”

  “You told her?” I said.

  Kate straightened up defensively. “Well, somebody was going to tell her. I thought that I should do it, you know, as a friend. You know, three couples within the Basic Eight have called it quits lately. You and Gabriel and me and Adam are the only happy couples left.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, trying to find something to say.

  Kate crumpled up the bag of chips. “I’m just glad that I don’t have to worry about–”

  “Can I talk to you?” Adam said, looking at both of us. Just at that moment some stereo on the other side of the courtyard started playing the Tin Can album, like he’d brought his own soundtrack.

  “Do you mean me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, and we walked to a quiet corner. “I’ll just come to the point. I made a big mistake, Flan. It’s you, it’s always been you.”