The Bad Decisions Playlist
Page 23
And there was Todd, with . . . no one.
I don’t know exactly what had been going on at Todd’s place, but I do know that he was coming over more and more frequently to beat the hell out of the drums. And after a school year full of increasingly horrible crap, his dad finally left, or got kicked out. Yesterday. The day before graduation. And who knows why, but his mom didn’t come to the ceremony either. So there he was, everyone hugging and celebrating, and he was glum and alone, and before I could ask him if he was coming to the big party at Devon’s tonight, he had disappeared.
I called and texted him a few times and got nothing. So after dinner, when I should have been heading over to Devon’s, I instead found myself grabbing the mandolin and heading over to Todd’s, and here I am.
No one answers the door until the third ring. It opens, and I see Todd’s mom for the first time. She looks haunted. Like she’s been crying, maybe for years.
“Hi there. I’m Austin Methune. Todd’s friend. Is Todd home?”
She stares at me a moment. “He’s in his room.” She steps back and I enter, and as she walks away she listlessly points down the hallway.
I take a gamble that his door is the one with the giant Wayne Gretzky poster on it. I knock.
“Todd? It’s Austin.”
Nothing.
“Todd?”
“What do you want?”
“You all right?”
“Yep.”
“Want to talk or something?”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
Mr. Gretzky and I regard each other. I take the mandolin out of the case.
“Come on, Todd, come on out, don’t sit in your room and pout,” I sing.
Neither Wayne nor Todd responds.
“The evening’s warm, the sky is clear, come on out of your room already and let’s you and me go drink a nonalcoholic beeeeeeer. . . .”
“Methune, get the hell out of here.”
“Don’t be mad, don’t be sad, come hang out and you’ll be glad.”
Stomping footsteps. Todd violently jerks the door open and glares at me.
“Methune, if you don’t get out of here with your frigging mandolin, I’ll . . .”
“What?”
Todd hesitates. Then the legendary bully and one-time scourge of the Edina public school system sighs, shoulders sagging. He shakes his head. “Screw it. Nothing.” He looks like he’s been doing some crying of his own.
“Come on. Let’s go to the party.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You can’t just sit in your room.”
“Why not?”
“Because we graduated, and there’s a party, and there’s girls and all that.”
“I told you—I don’t want to go to the party.”
He starts to close the door.
“Wait.”
“What.”
“Don’t just sit here alone. Come hang out.”
“And do what.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got, like, five really bad new songs we can work on.”
He considers that.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Come on, Todd. Let’s go play some music.”
About the Author
PHOTOGRAPH BY GINO DEPINTO
MICHAEL RUBENS is a former producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, as well as a writer and producer for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. His work has appeared in the New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, HuffPost Comedy, and Salon, and he is the author of one previous YA novel, Sons of the 613. He plays the mandolin, sort of.