Boy

by Blake Nelson

  But I rarely saw her at school, and anyway, who cared what someone like her thought about my life? Her and her weird friends. As I lay beside Grace, breathing her silky hair, kissing her slender neck, running my fingertips over the soft skin of her shoulders, I reflected that my life was pretty damn good the way it was.

  7

  Naturally, since weed was cool now, Claude had to get some, since he was Claude and people expected him to have everything. I offered to help.

  The first thing we figured out was that Bennett Schmidt was our school’s main weed source. Claude and I both rolled our eyes when we heard this. Bennett was one of the biggest creeps in our class. He’d worn these dorky wire-rim glasses all through middle school and had terrible acne for years. He was best known for beheading live ants during a science class project in fifth grade. And then showing people—girls mostly—the twitching bodies through the microscope.

  On Saturday we called Bennett and rode to his house on our bikes. His mother answered the door. She knew who Claude was—everyone did—so she was a bit surprised at the sight of us.

  “Is Bennett here?” said Claude.

  “Yes. Yes he is,” she said. “He’s downstairs in his room.”

  When she didn’t move, Claude said: “Can you get him, please?”

  “Oh,” she said, flustered. She turned and called down the basement stairs. “Bennett! You have visitors!”

  Bennett appeared from the darkness below. He told us to come down. Claude didn’t want to go down there. Neither did I. But it didn’t appear we had a choice.

  We descended the stairs and entered Bennett’s basement lair. It was pretty much what you’d imagine: a marijuana emporium. There were assorted posters: Snoop Dogg, The Big Lebowski, a big picture of Bob Marley with dope smoke coming out of his nose. There were different versions of the pot leaf stuck here and there. The ceiling was low. The lighting was dim. You had to respect the guy for dedicating himself so thoroughly to the drug-dealer thing. He used to be the gross-out king. Now he’d turned himself into Dr. Weed.

  Bennett pointed at an old sofa that was along the wall opposite his unmade bed. Claude didn’t want to sit. Neither did I. But this was part of the process.

  I followed Claude as he maneuvered around a dirty coffee table. With great disdain, he lowered himself onto the old couch. I did the same.

  “So you’re interested in some cannibis,” said Bennett.

  “Why else would we be here?” said Claude.

  Bennett was not affected by this insult. He went to his large metal desk and unlocked one of the drawers. He took out several small plastic bags and lined them up on a tray. Then he brought the tray over to the coffee table and placed it, with some formality, in front of Claude and me.

  “This is what I have at the moment,” he told us. He proceeded to tell us what countries the different bags were from, what their different effects were.

  “I don’t care where it’s from,” said Claude. “As long as it gets you high.”

  “I like the Moroccan,” said Bennett. “It has a more grounded feel. It’s not so cerebral.”

  I glanced at Claude to see if he was going to laugh in Bennett’s face. But he didn’t. Bennett was showing a certain confidence throughout this interaction. He wasn’t intimidated by Claude, not now. Claude had his status. And Bennett had his.

  Claude unwrapped a couple of the plastic bags and studied the contents. I looked too. The clumps of marijuana at the bottom of each bag did look somewhat different from each other.

  “Should we have a taste?” said Bennett. He pulled up a chair across from us and produced a small white pipe. He reached for the bag of Moroccan.

  “I’m not going to smoke it here,” said Claude, with growing annoyance. “How much is it?”

  Bennett put his pipe away. “The Moroccan is forty,” he said calmly. He took the plastic bag and rerolled it into a neat slender tube. He tossed it back onto the coffee table. Claude handed over two twenties.

  “Can you believe that guy?” Claude said when we got outside. “What a moron.”

  8

  “Do you remember that girl Antoinette?” Grace asked me one afternoon, while we were making out in her parents’ bedroom.

  I nodded that I did.

  “Oh my God, I heard the weirdest thing about her.” Grace sat up suddenly to tell me. “Supposedly, she went with Bennett Schmidt to a Southridge party? And everyone was really drunk? And they started making out? And then they started switching off.”

  “Switching off” was a term used for make-out parties that involved uncool people from redneck high schools like Southridge. When those people wanted to kiss different people, they didn’t bother spinning a bottle. They switched off.

  “And now she’s supposedly with him. With Bennett! Can you believe that? He is so gross. Remember him in fifth grade? Chopping up those ants in science class?”

  I nodded that I did. I scooted closer to Grace and tried to caress her back. But she was lost in thoughts of improper make-out games. She scooted away.

  “Someone should tell her,” said Grace. “She’s never going to be accepted if she hangs out with people like that.”

  “She just moved here,” I said. “She didn’t know him in fifth grade.”

  “And switching off  ?” said Grace in disbelief. “With Bennett and some Southridge guys? That’s disgusting!”

  “Yeah, but what’s the difference between that and spin the bottle?”

  “Spin the bottle has rules!”

  “Not when you play with Hanna,” I said.

  “And with spin the bottle you know who you’re playing with. You know the people. It’s not some random Southridge guys.”

  “She knows Bennett.”

  “It just sounds icky to me. And poor Antoinette! First her brother jumps off a bridge. And then those weird girls start following her around. And now she’s with Bennett of all people.”

  “Yeah . . . ,” I said.

  Grace became reflective. “God, high school is so different than I thought it would be.”

  “How so?”

  “People are just so . . . They can’t control themselves. And they have so many problems! Why can’t they just have fun? And do fun high school things?”

  “I’m with you on that,” I said, trying to kiss her neck.

  But Grace was not interested. She slid off the bed and refastened her bra strap. The make-out session was over.

  “Gavin?” she said, a new seriousness in her tone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think Hanna and Claude are soul mates?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Because you know Claude better than anyone,” she said.

  “Yeah, I probably do.”

  Grace finished buttoning her shirt. She went to her mother’s full-length mirror and fluffed out her hair. “Hanna says that Claude doesn’t think they’re soul mates.”

  “What are they, then?”

  “I don’t know. Not soul mates.”

  “Did he say they weren’t?”

  “No. But they were talking about soul mates and he said he didn’t know what it meant exactly. Meaning he didn’t consider her to be his. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “If he’s acting like he doesn’t know what a soul mate is, that means he doesn’t think Hanna is his.”

  “Yeah, but maybe what he’s saying is he doesn’t know what other people mean when they say ‘soul mate.’ Because different people probably have different ideas about that.”

  “But your soul mate is supposed to be your best friend,” reasoned Grace. “And the person you love more than anything. That’s what Hanna says.”

  “I’m sure Claude considers Hanna his best friend. And the person he loves more than anything.”

  “She’s still mad, though. Why is he saying he doesn’t know what a soul mate is? Why would you even say that?”

  “Yeah, but you know Hanna. She looks for reasons to be ma
d.”

  “No she doesn’t. She loves him. And so she wants to know if they’re soul mates or not.”

  “If she loves him so much, she shouldn’t start a fight about it.”

  Grace frowned into the mirror and began brushing her hair. She didn’t look at me again. I also noticed that Grace didn’t ask me if she and I were soul mates. Which was unlike her.

  Complicating things further, it was now the middle of May. Summer vacation was three weeks away. I wasn’t sure what Grace and I would do during that time. In the summer people went places with their families. We wouldn’t have our friends to do things with and go on group dates.

  That’s when I realized something Grace probably already knew: We were going to break up. This thought hit me like a truck. But I knew instantly that it was true. Of course we were going to break up. We couldn’t go out forever. We weren’t going to get married. We’d been together five months, which was already longer than most high school couples. Besides which, we seemed to have completely run out of things to talk about. Which was why we spent nearly every second we were together making out.

  We were going to break up. I sat pondering this. And it would probably happen soon. That’s why Grace hadn’t asked about us being soul mates.

  I was shocked. I was sad. I stared at her face in the mirror as she brushed her hair. My first love was coming to an end.

  • • •

  For the time being, though, we kept going as before. That weekend we went to the Westgate Pavilion and saw a movie with Logan Hewitt and Olivia Goldstein. We sat in the food court afterward and ate Pinkberry frozen yogurt. Grace ate all her blueberries, like she does, so I went back to get her more. I was standing in line when I heard familiar voices. I turned to find Bennett Schmidt and Antoinette standing behind me. They had come out of a different movie.

  “Oh hey,” I said.

  They nodded back.

  I had never seen them together in public. They looked pretty well matched: Bennett with that flushed, drugged-out look on his face, and Antoinette, who had recently cut her bangs in a bizarre way. “What movie did you see?” I asked.

  Bennett said the name of the movie.

  I looked at Antoinette. “Was it good?”

  “It was okay,” said Bennett.

  I nodded and turned away. Nobody talked. The line moved forward.

  “How does Claude like the Moroccan?” asked Bennett from behind me.

  I turned back toward them. “He likes it all right,” I said, though I hadn’t heard anything about it. Claude didn’t care about weed. It was probably still stashed in his desk somewhere.

  “How are you doing?” I found myself asking Antoinette.

  “I’m doing great,” she said, with deep sarcasm. I didn’t know what that was about. Maybe she was embarrassed to be seen with Bennett. Or maybe she disliked me even more than I realized.

  And then Grace appeared. She came up behind me and slipped her hand around my elbow. I felt myself blush. The situation became even more awkward than it already was.

  “I don’t want any more blueberries, I decided,” Grace told me, smiling at Antoinette.

  “Okay,” I said.

  The four of us stood there for a second, Grace and Antoinette staring each other down, Bennett and me avoiding eye contact. It was painful. Grace finally pulled me away.

  I did manage one last glance back at Antoinette, who gave me a broad, mocking smile. Wow, I thought. She seriously hates me. Which made me feel bad in a way.

  But as soon as they were gone, I was relieved to be free of them. Angry Antoinette and creepy Bennett—who needed people like that around? For one fleeting moment, I loved Grace more than ever.

  9

  On the first day of June, my mother knocked on my door and told me my dad wanted to see me on the deck. That didn’t sound promising. I went downstairs and found him sitting outside, in the late-afternoon sun, having a drink. I could tell he was going to lecture me about something, but I didn’t know what. My brother had been accepted to Cornell University by then. Maybe he was going to gloat about that. Or maybe he wanted to discuss my 2.8 grade-point average and my nonexistent extracurriculars.

  I paused at the sliding glass door, to watch him. My father was still wearing his suit and tie. The tie was loosened and pulled over to one side. He swirled the ice cubes around in his glass. It occurred to me he might be drunk.

  I slowly pulled the door open. I wasn’t looking forward to this.

  “Come out here, Gavin!” boomed my father. “I want to talk to you.”

  I went outside and sat down across the table from him, in one of the deck chairs. We hadn’t cleaned the outdoor furniture yet. It was still dirty from the winter. My dad didn’t seem to notice. I could see some of the dirt from his chair had gotten on his suit.

  “So your mother tells me you’re not playing any tennis tournaments this summer.”

  This was true. I had dropped like a rock in the state tennis rankings over the school year, partly because I had skipped most of the big tournaments, but also because I was in the sixteen and unders now. Other guys had begun to emerge at this new level, guys I had been able to beat in previous years but who had suddenly grown four inches, or hired better coaches, or who knows what. There were also new people, superior athletes, who had for some reason picked up tennis racquets. I had been ranked as high as #2 in the state in the twelve and unders. I had dropped to #11 in the fourteen and unders. Now, in the sixteens, I was ranked #94 or something.

  “I think I want to try other things,” I told my father.

  “And what other things do you want to try?” he said, slurring his words slightly. “What else exactly are you good at? Besides tennis?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly, carefully. “That’s what I want to find out.”

  My father took a sip of his drink. He stared out into the large yard of the large house he had bought for our family, which Russell and I had grown up in.

  “Mom says you’ve dropped in the rankings.”

  “I have,” I said calmly.

  “And why is that?”

  “The other guys have gotten better.”

  “And you have no problem with that?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You could get better yourself.”

  “There’s a certain factor of talent,” I said coldly. “I’m good. But some people are really good. I can’t beat those people. No matter what I do.”

  “So you say,” grumbled my father.

  “Those are the facts of it.”

  “Those are your facts of it.”

  I sat there. I stared into the yard.

  “There’s something about you,” said my father. “Something I’ve been trying to figure out for a long time now. And I think I know what it is. I think I’ve finally put my finger on it.” He paused dramatically, then turned to look me in the eye. “You think you’re better than other people.”

  I sighed and stared into the yard.

  “And you know what?” continued my father. “That is about the worst quality a person can have. If you were a great tennis player, then maybe you could have an attitude like that and get away with it. But as you’ve just said yourself”—he sipped his drink—“you’re not a great tennis player.”

  I said nothing.

  “I wish I knew what to say to you,” said my father. “I would tell you to look to Russell. To learn from your brother. To see how a person can be confident and still not alienate the people around them. It’s the difference between confidence and arrogance. A confident person, other people will rally around. But an arrogant person . . .”

  He was right. I was arrogant. And difficult. And defiant. But it was only with him that I was like that. I wasn’t like that around other people. Other people liked me just fine.

  “The problem with you is . . . ,” said my father. He stopped to consider the best way to describe the problem. “You don’t think about the other guy.
Now, maybe you can find a job working in some remote location. Or sitting in a cubicle. But those aren’t good jobs. Trust me. Good jobs require dealing with people. And if you’ve got an attitude, who will want to deal with you?”

  “Russell’s the one who thinks he’s better than everyone,” I said quietly.

  “Russell . . . ?” said my father, his nostrils flaring suddenly. “I’ll tell you something. Russell is going to be very successful. He’s going to do better than I’ve done. And I’ve done pretty damn well, as you can see from where you’re sitting at this moment.” My father waved his hand to indicate our large house and yard. “I don’t have any idea where you’re going to be sitting in twenty years,” he said. “Not anywhere good, at the rate you’re going. Which is what I’m trying to tell you.”

  He’s drunk, I said to myself. I sat there. I bounced one of my knees up and down. A warm breeze blew across the yard. Bits of sunlight peeked through the maple trees that divided our property from the Winslows’.

  “So what are you going to do with your summer?” said my father. “If you’re not going to play tennis?”

  I’d thought about this already. My mom had found me a job at the Garden Center, which was a local nursery owned by one of her friends. And the other thing was, my brother had a fancy camera he’d gotten for Christmas the year before and had never taken out of the box. During my landscape painting phase, I’d convinced him to let me look at it. It was complicated, but I’d figured out the basics. What I hadn’t done was take it outside and actually try it.

  “I’m going to take pictures,” I told my dad.

  “Take pictures,” he snorted. “Like what? With your phone?”

  “With Russell’s camera.”

  “And why are you going to do that?”

  “Because that’s what I want to do,” I said.

  “Oh, good,” said my father. “Only do what you want to do. That’s a good strategy. The world always needs more people like that. I can see the ad now: ‘Wanted: Person who only does what he wants to do.’ ”

  My dad laughed at his own joke. He took a long swig of his drink.