No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

  The muscles in my shoulders tense. My hand lifts off John’s chest and pulls back behind my head like a pinball plunger. I pick my target—his stupid, freaking nose—and I’m just about to strike when a hand, strong and rough, tightens around my wrist. Then I’m yanked off the ground by the same arm and a loud and sudden buzz of voices swirls around me in the cafeteria.

  “Both of you! Now!” Mastro shouts as he releases my wrists from his G.I. Joe super grip. He drags us out of the cafeteria by our shirts like he’s the secret spawn of Wonder Woman and the freaking Terminator. Geez, who knew Mastro’s the real badass around here? I mean, I thought he just sat around reading poems and feeling emotional all day. I never expected him to have the heart of a drill sergeant and the strength of King Kong, but trust me, John and I didn’t get tossed into the hallway by a brisk wind.

  Mastro corners us in front of a bay of lockers. His hair hangs down in tangled strings and his dress shirt is half untucked from breaking up the skirmish.

  “Excuse the language, gentlemen, but what the hell is going on with you two?”

  Neither John nor I utter a sound. We don’t even look at each other. Mastro waits for a response, hopes the awkwardness of the silence will be enough to get us talking. It has no such effect.

  “Okay,” Mastro continues, “have it your way. Principal Gechkardt will want to hear about this.” That’s all John and his stupid, perfect, little permanent record needs to hear.

  “He’s an ass,” John says. There’ a part of me that wants to tackle him again and finish what I started, but I don’t want to engage in another tangle with Mastro so I let it go.

  “He’s the one that bullies girls,” I say.

  “She’s a girl? I always thought she was a parrot.”

  I take a small, threatening step forward and Mastro gives me a look.

  “He insulted my girlfriend,” I say to Mastro—figured I’d cut out the middleman. But John doesn’t get cut out of anything. Ever. Probably learned that from the best: Lily Chen.

  “Your girlfriend? Is that what—”

  “Hey! I wasn’t talking to you,” I say, “and it’s none of your business. I know you’re pretty freaking terrible at staying out of people’s lives, but this is ridicul—”

  “That’s unfair, Gabe. You know we were just trying—”

  “I don’t care what you were trying to do. I never asked for—”

  “Enough!” Mastro’s booming voice echoes through the hallways and shuts us down in an instant. “I don’t know what’s at stake between you two, but you need to clear this whole thing up. You guys are supposed to be friends.”

  Neither one of us respond. John lets a whistling rush of air escape through his nose. He smacks his lips and tongue against his gums in one, loud click. Then he turns on his heels and walks off, leaving Mastro and I alone in the hallway.

  “You need to fix this, Gabe,” Mastro says in his usual, soothing, nonbadass voice.

  “Screw that,” I say. I shake my head. How do you fix something that’s been blown to smithereens?

  Gabe LoScuda

  English 4A – Personal Essay #8

  Mr. Mastrocola

  February 12

  A Blameless Wight

  It’s weird not having your best friend around after years and years of Siamese-twinning it. But that’s how it is for my buddy John and I, though I can hardly call him that now. Not since he betrayed me … or I betrayed him. Who knows? I can barely remember anymore.

  It hasn’t been that long since we parted ways, but I see him at school and I know he sees me. We don’t talk. Not ever. It reminds me of a few lines from Henry David Thoreau’s “I Knew a Man By Sight.”

  I knew a man by sight

  A blameless wight

  Who, for a year or more,

  Had daily passed my door

  Yet converse none had had with him.

  And I think: Why?

  Why the hell am I punishing myself and my friend—a friend who happens to be the original blameless wight, I might add? In fact, when I really try to sit and pinpoint all the times John has betrayed me since we were kids, nothing comes to mind. Not unless you count opposing thoughts—that is, all the times the kid’s saved my ass and been solid as a freaking rock. I mean, here’s a wight—totally and completely blameless—who’s never been the cause of any of my troubles and has more often than not provided me with solutions. Covering foolish lies I decided to tell my parents, my teachers; tutoring me through algebra, even dancing like Michael Jackson to help me woo love interests that were, at the time, completely out of my league. The kid has done it all. But nothing compares to how John helped me navigate my very first day of school at Schuylkill High.

  In a more distant place

  I glimpsed his face,

  And bowed instinctively;

  Starting he bowed to me,

  Bowed simultaneously, and passed along.

  We were at the township pool, a place where toddlers apparently flocked for the soul purpose of filling the kiddie pond with their own urine, and where teens met in a frantic attempt to bolster their social statuses before the start of a new school year. Under a blistering August sun, rising senior boys tugged at the bikini straps of their female counterparts while rising freshman, like John and I, played Marco Polo and tried to stay out of their way.

  Around noon, John and I embarked on our traditional poolside lunch journey, which consisted of a methodical walk between seven-year-old, living obstacles that ran and jumped and weaved their way between Mommy’s beach chair, the wet cement pathway, and the pool itself. Lifeguard whistles blared and were followed by the usual calls for “No running!”

  We dodged and tripped and stepped on little ones until we reached our lofty destination: the snack bar. John would order a hot dog, a Coke, and two ice cream sandwiches (as always), and I’d have my usual slice of pizza, Sprite, and a Flintstones push-up pop. We never strayed from the path.

  Only this day was a little different. Instead of holing ourselves up at the last picnic table between the dense woods and a rusty, chain-link fence where our hideous, pimply, scrawny, pubescent forms would be hidden from public view, we found ourselves lost and abandoned. Homeless, in a way. The table was already occupied, and the worst part was the occupants were all members of Schuylkill’s incoming senior class. We recognized them all because, to us, they were freaking legends.

  There was Zach Holt, linebacker extraordinaire from the mighty Schuylkill football team; the Ballinger twins, who’d never lost a fight in their lives (I guess two against one gave them pretty good odds); and Sammy Spieth, the guy who’d been with basically every girl at Schuylkill and more than likely all of their sisters and mothers as well.

  John and I grabbed our food and looked at each other. We didn’t need to say anything because both of us knew there was a better chance of us each sprouting chest hair and full beards right there on the spot than there was of us asking the senior crew to vacate our regular seats. I motioned to the safety of our beach blankets laid out on the other side of the pool and John nodded. We turned to walk, but safety, security, and a clean set of drawers were apparently not in our fate.

  “Well … looky what we have here,” Zach said as if he was singing some cheesy Broadway show tune. “Coupla incoming frosh.”

  There was a general clatter among the boys who all seemed to be sharing some kind of secret Neanderthal language that even Neanderthals would have had trouble understanding. Then Zach continued. “Those were the days, boys. Those were the days. Why don’t you two come and have a seat with us?”

  Zach stood and patted the palm of his hand on the picnic bench. “I kept it warm for you.”

  John and I looked at each other again. He shrugged, I followed suit, and the decision was made—as if there was any other decision we could make. I mean, you don’t just turn your back on three bruisers and a ladies man—especially if they’re seniors at your high school—unless, of course, you’re sick and twisted and int
erested in one hundred and eighty days worth of ass beatings. John and I were not, so we walked over with our food and squeezed both of our asses on a section of the bench meant for a single ass. It was awkward, but so is hanging from a locker hook on the first day of school—something we were desperately trying to avoid.

  “So, you boys are the new fresh meat?” Sammy asks.

  John and I kept eating, too scared to respond.

  “Hey! Sammy asked you a question,” one of the twins said, and he looked all menacing, gnashing his molars together and clenching his fists. “Answer the gentleman!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’re fresh meat alright.”

  I half expected to have all the actual meat stripped directly off my face at that moment so that I’d be sitting there shoving pizza through the jaws of a skeleton head. But it didn’t happen like that. Turned out those guys weren’t as rough and tumble as they let on. They were actually kind of cool to us—or so I had thought at the moment.

  “You’re in for some good times,” Zach said to us. “I’d do anything to go back and live it all over again.”

  “Me too,” said Sammy, “but that’d probably be a serious hazard to my health.”

  I didn’t get it (neither did John), but all the older guys started cracking up and slapping high-fives with Sammy for some reason. Seniors.

  “You guys are about to be a part of so many traditions at Schuylkill,” Zach continued. “I’m sure you’ve already planned your attack for the first day of school, but we can keep you in the know after that.”

  “First day of school?” I asked. “What happens on the first day of school?”

  Zach twisted and contorted his face into shapes you thought were only possible for cartoon characters. “You mean, you don’t now about Freshman Formal Day?” He slapped his palm against his forehead as if to say, “God damn freshman,” and then he started pacing back and forth at the head of the table like my ignorance of the Schuylkill High School unwritten laws of tradition had insulted every one of his ancestors and threatened his very way of life. “Did you hear that, guys? They’ve never heard of Freshman Formal Day. Never freaking heard of it!”

  The Ballinger twins and Sammy Spieth made eye contact. They looked a bit confused for a second, but then they each offered Neanderthalic grunts of disapproval in turn. I looked at John. His head was pointed downward and his eyes were locked-in on his hot dog. Maybe he was so concentrated on not pissing his pants that he had nothing to add to the conversation. Maybe that’s just how I felt. But I spoke anyway, because that’s the kind of stupid thing I do when I’m nervous as hell.

  “So, what is it?” I asked. I was kind of afraid to find out to tell you the truth, but I figured there might never be another opportunity to receive spot-on advice from guys who’d spent the last three years transforming from idiot pencil necks like John and I into freaking high school superheroes.

  “What is Freshman Formal Day?” he asks me. “Did you hear that guys? Unbelievable.” Zach was really starting to worry me. Like everyone at Schuylkill High knew the score but John and me. Like we were destined to be losers for the next four years in the same way we had been for the past eight.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what it is,” Zach continued. “First day of school, it’s a tradition for all the freshman guys to wear a suit.” It didn’t seem all that bad. Not like walking on hot coals or bobbing for brown, smelly toilet apples or anything. But wearing a tie? Man, I wasn’t in to that part of the deal.

  “What happens if we don’t?” I asked. I immediately knew I’d made a bad choice. The seniors got deadly silent. They moved in closer like those imposing, spiked walls that threatened to crush Han Solo and Princess Leia in Star Wars. I felt one of the Ballingers’ hot breath burn at the back of my neck.

  Zach chuckled—one of those snide, weasely laughs you expect to hear from a tax collector, a mad scientist, or a sea otter. “Gentlemen, what happens if our fresh meat here doesn’t look absolutely dapper?”

  I heard a knuckle pop right behind my ear, and the twin shadows of the Ballinger boys grew darker and heavier on the surface of the picnic table. Sammy Spieth stood there with his cold, blank stare on me just chewing on a Popsicle stick, mashing it into tiny smithereens like he probably wanted to do to every bone in my body. And who could stop him? Not me.

  But John? Well, he didn’t even break a sweat. As Zach clamped his robotic gorilla hands down on my shoulders, and I struggled to retain the half a cup of Sprite resting in my bladder, John popped the last bite of hot dog in his mouth and looked up from his paper plate, like he’d awakened from some ancient and mystic form of poolside meditation.

  “Gabe, stop messing with these guys,” he said. He took a sip of Coke and chewed on an ice cube. Then he looked directly at Zach. “He likes to screw with people. We picked up our suits from the cleaners last week. Got it covered, fellas.” Then he patted Zach on one of his massive biceps like they were old chums.

  I was stunned.

  The terrifying posse of murderous seniors was stunned.

  The freaking squirrels plucking old popcorn kernels off the cement were stunned.

  John bottomed out his Coke and munched a few more ice cubes. And Zach Holt and the Ballinger twins and freaking Sammy Spieth, they had no choice. The only thing they could do—the only respectable thing—was to burst out laughing. And I mean gut-blasting, belly bursting stuff.

  And, just like that, with a little Jedi mind-trickery on John’s part, we would survive the day with all of our limbs intact.

  For he had hardships seen,

  And I a wanderer been;

  He was my bosom friend, and I was his.

  Things would have ended there—they really would have—if Zach Holt didn’t turn around as the boys left our table and say even one more dreaded thing. “Oh, and the suits? Yeah. We weren’t kidding about that.”

  So began my two-week obsession with pocket squares and Windsor knots and shoe polish. I must have spent every moment of those two weeks—the last few glorious drops of summer—trying to figure out how I’d fit five foot nine inches of me into the five foot five inch accommodations of my confirmation suit. Thank you, sudden growth spurt.

  The whole time John’s telling me, “You’re an idiot, Gabe. Those guys were just messing with us, Gabe. Please don’t wear that purple suit on the first day of high school, Gabe. You’re ridiculous. Idiotic. Ben dan,”—and all sorts of other sage warnings I decided to ignore.

  I told him, “I’d rather look like a fool than look like a human cow patty that the Ballinger brothers track in on the heels of their combat boots.”

  John shook his head.

  On the morning of the first day of school I don my suit, slick back my hair, and slap on some Aqua Velva from the trial-sized bottle I’d snaked from Gramps. I looked in the mirror. The cuffs on my jacket were at least four inches shy of the wrist. The pants would have been perfect if a hurricane suddenly ransacked the area and I had to wade through a foot of water to get to class. The shoes looked like they’d been stolen off the set of a 70s-era gangster movie—and they may well have been. I did take them from Dad’s closet.

  I had to face it. I was a plum-colored nightmare. But at least I wouldn’t get my ass kicked. Or so I thought, until I arrived at the bus stop. I could hear a group of sophomore boys from the neighborhood laughing at me from half a block away.

  “Nice freaking suit, LoScuda,” one of them said as I approached. “Makes you look like you have gigantism.” I didn’t bite. Because it was tradition, right? Because these sophomores had been in the same position the year before, right? Because I was part of something larger than myself, right?

  But then I saw Chad Jarvis, one of my classmates from eighth grade, and he was wearing a plain, black t-shirt and jeans. No suit. No tie. No freaking gangster shoes. Maybe he didn’t get the memo.

  Then I got on the bus. More laughter. More pointing. More freshman classmates. Not a single suit in sight. I took a seat in the front
behind the bus driver and tried to hide behind my backpack. I leaned my head against the window and squeezed myself into the farthest possible corner crevice in the row. The vibration of the road against my ear through the warm Plexiglas partially muffled out the sounds inside the bus, but I could still catch a phrase here and there. Things like, “Did you see what he’s wearing?” and “I didn’t know he was in the circus,” and “He’s such a loser,” stood out above the rest.

  The bus pulled up to the next stop with a banshee-like squeal, and the driver folded the door open with the mechanical arm. I didn’t bother to raise my head from behind my book bag. Then a whole new chorus of laughter and shouting overtook the cabin. There were some whistles, even a few hoots and hollers. I couldn’t resist popping my head out, like one of those crooks in grainy Westerns who sticks his neck out from behind the old, swinging saloon door just in time to catch a bullet. But there was no bullet waiting for me—only John. In a bright teal suit with a purple tie that was straight off the set of Miami Vice. The dude was strutting up and down the aisle like it was a runway at Fashion Week. He stopped here and there to strike a pose, and received cheers and laughter in return. The kid could always work a room, even when that room was the inside chamber of a sweaty school bus.

  He sat down in the seat next to me and pulled a copy of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen out of his bag. I didn’t say anything.

  “Summer reading,” he said. “Got to refresh my memory before English class today. Read this way back in June.” He raised his eyes from the pages for a moment to notice my deflated posture in the seat. “Oh, and you’re an idiot,” he continued. “I told you Freshman Formal Day wasn’t a thing.”

  “Well, thanks for dressing up,” I said.

  “Here,” John replied. He reached in his bag and pulled out two sets of Schuylkill High PE uniforms—brand new and freshly washed. “Thought you might want to change into something more comfortable.”