by Pete Hautman
For a few weeks Wes succeeded in not thinking about it too deeply. Izzy would pop into his head and he would shove her roughly aside, or make himself remember one of her unattractive qualities, like her big saliva-spewing laugh. Thoughts of June were sneakier. He would be thinking about something nice, and suddenly she would be there in his head with those wide-apart eyes, and his guts would stir and his mouth would sort of sag open — all before he realized what was happening. To get rid of June thoughts, he would think about his clean garage, and after a while she would go away and the image in his mind would be that of a perfectly clean, gray painted floor.
It occurred to him on more than one occasion that he might be a little bit crazy. Was he crazy to break up with Izzy? Was he crazy to not ride the bus? Was he crazy to have made the garage as clean and orderly as a hospital surgical unit? Was he any crazier than Jerry, who was planning to become Emperor of the Universe?
Probably. Mr. Varon would think so.
But then, Mr. Varon thought everybody was crazy.
Psych class had sounded really cool when Wes had signed up for it, but Mr. Varon spent most of every period droning on about these old dead guys, as if he was teaching history instead of psychology. Varon would spend thirty minutes going on and on about Sigmund Freud, the supposed father of psychoanalysis, then explain how most of Freud’s theories had been flat-out wrong, leaving everybody puzzling over why, if the guy was so full of it, they had to learn about him at all.
Where were the rats and the mazes? Where were the cool experiments on other kids? The hypnosis and stuff? How come he left psych every day in a walking coma instead of, well, psyched?
But every so often, Varon came up with something that stuck in Wes’s head. Like his theory about all teenagers being nut jobs.
The way Varon explained it, something happened to kids around the age of twelve or thirteen. Their brains got these enormous injections of hormones, and everything got all scrambled and short-circuited, producing what he called “irrational behaviors.” Little kids do stupid stuff because they lack information and experience. Teenagers do stupid stuff because their brains are rewiring themselves.
“If, for example,” said Mr. Varon, “I were to behave the way many of you do, I would quickly lose my job and be diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, antisocial, and a danger to myself and others. In teens, however, such behavior is tolerated. In other words, insane behavior, in a teen, is considered to be perfectly normal.”
Everybody thought that was pretty funny. Aron Brey raised his hand and said, “I hear voices.”
“What do they say?” asked Maria Finer.
“ ‘Kill, kill, kill,’ ” Aron said.
Mr. Varon did not think that was funny. Actually, neither did anybody else.
“I’m kidding,” said Aron.
“Quod erat demonstrandum,” said Mr. Varon, which confused the entire class full of bipolar schizophrenics, Wes included.
Still, what Varon said made a weird kind of sense.
June looked at the caller ID on her ringing cell phone. Ron and Nancy Preuss. She answered with a cautious “Hello?”
“June? Hi, it’s Jerry. Jerry Preuss?”
It took her a second to connect the voice with a face.
“Oh. Jerry?”
“Yeah. How are you doing?”
“Okay,” she said. How had he gotten her number?
“I got your number from Naomi Liddell,” Jerry said.
“Oh.” Naomi! “Uh, how’s the campaign going?”
“Smooth.”
Smooth? “Oh. Good.” She could tell he was going to ask her out.
“I wanted to thank you for your suggestion the other day.”
Suggestion? “What suggestion?”
“You said I should promise people whatever they want.”
“I was sort of kidding.”
“Yeah, but it got me thinking. Like, the first thing I have to do is find out what people really want. You know, like do they want a good education, or better cafeteria food, or whatever. So I thought I’d start with you. Seriously. What do you want? I mean, within reason.”
I want out of this conversation. “Um, I don’t know.”
“I was thinking maybe we could get together and talk about it. Because you just seem like a really perceptive person.”
June liked that he thought she was perceptive. But was he asking her out, or what?
Jerry said, “For coffee?” When June didn’t immediately reply, he added, “It was just an idea.”
June imagined Jerry’s face with startling clarity, his ears and cheeks reddening, his soft brown eyes tearing up. She heard herself say, “Okay.” Because it was such a relief that it was just coffee. She wouldn’t have to get dressed up and deal with the whole Big First Date thing — not that she would have said yes to that, but still.
He said, “You know where the Bun and Brew is? We could walk over there tomorrow, from school?”
June thought of Wes, and wondered why she hadn’t seen him on the way home lately.
She said, “Okay. Only I have something else I have to do right after school.” It wasn’t true, but she didn’t want to walk to the coffee shop with Jerry. It would feel too public, too exposed. “I could meet you there at three thirty?”
“Deal,” said Jerry. “And think about what you want.”
“A cappuccino and an éclair,” June said.
“I mean as a voter.”
June laughed. “Sorry!” She could feel herself relaxing. One thing about Jerry — she would always know what he wanted.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
ALAN SCHWARTZ PLUNKED HIS TRAY DOWN next to Wes at lunch and said, “Your friend Jerry is a certifiable moron.”
“All my friends are morons,” Wes said.
“Yeah, well, Jerry Preuss makes the rest of us look like Einsteins.”
“What did he do?”
“Let’s see.” Alan sat down, picked up a carrot stick, and counted off his points by tapping it on the table. “Wants to be class president.” Tap. “An unpaid and thankless position.” Tap. “Talks about it constantly.” Tap. “To people who could give a rat’s ass.” Tap. He raised his eyebrows as if to invite disagreement, put the carrot stick in his mouth, and bit down.
“I can’t believe you put that thing in your mouth,” Wes said.
“I can’t believe Preuss expects us to listen to his campaign rhetoric for another six months,” Alan said through a mouthful of pulverized carrot.
“Wait.” Wes sat up straight. “Six months?”
“Course. The election is in April. You vote in the class president for the next school year.”
Wes shook his head. “The way he’s been acting, I thought it was next week.”
“Negatory.”
“So who’s president this year?”
“Laurie Floss.”
“Who’s Laurie Floss?”
“The budding politician we voted into office last April.”
“I don’t think I voted anybody into office.”
“It was not a highly publicized affair.”
“Huh. What did she promise everybody?”
“Nobody knows. But whatever it was, I’m pretty sure we didn’t get it.”
“So maybe Jerry’s strategy of promising everybody everything isn’t so stupid after all, if nobody is going to remember it next year.”
“What’s stupid is that he wants to be president in the first place. And what were those things he had you handing out?”
Wes shrugged. “Questions for potential voters.”
“How come I didn’t get one?”
“Did you want one?”
“No!”
“There you go.”
“You know what I think?”
“About what?”
“I think all my friends are idiots too.”
“Oh. My. God. Jerry Preuss?” Phoebe made her eyes go huge. “You’re totally joking. What was it like?”
“We didn’t do anything,” June said, looking from Phoebe to Britt to Jess. “I just went out with him.”
“I know. I mean … I didn’t mean … I mean, was he, like … or what?”
“He’s just a guy,” June said, wishing she hadn’t brought it up at all. “He asked me out — well, first he asked me out for coffee, and then Saturday we went to a movie over at the U. It was sort of cool. Not the movie. But the scene — kind of an older crowd.”
“What was the movie?” Britt asked.
“The Candidate. A really old Robert Redford movie.”
Jess said, “He used to be hot.”
“My grandma thinks he’s still hot,” said Britt.
“He wants to be president,” June said.
“Robert Redford?”
“No. Jerry. He wants to be class president, and then president of the country.” June waited to see what they would say. It was one of those defining moments.
“Oh, well. Van is going out with Kelly Freeman,” Phoebe said. Jess and Britt immediately took her remark as permission to accept Jerry Preuss, conditionally.
“Jerry’s sort of cute,” Jess said. “Except you’ve got to get him to buy some different glasses.”
“Does he have a car?” Britt asked.
“I don’t think so,” June said. “We took his mom’s minivan.”
Phoebe said, “Josh and I are going to the outlet mall Saturday.”
“I thought he was mad at you,” Britt said.
“We made up. I just had to promise not to yell his name at any track meets.”
“I bet that’s not all you had to promise,” Britt said.
“Up yours, bee-yatch,” Phoebe said, arching her eyebrows.
“Bitch.”
“Bitch.”
“Bitch.”
They all started laughing. Except for June, at first. But then she started laughing too, even though she didn’t exactly get it.
Later, Britt gave June a ride home from school and explained that she, Jess, and Phoebe used to call themselves the Three Bitches. “ ‘One for all and all for one.’ Phoebe came up with that back in ninth grade.”
“Isn’t that from The Three Musketeers?” June said.
“You mean the candy bar? What’s that got to do with it?”
“Never mind.”
“So, Jerry Preuss, huh?” Britt said, probing for details.
“He’s just a nice guy,” June said.
It was true, for once. June’s date with Jerry had been right out of The Concerned Parent’s Guide to Correct Teenage Behavior. Jerry had shown up on time, wearing clean clothes, driving a minivan. He had introduced himself to her parents, told them he was running for class president, that they were going to see The Candidate and then for ice cream, and promised to have their daughter home by ten. He had even opened the car door for her.
When June thought back over the evening, she was astounded that she had actually gone through with it. Minivan? Movie from the nineteen seventies? Ice cream? Home by ten? It had promised to be the date from hell, but it wasn’t at all. Jerry was dorky, sure, but he knew who he was, and he didn’t care what people thought — as long as they would still vote for him for class president. And he was so excited about that stupid idea that June had actually gotten into it, brainstorming campaign strategies over mocha malts and talking as if getting Jerry elected was the most important thing in the universe. By the time he kissed her good night at ten minutes before ten — it wasn’t the worst kiss she’d ever had — she had to admit to herself that it had been a fun night.
“You going to go out with him again?” Britt asked.
“I don’t know.” She really didn’t. If he asked her, she would probably say yes. If he didn’t ask her, that would be okay too. “He wants me to be chief strategist for his election campaign.”
“Omigod, I saw those flyers or whatever he was handing out. Like, does anybody actually care?”
“Jerry does.”
Britt gave her a sideways look. June knew what she was thinking. She was wondering if it was safe to remain friends with somebody who was dating a guy like Jerry Preuss.
Britt pulled up to the curb. For a second, June thought she was going to order her out of the car, but then she realized they had arrived at her house. Funny thing — she’d been living there six weeks and still had to check the house number to be sure it was the right one.
Wes caught up with Jerry at his locker after last period and gave him the rest of the undistributed questionnaires. “I’m not handing out any more of these,” Wes said. “You didn’t tell me that the election wasn’t until April.”
Jerry tossed the questionnaires into his locker. “You didn’t know that?”
“No!”
“You’re my campaign manager. You’re supposed to know those things.”
“I am not your campaign manager.”
Jerry did not seem in the least bit bothered. In fact, he seemed unusually confident and imperturbable. “It doesn’t matter. I got about twenty of the questionnaires back, and it’s pretty clear what people want.”
“What’s that?”
“Freedom.”
“From what?”
“Everything. I’m going to make that my slogan. Freedom!”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that.”
“I went out with June Edberg.”
Wes suddenly understood what had made Jerry so confident. Going out on a real date was huge for him.
“We went to a movie over at the U,” Jerry said. “She’s really into politics.”
“You going out with her again?”
“Sure. I like her.”
“Don’t you think her eyes are a little bit too far apart?”
“Are you kidding me? She has fantastic eyes. They’re like elf eyes.” Before he’d gotten into politics, Jerry had been into The Lord of the Rings.
“Elf eyes? Dude. That is so pathetic.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t see any girls chasing you down the hall.”
“Oh, so now she’s chasing you?”
“I didn’t mean that. I just — are you mad at me or something? ‘Cause I’m getting this vibe.”
“Vibe? Sounds like something my grandpa would say.”
Jerry rolled his eyes, as if he was suddenly above it all, as if Wes was some minor annoyance. He closed his locker. “Look, I got a bus to catch. See ya.” He walked off. Wes watched him go, astounded that he would walk away like that. He kicked the front of Jerry’s locker, leaving a small dent. Jerry and his stupid election and his elf eyes talk and acting so cocky after his big date and everything — it drove Wes crazy. It was … well, it was Jerry, the way he’d always been: clumsy and nerdy and obsessive and flat-out irritating.
Later, walking home, Wes replayed the conversation in his head and couldn’t figure out what had made him so mad.
CHAPTER
NINE
MOST OF THE GUYS JUNE HAD GONE OUT WITH thought it was their sacred duty to attempt to grope every square inch of her body. She was not opposed to a little groping, so long as it did not involve discomfort, bad smells, or excessive bodily fluids. But she didn’t enjoy being forced to slap, kick, or yell at her dates.
Jerry was no problem. She’d been with guys who were cuter and sexier and more exciting, but with Jerry she never had to worry about him going all caveman on her. He seemed happy just to be in her presence — and that was both good and bad. He was an intense guy, but most of his intensity was focused on politics. That was good. It meant that if she decided she didn’t want to see him anymore, he probably wouldn’t fall apart, or become a stalker, or go around telling everybody what a bitch she was. It was important, according to Pragmatic June, to always have an exit strategy.
Until that day came, being with Jerry was okay. They went out once a week, usually to a movie, and they saw each other in school, and sometimes at the coffee shop, and he would call her. Her mom liked Jerry. June’s theory was that her mom used her super-mom sense to
detect that they weren’t having sex or anything. That was all her mom cared about — that her daughter avoid “entanglements.”
The Three Bitches, it turned out, were okay with Jerry. Since Phoebe had made up with Josh Sandstrom, they’d gone on a double date. Josh was a nice guy once you got him away from his jock buddies. He and Jerry had discovered a mutual fascination with martial arts movies. Jess and Britt found their own regulars — guys they could count on to hang with them. It was a pretty comfortable arrangement, all in all.
By late October, Jerry had eased off on his election campaign to focus on his schoolwork. June was sailing through her own classes, even physical science. She had thought science would be her worst class, but Mr. Reinhardt was one of those teachers you just couldn’t help but listen to, even when he was talking about numbers and stuff that made no sense.
They were studying cosmology — all about the origin of the universe and outer space and gravity and something called dark matter. June didn’t understand most of it, but she liked hearing about the Big Bang, how thirteen billion years ago there was nothing. No matter, no space, no time — just a thing called a singularity that was smaller than a grain of salt, yet it contained everything that ever existed. Then the singularity exploded. The explosion was still happening. The Earth and sun and even the galaxy were just tiny fragments, rushing through space at more than a million miles per hour. As strange as all that sounded, June believed it. She didn’t understand it, but it felt right that she should be riding a spinning chunk of shrapnel headed for nowhere.
By the middle of November, Wes realized that he had fallen behind in school. He began paying attention in his classes, and quickly caught up on his reading. The weather was getting too cold to walk most days, but Alan Hurd got a hand-me-down car from his mother and started giving him a ride to and from school — as long as Wes bought him a donut every morning.
