by Mark Tufo
The bum had been right where Paul had said he would be and we made our business transaction. But this time it cost us two beers. By the time we were able to hitch a ride back to the supermarket, school had long been over and luckily my buzz had worn off long ago. At least the ride back had been a bit more normal. It was just a businessman finishing up his day. The ride might have actually been enjoyable if it weren’t for the jazz blaring through the speakers. Maybe he thought he was giving us some culture. Zeppelin it wasn’t. The only thing I wanted now was maybe a hamburger and a nap. I figured it was going to be about twenty to twenty-five minutes of listening to the ranting and raving at home before I got either of those things, though. We climbed back up to the roof and put the beer away in our makeshift cooler.
“Well, buddy,” I said. “Are you ready to face the music?”
“Oh yeah, I’m all set,” Paul said smugly. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to get the ‘I’m very disappointed’ speech tonight.”
“Well, that’s better than the cussing and cursing I’m about to get.”
“Good luck, bud.” I knew he meant it. “Bring a good book tomorrow.”
“Huh? Oh, for detention?”
“You forget about that part?” Paul grinned.
“Are we going to get suspended?”
“No, they know that’d be too much fun for us. We are going to get in-school suspension.”
“You mean we just sit outside of the principal’s office all day?”
He shrugged. “Yep. Like I said, bring a good book.”
“Thanks.”
And then he shook my hand, not in the way old men do, but the way you sometimes see in the movies when someone is falling off a building and the person still on the roof grabs him up around the forearm. That one motion seemed to cement our friendship and I think he realized it too. And then we parted ways to each receive our vastly different forms of punishment. Vastly different from what either of us expected. Apparently, Barb had a conflict with Paul’s dad and was unable to resolve it, so when Paul’s new little infraction came up she had not had proper time to look it up in one of her books. She blew her top at him; she reamed him up and down the wall. Not that he paid her all that much attention, but he was mildly surprised at the form her attack had come in. She was usually much more subtle. Oh well, he thought, he’d have to file this one under rare.
I, however, was completely unprepared for the way my mother decided to deal with the situation. I could just tune her completely out when she started in on me. I think I learned the technique from my father. At least he taught me something. The louder she screamed, the deafer I got. It drove her nuts. Finally, she would shut up and I could go in peace.
But I no sooner walked through the door when she hit me with a surprise attack. “I’m very disappointed in you.” It caught me so off guard I actually was taken aback. She turned and walked away. I think I stood there for at least five minutes, I didn’t know whether I should go and apologize to her or go cry in my bedroom, that’s how unprepared I was. I didn’t, but the fact she had unsettled me so much was, well, unsettling.
CHAPTER 3 - Journal Entry 3
Paul and I spent the remainder of the school week in detention. It amazed me how incredibly boring this means of punishment was. We sat outside of the principal’s office all day. At lunchtime we ate a supervised lunch, meaning one of the teachers sat with us. Yeah, that was a barrel of laughs. We were allowed two bathroom breaks a day—obviously at different times, heaven forbid we actually got to talk to each other for three minutes during the day. School generally seemed like it took forever, but I’d never experienced anything quite like this. I think this type of detention actually defies the laws of quantum physics, only in reverse. Instead of time travel, this was a time stoppage. The rest of the world was speeding by at light speed and our timeline had just plain old stopped. I can look back on this and see the pure brilliance of it, but at the time I was ready to split out of my skin. The thinking behind it had to have been that a parent can only yell at a kid for so long before they either have to do household chores or go to work. Once that’s over, the kid can pretty much do whatever they feel like. But with in-school suspension, you are trapped in a world where time does not move and they made sure you were in line of sight of every student who had to pass by that way. Suffice it to say, we were laughed and pointed at. I was beginning to feel like a caged monkey. The principal should have handed out rotten fruit to the student body and then it would have been just like being in the stockades back in the colonial times. The principal had officially made it to Paul’s and my short list. And sooner or later we would exact our revenge.
Well, contrary to popular belief, the week did finally end. My mom still hadn’t talked to me and my dad had taken off for parts unknown, so to my way of thinking, I had paid my debt to society. Paul’s pseudo-mother had softened her stance. Her newest book said, ‘Teenagers must explore their path unhindered and unadulterated’. Paul thought he should write a thank you letter to the author. He was pretty much free and clear to go ‘find his own way,’ as Barb put it. Parents would never get it. They must have lost it somewhere along the way. They kept telling us that they were teens once, but you’d never know it by looking at them. I wanted to live my life like The Who song, ‘Hope I Die Before I Get Old.’ We still had a ten pack on the roof of the local Stop and Shop and Friday night loomed large ahead. Paul and I both chowed down our respective dinners as if they were the last meal we would ever eat. Well, when it was already six pm and you only had until eleven pm, you had to pack in as much fun in that time period as teenagerly possible. I beat Paul to the roof and had been tempted to pop open a beer while I waited, but while I was trying to figure out this moral dilemma, I heard someone scaling the wall. Paul’s head came up over the lip of the building and I rushed over there to extend a helping hand. With a grunt and a heave we were both on the roof, previous problem solved.
“Hey bud, how was dinner?” I asked, laughing.
“How would I know? I’m not sure what I even had I ate it so fast. How was yours?”
“I wouldn’t know, the dog ate the majority of mine, but he did look a little green around the snout when I left.”
“Is your mom still not talking to you?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of creepy. But since my sister moved out she’s been on my case constantly. This is kind of a nice break.”
“Well, enough of that crap. Did you break the beers out yet?”
“Naw, I was waiting for you,” I said with a slight grin.
“Bull, you didn’t have enough time or you’d be sipping one by now.”
“Yeah, probably.” We popped open a couple of them. They were unbelievably cold on this relatively balmy autumn night. We talked all night, from how hot Betsy Whitestead was, how much of a cow Mrs. Weinstedder was, to how messed up our family lives were. It was a good night. At the time, I had no idea what the word meant but if I had been able to vocalize my feelings, the correct word would have been cathartic. I had been unable to release so much of this baggage that I had been carrying around. My brothers were almost a generation older than me and had long since moved out. My sister had left only months before and as I was affectionately known around the house as ‘the mistake’. That did wonders for my self-esteem. We had moved away from everything and everybody I cared for. I had begun to build a wall around myself. If Paul had not come along when he did, that wall may have grown to unassailable proportions.
The fall semester flew by. We played football with a bunch of other kids who more closely matched our type of persona. It was amazing what you could discover if you pulled away the fake veneer that covered a lot of these guys. Most of them had just not been shown that path before so they didn’t know how. But we made sure to corrupt as many as possible. I guess that’s not truly fair, we just wanted to have a good time and whoever wanted to come along was welcome. Which was vastly different from the status quo. The popular sect at school resented us, but we
honestly weren’t trying to lead a counter-culture revolution. In the popular crowd, you were either a ‘has’ or a ‘has-not,’ whereas, with us it was pretty much if you could catch up, join in for the ride. Don’t get me wrong, we still had lines drawn in the sand for who belonged where, but we had definitely blurred the edges.
CHAPTER 4 – Journal Entry 4
The first half of the year had come and gone. Christmas break finally arrived. Christmas really didn’t do much for me, but the thought of not having to do anything academic for two weeks was a great relief. It was during this break that I had my first girlfriend. It wasn’t much of a romance, the whole thing fit inside the break. Patty Ryan called me the day after Christmas to see how I was doing. At the time I didn’t think too much about it. After I told Paul he called me a bonehead.
“Why am I a bonehead?” I asked incredulously.
“Patty Ryan calls you out of the blue to say ‘hi’. What are you thinking?”
“Huh?” I asked still dumbfounded.
“She called you hoping that you’d ask her out.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Not at all, did you get her number?” I nodded. “Yeah, well, you should call her back before she realizes her mistake.”
“Thanks, buddy, and by the way—bite me.”
“You’re welcome.”
So I did as I was instructed and invited her out to dinner the next day. For all you people who are new to this whole game, if you ever invite a girl out or are invited out yourself, never go to an Italian restaurant. It’s way too messy. I had spaghetti sauce all over the front of my shirt. It’s kind of hard to put on the moves—not that I had any—on a girl when you have food stains on you. Otherwise, the date went fairly well. She didn’t invite me in for cocktails and she didn’t even give me a peck on the cheek. But I did get one thing, a reprieve; she invited me over the next day. I was on cloud nine, I had made it through my first date without making myself look like too much of a jerk and she had invited me over for round two.
“You’re in,” Paul said as he high-fived me. I had stopped over at his house on the way home from hers. “Smooth move with the sauce, though.”
“Come on, I feel stupid enough about that already.”
“Do you really think I wouldn’t use that as ammunition?”
“Well, I had hoped.”
“Dream on, sauce boy.”
“I’ve got to get home before my curfew is up. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, let me know what base you get to.”
And that was all I could think of that night and into the next day. Base—was I really going to get to a base and if so, how many? This was intriguing. I hadn’t even thought about that. I knew I wanted to kiss her, but I really hadn’t thought it out beyond that. I didn’t sleep much that night and even when I did all I could dream about was Patty Ryan’s breasts and would I get to touch them over or under. I went over to her house around one that afternoon and when I got there, she told me both of her parents were at work. I heard the fireworks going off in my head; I hoped she hadn’t noticed. And then she invited me down into her basement to play ping-pong. And all I could think was, Yup, I’m going to play ping-pong with your breasts alright. But she honestly meant ping-pong. I was truly perplexed. Her parents weren’t home and we were down in her basement and she actually wanted to play ping-pong. Where had I gone wrong? And then I made the fatal mistake. She had informed me she had been taking lessons and not to be surprised if she ‘whooped my butt’ as she called it. So I let the competitive side of me take over, and I crushed her five straight games before she told me her parents were going to be home soon and that I should leave. I’m not sure to this day if she would have let me touch her boobs or not. But by beating her at her own game I had effectively eliminated any such chance. And that was the beginning and the end of my first relationship with a girl. Won’t get much mileage out of that one, but I realized sometimes you have to lose in order to win. You just have to be careful with the balance. If you lose too much, the girl will think you are a loser. So it is a fine line, but if you want to touch the boobies you need to learn how to walk it. Paul laughed his ass off after I told him the whole story.
“So you think she’s not going to call me anymore?”
“It’s over. I wouldn’t sweat it, though. She’s just the beginning in a whole string of relationships you’re going to mess up.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Break out the Xbox, will ya?”
So my day ended with me kicking Paul’s ass on his new Xbox 360 game system that he got for Christmas. I got socks. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice socks, but you couldn’t shoot down alien ships with them.
CHAPTER 5 – Journal Entry 5
I dreaded the thought of returning to school. Mr. Ratsniffer, everyone’s favorite principal, had been following us around since our little spit ball incident and our subsequent walking out of punishment. Being on the principal’s crap list did not make school any easier. I once caught the guy actually following me around in one of the few times (luckily) I wasn’t causing mischief. He’d literally been waiting outside the bathroom door, probably wringing his hands, hoping I would light a cigarette up. Oh and joy to the gods if it had been some illegal substance. He pretty much had had his ear right up to the door so when I opened it up I startled him. What a jerk.
“Man, Ratsniffer’s so far up my butt he knows what I ate before I fart,” I groaned.
“How does he do that?” Paul bemoaned back.
“Do what?” Now my curiosity was a little peaked.
“Every time I turn around, the little bastard could read the soles of my sneakers. How is he in two places at the same time?”
“Maybe he’s only half of a set of freakish twins.” We both laughed a little.
“Talbot, we can’t go the rest of the year with him following us around, we need to throw him off us and onto someone else.”
“Any ideas? Or are you just talking out your butt again?” Paul punched me square in the shoulder. “Alright-alright, I’m listening.”
“Meet me at our favorite drinking location after dinner and wear dark clothes.”
“Wear dark clothes?” But Paul had left to make sure he didn’t miss his next class. The day dragged by as I pondered all the possible things Paul could be talking about and did I really want to add fuel to a fire. Ratsniffer might actually back off in a month or two or three.
Screw it, I’m in, I thought. I picked through the majority of dinner. My nerves were starting to get the best of me, but since my dad only read the paper and my mom spent the majority of the time glaring at him, my lack of appetite went completely unnoticed.
“Mom, I’m going to Paul’s to study!” I shouted as I headed out the door. She barely glanced in my direction. She probably figured if she glared at my dad’s paper long enough it would catch fire.
“Be back by curfew!” she shouted. With all the effort they put into my rearing I often wondered why in these times they actually went through with the pregnancy. There was no spark whatsoever between my parents and I was fairly certain my dad had far greener pastures to sow on the weekends.
Paul and I had some unknown business (at least to me) to finish with Ratsniffer. I made it down to the Stop and Shop in record time. Paul was already waiting by the dumpster.
“Hey, bud,” I half yelled into the wind. “You heading up?”
“Naw, too cold. Anyway, we have too much work to do to be messing around up top.”
“What’s with the book bag? You going to the library?” I quipped. I wasn’t sure if he even knew which way the library was.
“Actually, yeah.”
“What?”
Paul laughed when he saw my face. “Don’t worry, I’ll explain on the way.” He proceeded to tell me his plan in detail and how every good crime needed a solid alibi.
“So we’re going to do some face time in the town library, but won’t people see us leave as soon as we en
ter? What’s the use in that?”
“There’s the beauty my friend, we can sneak down into the basement, get out of the library, do our business, and be back inside without anybody the wiser.”
“You’re a genius,” I exclaimed, slapping him on the back.
Too bad the genius was short lived. We entered the sparsely populated library, making sure our presence was noticed by being a bit loud upon entry. The head librarian was quick to shush us and look us up and down in that disapproving way adults did. Paul even made sure to go up to her and ask for assistance in helping us locate a book for a report we had to do. When she realized that maybe these young hooligans were actually here to study, her demeanor softened a bit. We both made sure she got a good look at us and talked to us for a bit before we retired off to the far reaches of the south corner, and surprise-surprise, right next to the door that headed down into the basement.
The basement was far more disorienting than I would have expected. It seemed to be the repository for lost books… globally. Random stacks of books rose from the floor like literary stalagmites. We took great care to avoid these; one spill could alert the librarian something was amiss, or at the very least shoot holes into our alibi. The window, which I figured would be painted shut, flew open with the slightest push. The fates were definitely shining down upon us, at least that was the theory at the time. We took extreme caution to make sure our operation went completely undetected; it would do us no good to be caught running around Ratsniffer’s neighborhood moments before some ghastly deed was done. We even took to diving in hedges before cars passed by.
“You sure you know where Ratsniffer lives?” But before Paul responded I saw it, his brand new white Cadillac. How he affords that thing I had no idea.
“Put these on,” Paul said as he handed me a pair of surgical gloves.
“Good call. You really thought this out.”
