Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (12 page)

Mom drags me to the store once every six months so she can get my size. Ten minutes of misery and then I’m free. For the six months after that, clothes magically appear in my room. It’s like that fairy tale with the cobbler’s elves, only my elf specializes in triple-XL polo shirts.

Even I know that’s not going to fly at a football party.

I look at the clock. Seven p.m. I’ve got half an hour before Rodriguez picks me up.

I wish I could call Eytan and ask him what to wear. He knows about stuff like this a lot better than I do. Unfortunately
he hates my guts right now. If he saw my number on his cell phone, he’d probably throw it under a bus.

That leaves me with two options. I can pretend I’ve got food poisoning and miss the party, or I can talk to my sister.

Explosive diarrhea or Jessica. Not an easy choice.

I tap on her door.

“Go away,” a voice says.

“You don’t even know who it is,” I say.

“Now I do. Go away.”

I open her door anyway. Desperate times, you know? She’s standing in front of the mirror in her bra, pinching the fat under her arms.

Now I’m going to have to stab my eyes out.

“What the hell, Andy!”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She covers herself up with a T-shirt and flops down on the bed. She buries her head under a pillow.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say, “but I need help. It’s serious.”

I hear an annoyed groan from under the pillow.

“I’m going to a party,” I say.

“I’ll call TMZ and let them know.”

“A varsity-football party. With cheerleaders.”

She sits up and looks at me. “How did you get invited to a football party?”

“I can’t tell you,” I say.

“Then I can’t help you.” She sits back on the bed and crosses her arms.

“Listen. You can’t tell anyone,” I tell her. “You have to promise.”

She waits. I look at my watch. 7:10.

“I’m on the team,” I say.

“Okay, I just slipped into another dimension for a second and my ears stopped working. Say that again.”

“I made the team.”

“You made varsity?”

“Yes.”

“That’s like Ugly Betty winning
America’s Next Top Model.”
I’d love to fling a couple dozen insults back at her, but I keep my mouth shut.

“What about Mom?” Jessica says.

“She doesn’t know.”

Jessica’s eyes narrow. She loves secrets. She’s just bad at keeping them.

“What do you want from me?” she says.

“Dress me.”

Jessica smiles. “Why didn’t you say so?”

She grabs my arm and pulls me into my room. We survey the clothes spread all over my bed.

“What do you think?” I say.

“Jewish-mother chic,” Jessica says. “You’re doomed.”

“Fix it.”

“Okay,” she says, “this is totally like a
Project Runway
challenge.” She bites at her upper lip. “Question: In a perfect world, what do you want to wear?”

“Size thirty-two jeans.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Here’s the thing,” she says, and chews on the corner of her thumb. “Football players are big, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So we don’t need to make you look smaller. We just need to make you look good. Big but good. You know what I mean?”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Think hip-hop. Think Ice Cube. Don’t tuck anything in. It’s all in the attitude.”

Jessica walks across the room like she’s tough. She stops in front of me and busts a move.

I stare at her wide-eyed.

“I hope Mom installed a nanny cam, because I’d like to see that moment again,” I say.

“Just give it a try,” Jessica says.

I imitate her, walking across the room like I’m tough.

“How was that?” I say.

Jessica looks horrified.

“We’ll work on it,” she says, and she starts grabbing clothes off my bed.

“One other thing,” I say. “Do you know how to dance?”

get tipsy.

I’m sitting in front of a beer. It’s not the first beer I’ve ever seen, but it’s the first beer I’ve ever sat across from. And it’s definitely the first one waiting for me to drink it. If Mom saw me right now, she’d check me into rehab. Just in case.

There’s a bunch of guys, all standing in a circle and watching me. This is a big deal for them. My first sip of beer. They act like it’s something important, some rite of passage, and I didn’t even know it was coming. At least with my bar mitzvah I had some advance warning.

“Do we have to send you a text?” Cheesy says.

“About what?”

“Beer. In front of you. Smiley face.”

“You gonna hit that, or what?” Rodriguez says.

I sniff the beer. It has a strange smell, like sour bread. It makes me nervous. Plus it’s kind of illegal because we’re all underage. I guess this is what they mean by peer pressure. I’ve never really had peers before, so I haven’t experienced it.

I look at the guys, then reach down and lift the bottle to my lips. The bitter, ice-cold liquid hits my tongue. I cough and spit foam across the table. A
roar
goes up around me and all the girls at the party look over at us.

“Thatta boy,” O. says.

“How’s it taste?” Cheesy asks.

“Terrible,” I say, and the guys laugh. I take another slug.

“You popped your cherry!” Rodriguez says.

The guys pat me on the back one at a time, and they drift back towards the party.

Towards the girls.

There are a lot of girls here. Not Nancy Yee, acne-and-glasses girls who chew the ends of their hair when they get nervous. These are real girls. Pretty girls who know how to wear makeup to make them look even prettier. They know other things, too. At least according to the guys.

I’m wearing an untucked black T-shirt under a button down. I’ve got on my largest jeans, which are actually a little baggy since I’ve been working out so much. Jessica pulled out Mom’s cuffs and rolled the pants up on the bottom. I feel like a sloppy freak, but when I look around, I fit in perfectly. Big points for Jessica.

“What are you thinking about?” April says.

She’s like a friggin’ stealth fighter. When I want her, I can’t find her, and when I’m not looking, she’s sneaking up on my six.

“Just stuff,” I say.

“Good stuff or bad stuff?”

“Not sure.”

“You smell like beer. Are you shitfaced?”

“No,” I say, but truthfully I feel a little tipsy. I didn’t drink more than half a beer, but it must have been a strong half.

“You want a beer?” I say. That’s what I hear the guys asking the girls.

“Are you kidding? If my dad smells beer on me, my life is over. Seriously. He’ll lock me up until I’m twenty-five.”

“That’s pretty strict.”

“Korean dads, you know? He has to protect the family honor.”

“If you drink, it will destroy his honor?”

“Kind of.”

“What if you talk to a Jewish boy?”

“Executed,” she says. Then she smiles.

Now I’m smiling, too.

“But seriously,” she says. “A Korean family is different. We’re all connected, like a spiderweb or something. One person makes a wrong step, and it vibrates across the web.”

April is standing really close to me, talking loudly so we can hear each other over the music. I know I’ve looked at her about a thousand times, but it feels like I’ve never really seen her up close. It’s easy to look at girls from a distance, but the closer you get, the scarier it becomes.

“You have blue eyes,” I say.

“You just noticed?”

“I guess I never saw them before. I didn’t know Asians could have blue eyes.”

“We can’t, usually,” she says. She lowers her voice. “They’re contacts.”

“Why do you need contacts?”

“I don’t need them. I want them. They make me look … I don’t know … different.”

I look at April’s whitened teeth and her blue eyes. All artificial. All beautiful.

I glance down. I can’t help myself. The beer is in control of my eyes.

She adjusts her bra. “Those are real,” she says. “In case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t looking—”

“It’s okay,” she says. She pinches my arm and smiles. “You’re a good guy, you know?”

“I know.”

“And modest, too.”

The stereo is booming some hip-hop song I don’t recognize. The guys on the football team scream the chorus, bopping their heads with the beat. They’re scattered everywhere. Bison is on the sofa making out with some girl. O. is in an armchair with Lisa Jacobs sitting on his lap. A bunch of people are dancing. I bop my head like the guys do.

Suddenly I feel good. I’m at a party on a Friday night with April next to me. I’m a guy and I’ve got a girl, and I’m surrounded by other guys with their girls.

It’s like I’m normal.

Even more amazing, I don’t feel fat right now. Maybe it’s because of the beer. Maybe I’m still fat, only the beer makes me numb so I can’t really feel it. When the beer wears off, I’ll be enormous again. Or maybe it’s something else. With April next to me, at a party with the team, the rules are different. I’m not really fat. I’m big, like Jessica said.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I say. As soon as I say it, I want to take it back.

“Not anymore,” April says. “I mean, I used to. At my old school. Kind of. It’s a long story.”

“I like stories.”

“Another time,” she says. She runs her fingers through her hair like a comb. A delicious scent of fruit washes over me. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she says.

“Not anymore,” I say, even though I’ve never had a girlfriend. “It’s a long story, too.”

“I guess we’re both single,” April says.

“Are you two about to kiss?” O. says. He comes up and puts his arm around my shoulder.

“Shut up,” April says. She sounds like a little girl when she says it.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little lip-on-lip action,” O. says. “Provided nobody is sporting a cold sore.”

“You are
sooo
gross,” April says.

O.’s eyes are glassy. “I’m just messing around,” he says to April. “But I noticed your hands were empty.”

He offers her a beer.

“No, thanks,” April says.

“Hey, it’s a party,” O. says.

“April doesn’t drink,” I say.

“I drink,” April says defensively.

“Well, which is it?” O. says. “Drinky or no drinky? Not that I give a crap either way.”

“Drinky,” she says, and she grabs the beer from O. and takes a sip.

I can’t believe it. We just had a whole conversation about this, but the O-Effect has completely neutralized it.

“What about your dad?” I say.

“Don’t have a hemorrhage. That’s why they make breath mints,” she says.

“Or better yet …,” O says. He takes out a pack of those Listerine strips that burn when you put them on your tongue. “Lista-rents. Two on the tongue and the ’rents don’t know what you’ve been up to.” He passes the pack to April. “With my compliments,” he says.

We stand there, nobody saying anything.

April looks at me, then shifts her eyes towards O. When I don’t do anything, she gives me an elbow. Suddenly I get that she wants to be introduced.

“Do you know April?” I say.

“We’ve met a few times,” O. says. “But I can’t say I really know her.”

“Let’s do something about that,” April says, and she holds out her hand. “April Park, cheerleader extraordinaire.”

O. takes her hand. “Cheerleader. Well, that explains the short skirts,” O. says.

April giggles.

O. pushes her hand down by her side. “You’d better take this back,” he says. “I don’t trust myself with it.”

“You’re a pervert,” April says. She laughs way too loud. “Hey, I’m going to run to the ladies’ room. You guys stay here, okay?”

“Sorry,” O. says. “We’re required to make the rounds every fifteen minutes. Spread the love. You know.”

O. turns his back, hooks his arm around my neck, and pulls me away from her.

“What are you doing?” I say. “I was talking to her.”

“Just walk away, baby boy.”

“But she asked us to wait.”

“We don’t wait. We move, and she follows.”

“But it was going well,” I say. I’m so pissed right now I want to punch O.

“She’ll go to the john, fix up her makeup, then come back in five minutes. But only if you don’t look for her.”

“That’s like playing some kind of game.”

“Exactly,” O. says. “It’s all a game. Your only choice is which one you play. Do you want to play the friend game? Or the hot-guy-I-have-to-chase game?”

“When you put it like that …,” I say, and I follow O. to the bar.

“Change of subject,” O. says. He grabs himself another beer. “Get this: I nailed the
Huckleberry Finn
quiz.”

“Seriously?”

“No kidding. B-plus. Burch practically crapped his Depends.”

“That’s great,” I say.

O. looks upstairs towards the bathrooms.

“Here’s the deal,” O. says. “You’ve been working hard. Practicing a lot, helping me out. So I’m going to help you out.”

“Help me how?”

O. takes a long slug on the beer. “I’m your genie,” he says. “Just make a wish.”

“What can I wish for?”

“What do you want?” he says.

“You know.”

“Say it.”

“April.”

O. waves his hand in the air like a crazy magician and hops on one foot. It’s so ridiculous it makes me laugh.

“Done,” he says.

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously. I’m going to take care of you.”

I suddenly feel excited. It’s like a dream I used to have
where I become president. That’s what it feels like to be with O. Like I’ve been elevated.

O. looks over my shoulder.

“Speaking of which … hot Asian at six o’clock.”

I start to turn around, but he stops me.

“I’m going to walk away, and you keep looking towards the kitchen like you’re thinking about something important. Preferably another girl, hotter than April.”

He takes the empty beer bottle away from me and replaces it with his own half-full one. I feel strange drinking the beer that was just in O.’s mouth, but I take a long swallow. It’s like we’re brothers or something.

I see Lisa Jacobs beckoning to O. from the other room. He pats the center of my chest.