Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (24 page)

“The truth is it’s not really my thing, you know?”

“So why do you do it?” I say.

“Why did you play football?”

“I quit football.”

“But why did you play in the first place?”

“There were things that I wanted from it,” I say.

I look in her eyes. Soft blue, even softer than when I first met her. Maybe she’s changed her contacts.

“Those things you wanted,” she says. “You don’t want them anymore?”

“I want different things,” I say.

April looks off into the distance. She shivers and pulls her sweater around her.

“You could quit, too,” I say. “Drop the cheerleading. Get back to something—I don’t know—more your style.”

“I’m different than you, Andy. I actually like being popular.”

“I didn’t exactly hate it,” I say.

She laughs. “Anyway,” she says, “I can’t quit. The girls need me.”

“For what?”

“I help them with their homework.”

“I knew you helped Lisa, but—”

“All of them,” she says. “We have a study group together. How do you think I got into that clique in the first place? Half of them would be going to state schools without me. So it’s pretty much guaranteed they’ll keep me around.”

“Wow. Isn’t that … I mean, isn’t it—?”

“Kind of creepy? Definitely. But it doesn’t really matter now. Once you’re in, you can make changes. Influence things. Maybe bring someone into the group that you actually like. You know what I mean?”

“It’s an interesting idea.”

“You can’t do that from the outside,” April says. “From outside you’re behind the window looking in. What can you do from out there but tap on the glass?”

Another bus rumbles away. I look at April, the sun hitting her from the side and lighting up her hair. She’s still beautiful and smart and has great teeth, but there’s something different about her now.

No, it’s not her.

It’s me. I see her differently. Everything in her life is a chess move, and I don’t like it.

“I have to get to cheer practice,” she says. “See you around?”

She says it like it’s a question, like she’s expecting me to make a move. Or at least try to.

The old me would have gotten really excited about that.

I say, “Take care, April.”

And I get on a bus.

i see yee.

I’m sitting alone in the cafeteria.

Eytan has some UN thing to do during lunch today, so I’m not hanging out with him until later. There are a lot of people who don’t want me at their table now that I’m not a football player. Some people are calling me a quitter, saying I abandoned the school. Other people don’t care so much, or they missed the whole thing entirely.

There are a few places I could sit if I wanted to, but I don’t feel like it. When you sit with people in high school, it’s like you’re declaring your allegiance. Kind of like registering to vote for a particular party. I’m not ready to be with any party. I want to be independent for a while.

Hip-hop music is booming through the cafeteria. A few hundred students signed a petition last week, and Caroline Whitney-Smith agreed to pipe in the school radio station while we eat. It’s better than people sneaking in iPod speakers and having music turf wars.

Nancy Yee walks by with a tray in her hands. She doesn’t look at me.

I don’t know why, but I say, “Do you want to sit, Nancy?”

“Why? So you can insult me again?”

“So we can talk a little.”

She bites her lip like she’s having trouble making up her mind.

“Just be warned,” I say. “I’m kind of radioactive right now.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Guilt by association.”

“I don’t believe in that,” she says.

“The rest of the school does,” I say.

“That’s their problem.”

That does it. She sits down and arranges her tray. Salad and french fries, with nine packets of mustard stacked along the side. I look at her like she’s crazy.

“That’s a crime in some countries,” I say.

“I love condiments. So kill me,” she says, and she rips open a packet with her teeth and squeezes mustard all over the fries and salad. “You want a taste?”

“I try not to trigger my gag reflex in public.”

She laughs and pushes her hair back from her face with two fingers. Her acne is still there, but it’s so faint now, she just looks like she’s blushing.

“Your face looks pretty good,” I say.

I’m not sure if you’re supposed to say things like that to a girl. Probably not.

“Thanks,” she says. “My mom took me to the dermatologist. The doctor said my hair was making my face break out. I don’t get how my hair and my face can’t work together. I mean, they’re both on the same body, right? They’re even right next to each other. You’d think they’d get along better.”

“I get what you mean,” I say. “I wonder why I feel hungry if it’s only going to make me gain weight. I’m already fat, right? So why would my body make me hungry if it will only make the situation worse?”

“I know, right?” she says. “I think our bodies do whatever they want. They kind of have their own agenda, and we don’t get a vote.”

I forgot that Nancy is kind of a genius. I always think of her as this scrawny, weird girl with acne, but she’s not. Or she is, but she’s a lot more, too.

“You hate me because I don’t shop at the Gap,” she says.

“It’s not hate,” I say. “More like shock and awe.”

I notice that Nancy has pretty eyes. Dark black and very bright. Naturally dark.

“Anyway, I was being a jerk,” I say.

“I agree,” she says. “But if you want to shop at the mall, that’s your prerogative.”

“I’d love to shop at the mall. But nothing fits me there.”

“Oh,” she says. She rearranges the fries on her plate so they spell her name.
N-A-N-C
…

“I’ll try one of those if you’re still offering.”

“Okay, but if you’re going to puke, face towards the jock table.”

Nancy slides her plate to me, and I eat the
N
. French fries with mustard. Kind of like a salted pretzel. Nancy may be on to something.

“I have this theory” she says. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, everyone in school fantasizes about having a different life, right? They daydream about who they want to be and the things they’re going to do when they get there. But nobody does anything about it. And when you look at adults, how many of them actually went and lived their dreams?”

Nancy stabs a french fry, then a chunk of salad, then another french fry. I watch it turn to yellow mush in her mouth.

“So what’s the theory?” I say.

“Dreams have gravity. You think a dream is pushing you forward, but it’s actually sucking you back towards it. That’s why people get stuck. That’s my theory, at least.”

“So we should all stop dreaming?”

“No. We should do something about it. Take action. Like you,” she says.

“What did I do?”

“You broke through the gravitational field. You played football.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

“How did you think of it?”

“I thought I was a sellout,” I say.

“No way. You’re kind of like an astronaut.”

“When you put it like that, I sound pretty cool.”

“Speaking of gag reflexes,” she says, and clears her throat.

That makes me laugh. Suddenly I get a strange feeling in my chest, and I start to sweat under my arms.

“Do you want to get a pizza bagel after school?” I say. “You can put mustard on it.”

Nancy looks at me, surprised. I’m pretty surprised, too.

“You mean like a date?” she says.

“Kind of like that,” I say.

The fourth-period bell rings. Kids groan all around the cafeteria. Nancy doesn’t move.

“Can I ask you a serious question?” she says.

I nod.

“Did you notice me back then?”

“When?” I say.

“You know. Last year. The beginning of school. Whenever.”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“You were kind of invisible to me.”

She bites down hard. I think she’s going to tell me she doesn’t want to go on a date, but she just nods her head slowly.

“I didn’t think so,” she says.

“But I see you now,” I say.

We look into each other’s eyes, and I feel that feeling again. It’s a little tough to breathe. Not like when I’m having an asthma attack, but something different.

A second bell rings. That’s the warning bell. Caroline Whitney-Smith loves a good warning bell.

“That pizza-bagel thing sounds good,” Nancy says. “I’ll see you after school, okay?”

“Great,” I say.

We both stand up, and Nancy grabs her sketchbook. The music stops playing in the background. I don’t hear the song anymore, but I can still hear the beat.

Thump. Thump. Thump
.

At least I think it’s the beat. It could be my heart. It’s going pretty hard right now. Hearts do that sometimes, all on their own, and they don’t even bother to ask your permission.

acknowledgments

To my high-school posse from so long ago: Josh, Darrin, Ethan, Peter, Jon, Paul, and our other friends from Brighton High School in Rochester, New York. Though the story is fictional, the feelings are not. Thank you for the inspiration.

I’m so grateful to Stuart Krichevsky, Kathryne Wick, and Shana Cohen at SK. Your support and encouragement means the world to me.

Much thanks to Doug Pocock and Elizabeth Law, who brought me in and gave my work a home. Thanks, too, to the great team at Egmont. You really know how to make an author feel welcome.

Thanks to Lucy Stille and Zadoc Angell at Paradigm for taking things to the next level.

Thanks to Aaron Lee, Adam Silberstein, and Doug Hill, amazing men who point the way every day.

Thanks to the sweet and brilliant Kauser for keeping me sane after the fact.

Finally, a very special thanks to Stephanie Hubbard, writer and friend, who helped me so much while I was creating this book.

Allen Zadoff
was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and went on to live in upstate New York, Manhattan, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. A former stage director, he is a graduate of Cornell University and the Harvard University Institute for Advanced Theater Training. His memoir for adults is called
Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin
. He currently teaches writing in Los Angeles. Visit Allen at
www.allenzadoff.com
.

MY LIFE,
THE
THEATER,
AND
OTHER TRAGEDIES

Allen Zadoff’s next book,
coming from Egmont USA in May 2011.

Turn the page for a sneak peek!

SINCE NIGHT
YOU LEFT ME.

I dream of my father.

It sneaks up on me in my sleep, this dream I have from time to time.

Maybe more than time to time. I think I have it every night, but most nights I sleep through and wake up in the morning having forgotten.

Some nights I’m not so lucky.

Tonight for instance.

My father is there with me one minute, the next minute gone, disappeared into the darkness. He’s never dead in the dream. He’s missing, which is much worse. At least with dead, you know what you’re getting. But what is missing? Missing means he could be lost and need help. He could be hurt. He might have run away, abandoned me, Mom, and Josh. He might have been taken against his will.

If he’s missing, he can still be found.

That’s what’s so painful about the dream. When I’m awake, I know my father is dead. He died in a car accident two years ago. A little less than two years. But in the dream I don’t know that. In the dream he’s alive and I’m looking for him, searching everywhere with this giant wave of fear expanding in my chest.

Some nights I sleep through until morning, but not tonight. Tonight I’m in the middle of the dream when my eyes pop open. I reach for the big Maglite flashlight I keep in bed with me, but it’s rolled away onto the floor somewhere. There’s nothing to do but lie here with the covers pulled up high, remembering everything.

I don’t know when I go back to sleep, or if I do. I spend the rest of the night in that place between sleep and dreams and waking, my room barely illuminated by my night-light, lying in bed with my eyes open, staring at nothing at all.

Not true. Staring at the rest of my life.

How does it help to think about your entire life when it’s three in the morning? What are you supposed to figure out at a time like that? And when you’re sixteen like me, the rest of your life is a long, long time.

Or a very short one.

You never know. Which is just something else to think about.

“Adam!” my mother shouts.

My mother is not a dream. That much I’m sure about.

“You’re going to be late for school!” she says from the foot of the stairs.

It’s morning already. My mother is extremely nervous in the morning. She’s super nervous at night. In between she’s only relatively nervous.

“Are you awake?” she says more quietly from the other side of my door.

“For a long time,” I say through the closed door.

“I had trouble sleeping, too,” she says.

“Why you?”

“Bad dreams,” she says.

I don’t respond. I wait until I hear her footsteps moving away down the hall, and then I drag myself out of bed.

I turn off my night-light and crack open the shades. The sun is harsh, tinged with yellow, hinting at the summer to come.

That’s when I remember. It’s the first day of tech. We move into the theater this afternoon. Our spring production opens in four days.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.

I should be excited. I search my mind, trying to find some angle that equals excited.