Little Boy (15 page)

I stepped backwards out into the hall and
slammed the door behind me just as the first tear made its way to
my cheekbone.

I didn’t need you anymore.

Aside from “excuse me,” or “get out of my
way,” that was the last time I spoke to you. Until tonight.

I didn’t need you anymore.

Chapter 8

Close Call

That Monday in school, right after my date
with Maria, was terrific.

The Family usually didn’t meet up each day
until lunch, because we all got to school at different times. Kyle
and I sat at the very end of the lunch table opposite of one
another, so technically, each of us could claim that he was at the
head of the table. To my left was Rick, and to Rick’s left was
Paul. To Kyle’s right were Mike and then usually Chris, who wasn’t
really part of our Family, but hung out with us at lunch anyway. We
always sat in same places. Sometimes, maybe Paul or Rick would get
to the table first, and one of them would sit where Kyle or I
usually sat. If that happened to me, I’d just push him the hell out
of the way, unless Kyle sat in a different place, because then I’d
sit across from him.

Occasionally Kyle would get to the table late
only to find that Rick or Paul had slyly sat across from me at the
end of the lunch table. Rather than make a seen, Kyle would zip by
the table, almost as if he didn’t notice, and sit with another
group of people. This infuriated The Family, but I always thought
it was so cool.

Lunch time was a load of laughs for all of
us. Except for Paul—he didn’t really have a good sense of humor. I
don’t know why, but he didn’t click with the rest of us too well.
Paul’s sole reason for being there was me. Generally, however, I
ignored him and focused instead on Kyle. Kyle and I always led the
discussions. Always. And why not? We had better stories to tell,
mine usually about girls, Kyle’s about masturbation or alcohol or
some other off-the-wall topic.

As usual, Kyle was the first one to ask about
everyone’s weekend. It’s not that he really gave a shit; he just
wanted to hear everything first so he could prepare to make fun of
us. Not in a mean way, though; Kyle wasn’t like that. He just liked
to joke around.

“I spent the weekend cleaning our apartment,”
Paul said.

“Sounds like fun,” said Kyle. “Hope you
didn’t forget the cheese between your toes.” Everyone laughed.

“No, really,” Paul said. “We cleaned the
whole apartment. It’s springtime, you know.”

“Oh, so it was Spring Cleaning Day at the
Hannon residence!” I yelled. Everyone laughed again.

“Ha, ha, ha. Very funny, L’Enfant.” Everyone
in high school called me A.J., except for Paul, who always said
‘L’Enfant.’ Nobody ever called me A.J., except for Maria and my
parents and sister.

Rick told everyone about a date he’d had with
some girl I introduced him to. She was a real ugly chick, but Rick
didn’t go out with many girls, so just having a date was a big
deal. He met her at a party I had at my house a few months before,
when I was dating Lynn. Actually, she was one of my sister’s
friends. And this girl’s father owned a restaurant that we all went
to called Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This place had tremendous
seven-ounce hamburgers. I haven’t had one of them in so long, but
god they were so good.

Apparently, Rick and this girl went out
to—guess where?—Jackson Hole, Wyoming for dinner over the weekend.
He got his license before any of us, so it was real easy for him to
go out at night.

“You have a license, and a car, and all you
did was go to her father’s fucking restaurant?” I asked.

“What did you eat there?” Kyle said. “Did you
eat…her?” We all had a good laugh. Rick told us a few more details
about the evening, but there was nothing much left to make fun of.
Despite the dissing, we were all proud of Rick for having the balls
to take a chick out when he had so little experience.

Mike’s weekend was as unexciting as usual.
His parents had a cabin in Upstate New York, and they went up there
every weekend during the spring and summer.

“Did you do anything exciting this weekend?”
I asked Mike.

Before he had a chance to answer, Kyle
interrupted: “I masturbated with my guitar this weekend!”

We all laughed again. “How was it?” Mike
asked.

“Pretty good,” Kyle replied. “But now it’s
all out of tune.”

Kyle played the guitar a lot and he was
pretty good. He’d been playing for years, without ever having taken
a lesson. He was real smart, too. But he never got good grades like
me. It’s not that he never learned anything—hell, he was one of the
smartest guys I knew. He just never bothered to memorize what he
needed to ace the tests. He went completely on memory, and still
managed to get B’s and C’s.

It wasn’t the way he dressed that was funny;
it was that he didn’t care what anyone thought about it. No matter
what happened—no matter how mediocre his grades were, or how badly
someone might’ve insulted him—he always responded with the same
retort: “I always win.” I never understood what that meant, until
recently.

Kyle wanted to become a musician or comedian,
so I guess he figured he didn’t need good grades. I don’t know,
Kyle was always happy. And he was always different from the rest of
us in a certain way. He was the only left-handed guy we hung out
with, for example. I know that’s trivial, but it’s just an example
of how different he was from the rest of us in every possible
way.

I still don’t understand how he never got
caught when he stirred up trouble. I mean, he did crazy stuff all
the time. He’d say the most offensive stuff and play practical
jokes on everyone possible. And I was usually in on them, too. But
he always managed to avoid hurting people, and avoid getting
caught.

The best practical joke, however, never
actually happened. It was a great idea, though. We’d planned to
convince Mike that I was dead. I know that sounds dumb, but Mike
was really gullible, so fooling him like that was always fun. We
had this thing planned out to the letter. We’d get my sister to
call Mike on the phone and say I’d committed suicide, and that he
should go to this funeral home near his house for the wake. It was
all perfectly planned out, except for one thing—at the last minute,
Kyle wouldn’t go along with it. After all the hype, Kyle figured
that Mike’s parents would intercede, and maybe call up my family to
express their condolences or something. And that, of course, would
ruin the whole joke. So a few hours before we were going to do it,
Kyle called it off. It was fun to think about, anyway.

Kyle was my best friend in high school. We
never actually stated we were best friends, but our personalities
were so similar that it was obvious. We both told a lot of dirty
jokes and talked about things that nobody else in The Family had
the balls to talk about. One big difference between me and Kyle was
that I always had a girlfriend and he never had one. Almost every
day I’d try to bust his balls about never having a girlfriend. But
he’d always respond, “All I need are my left hand and my guitar.”
And then, almost immediately, he’d throw in his catch phrase: “I
always win, A.J. I always win.” Nothing ever phased Kyle.

The Family and I were unique in my high
school. Like most schools, the jocks ran everything. For some
reason, they were always the ones to get the girls. They smoked pot
and drank a lot, and were popular with everyone. I despised them.
Most of them had blonde or light brown hair—usually long hair. It
wasn’t long in the back, because that style was out. It hung over
their eyes. Most of them looked like fag models, but girls seemed
to like them anyway.

One of these guys was Rob Forman. I’m pretty
sure he was St. Ann’s valedictorian, the asshole. He was a star on
the basketball team and really popular with students and girls and
teachers. He was tall and tan with blonde hair and green eyes. He
was a remarkable science student, and I think he went to Duke on a
scholarship.

The reason I hated him was that everyone knew
he smoked tons of pot but liked him anyway. He went to a park near
my house on weekends and smoked up with all the other jocks and a
bunch of girls. He got so crazy and high sometimes that people
called him Stormin’ Forman. But all the teachers and students
kissed his ass. Either people didn’t realize that he was a low
life, or didn’t give a shit. Like I said, what an asshole.

Then there were the nerds. My friends and I
were all smart, but the nerds were super-smart. These were the
people who basically had no lives outside school. They’d hang out
in the library before school and study; they’d hang out in the
library after school and study. They were on the speech and debate
team, too. I was also on the team, but I wasn’t anything like them.
In fact, I was really an outsider on the team, and nobody else
could figure out how I always won all the time. The nerds, I think,
hated me the most. It was probably because I was almost as smart as
them, but I had friends and girlfriends and actually had a
life.

There were also these weird guys that really
didn’t fit into any category at all. They were that people that
didn’t dress well, the ones that I don’t think even took showers as
often as the rest of us. For example, there was one guy named Luis.
One day Kyle and some other guys took a bottle of Snapple and
dumped it on his head. Luis didn’t fight back or anything; he just
said something like “real funny, guys,” and walked away. Thing is,
he made no attempt to remove this shit from his hair. I mean, the
guy just walked around all day with wet hair, and never even tried
to get it out. That’s pretty much the way all these people
were—they just didn’t care. Another guy actually showed everyone a
cigar burn that his father gave him as a punishment. It was almost
like he was proud of it. I think a lot of them came from broken
homes. Nobody really talked to these people, but they all talked to
each other.

But the group of people I hated the most—the
ones I absolutely wanted to kill—was the hoods. They didn’t call
themselves hoods, but everyone else did. Anyway, these guys were
like the bullies of my high school. It’s not like they beat people
up after school—though, on occasion, that happened. They just went
around acting like they were.

Most of them had slutty girlfriends. And the
ones that dated halfway decent girls, girls like Maria, treated
them like crap. They always wore oversized hooded sweatshirts, and
big, loose-fitting jeans that always fell halfway down their asses.
I guess they got the name because of those sweatshirts. These were
the guys who smoked cigarettes during lunch hour outside the
school, right in front of the teachers. They smoked pot, too. And
most of them were either black, Italian, or Hispanic. But they came
in all colors, really.

Anyway, it was during lunch time when I
brought up my date with Maria. I hadn’t told anyone about it
beforehand; I wanted it to be a surprise.

It was the first time ever I was really
honest with the guys about a date. I had a tendency to exaggerate,
as do all teenage boys when it comes to chicks. But I was so proud
just telling The Family that all Maria and I did was walk around
the park and talk, that we’d only kissed once. They couldn’t
believe it.

“Did you bang her?” Kyle said, prompting
everyone to laugh.

“No, I told you, I only kissed her once.”

“Good for you, A.J. ” Paul said. He was
genuinely happy for me, I could tell.

I was elated that day. I was with my best
friends telling them about a girl I truly loved. Now there was a
word I’d never really thought of before I met her—love. I thought:
Could I love Maria after only one date? I was so high, I was
flying. To think that Maria might be The One!

“Guys,” I told The Family, “I think she’s The
One.”

“Yeah, right,” Rick said, “you say that about
all the girls you go out with.”

“Piss on you, Rick.” Everyone laughed.

“Gahdfaddah,” Kyle began, imitating Tom Hagen
perfectly, “Gahdfaddah, if you say dis is dah one, den dis is dah
one.” Then he genuflected before me, right there at the lunch
table, as a sign of respect. It was pretty funny. Kyle was the best
when it came to imitating the actors in
The Godfather
.

Mike laughed at Kyle; but, then again, Mike
always laughed at everything Kyle did. Paul and Rick sat there,
respectfully, waiting for me to finish.

“No, really,” I said,” I think she’s The One.
I don’t want to ever date anyone else again. She’s perfect.” Then
they started to take me seriously, because they’d never heard me
talk like that before.

They knew about The One, though. They knew
that my ideal girl—and this was my ideal years before I even met
Maria—was a short Italian chick with big boobs, black hair, and
brown eyes. She was a girl I wouldn’t only be physically attracted
to, but emotionally and mentally as well. They knew that I was
always on the lookout for The One, and that I never really thought
I’d find her. I always talked about The One, even when I was dating
other girls. For example, when I was dating Rachel, I remember
telling my friends how she jerked me off during the dance, adding,
“but she’s not The One.”