One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (26 page)

“Don’t be stupid, Raskar! I don’t care what you found out, stay out of it! You or those radical friends of yours cannot change a thing! Are you crazy? Do you know what you are up against? Have you any idea what they will do if they find out what you have been up to? You want to throw your life away? All those years in law school, Raskar? Your whole life is in front of you! If you get caught, you will go to jail, or much worse, and you will not be helpful to your sister or anyone of her kind!”

Distracted by the family drama, nearly shaking, Slue’s mother let them in. The conversation inside the apartment immediately stopped, and the older woman presented a falsely cheerful demeanor for Hieronymus. It shifted somewhat when she met Bruegel, who lumbered into the family’s apartment, awkwardly trying to remain low-key and failing.

“My name is Dertorphi. I’m Slue’s mother.” She held out her hand, but Bruegel did not shake it. He was so nervous. He only grinned, and when he spoke, she could barely hear the insanely quiet words, Hi, I’m Bruegel.

“Is everything all right, Mrs. Memling?” Hieronymus asked.

“Oh, everything is splendid, Hieronymus. You remember Slue’s brother Raskar, of course. He’s just giving your father and me a bit of grief. Now that he is a lawyer, the first thing he wants to do is make up for lost time with all the teenage rebellion he suppressed and missed out on as a youngster.”

Hieronymus nodded. He assumed it was much more complicated. Especially the part about being helpful to Slue, or others like her. That, of course, meant only one thing.

Their living room was large, with a wonderful view of the Sea of Tranquility spread out before them in all its neon-lit urban luster under the perpetual twilight. Far away, clouds of hummingbirds traversed the endless panorama. Dertorphi quickly changed the subject and told Hieronymus that she had heard about his wonderful presentation of
The Random Treewolf
. Bruegel walked over to the sofa and rudely plopped himself down while taking the liberty of grabbing a colossal fistful of potato chips and shoving them into his mouth. Slue’s mother looked on disapprovingly.

Slue’s father, Geoffken, entered, along with her younger brother Ned. Geoffken looked exasperated, but also appeared to welcome the distraction of visitors. They said hello to Hieronymus, then looked over at Bruegel, who, within seconds, had managed to wolf down half the bowl of chips. Geoffken frowned at the large apparition sitting in his living room—the strange teenage boy who did not even have the simple manners to acknowledge them in their own home. Bruegel reached forward to help himself to more, and Hieronymus watched as he stuffed them into his mouth.
So embarrassing
. He studied his friend with a tiny bit of resentment. He knew he was thinking Slue was already his girlfriend, he just knew it, just by the way the big boy chewed those chips with his mouth open and his slight cockiness toward everyone there.

Slue entered. She saw Bruegel and immediately turned around and left the room.

“Hey!” said Ned. “I know you! I’ve seen you around the school.”

Bruegel looked up at Slue’s younger brother. He stared at him, chewing with his mouth open.

“Yeah, you hang out with all those hoods by the Woolburth wall just next to the school.”

Bruegel only stared and chewed and swallowed. He looked over at Dertorphi. ”Can I have some more chips? These are really good.”

Then he belched.

Within moments, Bruegel was alone in the living room. The family had moved to the kitchen to find Slue and discreetly ask Hieronymus who exactly the stranger was in their living room.

“Who is that boy, Hieronymus?” asked Dertorphi. “He is very rude!

He did not even take his hat off—if you can even call that thing a hat.”

“He’s a Loopie.” Ned laughed. “He’s in that insane class with all the retards.”

“Really?” asked Dertorphi. “Hieronymus, you are not associating with Loopies, are you?”

Before he could come up with an explanation, Slue finally spoke.

“That boy out there is Hieronymus’ friend, and they are friends because Hieronymus is in the remedial math and science classes.”

The silence that followed only served to amplifly the chewing sounds of Bruegel and his loud chip-eating in the living room.

Dertorphi’s face twisted in absolute shock. For the first time, a tiny measure of contempt crept into her voice as she looked at Hieronymus.

“No. I don’t believe you. Hieronymus, certainly Slue is joking…”

Hieronymus looked at her, his face completely neutral. “You didn’t know that? Slue never told you that I spend half my day in the Loopie class?”

Ned burst out laughing. “Loopies! Slue is hanging out with Loopies!”

“Ned, leave the kitchen!” Dertorphi demanded.

“Hieronymus,” Geoffken interjected. “You never told us this before. This is a very serious matter. Why have you kept this a secret from us?”

Hieronymus was annoyed with Slue’s parents, whom he had known for years, as they suddenly began to look at him like some kind of a stranger.

“Well, Geoffken,” he said. “I don’t see what the problem is. I’m terrible in math and I’m terrible in science. I do very well in the remedial classes, but in any other class, in those subjects, I would fail, and I would still be two years behind. And the problem is not really the remedial classes—the problem is our society itself, where a large number of kids from underprivileged families or families with social problems always end up in the…”

“But they are criminals!” Dertorphi interrupted. “Those kids are rotten hoodlums! Everyone knows that! How can you stand to be around them? Aren’t you afraid of them?”

“Actually,” Hieronymous began in an icy neutral voice. “they are more afraid of me than I am of them…”

“It’s an outrage!” Geoffken bellowed. “A boy like you, a star, the number one student of the Advanced Honors section in history, philosophy, and literature, should be thrown in with that human detritus! Your father allows this?”

“My father has no control over this.”

“What about your mother? Your parents are divorced, right? Can’t you go live with your mother—maybe she lives in a school district where they can bend the rules a little…”

“Actually, sir, my mother lives at home with me and my da.”

Behind her goggles, Slue rolled her eyeballs at her father’s lack of tact.

“Your mother lives with you? I’ve never seen her. At school, it’s always just you and your da. A lot of people think your parents are separated. We used to think that your mother was dead, but I remember Ringo mentioning her, so I assumed that they had divorced.”

“No. She lives at home. But my mother is not well.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Before Hieronymus could answer, Slue interrupted, glaring at her father.

“Enough, Da! This is none of your business!”

Ned returned to the kitchen, laughing.

“You’re not going to believe this, but that Loopie out there not only finished the second bowl of chips, but he got up and went to the bathroom to grab a big wad of toilet paper to wipe his hands with!”

“Ugh!” Dertorphi sighed. “Slue, kindly ask your friends to leave.”

“Yeah, Ma, they just came by to pick me up, so we’re leaving…”

Both of Slue’s parents stared at her in shock.

“You are not planning to go out with these thugs, are you?” her father yelled.

“Da! I have known Hieronymus since the third grade! I have been friends with him since the third grade! You have known him this entire time! He has been here a countless number of times and you have always liked him! He is one of my best friends! How can you suddenly call him a thug!? How dare you? You know him so well, Da!”

“In fact, Slue,” her father yelled back. “It appears that I don’t know him at all! He takes half his classes with Loopies? How could we not know that? He brings big, strange, psychotic-looking men, like that guy in the living room, into our home?”

Ned remained at the kitchen door, laughing. “Hey, Slue,” he taunted his older sister. “So is that your date tonight? You going out with the giant screwball who just finished all the chips—and uses toilet paper like it’s a napkin?”

Dertorphi was quick to remedy the entire situation.

“Slue, shouldn’t you be getting ready for your date with Pete tonight?”

Hieronymus could not help but grin from ear to ear, and the humiliated look of complete and utter resignation over Slue’s face was a priceless moment that more than made up for the embarrassing exchange with her parents.

“No, Ma. I’m not going out with Pete tonight. He called about an hour ago. He canceled.”

“Pete? Your new boyfriend? Weren’t you two supposed to go to—”

“No, Ma. Pete had to cancel. He said there was an emergency.”

Hieronymus continued smiling.

“That Pete is a fine boy,” Dertorphi continued. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

Hieronymus tried desperately not to laugh. “Yes, Slue. I’m sure whatever Pete is doing can’t be very serious. I mean, it
could
be serious.”

“Hieronymus! Don’t even start.”

From the doorway, a new voice entered the conversation. “Are you talking about Pete?” Bruegel asked, his voice a little less shy than before, but not yet at its characteristic loud volume. Then he continued, a huge smile on his face, oblivious to the awkwardness his total honesty was about to conjure.

“I know where Pete is tonight! He’s with Clellen.”

“Clellen?” asked Ned, his face lighting up. “Is that that really hotlooking babe who dresses really weird and is in the Loop—I mean—in the same class as you?”

“Yeah.” Bruegel smiled. “She’s taking him over to Telstar so they can check into her favorite motel. They are definitely going to be swimming in each others sweat all night long, that lucky stinker in a bell pot. Pete, man, she has him tongue-tied around love’s icicle with a hot-jamming tug on the plexinister go-round jelly-bed.”

Nobody really understood the last part of Bruegel’s report on Pete and Clellen, but it was clear that Pete had dumped Slue for the notorious Clellen, and any contempt her parents may have had for the two boys somehow shifted towards the absent Pete instead. When the evening’s plans were explained—that they were driving out to see the Ginger Kang Kangs—Slue’s father was moderately impressed, as he had heard they really were an excellent band. It did not really matter what they told Geoffken and Dertorphi—the two elders were completely distraught that their daughter’s proper and athletic and handsome and gentlemanly boyfriend, whom she had been dating for the past few weeks, was in fact as fendish as they had imagined.
Clellen!
thought her mother.
That infamous little slattern! A Loopie slut! He discards our lovely daughter so he can have a cheap rendezvous with that queen of cheapness and strange clothes and bizarre hairstyles?!

The thought of Pete’s surprise transgression distracted them so much, they hardly noticed their daughter leaving with the big Loopie and the half-Loopie, not saying goodbye, not even closing the door behind them, the clanking sound of the elevator up the hall echoing and entering their living room.

Ned, deep in thought as he sat on the sofa, wished that he himself could once, just once, be as lucky as Pete in getting a girl like Clellen to go with him to a sleazy motel in Telstar.
Some guys got all the luck
, he thought, staring out at the red sky filled with Mega Cruisers landing and floating and going away.

On the slow-moving elevator down, Hieronymus finally introduced his two friends to each other. It was an embarrassing non-event. Bruegel was sweating like a pig on a frying pan, and Slue could not have been more uninterested in meeting him.

“Slue, this is Bruegel,” he said, very formally. “Bruegel, this is Slue.”

They shook hands. Slue appeared to be a million craters away as she said, “Nice to meet you.”

Bruegel simply grunted in reply.

Hieronymus thought to himself, This is swell.
The evening is starting of as a smashing success…

Bruegel remained frighteningly quiet as the elevator continued downward.

Slue stood, completely dressed in black velvet for the evening, except for her stockings, which were the exact same blue as her hair. She wore black suede boots. She wore a large black velvet poncho over everything. Both of the boys in the elevator with her thought she was, as usual, supremely excellent-looking in every way.

Hieronymus grinned. “This elevator is always so slow!” he said to Slue, but she didn’t even look at him. He then glanced over at Bruegel, who stood as still as a statue, his eyes darting from Slue, to Hieronymus, back to Slue, to Hieronymus, as if watching a tennis match.

Then Bruegel attempted to break the ice. “So, uh, Slue. Do you like Pacers?”

“What?” she asked in a completely neutral, almost rude voice.

“Pacers. You know.”

“No, Bruegel. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh,” he said, his voice trailing of with renewed cowardice.

A few seconds of total embarrassing silence passed by until Hieronymus added his own thoughts on the evening’s transportation.

“Don’t worry, Slue—Bruegel always gets nervous on long elevator rides. He’ll be a regular bag of laughs later on when we’re driving in his Pacer on the way to see the Ginger Kang Kangs—”