Second Helpings (16 page)

I was amazed at our generations ability to just bounce back after the recent tragedies. Since weve never experienced any real hardship, I think we assume that whatever is wrong with the world will just work itself out. Its our inalienable right to live worry-free lives. (Its my opposing take on life that makes me more of a Gen-X kind of girl, hence my love for all things eighties. But I digress.)

Until global chaos hit locally.

Omigod! Did your SATs quote get the thrax unquote ! Sara asked.

What SATs? Whatthrax?

Did the SATs you took last month get stuck in an anthrax-contaminated post office?

I didnt have to take them this month, I said. I rocked them the first time around. That second part was unnecessary, but there are few opportunities to brag about my brain. Bonus: I knew it would piss Sara off.

Omigod! I hate your guts! If I have to take them one more time, Im going to kill myself.

I doubt shed be so kind. The fact that she brought up the SATs at all suggests that she is very unstable right now. The SATs are one topic Sara usually avoids like a vegan shuns a Whopper. The DAbruzzis have already shelled out the cost of a college tuition by hiring a one-on-one Test Prep Professional to help boost Saras scores. Shes more than 200 points shy of the 1200 she needs to get into Rutgers, where she and Manda (1210) have already promised to be roommates and pledge the same sorority and date smokin fraternity boys and be maids of honor in each others weddings to said smokin fraternity boys and buy luxury homes next door to each other in a gated community and be each others verji, very bestest buds 4-eva .

Sara isnt the only one in honors who is so devastated by the lost scores.

Um! Im never going to get! Urn! Into Cornell! yelped Len at my locker in between classes.

Len did well when he took the SATs last March, but 1480 just wasnt high enough for him. So he took them again last May but was so convinced that he did worse than the first time that he walked right out of the classroom and called the testing service to cancel his scores. Being the academic head-case that he is, he took them again this month.

Now Im going to have to take them again! I have to get at least! Um! Fifteen hundred to guarantee that Ill get! Um

Len, youll get in with fourteen-eighty, I said, cutting him off.

Easy for you to say. Um. Miss Fifteen-forty. He gulped.

Okay. It is easy for me to say now, but I was just as freaked out as you were last spring. Everyone was freaked out because our school had done zippo in helping us prepare for them.

I wasnt, like, freaked out, said Bridget, who had come up behind us.

Thats because you didnt care what your scores were because you had this insane idea you werent going to college, anyway, I replied.

Im, like, still not going to college, she said.

YOURE NOT GOING TO COLLEGE? Len simply didnt have enough bandwidth to process this information.

Shes going to college, I said. Shes just being dramatic.

Im, like, so not going to college. I want to be an actress, she said. And if theres anything I learned at SPECIAL this summer, its that no one can teach you, like, how to be an actress. So why pay all that money?

Len was practically flopping on the floor and frothing at the mouth at the very notion of an honors student not going to college. He cleared his throat. Ahem !

Pineville Highs college matriculation rate is already the worst in the county. Only eighteen percent of the senior class, comprised almost entirely of our honors group, will go on to a four-year institution of higher learning. Another ten percent will attend two-year junior colleges, in most cases, Ocean County College. If honors students cut short their education, Pineville Highs academic standing will sink even lower than it already is, making it even more difficult for serious students like myself, or my younger brother Donald, who currently has the highest grade-point average in eighth grade, to get into top-notch schools like Cornell. What will happen to future generations of Pineville scholars?

And then, at the point in Lens one-sided sermons when he usually keeps on going until someone mercifully interrupts him, he stopped himself. I couldnt help but stare. That was the first time I had ever heard Len complete one sentence, not to mention an impassioned oration, without stumbling over his words, or babbling on forever. It was as if he had swallowed Paul Parlipiano. Or Haviland, the traitor.

Shes going to college, Len. She already applied.

He turned back to me and said, in classic Len style, Um. Huh? She. What?

Bridget didnt miss a beat. I applied to UCLA to get my dad off my case. But Im, like, totally not going.

I know Bridget is going to college, so I dont even bother getting all riled up. I have to admit, though, that the more she says it, the more it starts to concern me. Bridget does not lie, which means she really has herself convinced that she isnt going. I figure the best way to make her change her mind is to just agree with her and get the conversation moving. I needed to calm Len down. Hes the only EMT I know, which wouldnt be much help in the event of his own apoplectic seizure.

Okay. Besides Bridget, who doesnt count because she isnt going to college I said those last five words with just enough singsongy sarcasm to make my pointeveryone else, myself included, was freaking out about the SATs last spring. So dont think I cant relate.

Like, Scotty wasnt freaked out, Bridget quietly pointed out.

Thankfully, Len didnt hear her. Her comment was unnecessary but true.

Scotty was the only person I envied last spring because he was totally chillaxed about the SATs. He had already been wooed to play b-ball for the Patriot League, the only Division I conference a reasonably skilled, five-foot-eleven Caucasian from the burbs could hope for. All he had to do was fill in his name correctly and he had the score he needed in order to accept the scholarship Lehigh was dangling in front of him. Sure enough, he got 1170. Hes as hooked-up as a King should be.

After struggling through 5:50 1600s and 2:35 800s all spring, I knew no such athletic ride was in the cards for me. Yet I kept the dream alive for my dad and Kiley, promising to train hard all summer to get back into my formidable form. I sort of meant it, too.

That is, until I got my scores.

Nevertheless, my success has brought on a new problem. As Len pointed out, I am one of a handful of students in the history of our school whose scores might provide PHS bragging rights via a scholarship to a particularly prestigious university. Therefore, I am asked the Question approximately a bizillion times a day. Teachers Ive never had. Custodians. Lunch ladies. You cant not give an answer to the Question when youre Jessica Darling, which is why Im back to saying:

Amherst, Piedmont, Swarthmore, and Williams.

I decided to listen to my mom and have started putting together applications to the original final four, the ones Paul Parlipiano disapproved of. Surely he would understand my reasons for wanting to stay safe and sound and away from New York City. I even dared to bring it up with Taryn over geometry proofs yesterday.

So Taryn, did your stepbrother ever mention meeting me over the summer?

She didnt lift her huge eyes off the paper.

Well, we did. He told me that I should go to Columbia, which I had considered until, you know, everything thats happening in the world.

I could tell she wanted to pull her wool cap down over her eyes.

Has Paul ever mentioned wanting to leave the city now, you know, because hes afraid of what will happen?

She peered out through her thick curtain of hair. She didnt answer. I guess she wants to keep our relationship on a professional level.

I still cant help but feel like none of these schools are quite right. Im trying to convince myself that its safer for me to stay within what Mac called my perfect suburban world. Why would anyone bother bombing a snow globe?

the thirtieth

He was wearing the black shirt. It was the only exception to the days-of-the-week uniform. Hed stopped wearing that particular day-of-the-week shirt as a memorial to that unforgettable Tuesday, almost a month ago.

So it was still Tuesday when it happened.

One second, Im lying on my bed, listening to Upstairs at Erics , thinking about how much less stressed I should feel because I finally sent out applications to the final four, yet not feeling the least bit relieved at all. Life, as ordinary as it can be.

The next second, magic! Enchantment!

Hey, Jessica.

Poof! MARCUS WAS STANDING IN MY BEDROOM.

Actually, he was leaning against my wall, six feet of long-limbed, tattooed, slouching insouciance.

My body got all tingly.

Are you quiet because youre surprised or because youre repulsed?

Uh MARCUS FLUTIE WAS STANDING IN MY BED-ROOM . Not repulsed.

Yet not quite surprised, either. Just otherwordly. My arms and legs didnt feel like flesh anymore. They felt like they were filled with helium, lighter than air, going up, up, up. My head wasnt too solid anymore, either.

Marcus looked around my room, taking it all in. Then he turned to me. And thats when I began to levitate.

Look at you, he said, taking his hands out of the front pockets of his threadbare jeans to point to the mosaic Hope had made for my sixteenth birthday. Happy.

He was right. I was a portrait of rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed bliss. I was happy then, and it wasnt a matter of choice. Happiness chose me. But I couldnt respond because I was too preoccupied with trying to anchor myself to the bed.

I dont know if Ive ever seen you that happy, he said.

This was so Marcus to just come over here, on a totally random night, after barely speaking to me for nine months, and just pick up where he had left off, messing with my mind.

My heart.

I couldnt say anything because I was using all my energy to stay groundedone hand clutching the headboard, the other clasping the quilt.

I didnt plan to come over here tonight. Pure impulse. I was on the way home from band practice and I saw your lights on. I stopped the car, got out and knocked on your door, talked politely to your parents. Then I walked up the stairs and opened the door and here I am.

He paused and examined my bookshelf, which, sadly, is filled with more DVDs than actual books. Then he read the fine print of the cast and credit lines on my Sixteen Candles poster. I held on for dear life, afraid to float up, up, up and get hacked into little pieces by my ceiling fan.

He turned his attention back to me.

Can I sit down?

I nodded furiously, still holding on for dear life.

As he pulled out my desk chair, I did a quick once-over in the mirror. My hair was stuffed under a Williams baseball cap, a souvenir from the campus visit. My gym shorts were safety pinned at the waist. Low-riders are the thing right now, but since Ive lost my appetite, mine have a tendency to slip beyond plumbers crack. Thank God I was sitting down, so Marcus couldnt see the word BOOTYLICIOUS printed across my nonexistent assthe butt billboard was a gag gift from Hope. Worst of all, I was wearing my favorite ribbed tank top, which was practically see-through from too many machine washings. I quickly grabbed a dictionary off the floor and held it to my also-nonexistent chest, hoping it would both cover me up and weigh me down.

Marcus turned the chair around so he could straddle it instead of just sitting like a normal person. He looked at my murky, gray-over-pink painted wallsthe result of Hopes and my DIY project gone horribly wrong.

Did you know that the color of your walls changed the world?

I was too preoccupied by the fact that I was hovering an inch in the air above my quilt to respond.

Mauve, he said.

An inch and a half up. Did he notice ?

The invention of that hue in 1856 inspired the creation of new dyes which, in turn, led to numerous scientific breakthroughs.

Two inches

Funny how something so insignificant can have such a dramatic effect on history

He let his comment hanglike mein the air.

That was kind of a joke, he said.

I got it, I replied.

I was harkening back to when we first started talking to each other.

I know.

And I would throw out a question.

I remember.

As a conversational construct.

Right.

To facilitate a discussion.

Uh-huh.

He was going to make me ask the more pertinent question that needed asking.

Why are you here?

He clapped his hands together smack !and I came crashing back down on the bed.

Im here because there are two things I need to tell you. Ive decided to tell you these things because not telling you has led to the current state of our nonrelationship, which consists of me not telling you anything anymore and vice versa. He paused, resting his chin so it hung over the back of the chair, which was now the front. Is this making any sense?