The Other Normals
OTHER
NORMALS
NED VIZZINI
Balzer + Bray
An Imprint of
HarperCollins
Publishers
TO MY FATHER—
who taught me that an adventure story must always “deliver the goods.”
I love you.
THE WORLD OF THE OTHER NORMALS
THE WORLD OF THE OTHER NORMALS
NORMAL
WORLD
1
THIS IS A STORY ABOUT BECOMING A MAN, so naturally it starts with me alone in a room playing with myself. Not
that
way—playing Creatures & Caverns, the popular role-playing game.
Popular
being a relative term. I guess if Creatures & Caverns were really popular, I would have other people to play with.
“Perry!” my brother, Jake, calls, knocking on the door. “Are you ready to go to your stupid store?”
“Hold on a second!” When my brother sees my gaming materials, his automatic response is to make fun of me, so I hide them in my backpack and put it on. My graph paper, manual, and mechanical pencils disappear quickly as he turns the knob and enters, smiling under his long hair, with his guitar slung over his shoulder.
“C’mon, I’m gonna be late for practice.”
We head down the hall. Jake walks like he’s carrying a tank in his pants and I try to imitate him, but my legs aren’t long enough. Mom is in the living room having a conversation with her boyfriend, Horace. You can tell she’s talking to Horace because her feet are up on the couch and she’s twirling her
fingers in the air as if there were a phone cord when there isn’t. She’s in lazy Sunday-afternoon mode, like I was until a few minutes ago.
“Perry? Oh, Perry’s doing fine, you know. He’s a late bloomer.”
I squint at my mother. She doesn’t even notice me. I wonder how that bizarre notion could enter her head.
Late bloomer?
I’m an RPG enthusiast. I’m an
intellectual.
“Hey! You coming?” Jake calls. He’s already at the front door. I follow him out—intentionally not saying “Bye, Mom!” because maybe that’s what
late bloomers
say.
Jake and I walk to the subway through New York streets piled high with recycling bags awaiting Monday-morning pickup. It’s a gorgeous spring day and the daffodils are out in small plots for trees, where dogs will be attracted to soil them. The late-ish bloomer-ish phrase bounces around in my head. As a fifteen-year-old you don’t want to be compared to a flower. By your mother. And then have the flower be faulty. The daffodils make it worse: they bloom on the same damn day every year.
MY BROTHER AND I SIT ON THE SUBWAY. Jake takes out a water bottle and sips it and turns his headphones so loud that I hear them next to me. I always hated people who did that, and now he does it—but I don’t hate him, I worry about his ears. He’s listening to his own band, The Just Because, which has a small reputation in New York for disrupting “battle of the bands” competitions but is otherwise rightfully unknown.
We are the stoners (aah-ah!)
We built America (aah-ah!)
We built America (ah-ahhh)
Yes we did
“That’s a stupid song,” I tell Jake, even though it’s catchy. I wrinkle my nose. Somebody on this train smells like booze. I check the car—there’s a homeless guy lounging in the corner in rumpled, stained clothes, taking up two seats.
“What?” My brother turns the music down.
“Nobody wants to hear songs about you smoking pot and building America.”
“I didn’t write it. The singer wrote it. I don’t smoke. Girls don’t like it.” He sips from his water bottle.
“Jake, what are you drinking?”
“Raspberry-infused vodka.”
“What the—?” I pull out my phone. “It’s
twelve
!”
“Exactly. Sunday-afternoon cocktail.”
“Give me that!” I grab for the bottle. Jake uses his long arms to keep it out of reach. He stuffs it back into his guitar bag. “You can’t start drinking in the middle of the day!”
He grabs my arm and squeezes,
hard
, like a mechanical claw. “Shut up, bro. Don’t embarrass me. There are girls on this train.”
He nods across from us at a beautiful woman with short blond hair and earbuds. I don’t know how I missed her. I’m supposed to have laser focus for people like this. Maybe if I were blooming properly I would. She looks up from the book she’s reading.
Jane Eyre.
“Don’t look at her,” my brother tells me.
“I’m not.”
“Then why are you looking at her?”
I look down.
“I’m a musician,” he whispers. Vodka and raspberries hit my face. “It’s my right and duty to stay buzzed whenever I can.”
“No it’s not. You’re going to get in serious—”
“You have bigger things to worry about anyway: I heard you’re going to summer camp.”
“What?”
“Heard Horace tell Kimberley.”
“No! Why?” So far, in life, I’ve managed to avoid summer camp by excelling at math enough to qualify for a program called Summer Scholars in the city.
“Dad wanted to send you to math camp, but Mom’s making you go to real camp with public-school kids.”
“I
am
a public-school kid!”
“You’re a specialized-school kid.”
“Why now? I’m too old to go to camp. Wouldn’t I be a counselor?”
“Inflation. Horace told Kimberley that Mom can’t afford to have you home all summer. You consume hundreds of dollars a week in food, although I don’t know where you put it. With camp, for a few grand she doesn’t have to feed you or do your laundry or anything. Maybe she’ll send you for three or four weeks, but if she really wants to save cash, she’ll send you for eight. She already gave you that bowl haircut; that’ll last until September.”
I touch my hair. Our parents, after entering their divorce proceedings eight years ago, each began dating their divorce lawyers. Dad’s is named Kimberley; Mom dated a number of different lawyers until she found Horace. Due to their special relationships with my parents, Kimberley and Horace handle their cases pro bono.
“Kimberley says that Mom read an article about how boys who go to summer camp become more ‘emotionally mature’ men.”
I stay quiet.
“And you’re already having issues in that department if you’re riding with me to buy Creatures and Caverns books.”
“Like you’re going anywhere important.”
“Legendary Just Because band practices
are
important. And I don’t understand why every time I give you a chance to go to one, you just want to play by yourself in your room. I don’t make up the rules, Perry. Creatures and Caverns is a waste of time! There are certain things that are so uncool they’re cool, but role-playing games isn’t one of them.”
The train screeches to a halt. Jake drinks more vodka. The
Jane Eyre
girl gets out.
“What’s the name of the camp?”
“Some normal name. It’s very traditional, I think, with canoeing and log splitting and bears and counselors who molest children. In New Jersey. It’ll be good for you! What else you gonna do? You didn’t make Summer Scholars this year, right, because you’re a bitch?”
I ignore him, but it’s true. It’s a permanent blot on my math career. A month ago, on a qualifying exam, I did what I call a mutant paradigm shift: I filled in the answer for problem 15 in the bubble for problem 14 and then shifted every subsequent answer up by one question. Even though it was possible to see that I completely understood the questions, my score had to be counted with the incorrect answers. Mr. Getter, the Summer Scholars coach, told me he couldn’t have such a sloppy performer on his squad. I tried to explain the situation to Mom
and Dad directly
and
through their lawyers, but they wouldn’t hear it. I was about to try and get into college, they said, and hadn’t they told me that no matter how divorced they were, I had to get into a good college? Mistakes of inattention—
human fallibility
—were no longer to be coddled or explained away; that period of my life was over. I got the feeling that my parents wanted me to get a
job
this summer, but I didn’t know where—a bookstore? The zoo?