When you walk into the dining hall with someone else, you kinda melt into the scenery. Nobody even knows you’re there. Walking in by yourself is a totally different experience. It’s like you’re radioactive, like your skin is giving off this sick greenish glow. You can feel everybody staring.
I have friends, you want to tell them. They’re just busy right now.
Usually I ate my meals with Zack, but he’d slipped out after receiving a booty text at three in the morning and still hadn’t returned, the first time that had ever happened. He wouldn’t tell me who he was hooking up with, but he usually rushed out and came back an hour or two later, tired but happy, like a volunteer fireman who’d done his duty for the town and needed to rest up for a bit. I texted him—dude where r u—but he didn’t respond. I tried Will and Rico, too, but those guys were probably still asleep.
The Higg that morning was an ocean of strangers, so I headed past the crowded tables to the less-populated section in back. It was a reject convention back there. I guess I could have taken a book from my backpack and pretended to study—that’s what the other losers were doing—but it seemed like an asshole move, like, Hey look at me reading a textbook! At least my breakfast was pretty good, though it was common knowledge that the Higg omelettes weren’t made with real eggs—it was some kind of sludgy yellow liquid that came in a can.
One thing you realize when you’re on your own is how happy the people who aren’t alone look. There were a bunch of couples eating together, and most of them were pretty smiley, probably because they’d just woken up and fucked. Other people were laughing with their friends. A professor with crazy-clown hair was lecturing a bearded grad student who kept nodding like his head was on a spring.
There were two groups I couldn’t stop looking at. One of them was a bunch of girls who reminded me of Becca. Super-skinny, straight hair, lots of makeup. They were all wearing short skirts and sneakers, like they were still in middle school and thought it would be fun to coordinate their outfits. They kept erupting in laughter that sounded fake and a little too loud, like they wanted everyone to look at them and wonder what the hot girls thought was so funny.
Next to them was a table of football players, seriously big guys chowing down on plates piled high with ridiculous amounts of food. Unlike the girls, they were quiet and serious, maybe discussing the upcoming game, or wondering why coach had been so pissed off at yesterday’s practice. I had this weird urge to pick up my tray and join them, just so I could feel like I was part of the team again. I really missed that feeling.
There I was, people-watching and eating my omelette, and the next thing I knew my throat swelled up. And then my eyes started to water. I realized I was two seconds away from bursting into tears like a little bitch, right there in the Higg. I actually had to squeeze my eyes shut and take a few deep breaths to get a hold of myself.
Little by little I could feel the pressure letting up, the rubber ball dissolving in my throat. It was a huge relief. But when I finally opened my eyes, that douchebag Sanjay was standing right in front of me, watching me like I was a science experiment. There was nothing on his tray but an apple and a tiny container of yogurt.
“Hey, Brendan,” he said. “You okay?”
I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks—he wasn’t hanging out with Dylan anymore—but it seemed to me that he was slightly less nerdy than before. New glasses maybe, or a different haircut. Cooler clothes. Something.
“Fine,” I said. “Just a little hungover.”
He nodded, but it was annoying the way he did it, like it served me right for getting drunk on a Monday night. Fuck him. I wiped my mouth and stood up, even though there were still a few bites left of my omelette.
“Gotta run,” I said. “Catch you later.”
I carried my tray over to the dish line and put it on the belt. I glanced back at Sanjay as I headed for the exit. He was sitting at my table, all by himself, reading a book and munching on his apple. He seemed totally fine, like he didn’t even know I’d ditched him.
*
Losing my shit in public like that was a wake-up call. I mean, I knew I was drinking too much and fucking up in my classes. I’d flunked a unit test in Math and gotten a D on my first writing assignment for Comp—What Does White Privilege Mean to Me?—a grade the instructor claimed was “an act of charity” on her part. I was having trouble in Econ, too, but that was mainly because I couldn’t understand the prof’s heavy Chinese accent. That afternoon, he was droning on about “sooply sigh” and “deeman sigh” when I started zoning out. But instead of checking Facebook or texting Wade, I decided to be constructive for once and make a to-do list, which my dad claimed was one of the Eleven Habits of Highly Successful People or whatever. It went like this:
• Homework!
• Pay Attention in Class!!
• No Drinking on Weekdays (if poss.)
• Call Mom
• Laundry!!!
• Way Less Super Smash (vid games in gen.)
• Bday Card for Becca!
• Return Dad’s Email
• Break Up w Becca?
• Shave Chest & Balls
• Extra-Currics?
It had a calming effect to write it all down, to take my sense of impending doom and divide it into a dozen problems that could actually be solved, some more easily than others. I decided to start small, heading straight to the laundry room after class and washing every item of clothing I owned, plus the sheets and towels, which were pretty disgusting. It was a real morale booster, except that some of the white stuff came out pink.
*
That night I went to the library to do my homework, which I hardly ever did. I was trying to read this book about climate change, how it was almost too late for humanity to save itself, but maybe not quite, not if we all made a decision to change our wasteful lifestyles immediately. It was pretty interesting, but I had trouble keeping my focus. For one thing, I was sitting at a big table in the main reading room and the girl next to me was chewing her gum really loud. And this dude across from me kept sighing hopelessly as he erased the answers on his problem set, like he wanted the whole world to know he was struggling.
But all that was just background noise. What was really bugging me was the phone call I’d just had with my mom, which hadn’t gone the way I’d expected. I figured she’d be happy to hear from me, since we hadn’t spoken in a couple of weeks. But she kind of blew me off.
“I’m on my way out the door, honey. I have class tonight.”
“What?”
“I told you about my class. At ECC? Gender and Society, every Tuesday and Thursday night?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, though it was news to me. She’d been talking about going back to school for so long I pretty much just tuned out whenever the subject came up. “How’s that going?”
“Great. It’s really exciting to be back in the classroom.”
For a person who was on her way out the door, she had a lot of time to rave about her class. Apparently, the teacher was a really unique person, the students were super-diverse, and the reading was challenging and thought-provoking, exactly what she needed at this particular moment in her life.
“Cool,” I said, though it bugged me to hear her talking about college like it was the greatest thing in the world. I was the one who was really in college, and in my humble opinion, it was a mixed bag. Also, she was taking one fucking class. Try taking four, and then tell me how much fun you’re having.
“Oh, by the way,” she said. “One of the other students said he went to high school with you. Julian Spitzer? That ring a bell?”
I froze for a few seconds, trying to convince myself I’d misheard. But I knew I hadn’t.
“I remember the name,” I said, after a long pause. “But I didn’t know him that well.”
“He told me to say hello.”
I seriously doubted that Julian Spitzer had asked her to say hello. Unless he was fucking with me, in which case I couldn’t really blame him.
“Hey,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I got another email from Dad about Parents Weekend—”
“You know what, honey? I really have to go. I’ll call you back tomorrow, okay? Love you.”
*
Technically speaking, I wasn’t lying to my mom about Julian Spitzer. I really didn’t know him that well. He’d moved to Haddington in seventh grade, too late to make much of an impression on me and my buddies. In high school he was part of the skater posse. You’d see them cruising through town sometimes, zipping down the middle of the street in a big pack, like they didn’t give a fuck about oncoming traffic. I remember Julian standing up really straight on his board, hands on his hips, long hair streaming behind him like a girl’s.
I didn’t witness the incident at Kim Mangano’s house. I was upstairs with Becca—it was the first time we hooked up—in a bedroom that belonged to Kim’s little twin brothers. Meanwhile, Wade was in the kitchen, trying to talk to Fiona Rattigan, his on-and-off girlfriend who’d broken up with him a few days earlier. I guess she was ignoring him, and he got kind of upset. He grabbed her by the arm and wouldn’t let go. She said he was hurting her. A couple of people tried to intervene, but Wade told them to mind their own business.
He’s abusing me! Fiona said, in a really loud voice. I think she was pretty drunk herself. Somebody call 911!
Julian Spitzer happened to be in the kitchen, because that’s where the keg was. When he finished filling his cup with beer, he walked over to Wade and tossed it in his face.
Are you deaf? She asked you to leave her alone!
It took Wade a couple of seconds to wipe the beer out of his eyes and recover from the shock, and by then a couple of our lacrosse teammates had grabbed hold of him so he couldn’t do anything stupid. It was the middle of the season and our team was doing really well. The last thing we needed was for the party to get busted, and a bunch of our best players to get suspended for drinking and fighting. But Wade was furious.
For a week or two it was a big deal in school, like, Hey, did you hear about Wade and Spitzer? But then it just kinda died down. There were other parties, other incidents. Wade got back with Fiona, our team made it to the state quarterfinals, and then it was summer vacation. The whole beer-in-the-face thing seemed like ancient history, except that Wade couldn’t stop brooding about it. We ignored him, because everybody knew that Wade could be a nasty drunk. When he’s sober, he’s one of the sweetest, most laid-back guys you could know.
*
It was just bad luck that night in August. Wade and Fiona were on the outs again, Becca and I were fighting, and our buddy Troy hated his camp counselor job, which required him to spend his days with whiny five-year-olds. We tried to cheer ourselves up by drinking a bottle of Popov vodka in the woods by the golf course, but getting wasted didn’t improve our mood.
Afterward, we drove around in Troy’s Corolla for a while, circling past the same familiar landmarks over and over—the high school, the cemetery, the lake, the high school again—because nobody felt like going home, and at least we could be bored together, and complain about the songs on the radio.
And then, on maybe our eighth or ninth lap around the town, we just happened to see him—Julian Fucking Spitzer, all alone on a dark stretch of Green Street. He was riding his skateboard at a good clip, pushing off with one foot and then gliding for a while, not a care in the world.
“Look at that,” Troy said. “It’s your little buddy.”
He slowed down until we were right on Julian’s ass, and then gunned it, swerving around him and jackknifing the Corolla so it blocked the road. Julian had to jump off the skateboard to keep from plowing into us. He could have run, but for some reason he just stood there, paralyzed, as Wade stepped out of the passenger seat.
“Get in the fucking car,” he said. “We’re going for a ride.”
“What if I say no?” asked Julian.
“Just get in the car, asshole.”
Julian didn’t argue. It was like he’d been expecting this for a long time, and figured he should just get it over with. He picked up his skateboard and climbed obediently into the backseat. Wade ducked in right behind him, so there were three of us back there, with Julian squashed in the middle. Troy started the engine and we headed off.
“How’s it going, dude?” Wade asked in a fake friendly voice. “Having a good summer?”
“Not really,” said Julian.
“Awesome,” said Wade. “Happy to hear it.”
He slipped his arm around Julian’s shoulders like they were boyfriend and girlfriend. I could smell someone’s sweat, sharp and sour, but I wasn’t sure whose it was. It was like we were one person back there, three bodies glued together.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Wade said, in this weird flirty voice. “You never answer my texts.”
Julian didn’t reply. He kept glancing in my direction, pleading for help, but there was nothing I could do. This was between him and Wade.
“You shouldn’t have thrown that beer in my face.” Wade squeezed him a little tighter. “That was a big mistake.”
“I’m sorry.” Julian’s voice cracked a little, like he was maybe gonna cry. “I’m really sorry.”
“I bet you are,” Wade agreed. “But it’s way too late for an apology.”
Julian nodded, like he’d figured as much. His voice was small and scared. “What are you gonna do to me?”
Wade didn’t answer for a while. He took his arm off Julian’s shoulders and gazed out the window at the dark houses with their neat front yards, attractive homes full of decent people.
“I’m not a bad person,” he said. “I’m really not.”
I could totally see his dilemma. He’d talked so much about the hardcore vengeance he was going to inflict on Julian, and now he had to deliver. You couldn’t just drive around with the kid for a half hour and then let him off with a stern warning.
“You should fuck him in the ass,” Troy suggested. “I bet he’d like that.”
*
I guess it could’ve been worse. There was no violence, no bloodshed, no tears. Nobody got fucked in the ass. It was just the four of us standing in front of a disgusting Port-A-John near the soccer field in VFW Park. I swear, you could smell that thing from twenty yards away, a cloud of human waste and chemical perfume that had been fermenting in the sun for the whole summer. Wade held out his hand and asked Julian for his phone.
“Why?” Julian asked. “What are you gonna do with it?”
“Just give it to me, asshole.”
Once again, Julian did as he was told. Wade shoved the phone into his pants pocket. Then he pointed at the Port-A-John.
“Get in there,” he said.
I had my hand on Julian’s shoulder. I could feel his whole body stiffen.
“No way,” he said.
“Oh, you’re going in,” Wade told him. “I guarantee you that.”
“Please,” Julian said. “I already apologized.”
Wade poked him in the chest. “I’m not gonna say it again.”
Julian just sort of went limp. All the fight went out of him.
“That’s all?” he said. “You’re not gonna hurt me?”
“That’s all,” Wade told him.
“You promise?”
“I promise. Now get the fuck in there.”
It was all very civilized. Wade opened the door to that reeking closet and Julian stepped inside.
“Enjoy your evening,” Wade told him.
Julian turned to face us. The Port-A-John was slightly elevated, so it was almost like he was on stage. I guess he felt like he had nothing to lose.
“You guys suck,” he said. “I hope you know that.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Troy told him. “You’re getting off easy. If it was up to me—”
“I’m serious,” Julian continued. “Guys like you are what’s wrong with the—”
Wade slammed the flimsy plastic door before Julian could finish his sentence. Then he sealed it shut using the duct tape he’d found in Troy’s glove compartment. He wrapped it really well, using every last bit of tape on the roll, turning that Port-A-John into a prison cell.
“Yo, Julian,” he said. “I’m leaving your phone out here.”
“Fuck you.” Julian’s voice sounded muffled and far away, though he was right next to us. “You’re a terrible person. All three of you.”
Wade dropped the phone in the grass.
Julian started yelling as we walked away, calling us morons and scumbags and begging us to open the door, but his pleas had dwindled away to nothing long before we reached the parking lot. We tried to laugh about it in the car, congratulating ourselves on the genius prank we’d just pulled, but our hearts weren’t really in it. I was about to say we should go back and let him out, but Troy spoke first.
“He can breathe in there, right? He’s not gonna suffocate or anything?”
“There are vents in the side,” I said. “I checked.”
“Can you imagine how bad it smells?” Troy asked. “Could you actually die from that?”
“He’ll be fine,” Wade said. “People will be walking their dogs at like six in the morning. They’ll let him out.”
“That’s five hours from now,” I said.
“Don’t feel sorry for that fucker,” Wade said. “He’s lucky he’s not in the hospital.”
*
I went home and got into bed, but I couldn’t fall asleep. All I could think about was Julian Spitzer, trapped in that gnarly box, far from anyone who could help him. I wondered if his parents had realized he was gone, if they were maybe calling the phone that Wade had left in the grass.
I couldn’t take it. Around five that morning I got out of bed and rode my bike over to the park. It had seemed so sinister the night before, a creepy place where anything could happen. But it was beautiful in the early morning, with the sun coming up and birds chirping like crazy. I could see houses through the trees, not nearly as far away as they’d seemed in the dark.
I was relieved to find the Port-A-John empty, the tape seal broken. Maybe Julian had only been in there for a little while before someone came along, or he figured out a way to free himself. Maybe I’d stayed up all night worrying about nothing.
We had a few bad days after that, wondering if he’d told anyone what we’d done, his parents or maybe the cops or even just his friends. We weren’t sure if it was a crime to tape someone inside a portable toilet, but it was the kind of prank you could get in pretty bad trouble for, a serious lapse in judgment you wouldn’t want to have to explain to your parents or coaches, or to a college admissions officer.
But nothing happened. We never heard a word about it.
That was the summer before our senior year. When we got back to school in September, Julian Spitzer was mysteriously absent. Some people said he’d dropped out, others that he’d transferred to private school. I was just glad he was gone, so I didn’t have to see him or think about him. By the time we graduated, I’d pretty much erased him from my memory, which was why it was such an unpleasant shock to hear my mother mention his name that afternoon, dropping it so casually into the conversation, asking if it rang a bell.
*
You know how sometimes, if you try not to think about something, you become that much more aware of it? That’s how it was with me and that girl in the library. I kept trying to concentrate on my book—the melting glaciers and rising sea levels—and she kept chewing away, making this crackly gum-and-saliva noise that went right through me.
Jesus Christ, I thought. Can you even hear yourself?
It was actually a relief when the protesters arrived. There were maybe twenty of them, and they entered the library like a tour group, huddled together near the main entrance, whispering and looking around. Some of the kids at my table were already rolling their eyes and shaking their heads.
“Not again,” moaned the chewing machine.
“Every friggin’ night,” said the kid with the eraser.
The protesters organized themselves in single file, stretching all the way down the center aisle. The girl closest to my table had blue hair and black lipstick. She glanced nervously at the Muslim girl next to her, who just had the headscarf, not the facemask. They lifted their arms.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
It was kind of lame that first time, like only half the group got the memo, and not all of them read it at the same time.
“He was a thug!” somebody shouted from one of the tables.
The blue-haired girl and her Muslim friend raised their arms higher and chanted with more conviction.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
I’d heard about these Michael Brown protests—they were supposedly happening all over campus—but this was the first one I’d actually seen. A lot of people were complaining about them, saying that it was really disrespectful, the way the protesters barged into classrooms and harassed the fans at sporting events. But it was kind of cool to have them invade the library like this, filling that quiet space with their chant, which became louder and more confident the more they repeated it.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
The line was moving now, new faces filing past me in a slow parade. To my amazement, one of them was waving at me. It took me a second to recognize Amber, from the Autism Awareness Network, and by then she’d broken from the line and was heading straight for my table.
“Dude!” she said in this jubilant voice, like I’d come back from the dead. “Where have you been? We missed you last meeting.”
“Too much work,” I said, holding up my book so she could see I was reading about climate change.
Even though she was out of formation, she raised her hands and shouted along with the others, begging the invisible cops not to shoot. She was wearing sweats and a hoodie, and I noticed again how strong she looked, with those linebacker shoulders, and how pretty she was, blond hair and blue eyes and farm-girl freckles, her cheeks all flushed with excitement.
“It’s terrible what happened in Ferguson,” she told me. “This shit’s gotta stop.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The more I heard about Michael Brown the more confused I got. Was he minding his business or had he robbed a store? Was he surrendering or trying to grab the cop’s gun? I’d heard different people say different things, and didn’t know what to believe.
“It’s fucked up,” I said. “That’s for sure.”
Amber smiled, like I’d passed some kind of test. She held out her hand, like she was asking me to dance.
“Come on,” she said. “We need your voice.”
*
I was shy at first, and worried about my backpack, which I’d left at the table.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
“Come on!” Amber told me. “Say it like you mean it!”
Some people heckled us, but others got up from their seats and joined the conga line as we moved through the library. We marched past the circulation desk and snaked through the stacks to the Computer Commons.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
It got easier the more I did it, and a lot more fun. Some people were swaying and others started raising the roof. For a little while Amber and I were holding hands, our arms aloft like we’d just won a medal.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
We did three circuits of the main floor and then exited through the metal detector, chanting the whole time. It felt great to step out of the library into the chilly October night, everybody high-fiving and congratulating everybody else, the moonlight shining on Amber’s hair as she hugged me.
*
When I got back to the room, Zack was lying on his bed with these huge DJ headphones clamped over his ears. I wanted to tell him about the protest, but he yanked off the headphones and sat up before I’d even had time to shrug off my backpack.
“Dude,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Would you ever hook up with a fat girl?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “That’s not really my thing.”
“Yeah, but what if there’s a fat girl you really liked? Would you hook up with her?”
“Is this for a class?”
“No, I’m just curious.”
“Depends.” I sat down on my bed, directly across from him. “If she’s one of those plus-sized models I might.”
“Not a model. Just a regular fat girl. But she’s pretty and has a great personality.”
“Are you trying to set me up with someone?”
“Dude, I’m asking you a simple question.”
He sounded annoyed, which was a little unfair, since I’d already answered him twice.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll hook up with her. Why not, if she’s as great as you say?”
Zack nodded approvingly, like I’d finally given the correct answer.
“Okay, so you hook up with this girl a couple of times and it’s fun as hell, but totally casual. No strings. But then one night she starts crying, and you’re like, What’s wrong? And she’s like, Why don’t we ever go out in public? Are you ashamed of me? Is it because I’m fat? What do you say then?”
It was all so obvious, I almost laughed in his face.
“Dude, are you hooking up with a fat girl? Is that where you go at three in the morning?”
“No,” he said, in that same put-upon tone. “This is a completely hypothetical scenario.”
“All right,” I said. “Speaking hypothetically, I’d probably say, Bitch, maybe if you dropped a hundred pounds we could go to the movies. In the meantime, could we get back to the blowjob you were giving me? I’m tired and I have to meet my asshole roommate for breakfast in the morning.”
“Dude, that’s so mean. She can’t help it if she’s fat.”
“Not my problem, bro.”
“Wow.” Zack looked impressed. “You’re an even bigger dick than I am.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You wanna get baked and watch some Bob’s Burgers?”
“I could go for that,” he told me. “But I can’t stay up too late. I’m tired and I gotta meet my asshole roommate for breakfast in the morning.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “So do I.”
We bumped fists and Zack broke out his weed, and pretty soon we were lit and laughing our asses off, talking shit about my hypothetical ex-girlfriend, the fat girl who’d been fun for a while, until she turned all weepy and started getting on my nerves.