On Monday, Ms. Ansley tells us to put away everything except our pencils.
“The Latin test is coming up in two months and change.”
She passes out a pop practice test and everybody groans.
“Save your moaning. I’m doing this for your own good. I’m not expecting you to ace this thing. I just want to diagnose your strengths and weaknesses.”
I already know my weakness: the reading section. I’m probably the slowest reader in America, and the stuff on the tests is always some snooze-fest about ballet or the French Revolution, which makes me even slower. So I always jump straight to the questions and then go back and scan the passage for the answers. Of course, the tests are designed to make it impossible to find the answers like that, so I end up scrambling to reread it before the buzzer and can never finish. I want to guillotine myself just thinking about it.
A couple days later, Ms. Ansley hands me back my test. There’s a note stapled to it that says: David— You are currently in the 81st percentile overall and the 73rd percentile for reading. To get into Latin, your overall percentile needs to be in the 90s. Please return this to me, signed by a parent.
“I don’t want to put pressure on you,” Pops says that night. “But what’s going on here?”
“It’s just one test.”
“I think it’s time for us to start studying together.”
“I’ve been studying plenty on my own. I’ll be fine. It’s only October.”
“Have you been studying on your own?”
“I keep telling you. Like every afternoon.”
“Let me see your prep book.”
“Why? You don’t believe me?”
“Let me see it.”
I bring it to him. He inspects the wrinkle-free spine and frowns as he fans through the untouched pages. I bite my lip and smile when he looks up at me, which makes him even angrier.
“This isn’t funny, Dave. You need to start taking this a little more seriously. No more videogames at Kevin’s house. On school days, you’re coming straight home or going to the library.”
“Fine.” He doesn’t know I’ve already decided to ice Kev anyway.
I start walking off, and he says, “No allowance for the next two weeks, either.”
“What the hell? Since when are you so into Latin? I thought you didn’t care about brand names.”
“What I care about is effort. You’re not even trying.”
“How ’bout one week of allowance?”
“How ’bout three?”
I’VE NEVER BEEN more desperate for loot. I’ve been Machine-free for weeks and I’m fiending for a replacement. Even though I still like the purple and teal most, I’ll probably go with a green and white one next time around, to appease Mar. I’m more motivated than ever because I’ve started feeling Carmen Garcia, the shorty who propped me for the Machine.
I’ve been trying to spit some game, but it’s hard to mack in Morgie’s gear. Here’s our entire history since stylish:
Me: Can I get a piece of paper?
Her: [Tears a sheet and passes it without making eye contact.]
Kev clowns me about Carmen. I don’t know why I still tell him shit. I guess I feel obligated because back in the day, we made a pact: First, if either of us ever felt a shorty, we’d tell each other, and second, neither of us would ever, ever get with a white girl. He feels this big-bootied eighth grader named Aisha, who’s so out of reach, I don’t know why he even bothers. He says Carmen has a mustache. It’s true she has a little bit of lip hair, but it’s barely visible—a couple faint pencil shades, not the whole way across, just on the sides. And I don’t know why she rocks those giant plastic granny glasses, but honestly I think they’re cute. They’re pink. That’s cute as hell. And if Kev’s dumb ass looked a little bit closer, he’d see she’s got dope light brown eyes with crazy long lashes under there. I’m kinda glad she rocks that steez anyway. I bet she’s never even kissed a dude and that makes me feel her even harder, because if I ever did get with her, she’d have no idea how bad I am at it, and neither would I. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep and even the low-volume C’s talk doesn’t help, I’ll start thinking of Carmen sitting at her desk, her long black hair pinned up with those yellow barrettes, scribbling away with her fat rainbow pen. Instead of picturing fence-hopping sheep—an image that’s always stressed the shit out of me—I’ll imagine Carmen moving her pen across a page, writing in that adorable-ass cursive, the swooping, loopy kind, with a circle instead of a dot on the i.
If I’m gonna make another attempt to kick it to her, I’m gonna need a new Machine, and for that I’m gonna need to fatten my muenster stack, fast. Leaf-raking season won’t start for another week or so, and I can’t think of any other hustle, so I resort to my old standby: canning. If you can get over the whole looking-homeless thing, it’s pretty decent money.
In my years of canning across Beantown, I’ve found that the top gold mines are sporting events and street fairs. First of all, there’s always a lot of people drinking stuff, and most of them’ll be happy to throw an empty your way if you hover around until they’re done. Second, there’s usually police around to scare off the actual bums, which means way less competition. In the off-season, the big payday is Thursday, recycling day. That’s assuming you get to the blue bins before the truck does—or before Jerry does. He’s the homeless guy with duct tape wrapped around his feet who kicks it in front of Woolworth’s on Centre Street. Everybody knows him. He has this disease that makes him yell, “Suck my dick!” if you say hello. Ma still says hi every time.
It’s a Sunday, and I’m not trying to wait till the next recycling day, so I drag my old Radio Flyer down to my bus stop and hit up the dumpster behind the bodega. Jackpot: twelve cans, one two-liter bottle, and a couple St. Ides forties. I’m about to go cash in at the machine next to the liquor store when I see Mar, who’s all suited up, walking out of the PJs with a lady in a long red coat. She’s rocking a huge white hat topped by a bouquet of bright fake flowers.
“Mar!” I shout across the street.
He doesn’t seem to hear me, but the lady turns my way.
“Marlon—over here!”
I cross the street with my clanky load.
“What’s up?” I say to Mar. “Where you heading?”
“Church,” he says, looking ashamed. Not of church, of me.
I turn to the lady with the hat. She has Mar’s big friendly eyes, and when she smiles at me her cheeks pop out like plums.
“You’re Marlon’s mom?” I say.
“His grandmother.”
“I’m Dave.” I hold out a grubby hand. She’s wearing white gloves and gives a little wave back. “I’m in Marlon’s class. At the King?”
I was hoping for something like “Oh yes, I’ve heard so much about you.” But all I get is a look that says, Who’s this weird, dirty white boy, holding us up?
Then another woman walks out of the PJs and yells, “Hold up!”
She’s wearing these purple socks pulled halfway up her legs, over her jeans, and her feet are pressing down the heels of her sneakers, slippers-style. She’s mad skinny and her hair is staticking out in every direction, like a Fraggle. I’ve seen her before, walking down Centre Street, with the socks pulled up like that. Not too long ago I saw her chilling in front of Woolworth’s, talking to Jerry. I assumed she was his homeless homey.
“Who y’all talking to?” Fraggle says to Mar and his grandma.
“This is Marlon’s classmate, Dave,” his grandmother says.
The woman tilts her head slightly and grills me with a spooky, emptied-out stare. I turn to Mar for some kind of explanation, but he’s looking at his shined-up shoes.
“We’ve got to be going,” Mar’s grandmother says to me. “It’s nice to meet you, Dave.”
She takes Fraggle by the arm and they walk off. Mar doesn’t even give me goodbye dap.
ON THE BUS the next day, I sit next to Mar. I ask him about the lady with the socks and his face goes tight. Instead of answering, he says, “Hell you digging in the trash for?”
“It’s your fault,” I say. “If you’da let me sell the Bird-Magic I wouldn’t have to.”
“Well, it’s nasty,” he says. “You showered after?”
“Nah. Still got bin grease all over me,” I say, wiping my hands on his hoodie sleeve.
“Ugh!” he says, punching my arm back.
“ ’Course I showered,” I say. “I’m a businessman.”
“How much you make?”
“Dollar thirty. In like twenty minutes, though.”
“Ain’t worth it.”
“I’ll take loot any way I can get it.”
“Well, I’m not trying to dig around for nickels,” he says. “I’m trying to go to Harvard, come up for real.”
We’ve got a field trip today. One of Ms. Ansley’s old students is giving us a tour of Harvard.
“Do your thing,” I say. “My parents went there and they definitely didn’t come up.”
He thinks I’m kidding. I don’t push it, because Ma told me not to brag about them when she signed my permission slip.
A couple hours later, me and Mar are back on the bus together, on our way across the river to Cambridge. To kill time, I suggest some rock-paper-scissors. I have this trick that almost always works, where I throw paper on the first draw. Pretty much everybody I’ve ever played with throws rock, because it seems like the hardest play. But Mar throws paper. We shoot again and I decide to double down on paper. He throws paper again, too. This time, I lose patience and decide to throw rock. Mar sticks to paper and wins.
“You know about the paper trick?” I say.
“What trick?”
“Throwing paper right away. Because most people assume rock is the move. They might pick scissors. The last thing they’re gonna pick is paper.”
He’s not buying the theory.
“Cuz, like, it’s the only one that’s not a weapon,” I say.
“That’s the dumbest shit I ever heard.”
“You know what I’m saying. People think of paper as soft.”
“What they think money’s made out of?” he says.
We pull up to a big gate and our guide greets us as we file off the bus. We follow her into the courtyard and everybody looks around, all quiet and uncomfortable. This is the first time I’ve ever been on campus. I don’t know why my parents hate Harvard so much. This place is proper: buildings made out of dark red bricks instead of the yack yellow I’m used to, windows without grates, vines crawling up chimneys, no trash or glass-chunked dirt, oak trees everywhere.
Our guide brings us to this statue of a mean seated Puritan and introduces herself. “My name is Jabrina Wilkins. Hel-lo, y’all. I can’t hear you.”
A couple kids drone hellos. Whoever invented the I can’t hear you method of public speaking needs to get got.
“What’s up, King School? That’s a little better. The dreamers united can never be defeated! They still say that over there?”
They do if you’re Principal Jackson or a giant worm. Jabrina’s one of those Potato Head types who walks around all day with a snap-on smile. She’s got beaded braids and she’s trying to talk like she’s down, but you can tell right away she’s corn to the bone. Then she snaps off the smile.
“If you take a look around, you’ll notice there aren’t too many people like me around here. Not too many people who came from schools like the King. And the God’s honest truth is that I’m only standing here”—she pauses to clear her throat—“I’m standing here for one reason—Ms. Ansley. She didn’t want me to be a statistic, which is what too many kids at the King end up as. Believe me: Y’all gonna know kids who’ll end up upstate or underground.”
I look over at Mar. He’s staring straight at Jabrina, still as the Puritan.
“I didn’t get A’s my whole life. It took me a while to start believing in myself. I used to think there was one way—I used to think places like Latin and Harvard were for other people, not me. But Ms. Ansley didn’t buy the one-way talk for a second. She told me nothing’s for other people if you apply yourself. You put the work in, you could be standing right where I am today. You hear me?”
Everyone nods, so I nod, too.
“You may only be in middle school, but Ms. Ansley brought you here for a good reason. And that’s because if you stay out of trouble and study for that test, you got a real shot of getting into Latin. And no school, not even the fanciest private schools in the whole country—not your Andovers or your Exeters or your Miltons—sends more students here than Latin.”
“That’s right,” Ms. Ansley says quietly.
“You get into Harvard, you’re taking the reins, you understand? More presidents come from Harvard than any other school—more senators and congressmen and governors, too. More millionaires—more billionaires—from here than any other school.”
Now she has my attention.
“You wanna be president?”
Kaleem snickers.
“You wanna stack a bill?”
Everyone nods.
“Then get serious and get off your Game Boys. Don’t wait. Start studying for that test.”
We continue on the tour and Jabrina brings us through the cafeteria. It’s a huge hall with stained glass, giant chandeliers, and long, medieval-looking tables. I salivate as I watch a student fill up two Cokes from the soda fountain. Another swirls a huge helping of vanilla soft-serve onto his plate. I don’t see a menu anywhere, so I ask Jabrina, “How much does that ice cream cost?”
Mar scowls at me.
“It’s all-you-can-eat,” Jabrina says.
“You mean it’s free?” I say. “All of it?”
“It’s included in tuition,” she says.
On our way out, I spot an untouched grilled cheese, abandoned on a plate at the end of a table. I swipe it and tuck it in my hoodie pouch. As we’re walking back through Harvard Yard, I tear off half for Mar.
“You bonked?” he whispers.
“It was free,” I say. “I wasn’t gonna just leave it there.”
“You act like a straight-up hobo sometimes,” he says.
He refuses his half, so I house the whole thing. It’s soggy but incredible. None of that wheat bunk, no tomato slices. Just Wonder and American.
“This is the hustle,” I say.
“Nah, dummy,” he says. “Harvard’s the hustle.”
“My moms really went here,” I say with fresh-minted pride. “My pops, too. They met here and shit. Probably in one of these dorms.”
“I’ve seen your crib,” he says. “Your parents definitely didn’t go to Harvard.”
“Swear to— swear on my grandma’s grave. Kev, tell him how I don’t play when I swear on that shit.”
“There goes your exaggerating ass as usual,” Kev says. “You never said shit about your pops going to Harv.”
“My pops went here—ask him!” I say.
“You serious?” Mar says.
Kaleem turns around and says, “No one gives a fuck about your faggot-ass father.”
A few kids in the line turn around, too, waiting for my reaction. I just keep walking and pretend like I didn’t hear anything. Sticks, stones, and all that Gandhi bunk Pops is always preaching.
“Don’t let him do you like that,” Mar says to me.
“Forget it,” I whisper back. A second ago Mar was worried about me swiping free sandwiches. Now he wants me to beef, right in the middle of Harvard Yard? What’s he care about my father for, anyway?
“You hear me, white boy?” says Kaleem.
“Nobody’s talking to you,” says Mar.
“Nobody’s talkin’ to your nappy-headed ass, either,” says Kaleem.
One kid “Oh!”s and Ms. Ansley rushes over from the front of the line.
“We’re guests here,” she whisper-yells.
She walks back to the front of the line, and a few seconds later Kaleem turns around, stutter-steps toward me, and whispers, “Fuck Harvard and fuck your faggot-ass father.”
“You best step off,” says Mar.
“Fuck you, too,” says Kaleem. “Oreo.”
“The fuck you say to me?” Mar says.
Ms. Ansley’s too far ahead to have heard, but a couple Harvard students have stopped walking and started staring.
“Oreo,” Kaleem says. He sniffs in a big wad and spits it onto the raised roots of a tree. “Goes real good with milk.”
Mar’s face starts trembling. He looks over at the Harvard students for a second, seems ashamed to be making a show for them, and turns away. A second later, he turns back to them and they’re still staring—and now the look on his face says, Fuck you looking at?
He pivots to Kaleem and walks right up to him. “Say it again.”
Kaleem digs his shoulder into Mar’s and they waltz around. Then Mar lowers his head and shoves Kaleem with both arms. Kaleem staggers back a few steps, and Ms. Ansley dives between them.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ms. Ansley whispers furiously. “You lost your minds?”
“Next time he calls me a…next time I’ma kill his ass!” Mar shouts in Kaleem’s direction.
“You’re embarrassing the King,” she says, gripping Mar’s coat. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
A Harvard rent-a-cop rolls up.
“Everything okay here?” he says to Ms. Ansley.
“Thank you, Officer,” she says. She closes her eyes and runs her palm down her face, flattening her nose. “I’m handling it.”
“You guys here with a tour guide?”
“We were,” she says.
“So tour’s over?”
“Yes,” she says, blinking hard. “We’re on our way out.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Ms. Ansley has a meeting with Mar, Mar’s grandma, Kaleem, and Kaleem’s parents. Mar fills me in at lunch.
“Ms. Ansley made me apologize,” he says. “I would’ve been like, Hell no, if my grandma hadn’t been there.”
“He didn’t have to say sorry for the Oreo thing?” I say.
“Nah. Ms. Ansley never heard him say it,” he says. “I wasn’t about to snitch, so…”
“That’s some bullshit,” I say.
“Only reason he’s always talking smack is because he knows he ain’t real. I went to elementary with him. He used to call me Urkel all the time, even though his ass got straight A’s, too. You know he lives in Brighton?”
“For real? That’s basically Brookline.”
“I’m saying! You know that spot Zanzibar? That, like, bookstore downtown?”
“The one that sells all that stuff from Africa?”
“Yeah, yo, his parents own that spot!”
“What? Kev’s mom has like five masks from there. Those things are mad expensive. Kaleem must be looted.”
The good news is that Mar’s not in trouble. He’s been acing his assignments and tests all year, so Ms. Ansley cuts him a deal. She keeps his conduct record clean, but she says if he has another incident he’s going straight to the Barron Center, which means an automatic F in conduct, which means goodbye, Latin, and peace out, Harvard. In return Mar promises to pass in a practice test and memorize twenty new vocabs a week.
I SIT NEXT to Mar on the bus—second row—every day now. I don’t know if it’s because I’m out of the White Bitch Bench or what, but at least for the time being Angel’s stopped fucking with me. When we get off the bus, I ask Mar if he wants to come over. He says he’s heading to the library on Centre Street to study, so I roll with him. Mar and the librarian must go back, because she greets him by name when we walk in. On our way to the desks at the back of the room, Mar keeps stopping and pointing to the shelves, saying, “This one’s dope. You read this one?” and I keep nodding, even though I’ve only read one real book in my life: Drive, the autobiography of Larry Bird.
Eventually he takes a seat and pulls his Trapper Keeper, his test prep book, a wood pencil case, a neon sharpener, and four rubber-banded stacks of three-by-five cards out of his bag.
“You carry way too much shit around,” I say. He’s already going through his vocabs, so absorbed he doesn’t even respond.
“Lemme see one of those stacks?” I say.
“You don’t have your own?”
“I didn’t know we were supposed to make cards.”
“How else you gonna learn ’em?” He passes me one of the stacks, and the word on top is jettison. I flip the card and read the definition: to throw something out of an airplane.
“When would I ever say this shit in real life?”
“You know that ain’t the point. Just memorize it,” he says. “Ms. Ansley says it’s easier if you come up with tricks for each word. Like that one—jettison—it kinda sounds like Jetson, right? So you just gotta remember one of those Jetsons getting tossed out a spaceship.”
My next card is grotto. It means small cave.
“Kinda sounds like ghetto,” I say.
“Yeah. The ghetto’s kinda like a small cave, too,” says Mar.
“How?”
“You know what I mean,” he says.
“Put it in a sentence.”
He thinks for a second, grins, and says, “If I pass this test, I can climb out of the grotto.”
AFTER STUDYING, MAR comes over to my crib. It’s too cold for nasketball, so I suggest wrestling. I figure it’ll be a good way to prep for real-world beef, in case Angel or Kaleem decides to start stepping again. The way I wrestle with Kev, there’s only two real rules: no dick jabs, and you have to stop when the losing guy, usually me, says, “You’re the master!” But it turns out Mar’s not down to wrestle. He even admits he’s never been in a real fight. I don’t believe him.
“Then how come you stepped so hard to Kaleem?”
“That’s the whole trick with dudes like Kaleem,” he says. “Step like a maniac and get ’em shook. Then you don’t even need to fight.”
“What happens if someone, like, actually steals on you?”
“Hasn’t happened yet,” he says. “Most dudes are bitches.”
“But, like, why risk it?” I say. I’ve punched myself in the face before to see what it felt like.
“You gotta step sometimes. Like, down at Shaw? You don’t step at least some of the time? You’re done.”
So instead of fighting, we practice stepping. Really, we just do WWF intros. First we get our costumes together. Benno has this treasure chest full of crap Ma hauled home from Morgie’s over the years: rubber biceps and abs, a Pippi Longstocking wig, a Viking helmet with a broken horn, a limp lightsaber, a Santa coat with a sewn-in stomach, gold pirate pants, a sequined juggler vest, and tons of other stuff Kev clowns on.
I throw on a gray mechanic’s onesie that once belonged to a dude named Chet, cut the brim off a NEW YEAR’S EVE 1989 visor and tape it to the back of my neck, face-paint some gills on my cheeks, pop in plastic vampire teeth, and call myself the Great White Green. I’ve always sweated great white sharks, not just because they can conquer any animal in the kingdom but because they’re the only thing I know how to draw. Mar finds a glow-in-the-dark alien mask and a ninja hood and calls himself the Ninjalien. We wait in the hallway behind the closed front door. Benno sets up the camera outside, holds a cymbal from a string, and smacks it with a hammer so we know he’s rolling. I press play on my boom box—my intro song is Geto Boys’ “Mind of a Lunatic”—bound out of the door, jump up and down, make muscles, do a swim-circle dance around the porch, and move toward the camera, chomp-motioning with my arms. In a hyped-up announcer voice, I shout, “At five four, one hundred and eight pounds, from Boston, Massachusetts, representing the King School, the undefeated, undisputed, undiluted…Great White Green!” I do a jump-kick off the bottom two stairs of my stoop, right into the camera.
Then Mar comes out and does a strange swirling ninja dance to Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” which he found in Benno’s cassette collection. He spin-jumps off the stoop, and in a Texas accent (for some reason, Mar always does a cowboy voice when he mimics white dudes) he announces, “At fahv two, one hundred ’n one pounds a pure muscle, hailin’ from the home of the sixtain-tahm champyun Bawston Celtics, the inconceivable, unbuhlievable, unbeatable Ninnnjaaalien!”
Benno hooks the camera up to our thirteen-incher so we can watch the recordings. He presses play and I scramble to block the screen with my body. Benno reused an old tape and rewound too far.
“Fast-forward it!” I say.
“Hold up,” Mar says. “I wanna see that.”
“It’s nothing,” I say. It’s footage Benno took from my community theater group’s performance of Annie Get Your Gun. The sound blares from the shitty little speaker and Mar sings along to it: “Anything you can do, I can do better.”
“You actually know this song?” I say.
“Move your ass,” Mar says, shoving me aside. “Who’s that singing?”
It’s this rich white blondie named Meghan, who gets the main part in every single show.
“You know her?” Mar asks.
“Not really.”
“She’s mad cute.”
I’m a little surprised to hear Mar say this. I’d never go with a white girl, let alone admit one was cute. It’s not just because of the pact with Kev, either. At this point, I really only like Latinas and black shorties. Maybe it’s the force talking, but I can’t help it. White girls are way too corny.
“You in this play or what?” Mar says.
“I’m just in the chorus.”
“Anybody can try out?”
“I mean, it’s a musical theater group. You gotta join first.”
“It costs money?”
“Think so. My moms signed me up.”
“How old is she?”
“Meghan? Like a year older than us.”
“She go to Latin or something?”
I nod, and I can tell from the jump in his eyelids that this makes him want to go to Latin even more.
We move on to the wrestling footage. The feed gets blurry and Benno whacks the side of the box.
“If your parents really went to Harvard, how come they got this budget-ass TV?” Mar says.
“You want me to prove it?” I say. I run to the recycling bin and pull out this thick red booklet that came in the mail the other day. I show Mar the cover, which says Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1972 Twentieth Anniversary Report, and flip to Ma’s page. She never sent in her update pic, so it just shows her college yearbook photo.
“Elizabeth Smith?” Mar says.
“She kept her last name,” I say. I’d way rather my parents had given me Smith instead of Greenfeld, but Ma said she didn’t want us to have a boring WASP name.
“She looked way different back then,” Mar says. She has long brown hair in the picture; now it’s short, grayish, and spiky, like every other mom in Jamaica Plain.
“Let’s see your pops’s page,” Mar says.
“Actually, my pops didn’t graduate,” I say.
“I thought you said both of ’em went to Harvard.”
“They did. He just didn’t graduate.”
“How you gonna drop out of Harvard?”
“I think because of Vietnam,” I say.
I can never get the full story, because there’s nothing Pops hates talking about more than Harvard. All I know, I know from my grandfather. He lives nearby and comes over for dinner all the time. He’s constantly shitting on Pops for dropping out—and on Ma, too. Ma’s a year older than Pops, and after she graduated she bounced to Vermont to live with all these hippies on a farm. When Pops left Harvard during his senior year, he hitchhiked out there to join her. My grandfather says she brainwashed him.
Mar leaves and I sit with the red booklet for a while. Daniel Showalter, CMO. William Washington, Jr., CFO. Miles Strand, COO. Archibald Mather III, CEO. Melissa Farnsworth, Executive VP. Ma’s the only community organizer listed. There are a decent number of doctors and lawyers, some college professors (no community college professors, like Pops), a couple scientists, but mostly I see C-dash-Os. And according to the survey at the back of the book, a lot of them work for Fortune 500 companies, too. I don’t even know what the Fortune 500 is, but it sounds prestigious as fuck, and I want in.
At dinner, I ask my parents to point out who they know in the booklet. I figure I may try to purr at one of these fat cats for a job hookup someday. As Ms. Ansley says, “You want to make it in this world? I got four words for you: It’s the contacts, stupid.” Pops flips through and makes a bunch of weird sounds with his throat.
“Stan Rivers works for Goldman Sachs?”
Ma grabs the book and says, “No way.”
“Guy was the goddamned VP of SDS!”
“Is Goldman Sachs in the Fortune 500?” I ask.
“Who cares?” says Pops.
“I care. The study in the back says the median salary of the class of ’72 is four hundred K. How much you think Stan Rivers makes?”
Pops looks at the study and starts making choking noises. “This is sick. Four hundred thousand dollars? Who needs that kind of money?”
“It’s not that much,” I say. “I’m trying to make at least a mil.”
“Where’s he getting this stuff?” Pops says to Ma. Most dads would be happy to hear their son wants to go to Harvard and get rich. Most dads would say, Where’s he getting this stuff? about Benno, who brought a wad of gray clay to dinner. He’s making a sculpture of an oversized nose.
“Recognize this guy?” Ma says to me. She’s pointing to the only black face on the page, a guy named Ronald Taylor.
“One of the few who stuck to his guns,” Pops says.
Like Ma, Ronald Taylor doesn’t have an updated pic or a job description.
“Is he some kind of celebrity?” I ask.
Ma laughs.
“You don’t recognize him?” she says. “That’s your city councilor.”
“That’s Skip Taylor?” I ask. My parents sweat Skip Taylor. He’s the one whose sign has been on our lawn for months. We’ve been to a thousand rallies he’s spoken at, and my parents go door-to-door for him every time he runs for reelection. Skip’s bald and has a long gray beard, but in his picture he’s got short wavy hair combed off to the side. I had no idea he went to Harvard.
“That’s how you know him?” I say.
“Actually, we barely knew him in college. We became friends later, through organizing work,” says Ma. “He kept to himself back then. The movement wasn’t really his thing.”
“He might be the only guy we know who got more radical after Harvard,” adds Pops.
A COUPLE DAYS later, more Harvard mail comes. Checking the mail is my shit. It’s like cracking packs or bashing geodes: almost all duds, but if you’re lucky, you might pull a life-changer. My dream mail is a giant check from Ed McMahon or a love letter from a fly admirer, but I’ll happily settle for a cash-stuffed card from distant relations. Today there’s only two items of interest: an L.L.Bean catalog, because of the sports bra section, and an invite to a Harvard ’72 tailgate buffet brunch.
My first thought: unlimited grub, made by Harv. This is gonna be way better than grilled cheese. I’m thinking iced shrimp, caviar, and giant juicy steaks. My second thought: loads of millionaires, maybe even a few billionaires. Even if I don’t get to press flesh with a CEO, I’m bound to catch some kingpin vibes just hanging around.
When my parents get home, I beg for a family trip to the tailgate. Pops, predictably, says no.
“Please?” I say. “It’s all-you-can-eat.”
“I only go to one sporting event a year.”
He means the Latin-English game. English High—the school down the block from me, right where I got jacked—is the second-oldest school in Boston. Their football rivalry with Latin is a billion years old—the oldest in the country (just like everything else in crusty-ass Boston). Pops roots for English because he was a guidance counselor there for ten years, before he moved on to work at the community college. Even though English is now one of the worst high schools in the city, Pops still rocks his beat-up Bulldogs hoodie.
“You don’t have to come,” I say. “How ’bout I go with Ma?”
Ma seems open to it.
“I already told Marlon about it,” I lie. “He’s really into Harvard. He was all excited.”
Ma tilts her head at Pops.
“You guys want to spend your Saturday standing around in the mud?” he says. “Go right ahead.”
I’VE NEVER BEEN around so many rich people in my life. Actually, I’ve never been around any rich people before today, unless you count Kev’s mom. And it’s not like she’s a CEO; she’s a not-for-profit sucker like all my parents’ friends. Only reason she’s semi-looted is because Kev’s grandparents hooked her up when they died. Kev got some cash from them, too. I’m not inheriting squat from my cheap-ass grandfather. I’m gonna have to hustle for every dollar on my own.
Ma starts yapping with the only other semi-hippie-looking lady there, and me and Mar march over to the buffet. It’s pretty disappointing. No shrimp or steaks, just cold, cratered burgers, wrinkled dogs, and mac salad. Basically classed-up King grub. Still, anytime I see a smorgasbord, I load up like it’s the last chance I’ll ever get. I eat as quickly as possible, refill, and repeat, till I’m well past the point of pain.
Mar grabs two Frescas and fills his plate with chips and cookies.
“Can’t believe you like Fresca,” I say.
“Fresca’s my shit,” he says. “Mad crisp.”
There’s a parking lot next to our tent, so me and Mar play My Car No Copy. It’s an old bus game, where you point to a phat whip and say “My car, no copy” as fast as you can. Whoever says it first wins lifetime exclusive rights to the car.
“Mycanocopy!” I shout, pointing to a glossy Porsche.
“Mycanocopy!” Mar yells, spotting an old-school Caddy.
“What are they saying?” a woman near us whispers, too loud.
Her husband shrugs.
“Are they with anyone?” she says.
We walk back to the food and I can’t help scoping the can situation. It’s pretty bleak because there’s a servant dude who keeps zipping around the room with a big trash bag, clearing the tables.
“You’re not separating?” I ask him.
“Huh?”
“The cans from the trash?” I say, and he tells me to buzz off with his eyes.
“You better not be getting ideas,” Mar says.
I can’t get Ma to stop yapping with her homey, so me and Mar bounce from the tent and start wandering around the rest of the tailgate. The field where the students are partying is a whole different world from the geezer alum area. Naughty by Nature is blasting from speakers, shirtless dudes in snow hats are grinding on shorties, and everybody’s slamming back beers and tossing empties in the mud. It’s an aluminum mother lode. The only issue is transport. It’s not like I brought Benno’s wagon with me, and I can’t find any bags around that aren’t already full of trash and yack. I tell Mar I’ll be right back and run over to the ’72 tent. I spot a Harvard flag lying in the mud next to one of the tables and drag it back over to the student section.
“Oh hell no,” says Mar when I start kicking cans onto the flag.
“There’s gotta be like five hundred cans here,” I say.
“Don’t play. There’s mad po around,” says Mar.
“Canning’s not a crime.”
“What you doing with that flag?”
“We’re not gonna, like, take it,” I say. “We’ll grab the cans, load ’em in the van, and then bring it back here where we found it.”
“We’re gonna look shady,” says Mar.
“Just wait here while I collect, and make sure no one takes our shit.”
Nearby, a big crowd circles around a pigtailed redhead with an H painted on her forehead. She’s barely taller than I am and looks like a freshman in high school.
“Down in one! Down in one!” two stubbly cave-dudes shout at her. One of them takes a beer, shakes it up, stabs a key into it, and shoves the spraying can into the redhead’s mouth. She takes a short gulp and spews the rest out into the mud.
“Boo!” Flintstone shouts. “Do-over. Do-over!”
“I can’t,” she says, snot, spit, and beer mixing on her face. I grab the discarded can and bring it back to the pile.
“Chug-a-lug! Chug-a-lug!” cry the apes.
Once I’ve got a decent pile, I try to tie up the flag’s corners and turn it into a satchel. Half the cans fall out. We’re gonna need to make more than one run to the Whale. I head back to the alum tent to get the keys from Ma, but she’s not there. So I ask Mar to hold the hobo sack while I look for her.
“You’re starting to piss me off,” he says.
“I’ll split the coin with you,” I say. “Fifty-fifty.”
Mar sighs, looks over his shoulders, and grabs the load.
I scan the grounds twice over but still can’t find Ma. I decide to go back and check on Mar. When I return to the alum tent, there’s a cop talking to him. The whisperer from before is standing nearby, watching with her arms crossed.
I jog over to the cop and tell him Mar’s with me. If he was a real cop, I’d be way too shook to say something, but I’ll step to a rent-a-cop any day.
“Oh yeah?” he says. “And who’re you?”
“Alumni. I mean, my parents. My mom.”
“Point ’er out to me,” he says.
“She was here a second ago,” I say. “I don’t know where she went.”
“Sure ya don’t,” he says. “Where you kids from?”
“Jamaica Plain,” I say.
“Oh yah? I was born in J.P. Anyway, whattaya guys doin’ heah? This is a private pahty.”
“Officer,” I say, “I’m not lying. My mom’s here somewhere.”
“Ya just makin’ it harder on yahself. I don’t like liahs. I was a kid once, ya know. I did plenty a stupid things when I was your age and I can let stupid go. Lyin’s another story.”
“Officer, I swear,” I say. “She’ll be back in a minute.”
“Open the flag,” demands Renty.
Mar lets go of the corners and the cans cascade out. The whole tent gets quiet, and then I see Ma walking toward us.
“What’s going on here?” she says to the cop, who turns to the whisperer.
“These…kids…have been acting strangely all afternoon,” the whisperer says. Her husband looks down and visors his face with his hand.
“These are my kids,” Ma says.
Ma’s never shook. When she was a kid, she put a bar of soap behind her ear and pierced herself with a sewing needle. She’ll check the shit out of drivers if they don’t respect the crosswalk. She even shouted off a mugger once. Pops was pissed, told her she was crazy and that she should give them everything next time. I must’ve gotten his genes.
“Well, your kids have been digging through our garbage,” the woman says.
“Well, Harvard should be recycling on its own. As far as I can tell, they’re doing a service to Harvard—and our planet,” says Ma.
“I don’t think taking other people’s property counts as ‘service,’ ” says the whisperer, eyeing the flag.
Mar hangs his head and stares into the mud. I dragged him into this stupid situation.
“Honey,” says the whisperer’s husband, “why don’t you let it go?”
“That’s my flag,” Ma freestyles, “and they can do whatever they damn please with it.”
“Well,” says the woman. “It’s pretty clear where your son gets his manners from.”
“It’s people like you,” says Ma, “who remind me how much I fucking hate this place.”
Mar turns to me, giant-eyed. Even he can’t help but crack a smile now. I scoop up our haul and swing the sack over my shoulder, and we walk back to the Whale, triumphant, clattering, rich.