Arno and I stood in front of a table piled high with neon-colored polo shirts on the second floor of the Ralph Lauren store and mansion on Madison. Gissing Academy let upperclassmen out for lunch and I’d convinced Arno to come with me to buy something for the trip with my dad, since he’d said I should, and Arno had nothing better to do.
We have a funny problem, Arno and I. We’re the only people we really get along with at Gissing. I mean, we have plenty of buddies, but we don’t take them that seriously. Then the weird part is, of our real friends, we’re close, but we’re not each other’s favorites. I’m better friends with Patch, and then David, and then Mickey, than I am with Arno. And Arno’s better friends with Mickey, and then Patch, and then David, who he’s had some trouble with over Amanda, which had made them kind of intense with each other. But the weird part is, because we go to school together, Arno and I hang out pretty much constantly. So we’re more like brothers than friends—not that that’s a bad thing. And now that I’d invited him to the Caribbean instead of my other guys, it was like we were both questioning if we were actually closer than either one of us thought.
“Do you really think you can pull off hot pink?” Arno asked. He yawned. We had woken up at his house, made ourselves a big breakfast, and then been late to school. We’d muddled through morning classes and now we just had to get through an afternoon full of science, history electives, and Latin, and then we were out.
“Nah.” I wandered toward a tan jacket made of windbreaker material. It had lots of pockets all over it and cost four hundred ninety-five dollars. There was a saleslady called Mary who was hovering around us. She was about my mom’s age.
“Do you think it works?” she asked. Mary took me kind of seriously. I’d been buying clothes from her since I was ten.
“I’m not sure,” I said. What the hell does someone need to wear to hike in the waterfalls in Venezuela, anyway? I pulled out my cell phone and held down the number 4, which speed-dialed Mickey.
He picked up on the third ring and said, “One sec.”
I could hear his teacher yelling at him that no cell phones were allowed in class. After a moment it got quieter and I assumed Mickey was going into the hallway to talk, which is what he always did when I called him during the day at school. Of course talking on cell phones at school wasn’t allowed, but Mickey has this way of repelling rules or something. Like he’s got a magnetic force, and no matter how much someone yells at him or gives him detention, it never really pans out.
“Dude, I’m in Ralph Lauren and I need your advice on this windbreaker. I like it, but more importantly, I need to know if this is the kind of thing you wear when you’re hiking or doing something else outside that’s like that.”
“Where are you going hiking?” He said this like it was the craziest idea he’d ever heard.
“Well, there’s some shit happening with me, and I can’t really go into it all, but the most important thing for you to know at this moment is that my dad is getting remarried and he asked me to go on the honeymoon with him and his new wife and her son, who is named Serge and apparently likes to hike and do stuff like that, and no way am I going to be showed up by some foreign kid who likes adventure shit.”
“Whoa, buddy,” Mickey said. “First of all, that’s sort of rough about your dad and I’m sorry. Secondly, where is this hiking happening, and third, can I come? I can help you with the outdoorsy stuff.”
I knew that if this was anyone but Mickey, I’d think he was being a little forward, but the whole candid thing was part of what made him so awesome. And at that moment, I was totally sure he was the guy that I wanted with me to confront my dad and Serge and PISS and whatever weird bugs or other animals might be out in nature. I looked around for Arno and caught a glimpse of him in front of the antique watch counter, flirting with a blond girl in a black suit. She was rubbing perfume into his pulse points.
“All through the Caribbean on this huge sailboat, and yeah, I’d really like you to come with me. It’s just—”
“Awesome. Better head back in before I get detention for a week.”
“Mickey, there’s one other thing …” But he’d already clicked off. I handed my American Express card to Mary and told her I’d take the jacket with all the pockets. I went over to Arno while she rang it up.
“Smell this,” he said.
“Yeah, you smell good, like a girl who just took a bath.”
“That’s right. Now while I’m at school and bored this afternoon, I’ll be able to smell girls because I smell like one! Smart, huh?”
“Yeah, brilliant.” The saleswoman smiled and gave Arno her card. Then Mary came back and handed me my card and a shiny blue RL bag, and we walked back to school. It was incredibly bright out, and not too cold. Normally Arno would have spent a walk like that making fun of me for the girls I’m currently not hanging around with, like Fernanda, who goes to Barnard and said she was too mature for me, and Patch’s little sister, Flan, who is way too young but weirdly cool, and Liza Komansky (but we never talk about her since Arno fooled around with her a month or so ago), but instead he just kept smelling himself and smiling.
We were near school and we began to say our what’s ups to guys as they passed. Among the many things that are a drag about going to an allboys school is that you have to say “what’s up” constantly. It’s exhausting.
“What’s up,” Arno muttered. “Liesel’s cousin is having a bunch of people to his apartment tonight. I’m one of the hosts, so you have to come. This is a new group. You’ll like them …”
“What’s up,” I said to some doped-out-looking senior.
“What’s up,” Arno said to some guy in his English class.
“If we’re going to go out tonight,” I said, “I need to go home and get some clothes this afternoon.”
“Sounds good. What’s up, babydoll?” But Arno had said it to Mrs. Nathanson, our English teacher, and that made us both laugh.