Howard Newman deftly shuffled the cards and looked out at his three opponents around the table in the corner of the school corridor. “Okay. Seven-card stud, the card after the last jack is wild — unless it’s red, in which case deuces are wild. If no jacks pop up, then a one-eyed jack facedown is wild, but a two-eyed jack is nothing. Got it?”
“Deal,” said Sean as the two other players murmured their assent. Sean was no big poker enthusiast, but after a sleepless night of trying to figure out Raymond’s garbage bag theory while haunted by the magical luck of Theamelpos, he was ready for anything that would divert his mind.
Sean and Howard had once been best friends, back when Howard had been forced to repeat kindergarten as a classic underachiever. The friendship had ended a year after that when Howard had taught Sean to play poker and had proceeded to win all of his toys. Things were cool between them still, except that Sean now knew that Howard’s uncanny skill with cards came from the fact that he cheated like crazy.
Expertly, Howard dealt each player two cards facedown, and opened for ten toothpicks. He was in an especially good mood that day, because Popular Science was sending a team of photographers over to do a feature layout on SACGEN. With this in mind, Howard had snuck out during the night and festooned the solar and wind collectors on the roof of the school with pink and white floral toilet paper. At this very moment, he knew that eleven Department of Energy engineers and an almost hysterical Q. David Hyatt were scrambling around the roof trying to unwind his little present. He dealt another round of cards.
“I hid out in the parking lot to get a good look at Q-Dave’s face when he saw it. Man, it was pretty. I’ve never seen anybody so trashed out. Raise twenty.”
Sean threw a stack of toothpicks into the pot. “Won’t they just take it all down before the photographers come?”
Howard dealt again. “It’s not coming down so fast. I’ve got twelve rolls up there. Stuck on with library paste.”
“I can’t understand why Q-Dave loves that stupid windmill so much,” mused Randy, counting out his toothpicks.
“Oh, I can,” said Howard. “I mean, I hate it so much. So just picture someone who’s the opposite of me.” He glanced to the window where a small sheet of pink paper floated gently to the ground. “You’re doing fine, boys. Keep ripping.”
Out of twenty-two hundred students who didn’t think too much of SACGEN, Howard Newman was easily the best hater in the place. He had virtually dedicated his life to insulting SACGEN. It had been Howard who had given SACGEN its popular nickname during the first blackout of the year, which occurred at the opening assembly. As soon as the lights went out, Howard’s voice boomed, “Way to go, Q-Dave! You bought us a bum windmill!”
In fact, Howard had been holding his running poker game in the third-floor washroom, which had fallen to the wreckers when the entire center of the school had been gutted to make room for the SACGEN core. As far as he was concerned, he had been unlawfully evicted, and had lost his folding cot and upwards of ninety thousand toothpicks. He had taken his game out into the hall, and was cheating his way back from bankruptcy because, as he put it, “When I get enough toothpicks, I’m going to trade them in for a nuclear warhead, and drop it on the windmill.”
“Four queens,” announced Howard, raking in the pot with both arms. “It’s mine.”
Just then, Mr. Hyatt’s voice sounded over the PA system. “Your attention, please. Would the person or persons responsible for defacing the SACGEN superstructure please report to the office immediately.”
“That’s yours, too,” said Sean.
Howard shook his head. “This is exactly why Q-Dave is never going to move up in the world. He’s not too bright. Does he expect me to go down to the office and say, ‘Hey, Q-Dave, here I am. I’m the guy who t.p.’d your windmill’? Now, if he was smart, he’d say something like, ‘Someone has found twelve rolls of toilet paper on the roof. Would the owner please come to the office and claim them.’ Then he’d have me.”
Sean pocketed his toothpicks and stood up. “I’ve got a class.”
“So do we,” said Howard, dealing another hand. “Sit down.”
Sean thought it over. It was only one English class — not even a lecture. They were supposed to consult with their partners on a project topic. He shuddered. That meant Raymond, fifty minutes, uninterrupted. He tossed his toothpicks back onto the table and sat down again. “Deal the cards.” There was plenty of time to pick a topic tomorrow. This way he would have twenty-four more hours to resign himself to the idea of working with Raymond Jardine, and all it would cost him was a couple of hundred toothpicks.
As it turned out, he got the worst of both worlds, because Howard continued to be unbeatable at poker, and Raymond showed up anyway.
“This is impressive,” Raymond announced, a painful smile on his face. “And here was Jardine thinking you were going to waste your time doing a poetry assignment. What a relief.”
“Howard, Randy, Chris,” said Sean quickly, “this is Raymond Jardine.” He added, “My English partner.” God forbid anyone should think he and Raymond were friends. An ugly rumor like that could kill a guy’s image.
Greetings were exchanged all around.
“I’m the guy who put the toilet paper on the windmill last night,” Howard informed Raymond.
“Right — uh — thanks. Come on, Delancey. We’ve got to go hit the library.”
Sean was incensed. “I’m in the middle of a hand! What was the bet? Thirty-five?”
Howard raised it to fifty.
Raymond picked up Sean’s hole cards and snorted. “You think you’re going to beat him with three lousy queens? He’s already got two aces showing, probably one in the hole, and the one in his sock makes four.”
Howard blew up. “Hey, will you let the guy play, huh?”
“I fold,” said Sean, tossing his cards into the center of the table. Randy and Chris did the same.
Howard slapped his forehead and looked daggers at Raymond. “Man, you just cost me a hundred and fifty toothpicks!”
“I’ll make it up to you,” Raymond promised. He patted his pockets experimentally. “Hmmm. Fresh out of toothpicks. Would you accept maybe a good-sized roll of dental floss instead?”
“Raymond —” said Sean warningly.
Howard stood up. “My game is off limits to you!”
“Are you sure?” asked Raymond innocently. “It’s lightly waxed, shred-resistant —”
“Out!”
“I’ll see you guys later,” said Sean quickly, grabbing his toothpicks and hustling Raymond away from the game.
When they were out of earshot, Sean turned on his partner. “Nice going. Do you always make friends so charmingly?”
Raymond shrugged. “The guy cheats.”
“Of course he cheats. And everybody knows it. The point is, Howard Newman is the easiest guy in the world to get along with. All you have to do is play poker and hate the windmill. He liked everybody — until you came along with your dental floss.”
Raymond shook his head, indicating that he had no time for such small talk. “Never mind that. The worst thing that could have happened has just happened. Cementhead has signed up for Theamelpos.”
“Cementhead? Who’s that?”
“You know — the guy with a big cement block for a head, who wears shirts with no sleeves even when it’s freezing. Steve Cementhead.”
Sean was outraged. “His name is Steve Semenski, and he’s one of my best friends. He’s a good guy.”
“If he was a good guy,” said Raymond, “he’d stay away from Jardine’s trip.” From his clipboard he produced a sheet of paper and held it out to Sean. “Look at his record. It’s enough to make you cry.”
SEMENSKI, S., 5669, Junior
Height: 5′ 10″ Weight: 160 lbs.
Hair: brown Eyes: brown
Extracurricular activities: varsity football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, track and field, water polo, wrestling.
(Who is this creep?)
Comments: Forget it! He’s going to Theamelpos unless someone accidentally uses his head to put up a skyscraper.
Sean reddened further. He and Steve had become friends in eighth grade, when the two had formed a secret society, which had turned out to be not so secret, since practically everybody had known about it. Actually, the whole thing had started as a dare to see who would have the guts to sneak into the girls’ locker room during gym class and steal Karen Whitehead’s underwear. Gradually, a few others had been admitted to the society, but since Karen Whitehead was the biggest and meanest girl in the entire eighth grade, it had been almost summer vacation before Steve had finally accomplished the mission. This explained why the secret society had lasted all through the year, and was probably the main reason why Sean and Steve were so close.
“You are a vicious person!” he accused Raymond. “What has Steve Semenski ever done to you, huh? Here you are cutting the guy up when you know nothing about him! Steve is on all the teams, but he never gets to play. He’s just good enough to be the last guy who makes it before the cut. He plays substitute for every team we’ve got, but he never so much as breaks a sweat.”
“That’s even worse,” said Raymond. “He gets a record that makes him look like an Olympic decathlon champion, and he doesn’t even have to do anything to earn it. He’s never going to get injured, he’s never going to get kicked off a team for lousy play, and he’s never going to neglect one sport for another, because he doesn’t play anything. This guy must have been born with a serious horseshoe up his diaper! Now I know why I have no luck. They gave it all to Cementhead! How’s Jardine supposed to compete with a guy like that?”
Sean held his head. “Look, you compete with our poetry assignment, remember? Come on. Let’s go to the library.”
Raymond was not so easily consoled. “I’m starting to think that a poetry assignment isn’t going to be enough to pull this off.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Who’s going to sign up next — Superman? Delancey, we need some of that extracurricular garbage on our side, too. Like it or not, we’ve got to get involved.”
Sean frowned. “You’re my English partner. Don’t make me your partner at anything else.”
***
The library was a nightmare. He and Raymond sat at a long worktable, surrounded by mountains of books, desperately skimming for a topic for their project. To make matters worse, Raymond was being difficult. He was still dead set on the idea of pulling some obscure poet out of nowhere, bringing him to Mr. Kerr’s attention with their brilliant analysis, and chuckling about it all the way to Theamelpos.
“Too famous, Delancey,” Raymond said for about the fifteenth time. “Look at the universities he taught at. Look at the prizes they gave him. He’s practically the Cementhead of poetry. What we’re looking for is the Jardine of poetry.”
“Quit calling him Cementhead,” Sean growled. “Now look. We’ve got to get thirty pages out of this. I haven’t seen anything I could do thirty words on! Not even three!”
Raymond looked over at the book opened in front of Sean. “How about ‘This really stinks’?”
“Come on! At least we can do research on some of the famous guys!”
“We’ve got till Friday to pick a topic. Keep looking.”
Sean’s mood was not helped by the fact that Mindy O’Toole was sitting right across the table. When he said hello, her return greeting sounded as though she were talking to the gas man who had come to read the meter.
“How’s it going?” Sean asked her.
“Fan-tastic,” she replied, and returned to her work, shutting him out completely.
Mindy was also in Mr. Kerr’s class, and was in the library searching for a topic with her partner, Danny Eckerman. Actually, Danny was sitting passively by, munching on an apple, while Mindy slaved diligently over a volume of modern poetry. Danny was presently enjoying his second term as student body president, and was far more concerned with discussing the school’s upcoming Halloween party than rendering any assistance to poor Mindy.
“Halloween is the ultimate party night,” said the president, “and I give awesome Halloween parties. Remember that blowout we had last year?”
Sean, who had been there for a total of forty-five seconds en route to a different party, said, “How could I forget? It was amazing.”
“An event like that practically plans itself,” Danny went on, “but there are always a lot of little details to look after, and I’m pretty busy these days. I need a couple of helpers.”
Before Sean could issue a certificate of ineligibility, Raymond was out from behind a stack of books, throwing his hat into the ring. “No, you don’t. You’ve got two helpers — me and Delancey.” He stuck out his hand. “Jardine. Pleased to meet you.”
Smiling with all thirty-two teeth, Danny shook Raymond’s hand and then Sean’s. “I love this school,” the president declared emotionally. “There’s always someone ready to lend a hand.” From his pocket he produced a handwritten list and passed it over to Sean. “I jotted down a few basic ideas for you to take a look at. They should be helpful.”
Sean could hardly contain his rage until they left the library en route to second period. Then he turned to Raymond with a vengeance. “How could you be so stupid?”
Raymond was mystified. “What do you mean? This is a real break for us. Think how great it’ll look on our records — ‘Student Social Activities Planning Committee.’ And all we have to do is show up once or twice and help El Presidente put up streamers or something.”
Sean shoved the list under his nose. “Check this out, Mr. Streamer-Putter-Upper! ‘Food, drinks, music, lighting, games, contests, prizes, advertising, decorations —’ Get the picture? When you volunteer to ‘help’ Danny Eckerman, it means you have to do it for him! He never does anything! He’s the laziest guy in the school! You saw how he had poor Mindy doing all his work for him. I bet she even wrote this list. See? This is her handwriting!”
Raymond examined the paper. “Hmmm. Doesn’t leave much for him to do, does it?”
“See? And look! Our posters have to say ‘Danny Eckerman invites you to a Halloween Extravaganza’! I could kill myself! We’ve got a thirty-page poetry assignment with no topic, and now we’ve got to put on the social event of the season!”
Raymond looked up at the ceiling. “Cementhead doesn’t even have to play.” He shrugged. “Oh, well. We need the Brownie points. When we’re on Theamelpos, it’ll all seem worth it.”
***
SACGEN behaved itself for the people from Popular Science. So for that one day, the students were given respite from the usual breakdowns and inconveniences. This was largely because the Department of Energy sent in fourteen engineers instead of the usual two. It was their policy anytime visitors were expected to see to it that their pet project’s every mood was lovingly catered to. For this reason SACGEN, which was a complete turkey for the students who had to deal with it daily, had a perfect performance record in front of observers, and was fast earning a reputation in the industry as the energy source of the future.
Howard Newman was pleased to note that there was still one undiscovered small strand of toilet paper waving feebly but proudly from the back of an angled solar collector on the roof. He took out a subscription to Popular Science that very day.
The next day, Sean knew it was business as usual when he arrived at school to find the lights dim and flickering and a strange ping sound echoing through the hall every ten seconds or so.
There was only one other student by the east-side entrance. Raymond was in the process of removing the school’s notice advertising the Theamelpos trip and replacing it with one that read:
COOKING WITH CABBAGE
A SYMPOSIUM
Raymond looked at it critically, nodded with satisfaction, then ripped the Theamelpos ad into sixty-four pieces and spread them among three garbage cans. He was chanting again, too, a vague Latin-American rumba melody in time with the ping. It was all gibberish except for “Theamelpos,” which was sprinkled here and there amidst the nonsense. He wasn’t exactly dancing, but there was a certain spring in his step, and his movements were all to the beat of his music.
“That’s dishonest, you know,” Sean said behind him.
Raymond nodded absently. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, it is, you know. Never mind the notice you ripped up. What if some poor jerk really wants to sign up for” — he squinted at the new paper — “Cooking with Cabbage?”
“Oh, no sweat,” said Raymond seriously. “I admit a couple of people enrolled when I tried it with Knuckle-Cracking, but there wasn’t any fuss when it didn’t come off. I was on the right track with Seminar on SACGEN, until Q-Dave signed up. But this is perfect. It won’t even get a nibble. Any brilliant poetry topic inspiration come to you?”
“I’m too preoccupied with Halloween,” Sean said sourly.
Raymond nodded sadly. “My uncle called last night — you know, the fish guts czar of New Jersey. He asked me what I was going to be doing next summer.” He shuddered. “I said I was going to be seventy-five hundred miles southeast of Secaucus, flaked out on a beach, catching a rap with Miss Stockholm. He just laughed and told me I was getting a thirty-five-cent raise.” He reached down to pick up his clipboard, which was leaning against the wall, and began to walk. Sean followed.
It was ten to nine, and the halls were bustling with students putting in those last few minutes of hanging out before first period. Raymond pointed to a tall, dark-haired girl waiting in front of the physics lab.
“See her? She was the first one on the Theamelpos list after you. Amelia Vanderhoof. The day she signed up — poof — the first of those six spots — gone. Q-Dave and the teachers all love her.”
Sean felt his lips forming into a smile as he distinctly remembered telling Amelia about this great trip that had just been proposed. “Cut it out, Raymond. Amelia’s a friend of mine. She’s really nice. Kind of a goody-goody …” He waved at Amelia, who smiled and waved back.
“Good for her; terrible for Jardine. She’s got a record Albert Schweitzer couldn’t match. And the thing that bugs me is that she’ll get nothing out of that trip, when it would be such a rich and rewarding experience for Jardine!” He waved the clipboard under Sean’s nose. “Read about her! Read about her and weep!”
VANDERHOOF, A., 3992, Senior
Height: 5′ 11″ Weight: 119 lbs.
Hair: dark brown
Eyes: twin dots of India ink
Grade point average: 3.95 (I may throw up.)
Comments: Definitely going. Will probably put a damper on trip for everyone else. The most boring person alive.
Sean looked up to find Amelia standing in front of him, and quickly jammed the clipboard into Raymond’s chest so hard that it almost winded him.
“Hi, Sean. Nice shot last Monday.”
“Thanks, Amelia.” Sean paused. “Uh — this is Raymond, my English partner.” He was relieved to note that Raymond was polite and friendly, not to mention careful to keep his clipboard well concealed.
“So where did you live before here?” asked Amelia after Raymond had mentioned that he was new to this school.
“Oh, we didn’t move,” Raymond explained. “The town moved.”
“Pardon?”
“My house used to be in Seaford, but the town boundaries were changed, so suddenly we’re in DeWitt.”
“That’s really interesting,” said Amelia blandly. “Oh! Time for class. Bye.” She headed off.
“You never told me all that stuff about your house and the town lines,” said Sean as he and Raymond settled themselves in English class. “I figured you just moved here.”
Raymond looked pained. “It’s not one of Jardine’s favorite things to think about. You know what was affected by the rezoning? Two gas stations, a 7-Eleven, a flower shop, a Mexican food place, and one house. One house! Jardine. I live two blocks from Seaford High, but I can’t go there anymore because I woke up one morning a resident of DeWitt.”
Sean rolled his eyes. “Did you like it better at Seaford High?”
Raymond shrugged. “The lights worked there. But in the end, it doesn’t matter where Jardine is. They find him.” He cast a significant glance at the ceiling. “Did you catch the late news last night? There was this great piece on that sewer cleaner who went to Theamelpos and came home to find that he’d won the lottery. Eight-point-three million smackers.”
Sean scowled and tried to concentrate on the front of the room where Mr. Kerr was in a terrible snit. Ashley Bach, a transfer student newly arrived from Staten Island, had been placed in his class, thereby throwing off the partner system. As the twenty-seventh student, she had no one to work with on the term’s major assignment.
“Why couldn’t you have come before?” lamented the teacher. “Where am I going to put you?”
Ashley looked mystified. “Can’t one of the groups have three of us?”
Mr. Kerr winced. “But that’s so sloppy. If you’d come Monday, I could have made nine groups of three. Or if there were two of you, an extra pair — or seven groups of four! Wouldn’t that be something!”
Ashley shuffled uncomfortably. “Sorry, sir.”
“Oh, I guess it isn’t your fault. Go over there and work with” — he consulted his class list — “Delancey and Jardine. It has no balance, but I suppose it’s the simplest solution.”
Sean let his breath out, and suddenly realized that he had been holding it. He heard Raymond do the same. Ashley Bach was easily the most beautiful girl in the school and quite possibly the whole world.
“I thought you said you had no luck,” Sean whispered to Raymond.
“This must have been your luck,” Raymond whispered back.
The two watched mesmerized as Ashley gathered up her books and made her way over to the vacant seat beside Sean. She smiled at them, and Sean was positive that he saw a few soft strands of her auburn hair stir in the breeze as she passed the ventilation duct.
“Hi. I’m Ashley. I hope you guys don’t mind me joining your group.” The expression in her green eyes was open and friendly.
“Hi,” Sean greeted her, craning his neck to confirm that Mindy had noticed that this vision had been assigned to his group. “Welcome to DeWitt. I think you’re going to like it here. I’m Sean Delancey, and I play on the basketball team. I’m a guard, and —” He gawked. “Raymond, would you cut that out?”
Raymond had made a noose out of a piece of string, and was pretending to hang himself as Sean spoke. Ashley turned to Raymond, but by that time, he had the noose off his neck and out of sight.
“Cut what out?” he asked innocently. To Ashley, he added, “I’m Raymond Jardine. Welcome aboard.”
“Do you play on a varsity team, too?” she asked.
“No. I’m a free agent.”
Sean groaned. “Raymond here has no luck,” he informed Ashley. “None at all. Zero, zip, zilch. That’s only until the summer, of course. Then he’s taking a trip to the luck place —”
“My pen’s out of ink!” Raymond howled suddenly, sitting bolt upright in his chair.
Mr. Kerr glared at the back of the room. “Is there something wrong?”
“Uh — no, sir,” stammered Sean.
Ashley was digging around in her purse. “I think I’ve got an extra pen in here somewhere.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Raymond told her. “Mine writes again. It must have been a temporary defect. Thanks anyway.”
Ashley was still fumbling through the many possessions in her purse, a look of consternation on her face. Then she was on her feet, heading for the door. “I left my makeup mirror in the washroom,” she told a shocked Mr. Kerr. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
Sean grabbed Raymond by the shoulder. “The next time you let out a bellow like that in the middle of class,” he hissed, “be prepared to die! Got it?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Raymond challenged. “Let you tell another person about Theamelpos? Haven’t you done enough?”
“Maybe if you weren’t acting like such an idiot, I wouldn’t have to have said anything!”
The two partners were sitting nose to nose, glaring defiantly at each other, and a rough-and-tumble fight seemed inevitable, when Sean noticed that Mr. Kerr had stopped the lesson and was looking straight at them.
“Would you two kindly leave the room?” the teacher requested with icy politeness. “I’ll send someone to bring you back when we study war poetry!”
So it was that when Ashley returned to English class, her makeup mirror tucked safely in the zipper pocket of her purse, she found her two partners standing in the hall in disgrace, involved in a heated argument.
“What’s with you guys?” she asked, interposing her shapely body between them. “You shouldn’t be fighting. Don’t you see? If the three of us get along, we could have an awesome time in class together!”
This made Sean stop and think. “How awesome?”
“Awesome awesome!”
“Well,” said Raymond cautiously, “Delancey and I, we’re really serious students, so we don’t want to spend too much time having — uh — fun in class. Right, Delancey?”
Sean was about to agree when the green eyes fell on him, and he was lost. “Well, we have to show Ashley a good time. She’s new, and —”
“Yes,” Raymond agreed painfully, “but it’s urgent that we come up with a top-notch project for the poetry assignment. Right?” He glared at Sean.
“Well, yeah, but —”
“Right!” Raymond concluded positively. “So, Ashley, what do you know about poetry?”
“Nothing,” she replied in sweet surprise. “I’m a model.”
“Oh, God,” said Raymond.
Sean beamed in admiration.
Ashley touched a hand to her mouth. “Oh! I forgot! I’m not kicked out of class like you guys. What a drag! We were just starting to get along. See you later. And remember: no fighting.”
Sean watched her walk down the hall and disappear into Mr. Kerr’s room. When he turned back again, Raymond was staring at the ceiling.
“That’s right. Keep dumping your boulders and your boiling oil and your nuclear warheads down on Jardine. He can take it. He likes it.”
Sean looked mystified. “What are you complaining about? She’s incredible!”
“Yeah, but this chick is like a death sentence to our English project. Face it, Delancey, we needed a bookworm and they sent us a calendar girl. How could it be worse? We’ll be graded harder because there are three of us now; she’s going to be zero help except to interfere with everybody’s concentration; Kerr’s going to hate her if she carries out her plan to have an “awesome” time in his class; and the bottom line is Jardine is going to wind up with another summer of fish guts in New Jersey!” He moaned in real pain. “Yesterday everything was okay. Not great, but for Jardine that’s the best that can be expected. Today — our new partner has arrived. I might as well get on the bus for Secaucus right away and save myself some trouble.”
“Come on,” said Sean. “I’m sure we can teach her to be helpful.”
“Tell me about it. We’d have an easier time teaching Moby Dick to tap-dance.”
“Listen,” said Sean in growing irritation, “we’re going to do the work with or without her, and we’re not going to let her distract us. We’re grown — teenagers, and surely we’ve got the strength to function despite the fact that Ashley happens to be good-looking. We’re going to be so nice to Mr. Kerr that he’ll forget about today and begin to love us. And never again are we going to fight in front of Ashley, which includes not hanging yourself while I’m trying to talk!” His voice rose in volume. “I promise to do everything in my power to get you to Theamelpos! And I’m making this promise for no other reason than to shut you up! Okay?”
Raymond brightened. “You’re a real pal, Delancey. Jardine needed that boost. And we’re going to work three times as hard as everyone else. We’re going to get to Theamelpos no matter how many curves and spitballs they throw at Jardine. You and me, on the beach, catching rays …”
***
The DeWitt cafeteria was a cramped affair, because almost half the space had been converted into solar energy storage batteries for SACGEN. With these batteries right next door, the temperature in the dining room always hovered in the mid to high eighties. This was ten degrees cooler than the temperature in the food line.
Thompson Food Services had sent out an inspector in mid-September to find out why sales of coffee, tea, hot chocolate and soup stood at zero. The man suffered heat prostration after a day in the kitchen, and was transferred to the Anchorage office some weeks later at his own request.
For a nickname for the new cafeteria, the students had looked to Howard Newman. He did not disappoint them. At an emergency assembly, after Mr. Hyatt had assured everyone the temperature would be under the eighty mark by January, February the latest, Howard had piped up, “Way to go, Q-Dave! We really needed a windmill right next to Miami Beach!” And Miami Beach it became.
Thus the students would sweat their way through lunch in varying stages of undress, captained by the intrepid Howard, at his beachfront poker location. The players would appear daily, dressed in swimming trunks and armed with towels and sunglasses. The house supplied complimentary #18 sunblock for their noses. Like the game in the hall, the toothpicks were flying in all directions and ultimately, most of them would settle in the mountain in front of Howard.
Sean was about to tie into his lunch that day when a tray was placed on the table opposite his, and he looked up into the sea-green eyes of Ashley Bach.
“Hi, Sean. Do you mind I if join you?”
Calm down, Sean told himself. She was new. She needed someone to have lunch with. She was not — repeat, not — hitting on him. Then again, there was the possibility that someone had told her who the hero of Monday night’s basketball game was, who had pumped in that beautiful eighteen-footer. Hmmm. This situation called for casual suaveness and, if it turned out that Ashley was a sucker for a good jump shot, there was Contingency Plan B. According to Contingency Plan B, he would go for it and blow off the poetry assignment and his promise to Raymond, who could spend the rest of his life in Secaucus for all Sean cared.
“Sure, Ashley, sit down. How was the rest of your morning?”
“Bor-ing,” she sang out. “I wish you and Raymond were in my other classes.” She fiddled with her collar. “Why is it so hot in here?”
Sean shrugged. “The windmill.” He had been planning to say something else, but she was looking directly at him, and his mind went momentarily blank. Suddenly he realized he was staring, and he flushed beet red and diverted his concentration to his hamburger. It was an eighth of an inch from his mouth when she said, “Hey! You’re not going to eat that, are you?”
“Uh — yeah. It’s my lunch.”
She was all concern. “That’s not food! That’s poison! It’ll ruin your health or, worse yet, you’ll get fat!”
“But —”
“Look at that lunch! A hamburger! French fries! And a large soda! I’ll bet it isn’t even diet.”
“Well — uh — no,” Sean admitted. He glanced at her tray. Everything was green but the cottage cheese and the bowl of granola. It looked like an aerial photograph of the Amazon rain forest.
“Now let’s see,” said Ashley, beginning to count on her fingers. “Spinach, 38 calories; plus lettuce, 35; makes — 67; plus 106 for the granola — 148. Plus skim milk, 90 — oh, wow, I must be close to 200.”
Sean took a tiny nip out of his hamburger and chewed inconspicuously. Ashley looked at him in reproach and began to pick delicately at the Amazon rain forest.
“Hi, guys.” Raymond placed his tray on the table and sat down beside Sean. “This day is shaping up into a real lemon. Miss Ritchie just gave us the due date on our Political Science project. Next Monday. Guess who hasn’t started yet? If you said Jardine, you’re right.” He looked down at his tray with great relish. “I need this delicious double-chocolate milkshake — my favorite flavor. It just might prove that it was worth my while getting out of bed this morning.” Eagerly, Raymond sucked on the straw hard enough to pull a softball through a hundred and fifty feet of vacuum cleaner hose. Then he looked up at the ceiling. “Strawberry,” he said with resignation.
Ashley shook her head. “You, too, with the terrible lunch! Do you want to poison yourself?”
“You got poison?” asked Raymond brightly.
This started Ashley laughing so hard that she had to leave the table to fix her makeup.
“I don’t think we should tell any more jokes in front of Ashley,” Raymond decided. “She’s a laugher. If this ever happens in front of Kerr, we can kiss Theamelpos good-bye.”
“Who died and left you Chief Decision-Maker?” Sean asked. “I’ll do what I like.”
“I noticed,” Raymond snapped back. “Where do you get off, Mr. Let’s-Ignore-the-Fact-Ashley’s-Good-Looking, having an intimate lunch with her with love in your eyes?”
“It just so happens,” said Sean, “that I was already here when she sat down. And what if it works out that she likes me, huh? Am I supposed to throw it away? I wouldn’t expect you to hold off if it was you she was after.” This was a lie. Sean knew that if Ashley and Raymond ever became a couple, he would feed himself to SACGEN or, at the very least, cry.
Raymond read his mind. “You don’t have to worry. Girls like Ashley don’t happen to Jardine. Fish guts happen to Jardine. I’ll be satisfied if nobody gets Ashley. That way I won’t be missing out on anything, so there won’t be anyone to be jealous of.”
When Sean caught sight of Ashley making her way back to the table, he emptied the remainder of his French fries into his mouth, cramming the rest of his burger in there, too.
Raymond was not interested in trying this tactic himself. “You want to choke, Delancey, that’s your business. She can see me eating live toads for all I care. She’ll have to accept our religious differences — she’s a model, and I’m Jardine.”
Ashley sat down. “Oh, you guys are so funny! Now, I’m definitely going to have to do something about the food you eat. I’m great at nutrition stuff.”
Silently, Raymond mouthed the words “live toads.”
Sean glared at him.