Be More Chill (6 page)

Michael puts some God-awful emo tape on. I look out the window as we roll away from school.

“Oh, I forgot, you hate this, right?” Michael asks, pointing at the music. “I can play
Pinkerton
.”

“It’s okay,” I say. Michael can put on whatever music he wants (except maybe
Pinkerton
) because I love driving. I’ve always loved it. I never understood how little
kids can ask “Are we there yet?” or want to pee all the time—since I was two, when the family had the Volvo, I’ve been content to hang my head out the window and just watch
the scenery. I used to like seeing houses and hills that I hadn’t seen before, but this is Jersey—that got old quick. So now I do this thing: I look at houses and speculate about the
people
inside. Are they old? Are they pretty? Are they girls that like me?

“So tell me,” Michael breaches. “How come you want Christine so bad?”

I turn to him. “Um, I dig her.”

“How come?”

“She’s hot.” I catch myself: “She’s smart too.”

“And you don’t want to just hook up with her? You want to
date
her and stuff?”

“Yeah!”

“Huh. Do you like your shirts?”

I look down at what I’m wearing: a
Star Wars Episode I
T-shirt. “They’re okay, I guess.”

“Well, if you like your shirts, you might not want to date any girls. Girls are like the arch nemeses of shirts,” Michael says.

“Really.”

“Oh yeah. Shirts are their trophies. The last girl my brother went out with, she ended up with like three of his shirts. He used to come home wearing a jacket and no shirt. Don’t go
dating girls unless you’re willing to lose your shirts. You might just want to do whatever and the girls will show up eventually and
not
take your shirts.”

“Hey, Michael.” I almost forgot. “What’s up with that thing your brother had? The pill that made him smart? How did that work again?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that.”

“Well it’s tough to imagine he got a 1530 on his SATs.”

“Heh. Yeah. Well, I told you.”

“He had electronic assistance or something? I mean, I heard about these guys at Columbia—”

“No, man,” Michael says, gripping the wheel. “This is a totally different thing. I think it’s called a ‘script.’”

I look at him carefully.

“Like it scripts in your mind, so it’s a ‘script,’ this computer that comes in a pill, y’know? Experimental shit the government is doing.”

“Okay. And he really had one?”

“Yeah.” Michael pulls up to Halloween Adventure. “Go quick, they’re almost closed.”

I go into the store thinking about the script, but forget it pretty quickly because I have to beg the attendant for a little extra time to track down and pay for a
Scary Movie
mask.
It’s so dumb; it almost dares me to buy it. I figure with it on, no one’ll be able to recognize me and all I’ll have to do is wear black pants and a black shirt, and if I get
Christine alone and we have that amazing high-school romantic movie moment, with drinking and young lust and strawberry-flavored lip gloss, I can rip the mask off and she can see me for who I
really am and we’ll start having sex against a tree maybe and—

“Jesus,” Michael says as I walk out of the store with the mask on. “You’re the one that needs the pill, man; that is
stupid
.”

The next week, in play rehearsal, I fall into a pattern with Christine. (What does it take for a behavior to become a pattern? One repetition, right?) I come in, grab the seat
next to her and bumblingly mention a quasi-fact about music or current events or evolution, often stolen from Michael. She humors me (or maybe not, sometimes she seems to smile humor-free) with
comments of her own, and we build that, falteringly, into a conversation that ends five minutes after play rehearsal and then she runs off to meet Jake. Only I don’t know what to make of her
and Jake. They never talk to each other during rehearsal; he sits across the circle from her and eyes her only occasionally. Is it possible they’re just friends?

That’s one thing I hate about, uh, the world. I hate touchy-feely friend relationships between guys and girls. I hate them when I’m in them, of course, but I’m not in them too
often so mostly I just hate them from outside. They’re confusing and complicating: if you’re a girl and you’re touching a guy’s leg, I’m going to assume you’re
going out. End of story. If you are actually platonic friends, don’t put your heads in each other’s laps and don’t kiss each other on the lips. Right now we are living in one of
the first periods of human existence where young men and women can actually
be
friends without pending marriage or negotiations over which family has which tracts of land. So don’t
mess with it.

Christine, despite the fact that she is a prime offender of this nature, has a system of stages that she uses to keep things straight. She explains them to me after play rehearsal Friday. (One
week to the dance.)

“Everybody needs to be on my system,” she says, standing by her seat in the audience rows, rifling through her bag as I keep my eyes glued to her. “It’s like, the only
way.” She swishes a grin at me. “There are four stages of a relationship, see?”

“Uh-huh.” My hands are clasped over my crotch like a soccer player’s.

“Okay, first, there’s Hooking Up.”

Boy. I hate that one. “Hooking Up” is what
I’m
supposed to be doing, one way or another. The magic phrase for two types of young Americans: unimpeded teenage sex for the
Cool ones, kissing for me and Michael and the rest of the unearmarked sludge. Yay!

“—or anything,” Christine says.

“Wait, no! I missed that,” I apologize. “Could you say it again?”

“Well, I just went over Hooking Up,” she says. “Hooking Up is the first stage. That means you have someone who you’ve, y’know,
hooked up
with and maybe done
other things with, but there are no commitment strings anywhere. You don’t call this person up. You don’t sit with him anywhere. You just did what you did and that’s
it.”

“What does it mean, like, sex-wise?”

“Depending on whether or not you’re a slut,” Christine says, “Hooking Up means having sex. Which I totally understand, for some people. But we’re talking about my
system. Skanky girls work on their own system. You want to sit?”

“Sure.”

She continues with her elbow on the armrest between us. The armrest is dirty and her elbow is not.

“Stage two is Dating. Dating occurs after Hooking Up when you and the guy actually show up at public places together and give people the impression that you’re more than friends by
kissing and touching.” That sounds like where Christine is with Jake, but I don’t want to ask. Jake is across the room talking to one of his football underlings. “Dating has no
commitment either. Like, you can see other people and you don’t have to tell the person you’re dating, see?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Stage three is Going Out. Going Out is like Dating with a little more commitment. At this point, you know, sex might be a consideration, so if you
are
having sex with the person
you’re going out with, then you can’t have sex with anybody else.” I like hearing Christine talk about sex. It could be sex with those toads that have other toads spring out of
their backs, whatever. “But if you accidentally
do
have sex with someone else, then you are legally obligated—or rather, obligated by my system, which is just as good as legally
obligated—to tell the person you are going out with. Then collectively you can make a decision on whether you want to continue the relationship, given your transgression. You know
‘transgression,’ right?”

“Yeah.” Vocab pays off! “So how is Going Out different from Dating?”

“Um…let’s see.…in Dating, you hold hands, maybe. In Going Out, you put your arm around me or whatever.”

Huh. “What’s the last stage?”

“The best one!” Christine throws up her arms. “Boyfriend–Girlfriend. That’s like, you’re totally devoted to each other, no questions asked, you absolutely
cannot have any kind of contact with anybody else by penalty of whatever I decide.”

“What if it’s you who cheats and the guy who has to decide the penalty?”

“I don’t cheat.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

“I think so.” Christine smiles.

“You forgot Stage Five, after Boyfriend–Girlfriend.” I tilt my head back, feeling a witticism coming on.

“What’s that?”

“
Ex
Boyfriend–Girlfriend!”

“Shut up!” Christine hits me in the arm with her small balled fist. Jake shows up, shadows us both.

“Hey, Jeremy,” he says, turning on his cyborg kindness. Then he looks at Christine intensely. “Christine.”

“Yeah?” She twists around. Her body is poised to punch me again, but all I can see of her face is a twisted neck.

“You want to get outta here?”

“Sure!” she chirps. “Bye, Jeremy!” she turns back and kisses me on the cheek. Our first kiss. She gets up and steps into Jake, who slips an arm around her jeans-encased
butt as they walk off.

Going Out. At least now I know which stage I’m up against. I’m getting prepped. I think I might have a shot.

The Halloween Dance doesn’t happen at Middle Borough High School. It happens at a bar/dance hall near the poor section of Metuchen called the Elks Club Lodge, a place for
old men to drink and play pool.

I can’t get to the Club by myself. It’s almost in Edison, the next town over from Metuchen, and Michael really isn’t going because he’s listening to the new Weezer album.
There is the option of getting my parents to drive me to the dance, but I decide against that particular form of self-hatred. I dial up a car service and approach Mom as she works in the dining
room, to tell her the deal.

“Hey, Mom?”

“Yes, Jeremy.” She doesn’t look up from her work.

“There’s actually a, ah, Halloween Dance tonight as part of school, so I’m going.”

“Really?” Mom asks, looking up. And just as her
really
is ending, Dad slips through the curtain into the dining room, shirtless. He’s eating a giant hot dog in a
too-small bun. “Really?” he says.

“Yeah!” I look back and forth between Dad and Mom. I had expected, challenges.

“That’s wonderful!” Mom gets up and hugs me. “Who are you going with?”

“Yeah, what’s up?” Dad asks. “Does she have, you know…” Dad pantomimes breasts with his hands and hot dog.

“Stop it!” Mom snaps. “That is
not
appropriate.”

“You’d be surprised, son,” Dad says. “So many divorces that I handle stem from breasts. They’re incredibly important. Make sure that the girl—”

“There isn’t a girl,” I declare.

Silence from Mom.

“Hmm,” Dad chews. “Are you gay?”

“Stop it!” Mom shrieks, scrambling toward Dad. He skitters out. “Your father,” she says, returning to her seat at the stacks of paper. “Sometimes I really
don’t know. So, in any case—”

“I’m not gay. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not,” Mom smiles. “It would be fine if you were, really. We’re good parents. But you’re going to a dance?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great. Do you need money?”

“Sure.” I had no idea they’d give me money for this. I suppose I should be more social more often.

“Here,” Mom presses bills into my hands that I’ll count later. “Go to the dance—do you need a ride? Oh wait, I’m sure you wouldn’t want one from us.
Take a car service!”

“Yeah, I already called one.”

“Well that’s great! Remember, don’t ever touch my car, Jeremy. But have fun at the dance! You’ll do fine.”

“Yeah, for sure!” Dad says from the living room, eating his hot dog on the Bowflex. “Dance with girls!”

“Thanks, Dad.” I walk out to the porch and wait for the car service. When it comes, I stroll down the lawn dressed entirely in black, mask over the top of my head, not on. I get in
the car and try to negotiate the wannabe-strawberry air-freshener smell.

“Where you goin’?” the driver asks.

“Elks Club Lodge, Lefferts Road by the Friendly’s.”

“T’anks.” We slide down my street, take a turn past school and the field, which somehow has two fireflies in it, spinning in a lazy DNA spiral, this late in the year. I try my
mask on.