Friend Is Not a Verb (16 page)

My nose wrinkled. Repay Gabriel’s father? I opened my mouth, but Emma raised a finger to my lips.

“Shh. Whaddya say we go inside, Sarah? You can tell us all about it.”

About the surprise twist that I probably should have seen coming…

Gabriel almost seemed to be expecting us. I mean, as a package. He shook hands with Emma as if he’d known her his entire life and kissed my sister on the lips the way Petra had kissed me the day of my audition, with just a little too much
fuego
. Then we stood there for about five minutes in his sterile little apartment, grinning at one another with weird, anticipatory looks.

Finally Sarah told Gabriel to tell Emma and me the whole story. “Right up until we ran away,” she said. “You know, so Hen gets it.”

It went like this.

For most of his life, Gabriel Stern had one parent. His mom died of cancer when he was a toddler. His dad, Roger Stern, never quite recovered from her death. This isn’t to say that he retreated into a sad shell, writing unpublished poetry to his long-lost love. No, he reacted by becoming a colossal dick—one that made Emma’s dad and Petra’s dad look like kindhearted heroes by comparison. He turned into a degenerate gambler. He started going on sex tours to Cambodia and Thailand. He left Gabriel to the care of babysitters and nannies, even on holidays. But he was also a dazzling success. He quit his job as an investment banker and founded a hedge fund in 2002. In Gabriel’s senior year of high school, his dad made over a hundred million dollars. The two of them moved into a penthouse apartment on Madison Avenue, whereupon Gabriel’s dad gave Gabriel his own wing with a separate entrance, so they could avoid running into each other.

Now, none of this may sound especially tragic. Sad and pitiable, yes. But not a dire recipe for disaster. The real trouble, however, started when Gabriel started applying to colleges.

“I was rejected from every single college I applied to,” he told us all. “Can you imagine? Picture yourself surrounded by jubilant schmucks who are all getting into the colleges of their dreams. I bet it’s like how lepers must have felt in ancient Rome. There were six: Columbia, Vassar, Tufts, Haverford, George Washington University—and my safety, Boston College.
Safety.
Ha! What a great word. A euphemism for ‘a lousy college even a dope like
you
could get into.’

“Columbia was the real disgrace, though. Dad was a Columbia alum. He and Mom met and fell in love at Columbia. They joined the student government together. They protested all the issues worth protesting. Gas lines? The CIA in Chile? Whatever was wrong during the late seventies—a very lame decade, even lamer than the one we’ve got going now. They drank and chain-smoked at all the right bars and cafés. They both graduated cum laude. To them, Columbia wasn’t a college; it was a
chrysalis
. They came in like pupae. They went out like butterflies. Two beautiful, brilliant creatures flapping among the rest of us lowly insects, stinking of cigarette smoke.

“Afterward, they donated a few thousand bucks to the school.

“And
still
, I was rejected.

“Dad couldn’t believe it. He called the admissions office in an outrage, demanding an explanation. How could his only child, his
scion
, be rejected? How on earth was this possible? ‘Not enough extracurricular activities,’ he was told. Apparently, playing bass in a self-made student band didn’t count.

“The subtext was clear: I was lazy. And laziness is not an acceptable character flaw, as far as Dad is concerned. You can smoke, you can be neglectful, you can go on sex tours, you can make your only child feel like garbage…but if you’re lazy? No. It won’t do. So after that, he donated in the high five figures and secured my admission. I had to meet personally with the dean of students and director of admissions.

“After I started Columbia, I got over it, though. I tried not
to let myself get angry with him over his frustration with me. I understood it. I
was
an unmotivated deadbeat.

“But then came the straw that broke the camel’s back. I told him that I wanted to get a master’s degree in religion. You know what he said? I had ‘the foresight of an amoeba.’ Those were his actual words. When I told him to go easy on me, he said: ‘I’m your father, Gabriel, I’m not your friend.’ He finished by telling me that if I went to graduate school for religion, I’d have to pay for it myself. It was business school or nothing. He was cutting me off. Disowning me. And that’s exactly what he did.”

I flinched. Whoa.

Gabriel took a deep breath. His eyes were moist. I glanced at Emma. She blinked uncomfortably.

My sister took off her sun hat and clasped it in front of her.

“Did you know that Dad didn’t even come to my graduation?” Gabriel added softly. “I tried to convince myself that there was something romantic about it. You know: a solitary figure in a black gown, ducking around all the happy families, a musician, forsaken by his own flesh and blood…”

Emma slipped her fingers into mine. “So what happened after that?” she asked.

“I better let Sarah tell it,” Gabriel mumbled. “I need a drink first.” He disappeared around the corner into the little kitchen nook.

“Are you toasting Raj Bhutto?” I called after him, trying to lighten the mood.

He laughed. “Is that some sort of subtle attempt at an
apology? For reading something you shouldn’t have?”

I had to smile, too. “So you knew about that, huh?” I asked.

“Of course.” The refrigerator door opened and closed. Ice cubes clinked in a glass. Gabriel reappeared with a tumbler of brown liquor, heavy on the liquor.

“I read it, too,” Emma confessed. “Do you want it back? It’s in Hen’s room.”

“Nah, keep it,” Gabriel said. He took a sip.

“Keep what?” Sarah asked.

“My memoir,” Gabriel said, gesturing to the pile of manuscripts. He shot me a quick glance. He probably knew what I was thinking:
A very long love letter to my sister.

“Tell the rest of the story, Sarah,” Emma prompted.

Sarah took a deep breath. “Right. So anyway, after we heard that Gabriel’s father was cutting him off, we—”

“Who’s we?” Emma interrupted.

“Our circle of friends,” Sarah said. “Me; my best friend, Madeline; and the guys in Gabriel’s band, Rich and Tony. We just couldn’t believe that Mr. Stern could be so
evil
. But he was. And the way it happened…” She shook her head and laughed. “I still can’t believe it myself.”

“What?” I practically screamed, about to jump out of my skin. “Tell us already!”

“I tagged along with Gabriel when he went to make stickers to promote a gig that Friends was playing near campus,” she explained. “It was the last gig they ever played. The stickers
were originally supposed to feature the band motto, you know, ‘Friend is not a verb.’ But at the last second, when we were at Kinko’s, I convinced him to change it. I said we should turn the stickers into a big screw-you to his dad. Something that would scare him—a warning, almost, that Gabriel wasn’t alone, that his friends were his family, and we would all figure out a way to get back at his dad. So Gabriel printed up five hundred that said Steal Your Parents’ Money instead.” She chuckled. “Ring any bells?”

Holy crap.

Emma dropped my hand. Our eyes bulged. We both started cracking up.

“You?” Emma shouted at my sister. “You’re the unsung mystery genius behind Steal Your Parents’ Money?”

Sarah looked embarrassed. “If you want to call me that…”

“That’s exactly what you are,” Gabriel said. “The unsung mystery genius.”

“Please, Gabriel,” she muttered.

He turned to us. “See, none of us had any idea that the stickers would be the next big thing. Blogged about and twittered about…they were actually on the
news
.”

I nodded. I remembered. How could I forget?

“We all got a kick out of how different people tried to take credit for it,” Sarah added. “And that’s when it started. We were all in on this delicious little secret, the five of us. It just sort of snowballed from there. We convinced ourselves that we’d founded some kind of revolutionary underground movement.
We decided we
should
steal our parents’ money. Starting with Gabriel’s dad. Why not? He was the living embodiment of all those Wall Street swindlers who sunk the economy and walked away with a fortune. It wasn’t revenge; it was a public service. We’d only take a few million. That was a drop in the bucket to him. And then we’d all disappear somewhere and live happily ever after.”

“And that’s exactly what happened,” Gabriel finished. “Well, not the happily ever after part. The snowball turned into an avalanche. And it swept us all down with it. We robbed my dad of about two million dollars and split to the Dominican Republic. But the thing is…”

“There is no happily ever after,” Sarah finished.

I shook my head, still staring at Emma. “I can’t believe it.”

“I know.” Gabriel took another sip from his glass. “And I swear to you, Hen, I’m still asking myself: When and how and why did we reach that point?
That’s
the question. I don’t believe in accidents, but there’s no denying the
randomness
of it all. Suddenly we were trapped in a huge house we could never leave—”

“No, no, no,” Sarah interrupted. “There was nothing random about it. We were totally united up until the day we got there.”

Gabriel tilted his head. “Were we?” he asked in a melancholy voice. “I don’t know. I always felt like we were less of a pack and more of a giant spiderweb. Our group friendship started with the bond between you and me, and then it exploded into
a sticky mess. But what
is
friendship, anyway? It’s just a big tangled jumble of shared experiences. ‘I did X, Y, and Z with these people, so they must be my friends.’”

Sarah shook her head. “That’s a cop-out. You and I were closer than that.”

Gabriel stared down at his drink.

The silence in the room thickened.

“You know, there’s something I never told you, Gabriel,” Sarah said, suddenly sounding urgent. “And I guess I’m going to have to say this in front of my little brother and his best friend, which is fine, but…” She held her breath. “Okay. Gabriel, the main reason—above all others—why I did any of this was to impress
you
.”

Gabriel nearly dropped his glass. The ice cubes rattled. “Excuse me?”

Sarah nodded. “It’s true. I never realized how jealous I was of Madeline, of how you had a crush on her. And when we came up with the big plan to rip off your dad…I wanted to show you that I was just as crazy and smart and out there as
she
is.”

“But that’s just wrong,” Gabriel protested.

“So what? You know what else? I also thought that it would turn out to be a
joke
. I mean we’ve always been so detached and ironic with one another—all five of us. We’ve always had these walls built around ourselves. Just listen to the way we
talk
.”

Gabriel shook his head. “But what about that stuff you said about
your
parents? That you weren’t just doing it because of
my
dad. That you did it because they drive you crazy?”

Sarah lifted her shoulders. “They do drive me crazy, but that was a cop-out, too.” All at once she turned to me. “Hen, you know the only reason they’ve been obsessed with your finding a job this summer is because they’re terrified that you’ll turn out like me. That you’ll turn out to be a criminal. That’s why they didn’t tell you what happened. They
knew
. Gabriel’s dad called them and told them that he was out two million dollars and that he had a hunch who took it. But Mom and Dad didn’t want the police to find us, so they kept it a secret.”

I had no idea what to say. I didn’t even know how I
felt
.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t turn into a criminal, Sarah,” Emma said quietly. “I’ll keep him on a tight leash.”

Sarah smiled softly. “Thanks.” She turned back to Gabriel. “But, look. The thing is, I did it to prove to them what I wanted to prove to you as well…that I wasn’t just a good girl. That I could be bad.”

“But why would you want to prove that?” Gabriel said, stepping toward her. “It doesn’t make any sense. You
are
good—”

“Ahem!” Emma cleared her throat. “Just a guess here. But maybe also part of the reason Sarah did it was because her parents are so
overprotective
, and part of the reason you did it is because your dad isn’t protective
at all
? I mean, I’m saying this as the only relatively sane human being in this room—emphasis on ‘relatively’—and, ah, also because my own insane parents fall somewhere in the middle.”

Gabriel chewed his lip, nodding thoughtfully. “I don’t know. You may be right.”

Sarah tossed her hat on his unmade futon. “So, look. I sold the house to Karl. I’ve got a cashier’s check from Banco Federal in my suitcase for almost three million dollars, made out to Roger Stern. It’s all over now. All of it. No more house, no more crime, no more stolen money. Do you forgive me?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gabriel shouted. “I should be asking
you
that. That’s why I made you come back to the States with me! I was supposed to figure this part out myself! And now you’ve gone and made everything right on your own? Jesus, Sarah!” He slammed the drink down on top of the pile of manuscripts, spilling some of the liquor. “What’s your problem?
I
was supposed to fix this. Not you! You’re always fixing everything for me!”

I still have absolutely no idea why, but this compelled Sarah to pounce on Gabriel and start kissing him.
Blecch.
I suppose I should have foreseen a sappy make-out moment. I mean, I
got
it now. Gabriel knew so much about Emma and me because he lived a mirror image. But I hadn’t imagined his epiphany moment with my sister would be so in-your-face. It was almost grotesque.

“I think we’re embarrassing Hen and Emma,” Gabriel whispered, pulling away.

“I don’t care,” she said, clinging to him. “Gabriel, remember that book I got you in Puerto Plata, the one on that indigenous Caribbean tribe, the Tainos?”