Losers (3 page)

“Yeah, kinda. Down where Yardley Ave stops being a hill and flattens out, over near the docks.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, taking a deep, impressed toke. “Rough neighborhood.”

“Parts of it are. You learn to lay low.”

“My boyfriend used to run DVD players for these guys, he was down there all the time. They kept them in one of those old warehouses, not even locked. You could just walk right in and help yourself. There ain't too many houses around there, right?”

I shrugged noncommittally, trying to cover up for the fact that I'd winced when she mentioned having a boyfriend. “There's a few. It seems rough, but it's mostly quiet.”

“Man, that's not too bad. I bet I could rent a whole house around there for what an apartment would cost. That would be pretty tight. I could even have friends move in—of course, I wouldn't, that would kill the whole purpose of it. Hey, are there any houses around there up for rent now, do you know?”

“I dunno. I'm kind of, you know, taken care of.”

“Still doing the parental thing, huh?”

She said “the parental thing” as if it was an extreme improbability that any child above the age of teething would ever live with his parents. Not sure how to reply to that, I played it cool. “They're not so bad,” I said, offering up yet another indifferent shrug. “Mostly, we live in two different worlds. I think in English, and they think in Russian.”

“Yeah, well, you don't
sound
like you think in English.”

I could feel my face heating up. Now I was blushing furiously. I didn't say anything, not sure whether I should be offended or not. Other things about me that I was insecure about, I could hide. My accent stuck out like a bad hair day without a hat, like a zit that never went away. My hair was fuzzy and big, curls sprinting out in a Sideshow Bob ‘do that required refreshingly little effort. She ruffled the top of it now, as if petting a puppy.

“Don't knock it,” she said. “You're cute. And then you open your mouth and that voice comes out, that voice of yours, and it doesn't sound anything like you expect it to. I bet you're good at throwing people for a loop, yeah?”

“I'm alright,” I said noncommittally.

“Nice. So, what's with the accent anyway?”

“What's with it? I'm with it, I guess.”

“Heh,” she laughed. She laughed in a way that sounded like she'd contemplated what she was laughing at, thought about it for a while, and she still didn't think it was funny. “If you were really swift, you'd say, ‘What accent?'”

I didn't reply. Now I was listening to her voice, how much softer and less abrasive it had gotten while we'd been out here. “How about you, then?” I said. “Now you barely sound like you're from the Yards at all.”

“Yeah, I dunno,” she said. The gravel crept back in, but only slightly. Maybe because she was thinking about it now. “It's a defense mechanism, you know? You got to communicate with people on their level. You got to make sure they don't give you shit.”

I waited.

For a moment, it seemed like she was in another world. Like there was something in her voice that she wasn't saying. Then she snapped out of it, and snapped back to looking at me. She laid a hand on my chest. I felt like I should leap back, like she'd just bumped into me—it was so direct and so forward and even, if only inside my brain, so sexual. Her nail was right over my nipple. Her palm was hot, and I wondered if she was going to pull me in to her and start kissing.

Instead, she let go. She stepped back like nothing had just happened.

“But, come on,” she said, putting one hand on a hip, cocking a posture like she was examining me from afar again. “What's the deal with your accent? Are you an android, or is your larynx just on steroids?”

I gulped. “It's Russian. My parents are from Russia. We got airlifted out of the country when I was seven.”

“Oh yeah? How was that for you?”

“I don't remember that much. My parents made me stuff all the clothes in my room inside a duffel bag in, like, ten minutes. They said to just bring the important clothes—they were too busy, they couldn't even help me—and when they unpacked they discovered I had only brought my holiday dress suit and a shitload of underwear. Oh, and
Where the Wild Things Are,
which was my favorite book at the time. Anyway, they hustled me out the door, to a plane, telling me we were going to a party. I stayed up the whole flight, gazing out the window, and fell asleep as soon as we landed. I woke up a few hours later, we were in this rusty recycled car, headed for the Yards, and then I turned into an American.”

She barked out a bitter, dry laugh. “Damn, dude,” she
said. “I think that's the first time I ever heard the Yards being a happy ending.”

“Well, damn yourself,” I said, trying to project some sauciness into my voice. “I didn't think I was up to the ending, yet.”

She smiled.

For the first time, it seemed like I'd found something soft about her. Her voice, her chin, her eyes, even her breasts were so perfect, ample, and fleshed-out, plentiful in the way of Italian mothers and collagen patients, but perfect in the other sense of that word, too, stiff as a Renaissance picture. From her body, and from her attitude as well, she was the total opposite of me: totally composed, totally on top of her own social scene, and totally in control.

But, man, when she cracked her mouth open and let her smile poke through—awash in all her thin-lipped glory, crooked teeth swimming inside, gums the pale pink of someone who runs their toothbrush under the water instead of scrubbing their teeth at night—it was so imperfect and asymmetrical, so flawed and honest, that it actually made her look beautiful. I wanted to take that smile in my pocket and fall asleep with it under my pillow, to have it keep me warm through the cold of the warehouse night.

“And it isn't so happy, either,” I said.

She opened her mouth and looked at me—
what do you mean?
—in the way that perfect people always do, those girls who say whatever they want and expect everyone else to love them for it. But then she closed her mouth, as if to take back that sentiment, and instead she reached over with those intense fingernails and pulled my collar down.

I winced again as she saw my battle scars. My knee throbbed, and its soreness wasn't visible but I imagined she could see my
limp, too, even as I was standing still. She looked grossed out, as any normal person would be, but not revolted.

By which I mean, she didn't flinch. And she didn't look like she was going anywhere.

“Yeah, well, you know what?” she said. “It's gonna be.”

I took a hard, long breath.

“After what we go through to get where we are,” she said, “it better be happy. It fucking better be.”

She brushed aside one permed curl from her forehead. I could see purple skin of her own beneath it, a nasty contusion that ran along most of her scalp.

And, at that moment, I was about to offer her a room in our warehouse. I was about to tell her, forget about my hormones, forget about getting an apartment of your own, I'll take you away from all this.

She reached down, ground the cigarette out with the heel of her shoe, and tossed the butt in the half-cranked-up window of someone's car.

I waited for her to say something, and then I realized that she was staring at me. Probably because I was staring at her legs, long and pale and enclosed in a showcase of nude-colored fishnets, still exposed in the air after the grinding of her cigarette.

She grinned at me and re-ruffled my hair. When she spoke again, it was like her accent had switched back on. Like everything that had just happened between us hadn't actually happened.

“Look, I gotta go back inside,” she said. “Guess you do, too. Anyway, good luck and stuff. It was good talking with you, kid.”

“Well, hey, thanks yourself,” I said. “And hope to see you around, Margie.”

“Margie? Oh, jeez, that's not me—I just forgot to bring my name tag. I'm only Margie for tonight.”

I watched her climb the stairs, still in the parking lot, still stuck inside the memory of her legs. Her legs and her head. I watched as she hesitated for a moment on the precipice between the last step and the door inside, as if she was trying to decide whether she was going back in or not.

And then she did.

D
ay Two.

Day Two was a Friday, which meant school was not quite as bad. Who was the School District genius who decided to start school in the middle of the week? You'd think they'd just wait till next Monday, so we wouldn't be
quite
so culture shocked twice in a row, but I didn't blame them. Friday in general had always been a chill-out day, a work-free day, and a Friday before you had any work to do in the first place was pure brilliance. I've learned not to look gift horses in the mouth.

I got to school in the nick of time, 8:14, a minute before the bell rang. After experiencing a momentary sense of disorientation, in which I suddenly became afraid that I'd forgotten where my classes were and everything else I'd learned on the first day, I spotted a fire alarm that I remembered running past yesterday. In a flash, everything came back, and before the minute hand could jump forward and toll its cruel fortune, I was sitting in homeroom, Advisory #405, sitting in the next-to-last seat in the class, right in front of Liz Gozner. I successfully managed to
avoid Bates, and I successfully managed to avoid the embarrassing before-school time when everyone groups up, socializes with their friends, and checks out who the leftovers are, the ones without anyone to pair up with.

This was where I would sit, in complete and utter silence, until the bell rang.

This was how, in one form or another, every class that day progressed. When at last the final bell rang, I ran outside, feeling my lungs fill up and balloon for the first time that day. The North Lawn grass was wet and turfy below my feet. A cappella gospel songs that I didn't even know the words to were ringing in my head. Freedom had never felt so free.

So why isn't anyone else out here?
I asked myself suddenly.

There was a thin trickle of kids leaking from the building—nowhere near the Friday afternoon exodus you'd picture. A few kids were milling about on the Lawn, throwing Frisbees, eating their lunch.
Lunch.
Oh no—slowly, sickeningly, like my blood had turned to a giant vat of oil, realization swam through my body. It wasn't the end of last period. It was the
beginning.

I ran into class, ten minutes late, face-to-face with thirty gaping students. My classmates. They were supposed to be on my side, but at the moment, they were all giving me a single, unified dirty look, like we'd all simultaneously arrived in Hell and I'd accidentally stood against the button that turned off the air-conditioning.

Our teacher, Mr. Denisof, was scribbling away on the blackboard. Just then he finished the outline for the day's work, turned around, and found me standing in the front of the class. His mustache twitched, trying to make sense of the scene that I'd suddenly stumbled into.

“What's your name, young man?” he asked, in that soft voice, either incredibly insightful or incredibly patronizing, that teachers seem so good at.

“I'm sorry—” I managed to choke out.

He looked at me sideways through the narrow lenses of his designer glasses. “I
said,
what's your name?”

Before I could reply, a voice called out, “That's Jupiter Glazer.” I didn't see who it was, and I was dumbfounded that anyone in the class knew my name at all.

Mr. Denisof was already over at his desk, looking down the roll book. “Glazer, huh?” he said. “What seems to be the problem, then,
Mister
Glazer?”

“I am trying to not make a problem—I'm trying for there to not
be
problem,” I stammered, trying to explain. “I can't—I not—” My English was getting wavery, the way it always did when I got flustered. “I go sit now.”

“Excuse me?”

“Please, I'm unable to—I'm not so eloquent—” My mouth moved quickly, in those foreign patterns of English words that I was suddenly totally unsure of how to pronounce. Did the
I
come before the
can't
? After? Was I not supposed to say
I
at all? I could feel myself second-guessing. From behind me, there came brief, scattered spouts of laughter, like a water fountain that was clogged by algae. I could feel myself reddening. I could feel my entire body starting to blush.

Mr. Denisof was standing behind his desk, scribbling something quickly on a tablet of pale green paper. He tore off the top sheet and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, pronouncing each word slowly and deliberately. “I want you to go to the office. The principal's office. Do you know where that is?”

Mutely, I hung my head. I hefted my massive bag of textbooks onto my back, plucked the note from his fingers, and left the room.

The hall was totally empty, nobody lingering. By now, everyone was either in class or gone. There wasn't even an echo of students talking from the classes; it was still too early in the period for class participation.

Instinctively, the way every new student knows in their subconscious where to hang out and where to avoid, I found myself being drawn to the school office. The office was bustling, teachers standing around with coffee, office aides swarming the mailboxes, inserting copies of flyers for class announcements and start-of-year opportunities. The entire room seemed to gravitate toward a massive central desk with a brass nameplate that said
MRS. LEPORE
, no title. Behind the plaque was a self-important-looking woman. I handed the note to her without a word.

Equally without a word, she handed it back and nodded to a glass door across the hallway that said on it, simply,
MAYHEW
.

I left the office. There were three chairs next to Mayhew's door, looking both calm and sinister. Its ambiance was exactly what I remembered from the Russian airport: calm, stale, as if the very walls was saying to us,
You may think you're getting out, but we know the truth: No one ever goes anywhere.
Standard classroom chairs, plastic, with desks attached. The two closest to the door were empty.

Bates was in the third.

I took the seat that was farthest from him. I sat down quickly, without making eye contact, without looking up at all.

As if watching a movie, I could see myself sitting there, in third person, feet tucked under the chair, legs and shoulders
pulled in tight. I was a pill bug, curling up to protect myself from danger, sheathing myself in the armor of my own skin.

The heat levels rose at least two degrees (ten, I corrected myself—home was Celsius, school was strictly Fahrenheit land). I could feel Bates train his gaze on me.

I heard plastic creaking. I heard the sound of a loud, sudden
snap.

I looked over.

Bates had crossed his legs. Now he was cracking his knuckles, folding the fingers of his big, meaty paws together, resting them in his lap.

“So,” he said casually, “what are ya in for?”

My breathing totally stopped. He wasn't brazen enough to jump me right outside the principal's office, was he? I contemplated my options: answer honestly (
no
), come up with something wiseass and witty and hope Bates wouldn't pound me (
no
), jump up and run as far as I could until someone caught me, either Bates or the assistant principal (
no
). I ran over the
no
s in my head, trying to judge which
no
was the biggest. I took a chance.

“DWA,” I replied. “Driving while accented.”

To my surprise, he neither remarked on the patheticness of not even having a decent, manly reason for getting sent here (possible examples: cutting class, a fight, snorting lines of coke in the bathroom), nor did he crack on my half-assed joke.

He just shrugged.

“What about you?” I remembered to ask, my politeness instinct snapping in.

Bates echoed his own shrug. “They're keeping me down ‘cause of my religion.”

For a second, I was sure he was going to tell me that he was caught sacrificing bunnies during lunch period and getting the blood all over the school toilets.

Then I spotted the enormous wooden rod lying across his lap. It was at least five feet long, curled at the top like the end of a violin, with swirls and globes and curlicues carved into it.

“They won't let me carry my staff,” he said, by way of explanation. “In my old school, they used to let me—well, not
let
me, but nobody asked any questions. Here, they don't know what to make of it. I mean, it goes through the metal detector fine, but…”

His voice got choked up at the end, and there was a note of sadness in his words—real sadness, like the feeling I got in the back of my head and the pit of my stomach when I thought about the life I could be leading in Russia with friends who'd understand me and not think I spoke like I was retarded.

“Damn,” I whispered, selecting my words as carefully as a surgeon about to slice. “That must suck.”

Bates raised his hand up till it was right in front of his head, directly in his line of view. As if in slow motion, he curled his fingers until they were fist-shaped, capped his thumb over them, and cracked it. The crackle was resounding. His mouth and eyebrows clenched, face convulsed, and I could feel him heating up.

“Yeah,” he said. “It so fuckin' makes me want to—”

“Jupiter?”

Bates quickly dug his still-clenched fist into his lap. His forehead unclenched, and his other hand took the bottom hem of his massive, oversized
Death Eats Everything
shirt and wrapped it over his fist to hide it.

I looked up. It was Ms. Fortinbras, who'd been subbing in my English class. As far as I could tell, she was a mellow, agreeable type, the kind of substitute teacher who doesn't make you listen to the lesson as long as you aren't out of your seat or texting with your phone above the desk.

“Jupiter, what are you doing here?” she asked, looking honestly puzzled. I'd been in the front row, and earlier today I surprised myself by actually paying attention to the lesson and even asking her a question.

“Mr. Denisof sent me to the principal's office.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

I gazed vacantly into my lap. “He couldn't understand my accent. He thought I can't speak English, and that I shouldn't come back to class until I learn the language.”

“That's ridiculous; your English is absolutely fine. He's just a bigot looking for an excuse to whittle down his class size. Get out of here, take the rest of the period off, and if he still remembers on Monday that he kicked you out—which he won't—just tell him that your accent is from Cleveland or something.”

“Tell him it's from Cleveland?”

“Whatever. If he asks, tell him he has to deal with me. But he won't.”

“Um, okay.” I nodded, unsure whether I was actually supposed to listen to her and get up out of my seat or just throw away the note and keep waiting.

Ms. Fortinbras jiggled the pile of papers she was holding.

“What are you doing sitting there? Get out of here! It's Friday afternoon. Go have a weekend or something.”

I jumped out of my seat, straight toward the North Lawn, and clocked it out of there before Ms. Fortinbras could rethink
her verdict or before Bates decided to kick my ass for getting out of my appointment when he was still in line for his own.

The bus to the Yards was full when I got on. Almost half the chairs were empty, but there was somebody sitting in at least every pair of seats. Philadelphia transit buses all have two rows of seats, with a few choice single seats on the left that get filled immediately. On the right side of the bus are pairs, two-by-two rows of seats. The people in those seats shot me hostile glances as I walked down the aisle, everyone trying to protect his or her territory. I slid in what I thought was the only unoccupied pair left, and hesitated halfway down, realizing that someone was sitting there, too short to be seen from in front. Then I realized that person was Vadim.

“Why are you leaving early?” I asked him, settling down into the barely comfortable seat lining, a scratchy felt.

“My Organic Chem teacher threw me out of class,” Vadim replied.

“He threw you out?” I gasped, not comprehending. “For what? For knowing more than he does?”

Vadim looked at me with innocent, unsuspecting eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Actually, for that exact thing.”

“Well, damn,” I huffed. “It's official: This school has no sense of decency.”

“Nah,” he said. “It's cool. I think they're gonna skip me up a grade.”

“Another one? But you've already skipped fifth and seventh…”

“What can I say?” Vadim made a Groucho Marx caught-in-the-act face. “They know talent when they see it.”

“Yeah,” I echoed blankly. I stared out the window and watched the houses go by.

The Yards, the neighborhood where we lived, was the dusky, dingy attic of Philadelphia, the horrible family secret that everyone wished could stay buried. Only, in the case of the Yards, the secret wasn't anything terrible or awful or lewd—it was just smelly and boring. In the ‘50s, the Yards were shipping yards, where all the city's commerce came from, and the neighborhood was full of eager, young immigrant families. But since then, the buildings stayed the same and the neighborhood degraded, to the point where not even immigrant families would live there—unless they had absolutely no savings, no self-respect, and basically no hope.

Ask me how I know.

As the scenery changed from houses to dilapidated shacks, we both grew uneasy, the way we always did when we took the bus home. I scratched at the ghost of an itch on the back of my neck. Vadim touch-typed with his fingers onto an imaginary keyboard on his knees.

“So,” Vadim piped up, restless. “Want to come over?”

Want to come over?
Hadn't this been our pattern for the past seven years? Since we've been in America—since we've been each other's only friend—nothing's changed but the verb.
Want to come over and play? Want to come over and chill? Want to come over and hang out?