Losers (4 page)

And all this summer, as soon as the factory let out for the day, more often than not I'd rip off my heat gloves, throw on a fresh T-shirt, and run over to Vadim's.

Oh, shit. The factory.

“Oh, shit,” I said. “I can't. I promised my parents I'd try to keep helping out in the factory after school.”

“Come on, Jupiter. Just because your social life revolves around your parents' pathetic excuse for an immigrant job doesn't mean the rest of the world should have to suffer with you.”

I gave him a look, half ire and half fire. One of the cardinal rules of being friends with me was not joking about the factory.

Vadim knew that. But he also knew that sometimes I needed to be pushed over the edge. There was a glint in the little eyes behind those heavy frames that flashed insecurity, flashed fear, but also flashed a canny intelligence. “Jupiter, give me a
break,
” he half said, half whined. “Give yourself a break. You go home every day and help on the assembly line. And you've said yourself, you're usually too worn out from school to make much of a difference. Sometimes the bus gets caught in rush hour and takes twice as long, and you might get there too late to be of any practical use anyway, so why force yourself to succumb when your estimation might not be of any quantitative value by the time you get there?”

I gaped at him, not sure how to argue against that—in fact, I wasn't really sure what his argument
was
to begin with. Still, Vadim was smarter and thought faster than I did. I always figured the U.S. government would come and take him away to a secret underground base for hyperintelligent kids one day. So, I decided, why not trust him on this one?

The bus screeched to a halt at Vadim's stop, still half a neighborhood away from my house. Vadim glanced back over his shoulder. I took a breath, wrapped my backpack strap around my hand, and hopped off after him.

As soon as Vadim and I were in private, we switched to Russian. That big, glazed-over curtain, which half blotted out the rest of the world when I was in public, fell away with the Americans and the bus stops and the rest of the world. This was the only place I really felt safe—and I didn't even with my parents, anymore, those people who loved this country so much they'd named me names from English magazines, who wanted everything it offered—the wealth, the language—so much that they tried to be normal. And, in trying, made me feel like even more of a three-legged space alien, so much that I had to run away to Vadim's to function.

Hanging out in Vadim's room was something of an enigma. Every time I came over, I wondered:
What exactly is it that we're doing?
Today was no exception. I took a running start, leaped, and landed on his bed, at the highest point on the pile of assorted blankets, comic books, junk food, and dirty laundry. It didn't especially bother me. I pulled a bottle of Jolt Cola, the ultracaffeinated nerd soda, from under a pile of socks and cracked it open. Vadim plunked himself down in front of his computer. His eyes got wider, lost focus, and his entire body started to sway in synch with the movement of his hand on the mouse. I pulled an issue of
X-Men
from underneath my butt and began to read.

“So,” Vadim said, his eyes not deviating one millimeter off the monitor, “what do you think of North Shore? Do you really think we're gonna make it there?”

“Sounds like one of us is already making it,” I said. I flipped back a few pages in the comic, studying the first page quizzically. “What the hell is up with White Queen? I thought she used to be a psychic.”

“She is. But now her skin turns into diamond, too,” Vadim replied. “Hey, do you know Devin Murray?”

“Devin?” I shot up. “She's—uh, she used to go to Malcolm X with us last year. She did that sexy dance last Christmas with the girls in Santa Claus miniskirts.” What I
wasn't
saying was that she was also, hands-down, the hottest girl in our grade—both in the traditional babe sense and in the very real sense, too, the kind that, every time you look at her face, it seems like her eyes are even bigger and her cheeks are even smoother than you remember her. She had the kind of face that was both totally honest and totally unapproachable—and she had the reputation to go with it. The longest she had dated anyone was Reg Callowhill, who was both an all-city lacrosse player
and
went to private school. Eight months after their second-date breakup, the world was still talking about it. “Why do you ask?”

“‘Cause she's got an online journal, and she just posted this announcement about a party tonight in the Yards.”

“The Yards? No way, Vadim—it's gotta be a practical joke. Her family lives on the other side of the Northeast, in those luxury converted lofts. She'd never be seen in public around here, let alone…”

“I'm telling you, it's right here. I completely just found her secret online journal.”

I glanced at the monitor. Sure enough, at the top it said
Devin's World of Secrets,
and the background colors were yellow and red, North Shore's official color scheme. Trust Devin to wave the patriotic flag fresh in the first week of school.

“ ‘It's the social event of the season,' ” Vadim read. As he went on, the words sounded like alien dialect coming from his mouth, popular-girl grammar with his thick Russian accent. “ ‘Come
one, come all, to the first annual North Shore Opening Week Stress-Free Zone! Mixers, pyrotechnics, and an iPod DJ station. Help the North Shore freshman class kick it in style, and get those party impulses out while we still can.' ”

He had me convinced—at least, convinced enough to put down the comic and come spy on Devin's World of Secrets.

“How did you find this, Vadim?”

“My parents were saying I needed to get out more, so I Google Alerted the words ‘North Shore,' ‘freshman,' and ‘party,' and this was the first thing that came up.”

“And you're sure it's the same Devin, the same North Shore? Her last name's on it?”

“Well, no. And if you read the entry, it appears like she's taking great pains not to reveal her real identity. All her friends are mentioned by first names only. But if you click here, you can see her user profile—her home city is Philadelphia, and her email's devinm at whatever. Hey, isn't this right near the factory?” He had just hit the browser's back button, and now we were back on the invitation. His finger was extended toward the screen, aiming directly at the party's address. It was a few blocks from where I lived.

“How the hell is everybody going to get there?” I said, ignoring the larger and more logical question of how in the hell did North Shore kids know that the Yards even existed?

Vadim had an answer for that one, too. I should not have been surprised.

“Either the bus system is doubling its output overnight,” he said, “or kids who live in more financially gifted neighborhoods are allowed to drive way before the legal minimum. Well——either that, or they all have absolute suckers for parents.”

Vadim scrolled down.

“Yep, I was right.” He cleared his throat and read, “‘If u need a ride, give me a call. And please'—this part is in all caps—‘DO NOT MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT THIS TO MY PARENTS!!! They are OUT OF TOWN for the weekend!' I wonder why she's not having the party at her own house, then?”

“Don't be depraved,” I said, swigging the bottle of warm Jolt. “She's probably saving that for her own private after-party. Or for her boyfriend of the moment. That's what popular people do.”

“You think the rest of the school was meant to see this?” Vadim asked. He lowered his voice, although I bet he didn't even realize it. “Or do you think it was just meant for her friends?”

“Does it matter?” I finished the Jolt with one final, belch-inducing gulp. “I think we've seen enough to consider ourselves invited.”

I got home that night at 7:00, almost a half hour after the factory closed. With thoughts of Devin's party still filling my head, I wrapped both my hands around the two-foot-tall door handle and swung open the single heavy door.

Or, at least, I tried to. It took me a minute of pulling and grunting before I realized it was locked. Padlocked. From the inside.

“Hold on,” came my father's voice, sounding distant and distorted as it came through the sheet metal. “Is already locked up for night. I open.”

“Why the hell did you lock the door, Dad?” I called through it.

“Your mother she does not want the door open so late. Also,
have been break-ins in the area lately. Also, we don't know what time you get home. Also—”

The door, with a massive nerve-rending squeal, slid open.

“I do not intend leaving open for the whole night long, waiting for you.”

Without saying a word, he let go of the door, turned, and started to walk away, back toward the house area of the factory—the small alcove with partly upholstered sofas and a TV; the makeshift kitchen that had been makeshift for years, with plywood countertops marking its borders; the second-floor foreman's office, looking over the assembly line and the main room of the factory, which was converted into my parents' bedroom.

Yeah, this was where I lived.

Seven years ago, but I still remember it. The three of us sat in a gloomy, drab-looking room that looked like both the airport in Russia and the North Shore principal's office. We sat in a line: my father, me, my mother. I had never been on the same level with them, physically, before. Even at the doctor's office, one of them was always standing. And I had never before seen them looking as glum as they did now, facing a huge, monstrous desk, and a balding man whose glasses seemed to be larger than his head.

He was from the Jewish Federation. He was from the organization that, as far as I could understand, had brought us here. To America.

He spoke a lot. Occasionally, one of my parents would interrupt. I only gleaned a few words:
housing developments
and
integration into normal American neighborhoods
and
there's simply no room for more families.

I kept thinking,
He keeps calling us the Moore family.

At the very, very end, I remember him saying something to my father, and my father's voice brightening in response. It sounded like an offer. It sounded like he was offering us a deal.

It sounded like my father was taking it.

“It's about the house,” the man was saying. “The new housing developments are still full, and we haven't been able to allocate enough additional funding to secure you a house of your own.”

“But the condos…?”

“The condos are more expensive than the houses.”

“Oh.” The threat of being sent back to Mother Russia loomed large above our heads.

The director offered a conciliatory smile. “We have, however, located a housing facility that does hold a couple and a seven-year-old boy, as per your specifications. It's…well, it's good and bad.”

“Good and bad?” My parents had learned quickly that, when you don't speak a language, the easiest way to reply was to repeat back the last thing you heard as a question.

“Let's get the big news out of the way first: it's a factory.”

“A…factory?”

“That's right. The good news is, the Federation will be able to cover a large portion of your rental costs.”

“A factory what makes stuff? Factory is…active?”

“That's right. But the good news is…well, the location made it easy to find you folks jobs.”

I stepped over the track and struggled to pull the door shut. It was the front door to our house—and yet, unsurprisingly, it didn't seem at all like coming home.

“Dad,” I said, “it's seven o'clock in the evening. The
sun
hasn't even set all the way. I was just over at Vadim's house.…”

He didn't turn around. “What you were not doing over there?”

“Dad, you've got the grammar all wrong. It's ‘what
were
you doing over there.'”

“No, I am right. What you were
not
doing is helping us like is your job. We have deadline today we not make. And what is more, we trust you come and then you not come. Not even phone call. How I am suppose to trust you when—”

“I'm sorry, Dad. I just needed to let loose—”

“You just need to what? You just need to work. You need to help pay for going out to the Country Club, Jupiter Glazer!”

If we lived in a normal house, this would be the point where one of us walked out of the room, slammed the door, and possibly broke a doorknob or a window while doing it.

The fact was, though, our entire house was a big, ugly, mangy, turn-of-the-century, dust-infested, single-room factory.

At some point, it was one in a fleet of identical factories, all owned by the same huge corporation. At some point, that huge corporation decided—as would any sane person—to get the hell out of the Yards. And the factories got packed away, boarded up, auctioned off, and downsized.

And that's how we ended up here.

Fifteen years ago, the factory had functioned at full capacity, working 24/7 to supply the American public with new elevator parts. Chain hoists, counterweights, electric motors, and hydraulic controls—there were assembly lines for each one. Gradually, sections were abandoned as business dropped off. Now, we lived in the abandoned parts of the factory.

“It's not that bad,” I remember my father telling my mother. “At least it comes with a job.”

And so, with only the smallest amount of social awkwardness, they joined the twelve-person crew of the elevator factory.

My father, shaking his head, racketed up the stairs, two at a time, to the foreman's office. They more or less still used it as a foreman's office, only, because it was a workspace from nine to five and our house for all the leftover hours, my parents kind of used it as their office for when they needed to get away from me, too.