My Most Excellent Year (6 page)

“Best hot dog.”

“McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket. Best thunderstorm.”

“The one in Newburyport on spring vacation. Best worm.”

“Under the rock at Castle Island. Best Christmas Eve.”

“When I was three and a half.” This kind of threw me. Usually we always agree that it was the Christmas when we were seven. We stayed at my house the night before, and after we were asleep Pop brought in this life-sized mechanical Santa Claus whose arm went up and down like he was waving. He and Dad set it up by the fireplace and turned off all of the lights except for the Christmas tree. Then they woke up me and Tick and carried us to the doorway of the living room to say hello to Santa. Well, when you’re seven years old and you’re three-quarters asleep and your head is on your father’s shoulder, you’ll pretty much believe anything you see—even without the special effects. But this was the real deal. Santa Claus waved to us and we waved back. And we could never make anybody believe that it had really happened.

So when Tick switched Christmases on me, I knew something major was about to happen. While he stared hard across Mass Pike at the lights behind Fenway Park, he told me about how his mom had surprised them on December 24 with a sleigh and a horse and a driver. And how—after dinner—they rode through Bowdoin Street with the snow coming down all around them and the people on the sidewalks shopping at the last minute to buy presents for relatives they didn’t like or ginky friends they weren’t crazy about either, and with the colored lights blinking in all of the windows and “Silver Bells” piping out of the speakers in front of Faneuil Hall. The picture that the driver took of them shows Pop and Tick’s mom with their heads leaning in together and Tick in between them with a “this is going to last forever, right?” grin across his face. (Kids are
so clueless.) Pop still has the picture framed in their living room and they even used it for their holiday cards two years in a row. “Happy 1993. Love, Nikki, Ted, and Anthony” and “Happy 1994 from T.C. Keller and his two best friends.” But there wasn’t any Happy 1995. And I never knew the story behind the picture until today. No wonder.

After he finished telling me, his eyes stayed glued to the highway underneath us like he was memorizing it. By then there were only two rules in my mind: (a) don’t cry, and (b) don’t let him stay sad. So I said the first thing I could think of to break the silence.

“Best Christmas present.” Tick looked up suddenly and there was the usual Tick smile again.

“Blue Rollerblades,” he said. “Best blizzard.”

“The one that started while we were watching
Peter Pan
. You even clapped for Tinker Bell, you gink.”

“Oh. Like you didn’t.”

Adolescence isn’t just about growing hair, it’s about growing up. I hope I’m ready for it.

Love,

Augie

Dear Liza,

I don’t know why Andy Wexler thinks he needs help. He kicks a soccer ball better than David Beckham does. A couple of times during workouts this afternoon I could swear he fell on his ass on purpose. This is what happens when you’re a famous director. Everybody wants a piece of you, even if they have to fake a reason. What price glory?

Tick was working on his diary again, so after practice Andy and I went to Dad’s store and took over a booth in the café for two hours of hot chocolate and all the cookies we could sneak. What a remarkable guy he is. All 5-feet-5 of him. He started off by apologizing for calling me a gink in second grade (I got the last grape Jell-O in the cafeteria line so he was stuck with orange), but he said I was the one who raised his consciousness by making him
figure out that Asians have feelings too (!). If he hadn’t been so serious about it, with his forehead crinkled and his eyes looking so sad, I’d have dumped my hot chocolate all over his curly light brown hair. Instead, all I wanted to do was hug him and tell him it was okay—because if he really thinks that “gink” is the worst kind of name-calling that a Chinese American kid has to hear all his life, his consciousness never needed raising in the first place.

Other things:

• His father is a pilot for American Airlines, and on 9/11 he’d just taken off from Logan Airport for San Francisco when the World Trade Center was hit. For two hours nobody knew which planes had done it and his family didn’t even know if he was alive. I tried to put myself in his shoes while he was remembering, but I just couldn’t go there. What if it had been Dad or Pop??
  
• He loves football and the Pats the same way that Tick loves baseball and the Sox. So there’s another whole language I’m going to have to learn. First and ten. Hang time. Flower Bowl.
  
• He wasn’t crazy about doing “Casey at the Bat” in the talent show, but he changed his mind when he found out I’d be directing him. My reputation precedes me.
  
• He has a great smile—but I mean a great smile. It’s like getting a present you didn’t expect. When he flashes one of those things you know he means every word he’s saying.
  
• Neither one of us could figure out why we didn’t become
  friends until now. It was always just “Hey”/“Hey” in the hallway and “See ya”/“See ya” after scrimmages.
  

Before we left the store, Phyllis let him have
Day By Day in New England Patriots History
as long as he promised to keep it their secret.

“I don’t do this for everybody,” she warned him, hiding it in a bag. Which is actually bullshit. She does it for every one of my friends when she meets them for the first time. And since it looked like we were on a roll there, I handed her the new Audrey Hepburn bio and tried to get away with the same thing. But all she did was slap my fingers and say, “Augie, do
not
make me put on my heels.” (Slipping one over on Phyllis is like tossing a pair of dice and waiting for a seven. You get lucky maybe one out of fourteen tries.)

“Holy crap, Spidey!” blurted Andy, pointing to page eighteen while we were crossing Harvard Street. “There’s even a Jim Cheyunski autograph in here!”

“Holy crap, Andy!” I blurted back. “Who the heck is Jim Cheyunski??” Andy groaned and put an arm around my shoulder when we hopped the curb.

“Boy, have we got a lot of work to do on you.”

We sat on a bench in Emerson Garden until we ran out of talk. By then it was getting dark and I
really
wanted to ask him to come over for dinner, but I couldn’t figure out how. So after a couple of more seconds of looking at each other, it was back to “See ya”/”See ya” again. Then we went home in opposite directions.

I thought about him a lot last night. He’s the kind of friend I can see getting into capers with, like Butch and Sundance. Scratch that.
Like Thelma and Louise. He’ll be wearing mauve and beige at the same time, the fashion police’ll be closing in behind us in squad cars, and just before we take off down the highway he’ll turn to me with his brown hair and blue eyes and shoot me one of those grins that could easily last me the rest of my

SCREEEEECH.

Oh, no.

Oh, please God, no.

“Zing! went the strings of my heart.”

Too late. When he calls me Spidey I turn into grape Jell-O. His favorite kind.

I’m doomed.

Love,

Augie

Diary

Alejandra Perez, 9
^th
Grade

Mrs. Norwood’s Class

Dear Jacqueline,

Of all the Kennedy men you could have had, I think you picked the right one. Teddy was too cute to trust, and Bratty Bobby must have gotten on your nerves from day one, the way he was always chasing after Jack like a dog that’s looking for a rear end to sniff—and it doesn’t matter whose. Actually, you’d probably have done best with Joe Jr. if he hadn’t gotten himself killed in the war. He was handsome, and he may even have had some morals.

But at least you were given a choice. After one month of public school, these are my only options: