The Great American Whatever (3 page)

“He's ready,” Geoff says, when I realize I haven't answered yet, probably a full thirty seconds later. Perhaps I'm just hypnotized by how hard Zoë's hands are shaking.

• • •

I could have just given
myself
a buzz cut, of course, but at least Geoff got to hang out around a real live girl for twenty minutes (he's never really “been” with a girl). Anyway, that's the most optimistic way I can frame my new haircut. And believe me—they all got cut, every one of them. Picture a cue ball with lips.

Geoff's tapping his fingers against his steering wheel and humming, attempting to “add harmonies” to a song on the radio that's in an entirely different key. When he makes a surprise right out of Zoë's parents' subdivision, I use the moment as an excuse to crank down the volume.

“Wait, why aren't we going left?” I ask. “Why are we taking the parkway?”

Geoff keeps drumming right along, still hearing a song that I'm not. “I thought we'd take the long way. To, like, avoid going past the school.”

Oh.
That's pretty thoughtful of him.

“Oh.”

Geoff knows I still haven't been back, not since the day before Christmas break, and so I still haven't seen the guardrail that Annabeth crashed into, headfirst, dying “instantly or close to instantly.” Those were the last words I heard about her final moments, after the principal himself ducked into my health class and pulled me into the hall and told me he had some “difficult news” for me. I was sure it was going to be about my mom—I'm always stressing out about her health, because of her weight—but no, it was Annabeth: “Your sister, Quinn, has been in an accident, Quinn.” I'll never forget that, the way the principal said my name twice in the same sentence, before he explained how Annabeth had run the red light at the bottom of the hill outside school. How she had gotten sideswiped and spun on the ice into the guardrail. How, incidentally, she had died “instantly or close to instantly.” And right then, I smelled the smoke from her car.

That's the same day I started wearing earplugs. That's the same night I gave up on becoming a screenwriter, or an anythingwriter, or an anything.

“Well, maybe we can drive by it sometime later this summer,” I say to Geoff. He's still tapping his hands. This generic brass-and-fake-leather bracelet he always wears is adding annoying tambourine sounds.

“Sure thing,” he goes, “but, just a heads-up: There's this, like, weird portrait of Annabeth painted on the side of the school now.”

“Okay?” I'm not following.

“The principal had the middle schoolers do it. As a spring art project tribute thing.”

“Okay?” He's stalling. “And?” There's always an
and
with Geoff.

He pulls onto the parkway. “Dude: Your sister kind of ended up looking like a . . . like a giant
pug
.”

Somehow, this makes me laugh. If
you
think I'm a confusing person, imagine actually
being
me.

“Why are you laughing?”

“That's just ridiculous with a side of ridiculous,” I go, opening his glove compartment to get a Jolly Rancher, which is melted beyond oblivion. “It sounds like a straight-to-DVD Disney release:
My Sister, the Pug
.”

Oof. No reaction. That can't be good. People used to say I was witty. The guy who could find the funny in any situation.

“
Any
way,” I go.

It's quiet for a little while, and when I reach to adjust the volume back up, I catch Geoff wiping his nose against his arm. I should be the one crying, but I'm not. It never dawns on me that as an American, you're legally allowed to cry in front of others. Maybe I've just seen too many old movies. Tough guys never cry in old movies.

“Hey, actually—can you get off at the next exit?” I say. “I should swing home for a sec. I wanna put on a clean shirt for the party.”

“Quinn, we both know you don't have any clean shirts.”

“Ha.”

I'm thinking of so many mean things I could say about his “mustache.”

I punch his arm, instead, and his car swerves, which makes my stomach nervous. My stomach is like a weather vane. It knows what I'm feeling before I do, always. Maybe that's why I've been the emotional equivalent of a Hot Pocket for half a year. “I might not have any clean shirts,” I say, “but my dad does.”

“D'okay,” Geoff says, using his turn signal like the responsible young man he apparently turned into during my recent absence.

“I'll be two seconds,” I say, when he pulls into our rocky driveway with no lemonade stand in sight. But he doesn't stay in the car. He follows me right up the front steps, and right into our foyer, and right past the powder room with the broken toilet seat, until we find Mom—with her head in the freezer like she's an ostrich who couldn't find any suitable sand.

“Babe?” Mom says, pulling her beautiful face out. Seriously, she's beautiful. Fact. “Where did you go?” She shuts the freezer door. “And what happened to your gorgeous
hair
?”

That's a stretch. My former hair was about as gorgeous as bathwater after a bath, after a rugged hike. My current haircut is, at least, practically see-through.

“It's the new trend, Ma,” I say, running my hand over the stubble. “All the cool kids are doing it.”

“Well . . . at least I get to see that handsome
face
again.”

“Hi, Mrs. R.!” Geoff says, pushing past me and giving Mom the kind of hug people write songs about.

“Geoffrey, Geoffrey, look at you. A regular man.”

Geoff feigns a whole aw-shucks routine, but you can tell he's secretly thrilled to be getting attention from a female, any female.

Mom reaches her hand forward and tries wiping Geoff's upper lip. “You've got something there, Geoffrey,” she says, and he pulls back and hops up to sit on our counter, where he attempts to say with a totally straight face: “It's a mustache, Mrs. R.”

But that just turns Mom into an instant giggle machine. It is so good to hear her feeling good about something.

“Sure it is, Geoffrey,” she says, winking at me. “Sure it's a mustache.”

I take off. “Geoff and I are hanging tonight”—backing out of the kitchen before she can put up a fight that I didn't ask for her permission first—“so I'm gonna throw on a clean shirt.”

Wait for it. Waaait for it.

But she doesn't put up a fight or say I can't go. She just looks at Geoff and right away both of their eyes are watery, like it's been their big secret plan all along to get me out of the house. Which, who knows, maybe it has been.

“Call me if you're going to be later than eleven!” Mom yells when I'm hopping up the stairs three steps at a time. Six months of inactivity have suddenly turned me into a well-rested iron man.

“You bet!” I yell back.

Except my phone isn't charged. It isn't even plugged in. I don't even know where it is, to be honest, because I sort of blocked that day out. I haven't turned my phone on since the accident, when I figured out why Annabeth got into the accident to begin with, dying “instantly or nearly instantly,” as if the timing of somebody's death matters. They're dead. Roll the credits.

I ransack Dad's old closet to try and find his least offensive shirt. It's a delicate proposition: This is my first college party, and I agreed to go only because it's a group of people who don't know anything about my past, and won't look at me like I'm the only surviving seabird after a devastating oil spill.

Also, there's going to be beer.

But the Asshole Formerly Known As Dad's shirts always tended toward Hawaiian prints and polyester button-ups. These are not the shirts of a man who owns the area's number-one car dealership or hugs his kids. These are the shirts of a shifty junior manager who walks out on his wife on her birthday. I'm stuck.

I give up and go to Dad's shelf in the medicine cabinet, grabbing some okay-looking Polo cologne and giving my T-shirt a solid five pumps, figuring three of them should mellow out by the time we show up to the party.

“You kids done catching up?” I say from the bottom step, rounding my way into the kitchen like everything's normal again.

But I don't think they heard me, because they're . . . whimpering? No—because they're whimpering, period. Mom is holding Geoff and rocking him a little bit, each of them acting out the very scene I still haven't had with her myself yet.

I study my shoes and pull off a pretty good pretend cough. “Let's go,” I say. “Before traffic gets bad.”

W
e're on the street outside Geoff's sister's place in Squirrel Hill, looking up at a couple of big-shot college kids who are leaning out a window, smoking. I had the bright idea to stop and pick up something “nice” for the party, so when someone finally buzzes us in and we trudge up the four floors (without an elevator), I count it as a minor setback when a girl in a fedora swings open the door, looks at what I've brought, and calls back to the group: “Great. Another hummus.”

“Dude, let's go in,” Geoff says.

The place is awesome. Like, I can't believe in a couple of years I could actually live like this. You know, if I start doing my homework again and actually apply to college, ha.

“We don't have to stay long,” Geoff says. Now we're standing just inside his sister's doorway, at the beginning of a long hallway that hopefully leads to unlimited fun. And beer. Tonight is The Night I Try Beer and Maybe Pot.

“It's cool,” I go, noticing a tea-colored stain in the ceiling. “I'll be okay.”

“I actually
can't
stay that late, to be honest,” Geoff goes, starting to lead me toward a room that's boomeranging with voices. “I have the first shift at Loco Mocha tomorrow.”

“Wait, you got a
job
?” I go. I stop him beside a bathroom that's got this giant Yankee Candle going. Classy place.

“Yeah, I got a job,” Geoff goes. “Turn on your phone sometime. It will deliver mysterious things to you, like news.”

“No, I just can't believe
you
got a job.”

We used to make movies together, every day, all day, every summer. I'd write them, Annabeth would direct, Geoff would star. He was a terrible actor. So terrible it was funny, and somehow seemed like a version of good.

“My
dad
made me get a job.”

“But your dad is, like . . .” I consider how to phrase this. Geoff and I don't talk about money. He just . . . pays for stuff, while I look away. “Loaded.”

Geoff laughs, heads into the bathroom, and swishes with Listerine right out of his sister's bottle. Straight boys, every last one of 'em a mystery.

Anyway, he's back. “We do fine, but we are not exactly
loaded
. That's just what people think.”

“You drive a brand-new Toyota, Geoff.”

“You don't know anything about cars, Quinny. It's not exactly a Tesla.”

“What's that?”

“Exactly.”

We keep walking. It is a seriously long hallway, made emptier by how there's nothing in it but us, no furniture or posters or anything. I can't believe college kids can afford a place with such a long hallway.

“Well, whatever,” Geoff goes. “My dad said that in order to ‘learn money, you've got to earn money.' So, like I said. Whatever.”

These must be the lessons other kids get from their dads. Here is the lesson I got: When your wife turns forty, run for the hills and don't take your shorts.

“Maybe
I
should get a job at Loco this summer,” I start to say—it could be fun to make coffee all day—but Geoff's big sister, Carly, appears at the end of the hallway, puts her hands on her hips, and openly examines our outfits. Carly herself looks as if she was standing outside an Urban Outfitters when a pipe bomb went off.

“Jesus, bro,” she says, clucking at Geoff, “are you
still
getting dressed in the dark?” She's majoring in Fashion Merchandising, if that helps.

“Ha-ha, Carly,” Geoff goes, punching her shoulder harder than guys our age should. Carly's always ripping on Geoff, but she loves the dude. Can't blame her. I mean, the mustache alone gives Geoff a Make-A-Wish vibe that you have to kind of fall for, in a strictly platonic way.

“At least Quinny-boy had the decency to dress in neutrals tonight,” Carly goes, bypassing Geoff and giving me a huge hug. My arms don't know how to manage a hug anymore. “Wow,” Carly says, coughing, “neutrals and
cologne
, Quinn. Neutrals and cologne.”

I pull back and lift my collar to smell myself. “Too much?”

“No,” Carly says, running her hand over my head. “People will be too distracted by the hot new military man here to notice that he fell into a vat of Polo.”

“Aw, whatevs.”

“Seriously, Quinn: You look handsome as
whoa
. You look like a
man
.”

Geoff disappears into the montage of bodies just beyond, and I feel my heart kick into gear. Call it little-brother syndrome. I'm desperate for my own independence and then can't stand it when I get it.

I decide I could use that beer. I look like a man. Men drink beer.

“Come on,” Carly goes, taking my hand, “let's get you a Sprite.”

Great.

She leads me into the living room, where some people are sitting on a picnic blanket in the corner and lighting up what I'm sure is a joint. I've never smoked one myself, not that I wouldn't, necessarily. It's just, when you're third-tier at school, you don't exactly hit the party rounds.

But I'm not third-tier here. I'm no-tier. I'm nobody. It's perfect.