The Tragic Age (6 page)

“You're, like, roommates or something?”

“Sort of, yeah. Got some major talent here, dude.”

Meaning Deliza, who hasn't so much as blinked yet. It's a heavy-lidded stare-down, otherwise known as a human mating ritual.

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“How come your grandmother?”

Twom looks away from Deliza and at me. He sighs. “Okay, dude, it's like this. My folks are messed up, okay? They're fucking derelicts. The only reason they stay together is because nobody else would have them. Living with relatives is pretty much all I do. Okay?”

“Sounds tough.” Which seems kind of an understatement.

“It's better than foster care. Anything else you want to know?”

“No,” I say. “Anything
you
want to know?”

Twom gives me an amused look. “Surprise me.” Meaning it's doubtful I could. And now, wouldn't you know it.

“Hey, Billy.”

I look up and the day is complete. It's Ephraim again. He's approached the table and now he stands there, fidgeting, glancing at Twom, quickly glancing away.

“Ephraim,” I say. Noncommittal. Meaning “go away.”

Ephraim stares at the tabletop. At his feet. At his chewed-to-the-quick fingernails. For some reason I suddenly decide to be magnanimous. I hate feeling sorry for people. Even Ephraim.

“Twom, this is Ephraim. Ephraim—Twom.”

Twom looks Ephraim up and down as if Ephraim might be some weird species of skinny, featherless, sightless bird.

“How you doing, Ephraim?” he finally says.

“Hi, yeah, hi—good,” says Ephraim, his eyes blinking rapidly. “I—I just wanted to say—what you did today—to Montebello—wow—that was—that was so sick.”

“I'm glad you approve,” Twom says.

“Oh, yeah, I do … yeah…” says Ephraim.

Twom looks back across the room to see that Deliza and her posse are all getting up and heading for the door. Deliza stops to stretch slightly, making her breasts pop. She throws a last lingering look back over her shoulder that's the visual equivalent of her tongue touching the inside of my ear. Twom's look back to her is pretty much the same thing only it's not Deliza's ear he's licking. You just know you're watching two certified professionals at work. And then she's gone.

“Hey, anybody need anything?” It's Ephraim, who's so oblivious to the whole boy-girl thing he might as well be from Pluto, which is no longer a planet. “On me,” he says. “I'm loaded.” In trying to show his cash, he drops it. When he bends to the floor to pick it up, he hits his head on the table. It's really a terrific whack.

“Sorry,” he says. “It's okay, I'm all right.”

It's pretty pathetic and it's definitely not all right but now Twom looks as if he feels sorry for him too.

“Sure,” he says. “I'll have a donut, buddy.”

Buddy. If Ephraim had a tail, he'd wag it. “Great! Yeah! Okay!” Ephraim turns to me. “Billy? On me?”

For the second time in five minutes, I'm feeling oddly benevolent. It seems like such an easy thing to do.

“Two.”

“Cool!” says Ephraim. “I'll be right back … yeah!”

He turns and hurries toward the counter, thrilled to be of use. Two minutes later he's back with ten glazed, old-fashioned donuts. They're probably about fifty-seven thousand calories apiece and the crazy thing is, we eat all of them.

 

14

This is the day that as I move down the hall between classes, the tall, slim girl with the light red hair and the green eyes calls out to me again.

“Billy! Billy, hi!”

She stops as if she wants to talk to me but I ignore her and keep going.

“Billy?”

The side of my face feels like twisted, molten lead.

“Billy, it's
me
!”

I keep going as fast as I can.

“Billy!”

Maybe she'll think I'm someone else.

 

15

I find that Twom is full of surprises.

It's an afternoon about a week later and I'm on my skateboard heading home after school. I hear the odd purr of an engine coming up behind me. It's a BMW motorcycle, a big touring model, and it pulls to the curb in front of me. When the rider takes off his visored helmet and looks back, I see that it's Twom.

“Nice bike,” I say. Not because I'm crazy about motorcycles but because it is.

“Yeah, not bad,” Twom says. He reaches for the second helmet that's on the backrest. “Get on, I'll give you a ride home.”

“How long you had it?” I say as I get on the bike.

“About four minutes,” Twom says.

I quickly get off the bike.

“You stole it?”

“No. I borrowed it.”

“From who?”

“I dunno.”

“You
stole it
then.”

“Dude. Stealing is when you keep things. Borrowing is when you bring them back.”

I find this questionable logic at best and tell him so. Twom proceeds to inform me he is an experienced expert at “borrowing” motorized vehicles of just about any make and means and that he knows of what he speaks.

“What if you get caught?”

“You get arrested.”

“
Yes—
and?
”

“You spend the night in jail. Dude, it's no big deal.” It's all part and parcel, Twom explains, of occasionally
going a little outlaw
. Going a little outlaw means—

“You don't let assholes dictate the rules.”

Going a little outlaw means—

“
You
are your own authority. It's called
living,
dude. Something people oughta learn to
do
around here.”

I accept Twom's offer of a ride. However, I make a mental note to jump off the bike, literally or figuratively, at a moment's notice.

I also soon discover that despite his revolutionary's attitude toward rules and authority, Twom has his own highly evolved sense of right or wrong. He dislikes what he calls the “dickhead club” and he has complete empathy for the underdog.

For example.

There's the fat girl. I don't even know her name. I don't think anybody does. She's one of those girls who goes around with her head down, hoping no one will notice her, and she succeeds at it. But you can tell by the end of the first week, she's totally, madly in love with Twom. She sort of plants herself in the right places, and when we pass her in the hall, she goes into some kind of fugue state. Her vision seems to blur, her mouth hangs open. She trembles. You can't help but notice. He puts up with this for about a week.

“Hey, how you doin'?” Twom says.

He's stopped and walked over to her. She stares at him, turning forty shades of crimson.

“What's your name?” Twom says.

She can barely get it out. “Ophelia,” she says. It's a tough name to give an overweight, sweaty girl with badly cut, mousy blond hair.

“C'mon, I'll walk you to class, Ophelia.”

And he does. He chats with her the whole way, asking her questions about herself. And after that, every time he sees her, he makes a big deal about saying hello and talking to her and walking with her. He'll even go over and sit with her while she's having lunch. She doesn't eat a bite. And it might be my imagination but, after a while, she doesn't seem nearly so heavy. Maybe even kind of cute.

Twom turns out to be an amazing athlete. We're in High School High's overcrowded, mandatory, biweekly phys-ed class one day, where half the students always loiter off to the side in their regular clothes, waiting for idiot time to be over, and all of a sudden, grabbing a football, he tells me to go long. And I don't know why, maybe because I want to impress him, I take off, running as fast as I can, which is actually pretty fast. Twom waits about ten seconds and then casually lets it go. It's on a string, at least thirty-five yards, a perfect buzzing spiral, and it hits me in the hands, just about breaking them or at least that's what it feels like. They go totally numb. But somehow I hold on. And it's stupid but I'm really pleased that I do. I'm pleased that he's thrown this bullet of a pass and that I've caught it.

“Brutha!” yells Twom.

Twom can run like a track star, can dunk a basketball, and can probably throw a baseball through a wall while walking on his hands. It's only a matter of weeks before every coach at High School High is asking him to come out for their team. Twom just laughs at them. “Dickhead club,” he says later. “Like
that's
ever gonna happen.” He pretends he's toking on a joint.

One thing Twom doesn't do very well is schoolwork. Which is odd because most of the time he seems like a pretty bright guy. But then one day Mr. Monaghan asks him to read a paragraph out loud in class and Twom suddenly looks like someone's asked him to jump off a steep cliff. He quietly refuses in a way …

“I don't think so.”

… that says if even slightly pushed, it all might get ugly very quickly for Mr. Monaghan.

“Let's talk about it after class,” says Mr. Monaghan, nervously. But Twom doesn't stay.

When I ask him about it later, he just shrugs.

“I don't read good, dude. The letters don't look right.”

Point of reference.

Dyslexia or developmental reading disorder is when the brain doesn't recognize certain information. It has nothing to do with the ability to think or understand ideas.

“No big deal,” Twom says. “I'm just in school till they throw me out.”

“Then what?”

“Then I join the rest of the bottom feeders.”

It makes you realize how so much of standardized education just completely sucks. It's all about what educators think they should stick in your head so you'll be a so-called productive member of society, and if it doesn't stick, even if it's not your fault, you're written off as a failure. And then, you pretty much begin to think of yourself as one.

I start doing Twom's homework for him. I write essays for him to turn in. I summarize reading assignments and lectures so he can understand them. One day he even raises his hand in class. He gives the right answer, sending shock waves through the room. We get a surprise quiz and I slip him the answers. I partner with him in chemistry and we get an A on a lab experiment. We're the only ones that do, and because people have no reason to think of me as the brightest bulb in the lamp, Twom gets all the credit.

Much to my surprise, it's sort of fun, not holding back. And even though we both pretend to think it's hysterical, Twom is sort of thrilled. And I'm not used to helping people and find it's not an unacceptable feeling.

What's not so funny is that after years of trying to avoid him, I've suddenly inherited Ephraim.

Unlike Ophelia, he doesn't stay in one place, waiting. He constantly follows us, tagging along behind. Twom doesn't encourage him. If he does an Ephraim thing, like walk into an open door and knock himself senseless, Twom won't wait up for him. But if he gets himself up off the floor and catches up to us, Twom won't tell him to go away.

Twom and I go into the showers after gym class one day just in time to see Chris Hardy push Ephraim out of the way so he can take his shower. Ephraim, who is nearly blind without his glasses, slips on the wet floor and falls. His head hits the floor. Twom goes over and helps him up.

“You okay, buddy?”

Ephraim nods. They're both naked and Ephraim looks surprised and embarrassed at the physical contact. And now Twom turns to Hardy, whose eyes are closed under the spray. Hardy is huge from weight lifting. There are pimples all over his shoulders and back, even his ass.

Reaching out with one hand, Twom grabs Hardy by the cock and balls. Hardy screams and tries to jerk away, which is a mistake because Twom has his nuts in a death grip.

“You like pushing people around?”

Hardy just screams some more. Everybody's watching. The vast majority of kids in the shower room have never touched anyone's dick but their own and I'm sure they'd all now agree that it seems a good way to put a guy on the defensive. Ephraim's eyes are like saucers.

“What are you, a faggot!?” screams Hardy.

“You tell me, after I shove it up your ass,” says Twom, squeezing hard enough to make Hardy bellow again. All the younger kids shudder. The thought of an erect dick going anywhere
near them
is terrifying. Twom finally lets go of Hardy and shakes his hand as if there's something funky on it.

“Play nice from now on. Especially with my friends.”

You can tell Hardy wants to throw a punch but he's in too much pain. Cupping his balls and groaning, he hightails it out. Twom gives Ephraim back his shower. He turns to wait for one of his own. Needless to say he's now the hero of every kid in the locker room, especially Ephraim who now has heard the unhoped-for magic word. No one has ever called him a friend before.

He talks about the event for days.

 

16

It's a Monday study period and I'm in the school library where nobody ever goes, surrounded by books that nobody ever reads. I like the library. I like thinking that
I'm
a book nobody ever reads. I'm still trying to get through
Being and Time,
which is proving to be one tough nut to crack. All it seems to be saying is that life is a bitch and then you die, and frankly, it seems pointless to write an entire treatise trying to prove something that any moron could tell you is true without thinking twice. I'm just about ready to pack ol' Martin Heidegger in for good when somebody sits down across from me. When I look up I see it's the girl with the light red hair and green eyes and my stomach lurches.

Fact.

Red hair is a genetic mutation. Less than four percent of the world has red hair, and by 2050, geneticists predict that because of global intermingling, it will be practically nonexistent.