Be More Chill (4 page)

“Do you have lots of homework?”

“Nope.”

“I’m
swamped
with work.” Mom is in the dining room, which is basically the same as the living room, but with a curtain separating the two, so it’s like I’m
talking to the Wizard of Oz. “It’s time to snip some nips, you know?”

That’s a divorce term. Mom is a divorce lawyer. In fact, she’s one of the most well-known divorce lawyers in central (non-Essex) New Jersey, with Dad, because of her bus ads. They
run a firm together called Heere & Heere (“I should’ve kept my maiden name, Theyer,” Mom jokes, but really her maiden name is Simonson) that advertises on buses in Trenton,
New Brunswick, and Rahway. The ads say “Diamond’s Don’t HAVE to Be Forever” and show a gold ring being thrown into a hungry fire. I think it’s great. I tell people
I’m a child of divorce in an entirely different way from most kids.

“Yes, yes, a lot of Jersey couples are fed up right now.…” Mom continues to read documents. I can see her silhouette through the curtain; she’s hunched over the dining
room table behind stacks of envelopes.

“Mom, play rehearsal started today.”

“What’s your play called again?”

That’s just what Mark asked, four hours ago. “
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.”

“You know what play I love?
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. Are you going to do that one?”

“No, Mom. Is there any chance you could work with me on my lines sometime?”

“Ask your father. I’m busy.”

“Dad’s not home, Mom.” I take the remote and turn the TV to my family’s favorite show—whatever’s on digital cable obscured by a big Bowflex shadow. Naturally,
Dismissed
fills my screen; it’s always there in my lowest moments, so weird and dangerous and hypocritical that I’d like to shoot up my school just to blame it. I mean, what kind
of show throws ménage-style blind dates at teenage boys? What are you telling them—all of a sudden, you’re not Cool unless you’re going out with
two
girls?
You’re entitled to
two
girls? Where’s my
one
girl? And if you are a girl, are you better suited to competitive harem living than any sort of independent, self-sustaining
existence, like Mom’s doing right now behind her curtain? Are you bred for competition like a horse?

Naturally, MTV switches it around so girls go on a date with two guys or gay and lesbian people go out, but the result—cutthroat social contest, all day, everyday; death to the ugly; death
to the stammerers; death to the faces that got scarred in a playground sometime—stays the same.

Still, one of the incredibly hot girls on
Dismissed
is Asian. So I call up Michael Mell.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You watching TV?” I hear his television click; Michael sighs as he sees her. The contestants are on a date in a junkyard. Michael is silent.

“So what’s up,” he finally says. “What happened with Christine?”

“Oh, I, uh, started asking her about that letter, you know, and she got pretty pissed off.”

“Dumbass. Why’d you do that?”

Huh. I never considered that. Self-sabotage?

“I guess I just wanted to clear things up before proceeding.”

“You talked to her, though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great, man.”

“No, it’s not. She’s not talking to me anymore, and I didn’t give her the Shakespeare.”

“Dude, I knew you weren’t gonna give her the Shakespeare. When I saw you at lunch, I knew
that
wasn’t gonna happen.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Anyway. What’s up with you?”

“My brother is acting weird again. He just called. He thinks the government is putting pills in people’s brains.”

“Ah, I see. Like that pill he got that got him through the SATs?”

“Yeah. But that one really happened.”

“Sure.”

“I’m telling you, man!” Michael says. “How could my brother get a 1530 on his SATs? How the hell is he going to Brown? He had this pill, I’m telling you.”

“Sure. So listen.” I have to refocus the conversation; Michael can go on and on. (On TV, the
Dismissed
threesome frolics in a hot-air balloon.) “Did you see the
announcements for the Halloween Dance?”

“Nope. Do I care?”

“They went up late today.”

“Yeah. And?”

“You think we should go?”

“Are you asking me out?”

“C’mon, Michael. Seriously. Why don’t we go to a dance?”

“You should go. Christine will be there, right?”

Jeez, I didn’t even think of that! Of course! “Yeah, she will!”

“So go. Good luck.”

“What—am I supposed to go by myself?”

“Whoa! Whoa!” On TV, the
Dismissed
girls have taken to wrestling in some sort of oatmeal in their hot-air balloon. One of them has her top fuzzed out; anytime anything gets
fuzzed out on TV, Michael turns to his—

“De-Fuzzer time, baby!” My friend whoops—really, he can whoop; I picture him walking across his living room with the whoop-grin on his face to man the De-Fuzzer box. The
De-Fuzzer is something that you can only attach to digital, flat-screen televisions and it costs $400 to get from some guys in New York. The quality of the unpixelation is really bootleg—it
makes breasts look blocky and weird—but it works as advertised. Every time Michael turns it on, I’m understandably jealous.

“Daaaaaamn,” he says. “Nice nipples. Dark.”

“C’mon man, focus.” I watch my boring, non-titty television. “I’m tired of this crap, looking at nipples or listening to you look at nipples. We have to get some
real girls.”

“No shit,” Michael says. “But you know, it’s not a good environment, evolutionarily, right now. Like, humanity is currently at its genetic peak. Did you know
that?”

Michael’s full of crap like this. I just wanted to talk about the dance.

“I read about it. Theoretically, we’re all able to date whoever we want, whether they have bad eyesight or they’re prone to disease or whatever. If you’re a midget,
you’re still going to be able to find another midget and have good midget sex and breed, so we’re not evolving anymore. No natural selection is taking place. In that sort of
‘flat’ climate, scientists think that instead of survival of the fittest, it’s just survival of whoever’s out there and uninhibited, you know. Confidence prevails. So we
might be screwed.”

“Thanks, man. I always knew I was screwed.”

“No problem. Hey, I’m gonna watch the rest of this
Dismissed
by myself, cool?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Don’t use Vaseline. See you tomorrow.”

“See ya.”

And I go into my room
(wop wop wop)
…to enter the Internet. I use it like most teenage boys do—exclusively for sex.

Next morning I am determined to sort out who started the rumor about me and Christine and the letter.

Before that, though, I go to the bathroom to do an Appearance Check. I’ve been doing a lot of Appearance Checks lately. I’ve noticed that I’m kind of ugly. I mean, I have brown
hair and brown eyes—good, right?—but under a critical light, which is how the world views you, I can see how I might resemble someone with palsy. My face is too long and the sockets
that my eyes sit in are off-kilter size-wise, as if I were meant to have a larger eye on the left. My hair might be thick, but it’s full of dandruff like a snowstorm. (Michael and I used to
have dandruff battles, actually, ruffling our hair violently in a sunbeam to see who had more glittering scalp waste.) My lips are drawn back and ghoulish. My earlobes are huge. When I get enough
money for plastic surgery, I’m going to start with—

“Goood morning,” Dad says, ushering himself into the bathroom.

“Uh, hey,” I say, breaking my stare with the mirror, turning the water on so it looks like I was washing my face. Dad is completely naked, as is usual before 10
A
.
M
., except for his black socks. “Um, could I, um, get a little privacy in here?”

“Son, you’re catching me midstream,” Dad says.

“Yeah, I can
hear
that.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. Pretend we’re in the army. No other heads available. Ten-hut.”

“Dad, you were never
in
the army.” I turn toward him, then regret it because his naked butt looks weird. It always looks like it’s pressed up against a sheet of
glass.

“How’re my two boys in there?” Mom asks from outside in a singsong voice. “I’ve got to take a sho-wer!”

“Ho pippity pum pum!” Dad says, shaking his penis—

“Jesus, what is wrong with you people?”

“Jeremy?”

“Can you finish the second bathroom?
Please
?” I plant my hands on either side of the sink and close my eyes.

“Jeremy?” Mom asks, cracking the door open. Then, hissing at Dad:
“Put a towel on!”

“It’s not like he’s a
girl
,” Dad retorts. “We never had a
girl
.” I hear a soft ruffle as he grabs a towel and gets it around his wide body. Mom
comes in and puts a hand on me. “What’s wrong, Jeremy?”

“Nothing.” I open my eyes and look at the mirror image of me and Mom, with her face slightly wrinkled before she gets the makeup in the creases, and Dad on the right, a naked fat
face with a naked fat body, hands securing his towel like a happy Buddha. We look like an example of people who shouldn’t breed and what their offspring would be.

“Humuckuggg…”
I say. Then I stomp out of the bathroom, put on clothes, grab a fresh Humiliation Sheet and walk to school.

I almost forgot about the walking to school. I live very close to Middle Borough—there’s just one big field between it and my house and a gravel driveway that no
one minds if I walk across and then seven trees and a pile of garbage and I’m there—so I walk.

It’s weird to walk to school in Metuchen. Nobody walks to school. If you’re a junior or a senior, you should absolutely have your own car and drive to school every day, and it had
better be a shiny car with a multiple CD changer. If you’re a sophomore and you’re Cool then you should ride with one of the aforementioned juniors or seniors (it helps to have an older
sibling—that’s like an automatic Cool Person); if you’re a dorky, weird, or impaired sophomore, you ride with your parents. If you’re a freshman, you’re forgiven for
riding with your parents, but it’s your job to find peers who will give you rides when you hit sophomore status. If you’re poor, you ride the bus.

I walk, though, this morning like every morning, and once I get inside, Christine is at her usual spot at the front of math. I give her a look as I pass by; in fact I stare openly at her,
apologetic, terrified, but she doesn’t notice. I move to my seat.

Guess who Jenna is talking about today: “Then Elizabeth was like, ‘But I don’t know how to do it!’ And the guy was like, ‘All you do is take this resin and this
chopstick—’”

“Be quiet,” I say. “Everybody is sick of hearing about ‘Elizabeth.’” Only I don’t say that. Instead, I sit and look at Christine.

“There he goes again,” Jenna says halfway through; I try not to notice.

“What?” Anne asks.

“The stalker, look at him.” She nods her head at me the smallest bit.

“Oh, yeah.” Anne turns around as if she’s trying to pop the joints in her back. She looks at Jenna; Jenna gives a smiling look back; Anne looks slightly sad and pleading for
me; Jenna responds with a withering look. I didn’t realize girls could communicate like this, with their eyes, like evil monkeys.

“Don’t say anything, he’ll put it on one of his sheets,” Jenna says.

Jenna knows about the Humiliation Sheets?

Fuck. The pit that forms in my stomach stretches down quickly to suck/tear at my bladder. If Jenna knows about the Humiliation Sheets, thirty other people do too. Cool People are like termites;
for every one you see, there are thousands back at the hive with the same basic nervous system and worldview. I stare forward, as I usually do in times of crisis, not daring to note this particular
offense on my sheet. Not yet.