This Beautiful Life (8 page)

It never would have occurred to him to hook up with Daisy if she hadn't thrown herself at him. All that beer. Fucking Audrey.

He thought about Audrey, that golden ring on her golden belly. His hand instinctively unzipped his jeans. His hand went down to it, and it unleashed, hard and smooth, rising up to meet his hand. Maybe Audrey thought he was a good guy for saying no to Daisy. Maybe Audrey thought he was a sleaze and a dweeb. He'd pushed Daisy; he'd pushed Daisy off of him. Audrey couldn't have liked that. Nobody would like that, a guy pushing a girl. God, he was an idiot. He tried to remember Audrey's face in that horrible moment when his hands, not Jake, but Jake's hands alone, had pushed Daisy, but he couldn't remember; he couldn't remember the look on Audrey's face. His left fist was going faster and faster now. It tightened, and even though his skin was too dry and the fist was burning, right now he liked it that way and he didn't stop to spit or go for the Aveeno lotion. Maybe Audrey liked that he'd been rough with Daisy. Who knew? She liked Luke. And Luke was a jerk. Luke was always swinging her around. Maybe Audrey liked it nasty.

Jake came in loud, angry spurts, and then there was jizz all over his bed, which was disgusting. He took his T-shirt off and rubbed the jizz off on the shirt and then he stripped the sheets and put the whole mess plus his boxers into his hamper, wondering how he was going to explain all this laundry to his mom.

He got up and went to his closet to get some clean sheets and remade the bed. He put on a new T-shirt, fresh underwear, pajama pants. He was too wired to go to sleep. So he turned on the computer and checked his email. There was a missive from Henry: “sry we split w/out u, but yr hands wr full…” Jake tried to decipher the tone. Conciliatory? Or was Henry also making fun of him? Jake chose conciliatory, because he needed him. He wrote back: “Drunk. Don't ever let me do that again.” Then he closed his laptop and climbed into bed. And then he got up and out of it. He went back to his computer. Googled “Ithaca, New York.” Shut the laptop again and went back to bed. He could read old Spider-Man comics. That's what he could do, and he did. He read them till he fell asleep finally, and then he heard his mother and sister coming in the front door.

“D
id you have a good time last night?” Jake's mom asked as Jake opened the refrigerator.

She looked awful. Her brown eyes were red, and her skin was gray and translucent—he could see her veins throbbing in her temples. She looked a little old, a little like she would probably look like as an old lady, her hair twisted up in a bun that way, her T-shirt all sweaty and wrinkled. His mom looked the way she looked after one of them had been up all night with the throw-up flu and she'd been holding their heads, aiming them over the toilet, wiping their mouths. She looked a little like his grandma had looked before she died. Jake did not like looking at her right now.

So he scanned the interior of the refrigerator. Was there Sunny D inside? Milk? Something he'd want to down first thing in the morning? His mom hated it when he drank coffee. Said it might stunt his growth, when nothing seemed to stop him; his arms and legs already felt too long for his body, but whatever. He drank coffee every day at school, hoping to be normal.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, finally answering her question. “I guess I had a good time, yeah.”

He lifted out a gallon of milk and brought it to his lips. He took a long slug and put the container back inside. He turned to her, hoping what, that he could talk to her? That she would rescue him?

She turned off the stove. The teakettle hadn't even boiled yet. How could he tell her about hooking up with Daisy? Giving her that shove? Drinking too much? His mom was always going on and on about how grateful blah blah she was that she could trust him.

He was hoping she could magically intuit all of this, hoping that she could read his mind and instantly forgive him, like she used to; she could read his mind and forgive him all in an instant when he was young. Instead, she said, “All right, then, Mom's got a hangover,” and sidled past him, almost like she wasn't his mom, almost like she was a roommate or a grown-up stranger who lived in his apartment. As if she really didn't know or care if there was anything wrong with him or not.

“Way to go, Mom,” Jake said.

She shuffled off to her room to sleep it off.

I
t was already there. By noon, she'd already shot the damn thing and sent it to him. [email protected] The email was in Jake's in-box. He downloaded it and couldn't believe what he saw; Jake had never seen anything like it before—even at McHenry's, even when they were at McHenry's and McHenry Googled stuff like “Big Booty” and “Two Girls One Cup” and they all gathered around until they got bored. But this was not boring. Jake was the opposite of bored. Right now, Jake couldn't believe what he actually was watching. Was he supposed to be watching this? Was it legal?

He turned the computer off. He turned the computer off just by pressing the button. He didn't hit the Apple and cursor down or any of the stuff that he always did every day by rote. He just shut it down. You could lose data that way, but he wasn't thinking at the moment. He just did it. It was what his science teacher would have called an autonomic response.

He waited a minute and breathed hard. There was sweat running down the back of his T-shirt. Then he pressed the button and turned the computer back on.

Then he had to wait, he had to wait so long, he couldn't believe he had to wait so long. He should never have turned the computer off! Now he had to wait first for the black-and-white pinwheel to whirl around and then the rainbow-colored one—which he despised. And then he realized he'd already downloaded the thing. He didn't need to log on. So he just double-clicked and he watched it again. Daisy in that skirt. Daisy with that music. Daisy with no underwear. Daisy.

Was this pornography? Was it even sexy? He thought it was sexy, but he wasn't sure. He felt hard and he felt soft. It was like a hot potato. He had to fling it to someone else.

“Check it out,” he typed. Then he forwarded the email on to Henry.

He watched the video again. He watched it over and over.

His phone began to vibrate. It made a horrible sound as it buzzed against the floor in the pocket of his jeans, where he'd left it. He looked up, and the jeans looked like they were shuddering, like they were ashamed and shuddering. Like they felt guilty about where they had been the night before. On his body. On his horrible, disgusting body. Jake reached out and pulled them over with his foot—there were hairs on his toes; when had he gotten hairs on his toes? He was so gross!—and then he leaned over and picked them up. By the time he'd worked the phone out of his pocket, the caller had gone to voice mail. He phoned in for his message. It was Henry.

“Jake, dude, what the fuck? Call me,” said Henry.

So he did. He called Henry. He called him right back, but it was too late. In the thirty seconds it had taken him to retrieve and return the call, Henry had already forwarded the thing on to James and Davis. James was sitting in front of
his
laptop in the next room in their apartment. “Whoa, shit,” he yelled. “C'mere.”

“No, dude,” Henry called out to him. “You come here.”

Neither brother could stop watching.

B
y Monday, it was all over; all over school. Everyone had seen it during the weekend, and the ones who hadn't, they heard about it as soon as they touched down on campus. Kids were downloading it and watching it in the library. Henry had forwarded it to James and McHenry. James had instantly downloaded it, watched the thing, and once summoned, gotten up from his desk and walked into Henry's room while Henry was taking Jake's freaked-out call. By that time, McHenry had forwarded it on to Django and Davis, and then McHenry sent it to five or six other guys—only three from Wildwood, including Luke, and then two or three more from camp. And then forgot about it. It was all over the school and all over the city. Connecticut. Kids were finding it on porno sites. It was all over the country, maybe the world, even. So fast. Just like that. Forward and Send. It was kind of incredible how fast it went. Faster than fire. Practically the speed of sound or even light.

(By the end of the week, Jake was forwarded the video by a friend from Ithaca who didn't even know it had started in New York, even though it had made the news by then, even though there had been helicopters from Eyewitness News up at school, even though it had been in the
New York Post
.)

Daisy. “Daisy Up at Bat.” That was the porno listing that Henry forwarded to Jake, Monday morning before they left for the subway, neither of them sleeping the night before, trying breathlessly to keep track. The fucking video was everywhere. It clogged up Jake's in-box; people sent it to him without knowing it was meant for him, that he was its inspiration and its muse, that he was its disseminator. It was just everywhere.

“Ubiquitous,” said Henry on the subway. “Ecumenical. Panoramic. Catholic.”

“Broadcast,” said Jake, miserably. “
She
sent it to me,” he said to Henry, for like the fifty-eight millionth time.

“Her choice,” said Henry.

“She knew it was forwardable,” said Jake.

“Yes, indeed,” said Henry. “She probably wanted you to forward it. She was asking for it. You're innocent, dude. Don't worry about it.”

When they hit campus, Jake kept his head down. Henry walked broad-shouldered beside him. Like a bodyguard. But it didn't take long, really. “Later, dude,” said Henry, peeling out to go to Conceptual Math. It was all Jake could do to keep himself from running down the hall after him. He'd felt oddly protected, having Henry there. Jake had science first period, and when he slid into his seat just as the bell rang, Zack Bledsoe whispered into his ear, “Way to go, babe.” Zack Bledsoe called him babe, which was weird in and of itself, and slightly nauseating. Jake spent the whole period internally freaking out; he didn't hear one thing Mr. Carmichael had to say about chemistry. When the bell rang, he blinked and looked around like he'd had a seizure or something, like he'd just woken up from a coma.

“Hey, Zack,” Jake said, “do you think I could take a look at your notes?”

“Sure, babe,” said Zack, “if you share your beauty secrets with me.” Then he laughed way too loudly and his belly shook.

Jake had gym second period, which was great because he could shoot hoops and let off a little steam. But when he was changing in the locker room, Django came up to him and asked, “Did you tell Daisy to do that?” Which was weird, because Django never said very much, and why would Jake tell Daisy to do a thing like that?

“No,” said Jake.

“My cousin in New Jersey saw it,” said Django. “He sent me the link.”

This made Jake feel a little bit sick. Like maybe he should go to the nurse and go home?

“I feel a little bit sick,” said Jake to nobody. And nobody said anything.

After gym, Jake hurried over to the History Building without taking a shower. He had basketball practice after school, and days like today often he didn't even bother to change. He was still wearing his basketball shorts and school jersey when he entered the building. He saw his own reflection in the glass of the building door and he read the Wildwood Wildcats logo backward. So it
was
him residing in his body even if he felt like an imposter.

“Pond scum,” whispered some girl Jake didn't know, right into his ear, as he held the door open for her. He almost jumped out of his skin. Does she mean me? he thought. He watched the girl walk down the hall, trying to figure out who she was… just another brown-haired girl in a ponytail, a tank top. How does she know who I am? he thought.

A group of kids in the back of the classroom snickered when he entered.

“Yo, Casanova,” this kid Eli called out. The girls giggled. Karenna Mercer said, “When are you going to make a video for Daisy? You know, the boy version…”

“Virgin or version?” said Eli. Everybody laughed.

Why? Jake thought. Was that a funny joke?

Then Ms. Hemphill and Ms. Schwartzman, his Deconstructing America co-teachers, entered the room. Ms. Schwartzman was so pregnant; sometimes you could see the baby kick beneath her shirt, like an alien, like it was trying to pop out. Now and again she said, “Oooh,” when her shirtfront jumped, and some of the girls screamed.

“Settle down, everybody,” said Ms. Hemphill. “Karenna, let's hear your oral presentation on the Alexis de Tocqueville essay ‘Why the Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity,' from
Democracy in America
.”

Jake started to relax as Karenna gathered up her notes. He could zone through the whole period while she droned on, and then maybe go to the nurse's office after all. That's when the classroom door opened and the assistant head of the high school, Ms. Rodriguez, walked in.

“I'm here for Jacob Bergamot,” she said, and for one bizarre moment, Jake wondered, did my dad have a heart attack? Because why else would the assistant head of school come calling? But of course that's not why; he knew that was not why, as he gathered up his stuff, his books and his backpack, and, still in his basketball uniform, followed Ms. Rodriguez and her clicking heels out of the classroom, the hot stares of his classmates focusing on him like eighteen laser beams, his heart beating wildly in his throat. It felt like the other kids could see right through his skin and into his churning gut. Kind of like the cow with the plastic window in its side that he'd seen every year at the Cornell Ag School fair growing up—an open display of its digestive system. Ms. Rodriguez had come because of Daisy, because of Daisy and her video. Everyone knew that. Everyone knew this moment was coming, except Jake, who'd been lying to himself. This much was clear, the sheer inevitability of his downfall, from the disgusted look on Ms. Rodriguez's face as she marched him out of the room, to the way everyone gaped at his disgrace like he had a porthole window in his side, like they could see his innards grinding into shit.