The truth was, Joyce by then didn’t need much convincing. As much as she wanted to believe the private school was a good thing for the kids, the school community had started to rub her the wrong way. They’d have Sunday fellowship meetings, which already she didn’t love because after church she liked a little time to just be with her children, but fine, she went, and hosted parties when it was her turn to host parties in the spirit of open-mindedness, or fellowship, or whatever. But the people were just—she just couldn’t connect with them. They didn’t mingle; they kept to themselves. They didn’t seem capable of relating to anyone who wasn’t part of their church. They treated anyone else with scrutiny, even mistrust, and when the school intervened in Heidi’s life, as far as Joyce was concerned, that was it. She made up her mind.
“Spencer, hon, I need to talk to you.”
“Okay …”
She came into Spencer’s room with a serious look on her face and shut the door; Spencer worried that some tragedy had befallen the family. “So, listen.” She sat on the bed, and considered him. “Do you want to switch schools?” He couldn’t believe it. Was this a joke? Was she actually going to let him leave? The clouds parted, the future brightened; he wouldn’t be left behind, all alone, while Anthony and Alek moved on to exciting new lives. Now there was just the matter of reentry into the wild, finding excuses to leave school early so they could sneak over to Del Campo for football tryouts.
Spencer and Alek had won a huge victory. The battle felt no less than existential. To an adolescent boy few things could be more devastating than the prospect of missing out on high school life. Sports, girls, parties, dances—their confinement to the tiny school was stunting an impulse that was no less than biological. Even their hormones were telling them they had to get out.
Both had been given an important two-year lesson by Anthony, who’d descended on their lives like an oracle of cool, reminding them what they were missing out on. Prom, homecoming, football, the high calling of high school jockdom. Spencer was excited for public school; for Alek it was mostly just the escape that seemed to appeal. The school had beaten him down. He didn’t really care where he went afterward.
Together, they arrived at Del Campo like two orphans fleeing, with little besides Anthony’s advice to tell them how to behave or what kind of clothes were okay to wear. They found a bench no one sat on, and the two of them, Spencer smiley but overweight, Alek quiet and brooding, both profoundly uncool, both happy but uncomfortable in their new surroundings, sat and ate their lunch, just the two of them, like a couple of old-timers at a neighborhood park.
They watched the other kids mingle, kids who’d established their cliques and clubs and groups and study partners, but Spencer and Alek ate their wax paper–wrapped sandwiches with just each other. Spencer didn’t know precisely how to engage with normal kids, but he had a feeling that sitting just with Alek wasn’t healthy. They both needed new friends. As hard as it would be to try and mingle, as much as he stood to be ridiculed, he had to branch out. So one day at lunch he decided, Let’s go. It’s now or never. He got up, and looked down at Alek. “You coming?”
Alek shook his head. So Spencer ran the gauntlet alone. Alone, to bounce around from group to group until he found a place where he could fit, for a while, and Alek remained, content, still on that bench, keeping to himself, watching teenage life pass him by while Spencer tried to mingle without a wingman. They’d both wanted to be here, but now that they had what they wanted, this was when their separation began. Spencer couldn’t help but feel he was, in a way, leaving Alek behind.
He just didn’t know how permanent it was going to be.
Still, as hard as Spencer tried to blend in, there were a few people who made it impossible. He himself for one; he still never knew what to wear. The small Christian school had stunted his fashion sense and he always felt off. He stuck out in the crowd. Alek didn’t know anything about fashion either, but didn’t seem to care that they were always dressed noticeably different from the kids who’d gone to normal schools. And at football practice, one of the coaches liked to pair Spencer and Alek for the “heads” drill, lining them up, fingers down, and then, lest anyone forget the two had come from the small Christian school, he’d yell, “Watch out, it’s a holy war!” as Spencer and Alek charged each other.
And then one day Alek was gone. Off to Oregon with his dad. Spencer had to keep it a secret; Heidi didn’t even know until she called Alek one day to find out if he wanted to come over for dinner, and Alek said he couldn’t because he was in Oregon. Just like that. And though it felt cruel and sudden to have his friend gone so quickly, and Spencer missed him, he thought, Oregon, yeah. It’s probably better for him out there. Something about nature, open fields. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but that’s how Spencer pictured Oregon, and that’s what he pictured his best friend needing.
AS SPENCER WALKED UP to the dais to receive his high school diploma he heard what sounded like a boo.
Could it be a boo?
It couldn’t be a boo, could it?
What, the—why are they …?
It was. It was three people, maybe five. A jokester, a friend, he later found out, thought it’d be funny to get a few people to boo when Spencer went up to get his diploma. But the people nearby must have assumed there was a good reason, so it caught on, and soon the whole damn crowd was booing. Spencer walked across the stage squeezing his fists together, seething inside, ready to explode with anger. His whole family was out there, watching him get booed. He wanted to give everyone the finger, to scream obscenities at the crowd, but he repressed it. He took his diploma and walked off the stage, eager to close this chapter of his life for good. It was a fitting send-off for a postgraduate life that would be thoroughly undistinguished.
Spencer finished high school and started waffling. He took a job at Jamba Juice. He gained weight. He did little for exercise besides the occasional jujitsu class. His brother, Everett, had taken up the sport, and Everett was the one with the car, so Spencer followed him to whatever diversion Everett was willing to drive to. Spencer had always liked martial arts, because Spencer liked martial anything, but he’d grown frustrated with karate. He’d come home from a class and try to practice on Alek’s little brother, but when his sparring partner didn’t position himself according to the rigid rules of the form, Spencer couldn’t show off his moves. He wanted to do moves on everyone, but it just didn’t seem to work against someone who didn’t know karate.
Jujitsu was different. Jujitsu wasn’t like the other martial arts. Jujitsu worked on anyone. It worked if they knew jujitsu, and it worked if they didn’t know jujitsu. Especially if they didn’t know jujitsu.
That also made it practical. Not just because you could choke out your best friend’s little brother no matter what form of resistance he tried to put up. You could subdue any person on the street who tried to attack you, or hurt someone else. As long as he didn’t know jujitsu better than you, you could beat anyone.
At $8 an hour serving smoothies, he couldn’t afford to train, so he walked into new gyms, signed up for free trial memberships, took their classes, then apologized, “You know, actually this location isn’t that convenient for me,” and went to find another free trial.
A dozen different fighting styles from a dozen different teachers.
He couldn’t make any kind of progress, but he liked the camaraderie, and this rare combination of confidence and humility you got from it, even though those two things felt like opposites. Any skinny old man walking down the street could choke you out if he was better trained than you, and that made you respect everyone. But if you were the better-trained one, you could submit anyone, regardless of what advantages they might have over you. At least, he figured, unless they had some kind of weapon.
But mostly he spent those days