“Mmmmrrrr, yuh.”
“Michael.”
“Yuh.”
“You want to finish that?”
Michael smiles and lets chewed fish-cheese roll through the gap in his teeth. It plats on to the tray in front of him.
“Crackhead,” I laugh. “People are going to see you.”
“Uh-nuh,” Michael says; his Adam’s apple bobs up and down as his food slides away. “Yeah, so, ah,” he drinks milk, wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist. “What’s with Christine? You pussying out?”
“Yeah, well.” I haven’t touched my food. “It’s bad.”
“What’s bad? I totally know how it is. Did you say something dumb to her?”
“Well, no, but people think I did. Which is basically the same thing.”
“No,” Michael says, working on an orange cream icecream bar now. “You doing something and people thinking that you did it are actually really different.”
“Well, people think I gave her a letter.”
Michael’s body rocks. He grins: “‘I’ve got your letter! / You’ve got my song—’” I punch him in the shoulder. “Ow!”
“No Weezer, OK?”
“I’ll try. Michael folds his hands. “So who thinks you wrote Christine a letter?”
“Jenna Rolan. She also said I was her ‘new stalker’.”
“You’re such a girl.” Michael gets up and slides his tray into a nearby garbage can. “So what? Does Christine care? That’s who’s important, right?”
“Yeah, she’s who’s important, but she’s not the only thing that matters in this whole…situation,” I say, making circles with my hands to emphasise “situation”. “It’s like, do I still give this to her or not? Will it seem too stalkerish?”
“Jeremy.” Michael fixes buttons on his shirt. “That chocolate Shakespeare is genius. She’s gonna love chocolate, because everybody does, except for those weird people who only like chips”—Michael glances one table away at a redheaded girl eating chips—“and she’s in a Shakespeare play with you, so obviously she’s gonna like Shakespeare.”
“But what if she thinks I’m an obsessed loser?” I start in on the bean salad in my tray. It came cold but feels colder.
“Dude,” Michael says, “think of how you’ll feel if you don’t give it to her. Think of how you’ll feel at home tonight, jerking off, having missed your chance.”
“Oh yeah. Well, duh, I’ll feel like…” Like I do all the time, like I feel whenever I can’t dial a phone number or dance at a dance or hold a hand right. Like I’m used to feeling. “Like shit.”
“Right, so give it to her—”
“Yo, tall-ass, could you maybe sit or move from the garbage can?” Rich says to Michael. Rich has come on the scene; that’s what he does best. He’s shorter than us but very built. He has blond hair with a streak of red in the back, like a rooster. Michael moves aside and Rich dumps his whole tray, including the actual tray, into the trash. He eyes us.
“What? Punks.”
At the end of the day I walk Middle Borough’s elongated and well-painted hall—my school has one giant hallway that you enter in the middle of, so it looks like the Great Wall of Metuchen, NJ. At one end you get the echoes of the swim team; at the other you get the sound of the theatre door opening and closing as people file in for the first play rehearsal, where I’m going.
So far, in high school (I too have an extensive middle school career), I’ve been in The Tempest and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown to rave reviews, both times, from my mom. I like everything about school plays—being at school after school, learning my lines in the bathroom, how the performance always seems totally screwed up a week before it goes on but then comes together at the last minute, how the second show always manages to be better than the first, how everyone takes their bow at the end and the parents are standing, showing off their digital camcorders and your costume is hot but you figure, OK, that’s the price of my art and then…Bam! Cast party! I love cast parties. I’ve never been to one, actually, truthfully, but I’m sure they’re great.
“Hey, you’re in this play?” I ask Mark Jackson from math as I sit down next to him. Mark’s my friend, sort of.
“Yeah, I’m in this dilly deal,” he says. He’s playing Game Boy SP. “What’s it called again?”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” I say. “You don’t even know the name of your own play?” Only I don’t say that.
“Midsummer Night’s Drizz-eem. Gotcha.”
I sit down two places from him in a seat that looks like it was stained with condom residue—not that I would know, except for that one time in my room when I was messing around with one to see what it would look like in the mirror—
“Hot. Hot to death,” Mark says.
“What?”
“I’m talking to the game, yo. Mind your beeswax.”
I look over at Mark’s game, or, uh, “beeswax”, as the case might be. It looks he’s driving an SUV on underground train tracks shooting a high-powered rifle at homeless people.
“No peeking, dorkus malorkus,” Mark says, snatching his Game Boy away, imperilling his driving and shooting. “I’m the only one in the school with KAP Three; you gotta pay me five bucks to look at it.”
“What’s KAP Three?”
“Kill All People. Three.”
“Uh…”
“You never heard of Kill All People? What’s wrong with you?” Mark eyes me. I sit silent, keeping my head and mouth steady, staring ahead. After a few seconds, Mark slides down a seat like I have herpes (or lupus, right? Lupus); then I move down a row.
“Fuck, Jeremy, you don’t have to be such a bitch,” he remarks as I take my seat. Just then Christine, uncharacteristically late for something, walks down the aisle past us. She rolls her eyes at Mark and while she’s doing it, it is possible that they land on my person for a millisecond or two. Wow. When’s the teacher getting here?
“Aaaaaaaaaaaa!” Mr Reyes shrieks from the entrance to the theatre. “Mwaaaaaaaa! Greetings all! I’m not sure you realise it, but I have a very powerful falsetto voice! Baaaaaaaaaaa!”
“Damn, this dude is fruitaliciously homorific,” Mark says behind me. Little digital homeless people groan as they die on his Game Boy SP.
“It is wonderful to see you here!” Mr Reyes gets on stage behind a mic, which he does not need. “I am glad to have such a captive audience for my voice. Laaaaaaaaa! I am also very glad to have such a wonderful cast; we are going to have a great time in the play.” Mr Reyes is tall and skinny with no facial hair; he wears a suit and tie. He teaches English for his day job.
“So let’s see who’s here, and I will give you all your parts. Jeremy Heere!”
“Yes,” I get up.
“There’s no need to stand. You simply must know that you have gotten the role