After two awkward sec-
onds, D’ijon is calmed down
and I’m hearing talk about
nail color, fart quality, and
what’s good this week on
Hulu. That’s more like it.
But the more I think about it, D’ijon has a point. And it’s clear
to me that the only way any of us are going to get into a good
college is if the girls take on some crazy-ambitious public-
service project and let us guys pretend to help. Everybody
knows that group projects only have a chance at succeeding if
and only if there’s at least one girl on the team; it’s a scientific
fact, like gravity or yetis.
My phone buzzes with a text, so I hand it to Sara to read,
which she does with a dead-on impression of my mom.
There’s a chorus of awwws! and Isn’t that sweets!, but I
don’t care. I’m starving, and happy to see that we’re basically
back where we started. I yank the van into the space next
to Sara’s car, and the girls pile out in a tumble of tight jeans,
air-kisses, and good-byes. Hector resumes his usual shotgun
position, Pierce lays down a rhythm on what’s left of the van’s
headliner, and I order a double bacon jalapeño cheeseburger
in the drive-thru lane in case my mom’s serving vegetarian
or anything smaller than an alpaca. Dinnertime, here I come!
If there’s one thing in my life that’s certain, it’s that my dad
never yells. Well, there was that time when
he tried to take a shower
after me and had
to wait forty-
five minutes
for hot water.
And once he was helping me back in to the garage and I ran
over his foot, and . . .
. . . Oh, wow. Now that I think about it, my dad yells all the
time.
Which, I guess, is why I’m not surprised to hear hollering
from upstairs as I walk in the kitchen. My mom and dad are both
ridiculously nice. Even when they’re yelling about something
they use “please” and “thank you.” Whatever
is going on up there, I can tell it’s
not about me since the words
“that kid,” “knucklehead,” or
“grounded” aren’t coming out
in any familiar combinations.
Something on the
stove smells amaz-
ing, so I check it out.
I’m starving. A
double bacon jalapeño
cheeseburger just doesn’t stay with me as long as it used to.
There’s more clomping around from upstairs, and as I drain
the last milk carton, it sounds like the voices are getting closer.
Placing the empty carton back in the fridge, I wonder if Mom
is going to notice that she has to buy more milk before break-
fast. I sure hope so.
“HONEY, ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE SAME
TUXEDO?”
“Walt, you only have one tux. Hold still.”
“HERE. JUST TAKE THE PANTS, PLEASE.”
“Thank you.”
“YOU’RE WELCOME.”
And then my dad comes rolling into the kitchen, boxer
colors flying below a tuxedo jacket that makes him look like
a tube of cinnamon rolls that’s just been whacked on the edge
of the counter.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW A TUXEDO CAN FIT ME
FOR ONE AWARDS DINNER, AND BY THE NEXT DINNER
IT FEELS LIKE IT CAME FROM THE UNDERFED BOYS
DEPARTMENT AT ABERCROMBIE AND FLINCH!”
My dad finally notices that I’m standing right in front
of him.
“What?”
“It’s Abercrombie and FITCH, dad. Not ‘Flinch.’”
He stares at me for a second, then sits down at the counter
and sighs. “Do you remember the Southern Ohio Orthodontic
Society awards banquets your mom and I used to attend?”
“Sure,” I say for the sake of avoiding further explanation.
“Well, we had no plans to attend this year’s event until today,
when I found out that I’ve been nominated for the Golden Bite
Stick.” Blink. Blink. Nothing registering here. “Which,” he
continues as he tries to wriggle out of his tux jacket, “is the
big award that they give to the top orthodontist in the district.”
Still nothing. “It’s huge,” he says, “kind of a lifetime achieve-
ment award. Surely you’ve noticed the empty space I’ve left on
the wall in the front hallway in case I ever receive it?”
By now I’m thinking about the flaming Dumpster of clowns
with razors and I have to forcibly shake myself out of it. “Wow,”
I almost genuinely respond. “Very cool, Dad. Congrats.”
Both his arms are behind him and he’s spinning in circles,
trying to get free of the tux. Pythons have an easier time shed-
ding their skin. I grab a sleeve and tug.
“Thank you, Jeremy. The thing is, I already had plans for
us to drive down to your grandma’s that weekend so I could
return the Pilates machine I borrowed.”
“You mean the thing in your room that you hang clothes
on?”
“That’s the one.” He grunts, finally pulling free of the sec-
ond sleeve. “I obviously never got the hang of it, and she wants
it back.”
My mom walks in holding out what could either be a formal
parachute or the bottom part of my dad’s tux. “Walt, I think I
might be able to let the waist out an inch or so in these pants
if— Oh, hi, Jeremy.”
And the next thing I know, I’m staring at the wrong end of
a desperate woman’s sewing scissors.
CHAPTER 3
“Jeremy . . . ?” she says again. “I’m sorry, but I have another
appointment. Thanks for coming in on such short notice.”
“Oh. Right! Done!” I stammer, snapping out of my fantasy
and gathering up my score sheets from her desk. “This would
be the time when I stand up and leave!” I’m dropping more
papers than I’m managing to hold, and when she leans way
over her desk to help me, I lose a few more.
Look, I don’t totally understand it, but I apparently have this
thing for Ms. Sparks, the sophomore guidance counselor. How
else would you explain the leopard-skin leotard I just mind-
dressed her in? And that’s not even the most embarrassing
brain candy I’ve ever pictured. This one time we were going
over my foreign language requirements and I looked up and
she was a German Hofbräu waitress with two giant mugs of
beer balanced on her—um, never mind. It’s not important.
Ms. Sparks is this perfectly normalish adult
woman who’s wallpaper for every dude but
me. Seriously, we have hot-
ter lunch ladies nuking
burritos in the cafeteria.
But for some reason,
my hormones have
decided to latch on to
this guidance counselor like she’s Xena: Warrior Princess
in a push-up breastplate. It started when she set up monthly
meetings with me after I accidentally scored a 2380 on some
pre-pre-SAT exam and started getting bombed with college
catalogs. Now I can’t be in her office without picturing one
of tho
se book covers my mom tries not to notice when she’s
standing in the grocery line.
I finally manage to get the door open without making an
even bigger fool of myself, but then I practically flatten Sara,
Autumn, and D’ijon as I stumble out. My mental transmission
grinds its gears, shifting from my Sparks fantasy to a Sara
reality as I find my GF’s actual face two inches from mine.
Sara looks at me with a mixture of confusion, pity, and
maybe even a little nausea. Her wintergreen breath wafts
around my head, and a few more of my papers fall onto the
floor. She nods in Ms. Sparks’s direction, smiles, and scoots
by me, with Autumn and D’ijon right behind her. I glance at
my phone and see that there are only a few minutes before
the last bell. No sense rushing back to calculus now—not that
there would ever be a reason to rush back to calculus—so I
bend down to start slowly gathering up the papers I dropped.
One of them has slid almost all the way under the door, and as
I reach for it, I hear:
Okay, so it looks like the girls have their public-service deal
lined up. Sunscreen for Freckled Children doesn’t sound as
sexy as, say, Death Worm Vaccinations, but, hey, a project is a
project. If it’ll help get us into college, that’s all that counts. I
pick my stuff up and brush some of the footprints off my back
and head toward the van.
This has been such a weird day, but as I pull up to my house I
can see that there’s still more to come. I have been driving up
our driveway every day since I qualified for my learner’s per-
mit. Besides that one time when I modestly clipped the rear
fender of my mom’s car and it had to be towed out of the neigh-
bors’ pool, I have been nearly accident-free. Of course, that
never stops her from offering me a little helpful assistance.
I can tell by the way my mom is jumping up and down and
tearing at her hair that I must be getting close to her car’s
bumper, so I stop. Another perfect parking job. I take my foot
off the clutch and the van lurches forward two inches and I
feel a little bump. I believe that’s why they call them bumpers,
so yeah. Whoops. My mom sighs as she trudges back into the
house, and I grab my backpack and beat her to the kitchen. I
need a snack.
It’s a well-known fact that by the time school is out my lunch
has worn off and I’m on the hunt for nutrition. Yet somehow
this always surprises and annoys my mom, causing tons of
moaning and groaning about grocery bills, ruined meals, and
teeth marks on the fridge door. I don’t think I’m that extreme
about food, but after about twenty minutes of being lectured
on how I’m that extreme about food, I decide that it’s time to
derail her train of thought.
“So about that orthodontist award thing and my plans for
that weekend,” I wedge in while she’s taking a breath.
“Ohmygawd. Your father is obsessing about his tuxedo. I
finally had to tell him that we should just go rent one and—”
“Yeah,” I interrupt again. “Switching back to the Jeremy
Channel for a moment, can I ask how mandatory this Pilates
machine delivery thing is? Because it sounds like a real drag.”
Okay, that didn’t go so well. Apparently mandatory still
means mandatory. Good to know.
“Your dad promised Grandma that she’d get her exercise
machine back later this month,” she growls. “And there’s no
way we can do it since we’ll be in Chillicothe at the awards
dinner.”
I should be hatching a howling protest of a response at this
point, but my mind is hung up as it flashes to an image of my
grandma exercising on the Pilates contraption.
Ohmygawd. I think I just threw up in my mouth. I stick my
head under the faucet and turn it on. I gulp down about a gal-
lon of cold water, drowning out any image fragments of an old
lady in a leotard and restoring my visual cortex’s photo bank
to the usual array of YouTube pranks, girl parts, and vintage
guitars. My mom is just standing there staring at me. The line
in the sand has been drawn, and there’s no getting out of this,
so I do the only logical thing: I whine.
Hold on, something just vibrated in my brain.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Must exercise great caution here.
This is it! The Golden Ticket has been sitting right in front
of me and I didn’t even see it. It’s the perfect opportunity for a
road trip! Nobody said that a hundred-mile trip to my grand-
ma’s house had to be only a hundred miles, right? With my
parents tied up at the Golden Bite Me Award (or whatever it’s
called), the guys and I can totally hit about three states and
really get a preview of the Big Trip we’ve been planning for.
Come on, Jeremy. Control your breathing. Look put out. I
sigh a deep sigh and pitch forward, burying my face in my
arms.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
I take the stairs up to my room three at a time while group
texting Hector and Pierce, and meet my dad in the hallway. He
is trying to read it
upside down while
muttering some-
thing about salad
for breakfast.
“I talked to Mom.
You don’t have to worry about
Grandma’s Pilates machine. I’ll
get it to her, no problem.”
“Yeah. That’s a good idea,
Jeremy. I’ll just go rent a tux instead
of worrying about this one. Plus, I have to
write an acceptance speech. Not that I think
I’m going to win the Golden Bite Stick or anything.
Just in case, you know? Better to always be prepared in life,
right?”
“Yeah,” I un-agree. “Speaking of driving, since I don’t ask
you for gas money now that the van runs on veggie oil, do you
think I could get some french fry funds instead?”
“Mmm . . . french fries,” he says. Then he looks down at
the measuring tape that’s pinned under his belly fat and sighs.
“I probably won’t be pounding down too many of them for a
while. At least not ’til the award weekend is over.” Reaching for
his back pocket, which isn’t there since he’s still not wearing
any pants, he says, “Hang on . . . let me grab my wallet.” And
while he lumbers down the hall, I finish the text to Hector and
Pierce.
“Dudes,” it reads. “The Cross-country Canola Crusade is
happening! Make sure you’re free on the 24th. Details at prac-
tice in 1 hr.” I push Send and slip into my room. Two seconds
later there’s a knock on my doorframe. I stick my head out and
find Ulysses S. Grant staring me in the face.
“Here’s fifty bucks,” my dad says.
CHAPTER 4
here it is!” Pierce is standing on his tiptoes, the way he
“
does when he’s totally amped about something. “Right
T
there! Did you hear the bass?” Hect
or, Tim, and I are leaning
on my dad’s workbench, listening to Pierce’s turntable in my
garage. We’re supposed to be practicing, but Hector started
pushing Pierce’s buttons about analog versus digital record-
ing, and that’s like asking Mr. Stumpwaller, the government
teacher, if conservatives aren’t basically the same as liberals.
It’s a guaranteed rant.
“So you’re one of those guys who believes that CDs and
MP3s don’t sound as good as vinyl records,” presses Hector.
“It’s not something I believe . . . it’s a stone-cold fact! Real
musicians understand this.”
I really like listening to Pierce and Hector go at it. There’s
something almost musical about Pierce’s high-key voice yam-
mering the melody of his argument against the deeper timbre
(cool word, right? Thanks, Wikipedia!) of Hector’s questions
and laughter.
“Plus, vinyl is just much cooler. Listening to music should
be an experience for all the senses,” says Pierce. Now he’s
squatting on the workbench next to his turntable and practi-
cally making out with the album jacket. “There’s nothing like
sliding a record out of its sleeve, placing it on the turntable,
dropping the needle in the groove, and then sitting back and
listening to music the way it was intended to be heard . . .”
I have to admit that the record sounds pretty good. When
Pierce turns the bass up, the old paint cans above our heads
skitter toward the edge of the shelf, and I can feel the vibra-
tion down into my lower back. You know that you’re hearing
a good song when it vibrates your skeleton. Pierce’s eyes roll
up in their sockets as the deep thrum oozes out of the speaker
cabinet. He gets a big grin on his face and says, “That, dudes,
is what is known as a fat, fuzzy bottom.”
“So is that,” I say. “But around here, we just call him Dad.”
Pierce starts laughing that horselaugh of his, Tim snorts, and