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  How beautiful was this thing I was about to put just the teensiest, tiniest, most innocent little crack in?

  “So, dude,” said Drew as we watched Monica shotgun a three-footer, “don’t let her know I told you—she likes to surprise you—but we’ve got something a little better than beer for tonight. And there might be presents. I know, I know, we said no presents, but…Anyway, I know you don’t like surprises.”

  I smiled. They were so careful with me. Like I’d break.

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s say…nine?”

  And just like that, it was half-done. My itty-bitty betrayal. My li’l semi-Judas.

  “Perfect,” said Drew. “Time to spare. It’s just St. Augie. I don’t foresee OT.”

  Course he didn’t. “Just St. Augie.” Just the Final. Just a whole season undefeated, just another record, no big deal. Drew knew he’d win, and win handily, inside of regulation.

  I had no such assurances, in sports or life. Thus: semi-Judas.

  * * *

  —

  Drew was halfway up the cliff when Monica rode in. I was still putting on my shoes.

  “So don’t let him know I told you,” said Mon, squeezing out her hair and nodding up at Drew, “but our thing tonight? We got you something better than beer.”

  “Ah.”

  “Also, there might be presents. Even though we said no presents.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know you don’t like surprises.”

  She studied my face. Was there something on it to study? Shit.

  “Aaaand…Drew told you already, didn’t he?”

  I relaxed. “You got me. He spilled. Everyone’s just so super respectful of my deadly allergy to surprises.”

  “You literally said, ‘I never need another surprise in my life’ last year.”

  “Last year, you kidnapped me and took me to Medieval Times.” And everyone thought I was in the show was the part I didn’t need to add.

  (A fellow medievalist at the next table, blotto on mead, had pointed at me and suggested a “dwarf tossing,” and later, Monica’d “accidentally” hip-checked the guy into a pile of authentic medieval horseshit. That almost made it a fun memory.)

  “Fair enough,” said Mon. She grabbed her books. “What time?”

  Deep breath. Steady, Daughtry.

  “Eight-fifteen?”

  All done. The Full Judas.

  “Eight-fifteen it is,” said Monica, heading into the cave. “See you guys then. Don’t become a man without us.”

  I couldn’t summon a comeback that didn’t sound creepy, so I asked, “Which kind of book is that?” Nodding at Leviathan.

  “It’s a People Are Garbage,” said Monica. “The bible of People Are Garbage books, actually. I’m reading all People Are Garbage books right now. Don’t take it personally. I’d never lump you in with ‘people.’ ” She flashed that conspiratorial smile of hers, the one that’d been clearing my brain buffer for six years. “Anyway. Just a mood I’m in. It’ll pass.”

  I grinned. “Like history.”

  “Like history. Wiseass. Don’t you start. Mother Tannenger up there is bad enough.”

  “Will!” called Mother Tannenger, from his aerie.

  “Coming!” Then, to Mon: “So, what: no more fantasy books? Like, forever?”

  “The real world’s full-on fantasy nowadays, you noticed? I’m getting the milk for free.” She went into the cave. Then came right back out. Eyebrow cocked. Antenna up.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Why, do I seem…?”

  “You seem quiet.”

  “Can’t a guy be quiet?”

  “Not this guy. This guy is several dumb puns behind his daily quota.”

  “I’m saving up for tonight.”

  Monica smiled. I smiled back. I smiled up. The neck strain of basic human interaction: I barely noticed it anymore.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Monica said.

  “WILL!” called Drew, far up the bluff by then. “Afterburners, man!”

  * * *

  —

  I was a very forgivable Judas, I’d decided. That was my whole plan.

  My whole plan was to tell Monica I was in love with her. Tonight. At BoB. Holiest of holies. Just the two of us, no Drew. I would tell her I wanted to be her boyfriend and do boyfriend-girlfriend things, not just friend-y all-three-of-us things.

  Yes, I thought that might go well.

  Hear me out:

  Monica and I already loved each other. Friend love, sure, but love. Solid foundation. On top of that, we were clearly the weird outliers in a friend triangle Drew had become the undisputed fulcrum of. (Do triangles even have fulcrums? Ours did.) Monica was a nerdy surfer-sage from Barrio Nacional, poor and weird and aloof from just about everyone at Keseberg High except for me and Drew. And I was, well, what little I was.

  But to Monica, I was more. At least I hoped so. Lately, since basketball had started looming ever larger in Drew’s Plan and daily schedule, Monica and I had been spending more and more time on our own, at the Lowlands, or here at BoB, surfing. (She was teaching me. I wasn’t bad. A low center of gravity has its advantages.)

  There was nothing in the Plan that said we couldn’t fall in love. There was also nothing that said we could. The Plan (first draft) was written when I was ten, after all.

  Well, new plan: I’d confess my love, Monica’d see my point or at least think it over, and then Drew’d arrive, forty-five minutes later, and maybe we’d break the happy news over “something better than beer.”

  Obviously, this strategy of mine (if you can call it a strategy) was risky. Or, if you like, stupid. Obviously, it upset the delicate ecology of our little tide pool. But I told myself Drew was bigger than our tide pool, bigger than the Plan, even. As a budding sports titan, he had new worlds to conquer, worlds more in proportion with his newly embiggened huge-largeness.

  And with Monica, my time was running out. She was a rising senior, and just plain rising. From the minute we met, she was leaving me. Same as Drew. Rising away.

  There are two basic kinds of quests, according to Monica. There are quests when the hero’s after a prize—glory, justice, revenge, love. And then there are quests to lift a curse. To relieve a burden. I wasn’t sure which one this was. What I knew was, if I didn’t say something? I’d explode. What I knew was, I had to stick to the plan—my plan, with all its minor, forgivable, surgical betrayals—and that nothing, least of all my better judgment, was going to stop me.

  AND THEN I was in biology.

  But hey, we’re all in biology, right? Forever. We never pass. Until we, y’know, pass. And then we’re really in it, I guess. Intimately. Compostably.

  I’m not a dwarf, by the way. If the Medieval Times story made you wonder.

  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote ancient television history. Just as a matter of accuracy, of taxonomy: I’m not a dwarf.

  I’m not a midget, either. That’s not really a thing anymore, biomedically and scientifically. So don’t say midget. It’s just offensive.

  “Proportionate dwarf” is a thing, but it sounds like a bad indie band, so no.

  What I have (and I don’t really have anything, my problem is what’s missing) is called idiopathic short stature, which is just a long way of saying, You’re short. The short way is ISS.

  You’re short, nobody knows why, here’s an acronym, there’s the door.

  I’m very short. And I’m also not on fire.

  These topics are connected, I promise.

  One thing I like about biology is how it looks so messy on the surface, but everything’s connected pretty elegantly underneath, like a rhizome or a mycelium. (Go on, look ’em up, your time isn’t that precious.) The logic’s always there, even if you ha
ve to dig for it.

  It’s there, and it’s ruthless. Like, just plain mean. For instance, go online. Find some creepy personals. Creepier the better. The creepier they are, the more honest they are.

  I was addicted to creepy personals. It’s not what you think! I read them for the biology. And I found it, in abundance:

  Looking for a tall guy…

  Hey, big men…

  Please be tall.

  Hey, at least she/he said please.

  In the brutal wilds of the untender internet, tall correlates so strongly with handsome, they might as well be synonyms. (As for dark, well, that’s a split decision. Were you aware the internet is insanely racist? What’s that? You were?)

  Why are anonymous, self-interested creatures, operating in a realm beyond shame, still selecting for above-average height? Maybe they’re just products of a heightist culture. Or maybe something more fundamental’s at work.

  Fact: Small things don’t live as long. They’ve got faster metabolisms. They have to breed fast, or they burn out quick.

  Fact: Small people—shit you not—don’t make as much money. Don’t live as long.

  No use getting upset about it. Small things have their appointed life cycles, such as they are. And big things have…well, everything.

  Big things pace themselves. Because they can. Big things have every reason to take it easy. The bigger they grow, the more chilled out their metabolisms get. The less they have to worry about. The less they anticipate OT against St. Augustine.

  The more they’ve “got this.” And know it.

  And it’s a good thing they chill out, too, ’cause—not to biologize your head off, but let me drop a little metabolic theory on you—if an elephant maintained the same go-go hump-and-run metabolism as a mouse? It couldn’t radiate the excess heat generated by its own cellular processes. The elephant wouldn’t have enough surface area to cool itself, even with those flapping air-conditioner ears, because volume, see, is cubic, and surface area’s square, and that means—

  Okay, I’m biologizing your head off.

  (I am—not to brag, but okay, to brag—kind of the Drew of biology.)

  (And yes: that’s my best brag.)

  Let me cut to the chase. That poor unlucky elephant? With the revved-up mouse metabolism? Would—and I’m not exaggerating—burst into flames.

  Which would probably make zoos way more popular with Keseberg students.

  But wouldn’t be great for elephants, I don’t think.

  That’s kind of how I felt in those days myself. Like I was always on the verge of bursting into flame. Lucky for me, I wasn’t any bigger, right? Flameout dodged. Lucky, lucky me, the guy natural selection plus the internet had already weeded out for extinction. The guy elected by biology to fade away, not burn out.

  These are the thoughts that brush-fired through my head in biology while I was knuckles-deep in dead amphibian.

  “Careful,” whispered Sidney, “you’re nicking the spleen.”

  Sidney Lim was my lab partner.

  “That’s no spleen….” And that was Rafty Royall. My other lab partner. Frogs are frickin’ expensive, even in the wretched hive of Audis and yuppiedom we called Keseberg. Three kids to a frog is just a fact of life in public school, even a rich one.

  Sidney studied the tiny snot-green nuggets at the probing end of my tweezers. “That is a spleen.”

  “It’s a joke,” said Rafty. “I’m doing Obi-Wan. When he says, ‘That’s no moon!’ In A New Hope. See? That’s the joke.”

  A moment of merciful silence reigned while I tweezed, resisting the temptation to spleensplain.

  “I’m no comedy expert,” said Sidney, “but that is a spleen, and that wasn’t a joke.”

  Rafty sniffed. “Will laughed.”

  “I kind of…exhaled.”

  This was one slippery spleen. I was concentrating hard. Trying to, at least. My lab partners (maybe I oughta put that in air quotes) weren’t making this frogtopsy any easier.

  “He exhaled, Rafty,” said Sidney. “And just saying some random-ass thing from Star Wars isn’t a joke. Is it Wars or Trek, Will?”

  “Wars.”

  “Okay, well, I want you guys to know,” said Sid, serious-faced, “that the only reason I mix those up? Is because I don’t give a shit about either of them.”

  “Getting that loud and clear, Dr. Lim.” I tweezed the spleen, mounted it on the Styrofoam, just the teensiest feathery hem of connective tissue trailing. Best hands in the business. Best, because tiniest.

  I always did the dissections. Sid and Rafty handled the debate.

  We must’ve looked like quite the album cover, huddled around that autopsy tray at our lab station: me on the bottom, redheaded Rafty (5′4″) a relative colossus to my left, Sid (5′7″) on my right, statuesque in every sense, towering over both of us.

  “Hating Star Wars doesn’t make you cool,” noted Rafty. “It makes you sexist.”

  “Whoa! ’Splain me, bro.” Sid was officially amused.

  “Well, it’s what’s called a ‘dog whistle,’ ” Rafty ’splained, “to man-haters everywhere. It rallies a certain element to attack our culture.”

  “Your culture…okay, Rafty. Plenty of females like both the Stars, the Wars and the Trek one—”

  “Not the preferred nomenclature,” Rafty tsked.

  “—but I do not happen to be one of those females. That makes me sexist?”

  “Look, when you’ve worked as long as I have in the media-slash-promotion-slash-advertising field—”

  “You sell yearbook ads.”

  “—you become a student of human nature. You hear certain slurs over and over.”

  “You hear ‘I don’t like Star Wars’ over and over? Where? In what secluded corner of the internet? I want to go live there.”

  “Such hatred.” Rafty shook his head, Yoda-style, in mock disappointment.

  “Hey, guys?” I put down my tweezers, pulled off my safety goggles. “We’re done.”

  And just in time. Mr. Sulak was back from the supply closet to check our work.

  “Mr. Sulak?” Sid asked. “Why aren’t there cruelty-free tablet games for anatomy lessons? Oh, wait, there are.”

  “Too expensive,” sighed Sulak. He communicated mostly in sighs. “License fees are nuts, freeware’s garbage. You wanna save the frogs? Ask your parents. They’re the ones who don’t like taxes.” He scratched his bald spot—it got a little bigger every time he came out of the supply closet, I swear—and peered at our tray. “Nice job, Will.”

  “It was a team effort,” I said.

  “No, it wasn’t. Ms. Lim, what’s this?”

  “Spleen.”

  “This?”

  “Gallbladder. There’s the pancreas. Up here, conus arteriosus. All this, over here: ancillary fat bodies.”

  “Well done. Okay. Mr. Royall, what am I pointing at?” Sulak indicated a lung. A real gimme.

  Rafty shook his head. “I cannot answer that,” he said, “without incriminating myself.”

  Sulak sighed. “C’mon, Rafty. Try a little harder? Don’t make me fail you.”

  “I feel like we’re failing each other, Mr. Sulak. I just don’t see how any of this benefits my future in the media-slash-promotion-slash-advertising field.”

  “Let’s get you to the end of the semester, then we’ll worry about your…field.” A long sigh. And then Sulak was back in the supply closet.

  “What’s he do back there?” Rafty asked.

  “I’ve got ten dollars on compulsive masturbation,” said Sidney. She was already deep in her phone. Sid’s parents were in imports, whatever that meant. What it seemed to mean was that they spent a lot of time in Singapore. Which meant Sid spent a lot of time at parties. Parties and volleyball were 90 percent of what she did. She was
an A/B student without having to try too hard. Sid was one of the beautiful people, for sure—her dad had been some kind of clothing model in Hong Kong, and she’d gotten a healthy dose of those good-bone-structure genes—but she didn’t carry herself in god mode like a lot of Keseberg’s upper-caste jerks.

  “There’s a betting pool?” I asked. “On Sulak’s closet mysteries?”

  “Pot’s up to thirty-five dollars.”

  “You guys, check it out,” said Rafty, slapping down a flyer. On it was a confusing train wreck of shitty clip art—a microphone, a brick wall, and a chess piece, a queen. LAUGH YOUR BISHOP OFF! CHESS CLUB COMEDY NIGHT! BUN YIP’S!

  Sid raised an eyebrow. “Yip’s does comedy? Isn’t it just a Chinese restaurant?”

  “They’ve made a lot of changes since the health department thing last spring. I’m repping them now. Crisis management. Repping the chess club, too. Synergistic cross-pollination.”

  “Wait…” Sidney wrinkled her nose. “The chess club…they’re…performing? Comedy?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Rafty. “Full disclosure: I wrote a lot of their material. It’s risky shit. Pushes back against their clean-cut image. You want a free sample? Okay, this joke, it’s about a mouse and an elephant. I’ll warn you: it is sexual in nature.”

  The joke was sexual in nature, and also sexist in nature, and really just kind of confusing, logically and spatially. I don’t really know what the punch line would’ve been. Mercifully, the whole thing was interrupted by the bell.

  “Will?” Sid said. “Thanks for the autopsy.” She cut her eyes at Rafty on her way out. “Watch your back around Mouse Joke here.”

  “I have a very edgy energy!” Rafty called after her. “You know this about me!”

  * * *

  —

  Later, in the hall, Rafty said, “Sidney Lim is so beautiful.”

  “Yep.” It was undeniably true, and also completely irrelevant to individuals on our level, in our position. But Rafty was building a PowerPoint presentation.

  “And she likes us.”

  “Within reason, sure.”

  “So what we’ll do is we’ll challenge each other: you have to ask her out—”