Cold Fury

working on, he always says the same thing-it was going to be the greatest screenplay ever written, an epic story about a tortured hero. I asked if I could read it and he said maybe when he was done, but no peeking-Orson Welles and Quentin Tarantino never let anyone see their work in progress, either.

And then there’s his obsession with the movie About Face.

It’s a black-and-white comedy made during World War II starring an obscure comedian called Charlie “Chuckles” Huckleman, who wrote and directed it. Doug has an original About Face script he “scored” (his word) on eBay that he’s continually studying, which he calls “the highest form of the craft” (also his words). To sum it up, Charlie Huckleman plays a guy called Dinwiddy who stinks at being a soldier-too cheerful to be disciplined, too uncoordinated to march in a straight line, and too timid to shoot a gun. Through it all, he’s harassed by a bulldog sergeant who’s frustrated by his lack of military ability. The big joke of the movie is that when the sergeant orders “about face,” which means turn around, Dinwiddy always turns the wrong way and bumps into another soldier. Doug explained that Dinwiddy’s failure to turn correctly seemed like a B-movie gag but was actually an unspoken antiwar statement. That, in fact, the entire movie was a metaphor for why civilized people should turn away from violence.

Unfortunately, Fep Prep, too, has its share of uncivilized people.

Doubly unfortunate, Doug’s ever-ballooning weight and nonstop movie chatter make him a constant target of teasing and harassment.

Since the beginning of our sophomore year, he’s been picked on mercilessly by Billy Shniper, a.k.a. “Bully the Kid.”

Billy-slash-Bully has blond, spiky hair, eyes set too close together, and balloonlike biceps, and he is as relentless as a starving shark when it comes to baiting, circling, and cornering a victim. Once he finds his torture groove, he gets jacked up and jumpy, his skin flushes red, and he begins to giggle-a creepy, choking laugh, like a hyena being strangled, which echoes through school. Every time I hear it, I know some poor kid is being teased to death. More often than not, that kid is Doug Stuffins.

But Doug is kind of amazing.

He takes it like a statue, showing no emotion whatsoever.

Even while Billy calls him names (fat ass, freak, effing loser) or pokes his belly (“It’s like vanilla pudding!”) or yanks away his laptop, Doug stands perfectly still with a look on his face like he’s elsewhere. This cool calmness makes Bully meaner, which is when he zeros in on Doug’s movie obsession. The insults are weak and stupid, but they hit Doug where it hurts, which is the genius of a bully-to locate a person’s most sensitive feelings and then exploit them in a public way. Bully spews his idiotic commentary and chokes on his hyena laugh while Doug remains motionless, waiting for it to end.

Finally, when Billy loses interest and drifts away, Doug picks up his laptop and finds a quiet place to write.

A few weeks ago, I found him under the old oak tree on the south side of Fep Prep, his chubby fingers a tapping blur.

I sat next to him in silence, and then put a hand on his shoulder, and he squinted into the sun without turning to me.

“Sara Jane,” he said quietly. “Do you want to go to the spring dance with me?”

Other than being forced to climb the knotted rope in gym class, there was probably nothing in the world Doug considered as torturous as attending a high school dance. He knew I wanted to go and was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for me-tight dress pants, tucked-in shirt, and hours of hip-hop in the school gymnasium. I gave his arm a gentle punch and told him that I knew he didn’t really want to go. He blushed and grinned, saying, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

I thought for a second. “Sunset Boulevard?”

“Some Like it Hot,” he said, pleased with the obscurity of his movie quote as he huffed to his feet and waddled away, whistling.

I watched him go, impressed that even after being persecuted by Bully the Kid, Doug could find it in himself to whistle about, well. . anything.

In my bleak, dateless state, I never whistled anymore.

Also, I never hummed or sang to myself.

My iPod currently moaned with only the saddest, most self-indulgent songs.

The wicked irony is that, in general, I roll my eyes at books, TV, and movies that depict people my age stuck in some moody teenage dilemma. If they’re rich kids, they’re moody rich kids, if they’re vampire kids, they’re moody vampire kids, if they’re postapocalyptic kids. . you get the picture. The thing that bugs me most is that very few people my age even have time to be moody. We’re busting our butts doing tons of homework, or forming classic movie clubs, or working part time, or just, I don’t know-dealing with an existence thick with expectations. According to Doug, there are three or four kids at Fep Prep so worried about their futures that they worked themselves into a state of exhaustion and weirdness and had to be prescription medicated to deal with it.

Our lives are not the ones our parents lived when they were our ages.

Theirs were simpler, slower, and analog.

Ours are complicated, competitive, and digital.

My generation is the smartest, hardest working, most wired and interconnected ever. It’s not easy, but it’s exciting, because we’re in training to take over the world.

And yet-

And yet, for maybe the first time in my life, what I wanted most was to luxuriate in my own moodiness, to listen to sad songs and think about how tragic it was that I didn’t have a date. I considered it pathetic that I could count on one hand the number of times I had been kissed, or kissed someone, since Walter J. Thurber pressed his lips against mine three years ago. I was mortified by the realization that I was three weeks from turning sixteen and had never had a real boyfriend. Despite what was happening in my family, or maybe because of it, I was experiencing a profound sense of aloneness-an overwhelming feeling that I would never find a person who had been made especially for me. It was an isolating sensation, as if I were the only girl in the history of the universe who had ever felt this way. What I wanted was to connect with someone who was not a family member, not a Doug-type friend, but instead a person who was similar to me in good ways and completely different in other ways. And also someone who would just sort of, well-adore me.

I was so me-centric that I sometimes found myself staring into space.

Other times I floated in a warm pool of self-pity, absolutely sure that I was destined to be alone forever.

And then I re-met Max Kissberg.

7

To shake off my funk over the upcoming dance that I would positively, absolutely not be attending, I decided to focus my energy on recruiting that coveted third member for the Classic Movie Club. My big brainstorm was a pathetic sign-up sheet and pencil-on-a-string that I taped next to the office, labeled with the optimistic headline “JOIN THE CLASSIC MOVIE CLUB AND DISCOVER WORLDS UNKNOWN!”

It hung there for a couple of days.

Every time I checked it, the page was depressingly blank.

Finally, someone stole the pencil.

My literature teacher, Ms. Ishikawa, is also the Fep Prep activities coordinator. She pulled me aside, wrinkled her little hamster nose, and warned that unless I fulfilled the three-member rule for all clubs, funding for movie rentals and use of the theater room would be canceled. All I could think of was how bad it would reflect on my well-roundedness if I couldn’t successfully organize a club where all someone had to do was sit in a dark room, stare at a screen, and eat snacks. Finally, facing the inevitable, I trudged past the office, glanced at the sign-up sheet-and there it was.

max kissberg, printed in red ink.

At first, the name didn’t ring a bell.