Brendan slapped himself in the face.
Almost. Big eyes. Funny nose. He felt it move closer.
He slapped himself again.
And again.
He almost had it. Almost.
His face stung, but he slapped himself once more … and like some night predator, it nosed its way up out of a dense wormhole toward the light … inching upward ever so cautiously, so close … so close he could almost grasp it … Then suddenly without mercy it pulled back down into the gloom and was gone.
Brendan let out the breath that had bulbed in his chest and felt his body collapse on itself. He rested his head against the trunk and closed his eyes, feeling spent and chilled from perspiration.
So close, he could almost see it take form out of the gloom … and hear vague wordless voices … and almost make out a room and faces … hands and lights.
He banged the back of his head against the tree.
Brendan lit a cigarette and let his mind wander. He thought about how the tars in the smoke were filling the micropores of his lungs with dark goo that might someday spawn cells of carcinoma and how he didn’t really give a damn. How nothing in his life mattered, including his life. How different he was from others. A freak who could recite the most exquisite love poetry ever written, yet who passed through life like a thing made of wood.
It was crazy, which was how he felt most of the time. Crazy.
Just before he climbed down, he let his eyes wander across the stars, connecting the dots until he had traced most of the constellations he knew, then reconnected the stars until they formed constellations of his own. The arrow of Sagittarius he stretched into a billion-mile hypodermic needle.
And Taurus he rounded out into a smiling blue face.
“
The words rose up in his head with such clarity Brendan gasped. Instantly he clamped down on them before they shot away.
He had them. HE HAD THEM.
“Dance with Mr. Nisha,” he said aloud. And he groaned with delight.
Thirty feet away, Michael Kaminsky also groaned with delight as he shed himself deep inside Nicole.
She felt the warm ooze fill the condom and kissed him. “Was that good?” she whispered.
“Ohhhhh, yeah.”
“Would you give it an A?”
“A-plus,” he panted. “Did you … you know, enjoy it, too?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Why? Well, because I’m never sure with you. You don’t react much.”
She didn’t answer, but tapped him on the shoulder to get up. The clock said 12:43. “You’ve got to go, and I’ve got to get up in four hours.”
“But it’s Saturday.”
“I know, but my mean old history teacher wants my term paper by noon Monday.”
“What a prick.”
She slid her hand down his body and touched him. “I’ll say.” Then she got up and slipped on her nightgown.
Michael peeled himself off her bed and began to get dressed. “If they ever found out, I’d be hanged at dawn.” He pulled up his shorts then sat at her desk and put on his socks.
“Well, that won’t happen if you’re real nice,” she said, and put her arms around him. “Michael … ?” she said, glaring up into his eyes in her best pleading look.
His body slumped. “Come on, Nik, I can’t do that.”
“You have to, Michael. Just two-hundredths of a point.”
He sighed. “You’ve got your A, but I can’t do that to Amy, or any other student. I can’t give her a grade lower than she deserves.”
She squeezed his arms. “I want you to do this for me. Please.” She kept her voice low so her parents wouldn’t hear them.
“You know these Vietnamese kids. She killed herself on her paper. I’d have to make up stuff to justify a B. It was excellent. So was yours—”
“Then you’re going to have to make up stuff, because this American kid won’t settle for second place.”
Michael got up and pulled on his pants. In the scant light from the fish tank, Michael looked around her room. Covering the walls were photos of Nicole as well as her various awards, plaques, citations, blue ribbons. Hanging over a chair was her Mensa T-shirt.
“It means that much to you.”
“Yes.”
She watched Michael move closer to inspect the photographs. There were a dozen of them. One caught his eye: the group shot of the Bloomfield Biology Club on a field trip to Genzyme Corporation. Seven kids were posing in a lab with company biologists in white smocks. At one end was Nicole; at the other end was Amy Tran.
“Aren’t you taking this a little hard? I mean, you’ve got a wall of awards. You’ll probably get early admission to Harvard and be in med school in four years. What else do you want?”
Nicole moved up to him. “Maybe I am,” she whispered. “But you have to do this for me. It means everything.” She pressed herself against his groin.
“I don’t think Mr. Laurent had this in mind,” he said.
“Fuck Mr. Laurent.” Her voice was void of inflection.
The Andrew Dale Laurent Fellowship was a prize that went to a member of the incoming senior class whose sheer determination and effort had “most demonstrated the greatest desire to succeed,” as the write-up said. It was the most prestigious award at Bloomfield Prep, not because of the thousand-dollar prize, but because the benefactors stipulated that it went to the student with the mathematically highest grade-point average going into the senior year. It was the only award based purely on grades. And although the school did not publish class rank, everybody knew that the recipient was the eleventh-grade valedictorian. Number one.
“
“
Daddy’s words were like mantras. And ever since she had entered Bloomfield ten years ago, they were scored on her soul right down to the DNA level.
Nicole DaFoe had a grade point of 3.92, and Amy Tran had a 3.93. She knew this because she got Michael to check the transcripts. If Michael gave Amy a grade of B in his U.S. History course, she would drop to 3.91, leaving Nicole in first place. Which meant the Andrew Dale Laurent Fellowship was hers. And everybody would know.
“Michael, I’m asking you to do this for me.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said, and headed for the window.
She pulled him back. “Michael, promise me.”
“Nicole, I think your obsession with grades is a problem.”
“Say you’ll do it.”
