We waited for his sister to pick us up with her friend from Union.
“What, Vic? What’s going on? You just snapped out of nowhere.” I thought I had been more surreptitious.
A black car with black rims that was unnaturally low to the ground screamed down the driveway and screeched to a halt. “Hey you two dumbasses, get in,” said Carina, hanging out the window, the music so loud I thought it would push me backward like a strong wind. I could see the horrified Rosenblatts peeking out the windows as we peeled out and up the driveway.
We zig-zagged through the winding, dimly lit Short Hills streets. The music was pounding in Portuguese and I caught myself silently praying after the third time we blew through a stop sign: Our Father whoeth thou arteth in… Dammit! I thought I had nailed that down. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t have prayers like how we speak now.
Despite my protestations to be dropped off at the Geigers’ so I could reunite with Karl and indulge in soda and video games, Tank insisted that we go back to his house and order Dominos.
I ate a Philly cheesesteak pizza. Ameriganz? Sure, but they were so delicious I could eat a pie myself. I could follow that too with a half order of cinna-sticks, chased with the “jizz sauce” icing—at least that’s what Carina’s friend André called it. I asked Tank what “jizz” was anyway, and he said it’s what comes out when you “jerk off.” Further questioning revealed that “jerking off” was a crass way of saying the mellifluous “masturbating.” That’s not what my jizz looked like anyway, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want them to think I was sick or needed Jesus.
Carina and André wouldn’t stop laughing as we tore into the pizza, cinna-sticks, and wings. I would understand if Tank was telling jokes or if there was something funny on TV, but when I turned around the TV was muted on the Weather Channel.
“Will you guys shut up?” said Tank, becoming visibly nettled by the hissing of suppressed laughter.
Her eyes were red as if she’d opened them in a pool.
“Oh, you didn’t? Again, Carina? What the shit? That shit is so bad for you.” And he grabbed a pizza box and stormed off to his room in the basement. “Come on, Vic!” Tank tossed the pizza box onto the bed and started to spray himself with Axe. “I can’t get that damn smell out of my nose!”
“Smell of what?”
“You didn’t smell that? The pot? That’s why they’re laughing like jackals.”
“Pot? Pot has a smell?”
“What the shit are you talking about? Of course it does.” I had seen Cruel Intentions at the Geigers’ and remembered Sarah Michelle Gellar sticking white powder up her nose from a little pot she hung around her neck. If it smelled so bad, why would she shove it up her nose? “No, man, that’s not pot. That’s coke.” Like soda? “Ya know? Like cocaine? Blow? Snow?”
“Sure.” I was finished with the conversation.
We crushed the pizza on his bed as we scanned the channels for Sex and the City reruns.
“Hey! How come nobody turns off the lights in this house?! Do I own the electric company?” my father shouted as he thundered down the hallway into the kitchen wearing a t-shirt that said Proud to be Italian-American with a V-neck that reached his belly button. “We’re headed straight to the poor house!”
“I think there’s a step between Short Hills and the poor house,” said my brother, struggling to cut his piece of eggplant parmesan. I gave up on the endeavor myself and bit into the full piece stuck on my fork like the beast I was.
“Eyy, gavone (translation: pig, slob), how ’bout ya cut that?”
My mother rushed into the kitchen, bottom lip quivering on the verge of tears. She fumbled with the remote as she tried to turn on the small TV mounted on the wall.
“What? Honey, what is it?” my father started. “Hey, what about no television during dinner? This is family time. I forgot about high-lows. Tony, you want to go first?”
“My high was hockey practice and my low is this conversation.”
“Hey! Why you gotta be such a pain in the you-know-what? And hun, I thought we said no TV during…”
“Stop, Tony.” She didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
“For Pete’s sake, you’re shaking.”
Pictures of boys in maroon-and-yellow varsity jackets appeared and then faded on the screen. Each one was wide-jawed and handsome, with chestnut hair that came down to their eyebrows. I thought about growing my hair out like that, but Dad said real men kept their hair short.
“The ‘Summit Seven’ have been arrested and charged with raping…”
“Okay! Okay! Enough—what are we watching here?” My father stood up from his seat.
“Britney, honey, if you’re all finished you can go watch TV downstairs,” said my mother.
My parents watched in horror as the anchorwoman detailed the case: “Seven young men, all of them players on the high school football team in Summit, New Jersey, have been arrested for the rape of a fifteen-year-old minor with autism.”
“I’ve gotta call Pat,” said my father—Pat Kershaw was the athletic director at Summit High School.
Short Hills shares a border with Summit, and if we lived just on the other side of Route 24—the highway I could hear from my bedroom—we’d be Summitites…? Summiters? Summitians?
“Those motherfuckers,” my mother said under her breath. Tony and I looked at each other and receded into our eggplant. Sure, Mom cursed, but it was usually relegated to “bullshit” or “son of a bitch.” She stared at the screen, mumbling to herself as if we weren’t in the room.
The anchor continued: “Further details about the alleged rape—and be advised that this is graphic—include sodomy with a lacrosse stick and group sexual activities, and it has been reported that photographs were taken of the acts. One such photograph was circling around the high school, which led to the boys’ arrests.”
My mother put her
