“Vic, it’s Paxton. So what’s your move here?” Paxton sounded like a lawyer on the verge of a windfall, salivating over that thirty percent contingency.
“I’m not sure.”
“Man, this is Julie Fischer we’re talking about here.” He lowered his voice as if suddenly realizing Jenna was also at the party. “Vic, I’m supposed to be neutral here, but I don’t know how any guy could pass up Julie Fischer.”
I had to pick her. I mean, I liked Jenna, even though I didn’t touch her in the bathroom. But Paxton said it—“any guy” would pick Julie Fischer. I already couldn’t talk openly about masturbating, I didn’t own anything from Abercrombie and Fitch, and I still didn’t have any ankle socks (even though I had asked my mom like five times already), so I had to resort to folding my socks down and tucking the fold underneath my heel. I didn’t go to sleepaway camp in the summer and I wasn’t going to have a bar mitzvah next year, even though I used to celebrate one night of Hanukkah with Jeremy in my old town.
“Has that fag made a decision?” I could pick that voice out of the Greek chorus—Pierce Stone. There I was, making a decision between two of the hottest girls in the sixth grade and I was still a fag.
“Hey, hey Vic, you make a decision yet?”
I heard both upstairs and downstairs groups explode in mirth, and the camaraderiec pop of high-fiving. “Yeah, fine, Julie.” And I hung up.
I wedged back into the couch and sucked down my Pepsi, which had gone warm from neglect. It was already halftime and Ohio State was up 14-7.
“You heard about that shit with those Summit guys, right?” said George.
“Yeah, I played some of them in lacrosse. I recognized the names,” said Tony.
“That was some fucked-up shit. You hear they shoved a broomstick handle up her ass?” said George.
“I thought it was a tennis racket?”
“She was sodomized with a lacrosse stick,” said Karl without turning around from the computer.
“If you don’t get me a Pepsi I’ma sodomize you with a lacrosse stick, boy!” said George. “Yo, I heard Trevor Stone got one of the pics. Ya know, of the shit that happened.”
“I don’t want to see that,” said Tony.
“Yeah, me neither,” said George.
Jenna wasn’t “cool” with “the switch”—as it was called in the halls of Millburn Middle School—she was devastated, as it turned out. Part of me wanted to do a trade-back, as if the two Deerfielders had been holos.
In the auditorium, I would sit closer to John Thompson than I ever had before—sometimes right next to him. I can’t lie: it felt good when John asked Pierce Stone to move down so he and I could discuss Monday Night Football together—we didn’t even talk about the game.
I bought new clothes, put gel in my hair, and by spring, had socks that fell well below my ankles.
An updated version of the hot list had circulated the sixth grade, and despite my dark-horse ascendance to the pinnacle of the social pyramid, I hadn’t moved on that godforsaken list! I couldn’t explain it. I was with the unanimous number one but remained as stagnant as the Japanese economy.
I considered my many talents—speed, especially on the football field, writing epics centered around the Middle Ages, Warcraft strategy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene reenacting. But Jenna wasn’t aware of any of these talents; she had come to one game where we beat Chatham, but I think she left before I scored my touchdown.
Julie even cemented my “lack of hotness” suspicions when she said, “Vic, you’re, like, not hot yet, but you’ll be one of those guys who comes home from college and is like, really hot.” I had to wait seven years.
We walked into “town” Fridays after school and stopped in front of the Starbucks on the corner of Millburn Ave and Main Street.
“Hey Vic, you’re like, Italian, right?” asked John Thompson’s girlfriend, Jessie Levinson (number two). “I think that’s hot.” Not hot enough. “John’s Italian too.”
I didn’t think “Thompson” was an Italian name, but maybe it was anglicized from Tompsonini or Tompsonello or something like that. I’m sure my father would’ve told me if John was Italian. He was always pulling Italians out of the closet, like John Cabot and Napoleon, and even that crying “Indian” from the Keep America Beautiful PSA from the ’70s—Sicilian, from Louisiana.
I made room on the sidewalk for a group to pass by, and a small hand took hold of my right butt cheek. I jumped into a Lexus parked on the street and saw Michaela Silves wink and blow me a kiss over her shoulder.
“What? What is it, Vic? A spider?” Julie hadn’t seen.
“Hey! Hey, Julie! Jessie!” Pierce Stone called from the other corner, sucking down the light brown iced tea nectar from the Millburn Deli—Josh Glassman, Mitch Farber, and Paxton followed. He drank from his plastic half gallon, letting it spill on the sidewalk and on his chestnut top-siders. “Hey, you guys see these yet?” He held out his cell phone—he was the first in the class to have one—and displayed the picture to the screams and gasps of the girls: it was a pic from the Summit rape shoot.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Pierce?!” screamed Jessie as a Starbucks barista came out to ask us to please keep it down.
“That’s a lacrosse stick in her ass!”
“You’re heinous.”
He proceeded to click through photo after photo of the girl displayed in different poses with various objects shoved in each orifice.
“You know she has mental issues, Pierce? How could you think this is funny?” said Jessie.
“What? She’s a retard. I know.” He proceeded to smack his limp right wrist against his chest and exhale, aaduuurrrrr.
Uproar.
I shot Paxton a look with Jedi Force intensity. He stopped laughing. But Pierce Stone didn’t stop. And maybe he was intentionally provoking me or my irascibility was glowing in my face, but from my point of
