“It’s terrible he isn’t back at school yet,” said Josh Glassman. “Has anyone spoken to him recently?”
“See, my dad was smart and got out early,” started Pierce Stone. “Took a fat bonus and left Lehman Brothers before the collapse. Oh, what the shit, Ferraro? Just sneaking up on us like…”
“Fuck you, man! What the… what the hell are you doing, sending that pic around the school?”
“Oh, ha! You saw that? Yo, she sent that to my friend at Seton Hall Prep. It’s everywhere now. Even Maine said they all got it at Pingry.”
“How could you do that to her, man?! We’ve known Michaela since Glenwood. What the fuck is…”
“Yo, Vic, man. Breathe, man,” said Silas.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me, Silas. You spread this shit too?”
“Oh, so it’s okay to get a blowjob from her when she’s blacked out, but we can’t look at a naked pic? You’re a fuckin’ hypocrite, Ferraro.”
“What? Blacked out? How did… Who said…”
“Victor!” Maria came stomping down the pavement with the force of a thousand neglected girlfriends. “Victor! You didn’t wait for me after class. I told you I was going to speak with Mr. Neely after to go over the test.”
“Hey, uh… sorry, babe. But I…”
“Hey, everyone is talking about a naked pic of some junior. You know her? You didn’t look at it, did you?” Her hip tilted so fast that I thought it’d crack the axis of the Earth.
“Yeah, Ferraro, did you look at it? Who was it again? Michaela?” Pierce Stone asked, rhetorically.
“…Yeah.”
“You’re close with her, right?” said Pierce Stone, folding his arms on the inflection.
“Excuse me? You’re friends with this girl?”
“Vic and Michaela go way deep—I mean back.”
“Oh. My. God.” And Maria pivoted on a dime like she was stealing second base and headed back toward the school.
I could kill him.
“Ria, come on, babe. I didn’t…”
“Admit to nothing, Ferraro!” Pierce Stone called after me.
“What, Victor? What didn’t you do? I thought you said you only had sex with West Orange sluts! Not anyone in Millburn!”
“It was only one slut and she was from Westfield,” I said, as if the locus of the vagina somehow exculpated me from my transgressions.
“I DON’T CARE WHERE THE SLUTS ARE FROM!”
“Okay, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. Wait… wait… Michaela? The one who gave blowjobs to Carmine and Tank? They would always talk about how good she was at…” She took a deep—eyes closed—breath. “‘Sucking the pisciadool.’ This. Same. Girl… Victor?”
With Jedi-like intensity, I attempted to warg into the mind of a squirrel darting up a nearby oak tree with a recently discovered acorn—to no avail.
“Victor?!” With a rage hotter than the deepest fires of Hell: “VICTOR?!”
“Yeah, me too.”
Crack!
Uproar.
The punch felt like a warhammer collapsing my chest. I crumpled to the pavement like Prince Rhaegar slain at the Trident.
“Fuck you!” She stepped over me like a linebacker does after a flawless sack and stormed past the uproarious Crew to her car at the back of the parking lot. Heat emanated from her frame like the horizon on a sweltering summer day.
“Holy shit, Vic, are you okay, man?” Silas said, coming to my aid. From the ground I could hear the rest of the Crew mocking my defeat—Pierce Stone was performing his own rendition of my descent to the cracked pavement. Silas swallowed his own laughter. “Hell hath no fury, brother.”
I had entered enemy territory. I could only chalk up my brother’s decision to attend college in Boston as unadulterated masochism; it was a godforsaken city that my family spoke about as if they were the encroaching Huns.
Tony’s apartment building didn’t resemble the immaculate palm tree–lined dorms that flooded the folds of the college brochures I had stuffed into a Nike shoebox under my bed. Cars were parked on both sides of the tight street so the road functioned solely as a one-way. A college kid who was smoking something on the front stoop promptly darted inside when he realized that the van inching down the street contained “parents.”
“Okay, you guys,” started my father, “we gotta be up early tomorrow to see those rotten Red Sox. Don’t be up too late. And hey!” he said as we slid open the van door. “No drinking.”
“Ha! Yeah, okay,” said my mother, who didn’t suffer from such idealistic delusions, from the front seat.
“I’m serious, Tony!” he called out the window, leaning over my mother as he symbolically put his finger between his eyebrows (translation: respect).
Tony had to shove his shoulder into the warped wooden door to nudge it loose. The acrid stench of stale beer and cigarette smoke smacked me in the face like a fart in a car. From wall to wall, our feet stuck to the blackened hardwood floors and went squish, squish, squish with every step. Tony rinsed out two used red Solo cups and dropped the tap to the kegerator, releasing a steady stream of collegiately quintessential piss-yellow beer.
“Here.” He handed me the cup. “Eyy Mikey!” he called while pouring another beer. “Yo! Mikey! Happy hour!” Mikey—or the shirtless, tattooed, and stoned college student I presumed to be Mikey—practically levitated from his bedroom to the sound of sloshing suds. “Yo, this is my brother, Vic.”
“Oh man, Tony’s little bro. The future Trojan, right?” he said without a shred of patronization in his voice. Clearly Tony had been talking me up during my formative years as a top recruit.
He greased his finger on his nose and swirled it in his cup to control the rising foam as my phone started to vibrate.
Text from Maria <3 <3: Are you at your brother’s place yet?
Text from Maria <3 <3: How was dinner? Where did you guys go?
“That the GF? Better answer it.” A solid piece of brotherly advice I neglected in an act of stubborn defiance.
“Ehh, I’ll text her
