Hiding

about her, saying how she was so into exercise and health food and organics and yoga and meditation. I mean, she would literally sit me down and lecture me on her mom’s good points, like maybe I should take notes for my personal enrichment. And the truth is that whenever I’d complain about my parents, which, though I hate to say it, was probably like the main staple topic of every-thing I ever had to say, or at least close to it, Laura would sort of roll her eyes and look at me like my parents having any problems really had to be in the final analysis my fault, and what I should do is clean up my act and not be so disrespectful because of, you know, how much effort it took to raise a kid and all that sort of stuff. Which was exactly what Laura’s mom talked about next, saying, “We wouldn’t have to be in such a hurry if we didn’t have to drop you off for school, and with your grades where they are, I don’t see why we go on paying that tuition! Don’t you care what we do for you, young lady? Don’t you appreciate it?”

I’d had enough. I really couldn’t stand it anymore.

I mean, I swear to god. I hoped it was just an off day.

It probably was.

It had to be. I was sure of it.

I went back downstairs.

I felt pretty lousy. But even though I was, like, really, really mad at Laura’s mom, I want you to know that I still didn’t pee in her damn basement sink.

I waited.

For, like, twenty minutes, I waited.

Then I heard them all leave. Through the basement wall I heard them in the garage attached to the house, and I heard their car drive off, and after that I was alone.

Chapter

Eight

Now, I’m sure you’re going to believe me when I say that the first thing that came into my mind after I heard them leave was, This is my opportunity to get out of here.

And I would have.

Really.

I mean, after hearing what went on in the kitchen I was certainly ready for it. I didn’t like what I’d heard at all.

But more than just not liking it, it had totally confused me.

I won’t say it contradicted what I’d expected, because that’s not how I looked at it.

Had it been a contradiction, I just would have heard a bunch of morose voices, or no voices at all, and not the happy loving family scene I’d anticipated, and that would have been just a simple contradiction.

But that wasn’t it.

What I’d heard was the whole family dumping on Laura.

Or ignoring her.

And I was surprised.

Totally surprised.

Had it just been like a game of opposites and they all hated each other or acted coldly to each other, I would have just been wrong and felt like an idiot, which in truth wouldn’t have been hard for me to feel, because I already felt like a total and complete idiot for just still being there.

But what I heard I had no precedent for, if you get what I mean. Laura had always talked about her family as if they were the greatest people in the world.

But great people don’t treat their daughter like that.

And that’s when a certain thought came to me.

I hardly know how it all added up in my mind, but they say the mind is always working, you know, and sort of factoring all these different thoughts and putting them together until they make sense, so right about then I sort of put a bunch of those thoughts together, and bingo, something made sense.

I got an answer to a question I’d always asked myself about her.

Because I’d always had a question about Laura, especially when I had believed, and I really, really had believed, all the wonderful things she’d said about her family. And I was sure, sure, that getting the answer to my question was, even though you’ll think I’m crazy for saying it, part of the reason why I’d come in the house in the first place.

The question was, What the hell does she see in me?

I know a lot of guys ask themselves this same question. I mean, especially with your first real girlfriend. You look at her and see this beautiful girl who could have any guy she wants, so you sort of have to ask it—I mean, circumstances sort of compel you to.

And I never knew the answer. Until now, when I was sitting at the bottom of her basement steps and staring up at the hopper window, wishing to hell I hadn’t heard those five ominous beeps, followed by a long beeeeep, right before they left the house to get in their car.

I can honestly say that that was the question I asked myself about her the night when we first met.

I’m still amazed we actually did meet, because at the time I was doing one of my greatest performances of hiding that I’d ever managed to pull off, and was quite certain that I couldn’t possibly be noticed by anybody.

I was at this party I really shouldn’t have been at, thrown by this guy named Walton Roberts, called Biff by his friends for some completely incomprehensible reason, and his parents must have been out of town, because with what was going on in his house when we arrived—my friend Carol and me, we were back to hanging out a lot together then—I knew from the start that no parent in their right mind would ever allow it.

To be really exact, I would never have even been able to get into the party in the first place except for Carol, because he’d gone to the same Catholic middle school as Biff, before Biff went off to be a big shot at Ivy Hill Prep, which is the most exclusive school in my neighborhood, and those guys at Prep never, ever associate with anybody like me