Limos, Lattes and My Life on the Fringe Page 10

  When your heart broke. And this was when?

  That’s part of what you need to know. We’ll start with a story.

  I shoved the book onto the seat beside me and shrank away from it. I had just had a conversation with it. I read the words and thought my questions and it answered them. Right? Wasn’t that what just happened?

  I picked it up again and looked at the page.

  You did. When your heart broke. That’s part of what you need to know.

  That was all gone. But the words had been so clear in my mind, and I hadn’t put them there.

  The book went back on the seat, and I got up and paced, hands sopping wet with sweat and fear. Either I was losing it, or I’d already lost it and had entered a psychotic world where books answered your thoughts with words that disappeared the minute you read them. And yet — I wanted more …

  I stopped and looked back at it, still sprawled there on the window seat. I did want more. Even with my heart racing and my hands so wet they left damp prints on my jeans as I wiped them on my thighs, I wanted to know what else it had to say. What if I was headed for a crack-up? At least this voice was talking to me and listening to me — and not telling me to watch my tone.

  Slowing my breathing, I went back to the window seat and opened the book again. As I’d already seen, most of the “conversation” we’d just had was gone. All that was left was —

  They’re things you can’t know until you live them. If you’re willing to accept that, this book will help you experience your way into what you want to know.

  “Okay,” I said out loud. “What have I got to lose? Besides my mind.”

  I turned the warm page to printing that didn’t look like it would dissolve any second like invisible ink in a Nancy Drew mystery.

  Yeshua arrived in Jericho and took a walk through the town.

  Yeshua — the Aramaic name for Jesus. Jericho — a town in ancient Israel. I looked at the cover again. The same crease, carvings, and engraved RL looked back at me, so it probably wasn’t a Bible. A commentary, maybe? They didn’t use this curriculum in any Sunday school I’d ever gone to. I’d figure it out later. For now, I turned back to the page.

  There was a guy there named Zacchaeus. I’d normally call him Zach, but since you’ve already figured out that this is biblical, let’s just call him Zacchaeus.

  I pressed my hands to my mouth. Okay — I was losing it.

  My mind scrambled for an explanation. A lot of people probably read that far and knew it was a Bible story. Probably some of the people whose initials were carved into the cover. It wasn’t reading my mind. I was okay.

  Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and not just any tax man but the Big Boss of tax men. If this guy audited you, you better hope you had a receipt for every cup of coffee you claimed as a travel expense or you were toast. Burnt toast.

  I didn’t know that much about the IRS, but I was aware that (a) you didn’t want to tangle with them because, in my father’s words, you’d think it was their personal money and they were being cheated out of it, and (b) the ones in the Bible were usually in the same camp as Bernie Madoff.

  He was worth millions, and you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out where it came from. He wasn’t popular, but otherwise, he had it all.

  I had to ponder that for a second. The rich people I knew — the Ruling Class — “had it all,” including popularity. I didn’t like them, but they were popular with each other, and everybody knew them, thought they were cool, let them run the school — no matter what Mr. Baumgarten thought.

  I couldn’t untangle it yet so I read on.

  The only thing Zacchaeus still wanted was to see Yeshua, and yet despite his wealth and influence — as in, he could usually force anybody to do anything he wanted — he hadn’t been able to get in to see him yet. He was actually desperate.

  I took a chance with my sanity and thought, “Why?”

  Everybody in Jericho had heard about the miracle worker, the healer, who not only claimed to be the Son of God but could do things only God could do. Like possibly help Zacchaeus turn his life around? Who knows?

  One thing was for sure — this definitely wasn’t the Bible. At least, not the way it had been taught to me. I’d been told it was this perfect book with all the answers and you didn’t question it. And it sure didn’t tell you it didn’t “know.”

  That actually spurred me to read on.

  So the day Yeshua walked through Jericho, Zacchaeus was in the crowd, trying to at least get a glimpse of him. The problem was, all he could see were elbows and backsides. He was a short little dude — interesting, seeing how he was so feared — so his only option was to —“ Climb a tree,” I said out loud.

  The story was coming back to me now. When I was eight, one wacky Sunday school teacher in Long Island had us all climb trees in the churchyard while she taught the lesson from below. Knees got scraped and Sunday dresses got torn and parents had fits. Except mine. They thought it was creative, until when they quizzed me about it over that afternoon’s leg of lamb, I didn’t know the point of the lesson. After eight more years of Sunday school, I still didn’t. Hence my decision to worship with the bobolinks.

  But maybe now I’d get an explanation. It couldn’t hurt.

  Zacchaeus’s shrewdness kicked in, and he raced ahead of the crowd, in the direction Yeshua was walking, and shinnied up a sycamore. It was the perfect vantage point for seeing the man when he went by.

  That was it? He just wanted to see him?

  But when Yeshua got to the tree, he looked up and made eye contact with Zacchaeus, which Zacchaeus was NOT expecting. He was expecting even less for him to say, “Zacchaeus, come on down.”

  “We’re going to your house for tea,” I said. Those were the words to the song that same wacko teacher had tried to get us to sing. No self-respecting third-grader was doing that. Besides, who went to somebody’s house for tea? Pizza maybe …

  Zacchaeus didn’t care if it was for liver and onions. He was blown away that Yeshua would want to be a guest in his home. He wasn’t any more flabbergasted than the people who heard it. What was up with Yeshua wanting to hang out with this crook when they were respectable, churchgoing people?

  I could see that, actually. It reminded me of having my pencils all sharpened and my homework all done and my extra credit ready and my hand up in the air to answer the questions practically before the teacher asked them — and she was over there dealing with the fourth-grade version of YouTube McKinney. I always wondered why the kids who stuck crayons into the pencil sharpener and wrote stuff on their desktops with Magic Marker got all the attention. Junior jackals.

  Zacchaeus was no doubt asking himself the same question. And then he broke out of his stunned state and said, “I give half my income to the poor, and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times what I owe the person.”

  I thought everybody said he was a crook. Was he lying? Or were they?

  You like it black and white, don’t you?

  What isn’t black and white about that? Either he wasn’t a crook to begin with or he was and he was trying to make Yeshua believe he wasn’t.

  As if Yeshua didn’t already know. In fact, Yeshua said, basically, “Let’s go celebrate at your house, Zacchaeus. I came to find and restore the lost.”

  The rest of the page was blank.

  “That’s it?” I said. And then realized that, again, I was speaking out loud to somebody who was only there in words on a page in a book. Somehow it didn’t feel quite as ridiculous as it had earlier, but I was irritated.

  I didn’t have a whole lot of time in my everything-crammed-in life. I definitely didn’t have time to be figuring out stories that had never made any sense to me before, and yet somehow I’d managed to live without knowing.

  But you want to know.

  I jumped. Literally. Knocking the warm book sideways on my lap.

  They’re things you can’t know until you live them. If you’re willing to accept that,
this book will help you experience your way into what you want to know.

  Again with that. What I wanted to know was how I was going to go back to school tomorrow — unpopular, not having it all — and stage an equality campaign, avoid being arrested for trying to blow off beauty queens’ eyebrows, find an escort for the prom, deal with being friendless, and get through six more weeks of History with my sister as my teacher, not to mention handle my parents, who suddenly didn’t get me anymore. I didn’t even get me anymore. Suddenly I had all these feelings and passions, and all anybody could do when I tried to express them was say, “Watch your tone.” What was I supposed to do with all that?

  Maybe you should climb a tree.

  “Thanks for that,” I said.

  I closed the book and stuffed it back under the seat. Maybe tomorrow I would take it back to the bus.

  Chapter Nine

  Patrick found me at my locker the next morning before school. He looked sleepy-eyed the way a three-year-old is when he just wakes up and can’t wait to get out and play. It might have been cute if I didn’t immediately remember him laughing it up with Alyssa in the library the day before. One minute he acted like he might be taking me seriously, and the next he was sharing some sick joke at my expense.

  So I greeted him with a cold glance before I worked my combination.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Why are you always asking me that?” I said.

  His grin spread. “Here we go again with the questions. So — I sent you an email last night. Did you get it?”

  I hadn’t even checked my email. Too much weirdness going on in my room with the RL book talking to me.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I grabbed my health book and shut my locker. “And no, I didn’t see your email.” “That’s okay. I brought you a hard copy.” I blinked. “Of the article.”

  “Right.” I took the papers he handed me, two sheets stapled together.

  “If you can read it before the end of first block, that would be great. Just text me and I’ll come by the health room.” My head spun. “How did you know —”

  “I looked up your schedule. Coach Wendover will never know you’re sending a text.”

  “True,” I said. “But I leave my phone in my locker — like, uh, we’re supposed to.”

  His eyes did that thing — what was it this time, a tango? “You’re the only nongeek I know who actually follows the rules.”

  “Is that a compliment?” I said.

  He parked a hand lazily on the locker above me. “It was supposed to be. So — I’ll meet you after first block and you can tell me what you think about the piece.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I waited for him to leave, but he didn’t. If anything, he looked even more comfortable standing there. “I like the way it turned out,” he said, “and I liked everything you told me in the interview. But here’s the thing —”

  “I know ‘the thing,’ “ I said. “Everyone has informed me of it, starting with Mr. Baumgarten.”

  “Have they told you to have a plan ready when the article comes out the day after tomorrow?”

  My next words stumbled to a stop.

  “You’ll see when you read it. The article says you’re determined to make this Prom for Everybody thing happen, so people are gonna want to know what you plan to do. I’m just saying be ready for that.”

  I took a full survey of his face for signs of threat, warning, glee. I didn’t see any of that, but then, I hadn’t seen him mocking me during the interview either.

  “Just so you know,” I said — completely without planning to — “I’m aware that it is unlikely anyone is going to ask me to the prom. It’s not like that’s new material for a stand-up routine.”

  “Okay — so — I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Egan said I have to have an escort.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You and Alyssa seemed to find that hilarious.”

  “We did?”

  This boy was good. His brown eyes were wide and no longer doing the rumba. He had innocence down.

  Or maybe he was innocent and I was a paranoid freak. I could feel the heat rising on my face.

  “You know what, forget it,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely. I need to get to class.” “Don’t forget to read that. I’ll see you after first.” I nodded feebly and turned around. Alyssa was right there. Of course.

  “Why are you everywhere I am lately?” she said. “You mean, in front of my locker?” I said. Patrick laughed. I headed off down the hall, though not before I heard Alyssa say, “Shut up, okay? Just shut. Up.”

  First-block health was my least-favorite class, not only because it wasn’t honors or because I’d put off taking it until junior year, which meant hardly anybody I really knew was in there. It was mostly because Coach Wendover never did anything but show videos of things like car wrecks resulting from DUIs and put us in groups to answer the questions at the ends of chapters. That morning, though, I was glad for the inevitable movie so I could read Patrick’s article.

  It was really good. As in sentences like, Tyler Bonning’s eyes are fiery when she points out that the standards of the prom have skyrocketed to the point where those who can’t afford dinner at a five-star restaurant and a coach and four to get them there either opt out of going, or they risk ridicule when they arrive in Dad’s car wearing less-than-Prada shoes.

  But I decided he was right. If I couldn’t back that up with some kind of action plan by Friday when the Ruling Class read it, I was going to look like nothing more than a whiner.

  I wondered what Patrick was going to look like when they read it. He didn’t cut his friends any slack in there. “Lyssa” would be saying worse than “shut up.”

  The lights came on, and yawns and stretches erupted all over the classroom.

  “All right, people,” Coach Wendover said. Unlike Mr. Zabaski or Mr. Baumgarten, with their last names and their Miss So-and-So, he never called us anything but the collective “people.” I wasn’t sure that applied to the kid next to me, who was lifting his head from a puddle of saliva on his desk.

  I stopped myself in midthought. Was I always that judgmental about people?

  “I want you to get into groups,” Coach Wendover was saying.

  Big surprise.

  “And do the activity at the end of chapter twenty.”

  I flipped there in my book and sniffed. The “activity” was ten questions on content.

  Normally I would have just done it on my own, but this time I grabbed a spiral notebook out of my bag and crossed over to where my cousin Kenny was forming a group that included himself and three of the Kmart Kids. The drooly kid followed me. What was his name? Dizzy? Tizzy?

  “You woke up, Izzy,” Kenny said as we approached. “You got to go to bed nights, man.”

  Izzy grunted and fell into a desk next to the one I pulled into the circle. The other three faces stared at me blankly.

  “You guys mind if I join you?” I said.

  “Looks like you already did,” said a girl with a precise bob and perfect pink lip gloss. Why had I never bothered to learn anybody’s name?

  “I was thinking I’d answer the questions,” I said, “and turn them in for all of us if you’ll talk to me about something else.”

  “I’m in,” the other guy said.

  The girl beside him punched him in the arm. Had to be his girlfriend. The way she commenced to drawing on his hand with a purple gel pen was a dead giveaway.

  “What you wanna talk about, Cuz?” Kenny said.

  “Seriously?” Pink Lips said. “She’s your cousin?”

  “You don’t think we look alike, Ryleigh?” Kenny said.

  “Not at all.”

  “He’s definitely cuter,” I said quickly. “Can we talk about the prom?”

  Izzy dropped his face on the desktop and was immediately snoring.

  Ryleigh and the gi
rlfriend eyed each other the way I’d seen girls do when they were close — as if words were entirely unnecessary in certain situations.

  “Is this about you being nominated for prom queen?” the girlfriend said.

  “She was nominated for prom queen?” the boyfriend said.

  “Shut up, Fred,” she said, and punctuated it with another arm slug. That must be the new romance language.

  “I was,” I said. “It was totally a joke, but it woke me up to the fact that the prom has gotten completely out of hand in terms of how much people spend on it and how much they expect from it. I want to make it so anybody can go and feel like it’s their prom — and I just need to know how you feel about that.”

  “I don’t get it,” Fred said. “Feel about what?”

  “I get it.” Ryleigh nodded at the girlfriend, who nodded with her. “You’re asking us because we’re the ones who can’t afford, like, the stretch limo and the weekend party —”

  “And the booze,” Kenny said.

  “I didn’t even know you drank,” I said.

  “I don’t. But that’s what it’s all about. People tryin’ to sneak in alcohol and gettin’ wasted.”

  “No, it’s not about that,” Girlfriend said.

  “What’s your name, by the way?” I said.

  “Noelle. It’s so weird that we’ve been in the same class all year —”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So, go on — what is the prom about?”

  “It’s about who’s gonna be the most glammed out — wear the most expensive dress, have the designer manicure. I’m probably gonna spend three hundred dollars total — that’s dress, shoes, everything.” She twisted her cute mouth into a knot. “That wouldn’t even cover a hair appointment for Alyssa Hampton. Not that I think she’s bad or anything.”

  “You don’t?” Ryleigh said. “I do. Okay — this doesn’t have anything to do with the prom, but, like, all the time she and her friends will be talking in a class and one of us will say something and she’ll just stop and look at us like ‘why are you even talking?’”

  “More like ‘why are you even here?’ “ Noelle said. She leaned against Fred, who wrapped an arm around her neck. They could probably start locking lips right here and Coach Wendover would never notice. Come to think of it, weren’t they the couple in the Sunday school class I dropped out of?