Each morning, he met Luca at his locker, and the pair combed the hallways together before the first bell, talking shit and joking around. Eddie Benson usually joined them, and by the second week of October, a whole squad of seventh graders was following them around. Random wiggers and metalheads who Siddharth knew through Marc — grubbers, as Luca called them — nodded their heads as they passed him by, and Marc’s friend Corey Thompson always stopped Siddharth to shake his hand. Sometimes Corey asked him if he could borrow twenty bucks, so he would steal a bit of extra cash from his father’s wallet. Corey always paid him back, occasionally with a buck or two of interest or a miniature bottle of rum.
Siddharth was developing a reputation for being smart and funny, and he didn’t want to ruin this, which was why he was perpetually anxious about being seen with Sharon Nagorski outside of class. If Luca saw them together, there would be trouble. Fortunately, she didn’t pay Siddharth any attention in the hallways, and in the morning, when everyone else was roving and socializing, she went to the band room to practice her trumpet. She did the same thing at lunch, and, thankfully, she only mentioned Luca a single time during the fall semester.
It had happened on a Monday morning in science class. Sharon said that Siddharth seemed upset, and he told her that he was just tired after a crazy weekend.
“Why, what did you do?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just hung out with a couple friends.”
“Friends? Oh, you mean Luca — Mr. Asshole?”
“Take it easy. Once you get to know him, he’s not that bad.”
“Sure,” said Sharon, blowing her bangs out of her eyes.
“Hey, it takes two to tango, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you just sit there and take it. If you want him to respect you, you should say something back.”
“Whatever,” said Sharon. “I’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
“You mean your boyfriend?”
She smiled, revealing a dimple. “He took me out to Pasta Palace on Sunday. The bill was, like, forty dollars.”
* * *
By the end of October, Siddharth was going over to Luca’s on most Saturdays. The house was dark and old-fashioned. Luca’s family room had a La-Z-Boy recliner, which was great for watching movies. It had thick brown carpets and a wallpaper mural of the Grand Canyon. This wallpaper reminded Siddharth of the mural that had once adorned his own family room, back when his mother was still around — before Ms. Farber had taken over his father’s life.
Mrs. Peroti had grown fond of Siddharth. She cooked him fresh manicotti or ravioli, always sending him home with some. She said, “I got plenty of pasta for you. Just keep my Luca outta trouble.”
Luca would mutter the strangest things in front of his mother. One time, when she was cooking and watching television, he said, “Ma, do you like pussy better, or cock?”
When she turned around, her blue eyes were blazing, and her ringed fingers were clasping one of her ample hips. “Did you just say what I think you did?”
Luca threw his hands in the air. “Jeez, Ma, I asked you a simple question — are you a Pepsi woman, or are you into Coke?”
In moments like these, Siddharth’s heart beat quickly, and yet he couldn’t help but grin. Luca was definitely one of the funniest people he’d ever met, and Siddharth was pretty sure that Arjun would like him.
Initially, he avoided spending the night at Luca’s, as he had heard about the crazy things that Luca and Eddie did during sleepovers. They went out shitting houses, which had once consisted of spray-painting dirty words on people’s driveways but had evolved into more serious acts of vandalism, like burning mailboxes and shattering windows. Sometimes Luca and Eddie sat in the woods by the edge of the Merritt Parkway and chucked stones at passing cars.
When Siddharth finally decided it was time to spend the night at his new friend’s house, it was because he was sure Eddie wasn’t going to be there. He ended up having a good time. He and Luca just sat around listening to music and talking, and they also taught Luca’s little brother how to ride a bicycle with training wheels. At night, over a game of Monopoly, Luca said he’d heard that Marc was smoking reefer.
“Smoking what?” said Siddharth.
“You know — grass.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that.” But he knew Marc was getting stoned, and the truth was, he was nicer high. When Marc came home stoned, they stayed up late talking, and he asked Siddharth interesting questions: “If the world was ending and you could only save one person — would it be your dad? Or the president?” “If you had to kill yourself, would you do it with a gun, or by jumping off a bridge? Keep in mind that I hear drowning yourself is the most painless way to die.” These conversations made Siddharth feel older. They made him feel that his special connection with Marc wasn’t totally dead.
Luca said, “Yo, weed’s fucked up, kid.”
“Why’s it fucked up? You’re always talking about getting hammered.”
“Yeah, but that’s different.”
“If anyone can take care of himself, it’s Marc.”
“All I’m saying is that reefer’s for porch monkeys.”
“For what?”
“For jigaboos,” said Luca.
These were new terms for Siddharth. But he knew they were racist, and that made him nervous. Racism was definitely bad. His father had called racists the biggest cowards.
All of a sudden, there was a knock at the door, and Mr. Peroti barged in. He was a beanpole of a man with a thick Italian accent who put in twelve-hour days at his Howard Avenue beauty salon.
“Boys,” announced Mr. Peroti, “time for dinner.”
“Dad,” said Luca, “this kid doesn’t know what a porch monkey is.”
“Enough porch monkey talk,” said Mr. Peroti. “I get enough of that at work.”
“One question, Dad: how do you get all that nigger sweat off you — all those pointy little Negro hairs?”
Siddharth’s stomach tightened. He counted his Monopoly money to avoid making eye contact with either of them. He had heard the N-word said in movies and on Marc’s rap tapes. But this was the first time he was hearing it said in real life — the first time he was hearing it said by a regular person. He told himself that his friend was joking, that he needed to lighten up.
“You’re bad,” said Mr. Peroti, who was shaking his head but smiling. “Hurry up, Luca. Your mom’s gonna chop off your hands.”
* * *
Halloween was on a Sunday that year. Luca invited him and Eddie to come straight over to his house from school. The plan was to go trick-or-treating in his neighborhood and then have a sleepover. Siddharth was excited, but anxious. The thought of ending up in handcuffs just two months before his thirteenth birthday wasn’t appealing. Not to mention, Luca was on the same bus route as Sharon Nagorski. Luca had told him about the things he said to her on the way home from school — that she was a slut, a loser, a wild boar. When Luca gloated over his cruelty, a part of Siddharth wanted to say that Sharon had changed — that she was cool once you got to know her. But he would always just laugh before changing the subject.
As Halloween approached, Siddharth tried to figure out an alternate way of getting to Luca’s. But Ms. Farber wouldn’t be around that afternoon, and his father had an evening class. Mohan Lal said he could drop off Siddharth at nine, but that wouldn’t work because then he would miss the best part of the evening.
On Halloween morning, it started drizzling as Siddharth and Timmy Connor made their way to the Miller farmhouse, passing smiling jack-o-lanterns and garbage bags bursting with decomposing brown leaves. Timmy told him about a new pellet gun that his father had gotten him for his fourteenth birthday, and how he had used it to kill a squirrel. Siddharth was too worked up to listen. He had a note in his pocket that gave him permission to take the bus home with Luca. He wondered if he should crumple it up and throw it into the sewer.