“It’s better if she gets there first,” Benji said. “You don’t want to be the one waiting.”
“You don’t want to sit there and get all worked up and nervous and then screw up the big first kiss,” said Vincie.
“That’s got nothing to do with anything,” said Nakamook. “Vincie doesn’t know anything,” he said. “If you’re waiting for her, you’ll look anxious. You don’t want to look anxious.”
I am anxious, I said.
“You don’t want to look anxious,” said Benji. “You want to kiss her, and if you want to kiss her, it’s better you don’t look anxious, right Miss Pinge?”
“I don’t know about any of it,” Miss Pinge said, “but anxious isn’t usually an attractive quality.”
“That’s what I was saying,” Vincie said.
“No it’s not,” Nakamook said, “and you know it’s not, so you should watch out for that. What are you gonna tell Brodsky when he starts asking you things? Because when I was in there, he started asking me things, Vincie, not just about the wrestling but about the scoreboard which of course I have no idea about and I’m sure you have no idea about it either, but the way you’re pretending to know things that you don’t — worries me a little. What’re you gonna tell him?”
“Nothing!” Vincie said.
“You sure?” said Nakamook. “Because it seems like you can’t stop talking today.”
“Whatever, Nakamook,” said Vincie. “I hardly said anything that whole time the Chewer was in here and it was cause I was practicing for silent-mode, which you’re screwing up right now by accusing me of things and I have to defend myself. And don’t say that’s exactly what Brodsky is gonna do is accuse me and so then I’ll think I’ll have to defend myself by talking because I know that’s why you’re making that fucking face at me you fuckface I’m not stupid. Maybe it’s you who’s stupid for saying everything you’re saying in front of Mr. Brodsky’s secretary, because maybe she doesn’t like you as much as you think she likes you. For all you know, she thinks you’re doing that thing you’re always quoting about in weird old English about exclaiming too loud of a doth protest or whatever and how it makes you look suspicious and maybe she’ll say so to Brodsky. I at least know the difference between my friends and the Arrangement so don’t start up with me, just don’t start up with me.”
“Wait for us,” Nakamook said to me.
Vincie ripped a sleeve off his T-shirt. He could get very explosive when anyone ignored him, but especially Nakamook.
I said, It’s like a lie to pretend I’m not anxious when I’m anxious.
Benji said, “No one’s saying you should pretend anything. I’m just saying you should wait for us, and we’ll walk you. If you agree to wait for us, it’s true you’ll be a little late to your meeting with June and that’ll make you look less anxious than if you were early or on time, but that doesn’t mean you’re lying. All it means is you told us you’d wait for us and you didn’t want to break your word to your friends.”
But if I agree to do it now, I said, after you just said all of that, it’s fakey even if it isn’t a lie.
“Fakey shmakey,” Nakamook said. “If she asks you if you’re anxious, you’ll tell her the truth. There’s no reason to telegraph that you’re anxious if she doesn’t ask, though.”
I said, But if I hide it in advance—
“Gurion, say that detention comes around and you’re in the bathroom and it makes you late for your meeting with June, okay? When you finally get there, to detention, are you gonna say, ‘Hey June, the reason I’m late is I was playing Victor Dumpenstein to this brown monster I was sadly compelled to bring into the world?’”
Miss Pinge, who’d leaned in about nine times with the intention of telling Vincie to stop cursing and Benji to stop talking to me, made a grossout face and sat back in her chair.
I said, Of course I wouldn’t tell her that.
“Right,” said Benji. “Of course,” said Benji. “You wouldn’t tell her,” he said, “but wouldn’t not telling be fakey? I mean, if you were, in fact, a young Dumpenstein?”
No, I said.
“So why would it be fakey to not let her know that you’re anxious?”
I don’t know, I said.
I really couldn’t think of why right then.
“So I win the argument. Agree to wait for us,” he said.
I agreed to wait.
The whole rest of the schoolday, no one said anything to me except for Vincie, who mouthed “Ben-Wa Wolf” as he came out of Brodsky’s while shrugging his shoulders = “Can Ben-Wa Wolf be on the Side of Damage or not?”
I shrugged back with squinted eyes = Ask me later.
I still wasn’t sure what the Side of Damage was exactly, let alone how to make decisions about who was a part of it; I didn’t even know if I was the one who should make those decisions. I was too distracted by my anxious thoughts about June and my anxiousness itself and how to make it stop to consider the possibilities with any rigor.
Plus I still had to write my ISS assignment, or else I’d have to be in ISS again the next day. And so what I did was, I wrote about distraction, and once I was finished, I was no longer distracted, I was no longer anxious, I was ready to think about Ben-Wa Wolf or the Side of Damage or anything else I might’ve wanted to think about, but no sooner had I handed the assignment to Pinge than Boystar’s mom came in for an appointment, ushering a skinny, raccoon-eyed blond guy, a guy she bragged was “the best acoustics man in the business,” and this guy was wearing a company trucker cap embroidered with the words Sound by Highway 61 and a t-shirt for a metal band I’d never heard of — But the Angel Was Tardy — on which, in cartoon, Avraham opened up Isaac’s carotid while a drunken-looking seraph who’d tripped on a vine lay on his back just inches away beneath a big speech bubble reading “Oh shit!”
Which of course got me anxious about June again.
Name: Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee
Grade: 5 6 7 8
Homeroom: The Cage
Date: 11/15/2006
Complaint Against Student (from Complaint Against Student Sheet)
Fistfight with Ronrico Asparagus and on on top of that assaulting Michael Bregman by spitting on the guy. Gym locker-room. 2nd Period. 11/14/06._Mr. Desormie.