Prep Read online

  Elliot was sitting at the kitchen table in the red silk bathrobe that let everyone know he was relaxing. He had a bowl of cereal resting on top of his copy of Barron’s and he didn’t seem to notice that I’d walked in. Elliot worked downtown for Pierce & Pierce Investments. He spent so many hours in his office making money that he never had time to buy anything except squash rackets.

  I got a fork out of the dishwasher and Gloria, Elliot’s Costa Rican maid, handed me my plate. I nodded thanks and grabbed a carton of orange juice off the counter.

  “Hey, he’s up,” Elliot said to nobody in particular.

  My real father was an oil guy. At least that’s what people said. He was a surveyor for companies looking for new places to drill. When people heard a rumor, they needed a guy to go check it out. Any suit could fly to Canada or Russia, but the oil execs wouldn’t go to third-world countries or places that weren’t even countries anymore. My father would.

  “Knicks won pretty big,” Elliot mumbled. “They’re finally stepping up.”

  “Yup,” I said, sitting down at the table.

  “Some new guard.”

  “Yup.”

  I don’t know if my dad ever realized it, but my mother would start crying as soon as he left on a trip. She would never let on while he was getting ready; sometimes she would even look excited. But as soon as the door closed behind him, she’d scoop me up, lie down on their bed, and just sob. I almost always ended up crying along with her. When you’re a kid, there’s nothing more terrifying than watching your mother weep.

  If my dad came back in the middle of the night, he’d always sleep on the living-room floor. He said it was because he didn’t want to wake my mother, but I think he had trouble sleeping in beds after a trip. I loved dragging the quilt off my bed and lying down next to him on our rug. I’d sniff at his palms and shirt to try and guess how long he’d gone without a shower. He’d always run his hands through my hair and tug softly at my ears. My dad loved my ears because the lobes were perfect semicircles like his.

  “Martinez something,” Elliot continued.

  “Huh.” I never knew what else to say.

  My mother would always find my dad and me asleep on the floor. All morning I’d beg him to tell me what he’d found or who he’d met, and he’d spin these long tales about hiking across a deserted island, or camping in a rain forest, or trading his watch for a bowl of soup. Looking back, I wonder how many of them were actually true and how many were cooked up for my eight-year-old imagination. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Sitting at our kitchen table, chomping on sugar cereal, he was my own personal Superman.

  “How’s your Spanish class at Daley?”

  “It’s okay. The teacher’s not very good.”

  “Not very good?” Elliot said, looking down at his article.

  Then there were the times when my dad didn’t come back looking so well. Three days into Colombia, the wrong bug bit him, and he spent the next two shivering in a dugout canoe being paddled slowly upriver by a guy he’d just met. When we visited him in the hospital, his skin had turned a soft green. I remember sitting next to him, studying the scars on his hands, while my mother screamed down linoleum hallways at doctors. I thought I was going to throw up all over his bedspread.

  “But as I recall, you liked last year’s teacher,” Elliot said. “Good marks at least.”

  “She doesn’t teach seniors.”

  And then two weeks before my eleventh birthday, my mother told me that my dad wasn’t coming back, that he was dead. I was halfway through an egg roll, staring at The Simpsons, when she started talking. I don’t remember a single word she said. I couldn’t hear her. Suddenly, I wanted to punch something. Hard. What had we done wrong? I didn’t even realize that I’d started peeing until I smelled the sour heat of my damp sock.

  I dropped my egg roll and ran into the bathroom. Turning the shower on, I climbed into the bathtub and lay down underneath the cool water. I tried to catch my breath as I waited for my mother’s slow, predictable knock. How could she be sure? My pants started to stick to my thighs and butt, and I lay there wishing and crying.

  I couldn’t hear anything for weeks, or maybe I just couldn’t listen. People would be talking at me, teachers, friends, bus drivers, and I wouldn’t get it. The only place I could actually relax was in bed. If I left a couple sandwiches on my nightstand, I could sleep for ten or twelve hours at a time. My dad and I would talk sometimes in my sleep, but we always discussed the most random things, like the Beatles or potato chips or crosstown buses. I loved listening to his scratchy voice. I missed everything about him, always.

  “Use a glass, Nick,” my mother said, walking into the kitchen. “That’s why we have them.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “You’ve got to get on a normal schedule,” she continued. “You’re really burning the candle—”

  “I know,” I interrupted.

  After my dad died, everyone kept asking me to cry. My mother would always tell me that it was completely normal, and my teachers liked to remind me that I could excuse myself from class without permission. The school shrink explained that it was okay to “lose it” or “break down,” but I still don’t understand what he meant or how I would even know. Everywhere I went, people kept saying that I didn’t have to put up a front.

  I was terrified of tearing up around my teachers. The few times I actually did, they started nodding and sighing and saying they understood. Why can’t people just listen without throwing in their two cents? I couldn’t tell my teachers that my dad was the only person who understood how much I loved him. My dad knew how I would save all my embarrassing questions for our walks to the video store and how I used to cover for him when my mother got annoyed. He was the only person who ever really tried to understand me.

  “I was thinking about your plans for next summer,” Elliot said, looking over at me.

  I wasn’t. “Yeah.”

  And then the women started to show up. I don’t know how many came, but they seemed to arrive in bunches. I met one. The doorbell had rung and I ran to answer it, ready to pay for a large pizza with sausage and green peppers. A tall woman with hazel eyes stared down at me and said my full name, balancing each syllable evenly on her tongue. I remember thinking that I’d won something. My mother rushed me into my bedroom, and I spent the next hour lying silently against the doorframe, listening to their conversation. The women usually brought something of my father’s, a sweater or handkerchief, and there were always letters, lots of letters.

  I just couldn’t believe we weren’t enough for him.

  “Well,” Elliot continued. “I was speaking with a partner of mine whose son spent the summer working on the floor.”

  “The floor?” I said innocently, shoveling the last of my eggs into my mouth.

  “Of the stock exchange.” Elliot sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  “Huh.” I’d rather give myself paper cuts all day. When you have money and everything still sucks most of the time, you don’t want to spend your life just making more.

  “Nick, you need to work for your happiness,” Elliot said, closing his newspaper.

  A year after my dad died, my mother met Elliot at some hospital fundraiser. He’d spent most of his adult life in front of a computer screen and was looking to start a family; my mother was looking to save one. She told me their marriage was about me and my future, but she wanted the security, the stability. Elliot was a rock, and he wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t matter that he was an asshole.

  For the first two years of their marriage, Elliot and my mother fought practically every night. Sometimes they’d argue about his eighty-hour weeks; other times it was weekend plans, but it was always in their room, always late. That’s how I got into the habit of falling asleep to movies. I’d buy a new one every day after school and leave it playing. It helped me relax. Eventually the fighting tapered off. No divorce, though, just resignation.

  These days when I can’t
stand dealing with Elliot and his attitude, I’ll call Kris and tell her that there’s this movie I have to show her. She usually lets me come over, even if she has a lot of homework to do. A couple weeks ago, I watched all three hours of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly while she wrote a term paper on Morocco. I think she knows I’m there because I don’t know where else to go.

  The breeze jogged by me down Fifth Avenue and swept the leaves into whirlpools of candy-bar wrappers and plastic bags. October was settling into Central Park, but the afternoon still had the sweet scent of August. I was just glad to be out of the apartment and away from the two of them.

  I stopped at the hot-dog stand right outside the 72nd Street park entrance and bought a Coke. I had a few minutes to kill before I was supposed to meet Kris. Sitting down on a chipped bench, I took a long, hard drag on the day’s first cigarette. It was always the best. I should have looked around before I sat down, but I didn’t, and so I never saw Greg Carmichael until he was ten feet from my bench wearing his typical, obnoxious grin.

  “Thet,” he shouted. We hadn’t bumped into each other in months, but Greg never passed up a chance to try and show me up.

  I nodded “hello.” Greg and Kodak had given me the nickname Thet, because DOA was just a little too suspicious and my O came out as a perfect theta. They told our teachers it was because I was the top Greek student, but all the other guys in our grade knew the truth. And pretty soon Thet had more street cred than any prep-school hood in Collier history.

  “Yo, what you doing here?” Greg cried. He walked over to me, throwing his shoulder into each stride like a hood thinks he has to. Greg had a thick jaw and restless, green eyes, and he was wearing a baggy Polo sweatshirt.

  “Meeting somebody,” I said. “What about you?”

  I’d started hanging out with Greg in seventh grade at the Collier School for Boys. After my mother and I moved into Elliot’s place, I always avoided going back to Elliot’s apartment. Most days after school, Greg, Kodak, and I would smoke a joint in Central Park and go to Greg’s building to watch television. He had five twenty-seven-inch Sony TVs hanging in his room and a DIRECTV dish strapped to the roof of his building. Greg was obsessed with sports and gambling on sports, and he said the only way he could relax was to have all the games playing at once. Greg always used to say that his goal in life was to set the odds in Vegas, but lying on his couch half-stoned, all I wanted to do was forget about tomorrow. I’d get sick of SportsCenter sometimes, but it was always better than listening to Elliot.

  “Some guys and I just did some Benzos, and we figured we’d come here and chill. You know, until Sara’s party starts and shit.”

  I nodded again. Why couldn’t he just keep walking?

  “So who you meeting?” Greg asked.

  “Kris Conway.”

  “Mad cute, goes to school downtown?”

  “Yeah,” I said, surprised he recognized her name. I guess she was that beautiful.

  “She’s chill. A little JAPy for my styles, but I bet she likes your loafers,” he said, smirking at my shoes.

  I brushed it off. “I’m not sure she’s noticed.”

  “She your womans?”

  “Just friends,” I said, hating the sound of it.

  “Too bad, boy. You gotta be able to convert that shit. Break it in like a glove.”

  I didn’t respond. Watching Greg flex his attitude, it was hard for me to believe we’d ever been friends.

  At the end of eighth grade, Greg, Kodak, and I had started tagging, just doing fat-cap throwies and trying not to get busted. Most of the Collier boys tagged a handful of bus stops and quit, but I loved the rush. Working the sides of buildings, ducking the cops, racing frantically to beat the sunrise—the three of us had found a cause. It was more fun than art class at Collier, and all the training finally paid off. I caught a rep beyond the Upper East Side. Suddenly, girls I’d never met before knew my tag, and kids were always going out of their way to invite Thet to their parties. I felt like a fucking movie star.

  I pushed open the fireproof back door of my building and stepped outside into five in the morning. Kodak tossed our red laundry bag into my chest and I caught it with my free hand.

  “Fuck, it’s early,” I said, kicking off my penny loafers. My whole body was stiff. I dropped the bag to the pavement and started unbuttoning my oxford.

  “I got you a Pop-Tart,” Kodak said, chewing. A canvas mini-duffel rested on both his shoulders like a backpack and he was balancing two cartons of orange juice in his right hand.

  “I’m good.” I pulled my hoodie out of the laundry and stuffed my tie and blazer into the sack. I reached for the second Tropicana. “Thanks.”

  “You’re not supposed to go to work on an empty stomach,” Kodak said, frowning playfully. He had nervous, brown eyes and the kind of frame that didn’t win you any favors.

  “Says who?”

  “The FDA, is who.”

  “That includes graf artists?” You had to love a kid who wouldn’t go bombing on an empty stomach.

  Kodak dug his fist into the laundry bag and slid out my stained jeans. They were glazed with paint and dirt, but they were still the prettiest piece of clothing I owned. I stepped out of my charcoal slacks and felt the side-street breeze hit my boxers.

  “So Lusty rolled it?” I asked. Last night, Greg was supposed to take a paint roller and a can of Ivory White to a parking lot wall on 95th and Third. We had our routine down—get dressed for school, change, work, and be back in shirt and tie by first bell. It was exhausting, but I lived for it.

  Kodak nodded and ran his hand over his crewcut. “That’s what he says.”

  “Well, I racked six cans off Woolworth’s,” I said, pulling up my jeans.

  We were Krylon boys—Sparkly Gray and Midnight Blue were my primaries. I’d write the half-circle of the D, the O, and the two legs of the A. Then I’d run the intersecting line of the A, through the middle of the O, and spread it out to form the D with an arrowhead.

  “I’ve still got two blacks and half a red.” Kodak stared up at the high-rises. “How many pieces you gonna put up?”

  “Just one,” I said, adjusting my belt. I could work on a single piece for an hour, tweaking the fades and shadows until I ran out of paint.

  Kodak grinned. “Dream big.”

  I smiled and stretched my neck. On a morning like this, there was nothing better than burning through six cans, getting narced on the fumes, and smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, you see my new piece?” Greg said excitedly.

  I shook my head. “Must’ve missed it.”

  Greg smiled. He knew I didn’t give a shit. “It’s this dope green and silver down on Forty-third. Your old school styles, but without getting sloppy.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re leaving the stencils at home.”

  “Oh, well excuse your punk ass.” Greg leaned toward me. He wasn’t going to throw down but I could feel my chest tighten. “You must think this is old-timers day or some shit.”

  I shrugged it off. “Something like that,” I muttered. I hadn’t touched a can of paint in nearly two years, but Greg could never touch my wildstyles and he knew it.

  “Like Kodie didn’t run your fill-ins, too,” Greg declared, trying to stare me down.

  “Yup,” I said, the inflection in my voice suddenly dropping. I looked over at the park entrance. I had to get the hell away from him.

  “You know Kodak was in town last weekend,” Greg said.

  “What? For real?”

  “Yeah.” Greg nodded. “Some of my boyz saw him on West End.”

  “I—”

  “Expected a phone call or some shit, right?” he sneered.

  I didn’t know what to say. For years, I’d been replaying that night, frame by frame, trying to splice it back together.

  “So I guess I’ll see you later in time,” Greg said. He’d won, and he knew it.

  Greg walked off toward the Reservoir and I took a full breath. My cigarette h
ad curved into a long, flimsy ash—I’d forgotten about it. Dropping the butt, I pounded it into the concrete. I didn’t need to start thinking about Kodak and the whole damn mess.

  The Collier boys had given Kodak his nickname in fifth grade when he was caught documenting the early stages of his pubescence on film. Apparently, the guy at the One-Hour Photo called the cops because he thought it was a child pornography ring. Eventually, Kodak’s thirteen-month study was subpoenaed.

  Kodak and I’d become best friends at the beginning of sixth grade. Two weeks into first semester, his au pair rolled their Range Rover across three lanes of the L.I.E. and into oncoming traffic—his sister died instantly. After the accident, Kodak and I started hanging out and talking about family and life and everything else that was on our minds. He was a virtuoso cellist, and we used to cut gym and work on his concertos. I loved sitting in that empty auditorium, watching his hands wiggle and twist through a piece. He’d always ask my opinion. Sometimes I think Kodak pretended like I knew what I was talking about just because we both needed the company. Besides, I was the only one in the grade who didn’t shit on him for being good at something.

  When I first started smoking up with Greg, he never wanted me to bring Kodak along. I couldn’t explain why I trusted Kodak so much, so one night during eighth grade Greg and I split a bottle of Chivas and I forced him to watch The Godfather. When we were done, and flipping through the late games, I told him to think of Kodak as a consigliere, but with asthma. After that, the three of us were inseparable.

  “So I made a list of things I could talk about with that girl, Patty,” Kodak said, swinging the laundry bag over his shoulder.

  “You’re stressing, Kodie.” I lifted my backpack and felt the weight of seventy-two ounces of Krylon. There was barely enough room for my textbooks.