Prep Read online

  “Was he the director?”

  “Cinematographer,” I said, closing one eye.

  Tim walked into the Slate with his hand comfortably wrapped around his girlfriend’s waist. He nodded hello and pushed his way toward us. Normally, I wouldn’t want to share Kris with anybody, but I’d talked myself into a corner.

  Tim was a heavyset kid with a gentle smile and a soft, Georgia drawl. We were placed in the same sophomore advisory at Daley and we’ve hung out together ever since. After Greg and Kodak, I just wanted to keep things low-key. Tim didn’t hang out with hoods—he wanted to be a comedian. And I could always count on Tim to split a six-pack and a pizza.

  “What’s going on, guys?” I said, pulling over two seats. Tim and Nancy had been going out for the last three months. I’d only hung out with her a couple times, but I could tell she was a sweet girl. She lived out on Long Island, and Tim was always talking about how she spent all her time working with blind children, or children of the blind, or something like that.

  “Not much.” Tim rested his hand on my shoulder. “Kris, this is Nancy. Nancy, Kris,” he said, motioning with his fingertip. “How long have you guys been here?”

  “About half an hour. Sorry about hoops this morning,” I said, grinning. “Slept in.”

  The trumpet player stood up from his seat and started ruining an old Miles Davis tune. Nobody was listening anyway.

  We paid and the four of us stepped onto 13th Street. There’s this very distinct smell Manhattan gives off at night. People joke that it’s a potpourri of trash, car exhaust, and urine, but to me it just smells like home. When I step onto the sidewalk and take a deep breath, I feel my heart jump. New York City is addictive.

  “So what are you guys thinking about?” Tim walked into the street and raised his arm for a taxi. “Sara’s party won’t be that bad.” Sara went to school in midtown with one of my old class-mates from Collier.

  “I think we’re going to pass,” I said, turning to Kris. “Sara’s is going to be hood central.”

  “Thanks for the invite,” Kris said to Tim.

  “Yeah,” I continued. “We’re going to go check out this movie at the Forum—”

  Kris turned to me. “Actually, I might just go home.”

  There were times when I couldn’t tell if Kris was bored with me or the high school scene or life in general. Some nights we’d be getting along famously, and she’d bail to go read a book or write in her journal. I couldn’t complain about it without making a complete ass of myself. If it were up to me, she’d never leave my side.

  “Then let’s just go hear some real music,” I said. “Besides, I wouldn’t mind another drink.” I couldn’t go home right now.

  Tim flagged a cab and opened the door for Nancy. “Well, we’re heading uptown. You guys want a lift?”

  Kris checked her watch. “I kind of made plans to meet up with Luke later.”

  My chest hurt—my lips went numb. I felt like I was hanging upside down by my shoes and all the blood was running into my head.

  “So you guys want to split this cab?” Tim shouted, from inside the taxi.

  I didn’t know what to say or think or anything. Kris could just unplug me without even realizing it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” I said to Kris.

  “I think it was the ‘Say no to drugs’ comment.” She grinned. “Why don’t you go uptown with them? I just haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  I felt like such a jackass. Not just because Kris was ditching me for Luke, but because it was happening in front of Tim and his girlfriend. Even the cabbie was watching.

  “All right,” I said, trying to regain my composure. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow.” I followed Tim into the taxi and gave Kris a good-bye nod. “Later.”

  “Later, guys,” Kris said as she closed our cab door.

  In less than a minute, I was a block away from Kris, sitting snugly next to Nancy. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I stand up for myself?

  “So you want to check out this party?” Tim asked.

  And say something like “Stop.”

  “Nick, you want to come with us?”

  Or just tell Kris the truth.

  “With us, do you wanna come?” Tim cried, jokingly.

  “Sorry,” I said, shrugging it off. “Just drop me off at the diner on Eighty-second.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I think I’m gonna crash early tonight.” I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I couldn’t go with Tim and Nancy. I needed some time to sort everything out. All day I’d been thinking about telling Kris how I really felt, but I wasn’t even sure that it mattered anymore.

  Tim patted the back of my neck. “Man, you can fog over.”

  “I know. It’s called Nickville.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I laid my forehead against the cab window and closed my eyes. I was such a loser.

  The driver sped across town, listening to the news in French and drumming a beat on the steering wheel.

  “Kris went to see that guy she used to date?” Tim asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, kid.” Tim rolled down his window. The cool breeze wrapped around the back windshield and I suddenly felt all the sweat on my palms and neck.

  “So am I.”

  The cab pulled up to the corner of 82nd Street, and Nancy gave me a long hug good night. I could see that she felt sorry for me. I guess that made two of us.

  “I’ll catch you guys later,” I said, stepping out of the taxi.

  The cab sped off. I reached quickly for a cigarette.

  “Nick!”

  I turned around and saw Danny leaning up against the phone booth just outside the Three Brothers diner. He was holding a large pizza box with one hand and trying to make a phone call. I didn’t feel like talking to anybody, especially Kris’s brother, but I couldn’t ignore him now.

  “What’s up?” Danny said, tucking the pizza carton underneath his arm. I noticed a dark purple line running along his cheekbone. “How you doing?”

  “You get popped?”

  Danny nodded and showed me the Ray’s Original pizza box. “You want pepperoni or broccoli? I ate all the anchovies.”

  “You okay?” I asked, waving off the pizza.

  “That’s a good question.” Danny rocked back and forth on his toes. I’d never seen him this edgy before.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “MKII,” Danny said exasperatedly. “They’re really bitter fucking guys.”

  “I thought they didn’t see you.”

  “I thought so, too.” He reached down and pulled off his shoe. Then he slid his sock off and tried to hand it to me. I didn’t want to touch it but he insisted. “Look at the bottom, Nick.”

  I turned the damp sock over. Danny’s full name was written in green marker across the side.

  “Mom,” he groaned and gave this helpless smile. “She’s so practical. She had the housekeeper label all my clothes when I went away to rehab.”

  My breathing quickened—he was fucked. “You left your sock behind?”

  “I raced to get the hell out of there as soon as MKII showed up. Isn’t that fucking ridiculous?”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “This girl from my history class called all worried about me. She’d heard MKII was putting together a manhunt. That they’d found my sock in the bathroom.” Danny took a pepperoni slice out of the box and then dropped the carton to the ground. “There were three MKIIs sitting across the street from our house all afternoon. They started throwing bottles at the front door. Fucking derelicts.”

  Danny stared down at the glossy slice. “I can’t eat this right now. You sure you don’t want it?”

  I shook my head. “MKII doesn’t kid around.” I didn’t want to freak Danny out, but MKII made its name fucking kids up.

  “No shit,” Danny said, angrily kicking open the pizza box and tossing the slice back i
n.

  “So what’d you do?”

  “I snuck out the back and went over to my friend’s house. You know, the one who got his hand cut up.”

  “And?”

  “And there were two guys waiting outside his apartment building. I should’ve noticed their clothing, but I didn’t think MKII was so fucking methodical. Well, one of them swings at me, these three old ladies start screaming ‘POLICE, POLICE,’ and I jetted.”

  “This definitely sets your personal record,” I said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a couple nights that’ll live in infamy.” Danny slid his sock back on and laced his shoe. “I just don’t want to get my face kicked in.”

  “Well, when they catch you, you’ll be lucky if you don’t end up in traction,” I said disgustedly. When I’d stepped out of the cab, I’d been so pissed off at Kris and myself and Luke—suddenly I was furious at MKII. How dare they go after Danny?

  “I know.” Danny rubbed his finger against his cheekbone and squirmed. “Is Kris coming? I left her a message, but I figured she’d show up at the diner.”

  “She’s with Luke,” I said, looking down at the sidewalk. I hated saying his name.

  “The granola-eating freak?”

  “Yup.”

  “I think I have his number.” Danny pulled out his wallet and slid a small, black address book out of a pocket. “I’ve got his father’s loft.”

  “Let’s try it,” I said, placing a quarter in my palm and offering it to Danny. We slapped hands and the crisp sound shuttled down the block.

  He dialed the number.

  “Yeah . . . Hello . . . Yeah, can you hear me? Is Luke there? Well, when do you—No, see, I need to speak with him.” Danny covered the receiver. “Fucking hippies,” he groaned.

  “No, tell him to stay home when he gets there . . . that Danny needs to talk to Kris. Can you do that, pal? It’s an emergency. Okay, I can wait.” Danny let the phone hang by the metal cord and rolled his eyes. “Burners, man. They’re wastes of space.”

  “Bouncing wastes of space,” I added.

  Danny reached for the phone and pressed the receiver to his ear. “Okay, pal, just tell Luke and Kris to stay put. We’ll call back when Jerry Garcia comes back to fucking life,” he shouted, slamming the phone down. He was losing it, but I guess I couldn’t blame him.

  “You shouldn’t have made that Jerry comment,” I said, grinning.

  “He was already hanging up the phone,” Danny muttered. “So what’s next?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m pretty fried.”

  “There’s got to be some way to outsmart these guys.”

  “These aren’t the kind of guys you can just shake. I mean, they live for this shit.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t fare well as an expatriate,” Danny said. “Kris is going to kill me.”

  He was right. Danny was the only person Kris felt responsible for.

  I had one idea, but it didn’t make any sense. On the other hand, for the last twenty-four hours nothing had really made sense.

  “There’s one person I could call,” I said. How could I be thinking about asking Greg for help? Just bumping into him had screwed up my whole afternoon. Fuck it. I couldn’t feel any smaller than I already did. “Let me talk to an old friend of mine.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You know a kid named Greg Carmichael?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  After everything had fallen apart sophomore year, Greg and I were both suspended from Collier. My mother immediately

  transferred me to Daley, and Greg started a week later at Melville. I knew my writing days were over, but Greg never looked back. I don’t even think he knew how to stop. He used his street cred to join a large Riverdale crew called the Dignitaries, or the Diggs for short. Everybody called them the Dicks behind their backs.

  Greg had done everything he could to recruit me into the Diggs. He’d dragged me out with them once, and a bunch of the senior hoods had taken turns selling me on the girls and parties, the protection and brotherhood. I felt like I owed it to Greg, but I wasn’t buying. It drove him crazy. For months, he’d call me up in the middle of the night, deliriously high, and start yelling at me for abandoning him, for being a pussy. Eventually, he gave up. I just didn’t see the point of it all anymore.

  “He’s an old friend of mine, or whatever, and he knows about this sort of stuff.” Who was I doing this for? Was it for Danny or Kris or me?

  Danny rested his hands behind his head and took a long breath. “If it’ll help.”

  “It might,” I said. “He’ll be at this girl’s house party on Ninety-eighth.”

  “Well,” Danny said, pointing uptown. “My calendar just opened up.”

  “Mine, too.”

  Danny and I walked up Lexington. The streets were filled with yuppies drinking and flirting their way down the avenue, and for the first time since I’ve known him, Danny had nothing to say. I could see how scared he was, and part of me just wanted to give him a hug.

  “What’d you do all day?” I asked. “I mean, you couldn’t go home.”

  “I snuck into this modern architecture lecture at the New School. Did you know Mies van der Rohe added the ‘van der Rohe’?”

  I shook my head. “They just let you sit in?”

  “Yeah, I do it all the time. If you sit in the cheap seats nobody ever seems to care.”

  “You’re crazy, Danny.”

  “Why?” he said. “I think it’s the least crazy thing I’ve done all day.”

  In eighth grade, Danny’s adviser at his old school noticed that he’d run up a tab of fifteen overdue library books on T. S. Eliot. At first, his teachers figured he was just a poser. Danny didn’t pay attention in class and his marks were below average, so they assumed he just liked carrying them around for show. Then they asked him a few questions about The Waste Land. A month later, Danny was labeled “gifted” and he transferred out. Kris’s favorite part of the story is that he never returned the books.

  “Fair point,” I said, wondering what Kris and Luke were doing right now. I couldn’t stop picturing them—on a stoop, in the park, outside her townhouse. He’d probably have his fucking guitar.

  Sliding my hand into my jeans pocket, I searched for my coin. It was nestled next to my school ID, and I pressed my fingers against the cool metal. I pulled it out and rubbed it softly with my thumb.

  Danny stepped toward me. “Where’d you get that?”

  “It was my father’s.” I didn’t know why I’d told him the truth. Kris was the only one who knew.

  “It’s gold?”

  “Yeah, not much, though.”

  “Your pops was Indiana fucking Jones.” Danny pointed at the face on the coin. “Who’s the guy?”

  “This king, Ella-Asbeha.”

  “Old school?”

  “Yup. The Aksumite Kingdom,” I said, nodding. “Somewhere in East Africa.”

  “And you just carry it around with you?”

  “Keeps me company.” I took out my wallet and tucked the coin back in. It felt good to have Ella back where he belonged. “So I was thinking, you should probably hang back before we get to the party.”

  “Why’s that?” Danny said anxiously.

  “Who knows who’ll be there? I’m sure there’ll be a couple MKIIs.”

  Danny gnawed on his lower lip. “I guess you’re right.”

  There are about a dozen prep schools in the city, and when a party has been brewing for a couple days, they all show up. Everybody knows everybody. Maybe they went to the same camp, or their families summered together, or they played each other in football. Then so-and-so will tell so-and-so and her boyfriend will bring a few of his buddies, and all of a sudden there’s a crowd.

  “There’s that twenty-four-hour magazine store on Madison,” Danny said, nodding west. “I could kill some time there. How long will you be?”

  “No idea. I mean, not that long.” I didn’t know what the hell
to say to Greg. I was convinced he was going to start laughing at me.

  “Well, do what you gotta do. I’ll go catch up on The New Yorker.”

  We shook hands and Danny headed toward Madison.

  “I’m gonna throw up a pair of pieces,” Greg said. “One high, one low.” He reached into his bag and came out double-fisting cans. “Kodie, you wanna fill?”

  “I’m on it,” Kodak said, putting down his second Pop-Tart.

  Kodak tried writing on his own a couple times but he said the paint fucked up his breathing. We needed the backup anyway. You always need someone working fill-ins and running lookout.

  “You gotta help me later,” I said, switching fingers. The can was freezing my hand, but I wasn’t letting go for anything. The hard edges of my D were starting to come into focus, and the glossed surface bounced the steady flashing of traffic signals onto the front of my hoodie.

  A curtain of sunlight was sliding gradually down the far wall of Quik Park. We had forty minutes, maybe fifty, until sophomore assembly. Some mornings I’d pretend that Mick from Rocky was standing behind me with a stopwatch.

  “Under an hour,” I said, turning to Greg.

  Miniature pools of paint clung to the chips and divots in the brick. From ten feet away, all you could see was the full surface color, but as you stepped closer, tiny runs and cracks splintered the characters.

  When I turned the corner on 98th, I knew exactly where the party was. About twenty people were hanging outside the second building on the block. I recognized a bunch of West Side girls and some prep-school hoods passing a fresh blunt around.

  On Saturday nights, prep-school hoods spend their time practicing their thuggish poses and their shortest, cruelest smiles. Like they’re so cool they don’t even know what to do with themselves. Usually if you see a whole prep-school crew, half of them will be studying the street and the other half will be saying “fuck you” with their eyes. And working so hard to own the pavement, none of them want to admit that their white asses sleep in Fifth Avenue duplexes.

  Jerry Rosencrant and Adam Guild were leaning against the building drinking forties. They were both in my grade at Daley and they were real friendly with the Diggs. There weren’t enough hoods at Daley to start a crew, so guys like Jerry and Adam kind of drifted around minding their own business, like Switzerland.