The Music of What Happens, page 28
Wow, I thought, climbing two steps at a time up to my dorm room, keeping pressure on my nose with the paper towel. Here I was, two hours into my Natick adventure, and I was already in that entirely new skin I had fantasized about. Jock Rafe.
It felt freaking fantastic, to be honest.
Nothing could throw a wrench into this new plan, I thought, and then I cursed myself, because anyone who has ever watched a single Hollywood movie knows that thoughts like that lead to, well, big-ass wrenches.
Enter big-ass wrench number one.
The door to my room was open, and I peered in. Inside, a short, pudgy guy in a black T-shirt was unpacking the suitcases that had been in the middle of the room. Lying where they had been amidst the wreckage — cereal boxes, soda cans — was a skinny kid with spiky hair. He was facing away from me, and his hands were behind his head like he was doing sit-ups. I pressed the paper towel to my nose and then took a look at it. Still pretty bloody.
“So let me ask you,” the spiky-haired guy said. “Let’s say there was a gang of six-year-olds roaming the streets. And they attacked you. How many of them could you fight off?”
I stood in the doorway, as yet undetected. Aside from the disaster area that was the middle of the room, I was pleased to notice that at least things were being put away. A pile of what appeared to be nothing but black T-shirts on the short kid’s bed was getting pretty high. He opened a drawer on the dresser next to his bed and started stuffing it with shirts.
“Do they have weapons?” he asked.
“No, just fists,” Spiky Hair replied.
“Then probably four of them. Two of them could probably take out my legs, but I’d still have my arms. They could each grab hold of one limb, but then they wouldn’t have anyone to go after my midsection. I’d be pretty much, like, incapacitated, I guess, but I’d be alive.”
“Yeah,” said Spiky Hair. “Probably four. I’d like to think I could take on four myself. I know if it was five, I’d be in some trouble.”
“What if they had weapons?” Stocky Guy asked.
I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorway, which creaked when I put my weight against it. Both guys turned and looked at me.
“So why are these six-year-olds in a gang?” I asked, wiping blood from my nose.
Spiky Hair sized me up.
“Bad parenting,” he said. “Their parents are like crystal meth addicts, and the kids don’t have anywhere to go at night, so they roam the streets, looking for trouble.”
Stocky Guy chimed in, “Also peer pressure. They have older brothers who are in eight- and nine-year-old gangs.”
I nodded, folding the paper towel so that I could place a clean part of it under my nostrils. “Yeah, peer pressure is hard. Do they really want to do you harm, or are they just showboating?”
“Mostly showboating,” Spiky Hair said. “It’s like an initiation thing.”
If these guys were at Rangeview, I thought, they’d be survivalists, kids who wore army fatigues and hung out at the shooting range and watched lots of shows about fishermen who got killed hunting crabs and stuff. Hence the exploding-car poster, I realized.
“I wonder what a six-year-old has to do to become a gang leader,” I mused. “Knock over a 7-Eleven made from Legos?”
Stocky Guy squinted at me. “Don’t be naive,” he said. “It’s a strength thing. Survival of the fittest. Toughest becomes leader. Like Lord of the Flies.”
“Yeah, in Lord of the Flies there was a fight to the death for that role,” Spiky Hair said, sitting up and facing me and rubbing a zit on his cheek.
“Right,” I said. And then we were all silent.
“You’re Rafe?” Stocky Guy said.
“Yep.”
“I’m Albie. And this here is Toby.”
“Hey,” I said, coming in and sitting down on my bed. “You have a radio with lots of buttons.”
“It’s a police scanner. Knowledge is power,” Albie said. “You have a bloody nose and lots of dirt on your legs.”
“Football,” I said.
Albie looked over at Toby, and they exchanged a look. “Great,” he said, in a way that meant not great.
I glanced around the room. “So I’m guessing you’re not studying to be a housekeeper?”
“Not so much,” he said. “Are you seriously anal-retentive?”
“Nah,” I said, realizing that I was, in fact, seriously anal-retentive, since just looking at our room was filling me with the strong urge to buy a vacuum cleaner. Or maybe a butler. “That’s a lot of black T-shirts.”
“Thanks,” Albie said.
“Albie shops at the waiter’s store,” Toby said.
“Yeah, that’s hilarious,” Albie responded. “You shop at the ‘I could never be hired as even a busboy because of my criminal record’ store.”
“Good one,” said Toby.
“So what do I need to know about Natick?” I said.
Toby and Albie shared another look.
“Run for the hills!” Toby said.
“It can’t be that bad. And I’m pretty sure I just came from the hills. I’m from Colorado.”
“Well, then I guess it depends on what kind of guy you are,” Albie said.
The old Rafe would have let it go. But I really felt like I had to call him on it. “Why do I have to be any particular type?”
He looked me up and down, in a very obvious way. “Well, you don’t have to be, but you are.”
I grabbed another paper towel from the roll on my desk and pressed it against my nose. “Okay, then,” I said. “What’s my type?” I crossed my arms and stuck out my chest a bit.
“I’m guessing preppy jock,” Albie said.
“And that’s … a bad thing?”
Albie shrugged. “Having a moth fly into your ear and lodge itself into your brain is a bad thing. Being a preppy jock is just … I don’t know. It’s a thing.”
“You mean it’s a bad thing.”
“Well, it’s not a moth burrowing into your brain, but, yeah, it’s kinda lame.”
“Geez, Albie!” Toby said.
“Well, he asked.”
Maybe it was the adrenaline from the football game and getting the nosebleed. Maybe it was just the irony that I’d finally been labeled something mainstream and acceptable, and now here was my loser roommate giving me trouble. “And I see you’re the type of guy who enjoys exploding cars and police scanners,” I said. “Are you in a militia?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re a genius. I am in a militia. You should probably sleep with one eye open.”
“Dork,” I muttered.
“Republican” was his response.
Me? A Republican? I imagined my mother’s head actually exploding. My face started to get red, and Albie turned toward me. His face had no expression, but I saw a flicker of something in his eyebrows. Fear? Was he afraid of me? No one had ever been afraid of me before, physically, at least. I felt like I had walked into a totally new dimension. Toby stood up and got in between us, which almost made me laugh, because it was like, What? Are we going to rumble?
“Is it horrified in here, or is it just me?” asked Toby. “Okay. Boys, here’s what we’re going to do.” He walked over to Albie and put his hand on his shoulder. “You. Are going to stop being defensive to somebody who totally didn’t deserve it.”
Albie shrugged his shoulder away for a quick moment, and then relented. He nodded.
Then Toby walked over to me. He was extremely skinny, and his spiky hair was platinum in places. If this were Boulder, he’d definitely be a gay kid. But, then again, who was I to label?
“And you. You’re going to take back your militia comment and never say anything negative again about that awesome poster, which happens to be for the coolest show in the history of television.”
“Survival Planet? Never heard of it.”
“Now that’s something we can help you with,” Toby said, squeezing my shoulder, and I blushed. Yes, possibly gay. And so, so not my type.
I took a deep breath before answering. “I’d watch,” I said. “Always up for something new.”
I looked over at Albie. He had paused in his unpacking and was just standing still, looking out the window. He looked sad. I thought about what I had said, calling him a dork. That was so not part of my plan when it came to the first conversation with my new roommate.
“Hey, Albie,” I said, “I should not have called you a dork. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t mean it. I have Tourette’s.”
He looked over at me and rolled his eyes. “If you have Tourette’s, then you did mean it. You just lacked the ability to filter your thoughts.”
Now I had to laugh. “C’mon, dude. You’re making it hard to take back the dork comment,” I said. His face fell, so I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder with my fist. “I’m kidding, kidding. God, sensitive.”
He seemed to ponder this for a moment. And then he shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. Start again?”
I grinned. “Sure.”
He frowned, put his hands over his face, and then removed them to display a smile.
“Hi, you must be Rafe, my athletic new roommate.”
I shook his hand. “And you must be Albie, my unorganized new roommate.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“I don’t feel the urge to clean up this horrendous mess at all. And, by the way, great poster. I love that show,” I said.
“Let’s go play some sports,” said he.
“Now that’s much better” was Toby’s response.
Albie went back to unpacking, and I lay down on my bed, a respite from the calamity that was the rest of our room. I wondered whether we’d work as roommates. On the plus side, they were both kinda funny. On the negative — well, why focus there, right?
“Shit, the lightbulb is dead,” Albie said, switching his desk lamp on and off.
Toby put his head in his hands and pretended to sob lightly. “O bulb! We hardly knew ye,” he said.
Ah, yes. The negative.
Once upon a time, I set about trying to write a novel based on a young person who had been kicked out of his home for being gay. It was based on the painful, true story of a fan, and watching it happen to him touched me profoundly, as did his resilience in the face of adversity.
I followed the path where it led me, and this is that novel. Except it’s not at all about a kid who was kicked out of his home, and Jordan, initially based on Reagan Stanley, has a totally different home life. I am not sure I’ll ever be able to explain how The Music of What Happens came about, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t start by thanking Reagan, who is brave, and who is special, and who told me about throwing dreams (in balloons, not condoms) and who says stuff like “Sweet Gay Jesus.”
I also must thank my editor, Nick Thomas, who guided me as this book came together, and also Cheryl Klein, who was there at the start when I was figuring this story out. I have learned so much from both of you and I am grateful for all of it.
Oh yeah, and Linda Epstein! My agent. Who is hardly an “Oh yeah” in my life, but she will understand why I say that. Sorry and love you and thank you for your support.
Thanks to my Scholastic family. You folks have been so good to me, and I love working with you. A special shout-out to Arthur A. Levine. Thank you for your friendship and thank you for, well, my career.
To my husband, Chuck: You and I will float around on a soft, cushy, flying rug for eternity. I’d say I’m looking forward to that, but we’re already there. Thanks for making my life so cozy. Thank you to my mother, Shelley; my father, Bob; my sister, Pam; my brother, Dan. You are my family, and I know that sounds like I’m saying the obvious, but I mean it in the greater sense. You are my people. I love you.
Karen and Sam: You have become my family too! I adore you.
Thanks to the amazing Doug Bland for reciting a Seamus Heaney poem over dinner one night. The last words of the poem became the title, and really it transformed the story too, bringing poetry into the fold.
Thank you to my readers: Lisa McMann, Kameron-with-a-K-Martinez, Josh Horton, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Joseph Chavez.
Gratitude to Staci Edwards, who allowed me to watch her draw, so that I could understand how that happens.
Much appreciation to Jonathan Willis from Traveling Cup, Mike Baum from Paradise Melts Food Truck, and Robert Coleman from Circle R Farm Food Truck, for letting me hang out and find out what it’s like on a food truck in the summer in Arizona. Toasty! I appreciate you answering all my stupid questions.
Anthony Celaya at Dobson High School: Thanks for letting me hang out in your classroom and pick up on the vibe of your students. “This I Believe” comes from you.
And never least, to my friends at The Mankind Project, particularly Steve Murphy, Steve Harrison, and Rick Isenberg, thanks for continued support and teaching me about men’s work.
Bill Konigsberg is the author of four books for young adults, which have won honors including the Stonewall Book Award, the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, the Lambda Literary Award, and the PEN Center USA Literary Award. Bill lives in Chandler, Arizona, with his husband, Chuck, and their two labradoodles, Mabel and Buford. Please visit him online at billkonigsberg.com and @billkonigsberg.
Also by Bill Konigsberg
Openly Straight
Honestly Ben
The Porcupine of Truth
Out of the Pocket
Copyright © 2019 by Bill Konigsberg
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LCCN Number: 2018016859
“Song” from OPENED GROUND: SELECTED POEMS 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1998 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
First edition, March 2019
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e-ISBN 978-1-338-21552-6
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Bill Konigsberg, The Music of What Happens
