The Absolute Value of -1, page 1
| the absolute value of -1 |
Text copyright © 2010 by Steve Brezenoff
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brezenoff, Steven.
The absolute value of -1 / by Steve Brezenoff.
p. cm.
Summary: Four teenagers relate their experiences as they try to cope with problems in school and at home by smoking, drinking, using drugs, and running track.
ISBN: 978–0–7613–5417–8 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)
[1. Emotional problems—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction.
3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Absolute value of negative one. III. Title: Absolute value of minus one.
PZ7.B7576Ab 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009034274
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 – SB – 7/15/10
eISBN: 978-0-7613-6220-3 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3164-5 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3165-2 (mobi)
for my father,
whom i miss every day.
and for my son,
who i hope will know
a little of his grandfather
through me.
—s.b.
The absolute value
of the difference of two real
or complex numbers
is the distance between them.
—Wikipedia
A dark wood lectern, and this doctor I’ve met—maybe twice?—kissed me on the cheek and called me Susan.
I looked down at my dress—black and too short; Jo bought me leggings so I wouldn’t be cold, but they’re patterned and fun. It was the only thing at Mom and Dad’s that was appropriate, this dress from the Gap. At Mom’s.
It’s a few years old. I wore it to the winter dance when I was sixteen—sophomore year. I went with Greg . . . Something. He was high, and his hair was greasy, I remember noticing. He wanted a blow job and I slapped him.
In my hands was paper, three sheets of paper. One came from Simon. I don’t remember when we found time, or made use of the time, to write these things down. I couldn’t read, I realized, because of the tears in my eyes, so I looked back up and tapped the papers on the lectern. They didn’t make the sound I hoped they would, and the mike fed back.
The last forty-eight had been the longest hours of my life.
I drove my father’s car. I adjusted the seat and the mirrors and it didn’t matter because Dad wouldn’t care he wouldn’t bang his knees when he got in he wouldn’t get frustrated by the little switch “L–R” to select which side-view mirror. Mom sat in the back, and Simon sat next to me in the front. He was dripping wet, and no one said anything about the leather seats.
It was very late—two or three—and the lights from cars all around and the lampposts high over the LIE blurred in the sheets of rain on the windshield so it was like driving into an impressionist palette of red and white and light yellows. The wipers couldn’t even keep up. The expressway was completely unfamiliar, like I wasn’t native. Construction made it a new road every time you used it.
The Van Wyck and Grand Central merges were on top of me in a blink. I slammed on the brakes and stopped in time, but the guy behind me didn’t; he hit us, not hard, but we jerked forward and back into our seats. The car in front of me sped along quickly, past the merges.
“Just forget it,” Simon muttered. “Go.”
I swallowed and glanced into the rearview mirror at Mom. From looking at her, you would have thought she hadn’t even noticed the hit. Sideways at Simon, he didn’t look back at me. The guy behind would be getting out. He’d want to know if we stopped to exchange information or something. I hit the gas before he reached my window. He couldn’t see us, he shouldn’t be allowed to, maybe for his sake. Maybe mine.
From the lectern, faces rushed up at me, most without features, just blank ovals of flesh. Simon and Mom had their faces pointed at the floor. I stared at Simon, willing him to look up at me, but he didn’t. I scanned the crowd—“crowd” like the people at a game, or a show, or a synagogue. Here’s who stood out:
Simon’s girlfriend, with her black eyes and black hair and black trails of tears on her cheeks. A fist tightened around my chest as I looked at her and she looked back. Back at Simon: Look at me! Look up!
My roommate was in the back, standing by the double doors. She had her hand over her mouth, and I didn’t care she was there. None of my friends were there, off at their college towns, not flying in so spontaneously: You’re okay, right? She’d brought my stuff from Boston. Go home now, Kierrey. Just go home.
Next to the girlfriend was that third-wheel boy. Eyes closed and eyebrows up: put upon?
Lily, that’s her name. I’d never met her. Was she a goth? I laughed to myself and smiled, then worried everyone had seen me smile at this memorial I was smiling my father was dead and I was smiling would you expect anything less from a girl like her, who ruined her brother.
Faces were everything, and twenty hours of daylight with Mom and Simon and our house, and enough rooms between us to avoid each other completely and cry on our own, or wail, or rend our clothes, but we go to the fridge or the liquor cabinet or the bathroom and the others are there and here is what I think when we make eye contact:
“Her husband is dead. She is a widow.”
“His father is dead, and he made out with his sister.”
“She is a pervert. She wanted her brother and her father is dead.”
The real Jews cover the mirrors.
Simon still didn’t look up. Nor did Mom. Abe did and he pulled off his glasses like Dad would when he worked on the crossword just like Dad.
The memorial was a Wednesday—as soon as possible, and Dad was on a gurney and then in a bag and then a pine box and then a gas oven and then he was ash in a baggy and he arrived via FedEx in a cardboard box “Just get rid of it.”
I stood in the back of the hall, full of dark wooden benches, with serious dark purple cushions—gravity. Like pews, but not pews, because this was not a church, not a synagogue, just like one, for the godless or those who can’t get a reservation in time.
The hall was full and I didn’t see faces from the back. I saw Abe’s gray head far in the front. He moved his arm around Mom’s shoulders and I remembered to breathe.
I’d volunteered to speak. Simon wrote something; I would read it. Mom couldn’t write, couldn’t talk—could barely stand up and not cry long enough to say a single sentence to one of us.
My dress was wrong, completely. I pointed my foot and held out my leg. Tights with butterflies. “They were black and I didn’t think,” Jo had said. She would have gone back to the store but what does it matter? It got quiet and I looked up, because it had gotten quiet, and another doctor was on the podium. He was saying something; I didn’t make it out, and I barely heard my name. But I managed to walk down the aisle.
I looked down at my legs, fluttering by. The dress hung to my knees, almost, and it swung as I walked, like I was flirting and disgusting.
“Simon . . . ,” I started, thinking I’d read his first, but it caught in my throat when he looked up. I dropped my head and looked at the yellow, crinkled paper, his shaking handwriting and adorable stanzas.
I looked up at him again, coughed. I felt myself push my hair behind my ear, and it fell right back out. I wanted to claw it out.
| part one |
LILY
| chapter 1 |
Before sophomore year started, I held out hope that every other girl in my grade would have some boobs to show for their summers away. I prayed frequently that the Tits Fairy would have finally paid them all their very own visit, left them fully and well endowed, and explained very kindly in their ears to leave Lily Feinstein the fuck alone.
But September came too soon, like it always does, and even if some girls were finally filling out their sweaters, I still got all the attention. By the time I reached the end of the path from my neighborhood to the back field of the high school that first day, I’d already heard plenty. But of course no one is as sincere and positively moving as Noah.
“Hey, Lily,” he called to me on our first day. He was standing, and Simon was sitting, on the steps around back, near the path from my neighborhood that hits the schoolyard. We’d started meeting there before school during freshman year, since it was a good place to smoke a couple of cigarettes before going inside. Simon is Noah’s only other friend, as far as I know.
Then again, Simon and Noah were my only friends too, so I should shut up.
“I missed your tits this summer. Don’t they want to come out and say hello?”
“Fuck off, Noah.”
Let me stop right here. Yes, I take the lip from Noah. What am I going to do, slug him or something? I mean, I’ve hit him, square in the gut, a couple of times. It just eggs him on. Besides, it’s his way: to be awkward and hyper and kind of retarded. He’s harmless.
Simon, on the other hand, didn’t even look up. His nose was in a paperback, which was bent around, so I couldn’t see the title. It looked old though. The way he wears his baseball hat so low, with the brim bent so it’s practically folded over on itself, I couldn’t even see his eyes. Green, by the way, except right in the middle, where they are red before the black center.
“What are you reading, Simon?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he unfolded the book and held it up about an inch higher so I could squint and just barely make out Franny and Zooey.
“Nice to see you too.”
“Ha!” Noah chirped. “Don’t mind him, Lil. Mr. Fisher had an epiphany this summer and plans to get ahead on his studies.”
“Exactly,” Simon mumbled from behind his paperback.
Noah bounced on the top step, then stepped down to the second, then the first, and bounced some more. Three, two, one: “Yup, this is going to be a big year. A big year.”
I glanced at my watch. It was 7:15, fifteen minutes before homeroom bell. That meant we had eleven minutes before I had to hit my locker.
“So,” I ventured, “we have ten minutes.” I shaved off one minute because I was dealing with about half a brain between the two of them.
Simon got up and slipped his book into the back pocket of his jeans. “Let’s take a walk then.”
Sometimes we don’t just want a cigarette. Sometimes we smoke something more. Noah became even more animated as the three of us headed back up the path to my neighborhood. It’s lined on both sides with a tall privacy fence, and on the other side of those fences are trees and shrubs; and beyond those: backyards; and beyond those: three bedroom homes for the familially insane. I should know.
Around the first curve, past the two maples that make a nice archway overhead, is a little inlet, where the fence on the right side was built around a public bench. I don’t know exactly who put that bench there. It’s bolted down into a slab of concrete, and a plaque on the back says “For My Wandering Boy—the Class of 1962.” I guess some kid ran away from home, and his graduating class dedicated this bench for him. Well, I sit on it at least a few times a week, and I’ve never seen any wanderers hanging around, so I don’t think he’s coming home.
I folded up my leg and dropped onto the bench, then pushed my hair behind my ears.
Simon finally looked at my face as he sat down next to me. “Your zits are gone.”
Can you feel the magic?
“I guess.” I looked up at Noah, wondering when he’d sit, wishing he’d sit and give me a reason to slide closer to Simon, to make room.
Noah just bounced. He pulled off his backpack in midbounce and zipped open the small pocket on the front.
“Drum roll, please!” he said a little too loudly, and pulled out a small plastic baggie.
“Noah, man, try not to alert the whole neighborhood to our presence, okay?” Simon said. He shifted on the bench a little and pulled his hat tighter over his face.
I planted both my feet squarely on the ground, so the soles of my sneakers were perfectly flat and my heels and shins made a nice ninety-degree angle. “Five minutes,” I announced.
“Shit,” said Simon, and he pulled a bowl from his pocket. We passed around one pack, which Noah complained was too tight, and then started back up the path and across the athletic field to the back entrance.
“What do you have first, Simon?” I asked. He was walking right next to me; Noah was behind us. As we crossed the fifty-yard line, I grabbed Simon by the elbow and he didn’t shake me off. Maybe it was going to be a big year.
“Rohan,” Simon answered. “English. He’s also my independent study adviser, so I hope he doesn’t suck.”
“I heard he’s the best English teacher to get.”
“What about you?” Simon asked. But before I could answer, he added, “Noah’s looking at your ass.”
“I am not!” Noah insisted, and then he ran past us, jumping and hooting. Ever heard of someone who gets hyperer after smoking weed?
At the thirty, Simon cleared his throat. Seven steps later I turned to look at him, and he turned away. As we walked under the goalpost, he pulled back his arm.
“I’m going to cut through the gym.” He only made eye contact for an instant, then started toward the double doors. That’s more like it—good old Simon. “Later, Lil.”
“Bye.”
I watched him walk away a second, then turned toward the sciences wing, taking a quick look at my watch. Somehow I had lost about a minute, no doubt wasting time watching Simon walk away, so I took off like a shot—I was completely Wonder Woman. I moved that fast; my black hair flew behind me like a flag of strength. I was graceful and fleet of foot. When two senior boys suddenly burst through the back door, I smiled gracefully and winked, then slipped in behind them. They watched me go with longing in their flirty, flirty eyes.
Actually, I jogged carefully across the athletic field, holding my breasts with one arm, and my hair kept falling into my eyes, making it impossible to see, which is why when the door blasted open, I lost my balance and nearly bit it. The senior boys laughed at me. And I told them to fuck off, which only made them laugh more.
But after that, I did really smile and slip inside behind them. And I happen to think I have a very graceful smile, if nothing else.
My homeroom was exactly thirty-eight steps from the back door, including the stop at my locker to hang up my magnet-mirror and check my eyes, the redness levels of which were acceptable, I decided. I sat down in homeroom as the bell buzzed and felt the embrace and warmth of my fellow tenth graders all around me. I hadn’t been early enough for the back row, which really was fine because I know what Ms. March—Math Goddess—thinks of backrowers. I found myself pretty dead center of the room: Hal Roberts in front of me, butt crack shown for all the world to see—and occasionally toss raisins into; to my left, Lindsey Horowitz, reminding me silently that some girls have it worse than I, physically; to my right, Staci Short—I thanked myself for smoking a cigarette on the walk to school, for my own powerful stench blocked the sting of her perfume; and behind me, Elijah Rosen, who was very possibly perfect in practically every way—smiled constantly, blue eyes, shaggy hair, insanely brilliant, at least at math—and I hated him with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. When the door opened, Elijah was making himself comfy, with his foot on the back of the seat of my chair. I looked forward to spending the rest of the day with the imprint of a size ten All-Star on my ass.
Ms. March, well, marched in and swung the door closed (and locked) behind her. Her heels clicked, then clacked, in succession, until she reached her big metal desk at the front of the room. Her skirt was just north of appropriate, and her bag landed on the desk with a thud. She pulled out her attendance sheet and looked at us. “Is everyone comfortable?” she announced.
No. Elijah Rosen, I’m fairly sure, has 84 percent of his foot in my ass right now.
Of course no one actually answered. That’s just not done. Besides, of course we weren’t comfortable, but it would take a very brave soul to get on Ms. March’s bad side sophomore year. A better plan would be to hold in all your angst until second semester senior year, after your fate is well sealed, or else take it out on someone else, like old Mr. Hoffman, who was deaf in one ear, having been too close to a jammed canon when it exploded during the Civil War. Ms. March, you see, was a very special teacher, in that her students were stuck with her not just two semesters, nor four, nor even six. No, if you act now— “now” being seventh grade, during the Research Honors qualifying exam, which I passed with flying colors—you will have the pleasure of Ms. March and her math Nazism for a full eight semesters, eighth grade right through eleventh. As a senior, you’re dumped into AP Calculus. Can’t wait!
