The Absolute Value of -1, page 3
Simon shook his head. “First night of school, Lil. Homework, really?”
I shrugged. “That’s RH math, I guess.”
“There is no test I was happier to fail than that,” he said back, then put his earbuds in. “See ya tomorrow, Feinstein.”
“Bye.” As I watched him walk across the parking lot toward his neighborhood, the same way Noah had walked a few minutes before, I thought about firsts. After all, Simon was my first crush and my first friend in junior high; he was with me for my first mile around the track, his first cigarette, my first concert, and our first bong hits; this was the first day of our first double-digit grade. Suddenly I felt afraid—I don’t know exactly of what. So I jumped up and called out, “Hey, Simon! Wait!”
He turned to look at me and pulled off his headphones.
I shaded my eyes from the sun, still pretty high behind him. He stood there, waiting for me to say something, to offer any kind of explanation for my outburst.
I looked back at him, and said, “Are you ready for this? Another year?”
He waved me off. “Please,” he shouted to me. “Piece of cake. Don’t be such a drama queen.” Simon put his earbuds back in and walked on.
I sat back down on the curb, folded my arms over my knees, and rested my head. “Definitely,” I said. “Piece of cake.”
| chapter 4 |
I didn’t immediately follow Simon down the path to delinquency. I didn’t even really mean to follow him at all. My interests and his, especially back in seventh grade, did not intersect in any way, shape, or form. If an outside observer had been watching our behavior—the trends of our interactions that year—he or she might have thought Simon was in fact following me. I mean, who ever heard of a sulking, metalhead boy joining the track team?
But he did. So I did.
But that’s not really why I joined, at least not in my own mind to begin with. I had myriad reasons to join.
Here’s something you should know about me: I have hypothetical arguments on a pretty frequent basis. Every decision I make—on topics from an answer to a complicated math problem, to what to have for lunch, to taking a certain route from one class to the next—requires a thoroughly prepared defense. One such hypothetical argument from high school might go like this:
Noah: “Why are you having a veggie burger for lunch?”
Me: “I’ve stopped eating meat.”
Noah: “Of course you did, because Orlando Bloom did.”
Me: “That’s not why at all. I became a vegetarian because animals are mistreated by major meat-producing corporate farms. They’re treated as a product or a commodity, instead of like another living thing that is giving up its life so that we can have a couple of minutes of visceral pleasure.”
I work through these hypothetical arguments on my walk to school, or in the shower, usually before I’ve fully committed to the decision in question. My opponent is always the person who will be most likely to point out a possible ulterior motive. Once the hypothetical argument has been processed, I tend to feel better about the decision, and a little angry.
The truth, of course, is that in that hypothetical argument, I’m always talking (or shouting) out of my butt, because I don’t believe a word of what I’m saying. The truth is, I took the math and science wing from social studies to the gym not because I had to stop by my locker, but because I like how my feet fit into the tiles in that section of the school. The truth is, I had a veggie burger for lunch because, yes, Orlando Bloom is a vegetarian. Or possibly a vegan. I should look into that.
But back to seventh grade. My point is, yes, I wanted to stay in shape, or get in better shape, or have an athletic aspect to my college applications—all that is true. But none of that is why I joined track. I joined because Simon did.
It’s not like I was stalking him or something, either. We were already friends; sitting in front of him every single day for an hour, especially since I had so successfully gotten under his skin on day one, will do that. But we definitely weren’t spending a lot of time together beyond that. We flirted heavily—or anyway I did; I don’t think Simon was or is capable of civilized flirting—during class, but that’s all. So when I found out (through honorable means, I promise) that he was joining the track team, the little worm of doing something idiotic bored into my ear and wiggled around until I found myself counting the floor tiles from my locker to the track coach’s office. The pen was in my hand when my hypothetical argument began, this time with the entire goddamn seventh grade.
But I won, as always, and scribbled my name on the sign-up sheet.
Simon seemed happy to see me at the first day of track practice. Don’t be surprised I made the team, by the way. I should explain quickly that the junior high school track team is not popular. No one cares about track, which includes most of the people actually on track. Of the whole team, about five of us gave half a shit, and only two or three gave an entire shit, about performing to their best abilities. For this reason, and because there was no danger of overenrollment, the track team does not have tryouts.
Instead, it’s more like a drama club meeting: There are auditions. A few people are selected to play the major roles, a few are selected for the minor roles, loads are thrown into the chorus, and then everyone else ends up doing lighting or pushing sets around. Everyone who shows up, though, will play some role, from Girl with the Final Aria to Girl Who Turns the Pages for the Piano Player. On track, that means a few of us are hotshots and place in meets, and the rest of us are pretty much jogging around in ugly uniforms.
Simon was sitting in the track infield. He was head to toe in blue sweats, like the rest of us—completely shapeless, baggy, and blue. For once, though, he had no baseball hat on, and his short red hair looked like I always imagined Huck Finn’s would: like a badly hewn field of orange hay.
I sat down next to him on the grass. “Hi.”
“Well, well,” Simon said, molto snotty. “If it isn’t little Miss Feinstein.”
I stuck out my tongue appropriately and watched the coach flip through his clipboard.
“You’re joining the track team?” Simon said after I’d ignored him a few minutes. Really I hadn’t ignored him; I’d just had no idea what to say to him. As usual. I’d covered this fact by not looking at him in as smug a manner as I could.
“Um, did you figure that out yourself?” I replied, snarling at him. My hair fell over my face as I turned to him, and I pushed it behind my ear.
He just closed his eyes and shrugged. Then the coach, Mr. Freeman, called us to attention. Freeman, by the way, also coached the high school team. Apparently he was the only member of the faculty, systemwide, willing to coach track.
“Okay, people,” he said, “welcome to winter track. You all made the team.”
Like I was saying.
“If you don’t do anything incredibly stupid, you’ll probably be on the team—if you can stick it out—until the end of the season,” Freeman went on, rarely looking up from his clipboard. “Now let’s get some event assignments done, and this first practice won’t be a total waste of our time.”
Freeman flipped through the pages on his clipboard. “First: who’s interested in the dash?”
Two eighth-grade boys raised their hands.
“That’s it?” Freeman said, looking us over. “Hundredyard dash, that is.”
At that, three seventh-graders raised their hands quickly, as if they might miss it or something if they didn’t hurry. Freeman rolled his eyes and Simon chuckled.
“Morons,” he said at me sideways.
“Okay, I think we can squeeze in three neophytes on our dash team,” Freeman said. “Names?”
The new kids called out their names, and Freeman scribbled them down. Then he moved on to the 200. I was surprised to see Simon’s hand shoot up. Had I been more prepared—such as, knowing that runners ran races of different lengths and had specialties, for example; in other words, knowing anything about track—I might have put my hand up too. But, as it was, it seemed too obvious, to see Simon and copy him. I figured being on the team was probably enough.
With Simon on the 200 team was just one other person, an eighth-grader who seemed pretty serious about running. He was a very in-shape-looking (one of the few people who was, first of all, not in sweats but in the team shorts and tanktop, and second, already stretching and running in place) black guy whose name I didn’t know. Coach Freeman obviously knew him, though, because he wrote down his name before even looking up. Then he took Simon’s.
The black guy also raised his hand for the 400, which looked to be the most popular race. Simon did too. I almost raised my hand for that one, thinking I could just slip through unnoticed, but I waited too long and then felt stupid. So I decided to raise my hand for the next one, whatever it was.
“Mile.” And up shot my arm. I must have visibly cringed. Must have.
One mile. Four laps around the track. I’d never even run one.
“Let’s stretch out a little before we do any running, okay?” Freeman said after dropping his clipboard onto the grass. “This will be our stretching routine for the season, so learn ’em now.”
He showed us butterfly stretches, where you sit down with your feet together, and hurdler stretches, which were especially unpleasant, and one where you need a partner. Simon was not mine. We’d already broken off into groups (Simon said, “You’re a miler? Okay,” and walked off), and I was stuck with Melanie Siegel. She leaned on my shoulder and pushed onto her rear foot. This was to stretch the . . . leg muscles?
“I’m glad there’s another girl doing the mile,” Melanie said.
I smiled at her.
I’d known Melanie Siegel most of my life. She was adorable and smiled all the time and I wanted to punch her face. I might be projecting a little from my tenthgrade self to my seventh-grade self, but not much.
“I don’t know how good I am,” I said, holding her ankle so her legs formed almost a 180-degree angle for some insane stretch I didn’t plan to attempt. “You look like you already know what you’re doing out here.”
Translation from wussy seventh grader to bitchy tenth grader: I will not be running with you. Ever. Because you sicken me.
“I’ll help you out any way I can,” Melanie replied, smiling (retch). Then she helped me stretch my glutes or quads or whatever the fuck.
There were five of us on the mile squad: me and Melanie; a seventh-grade boy name Robin (ouch) Goldberg; and two eighth graders, Jake and Hank. Robin was something of a school pariah: his name and meager stature made him the go-to target of ridicule and random beatings. He was a pretty good miler, though, it turned out—certainly the best on the team.
Freeman blew his whistle. “Let’s do some warm-ups. One mile, everyone, even short-distance, please. And stay with your event. Let’s have the milers start out first.”
Melanie jogged right from the infield, onto the track, and was off. Robin was right next to her in an instant. As for me, Jake, and Hank, we sort of collectively screwed up our faces to say, Seriously? A mile? On the first day? Then, with a sigh and heavy hearts, we headed after them.
It didn’t take long before Freeman’s rule about sticking with your event had been not just broken but shattered in teeny tiny pieces. Simon caught up to me and the miler boys in about fifteen seconds.
“You three are pretty pathetic,” he said as he passed.
“Screw you, Simon,” I replied. Jake and Hank didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass. They ignored him and kept on chatting with each other. Freeman frequently told them to shut up and run.
About Jake and Hank: They were practically identical, it seemed. Same height, same hair color, same hairstyle. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why they were on the team. But they did kind of change my life.
Oh, and if you’re wondering: two sports bras.
| chapter 5 |
A particle is moving along the x axis such that
its position at any time (t) is given as s(t)=2sin(π).
What are the amplitude, frequency,
and period of this motion?
Within the first six weeks of sophomore year, I had learned four things worth noting:
1. Positive and negative numbers have the wonderful quality of being able to shed their signs to take on their “absolute value.” That means a number as grandiose and huge as 58 million has the same absolute value as a debt of 58 million. I should be so lucky.
2. Chewing gum, when affixed to the bottom of Elijah’s size-ten sneakers, has no trouble dislodging itself to better attach to my butt. Getting it off my butt, though, is much trickier.
3. Mr. Rohan walks to his car through the side door, at least on Thursdays. I know this because it was a Thursday in October that he caught me, Simon, and Noah smoking. He was especially mad at me and Simon, I guess ’cause he knows we’re smarter than that. Noah, not so much.
4. Simon and Noah are obsessed with the new girl working at the Gap. When they discovered this about each other, I thought they were about to fight like hyenas over a dead gazelle. Instead, Simon won a little staring contest and they changed the subject.
Unfortunately, that soured everyone’s mood, and Simon went off home, leaving me sitting on the curb at the strip mall, with Noah yabbering at me, bouncing up and down—up the curb, off the curb, around the No Parking sign, back on the curb, off the curb.
“Your parents are divorced, right?” he asked. I was going to add “out of the blue,” but there might have been a good segue. I just wasn’t paying close attention. But that question pulled me back.
“Yup,” I said. “Their three-year divorce anniversary is right about now, actually. Why?” Not to be terse, but I was pretty much over it. The only real difference between pre-divorce life and post-divorce life for me was that my parents only fought on the phone, and rarely.
Noah kept moving around me. Simon was long out of sight.
“No reason,” Noah said. “Did your dad have an affair or anything like that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think so. They just always sort of, I don’t know—hated each other, I think.”
“Wow, really?” he said. He took out a cigarette and lit it.
I cleared my throat audibly.
He stopped pacing and said, “They’re menthol.”
“That’s fine.” So he gave me one, and it was gross but worth it.
“Anyway, that sucks,” Noah went on. “Your whole life they hated each other?”
I thought about it a minute. “I guess I don’t remember my whole life. But I do remember a lot of fights and shit.” I took a drag from my cigarette and tried to get used to the toothpaste-ness of it. It was futile. “Why are you asking me about my parents?”
Noah shrugged. “My parents fight a lot too,” he said, and that was that.
So I went home. I said good-bye to Noah and walked back across 25A. As soon as I was out of Noah’s sight, I dropped the menthol too. I couldn’t let him know I’d wasted a cigarette of his. He’d never forgive me.
Mom had beaten me home. Typically, I should be getting home first like a good little latch-key kid, but I’d dawdled. Not like she noticed.
“Lily!” she called from upstairs. “Is that you?”
“No, Mom!” I called back, kicking off my sneakers. “It’s the Spanish Inquisition!”
There was a pause. “What?” she called down.
“Ugh, never mind,” I muttered nowhere near loud enough, then wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a can of soda from the fridge. I stood next to the counter, drinking it. Then I looked down at my feet.
The kitchen tiles, in addition to being black and white and a reminder of a dysfunctional marriage and very possibly a sexual relationship between my mother and the contractor, are exactly six and one quarter inches by six and one quarter inches. Perfect squares. Their diagonal, therefore, is 8.84 inches. That is also the length of my feet. When I stand with my heels together and with my feet at a ninety-degree angle to each other, they perfectly connect the corners of a tile each—one in a black tile, one in a white.
I’m slightly pigeon-toed. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you saw me, but I am pretty aware of it most of the time. You should see my shoes. The soles are so unevenly worn, it’s embarrassing. So when I stand in the kitchen, fully duck footed and connecting the corners of two tiles, I consider it compensation.
Mom walked in as I was guzzling away.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said, and she put an arm around me. She had just gotten out of the shower; her hair was in a towel, and she was wrapped in a huge terrycloth robe. “Lily, you smell awful.”
“Oh hey, thanks, Mom,” I said. I jiggled the can to hear if any drops were left. I coaxed out a desperate sip that was probably all backwash, then put the can on the counter. “That’s really awesome of you to say.”
She just shrugged and picked up the pile of mail. Flipping through it, she added, “Well, you do. I really wish you wouldn’t smoke. It’s so disgusting. What boy is going to want to date a girl with smelly hair, and smelly clothes—”
“All right, Mom!” I snapped at her. She looked positively aghast that I’d interrupted her advice. “I get the picture!”
“I wasn’t finished, and put that can in the recycling bin.” I groaned and sighed and just about threw a fit, but I picked up the can and rinsed it out and dropped it into the plastic bin under the counter.
After I’d obeyed, Mom said, “And bad breath.”
I rolled my eyes as I left the kitchen.
“You know it’s true!” she called after me. “I’m just looking out for you, Lily-pie!”
I was halfway up the steps when the proctologist came out of my mom’s bedroom, fresh from the shower himself and in one of his awful tracksuits.
“Oh, hi, Lily,” he said.
I rolled my eyes at him and went into my room.
To answer your questions, no, they did not get married. He didn’t even move in or anything like that. He’s divorced too, and I don’t suppose either of them is terribly interested in committing in any serious way. But after three years, I’d gotten used to seeing him around on occasion. And your other question: yes, they had just had afternoon sex in my childhood home, knowing full well I’d be walking in at any moment.
