Stupid Fast

Chapter 4: THE TERRIBLE PHONE CALL OF LATE MAY!




This is how the summer began.

Imagine this:

It’s the Saturday before the last week of school. I’m lying downstairs on the couch outside my bedroom, down in the basement, lights out, resting with my thoughts and the TV, and sweating hugely because of my disqualification at Regionals. Andrew’s upstairs in the living room playing about ten annoying notes on the piano, over and over, singing along with them, totally off-key and very loud, which he does a lot, which I find excessively annoying. The phone rings. Jerri answers, her voice echoing throughout the house.

“Oh, no. I’m so sorry, Teresa.” Jerri says Teresa in her best Spanish accent, Tayraysa, even rolling the r.

Jerri thinks she knows Spanish because she took hippy drumming lessons from a dude named Tito a few years ago. Tayraysaaa. Teresa happens to be Gus’s Venezuelan mom.

I sit up, which isn’t easy as I’m weak from not eating. Is something wrong with Gus?

“Of course, Tayraysa. Felton can do Gus’s paper route. He really needs to re-engage.”

Paper route? Re-engage? Oh, no. Jerri said re-engage, which is code for torture Felton.

Gus’s ridiculous paper route? Torture!

My stomach is rumbling, churning, burning, almost ready to upchuck, except there’s no food inside of me.

What if something is wrong with Gus?

“I’ll have Felton call later this morning, Tayraysa,” Jerri says.

I leap from the couch and run upstairs just as Jerri is hanging up the phone.

“What the hell, Jerri? What’s wrong?”

“Felton, Gus is leaving.”

“What do you mean? When?”

“Next weekend. Tayraysa’s mother is gravely ill. “

“Yeah? She’s been sick since third grade. So freaking what?”

“The doctors don’t think she’ll make it through the summer, so the Alfonsos are going to Venezuela to be with her.”

“Aw, hell! What am I supposed to do all summer?”

“You can help Gus out. He needs a friend.”

“Who am I gonna chill with, Jerri?”

“Gus needs help with that route.”

“Paper route? Come on! He doesn’t give a crap.”

“Well, Tayraysa does. And I do.”

“You?”

“Yes. So you’re going to help Gus out, do you understand?”

“Aw, man! Jesus Christ! Come on!”

Meanwhile, Andrew’s plinking the piano behind me, still singing along with those ten notes.

Blah la la blah. Plink plink plink.

“Shut your freaking piano, Andrew. We’re in crisis here,” I shout.

Andrew turns. Looks at me. Says “What?” but stops, which is lucky for him because I’m about to take him down with some serious karate-chopping to the nose, throat, and mouth if he doesn’t stop.

***

MY F-BOMB SUMMER by Felton Reinstein:

Kick off with a serious sweat fest. Add the absence of best friend. Stick in a damn morning paper route. Make sure it all goes down in Suckville. Fantastic!

“Damn, Jerri!” I shout.

***

By the way.

Every time in my life that Jerri has said “Felton needs to re-engage,” I’ve ended up with a new freak tale to add to my squirrel nut history. For example, I had these scary anxiety attacks back in fourth grade. I kept thinking my heart wasn’t pumping right, which seriously terrified me, of course, and me being scared would make it pump faster. So because it pumped faster, I got more scared, so it pumped faster and faster and faster, which was complete proof to me that my heart was completely malfunctioning and was about to explode, and I’d get dizzy, and squeaky-voiced, and sick, and not be able to breathe, sucking for air while Mrs. Derrell, my teacher, went on and on about Wisconsin’s first settlers, who I can’t remember because my heart was killing me. I think they wore straw hats and suspenders.

Jerri took me to a doctor, who said my heart was fine, but I seemed to be anxious (no crap!). Jerri was so relieved. But the doctor’s opinion didn’t help me because it kept happening, my heart attacks, so I stopped wanting to go to school because the heart attacks always happened at school.

After me refusing to go to school for a week, Jerri said I needed to learn to re-engage, so she took me to a cognitive behavioral therapist. The cognitive behavioral therapist suggested that when I start to have a freak-out and think my seriously healthy heart isn’t working right, I should look at somebody I know well in my class, a person I like a lot, and repeat his or her name three times to remember I have good friends and I’m not alone and everything will be okay. The therapist also said that I should breathe deep to calm down my heart, all of which I sincerely tried to do, except I was probably supposed to say Gus’s name in my head, not out loud, because when I did it during Mrs. Derrell’s lecture on immigrants making sausages in Milwaukee, the world fell silent and the whole class turned and stared at me, their eyeballs popping out of their heads like they were looking at the famous nose-picking gorilla at the Milwaukee Zoo—completely gross and weird—which made my heart bang in my chest, completely proving I was dying.

Imagine all of them staring at me with their mouths open wide.

For years after that, my classmates would whisper softly to me, “Gus, Gus, Gus,” and look at me sweetly but not sweet at all.

That’s not funny either, by the way.

If Gus weren’t my best friend and also sort of lacking in friends himself, he would probably have stopped being my friend because he caught so much crap too.

That wasn’t the only time Jerri suggested I re-engage. There are probably ten more incidents I could report through the years. But it’s late (1:23 a.m.).

And after I’d re-engage and freak out because of re-engaging, Jerri always ended up having to keep me home from school for weeks at a time and had to hug me a lot and cook me grilled cheese sandwiches and say sorry over and over.

All that stopped.

I made myself stop freaking out so much starting a couple of years ago. I got tired of being the center of attention. I don’t like attention—did not anyway—and I got tired of being hugged, and I got tired of Jerri saying sorry to me. It’s not like Jerri murdered Dad. Dad murdered Dad, right?

But I suppose my post-Regional dry-heaving put Jerri back in the mood.

Re-engage. Re-engage, donkey. I sure didn’t like Jerri saying the word re-engage.

***

Two days after Tayraysa’s call, I ate those bagels and regained some of my strength and sanity. I went back to school in time to turn in my English research report about what I want to be when I grow up (titled “Standup Comedy: Take My Wife…Please”) and to take my stupid finals and to bid fare thee well to the senior class full of honkies and poop-stinkers and, of course, to Gus, who was leaving.

“I’m sorry, Felton,” Gus said as we exited Bluffton High on the last day of school, the sun beating down on our heads, our eyes squinty.

“You should be,” I said as we walked toward the bike rack.

“I don’t have any friends in Caracas, man,” he grimaced, unlocking his bike.

“I don’t have any friends in Suckville,” I said as we pedaled away.

“What about Peter Yang?” he asked, now a block from the school.

“Something’s gone amiss,” I told him, a look of resignation on my face.

“At least Peter Yang has a driver’s license,” he said, nearing his turnoff.

“That’s true,” I agreed as he turned.

“We can Skype, dude,” he shouted, biking away.

“Chapter over,” I mumbled, heading toward home.

***

Bleak. Bleak. Bleak.

Summer. Summer. Summer.