“It’s not dumb at all!”
“It’s something I think about. Not, like, a lot.” In Gideon-speak, that meant obsessively. It went way further than just SNL: Gideon watched every stand-up special on the air, pirated hard-to-find ones off the Pirate Bay, obsessively watched his favorite comics, and—as I realized once when I glanced at him in the middle of a Chris Rock special—took notes on the rhythms of the jokes, how the lineup came together, which segues felt natural and which felt forced.
“Why don’t you try it?” I prodded. “Stand-up?”
“Like at the school talent show, you mean? There’s a reason why I barely say anything in class. Do you really think anyone else from school is sitting here watching this stuff?”
“Maybe some of the teachers. The old ones.”
He smiled and glanced at the stack of DVDs. “You actually kinda remind me of her,” he said. “Gilda.”
“Really?” I stared down at the carpet, crestfallen that he thought my doppelg?nger was Roseanne Roseannadanna.
“Yeah. I don’t know. You look sort of like her, I guess—in old pictures, when she’s not in costume. But mostly . . . you kind of think like her. I don’t know how to say it. Your mind, or your thoughts or something, they’re just different from most people’s.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, goose bumps shooting up my arms and legs. It was, and remains, the best compliment I’d ever gotten.
“I wish I was more like that,” he said quietly.
“So just try it! What’s the harm? It’ll suck for five minutes. School sucks for, like, eight hours a day. It’s nothing.”
“I dunno. I just feel like . . . it’s all been done. There’s nothing I can do that won’t be a total knockoff of someone who’s better.” He sighed.
I almost blurted out that I felt that way about making up stories, but I bit my tongue at the last minute—too embarrassing. Which is strange, now that I think about it, because before that summer, I’d tell him everything, down to the last unappetizing, unflattering detail.
I adamantly unstuck my thighs from the leather sofa.
“Well, I’m not letting you start high school without trying it.”
He looked for a second like he was considering it, drumming his long, thin fingers thoughtfully on his denimed thigh. Then he rolled his eyes, giving me his signature wide-eyed You’re being batshit look.
“Where am I gonna go, Scarlett? The Yuk Machine?”
The Yuk Machine was (and still is, because nothing changes here—it’s like a lamer Brigadoon) right off the highway in a strip mall, wedged between a liquor store and a ShopWay.
“This is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.” Gideon paced in the parking lot, drenching his sneakers in dirty puddles.
I gazed up at the neon sign. The Y was burned out.
“Actually, the Yuk Machine is a terrible idea,” I said. “The Uk Machine is the best idea I’ve ever had.”
Inside the dim club, I fiddled nervously with the neon under-21 bracelet, my Converse squishing against the inexplicably damp floor. The Yuk Machine would not have seemed out of place on the set of Children of Men. But when I glanced at Gideon, he was beaming like a cancer kid on a pamphlet for the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. He was really gonna do this. In a flash, I was way more nervous than he was.
“Nobody’s, like, parents are here, right?” he whispered.
I got on my toes and twisted to and fro to check for nosy Melville housewives. Instead of him helping me look, I felt him subtly glance me up and down, quick and fluttery like a moth, as if I was some random girl walking by him on the street and we hadn’t been best friends for almost seven years. It gave me a little shiver. In a good way, I realized.
We quietly slunk to a small, wobbly table in the back and waited for the guy onstage to finish his set.
“. . . alimony, right? I mean . . . what, even?” the guy was saying. Then he sighed and drank half his beer. Gideon and I winced at each other. At least he wouldn’t be a tough act to follow.
Finally he finished, and the depressed-looking emcee came back on.
“Anybody else want to try their hand at open mic night?”
Gideon stood up.
“Oh, good,” the emcee intoned in his flat, dead voice. “A child.”
Finally, some laughs. Gideon faltered, and for a second I really wanted to kick that guy in the balls. But Gideon ambled up to the stage and jumped on anyway, taking the mic from the emcee.
“Hi, guys,” Gideon said placidly.
I noticed my nervous leg-jiggling was shaking my little table. I stopped, then unthinkingly started biting my inner cheek instead.
He took a deep breath. “So, I’m forty-two, and . . .”
“Bullshit!” shouted a drunk man in the back.