He begins walking again, ever so slowly, literally dragging his feet as we head to the party. Technically, while this is considered movement, he’s still impeding our progress. At his .0001 MPH speed, we won’t even arrive at Jasper’s before the town’s curfew.
Stephen shuffles and argues, “The cool kids and athletes don’t want us at their party. We don’t matter to them. We don’t exist. If we died tomorrow, they wouldn’t even care.”
“Stephen, what an awful thing to say, especially in light of everything! Of course you matter. Of course you exist. Everyone cares,” Simone argues. “We care so much.”
Stephen’s super sad-trombone right now, but I wonder if he doesn’t have a point about not being wanted there?
“Wait, how do you actually know anyone will be happy to see us there?” I ask. Do I need convincing we’ll be welcome, too?
She replies, all matter of fact, “Because Jasper invited us.”
“Um, no,” Stephen says, “he invited you, sis. I feel like his crowd is going to thrash the two of us just for showing up.”
“Every shitty ’80s movie can’t be wrong,” I add. “The nerds always get their asses handed to them when they breach a popular-kid party.” I find myself mentally pumping the brakes, too. Maybe going to a party is a bad idea.
Wait, hold up, I say to myself.
No.
I refuse to be dragged into Mr. Cho’s Deep Dark Hole of Dire Doom again. I feel like attending this event may be my line in the sand. Do I want to keep hanging on the side of the beach where it’s calm and safe and nothing bad ever happens, but nothing interesting does, either?
Or am I willing to take a risk and see what’s on the other side of the line?
Maybe I’ll get my ass handed to me, but what if I don’t? What if the reward’s worth the risk? What if there’s an awesome, I don’t know, clambake or something on the other side of the sand? Ooh, or Mallory in a bikini? And what if the popular people like me once they get to know me? We were all friends as kids. Maybe we could hang out again. I let Stephen talk me out of doing stuff so often that our default mode is to turn and run. We reject everyone long before they can reject us.
So, what if we don’t run tonight?
Stephen has worked himself into a full-on lather. “You think those films were based on nothing? They were written as some dork’s revenge for having this very thing happen to them in high school. Seriously, name me any big writer/director right now and I will show you a guy who stayed home on the weekends to watch Star Trek reruns as a kid. I will show you a nerd. Thesis statement, Wes Anderson, J.J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino. Quentin? His name is Quentin. He got his ass kicked on the reg in high school, I guaran-goddamn-tee it.”
With far more patience than I can muster, Simone says, “Jasper said, ‘Hey, come to my house on Friday. Bring your friends.’ At no point did he mention or imply he planned to kick anything but back. Didn’t specify who to bring and he always sees me with you guys before study hall. Do the math. I can’t imagine you two showing up is going to be a shock.”
“This is ridic. Stephen, you’re being a huge wuss, bigger than usual,” I say with a fair amount of venom in my voice. The gloves are off now. I don’t care if his widdle feelers are hurt. This is some bullshit right here. I’m very tired of him dictating our everything.
“Sorry. I’ll try not to be so ridiculous.” His words come out full of peevishness and completely lacking in remorse. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess he’s enjoying screwing up our night. Negative attention’s still attention.
I pull out the big guns—quoting Yoda. “You’ll try not to be? ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’” I tug Stephen along by his sleeve to speed him up, but he’s suddenly immobile again.
“You know what? No. I’m not going,” he says. He turns around and heads back in the direction of our houses.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me, man?” I exclaim. This is exasperating. “Why are you freaking out like this?”
“Because fuck you, that’s why!” He takes off in a run.
Simone looks to me for guidance. “Do...do we go after him?”
Line? Meet sand.
“You know what? No. If he wants to be a drama queen, let him. I can’t even deal with his moods right now. His flouncing is so past the expiration date. You hear about the hissy fit he threw at the last meet? He was so hysterical that his behavior almost made the judges forfeit our win. Luckily our coach talked them out of it. We cannot encourage this kind of behavior. He’s got to learn to control himself or he’s going to have no friends left.”
We watch Stephen retreat, the thwack of his sneakers sounding hollow on the asphalt. “Is that the best idea, though?” Simone asks. “I feel like he’s going through something but between trying to get Owen to speak to me and my ACT test prep, I haven’t been around much.”
I start walking in the direction of the party. “Like any of that is your fault? No. Nuh-uh. This is not on you. And this is not on me, either. For the first time in my life, I’m not gonna kowtow to him. I’m not gonna let him make all the rules. He wants to storm off and sit home alone on a Friday night, let him.” To emphasize my point, I slip into my rapper persona, DJ Wonderbread. “Imma meet me some girls. Imma mack on drunken cheerleaders. Imma find some ladies to be part of my Tunaverse.”
Now it’s Simone’s turn to stop. “Your what?”
I drop the persona.
Yeah. I should probably confine DJ Wonderbread to my bedroom.
“Did I catch that right?” she says. “Your Tunaverse?”
“My Tunaverse—it’s kind of a line from a Run-D.M.C. song? They refer to their groupies as the Tunaverse in ‘Down With The King.’”
Simone gives me a sidelong glance. “Huh. Never considered you a misogynist, Kent.”
“I’m not, I swear! Honestly, on the whole rap-sexism spectrum, Run, Darryl, and Jam Master Jay trended fairly female-friendly. They were never all, ‘bitches and hos.’ Mostly, I think they were looking for a word to rhyme with ‘universe.’ Sure, there were better choices, like curse or asperse or adverse or reimburse but maybe they were in a hurry to finish the song? Studio time is expensive. That’s why Rick Ross could rhyme Atlantic with Atlantic in ‘Hustlin’. So if you look at it in that context, Tunaverse makes sense.”
Wait, they are saying Tunaverse, right? Not tune of verse? Because I’m really going to feel dumb if I’ve been singing the lyric wrong all this time.
No, it’s gotta be Tunaverse. I’m sure of it.
Simone purses her lips and starts to speak a couple of times before actual words come out. Putting her palm on my forearm, she asks, “Kent, let me figure out a nice way to say this—you reckon maybe referring to women as your ‘Tunaverse’ is why you don’t have a girlfriend?”
I nod decisively. “Distinct possibility.”
“Cool. If you’re comfortable with that, then.”