Chapter 10

Looking back, it probably should have occurred to me some time during, say, the entire month of January, to wonder how Jill got to school. She certainly didn't ride the bus, and I'd never seen her leave the house before Jeanne and I did, even on the days we were driving. I knew she went to school, of course; I'd seen her there. She didn't have lunch at the same time Jeanne and I did — sophomores shared a fifth period lunch with freshmen, while juniors and seniors had sixth period lunch — but I'd seen her in the halls now and then. Up until today, though, it had never occurred to me to wonder how she got there.

My newfound curiosity may have been prompted by my actually having spent a good bit of time with her the previous evening watching the Super Bowl. She had asked a lot of questions, and when Dave's answers proved as technical and convoluted as Dad's, she plonked herself down next to me on the couch. Until I'd fallen asleep, confident that there was no way the Bears could possibly come back, we'd actually been connecting on some superficial level.

Or it may have been simply that, for the first time in a month, I was actually looking forward to a week of school, and had enough time while I was driving there — Jeanne and I had agreed to take turns — to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

"So, um, how does Jill get to school?" I asked nonchalantly.

Jeanne looked over at me like she was about to question my sanity, yet again.

"Humor me," I said.

"Her asshole boyfriend picks her up, like, five minutes before school starts. I don't think she's made it to her homeroom on time yet, but Mr. Adams has a hard-on for her, so she never gets called on it."

"And her current asshole boyfriend is?" I asked.

"Andy," she said, once again with the look.

"Andy... ?" I tried to prompt her.

"Andy Lebo? The quarterback? Of the football team? You really have just lost it, haven't you?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I kinda have."

She shook her head but she kept talking.

"She's been dating Andy since like last spring, when it became clear that he was going to be the starter."

"Wait a minute," I said. "That's not the guy she was with last week at the game. Andy Lebo's a string bean."

"Yeah, in tenth grade, maybe," Jeanne laughed. "So were you. Rumor is his Dad gets him steroids."

"What about all those other guys that picked Jill up over Christmas?"

"The college guys?" Jeanne asked. "Mostly old boyfriends, from last year, when they were seniors."

"And Jill was a freshman," I nodded.

Jeanne shrugged.

I smoothly pulled into the parking lot, and we made our way into the school. First period was my first Government test of the year, and as soon as I got the questions, I knew I'd pegged this class correctly. The major question — "describe how a bill becomes law" — was straight out of the textbook. I could even see the page in my mind; there were twenty-eight steps. I could only remember twenty-seven, so I made one up: "No. 21, the President pro tempore impresses the bill for the register." Did it make sense? No. Did it have a number? Damn straight.

In History, Mr. Anson began his analysis of Jacksonian democracy. I was very pleased to learn the extent to which it coincided with my analysis. There were some teachers, like Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Jenkins, with whom I was happy to disagree. They would grade my work based on its reasoning, not whether they agreed with its conclusion. Mr. Anson, though, was more likely to believe that anyone who held a contrary opinion was just wrong. Since my UVA admission depended on my being right almost one hundred percent of the time, I couldn't afford too many contrary opinions in his class.

Third period, Mrs. Palmer dropped the bomb. Literally. She walked around the room, a sadistic little smile on her face, dropping copies of "Moby Dick" on everybody's desk. We'd be finished with Bartleby this week, she told us. Chapters one through five to be read by next Monday, five through ten by the following Friday. The same schedule for the rest of the year. Five more chapters every Monday, and another five every Friday. There were lots of chapters, people, but they were small. A paper entitled "Why not call him Bob or Sam?" was due on the 20th of February. No, Mrs. Palmer would not explain the title; we should read chapters one through five first. She would answer the question next week, although her look implied that she hoped she wouldn't have to. Yes, Mrs. Palmer was aware that the weekend before the paper was due was a three-day weekend; students were free to turn in the paper on the preceding Friday if they wanted, but they'd get no additional credit.

In Astronomy, we learned that Aaron Fleischmann had contracted pneumonia as a follow-up to his mononucleosis, and that he was going to be home-schooled the rest of the semester. Mr. Carruthers asked if Cammie and I minded having each other as lab partners. I said no instantly; Cammie reminded me about the consequences of screwing with her admission to R.P.I. which, I'd since learned, was actually a very good engineering school in upstate New York. But she ultimately agreed to accept me as her new permanent partner.

And fifth period was Tanya. Oh, and Religion. But mostly Tanya. Who told me she'd had a nice weekend but she'd have probably rather spent it here with me.

"Probably?" I whispered.

She gave me a brief but beautiful smile.

"How do I know?" she asked me. "Yet?"

At lunch, I suddenly found myself with a full set of friends. Jeanne motioned us over to her table, where I sat next to her and Tanya sat next to Sammy. A week ago, I would have wanted nothing more than to eat lunch with a group of people. Today, what I really wanted was a chance to ask Tanya what "yet" meant.

I never got that chance the entire week. Not only had we been accepted into a new circle of friends, but there seemed to be one of them around us every minute of the day. With the exception of Cammie, who was probably going to be cool toward me for the rest of our lives, everyone else treated Tanya and I like we'd been part of the group forever. For that matter, Cammie and Tanya also seemed to get along great.

The only excitement during the school week came on Wednesday night, when Jeanne showed me what I was going to be wearing to the dance on Saturday.

"I am not," I protested.

"Oh yes you are," she said.

"It looks like somebody threw up on it," I pointed out.

"What were you going to wear?" she countered.

"I dunno," I said. "Jeans? A button-down shirt?"

She gave me a smug little smile.

"You'd have never gotten past the door," she said. "Dress code is seventies. Margie's got Mo sitting by the door for the first hour keeping out the undesirables."

Maurice "Mo" Perra was probably the biggest guy in the school. He'd been in the baseball team picture last year. I assumed he was the first baseman. Even on the pickup softball games we played in gym class back in the ninth grade, Mo had been "the" first baseman.

"They wore jeans in the seventies," I said hesitantly.

"Yeah, you try that out on Mo," Jeanne crossed her arms.

"So what the hell is this?"

"Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd," she said. "Saturday Night Live. Two wild and crazy guys. You want to see a clip?"

"I guess," I said. She'd downloaded one onto her computer and I had to admit that it was a good routine.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You got two shirts. Who's the other one for?"

"Sammy," she said proudly.

"I'm wearing the same outfit as Sammy Houghtaling?" I asked.

She nodded.

"No way," I said. "Tanya'll never —"

"Call her," Jeanne interrupted me.

I stomped off to my room to get my cell phone. Tanya wasn't picking up, but I did get a return text message: URAQT. I was a cutie.

"She already knows, doesn't she?" I asked when I returned to Jeanne's room.

Jeanne just smiled at me, and I stomped off back to my room again.

Then I returned for the shirt.

"What's Tanya going as?" I asked.

"It's a surprise," my sister smirked.

Then she gave me the pants that went with the shirt. The plaid pants. And the hat.

Women.

I was destined not to find out what Tanya was going as until Saturday night, when I rang the doorbell at the address Tanya had given me looking like a fruitcake. An actual fruitcake.

The woman who answered the door was older than I would have thought Tanya's mom should have been, perhaps in her mid-to-late-fifties. She gave me a long look up and down before she stepped back to admit me.

"Mrs. Szerchenko?" I asked hesitantly. "I'm Patrick Sterling."

"I know," she said coolly. "Please come in. Tanya will be right down."

Right down was apparently a more relative term than I was used to; I cooled my heels for ten minutes in the Szerchenkos' foyer until Tanya finally emerged at the top of the staircase.

"Oh my God," I blurted out.

She was dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt with short white shorts, accessorized with a white belt and a pair of white tennis shoes. The hairdo was unmistakably that of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, the look unmistakably that of one of Charlie's Angels.

"Oh my God," she snorted.

"You're gorgeous," I stammered.

"You're a riot," she giggled.

"Shall we go?" I said.

"Did you meet Mom and Dad?"

"Your mom," I shrugged.

"Then she just left you here?" Tanya sighed. "Figures. Come on."

She grabbed a long coat, and I escorted her out to my car. Mo Perra was sitting at the door of the gym, his white teeth flashing in his dark face. He gave me a good laugh and told me my twin was already inside. Then he gestured Tanya to open her coat. She took a step back and flashed him, and he gave her an appreciative whistle.

"Hey, buddy," I said. "Eyes forward."

"Gotta check everyone out, man," he said. "Chief's orders."

The one thing I had learned during the previous week was that Margie Williams was "The Chief." Margie was the president of the senior class, the organizer of all social events. In a nutshell, she was the eye of the John Marshall High School hurricane. If something needed arranging, like this dance, Margie would do it. And without delegating anything, either. Margie had created the idea for the dance, booked the D.J. with orders to play nothing that didn't come from the seventies, and led the crew that decorated the gym. They'd done a great job, too. With a few pieces of cloth, they'd made it look just like the inside of a tent. That and a disco ball were all that Margie needed. This was the indeed the Winter of our Disco-tent.

As I entered and looked around, I realized that everyone else in the gym had pretty much dressed in generic seventies clothes, and I did see a number of jeans. I frowned at Jeanne as we approached her table, and she just laughed at me. I was at the Jeanne Sterling table, and we had all done things the Jeanne Sterling way. Jeanne had outdone Tanya, and was attracting stares from across the room as the title character from the television show I Dream of Jeannie. I immediately revised my previous opinion of my sister's figure. She was a hottie. And smart, too, of course. Jeanne always did her homework. When one wise-ass pointed out that I Dream of Jeannie was a 1960s show, she smugly pointed out that the last show had aired on May 26, 1970. Then she giggled and stuck out her tongue.

Jeanne had saved us seats at her table with my wild and crazy friend Sammy and a bunch of other television characters. Cammie was a very convincing, if somewhat drab, Hot Lips Houlihan. Rabbit, in a white shirt and a maroon vest, on top of a maroon pair of pants, was a hysterical Keith Partridge.

Tommy Narburg was the best, as a slightly larger version of Gopher from the "Love Boat." He kept asking us if everything was okay, and did we need him to get us anything from the bar, which in our case was a table with punch. Tommy was great fun, but as the evening wore on, he kind of wore down. Part of it, I'm sure, was not having a date. Tanya, Cammie, and Jeanne did their best to drag him onto the dance floor, but there were times when we three couples were out there dancing and Tommy was sitting there by himself. Another part of it, though, was Andy Lebo and his gang, who kept walking by the table and yelling out "Hey, Woodchunk" and "Hey, buddy, time to go-fer another piece of pie, huh?" By the end, I'm sure he wished he'd picked another outfit.

For my part, I wished that Jill hadn't been a participant in the ribbing. She was hanging on Andy's arm for most of the evening. As far as I knew, she never actually said anything to Tommy, but she certainly joined in the laughter with Andy and his friends. At one point, I met her in the hallway leading to the boys' and girls' rooms, and asked her if she would please knock it off. She just rolled her eyes at me, as if she couldn't believe what a wuss I'd turned into.

The music was fun; I didn't know anything about disco, and with good reason. But there was some good disco — mostly the Village People — and the other tunes included some great rockers like Springsteen and Bob Seeger. Tanya was pretty much my constant dance partner. When she got up to dance with Sammy or Rabbit or Tommy, I just sat at the table and looked around. I wasn't about to dance with my sister, hottie or not, and I wasn't about to ask Cammie. The only other girl I danced with, in fact, was Margie, who came by to thank all of us for dressing up so "festively."

Margie wasn't my only other dance partner, though; it's just that I found hard to think of the third one as a "girl." As the party began nearing its scheduled conclusion, Margie stopped by the table one last time to ask if any of us knew Rachel Carter. We all looked blankly at each other, and then shrugged our shoulders and told her we didn't.

"Wait a minute," Rabbit said as Margie was about to leave to try the next table. "You mean Ms. Carter who works in the office?"

"Yes," Margie said eagerly. She followed Rabbit's gaze to me, where everyone else at the table was now looking, and raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, um, I do," I said sheepishly. "I know her. I mean, sort of. I'm sorry. I just think of her as Ms. Carter. Why?"

"She's one of the faculty chaperones," Margie said.

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Marsh Alien

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