Danny Dingledine raises a hand. The class giggles, which is what we do whenever Danny Dingledine does anything. Danny is hilarious even when he doesn’t try to be, which I’m guessing has saved him many an ass-kicking through the years.
“Yes, Mr. Dingledine,” says Herr Weingarten.
We giggle.
“Hi, yes, hello,” says Danny Dingledine. (More giggling.) “I don’t know what schadenfreude means.”
The new kid raises his hand but doesn’t wait to be called on. “It’s when someone derives great pleasure from another person’s misfortune. Literally translates to ‘harmjoy.’”
Mayday, mayday, competence in the air. The rest of us look at each other, knowing what’s at stake. For three years, we’d worked hard to curate a space in which the minimum amount of work was required, collectively lowering standards until low standards were the norm.
And now here’s this new kid all knowing shit and stuff.
Herr Weingarten looks about as shocked as a teacher who hasn’t had a student voluntarily provide a correct answer in over a decade. He commends the new kid and tells him, as a reward, he can have first pick at his German name for the year.
“I’ll take Norbert,” says the new kid. The entire class, Herr Weingarten included, turns their eyes to me. Thing is, I’ve been Norbert for three years. No one is more Norbert than me.
I am Norbert.
Herr Weingarten is all, “Um, well, as it happens,” and stumbles through a lengthy explanation as to why this kid can’t be Norbert, the gist of which is Noah has dibs.
“Herr Weingarten,” I say. “It’s okay. I can just be, um . . . Klaus.”
Based on the class’s response, you’d think I’d just stripped down to socks only, propped my feet on my desk, and lit up a doobie.
Herr Weingarten, very quietly: “But you’re Norbert.”
Yes, I think. I am Norbert.
The new kid, having now recognized his misstep, speaks up. “It’s fine, Herr Weingarten. I can be Klaus.”
A collective sigh sweeps through the classroom.
I smile at the new kid. “Danke, meine neue Freundin.”
Herr Weingarten clears his throat, but before he can say anything, the new kid—Klaus—jumps in. “Actually,” he says, all ac-tually, which is just so Klaus, “you called me your new girlfriend. I think what you meant was, Danke, mein neuer Bekannter, or, ‘Thank you, my new acquaintance,’ which seems more appropriate.”
Actually, Klaus, what I meant was I would derive great pleasure from your misfortune.
“Thank you, Klaus,” I say, teeth gritted.
“Bitte, Norbert.”
Herr Weingarten’s customary lecturing process includes long tangents that do not require the presence or participation of other humans, namely us, his students; later in the year this class will morph into more of a study hall, but for now I let my mind wander back to the first time I ever walked into Alan Rosa-Haas’s bedroom.
The kid had more comic books than I’d ever seen in one place. Shelves upon shelves of them, piles on the floor, posters, bedsheets, you name it. I’ve never really known much about comics, but I spotted a few familiar names—Batman, Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Aquaman, Green Lantern—and eventually I learned the name of Alan’s preferred niche: DC Comics. I learned other things too, things Alan wouldn’t shut up about, and even though I usually zoned out during his little rants, some of the information seeped its way into my brain. Like the fact that most (though not all) superheroes were divided between DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and that there were factions who bought wholeheartedly into one or the other, and if you went deeper into those factions, you might find individuals who, on the Spectrum of Fandom, fell less on the side of “casual hobby” and more on the side of “religious fanaticism.” Alan wasn’t religiously fanatic about DC Comics, but he wasn’t far off, which is to say, the Alan I know would never sing the praises of Tony Stark, because the Alan I know was never obsessed with Iron Man, because Iron Man is not a DC character.
“Herr Norbert?”
Herr Weingarten stares at me in anticipation.
“Yes?” I say. “I mean—um—ja?”
He sighs heavily, pulls off his glasses, and rubs a temple. “Just a sentence,” Herr Weingarten mumbles. “That’s all I ask. One sentence describing your day.”
I have this theory about teachers, and what separates the good ones from the bad: it’s not that good teachers don’t think about quitting; it’s that they never look like they’ve already quit.
“Um, well,” I say. “It’s been okay so far, I guess. Sort of a rocky start, but—”
“Auf Deutsch, bitte, bitte,” says Weingarten, temple rubbing with increased velocity.
“Right. Okay, so . . .” My phone vibrates in my pocket, the alarm reminding me to read Penny’s letter from this morning. “Dinge beginnen, für Norbert . . . um, weirden zu bekommen.”
Herr Weingarten rubs those temples, plops backward into his desk chair.
“Weirden isn’t a word,” says Klaus the new kid. “In German or English.”
“Hey, Klaus,” says Danny Dingledine, “what’s German for butt-for?”
“What’s a butt for?” says Klaus, and the class loses it, but all I can do is count down the minutes to the end of the day. Between Mom’s scar and the shape-shifting dog from the other night, I don’t need another looming question mark. One look in Alan’s room, and I’ll know if he’s mysteriously switched comic allegiances.
23 → the pros and cons of Penny Oakman
My darling brother,
Due to your irrational apathy in regard to the very brilliant film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I am compelled to make a list of pros and cons for you. (Do you know about “pros and cons,” darling? It’s when you write down all the reasons you should do something [pros] and all the reasons you shouldn’t [cons], and then compare those reasons side by side.) I believe when you see the overwhelming evidence in the PROS section, you will have no choice but to agree. Now pay attention!
Should Noah Watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Penny?
reasons for (pros) and against (cons)
Pros:
It’s a really good movie
Audrey Hepburn
Quality time with Penny
Audrey Hepburn
The fashion, darling
Audrey Hepburn
Based on a novel by Truman Capote
Audrey Hepburn
Good music (well, decent anyway)
Audrey Hepburn
Cons:
The racist depiction of Holly Golightly’s neighbor, Mr. Yunioshi. No doubt, this is an absolute con, and a total drag on the movie. But you’re in luck! Your terribly clever and resourceful sister (that’s me!) long ago took the liberty of jotting down the time stamps of every scene that includes Mr. Yunioshi, and can happily report her ability to fast-forward said scenes with her eyes closed.
So. Will you watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s with your darling sister? Please check one:
Yes, of course I will ☐
No, I never will ☐
I’m still considering ☐
Love always
(and I do, even when you’re being ridiculous),
Penelope
24 → the arpanet, the golden age, and an exclusive look inside the first celebrity canine wedding!
I stand on the front porch of the Rosa-Haas house, somewhat apprehensive, gripping my sister’s letter in my pocket like a charm, imagining two scenarios: Alan’s room is the same as it ever was, like DC vomited comics everywhere; Alan’s room now rotates in the Marvel universe.
Before I can build up the courage to ring the bell, the door swings open.
“Noah?”
“Oh. Hey,
Val.”
She’s changed into cutoff shorts and that AC/DC tee with the ripped-wide collar. No one scrubs like Val.
“You just standing out here?” she asks.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Care to accompany me to the mailbox?”
We walk down to the end of the drive, where Val pulls out a small stack of mail and a People magazine. “So you were standing on the porch, what—hoping I’d intuit your presence?”
I shrug. “It worked, didn’t it?”
Back on the porch, Val says, “I’m making pegao if you want some.”
“Sure.”
Inside, she walks down the hallway, leaving the door open for me to follow. It’s a very familiar move, very Val, very East Egg. In the kitchen, she tosses the mail onto the counter, adjusts the temperature on the stove.
“Alan around?” I ask.
“Seriously, No?”
“What.”
“He has practice.”
“Oh. Right.”
I sit at the counter and watch Val stir the pegao with one hand while navigating her phone with the other.
“Shit.”
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, I’m just—not supposed to disturb the rice at the bottom.” She puts a lid on the pan, adjusts the temperature again. “It’ll be fine.”
“Your mom usually uses a different pot, I think.”
The look she gives me—my God. “First off, it’s a caldero, not a pot. Second, you can’t even say pegao, what makes you think you know how to cook it?”
I should have lied. Rung the doorbell, said I’d forgotten something in Alan’s room; that would have gotten me up there, no questions asked. Now I’m committed to this pegao and hanging with Val until it’s ready.
On the counter, one of the Kardashian sisters smiles up at me from the cover of People magazine. I pick it up, read the subtitle: AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK INSIDE THE FIRST CELEBRITY CANINE WEDDING!
“This is ridiculous.”
“What?” Val looks up from her phone. “Oh yeah. Clearly a slow week.”
“Remind me why she’s famous?”
“Sex tape, I think? Went viral?”
“Freaking Internet.” I thumb through the first few pages. “Should be called something else. Internet sounds too harmless.”
“I don’t think it was called that in the beginning, was it?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Here, I’ll google it,” Val says.
“How very meta of you.”
She pushes herself up onto the counter by the stove, and a second later she’s got it. “Okay, looks like its original name was the Arpanet.”
“That’s not better at all.”
“Invented by Robert E. Kahn and Vinton Cerf.”
“Way to ruin everything, Bobby and Vint. Couldn’t even get the name right.”
“You do know people fall in love online, right? Form lifelong friendships, find jobs, houses. It’s a place where the marginalized have a voice, where we can all gain a broader worldview—”
I hold up the magazine. “Where we can become famous for nothing?”
“Like everything else, Noah. You take the good with the bad.”
I toss aside Kardashian as if that’ll show her a thing or two. “I bet the nineties were great. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, no smartphones, flannel far as the eye could see.”
“I think we need to cool it with the Gilmore Girls binging for a bit.”
“You know what I miss most, though?”
“You can’t miss it, No, you weren’t alive.”
“The part where not everyone in the known universe knew everything about everyone else in the known universe.”
“You’re hopeless, you know that, right?”
“Just a sliver of anonymity is all I’m asking. Like, if I could take a trip to the fucking bathroom without my second cousin in North Carolina liking it, that would be great.”
“If they’re liking it, you’re posting it, which in this case raises some questions.”
“And it’s not like I need to know when everyone else goes to the bathroom. Or like, you had stewed rabbit with fresh rosemary for breakfast.”
“So quit,” says Val.
“What?”
“I’m sick of people shitting on social media like they don’t have a choice. This isn’t mandatory participation. If you hate it, quit. No one cares.”
“That’s just it,” I say. “The act of quitting is itself a statement. Like slamming the door on your way out of a party or ending a text with a period.”
“Noah, your online presence is roughly the equivalent of a silent fart in the middle of an empty field. I think the world will keep spinning should you go gentle into that good night.”
“Very poetic of you.”
“Also, you end texts with periods all the time.”
“Yeah, I feel bad about that.”
Val slams her phone on the counter. “Four hours.”
“What?”
“Four hours. That’s how long I spent on my last post. It was Nico with the Velvet Underground, and it was fucking awesome.”
“Val.”
“I know social media sucks sometimes. But it’s also a gathering of minds. You know how hard I work on my art, how important it is to me. The Arpanet is my gallery, Noah.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Val swivels on the counter to face the stove, pulls the lid off the caldero. “Son of a bitch, the pegao is toasted.” She slides down onto the floor, turns off the stove, and pushes the caldero to the back burner.
“I thought it was supposed to be that way.”
“It’s supposed to be crispy, not . . . like this.” For a second Val just stands there staring at the stove.
“Val, I’m really sorry.”
She turns toward the hallway. “I’m going for a swim. You can use that moral compass of yours to find your way out.”
25 → monsters
But I don’t leave, not yet.
Upstairs, outside Alan’s bedroom door, I think of how often I still look under the bed for monsters. I know nothing will be there, but I also know that at some point later that night my arm will be hanging off the edge of the bed, and I’ll imagine some scaly-skinned hand reaching up, coiling around my wrist, and I’ll imagine the monster pulling me out, pulling me under into darkness, and so I get down on the floor and look first because I know I’ll need the proof later.
I turn the knob and push the door open just wide enough to get my head through.
* * *
“I’ll call him later,” I say out loud. No one hears me, or I don’t think they do, which is another reason I love walking: very conducive to thinking out loud. “I’ll call him and ask him,” I say, but no, this needs to be in person. I need to see his face when I ask, see how absurd a question he thinks it is; and I need him to see mine, see that I’m being real with him. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” and—as if my mind is playing out the afternoon in reverse—I hear Val say, It was Nico with the Velvet Underground, and it was fucking awesome. I pull out my phone in a sudden panic. “No-no-no-no-no-no-no,” but yes, there it is, the monster under the bed. Scroll, scroll, checking, double-checking date stamps, maybe she’s just changed courses, but no, “No, no, no . . .”
I remember the day Val told me her idea about movie-related photos, how she’d labored over which film to start with, ultimately landing on her favorite movie of all time: Kill Bill. And I remember, more recently, how excited she’d been when her Star Wars: The Last Jedi Rey-themed post put her over 100k followers.
I remember these things because they happened.
Phone in pocket now, I spend the rest of the walk home trying not to be sick. Through the front door, beep-beep-hey-honey, an
d Fluffenburger the Freaking Useless is jumping and yapping at my heels, and Penny whispers, “See? He’s changed,” and Mom is in the kitchen with her hair pulled back, that scar more visible than ever, and all I can do is go to my room, shut the door, shut out the world. All I can do is wish I’d never looked under the bed.
Val’s feed is all music now.
And Alan’s room is filled with Marvel.
26 → a concise history of me, part twenty-six
350 B.C.E.
Aristotle writes Parva Naturalia, a seven-piece collection on the body and soul, including a treatise called De Insomniis—or, On Dreams—in which he analyzes the toll imagination takes on our dreams, and the way our waking brains process afterimages in order to differentiate between reality and unreality.
Our sleeping brains do no such thing.
It goes like this: You see an animated movie containing a dragon in tights. You walk outside and imagine that same dragon in tights flying through the sky. Having just seen this image in a movie, you can picture it easily, and depending how imaginative a person you are, it may be a fairly strong rendering. But you are a reasonable individual, able to distinguish those things that are externally present from those that are imagined. Dragons do not exist. And even if they did, they would not wear tights. (Of this, you are relatively certain.)
Later that night, however, in a dream, you see that dragon in tights again, only now the sucker really exists, or at least you could swear it does, because it’s just so real, and of course it wears tights, what else would a dragon wear to cover its legs and hindquarters and, moreover, you just heard that dragon declare an affinity for The Nutcracker, which, as it so happens, was produced by your uncle Orville’s mechanic’s pet gerbil, a real go-getter named Rodney. Whatever piece of your brain had so easily distinguished external reality from perceived unreality was no longer in use during sleep.