The Boy Recession

  “Hunter, you are super-sweaty,” Diva tells me.

  “I’m aware,” I say. “And I can’t breathe. Can you get offa me?”

  She’s sitting on my lap, because we just finished this song, “We Both Reached for the Gun,” where I pretend to be a puppet master and she’s a puppet. The spotlights are really bothering me, and Diva’s weight on my legs is making my thighs go numb. I push her off, and she lands on her ass on the stage and whines, “Hunter!”

  Pulling my sticky T-shirt away from my chest, I stand up and start to walk offstage. I need to get out of these spotlights. But before I get to the stairs, Mrs. Martin calls out from her seat in the front row of the audience.

  “Billy Flynn!” she says. “Let’s take those last few measures again.”

  I trudge back toward the chair, which Diva’s sitting in now.

  “Can we do it without her in my lap?” I say. “She’s heavy. My legs are all sore.”

  “Hunter!” Diva whines again.

  “Get back into position,” Mrs. Martin says. “She is the puppet; you are pulling the strings. All of your body movements must be coordinated. And she must be mouthing the words at the same time you are singing the words. You must be completely attuned to each other.”

  “I don’t know if I should even sing any more,” I say, squinting out at Mrs. Martin with my hand up to shade my eyes. “My throat is sore.”

  “If your throat is sore, you are not singing properly,” Mrs. Martin says. “You should not be singing from your throat. You should be singing from your diaphragm.”

  “I’m singing the right way,” I snap. “I know how to sing. My throat isn’t sore because I’m singing. My throat is sore, so I don’t wanna sing.”

  “Sit down, Billy Flynn!”

  Diva stands up next to the chair and crosses her arms to show she’s pissed. When I’m in the chair and she lands on me with her full body weight again, I let out this involuntary grunt.

  “Jesus Christ, Hunter,” she hisses, without even looking back at me. “Get over yourself.”

  The piano guy starts the music, and Diva gets going with her puppet movements. Her arms are flinging and flailing all over the place, and she keeps hitting me in the face with her stupid elbows. I can’t wait for this crap to be over.

  When we finish the song, I push Diva off me again and head for the stairs, but Pam pops her head out of the stage curtains. She’s got her headset on, and she calls out, “Billy Flynn! Where are you going? You have a costume fitting!”

  “What?” I’m on the first step. “I can’t do it tonight. I’m sweaty as hell.”

  “Oh, you’re sweaty?” Pam says, holding up her clipboard. “I just hauled twelve boxes of dusty-ass costumes off a sketchy-ass truck and unpacked every single one of them to find the so-called pimp suit that you don’t even deserve. So I think you can expend the energy to try on a pair of pants.”

  I’m too tired to fight with Pam. So I go into the auditorium, where they’re fitting the costumes. I take off my pants in front of, like, ten people, and don’t even care. Pam puts the suit pants on me and starts sticking pins or needles or something all up and down them. I’m standing, feeling dizzy, and my body’s heating up like a generator.

  “Can I sit down?” I ask Pam. “I don’t feel well.”

  Diva is next to me, trying on her costume, and she looks over and rolls her eyes.

  “You don’t feel well? Seriously, Hunter?” she says. “Man up.”

  Man up? Pam actually lets me sit down, and the whole time she’s busy fitting my jacket, I’m thinking about how much I hate Diva. Hatred is rare for me. But my girlfriend—I definitely hate her. She’s gone from telling me what to wear to criticizing everything I wear and criticizing everything I do. I would dump her right now if I could do it without her screaming at me for three hours.

  I almost kissed Kelly the other day. I would have done it, too. But we got interrupted when the emergency drill ended. But really I should have just kissed her the second we got under the table. I should have kissed her months ago. But now instead I’m stuck with Diva, and Kelly is dating Johann. Kelly is awesome and funny—and nice, which, I’m realizing more and more from spending time with Diva, Pam, Amy, and Mrs. Martin, is a really rare thing in a girl. I knew she was awesome and funny and nice, but I didn’t do anything about it, because I’m lazy and stupid and a fucking slacker. I didn’t ask her out back then, and I didn’t kiss her the other day, and now I’m screwed and I have no one to blame but my own lazy ass.

  The more I think about this, the worse I feel. I’m all pissed at myself, sweaty, and my whole body hurts. Then I remember Kelly’s hand. It’s the weirdest thing, but when we were under that lab table, my hand was on top of her hand, and her hand was small and soft, and it felt really cool. Now I imagine her touching my forehead, smoothing my sweaty hair back with her palm, sliding her hand down my face and my neck. I’m thinking about it so hard that I can almost feel her hand. It’s like those guys dying of thirst in the desert who see water and try to drink it even though it’s really sand.

  “Ow! What the crap?” I say, jumping off the chair.

  “Did I stick you?” Pam asks. She’s holding pins between her teeth.

  “Yeah! The needle is still in there! Get it out!”

  That’s it. I’m done with this shit. I rip the jacket off and leave it on the chair. Pam tries to protest through the pins in her mouth, but I don’t even look at her. I unzip my suit pants and let them drop to the floor.

  “Hunter, what the hell?” Diva whines.

  I pull on my jeans and then I take off, running down the stairs and into the audience. Actually, I’m trying to run, but my body’s so weak that I’m actually jogging slowly. But I’m getting out of here.

  Mrs. Martin looks up from the orchestra pit and calls out, “Billy Flynn!”

  A girl in the audience says, “Hunter, your coat and your backpack are here,” as I pass her going up the aisle.

  But I ignore both of them and jog to the auditorium door and plow into it, and even though I’m weak as hell, it bangs open really loudly. My fever is making me crazy, and I imagine I’m running to Kelly and that she’ll be nice to me and touch me with her cool hands and not tell me to “man up” when I’ve got a nine-hundred-degree fever. But I realize I’m just running to anything that’s cold that will cool me off.

  So it’s a good thing I live in Wisconsin, because we have a lot of cold stuff lying around everywhere. Once I get outside, I stand for a minute to feel the cold air blow against my sweaty skin and to breathe in the fresh air. Then I walk over to the side of the building and stick my face in a huge pile of snow.

  CHAPTER 24: HUNTER

  “He Had It Coming: Chicago’s Violent Female Leads Too Familiar for Comfort?”

  “The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth, The Julius Journal, March

  So, after three hours waiting around in the ER and two blood tests, I found out I’ve got mono.

  When I stormed out of that rehearsal, I felt pretty badass. But then I realized I didn’t have my phone or a ride, and I couldn’t walk home because it was four degrees outside and I was in a T-shirt. So I had to sneak back inside to grab my stuff, and then sit out on the curb, waiting for my dad to pick me up. My doctor’s office was closed, so my dad drove me to Columbia St. Mary’s hospital in Milwaukee. Apparently doctors can’t give you medicine to get rid of mono; you just have to rest for a few weeks and hope it goes away. The ER doctor warned me that mono makes you so tired you sleep ten or fifteen hours a night, which made me wonder, How long have I had mono for? I’ve been trying to sleep ten or fifteen hours a night since puberty.

  So except for feeling shitty and sweating my ass off, being sick is pretty sweet. I get to stay in bed all day. No school. No homework. No musical practice. It’s awesome. I get to sleep until three in the afternoon and have my mom tell me, “Good for you! Rest up!”

  When I first disappeared from rehearsal, Diva freaked out and tried calling me
five hundred times. As soon as I got out of the ER, I texted her Got mono, can’t talk, can’t rehearse. Tell Mrs. Martin, and then shut my phone off.

  Apparently Diva spread the word about me being diseased pretty fast, because Eugene found out and called my house that same night. He let me know that Diva had been writing Facebook status updates on my “condition”:

  My poor boo is still home with swollen lymph nodes!

  At rehearsal, missing my Billy Flynn! Rest up for opening night, boo!

  My boo is starting to get better…. Get strong, boo!

  Her updates are ridiculous, considering she has no clue what’s going on with my lymph nodes or me. I refuse to text her or pick up her calls, and she refuses to visit me because she’s scared she’ll catch mono and miss the musical. But Eugene has come to visit me a bunch, and I think that he thinks I’m dying. A few days ago he brought rosary beads and spoke to me really seriously.

  “How are you feeling, Huntro?” he asked me in this low voice.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “You’re sick!”

  “I’m fine,” I told him. “I’m just sleeping all day.”

  “Huntro, this mono is serious stuff,” Eugene said. “Can the doctors do anything?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh my God!” Eugene sprung up from the chair in surprise and brought a fist up to his mouth.

  “No, no!” I sat up in bed. “Like, they don’t have to do anything. I just have to sleep for a while and it will get better.”

  “Huntro,” Eugene said, sitting down again and leaning forward. “Your illness has got me thinking about my own mortality. Seriously, man. I’ve started writing my will. And I’ve decided I’m leaving Bobbi ten thousand dollars.”

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “I know she and I aren’t dating anymore,” Eugene told me. “But finding all these people prom dates has made me think about love and compatibility…. I regret losing her. I do. I know we had our differences, with her being a Christian, and me being somewhat morally… ambivalent… but I really care about Bobbi. I want to take care of her, even if I catch your mono and die.”

  “No, I meant, like, what the hell?” I interrupted him. “I’m the one who’s sick, and you’re trying to have a heart-to-heart about you right now? I have to listen to your dumb ass blabber on all the time—give me ten thousand dollars.”

  After that visit, Eugene felt bad, so he did me a bunch of favors. He went and told Mrs. Martin that I was on my deathbed and couldn’t come to rehearsal. He started bringing me messages from school—homework from my teachers that I threw out right away, desperate pleas from George, who had to take my place as Billy Flynn and was going nuts from dealing with Diva. Today I’m lying in bed, feeling pretty great about not being Billy Flynn, when my dad yells up the stairs, “Hunter! Wake up, champ! You have a visitor!”

  I hear someone coming up the stairs and I figure it’s Eugene again, so I keep playing BrickBreaker on my phone and call out, “You got death threats or rosary beads today, gingerbread boy?”

  But it’s not Eugene—it’s Diva. She stomps really loudly into my room, wearing a big coat that looks like it’s made out of a dead bear. I wonder what made her finally decide to risk her precious lymph nodes to visit me.

  “Hello, Hunter,” Diva says. “How are you feeling?”

  “Uh… okay,” I say cautiously.

  “Oh, so you feel okay about cheating on me?” Diva says, putting her hand on her hip.

  What the hell? Is this girl delusional? Diva stomps the snow off her leather bitch boots and says, “I know about Kelly Robbins.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Two people in school have mono,” Diva informs me. “You are one of them, and Kelly is the other.”

  “How did she get it?” I ask, genuinely confused.

  The look on Diva’s face says, Are you a complete moron?

  “So, what, are you denying it now? You’re denying you guys hooked up? I don’t get it, Hunter.”

  I start to tell her that nothing happened, but then I realize something: This is my way out. Sure, this girl is looming over me like she’s Godzilla and I’m a flimsy Japanese building, but I always knew this breakup would be violent, and I gotta do it sometime. This time is as good as any. “Uh, no,” I say. “I guess I’m not denying it.”

  “We are over,” Diva tells me. “We are completely over. And don’t think about coming crawling back to me. I don’t want your gross disease.”

  Swinging her hair, Diva stomps out of my room, calling over her shoulder, “I’m never speaking to you again. Except for when I have to, in the musical.”

  Once she’s gone, this huge weight lifts off my shoulders. I don’t have a girlfriend anymore. I can wear whatever color shirt I want. I can walk down the hallway at school without getting harassed. I’m free.

  And it was Kelly who set me free. Kelly was my escape. I could kiss that girl. And ya know what? I will kiss that girl. As soon as I get back to school, I’m gonna grab her, and I’m gonna kiss her.

  CHAPTER 25: KELLY

  “Mono Mystery: Connect the Cough Drops to See Who’s Been Kissing Whom”

  Special Graphics Edition of “The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth, The Julius Journal, March

  So does Diva still hate me?” I ask, propping myself up in bed with a bunch of pillows and stuffed animals my little sister, Lila, lent me to make me feel better.

  This is my second sick visit from Darcy and Aviva. When they came over last week, Darcy was wearing a surgical mask and wouldn’t come past the doorway. But over the weekend she did some research and found out I can only give it to her if she shares my toothbrush or lip gloss or kisses me. So today she’s actually in my room, organizing homework assignments for me. Aviva brought me a chai tea latte from Starbucks (“This counts as fluids, right?”). This is why I need two best friends.

  “I think she’s toned down the hostility a little bit,” Aviva says, curling up on the foot of my bed. “Here, let me check my phone…. Okay, her last Tweet about you was a whole twelve hours ago. That’s progress!”

  “What was it?”

  “ ‘Still hating that diseased hussy,’ ” Aviva says. “Oh, and there’s a sad face, too.”

  “But she doesn’t have mono yet?” I ask hopefully.

  “I wish,” Aviva says. “It gives you a sore throat, right? Maybe if she got it, she would shut up for a few days. Or give up singing.”

  “No one else has mono yet?”

  “No one else. Just you and Hunter,” Darcy says from my desk, where she’s rubbing antibacterial gel into her hands. “It’s so weird. It’s actually ironic. You know what you have? Ironic mono.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “It really is ironic!” Darcy continues, fascinated. “I mean, you got mono, but you didn’t even get kissed!”

  “I know,” I snap.

  “But you did have that almost-kiss,” Aviva says. “Which I still don’t understand, by the way. What is an almost-kiss?”

  I must have explained what happened between Hunter and me under the lab table five times, but Aviva still doesn’t get it. She pulls her knitting out of her giant purse—she heard the actors from Gossip Girl were knitting one another scarves, and she decided to knit me a get-well one—and waits for an explanation.

  “I told you we just had that moment before a kiss. You know, you’re looking at each other, and you know it’s about to happen.”

  Aviva shakes her head. “I don’t think I ever had that moment. I usually dive-bomb them.”

  I sigh and slump back into my pillow pile. I hate being sick. I’ve been out of school for only four days, and I already feel like I’m behind on everything. On top of that, there’s the Hunter situation. Diva is going around school telling people I stole her boyfriend, but I didn’t steal him. If I stole him, I would actually have him.

  “But the ironic mono was actually good!” Darcy says. “The ironic mono broke
up Hunter and Diva. He’s single now, thanks to the mono. And you’re single now, too.”

  That’s true. I am single—Johann and I broke up in the nurse’s office the day I got mono. I had been feeling bad all day, and finally Johann convinced me to go to the nurse’s office. He stayed with me while I waited to get my temperature taken, and I felt so sick and also guilty about not really liking a nice guy like Johann. Finally I started to cry, and poor Johann was totally bewildered. When I pulled myself together, I didn’t know how to explain what was wrong. Everything seemed wrong.

  “You’re so nice,” I began, between my gasps. “You’re so nice to sit here when I’m sick, and gross, and…”

  “It’s okay.” Johann shrugged and patted my arm.

  “Don’t…. You don’t have to touch me,” I told Johann apologetically, as I shifted loudly against the really noisy crinkly paper on the nurse’s exam table.

  “Um, Kelly?” Johann said. “Do you think we… Do you think we should be really going out? It’s just… every time I touch you or anything, you tell me not to.”

  “No, I don’t!” I protested.

  But what he was saying was true.

  “I feel bad that you’ve been sick so much,” Johann continued. “But maybe we should… I don’t know, do you think you should just focus on getting better for now?”

  Always the gentleman, Johann was even considerate while he was dumping me. Even now, a week later, I feel guilty and awkward when I think about him.

  “You are single!” Aviva realizes, looking up from her very tangled knitting. “Ooh, you should ask Hunter to the prom!”

  “The prom?” I say. “There’s still snow on the ground! Isn’t it a little early?”

  “Not according to the female population of Julius,” Darcy says, rolling her eyes. “You’ve been missing the mass panic that started last week. A few girls got dates, and then everyone without a date got freaked out. Pam is selling copies of her prom contract. And Kristin Chung asked George!”