The Boy Recession

  “You think she’s gonna eat him alive?” Aviva asks, watching the scene unfold between Diva and Hunter.

  “I love him,” I blurt out.

  “What?” Darcy’s blue eyes are huge.

  “You love him?” Aviva sounds skeptical.

  “Okay, no, no,” I say. “I don’t love him. I just don’t know how to announce something like that. I only see this kinda stuff in romantic comedies.”

  “You like him,” Aviva says, as though she’s correcting my grammar.

  “Yes,” I say miserably.

  “You like Hairface Hunter?” Darcy says.

  “I like him,” I repeat, hopelessly.

  The three of us are standing and watching as Diva brushes Hunter’s hair back from his face.

  “Push her off,” Aviva says to me. “Push her off his lap.”

  “I can’t push her off!”

  Aviva and Darcy start coming up with other plots, but I feel helpless, standing there hoping that she doesn’t kiss him. Please, don’t let her kiss him.

  CHAPTER 11: HUNTER

  “Halloween Costume Roundup: Could Pirate Dave Have at Least Tried to Be Creative?”

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

  You got in late last night!” my mom says when she comes into my room.

  It’s 3 PM on the Saturday after homecoming, and I’m still in bed. I’m actually awake—I’m sitting up against the wall with my guitar on my stomach, picking out chords—but I’m still in bed. I love my bed so much that sometimes I stay in it for a whole weekend.

  Most moms would probably be pissed if they came into their son’s room and he was lazing under a pile of crap that included an open package of those orange peanut-butter crackers. Not my mom. She also doesn’t mind that I was out ’til 1 AM last night, when Dave, who was angry about being designated driver for the homecoming party, literally pushed me out of his slow-moving car and onto my lawn. All she says when she sits down on my super-comfortable broken-down mattress is: “I’m glad you could sleep in this morning! You need it. How was the game last night?”

  She reaches over and brushes my hair out of my eyes.

  “Good,” I tell her, yawning and dropping my guitar pick onto my blanket. “Eugene got hurt, but he’ll be okay.”

  “He got to play in the game?” my mom says. “Good for him!”

  “Nah. Actually,” I say, “it was kind of a… warm-up injury. I don’t know if he’ll ever get to play.”

  “I’m sure he will,” my mom says. “He needs time to learn the game. He’ll get his chance.”

  My mom is used to underdogs from her job with the Milwaukee public school system, where she does art therapy with “problem kids.” That sounds pretty depressing, but my mom is good at it, and the kids like her. She’s big into self-expression, so her students get to decide on their own projects. This one kid who stabbed someone in a fight started working with my mom on a Jackson Pollock project, where he would go in a room and throw paint around and make these gigantic, crazy paintings. He got so into it that he started bringing paintbrushes to school instead of knives.

  Her teaching style—valuing self-expression and personal freedom—definitely shows up in her parenting, too. When I was growing up, she would let me wear whatever I wanted. I could wear my Halloween costume to school and refuse to cut my hair for four years, and she was cool with it.

  When I get my pick and start playing the guitar again, my mom watches me for a few minutes, smiling.

  “Did you write that one?” she asks.

  “Yeah. I’m starting a song,” I tell her. “I never finish them, though.”

  “I have a bunch of staff paper downstairs that I took from the school,” my mom says. “You should write down what you’ve written so far!”

  “Yeah. I have to figure this part out first,” I say. “I keep messing it up.”

  “Well, I stole a lot of paper,” my mom says, winking, and then whispers, “So you can make lots of mistakes.”

  My mom gives me a hug, which is really brave, because I haven’t showered and I still smell like Dave’s car. She doesn’t seem to mind. Then she gets up, and as she pulls the door shut behind her, she says, “There’s bacon downstairs, too.”

  Half an hour later, I’m still in bed. The only thing that’s changed is that a pile of blank staff paper and a plate of bacon crumbs are in bed with me. I’m still leaning against the wall, picking at my guitar, when my dad comes bursting into my room.

  “Let’s get going!” he says, clapping his hands. His clap is so loud it hurts my ears. “Let’s go and get a pumpkin.”

  “What?” I yawn at him. “When is Halloween? Soon?”

  “Halloween is next week!”

  Whoa. Seriously?

  “We’ve gotta get ready,” my dad is saying. “We’ve gotta stock up on candy, we’ve gotta put the spiderwebs out on the bushes, get the fog machine out…. What if we did a haunted-house thing this year? Whadda you think about that? You and I could hide in the bushes, and when kids come out, we’ll jump out….”

  This plan sounds like something we could get sued for. Plus, I’m not sure I want to spend Halloween night hiding out in a bush with my dad, waiting to jump out and make little kids cry. I’ve gotta go out with Derek and six cans of shaving cream and make bigger people cry. But for now, to make my dad happy, I’ll go get a pumpkin.

  Let me give you some advice here: People who want to have the sex talk with you will act the same way as people who want to murder you. First they get you in their car, so they’re in control and you can’t escape. Then they drive you someplace in the middle of nowhere. Today my dad takes me to a farm on the outskirts of Whitefish Bay. On the hunt for one of those huge monster pumpkins they inject steroids into, my dad treks farther and farther back in the field, back where there’s a lot of wet grass and mud and animal shit, and my sneakers are sinking into the ground. When we’re back in the last few rows of pumpkins—this is the isolation thing I’m talking about—my dad says, “So I saw Gene Pluskota at the hardware store this morning. He said Eugene has a girlfriend!”

  Wow. Eugene works fast. When did he tell his dad about Bobbi? It had to be sometime between midnight last night, when they stopped making out long enough to agree that they were actually dating, and 9 AM, when my dad was at the hardware store.

  “So…” my dad follows up, grunting as he rolls this huge pumpkin over. No go. It’s all rotten on the back side. “Anything going on with you in that department?”

  Crap. Well, I guess he had to ask about my love life eventually. But I don’t have a lot to tell him. Some people think Eugene and I are dating, because we’re always together and he pays for my food. I do hook up with girls, but my hook-ups are pretty sketchy. Usually I’m drunk or the girl’s drunk, or she’s pissed at another dude who rejected her, and we’re in some weird location. Once I made out with a girl in Dave’s smelly parked car in the Applebee’s parking lot. Maybe it means something that girls kiss me only in dark places. I tell my dad, “Uh, not too much going on.”

  I go over to this huge pumpkin and try to check out the bottom side.

  “Well, I think your stock is up,” my dad tells me. “I think you’re growing into your looks,” he continues.

  Uh… What? Seriously, Dad? What is that, the consolation prize of compliments?

  My dad’s comment does remind me of something Eugene said last night, though. When we were waiting for his X-rays, he told me Bobbi’s friends have been talking about me. “Some of them are hot for you, Huntro,” he told me. “They said your hair was cute.” Then he corrected himself. “Well, they called it ‘messy cute.’ ”

  I didn’t know if “messy cute” was good or bad, and I didn’t really believe Eugene anyway, but then later at the party, Diva Price sat on my lap. Diva is one of Bobbi’s friends, and she’s kind of loud, but she’s not too bad-looking.

  I didn’t hook up with her, though. I had just chugged a beer, and I was still
walking that tightrope between puking and not puking.

  “… So if you ever need any advice,” my dad is saying, “you know the guy to come to. I think I had some moves, back in the day….”

  Then my dad goes off on some tangent and ends up talking about the guy from the Old Spice commercials, and I realize that my dad’s not going to murder me or give me the sex talk. He just wants to bond. My dad’s been really into bonding with me since he lost his job. I think it makes him feel like he’s doing something. Like, even if he’s not making any progress finding a job, at least he’s getting some quality time with his son. Walking through the pumpkin patch, I find the biggest one in the back row and roll it all around to make sure it looks good. Then I point it out to my dad, who picks it up by himself, which is impressive.

  “Wow, yeah, this one looks good!” he says. I grab the other side, and we start backing up. It’s a long-ass way back to the table where you pay for stuff, and my arms hurt already.

  “You know what we need?” he says. “Did you see, on the table, those huge carving knives? We should go crazy with carving this year….”

  My dad needs to find a job soon, because I need a break from the quality time. I can’t lift stuff like this anymore.

  CHAPTER 12: KELLY

  “Gold-Digger Guys: Warning Signs”

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

  Kelly! Hey, Kelly!”

  The last class bell just rang, and Bobbi Novak is chasing me down the hallway, her heels clicking and squeaking against the tile floor. I turn around to talk to her, mostly because I want to get close enough to check out her necklace, a sparkling light blue stone dangling from a thin gold chain resting in the deep chasm of Bobbi’s cleavage. The much-talked-about necklace is a gift from Eugene, who is now officially Bobbi’s boyfriend. Her Facebook profile picture is the two of them, taken last week, when they dressed up as Hugh Hefner and a Playboy Bunny for Halloween.

  “I’m organizing Open-Mic Night this year, and I’d love you to be part of it!” Bobbi says.

  “Oh, I’m definitely coming. Aviva and Darcy and I go every year.”

  “Actually, I was hoping you would perform!” Bobbi says. “You’re so amazing on the flute, and everyone would love it if you’d play something!”

  I seriously doubt that. I can’t imagine getting up on the Julius stage on a Friday night and serenading a rowdy, half-drunk audience with a Mozart aria.

  “Maybe next year,” I say. “Have you asked Amy to perform? She’s an amazing dancer.”

  “I have her name right here!” Bobbi says, pointing to her clipboard. “She’s leading our new stomp group. I’m so excited to watch them! But you should—”

  “Sorry, I’ve gotta run in here and get something! Sorry!” I say, cutting Bobbi off. I back up against the band room’s door and escape inside.

  When I go to the cubby to take out my flute, I see Hunter. He’s sitting on the first level of the bandstand. I’ve noticed that he almost never sits on chairs—he spends most of his time in this room balanced up on the railings of the bandstand, swinging his legs, or sometimes he’ll hop up onto the closed lid of the grand piano, except when Johann is around. Even though he’s younger than us, Johann makes both Hunter and me want to behave ourselves. Right now Hunter’s playing a few chords on his guitar, stopping and starting the same chords over again. It’s been less than a week since I realized that I like Hunter, and now I find him alone, looking cute. Maybe Aviva’s right, and the universe wants us to be together.

  “Hey,” I say.

  Hunter starts and drops his guitar pick. When he turns around and sees me, a slow smile comes across his face.

  “Hey!” he says. “What are you up to?”

  I grab one of Johann’s music theory textbooks off the piano before sitting down on the bandstand next to Hunter.

  “I thought I’d brush up on my dotted quarter notes and sforzandos,” I tell him. “I think Johann’s teaching my kids so much that they know more than me now.”

  “Seriously! That kid is intense. He knows so much. He explained to my kids how Beethoven wrote music when he was deaf! It blew my mind!” Hunter says with a laugh.

  “And he can play every instrument!” I add, opening my flute case on my lap and starting to twist the headpiece in.

  “You know those one-man bands, where the guy has the harmonica in his mouth and the drum kit strapped to his back? I think Johann could be one of those,” I say.

  “No way,” he says. “Not in those khakis. He’s too serious! I mean, he’s fifteen, and my kids call him ‘Mr. Johann.’ ”

  I bring the flute to my mouth, test out a note, and then lower it to pull the headpiece out, which changes the pitch.

  “Is it really that hard to make a sound on that thing?” he asks me. “All your little flute girls are always huffin’ and puffin’ over there.”

  “It’s harder than it looks,” I tell him, adding, with mock arrogance, “I’ve got mad skills.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Hunter says, tilting his head and grinning at me.

  “You think you can do it?”

  “Well, I’m no one-man band, but I think I can handle it.”

  When I give him the flute, our hands overlap for a second. Hunter puts his fingers in the wrong place, but he blows a pretty decent note.

  “Not bad, Fahrenbach,” I say. “But what can you play on that thing?”

  I’m looking at the guitar.

  “Uh, well, I can play anything, kind of,” Hunter says. “I mean, I just listen to stuff, and I play it back. Beatles, Hendrix, Clapton, whatever. Acoustic stuff, Ani DiFranco…”

  “You play Ani DiFranco songs?” I say, staring at him. “You know who Ani DiFranco is?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Hunter says. “I listen to everything. What, you don’t think I’m a fan of, like, bisexual feminist folk songs?”

  “You’ve got hidden depths.”

  “When you rock, you rock, Robbins,” Hunter says. “Nah, but mostly I play your basic Stoner’s Greatest Hits. Ya know, ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis, ‘Ants Marching’ by Dave Matthews Band, ‘The General’ by Dispatch…”

  Hunter starts with “Wonderwall,” but then, as he’s playing, the melody changes and all of a sudden he’s playing “Ants Marching.” Then “Ants Marching” slows down into the chorus of “The General.” Then it all flows into another Oasis song I can’t remember the name of. It’s amazing—Hunter’s finding the exact right notes and chords that let one song in one musical key meld into a different song in a different musical key.

  “Did you write that?” I ask him, so impressed.

  “That?” Hunter picks out a few notes of the last song. “That’s ‘Champagne Supernova.’ That’s Oasis.”

  “No, the whole thing. The medley. Did you write the medley?”

  “Oh!” Hunter shrugs. “I’m just playing all the songs I know, basically. They work together. You know, something like this…”

  And he starts playing and singing a song I love—“Crash into Me” by Dave Matthews Band. He’s singing it the same hoarse way Dave Matthews sings it, and his voice is really good. He transitions from “Crash Into Me” back to “Champagne Supernova,” then trails off.

  “Yeah, so, enough of that,” Hunter says. “It’s awkward with the words, ’cause I’ll be singing about love or whatever and then suddenly I’m talking about people getting high.”

  “No! You’re good!” I insist, leaning toward him. “You’re seriously good.”

  “Nahhhhh,” Hunter drawls, relaxing his legs, which lowers his guitar.

  “Yes! You can really sing. I had no clue.”

  “I just sing,” Hunter says, shrugging. “I dunno.”

  “You’re actually talented!”

  That sounds terrible, so we both laugh as soon as I say it.

  “I write some stuff, too,” Hunter says.

  “You write songs?” My voice is even squeakier and more ridiculous.

  ??
?Well, no, not songs,” Hunter says. “I start songs, but I never finish them. I just write, like, four bars of music, and then I play it over and over.”

  “Did you write what you were playing when I came in?” I ask. “I wanna hear it!”

  After I pester him, Hunter plays a verse of a song that’s really, really good.

  “I get stuck after that last chord,” Hunter says.

  “Here, play the end for me again.”

  We’re sitting so close that my leg is right next to his guitar, and it feels cozy, even though we’re in a big empty room.

  “What about a G chord next?” I suggest. Then, after he plays it, “No, that’s not what I’m thinking. Try a G seventh?”

  A half-hour goes by, and the song is coming together. I’m giving Hunter suggestions and listening to him try things out until we have three verses and a chorus figured out.

  “That’s a cool sound right there,” Hunter says, playing a transition. “Yeah—I like that shift, the way it changes.”

  “So that’s the whole thing, the whole song,” I say. “Play it from the beginning!”

  As he plays, Hunter hums, and I wonder if he’s already thinking of words for the verses. At the end, he plays the chorus twice.

  When he’s done, I’m so amazed that I blurt out, “Someone should hear you!”

  The guitar strings are still vibrating, so Hunter covers them with his hand to still them, looks up, and says, “You are someone.”

  My face and neck feel hot. Under all his messy hair, Hunter’s eyes are intensely fixed on me, but I can’t hold his gaze too long. I stand up and walk to the piano to return the theory book that I never opened.

  “Have you heard about this thing Bobbi is doing?” I ask him. “The Open-Mic Night?”

  “I think Eugene told me something about it. What is it?”

  “It’s kinda like a talent show. You just get up, sing one song, and that’s it. You should sign up!”

  “I don’t know,” Hunter says, absentmindedly moving his fingers up and down the guitar strings.