Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp (45 page)

Everyone denied making a sound.

Another muffled bark.

“It sounds to me like it’s coming from the hole,” observed Vijay ominously.

“Don’t be silly,” I said.

Another bark.

“Nick, perhaps we should stop now,” ventured the nun. “Father wanted us home early.”

“Keep on digging,” said Vijay, his black eyes burning with ghoulish curiosity.

I dug. Down three inches, six inches, a foot—as dogs howled, trees writhed, and guests trembled. Then, suddenly, the edge of the shovel clinked against a solid object.

“What is it, Nick?” asked Apurva, wide-eyed.

“I can’t see yet. It looks like something metallic.”

Ten minutes later a robot, two Indian maidens, and a candy bar—groaning with exertion—pulled a dented old footlocker from the now cavernous hole. A half dozen blows from the shovel shattered the rusty padlock. As eight eager hands tugged on the lid, the ossified hinges screeched in agony, then snapped. At that moment the winds died and the howling abruptly ceased. All was still.

“Can you tell what it is?” asked Vijay.

“It looks like something electrical,” I said, gingerly pushing aside the moldy, foul-smelling excelsior. “Apurva, hold the light steady.”

“It’s a sign!” exclaimed Fuzzy. “A neon sign! Far out. What does it say?”

I removed the decaying shavings, then traced a finger slowly along the cursive glass tubes. The sinuous letters formed the words:
AL’S LIVE BAIT. FISH PICNIC
.

“It must be from some old resort,” said Fuzzy.

“Do you suppose it’s operable?” asked Vijay. “Old signs can be quite valuable.”

“Let’s plug the sucker in!” suggested Dwayne.

With much unladylike profanity, Meera and Bina carried the heavy sign into the house and set it down on the kitchen table.

“What the fuck is that?” demanded Dad, pouring himself another highball.

“We found it in the back yard, Dad,” I explained. “We’re going to see if it works.”

“Yeah, well, you electrocute yourself, pal, don’t expect any sympathy from me.”

“It’s a deal, Dad,” I said, kneeling beside the wall socket. “OK, Frank, get ready to knock me free in case I get paralyzed by an electrical shock.”

Fuzzy nodded nervously. I gulped and pushed in the old-fashioned Bakelite plug.

Nothing happened.

“Fuck. Must be busted,” sighed Dwayne.

“Wait,” said Vijay. “Pull that chain there.”

I pulled. The transformer buzzed, the glass tubes flickered, then burst into brilliant crimson light.

“Whoooo!” exclaimed the multitude.

“Hey, all the letters don’t light,” complained Dwayne.

As illuminated, the sign read:
AL’S LIVE BAIT. IS NIC
.

“It’s almost a message,” said Apurva. “It says Al’s live bait is nice.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Vijay said. “It says Al’s live bait is Nick!”

Everyone looked at me.

What on earth do you suppose that means? Could it be a Sign from The World of the Beyond?

THURSDAY, November 1
— Sheeni called collect this morning.

“Nickie, why haven’t you called me?” asked my Estranged Sweetheart.

“Well, darling, as I recall, you hung up on me,” I explained.

“All the more reason to phone, darling,” she replied. “These gestures are a cry for reassurance. I need to feel that you care.”

“I love you, Sheeni,” I replied matter-of-factly. “I love you every moment of every day. I shall always love you.”

“Nickie, you sound somewhat tentative,” she complained.

“Sheeni! You are driving me insane!”

Reassured at last, she moved on. “Nickie, how was your Halloween?”

“Oh, fairly uneventful,” I lied. “How was yours?”

“We had a boring dorm party. Taggarty had one glass of punch and promptly fell asleep. We’re all petrified for her, but she refuses to see the nurse.”

“Are her grades suffering?” I asked optimistically.

“Oh, yes, dreadfully. I had to write her last Cartesian Philosophy paper. Fortunately, she got an A on that.”

“Is that entirely ethical, darling?” I asked, trying not to let my irritation show.

“Do you mean in Cartesian terms?”

“I mean in absolute terms.”

“Nickie, the existence of any absolute is very much in question. I have done what I feel is in the best interests of my friend. I shall continue to assist her any way I can.”

“Even if it means putting your own academic career at risk?” I asked.

“How would it do that?”

“Well, suppose the school authorities find out you wrote her paper.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s likely,” she replied. “How would they ever find out?”

I know one way. And I know it absolutely.

“Nickie, where is your check?” demanded Sheeni. “I am completely impoverished. I haven’t a sou!”

“Darn, it must have gotten lost in the mail,” I replied. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll stop payment on it and send you another.”

“Hurry, Nickie. I am nearly at the point of having to formulate my own blusher out of native clays—gathered from the riverbed and ground between rocks.”

“That’s a good idea, Sheeni. Very resourceful. You could also color your lips with the juice of wild berries,” I suggested.

“Nickie, please!” was her only response.

Following Apurva’s industrious example, Vijay, Fuzzy, and I spent most of our lunch period inscribing the walls of Redwood High’s rest rooms with you know what. Unlike your usual slipshod graffiti perpetrators, we took pains to print legibly, spell the names correctly, and write in indelible ink. If only Bina or Meera had been there to do the ladies’ rooms.

“Good party,” said Fuzzy, as we finally sat down to bolt our lunches.

“Thanks, Frank,” I said. “You looked very nice.”

“Thanks, Nick. I was kind of getting into it there for a while. Boy, you should have seen Uncle Polly go wild over Bina.”

“I had to threaten to slap him,” said Vijay. “You know those Italians and their Roman hands.”

“Nick, what are you going to do with your sign?” asked Fuzzy.

“I don’t know yet. I put it in my bedroom window for now. Odd thing, though.”

“What’s that?” they asked.

“When I plugged it in this morning, all the letters lit up. And they were green, not red.”

“Perhaps you’ve ceased to be Al’s live bait,” speculated Vijay. “Although I don’t think so. It’s still too soon.”

Too soon for what?

To my amazement, at work today Dad was even more obnoxiously smug
than usual. Believe it or not, his report on Oregon’s waferboard innovations has been greeted by thunderclaps of praise from his employer. Everyone in the office was stupefied by Dad’s exhaustive research and incisive prose. Not even Dad’s turning in a shocking $300-over-budget expense report dimmed Mr. Preston’s enthusiasm. He only chuckled indulgently and had Miss Pliny cut his star assistant editor a check on the spot.

With my brownnosing dad setting such a sterling example, I didn’t dare leave work early. I misfiled until precisely 4:59, then raced over to the library. Apurva was just walking down the granite steps when I puffed onto the scene.

“Hello, Nick,” she said. “No, you don’t have to kiss me in public anymore. Remember?”

“Oh, right,” I muttered, pretending I had puckered my lips for purposes of whistling.

“So you are musical too,” exclaimed Apurva. “Nick, you have so many talents. That was extraordinarily clever of you to plant those messages from Albert last night. But I’m still curious—where was your poor deceased dog?”

“Right where I had left him,” I replied, “still terminally electrocuted. I dug him up the day before the party. There he was—looking only slightly the worse for wear. Must be all those preservatives they put in dog food. Anyway, I planted him again nearby. I hope the mutt stays buried this time.”

“Death usually is so reliably final,” sighed Apurva. “Nick, I hope you don’t think I’m impossibly dim, but try as I might, I haven’t been able to deduce your reasons for burying that neon sign. May I ask what that ingenious ploy was designed to accomplish?”

“Apurva, I didn’t bury that sign! I was as surprised as everyone else.”

“Oh, I see.” she said. “That is a relief. I was beginning to fear you Americans were too labyrinthine for me.”

When I arrived home, canine triplets were slathering disgusting doggy drool on the blubbery, still-brown-in-spots epidermis of Dwayne, lying motionless in the front yard.

“Are you dead?” I asked, wondering if I dared hope for a coronary thrombosis in one so young.

Still sentient, Dwayne rolled toward me and smiled. “Hi, Nick! I brung Kamu back like Albert says.”

“Good,” I replied. “Just keep them out of sight. And make sure you take the correct dog home tonight.”

“OK, Nick. Guess what?”

“What?”

Dwayne smiled blissfully. “Mom’s makin’ pizza for supper!”

8:05
P.M
. Feeling a bit sluggish, I took a brief postprandial rest in my room. Say what you might about our housekeeper, but you could never accuse her of being stingy with the pepperoni. When I revived, Dad, Mr. Ferguson, and Mrs. Crampton were chatting in the kitchen, so I sneaked into Dad’s bedroom to make a call. After an alarmingly expensive wait, I heard my head spy gasp her customarily breathless “hello.”

“Bernice, where were you? Christmas shopping in Carmel?”

“Hi, Nick. Nice to hear from you, honey. I was down in the basement polishing the brass valves on the steam boiler. Nick, I need some more you know whats.”

“Don’t worry, Bernice. I just put another dozen in the mail for you this morning.”

“Oh, good, honey. I knew I could count on you.”

“Bernice, what’s that strange noise?”

“It’s me, honey baby. I was sending you a phone kiss. Could you feel it?”

“Uh, yes. Now, Bernice, listen closely. I have another job for you.”

I outlined Sheeni’s ethical lapse on behalf of her roommate and pointed out the need to bring this scholastic deception to the attention of the proper authorities.

“You can count on me, Nick honey,” said Bernice. “We got the goods on them this time.”

“Good. Now, what’s been happening with Ed?”

“Ed?”

“You know, Ed Smith,” I said. “Sheeni’s friend.”

“Oh, that Ed. He’s gone, Nick honey. Expelled. Dean Wilson canned his butt. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No, Bernice, you did not. That’s fantastic! You mean the dean expelled him for driving without a license?”

“Not entirely. They also found him up in his room in bed with somebody.”

Instant gut-wrenching panic. “Bernice, it wasn’t Sheeni, was it?”

“No, Nick. It was some wrestler from Santa Cruz High.”

I was confused. “A lady wrestler?”

“Er, not exactly,” she admitted.

“Bernice, I thought you told me Ed was straight?”

“Hey, Nick honey. What can I say? I was stunned. We all were.”

The untrammeled veracity of My Love has been restored!

“Anyways, Nick,” she continued suspiciously, “why would you care if it had been Sheeni?”

“I wouldn’t, of course,” I lied. “But, Bernice, I want to know I can rely on your information. As I recall, you were quite adamant in proclaiming Ed’s enthusiastic heterosexuality.”

“Well, I was wrong. I guess I should get fat and have pimples for 50 years. Would that make you happy, Nick honey?”

“Not happy, no,” I said. But certainly lighthearted, thought François.

When I hung up, throbbing guilt drove me to my checkbook. I just hope tomorrow’s paycheck can cover my generous $50 donation to the Sheeni Saunders Cosmetics Fund. I also enclosed a mash note of such unrestrainedly virulent sentimentality that no rational person could question the author’s sincerity.

10:20
P.M
. Dad just barged into my room (without knocking) and this shocking conversation ensued:

Dad: “I want you to move all your stuff into half of the room.”

Son (alarmed): “Why?”

Dad: “Mrs. Crampton is moving in.”

Son (more alarmed): “In with me?”

Dad: “No, moron. Her kid’s moving in with you. She’s moving in with Mr. Ferguson.”

Son (numbly incoherent): “M-M-Mr. Ferguson?”

Dad: “Yeah, they’re engaged. Big surprise, huh? Course, she has to divorce her jailbird husband first.”

Son (horror dawning): “Me live …with…Dwayne?”

Dad: “Yeah, now move your ass. They’re coming with their stuff tomorrow morning.”

Son: “But, Dad. That’s impossible!”

Dad: “No arguments, pal. Or it’s back to Oakland for you. I have to make up for Lacey’s share of the rent. This affluent country lifestyle is a big financial drain.”

I need a gun. The NRA is right. If you’re not armed to the teeth, people are just going to walk all over you.

FRIDAY, November 2
— I’ve been Dwayned. A fate patently worse than death, because when you are dead, no matter how many times Dwayne burps or farts or scratches his groin and then sniffs his fingers, YOU ARE COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS. You are beyond mortal suffering.

Dad made me skip school this morning so I could help them unload. Talk about instant slum. Each new horror off the truck rubbed fresh salt into our bleeding aesthetics. Even Mr. Ferguson looked distressed by his bride-to-be’s enthusiasm for particle board disguised as Late Empire and molded styrene masquerading as French Baroque.

Striving to preserve lebensraum for his BMW, Dad closed all borders to the Crampton’s army of dead cars—granting entry only to the still (barely) operating Grand Prix and its tow mate, the Crampton family camper. This is a tiny decrepit trailer named by its manufacturer, in a moment of sardonic whimsy, Little Caesar. Thank God François put his foot down and insisted the mobile eyesore be rolled into the back yard, where it is at least partially hidden from view.

Besides being a disgustingly materialistic pack rat, my new roommate smells bad. For some reason I never noticed it before. Perhaps I had never before experienced Dwayne in such a concentrated form. After he finished cramming in all his debris, my room looked like a deranged toddler’s storeroom and smelled like a gangrene ward.

“Gee, Nick, ain’t this great,” Dwayne enthused. “You got any games we could play on your ’puter?”