Pass It On Read online

  pass it on

  j. minter

  Contents

  a word or two from your good friend jonathan, the social glue

  Part 1 a cool shiver of a saturday, the snap of thanksgiving in the air

  chapter 1 who knew the apartment needed a fresh coat of paint?

  chapter 2 sunday afternoon—four guys, no jonathan

  chapter 3 i get some really good, and some very bad, news

  chapter 4 arno is in the bright, burning beginning of a very wild relationship

  chapter 5 i learn some things that i so do not want to know

  chapter 6 david’s sweet and somewhat-too-serious love affair

  chapter 7 a monday at school that i so cannot take seriously

  chapter 8 after-school milk and cookies with mickey and philippa

  chapter 9 the tent that’s pitched in my living room

  chapter 10 arno’s new girlfriend’s cousin throws a little get-together

  chapter 11 i meet someone special

  chapter 12 david thinks he lives alone

  chapter 13 wake up and crush!

  chapter 14 lovers quarrel over the shape of clouds in the sky

  chapter 15 the joy of being somewhere i never am

  chapter 16 dinner with the wildenburgers

  chapter 17 david is good at football, too

  chapter 18 arno’s got a problem

  chapter 19 one-on-one with david

  chapter 20 mickey is suddenly left to his own devices

  Part 2 The Psychologically Convoluted Interior World of the Grobart Family

  Chapter 1 a portrait of the grobart clan in repose

  Chapter 2 what the hell is happening in my apartment?

  Chapter 3 david shouldn’t be surprised

  Chapter 4 i tell ruth everything

  Chapter 5 arno trips out with his uptown girl

  Chapter 6 this is not who mickey is

  Chapter 7 patch has the stupidest outgoing message on his cell phone

  Part 3 a few fateful nights at the floods

  Chapter 1 who is nicer than little flan flood?

  Chapter 2 arno has to make a sudden choice between friends and lovers

  Chapter 3 my confrontation with old father flood

  Chapter 4 i spend friday in heaven

  Chapter 5 everyone is at patch’s but patch

  Chapter 6 mickey’s one and only true love

  Chapter 7 amanda is studying, dammit!

  Chapter 8 maybe liesel really is the girl for arno

  Chapter 9 why would my happiness grate on the group?

  Part 4 a sunny saturday in old greenwich

  Chapter 1 david gets shotgun

  Chapter 2 i take a moment to enjoy flan flood’s sweet lap of luxury

  Chapter 3 who goes sailing in november?

  Chapter 4 david helps the guys through the heart of saturday night

  Chapter 5 mickey should never be allowed to drive anything

  Chapter 6 i must reveal my secrets!

  Part 5 in the valley of the pardos

  Chapter 1 no problem at all, mrs. pardo!

  Chapter 2 how little does homecoming matter to arno?

  Chapter 3 david brings someone special to ginger’s

  Chapter 4 mickey’s magic slammer

  Chapter 5 the bathroom of my destiny

  Chapter 6 arno worries first

  Chapter 7 mickey knows a dead man when he sees one

  Chapter 8 arno sums it all up

  Chapter 9 david gets some more of that newfangled grobart philosophy

  Chapter 10 my mom comes through on her promise

  Chapter 11 mickey’s love is real

  Chapter 12 arno already knew the bad news

  Chapter 13 if there’s a sunset, who do you think is headed off into it?

  Chapter 14 all of us together again

  for SKS

  a word or two from your good friend jonathan, the social glue

  The other day I was walking down Ninth Street, headed over to Patch’s, and this girl with honey-colored hair and a long, gray coat passed by me. We smiled at each other, because we’d definitely been at parties together. This was before all the secrets around me started to churn, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving.

  The streets of New York City shone in the sunlight and the wind was strong. Brightly colored leaves rustled in the wind. In the fall, I like to have a warm, dark-colored sweater on hand—either for me, or to lend to a girl like that, like the one in the long, gray coat who walked by me that day and who shared the trace of a smile.

  I remember looking at that girl and wondering, what’s her secret? Then, only a few days later, when all the secrets started to build, they felt like the big difference between me and my friends. Whenever I saw a girl, or even other guys, I thought, what’s their secret? And I wondered that about people because all of a sudden I had so many secrets of my own.

  Now I believe that everybody I like has secrets. They sprout up fresh all the time, like mushrooms or something growing in nature that I’m not familiar with, since I rarely leave Manhattan.

  But let’s start this story right at the moment when I had to take on my first big secret, which is about my dad and what he’d been up to over in London, where he moved about five years ago when he left my mom and me and my brother.

  This is the secret that I had to keep from everyone. And I’m pretty sure it’s the one that set all the others in motion. Soon enough the secrets were growing, gaining speed, and rushing toward me and my friends until we had no choice—we had to either knock them apart or let them mow us all down. And that girl I saw on Ninth Street? Yeah, I got to see her again.

  a cool shiver of a saturday, the snap of thanksgiving in the air

  who knew the apartment needed a fresh coat of paint?

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “Dad’s getting remarried next week and we find out now?” I leaned against the doorway of my brother Ted’s bedroom. My mother was in the hallway, facing me.

  “I understand that this might be upsetting for you, Jonathan.”

  “Might?” My foot jumped suddenly as if the ground below it had gotten overheated. “Have you called Ted?” I asked.

  “I left him a message.” My mother inspected the yellow-white wall. The paint was cracked and flaking in places. She smiled and nodded to herself. “In any case, the important thing for you to know is that I’m taking a vacation, and while I’m gone, we’re having the apartment painted.”

  “We? Are you sure this is really necessary?”

  She’d been threatening to do this for a while. We live in this gigantic rambler of an apartment on Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, on the eleventh floor, and sometimes I feel like the apartment is prehistoric or something—like it’s always been there—which is why I got so weirded out when my mom said she was going to change something about it. My mouth hung open. I stared down at my new Prada loafers, but I found no solace there. I looked back and my mom was still looking at me.

  “I’m quite sure. This place will be an uninhabitable mess for a couple weeks. So you can either stay in a hotel or spend a few days with each of your friends.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked. Maybe it’s because my brother’s up at Vassar, or because I’m practically halfway through my junior year, but my mom seems to feel that most of the time I can pretty much take care of myself.

  “I’m flying to Paris tomorrow night.” She smiled at me. “Milla is still there and she’s going to take care of me.”

  “What about Thanksgiving?”

  “Oh, I’ll be back before then.”

  “But it’s next Thursday.”

  “Is it? I’ll tell my travel agent.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll just shuttle between my friends’ houses,”
I said.

  “You can stop by here during the day, but all the furniture is being moved out tomorrow morning. With your dislike of disorder, darling, you can see why you should go elsewhere.” She moved into the living room and I followed.

  I didn’t even bother to start getting annoyed with her about how this was going to affect my schoolwork or how she could’ve maybe waited till December break. I got that there was a reason why she was cleaning house and flying to Paris to be taken care of by her best friend from college. She was upset because my dad had called to say he was going to get remarried. He’s a real piece of work, my dad. If he didn’t send the checks that kept me and my brother in school and my mom in couture clothes from Bergdorf’s, our opinion of him would’ve fallen so low years ago that by now we’d have completely lost track of it.

  “How’d he deliver the news?”

  “He called last night. Her name is long, but I wrote it down: Penelope Isquierdo Santana Suttwilley.”

  “PISS?” I asked.

  My mother laughed, and her right eye began to blink uncontrollably.

  “Why, yes. I’ve heard from Arno’s father, Alec, that she looks a lot like me. She’s younger of course, and probably spunkier. Apparently Alec Wildenburger is going to be the best man.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Alec said it will be a small ceremony, with only a few of their closest friends. I’m sure your father is going to call you, he just hasn’t had a chance yet.”

  She brushed my hair off my forehead and walked back down the hall toward her bedroom. She was putting an earring on, so she listed to the left. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a different, better color for our apartment walls. But I couldn’t. Everything was fine the way it was. And who cares about wall paint anyway? Not me, and I’m exactly the sort of detail-oriented person who is supposed to.

  I went back into my bedroom and sat down in the chair at my desk. It was about noon, and the sun was starting to shine through the clouds. I’d hung out with my guys last night—first at Patch’s, and then we’d all gone over to Mickey’s girlfriend Philippa’s house until really late, because her parents were in Long Island—but I hadn’t talked to anyone yet that day, so I called Arno’s cell.

  “Arno’s cell. Liesel speaking.” She pronounced it Awww-no’s.

  “Oh, hi. Could I talk to Arno?”

  There was muffled laughter. Then Arno got on the line.

  “She slept over?” I asked.

  “Yeah. My parents don’t know she’s here. What’s up?”

  I gulped some air. Arno had only just met Liesel the night before—she was a very “uptown” girl Philippa knew from school and she’d arrived at like three in the morning. I’d barely shaken hands with her. But I guess Arno had made a much stronger connection. Through the phone, I could hear the new Beastie Boys CD playing. I punched up the same sounds on my iPod.

  “Look dude, I need to stay at your place for a couple of days. My mom’s having our apartment painted.”

  “Cool. The Rentmeesters are upstairs in the penthouse, but you can stay in my room. This starts when?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Yeah, come by for dinner—you’d have probably done that anyway. Ow!”

  Arno ended the call. Though I knew next to nothing about Liesel, I figured that a girl who could take center stage in Arno’s life so quickly probably wasn’t the type to wait patiently for him to get off the phone. As I set down the receiver, I wondered if Arno’s dad had told him about my dad and PISS yet. I would have called him back to ask, but I had a feeling Leisel wouldn’t let him answer, so I decided to skip it.

  I stood up and looked around my bedroom, which was spare and clean. The only things I keep around are a lot of music, my clothes (evenly spaced on a steel rack), and a desk that I sit at while I make my phone calls. I kind of love my room. It’s minimal, but very “rock” at the same time. Very “rich punk,” which is how I’ve been feeling lately.

  “Jonathan, we’re going to paint your room too,” my mom yelled.

  I immediately got up and went down the hall to her bedroom. “Can I ask why?” I asked.

  “Because I think we need a change, that’s why.”

  She was packing and speaking in French to her friend Milla. Her French is more than a little grating.

  “No!” I heard her say. “He’s using the wedding to come clean about his past? He can’t!” She turned toward the wall and leaned her head against it, which was not the kind of thing I’d ever seen my mom do before. She ended the call and looked at me. “I need you home tonight,” she said. “Your father is trying to turn over a new leaf. May God help us all!”

  “Why does that mean I have to be home?”

  “Well … because if your father does call, I want you to talk to him. There’s more going on here than just the marriage or the paint and I feel it’d be best for him to tell you. Obviously if Alec Wildenburger is his best man, then he doesn’t have any idea what’s really going on.”

  I looked at her, puzzled. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  “Nothing, dear. Maybe it’s nothing.” She scratched at her hand, which is something she does when she’s nervous. “In any case, I’m having dinner tonight with the Grobarts, but you’ll stay home for the call, won’t you?”

  “Oh-kaaay,” I said. “Then I’m going to rent some movies.” A Saturday night at home wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—Friday night had definitely been wild enough that somebody might want to just come over and hang out and watch movies or whatever.

  “In the meantime, there’s one other thing you should know. The painter is starting Monday morning. You remember Gerald and Gina Shanlon? That artistic couple we shared the beach house in Sag Harbor with when you were six? The Always Nakeds, your father and I called them. Remember their son, Billy? He’s going to be staying here and painting the house. If you do happen to stop by to pick up clothes or something, you might run into him.”

  “Did you tell him to be extra careful in my room?”

  “Sure I did—” But her telephone was ringing, and it was probably someone with more gossip about my dad. I threw on my jean jacket and went down to the street to get some food and rent some DVDs—I was definitely up for seeing Eternal Sunshine again. And I figured I’d make my walk a long one, because if there was one thing that would take my mind off whatever seemed to be happening, it was the chance of running into that girl with the honey-colored hair and the warm smile.

  sunday afternoon—four guys, no jonathan

  “What’d you do last night?” Arno Wildenburger asked. He sat back in one of Patch Flood’s gigantic white beanbag chairs.

  “Went over and watched movies at Jonathan’s house,” Patch said. He stood on a skateboard in the middle of his room in the Floods’ town house on Perry Street. It was Sunday afternoon, and they’d been watching football, but the Giants were losing by so much that they’d had to turn it off.

  Arno was kind of psyched to be hanging out with Patch—he needed a rest from Liesel, whom he’d been with for thirty-six hours straight. He felt pretty lucky to have caught Patch at home.

  “Did anybody else come over? Liza Komansky?” Arno asked.

  “Nope, it was just us. Apparently she’s still annoyed with Jonathan about their friendship.”

  “Because they can’t be friends since she has a crush on him?”

  “I think that was it,” Patch said. “And she definitely still has that crush. She’s always talking about it at school—to the point where even I heard about it.”

  Patch went to Turner, a private coed school in the West Village. And since Arno and Jonathan both went to Gissing, which was all boys, they always wanted to know about girls from Turner. David went to Potterton, which was all boys, too. And Mickey went to Adele Biggs, on the Upper West Side, which was coed and cool and all, but populated mostly by super-privileged burnouts and problem children who’d been kicked out of boarding schools for drugs and bad attitudes.

 
Patch smiled the wide, gleeful smile that made people compare him to sports stars like Beckham and actors like Brad Pitt—guys who were always winning and looked really happy.

  “Hey did I tell you? I ended up kissing Selina Trieff on Friday night.”

  “What about Graca?”

  “Graca’s twenty-three. She never wanted to just skateboard around under the Brooklyn Bridge or get high and hang out at Sheep’s Meadow.”

  “I get that.” Arno nodded. “Jonathan’s going to stay at my house for a couple of days. His mom’s getting their apartment painted.”

  “Yeah, he told me.” Patch had his eyes closed and he was listening to the music, swaying back and forth on the board. He was barefoot. His khakis were hanging halfway off his ass and he didn’t have a shirt on. “I think some stuff’s going on with him.”

  “Like what?” Arno picked up a Pomona College catalog that was on the floor.

  “Dunno. He said he was waiting for a call from his dad, but he didn’t really go into it.”

  “So, what’s Selina Trieff like anyway?” Arno asked.

  “Selina? She’s—” Patch paused. Arno watched him. He couldn’t describe Selina either. She was quiet and not very flirty. On weekends she mostly stayed out at her parents’ mansion in Oyster Bay. That kind of girl baffled Arno.

  “Selina’s cool. I think I’m going to see her later. What about you? What happened with that uptown girl, Liesel Reid?”

  “I’ve been hanging out with her since the last time I saw you,” Arno said.

  “Well?” Patch asked.

  “We’re like soul mates, and I think it might be freaking me out.”

  “You sound scared, dude.”

  “She’s a little—” Arno paused, and began the slow search for the right word. “What Jonathan calls people that remind him of himself: pretentious. But she’s really, really fun.”

  “So?” Patch asked. “That should work for you. You’re the most pretentious guy I know.”

  Before Arno could decide if he were annoyed or not and then respond accordingly, someone knocked hard on the door and swung it open.