Pass It On Read online

  “What’s up,” Arno muttered. “Liesel’s cousin is having a bunch of people to his apartment tonight. I’m one of the hosts, so you have to come. This is a new group. You’ll like them …”

  “What’s up,” I said to some doped-out-looking senior.

  “What’s up,” Arno said to some guy in his English class.

  “If we’re going to go out tonight,” I said, “I need to go home and get some clothes this afternoon.”

  “Sounds good. What’s up, babydoll?” But Arno had said it to Mrs. Nathanson, our English teacher, and that made us both laugh.

  after-school milk and cookies with mickey and philippa

  “I’m just saying what I heard,” Philippa said to Mickey.

  “Well, what you heard is bullshit.” Mickey covered a tumbler with a paper towel and slammed it down on his kitchen counter. The contents sizzled and he shot it back, his eyes watering.

  “Nice one,” Philippa said. “Now do me.”

  Monday afternoon, and they were over at Mickey’s house doing their Monday afternoon ritual, which was tequila slammers and TiVo’d gossip shows from the Style network that Philippa watched obsessively. She was very into gossip.

  “I talked to Jonathan today. Yeah, his dad is getting remarried, but it doesn’t sound like he’s in any kind of financial trouble. He invited me to go on a trip with them on some gi-normous sailboat through the Caribbean.”

  Even though it was November, Mickey was in blue canvas shorts, flip-flops, and a white leather jacket. He went over to the stereo and turned on the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD.

  Philippa turned off the TV.

  “Listen,” she said. “I don’t like my dad any more than you do yours. But that doesn’t make him a liar. He said he hopes Jonathan’s dad isn’t spending too much on the wedding, because everyone is about to sue the living daylights out of him for stealing lots of people’s money.”

  “Yeah, bullshit.”

  Philippa smiled at Mickey, who was crouched on the counter like a big monkey, messing around with the stereo. Mickey was ignoring Philippa, which was odd, since she was wearing only a white Marc Jacobs blouse and her underwear. They’d been fooling around in the living room, on the gigantic horseshoe-shaped couch Mickey’s dad had built there. The thing was twenty feet long and made of ultrathick purple velvet.

  “Make me a slammer,” Philippa said. Mickey kissed the top of her forehead. Then, still crouched on the counter, he set her up with a slammer. But he wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  “You’re sensitive about Jonathan.”

  “Come on, baby. All this rumor stuff is crazy—his dad is obviously still rich and even if he wasn’t, what the hell does it matter to us?”

  “It’s not a rumor. It’s just what my dad said.” Philippa shrugged. “When are your parents getting home?”

  “What you described is a rumor,” Mickey said. “They’re here, I think.”

  “Your parents?!”

  Mickey raised the mix of half-tequila-half-ginger-ale over his head.

  “Mickey?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Philippa scooted around the kitchen island, but Lucy Pardo, Mickey’s mom, still caught an eyeful of Philippa’s barely covered behind.

  “I thought we discussed that tequila slammers are for special occasions,” Lucy Pardo said.

  “Yeah,” Mickey said. “It’s Monday and next week is Thanksgiving. That’s special.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Pardo.”

  “Go find your jeans, sweetie.”

  “Okay,” Philippa said weakly. She skipped into the living room to find her jeans and her shoes.

  “Your father will be in Montauk this week, but I’m staying here. Now deja de emborracharte en las tardes!” Stop drinking in the afternoons!

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  Mickey hopped down from the counter. The slammer he’d been holding bubbled over.

  “But don’t let this go to waste. You have it.” Mickey handed the shot to his mother. She shot it. After wiping her mouth, she looked for Philippa, who was half hidden behind a Yoshi screen in the living room.

  “You two behave yourselves. I’m serious. No more drinking and partying in this house on school days.” Then she walked out of the room.

  “Wow,” Philippa said. “My dad’s right. Your mom really is from another planet.”

  “Your dad should keep his nose out of other people’s business!”

  “He also said you had a temper that I’m just not seeing and that you’re too wild for me and I should deal with that.”

  “STOP IT!” Mickey yelled. Then he dropped to his knees in front of Philippa and clasped his hands together. “Please never listen to your dad again. Can you do that for me? And can you let all this gossip go? You’re getting way, way, too into it.”

  “I don’t know.” Philippa shook her head and fished a piece of dark chocolate out of a bowl on the counter. She chewed and looked away from Mickey, who was still on his knees, and then she said, “I get grounded so much because of hanging out with you, I kind of have to depend on hearing everything second-hand from whoever was actually there. It’s either that, or I hear stuff from my parents.”

  “Well, maybe you and me shouldn’t get into so much trouble anymore, then.”

  “Do you think that’s even possible?” Philippa licked her fingers.

  “I don’t know,” Mickey said. “Let’s try.”

  the tent that’s pitched in my living room

  “Hello!” I yelled. The door to my apartment was open when Richard, the old elevator man, let me out in my hallway. He slammed the elevator door shut behind me.

  All the furniture in my apartment had been moved to some undisclosed location, so now the home I grew up in was nearly empty. In the middle of the dining room was what looked like a great jumble of the stuff of ours that was too small to bother moving, all hidden under a big white sheet.

  I sighed and went down the hall toward my room. To my left, in the living room, there was a tent. A green tent.

  “Hello!”

  “Yeaagh!” I kind of jumped against the wall. Behind me, there was a tall, thin guy with shaggy brown hair. He was wearing painter’s overalls and no shirt or shoes. He held a pair of my mother’s chandelier earrings.

  “Found these in an egg cup in the fridge. Seems to me all has not been at ease here.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m Billy Shanlon. We met when you were into sculpting shoes out of sand, just a few years ago. I assume you’re Jonathan. That right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I’m your painter.”

  We stood there. His face was contorted in a jack-o’-lantern grin and his hair hung around his head like tufts of brown cotton. He was at least half a foot taller than me, and I’m not short.

  Around us the floors were covered in swirls of white canvas and old sheets, so what was once my wonderfully familiar apartment had become pretty much unrecognizable. The smell of paint was everywhere, too, but it didn’t look as if Billy Shanlon had begun to apply any of it to the walls.

  “Did you touch my clothes?” I asked.

  “Burned ‘em.”

  “Ha.” I immediately turned and ran down the hall toward my room. He was right behind me, and I could feel him laughing.

  “So you’re a fancy boy?”

  “The hell I am. Where are you from, anyway, Ireland?”

  “Long Island, actually. Riverhead.”

  This was a place I knew only from seeing road signs when I rode the Jitney to the Hamptons to visit my friends. I got into my room and, sadly enough, everything that hadn’t been dragged out and stuffed on a truck somewhere was in a great heap with a sheet over it.

  “Feels unsettling, doesn’t it?” Billy Shanlon nodded to himself and scratched his stubbly chin.

  I opened my closet. Empty. Shit.

  “I need a sweater,” I said.

  He rummaged around for a moment underneath the sheet and came up with a stack of
sweaters, mostly dark blue or black cashmere.

  “Here.” He handed me my sweaters and I stood there, holding them.

  Billy leaned against my window, which was open. Cold air blew in, but he seemed totally unconcerned. He pulled out an American Spirit and lit it. He smoked and smiled at me in this weird, lazy way.

  “Don’t you think you should get started?” I asked. “I thought you were here to paint the apartment.”

  “I am. But I’m waiting for inspiration. In the meantime, if you want to just come by and hang out and talk, that’s cool.”

  “I’ll stop by when I need a shirt,” I said.

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

  “I’ll admit,” Arno said, “this is not my regular beat.”

  Arno stood with Jonathan and David on Central Park West and Sixty-second Street, looking up at a glistening white Art Deco building. They were on the park side of the street. The only light came from yellow street lamps, which made the street feel very retro and otherworldly and nothing like downtown. Up on the eighth floor, they could see kids moving back and forth in silhouette.

  “She’s meeting you in there, right?” David asked.

  “I hope so,” Arno said.

  “I’m psyched for this party, actually,” David said. “A lot of Potterton kids live up here. Most of them, actually, if you think about it. And I barely ever talk to any of them.”

  “Well, good,” Arno agreed.

  “Speaking of new people,” Jonathan turned to David, “I haven’t told you that my dad’s getting remarried and I’m getting a stepbrother.”

  “Yeah, my dad said your mom said some stuff was going on with your family. That’s kind of weird, huh?” David said. “You all right with all that?”

  “It’s cool, I guess,” Jonathan said.

  “It’s more than cool,” Arno interjected. “His dad is marrying some unbelievably rich woman named PISS who is taking us sailing through the Caribbean on a three-hundred-foot yacht!”

  “Yeah?” David looked hopeful.

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said, but then he wrinkled his nose and started looking flustered. “But ‘we’ is actually…” he trailed off. “C’mon, let’s just go up.”

  The three of them went across the street. They’d called Patch earlier, but he wasn’t around. And Mickey and Philippa had said they were staying home to study, which everyone agreed was a total lie.

  “You think Liesel will talk with us this time, before you and her go somewhere and make out?” Jonathan asked in the elevator.

  “Hard to say.” Arno smiled. He didn’t bother to pretend as if he knew what Liesel would do. He still felt like he hardly knew her—and he was beginning to realize that was part of what made her so exciting. Arno sniffed the air. “You smell like paint,” he said.

  “So what? You still smell like a girl.”

  When they walked in, the birthday party was in full swing.

  “Awww-no!” a girl yelled.

  “Ready, set, go,” Arno said as Liesel enveloped him in a nutcracker hug. He hugged her back. She picked him up. He picked her up.

  “We’re going to have to pry them off the ceiling,” Jonathan said to David.

  “These are your awesome friends,” Liesel said.

  She kissed them both on the cheek three times while Arno watched. She stood there in a gold cropped V-neck T-shirt and a black skirt that was about nine inches long. Arno smiled. He thought, maybe she’s charming—maybe I’m really into how brash she is. But he felt like he was looking at her through blurry eyes—he couldn’t be sure about anything about her. He followed Liesel into the kitchen, which was old-fashioned and huge, with a maid’s room and a pantry. The surfaces of antique cabinets were reflected in the aluminum faces of twenty-first-century appliances.

  “Whose house is this, anyway?”

  “Alan Ebershoff’s,” Liesel said. “He’s my cousin. You should call him Froggy.” She yanked over a heavyset boy with long blond hair that covered his eyes. He was wearing baggy red corduroys, no shoes, and a blue turtleneck.

  “You guys want drinks?” Ebershoff had a voice like a bullfrog.

  “Sure we do,” Arno said.

  In the middle of the white marble counter was a gigantic piece of dry ice that was giving off puffs of smoke. Several kids stood around watching it, as if the ice were going to start to talk or move. There was a carved-out area in the center of the dry ice that held several bottles of vodka.

  “Here ya go,” the bullfrog croaked. Arno accepted a glass of vodka, lemon, and ice.

  “Thanks, man.”

  Jonathan and David got drinks and quickly went into the living room. Arno watched them go.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” Liesel said, pressing into Arno’s back. He leaned against her and thought she smelled of alcohol and a different perfume than he’d had on earlier, perhaps Chanel No. 9, which Arno realized he recognized because his mother wore it. Gross. He tried to forget the connection.

  “Let’s get you into a bedroom,” Liesel said.

  “Um, good idea.”

  They took their drinks and disappeared down a hallway. Arno watched her small, twitchy butt as she walked. He slowed down, but only because he wasn’t smiling and smirking the way he usually did before hooking up, and he couldn’t understand why.

  “Hurry up!” Liesel yelled. Several other guys jumped to attention when she yelled, but she was only looking at Arno. So he got his face in order, tried to close his nose, and hurried.

  i meet someone special

  “And awaaa-y they go,” I said.

  “I feel like if we said hello to her again, she wouldn’t know our names,” David whispered.

  “Yeah. We’re just the awesome friends. She’s not into details.”

  We watched Arno and Liesel disappear down a dimly lit hall and close a door behind them.

  “If anyone’s going to take over this kid’s parents’ bedroom, it should be them,” I said.

  “She could break Arno in half,” David said as we wandered into the living room. His phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen.

  “Mickey?” I asked.

  He shook his head, glanced out the window. Alan Ebershoff came in and put on some Jimi Hendrix, really loud. Some guys stood in a circle, and then out came the Hacky Sack.

  “Patch?” I asked. Still no. David typed something back.

  “Risa Subkoff,” David said.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t feel terrific about this.” David was IMing his location to Risa Subkoff. I looked over his shoulder.

  “Don’t tell me you have a thing with this Risa Subkoff.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “What’s your name again? Do you mind if I call you Arno?”

  “Come on,” David said. “Don’t pigeonhole me. I know I’m not Arno, but maybe I need to kick it with two different girls for a while.”

  “Nah. You shouldn’t even say kick it.” David was juggling two girls? He might as well have told me he was getting paid to have sex with them, which was about as believable.

  But then David’s screen said be right there and David smiled. He said, “She plays basketball for Trinity. We saw each other play this afternoon and then we talked and then …” He smiled. “I’m going to the bathroom and clean myself up before she gets here.”

  “At least give me an explanation,” I said, and I downed a lot of my drink. A sweet girl called Madison, whom I knew from my days at Camp Meadowlark, filled my glass with more cold vodka.

  “Well, I was at Amanda’s yesterday and she told me she wants to be engaged, which of course is insane, but she says we need to do it so we won’t cheat on each other again.”

  “So when she said that, you knew she must be cheating on you, so you figured you’d cheat on her again too?”

  “Precisely.” David smiled and raised his glass in a toast to me. “I talked about it with my dad for a minute, without naming names. He said even if she hasn’
t already, she’s going to.”

  “But you love her.”

  “Yeah, but we have problems, and this girl Risa, she’s really nice to me and we actually have stuff in common, which obviously Amanda and I don’t.”

  “Because you’re basically interested in basketball and psychology. And you don’t like to deal with that second part of you, so a basketball-playing girl is like a dream come true.”

  “Right again.” David raised his thick eyebrows and padded off. He turned around for a second when he got to the hallway, though, and said, “Hey, let’s talk more about your dad later, okay?”

  I nodded a nod that said yeah, thanks, but then I figured it was now or never. I had to tell him.

  “Hey, David?” I walked across the room to get closer to him.

  “Yeah?”

  “The thing is … I’m not exactly sure how to say this, but I can only take one friend on this trip. So, you know …” I trailed off.

  But David smiled. “Damn. I’m sure Arno’s gonna be bummed, but that’s really cool of you to want me to be there, man. We’re going to have such a great time!”

  He turned back toward the bathroom, and I felt my whole body sag. That certainly hadn’t gone as planned.

  Some kids watched him walk off and whispered to each other. Even though to me—to us—he was David the Mope, to other people he was one of the best basketball players in the private school leagues, and certainly the star of Potterton’s team. But that didn’t fool me into thinking he was cool, even though he was a great friend. I thought all his parents’ psychobabble had worn off on him in a good way.

  So now I’d managed to invite Arno, Mickey, and David all on a trip where I could only take one of them, and worse, David thought he was The One. It occurred to me then that maybe this whole guilt over my dad being a criminal thing was subconsciously making me bribe my friends, kind of like when my parents got divorced and my Christmas presents suddenly got a whole lot better. I thought about this as I took a sip of my drink, which was no longer cold and simply tasted like extremely potent alcohol.