Pass It On Read online

  “I was kidding.”

  “What?” Arno asked.

  “About your dad—I didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh. Right—anyway, I don’t care. They’re being assholes for some reason I don’t get. It’s like, lately I hate my house. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  david is good at football, too

  Wednesday was a bright fall day. The sky was an incredible blue and it was a perfect, bracing fifty degrees. With just a week before Thanksgiving, each day that could be enjoyed outside felt like a little gift, and everyone in the city seemed to know it.

  Because of the weather, after school David and Mickey made their way to the baseball diamonds in Central Park, where they were going to play football.

  It was a weekly game and whoever showed up played. David was always a quarterback because he had laser accuracy and an incredible ability to throw the bomb, and Mickey liked to be a lineman so he could grab guys and wrestle the ball away from them. They hadn’t talked since David called Mickey and told him about how Jonathan wasn’t supposed to invite them all on the trip, which David was currently wishing he hadn’t done, since Mickey seemed very, very on edge.

  “I mean, I kind of can’t believe Jonathan,” Mickey said. He kept shaking his head and looking around. “I sort of feel like he lied to me, you know.”

  “I know.” And David did know. The trip was nothing, but the more he thought about Jonathan’s dad stealing that money, the more he wondered if Jonathan knew about it all and was just taking him sailing to keep him quiet about the whole thing. “He and Arno said they were going to come a little later.”

  “Oh yeah? If they show up, I’ll give you twenty bucks,” Mickey said. “I love those guys, but they suck at sports, especially team sports.”

  “I think they’re just planning to watch.”

  “That’s lame.”

  They walked quietly for a moment. They were both wearing sweatshirts, running shoes, and wind-pants, so they made loud swishing noises while they walked. David had a football stuffed in his kangaroo pocket. He looked pregnant. They sipped steaming coffee from paper cups.

  “Really fucking lame,” Mickey said.

  “Hey,” David said. “What’s the matter? Maybe it’s a big misunderstanding and he really did mean to invite you instead of me. Or maybe he’s ditching both of us and he picked Arno instead. And we don’t even know if he invited Patch.”

  Mickey kicked at some pebbles in the horse path. “Yeah, maybe.”

  But David didn’t like the sound of that any more than Mickey did.

  They arrived at the baseball diamonds and waved at the ten kids who were already there, throwing around footballs and tackling each other. One kid, clearly hungover, was dry-heaving into a bush. Another had already twisted his ankle and was lying on his side, moaning. A few girls were there to play, too. The group of footballers approached them. Mickey and David tossed their coffee cups into a trash can.

  “Mickey’s got to be on my team,” David said to the group. “I don’t want this crazy monkey sacking my butt every time I get a snap.”

  Immediately, a guy from Collegiate named Roman called for Mickey, and Mickey went on the team that wasn’t David’s.

  “I want you!” Mickey yelled and pointed at David. He started hopping up and down and barking. “I’m Ray Lewis and I am going to bury your sorry ass in the dirt!”

  “Great.” David looked around and saw Jonathan and Arno coming toward the field. They were late, and everyone watched them approach. They were both in long black overcoats, crewneck sweaters, and loafers.

  “I have Arno,” Roman yelled. “Not the other one.”

  “We’re not playing,” Jonathan called out.

  “What’re you, cheerleaders? Fuck that!” Alex Turner screamed. He was Mickey’s team’s captain. “I got Arno.”

  Everybody on David’s team was quiet. That meant they had Jonathan.

  David watched Arno and Jonathan confer for a moment, and then Jonathan jogged over to David. They nodded at each other.

  “Can I stay at your house tonight?” Jonathan asked. “I’ve had about enough of Arno’s.”

  “Of course you can.” But David knew his voice was stiff.

  They set up to play, and on first down, David lobbed one out to Jonathan, who did his best to catch the ball. David watched as the ball spiraled and then he saw Jonathan seem to tug it down from the sky. Then everyone stared in complete surprise, as Jonathan brought the ball down and cradled it in his scrawny arms. Mickey launched himself at Jonathan just as he began to run. And Jonathan went down, the ball squirting out of his hands and bouncing away. Mickey and Jonathan landed on the grass.

  “Wow,” Jonathan said, “I forgot you were allowed to do that!” He tried to laugh as he struggled to his feet, and then extended a hand to Mickey.

  “Yeah,” Mickey said. “I love to come right at the guy with the ball—I’m really upfront and honest that way. No lies here.”

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. Mickey looked at Jonathan and saw that he was totally confused. They jogged away from each other, and Jonathan caught Arno giving Mickey a “what the hell, dude, you know Jonathan is fragile” look.

  They played a few more downs, and then everyone was huffing and out of breath. Jonathan was bent over, still, from when Mickey had taken him out.

  “Let’s go!” Alex Turner screamed. Everyone looked at him. He was really into the game. Just then Froggy came up in a brand-new Giants football jersey.

  “I want in.” Froggy pranced around, and started pointing at Arno, because he wanted to get back at him for breaking his parents’ bed.

  “You can have my spot,” Jonathan said. “I’ve got to make a phone call. See you guys later. David, I’ll be at your house around seven or eight.”

  Jonathan was already walking away before anyone could stop him. David, Mickey, and Arno watched him go. They turned around and looked at the remaining players. Froggy grabbed the ball and ran with it, and then flipped onto the grass.

  “Is he trying to tackle himself?” David asked. While they watched, a knife fell out of Froggy’s pocket. He stood up and hid it, and bounced up and down, staring at Arno. While Froggy screamed at Arno, everyone stared at the smear of dog shit he’d gotten on his khakis.

  “Can you imagine getting stabbed to death playing pick-up football?” Arno asked. “I don’t think I want to play anymore.”

  “Everybody in position!” Alex Turner screamed. He grabbed the ball and torpedoed it at David, who caught it with one hand and shot it back.

  “We’re done for the day,” David said. But when he looked around, Arno was already gone. David called out to Mickey and they walked toward the park exit together.

  “Somebody should call Jonathan and make sure he’s okay,” Mickey said. “I really creamed his ass.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to see him for dinner.” David smiled, and the two waved their cell phones at each other.

  Mickey was already calling Philippa. So David speed-dialed Amanda. But then he pressed END when he remembered that he was supposed to be getting secretly engaged to her, and he punched in Risa’s number instead.

  arno’s got a problem

  “If my best friend did that, I’d chop his balls off.” Liesel said and laughed heartily, her voice jumping up and down multiple octaves.

  “It’s not a joke,” Arno said, and to console himself, he slid his hand along Liesel’s naked thigh. He thought it might be the softest and warmest part of her. They were in his bathroom, in his apartment, sitting side by side on the marble bench in his big glass-enclosed shower. It was early evening, and they were both draped over with towels and drinking some herbal tea that the Wildenburgers’ cook had made for them and left by the door.

  “I mean, really,” Liesel said. “He stayed at your house and invited you on vacation but then you find out that actually he’s bringing someone else!”

  Arno had just explained to her as much as he knew about what was going
on with Jonathan, all of which he’d heard from Mickey, who had called on his way to do homework at Philippa’s. Mickey had told Arno a garbled version of what he knew since he was feeling bad, both about tackling Jonathan and the nasty look Arno had given him, so he wanted to explain why he had been so fired up during the game.

  Arno knew Liesel was maybe not the perfect person to tell problems to… but then again, she was supposed to be his girlfriend. Arno closed his eyes. But then he opened them, because he was just beginning to understand that listening to Liesel without seeing how gorgeous she was, was a very bad idea.

  “I need to go home and study,” Liesel said suddenly. “You’re so naughty, making me act all crazy on a weekday, when I should be home! Everyone was right about you. I have to get out of here. You are so good-looking!”

  She kissed him, and for a moment, he felt himself get excited. Then he shrugged her away.

  “Man, you change subjects quickly,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Liesel asked. “Were we talking about something interesting before?”

  “I just want Jonathan to tell me what’s going on. And if stuff was normal and his dad wasn’t getting remarried right now, then maybe we would just wrestle and like, get it all out. But Mickey made me swear that I wouldn’t say anything to him.”

  “Um, right. I remember when my parents had some friends who got in all this trouble for using the money from the company they owned together to finance their personal lives. My parents cut them off quicker than you can say ‘Jack Spratt.’ That’s how my dad put it. I know it’s old-fashioned, but my family doesn’t like it when people do things that get them in the papers. Anyway, this couple had a daughter and I never saw her again. I heard they moved to New Jersey and now she goes to public school.”

  “How is that related to anything? Do you mean you think I should cut Jonathan off because he might bring someone else on this awesome vacation instead of me?” Arno wondered for just a moment if Leisel knew something that Arno didn’t.

  “I don’t know!” Liesel laughed. The sound was braying, and for a moment her nostrils flared. “Sometimes I hear things, but oh well!”

  He was glad the bathroom was steamy because he didn’t want her to see his totally confused expression.

  “Arno?”

  They both stood stock still. Through the Liars CD, which was playing plenty loudly in Arno’s room, they’d heard Arno’s mother’s voice calling.

  “Yeah, Mom.”

  “Dinner! Does your friend want to stay?”

  “Now I really have to go,” Liesel said as she stood up and dropped the towel. Arno’s jaw dropped. She was incredible. Too thin, but still incredible.

  “I think she’s going to go home,” Arno said through the door. He stared at Liesel, who was struggling into a silvery-pink bra.

  “If you stare too long you’ll turn to stone.” She giggled, and leaned down and kissed him. Then she sprinted out of the steamy bathroom. Arno followed her, and they dressed quickly.

  “Being with you is so fucking outrageous.” Liesel laughed and looked around for the rest of her clothes. “You are so much more fun than all those rigid uptown boys I’ve been with!”

  “Yeah,” Arno said. “Hey, do you want to meet my mom?”

  “Are you crazy? We barely know each other—what do you think I want to do, marry you?” Liesel started laughing uncontrollably and threw herself on the bed. And all of a sudden, Arno thought, hey, I think I kind of like this girl. I don’t get her at all, but I like her.

  one-on-one with david

  Amanda called David and his phone vibrated. David saw her name and jumped in the air.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to Risa Subkoff, who was standing next to him.

  “I wasn’t.”

  Risa was in long basketball shorts and a T-shirt. She had her long dark hair back in a ponytail and her hands all over David because they were playing one-on-one basketball with unlimited physical contact.

  They were in the Reebok Sports Club on the Upper West Side, where Risa worked some evenings as an instructor/semipro for women’s basketball, which basically meant that she went one-on-one with career women in their thirties and forties and helped them with their jump shots. Because of this she had free passes, so she and David were on the court, which was a whole lot more modern and fun than the courts at their schools.

  David locked eyes with Risa, then went up and dunked, because he could.

  “I found out from my friends all about you and Amanda Harrison Deutschmann and how serious you guys are.” Risa took the ball from David and shot from three-point range. She made it. The club was quiet because it was nearly nine on a Wednesday.

  “Uh-oh,” David said and sighed. What was he supposed to say? He didn’t know. That he might be still in love with Amanda and they could probably be happy together if they could just stop cheating on each other? Um, no, he couldn’t say that. He took a deep breath and tried to imagine what his dad might say.

  “I can imagine that you must be angry,” David said.

  Risa grabbed David by the front of his Tarheels T-shirt.

  “I was really embarrassed the other night,” she said. “I’m sure your dad thinks I’m a whore.”

  “He doesn’t think in terms like that.”

  “You do know that I don’t care that you have a girlfriend, right?”

  “Um, I’m not even going to try to understand that,” David said.

  “Good, don’t.” She was smiling, so David started kissing her. But he knew that no matter what, he wasn’t Arno. And that was what this was all about, he realized. Trying to get back at Arno for what had happened a month ago, when Arno had fooled around with Amanda at Patch’s house. He still wasn’t over that. Look at me, I can be a cheat, too. But it wasn’t working. He knew it, he just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

  Then Risa pushed him away and they played a slow game of one-on-one. Some adults stopped to watch as they came back from their massages and weight training.

  Risa blew past David and went for the hole and David body-checked her. She tripped, and they landed in a tangle on the floor. He kissed her. Amanda would never play with him like this. It would mess up her hair. But for some reason he loved that about Amanda, that holding back thing she always did. And there, in the warm glow of the basketball court in the Reebok Club with Risa, who was so right for the room, he was thinking only of Amanda and how to get back to her. And he hoped against hope that she wasn’t doing the same thing he was right then.

  mickey is suddenly left to his own devices

  “I don’t understand why we can’t get fucked up,” Mickey said. “I mean, I’m kind of tweaked about this stuff with Jonathan. I sort of always thought we were the closest, you know? And now I find out he’s lying straight to my face.”

  “And plus, you were really excited to go do some wild stuff since we’ve been acting so calm, huh?” Philippa said.

  “Well,” Mickey looked at his girl and remembered again how amazing it was that she could totally read his mind. “Yeah, that’s true.”

  He sat with Philippa in a back booth at Man Ray, and he had an ice pack on his ear from when he’d smashed into Jonathan at football. The Neptunes were playing, so the room was really loud, and it was also kind of dark. Philippa had her hair pulled back and she was looking particularly prim. And Mickey was trying to relax into his role as a happy boyfriend, but he also wanted to get a little drunk and it seemed as if Philippa was telling him he couldn’t do both.

  Philippa’s phone buzzed and it was Liza Komansky, who was currently defiantly incommunicado from everyone in the group, but who was still kind of obsessed with Jonathan even though she said she hated him. Philippa answered and immediately they started talking about Jonathan.

  “And apparently, Jonathan has a new girlfriend, on top of everything else,” Philippa said into the phone.

  “Don’t tell Liza that.” After all, Mickey had only heard that secondhand from Arno, and this rumor
stuff seemed like it was getting out of control.

  “Why not?” Liza yelled back through the tiny speaker. “I don’t have a thing for him. And you tell your friend Jonathan that I don’t care if his new stepmom could buy her own country, I still wouldn’t like him.”

  “What? How does she know that?” Mickey asked.

  “Come as soon as you can,” Philippa said to Liza, then she hung up and turned to Mickey. “Word travels fast. Plus, she said she saw Jonathan at Barneys buying a weird neck warmer and talking to a salesgirl about what the best deck shoes for a five-hundred-foot yacht would be.”

  “It’s not five hundred feet.”

  “Well, anyway, that’s what she said.” Philippa flipped her hair.

  A waitress came by and delivered plates of crab cakes and tall glasses of cold beer. She winked at Mickey, and Philippa saw.

  “Watch it,” Philippa said to the waitress. Mickey gave her a half frown. He’d known the waitress since he was eight or so, and she’d seen him in all sorts of states. She was a cellist who worked only a few nights a week. Her name was Diane, and Mickey had only fooled around with her a couple of times.

  “Think of me as a cousin,” Diane said to Philippa.

  “When Mickey went to Brazil he slept with two of his cousins,” Philippa said back.

  “Oh.” Diane reddened and walked away.

  “I almost killed Jonathan today,” Mickey said, tearing into his crab cake. “I still can’t get over the trust thing. I mean, if it was Patch, or even Arno, I’d just figure it was an honest mistake, but Jonathan is way too uptight to not realize he’s invited us all even though we’re not all allowed to come.”

  Philippa sighed and looked at Mickey in sort of a bored way.

  “There must be something else Jonathan’s not telling us.” Mickey spoke with his mouth full, and twisted his finger in his ear. He’d said it, sure, but he couldn’t follow his own reasoning. Then Mickey got even more tangled in his thoughts, because now he felt like he was doing Jonathan’s job, which was figuring out all the gossipy-shit. And this was not a job he was particularly good at. He looked at the restaurant’s gigantic front door and suddenly it opened and Liza came sweeping through it. She was dressed all in black and her flowing coat slapped the backs of other diners’ heads as she passed.