Second Helpings Read online

  Never have cinder-block walls been so inviting! Never have I been so intoxicated by the scent of industrial-strength antiseptic! Never has a glorified cot with a one-inch-thick mattress seemed so comfy! Never have I been so excited by the idea of writing for six hours a day, five days a week! Never have I been so happy to see my parents pull out of the parking lot!

  My dad is still pissed off that I chose SPECIAL over cross-country camp. Angry sweat on his bald head sizzled as he tried to transform the former into the latter. He’s still got the sturdy, muscular frame of the star point guard he was back in the day, but the way he moped and slumped around campus gave him the appearance of a man whose athleticism was limited to beer-guzzling weekends at the Bowl-a-Rama.

  Cross-country camp is just what the doctor ordered. Literally. My orthopedist said that with the proper training regimen, I could easily get back into my record-breaking shape, completely disregarding my total lack of interest in doing so. See, as a senior, a two-year captain, and four-year varsity veteran, I have a moral obligation as a mighty, mighty Pineville High Seagull to train harder than ever to overcome the leg injury that provided my father with enough video footage last spring for Notso Darling’s Agony of Defeat, Volumes 3 and 4 (both of which will be available on DVD any day now).

  When he wasn’t acting depressed for my benefit, Dad spent most of the afternoon pointing out good places for me to run. This is a supreme example of parental cluelessness, as he has no inkling that my stellar SATs have made me less inclined to break a sweat than ever.

  “Those stairs are good for building your uphill strength. The perimeter around the quad is roughly a quarter mile—you can do sprints around the path. If you eat dinner at the cafeteria on South campus, you can get in six miles a day right there.”

  Right before he left, he gave me a six-week training schedule, forty-two hard-core workouts that I’m somehow supposed to squeeze in between my seminars. Then he kissed me on the cheek and said, “If you sit on your ass thinking about artsy-fartsy crap all summer, you’ll pay for it in September.”

  Thanks, Dad. I love you, too. I didn’t even bother telling him that according to MY DAILY SCHEDULE, I will have little time to sit on my ass to take a crap, let alone contemplate it, which is just the way I like it. Being Busy = Avoiding My Issues. He of all people should appreciate this, as someone who hops on his bike and rides around greater Pineville (an oxymoron, by the way) for hours whenever I’m “testing his limits.”

  Mom may be in real estate, but I think interior design is her true calling. She was in full-on Martha mode. As with a sleepwalker, it’s best not to interrupt her, or she could go psycho and strangle me with the behind-the-door shoe organizer. So I just watched as she buzzed around the room, blond hair bouncing, perky as the cheerleader she used to be. She unpacked all my clothes and arranged my closet so it would “meet its full stowing potential.” She didn’t think the room was “maximizing its blank space” and rearranged the beds and the desks before my roommate could arrive and protest the takeover of her half of the room.

  Two hours past check-in, and she still hasn’t shown up. According to the pink construction-paper toe shoe on the door, her name is Mary DePasquale. Since Jessica Darling is written on a yellow construction paper pencil, I would assume that the toe shoe means that the mysterious Mary DePasquale is a dancer. That is all I know about the person who will be sleeping less than a foot away from me for the next six weeks of “sharing ideas and making memories with other highly motivated, talented New Jersey teens . . . one hundred actors, singers, dancers, musicians, visual artists, and writers who will shape the cultural landscape for years to come.”

  Bridget is the only other student from Pineville High who was accepted to this “highly competitive, nationally recognized program,” so it’s pretty much impossible to buy into all the brochure’s rah-rah, change-the-world rhetoric. Bridget would rather shape up her ass than shape the cultural landscape.

  MEOW-ZA! Got any nip for my cattitude?

  Bridget is still offended by my decision not to room with her. When she found out that we had both been accepted, she automatically assumed we’d stay together, exhibiting the special kind of naïveté that is sometimes refreshing—but more often annoying—in this cynical world.

  “Don’t you want to make a new lifelong friend?” I said, intentionally hitting her weak spot, which is her unwavering need to “connect” with people.

  “And, like, you do?”

  Valid point. But I was not going to cave in. The mysterious Mary DePasquale was better than the certainty of living with Bridget. I know exactly what my summer would be like if I lived with her. Until I bonded with Hope in middle school, I spent the first dozen years of my life playing the quirky best friend to Bridget’s leading lady—you know, the comic sidekick whose average appearance seems downright troll-like when sharing the frame with the incandescent, above-the-marquee beauty. Like Lili Taylor in Say Anything. Or Lili Taylor in Mystic Pizza. Or Lili Taylor in any movie, ever.

  But turning her down did me little good. This dorm has forty rooms on four floors. Yet is it any surprise that Bridget has been assigned a room just two doors down?

  “You can ignore me if you want to,” she said with a pout.

  I should give Bridget more credit because the acting program had more applicants than any other, but I probably won’t. I’m pissed at her for crashing what was supposed to be my summertime banishment. Dropping out of Pineville society had a purpose, you know. This was supposed to be my test run for college, my only opportunity to practice spinning my personality into a more alluring and/or amusing alternative to the Real Me. I could’ve worked out all the kinks this summer so I don’t waste a moment of real college life next September.

  For example (and this is just an example, one of many possibilities), I could’ve written erotica and transformed myself into suburban New Jersey’s jailbait answer to Anaïs Nin. No one would’ve known any better to question the authenticity. I mean, what kind of starved-for-attention sicko would make up a whole new identity for herself just for amusement’s sake? Oh, yeah. That’s right. One who wanted to score a book contract, a movie deal, and an acceptance letter from Harvard. None other than the trustafarian turncoat herself, Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace. Ack.

  Too bad Bridget’s pathological honesty makes such a temporary image makeover impossible for me. I can just imagine her calling out my bullshit in front of my SPECIAL classmates. “Jess is a virgin. Like, what does she know about throbbing, pulsating passion?”

  While I don’t look forward to exhausting the energy it will require to ignore Bridget all summer, I do look forward to all the possibilities of getting out of Pineville, mostly (as much as I hate to admit it because it gives in to my girliest tendencies) the chance that I’ll meet the magnetic, brilliant boy who proves once and for all that a particular Pineville High student, He Who Shall Remain Nameless, does not corner the market on magnetism or brilliance.

  the fifth

  The first two days of SPECIAL are devoted to Orientation, during which we’re supposed to meet people and get cozy with the campus. Instead of just letting us meet people on our own, in a natural, uncontrived way, the powers that be organize agonizing events like last night’s Get-to-Know-Ya Games.

  It was during the GTKY Games that I looked into the face of pure evil. She wore blue eye shadow and hot-pink spandex leggings, and went by the name of Pammi. She had eighties soap-opera hair and a well-rehearsed bubbliness that instantly reminded me of Brandi, the school’s mental-health “expert,” with whom I had several run-ins last year. I swear Pineville’s Professional Counselor and Pammi were separated at birth, with only one brain between them. Pammi is one of the teachers in the acting program (lucky, lucky Bridget), but for last night she was the “Play Leader,” a sort of referee for these inane games. Her main responsibilities were (1) whoo-hooing at random intervals, (2) shouting the rules for the next GTKY game, and (3) blowing the start signal into the bea
k of a plastic whistle shaped—inexplicably—like a toucan.

  For example:

  “Whoo-hoo! Find each and every person in the program who shares your birth month! Go!”

  Tweet!

  Then I would have to find each and every person in the program who shared my birth month until all one hundred of us were in the proper zodialogical grouping.

  Or:

  “Whoo-hoo! Dance butt-to-butt with someone wearing the same color shirt as you but who is not in your birth month group! Go!”

  Tweet!

  And then I would have to dance butt-to-butt with someone who was also wearing a white shirt but was not born in January.

  This went on for three hours.

  They can’t possibly make us do this during Freshman Orientation next year, can they? I don’t get how this is supposed to help us fit in. In theory, you’re supposed to get everyone’s names and become lifelong friends. I literally had contact with half the kids here last night, but how in hell do they expect me to differentiate one of my butt-to-butt dancing partners from another? Am I supposed to randomly rub my buttocks up against people to see if we’ve bonded booties before? “Yes, the particular musculature of your ass does feel familiar. I remember you now!” Duh.

  Now that I think about it, buttocks-bumping was an unintentionally appropriate prelude to the fun we have in store for the next month. The unspoken objective for the overwhelming majority of SPECIAL students has clearly revealed itself, and it’s a lot more straightforward than the enrichment crap listed in the brochure: GET LAID.

  To this end, the girls on my floor have devoted much time to the creation of the Lucky Seven, an official designation of the most doable guys in the program. Girls outnumber guys seventy-two to twenty-eight, so the competition is fierce. SPECIAL is a haven for hetero boys whose interest in the arts has inevitably led to chants of “Fag!” and other homophobic taunts at their respective high schools. This is their chance to shine. But even after taking their hardships into consideration, only seven made the cut. Very lucky for them, indeed. Very unlucky for me. See, I made butt-to-butt contact with each and every one of the Lucky Seven, none of which was a gluteal love connection.

  Take “the vocal music hottie,” Derek, for example. The mere mention of my name inspired him to break out into a Broadway show-tune version of the 1981 Rick Springfield tune “Jesse’s Girl.” This was unwise for two reasons: (1) I introduced myself as Jessica, not Jessie. I loathe being called Jessie. (Almost as much as I loathe it when my dad calls me Notso, as in Jessica Notso Darling. Har-dee-har-har. It’s even more hilarious now than it was the first bizillion times he said it.) (2) The song “Jesse’s Girl” is sung by a guy (Rick Springfield) who wants another guy’s (Jesse’s) girlfriend (name unknown). For the song “Jesse’s Girl” to apply to me, it would have to be a song about Rick’s lesbo envy, or something like that.

  I tried explaining this to Derek, to which he replied, “Well, excuse me, Miss Buzzkill.”

  I see my reputation has preceded me.

  The only other notable Lucky Seven exchange was with “the saxophone player hottie.”

  “I’m Mike,” he said, swiveling his butt against my shoulder blades. He was nearly a foot taller than me. “What’s yours?”

  “Jessica.”

  “Jessica what?”

  “Jessica Darling.”

  “Get the fuck out!” he yelled, bringing our butt-to-butt dance to a screeching halt.

  “I will not,” I said. “That’s my name.”

  He snickered.

  “Seriously, what’s your problem?”

  Snicker. Snicker. Snicker.

  “What?”

  “You look different in person. . . .”

  I stood there with my hands on my hips, glaring.

  “You usually look like a glazed doughnut.”

  More glaring.

  “Glazed doughnut. Get it?”

  “I know we just met, but now you’re pissing me off.”

  He held out his hand. “I’m honored to meet you, Jessica Darling, the Queen of Anal as voted by the 1997 Adult Video Awards.”

  Jesus Christ. If telling a girl she shares a name with a porn queen who specializes in butt sex qualifies as wooing these days, I’m signing up for the nunnery tomorrow.

  The upside to all this is that at least I know for sure, on Day One of Orientation, that there is no hope. Not one shred of hope that I will find my true love. Not one sliver of hope that I will meet the one who will permanently erase the memory of He Who Shall Remain Nameless.

  It’s good to get that out of the way. Now I can just move on.

  Of course, it would be much easier to forget He Who Shall Remain Nameless and move on if I stopped having XXX-rated dreams about him.

  Oh, Christ. That’s exactly the type of thing that warrants a journal burning.

  the sixth

  The very notion of being defrocked by a teacher is nothing more than comedic fodder for girls in the Pineville school district. A sorrier assemblage of maleness is unlikely to be found anywhere in the world. Hope and I once tried compiling a list of the hottest teachers when we were sophomores, and it turned into a carnal cavalcade of freaks, starting with Mr. “Bee Gee” Gleason, the history teacher whose irony-free wardrobe consists of polyester bell-bottoms and butterfly collars, and ending with Mr. “Rico Suave” Ricardo, my homeroom teacher, whose party-in-the-back, all-business-up-front mullet is an engineering marvel requiring no small amount of technical know-how and a complex assortment of mousses, gels, and hair sprays.

  I lamented the dearth of hot male teachers, but now I realize it was a blessing. My academic record would not be as impressive had I been distracted by the likes of Professor Samuel MacDougall, who can credit three novels, two works of nonfiction, and one hot piece of ass to his name. Finally! A new Obsessive Object of Horniness. OOOH!

  “Call me Mac,” he said.

  Mackadocious is more like it.

  “For the next month, I will be your writing instructor. . . .”

  Lip Macking Good.

  “It was Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who said, ‘Words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the Soul within. . . .’ ”

  Big Mac Attack.

  “Here, in the next five weeks, I hope you do more revealing than concealing. . . .”

  Oh, I’ll reveal more than that if you want me to, Mac Daddy.

  “You will read and write for six hours a day, five days a week. There will be a morning workshop lasting three hours. Then a break for lunch, followed by an afternoon workshop. You will be expected to share your writing and critique each other’s work, which will help you become more careful readers and better blahdiddyblahblahblahblah . . .”

  That’s where I kind of zoned out. Maybe it’s the humidity, but Jesus Christ, Mac brings out the David Lee Roth in me. . . .

  Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad . . . I’m hot for teacher.

  What makes it worse is that I seem to be the only student who has fallen under his hypnotic spell. True, he’s not the obviously crushable type. He’s skinny with thick black glasses and kinky black hair that springs off his head in all directions: SPROIIIIINNNNNNG! See, my idea of cute comes with an IQ requirement. It’s geeky cute. It’s Rivers Cuomo, not Justin Timberlake. It’s Gideon Yago, not Brian McFayden. Jimmy Fallon, yes please! Brad Pitt, no thank you.

  My mental undressing got as far as Mac’s boxer briefs when the class gasped in response to something he had said.

  “What did he just say?” I whispered to a tall, anemic guy next to me, a dead ringer for the Grim Reaper. (Pun very much intended.)

  “The seminar will culminate in a reading at Blood and Ink,” he replied in a subvocal growl.

  This meant nothing to me. “Where?”

  “Blood and Ink.”

  Me, expressionless as a lifetime of Botox injections.

  Grim Reaper turned to the shadowy figure sitting next to him.

  “She’s never heard of Blood and In
k.”

  You wouldn’t think that a girl with eight barbells in her face could be so easily horrified. I would say that all the color drained from Barbella’s face, but I was pretty sure that the vampire girl sitting in back of her had drained her veins already.

  Thankfully, Mac stepped in before I was ritually sacrificed.

  “Blood and Ink is a performance space located in the East Village in Manhattan. It is one of the last bastions of oral storytelling. Historically, it has always been a forum where writers blahdiddyblahblahblahblah . . .”

  I think the other reason I’m the only one Macking out is that my fellow students can only be bothered by the deepest, most intellectually rewarding pursuits.

  “Now that you know what I expect of you in these next five weeks,” which I didn’t, because I hadn’t been listening, “I’d like to find out what you hope to get out of this program. Francis Bacon said, ‘Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable.’ For the next fifteen minutes, I want you to write in the moment. Answer these questions: Why are you here? Why did you willingly sign up for a program that traps you inside a classroom all summer long, while your friends are at the beach? More important, why do you want to write? I expect you to share your responses with the class.”

  A hand shot up next to me. It was attached to another black-clad lump of a person, with skin so pale that her veins gave her a blueish hue. A vision of the Lump frolicking in the sand made me chuckle, which was not a very cool thing to do when you should be trying to make friends.

  “Must I use prose? I’m a poet.”

  “You can write in whatever form you feel is best for self-expression,” Mac replied.

  So what did I write about? How did I account for my presence at SPECIAL? Well, without totally plagiarizing my application essay, I basically wrote that I wanted to escape another summer catering to attitudinal tourists at Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe but my parents are putting every extra penny toward my college fund and would only send me to a summer program that cost little (cross-country camp) or nothing at all (SPECIAL), so I chose mental exertion over physical and applied to the writing program because I can’t sing, act, dance, paint, play the piano, or do anything else of artistic merit.