Everyone lives a self-centered life.
From the world’s greatest humanitarian to those incredible nuns who work in slums, everyone wakes up each morning thinking about herself.
Whether it’s trivial, like what’s for breakfast, or more ambitious, like achieving some lofty goal, a person is constantly on her own mind.
How else can I explain the fact that, despite what was happening in my family, I was still focused on myself? My grandpa had died only a week earlier, my parents whispered something about a mysterious plan, my frustrated dad punched my rotten uncle in his stupid face, and I was genuinely worried about all of it. Yet, when I opened my eyes each morning, what did I immediately obsess over?
Not having a date for the spring dance, which was one lousy month away.
Graduating with honors, which meant a trip to Italy as a reward from my parents.
Studying Italian so I could speak like a native, or at least not embarrass myself.
Me, me, me.
There wasn’t much I could do about being dateless-no one had asked me and there was no one I wanted to ask-so, even though it was two years until graduation, I focused on school even more. Honors required not just good grades but also the elusive “well-roundedness” on the part of a student. That’s why I was a member of the Environmental Club (we planted trees-yawn) and Red Cross Club (we gave blood-ouch) and eventually decided that I should shake things up and make my own mark on Fep Prep.
What better way than forming an organization and naming myself president?
I considered a boxing club, but it felt too personal-something I didn’t want to share with the whole school. It was my mom who suggested a movie club, leaning over and whispering it while she, my dad, Lou, and I watched The Third Man for the millionth time. We were jammed, as usual, on the big leather couch, with Lou the keeper of the popcorn. He shushed my mom since it was his favorite scene-Holly Martins (yep, a guy named Holly) meets Harry Lime (yep, Harry’s namesake) on a Ferris wheel, seeing but not quite believing that his friend, whom he thought was dead, is in fact alive. Each time we watched the scene, Lou hugged his knees and said the same thing.
“Meeting on a Ferris wheel, high in the sky, where no one can see them,” he said quietly. “Private and dangerous. . perfect.”
Like I mentioned before, The Third Man is Lou’s favorite movie, and my dad’s too. My mom loves Bette Davis’s self-confidence in All About Eve, while I can’t get enough of Pulp Fiction, especially the character Butch, a boxer who fights off some very icky guys in a basement. All in all, the best way to say it is that we’re a family of movie geeks, and based on that, I started the Classic Movie Club.
The Fep Prep student body was less than enthusiastic, to say the least.
The only other member was Fep Prep’s (maybe the world’s) most unpopular sophomore, Doug Stuffins.
His name, by a twist of fate, perfectly defines what he looks like and who he is-incredibly puffy, his three-hundred-pound body stuffed full of junk food, and incredibly smart, his giant brain stuffed full of movie information.
I met Doug during our freshman year in homeroom-my R last name seated near his S last name-when he turned to me as the teacher droned on about something, and whispered, “You look like an Italian film actress from the sixties.”
“I do?” I whispered back. “Which one?”
“All of them,” he said with a wink of his piggy eye.
When I sat across from him the next day, he waved and said, “Ciao, bella”-“Hi, beautiful” in Italian-not in a flirty way, but appreciatively. He’d paid me two nice compliments in two days, and for a girl with a very real issue with her very Italian nose, there are few better ways to start a friendship. We talked every day, covering all of the essential subjects-his lousy home life, my super close relationship with my family, the stunning lack of romance in our lives. The one thing we never discussed, maybe out of sensitivity for each other’s feelings, was our unpopularity-his by decree of the student body, mine mostly by choice. I probably wouldn’t have had a problem dating; I didn’t like how I looked, but some guys seemed to be okay with it. But the insularity of my family had gotten into my bones, and so I never pursued a bunch of friends. Doug was different than other kids because, in his isolation, he was the same as me. We bonded over being outsiders and, of course, over movies.
Doug knows more about movies than any kid in the world-maybe any adult in the world, except for his hero, film critic Roger Ebert. He talks about movies constantly to anyone who will listen, and doesn’t seem to know (or care) how to shut it off. Sometimes he quotes movies that most people have never heard of, much less seen, which makes him sound sort of insane. He’s constantly, frenetically tapping on his laptop, and when I ask what he’s working on, he always says the same thing-it was going to be the greatest screenplay ever written, an epic story about a tortured hero. I asked if I could read it and he said maybe when he was done, but no peeking-Orson Welles and Quentin Tarantino never let anyone see their work in progress, either.
And then there’s his obsession with the movie About Face.
It’s a black-and-white comedy made during World War II starring an obscure comedian called Charlie “Chuckles” Huckleman, who wrote and directed it. Doug has an original About Face script he “scored” (his word) on eBay that he’s continually studying, which he calls “the highest form of the craft” (also his words). To sum it up, Charlie Huckleman plays a guy called Dinwiddy who stinks at being a soldier-too cheerful to be disciplined, too uncoordinated to march in a straight line, and too timid to shoot a gun. Through it all, he’s harassed by a bulldog sergeant who’s frustrated by his lack of military ability. The big joke of the movie is that when the sergeant orders “about face,” which means turn around, Dinwiddy always turns the wrong way and bumps into another soldier. Doug explained that Dinwiddy’s failure to turn correctly seemed like a B-movie gag but was actually an unspoken antiwar statement. That, in fact, the entire movie was a metaphor for why civilized people should turn away from violence.
Unfortunately, Fep Prep, too, has its share of uncivilized people.
Doubly unfortunate, Doug’s ever-ballooning weight and nonstop movie chatter make him a constant target of teasing and harassment.
Since the beginning of our sophomore year, he’s been picked on mercilessly by Billy Shniper, a.k.a. “Bully the Kid.”
Billy-slash-Bully has blond, spiky hair, eyes set too close together, and balloonlike biceps, and he is as relentless as a starving shark when it comes to baiting, circling, and cornering a victim. Once he finds his torture groove, he gets jacked up and jumpy, his skin flushes red, and he begins to giggle-a creepy, choking laugh, like a hyena being strangled, which echoes through school. Every time I hear it, I know some poor kid is being teased to death. More often than not, that kid is Doug Stuffins.
But Doug is kind of amazing.
He takes it like a statue, showing no emotion whatsoever.
Even while Billy calls him names (fat ass, freak, effing loser) or pokes his belly (“It’s like vanilla pudding!”) or yanks away his laptop, Doug stands perfectly still with a look on his face like he’s elsewhere. This cool calmness makes Bully meaner, which is when he zeros in on Doug’s movie obsession. The insults are weak and stupid, but they hit Doug where it hurts, which is the genius of a bully-to locate a person’s most sensitive feelings and then exploit them in a public way. Bully spews his idiotic commentary and chokes on his hyena laugh while Doug remains motionless, waiting for it to end.
Finally, when Billy loses interest and drifts away, Doug picks up his laptop and finds a quiet place to write.
A few weeks ago, I found him under the old oak tree on the south side of Fep Prep, his chubby fingers a tapping blur.
I sat next to him in silence, and then put a hand on his shoulder, and he squinted into the sun without turning to me.
“Sara Jane,” he said quietly. “Do you want to go to the spring dance with me?”
Other than being forced to climb the knotted rope in gym class, there was probably nothing in the world Doug considered as torturous as attending a high school dance. He knew I wanted to go and was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for me-tight dress pants, tucked-in shirt, and hours of hip-hop in the school gymnasium. I gave his arm a gentle punch and told him that I knew he didn’t really want to go. He blushed and grinned, saying, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
I thought for a second. “Sunset Boulevard?”
“Some Like it Hot,” he said, pleased with the obscurity of his movie quote as he huffed to his feet and waddled away, whistling.
I watched him go, impressed that even after being persecuted by Bully the Kid, Doug could find it in himself to whistle about, well. . anything.
In my bleak, dateless state, I never whistled anymore.
Also, I never hummed or sang to myself.
My iPod currently moaned with only the saddest, most self-indulgent songs.
The wicked irony is that, in general, I roll my eyes at books, TV, and movies that depict people my age stuck in some moody teenage dilemma. If they’re rich kids, they’re moody rich kids, if they’re vampire kids, they’re moody vampire kids, if they’re postapocalyptic kids. . you get the picture. The thing that bugs me most is that very few people my age even have time to be moody. We’re busting our butts doing tons of homework, or forming classic movie clubs, or working part time, or just, I don’t know-dealing with an existence thick with expectations. According to Doug, there are three or four kids at Fep Prep so worried about their futures that they worked themselves into a state of exhaustion and weirdness and had to be prescription medicated to deal with it.
Our lives are not the ones our parents lived when they were our ages.
Theirs were simpler, slower, and analog.
Ours are complicated, competitive, and digital.
My generation is the smartest, hardest working, most wired and interconnected ever. It’s not easy, but it’s exciting, because we’re in training to take over the world.
And yet-
And yet, for maybe the first time in my life, what I wanted most was to luxuriate in my own moodiness, to listen to sad songs and think about how tragic it was that I didn’t have a date. I considered it pathetic that I could count on one hand the number of times I had been kissed, or kissed someone, since Walter J. Thurber pressed his lips against mine three years ago. I was mortified by the realization that I was three weeks from turning sixteen and had never had a real boyfriend. Despite what was happening in my family, or maybe because of it, I was experiencing a profound sense of aloneness-an overwhelming feeling that I would never find a person who had been made especially for me. It was an isolating sensation, as if I were the only girl in the history of the universe who had ever felt this way. What I wanted was to connect with someone who was not a family member, not a Doug-type friend, but instead a person who was similar to me in good ways and completely different in other ways. And also someone who would just sort of, well-adore me.
I was so me-centric that I sometimes found myself staring into space.
Other times I floated in a warm pool of self-pity, absolutely sure that I was destined to be alone forever.
And then I re-met Max Kissberg.