Nick’s on his bunk when I go in to grab a sweatshirt.
“Has Joe finished his homework?” he asks.
I shrug.
“He said we could play Risk.”
My sweatshirt gets hung up on one arm, inside out, and I’m stuck but trying to get it untangled without having to take off the stupid thing and start over.
I mumble, half in, half out of the sweatshirt. “Could is the operative word. He said we could play.”
“Don’t you want to play?”
“Grow up.”
“Why don’t you want to play? Joe does.”
“You and your games. Jeez, Nick, you’re so into beating other people. What is it with you and winning?”
“You’re the one who won at Scrabble last time. You used to like to play games. Before you…before.”
“Yeah, before I found out I might not be here this time next year. Death. It’s just a teeny little thing that changes your perspective.”
Nick throws his Game Boy at me. Lucky for him, I catch it.
“Don’t be throwing this away, boyo. You can play it when no one else wants to play Risk with you. When I’m dead and gone.”
I toss the little machine back to him, but he’s already halfway out of the bunk, his head tucked, aiming for my legs. Everything turns into slow motion. There’s silence from all sides and then there’s Nick. So compact, all muscle, he hits me like an anchor, twists around my legs, drags me down. With one arm still inside my sweatshirt, I’m pinned and helpless. Joe appears at the door. In a split second he takes it all in and digs through the tangle to grip Nick around the waist. He plants his leg by my chest so I can’t reach Nick.
“Picking on someone weaker than you, eh?”
Who knows which one of us he means? Who cares? It’s an old-fashioned pig pile, like we used to do all the time before Joe left for college. Nick squeals, I grunt, Joe pulls. I push, Nick squeals. The bunk bed probably gets the worst of it. And when we’re all exhausted, no one’s able to stand because we’re laughing so hard, like clown chimpanzees at the circus.
Although Dad and Mom have to be able to hear us from the living room, they leave us alone. And that’s the thing that reminds me most of old times. For a change no one’s worrying about poor sick Daniel.
“So, what did Mack say?” Joe asks at breakfast as he’s stuffing Dad’s famous veggie omelet down his throat like he’s a refugee from the Sudan who hasn’t eaten in a month.
“Juice?” Mom asks no one in particular.
“Me,” Dad, Joe, and Nick say at the same time.
Mom pours four glasses and gives the first one to me.
“I didn’t want any,” I say.
“You’re the one who really needs it.”
Joe looks at me like he suddenly understands what I’m up against. “Mack?” he repeats.
“He’s gonna get the twins and then swing by the public boat ramp for me. Nick can run me up there in the Whaler.”
“Maybe I can’t,” Nick says.
“Why can’t you?” Mom’s refereeing again. So much for the anonymity of the pig pile.
“Never mind.” I’m not about to wait for the blessing of a thirteen-year-old worm. “I’ll take the rowboat.”
“I don’t think that’s a great—” Mom starts.
Dad cuts her off. “When is all this social activity taking place?”
When Mom’s back is turned, Joe takes a swig of my juice. He swallows in one gulp and grins. “Saturday night, the Yowells’ Halloween party. Daniel has a date with a gorgeous girl.”
Dad grins like he’s actually really pleased for me. I’m so busy feeling halfway normal at the whole scene that I miss Mom’s frown until she sits down.
“Won’t there be a lot of kids there?” she asks.
“I hope. It wouldn’t be much fun with just Leonard, Mack, and Meredith.”
“Daniel.” Dad’s irritated now. All that good feeling gone in an instant and I’m back to the whole fishbowl feeling.
“I think I’ll row for a bit.” I put my plate with the half-eaten omelet in the sink. If we had a dog, it wouldn’t be so wasteful. I can just hear Mom, though, on the subject of a dog, a germ factory. “When are you going back to school, Joe?”
“Pretty soon. I’ve got a term paper due on Tuesday. Gotta start researching it.”
When Mom and Dad go ape about being prepared and staying focused, I slip out. Joe’s okay.
The creek is like a big blank brown paper bag, not a mark, not a wrinkle, not even an otter sunbathing on the mud flats by the reeds. If it were July, it’d be too hot to even be out in the rowboat like this, but October’s perfect. The top of my head is baking, but the air is cool on my neck and on my arms where I’ve pushed up the sweatshirt sleeves. I’m not in a hurry, not headed anywhere, no schedule. The boat is ancient, a metal body with a few telltale dents, wooden seats that Dad replaced when he found it washed up in the reeds. With forty different paint colors chipped off in different places, the hull looks like modern art.
When I’m alone like this, away from my family, it’s so much easier to think. I don’t know how Holden stood it so long at Pencey or the other boarding schools he was farmed out to by his parents. With kids like Ackley and Stradlater coming in and out of his room all the time, using his stuff and interrupting him, even when he’s in the john. Privacy’s pretty important to me. If the only way out was to not write the assigned papers and to not pass the tests, I might have done the same thing.
I don’t want you to think I’m a nutcase or anything, but out on the river by myself is where I have my best conversations with Holden. He knows how it feels to be on the outside of everything. After he read Isak Dinesen on exploring Africa, he wanted to call the author up and talk. I understand that completely. I wish I could call Holden right now.
Mack’s an okay friend, but he doesn’t like to read and he doesn’t always tell the truth. He exaggerates to make stuff sound more exciting. It’s not that I mind so much. Even when he won’t admit it, I know when he’s stretching things. I mean, it’s not okay that he does that. It’s a character flaw he needs to get past. I stopped leaving my chewing gum on the bedpost when I was nine. Ha-ha.
Dad says people usually grow out of bad habits like they grow out of clothes. Things happen to make them see how destructive the habit is. Either way bad habits definitely get in the way of what’s important. They can hold you back. That’s Dad talking. I’m the first one to admit I have a few bad habits. I’m definitely obsessed with Meredith, but at least it’s not girls in general anymore. I’m antisocial. Not that I don’t like being with people. It’s certain people I can’t be in the same room with. You’d think I could focus on their good traits and ignore the lousy ones. I’ve tried, but faking it would be worse, in my mind.
Holden has plenty of bad habits and he knows it too. He wants to be a regular guy so much that he puts up with jerks. He doesn’t want anyone telling him he has to do something. He has trouble when it comes to priorities. That’s one of the problems I used to have, but not anymore. The Disease really cuts to the chase.
Not that he’d admit it, but Holden’s working through the honesty thing too. Personally I think he almost has it right. Being honest with other people if it means you’re going to hurt their feelings is not always necessary, but being honest about some things is crucial. Like, if Meredith didn’t know about my being sick, I’d have to tell her before we slept together. This is all hypothetical, now. I’m talking it through with myself. It wouldn’t be fair to her. She ought to be able to choose before she commits, if a guy she’s serious about might not be around to take her to the senior prom, that kind of thing.