Losers Read online

  The train was empty. There was no sound but the grinding of wheels on tracks and the whir of the air-conditioning. It felt way too late in the year for air-conditioning to exist. I took the seat behind Bates. Each seat was big enough to hold two people, but Bates had his feet up. I slid into the seat behind him, pulling my feet onto the cushion in the other direction, so I could face him.

  “Hey, Bates,” I said. “Why were you acting like that before?”

  “What?” he said. “You mean, on the ground?”

  “Yeah. Were you stoned?”

  He looked at me askew. I’d never been a drug user. I didn’t know what being stoned was like. It seemed like it must be like that—acting like you’re in a totally different universe. I imagined that was what the café hipster kids must do—all get stoned together and lock themselves in a room all night.

  “Jupiter. Do you even know what being stoned is?”

  I gulped.

  “Yeah—uh—sure,” I admitted, measuring the volume of my voice to sound casual. “It’s when you smoke too much marijuana.”

  He burst out laughing. He laughed like coughing, as though all the phlegm in his throat was going to congeal and coalesce.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, stricken. “Isn’t that what it is?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, rubbing his chest and coming down. “No, Jupe, I was not stoned. I was just, I dunno. What my shrink would call acting out.”

  “Your shrink?” Was Bates really psycho? Had he ever been institutionalized?

  “She’s just this lady my parents send me to. A socialization therapist or whatever. They get freaked out whenever I open my mouth, and every few months they need reassurance that I’m not going insane or some shit. So they send me there, and she interviews me for an hour and tells them that I’m fine. I don’t know what she would make of that monkey over there.”

  He shot his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing to where Crash was now hanging upside down from the bars on the ceiling, from the very foot that he’d just been moaning on the floor about and threatening to sue the city for a new leg.

  “Oh. Right.” I was speechless, having nothing in my own life to compare this to. The closest I’d ever gotten to therapy was being sent to my room and then crawling out onto the roof to stare at the stars. Maybe my parents weren’t so screwed up, I decided.

  “Yeah, well, anyway, it’s fun. You get to tell her whatever you want and she has to take you seriously. I make up a new disease every time I come in. She keeps thinking that I’m gay, but I think she’s supposed to say that about everyone.” He let out a loud guffaw—mostly, I think, for the benefit of Crash, who I’m sure didn’t know anything close to the truth. I looked over at him, but Crash had left his perch on the handlebars and emerged in the seat directly behind me. His head popped up like a weasel.

  “What are you guys talking about?” he shrilled. “Is it fun? Is it about me?”

  “We were just saying what a massive ego you have,” said Bates, totally unexpectedly.

  “Well, you know, it’s actually a learned talent. I mean, you can’t just go into the business of being me and expect people to start loving you for the person you are without a little free advertising. It never hurts to get your name out—” he said, smoothly and smartly.

  And then he suddenly stopped talking because someone had, at that moment, shoved a knife in his face.

  The knife was as long as my forearm. It was shiny and clean, and seemed a glowing, lightsaber white as it reflected the subway car’s fluorescent lights. It waved in the air, pointed vaguely at Bates’s face, the tip of the blade hovering this way and that with an air of easy threat, as if at any moment it could decide of its own accord to burrow itself in his neck, or to change course and fly out at one of us.

  At this point, both Bates and Crash were facing out. I was facing them, which meant I was sitting with my face toward the window. We had just ridden past the Ben Franklin Bridge, a brilliant shade of aqua blue, standing out against the harsh grays and slates of the Philadelphia skyline. The Delaware River flowed quietly, meditatively, dotted with a million tiny glowing waves and lights that reflected the city skyscape.

  The knife, too, reflected the brightly glowing lights of the subway car. Only, those were fluorescent and dirty and cold.

  And I could see Crash’s face in its dull steel, and he looked like I’d never seen him before, like a totally different person.

  He looked scared shitless.

  “Come on!” roared the guy who was brandishing the knife. “Give us your wallets!”

  Us? I thought. I felt my blood racing, my heart hammering in my rib cage, my veins beating against my outer layer of skin. An instant, viscous layer of sweat burst out, soaking my shirt in seconds. I listened intently, terrified. I glanced at the reflection of the muggers in the train window. There was a whole gang of them, too many to count. Five? Six? Eight? They were talking too loud. My head was spinning too fast.

  Bates stirred in his seat, fidgeting. I wasn’t sure where this fell in the spectrum of his fierce and antisocial urges—whether he was going to spaz out and go crazy or whether he’d be so freaked out by someone who wasn’t him bullying him that he’d back down instantly. A small part of me, totally scared and totally tailspinning, was hoping that he would start to rage like a mountain lion, hulking out and throwing his fists everywhere, attacking everyone and everything. An out-of-control Bates was still better than an in-control crazy, screwed-up Yards gang with weapons. Not by much. But better nonetheless.

  Bates made his move.

  Snarling and glowering, he rose to his feet. “Listen up, you mammalians,” he growled. “You wanna talk to me like that, you best be talking out of your mouth and not some other—”

  “You gonna argue with this?” the main guy said, thrusting the knife closer to Bates. Now it was right up against him. The blade dug into the fatty fold of skin between his neck and chin. It pressed the skin neatly back, straining it, bisecting it in an even crease. Soon it would start cutting in.

  Bates’s eyes swam with determination. The other guy’s friends stared at him. Everyone had thought it would be a simple game, their wills against ours. I don’t think either of them expected to have their bluff called.

  Then came an explosion from the mouths of one of the other guys in the gang.

  “Don’t!”

  He jumped for them both. He seized the hand of the guy with the knife at the same time as he grabbed Bates’s forearm. I don’t think he knew what he was doing. I mean, I don’t think anyone knew what they were doing, but this was a particularly advanced degree of stupid—like plunging into a dark room when you’re in a mad scientist’s house and there’s one of those biohazard signs on the door.

  But sometimes, you just gotta throw yourself into it.

  Bates tumbled backward over the seat. The guy with the knife soared through the air, flying into the rest of his gang, literally bowling half of them over so they were arranged on the floor in various positions of Twister-like complexity. Bates, meanwhile, was clutching the top of the seat with both arms, holding on for life in a position that, in different circumstances, would have been doing serious damage to his ego. His legs hung upside down in the air. His arms were sprawled out, clutching the pillowy plastic fabric, feet jammed in my face. I don’t know how he managed to roll into that position, but there he was.

  It was a precarious balance. Too precarious. The visual absurdity of Bates’s massive body hanging upside down by a thread, just the utter weirdness that our assailant was lying in the main aisle of a deserted subway car racing across the city, was enough to freeze us all.

  And then Bates collapsed.

  He fell right into me. Or onto me, I should say. I fell on the floor, Bates rolled on top of me, and off of me, and then straight into the gang guys.

  In a flash, the members of the gang scrambled to their feet. Two of them grabbed Bates by his arms and held him tightly, like a convict going to the guillotine. They
forced him down, brought him to his feet. I backed up against the wall, feeling even more afraid, and even more conspicuous than before.

  And then, in the silence that followed, as I trembled and the gang members panted and everyone wondered whether the leader of the pack, the wild one, was really going to use that knife, there came a single, cogent, bewildered exclamation.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I blinked.

  I started, actually recognizing the voice before the face. She was just standing there, mixed in with the rest of the gang—short, stocky, bleach-blond pixie haircut, boobs jutting out like they meant business, hands on hips, out of uniform, looking more than anything like she was pissed off.

  “Yo, hey, what’s up Margie?” I said quickly, the words tumbling out of my mouth with a fear that bordered on religiousness. “What are you doing here?”

  “Dude, this is what we do at night,” she said. “You live in the Yards, you know what goes on. This is my man. His name’s Jimmy.”

  At that moment, none of that information was entering my brain. I was only barely aware that she was even speaking. I nodded to Jimmy severely, maturely. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  Jimmy, baffled, offered a wave of his hand.

  “Hey.”

  “What the hell’s your name, anyway, kid? I keep running into you, but we never get around to—”

  “It’s Jupiter,” I said quickly, answering her while actually cutting off the end of her question. It wasn’t really a question, anyway, though. It was somewhere between small talk and getting the particulars of our meeting out of the way.

  “For real?” she said, still staring at me like I was a phantasm that she didn’t quite believe in. “Well, whatever. Cool. Your parents name you that?”

  My mouth came open, about to reply. But she pre-empted me, asking instead, “So what are you doing here? And why are you hanging out with these clowns?”

  I glanced around, at Bates and the still-hiding Crash Goldberg, who was currently being surrounded by three gutter punks in gold jewelry and puffy Eagles jackets, each of whom looked more eager than the others to make an imprint of that jewelry in Crash’s skull.

  I paused. I was on the precipice of telling her everything that had happened since the first conversation we’d had, the first time that I’d met her, in the restaurant. I wanted to tell her about becoming popular, about losing my accent, about hanging out with Devin, and, most of all, about discovering downtown. How there was a world beyond the Yards, and how there were people around that were so cool and how we didn’t have to hang out with guys like this, the type of guys who beat me up every day for the first seven years of my public education, the type of guys who probably ridiculed her every time she used correct grammar or spoke in an accent that they didn’t understand.

  And so I did.

  “We’re on our way home from a rock show,” I said. “It was this band called Prowler. They’re amazing. They aren’t big yet, they’re just a bunch of café kids who leave flyers lying around downtown, but they’re going to be huge. They really could do it. And it’s amazing—there are all these coffeehouses and art galleries and even some clubs, and all kinds of people hang out there—” I thought about telling her about Bates’s and my adventures at Bubbles, but decided now was probably not the proper time. “And it’s really completely amazing. And since we talked that first time, things have gotten really insane. I got popular. Everyone at school knows who I am, and I get invited to parties constantly, and Bates even says that this girl, Devin Murray, the hottest girl in school—she’s, like, practically the dictionary definition of conventionally beautiful—and Bates keeps saying that we should, like, get together, and I even think he might be right. But you know what? I don’t really care. Not to sound arrogant or anything, but I’m not interested in her. She’s nice, and she’s cool and smart and funny—she isn’t any of the stereotypes—but it’s just that I’m not into her. Or any of the girls downtown. They’re interesting and thoughtful and cultured, they’re everything that I wanted to get out of the Yards to get away from, but they still live in their narrow little worlds, afraid to talk to me. They aren’t like you at all. And I really think—I keep hoping that I’ll run into you so I can tell you—I just want you to know, I think you’re really amazing.”

  Everyone on the train was silent. Bates, Crash, the guy with the knife. The guys who had been looming over Crash, about to capture him or something, actually took a step back. They all waited, curious and uncertain. Everyone looked like they really wanted to hear what was going to happen next.

  Then, into the aura of solemnity that I had somehow imposed, someone’s voice broke out. It was the guy with the knife.

  “Can we please get our shit together here, folks?” he bellowed. “I believe we were in the middle of something?”

  Margie raised her hand—palm up, fingers stiff together. “Cut it, Jimmy,” she said. “Just get off the train or something, okay? We’re in the middle of something.”

  Jimmy looked like he was going to argue with her, but the train pulled to a stop just then. The guys who were holding Bates let go of him. Jimmy sheathed his knife quickly, and they all poured out of the subway car.

  And then it was just the two of us.

  Margie stood in the aisle, and so did I. We faced each other, suddenly feeling very formal, somehow meaningful, as though we were destined to be standing right here, right now. She looked totally different, standing alone in the middle of the car. Her black Guns N’ Roses ripped-sleeves T-shirt and cut-off jeans turned her into some sort of postmodern artsy Gothic girl. Her pale skin and even whiter hair made her surreal, luminescent, so vividly and throbbingly alive against the dullness of the subway car. Okay, we weren’t really alone—Bates and Crash were both sitting on the edges of seats, eyes wide and breath racing, both trying to figure out what had just happened—but, as far as we were concerned, they were in another universe.

  Or, at least, as far as one of us was concerned.

  “Wow, Margie,” I said. “I can’t believe I ran into you again. It was really cool of you to save our lives like that.”

  When I called her Margie, her face scrunched into a question mark, but then softened into an expression of grace and understanding. She laughed a little, candid and sort of nervous. “Hey, no problem, Jupiter. Anything I can do.”

  “So you’ll go out with me, then?” I blurted out.

  At once, I realized the severity of my words. I had never asked a girl out before, and I guess I’d always just assumed that it was something that one might bring up naturally in a conversation, along the lines of How are you? or Have you heard the new Cookie Jar record? As soon as I’d said it, however, I realized the inflexibility of such a question. Like the turning point in our relationship. Like the turning point in my life, and the two vast, extreme directions it could go from here.

  “Oh, Jupiter,” she said, sweetly and gently. “No.”

  “Oh.”

  My oh could not have been more different than hers. Margie’s was kind, lilting, easy, and noncommittal, the kind of oh that is sung more than said. Mine was like a winter blizzard, sudden and hard, a punch in the stomach. Deflated.

  “Jupiter, you met Jimmy. He’s my boyfriend. Granted, he’s not very sociable, but what do ya want? He’s actually a pretty good guy. Give or take the occasional knife fight. And he’s a vegetarian.”

  I’m a vegetarian, too, I thought about saying, but didn’t, because I wasn’t.

  “Listen, I have to go. I’ll grab a taxi at the next stop, hook up with the guys. This is—this isn’t what we ordinarily do. They don’t even really need money—they have like a zillion hook-ups. It’s just a thing. It just keeps them busy.”

  “Uh…right,” I said, floundering for something to say that didn’t sound incredibly juvenile in response to that.

  “But…you glad I could get you out of that?”

  I grinned. “Yeah, just as they were about to puncture B
ates like a big red balloon. That part was cool. Thanks for the rescue, Margie.”

  “Hey, no problem.” Like clockwork, the train glided to a stop and the doors slid open. She stepped into the doorway, one (long, thin, ivorylike) hand over the door. She flashed me a smile, which didn’t feel charitable so much as purely beautiful, a smile I would have bathed in the memory of for the rest of my life. “I’ll see you around, Jupiter.”

  “Wait!” I cried suddenly. The train was whirring up; the door was going to shut in a minute.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know that keg you guys stole from the party I saw you at? The warehouse one?”

  “Yeah, I remember. It’s still around. Marcus has it in his room with a Flyers flag on top of it. Why?”

  A computer voice on the subway loudspeakers said, “Please stand away from the doors.” The standard alarm bells started to go off, and all the doors except for hers slid halfway shut and open again.

  “You think I could get it back? There’s this girl I kind of want to impress.”

  She thought for a second.

  Then she said, “Tell me her locker number.”

  When she stepped off the train, Bates and Crash shot immediately over to where I was sitting. They started gushing, flooding me with questions and exclamations. I tried my best to answer, but I was totally gone—staring out the window at the night, shivering, lost in the wonder of my own gloriously weird life.

  We got the letter in the mail a few days later, delivered by certified post. We’d never gotten one of those before. It was a Saturday morning. At first, I think, I didn’t even really believe it was true. I mean, did special deliveries even happen on Saturdays? But the doorbell rang and my mom walked over to the big grated garage door and grabbed the latch and swung it open.

  The letter carrier looked around our suddenly exposed kitchen, confused as anything.

  “I need to have somebody sign for this,” he told my mother. “Registered mail. It’s addressed to the Glazer family, North Diamond Street at this address?”

  “That’s us,” my mom said, plucking the letter from his fingers. Ignoring him, she ran to the kitchen table, grabbed a butcher knife, and sliced it open. Hastily, apologetically, my father scribbled his name across the clipboard.