Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath by Steven Goldman Read Free Book Online Page A

few of us write it in our notebooks. “The delineation of the particular qualities, features, and traits of a fictional person, conveyed primarily, in decent novels, through the character’s actions and dialogue …”
    Louis is giving himself a nosebleed. It’s a trick he doesn’t overuse, so he must really want out of this class. The first time I remember him doing it was in fifth grade, as a way of postponing a geography test when we were supposed to have memorized all of the state capitals. He first tugs out some of the deeper nose hairs, then taps the side of his nose, up near the bridge. It takes about ten minutes, and then there’s a gush of very red blood. I’ve never wanted a nosebleed badly enough to try it.
    The gush comes. Louis catches it on his shirt. I hope he has to do his own laundry. He raises his hand.
    â€œExcuse me, Mr. Curtis, sir?” Louis calls all the teachers sir or ma’am.
    â€œAre you bleeding?” Curtis asks. He sounds a little shaken. He’s not one to question the obvious.
    â€œYes sir, I’m sorry. I get nosebleeds. It’s a puberty thing, sir. May I go to the bathroom?”
    â€œPlease,” says Curtis.
    Still holding his shirt to his nose, Louis uses his free hand to grab his backpack, slings it over his shoulder, and leaves the room. He’s not coming back. On the way out he pats Thad on the back, leaving a bloody handprint.
    â€œ ‘Character’ is a noun. ‘Characterize’ is a verb. Both are derived from the Greek word …” And here Curtis stops to write something even more unintelligible than his usual handwriting. It looks as if it starts with an x. I assume he is now writing in Greek. “The word meant to mark, to distinguish …”
    I drop my pencil. Well, “drop” would be an understatement. I don’t just drop my pencil. I fling my pencil. I hurl it across the room. For several minutes I’ve been doing that nodding thing, where you start to fall asleep, then catch yourself just as your head moves forward and then you jerk back up suddenly. Fourth, maybe fifth nod, I jerk back up and my pencil flies across the room. It lands in front of Curtis, perfectly into the little space between him and the class, the demilitarized zone, the no-man’s-land. Everyone looks up, then back.
    If I had been quick, I could have looked around as if I also didn’t know where the pencil came from. If I had been Louis, I would have tapped some schlep next to me (it probably would have been me), and said, “Good shot, dickhead.” If I had been cool, I could shrug it off. Big deal.
    As I am me, my face immediately drains of all color. My eyes feel moist, my hands clammy. I sit on my hands. I stare straight ahead, into the oncoming headlights of Curtis’s impending anger. I can’t breathe. Everyone is watching me. I can feel myself expand, grow larger, fill up all of the empty spaces in the room.
    Curtis picks up the pencil and walks the three rows back to my desk.
    â€œThis yours?” he asks.
    I nod.
    He places it on top of my open notebook, next to my doodle of a vaguely Curtis-like person impaled on a giant pencil.
    â€œTry holding on tighter,” he suggests without any inflection, and then he launches into a soliloquy on stream of consciousness.
    Beware anything that is too easy
    David is sort of waiting for me at my locker. He always looks as if he just happens to be there when I get there, not like he’s waiting for me.
    â€œMyoclonic jerk,” he says cheerfully.
    â€œWhat did I do to you?”
    â€œNo, dumbshit, in class, the pencil thing. It’s called a myoclonic jerk. It’s a medical term. Aren’t you a doctor’s son?”
    â€œIt doesn’t mean I know anything.”
    â€œWe talked about it in biology last year.”
    I sort of remember biology last year, but nothing this specific.
    â€œIt’s the sudden convulsion