Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

We all laughed again. “How was it?” Mike asked.

“Pretty good,” Kyle replied. “But now it’s all out of tune.”

Kyle played the guitar a lot and he was pretty good. He’d been playing for years, without ever having taken a lesson. He was real smart, too. But he never got good grades like me. It’s not that he never learned anything—hell, he was one of the smartest guys I knew. He just never bothered to memorize what he needed to ace the tests. He went completely on memory, and still managed to get B’s and C’s.

It wasn’t the way he dressed that was funny; it was that he didn’t care what anyone thought about it. No matter what happened—no matter how mediocre his grades were, or how badly someone might’ve insulted him—he always responded with the same retort: “I always win.” I never understood what that meant, until recently.

Kyle wanted to become a musician or comedian, so I guess he figured he didn’t need good grades. I don’t know, Kyle was always happy. And he was always different from the rest of us in a certain way. He was the only left-handed guy we hung out with, for example. I know that’s trivial, but it’s just an example of how different he was from the rest of us in every possible way.

I still don’t understand how he never got caught when he stirred up trouble. I mean, he did crazy stuff all the time. He’d say the most offensive stuff and play practical jokes on everyone possible. And I was usually in on them, too. But he always managed to avoid hurting people, and avoid getting caught.

The best practical joke, however, never actually happened. It was a great idea, though. We’d planned to convince Mike that I was dead. I know that sounds dumb, but Mike was really gullible, so fooling him like that was always fun. We had this thing planned out to the letter. We’d get my sister to call Mike on the phone and say I’d committed suicide, and that he should go to this funeral home near his house for the wake. It was all perfectly planned out, except for one thing—at the last minute, Kyle wouldn’t go along with it. After all the hype, Kyle figured that Mike’s parents would intercede, and maybe call up my family to express their condolences or something. And that, of course, would ruin the whole joke. So a few hours before we were going to do it, Kyle called it off. It was fun to think about, anyway.

Kyle was my best friend in high school. We never actually stated we were best friends, but our personalities were so similar that it was obvious. We both told a lot of dirty jokes and talked about things that nobody else in The Family had the balls to talk about. One big difference between me and Kyle was that I always had a girlfriend and he never had one. Almost every day I’d try to bust his balls about never having a girlfriend. But he’d always respond, “All I need are my left hand and my guitar.” And then, almost immediately, he’d throw in his catch phrase: “I always win, A.J. I always win.” Nothing ever phased Kyle.

The Family and I were unique in my high school. Like most schools, the jocks ran everything. For some reason, they were always the ones to get the girls. They smoked pot and drank a lot, and were popular with everyone. I despised them. Most of them had blonde or light brown hair—usually long hair. It wasn’t long in the back, because that style was out. It hung over their eyes. Most of them looked like fag models, but girls seemed to like them anyway.

One of these guys was Rob Forman. I’m pretty sure he was St. Ann’s valedictorian, the asshole. He was a star on the basketball team and really popular with students and girls and teachers. He was tall and tan with blonde hair and green eyes. He was a remarkable science student, and I think he went to Duke on a scholarship.

The reason I hated him was that everyone knew he smoked tons of pot but liked him anyway. He went to a park near my house on weekends and smoked up with all the other jocks and a bunch of girls. He got so crazy and high sometimes that people called him Stormin’ Forman. But all the teachers and students kissed his ass. Either people didn’t realize that he was a low life, or didn’t give a shit. Like I said, what an asshole.

Then there were the nerds. My friends and I were all smart, but the nerds were super-smart. These were the people who basically had no lives outside school. They’d hang out in the library before school and study; they’d hang out in the library after school and study. They were on the speech and debate team, too. I was also on the team, but I wasn’t anything like them. In fact, I was really an outsider on the team, and nobody else could figure out how I always won all the time. The nerds, I think, hated me the most. It was probably because I was almost as smart as them, but I had friends and girlfriends and actually had a life.

There were also these weird guys that really didn’t fit into any category at all. They were that people that didn’t dress well, the ones that I don’t think even took showers as often as the rest of us. For example, there was one guy named Luis. One day Kyle and some other guys took a bottle of Snapple and dumped it on his head. Luis didn’t fight back or anything; he just said something like “real funny, guys,” and walked away. Thing is, he made no attempt to remove this shit from his hair. I mean, the guy just walked around all day with wet hair, and never even tried to get it out. That’s pretty much the way all these people were—they just didn’t care. Another guy actually showed everyone a cigar burn that his father gave him as a punishment. It was almost like he was proud of it. I think a lot of them came from broken homes. Nobody really talked to these people, but they all talked to each other.

But the group of people I hated the most—the ones I absolutely wanted to kill—was the hoods. They didn’t call themselves hoods, but everyone else did. Anyway, these guys were like the bullies of my high school. It’s not like they beat people up after school—though, on occasion, that happened. They just went around acting like they were.

Most of them had slutty girlfriends. And the ones that dated halfway decent girls, girls like Maria, treated them like crap. They always wore oversized hooded sweatshirts, and big, loose-fitting jeans that always fell halfway down their asses. I guess they got the name because of those sweatshirts. These were the guys who smoked cigarettes during lunch hour outside the school, right in front of the teachers. They smoked pot, too. And most of them were either black, Italian, or Hispanic. But they came in all colors, really.

Anyway, it was during lunch time when I brought up my date with Maria. I hadn’t told anyone about it beforehand; I wanted it to be a surprise.

It was the first time ever I was really honest with the guys about a date. I had a tendency to exaggerate, as do all teenage boys when it comes to chicks. But I was so proud just telling The Family that all Maria and I did was walk around the park and talk, that we’d only kissed once. They couldn’t believe it.

“Did you bang her?” Kyle said, prompting everyone to laugh.

“No, I told you, I only kissed her once.”

“Good for you, A.J. ” Paul said. He was genuinely happy for me, I could tell.

I was elated that day. I was with my best friends telling them about a girl I truly loved. Now there was a word I’d never really thought of before I met her—love. I thought: Could I love Maria after only one date? I was so high, I was flying. To think that Maria might be The One!

“Guys,” I told The Family, “I think she’s The One.”

“Yeah, right,” Rick said, “you say that about all the girls you go out with.”

“Piss on you, Rick.” Everyone laughed.

“Gahdfaddah,” Kyle began, imitating Tom Hagen perfectly, “Gahdfaddah, if you say dis is dah one, den dis is dah one.” Then he genuflected before me, right there at the lunch table, as a sign of respect. It was pretty funny. Kyle was the best when it came to imitating the actors in The Godfather .