Allen Zadoff: Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have

Before I can answer, April walks out of class alone.

“Give me two seconds,” I tell him, and I peel away. I have to do something before I chicken out again.

“Hey,” I say to April. Not what you’d call a brilliant opening line.

“Hey,” she says, but she doesn’t sound happy about it. It’s not like yesterday when she was teasing me. Maybe I look better with a table of éclairs behind me.

“Remember me?” I say.

“The big jock, right?”

“Yeah.” I smile. She doesn’t smile, but at least she remembers. I glance over my shoulder at Eytan. He’s watching me with a curious look on his face. I don’t think he’s ever seen me talking to a girl except maybe Nancy Yee. But she’s not really a girl. More of stick figure with an accent.

“Do you go here?” I say to April.

“Now I do,” she says. “My dad got transferred over the summer.”

“Interesting,” I say.

I can feel my heart beating in my chest. The last time I went to the doctor, he had to press the stethoscope into me really hard because he couldn’t hear well through my fat. But my heart’s banging away so hard right now, it feels like I don’t have any fat at all. It’s tapping right against the front of my chest. What if I die of a heart attack in front of April? What if her last memory of me is 306.4 lbs. pounds of blubber collapsing at her feet like a dead walrus?

Eytan’s slides in next to me. “Eytan Michaeli,” he says, and extends his hand.

“I’m April,” she says, and they shake.

“I’ve heard a lot about you from Dr. Zansky here,” Eytan says, and he puts his arm around my shoulders. April looks at both of us like we’re maniacs. I know Eytan’s trying to help me, but he’s making it worse.

“April’s a new student,” I tell him.

“You fell down the rabbit hole, huh?” he says.

“If you have questions about anything…,” I say.

“It would be our pleasure to assist you in navigating the madness,” Eytan says.

We stand there for a second, Eytan and me on one side, April on the other. People are looking at us with the new girl, and I can see it’s making April uncomfortable. You have to be careful who you stand next to when you’re new. Eytan and I are not exactly status builders.

“I have to get to class, guys,” April says.

“Absolutely,” I say. “You don’t want to make a bad first impression.”

April kind of shrugs like she doesn’t need my advice. Then she takes off.

“That was your girlfriend?” Eytan says when she’s gone.

“Sort of. I’m hoping. You know.”

“Okay, here’s my assessment,” Eytan says. “First of all, I’m putting aside the fact that you lied to your best friend.”

“I didn’t lie exactly.”

“Your shwanz is making up stories. It’s normal. Hormone-induced psychosis.”

“I admit I stretched the truth.”

“So here’s the thing,” Eytan says. “Normally, she’d be way out of your league. No offense.”

“None taken,” I say. He’s right about April being out of my league. I know it.

“But seeing as how she’s new… you might have a chance. You just have to act fast. That’s how I got in with Sveta last year. What chance did I have with a hot German exchange student, right? So I moved at the speed of light. Blitzkrieg , baby. I had to impress the hell out of her before she had anyone to compare me to.”

“You think that will work for me?” I say.

“Only if you dazzle her,” he says.

I bite my thumbnail. I’m starting to feel hungry again.

“Fast,” Eytan says.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” I ask Dad.

I’m hiding in my bedroom on the cell while Mom watches TV in the living room downstairs. She hates it when I talk to Dad, especially if she’s not around to monitor the call.

“Love at first sight,” Dad says. “You mean like in a fairy tale?”

“In the real world.”

I look down at the iPhone Dad gave me for my birthday. His picture is staring out at me. For some reason, he doesn’t quite fit in the frame. His forehead is chopped off. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw him in person. I’m pretty sure he had a forehead, but it’s been a while.

“I met this girl,” I say.

Dad interrupts me. “I don’t want to talk about this, Andy. We have bigger fish to fry.”

Dad likes to get down to business. It’s because he’s a lawyer, and lawyers bill by the hour. Dad’s life is measured in billable hours, six minutes at a time. Ergo:

a six-minute phone call to Andrew = $35

a fight with Mom = $140

going to the bathroom (#1) = $5.83

going to the bathroom (#2) while reading The New Yorker =$70

messy divorce = $1.4 million

I understand how billable hours gives a different perspective to everything. Time is money after all.

Anyway, I know what fish Dad’s talking about. School.

Now that sophomore year has started, Dad’s worried. Not half as worried as I am. I’m the one who had to live through ninth grade.

Dad interrupts me. “It’s a whole new year,” he says, “which makes it like a new start. You know what I mean?”

“I know.”

I had a few hundred issues my freshman year, and Dad’s concerned I’m going to have a few hundred more this year.

“You’re starting behind the eight ball,” Dad says. “They’ve already had a good long look at you. A whole year’s worth of impressions. That means you have to overcome before you can triumph.”

“That’s exactly my plan,” I say.

Dad doesn’t say a word. The line is totally clear, not a crack or a pop. Just three dollars’ worth of silence. When Dad and I stop talking, it feels scary, like looking into a canyon from the very edge.

“What’s it like in New York?” I say to try and change the subject.

Dad’s been commuting back and forth, making the transition to the new office.

“It’s an amazing city. Really something special. Like Boston times three, if you can imagine that.”

“Maybe I can go down there with you one time.”

“What do you mean?” Dad says.

“Before you move. Just so I know what it’s like.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m still getting settled,” Dad says. “But once things calm down a bit, we’ll make a plan.”

“I could come one weekend, maybe. I’ll take the train so it will be cheaper.”

Mom walks by my bedroom door. “Who are you talking to, honey?”

“My friend,” I say. Mom usually checks the cell bill at the end of the month and scans it for Dad’s number. That’s the downside of a family plan. Surveillance. The upside is that she won’t know I lied to her for twenty-four days.

“I have to go,” I tell Dad.

“Good boy. Don’t upset the apple cart.”

I click off, and Mom looks at me suspiciously. “Did you do your homework?”

“We’ve only had one day of school, Mom.”

“Well, don’t scream at me. I’m your mother, and I want you to go to college.”

“I’m so not having this conversation,” I say.

I’m standing in Coolidge Corner on a winter afternoon. It’s really cold out, and I have to blow on my hands and slap them together to keep warm. I try to pull my jacket closed, but it’s a size too small and the sides won’t meet.

Suddenly I hear brakes squeal as the T stops two blocks away.

April gets off.

She’s wearing a red coat, and even from far away I can tell she looks really beautiful. It takes her a minute to see me, but when she does, a big smile crosses her face, and she starts to run towards me….