The Downside of Being Up by Alan Sitomer Page B

boy and a man. Make your play.”
    A silence fell over the living room.
    â€œWhat the hell does that even mean?” Gramps asked.
    â€œGrandpa!” exclaimed my mother. “Don’t use the H-word.”
    Gramps shrugged as if to say, “Why not?”
    â€œMy house, my rules,” Mom added. “And if you are going to stay here as our guest while your wife is visiting her sister in New Mexico, all I ask is that you please respect my wishes, okay?”
    â€œI thought Gram was on a cruise,” I said.
    â€œOh, um . . . yeah,” Mom said. “On a cruise visiting her sister.”
    â€œIn New Mexico?” I said, trying to figure it out. All the adults shared one of those looks. Something was fishy.
    â€œPhillip,” Mom said. “Would you talk to your son, please?”
    â€œLook, Ilene, this is a man thing,” Dad said. “And though you’re not gonna like hearing it, the truth is, I think you need a penis to understand the situation.”
    Mom looked as if she were about to faint.
    â€œBobby knows what I’m talking about,” Dad said. “Don’t you, son?”
    It was a moment before I answered.
    â€œCan I be excused?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Mom replied. “Can you?”
    I shook my head. “May I be excused?”
    Suddenly, I just felt, well . . . bummed out. I mean, I thought families were supposed to support you. Mine just made things worse. Like, did other kids feel this way about the people who lived in their house?
    â€œI guess you may,” my mom finally replied.
    â€œHey, Bobby,” Gramps called to me.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œDon’t forget the Vaseline.” Gramps grinned, then farted. “Ahhh . . . boysenberry.”
    I headed to my room as Mom and Dad began a half hour fight with each other, my mom nagging my dad to “talk to me” and my dad responding with comments like, “Wives like you are why God invented alcohol and TV.”
    Life sucked.

11
    â€œYa know what we need, Bobby? Ya know what we really, really need?”
    â€œFinkelstein, freeze,” I said. “Hold it right there.” We stopped dead in the center of the school hallway. It was Nutrition Break, a fifteen-minute time slot our school built into the day’s schedule, since class started at seven thirty and no one got to eat lunch until eleven fifty. They thought we needed a short energy break in the mid-morning to eat apples and munch pears. Mostly, we just talked, chowed potato chips and punched one another.
    I grabbed Finkelstein by his shoulders so I could get a good look at him.
    â€œSmile.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSmile,” I repeated.
    He smiled.
    â€œWhat kind of crazy color is that on your teeth this week?”
    â€œIt’s called sunrise and carrots,” he said proudly.
    â€œSunrise and carrots?” I said. “You look like you swallowed a safety vest.”
    â€œYeah, sexy, huh?”
    â€œNo, it’s not sexy, Finkelstein,” I replied. “It’s not sexy at all. It looks like they should use your face as a crosswalk warning.”
    â€œHe-hurrggh, he-hurrggh.”
    â€œDo not laugh, Finkelstein. Please, do not laugh.” I continued walking down the hall, past kids with stuffed backpacks, untied shoelaces and enough candy in their pockets to open up a convenience store. Even on a mellow day, the hallway was loud and rowdy, filled with kids’ random screams. The only time it got orderly was when Vice Principal Hildge cruised past, yelling things like “No running in the halls!” into his bullhorn.
    The guy probably slept with that bullhorn.
    â€œI wanted something extra special for the ladies,” Finkelstein explained to me. It had been about two weeks since “the incident,” so the spitballs dunked in chocolate milk had mellowed a ton. “I mean, face it, Bobby, we need to score chicks for the Big Dance. Hey, watch