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PART TWO
The Grass

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10.
I’d been asleep for just about thirty minutes when my alarm clock went off at
6:32. But I did not personally notice that my alarm clock was going off for
seventeen minutes, not until I felt hands on my shoulders and heard the distant
voice of my mother saying, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“Uhh,” I responded. I felt significantly more tired than I had back at 5:55,
and I would have skipped school, except I had perfect attendance, and while I
realized that perfect attendance is not particularly impressive or even necessarily
admirable, I wanted to keep the streak alive. Plus, I wanted to see how Margo
would act around me.
When I walked into the kitchen, Dad was telling Mom something while they ate
at the breakfast counter. Dad paused when he saw me and said, “How’d you
sleep?”
“I slept fantastically,” I said, which was true. Briefly, but well.
He smiled. “I was just telling your mom that I have this recurring anxiety
dream,” he said. “So I’m in college. And I’m taking a Hebrew class, except the
professor doesn’t speak Hebrew, and the tests aren’t in Hebrew—they’re in
gibberish. But everyone is acting like this made-up language with a made-up
alphabet is Hebrew. And so I have this test, and I have to write in a language I
don’t know using an alphabet I can’t decipher.”
“Interesting,” I said, although in point of fact it wasn’t. Nothing is as boring
as other people’s dreams.
“It’s a metaphor for adolescence,” my mother piped up. “Writing in a
language—adulthood—you can’t comprehend, using an alphabet—mature social
interaction—you can’t recognize.” My mother worked with crazy teenagers in
juvenile detention centers and prisons. I think that’s why she never really
worried about me—as long as I wasn’t ritually decapitating gerbils or urinating
on my own face, she figured I was a success.
A normal mother might have said, “Hey, I notice you look like you’re
coming down off a meth binge and smell vaguely of algae. Were you perchance

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dancing with a snakebit Margo Roth Spiegelman a couple hours ago?” But no.
They preferred dreams.
I showered, put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I was late, but then again, I
was always late.
“You’re late,” Mom said when I made it back to the kitchen. I tried to shake
the fog in my brain enough to remember how to tie my sneakers.
“I am aware,” I answered groggily.
Mom drove me to school. I sat in the seat that had been Margo’s. Mom was
mostly quiet on the drive, which was good, because I was entirely asleep, the
side of my head against the minivan window.
As Mom pulled up to school, I saw Margo’s usual spot empty in the senior
parking lot. Couldn’t blame her for being late, really. Her friends didn’t gather as
early as mine.
As I walked up toward the band kids, Ben shouted, “Jacobsen, was I
dreaming or did you—” I gave him the slightest shake of my head, and he
changed gears midsentence— “and me go on a wild adventure in French
Polynesia last night, traveling in a sailboat made of bananas?”
“That was one delicious sailboat,” I answered. Radar raised his eyes at me
and ambled into the shade of a tree. I followed him. “Asked Angela about a date
for Ben. No dice.” I glanced over at Ben, who was talking animatedly, a coffee
stirrer dancing in his mouth as he spoke.
“That sucks,” I said. “It’s all good, though. He and I will hang out and have a
marathon session of Resurrection or something.”
Ben came over then, and said, “Are you trying to be subtle? Because I know
you’re talking about the honeybunnyless prom tragedy that is my life.” He
turned around and headed inside. Radar and I followed him, talking as we went
past the band room, where freshmen and sophomores were sitting and chatting
amid a slew of instrument cases.
“Why do you even want to go?” I asked.
“Bro, it’s our senior prom. It’s my last best chance to be some honeybunny’s
fondest high school memory.” I rolled my eyes.
The first bell rang, meaning five minutes to class, and like Pavlov’s dogs,
people started rushing around, filling up the hallways. Ben and Radar and I stood
by Radar’s locker. “So why’d you call me at three in the morning for Chuck
Parson’s address?”

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I was mulling over how to best answer that question when I saw Chuck
Parson walking toward us. I elbowed Ben’s side and cut my eyes toward Chuck.
Chuck, incidentally, had decided that the best strategy was to shave off Lefty.
“Holy shitstickers,” Ben said.
Soon enough, Chuck was in my face as I scrunched back against the locker,
his forehead deliciously hairless. “What are you assholes looking at?”
“Nothing,” said Radar. “We’re certainly not looking at your eyebrows.”
Chuck flicked Radar off, slammed an open palm against the locker next to me,
and walked away.
“You did that?” Ben asked, incredulous.
“You can never tell anyone,” I said to both of them. And then quietly added,
“I was with Margo Roth Spiegelman.”
Ben’s voice rose with excitement. “You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman
last night? At THREE A.M.?” I nodded. “Alone?” I nodded. “Oh my God, if you
hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You
have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman’s
breasts. Thirty pages, minimum!”
“I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing,” Radar said.
“A sculpture would also be acceptable,” Ben added.
Radar half raised his hand. I dutifully called on him. “Yes, I was wondering if
it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman’s
breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and