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PART ONE
The
Strings

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1 .
The longest day of my life began tardily. I woke up late, took too long in the
shower, and ended up having to enjoy my breakfast in the passenger seat of my
mom’s minivan at 7:17 that Wednesday morning.
I usually got a ride to school with my best friend, Ben Starling, but Ben had
gone to school on time, making him useless to me. “On time” for us was thirty
minutes before school actually started, because the half hour before the first bell
was the highlight of our social calendars: standing outside the side door that led
into the band room and just talking. Most of my friends were in band, and most
of my free time during school was spent within twenty feet of the band room.
But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is
generally associated with actual deafness. I was going to be twenty minutes late,
which technically meant that I’d still be ten minutes early for school itself.
As she drove, Mom was asking me about classes and finals and prom.
“I don’t believe in prom,” I reminded her as she rounded a corner. I expertly
angled my raisin bran to accommodate the g-forces. I’d done this before.
“Well, there’s no harm in just going with a friend. I’m sure you could ask
Cassie Hiney.” And I could have asked Cassie Hiney, who was actually perfectly
nice and pleasant and cute, despite having a fantastically unfortunate last name.
“It’s not just that I don’t like prom. I also don’t like people who like prom,” I
explained, although this was, in point of fact, untrue. Ben was absolutely gaga
over the idea of going.
Mom turned into school, and I held the mostly empty bowl with both hands
as we drove over a speed bump. I glanced over at the senior parking lot. Margo
Roth Spiegelman’s silver Honda was parked in its usual spot. Mom pulled the
minivan into a cul-de-sac outside the band room and kissed me on the cheek. I
could see Ben and my other friends standing in a semicircle.
I walked up to them, and the half circle effortlessly expanded to include me.
They were talking about my ex-girlfriend Suzie Chung, who played cello and
was apparently creating quite a stir by dating a baseball player named Taddy
Mac. Whether this was his given name, I did not know. But at any rate, Suzie
had decided to go to prom with Taddy Mac. Another casualty.
“Bro,” said Ben, standing across from me. He nodded his head and turned

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around. I followed him out of the circle and through the door. A small, olive-
skinned creature who had hit puberty but never hit it very hard, Ben had been my
best friend since fifth grade, when we both finally owned up to the fact that
neither of us was likely to attract anyone else as a best friend. Plus, he tried hard,
and I liked that—most of the time.
“How ya doin’?” I asked. We were safely inside, everyone else’s
conversations making ours inaudible.
“Radar is going to prom,” he said morosely. Radar was our other best friend.
We called him Radar because he looked like a little bespectacled guy called
Radar on this old TV show M*A*S*H, except 1. The TV Radar wasn’t black,
and 2. At some point after the nicknaming, our Radar grew about six inches and
started wearing contacts, so I suppose that 3. He actually didn’t look like the guy
on M*A*S*H at all, but 4. With three and a half weeks left of high school, we
weren’t very well going to renickname him.
“That girl Angela?” I asked. Radar never told us anything about his love life,
but this did not dissuade us from frequent speculation.
Ben nodded, and then said, “You know my big plan to ask a freshbunny to
prom because they’re the only girls who don’t know the Bloody Ben story?” I
nodded.
“Well,” Ben said, “this morning some darling little ninth-grade honeybunny
came up to me and asked me if I was Bloody Ben, and I began to explain that it
was a kidney infection, and she giggled and ran away. So that’s out.”
In tenth grade, Ben was hospitalized for a kidney infection, but Becca
Arrington, Margo’s best friend, started a rumor that the real reason he had blood
in his urine was due to chronic masturbation. Despite its medical implausibility,
this story had haunted Ben ever since. “That sucks,” I said.
Ben started outlining plans for finding a date, but I was only half listening,
because through the thickening mass of humanity crowding the hallway, I could
see Margo Roth Spiegelman. She was next to her locker, standing beside her
boyfriend, Jase. She wore a white skirt to her knees and a blue print top. I could
see her collarbone. She was laughing at something hysterical—her shoulders
bent forward, her big eyes crinkling at their corners, her mouth open wide. But it
didn’t seem to be anything Jase had said, because she was looking away from
him, across the hallway to a bank of lockers. I followed her eyes and saw Becca
Arrington draped all over some baseball player like she was an ornament and he
a Christmas tree. I smiled at Margo, even though I knew she couldn’t see me.
“Bro, you should just hit that. Forget about Jase. God, that is one candy-

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coated honeybunny.” As we walked, I kept taking glances at her through the
crowd, quick snapshots: a photographic series entitled Perfection Stands Still