Bad Haircut. Tom Perrotta
A sticky heat wave rolled in early that summer, right after school let out. We got in the habit of going to Kevin's house in the afternoon to watch reruns of The Twilight Zone on channel eleven. Sometimes Kevin's older brother Jack would be there with Burnsy and a couple other guys, smoking pot from a red plastic bong. Jack had just graduated from high school, but he didn't seem too interested in finding a job. He made all the money he needed selling nickel bags to kids who hung out at the Little League and McDonald's. Kevin and I didn't get high—we had just finished seventh grade—but we liked to pretend we did, watching TV through our eyelashes and laughing hysterically at the commercials for Peter Lemongello's Greatest Hits and truck-driver training.
Paul barged in on us right in the middle of a great Twilight Zone, the one where the businessman steps into a time warp and returns, as an adult, to the world of his childhood. He meets his ten-year-old self on the playground and begs him to appreciate the beauty and wonder of youth while he still has time and not to be in such a big hurry to grow up. The kid pounds his baseball mitt, and says, “Sure, mister, whatever you say.”
“Wow,” said Jack. “Is that intense or what?”
We heard keys jangling, but it was too late to move. Paul stood in the doorway looking hot and grimy in his oil-stained work clothes. I thought he was going to deliver a big lecture, but he just turned off the TV and stared at us like we were Martians.
“Don't you guys have anything better to do?”
There were six of us in the room. One by one, we shook our heads.
The next day Kevin and Jack began manning the pumps at Paul's Amoco. Jack hated it so much that he quit after two days and moved down to Seaside, where some guys he knew were renting a house for the summer. Kevin stuck with the job and began stealing from Paul.
It didn't occur to me to think it was wrong. Ever since I'd met Kevin, he'd been doing crazy things and dragging me along. On the morning of our First Holy Communion, we'd slipped into the Sunday school cafeteria and raided a tray of jelly donuts; we got powdered sugar all over our new blue suits. For our first and only Webelos camping trip, Kevin had shoplifted a gigantic T-bone steak, which we never got around to cooking, though we did have a great time banging each other over the head with it inside our tent. We threw snowballs at cars, ordered pizzas for people we didn't like, and played whiffle ball when there was nothing else to do. He was my best friend.
The night he told me about the money, Kevin took me to Shoe Town and bought us identical pairs of Puma sneakers. Before we went home, we took off our old sneakers, knotted the laces together, and tossed them at a telephone line on Center Street. We didn't stop until both pairs were dangling from the wire, kicking back and forth like they were walking on air.
* * *
I was with Kevin at the St. Agnes carnival in Cranwood the night he first laid eyes on Angela Farrone. We were standing by the food booths, spearing french fries from a paper cone.
“Look at that,” he said. “By the Porta-John.”
She was a gum-snapping bleached blond about our age, a knockout in a white tube top and jeans so tight that Kevin said she probably had to pack herself in with a shoehorn. In one hand she held a green helium balloon on a string, in the other a goldfish in a little plastic bag filled with water. The door of the Porta-John popped open and a scrawny redhead stepped out, glancing sheepishly around. She took the balloon from her friend and the two of them entered the moving crowd, like cars merging with highway traffic.
We followed them past the bake sale, the wheels of fortune, and the creaky rent-a-rides, then out of the carnival and down a sidestreet littered with ripped tickets and greasy paper plates. They stopped beneath a streetlight, huddling together with their backs turned in our direction. The green balloon jerked up and down above their heads. We caught up with them just as they stepped apart, hands empty at their sides. For one miraculous moment the balloon and the fish were suspended in midair, connected by the string. Then they started to rise.
We stood with our heads back, watching the balloon gain altitude as it drifted upward and eastward over the treetops, toward New York City. The goldfish glinted orange in the light, then disappeared, like a match flaring out.
“Hey,” Kevin said. “Why'd you do that?” The blond shrugged. “The last time I brought a fish home, my Dad flushed it down the toilet.”
Kevin called Angela every night for a week, but she kept hanging up on him. Then he had an idea. He bought a dozen roses and hired me—I was good in school—to write her a letter.
Dear Angela,
My name is Kevin Ross and I have a crush on you. We met on Friday night outside the Carnival. I've been thinking about your fish. Maybe it got lucky and fell in a lake! Will you please come to the movies with me sometime soon? We can see anything you want.
Your (hopefully) friend,
Kevin Ross
P.S.—In case you're wondering, I've employed a friend to give us a ride.
Kevin paid me ten dollars for the letter and another ten for delivery, five of which went to Burnsy, who drove me to Angela's house in the ritzy section of Cranwood. It was early evening, and a sprinkler spun jets of water across the plush front lawn. The shrubs near the house had been trimmed to look like gum drops and spinning tops. I set the roses on the welcome mat, then turned and ran back to Burnsy's Duster.
Kevin and Angela went to the drive-in on their first date. They really hit it off. Burnsy said there was so much heavy breathing in the back seat that he had to get out of the car and watch the second half of Billy Jack sitting on the gravel, holding the speaker to his ear. He told me this as we drove to Angela's to deliver another bouquet of roses, along with a poem I'd written at White Diamond:
Last night at the drive-in
The people in cars Were watching the movie But we were the stars!
It was Wednesday afternoon and I should have been doing my paper route. I was a carrier for the Community News, a freebie shopper paper. Once a week I had to fold 300 papers, secure them with rubber bands, then deliver one to every house in a six-block area. The entire process took about seven hours, and I made ten bucks.
I had been wobbling down Oak Street around noon on my old stingray bike when Burnsy's car pulled up and began crawling down the street beside me. Kevin rolled down the passenger window. I could tell from his greasy T-shirt that he was on lunch hour from the station.
“Hey Buddy,” he said. “You ever write a poem?”
“Nope.”
“Think you could handle it?”
I whizzed a paper at someone's front porch, just a little too hard. It slammed into the screen door: dogs started barking up and down the street.
“Sure,” I said. “No sweat. Just let me finish up.”
He leaned out the window and waved some money in my face.
“Come on,” he told me. “I'll make it worth your while.”
At the corner, Burnsy opened his trunk and threw my bike and canvas bag inside. By the time we got back from Angela's, I didn't feel like finishing my route. I went home, stuffed the last fifty papers into my bag, and rode out to the woods behind Indian Park. I dumped the papers into the brook, then sat down under a tree to leaf through a copy of Playboy someone had thoughtfully left behind.
“Sue really likes you,” Angela whispered. “Do you like her?”
“I don't know,” I said. “We just met.”
Sue was the redhead. Her parents were away for the weekend, and her older sister had agreed to let us have the house to ourselves on Friday night. It was my job to keep her occupied so Kevin could be alone with Angela.
Sue and I sat rigidly on the love seat while Kevin and Angela huddled together on the couch, holding hands and playing games with their fingers. Angela smoked like