Grandmom and Granddad spoil me because they love me, but also because I’m their only grandkid. I almost had a sister, but she died before she was born.
Her name was Willow.
Anyway, one of Granddad’s favorite sayings is, “Walk into a room like you own it, and everyone will assume you do.”
That’s what I tried to do when I strode into the cafeteria on the day of Stevie’s lobster presentation, and I guess it worked, because Stevie spotted me from his table and waved me over.
Ah, shit, I thought. It wasn’t Stevie I wanted to impress. I’d hoped I was done with him, or he with me.
I told myself to be cool. I crossed the room, brown paper lunch sack in hand. Ernie Korda held out his fist as I passed, and I gave him dap.
When I reached Stevie, I said, “’Sup?”
“Sit,” Stevie said.
I dropped into a chair and nodded at the others: Stevie’s friend Matt and two girls, Lily and Sabrina. I upended my lunch bag, emptying its contents before me.
“Takis. Excellent,” Stevie said. He snatched the green foil bag, ripped it open, and shook some into his mouth. “May I? Excellent.”
“You used excellent twice in a row,” Lily pointed out.
“Not in a row,” Stevie said. “‘In the same sentence family’ would be more accurate.”
“You should work on your adjectives,” Lily said. “Variety’s the spice of life.”
“Mmm. Spice. I like a girl who’s spicy.” He dipped his hand into my bag of Takis, helping himself to more. He licked his fingers and smeared Lily’s cheek with Takis spit.
“Gross,” Lily said. She swiped at her cheek with her napkin.
“I marked you. Now you’re mine,” Stevie said.
“No.”
“You have to be my sex slave and rub my feet.”
“No, and again, gross,” said Lily.
“Why your feet?” Sabrina asked Stevie. “Not that I’m knocking foot rubs, but of all the body parts in the world to make your sex slave rub . . .”
Lily shoved Sabrina. “Oh my god!”
“I’m just saying,” Sabrina said.
“Girls, girls,” Stevie said soothingly. “You can rub me wherever you want. My body is your playground.”
Lily and Sabrina looked at each other. They giggled, and it was kind of like they were Stevie’s sex slaves, only without any actual sex. Presumably without any actual sex.
Across the cafeteria, I spotted Roby eating his lunch and reading a paperback. He seemed fine, and I felt an irrational flare of annoyance. Here I was, feeling ashamed of myself on multiple levels, and Roby was oblivious. Roby was as happy as a clam!
Were clams and lobsters related? Did clams skulk along the ocean floor angling for fights, each hoping to be dubbed the mighty Clam King?
I imagined a clam stretching its rubbery body to its full length and flinging itself forward against its shell. Best-case scenario, the clam would drift through the water, clink shells with its opponent, and sink lazily back to the bottom of the sea.
“Yo, Paul,” Stevie said. “I was telling Lily and Sabrina what happened in Ms. Summers’s class. How epic it was.”
“So epic,” Matt said, bobbing his oversize head. Seriously, he has a really big head, and not because it’s overflowing with brains. It’s just a really big head.
“And while Stevie’s story wasn’t terrible,” Lily said, “it also wasn’t the most thrilling, because it wasn’t about me.”
“Dang, Lil,” Sabrina said, “you are remarkably self-absorbed.”
“It’s a talent,” Lily said. She pretended to yawn, which she pretended to hide with a ladylike pat of her mouth. She dropped her hand and cocked her head. “So, Paul. You tell us a story.”
“Does it have to be about you?” I said.
“Ha,” said Stevie.
“No, just entertain us,” Lily said.
Was it fair for pretty girls to demand that boys entertain them? Lily and Sabrina were pretty, Lily in a cheerleader-peppy-white-girl sort of way and Sabrina in a black-eyeliner-Asian-vampire sort of way.
Sabrina smiled at me.
Lily propped her chin on the heel of her palm.
“Well . . . see that guy over there?” I said, indicating a junior with broad linebacker shoulders.
“Thad Parker?” Lily said.
“He went to the same middle school as me,” I said.
“Not entertaining,” said Sabrina.
“I was a sixth-grader when he was an eighth-grader, and at the beginning of the school year he cut in front of me in the lunch line.”
“Oh dear,” said Lily.
“What’d you do?” Stevie asked.
“Me? I’d have beaten the crap out of him,” Matt said.
“Yep,” Stevie said. He drove his fist into his palm. “Whammo.”
“Wow, Stevie, you are so tough and macho,” Lily said, and I thought she was being sincere until I caught the wink she threw at Sabrina.
“I would have made a citizen’s arrest,” Sabrina said. She jabbed her Twinkie at me. “Did you make a citizen’s arrest, Paul?”
I felt, for a moment, as if I’d been lifted from my body and was looking down at myself. I wondered why I was here, and what I was saying, and if I was going to do or say anything meaningful, ever.
“I pinched him,” I said.
Stevie barked a laugh. “You pinched Thad Parker?”
“As hard as I could.”
“And?” said Sabrina.
“He yelped. And then I yelped. And then he narrowed his eyes and came closer, and I shrank back in terror.”
“You poor thing!” Sabrina said.
“But after that did he leave you alone?” Lily asked.
“He did, yeah.”
Stevie cleared his throat. He liked it better when he was entertaining his sex slaves.
They weren’t his sex slaves.
Nobody was anybody’s sex slave.
“Yes, master?” Lily said sweetly.
“Is it time for us to rub your feet?” Sabrina said.
They giggled. Stevie looked perplexed, but launched into a speech about how Thad was a decent guy, actually, and how the two of them used to play on the same flag football team.
As for Lily and Sabrina’s foot-rubbing offer, maybe Stevie took it at face value. Foot value. Maybe girls offering to rub his feet seemed normal to him.
He was, after all, the Lobster King.
For the rest of the school day, I considered the mystery of girls and boys and life and everything.
In elementary school, I didn’t give much thought to girls beyond the fact that they smelled better than boys and tended to have longer hair.
In middle school, I became obsessed with girls. I looked at girls and thought about girls all the time. I discovered boob pics on Instagram. I discovered porn. I watched clip after clip of girls wearing tiny pleated schoolgirl skirts that didn’t quite cover their ass cheeks, and I wondered if they sold those skirts in some special sex store somewhere since so many girls wore them. Not in real life. Zero girls wore them in real life. But on Pornhub and SpankBang and xHamster, those ass-cheek skirts were everywhere.
Now that I’m in high school, I understand more about how things work. I know, for example, that those skirts are just a costume. I also know that it’s messed up how so many guys like to look at nearly naked women pretending to be schoolgirls. Guys like me. Although don’t get me wrong, I’m equally interested in watching naked women simply being naked, or naked women doing naked things.