The Bad Decisions Playlist Page 3

  Rick has arranged for me to have a math tutor.

  This is part one of the penance I shall be paying to expiate my mandolin-related sins: each Wednesday I shall attend tutoring sessions to supplement my Monday-morning summer school class.

  Which is annoying, but it pales in comparison with part two. Part two is indicated by the shirt I’m wearing as I squeak squeak squeak my way through the halls. It’s a blue-collared polo shirt. On the left breast it says RICK’S LAWN CARE SERVICE.

  Did you think Lawyer Rick is just a lawyer? Oh, no.

  Lawyer Rick is also Entrepreneur Rick, investor in and part owner of several fascinating businesses. One being a restaurant. One being some sort of cloud-data computery thing. The third being the creatively named Rick’s Lawn Care Service.

  So almost every day, with half days for summer school and tutoring sessions, I’ll be an indentured Lawn Care Servant, tending the grounds of the retirement homes and industrial parks of suburban Minneapolis. It offers more money and more hours than bagging groceries. By the end of the summer I’ll have enough to pay off about half of the cost of the mandolin.

  The remaining debt will be forgiven if, and only if, I faithfully attend all my summer school and tutoring sessions and pass algebra.

  I have signed an actual contract to this effect.

  The contract being my mother’s suggestion. “Great idea!” said Rick, and he lawyered one up in about twenty minutes, and then I swear to God we went to a bank in downtown Edina and got the contract notarized. I signed it in the presence of Rick and my mom and a smirking bald guy in a bad suit, Rick countersigned, and my fate was sealed with an embossing stamper.

  Afterward, my mom stood there smiling while Rick shook my hand and patted my back with his other hand​—​I hate when he touches me​—​and said, “Congratulations, Austin. To a new beginning.” I wanted to emboss his nuts.

  But you know what? It’s all good. I actually feel optimistic today. Healthy. That presatisfied feeling you get when you’re being responsible and doing something that you’d rather avoid. Granted, that’s not a sensation I’m all that familiar with. And granted, it’s all contractually obligated.

  But this morning, I’m on the right track. This morning, I’ll sit with my tutor, I’ll apply myself to bettering my knowledge of mathematics​—​it’s the key to the universe, really​—​and after I’ve improved myself intellectually, I’ll go and begin my first day of work and improve myself physically and fiscally. Physically and fiscally, I repeat to myself as I march along. Fiscally and physically.

  I pass the room where I did English last year. I liked the teacher, Mrs. Jensen, who is one of those who’s about sixty years old but will still drop an F-bomb and barely bother to apologize.

  “You know what you are?” she said to me once, after I’d failed to complete another assignment.

  “Um . . . I bet you’re going to tell me.”

  “Yes, I am. What you are is a SmartTard.”

  “SmartTard. Smart and . . .”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Are you supposed to say stuff like that?”

  “Hell no. But I can’t think of a better description for you. You’re smarter than lots of these other kids, but you won’t get off your ass and get stuff done. I see you with books all the time. I mean, you’re reading that, correct?” Pointing to the copy of Infinite Jest I’d been lugging around lately, admittedly a bit ostentatiously. “Or is that just some sort of affectation?”

  “I’m reading it,” which was true in that I’d reread the first half chapter several times.

  “Good. I was beginning to wonder if you were functionally illiterate. What else have you read?” she said, so we played checklist: Hemingway, Vonnegut, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Pynchon​—​

  “Oh, c’mon.”

  “No, seriously. Or I tried.”

  “So why can’t you turn in a goddamn assignment? What’s wrong with you? They not giving you the right mix of meds?”

  I explained the complicated varieties of meds and therapies I had received over the years with somewhat dubious results.

  “Also,” I added, “we’re trying this new thing now where I get more healthy male guidance in my life. Which apparently is important.”

  “Male guidance,” she said.

  “Right.”

  This was just after my mom broke up with Loser Tom, who followed Total Loser Phil (preceded by Absolute Disaster Chris), and right before she started dating Lawyer Rick. She signed me up for a Big Brothers thing where a guy came by once a week, a guy who decided that the ideal shared activity would be basketball. Which I think is called misreading your audience.

  “Male guidance,” repeated Mrs. Jensen.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you just need to pull your head out of your ass.”

  Tough but fair, that Mrs. Jensen.

  She ended our conversation by saying, “Someday, you’ll figure out what your problem is, and maaaaybe you’ll achieve something. For now, do yourself a favor and try to focus more on the smart part, and less on the ’tard, okay?”

  Less on the ’tard. Copy that.

  Today, and going forward, is all about smart, and not about ’tard. Smart not ’tard. Physically and fiscally. Smart not ’tard.

  I get to the classroom. I pause outside the open doorway, making sure I’m clear of the sightlines of anyone in the room, reshoulder my backpack, rehearse my excuse/apology for missing the Monday session of summer school, and go in.

  And stop.

  There’s a girl in the room. A girl my age, blondish hair. She’s standing on the other side of the conference table that dominates the space, focused on putting books into her own backpack.

  There’s a shallow part of my brain​—​okay, it’s mostly shallow parts​—​but a specific part whose job it is to alert me to the presence of attractive girls. And that part says, Oh, hey.

  And then another part immediately says, Really? Because she’s not at all the type of girl I’d usually notice. Not that she’s bad-looking or anything, and from what I can tell she does have a pretty good body, particularly her​—​

  Which is precisely when she chooses to sense my presence and look up. Erp.

  Our eyes lock. We’re both motionless. She has the book halfway into the backpack. There’s something about her gaze​—​I feel pinned by it, a thief in the spotlight, guilty​—​and I’m waylaid by a sudden and nearly overpowering urge to start babbling an apology.

  Then she returns her focus to her book, shoving it the rest of the way into the bag, and the moment is over. “I was just leaving,” she mutters. She zips the zipper.

  “Oh,” I say. I recognize her now: She’s in my grade, one of the Smart Kids, student government and debate team and math club and all that. I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere else, too. Jessica? Geraldine?

  She fixes me with that X-ray gaze again. “That’s it?” she says. “‘Oh’?”

  “Um . . .” I say. Oh, you’re really weird? “You don’t have to leave . . . ?” I venture.

  “You’re over thirty minutes late.”

  Now I’m really confused.

  “I’m here for a tutoring session at nine thirty,” I say.

  “No, it was scheduled for nine.”

  “How do you know? Are you here for a tutoring session also?”

  “Uh, yeah, I suppose you could say that.”

  The force of sarcasm is strong with this one.

  “Okay, well, even if it was supposed to be nine o’clock, the tutor’s not even here.”

  “I’m your tutor!” she practically shouts.

  I probably should have read the email more carefully. It probably specified the correct time, and also that my tutor is a peer tutor. Then I remember that Devon had made some joke about it, because he did the same program last summer. It’s called Peers Helping Peers, which Devon shortened to “PHaP,” as in, I gotta go do some phapping.

  So here I am, late for my fir
st phapping session, and my peer doesn’t look at all eager to help out her peer.

  “I’m really sorry I’m late,” I say.

  She shakes her head and sighs, making a big deal out of unzipping her backpack and pulling out the textbook, dropping it onto the tabletop with a thump. Then she sits with another dramatic sigh, just in case I don’t know that she’s pissed off.

  “I’m Austin,” I say.

  “I know,” she says, opening up the textbook.

  I’m still standing. “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Josephine.”

  “Josey?”

  “Josephine.”

  “Sorry. Got it. That’s a nice na​—”

  “Can we start? We only have twenty-four minutes left, and then I have to go to work.”

  This is going great.

  I sit. She flips through her notes and textbook as I get myself prepared, feeling flustered and off balance. Do not, I remind myself, start running your mouth.

  Just then she looks up sharply and says, “Did you just smoke a cigarette?”

  “Yes?” I say.

  “Can you please not do that?” she says.

  “Um, yeah,” I say, and scratch at my ear. Oh, God, Austin, do not start running your—​“The thing is, they totally trick you and put this nicotine stuff in there?” AUSTIN, STOP RUNNING YOUR—​“So, one day you’re like, I’m gonna try one of those burning-stick things, because they look so cool and all that, and the next thing you know you’re this pathetic object lesson in the dangers of marketing and peer pressure and you’re getting lectures from people you just met.”

  Wonderful. Great job. I’ll just step out now and let you handle things from here (footsteps; door slams).

  “Fine,” she says. “Could you skip the burning-stick things right before we meet? I’m allergic to it. It makes me throw up.”

  “Throw up? From smelling it? Who throws up from smelling tobacco?”

  “I do. Do you want me to prove it to you? Happy to do so.”

  “No, I’ll take your word for it. Any other allergies I should know about?”

  “Yes, gluten,” she says, then mutters so quietly that I barely hear her, “and jerks.”

  “You should say ‘assholes,’” I suggest.

  “What?”

  “Instead of ‘jerks.’ ‘Assholes’ is funnier.”

  “I wasn’t going for funny. But fine. Assholes.”

  “Excellent. Well done.”

  Tiny eye roll from her. Any optimism I felt earlier is long gone. I drum on the table. Doot doo doo.

  “So,” I say, “what kind of music do you like?”

  She looks at me.

  “Kidding,” I say. “Isn’t that what people always ask to break the tension? ‘Hey, what kind of music do you . . .’”

  Arched eyebrow.

  “Never mind,” I add.

  “Okay,” she says. “So​—”

  “What about Wilco? Feist? The National? No? Tegan and Sara?”

  Unchanged expression.

  “Shane Tyler? Do you like him?”

  “I don’t know him. Should we maybe​—”

  “Really? He’s my current fave. You should check him out.”

  “I’ll make sure to do that.”

  “Shane Tyler. S-H-A​—”

  “Got it.”

  “I can make you a playlist, if you want.”

  Her eyes narrow.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing. Can we​—”

  “So where do you work?”

  “Can we begin?”

  “I’m just asking. Now, me? I work in the burgeoning field of lawn care,” I say, stretching the shirt with two hands to better display the logo. “I mean, I’m just getting my start, but I gotta say, I’m pretty optimistic. Big things coming for me. Big things.”

  “I bet. Now we have about twenty-two minutes left.”

  “Honestly, I’m sorry about being late. I thought it was at nine thirty.”

  “Okay. But even if it was at nine thirty, you were still late.”

  “Point taken. Agreed. I also had some trouble getting my bike started, so that slowed me down a few minutes.”

  “Fine. What did you go over in class?”

  “Uh . . . Right. Class. I have to be honest. I sort of didn’t make it.”

  That penetrating stare again, making me squirm inwardly. She says, very deliberately, “What.”

  “I didn’t make it.”

  “You blew it off.”

  “Yes. True. You’ve never blown off a class?”

  I might as well have asked her if she’d ever killed and eaten a hobo.

  “I’m gonna take that as a no,” I say. “And you’ve never been late.”

  “I try not to be.”

  “I really am sorry about that, okay? You’ve never screwed up or broken a rule?”

  Stare.

  “No,” I say, “of course not.”

  “Twenty-one minutes.”

  “Right. Sorry. Let’s start.”

  “Fine. So​—”

  “Okay: The light is red, but there’s not a single car in sight. No cars at all. Do you cross?”

  “Argh! Look, I get it, okay? You’re a rebel who rides a motorcycle and is too cool to do math because you’re going to ride off on your motorcycle and do rebel motorcycle things and you won’t need math.”

  “Whoa. Hold up. It’s only a 175 CC, so it barely qualifies as a motorcycle. The ‘CC’ in this case referring to​—”

  “The cubic displacement. I know.”

  “Oh, do you know motorcycles?”

  “No, I know math, which is what we’re supposed to be working on.”

  “I bet Jack White or Ryan Adams or Conor Oberst isn’t that good at math.”

  “Fantastic. Let’s see, are any of them here? Oops! Nope! Looks like it’s just us.”

  “Well, I’m going to be like them.”

  “What about your great career in lawn care?”

  “Well, yeah, of course. I figure after a few months of mowing lawns I should have several million bucks socked away. But honestly? Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Um . . . no?”

  “My plan​—​which is a secret​—​is I’m going to be a singer-songwriter.”

  “A singer​—”

  “Songwriter. Yes.”

  “You’re going to be a performer.”

  “Yep.”

  “Onstage.”

  “Yep.”

  “In front of people.”

  “Yes!”

  She looks at me evenly. Then shifts her gaze, mouth open slightly like she’s trying to figure out how to word something or whether to say it at all. She shakes her head and says, “Good luck with that.”

  I realize how I recognize her.

  Choir.

  She’s in the choir. She was one of the people left standing there on risers, humming and oo-ing endlessly while I was otherwise involved.

  My face is prickly hot.

  “So. What chapter did they cover in class?” she says. “You don’t know.”

  “No,” I mutter.

  “Didn’t think so. What do you want to work on? Quadratic equations? Factoring polynomials?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever. It’s all good. Let’s go. Boom.”

  “Right. Well.”

  She claps the book shut and stands up.

  “This,” she says, “is not going to work.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  She doesn’t say another word as she crams the books into her backpack and walks out of the room, ignoring my Aw, c’mons and Look, let’s just start agains. No, that’s inaccurate. She says one thing, to herself: “I’m such a fool.”

  “I signed a contract!” I say. “You don’t understand! I have to do this! You can’t leave me like this!”

  She leaves me like that.

  I listen to the squeaking of her shoes receding down the hallway. Then I clap my hands together and announce to the empty
room, “Fantastic! Okay! Let’s go repay Rick!”

  Except I’m not going to repay Rick. Instead what I’m going to do is screw up again and die.

  I’m gonna be smiling when they find me /

  because I’ve left it all behind me

  I’m going to​—​am about to​—​die, a gruesome, spectacular splatterfest of a death. A death caused by a commercial-grade lawnmower and my own stupidity.

  And Josephine. She deserves at least some of the blame.

  Sccrrrttcch goes the gravelly soil under my sneakers as I skid another few inches toward perdition.

  “Help,” I squeak, but I’m straining and out of breath and can’t get any volume behind it. Not that it matters​—​I doubt anyone else on the lawn crew could hear me over the roar of the machine, even if they weren’t wearing the big rifle-range ear protectors we’ve all got.

  I am on a very steep slope.

  Directly downhill from me is the narrow top of a retaining wall.

  Directly downhill from the retaining wall is lots of air to fall through.

  Directly uphill from me, and pushing me inexorably downhill toward the retaining wall and the air and death, is a four-hundred-pound walk-behind mower, its knobbly wheels churning uselessly as it slides slowly in the wrong direction.

  Sccrrrtch. Now the balls of my feet are on the retaining wall and skidding backwards. When I run out of wall, the machine and I are going over the precipice. And if the fall doesn’t kill me, the weight and vicious twin blades of the mower will.

  I think it qualifies as ironic that the job Rick got me so that I can pay Rick back is going to instead cost Rick more money, because cleaning up my remains is going to require hiring a white-suited HAZMAT team equipped with wet-vacs. Sorry, Rick.

  “Okay​—​important item: Don’t use a big mower on the steep sloping areas. Use the smaller push mower. You copy?”

  Those were Kent’s instructions, which I should have listened to. Kent being the REALLY HEALTHY-LOOKING pre-law college student who manages the crew and has FANTASTIC TEETH and INCREDIBLE HAIR and a REALLY POSITIVE DEMEANOR and CHARISMA and is basically the purified essence of every church youth group leader ever, the sort who is going to just friendly-enthusiasm you into a life of RIGHTEOUSNESS and JESUS. Exactly the guy Rick would hire. When I arrived, he approached me with a big smile, used his God-salesman grip to crush the bones in my right hand while squeezing my shoulder muscle with his other hand​—​the alpha-bro handshake, you know it?​—​and said, “Hola, amigo! Boss-man Rick tells me I need to keep a special eye on you. So first thing, a little tough love: You’re late.”