The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second

KENSINGTON BOOKS

Chapter One

Okay, so maybe getting my scrawny ass pushed into the back of a Crystal Lake cop car wasn't the smartest thing I've done, but Dana's party last night-it sucked. She should thank me. The only thing anyone'll remember about the party is me getting busted.

My folks, on the other hand, won't let it go. They say I'm this big embarrassment to them. What else is new? After spending seventeen years listening to them say that I don't "apply myself," I'm giving up. Not in the good-bye-cruel-world sort of way. I'm not in this huge rush to swipe a Ginsu knife from the kitchen and make Swiss cheese of my intestines. It's just that when you're in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation, it's best if you don't. It's easier.

Only, my parents don't see it that way. According to them, I need to grow up and try to make something of myself, which means writing this stupid personal essay for my college applications. So I said I'd start my personal essay.

My name is Charles James Stewart, II. Charles the Second. My friends call me Charlie. First (AKA Charles James Stewart, AKA Dad, AKA McHenry County's next state's attorney) calls me Chip at press conferences, but around the house, I'm usually Smart-ass. Everyone else calls me Ass Bandit or Fudge Packer. I'm seventeen years old, scarecrow gangly at all of 6'4", and a buck-fifty dripping wet. My nose and ears are way too big, my voice cracks all the time, and I've never passed my driver's test. (Six failures, but who's counting?) As you can probably tell, I'm one of the cool kids. While some guys in my class already have hair on their chests, I just started getting pubes. And to make me a bigger freak, all three of them are growing in straight. I also don't have their "cool" half-a-pint-of-gel-and-two-hours- in-front-of-the-mirror-to-look-like-I-just-rolled-out-of-bed hair, puka shell necklaces, designer hoodies, or K-Swiss shoes, either. I do have their dirty jocks, though, 'cuz they shove 'em in my face all the time.

I'll be a senior at South. I'd've graduated already, but in grade school I was held back 'cuz I was, as First half-jokes, "socially retarded."

My extracurricular activities include soccer, being a total music and comics freak, and jacking off like a retarded monkey. C'mon, I'm seventeen, and it's not like I've gotten any action, short of the one time Bob Collins beat off in front of me after a soccer game (and then freaked and totally stopped talking to me).

After high school, I want to ...

Who cares?

So naturally, Dana Flannigan's not the only person who thinks I'm a jerk. Everyone does. That's why Dana didn't even want me at her end-of-summer-we're-gonna-be-seniors party. It didn't matter to me. The only reason I even went to the thing was because Dana is dating Bink, my best friend since second grade (second grade round two, that is). Bink made me go.

I guess the fact that Bink's always making me do things is how the two of us ended up friends in the first place. He jokes that we wound up being friends 'cuz "all the really cool superheroes have sidekicks." He says it 'cuz he knows it'll get a rise out of me. I tell people we ended up friends 'cuz we wanted each other's meat. It pisses him off, but it's true-sort of anyway.

During the first week of second grade, I made sure I always sat by him in the school cafeteria during lunch. Even back then, I thought he was cute-cute like I wanted him near me, not cute like I wanted him in me. Anyhow, this one day toward the end of the week, Bink opened his lunch bag, pulled out a plastic-wrapped corned beef sandwich on white bread, and stuck a finger in his mouth, pretending like he was going to puke.

"I hate corned beef," he said, pouting. "What do you have?"

I opened my plastic lunch box and looked inside. "A ham sandwich."

"I'm not supposed to eat those."

"Why?" I asked, wondering if he was like this one girl in class the year before who ate something that touched a peanut at some point, and almost died.

"Because I'm Jewish," Bink said. He looked like a little kid who'd just been told to hug a great-aunt who always wears costume jewelry sharp enough to puncture a lung, tells you how big you're getting, and then drags her chin whiskers across your face as she gives you one of those slobbering kisses that border on intergenerational incest.

"What's Jewish?" I asked.

"It's like being grounded for life for not believing in Jesus. You can't eat ham. You have to wear stupid hats. Every Friday night they force you to go to a place where everyone talks funny. Once a year, you have to wait at the table until some guy named Elijah shows up for dinner. He never does 'cause he's dead, but they don't tell you that at first. The worst part is you don't get Christmas. I don't want to be Jewish."

"Me neither," I said, wondering, at the time, if it was something you could catch from a girl or from sitting on a public toilet seat.

I felt bad that Bink didn't get to have Christmas, so I gave him my sandwich. He practically shoved the whole thing in his mouth, telling me between chews that I was his best friend in the whole wide world. Looking back on it now, it wasn't the smartest thing to do, but what did I know? I was, like, eight. And, I didn't know that Mrs. B would fly off the handle when she found out.

I like to imagine the second-grade version of Bink, walking home from school all pissed-like and letting Mrs. B have it. He marches into the house, metal screen door slamming behind him, throws his book bag on the floor, puts his fists on his hips, stares at Mrs. B, who's sitting on the couch watching some TV judge tell a hillbilly he's gotta pay for the cell phone he stole from his truck-stop girlfriend. Mrs. B looks at him and asks, "What's a matter, honey?"

Then Bink gets all high and mighty, and lays into her about how Moses, Methuselah, Maccabaeus, Meir, and Menachem had it wrong.

Bink says to his mom, "You lied to me. There's nothing wrong with ham. In fact, it tastes really good-especially on rye bread with Swiss cheese."

I can see Mrs. B going into this state of total apoplexy-bulging eyes, trembling lips, jaw practically to the carpet-but none of that seems to bother Bink. He just wants to know what else she lied about-bacon, shrimp, cheeseburgers, shellfish, bacon cheeseburgers, and probably even his foreskin. Okay, so not his foreskin. I'm the only freak who'd bring it up.

I don't know how it really happened, but Mrs. B found out about Bink eating ham, and she actually did blow a gasket. She called the school and, I imagine, demanded that the principal tell her what Nazi sympathizer was feeding her son pork products, why the school was letting some kid single-handedly ruin the Jewish diorama (or whatever she called it), and if West Elementary would teach kids to remember the Holocaust by selling Anne Frank-furters at lunch.

The principal ended up calling my mom, and we had to go into his office for a meeting with Bink and Mrs. B. I got grilled on why I gave Bink the sandwich even after he told me he was Jewish and wasn't supposed to have it.

"'Cuz he doesn't get Christmas."

As a defense, it didn't fly. It just led to some boring let's-find-exciting-new-ways-to-celebrate-our-differences discussion that made both...