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16 ENTER LEIGH, EXIT BUDDY
I'm not braggin, babe, so don't put me down,
But I've got the fastest set of wheels in town,
When someone comes up to me he don't even try
Cause if she had a set of wings, man,
I know she could fly,
She's my little deuce coupe,
You don't know what I got…
— The Beach Boys
It was, I am quite sure, the Tuesday after our loss to the Philadelphia City
Dragons that things began moving again. That would have been the 26th of
September.
Arnie and I had three classes together, and one of them was Topics in
American History, a block course, period four. The first nine weeks were
being taught by Mr Thompson, the head of the department. The subject of that
first nine weeks was Two Hundred Years of Boom and Bust. Arnie called it
a boing-boing-going-going class, because it was right before lunch and
everybody's stomach seemed to be doing something interesting.
When the class was over that day, a girl came over to Arnie and asked him if
he had the English assignment. He did. He dug it out of his notebook
carefully, and while he did, this girl watched him seriously with her dark
blue eyes, never taking them off his face. Her hair was a darkish blond, the
color of fresh honey—not the strained stuff, but honey the way it first comes
from the comb—and held back with a wide blue band that matched her eyes.
Looking at her, my stomach did a happy little flip-flop. As she copied the
assignment down, Arnie looked at her.
That wasn't the first time I had seen Leigh Cabot, of course; she had
transferred from a town in Massachusetts to Libertyville three weeks ago, so
she had been around. Somebody had told me her father worked for 3-M, the
people who make Scotch tape.
It wasn't even the first time I had noticed her, because Leigh Cabot was, to
put it with perfect simplicity, a beautiful girl. In a work of fiction, I've
noticed that writers always invent a flaw here or a flaw there in the women
and girls they make up, maybe because they think real beauty is a stereotype
Or because they think a flaw or two makes the lady more realistic. So she'll
be beautiful except her lower lip is too long, or in spite of the fact that her
nose is a little too sharp, or maybe she's flat-chested. It's always something.
But Leigh Cabot was just beautiful, with no qualifications. Her skin was fair
and perfect, usually with a touch of perfectly natural color. She stood about
five feet eight, tall for a girt but not too tall, and her figure was lovely—firm,
high breasts, a small waist that looked as if you could almost put your hands
around it (anyway, you longed to try), nice hips, good legs. Beautiful face,
sexy, smooth figure—artistically dull, I suppose, without a too-long lower lip
or a sharp nose or a wrong bump or bulge anywhere (not even an endearing
crooked tooth—she must have had a great orthodontist, too), but she sure
didn't
feel
dull when you were looking at her.
A few guys had tried to date her and had been pleasantly turned down. It was
assumed she was probably carrying a torch for some guy back in Andover or
Braintree or wherever it was she had come from, and that she'd probably
come around in time. Two of the classes I had with Arnie I also had with
Leigh, and I had only been biding my time before making my own move.
Now, watching them steal glances at each other as Arnie found the
assignment and she wrote it carefully down, I wondered if I was going to
have a chance to make my move. Then I had to grin at myself. Arnie
Cunningham, Ole Pizza-Face himself, and Leigh Cabot, That was totally
ridiculous. That was—
Then the interior smile sort of dried up. I noticed for the third time—the
definitive time—that Arnie's complexion was taking care of itself with
almost stunning rapidity. The blemishes were gone. Some of them had left
those small, pitted scars along his checks, true, but if a guy's face is a strong
one, those pits don't seem to matter as much—in a crazy sort of way they can
even add character.
Leigh and Arnie studied each other surreptitiously and I studied Arnie
surreptitiously, wondering exactly when and how this miracle had taken
place. The sunlight slanted strongly through the windows of Mr Thompson's
room, delineating the lines of my friend's face clearly. He looked… older. As
if he had beaten the blemishes and the acne not only by regular washing or
the application of some special cream, but by somehow turning the clock
ahead about three years. He was wearing his hair differently, too—it was
shorter, and the sideburns he had affected ever since he could grow them
(that was since about eighteen months ago) were gone.
I thought back to that overcast afternoon when we had gone to see the Chuck
Norris Kung-fu picture. That was the first time I had noticed an improvement,
I decided. Right around the time he had bought the car. Maybe that was it.
Teenagers of the world, rejoice. Solve painful acne problems forever. Buy an
old car and it will—
The interior grin, which had been surfacing once more, suddenly went sour.
Buy an old car and it will what? Change your head, your way of thinking, and
thus change your metabolism? Liberate the real you? I seemed to hear Stukey
James, our old high school math teacher, whispering his oft-repeated refrain
in my own head:
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