Scrappy Little Nobody(17)
For example, I told her about the time my friend found out I’d never seen a movie without paying and he forced me to sneak in to Iron Man. I did not enjoy the film at all; I felt guilty the entire time. And when I found myself at dinner with Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. a year later, I confessed my crime and insisted on giving them cash or buying them something on the menu of commensurate value. Lisa knew she’d found an uptight, apple-polishing soul sister. We held a little election to see who would be the ruler of Squaresville, if such a miraculous place existed. I was elected mayor and she, my loyal deputy. To be fair, the thing was rigged in our favor since we were the only two people organized enough to bother voting.
I happen to love rules. I love having a plan. I love a film set that’s run like a well-oiled machine. I thrive in structure; I drown in chaos. I love rules and I love following them. Unless that rule is stupid. And yes, I have felt qualified, no matter my age, to make that determination. Scrupulous people don’t enjoy causing trouble, but they can be defiant as hell.
As an adult, being square is more or less an acceptable personality trait. The only time I desperately wanted to be rebellious was in adolescence. I wanted to be Rizzo, not Sandra Dee! I had to will myself to break rules when I could stomach it. While I’ll admit I enjoyed the thrill, I was not “the bad kid.” In fact, aside from the following stories, I was a painfully typical example of “the good kid.” During free period, even on the rare Maine sunny day, I’d stay in the cafeteria and do my Latin homework. Not because I was smart, but because I assumed the fabric of the universe would disintegrate if I didn’t. But the qualities that made me a square as a teenager—dedication, independence, maturity—led me to break the biggest rule of all. I committed systematic genocide. (Is she kidding? Let’s read on and find out!)
My adolescent flirtations with rule-breaking were alternately facilitated and foiled by my brother, Mike. Mike was a genuine cool kid. Not a “popular” kid; a wiry, quick-witted, slightly dangerous, well-liked kid. He’d been bullied in middle school but at fifteen he shot past six feet, got into good music and minor drug use, and stalked around the school in baggy white tees and fitted baseball caps. He had that feral look about him that was specific to the early 2000s, like the actors in the movie Kids (a movie I should not have watched before puberty). Like me, he had a strict sense of justice, so he had no interest in being unkind or intimidating people who were perfectly harmless, but he once beat up a friend for trying crystal meth and promised it would happen again if he slipped up. He was like a sheriff or an angsty Robin Hood. He’d be the first to point out what a loser I was, but wouldn’t let anyone else say a word against me. He once made a kid apologize to me after making a crack about my size. (“I didn’t know you were Kendrick’s sister.”) When I got home, Mike asked, “Did Spencer apologize to you today?”
“Yeah, he did! And do you know what I said back?”
“Don’t tell me, dude. I know it’s gonna be something lame.”
It was something lame, so I’ll spare him the embarrassment of putting it in this book.
I got better grades than Mike, but only because, as every teacher said, he didn’t “apply himself.” He eschewed all extracurricular activities in favor of hanging out in a park downtown that a local paper described as being full of “undesirables.” That wasn’t a description of the unsavory types that my brother might find there, that was a description of my brother. He drove states away to go to raves, which he called “parties,” because only your parents and alarmed-looking blond ladies from the news said “raves.”
When people would call the house and ask “Is Kendrick there?” I’d act irritated and say, “There are four Kendricks here, you’ll have to be more specific.” I always knew who they meant.
I still idolized him. He still thought I was a liability at best and figured that dictating my social life was in everyone’s best interest.
At thirteen, I was invited to drink for the first time. Mike tore tickets at a local movie theater, and he and the rest of the teenage staff stayed behind after hours one night to throw a party. They had beer, vodka, and coffee brandy, a sickly sweet liqueur that you mix with milk. It’s a staple of the low-income New England alcoholic, so naturally I started there. I wandered around the empty cinema, discovering what a buzz felt like and hearing, “Hey, loser, you still good?” at five-minute intervals.
At fourteen, he let me smoke a bowl with him and his best friend, Evan, whom I’d known since childhood. We went to T.G.I. Friday’s and in a haze I said, “Do you guys feel like we’re in a movie?” They laughed at me.
“Yeah, dude, that’s the kind of stupid shit you need to get out of your system while you’re just in front of us. Rookie.”
That same year he took me to my first party (that’s “rave” for all the people out there as lame as me). It was fun and weird, and I liked trying to pick up the dance style—though I might not have if I’d known how stupid I looked. I kept going whenever he would invite me, but mostly for the bragging rights. Mike told me I wouldn’t be allowed to take Ecstasy until I was sixteen, which was fine with me since I found navigating new environments hard enough when I was sober.
When I was fifteen, we went separately to a warehouse rave upstate. I was paying for entry when a large young woman burst through the doors of the main floor, out into the makeshift lobby. She was still about ten feet away when she pointed at me and said, “No. Go home,” and walked back inside. The guy who’d been taking my money shrugged and started to hand it back to me. If you’re confused, it’s because I mentioned that I was fifteen and you pictured a fifteen-year-old. But at this point, I looked about twelve. There weren’t official age limits for a party thrown in a warehouse—certainly fifteen was old enough—yet she’d decreed I was too young.