Antsy Does Time

“Yeah ... Yeah, sure, see you tomorrow.”

Before she closed the door, I caught a glimpse of Gu

It was a nice skateboard. High-quality Spitfire wheels, cool design. I sat on my bed that evening, ru

See, there’s a time for everything in life—and everyone’s clock is different. There are guys who use skateboards right up until they get their license—after all, it’s a useful mode of transportation. Then there are guys like Skaterdud, to whom skateboarding is like a religion, and they’ll do it all their lives. I’m sure the Dud won’t just fall off that aircraft carrier, he’ll roll off it. But my skateboard phase ended the summer before ninth grade. I kind of outgrew it—and everyone knows the second you outgrow something, it’s like poison for a couple of years, until it becomes historically significant in your life and you can look back on it fondly.

It was all starting to make sense now. Especially after seeing that awful notice plastered on their front door.

HOUSE IN FORECLOSURE RESIDENTS ARE HEREBY GIVEN THIRTY DAYS TO VACATE

PREMISES

It was far worse than any field of doom Gu

Lexie had been right. Kjersten was dating “the idea” of me.

Could I be what Kjersten needed? Did I want to be? As I sat there ru

What the Ümlauts really needed was time—and not the kind I could print out of my computer, but real time. And as for Kjersten, if I really cared about her—and I did—I realized the best I could do was to become “the idea of me” as much as possible for her. I couldn’t give her time, but maybe I could give her a little time travel.

So I got on that skateboard and rode it around and around and around, trying my best, for the rest of Christmas vacation, to recapture the earliest days of fourteen.

15. Mona-Mona-Bo-Bona, Bonano-Fano-Fo-Fona

“Hey, Kjersten—I can play ‛The Star-Spangled Ba

There’s something to be said for immaturity—acting your shoe size instead of your age, although in my case they’re starting to get close. Once I gave in to it, it was fun. Dumb jokes, bathroom humor, pretending to care about stuff I gave up in middle school... who could have known dating an older woman could be like this?

“This is just, like, the coolest video game, Kjersten. You’re driving a killer Wi

’You play, Antsy. I’ll just watch.”

I was Kjersten’s escape. It made her feel good, and that made me feel good. I even learned to make myself get red in the face and look all embarrassed, when I actually wasn’t.

“See these scabs, like, on my elbows and stuff? They’re from skateboarding. I’ve been, /know, like, practicing my varial kick-flip and stuff. Like.”

“So the skateboard I got you is a good one?”

“It’s the best!”

The problem with stunting you own growth like that, though, is that it doesn’t leave you with anything lasting. It’s like eating cotton candy all day, although not quite as bad on your teeth. It’s also exhausting. After a day with Kjersten, I’d just want to go home and read a newspaper or something—or even bus tables at the restaurant, just to gain back some basic level of age appropriateness. Unfortunately, I was still ba

“What’s with you?” Mom asked. I had just spent an energy-intensive day with Kjersten at the arcade and was now lying lumplike on the sofa, staring at the stock-market quotes scrolling on the financial network.

“Nothing,” I answered, so Christina took it upon herself to elaborate.

“His girlfriend is using him to recapture her lost youth.”

This confused Mom. “What do you mean ‛lost youth’? She’s only sixteen!”

“You know how it is,” Christina says. “Everything starts younger and younger these days.”

“It’s not a problem,” I told her. “I know what I’m doing.”

Mom shook her head. “Lost youth! What is she go

’Yeah, and she burps me real good, too,” I said.

Mom threw her hands up as she left the room. “I didn’t just hear that.”

My return to school after the holidays was met with much congratulations and pats on the back from friends and kids I didn’t even know. At first I thought it was kudos for being publicly seen dating Kjersten, but it was all because of the New York Post. Dumping water on a senator and getting front-page exposure made me a school hero, but it was not the kind of fame I wanted.

“I could say ‛I knew you when,’” Howie told me, as if this would launch me into full-on celebrity status. “Have you gotten any talk-show invitations?”

For a moment I imagined myself holding a pitcher of ice water next to Clicking Raoul on a talk show, but I shook the image away before it could do any damage.

People had no idea how the ice-water incident had affected my family. How it strained my father and the restaurant. I just wanted it to go away—why couldn’t anyone understand that?

I also wanted Gu

It actually snowed on Tuesday night—the first snow of the winter, and I hoped we’d have a snow day, postponing or even canceling the rally on Wednesday night. But who was I kidding? There’s got to be woolly mammoth walking down the street before the New York City schools call a snow day.

Gu

“What are you going to say at the rally tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “What do you think I should say?”

“You’re not going to ruin it, are you?”

Did he really think I would tell everyone the truth now? How could I? I was like his partner in crime now—an accomplice. The only way to make this go away was to go through with it. Who knows, maybe as wrong as it was, it was the right thing to do. Didn’t some famous dead artist say that everyone gets fifteen minutes of fame? Who was I to stand in the way of Gu

“Maybe I oughta turn the whole thing into a cash collection for your mortgage,” I told him. I don’t know whether he thought I was serious or just being sarcastic. That’s okay, because I didn’t know either.

“Too late for that,” he said. “Knowing my father, the money wouldn’t go to the mortgage anyway.”