How to Lose Everything Read online

  The glass coffee table—which usually played host to an organized assortment of his mom's women's magazines—was in total disarray. Small crumbs of tobacco surrounded Daniel's glass bong, and next to the bong was Eric's bud. Wu-Tang Clan played in the background. I dropped onto the couch and watched them play. Eric won every time.

  After fifteen minutes, Daniel tossed his controller into the corner and pressed his face to the top of the bong. The sunlight sank down through the front yard, and now and then the doorbell rang. When it did, Eric would get up, open the door, and then shuffle back to the couch. Daniel would give a quick nod to the guests, but otherwise he made no effort to greet newcomers. At least two hours went by like this. When the space on the couch and chairs was completely filled up and people were sitting on the floor with their beer bottles, Daniel suddenly jumped up and chanted for alcohol in a shrill voice: “Booze, booze, booze!” He ran like a weasel into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of vodka.

  Sam, for his part, had brought two bottles of tequila. He opened one up and started drinking as if it were Coke. After the fifth gulp, he tore the bottle away, coughed, and spit up a liquor-saliva mixture onto the floor. In the corner, three guys in puffy jackets laughed at him. Sam asked defiantly, “Got a problem?”

  One of the puffy jackets stared at him. Sam stared back.

  “Got a p-p-problem?” Sam asked again.

  “No, do you?”

  The puffy jacket made a move to get up. But just then Schulz put a hand on Sam's shoulder and took the bottle from him. The puffy jacket sat back down and returned to staring at the TV. I rubbed the bills in my pocket and waited for Sam or Schulz to say something. But we stayed silent. We'd been lucky, and now we shared a secret. Our pact was sealed with silence. We drank to that, passing the bottle around until it was two-thirds gone.

  In the meantime, the house had filled up. Jonah—a punk who everyone called Jim—trudged over to the stereo in his half-laced combat boots. He started talking to Orhan, a Turkish kid who lived near the train station, about switching the music from Wu-Tang Clan to something by Bad Religion. He tried to be diplomatic: “Bad Religion is way more political than Wu-Tang Clan.”

  Orhan said he didn't really care about politics. Jim started ranting about repression under the capitalist conditions for labor production.

  “You're an immigrant! The system is especially out to get you. They're just like the Nazis,” Jim said. He began to talk himself into a rage—as he always did when he drank too much. “The government pretends it wants peace while they sell weapons to the third world. It's all about the money!”

  At some point Orhan said, “Hey punk, I just wanna listen to Wu-Tang.”

  Orhan and the other Turks always called him a “punk” when he started to get obnoxious. Jim backed down at that.

  Eric, meanwhile, was virtually stationary. He was playing Tekken against one of the puffy jackets. When that one lost, another puffy jacket tried, and another one after him. Eric stayed in. Ollie and Ben, two goths with long hair and long black leather coats, had taken charge of Daniel's dad's office and were trying to roll a huge joint using six rolling papers. In the kitchen, two junior-year girls were discussing which AP courses they were going to take next year. Tim, a total dumbass who always wore a button-down shirt underneath a preppy sweater, was attempting to make a White Russian. Lang, his anorexic friend, was helping. Before long, Tim was puking, like he did at every party, and I went upstairs. In Daniel's room, a couple of skaters were sitting on his bed watching a skating video.

  I wanted to lie down, so I headed to Daniel's little sister's room. But as I was about to open the door, it was yanked open from the other side, and there was Lena standing with a mixture of shock and anger in her eyes. Maybe that was the reason we couldn't look away from each other—not for a while, anyway. We definitely stared for an abnormally long time. I was about to say something like “sorry”—I couldn't think of anything else—when she slipped past me with a sideways movement and ran down the stairs into the noise of the party.

  The wall above Daniel's sister's bed was plastered with Backstreet Boys posters. Schulz was sitting on the purple bedspread, elbows on his knees, smoking a cigarette. The setting felt almost intimate, yet with all the childish things surrounding him, he looked like an aged cartoon character.

  “What's up?” I asked.

  “She's crazy,” he said. “She wants us to take the money back. She says it's stolen and she thinks it's wrong.”

  “Wrong? How?”

  “That's just what she said. She thinks nothing good can come of it. It's stolen and she doesn't want anything to do with it.”

  “She doesn't have to have anything to do with it. It's not like she was there.”

  “I wanted to give her three hundred marks. So she could buy shoes or whatever. I thought she'd be happy about it. But instead she starts yelling, ‘I'm not a hooker.'”

  “Where did she go?”

  “No clue. And I don't care.”

  What was I supposed to say? I'd never had a girlfriend, or at least, not a real one. How was I supposed to comfort a friend when I had no idea what it was like to fight with your girlfriend?

  I said, “Wanna go get a drink?” I didn't know if that was the right thing to say, but Schulz nodded anyway.

  One half hour and five tequila shots later, Schulz's troubles had disappeared. Eric was standing in the kitchen, where Tim was now drinking Coke, telling the junior-year girls that he couldn't care less about his future and that he was just glad not to be at that crappy school anymore. He thought people like Mr. Lexer, the physics teacher, were psychopaths, or at least really messed up.

  Schulz was standing next to me, and when he raised his arm, I saw a new watch on his wrist.

  Behind me I felt something soft graze my elbow. When I turned around, I started. The something soft was a girl's breasts.

  The girl said, “You're the one who was totally stoned the other day.”

  It was the girl from the gas station. She was a good head shorter than I was and looked up at me with sassy, almond-shaped eyes. Her whole face had something childlike about it. It was round and surrounded by thick, strawberry-blonde hair. My gaze wandered downward. The shape of her whole body matched her small, angelic face. She wore a red-and-white striped shirt that hung down over her jeans like a dress.

  I said, “Maybe,” and then, “Yeah.”

  “That was funny,” she said, and told me her name was Carina.

  “How do you know Daniel?” I asked. I couldn't think of anything better to say.

  “Your speech is slurred,” Carina said. I grabbed an unopened beer from the counter, while she continued, “I've known Danny forever. We were in first grade together. We've always gone to the same school.”

  I used a lighter to open the bottle. It worked on the fourth try. I wanted to take her beer and open it for her. But she insisted on doing it herself, which I thought was cool because most girls can't do it. I took a drink and lit a cigarette. After two puffs, I felt dizzy.

  “But now we don't really hang out anymore,” she said. The sound of her voice made my ears ring. I threw my cigarette down the sink.

  “Now he just gets stoned and plays video games all day.”

  I searched for something meaningful to say, but I only came up with splintered thoughts that I couldn't piece together.

  Carina said, “That's why I don't really like smoking pot, because the people who do that seem like they don't do anything else.”

  The blonde hair. The red-and-white striped shirt. The breasts that had brushed against my arm. The money in my pocket. The dimple on her chin.

  “Can we go sit down somewhere?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said, and took my hand. Her hand was tiny, warm, and a little damp. I let my guard down; she would watch out for me. She led me through the crush of people in the living room—Sam was in there somewhere, swearing—to the patio, and we sat down on a pair of white plastic lawn chairs. The
re was a grill in front of us. I heard Carina saying the words “ex-boyfriend” and “relationship,” then she listed the names of some bands before asking me, “Who do you listen to?” I took a deep breath and then exhaled.

  Suddenly, I didn't want to talk anymore, just sleep (though I would have liked to have held her hand again). I reached into my pocket and felt raw paper. Just once, just this one time, I wanted to look at the bills, in public, for just a second or two. But when I pulled my hand out, my fingers weren't holding the bills. Instead, I saw the letter.

  “What's that?” asked Carina.

  “It's simple. I'm gonna buy a pound from Zafko, but he's only gonna charge me for three quarter-pounds. He told me he gets it from his guy for the price of two. So he's still getting a big cut. But whatever, let's say I buy a P for the price of three QPs. That's 200 marks an ounce! And around here, an ounce goes for at least 275! Do the math!”

  Eric didn't wait for an answer.

  “That's 1,200 marks per P—1,200 marks of profit! If it works, I'll buy twice as much next time.”

  Eric's face came uncomfortably close to mine. I tried not to flinch, but I did anyway. His breath stank because he hardly ever brushed his teeth.

  “But you don't have that much money.”

  “Dude, I'll get it on comm.”

  I didn't know what “comm” was, but I didn't have the heart to ask. I waited for a few seconds, hoping Eric would explain.

  “So first I have to make a small down payment, right? About 500, as a deposit. Zafko'll give me the bud, I'll sell it for him, and then give him the other 2,700. Then, when I've done it a few times, I'll be able to pay him everything up front. Always better not to have debts. But for my first time, this is perfect.”

  “But where are you gonna sell it? You can't just stand here at the station and sell it to freshmen gram by gram.”

  “Dude, obviously I'm not gonna sell it all by the gram. One person will want ten grams, someone else will want twenty. In Munich, in the park. And that's just at first, see? Eventually I'll do it like Zafko. People will sell for me. Then I'll just handle the big business.”

  I wasn't sure why I wasn't as excited as Eric, and maybe that was why I didn't keep asking questions. Maybe I was also tired of being a buzzkill. It had warmed up and I was sweating in my socks and my thick skater shoes. Eric had gotten two new piercings: A second stud had been added above the earring he already had, and the new stud in his left ear was glinting in the sun. Big headphones hung around his neck, and he had obviously decided to let his hair and his beard grow out.

  Now that he'd stopped talking, his eyes wandered back toward the horizon, and his head tilted slightly up and to the side as he focused on a distant point. Eric could smoke more weed than anyone. Almost every day he showed up with something new: One time it was grass and he told us it was “White Widow,” and the next week he might even get “Super Skunk.” Once he'd had a beige-colored piece that threatened to disintegrate at the slightest touch. “Compressed Pollen,” he'd told us. Once he'd even had a piece of “Afghan Black.” He explained that you don't use a lighter on Afghan. Instead, you roll a piece of it gently between your thumb and forefinger. Then that goes into a joint. Eric said he got it all from Zafko. Zafko, the dealer with his own apartment out past the train tracks, in the high-rise where the Turks and the Yugoslavs all lived.

  It had been two weeks since the party at Daniel's. As always, Sam and I still met every day at the half-pipe. My wallet, which was attached to my belt loop with a chain, was always full. Small luxuries, which used to be valuable because I didn't have them, were now available to excess. Sometimes I bought way more candy than I could eat. I would either throw the leftovers away or give them to someone without saying anything. Sometimes I would feed coins into Frank's pinball machine until playing got boring. Sometimes we went to Ingrid at the small corner bar and ordered B-52s, dinky little cocktails made with Baileys and Kahlua, which were insanely syrupy. I always had a pack of cigarettes in my bag, and I still had a wad of dusty bills in my wallet. I wanted to get a PlayStation, but there was no way. My parents would've asked me where I got the money. So I was forced to waste it on small, insig-nificant things. And that took a lot less time than I'd ever thought possible. I was a little shocked when I counted up the money again: It had shrunk from the previous count of twelve bills to only six. Then again, maybe I wanted it to disappear quickly.

  It was possible that the others felt the same way, but Sam wasn't talking much. Eric was completely absorbed in his plans and dreams about being a dealer. We hardly saw Schulz because he was spending more time with Lena than ever.

  Since Eric had been staying with Daniel the past two weeks, and Schulz was with Lena so much, it was mostly just Sam and me getting pizza and playing pinball at Frank's. Sam was leaving his skateboard at home more and more often. “Don't feel like it” was all he said. It made me think of first grade, when Sam was new at school and didn't talk at all. To everyone else he seemed weird, but that was exactly the reason I liked Sam. Everyone else talked all the time.

  Eric returned from his daydream to the concrete of the half-pipe.

  “It's gonna go off without a hitch, I'm telling you. Just think about it. A pound. I need a month for that. And that's being conservative. Maybe just two weeks. But okay, let's just say a month. In another month I can sell the second P. And then I'll buy two. And with that, I'll double my profit. See? That comes to 2,400 marks of profit—2,400 marks! Do you know what we could do with 2,400 marks?”

  I smiled, unsure what to say. I honestly didn't know what we could do with 2,400 marks that we hadn't done already, except eat even more pizza at Frank's and feed even more coins to the pinball machine.

  “What's with you? Are you even listening? Together, we could pull this off. If we split up the work, we'll be in business even faster. Then maybe later we could get into acid and pills. Maybe even blow. There's some serious cash there. Zafko's just getting started with it. But sometimes he's . . .”

  Eric stopped. Suddenly Sam and Schulz were standing in front of us. Eric had been talking so loudly we hadn't heard them coming. They snickered and I noticed that their eyes were as red as albino bunnies'. Schulz had started wearing his hair in a ponytail. The gold of his new watch glinted around his wrist. He wore it loosely, so that it clinked a little when we shook hands. But he wasn't pulling off his new pimp look at all; he just looked ridiculous.

  “Schulz,” said Eric in a friendly voice. Schulz stretched his arm up and the watch slid back.

  “Sam,” said Eric. Couldn't he just shake hands normally? It was so fake.

  Sam was temporarily confused. “H-h-hey, E-Eric,” he answered. He was wearing a wife-beater T-shirt with his beige baggy pants. If they'd been a little less bunched up around his waist, and if his arms had been a little more muscular, Sam would have been a pretty decent replica of a boy band member. He may have stuttered, but he wasn't bad looking.

  “You guys are blazed,” said Eric.

  They nodded, looking like two comic strip charac-ters with permanent grins.

  “Ready to go?” asked Sam. “The train leaves in eight minutes.”

  We nodded and grabbed our stuff.

  When we got to the platform, Schulz went to the ticket machine. Sam called over to him, “Why don't you ever just get a ten-trip ticket? Are you retarded?”

  Two of the other people waiting on the platform looked up, first at Schulz, then at Sam. Schulz thought for a second, opened his wallet, and threw a handful of coins into the machine. It began to light up, gave a chirp, and then spat out a piece of paper, which Schulz pocketed before walking back to us.

  “You m-m-moron, why do you just buy one-way tickets?”

  “What's your problem? Just let me buy the damn ticket,” said Schulz. “I can afford it.”

  “True,” said Sam, unexpectedly forgivingly. “True!” he said louder. And then he shouted down the whole platform: “Truuuuuuuuue! He can afford it!”

&nb
sp; Now all the waiting passengers turned and looked at him. An old lady shook her head. He wasn't acting very cool, but it was still kind of funny. Eric kicked him in the shin and said, “Dude, not so loud.”

  We got on the train and dropped into the soft pleather seats, the kind that stick to your skin when it's hot. Sam opened his backpack and pulled out a Corona wrapped in a brown paper bag. Eric put on his massive headphones, stroked his chin, and proceeded to stare dreamily out the window for the rest of the trip.

  “How's it going with Lena?” I asked Schulz. As I said the words, I realized that my real motive wasn't to see how Schulz was doing, it was to find out about Lena.

  “Fine,” said Schulz.

  “Cool,” I said. “I mean, is she still mad?”

  Schulz didn't answer. After a full minute, he asked, “Why should she be mad?”

  “Well, you know, because back at Daniel's party, she . . .”

  “Lena is always mad about something, if that's what you're wondering. It's nothing, just the way she is.”

  “I mean, at Daniel's party, you were fighting, and she just walked out.”

  “Sh-sh-she was super pissed,” said Sam. “Because of the money, you said.”

  “She gets upset, then she calms down again. I bought her some perfume. Since then, everything's been fine.”

  “Cool,” I said again. But there was nothing cool about it. I thought it was totally uncool for him to buy her off with perfume. It wasn't insulting, exactly, but it somehow fit with the way Schulz was going around like a pimp. It was shady. Shady was the right word.