The Schernoff Discoveries Read Free Page B

straightened his tie—a bow tie, of course—and tugged his pants down, to at least cover the tops of his socks. “No matter what happens you have to stay cool.”
    He frowned. “I would find it much easier to do that if I knew exactly what ‘cool’ meant.”
    “It’s a way to be. You have to
be
cool.”
    “An example, please.”
    I thought. “Elvis. Elvis is cool.”
    “I need a frame of reference. Who is not cool?”
    You, I thought, and of course me. Us. We are not cool people. “Pat. Pat Boone. All that ‘April Love’ stuff is not cool.”
    “So how do I do it? How do I become cool?”
    “It’s a way you look,” I said. “You have to stand cool and hold your arms cool. Like Elvis. And talk low. You know, like Elvis.”
    And so we tried, we really tried. He took a pose that he thought made him look like Elvis. But he was thin and wore clothes too short for him, sports jackets from bygone days, white shirts buttoned at the collar. He looked like a large bird with severe posture problems.
    “All right. Maybe we’ll forget the way you stand. How about lowering your voice—try that.”
    “Like this?” he croaked.
    “So we’ll forget the voice too. You’ll just have to be yourself.”
    “Myself?”
    “Yeah. You know, just act normal.”
    And so the disaster began. Because Harold and I had pretty much evolved away from junior-high society, neither of us knew exactly what
normal
meant. My concept was locked into the get-good-grades-have-parents-who-didn’t-drink-be-great-in-sports-and-have-hair-that-made-a-perfect-flattop way of normalcy—in short, impossible for me to achieve.
    Harold’s thoughts on what it was were a mystery to me. I suspected that for him it was somewhere between being the first fourteen-year-old boy to win a Nobel prize by understanding the secrets of the universe, and learning how to dress himself.
    At the time Harold merely nodded quietly. I should have known. He was always questioning things, always, and when he became quiet it was never a good sign.
    The problem was that the date was still over a week away. This had only been a rehearsal. Had it come sooner things might have been all right, and had it been later perhaps there would have been time for Harold to learn more.
    As it happened, there was just enough time for Harold to begin research on the subject, to “gather sufficient data,” as he put it, which made him completely dangerous.
    He went to the library, of course, and he took out books on etiquette, romance, love and heaven only knew what else. For the next eight days he immersed himself in reading and when the big day finally came I met him in the hall just before the last bell.
    “So—are you ready?” I opened my locker doorcarefully, a habit I had adopted since Chimmer and some of his friends had learned my combination and taken to putting things in my locker—dead chickens, buckets of water set to tip, a small fifth-grader.
    Harold nodded. “I believe I have accumulated adequate data to make the venture a success.”
    “Good. Just remember … well, never mind.” I was going to tell him once more to stay cool but realized it wouldn’t help.
    This was on a Friday night and it coincided with the opening weekend of grouse season. I had purchased a new .410 shotgun with money from selling papers and there wasn’t a power in the world that could keep me out of the woods. I hunted all weekend, and on Sunday night after my parents had passed out I made a grouse dinner with a recipe from
Field and Stream
magazine and ate grouse and spit shot half the night.
    I was consequently late for school the next morning and did not see Harold until after first period.
    “So,” I asked, “how did it go?”
    “How did what go?”
    “The date, of course.”
    “Oh. Well, to be honest, it did not progress as well as I had anticipated.…”
    At that moment Arlene passed us in the hall. She took a horrified look at Harold, covered her face with her notebook and