The Field Guide to the North American Teenager: Chapters 21–28

“Is that a hockey movie?”
Blasphemy.
“The Mighty Ducks is a hockey movie the same way Citizen Kane is a snow globe movie.”

He liked making her laugh. More than that—liked that she liked him. Aarti was worldly and cool and, somehow, his misanthropic streak appeared to have found a welcoming audience, which was more than he could say for...well, anyone except his parents and Eric, really.

To make matters worse, the delivery situation was still in flux, and in the late afternoons, it often came down to whoever was available to make the local rounds.

When it was his turn, Norris talked about his own family; his nominal cousins who lived in Haitian pockets all over the map, who he didn’t really keep in touch with, and all the disgusting memes that he still received from his hockey team back home.

Something about the invitation coming free of any stipulations, quid pro quo, or additional shift to cover felt important to Norris.

Norris had been watching the team with trepidation, with just a few weeks to prepare for their first-ever game, but he was having trouble finding fault with their play.

Norris and Liam finished picking up the equipment and joined the rest of the team in the parking lot, only to realize that Patrick had manifested a case of beers.

“No worries, folks. Lamarra is just down with a cold!" Norris said, because nothing could diffuse a budding team like one of the key players projectile vomiting Lone Star all over one of his new teammates.

Liam’s turning on of the ignition had barely elicited a whisper from the top-of-the-line engine.

Things had gone too well today; Stephen Fuller Austin’s ghost was awake and demanded penance.

“She will ship me to Haiti before letting me fall prey to your decadent American ways.”

Norris had no idea how much truth Patrick’s drunken assertion held and was waiting for Liam to say something about it, but he was pretty sure that if it weren’t for Patrick’s intermittent seismic snoring, they would be sitting in complete silence.

Norris had no idea how much truth Patrick’s drunken assertion held and was waiting for Liam to say something about it, but he was pretty sure that if it weren’t for Patrick’s intermittent seismic snoring, they would be sitting in complete silence.

Liam definitely wasn’t imaginary; Norris’s imaginary best friend when he was six was a floating chaise longue, laughing at all his jokes.

Patrick began to stir in his drunken stupor...

As it turned out, tiny drawings was one of her favorite means of communication. Something about the photographer in her liked to see how people interpreted them. Norris kept a loose log of all the obscure ones she’d used with him in his notebook and what their meaning had turned out to be.

A hockey practice turned into wedding siege, being sequestered with a vomiting football player, Liam being weird.

“Hi,” Norris quickly said, followed by “Hello, hey, what’s up!” Greetings were now incantations that might hopefully rewind time in five second bursts.

“Anyway, my little sister found me. She’d left her clarinet, so the nanny drove her back during lunch hour. Apparently, there was a puddle of puke at the bottom of my bed, which was the only way she... Well, anyway. The gist of it is that I have my own row of prescriptions now.”

His brain was out of witty repartee by this point.

For all he knew, Liam had dropped some serious hallucinogens before he got to the car, but at least there was no longer a huge invisible vise around their two heads.

“What, were you expecting a black T-shirt again?” Norris asked, surreptitiously adjusting his sleeves by pulling down on the cuffs with his forefingers.

Mr. Puri had a...contradictory appearance. Half of him was casual and laid-back, but there was a stiff undercurrent of foreign propriety.

This was someone raised to believe that the role of a host carried certain responsibilities. Norris’s dad had the same mannerisms; his took the form of a gold watch he always slipped on when the doorbell rang.

This also made her kind of stunning. MILF would be gauche, but “Mother I Would Like to Read with Under a Tree” might qualify.

“Antilles literature and Haitian diaspora are her main jam. She just started at UT. That’s why we moved here.”

Norris had decided to include the answers to three questions he knew were coming in every one of his replies, in order to expedite the interrogation portion of dinner.

“I want to see the world, Dad,” Aarti shot back. “Isn’t it hypocritical for you of all people to say no to that?”

Norris stood at the doorway, looking in with some apprehension.

“I liked your parents,” he said, imprinting as much of the small and colorful room as he could at a cursory glance.

“We could solve crimes,” she offered. “For a small stipend each time, of course.”

Another time, he’d tried to keep track of Goade’s diet, and had only come to the fact that the man should by all account be dead of scurvy.

That was how they both seemed comfortable talking about these new heavy topics that were now part of their lexicon—in a dry, glib way that put neither of them on the spot.

As he left, he hurled a litany of insults back at them.

Meredith and Patrick had immediately devolved into an impromptu make-out session as soon as Patrick had stepped off the ice, hair still damp with sweat.

...Judith now overcompensated by sitting on Norris’s bed—presumably guarding it so Norris wouldn’t jump in and pull the covers over his head—and complimenting him on his dapper haircut, winning personality, and good looks, as Norris fidgeted in front of the mirror hanging from his closet door.

Some were true southerners, dressed to the nines for the occasion; flowers in hair and boutonnieres for the men. Others wore more subdued attire, which was still pretty impressive—pageantry of churchgoers and all that. The third contingent were very literally dressed for an average neighborhood barbecue.

He treated Norris like a proxy member of his tribe now.

Maddie's dress was less revealing and less ostentatious than the pageant taffeta constructions that some of the other girls were wearing but perfectly suited to her.

“Because I’m out here, socializing like a real live American boy?” Norris snorted. “If this keeps going, I might buy a Chevy and take it to a levee, whatever that is.”