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: : : HIGH SCHOOL ENDS. The day of the graduation ceremony Tim goes over to Northwestern, where the commencement is being held, and he skates around the campus. He sees girls in caps and gowns posing for photos and cheering. Bitches, he thinks. He doesn't see Megan. He tells himself that he wasn't really looking for her anyway.
In front of him lie a stretch of days where he has nothing to do, and he keeps thinking of those days as his summer vacation, and he keeps having to stop and say not summer vacation. Your life.
His relationship with his parents continues to deteriorate. Every night he argues with them until he gets fed up and leaves; he skates around town and comes back late, once he knows they'll have gone to bed. Finding someplace to go is kind of tricky. His parents have stopped giving him allowance and his usual porn buyers have been difficult to track down so he's totally broke—IHOP is out of the question. Sometimes he sneaks into a movie. Mostly he goes and hangs out in the park after it's closed. The weather's nice enough for it. He sits on playground equipment in the summer midnight and watches distant couples make out on the grass. One time he jerks off onto the sliding board.
He goes into the city one weekend to hang with Matt and Nick. Back in the winter, when they first moved, they talked about having him come on as a third roommate, they said that maybe they could get him a job at the delivery company they work for. He hasn't heard them say much about that lately. So he goes in. Just to see.
They sit around and get drunk in the afternoon and nobody mentions that stuff.
—Hey, says Nick. —Are you still seeing that Megan chick?
—I don't know, says Tim. He's lying on the floor, picking at the flaking drywall. —I mean we never really broke up or anything but she stopped calling me.
—She found out about the porn, didn't she?
—What? Tim says. —No. I mean, yeah, she did, but that wasn't—I mean she didn't care about the porn. She was kind of into it in a weird way.
—Ohh! howls Nick. —I see how it is with her. So did you guys fuck?
—None of your business, says Tim.
—C'mon, says Nick. —Spill it.
—No, Tim says. —We never—we never did that.
—Too bad, man, too bad. She looked like she would have been a real sweet lay.
—Yeah I guess.
—So how come you guys split up anyway?
Tim thinks back to that night at the train station; that was really the end. After that there were a couple of times that he tried to talk to her at school, and a bunch of times that he called her and left messages on her phone, but none of those attempts ever quite resulted in a conversation. He tries to think of an answer to Nick's question and all he can come up with is she found out that I suck.
—I don't know, is the answer that he gives. —Fucking chicks, you know?
—Tell me about it, says Nick. He tosses Tim another can of beer.
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