Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [4]
Where had that come from? I’d never in my life frozen Tang.
“That’s great!” said the man with the blue eyes who was going to take me away to live with him in a penthouse apartment.
All of the men exchanged a look. Then my man said, “Thanks a lot, kids.”
Disgusting Evan and retarded Ellen immediately pushed their chairs back from the table and fled. But I was crushed, stunned, so I moved in slow motion, carefully rising from my chair. They might as well run over me with their white Tang van now, I thought.
“Uh, no. Not you. What’s your name?”
“Augusten?” I said.
“Yes, you, Augusten. You were great. We want you.” It was the man with the blue eyes speaking, and now I had my confirmation: he adores me, too. Instantly, my mood reversed, and I began to grind my teeth in joy.
I can now trace my manic adult tendencies to this moment. It was the first time I felt deeply thrilled about something just a fraction of an instant after being completely crushed. I believe those three words “We want you” were enough to cause my brain to rewire itself, and from then on, I would require MORE than other people. At the same time, my tolerance for alcohol was instantly increased, and a new neural pathway was created for the future appreciation of crack cocaine and prescription painkillers.
“You want me?” I said, containing my enthusiasm so completely that I probably appeared disinterested.
“Well, yeah. Don’t you want to be in the commercial?”
“Well, yeah. A lot.” I tried to imitate an excited boy. I was excited but somehow unable to express the actual emotion of excitement. My electrical system was all off now.
“Good,” he said clapping his hands. Then he slid a stack of papers across the table. “Then you need to take these home and have your parents read them over very carefully. We’re going to be back Monday.”
The ride home on the school bus was excruciatingly long. Only ten of us had been chosen to be in the commercial, so the rest of the kids were sullen. Chad, who hadn’t been chosen, sat with his head pressed against the window, crying.
Piggy Lisa hadn’t been chosen either, and this had made her nasty. She blew spit balls through a straw until she accidentally hit the school bus driver, Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed hit the brakes and glared into his rearview mirror, scanning our faces to see if he could tell which kid was guilty. He was missing one of his front teeth. This made us (or was it just me?) think of him not as a man but as an animal, capable of inflicting great pain and possibly death. “Little girl,” he growled at Piggy Lisa, “you spit one more of them thingies at me and I’ll come right on over there and milk them little titties a yours like you was a cow.”
That shut her up. Piggy Lisa sank into her seat and folded her arms across her fatty chest.
Wendy was the prettiest girl in school, so of course she had been chosen. But Wendy was mentally lazy, relying on her looks alone to see her through life. She was what we called “a dip.”
“What does it mean? What does it mean?” she kept asking over and over. She was entirely ecstatic, rising from her seat frequently and twirling around to ask the other kids, “But what does it mean?” Constantly, she tucked her long blonde hair behind her ears.
“It means, you dip, that you’re gonna be in some dumb TV commercial for dumb old Tang.” This was spoken by Gary, who, because of my powerful mental powers, also hadn’t been chosen.
I sat quietly on the middle hump seat over the wheel and tried to contain my insane excitement by staring out the window, and thinking of television cameras.
But as soon as I got home, I sprinted up our gravel driveway and threw open the front door, screaming “I’m gonna be in a Tang commercial! I’m gonna be in a Tang commercial!”
My mother was talking on the phone and smoking a cigarette.
I screamed into her other ear, “I’m gonna be in a Tang commercial! They want me!”
She winced and pulled away, then spoke into the phone. “I have to go, Dee. Augusten’s home, and he’s hysterical.”
As soon