Losers by Matthue Roth

that. It’s all a side effect of smoking too much pot. People act crazy for a year or two, realize their parents aren’t around to make sure they’re dressing normal and scoring good grades, and then they either get their act together or they flunk out.”
    â€œIs that how it works?” I said. “Why are you thinking so much about college all of a sudden? I feel like it’s been a year since we hung out.” I checked my class schedule in my head. It was Friday when I’d gone to his house, and now it was Wednesday. Not an eon, but long enough for my life to completely change its essence and purpose.
    â€œA year? You’re so dramatic, Jupiter. I’ve just been up to my own stuff.” He cracked a hint of a smile. “Hey, what’s up with your voice?”
    â€œMy voice?” I said. I cleared my throat, gurgled my saliva, and said it again. “What’s wrong with my voice?”
    â€œYour accent,” he said. “You sound like an amoeba with laryngitis. Why you are talking so funny?”
    Vadim’s grammar slip-ups—how did I always notice grammarslip-ups? Was I that paranoid about my own?—were so rare an occurrence that I had to stop talking totally. I realized we were speaking English even though it was just the two of us.
    â€œIt was at the party Friday night,” I said. “I was talking to this girl, and she told me—”
    â€œYou were talking? To a girl?”
    I couldn’t tell whether Vadim was being sarcastic or not.
    â€œNot like that !” I said. “I mean, I was talking to girls all night, Vadim. I told you—you utterly should have come.”
    â€œYeah, right,” Vadim said darkly, as though I had just suggested that he donate a pint of blood to the South Lawn kids.
    â€œBut, listen. The party was nothing—it was just school kids, you know? What you really need to see is the life downtown.”
    It was like I couldn’t stay away. Even though Vadim begged off (there was an Odyssey of the Mind meeting after school, or something like that), I had to plunge back in. Last time, I’d left the coffeehouse well before sunset. But this time, I wanted to stay there. I wanted to watch the hours turn.
    If the night had gone on for twenty years, if the darkness stretched out forever and became the only experience I ever experienced again, it would have been enough for me. I left the coffeehouse long after dark, an eternity after school had let out.
    Once again, I hadn’t spoken to anyone there, other than a brief, self-conscious, spoken-into-my-chest “small house coffee.” I didn’t need to. Just being there, existing in a universe with them, was enough for me—at least for now. I had the rest of my life to overload myself.
    There was a second dusk that only happened downtown, after nightfall, a gradual twinkling of the stars that signified thecity’s descent into night. It was the transition between the dinner crowds and the nighttime crowds.
    This was the kind of place where Saturday nights happened every night, where people lived every night as a joyous occasion and a potential party, not just as a time to eat dinner and finish homework and text message your geeky Russian friends. They went out as a matter of principle. Nothing was a spectator sport.
    My shirt was feeling thin in the rapidly cooling air; my hands were full of coffeehouse flyers that advertised events I knew I would never attend.
    And I decided then, at that moment, to come back as often as I could, to walk around and exist downtown as many nights as I could sneak away. It didn’t matter if all the concerts were twenty-one and over, or if the people at the cafés looked straight through me. I just wanted to be a part of their world, to absorb everything I could and find someplace that was more real and more lifelike than the Yards.
    At home, I expected to find a note on my bedroom door, as was my