Michael Bamberger - Wonderland: A Year in the Life of an American High School

Wonderland

By the same author

The Green Road Home
To the Linksland
Bart & Fay (a play)

A Year in the Life of an American High School

Michael Bamberger

Copyright 2004 by Michael Bamberger

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

Permission to quote from Nellys Hot in Herre by Hal Leonard Corporation. Words and Music by Pharrell L. Williams, Cornelius Haynes and Charles L. Brown 2002 EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC., WATERS OF NAZARETH, BMG SONGS, INC., JACKIE FROST MUSIC, SWING T PUBLISHING, ASCENT MUSIC INC. and NOUVEAU MUSIC COMPANY. All Rights for WATERS OF NAZARETH Controlled and Administered by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. All Rights for JACKIE FROST MUSIC Administered by BMG SONGS, INC. All Rights Reserved International. Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

Excerpt from The Hollow Men in COLLECTED POEMS 19091962 by T.S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt, Inc., copyright 1964, 1963 by T.S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bamberger, Michael, 1960
Wonderland : a year in the life of an American high school / by Michael Bamberger.
p. cm.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4598-8
1. YouthPennsylvaniaPennsbury (School district)Social conditions. 2. High school studentsPennsylvaniaPennsbury (School district)Social conditions. 3. PromsPennsylvaniaPennsbury (School district) 4. Bucks County (Pa.)Social life and customs. I. Title
HQ799.72.P4B35 2004
305.2350974885dc22
2003069501

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

For Mark Bowden,
who opened the door,
and the window, too.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream
Lingering in the golden gleam
Life, what is it but a dream?

Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass

Mike Kosmin and his friends started talking about her in September, the hot girl in the hot car, and now Mikes father was finally seeing her, on the day of the prom. The girl was a senior, and from the start of the school year, Mike and his buddies called her Jeans, for the low-cut, faded blue jeans she wore once a week or so, acid-washed and faded at the hips, with the zipper in the back. Mike was a junior at Pennsbury High, not a nerd, though he loved computers; not a jock, though he had made himself a good hockey player. He was a little chunky, funny, new to driving and the world of girls. On Labor Day weekend, his parents had surprised him with the ultimate gift, a car, not some ratty old clunker but a brand-new triple-black Acura RSX. Mike was saving up to improve the sound system. Still, some ride.

Mikes father had handed the virgin car keys to his only son and said, When I was your age, I had an old Ford Falcon that took a quart-a-oil just to drive down the shore. He wasnt Mikes genetic father, but they shared a first name, and they were as close as any father and son. The next generation should have something better, ya know?

Only the most connected juniors could get a space in the oversubscribed Pennsbury student parking lot, so Mike Kosmin was forced to rent one at the pizza place next to the school. Each day, when the final school bell rang at 2:10 P.M., Mike and a buddy or two would trek across the school lot and across a baseball diamond over to Marcellis Pizza, turn on the car radio, and watch Jeans walk to her black Corvette. Shed flip her long blond hair over one shoulder, slip into her sleek car, and drive off to places unknown.

Someday, Mike knew, hed be in the main parking lot, in the thick of things. One of his best friends, Bob Costa, didnt even have a car but somehow had snagged a permit for student parking. Bob held it out as something hed give his friend, someday.

Costa was well connected and unusually sharp. He was the president of the junior class and the second-best debater on the Pennsbury forensics team. He always seemed a step ahead of everybody else.

He was also a movie buff, and he quickly identified Jeanss cinematic ancestor. She was Pennsburys version of the mystery girl in the white Thunderbird in American Graffiti, the one played by Suzanne Somers, the blond goddess with the shimmering lips whom earnest Richard Dreyfuss, in his short-sleeved madras plaid summer shirt, can never quite catch up to. Once Costa said it, everybody agreed: The girl in the T-bird was Jeans.

None of them knew where Jeans lived, what middle school she had attended, where she worked, how she got her Corvette, what guy she saw. They didnt even know her name until Dan Bucci finally spoke up. Shes Alyssa Bergman, he said one afternoon. I sit next to her in D period. Modern media, with Mr. Mahoney. He does alphabetical seating. She talks to me. Shes got a boyfriend. Hes, like, twenty-five years old. Hes in college or something.

And now here was Mikes father, practically face-to-face with the hot girl in the hot car, on the third Saturday in May, the day always reserved for the Pennsbury prom.

Mikes parents were doing the annual prom-day walk-through, when Pennsbury is on public display and hundreds of locals tour the school lobby, gym, and hallways. It is the day the locals judge for themselves the quality of the transformation from ordinary middle-class suburban high school to some sort of dance-party fantasyland, to decide for themselves if this years kids had outdone last years kids.

Nobody else, not one of Pennsburys booming rivals, had anything like the Pennsbury prom. At Council Rock North and Central Bucks East and Neshaminy, along with most every other place you could think of, they all did the same thing: They held their proms in a Marriott ballroom or in some ghastly catering hall. The whole country had gone that way years ago. A prom in the gym? How low-rent can you get? How ghetto! At Council Rock and everyplace like it, the kidsthat is, the kids who actually went to their promshired shiny limos for the night. They mocked the Pennsbury kids when Action News sent a reporter to do a feature on their prom: how the dates arrived by helicopter or pogo stick or in the back of a brightly painted cement mixer, how the sidewalks around the school were teeming with spectators.

The Pennsbury kids, most of them from Levittown, in the heart of working-class Lower Bucks County, pretended not to care about what the rich kids said. Yer mad, theyd say, cause were on TV and yer not.

Mike Kosmins mother and stepfather, the buyers of the triple-black Acura RSX, were not Levittowners. By Pennsbury standards, they were rich. They could have bought a home in any school district. Big Mikethe stepfather, Mike Mackrideswas a successful house builder. Cyndi Mackrides sold real estate. They could have sent their son to private school. They chose Pennsbury because they wanted Mike to go to a large public high school with every sort of kid you could imagine. They chose Pennsbury because it had some kids applying to Princeton and many more heading off to the military or trade school or Bucks County Community College or work. They chose Pennsbury because it had its own traditions, because it had a prom so out of the ordinary that Action News covered it every third year or so.