Notes: Because the fandom doesn't need another "Episode 20" fic. And I've always wondered about the enigmatic-yet-omnipotent Tino.. who hasn't?
Pulling a Catalano
When he feels like it, Tino goes to fifth period phys ed, but only because Jordan Catalano is there. He only goes when it's sunny, so he and Catalano can jog side-by-side on the track and talk. Coach always yells at them to run, but they can't because of all the smoking they do. It's why Tino quit soccer freshman year. Well, that and the fact that he never really went to practice anyway.
Today, Monday, Catalano is talking about Residue and how they might have a gig coming up. Tino nods and doesn't tell Catalano about Alpha Dog's Spring Break, the band he might form with a couple juniors and that freshman who can play guitar like Hendrix. Seriously. Tino just listens, and there's no bad blood between them. That's the nice thing about Catalano. He gets over stuff.
"Get your ass moving, Catalano!" Coach yells from his trackside lawn chair. "You too, Tino!"
Tino is so well-known at Liberty that they don't even call him by his last name, and if you pulled aside random people, eleven out of ten wouldn't even be able to tell you what it is. The rumor last semester was that they didn't even print his last name in the yearbooks, and the rumor still stands because no one ever wants to take the time to go check the yearbook.
"Well?" Coach demands, looking at them expectantly. "Move it!"
Catalano looks at Tino and they both decide to slow down just a little…just enough to make Coach get a couple more gray hairs.
Tino is the guy who's always giving rides to underclassmen, the guy who can get Rayanne Graff Chinese food after sixth and burritos by eighth. He's got the keys to the boiler room (graciously keeping it unlocked), access to the librarian's personal photocopier in case he needs someone's homework, and a sophomore just told one of her freshman friends that yeah, Tino could totally get you into Let's Bolt if you really want to.
At Liberty, Tino is a legend. But Tino is also a senior. A few months from now, he'll be gone and graduated, his presence then only a memory. It's true, they say legends don't die, but they forget the fact that only certain legends make it to that status. Nicky Driscoll did it in the 50s by falling off the rafters on Halloween; Jennalee Blanchard did it in the 70s when she dangled her entire bra collection from her graduation gown and proclaimed she was "Bustin' Out!" during the valedictorian's speech; Greg Hammond did it two years ago when he moved all the cafeteria tables and chairs onto Liberty's front lawn and nearly got away with a massive yard sale. They're not just legends because of that, though; they're legends because they left things behind. There's Nicky Driscoll's English book, Jennalee Blanchard's green polka-dotted bra under the false bottom of locker 336C, and the missing table Greg Hammond sold to the gypsies. But Tino hasn't done anything spectacular like that. It's all been little bullshit so far. He hasn't done anything to mark his territory as a legend. Compared to those guys, he's nobody. A guy with no last name? Anyone can pull that if they really want to. Tino wants to leave Liberty a real legend.
But how?
Tino spends a few days thinking about this. Instead of going out to get Graff Thai (which he'd be doing instead of going to Modern World History), he has a junior steal the '63, '77, and '92 Liberty yearbooks from the library (because Tino would never be seen there), and he reads up on the legends, studies their pictures to see if maybe there's something in their faces that makes them able to pull of what they did. But there isn't. They look normal, and the yearbooks don't hold any clues. By Thursday, Tino has no idea what to do.
Then, when he sees Catalano leaning against a locker, he remembers. When Tino was a sophomore, Catalano had yet to be held back. And even though they were both sophomores, Tino was still one year older: he'd been held back in second grade, skipped third but later had to repeat seventh. By high school, though, he was doing pretty good. Or just good enough. At the end of that year, Tino scraped by with his grades, and instead of moving on, they kept Catalano for another round. And at the end of his junior year, when he'd passed because of a lot of helpful volunteers who did homework and attested to his impeccable attendance record, Catalano still wasn't as lucky. But in those two years, Catalano had accomplished all the same stuff Tino had, and because they held him back, he has two more years to pull more.
Waitaminute. That's it.
Tino is going to pull a Catalano.
Tino is going to pull a Catalano and get one more whole year to come up with and pull off the thing that will make him a Liberty legend, the kind that will keep him in the memories of everyone for a long time, hell, maybe even forever.
So the next day Tino fires the kids who do his homework for him and locks the old test papers he studies off of into a desk drawer (he'd burn them, but he might need them next year, in case he wants to graduate). He shows up to school in the morning, but after the first bell he's never found again on campus. The rumors fly, but Tino doesn't bother to follow them. He ran away to Mexico to marry some sophomore from Harrison High. He's getting bratwursts for the entire junior class. The administration locked him in the third floor east wing boy's bathroom (the really disgusting one) and he has to scrub the toilets with his toothbrush. He went crazy because he ran out of cigarettes. Rayanne Graff takes the opportunity to tell him these stories with her usual scathing glee, and Tino barely pays attention. He has his mind on other things.
After two and a half weeks of this, Graff tells him the only rumor that has the possibility of being true, and the only one that he wants to hear:
"Dude, Tino, one of the attendance narcs -- you know, the ones who work during their study halls? --" Tino knew; a few had been on his firing list. "-- well, I kind of know the friend of the sister of one of them, and she told me that her friend's brother heard administration say all this stuff about how if your grades keep slipping, you're, like, not going to graduate."
Tino takes a long drag from his cigarette, says, "Fine by me," hands Graff her shrimp and lobster sauce from Wong's and leaves to find another book of matches.
A couple days after this he makes the mistake of roaming Liberty during fifth period, where he runs into Catalano.
"Aren't you supposed to be in gym or something?" he asks Catalano.
"Aren't you?" asks Catalano.
"Cute, Catalano. What's up?"
"Wanna go out and smoke a couple?"
Tino tells him, "I'm sick of smoking in the fresh air. Bathroom okay by you?"
Catalano shrugs. "Whatever."
They head into the second floor, west wing men's room, where Catalano immediately lights up. Tino bums a match off of him; he's already used up the book he got a few days ago.
"So, Tino." Catalano does his trademark lean against a stall. "What's going on?"
"Not much." He takes a long drag. "Don't you think Coach is gonna miss you in class or whatever?"
"Coach doesn't, like, keep track of who's there, remember?" Removing the cigarette from between his lips, he mutters, "Doesn't explain why you show up there."
"What was that, Catalano?" asks Tino, staying cool as always. "Say it to my face if you've got anything to say at all."
Catalano drops his half-finished cigarette onto the bathroom floor and stomps on it, letting it join the graveyard of butts that came before it.
"Don't you get it, Tino?" he asks, actually looking serious-serious, not vacant-serious like he usually does. "They're gonna, like, let you out. If stuff didn't keep screwing up, I'd be getting out too. Why are you ruining it by, like, failing on purpose?"
"Who said I was failing on purpose?"
"Like, everyone."
"They're wrong."
"Why are you doing it?" Catalano repeats. Tino knows Catalano had a conversion experience or something around Halloween, when that chick Graff hangs around with kept him from getting booted out by Lerner. He heard about it from one of his and Catalano's mutual friends who's in the class with him. "You can get out, Tino, and, like, move on to better stuff. Shit, anything's better than this."
"Fuck it," Tino grumbles. "Stop trying to imitate that redhead you couldn't get to sleep with you, Catalano, 'cause it's not working."
"Keep her out of it, Tino." For maybe the first time, Catalano sounds genuinely defensive of a girl. "I heard you, like, had a couple underclassmen steal yearbooks."
"So?"
"That's a stupid senior prank, especially for, like, you."
Tino almost laughs because Catalano just can't connect the dots.
"Catalano," Tino says, running a hand through his hair, "listen, man. I don't need any of this from someone like you right now."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You know. This conversion shit. Or whatever it is."
"Christ, Tino, if I was in your position, you know, with the end so close, I would, like, seriously reach it, or at least, like…try to."
"You don't get it, Catalano." He grabs a second cigarette. "You totally used to understand this kind of stuff."
"Maybe it's, like, better that I don't anymore, then." Catalano closes his eyes for a long moment, either thinking about it or spacing out. Tino never knows which. "Whatever, man."
Outside, the bell rings.
"Might as well just check out who's at my locker," Catalano says, heading for the door. Tino says nothing. "Hey, Tino?"
"What, Catalano?"
"Hammond didn't need to, like, fail senior year on purpose to make sure they remembered him."
And then he's gone.
Tino can't believe that he just let Jordan Catalano walk out on him. In a bathroom, too, of all places, and with such a lame excuse. But, weird as it is, from everything they said, they're both kind of right. Blanchard and Hammond didn't fail senior year (Driscoll didn't make it that far, so he doesn't count right now), like Catalano said. But Tino doesn't need someone like Catalano and all of his regurgitated philosophical babble right now. He needs a girl. A girl with her own original babble, a girl like Catalano's to give him his own conversion. Or whatever. Tino has a few months left to figure out the details.