"I can't stand the sight of Long Island!" Johnny announced with much emphasis as he and Simon gathered equipment for their first experiment. "What a hole!"
Stunned that Johnny should feel moved to make such a statement, apropos of nothing, Simon could only manage a week, "Huh?"
Johnny pointed out the window. "Look at that. It makes me sick. A plastic civilization with paper dolls for people. They're all dead out there. They think they're alive, but they're dead. The only thing that's real on Long Island is the boredom. That's it. Nothing else."
"Uh - uh - is there somewhere - better?"
The sheer absurdity of this question caused Johnny to squeeze his eyedropper, spraying vicious red liquid on Simon's shoes. "The city, man! New York! That's what life is about. But not the city they show in the tourist booklets; the real city! Tenement housing -cockroaches - rats! That's real! To freeze all winter and sweat all summer, and write great songs by the light of a bare bulb in an eight-by-eight cold-water walk-up with crumbling plaster and bad plumbing! That's living!"
Simon was sure it wasn't, but said nothing and concentrated on applying the liquid to the leaf on his slide. There was no reaction from the leaf, but his shoes where beginning to steam.
"In the city, if you've got something to say, you go right ahead and say it - in five-foot letters on the subway wall. On Long Island you don't say anything. You sit at home worrying because you didn't buy your kid a personal computer when he was three, so he won't get into the college of his choice, and he'll end up stupid and have to wear plaid shirt forever. In the city, you wake up because they're breaking pavement outside, or because somebody heaved a brick through the front window of the delicatessen you live over. On Long Island, you sleep through the alarm on your fifteen-hundred dollar Piaget watch, but some poor dog half a block away is driven crazy by the sound and smashes his head against a fence until his brains are scrambled. I hate Long Island!"
Simon, weary of the speech, and more then a little nervous about his shoes, said, "If you hate it here so much, why don't you move to the city?"
"Because my mother says if I move out before I graduate, no one's going to feed my fish."
"Oh."
A young man learns all about friendship, loyalty, his talents (both in the arts and in the leadership department) and his family, while at the same time waging war against an "opressive mega-corporation".
Oh, and his father is the CEO.