School’s always been pretty bad. Mom said they were going to keep me back at the end of first grade, but when they tested me they found out I was in the ninety-sixth percentile for intelligence and they figured I was just bored. Dad gave me lectures explaining how all the brains in the world wouldn’t do me any good if I didn’t know how to work. But as it turns out, all the lectures in the world don’t make things any less boring, and they don’t make you work harder either. So I aced classes where all I had to do was show up and take tests. I didn’t do as well in classes that required projects.

It always bugged me that I went to school but I didn’t seem to learn anything really useful. Like birds. I saw the same kinds of birds every day and there I was in my last year of high school and I didn’t know what kinds they were. Except robins. Shouldn’t there be a class called Basic Birds? What about flowers? Shouldn’t there be a course called Common Flowers You Will See in Your Typical Day? And what about stuff like how the financial world works? How about How to Get into the Stock Market Without Losing Your Shirt, or even What That Information Sheet They Give You When You Open a Bank Account Means. I had to read Lord of the Flies in English class just to learn that all teenagers are animals at heart and thank you civilization for keeping us from ripping each other’s throats out. But Lord of the Flies was written in 1954—haven’t they written any good books since then? Maybe we would evolve if the curriculum did. How about a course called Marriage 101 or Mortgages 101 or Parenting 101? Some of the biggest things in your life and you don’t get taught how to do them. But hey, I know the molecular difference between an acid and a base. I’ve got nothing against knowing the molecular difference between an acid and a base, but how about something practical once in a while? I just want to look around in the world and not be totally baffled by it, even as I recite the periodic table, you know?

So yeah, Bill, I’ve always had a problem with school.

All morning Hobbes followed me around in the hallways and in my classes, never in full view, always just behind me and to my right. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of the end of his tail. All morning I thought

the English project

the biology project

Hobbes

the English project

the biology project

Hobbes.

They were like mantras in my head.

They were like canker sores in my mouth.

They were like little rocks in my shoes.

I thought, I should go home. No, I can’t go home. I should run away.

Hobbes: Hard to win the Change the World Lottery if you’re a high school dropout.

Me: Or if you talk to imaginary tigers.

My parents didn’t know that I was about to become the first ninety-sixth percentile to flunk. My dad had told me over and over again to do well in school so I wouldn’t have to grow up to be a ditchdigger, and now that I was about to resign myself to a lifetime of ditchdigging, I realized I had never seen a ditchdigger anywhere ever and probably they had machines for that.

Hobbes: There’s always McDonald’s. I wonder if you worked there for, say, twenty years, you could afford to move out of your parents’ house. I wonder if a guy whose great ambition is to be promoted from french fries to hamburgers could get a girlfriend.

*   *   *

On a day like this, of course, I couldn’t get lucky enough to avoid Maurice.

Maurice: What do I have for lunch today, Timbit?

Hobbes growled.

Maurice grabbed my lunch bag and reached his huge hand into it. He threw the apple at me.

Maurice: You can have that.

He looked at me like he hated me for letting him get away with this every time he forgot his lunch, which was a lot.

Hobbes: Can I eat him?

Maurice: You’re looking skinny, man. Tell your mom you need a bigger lunch.

He unwrapped my sandwich.

Hobbes: Not much to him.

Me: Eat him anyway.

Maurice leaned into me, slamming me against my locker.

Maurice: What was that?

Hobbes might have jumped him if Susie hadn’t suddenly been standing there.

Susie: Everything okay, Calvin?

She glared at Maurice.

Hobbes: Babe!

Me: Your boyfriend is a bonehead bully.

I could say that because I knew Maurice wouldn’t do a thing to me if Susie was there.

Susie: He’s not my boyfriend.

Maurice: Bully? Strong word. I thought we were friends.

Maurice threw his arm around Susie’s shoulders, grinned at me, and took a big bite of my sandwich.

She slid out from under his arm.

Maurice: Hey, where’s your sense of humor, McLean? This is the way men show our affection. Right, Timbit? We’re buddies, right?

Susie looked from me to Maurice and back again.

Me: Sure, Maurice. Buddies. Since first grade.

Maurice: Susie, you want half my sandwich?

She took it absently, and they walked away enjoying my peanut butter and banana sandwich. Susie looked back at me as if she was hoping I’d say something to Maurice, but I didn’t. I never did.

Hobbes: I can’t believe you’re still putting up with that.

Me: Depends on what you mean by putting up with.

Hobbes: No wonder you brought me back.

Me: I didn’t. I want you gone.

But at that moment I sort of didn’t, Bill. I sort of liked him beside me in a corner of my mind, growling at Maurice and calling Susie babe.

The kids in the hallway were looking at me funny, possibly because it appeared I was arguing with myself, so I headed to English to eat my apple and wait for class to start. I don’t know why I went to class—my life was over as far as school went. The project didn’t have to be handed in until the end of class, and maybe I thought one would float down out of space and land on my desk.

All during class I was suffering the pains of the Damned Who Don’t Do Their Semester Projects, and I thought I could hear the tiny screams of my brain cells as they died of grammar-review boredom. They started to get so loud I almost couldn’t hear the teacher. She was looking at me, bending into that look, like she was seeing how repulsive I was for the first time, and suddenly she was revealed as the globular-faced alien she really was, and I understood that she was slowly turning the brains of young humans into a kind of gray smoothie and one day she’d stick straws up our noses and sip our brains out.

Teacher: Calvin?

I hadn’t heard her question, but I sensed that under those buggy eyes was a subtle mind.

Me (politely): Could you rephrase the question, please?

She paused. Was she onto me?

Teacher: Where is the prepositional phrase in this sentence? I’m not sure how I could phrase it better.

Me: In this sentence. That’s the prepositional phrase.

She stared at me. I thought I could see her jaw bubbling, as if her mandibles would break free of her human disguise any moment.

Teacher: Clever. But I was talking about the sentence on the board, not the one I was saying.

I looked at the sentence on the board. By now about a million of my brain cells had gone to their deaths, victims of grammar, but I tried to summon the survivors. I said something, but only nonsense came out.

Susie was looking at me like I’d sprouted a cancerous growth.

Susie: Calvin—?

All the colors in the room were a little too bright, the edges too black. Couldn’t she see the evil intent of the so-called teacher? Hobbes was growling, low and deadly.

I stood up, but I felt wobbly.

Me: Run, Susie. I’ll cover for you …

Teacher: Calvin? Calvin, are you all right?

But I wasn’t, Bill. Something was wrong and Hobbes was roaring in my ears and the teacher had morphed into her true alien self and I could see Maurice laughing, and that’s all I remember until I came to my senses in the hospital.