Chapter 3
Mase was in bad shape. I mean, generally speaking, Mase is the Tony Hawk of Gamma High. Bruises and scabs are pretty much his calling card, along with his beat-up brown backpack.
But today at his locker, it was a completely different story. A horror story. He was missing some teeth and some hair, and it looked liked someone had pulled out that hair. He also had a cut with a brown scab near his eye.
It was a horrific scene and I wanted to look away except I was fixated on and fascinated by the group of Care Bears who were huddled in the corner crying. Okay, so what I really mean is that this was Mase’s latest self-portrait, the artistic expression of his current state of mind, including a posse of depressed Care Bears (with who knows what intended symbolism).
It was Mase’s way of telling us that he was livid, felt betrayed, or worse—both.
“Wow. That’s wild and messed up,” I said, holding up his picture and inspecting it from all angles.
Mase just smirked.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
Mase shook his head. Just then Bridge walked up to us and I handed her Mase’s latest creation.
“Is it Bridge?” I asked, still curious.
“Is what me?” Bridge sounded confused until she had a moment to soak in Mase’s pictorial rendition of his mental and emotional state.
“Oh, no!” Bridge said after a closer viewing. “I’m definitely not that evil.”
Ahhh. Then it came to me. “Is it Adam?” I asked.
Mase confirmed by wincing, then reached into his backpack and began pulling out all kinds of show-and-tell items: skateboard wheels, a wrench, a leftover sandwich, tons of really short pencils. Finally, when he got to the bottom of the bag, he pulled out a newly crumpled piece of paper.
It was the list of the Homecoming nominations, and on the freshman boy list at the bottom was Mason Milam’s name except it was misspelled with two l’s.
“Isn’t this fabulous? All four of us! I’m so excited! I hope we all make finalists, and when we do, we can have a congrats party at my house and wear all white, you know, like they do in the Hamptons? And then I could invite Brad Walker. Maybe he would perform a song for me on his cello,” dreamed Bridge.
“You nominated Adam, didn’t you?” I said.
Mase nodded and took a deep breath.
“Did you want to be nominated?” I asked, knowing this was a dumb question. For a dude that has skateboarded over fiery BBQ pits and could pull off a ten-inch scab without flinching, Mase shot me a terrified look.
“So, you think Adam did this?”
Mase just shrugged, and as if on cue the bell rang and we all scattered. As I ran to my science class trying to figure out just what had taken place in the hall, I ran smack into ... Swen. Hard. I just wanted to die.
“Hey, are you okay?” Swen asked, holding my arms to help me not drop any of my books or vital organs.
Omigod. I don’t know what I was feeling or experiencing first. Was it embarrassment, pain, or love?
Diga! Diga! Say something! Anything! my brain said.
“Yeah, I’m good,” my voice eked out painfully like I was doing a Jabba impersonation.
My brain started racing. What was he doing here? And then there was Venus. What was she doing there standing by my crushable?
“Hey, watch it, Santos. Don’t damage my potential Homecoming merch,” Venus said as she made her rapid exit down the hall in a too-tight pair of Seven Jeans.
Swen just rolled his eyes and smiled and went to the back of the science classroom. Was she serious? Was that rich witch indeed taking my chemical reaction Romeo to Homecoming?
Normally, I react with tingling all the way to my DNA when I’m in that close contact with Swen, but this time my genetic material was in an immune response to a virus named Venus Hunter. It had already been a rough morning with Mase being upset, and now with this nightmare invasion of my dreamworld, I was about to flip out.
Por favor, calm yourself, chica, my brain commanded.
What I needed to do was sit down—and I did, to the tune of Dr. Hamrock’s “Pop quiz.” I wanted to cry. Is this the kind of pressure I would be feeling on a daily basis being in high school?
If it was, then this sucked. And this pop quiz on pressure differentials and the properties of a vacuum, sucked. Just then, an angel spoke. Okay, it wasn’t an angel; it was Jabba and she asked if we could use our notes. It sounded like a ridiculous question to me, but I was still curious enough to want to hear the answer.
I couldn’t believe it. It was a miracle! Dr. Hamrock said yes, but only because this was our first semester with him. Yippee! I thought as I pulled out my earbuds and plugged them into my Chica Speakas to listen to Dr. Hamrock’s last lecture.
Fortunately, I was so caught up with Bridge and her adorable snacks the other day that I forgot to change the tapes. Miracle number two. Maybe my luck was changing.
It was a very long and tedious quiz, and when it was over, I wanted to take a nap but I couldn’t relax remembering that Swen was in the back of the room.
What was he still doing here? As I turned in my quiz, I was anxious to bolt out the door. But just then my sixth sense reminded me that Dr. Hamrock wanted to talk about my proposed project.
The bell rang and all my peers scattered like cockroaches. I wanted to be one of those little cockroaches. But I knew I couldn’t avoid Dr. Hamrock’s impending bug bomb.
“Miss Santos,” Dr. Hamrock said with the undertones of “You can’t escape from me, my little pretty.”
“Yes?” I said, acting like I was in quite a hurry.
“Have you by any chance found out who was responsible for killing my fish?”
Darn that dead frog. By trying to do the right thing, I got caught and was forced to enter the science competition and was about to lose my prince. Was there no justice? Could it be any worse?
Oh, yeah, it could and it was. That’s when I looked at Dr. Hamrock’s fish tank. It was like a really bad car crash. You know when you really don’t want to look because you think you shouldn’t, yet some uncanny force makes you look anyhow to see just how much gruesome you can take in a moment’s notice? It was pretty gruesome.
The tank was there but it was totally empty with a bit of a residue of where the water used to be. My stomach felt sour. Poor fishes. Lo siento. I’m sorry. I tried.
“Uh ... no. I haven’t found out anything—yet.”
I added the “yet” to give him some hope. But I couldn’t dare tell him it was Bart. My high school years would be endured in endless torture if I busted Bart, because he was the type to never let me live it down.
“Alright then, on to other things,” Dr. Hamrock said.
I couldn’t tell if he really meant it or if he was really sad and did one of those guy things to avoid any type of emotions. Or maybe, he just really wanted to win Regionals. I don’t know. It was too early in the day and in the game for me to figure out his m.o.
“How are you coming on your winning project idea for the competition?”
I shifted uncomfortably. Now, here was my big chance. This is when I wished I had taken drama so I could lie effortlessly and pitch him my doozy of a project. And then when he rejected me fiercely, with a flip of an emotional switch I could change from scientifically supercharged to utterly devastated. And pull my hair and scream, “Aye Dios! ” just like they do in the Mexican soaps my grandma watches. And then as a topper, I could start doing that totally annoying girl thing and start bawling my eyes out.
But I didn’t get chosen to come to Gamma High for my drama skills. So, instead, I directed myself very quickly to just act from a place of certainty.
I was certain I wanted out of this project. I was certain I wanted to go to Homecoming and I was certain I wanted this whole discussion to end very quickly.
So, I explained Project Gamma Glamma to Dr. Hamrock. My hypothesis was that if I could alter a few critical elements of a student’s self-presentation—in other words, clothes, voice, mannerisms, even their smell—then through that I could alter how they would be received by particular social groups.
I told him I had three participants for the project even though I hadn’t asked Mase and Jabba directly. Okay, I hadn’t asked them at all. But I figured I would see them at lunch and I also figured if the project was dead it wouldn’t be necessary to ask them. Right?
Now that I had vomited out my proposal as fast as I could, I froze and waited. And waited. And waited. Dr. Hamrock didn’t seem to show any emotion, but then he never really ever shows emotion, so what am I saying?
Seconds seemed like hours and I knew I already was going to need Dr. Hamrock to write me a hall pass since I was super late for lunch.
“That’s unusual.” Dr. Hamrock lingered on the word unusual. “What would be the benchmarks to determine the success of this experiment?”
This new loop I was now being thrown for only made the acid in my stomach churn faster. “Umm ... I can observe who they start to hang out with, where they sit in the cafeteria, if they get dates to the Homecoming dance. Maybe I can even get them selected to be finalists for Homecoming Court.” Ooops. I realized too late that I might be overpromising.
“What do you think about this proposal, Eric?” Dr. Hamrock tossed to the back of the room.
Eric? You gotta be kidding me. Mi Dios! Eric was still in the back of the room, and even after surviving the embarrassment of our collision, I would now have to endure him witnessing the grand rejection of my proposal. Dang, I didn’t have a chance to respond to anything today—Mase, Venus, pop quiz, being “unusual.”
“I like it,” Eric said.
I wanted to scream. My nervousness started showing when I kept accidentally hitting my heels on the floor and the tapes in my shoes kept rewinding and fast-forwarding.
I would have bent down to fix the tapes except I had been in a rush to modify my miniskirt and I’d kept trimming and trimming this morning and it pretty much was a mucho micro-mini right now.
It was probably breaking school policy but I’m pretty short, so it didn’t look that skanky. Nonetheless, the last thing I needed to do was flash my science teacher and my crushable. Not that it would be that big of a deal. I mean, I was already feeling pretty exposed at the time.
“I like it ... because it combines a social theory and applies it in a way that a student audience can appreciate,” Swen said.
I cocked my head like my dog Señor Shortie does when he hears a familiar Fritos cellophane bag sound. I tried to nod in agreement. But I’m sure I looked like a freakin’ groupie.
Swen closed his laptop. “This is a great story to follow to help boost the science cluster.”
“And bring up our numbers,” added Dr. Hamrock.
“Yeah, it couldn’t hurt to even things out against the drama population,” laughed Swen.
That I could understand and I had to agree. Gamma High was supposed to be a supermagnet to represent all the types of folks, but the sea of Dramaticas was pretty deep.
At the first of the school year, people sometimes used to think I was one of the drama folks because of my love of black clothes. But with my repurposed Polos, Izods, and my geekspeak it’s pretty clear which tribe I come from. But I have to tell you, it’s really fun to cause a bit of confusion between cliques here from time to time. Who knows, maybe I am a bit of a Drama Mama myself.
“Luz, why don’t you come up with a more detailed plan on how you expect to demonstrate your hypothesis. Once you’ve done more research, I’ll help you organize the data for our competition. And then we can tweak it even more for Regionals.”
Wake up, Luz! “That’s if I win Gamma’s competition first,” I reminded him.
“Oh, you’ll win,” Dr. Hamrock said, almost sounding ominous, as he looked for something in his desk drawer. “And, Eric, thanks for helping cover this experiment.”
I didn’t know what to do during all this dialogue, so I just looked at my backpack and thought about when and how I could modify it with a video camera. Dr. Hamrock must have noticed—I mean observed—my anxiousness.
“Oh, don’t you two know each other?” Dr. Hamrock asked with a bit of surprise.
“Not really,” I said.
Eric walked right up to me. He was less than a foot away from me. “Eric Swenson. But you can call me Swen,” he said as he extended his hand out to me (love those hands).
I reached out my hand. “I’m Luz Santos,” I said, then tried to recall if I’d said my own name right.
Everything was happening so fast that I didn’t have time to put on my cute voice or to talk to him with mis ojos, my eyes. (You know, like all that advice that sounds really good when you’re reading Cosmo, or in my case, Cosmo Girl, because it’s Saturday night and your overprotective Latino parents forbid you to date until you’re sixteen.)
“Eric, I’m just going to call you Swen, too,” interrupted Dr. Hamrock, trying to be cool. Gross.
“Now, why don’t you guys exchange numbers or e-mails or whatever it is you do, so Swen can keep a record of your progress, Luz. We need all the press we can get out of this,” said Dr. Hamrock, totally busting my love groove.
“No problem,” said Swen.
For a second I observed that Dr. Hamrock sounded almost human but he also sounded nervous like he could lose his job or something. It was weird but I didn’t dwell on it, because I wanted to hug him and thank him for making all my dreams and nightmares come true at the same time.
And then my dreams and nightmares slapped this chica into this reality.
“Luz, let me write you a pass,” Dr. Hamrock said, sounding like himself again and digging around trying to find the pass forms.
“And let me get your number,” said my dream lover.
Of course, reaching down into my backpack for pen and paper set off all types of things, like my iPod, my lipstick radio, and my homemade talking key chain, which said on cue, “Aye Papi!”
I was so tragic and then the only piece of paper I could find was the crumpled paper that Mase had given me with all our names on it as freshman nominees for the Homecoming Court. I ripped a piece off of that and scrawled my digits and gave it to Swen. I’m sure he thought it was gross that I was handing him a now warm and wet (read sweaty palms) piece of trash with my number on it. He probably thought I was Señorita Basura. That’s brown trash, y’all. Whatever.
My stomach acid kept churning and now I was on the verge of throwing up. It was coming. And I knew I had to outrun it. When I turned around to grab my pass from Dr. Hamrock, I knocked a book out of Swen’s hand called Elements of Style.
I quickly picked it up from the floor and gave him a weak smile. He said he liked my shoes and made some comment that I should make him some.
I couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or totally feeling sorry for me. I didn’t have time to break it down. The bile volcano was sending seismic waves toward my mouth.
I ran and ran faster. I finally got to my destination, the girls’ bathroom (upstairs and farthest from any classroom), and promptly bowed to the throne. Acid. Nothing like reflux.
But truly for me, it happens when I get nervous. And then right when I came out of my stall and decided to at least wash my face and bravely carry on, my nightmare returned in a sequel when I heard a familiar voice.
“Santos, that’s so very Hollywood of you. Y’know, I was thinking about writing a report for health class about eating disorders and how it affects teens. Maybe you could help me?” Venus hissed sweetly.
“Eat it, Venus,” I said.
I was so proud of myself. Courage under fire. Miracle number three. Right on!
Normally, I would have said something stupid, and then later in the privacy of my own bedroom/laboratory, I would have overanalyzed the episode. And then that’s where the useless perfect words would have made themselves known to me.
Crawling back to lunch after missing twenty minutes of it, I tried to review the reality that would make up my near future.
First of all, I had to now go through with the experiment. Bridge wasn’t going to believe this, much less like it.
Next, I had to also convince Mase to be my lab rat. Maybe I’d tell him that I would motorize his skateboard or create a video of his latest stunts that he could carry around on an iPod and show everyone.
Or maybe I could create a paint that could be eaten so that when he was done creating his masterpieces he could munch down. The possibilities were endless.
The next step of my once-fake-but-now-real science experiment was talking to Jabba. Would she trust me? Would she go through with it? I had no idea.
I mean Bridge and Mase were average to above average in the looks department. It wouldn’t look like a giant step for studentkind if these two inched up the social ranks.
But for Jabba, it was a whole different story. If I could make her popular, she would make me famous. And I needed to be famosa, especially now that Swen was going to follow and cover my project.
This challenge I was about to face was going to be the mother of all challenges for me. How do I get my closest friends and schoolmates to trust me enough to change their looks? And what exactly was I going to change about them?
How could I make my science project look hot in the paper but not hot enough to win so that I wouldn’t be at Regionals and I could still go to Homecoming?
And then there was more. How could I get kids to vote for me for Homecoming Court? I wanted to be a part of that TV documentary, and in order for that to happen, I had to be a finalist.
And if any of my grand schemes failed, what would be the worst that could happen? Failing in the science cluster? Losing my best friends after they are ridiculed by the evil masses?
Okay, maybe failure wasn’t an option. Just then, as I opened the door to the cafeteria, Jabba quickly shuffled out. I noticed that someone had taped a sign to her back that said, “I brake for snacks.”
I would have pulled it off, but I had low blood sugar and needed a snack. Something in my neurons snapped. That’s it, I thought. I’ll just make all my science participants “Snackables.” Everyone loves snacks, don’t they?