XANDER

Writer’s Craft Journal

Xander Watt

April 4, 2016

ASSIGNMENT: Describe an inciting incident in your life—a pivotal moment when everything changed.

My Inciting Incident

I work at Comic Corner part-time. Actually, it started out as a co-op placement last semester. It was Mrs. O’Neill’s idea. She knows I love comics. Especially Star Wars comics. I only ever read Star Wars until I met Maxwell Steinberg. He worked there after school and he would be coming in for his shift as I was leaving.

In the beginning, I didn’t say much to him or anyone, really. There weren’t a lot of customers in the small store. The few that came in only asked me questions I could answer easily, like

•   Where can I find Deadpool #65?

•   Did my Mighty Avengers come in?

•   Where is the bathroom?

The owner, John Banks, spent a lot of time on his computer and only asked me questions like

•   Did you put the posters up?

•   Can you move the back issues into the bins?

•   Do you want to take your break now?

So, I was free to do what I like best: organize comics. I am very good at organizing things and I know how to handle a comic book correctly. Mrs. O’Neill also thought it would be a good job for me because it would help me with small talk.

small talk

/’smɔl,tɔk/

noun: polite conversation about unimportant things

I don’t get small talk. It’s basically people asking other people silly questions. It’s talking about things you don’t really care about with people you don’t really care about. It doesn’t make sense. Why would I care if some stranger at the bus stop thinks it’s a nice day?

But it didn’t matter much, because there was not a lot of small talk at Comic Corner. And I liked that just fine.

I noticed a few things the first time I saw Maxwell Steinberg standing at the counter sorting the new stock. First, he was about the same size as me. Second, he had a neat T-shirt with nine heroes on it, all Marvel, not DC. And last, the blue strip on his name tag had only three letters: MAX.

Maybe there was not enough space on the punch tape to spell the full name. But, no. Mine had ALEXANDER and that was nine letters long.

I pointed at his tag. “Isn’t your name Maxwell?”

He looked at me funny. “Only my dad calls me that. And my teachers. And they’re all assholes.”

I considered his logic. If anyone using his real name was therefore an asshole, did that mean they were assholes because they used his name, or that typically all assholes use that name? And why do we call assholes “assholes,” anyway? Because, anatomically speaking, an anus serves a very important purpose.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asked. I hadn’t realized I was staring.

“Everyone needs an asshole,” I finally said, “biologically speaking.”

He shrugged. But he didn’t walk away like most people did when I tried small talk.

“So, do you like the name Al-ex-an-der?” The way he said it, I decided that I did not.

“My preference is irrelevant,” I said. “It’s my name.”

He laughed. If there was a joke, once again I’d missed it. Then he grabbed a stack of new comics and headed to the X-Men section. I followed. He moved down the New Releases shelf quickly placing his comics, one after another, in exactly the right places. I realized that he’d organized them first at the desk. By series. Then alphabetically. Then by issue.

I liked that.

“Anyone can change their name,” he pointed at a few of the characters on the covers. “Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Wolverine. All these characters did.”

I hadn’t realized that before. But, come to think of it, he was right.

“How about Al?” he said. “Or Alex?”

I shook my head. “That’s my grandfather’s name.”

When he was finished with his comics, he peeled the blue strip from my name tag and ripped off a third of it. I was going to walk away, like Mrs. O’Neill said I should when I feel anxious. He’d just wrecked my name tag, and John Banks would not like it if I asked him to make another one. I had already asked because the letters were not spaced evenly and John Banks had said no.

But Max only threw part of the strip in the garbage. The other two thirds he stuck back on my name tag.

XANDER.

“There,” he said. “How about that…Xander?”

I let the word bounce around in my head. Xander. Xan-DER. XAN-der.

I liked it. And I don’t usually like change. But this was different. This was more like editing. Like what my English teacher said we should do. It was concise. Better. I smiled at Max.

Then he took a red Sharpie out of his back pocket. He traced over the X in my name and drew a circle around it. He didn’t say anything else. But I knew. We were X-Men, me and Max—maX and Xander.

And I wondered if that meant we might be friends, too.