OKAY. EVEN THOUGH I KNEW in chapter nine that I’d end up reencountering my crit partner, the Abernathy, in Culinary Arts, I didn’t really know it until just before the class began, which is going to happen in a few paragraphs.
So hang in there.
The Culinary Arts room was as big as a grocery store. Instead of desks, there were prep tables with built-in sinks. There was an entire wall of gleaming steel ovens and cooktops, and even a walk-in refrigerator and freezer. There were microwave ovens, too, which made me flash back unpleasantly to the sleep-deprived night before.
This was all new to me, though, especially the teacher, Mrs. O’Hare, whom I had never seen around Pine Mountain before. Mrs. O’Hare was the exact opposite of what I’d imagine a cooking teacher to look like. She was young, with billowing blond hair, and long slender legs that you couldn’t help but notice in her tapered chef’s pants. She also wore one of those perfectly white, double-breasted chef’s tunics with just one button seductively undone. No boy in his right mind would have to break out the candy thermometer to know that Mrs. O’Hare was the hottest thing in the kitchen.
I wondered if she was a widow.
Something cool and soft touched my hand, and I snapped out of my stare-down contest with that one button.
“I’ve been waiting for this all day. Well, since breakfast, at least.”
Annie.
We held hands beneath our prep table and leaned close enough that our shoulders and legs touched—just innocent enough that Mrs. O’Hare (my new favorite, hopefully widowed teacher) wouldn’t think anything rule-breaky was going on.
“Oh man, Annie! I am so happy to see you. Do you realize I had to endure an all-boys Health class, where we were forced to take a pledge and promise that we’d learn stuff like healthy attitudes and behaviors toward our penises, and then I just had the worst experience ever in Creative Writing class,” I said.
“What now, Ryan Dean?” (hot scolding tone).
“Well, first off, it’s taught by Mr. Wellins, who is now Dr. Wellins, which means his obsession with sex is going to be even more creepy and condescending, and then Sam Abernathy turned up in the class—and Dr. Wellins had us pair up as permanent writing buddies—and he even made us write something together called a tandem dialogue. It was a nightmare. We had to take turns, where the setup was assigned by Dr. Wellins, then we alternated writing dialogue between two supposedly fictional characters. Here. You should read this.”
And I slipped Annie Altman the shared paper that Sam Abernathy and I had written our first partner project on.
Ryan Dean West
Creative Writing Assignment: Tandem Dialogue
Dr. Wellins
Assignment: Write a dialogue scene with your partner, taking turns to alternate between speakers. Be sure to utilize proper dialogue tags and punctuation. Limitations: (1) YOU MAY NOT USE ANY FORM OF THE VERB “TO SAY.” (2) YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE “REAL PEOPLE” IN YOUR STORY. The situation is as follows: Two speakers are present, engaged in dialogue. One of the speakers finds out that his/her friend is having unprotected sex.
Ready? Set? Write!
I could not believe what Stan Abercrombie just confessed to me. “You’ve been having UNPROTECTED SEX?” I asked.
Stan Abercrombie considered the question for a moment and then retorted, “I thought you weren’t allowed to write in first person.”
I conceded, “Stan, I will overlook your use of a form of ‘to be’ if you will just go with the one-P-P-O-V. The bigger issue remains the fact that you’ve been engaging in unprotected sex!”
“Ryan Dean
“Rodney Dan,”
“Richard Dick,” Stan Abercrombie explained, “I don’t really know what unprotected sex is.”
“Wait,” I ejaculated, “are you fucking kidding me?”
Stan Abercrombie nervously admitted, “No. I really don’t know what that means.”
“That isn’t what I was talking about,” I bellowed. “Why the hell would you name me RICHARD DICK? Nobody would ever be named Richard Dick! Who would name a kid Richard Dick?”
Annie laughed. Well, she tried not to laugh, but I could see all that liquid laughter pooling up in her eyes, which I always found to be incredibly hot. Combine that with Mrs. O’Hare’s top button, and I was certain that Ryan Dean West was raising the internal temperature in Culinary Arts enough to turn milk into yogurt, and yogurt into cheese, and cheese into fucking fondue.
“I’d keep reading this,” she said. “It’s really funny.”
“He’s going to give me a stroke,” I said.
Annie sighed and shook her head. “Just listen to yourself, Ryan Dean. You’re being mean. I’ve never seen you be mean to anyone. Not ever. Why have you decided this is how things are going to be this year? I don’t like it at all.”
If you’ve never played a sport like rugby, then you might not know what it feels like to get the wind knocked out of you and punched in the balls at exactly the same time. But trust me. It was how I felt when Annie said I was being mean. And immediately after that, it also felt like somebody was adding a stiff knee to the kidneys on top of it all, because that’s right when Sam Abernathy came into my constricting field of vision.
“Ryan Dean! I didn’t know you liked to cook too!”
No. I can’t. Just no.
And Sam Abernathy plopped his big-zipper-binder-organizer onto the prep table right next to Annie and proceeded to sit down as though it were entirely acceptable.
“Is this—?” Annie started.
“Sam Abernathy, meet Annie Altman, my girlfriend.”
And the Abernathy stuck out his sticky little cotton-candy puppy paw and shook Annie’s hand. They were actually touching each other’s skin and stuff.
I studied Annie.
That’s when I saw it.
Okay. So, you know how when you completely know someone inside and out (I mean that in a totally non-sex [but it would be with protection, unlike that fictitious moron Stan Abercrombie] way) and then when that person you know actually looks at and touches the bare pink skin of another boy who I will openly admit (in a completely non-gay way) is clearly five out of five baby hedgehogs on the Ryan Dean West Scale of Things That Everyone Is Convinced Are Adorable but Ryan Dean West Thinks Are Totally Disgusting, and then that person who does the skin contact actually blushes and then hedgehog boy blushes too and you’re sitting there watching a fucking hormonal blinking blush fest that looks like a flashing railroad-crossing sign and you’re thinking to yourself, Dear God, she thinks he’s cute and Great Caesar’s ghost, he’s already got a crush on her and Are these ovens gas, and, if so, are their pilot lights out and Would it mess up my hair if I stuck my fucking head in one and Is this the first time in my life I’ve ever thought about my hair being messy?
Yeah. That.
Then hedgehog boy looked at me, his eyes grapefruit-size saucers of admiration and protopubescent lust, and said, “Wow, Ryan Dean, I had no idea you had a girlfriend.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I said.
Well, to be honest, I didn’t say exactly that. In fact, I didn’t say anything at all, because (1) I was choking on something, possibly wishful-thinking gas, and (2) Mrs. O’Hare launched into her sermon on the gospel of Culinary Arts.
“Let’s get this straight right away,” Mrs. O’Hare, whose voice was shockingly manlike, said. “If you think this is going to be an easy class, you are in for an unpleasant surprise.”
Annie leaned into my ear and whispered, “She sounds like a man.”
“If I close my eyes, I picture a young Ernest Borgnine,” I confirmed.
The Abernathy, whose feet couldn’t reach the floor because we sat on tall backless stools, kicked and squirmed and bounced, which meant he was either really happy to be sitting with me and Annie or he needed to pee really bad again.
“To begin with,” Mrs. O’Hare chainsawed on, “this is not a cooking class. Anyone who calls it a cooking class is not fit to polish the Vikings.”
Side note: Is it just me, or does “polish the Vikings” sound really terrifying, in a deeply perverted way? I came to eventually find out that Mrs. O’Hare called her stoves “Vikings.”
And I have no problem admitting that I thought the class was going to be easy. I had already categorized it in my mind as a cooking class, and, speaking of which, I had never cooked anything in my life, unless by “cooking,” you mean “unwrapping and putting in your mouth.”
“Furthermore,” Mrs. O’Hare said, “in Culinary Arts, we work in pods of two students . . .”
Great. Say good-bye to your little pink hedgehog, Annie.
“. . . which have already been determined by me . . .”
Wait a minute.
“. . . based on alphabetical order.”
No. No. No. No. This isn’t real, right?
“Pod one: Abernathy and Altman.”
Sam Abernathy kicked and bounced with joy.
This can’t be happening to me.