| |
Tuesday morning, I jostle my way through the metal detectors and head out to the quad. Walking past the Tech building, I see a new piece of graffiti shit: “Kill Raghead Muslim Terrorists,” slapped up with a black permanent marker. So much for the back-to-school email reminder that “Hamilton High is a Hate-free Environment.” It pisses me off, the haters who want to get rid of everyone who’s not white.
Underneath the Muslim hate, underlined twice, it says “14 Words.” I don’t know what that means, but I’m pretty sure it’s more hate shit.
At the quad, there are six lunch tables lined up with office people and aides behind them, handing out programs and first-day information.
I join Brent in the A-D line. He looks all anxious and worried.
“How’s it going?”
He shakes his head. “I told my dad I don’t want to be an engineer! Like I’ve been telling him at least once a month for the past four years! And he tells me, ‘Stick with it. You’ve got a great opportunity here!’ like he’s been telling me for the past eight years.”
Phong wanders over from the I-L line carrying his program packet. Phong Liu.
“Did you take WriteLight again this year?”
I nod.
“Cool! Maybe you can turn Simba into a vampire. He can help Vernon.”
I laugh. “Simba’s a vegetarian, except for mice.”
“Yeah, but if he eats a vampire mouse, then he’ll be a vampire cat.”
Phong cracks me up. He’s got this thing for a cowardly vampire—Vernon the Cowardly Vampire. He’s always doodling pictures of him. Vernon looks a lot like that guy Edward in the vampire movies, except Edward has these wicked teeth and Vernon has tiny baby teeth.
Me, I doodle pictures of Simba the cat, who is strong and brave. He’s my doodling specialty—has been since I was a little kid and obsessed with “The Lion King.” I even named my kitten Simba because I wanted him to grow into a lion. What can I say? I was a kid. Simba grew into a regular cat, like the one I’m drawing now.
“Later,” Phong says as I reach the front of the line.
Ms. Cordano, one of the office ladies, hands me my packet. As I step aside to wait for Brent, I notice Rosie about halfway back and wander over. She points to the bulky envelope I have tucked under my arm.
“What classes do you have?”
“I haven’t looked yet.”
She laughs. “Then, look!”
I take my program out and read the list of classes to her as she inches along in line. “WriteLight. World History. I like history,” I tell her. “I probably won’t do the homework, but class discussion will be okay.”
Rosie’s looking at me like maybe I’m from another planet or something.
“Environmental Ecology. I don’t even know what that is,” I tell her, “but I’ve heard it’s easy and it’ll meet the science requirement. 20th Century American Lit. That might be okay. I might read some of those books...”
Finally at the front of the line, Rosie gets her packet and rips it open. She skims her program information and waves it in the air.
“Brianna!!” she yells to a girl standing over by the fence.
The girl runs over to Rosie. “You got it?”
“Yes!”
“Me, too!”
Rosie throws her arms around Brianna, and they jump around, laughing and hugging and doing that squealing girl thing. “We got it!” Rosie says. “We got it!”
“Come on!” Brianna grabs Rosie by the hand and moves back toward the other girls.
“In a sec,” Rosie says, turning back to me. “So, American Lit and what else?” she says, her smile still all glowing.
Brianna looks from Rosie to me and back to Rosie. “I’ll see you at the assembly, then,” Brianna says, and goes back to the others.
“What else have you got?” Rosie asks.
“What have you got that you’re so happy about?”
She shows me her program, pointing to sixth period, Tuesday and Thursday. R.O.P. Music Therapy. She says it’s some “consortium” with students chosen from all of the schools in the county—super hard to get into. But if you do get in, it’s almost certain you can get into this highly competitive Music Therapy program at University of the Foothills. “I’ve wanted to be a music therapist since I first learned about it in seventh grade and UOF has this great program. I love music and I love helping people, so it’ll be perfect...What’re your other classes?” she asks.
“Earth Science, Life Skills, Yoga, Business Math.”
“Business Math? Not Calculus?”
“I’m not going to college. I don’t need calculus. Besides, I’m learning the painting business with my sort of stepdad. Business Math will be good to know.”
“Painting?”
“Yeah. House painting. Office painting. Buildings. You know.”
Rosie stands looking at me for too long. Too serious. I’d like to be treading water.
“But...I remember how smart you were back in the 4th grade. Why aren’t you going to college?”
“I guess I’m smart enough to know I don’t want to go to college.”
“Well, okay, speaking of 4th grade, know any more of those little kid jokes?” She laughs, like even asking is a joke.
It’s a relief to get off the no-college subject, so I tell her, “Here’s the one I told Imani yesterday afternoon so she’d stop telling me every detail of “Frozen” for about the millionth time. I told her the joke in exchange for some quiet time.”
“Oh, my gosh. My little sister is constantly talking about ‘Frozen.’ She watches it practically every day when she gets home from school, and then she tells me all about it, like she did the day before, and the day before that.”
“Try buying some quiet time with a joke.”
“Zoe can’t possibly be quiet for an hour.”
“Start with half an hour.”
“What’s the joke you used for your stepsister?”
“My sort of stepsister.”
“Okay, so what’s the joke you used for your sort of stepsister?”
“It might not work for your sister.”
“C’mon!”
“Okay. Why are elephants smarter than chickens?”
“Why?”
“You have to guess.”
“Because they have bigger brains?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Think about it. They have to be smarter, because have you ever heard of Kentucky Fried Elephant?”
Rosie laughs and laughs. It’s kind of musical and tinkly, but hearty at the same time. I love her laugh. She’s a great audience for dumb, corny jokes. She probably wouldn’t ever like me, like for a boyfriend, but...?
It’s a minimum day schedule. We check in at classes, get our textbooks and whatever else teachers hand out on the first day, reading lists, schedule of assignments, that stuff. There’s a note on my program card from Mr. Kaiser, the senior counselor: “See me at 12:30.”
I go to his office after 6th period when what I most want to do is go to lunch. I text Brent. Me: Stuck in Kaiser’s office.
Brent: I’m starving. Frowning face, triple taco emojis
Me: Go ahead. I’ll catch up.
Brent: Just hurry.
Me: Thumbs up.
Brent: Say yes and nod your head to everything.
Me: Okay emoji
I’ve already had five texts from Brent, all saying “hurry!” and three texts from Cameron saying “starving” by the time Kaiser calls me into his office. He takes my folder from the “permanent records” file cabinet next to his desk and opens it.
“What classes are you taking?” he asks.
I hand my program card to him. He frowns. Shakes his head. Turns the open folder to face me. There’s my whole high school history, neatly recorded grades next to every class I’ve taken, in consecutive order, semester by semester. I know what comes next. It’s the old “not living up to your potential” talk that I got from my freshman counselor, and sophomore counselor, and junior counselor. It always comes within a week or two of when school starts in September, and again a week or two before school gets out in June. Usually though, they don’t give me the talk on the very first day of school. This first day thing totally gets in the way of my back-to-school lunch tradition with Brent and Cameron.
Mr. Kaiser points to numbers in a box at the top of my transcript. “Look at these test scores, Eddie. Some of your college-bound friends would be thrilled with such test scores.”
I shrug.
“And look at this!” he says, pointing to another section. “All through high school, you’ve taken the easiest classes you can get by with and your grades are mediocre at best. And this?” He pushes my program card back to me. “This is a joke! WriteLight, and Yoga,” he sneers, then lets out a long sigh. “You’ve got such potential! And you’re squandering it. Why?”
I shrug.
Another long sigh. “What’re you going to be doing next year, after all of your friends are off to college, working their butts off to make something of themselves? You gonna be sitting around wasting your excellent brain on video games?”
“I don’t play video games,” I say, which is mostly true.
“People in your class are going to be doctors, and educators, and musicians, and business administrators, and tech experts. What are you going to be?”
I hate that “what are you going to be?” question.
“I already am.” I tell him. “I’ve been from the day I was born.”
Long pause. Slow head shake. “Okay then, how will you be wasting your brain while all of your friends are growing theirs in college? What will you be doing?”
“I’ll be working with my stepdad in his painting business.”
Kaiser shakes his head sadly again, like painting houses is work for losers or something. It pisses me off. I bet William’s read twice as many books in his life as this college graduate guy has. William drives a year-old Lexus. Kaiser drives an old beat-up Prius. So, I don’t know where he gets off thinking college is so much better than going straight to work at a job I like. After another long sigh, Kaiser puts my records back in the file folder and pushes it aside.
“Okay. I give up. Waste it if you want to. It’s your life,” he says.
“Right. I know that.”
Cameron and Brent are waiting by my car when I get to the parking lot. “Starving!” Brent says.
“Double starving,” Cameron says.
Our first day of school lunch is always at the Taqueria. It’s close to 1:30 by the time we get there, and the lunch crowd’s mostly gone by now. Much earlier and there’d be a line out to the sidewalk. We order at the counter and take a table toward the back. I hear the cook and one of the busboy guys in the kitchen, arguing in Spanish about the best way to cook a goat. Rotisserie over a fire pit, one says. The other says it’s got to be grilled.
Except for a few (maybe more than a few) swear words, and words for family—abuela, abuelo, tia, tio, gracias, de nada—I don’t speak much Spanish. I understand almost everything, though. While I was living in Redville with Tia Josie and Tio Hector, they’d always slip back and forth between Spanish and English, and Spanish was the playground language when I was going to school up there. I took Spanish in the ninth grade to check off the foreign language requirement for high school graduation, but that was a different kind of Spanish.
Cameron looks back toward the kitchen. “I’m weak with hunger,” he says, slumping down in his chair.
“Calculus is going to be a bitch,” Brent says. “It’d be a bitch with anyone, but I’ve got that asshole Epstein.”
Epstein has a reputation for being one of the toughest and meanest teachers on campus. Brent’s frowning so hard his eyebrows practically meet in the middle. “God, I dread that class.”
“Know what you mean,” Cameron says. “Fourth year French is gonna kill me.”
The goat cooking expert brings our order to us. I’ve got three grilled fish tacos, refried beans, and a salad. Cameron’s got carnitas and a double order of refried beans, with a double order of cheese on top. Brent’s got the super burrito. Really, I think it’s got every single thing on the menu all rolled up in a giant flour tortilla, then slathered in red sauce and cheese.
Cameron looks at my tacos. “Fish? Grilled?” he says.
That’s something else we rag on each other about. What we eat.
I nod toward his carnitas. “Pig? In lard?”
Brent cuts into his too-big-to-put-in-your-mouth burrito and takes a giant forkful, but he’s staring off into space like he doesn’t even hear us.
“Why not give yourself a break?” I say. “Take Business Math instead of calculus. It’d be an easy change—same period as Epstein’s calculus. I could help you.”
He gives me a long, serious look. “Then, could I come live with you when my dad kicks me out?”
Cameron groans. “High school’s supposed to be the best years of our lives, but I already know I’m going to hate senior year. What if I’ve already lived the best years of my life? That sucks.”
“Yeah, I know this is going to be the worst year of my life, ever,” Brent says.
“Take Yoga. It’d help you de-stress,” I tell them.
“Just looking at Yoga Joe stresses me out. I couldn’t sit through fifty minutes of him every day,” Brent says, shaking his head. “Hey, but you know that book that was on our summer reading list? Into the Wild? I’ve been thinking maybe that Chris McCandless guy had the right idea. Get away from all the pressures of school and parents, live in the natural world.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Cameron says. “You don’t even like to go camping. Besides, the guy died out there. Starved to death. No burritos.”
“Yeah, well I’d take more stuff with me, and warmer clothes . . .”
That’s weird. I read the same book and no way did it sound like anything I would ever even think about doing. I know Brent feels stressed with the whole math thing, but into the wild? Really?
CHAPTER THREE
