Quad Squad

by R. Barri Flowers

Ms. Rodale’s Class

  “Heard you were dead,” was the only thing that anyone said to Mike when he came back on Thursday. It was Jerry, in P.E. The entire goal of school that day, in fact pretty much that year for Mike, and especially in P.E., was to avoid eye contact with Maya, so talking to Jerry about just about anything was just fine. In a minute the girls would come out and he was fine with him and Jerry hanging out near the chain link fence watching traffic; in fact, if he could have stayed right there the whole day, instead of having to go to classes and see her, that would be fine.

  “You heard right,” Mike said. “Had to go to the doctor.”

  “Sucks,” Jerry said.

  Cole came over and started to explain the plot of the Star Trek movie, which he had seen twice. Mike, who hadn’t seen it, started to say no spoilers, but he stopped himself. Any conversation was better than that conversation, the one he was desperately, desperately trying to avoid.

  Tim and Malik had also come over and Malik and Cole had started arguing about what had actually happened in the time travel part of the movie, and then Mr. K. said, “People,” and they all went to line up. Mike went head down and found his place and didn’t look up until they had been grouped off and thank God she wasn’t on his team or on any team he played that day.

  In the locker room, Rachel said to Maya, “He’s totally ignoring you.”

  “So rude,” Sabrina said.

  “It’s whatever,” Maya said. She had been hurt that he wouldn’t even say hello but obviously the whole bonfire thing had been a bigger deal to her than to him. Which was sometimes how it went.

  “Guys are so lame,” Rachel said, and Maya nodded, even though she didn’t know if she agreed. Rachel thought how lame she herself actually was for offering opinions on how lame guys were, but actually knew nothing really about the subject, she had never even kissed a boy unless you counted Cesar, which she didn’t, it was barely a kiss, although if she had to judge from Cesar then yes boys were lame, but that was what her dad would call too small a sample size.

  Outside, Rachel found herself walking in the same direction and in the same step as Jerry, side by side, unplanned. They both noticed but neither one of them said anything, except they both started laughing but not making eye contact. They were both going to English, so they had to go across the whole main quad and up the stairs. The problem was, Rachel thought, that his strides would be too big and she thought about the ratio and common denominator problem in this real world math problem but that distracted her and got her off stride, but then he gave a little kick-jump to match up strides again and they were both cracking up but kept walking straight ahead. It was a problem when they got to other people. Around the middle of the quad Jerry got stopped altogether because four basketball guys walked right across his path, so he would have been way out of stride with Rachel, but she thought fast and pulled out her phone and pretended to check it so that she was also barely moving, and then when Jerry’s way was clear again, she put it away and walked in stride with him.

  Rachel thought, this is so dumb, I hope Andrea and Maya and them aren’t watching, what would they say, I’ll bet they would say that I’m trying way too hard, and that anyway if you’re going to hang out with a guy then some day you’re going to have to speak to him, but what does it even matter what they say, I think it’s fun and I don’t know when it became not cool to have fun but whatever I’m going to keep doing it.

  Jerry thought, Rachel’s cool.

  Walking that weird way made them slower than usual and Rachel was hoping that even though the seats were assigned and everything, Jerry might sit next to her or at least hang out before class or something. But instead he went over and sat next to Andrea which wasn’t even his seat but for some reason since Ms. Rodale had moved him a few times for talking too much now it wasn’t even clear what his seat was and today instead of sitting back next to Cole, he sat down next to -- no, Rachel thought -- on top of Andrea. It was kind of embarrassing, honestly.

  Rachel decided to ignore all that and he daily PA announcements while she and Maya and pulled out their notebooks and checked who was wearing what now that P.E. was over. Jerry and Andrea kept laughing like crazy about something, it was super annoying. Rachel sighed and rolled her eyes toward Maya.

  “Seriously,” Maya whispered.

  “Like, out of control much?” Rachel whispered back, hating herself a little bit. She knew that walking in step with a guy from one class to another didn’t mean that you owned him, but it was extra frustrating that Andrea couldn’t maybe be a little more loyal even if she did sit next to Jerry. She had seen Jerry and Rachel come in together,

  The laughter was, like, seriously out of control as far as Rachel was concerned. Apparently some kind of dare had been involved. All Rachel knew was that they were passing their journals back and forth and laughing like some kind of hyenas, and it was quite irritating. Quite, quite irritating.

  Maya leaned back toward Rachel and whispered, “Oh, Andrea, you’re so hilarious,” in a fake Jerry voice that didn’t sound anything like him. It was more the idea of an impression than the actual thing.

  Rachel whispered back to Maya, “Oh, Andrea, thank you. I think you’re so hilarious, too. And so very hot.”

  “Really?” Maya asked. “You don’t think my boobs are too big?”

  “Not at all,” Rachel said. “I find them a perfect size. And your shorts look really good from behind. I know because I was staring when we were walking in.” This was true, but Rachel felt guilty saying it.

  Maya said, “How nice. Well, I think you are stunningly handsome, Jerry.” She looked around a bit but no one was listening so she added with a giggle, “And I think you smell delicious.”

  “Really?” Rachel wondered, “I was worrying that maybe I put on too much Axe.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Maya said. “There’s no such thing!”

  “... rest of us,” Ms. Rodale said.

  People around them were sort of paying attention to her and sort of wondering what was going on with Andrea and Jerry, and sort of trying to listen to Ms. Rodale and give a shit about another school day, all at the same time.

  “It was nothing major,” Andrea said.

  “Yeah,” Jerry agreed, and Rachel deduced that Ms. Rodale had asked them to share with the rest of the class whatever was so funny. This was obvious because of A. The context, and B. The extremely annoying fact to Rachel that teachers always ask anyone who is having an actual good time to share it with the class.

  “Seemed major,” Karen said without raising her hand.

  Naeli, who was of course next to her, said, “Seemed seriously major.”

  “It’s only second period,” Andrea said without looking back at them, “So I’m seriously confused how it can be 4:20 already.”

  This got her a laugh from most of the class. Of course it did. Rachel frowned, annoyed. The rules were: if you were in elementary school, any reference to bodily functions got a laugh. If you were in middle school, any reference to sex whatsoever got you a laugh. If you’re in high school -- wait, I just said high school, isn’t that hilarious? Do you get it? Do you, do you get it?

  “All we were doing,” Jerry volunteered, because he was getting left out of things, “Was reading those journal things of yours.”

  Ms. Rodale half smiled. “You mean, of yours?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  Ms. Rodale looked up from the laptop. Rachel couldn’t tell if she had finished taking roll, but then immediately regretted it, certain that she needed to stop caring about stupid things like that. There was growing evidence that she not only was a goody-good, but was going to be stuck being one the rest of her life.

  Ms. Rodale said, “That’s kind of interesting.” She stood up from the laptop and started pacing in front of the whiteboard. She said, “The point of the Know Thyself project is obviously to get to know oneself better. But what if it was instead to get to know someone else better?”r />
  Rachel thought right then at that moment, do I want to know someone else better? Who? And then, after a second, added, whom, and then, you’re such an idiot.

  Ms. Rodale pivoted back to center in her pacing. She said, “Maybe one way you guys could do this--”

  But this was interrupted by Jenny Machado, who predictably said, “This isn’t on the syllabus. Is this an extra assignment?”

  Jenny, Rachel knew, had a defining and pretty complicated mission in all classes, which was to figure out how to do the least work possible while getting the most credit possible. This meant that she had to freak out as much as possible about every little change because her parents would be pissed if she got a B, but she would be pissed if she had to work any harder than she had been to get an A.

  In this mission she had an ally, Dylan, who immediately perked up and asked, “Assignment or assessment points?” Dylan was the same as Jenny except lower on the food chain, he was just trying to make sure he got passing grades instead of failing.

  “Well,” Ms. Rodale said, betraying only the mildest of annoyance in her voice, “I haven’t really thought about that quite yet. You can be sure that if I change the number of assignments or the grading system at all I’ll let you know in advance in writing as required by school regulation.”

  Everyone else sighed or rolled their eyes or shifted in their seats because Jenny was being so annoying and because Ms. Rodale couldn’t say so for stupid teacher reasons.

  At this point Rachel got on her phone for a few moments, but nothing much was happening there. Ms. Rodale was chill about phones, she just didn’t want the privilege abused.

  Ms. Rodale said, “... what teachers call a ‘teachable moment.’ Of course all moments are teachable if used correctly, but this refers to unexpected opportunities, which I think this might be. How many of you are doing journals?”

  Just less than half the class raised their hands. The assignment had been to either read books that address the nature of the self, and write about them; or to write personal journals, but they had to have some level of organization and writing skill, not just scribbles. And it had to be done daily. Most of the kids didn’t want to do anything daily, so they were reading The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury because it was short stories and that seemed easiest. Teachers were all under the impression that if they offered some choices, students would choose based on what novel was most fascinating and motivating, or most suited to their personal learning style, but obviously to Rachel, the students almost always chose whatever is easiest.

  A group of popular girls was reading The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian because they had somehow figured out in the first five minutes when Ms. Rodale had first laid out the assignment that the rest of them were reading it. This may have started with Gina. Rachel wasn’t sure. In her view, Gina was Popular, with a capital P. The difference between Popular and popular wasn’t clear to Rachel. Something about it.

  Some of the boys were reading Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman because it was about adventure and they were boys.

  Rachel had chosen to keep a journal because she had never done that and thought it might be interesting, but was also privately reading the books, because she was always looking for a good book. Why, she wondered, was it considered so horrible an experience to read a book? Like, when did that happen?

  Ms. Rodale said, “I’m not going to make this compulsory, but if some of you want to try it, I think it could be worthwhile. If you have been keeping a journal, you can swap with another student. And -- okay, if you haven’t, you can start now. Then you would write about what you learned from the experience. You would be walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, as they say. We can call it the Walk a Mile project.”

  Immediately the opening line from Iggy Azalea’s Work shot through every student’s head, but Destiny was first to say out loud, “Walk a mile in these Louboutins,” and her impression was in Rachel’s opinion pretty good actually, and everybody laughed except Ms. Rodale. Rachel did, but she was also thinking, it would be weird to switch with her. There were many ways that Destiny and Rachel were different, but if she was being honest about it, then she had to admit it was about race. She worried that this meant that she, Rachel, was implying that she was having a superior life experience from Destiny’s, but all that she meant, she clarified to herself, was that it would be different.

  “I am so not doing that,” Gina said, and immediately all the popular girls agreed.

  Missy said, “That would be so … weird,” which was the worst curse word a popular girl could utter.

  Andrea thought, fuck her, fuck all those popular girls. Aloud she said, “I’m down. I think it would be completely interesting.”

  As soon as she had said it, Jerry and Tim and Maya said, “I’m down.” Maya looked back at Rachel. She thought, I am not at all sure I’m down, but said, “I’m down.”