A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag

by Gordon Korman

  “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” said Howard piously. “I said the windmill’s lousy.” His eyes shifted around the table. “Raise seventy-five.” A hum went up from the other players.

  Raymond was still gesturing at Sean. He seemed to be pointing at the player to Howard’s right, one Leland Fenster. Leland was the self-proclaimed “coolest guy” at DeWitt, and his clothes, his “shades,” and his hairstyle backed that up. Not content with merely being in fashion, he kept himself several weeks ahead, consistently managing to look peculiar rather than avant-garde. Loud jackets and onyx earrings were his current trademark, along with an unimaginably expensive pair of sunglasses from Italy, which looked exactly like the kind that sold for three dollars on the street. Raymond was pointing at Leland, thumbing his nose, and pretending to gag himself with his index finger.

  All the players dropped out of the hand except for Sean and Leland, who pushed their toothpicks into the sizable pot.

  Leland said, “Fling the horizontals, baby.” In keeping with his all-pervading coolness, he spoke only in “hip” words, most of which he made up as the occasion warranted. Sometimes he was downright impossible to understand. For example, in this instance he was saying “deal the cards.” But it could get much more obscure, and often even his closest friends had difficulty. Some students were still trying to figure out what he’d meant that day last June when he’d stepped onto the school bus and announced, “Don’t libe me that free-zone box, babies.”

  Sean pulled two cards, Leland three, and Howard stood pat. He had dealt himself a royal flush, and didn’t feel he needed any assistance.

  “Zung my nut,” said Leland dejectedly when Howard revealed his hand and raked in the pot.

  Sean could no longer ignore Raymond’s gesturing. “What do you want?”

  “Hey,” said Randy Fowler, “he’s the gangster. He was in Danny Eckerman’s comedy sketch at the Halloween party. You know — with the helium balloon.”

  “It wasn’t comedy,” said Raymond. “It was real-life drama.”

  “I don’t like this guy,” said Howard to no one in particular.

  “It was a great skit,” said Chris. “The whole school’s talking about it. Man, I laughed.”

  “Affirm, baby,” agreed Leland enthusiastically. “That vub zipped my thinkometer and orbed me out in guffaws.”

  Raymond looked politely interested. “Really? That neutron-bombs my gladometer with electric flaming shock-tingles.”

  Howard assumed a pained expression. “Get him out of here.”

  As Raymond and Sean headed away from the game, Howard called, “Sean, from now on you’re responsible for keeping that guy out of my face.”

  Sean was so amazed over Raymond’s hip comeback to Leland that his irritation vanished. “Raymond, what did you say to him? What did he say to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Raymond tragically. “This morning he signed up for Theamelpos.”

  “Who, Leland? Don’t worry about him. He gets lousy grades, and all the teachers think he’s a freak.”

  “He is a freak,” said Raymond, “but he can’t miss. His mother’s been president of the PTA for seven years.”

  “So what? That has nothing to do with him.”

  “You’re a great guy, Delancey, but you’re naive. Mrs. Fenster’s nickname is The Piranha. They say Q-Dave is scared to death of her. There’s no way he’d risk not sending Mr. Cool to Theamelpos. And this is getting pretty hairy, you know, because Mr. Cool, Vanderhoof, and Cementhead grab the first three spots, and that leaves eight of us fighting for the last three. And there are the Saps and some stiff competition in there.” He held out his clipboard for Sean’s inspection. “I put this together in a bit of a hurry. Can you add anything?”

  FENSTER, L, 2331, Sophomore

  Height: 5′ 7″ Weight: 135 lbs.

  Hair: funky

  Eyes: who knows what’s beneath those tacky sunglasses?

  Grade point average: 2.2

  Extracurricular activities: doesn’t need any.

  Comments: Mama’s apron strings will get him there. He’ll set back Greek-American relations a thousand years, baby!

  Sean shook his head. “Is there anyone you don’t hate?”

  ***

  Mr. Kerr was late for English that morning, so Ashley used the time to throw the floor open to Raymond and Sean for any ideas they might have as to how she could meet Steve Semenski.

  “Gee, Ashley,” said Sean in perplexity, “that’s a tough one.”

  “I’m a complete blank,” said Raymond, shaking his head. “By the way, have you had a chance to talk to that Entwistle guy about his prize?”

  She nodded. “We’re going out next Friday, but I don’t think he’s too keen on it. He’s kind of a weird guy — really shy. He loves his tire gauge, though.”

  Mr. Kerr breezed into the room. “Sorry I’m late, people. Today I want a progress report on all the poetry assignments. We’ll start with the group of three —” he checked his list — “Delancey, Jardine, and Bach.”

  Sean panicked. “Raymond, what are we going to do?” he whispered frantically. They had not anticipated the need to show Mr. Kerr the project until it was already finished. The three-quarter page analysis was not going to impress the teacher very much, since it represented the entire output of three people over a two-week period. As for the poems, well, there were four of them now, which was a triumph, under the circumstances. But Mr. Kerr didn’t know the circumstances!

  The teacher examined the material that was put before him. “Well, it’s one of two things: You people either don’t work very fast, or you don’t work very much. What’s the problem here?”

  Raymond cleared his throat carefully. “Well, sir — uh — we didn’t want to tell you this so soon, because it would spoil the surprise …”

  Sean stared at Raymond. What surprise? Even Ashley looked intrigued.

  “Surprise me,” said Mr. Kerr skeptically.

  Raymond swallowed hard and forged ahead. “As you know, we’ve been working on Gavin Gunhold. Well, Mr. Kerr, you see, we know Mr. Gunhold, and —”

  Sean felt a seizure coming on.

  “Stop right there. Don’t say another word. I know what’s going on,” the teacher said sternly. “You people picked Gunhold right from the beginning because you knew he could help you with your analysis. Why didn’t you just come to me and explain the situation instead of making up a story about how you found this Canadian poet who caught your interest?”

  “We — we thought you might not let us do him,” said Raymond faintly.

  “Nonsense,” said Mr. Kerr. “Actually knowing the artist is an excellent opportunity for study. You could do analyses both before and after discussing it with Gunhold. Yes, that’s what I’d like. Your project will, of course, be much longer than the others, but there are, after all, three of you.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Sean caught Raymond glancing up at the ceiling.

  “Now,” said Mr. Kerr, “exactly how much poetry has Gunhold published?”

  “Just the one back in Canada,” Raymond confessed. “He gave up, poetry to be a service station attendant full-time. But now that he lives in New York, there are new poems, and more on the way.”

  Sean put the poetry text, open to “Registration Day,” in front of the teacher, and placed the typewritten sheets next to it. He held his breath and waited for Mr. Kerr to say, “The one in the book is a poem, but the other three you wrote.”

  Mr. Kerr scanned the work. “Yes, I see what you admire about the man. No vast literary merit, but very sensitive and appealing all the same.”

  “Thank you,” beamed Raymond. Hastily, he added, “On behalf of Mr. Gunhold.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Kerr. “Now that everything’s up front, we see that you still have a very exciting project in the works. Next time we update, I want to see a whole lot more on paper.”

  Another group was called, and Jardine, Delancey,
and Bach returned to their seats.

  “I want to meet him,” said Ashley in a whisper.

  “Who, Steve?” said Sean. “Ashley, we’d help you if we could, but —”

  “No!” Ashley dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “Gavin Gunhold! I want to meet Gavin Gunhold.”

  Most of the color drained out of Sean’s face, and even Raymond looked stricken.

  “Y-you don’t want to meet him,” Sean stammered. “He’s — not your type.” Raymond nodded vigorously in corroboration.

  “Sure he is. I like all kinds of people. And besides, I’ve never met a real-live poet. Come on. Please?”

  “Well, there’s a problem,” said Raymond. “Gunhold’s eccentric. He doesn’t see very many people, and if we just brought along someone he didn’t know, he could freak out and stop helping us.”

  “Could you ask him?” Ashley pleaded. “Tell him I love his work.”

  “Okay,” Raymond agreed finally. “But remember, we’re not promising anything, so don’t take it personally if he says no.”

  “Oh, thanks! And, you know, it’s not only meeting a poet. You guys have been doing all the group work for this class, which was okay at first, because I had to get adjusted, and after that there was the party. But now I want to do my share.”

  After class, when Ashley headed off to art, Sean lit into Raymond. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you about lies? Don’t you remember George Washington and the cherry tree? You’d be the guy who tried to say that the cherry tree was still standing! I could kill you, Raymond, except that would leave me as the only living personal friend of Gavin Gunhold!”

  “I can see why you’re upset, Delancey, but when I was standing up there in front of Kerr, I suddenly realized this was the only way. Otherwise we’d have to make up stuff about the poems, and fake books and magazines where they were published. We’d have tons of lies going, any one of which could blow up in our faces. So it just came to me — a way to swap all those little lies for a single big huge one. And Kerr’s so sure he caught us trying to use Gunhold to make our work easier that he’ll never consider that the guy’s been dead for thirty-eight years. So, believe it or not, Delancey, we’re pretty cool here.”

  That explanation seemed so logical to Sean that it alarmed him. Why were there no big gaping holes in Raymond’s reasoning? There was only one explanation. The boy whose former biggest risk in life was a jump shot from long range was turning into a plotting, conniving, figuring-the-angles Jardine protégé. Yes, only Jardine logic could dictate that they were “pretty cool here.” A normal person would be feeling like the blender operator of a nitroglycerine milkshake.

  “Well, what about Ashley?” Sean asked finally. “She wants to be in on the project. Do we tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “The truth, you idiot! That if she wants to meet Gavin Gunhold, she’s going to have to take a trip to Toronto with a shovel! And that we’re writing the poems!”

  “God forbid!” said Raymond in horror. “I like Ashley as much as you do, but she talks a lot, and to everybody. If she knew a secret like ours, she’d be so proud of pulling off something that big that, sooner or later, she’d say it in front of the wrong person, and it would get back to Kerr.”

  “So what was all that about how we’re going to try and fix it so she can meet our friend, the dead poet?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Raymond shrugged. “We’ll put her off a few times, and pretty soon she’ll forget the whole thing.”

  “Raymond, I feel like I’m drowning in this.”

  “Keep dog-paddling, Delancey.”

  ***

  “Good workout, group!” barked Coach Stryker at basketball practice that day. “That’s enough for now.” To Sean he added, “Nice shooting. Let’s hope the slump is over.”

  In the locker room, Sean found himself beside Steve Semenski, and felt a bit guilty about how little time he’d been spending with his friend lately.

  “You’ve been hiding out these days,” Steve said.

  “It’s schoolwork, believe it or not,” Sean replied glibly. “I’ve got this killer poetry assignment hauling me down.” This was almost the truth. It was Raymond who was hauling Sean down, and that was directly related to poetry.

  “I’ve seen you hanging around with that Raymond guy —” Steve began.

  “Hold it,” Sean interrupted. “I’m not hanging around with him; he’s hanging around with me. He’s like a virus. You can’t shake him.”

  “Well, what I meant to ask — that girl, the amazing-looking one you guys are always with. What’s the story with her?”

  Sean swallowed hard. What could he say? “She doesn’t talk about herself too much — wait — I seem to remember her saying something about a boyfriend. A wrestler. Tank Somebody. What’s the big interest?”

  “I thought I caught her looking at me a couple of times at Miami Beach.”

  “I didn’t notice,” said Sean through stiff lips. “I get the impression that she’s pretty loyal to the Tank.”

  Steve nodded thoughtfully. “What’s her name, just in case?”

  “Ashley. Ashley Bach.”

  ***

  Sean knocked lightly on Nikki’s door. “Nik, are you in there? I need to borrow your —” The door swung open on its own, and an amazing sight met his eyes. Nikki and her friends Marilyn and Carita were flopped in various poses around the room, examining, trading, and gushing over candid Polaroid snapshots of Raymond Jardine in different corridors and classrooms of Dewitt High.

  “What the —?”

  “Sean, get out of here!” Nikki barked.

  Dazed, Sean retreated into the hallway. Nikki followed a few seconds later, eyes afire. “How dare you barge into my room without knocking and embarrass my friends like that?”

  “But Nik, I did knock. I was just —”

  “Don’t give me that! You just walked right in! You didn’t care about anybody!”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know —?”

  “I’ll get you for this, Sean Delancey! Mark my words! I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do!”

  Sean slunk off to his own room, thoroughly shaken. This was definitely a complication he didn’t need. Nicolette Delancey could carry a grudge into the twenty-third century and still be just as mad as if the offense had occurred yesterday. When Nikki said “I’ll get you,” you were a marked man. His mind wandered to the time three years before when he’d accidentally spilled pea soup on her autographed picture of David Bowie. She had sworn vengeance and bided her time for two months. Then, all on the same day, she had put grasshoppers in his lunch, dyed his favorite jeans pink, rolled his lucky penny down the sewer, and, for the pièce de résistance, written MISS COX IS AN IMMENSE FAT FREAK on his geography project in a marking pen so thick that it had gone through seven pages. Now, three years older, and comfortably settled at the center of a network of friends with access to virtually all of the twenty-two hundred students at DeWitt, who knew what vile evil she would devise to punish him?

  He sighed. His only salvation appeared to be convincing Raymond to plead his case for him. Forget that idea! Take a weirdo like Raymond and let him know that suddenly he’s the love of three lives, and there’s no telling what might happen. And if there was anything worse than the wrath of Nicolette Delancey, it was having Raymond Jardine date your sister!

  Seven

  JARDINE, R., 8413, Junior

  Height: 5′ 10″ Weight: 150 lbs.

  Grade point average: 2.85

  Extracurricular activities: Student Social Activities Planning Committee

  Comments: NO luck

  Sean squinted at the sheet in the uneven light. SACGEN was having one of its flickering days. He looked at Raymond impatiently. “So?”

  “Well, what do you see? Or, more important, what don’t you see?”

  “I don’t see why you’re pestering me. What do you want me to say, Raymond?”

  “Sports! It’s so obvious. You�
��ve got basketball, but my record doesn’t say anything about me getting involved in sports. Even I wouldn’t send Jardine to Theamelpos without some kind of athletic garbage. That’s why you and I are joining the DeWitt varsity ice hockey team.”

  Sean frowned. “We don’t have a hockey team.”

  “That’s why this is such a great opportunity,” Raymond replied with satisfaction. “Since we’re forming the team, we go on the record as captain and assistant captain.”

  “But Raymond,” Sean argued, “we couldn’t play any games. There isn’t a high school on Long Island with an ice hockey team.”

  Raymond grinned delightedly. “Don’t you think I know that? It’s a little trick I picked up from Cementhead — do nothing and get lots of credit. We can recruit players, hold meetings, assign positions, maybe even print up a notice or two. But there’s no way we’d ever have to play a game, because we’d have no opponents; and there’s no way we’d ever have to practise, because we have no games. Which means we get fantastic records without ever putting on a pair of skates. You may now go down on your knees and kiss Jardine’s feet for such a display of brilliance.”

  “I’ll pass,” said Sean sarcastically. “The last time you displayed brilliance, it was to pick an unknown poet for our project. And I’ll be paying for it the rest of the semester and possibly my whole life, depending on whether or not we get caught. I’m staying away from your hockey team.”

  “But your name is already up on the list outside guidance.”

  “Not anymore.” With Raymond in tow, Sean marched down the hall to the guidance wing and the offending bulletin board. There it was in bold print: VARSITY ICE HOCKEY SIGN-UP. He stepped forward, pen in hand, to strike his name from the list, and suddenly found himself face to beautiful face with Ashley Bach.

  “Oh, there you are. I was just coming to look for you. I’m so thrilled!”

  “Thrilled?”

  “That we’re going to have a hockey team! I love hockey! It’s my favorite sport. I used to go out with this guy from Minnesota; he was a fabulous hockey player.”