by Blake Nelson
“Hey, James!” she says, smiling like, Isn’t this the funniest thing ever? She cocks her hip to the side. She does this like she’s been practicing it all day in the mirror.
“Hey,” I manage to say.
Gabe looks worried. “Who is that?” he whispers.
“A girl I met on spring vacation.”
“It took me a while to find you,” says Tasha. She and her friend are both chewing gum.
“Wow,” I say.
“This is my friend Fiona,” she says. “We got out of school early and we were bored so we decided to come find you.”
“Wow,” I say again.
She shields the sun from her eyes. “What’s up?” she says.
“Not much.”
She sees then that I’m not happy to see her, that I’m not overjoyed that she is here to play the sex kitten with me. “So what are you guys doing?” she says, not giving up.
“Uh…,” I say. “We’re just…Gabe and I…we were heading downtown—”
“What for?” she says.
“We have to…,” I say, trying to think of a likely story. “Go down to the skateboard store…Gabe has to return…”
Tasha’s smile falters. Fiona frowns. The two of them deflate right in front of us. They were hot babes, rock stars, sex kittens, as we walked up. Now they are embarrassed eighth graders in ridiculous clothing.
“James?” I hear someone say behind me. I know who it is before I turn around.
It’s Sadie.
I turn. She’s coming up behind us. “Hey,” she says. Then she sees who we’re talking to. She stops. “Oh,” she says. “Who’s this?”
“This is…uh…,” I say.
“Tasha,” says Tasha. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sadie.” She looks at Tasha. I can see her brain working.
“She’s a friend of my—” I start to say.
“No, no, that’s okay,” Sadie says, waving her hand. “I just wanted to talk…before you left…”
I stare at Sadie for a moment.
“But we can talk later,” she says. She turns and strides away.
“Sadie, wait.”
“No,” she says, walking quickly and not turning around. “That’s okay, I’ll call you later.”
Fiona, meanwhile, is twirling her hair on her finger. “Awwwk-ward,” she says.
James Hoff
Junior AP English
Mr. Cogweiller
ASSIGNMENT: four-page essay on nature
ON NATURE
People think of nature as something separate from us. Nature is a park, or someplace you go on vacation. But nature is all around us. It is part of us. It can help us with our problems. People don’t think that but it’s true.
TREES
Trees are like parents. They look down on you with a wry smile. They know how it is. Not that they’re gonna cut you any slack. You still gotta do the right thing. But they’re always there. No matter how bad you mess up. You can always sit beneath a tree, nurse your wounds, try to do better next time.
RIVERS
Rivers are like a talkative friend. Streams. Creeks. They babble. They make pleasing sounds. They soothe the soul. They chatter happily about nothing, allowing you to think about other things in a calming environment.
OCEANS
Oceans are more imposing. They do not sugarcoat the truth. They represent all of life, not just the fun parts. They are not terribly interested in you in particular. You are just one of many. You have a problem? So does everybody. Oceans provide humility.
THE SKY
A clear sky will swallow your problems. It will empty your brain if you let it. Gray skies are like a bad mood, dismal and heavy on your soul. The night sky is endless, full of possibilities, full of dreams you had once and forgot about. Look up. Those dreams are still there. You can always go back to them.
GRASS
Mountain grass, wild grass, grass along a trail. A place with grass is a good place to sit and think about things. Rabbits can be found in such places. Small birds. Little black bugs. Wild grass is light, airy, soft. Try not to hurt it. Try not to disturb it. Let it remind you how fragile things are.
LAKES
Lakes are still and peaceful. They are so still and peaceful you want to throw stuff into them. You throw rocks into them, sticks, logs, whatever you can find. The lake can take it. The lake can absorb all the bad energy you got. Go ahead, freak out. The lake’s got all day.
RAIN
The rain comes and washes us while we sleep. It cleans our souls. It smoothes over the footprints of our mistakes. What can’t the rain fix? What can’t it soften and erase? The sound of it even: raindrops on your roof, raindrops on the top of a car, raindrops on the hood of your poncho when you’re sitting on the curb outside your house wishing you could just once, just once, in your life get something right.
No matter what we do, Nature remains our protector. Even as we ignore it, contaminate it, destroy it, Nature offers us sympathy and love. It comforts us in our darkest hour. We do not deserve this. And still it is offered.
The End
May 30
Cogweiller: These are some touching descriptions and thoughts, but it is unclear what has happened to inspire them. I can guess what has happened, but generally, that is not the reader’s responsibility. Hope everything’s okay.
THE TALK
Sadie and I meet after school to have the talk. It has nothing to do with Tasha, is the first thing she says. It’s not a jealousy thing. She is very careful to explain that.
We sit on the cement steps behind the art room. The conversation goes pretty smoothly. I feel like I’m gonna die when we first sit down, but once we’re actually discussing things, I feel okay. There’s something very ordinary about it. It’s just me and Sadie talking, working stuff out, like we’ve done a million times before.
Her main point is that she feels like we should move forward. That we need to grow. We are so young. She loves me. She never stopped loving me. Even during her time with Will. She is glad we got together. She doesn’t regret it. But summer’s almost here. She is leaving for Vancouver in five weeks. She wants to go into the world unencumbered. She wants to meet people; she wants to learn, to be seventeen.
My main point is…well…I don’t have a main point. I tell her I don’t really like talking to anyone but her. Other people are morons. But as she points out, that is more my problem than the other people’s. I’m not trying hard enough. She thinks it’s ridiculous that I didn’t write for the school paper this year. I would have met smart, interesting people. I would have had so much fun.
So then I bring up sex. I feel like we need to have sex more. Or again. Or something. But she just shakes her head. I guess she already gave me as much as she can in that department. So then I say that I will miss her so much, that the last two weeks have been the best part of my whole year, of my whole life. She has no easy answer for that. She understands. She is going to miss me, too.
Then the conversation drifts off to other things. Her brother came home from Berkeley. She tells me about that. He is taking a year off. Her parents are having fits. I remember her brother. He was into techno music and gaming stuff and had long hair and was a mathematical genius. Then his parents cleaned him up and sent him off to Berkeley. Sadie says that’s what you get when you try to change people. You get nothing. I agree. I wonder if I’ll see him around this summer. I used to see him skateboarding sometimes. Sadie says I might.
So then we’re done with our conversation. It gets hard, that part. Sadie is the first to stand up. I stand up, too, and brush the cement dust off my ass. We both look down at the baseball field where a little kid is riding his bike around the bases. I am not quite ready for this, but who is ever ready for such things? She takes my hand, squeezes it, and kisses the side of my face. She says good-bye. Then she goes inside. The big metal school door closes behind her.
I stand there. I stand there for a long time and then I sit back down where I
was. It’s hard sitting by myself, without her there talking to me anymore. I feel so empty. Suddenly the world seems so utterly empty. I start to cry. Just a little, just enough to get the worst of the pain out of my chest. I wipe the snot off my face and pull myself together. Then I sit there. My knees up. My chin on my forearms. I sit there.
Endings (a short philosophical essay)
When you talk about the end of something, what do you mean? Is there ever really an end? Isn’t everything always ending, all the time, every where, and also beginning, too?
When you break up with someone, is that the end? Don’t you still have them inside you in a way?
Will the world end?
What happens when you die? Is that the end? Is there an end to the Universe?
When you empty out your locker on the last day of school, that is an end of sorts. But also the beginning of something. Summer. Gabe told me that Lucy Branch asked him about me. She told him that I seemed nervous during our date but she still thinks I’m cute. She asked why I don’t hang out more, or go to parties or whatever. Gabe told her that I don’t hang out more because I think the world is coming to an end and I’m preparing myself by locking myself in dark rooms and holding my hand over candle flames. That’s Gabe’s odd sense of humor. Thanks, Gabe.
Is death the end? People don’t think so because they believe in heaven or reincarnation or future generations. But if we make the world uninhabitable and nothing is alive and the surface of the earth looks like the surface of Mars, wouldn’t that be the end? It seems like that would be the end.
Poor Tasha. I told my sister about her showing up at my school. She said she’s heard that Tasha is nuts. What is gonna happen to that girl?
When I get home, I drag my Hefty bag full of end-of-the-year crap to my room and dump it on the floor. It’s pretty easy to sort out. Math stuff: trash. Biology notes: trash. Gym clothes: trash. Ragged copy of Fahrenheit 451: trash.
Junior year is over. That’s it. The end.
June 12
Went to Safeway last night to get some stuff for my mom. Pulled in and who was getting out of the car across from me but Jill Kantor.
I’d hung out with her a couple times during the last weeks of school. Sadie had forced us together, in hopes that I’d join the school paper. Now I was embarrassed since she must have known that Sadie dumped me. Girls always know the details of that stuff. Even nerdy girls like Jill and Sadie.
But she was cool. She said hi and we walked into the store together. She talked about the paper next year and asked if I would write something for them. She said, “Didn’t you write something about cars last year? Sadie told me about it. Like how we need to move beyond them?”
“You mean destroy them?” I said.
She sort of laughed, which was a good sign. She gave me her email address and told me to send it.
So when I got home, I emailed it to her. I also sent her a new thing I had called Thoughts on Assholism. I figured that would be the end of it. But a half hour later, she emailed back. She said she really liked both pieces.
She also asked me if I had read 21 Points for the Immediate Removal of All Corporate Influences from the Classroom. I had to admit I had never heard of it. She said it was on this kid’s website, this fifteen-year-old in Washington DC whose dad was in Congress. The website is called WastedOnTheYoung.com. He wrote all these political rants and manifestos. It had become so popular that Time magazine had done a profile on him.
So I checked it out and it was rad! Seriously. Totally brutal and hilarious at the same time. I was kind of shocked to see someone doing something like that. It was exactly what I wanted to do. I emailed the guy immediately.
Then I emailed Jill Kantor back and thanked her and told her some other ideas I had. And she wrote back. And I wrote back. It went on like that into the night. It turned out Jill is gonna be home most of the summer. And so am I.
It made me look forward to things. Which sorta pissed me off—since that’s exactly what Sadie predicted would happen if I would just open myself up a little.
I hate it when Sadie is right.
June 17
Cogweiller emailed me today. He said he’s retiring from teaching and that he and his wife are moving to Arizona at the end of the summer. He wanted to stay in touch in case I needed a college recommendation from him. He said he’d be happy to write one.
I wrote him back and said thanks but I didn’t think I was going to college right away. I told him I wanted to move to Washington DC after high school, and join some other people working on a website called WastedOnTheYoung.com.
I told him we hoped to engage in guerrilla media attacks, harassing people and doing funny outrageous things online to get other young people as angry and motivated as we were.
He wrote back and said, “Sounds like an adventure!” Then he gave me his mailing address just in case. I copied it down and put it in my drawer. Just in case.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX 1
SELECTIONS FROM Black Elk Speaks
“Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and plenty for us. But the Wasichus [white men] came, and they made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.”
“That fall [1883], they say, the last of the bison herds was slaughtered by the Wasichus. I can remember when the bison were so many that they could not be counted, but more and more Wasichus came to kill them until there were only heaps of bones scattered where they used to be. The Wasichus did not kill them to eat; they killed them for the metal that makes them crazy…they just killed and killed because they liked to do that. When we hunted bison, we killed only what we needed…”
“All our people now were settling down in square grey houses, scattered here and there across this hungry land, and around them the Wasichus had drawn a line to keep them in. The nation’s hoop was broken, and there was no center any longer for the flowering tree. The people were in despair. They seemed heavy to me, heavy and dark…”
“I could see that the Wasichus did not care for each other the way our people did. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth was their mother.”
“I looked back in the past and recalled my people’s old ways, but they were not living that way any more. They were traveling the black road, everybody for himself…”
“When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there.”
APPENDIX 2
FROM The Evergreen Owl
THOUGHTS ON ASSHOLISM
BY JAMES HOFF
I was watching one of our high school tennis matches the other day. Our best guy was playing the best guy from Wilson. The first thing I noticed was that beneath the tennis competition was a separate competition of who could be the biggest asshole.
The match was very entertaining. There was complaining, whining, arguing. Racquets were thrown. Balls were kicked. I was glad the players were indulging their assholic tendencies. Assholes are more fun to watch than people who keep their cool. Assholes are more fun in general, as long as they’re not being assholes to you.
In our society, we teach young people to be modest and humble, to respect authority. The people who absorb this message tend to be the people who are humble anyway: the dorks, the losers, people who wear glasses. These people nod knowingly when adults explain that assholism hurts others and leads to pers
onal unhappiness. They agree. They think being quiet and meek is the better way to go. That is convenient since that is how they are anyway.
Meanwhile, the assholes hear this message and laugh. They already know the reality of American life: Assholes rule! Being meek gets you nothing! Get out there and grab whatever you can, fight for it, kill for it! If one of these assholes happens to meet another asshole trying to get the same thing, well, now things get interesting. Now we have free market competition! Everyone loves a good fight. Even the dorks and losers can be roused from their video games to watch the assholes duke it out.
The tennis players spat a lot. They stalked around the court scowling at each other. They didn’t just want to win, they wanted to screw the other guy over. People could feel the assholism and soon a large crowd gathered. Both these tennis players probably get millions of girls.
We are taught the greatness of the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King. But who do we really stand in awe of? Not those people. We prefer winners, conquerors, the rich, the famous. We love athletes who crush their opponents. We like companies who strangle their competition. When our politicians steal elections, we stand in awe, unable to act, we’re so mesmerized by this extreme and fascinating assholity. We respect people with the cojones to screw other people over. We love the victorious. We don’t care how they did it. The more ruthless the better.
