Sophomores and Other Oxymorons

by David Lubar

I’d already done the hard work of separating the survival tips from the personal stuff, and formatting everything to look good. All I had to do was print nine copies. I set things up on the computer, then clicked PRINT.

  Our printer was kind of slow. But I didn’t need to hang around and watch the pages ooze out. I went upstairs to do my homework. After I finished my bio and geometry, I checked things, and saw a thin stack of pages in the output tray and a flashing light on the control panel. The printer was out of paper.

  I fanned through the sheets. Oh, crap. I’d printed nine cover pages, nine copies of page one, then nine copies of page two, and so on. And it had only gotten to page three. There were twenty-eight more pages to print. And I’d have to collate the copies. It would be better to print one copy at a time.

  I found more paper in a drawer under the computer desk—about a quarter of a pack—and refilled the printer. Then I went to the computer, cleared the current print job, and told it to print one copy. There was probably some way to tell it to print multiple copies in the right order, but I didn’t want to spend time hunting for that. It was easier to do it manually. I figured I’d just print the copies one by one. It would be tedious, but better than separating all the pages after everything was printed. And, as I liked to remind myself, I was making money with every copy.

  On my way up the stairs, I realized I didn’t need to print the cover and the first three pages again. I already had nine copies of them. Too late for this copy. But not for the rest.

  I printed the second and third copies without those pages. By then, I was totally out of paper. Tomorrow, I’d walk home after school and buy some in town. Paper wasn’t expensive. Six of the freshmen would just have to wait for their copies. It felt good to be in demand. I was probably J. P. Zenger High School’s best-selling author. And its only one.

  I put the finished copies in my backpack. “I’m in business,” I said. Business. Maybe I could come up with another idea to sell to the freshmen. Or to everyone. There was no reason I had to limit my market to one segment. This looked like a real easy way to make money. Even better, it was a way to make money doing something I was good at.

  When I came down for dinner, Mom said, “Well, you worked hard today.”

  “I had a lot of homework,” I said. Not to mention running my publishing empire, and writing a pretty awesome essay.

  “Too much to handle?” Dad asked.

  “Nope. I’m on top of it.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom asked. “It’s not too late to switch classes. Bobby did that all the time.”

  “I’m positive,” I said. “You have nothing to worry about.”

  They both looked relieved.

  EIGHT

  When I got off the bus, the freshmen descended on me, their arms out like they were begging for alms. I pulled the three copies from my backpack.

  “This is all I have right now,” I said.

  That produced frantic hand-waving, a flurry of pushing, and shouts of “Me!”

  “Calm down! I’ll have the rest tomorrow.” I wondered what would be the fairest way to decide who got a copy today. I couldn’t help thinking about how each year, there was a hot toy that all the little kids wanted for Christmas. And there was never enough supply, so parents would pay all sorts of money or do crazy things to get their hands on one.

  I realized I had to do something quickly. The gerbils were getting frantic.

  “Who needs this the most?” I asked.

  All nine hands went up.

  Okay. That didn’t help. I tried a different approach. “Who had a problem with another student yesterday?”

  Nine hands.

  “Who got in trouble with a teacher?”

  Nine hands.

  “Who got lost in the building?”

  Nine hands.

  “Figure it out among yourselves,” I said.

  They went from calm discussion to shouts and threats in less time than it took for me to fully congratulate myself on my problem-solving abilities. People really are animals.

  “Stop it!”

  They froze. I had a crazy feeling that if I said, “Drop to all fours and howl like a coyote,” they’d transform the parking lot into Yellowstone right before my eyes.

  I picked a random number. “Each of you, think of a number between one and one hundred.” I pointed to them, one by one, and let them tell me their numbers. After I’d heard from all of them, I gave the manuals to the three who’d come the closest to my number. While the winners were paying me, and grinning like they’d just been handed a million dollars, I could see the others staring at them with a mix of envy and hostility.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m just temporarily out of stock. You’ll all get yours tomorrow.”

  As I put the money away, I wondered why I bothered worrying about grades. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college. My brother hadn’t even finished high school. He was studying for his GED now, but he’d left the halls of Zenger High midway through his senior year. And he was doing just fine. So was my dad.

  If I was already making money with my writing, without even really trying, think how well I could do if I gave it all my attention. On the way to homeroom, I pictured myself living on my own, in a cool apartment, writing stuff people would line up to buy. Maybe I’d be living with Lee. That thought quickly took off in its own direction, abandoning the literary world for earthier realms.

  “Hey, Scott, where are you?”

  I looked back. Lee was right behind me. “Huh?”

  “I called your name three times,” she said. “Whatever thoughts you were lost in must have come equipped with earmuffs.”

  “Sorry.” I banished the imaginary cohabitational Lee from my mind and turned my attention to the real one. “I was thinking about the manual.”

  “And you made the shift automatically,” Lee said with a smirk.

  “Yeah.” My brain was too busy switching gears and wading through pools of guilt to reply to her pun with one of my own. I felt like I’d narrowly avoided being caught with my pants down.

  But the memory of the fantasy tickled at my mind. As I sat next to Lee in geometry, I reminded myself that I had no idea what sort of relationship I’d even have with her when I was old enough to move out on my own. Still, it was a seductive image.

  The rest of the day was uneventful, not counting the growls produced by the growing hunger I felt from skipping lunch. When I got to English class, I dropped the essay on Mrs. Gilroy’s desk. “Two thousand words on arrogance,” I said.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “I was afraid I’d have to settle for reading one of the classics this evening. I guess poor Tolstoy will have to get through the night without my admiration.”

  I didn’t bother to respond.

  “Want to walk into town?” I asked Lee after school.

  “I can’t. My folks are picking me up to go to my aunt’s house. It’s her birthday. She only has one a year, so it’s sort of special.”

  “Too bad she’s not twins,” I said.

  “That’s my misfortune, too. There’d be more presents for me, were that the case,” Lee said. “We could drop you off in town.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll walk.” I didn’t feel like being around her dad.

  Since I didn’t have to worry about catching the bus, I swung by Mr. Franka’s room on my way out. He was sorting a stack of comic books in hanging folders in a filing cabinet.

  “How’s it going, Scott?” he asked when I walked in.

  “Mrs. Gilroy hates me,” I said.

  “I know,” he said.

  That hit me by surprise. I’d expected him to lead with something like Of course she doesn’t.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Because she hates everyone.”

  “Very funny,” I said.

>   “But also very true. She feels the current generation of students has no respect for our language. So don’t let yourself feel singled out.”

  “I can’t help it. She hates me more than anyone else in the class,” I said. “And I love English. You know that.”

  “So consider this a true test of your love,” he said.

  “Why does love always have to be tested?” I asked.

  “That’s just the way things work,” he said. “If love never got tested, what would writers have to write about?”

  “Lots of stuff,” I said. “War. Dragons. Cookies. The possibilities are endless.”

  “Here’s the truth, Scott. Mrs. Gilroy knows more about the English language and English literature than anyone else in this building. If you’re smart, you’ll learn everything you can from her, no matter how hard it might be for you to put your ego aside. Trust me.”

  “Ego?”

  “Everyone has one,” he said. “To claim otherwise would be egotistical. Put yours aside.”

  “I’ll try.”

  I headed into town and bought the cheapest paper I could find. Mom was on the computer when I got home, looking up something about baby rashes. From the brief glance I got of the images on the monitor, I definitely didn’t want to stick around. I went upstairs to start my homework. After Mom was finished, I’d print out the last six copies. Maybe tomorrow I’d even get more orders. Word would be spreading. Especially since there’d been a shortage. I thought about just printing three copies, extending the shortage and making the manual even more desirable. But I was afraid there’d be a riot.

  • • •

  Later, when I heard Mom emptying the dishwasher in the kitchen, I put aside my history reading and went downstairs, but then Dad was online, checking out the sports news, so I got back to work. It really sucked that we only had one computer. But at least it was a good one.

  Just as I was finishing my homework, I heard Dad swear. He doesn’t do that much at all. I went downstairs. He was trying to print out a coupon for twenty percent off one item at our local hardware store.

  “We’re out of ink,” he said. “How could we be out of ink? I just put in new cartridges last weekend. There’s no way we used all of it.”

  He spotted me before I could sneak off.

  “Did you print something?” he asked.

  “A couple things,” I said.

  “Couple?”

  “Maybe a bit more than that,” I said.

  “Maybe a lot more?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So maybe you should buy some ink.”

  “Sure. I can do that.” Oh, crap. I didn’t even know what ink cost. It couldn’t be that expensive. After Dad left the computer, I checked the model number for our printer, then got online and searched for cartridges.

  Oh, my God. Did they make it out of the blood of unicorns or the tears of pixies? How could a little box of ink cost that much? It looked like my profits were going to take a big hit, or maybe even disappear entirely. And it looked like I wasn’t going to print those six copies this evening.

  September 4

  I told you this wasn’t a journal, Sean. And it’s absolutely not a diary. Did you figure out what you have in your hands? It’s actually an epistle. That’s a fancy word for a letter. What’s the difference? In a journal, I’d be writing to myself. I’d basically be sharing my thoughts with myself. In an epistle, I’m writing to someone else. That would be you. Even though you are not, at this moment that I am actually writing this, capable of reading these epistles. But that’s okay. Your shortcomings—hah, you’re short in most departments, except moisture generation—anyhow, your shortcomings have zero effect on the tone of the epistle.

  Anyhow, here’s today’s tip. You can learn stuff even from people you don’t like, and people who don’t like you. At least, that’s what Mr. Franka told me. And I like him. So I’m going to try really hard to learn from Mrs. Gilroy. And from Ms. Denton, for that matter.

  When I got off the bus, I looked around for the pack of freshmen who hadn’t gotten their manuals yet. I wanted to slip past them. They were going to be really unhappy that I was empty-handed.

  But they weren’t there. Nobody was waiting for me. That was weird. Maybe their history homework assignment had been to reenact the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony. On my way to homeroom, I saw a kid—one I didn’t even recognize—carrying a copy of my manual. Except the cover wasn’t in color.

  I tapped him on the shoulder. He screamed and jumped away. Then he started digging in his pockets, like he was eager to give me his lunch money.

  “Hold it! I’m not trying to hurt you. I just have a question. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  I pointed at the manual. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Online. All the kids have it.”

  “Online?”

  “Yeah.”

  As I hunted for Jeremy, I saw lots of freshmen carrying copies of my manual. Bootlegged, pirated copies.

  I found Jeremy outside, near the back door. I guess he’d ignored my advice and lingered there, because someone had picked him up and put him in the Dumpster. Fortunately, it was fairly empty. Unfortunately, it was fairly deep.

  “I told you not to get caught here.” I reached in and gave him a hand, so he could climb out.

  “I stopped to tie my shoe,” he said.

  “That’s one of the first tips in the manual,” I said. “You never tie your shoe around a senior.”

  “They weren’t around when I knelt,” he said.

  “This is a high school. They’re always around.”

  “Good point. Thanks for the rescue.”

  “I had no choice. If I’d left you there, I’d probably get stuck riding the bus with someone even more annoying.”

  “Was that a joke?”

  “If you want it to be. By the way, what happened to my manual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone seems to have a copy,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I guess someone scanned it and posted the file.”

  “How could someone do that?” I asked.

  “Easy. Especially if your scanner has an automatic document feeder. You just load the pages—”

  “That’s not what I meant. I know how they did it. I just can’t believe someone would do it. It’s not right.”

  “Is it really any different from if I let someone borrow my copy?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Sure. Only one person at a time can read your copy. This way, everyone gets it at once. That’s just wrong.”

  I felt like I’d been robbed. I guess because I had been robbed. And there probably wasn’t any way I could fix things. Even if I tracked down the kid who’d scanned the manual, what could I do about it? I wasn’t going to beat up some freshman pirate. I doubted I could get money from him. Or her. It was done. Over. My publishing career had lasted less than a week. All my profit had turned into red ink. Actually, make that black, cyan, magenta, and yellow ink.

  I went into the school through the back door and headed for my homeroom. Two kids stared at me as I walked past them. I heard one of them whisper to the other, “I think that’s Scott Hudson.”

  “You sure?” the other whispered.

  Weird. A couple other kids stared at me later. I guess they’d downloaded the manual.

  I’d gone viral.

  And it hadn’t gained me anything. If I ever wrote another manual, I was going to carve it on rocks in my backyard. Anyone who wanted to read it would have to pay admission and promise not to take photographs.

  I decided to give lunch another shot. I was getting used to the smells and sights in biology. The choices were chicken nuggets or mac and cheese. As much as I liked mac and cheese, the cafeteria’s version was pretty dense and gooey, and seemed capable of choking m
e if it came back up my throat. If I died in biology, I could just imagine Ms. Denton seizing the opportunity to turn my corpse into an AP specimen. So I got the nuggets.

  Lee, Edith, and Richard had opted for mac and cheese. Bradley had opted for making friends with some JV baseball players, and was sitting with them now.

  I took a seat and stabbed one of the nuggets with my fork, then held it up and stared at it, bracing myself for that first bite.

  Lee snickered. I could tell from her expression that she was about to launch into a biology joke.

  “Please don’t,” I said.

  “I’ll spare you,” she said.

  “Whoever decided that chickens belonged in nuggets was clearly confused,” I said.

  “Sophomore!” Richard shouted, punching me hard on the shoulder.

  “Ow! What was that for?” I asked. I rubbed my shoulder.

  “You used an oxymoron,” Richard said. “‘Clearly confused.’”

  “So?”

  “So, if you hear someone use one, you get to hit them on the shoulder and shout sophomore.”

  “When did that become a thing?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Always, I guess.”

  I put my fork down. “Is that a wild guess?” I asked.

  “No. It’s an educated guess.”

  I could tell from his eyes that it had just dawned on him what I’d done.

  “Sophomore!” I shouted, hitting him hard for his educated guess. I could get into this game.

  “You’re both acting like big babies,” Lee said. “And educated guess isn’t necessarily an oxymoron.”

  Big babies! That was probably an oxymoron.

  Before I could even launch my brain into the train of thought wrapped around what my response should be, Lee looked me right in the eyes and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” I turned my attention to my nuggets and started eating. But I left half of them on my plate. If I was going to lose my lunch, I wanted to keep the splatter to a manageable amount. Lee had no interest in the leftovers, but Richard and Edith happily split the bounty.

  “Mac, cheese, chicken mélange,” Edith said, stirring everything together.