Sophomores and Other Oxymorons

by David Lubar

  You’ll figure it out.

  Those were her exact words. Which meant she expected me to remember. Anniversaries are the sort of concepts that girlfriends care about. I mean, I have no idea what date Wesley and I became friends. Maybe one way to get Lee to be my girlfriend was to act more like she already was. Though I could see where that could turn into a minefield of awkward moments and misunderstandings.

  However much or little this anniversary meant, I’d obviously not remembered soon enough. I needed to fix this. But I wasn’t sure how. If I pretended I was totally clueless, she’d eventually either let it go or let me know why she was angry. But then I’d have to figure out whether to be apologetic or tell her how I felt about pseudo-significant moments. I was glad she’d come to Zenger. I was really glad we’d met and become friends. But, seriously, the anniversary of the day we met? It didn’t seem like an occasion for a gift.

  I could come right out and admit that I was slow to realize it was an anniversary. The fact that I’d finally figured it out should earn me at least a little bit of credit. Especially if I ended the admission by handing her a gift. Assuming I had any idea what to buy.

  • • •

  First thing in the morning, I looked up anniversaries. I was pretty sure that the one-year gift was supposed to be made of paper. A quick check online proved I was right. So, paper . . . a book was the obvious choice, and also the least imaginative, since she’d already given me one. A journal? Not bad, but not great. Origami paper? Nope. She had tons of it. Cardboard counted, too. I guessed anything in a box would sort of count. Crayons would be fun. No. Crayons would be stupid. But maybe Lee would think they were fun. I wondered whether there was a wax anniversary.

  I realized I was in danger of driving myself crazy. I looked around my bedroom, seeking inspiration. I saw a deck of playing cards. Cards. They were paper.

  Wait!

  I could get her tarot cards. Those were cool and also kind of creepy—especially the ones involving death. Yeah. That was perfect. The only problem was that I’d have to wait until after school to go shopping, and then give the present to her that evening, or the next day. Showing up at her house with a gift would be really weird. But the longer I waited, the worse it would be. Here’s a gift to commemorate the time we first met, one year and two days ago. Aren’t I thoughtful?

  But there was someone who always had my back. Someone I could count on when I really needed help.

  I called Wesley. “You driving?” I didn’t want to distract him if he was on the road.

  “Nope. Just finished my route. What’s up?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  I explained what I wanted him to do. The stores wouldn’t be open yet. I figured the earliest Wesley could get the cards and meet me was third period. “I’ll wait for you by the cafeteria doors,” I said.

  “You got it.”

  “Thanks.”

  When I saw Lee in geometry, I assumed I’d receive another of those expectant stares. But she greeted me normally. Which didn’t mean anything, since she was really good at hiding her feelings. Still, it made me happy that I was going to acknowledge the anniversary. I was pretty sure she’d be pleasantly surprised.

  At lunch, I waited for Wesley by the side door of the cafeteria and, sure enough, he pulled up in his truck. Except it wasn’t the bagel truck. This was one of those street-sweepers. He got out, came over, and handed me a small bag.

  “What happened to the other truck?” I asked.

  “I lost that job.”

  “But you got another,” I said.

  “Yup.”

  “And you drove the sweeper over here, from wherever you were supposed to be.”

  “Sure. No big deal. I mean, all the streets are dirty, right?”

  “Right. How much do I owe you?” I asked.

  “My treat,” he said.

  “You didn’t . . .” I was afraid he’d stolen the cards.

  “Didn’t what?” he asked.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

  “Hey, what are friends for? Catch you later.”

  I looked in the bag and was relieved to see a receipt. I guess there was hope for Wesley, after all. He’d gotten the deck wrapped. Appropriately, the paper was black. I took the present out of the bag and walked over to our table.

  “I finally figured it out,” I said, handing her the gift. “I’m a bit slow at this stuff.”

  Lee looked at the gift. “This is a nice surprise. And don’t be too hard on yourself. Not everybody memorizes the death dates of famous writers.”

  Death dates? Famous writers?

  “Yeah. Not everyone,” I said. So that was the October event. This was so typical of Lee—give me a gift to celebrate Poe’s death, not the anniversary of our meeting. And that’s why she had said that the obituaries were too obvious.

  “Cool,” Lee said after she unwrapped the cards. “What’s this have to do with Poe’s death?”

  Before I could invent an answer, a tell-tale slip of paper flittered out of the wrappings. I recognized Wesley’s handwriting. Lee picked the paper up and read the note. “Happy anniversary.”

  She frowned. “What anniversary?”

  This was not going well.

  “You thought my gift was to commemorate our first meeting, right?” Lee said.

  “Right.”

  “But you didn’t come to that mistaken conclusion until last night. Or this morning. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And then you scrambled to get me something. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s sweet. And stupid. We could call it glykomoronic. Hey, I made a word.”

  She grinned at her coinage, opened the box, and slid out the cards. “Let me tell you your fortune.” She shuffled the deck, then turned over a card. I expected The Hanged Man, but it was The Fool.

  “I guess we can stop right here,” Lee said.

  October 2

  Here’s a tip for you, Sean. Keep a diary. I know guys don’t do that. But if we did, we could look back and always know what had happened exactly one year ago.

  By the way, as exhaustive as Mrs. Gilroy’s list of essential figures of speech might seem, I realized she missed a lot of them. So I took some time and made my own list. The last one’s especially for you.

  Scott Hudson’s Little-Known Figures of Speech

  Hamonym—creative phrases for tasty parts of the pig

  Bdelguppia—dozens of small words dashing about like little fish

  Ablitteration—words so awesome they blow the reader away

  Slimeli—any description or comparison using snot or mucus

  Metafart—any descriptive phrase that includes a colon

  Bananaclassis—writing about the same fruit at different times for different reasons

  Cacaphony—any words used to describe rubber dog poop

  Oopsphemism—unintentional swearing

  Onomatopony—how toddlers ask for a horse

  “Isn’t it picture day?” Mom asked as I headed for the door on Monday.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “You’re wearing a T-shirt,” she said.

  I glanced down. “It’s clean.”

  “That’s not the point. You want to look presentable.”

  “Why? We have lots of pictures of me.”

  “Your grandparents love the photos. So do your aunts.”

  “I can get Lee to retouch last year’s picture. She can age me slightly. She’s really good at that. They’ll never know the difference,” I said.

  “Scott.”

  It always amazed me how a single syllable could carry so many different meanings simultaneously when uttered by a parent. This one, at the moment, carried a variety of commands, laced with sever
al threats, and an ultimatum.

  I played my last card.

  “I’ll miss the bus.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  Had I known what sort of nerve gas lurked in Sean’s bowels, awaiting release in the car, I would have appeared at breakfast in a tuxedo.

  • • •

  I saw a lot of freshly scrubbed faces in the halls, and an abundance of well-ironed clothing, crisp pleats, and stiff collars, along with the usual variety of individual protest statements. I blended right in among the respectable buttoned-down majority. Jeremy, who I saw out front after Mom dropped me off, had been swaddled in a sports coat and tie. Poor kid.

  “Nice shirt,” Lee said when I walked into geometry.

  I didn’t bother to respond.

  “Did your mom dress you?” she asked.

  “Basically,” I said. “I should burn all these shirts.”

  “I’ll help. We can have a festival and call it Burning Shirt. It could start a trend. At which point, of course, we’ll stop going because it became too trendy.”

  She was wearing a black T-shirt. But it didn’t contain any horrifying images or defiant messages. “Did your mom dress you?” I asked.

  “No. She merely advised me. We agreed, after heated negotiation, that this would be an acceptable compromise.”

  “That’s what parenting is all about,” I said.

  “Hey, I have an idea. We’ve got that geometry test tomorrow. Let’s study at my place.” She gave me a calculating grin.

  “You want your dad to see me dressed up.”

  “It will disturb his universe, slightly. Are you in?”

  “Sure.” I might as well get some mileage out of my outfit.

  FIFTEEN

  Lee and I ended up studying for a long time, because her dad worked late. But her mom brought us several nutritious, high-fiber snacks. She was a phlebotomist, so she was professionally oriented to be even more aware of nutritional perils than the average parent. When Lee’s dad finally arrived, he came loaded with takeout Italian food from a place near his office. The food was well worth the wait.

  As I was walking back from the bathroom after dinner, I passed Mr. Fowler’s office. He usually kept the door closed. It was open this time. I guessed he’d dropped something off when he got home from work. I glanced in, curious about what the room would look like. No surprises leaped out at me. No statue of Beelzebub, or a cage full of weeping of orphans. No towering pile of Dalmatian skins. There was a large desk of dark wood. Maybe cherry or mahogany. There was a sturdy leather chair of the swiveling sort. There were bookcases filled with volumes that unanimously featured mundane spines. I saw a framed piece of needlepoint on the wall behind the desk. It looked like it had a sentence in fancy script in the center, but I couldn’t make the words out from the hallway.

  “Go ahead,” Mr. Fowler said, walking up from behind me. “Take a look. Lee made it for me back when she was in eighth grade.”

  I walked in. As I got closer, I realized why I couldn’t read it. It wasn’t in English. I was pretty sure it was Latin. I sounded it out, to see if it meant more when the words were spoken, “Aedificare in tuo proprio solo non licet quod alteri noceat.”

  “It’s one of the many Latin phrases they make you memorize in law school.”

  “Why do they do that?” I asked.

  “To thin the herd. To weed out those who lack sufficient will. It’s an honored tradition.” He touched the needlepoint. “Any guess what it means?”

  “Except for in, solo, and non, I’m totally clueless. I can’t even think of any words close to the rest of those.” Usually, if I saw a sentence in a language I didn’t know, I could figure out some of the words, based on the way they resembled roots or prefixes from English or Spanish.

  “‘It is not lawful to build on one’s own land what may be injurious to another,’” Mr. Fowler said.

  “But isn’t that exactly what—” I caught myself. From what I knew, his clients wanted him to help them build things that were harmful to others. They skirted environmental laws, and he found ways for them to avoid fines or other forms of punishment.

  I guess he knew what I was going to say. But he didn’t get angry. He laughed. “Remember who gave it to me. . . .”

  “Right. I’ll bet she spent hours looking for the perfectly ironic phrase.”

  “That’s my little girl.” As he walked off, he said, “Nice shirt. You should dress like that more often.”

  I stood there and memorized the quotation. Knowing the meaning made that easier. I figured it would be fun to spring it on Lee someday, should she ever do something that might be injurious to another. Or maybe spring it on her at a totally unrelated time, which could be even funnier. And I happened to know the Latin phrase for that: non sequitur.

  Zenger Zinger for October 7

  Last week’s answer: “The tomb is filled with blood-sucking insects,” John Peter said cryptically.

  This week’s puzzle: “Edgar Allan wrote some less serious works,” John Peter said _________.

  Tuesday, I got a letter from Mouth. That’s his nickname. We’d started freshman year together, but he’d left Zenger. We’d written to each other once in a while, after he left. I think we might have been the last two kids on the planet to write actual letters, not counting parent-mandated thank-you notes. I hadn’t heard from him in a while. Since last summer, I think. And I guess he hadn’t heard from me, either. But it was nice he got back in touch.

  Dear Scott,

  Remember me? Of course you do. We had a lot of good times at the bus stop last year. There’s no way you’d forget me in a couple of months. Unless you got a girlfriend and can’t think about anything else except her. And I sure couldn’t blame you if that was the case. I know, if I ever get a girlfriend, that’s all I’ll be able to think about. But even if you were madly in love, you’d still remember me, since we hung out all the time at the bus stop, and at the newspaper meetings. Those meetings were great. Anyhow, I just wanted to say hi and let you know how I’m doing, and where I am, since you’re the only one who cared about me back at Zenger High. Well, you and the school nurse. We moved to Nebraska. I guess you can tell that from the postmark on the envelope. Unless you already threw out the envelope. People are nice here. They smile a lot. Nobody tells me to shut up. Sometimes they don’t stay until I’m finished telling them what I want to say, even if it’s important, but they are very polite when they walk away.

  That’s enough about me. How are you? Did your mom have her baby? That must be weird. Some people think clowns are scary. I think babies are scarier. I’d hate to have to sleep near one. How’s school? Are you on the paper? I loved your articles last year. I cut all of them out and put them in a notebook. I show them to my friends. Well, to people I’ve met. People here are nice. I told you that. But nice is sort of different from friendly. My doctor told me not to think too much about friends. Especially if it makes me sad. But I think about you. And that makes me not sad.

  I have to go. I hope you write back.

  From far away,

  Louden “Mouth” Kandeski

  Wednesday after school, I waited outside the meeting room, again, so I could catch Mr. Franka.

  “I really wish I’d run that opinion piece right away,” I said when he reached the door.

  “Why?”

  “Mrs. Gilroy is nailing me for all kinds of stupid things,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  I held out the essay I’d written during a free-writing session, and pointed to one of the many sentences she’d circled.

  Hoping it would be an amazing summer, my bicycle carried me down the street, leaving my home behind me like a fragile cocoon abandoned by a butterfly.

  “That’s good writing, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Franka responded to my question by staring at me. He didn’t say
a word.

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  “Pretend someone else wrote that. Read it slowly and carefully. Read it out loud, for that matter.”

  I read it out loud, slowly. “Sounds fine,” I said. “Sounds like good writing.”

  “The bicycle has hopes?” Mr. Franka asked.

  “No. That’s not what it says. Wait.” I read the sentence again. Oh, crap. It did sound like the bicycle hoped it would be an amazing summer. My hand dropped. I felt like crumpling the essay.

  “Hey, cheer up, Scott. Everyone makes that sort of mistake. It’s very common. That’s why there are teachers,” Mr. Franka said. “The cocoon thing was pretty good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You can write, Scott. You have talent. But it’s a huge mistake to think you have nothing to learn.”

  “I guess. But it’s a lot easier to learn from some teachers than from others,” I said.

  I expected him to accept that as praise, since he was definitely one of the teachers I liked learning from. But he responded, “And it’s a lot easier to teach some students than others.”

  “I’m not hard to teach,” I said.

  “I never said you were.”

  “You didn’t say I wasn’t, either.”

  “That’s true, too.”

  “That’s parisology,” I said, dredging up one of the more easily memorized words from Mrs. Gilroy’s list. Too bad all of them didn’t contain parts that resembled the names of famous cities. “It’s the intentional use of ambiguous phrasing.”

  He patted me on the shoulder. “I’m glad to see you’re learning something.”

  “I’m learning something,” I said ambiguously, as I followed him into the meeting.

  As I took my seat next to Jeremy, I realized I still hadn’t written an actual article that was going to run in the paper. That was okay. There was an issue every week. I just needed to think about something where I had a strong opinion. Or look for a good feature story.