Aaron and I exchanged confused looks.
“Anyway, it’s cool,” said Tegan. “People believe some crazy shit, but if it doesn’t hurt anybody, I don’t got a problem with it. Carlos, for example? He believes that God is actually part of an alien race called the Annunaki who came here from Planet X to mine for gold, and, like, their only purpose for us is to be their slave mine workers. Although Carlos only talks about that shit when he’s torched. When he’s not high, I think he’s a Protestant.”
“Hey, everybody’s gotta believe in something,” said Aaron—still unfazed. “We’re all like Rice Krispies Treats, and having something to believe in is the marshmallow glue that holds us all together.”
“Hells yeah! That’s what I’m sayin’!”
I didn’t know how these two became my friends, but it was so simultaneously weird and awesome, I couldn’t even.
“Also,” said Tegan, “any list that tells you to stop Niko or to put that uppity bitch Esther in her place is all right by me. So if you guys need help or whatever, count me in.”
“What?” I said.
“Seriously?” said Aaron.
Aaron and I did need help with the List—namely writing our speech for the Sermon Showdown, which sure as hell wasn’t going to write itself. And, as I had learned less than twenty-four hours ago, Tegan was something of a writer herself. I mean, they were probably rap lyrics and this was a Sermon Showdown—but those were better qualifications than Aaron and I had combined.
“Tomorrow,” said Tegan. “Same time, same place. We plan like hell. Then we kick this List in the ass.”
The next day at lunch, Aaron, Tegan, and I came ready to get down to business. I had to hand it to Tegan: she gave one helluva pump-up speech.
Unfortunately, she also had the focus and attention span of a toddler gacked out on Halloween candy.
Aaron had barely even mentioned the Sermon Showdown when Tegan saw Jack and Julian pass by wearing matching Marvel Comics shirts (yes, matching), and she started raving about the new Avengers movie, and oh my God, Iron Man is the greatest Marvel superhero ever, blah-blah-blah.
Oooooooh boy. So much for the List. Ten minutes later, this was the conversation that ensued:
“Superman is easily the best superhero,” said Aaron. “I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”
“Superman is easily the most two-dimensional superhero,” I said. “I mean, he’s this all-powerful alien entity who’s basically invincible except that he has an all-crippling weakness to Kryptonite. One second, he’s kicking ass and taking names, the next, ‘Oh no, Lex Luthor has alien rocks!’ Sorry. Not buying it.”
“But he shoots lasers out of his eyes!”
“Yeah,” said Tegan. “And he wears red undies over his blue tights. Kinda sketch.”
“Who wears red underwear anyway?” I said.
“I’m wearing red panties,” said Tegan.
“Yes. And that’s awesome.”
“It is awesome.”
“Um,” said Aaron, “how did we go from Superman to Tegan’s panties?”
“The fact of the matter is that Tegan’s red panties are awesome,” I said. “And Superman is overrated.”
“You two aren’t American.”
“Whatev, man,” said Tegan. “Everyone knows that Batman is the best superhero.”
Aaron and I groaned simultaneously.
“What?” said Tegan.
“Batman isn’t even a superhero,” said Aaron.
“He doesn’t have a superpower,” I said. “Thus disqualifying him from the hall of fame of superherodom.”
“Shut your whore mouths,” said Tegan. “Of course Batman has a superpower.”
“Really?” said Aaron. “And that would be…?”
“Justice. And money.”
“Okay, this conversation needs to end,” I said. “Because Spider-Man is the best superhero, bar none.”
“Spider-Man is the best at kissing upside down,” said Tegan. “That’s it.”
At this point, I was basically ready for anything to end this conversation. It was all fun and games until someone insulted Spider-Man. Then a shadow fell over us.
It was Niko.
He just stood there. Like a literal mountain, motionless and immovable.
“’Sup, bro,” said Tegan. “Can we help you with something?”
But Niko wasn’t looking at Tegan. He wasn’t looking at Aaron, either.
His eyes were locked and loaded on me. I suddenly felt very naked. And for a six-foot-six, 250-pound mass of flesh, that’s a lotta nudity.
And then the mountain moved. He extended his beefy arm—I may or may not have flinched—and he set an object on the table in between Tegan and me.
A Nintendo 3DS. With a game cartridge inside.
I stared. Aaron stared. Tegan, meanwhile, glanced between the awestruck expressions on our faces and the weird Nintendo thingy on the table, possibly wondering if she had just witnessed some sort of rare symbolic male initiatory ritual.
And then Niko turned and left. Just like that. Like this wasn’t a big deal. A huge deal!
“Hey, Niko,” I said.
Niko stopped and turned around.
“Superman, Batman, Spider-Man,” I said. “Who’s the best super-hero?”
If Niko thought this was a random, borderline-idiotic question, it didn’t show on his face.
“Wolverine,” he said. “Duh.”
“Hmm,” said Tegan. She nodded approvingly. “With his healing power, he is basically invincible. But in a cool way. Not like Superman.”
“And,” said Aaron, “the fact that he’s had adamantium surgically bonded to his skeletal structure not only makes him double invincible, but it also makes him a total badass.”
Niko didn’t seem to know how to react to our positive appraisal of Wolverine. He nodded awkwardly. And then he started to turn and—
“Hey, Niko,” I said. “Do you want to sit with us?”
Niko paused to consider this. “Yeah, okay.”
Niko sat down a seat away from me, leaving an empty seat between us. I could have interpreted this as social hesitation, but really, it was just common sense. Even Lacey Hildebrandt’s skinny ass would have a hard time squeezing into that empty seat against the immensity of our combined girth.
I glanced at Aaron, and he glanced at me, and something passed between us. Something that defied words. Something that defied logic. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know if God had anything to do with it, and I didn’t even know if Aaron had a concussion, but I knew one thing for damn certain:
The List wasn’t crazy. The List was bigger than Aaron. It was bigger than Tegan, it was bigger than Niko, and it was bigger than me. And I’m HUGE.
It was bigger than all of us.
There are certain conversations that should just never happen, ranked among the likes of “How many squares of toilet paper should you wipe your butt with?” (the Environmentalism vs. Sanitaryism Argument) or “Is it okay to have sex with your cousin if she’s, like, really, really, really hot?” As Aaron and I entered Mr. Gibson’s computer lab, Jack and Julian were embarking on a Level 5 Is This Conversation Seriously Happening?
“Dude, it’s not even a question,” said Julian. “Boa Hancock from One Piece is easily the hottest anime chick.”
“Wow, what a sellout answer,” said Jack. “Do you even anime, bro?”
“That’s like saying Kim Kardashian is a sellout answer. Are we analyzing her media overexposure, moral integrity, and overall depth as a human being? No. But her body’s so hot, it could start forest fires.”
“Scientifically impossible.”
“It’s called hyperbole, Jack. There’s a very real fire in my heart, and it burns for Hancock.”
“No, man. It’s all about Yoko from Gurren Lagann. Not only is she a babe and a half, but she’s more emotionally mature than the entire male cast combined. Also, she has a sniper rifle that shoots lasers.”
“Oh, snap. I forgot about Yoko.” Julian clutched his chest dramatically. “Ah, my heart! It’s being torn asunder!”
Aaron cleared his throat. “Are we…interrupting?”
Somehow, Jack and Julian were just now noticing us. And then they noticed the 3DS in Aaron’s hands.
“Holy shit,” said Jack.
“Holy apeshit,” said Julian.
And as they gaped in awe at the Holy Grail of handheld gamedom radiating celestial light from Aaron’s hand, he walked over and set it on the desk in front of them. But he didn’t let go. Not right away.
“You two are going to find out who HAL is for us,” said Aaron. “Right?”
Jack met Aaron’s gaze with an earnestness that he probably only reserved for anime porn. “We will give you HAL’s identity on a silver platter.”
It was just me, Aaron, and the List.
And Quentin Tarantino’s entire filmography.
And a plethora of deep-fried things.
It may have seemed like these other things were distracting from our main focus—the List—but I liked to think of them as moral support.
Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman were just heading out the door when I arrived. They had a reservation at Auberge de l’Ouvre. Which was a restaurant, apparently.
I didn’t know how old Mrs. Zimmerman was, but she looked like a Victoria’s Secret model. But, you know, fully clothed. And Mr. Zimmerman looked and walked and even smelled like the sort of guy who married Victoria’s Secret models—like he was the perfect genetic zenith of success.
In other words, a forty-something version of Aaron.
“So you’re the famous Cliff Hubbard,” said Mr. Zimmerman. “Your dad’s Hank Hubbard, am I right?”
My dad did, indeed, have a first name. And it was Hank. And holy shit. How did this guy know my dad?
I just nodded stupidly.
“Hank and I used to play football together at your high school. He was one heck of a running back, but then he tore a tendon…um…his senior year, I think? Shame, too, ’cause he was fast. Your dad was lightning.”
He might have lost his ability to run, but one thing was for damn certain: his fists were still lightning.
“So are you on the team with Aaron?”
There was no need to make this weird. So I lied.
“Yup,” I said.
“Great! What position do you play?”
“The one that hits people.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Zimmerman, unfazed, because his genetic code did not allow him to be fazed or confused by sarcasm. “Lineman. Gotcha. One of my best friends growing up was a lineman. That guy could eat a whole buffalo if you let him.”
He chuckled at his own joke that wasn’t really a joke.
“You two have fun,” said Mrs. Zimmerman. “Money for the pizza is on the fridge.”
And with that, Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman departed for their reservation at Le French-Ass Restauránt.
Aaron looked at me. “Twinkies?”
I reciprocated the look. “Twinkies.”
There is a deep, dark secret in the culinary world, and that is this: everything is better deep-fried.
Everything.
Do you like cookie dough? Deep-fry it. Watermelon? Deep-fry that healthy shit. Bacon? Those wonderfully delicious strips of juicy pork ecstasy saturated in oil and grease and fat with the power to end wars and cure vegetarianism?
Deep-fry it.
Aaron had just paid the Pizza Hut delivery guy and decided that our Meat Lovers Stuffed Crust masterpiece wasn’t nearly greasy enough to stop our hearts by the end of The Hateful Eight. So we were going to deep-fry a few slices of that, too.
At long last, we evacuated the kitchen with our deep-fried delicacies, popped in Reservoir Dogs, bombarded the sofa with our butts, and watched the aftermath of a diamond heist that had gone horribly, horribly wrong. It was right about the time that Mr. White was driving a speeding car while trying to comfort Mr. Orange, who was bleeding profusely in the backseat, when Aaron said:
“Did you know Mr. Spinelli won the Montana Teacher of the Year award?”
So much for watching Reservoir Dogs.
I turned to Aaron with a half-chewed deep-fried fudge-covered Oreo in my mouth, and said “Whaaaaaghhh?” And then I made an awkward attempt to swallow. After nearly choking, I retried: “WHAT?”
“Yeah,” said Aaron. “I googled him, and that’s the first thing that came up.”
“Why in the holy name of Quentin Tarantino would you google Mr. Spinelli?”
“I thought it would pull up his e-mail from the school directory or something. I was going to write him an apology letter.”
“Oh,” I said. And now I felt shitty all over again. But I felt shitty and curious, which was at least mildly distracting from the shittiness factor. “Teacher of the Year?”
“For the whole state of Montana! Do you know how big of a deal that is?”
I’m sure my face was ninety-eight percent cynical and two percent something else. Indigestion, maybe?
“Where did you read that?” I said. “How do we know this is a reliable source?”
“I didn’t read it. It was on the news. Well, technically it was on YouTube. But yeah, that news. Here, look.”
Aaron whipped out his phone and pulled up the video. He then shoved it in front of my face and pressed Play.
“We’re here at the small town of Happy Valley,” said Sandra Shelley of KXLH, “where the Montana Professional Teaching Foundation has awarded their annual Teacher of the Year award to fifty-one-year-old Roger Spinelli.”
Video footage of Spinelli appeared on the screen, in action, teaching in the classroom, but something was staggeringly wrong because he was smiling, and he was using all these wildly captivating hand gestures, and the students were smiling, and they were even laughing.
“Spinelli has taught ninth- through twelfth-grade English at Happy Valley High School,” said Sandra offscreen. “And his teaching method is always an adventure.”
“The fact of the matter is it’s not about the teaching,” said Spinelli in a standing interview outside of a slightly newer, cleaner, and overall happier HVHS. “It’s about the learning. Too many teachers get so caught up in the mechanics of the lesson plan that they lose sight of who they’re giving it to. I make it a goal not to get comfortable in my curriculum. I experiment with new things because I can. I teach because I love it, and I care about these kids. They make me smile, they make me laugh, and they always keep me coming back for more.”
“But don’t take Spinelli’s word for it,” said Sandra. “The students speak for themselves.”
“I always hated English,” said a girl with braces, grinning so wide that nearly every single bracket was unsheathed. “But with Mr. Spinelli…I don’t know, it’s weird. You know that he cares about you and that makes you want to hear what he has to say.”
“Mr. Spinelli is tight,” said an olive-skinned kid. “Spinelli is the bomb. He’s funny, he’s smart, he’s loving…It’s like he’s family. It’s like we’re a family. I’m actually gonna be sad when school ends.”
“And there you have it,” said Sandra. “It just goes to show the difference one teacher can make. Back to you, Ron.”
The video ended.
“What. Was. That,” I said. It wasn’t a question. It was the breathless declaration of one who had witnessed the unthinkable. It wasn’t a question because there couldn’t possibly be an answer. But Aaron tried anyway.
“Apparently he used to be a good teacher,” said Aaron.
“Montana Teacher of the Year!” I said. “I mean, Montana’s a big state. You can fit a lot of teachers inside Montana. And for one year, Spinelli was the best? I can’t even wrap my brain around that. Next to my dad, he’s probably the most evil old quaffle I know.”
“Well, it was an old interview. A lot can change over time.”
“A lot? As in, everything about Spinelli?”
Aaron shrugged. “Maybe Google will have
the answer.”
I rolled my eyes. “You and your Google. While you’re at it, could you ask the Googles how many deep-fried fudge-covered Oreos it takes to kill a person? Because I’m on number thirteen.”
Aaron ignored me, opting instead to scroll and click and scroll and click. I decided to take my chance with death and ate another Oreo.
Suddenly, Aaron’s eyes went wide as his mouth fell apart. “Holy shit.”
“What?”
Aaron’s eyes darted from side to side as he continued reading. “Oh my God.”
“AARON, WHAT?”
He handed me the phone. The headline sucker-punched me in the eyeballs.
WOMAN KILLED BY TEENAGE DRUNK DRIVER KALISPELL, MT—A 16-year-old driver was indicted last Monday for a first offense underage DUI and vehicular homicide after allegedly slamming into another vehicle in a high-speed crash, killing the driver.
The late-night crash occurred Saturday as the teen was driving south on Sunset Boulevard. He ran a red light at the corner of Center Street and hit a car driven by Helen Spinelli, 50. By the time the ambulance arrived, Spinelli was pronounced dead.
“It’s a small town,” said Gary Lamar, who witnessed the scene. “I know both families. It’s an unfortunate tragedy, and really, all you can do is pray for everyone involved.”
Though it is currently uncertain whether or not the teen will be tried as an adult, police have stated that possibility is “not likely.”
“We’re well aware of everyone’s suffering in a situation like this,” said Chief of Police Rodney Bassett. “We’re conducting a very thorough investigation, taking all factors into consideration. We intend for the justice system to work in its most meaningful capacity.”
Helen’s husband, Roger Spinelli, is an English teacher at Happy Valley High School.
I stopped reading.
“No wonder he hates teenagers,” said Aaron. “A teenager killed his wife.”
I looked at the top of the article. It was dated December 22.
“Three days before Christmas,” I said.
“Jesus Christ,” said Aaron.
Jesus Christ, indeed. Most people didn’t know what death did to a person. But I did. If I was Spinelli, I would hate teenagers. I would hate God. I would even hate myself. Because why not?
Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe Page 12
