Don't Care High

by Gordon Korman

  “Now wait a minute! You were the guy who said that this was all over when they announced he was president. Well, that just happened, so it’s finished. Right?”

  “Technically, yes,” Sheldon admitted.

  “Now just what does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go to English.”

  * * *

  Sheldon tried it again at lunch. He and Paul were sitting in the cafeteria at a long table of students, and the conversation was light when he suddenly burst out with: “Hey, what does everybody think of our new president, Mike Otis?”

  A long silence followed.

  “Well, wasn’t anybody paying attention? They announced today that he’s president.”

  “What of?” asked Cindy Schwartz in between bites of her apple.

  “Of you, of me, of all of us! He’s student body president!”

  “So?” inquired half a dozen voices.

  “So nothing!” said Paul positively.

  He was curious to see the effect of the presidency on Mike himself, so he looked forward to photography class with both anticipation and dread. But Mike was inscrutable as always. Mr. Willis was the only one in the room who seemed affected. Before beginning the lecture, he beamed at the back of the classroom and said, “I see we’re honoured to have the student body president himself in our little group.”

  This caused a slight hum, though Paul had expected more. Some of the students — Paul included — turned around to look, but Mike sat immobile and impassive, gazing ahead at points unknown. Paul had the feeling that Mike wouldn’t have reacted if someone had tossed a live grenade behind his desk.

  “Well, we’ve all brought our cameras today,” said Mr. Willis, getting right to business.

  “I didn’t,” chorused half the class.

  “Well,” said the teacher painfully, “I can still give my first lecture on basic composition.”

  Throughout the hour, even though the lesson proceeded as normal, Mr. Willis kept looking at the back of the class and shaking his head intermittently. Class was dismissed fifteen minutes early again, and Paul wondered if he would graduate from this course never having clicked the shutter of a camera.

  After school, Sheldon said he felt like “hanging out” for a while, and Paul saw through it immediately.

  “I know you,” he accused. “You’re looking for Mike Otis, aren’t you?”

  “Not especially,” Sheldon replied casually, “but if we happen to run into him, I see no reason why we shouldn’t congratulate him on his big win.”

  “Sheldon, you promised —”

  “There he is now. What a coincidence.”

  “You’re standing eight feet from his locker,” Paul pointed out, but Sheldon had already run over to the new student body president. This presented Paul with a dilemma. Should he disassociate himself from whatever lunacy his friend had in mind (or hadn’t even thought of yet?!), or in light of the fact that he was already in this thing and would be blamed no matter what, should he stick by Sheldon? That way he might be able to moderate Sheldon’s plans, if not curtail them altogether. Taking a deep breath, he followed Sheldon.

  “Hey, Mike,” said Sheldon genially. “Congratulations!”

  The beady eyes shifted from Sheldon to Paul and back again. “Why?”

  “Student body president,” said Sheldon. “That’s great!”

  Mike shrugged a vague assent and turned back to his locker.

  “Well? What happens next?”

  Mike looked faintly confused. “I’m going home.”

  “No, I mean what are you going to do as president? What’s your first official act going to be?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” repeated Sheldon. “But then why did you become president?”

  Mike shrugged again. “I don’t follow a lot of that stuff.”

  “Well, are you going to meet with Mr. Gamble like he wants?”

  “No.”

  Paul started to laugh and covered it up with a severe coughing spell. There was something to the old adage that you could lead a horse to water, but you couldn’t necessarily make him drink. Mike Otis could become president of the galaxy and it still wouldn’t impress him.

  Mike closed his locker, gave Sheldon a self-conscious bye, and slouched off.

  As soon as Mike was out of earshot, Paul allowed himself to laugh out loud. “Sheldon, you’ve got to stop teasing the poor guy like that. It’s bad enough that you made him president. Now the least you can do is leave him alone.”

  Sheldon seemed abstracted. “If only we could get to know him better.”

  “We know him well enough to know that he doesn’t want anybody to know him better!” snapped Paul. “You were the one who explained to me all about Don’t Care High! Well, I don’t think anything unpredictable has happened here except that you have lost your sense of perspective! Now let’s forget this whole student body president thing and start living normal lives — under the circumstances!”

  “You have no spirit of adventure,” Sheldon complained.

  * * *

  I have no spirit of adventure, Paul thought as he lay in bed that night — and no imagination either. He could not for the life of him see the exquisite joy Sheldon seemed to derive from Mike Otis being student body president. What was the big deal? Yet last year, when some of his friends had put overalls on the school’s statue of Sir David Kilgour on the day of the Queen’s visit, he had stayed out of it, and had been unable to understand the great rejoicing when even Her Majesty had cracked a smile. And the year before that only peer pressure had forced him to participate in submitting the principal’s name and photo in the “Sexiest Man in Saskatchewan” contest. And he had faked his laughter in the celebration when Mr. Phillips had won third prize.

  What was wrong with him? Was it time to come to terms with the fact that he was — dare he say it? — dull?

  A barrage of gunfire signified that the people in the next apartment were watching the late show.

  Cover me! I’m going in there! shouted the hero masterfully.

  Oh no, Steve! came the voice of the leading lady. You’ll never make it through the crossfire!

  You can’t play it safe all the time, baby!

  Sure, Steve, that’s easy for you to say. You’ve read ahead in the script. They’re going to aim fifty thousand cannons at you, and you aren’t even going to get a flesh wound. You won’t have a hair out of place. What do you know?

  In the Paul Abrams version of the story, Steve sneaks out back and leaves town in the middle of the night. This hero hasn’t read the script, and reserves the right to be a snivelling coward.

  Paul could recall all of his friends expressing envy when he’d told them he was moving to New York. And what was he doing in the city? Being afraid of it. Letting the neighbours’ TV blast him out of bed, crouching at his window like a Peeping Tom, watching the people in the building across the street, keeping his mouth shut while Auntie Nancy mixed into his mother’s life and encouraged her to mix back. He had no right to look down on the Don’t Care students. Exactly what was the difference between not caring and caring but not having the guts to do anything about it?

  Back on the late show, they were awarding Steve a medal.

  “Way to go, Steve,” Paul muttered as he drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  After school the next day, Sheldon delivered the crusher.

  “We’re going to follow Mike and see where he goes.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We made him president,” said Sheldon reasonably. “It’s our duty to find out what kind of guy he is.”

  Paul’s first impulse was to refuse flat out. Then he remembered Steve, the late show hero. It was not by refusing flat out that Steve had acquired the medal, not to mention the leading lady. What would Steve do? Refuse? Never. Then again, Steve didn’t know Mike Otis.

  “But we can’t follow him. He has a car, remember?”

  “That’s to our advantage,” She
ldon argued. “Have you ever seen the traffic in this part of town by three-thirty in the afternoon?”

  Still muttering his complaints, Paul followed Sheldon to the bench near the narrow roadway that snaked in and around the high brick walls of the school and opened into the tiny, cramped parking lot nestled under the 22nd Street ramp. The two sat with studied nonchalance, waiting for their prey to drive out. It was ten minutes to four when the car appeared, a shiny black —

  “What is that?” Paul gasped in awe.

  “Wow!” breathed Sheldon. “He just gets cooler every day! Look at that car!”

  The car looked like a German staff car from World War II, with a jet-black paint job that was lustrous and flawless. It seemed a little larger than a staff car, however, and just a little… different. Paul had always taken a keen interest in cars, but he was positive he’d never seen anything exactly like this before. Just when he was coming close to finding a category for it, he’d notice something that didn’t fit, like the front grill, which was a work of art in itself; or the hood ornament, which seemed to depict the birth of Venus. Perhaps the main reason why the whole thing looked so alien was the fact that the man himself was hunched behind the steering wheel, a pair of mirrored sunglasses giving him the appearance of a World War I flying ace.

  “Amazing!” exclaimed Sheldon without reservation.

  He and Paul started on their way as the black behemoth eased into traffic. A woman in a red VW Rabbit, spying Mike in her rearview mirror, stuck her head out the window and gawked at the leviathan behind her, twice the size of her own vehicle.

  Sheldon and Paul walked down the street, pacing themselves with the slow-moving traffic.

  “Shel, I used to be into cars. I had books upon books upon books. I know every kind of car that ever existed, and that isn’t one of them. Shel, what is that thing?”

  “A masterpiece,” said Sheldon. “Let’s cross. He’s turning left.”

  They had no trouble following the car. As Sheldon had predicted, traffic was slow and plodding. They lost sight of Mike only once, but a mad dash through a moving fleet of taxis got them caught up. About half a mile from the school, the great black automobile wheeled out of the line of traffic and disappeared down the tunnel of an underground parking garage.

  Sheldon and Paul jogged up.

  “No problem,” said Sheldon. “We’ll just wait for him to come out, and follow him home.”

  They found a newsstand a discreet distance away. Sheldon bought a paper, and they both hid behind it, keeping their eyes trained on the two exits. People came and went, but not Mike. After twenty minutes, they abandoned their position and circled the perimeter of the garage. There were no other doors.

  “Strange,” Sheldon commented.

  “Maybe he’s doing something with the car inside the garage,” Paul suggested. “Like… uh… I don’t know. Trying to figure out what the blasted thing is. Oh, let’s just get out of here! We’ve seen him stare for twenty minutes at a locker; who knows how long he could spend with a whole garage? We could be here till midnight!”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sheldon admitted grudgingly. “But I know a place not far from here where they serve a slice of pizza that’s not to be believed.”

  Paul made a face. “The last time you ‘knew a place,’ I was up all night with my insides on fire. And it’s almost suppertime. My mother’s pretty free with her lectures, you know, and the one about spoiling your supper is a classic I’ve heard all too often.”

  “We can’t pass this up,” Sheldon insisted. “The tomato sauce is so amazing that they’ve patented it under the name Rocco. Just one slice won’t ruin your appetite. Come on.”

  * * *

  “… so I said to Nancy, ‘You have money. If you want the dishwasher, buy it yourself and Harry won’t say anything.’ So she said to me, ‘That’s not enough. Harry has to want it, too.’ Paul, you’re not eating.”

  Paul shifted in his chair, and the tomato sauce patented under the name Rocco resettled itself. “I’m just not very hungry tonight.”

  Mr. Abrams looked up from his plate. “I’ve got to apologize, son. I’m so busy lately that I hardly ever see you. But tell me, how’s the new school going?”

  Tears formed in Paul’s eyes. His father thought they arose from the emotional content of the question. Paul knew they were from Rocco. “Well, it’s not like Kilgour, Dad. It’s kind of a weird school. You see, nobody cares. They all look like zombies, and nobody participates in class or asks any questions. It’s not very good.”

  “Well,” said his father, “are you sure a lot of that couldn’t be explained away by the fact that it’s in such a big city? Remember, we’re not in the boonies anymore.”

  Paul winced. “We’re not in the boonies anymore” had been a big catch-phrase for the move, designed to make New York more palatable, and put down Saskatoon. Paul had always thought Saskatoon was rather nice.

  “Well, I don’t know, Dad. Would you believe that they actually call the place Don’t Care High?”

  “I think that’s just terrible,” said Paul’s mother. “Who was this Don Carey, anyway?”

  Paul shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I think he invented the sewer or something.”

  Mr. Abrams looked thoughtful. “No, the Romans did that.”

  “Maybe they forgot about it after the Romans,” Paul said irritably, “and Don Carey revived the art.”

  “I don’t think that’s very funny,” said his mother primly. “And sewers certainly aren’t table conversation.”

  “Sorry,” said Paul. “I’m not feeling very well.” Why bother these poor people with matters that were beyond their control in the first place? “Maybe things will get better,” he added with a strange smile. “We have a new student body president.”

  4

  May I have your attention, please. Here are today’s announcements:

  The Chess Club would like to list all those students who signed up this year: Seth Birenbaum. I am instructed to point out that, as soon as we have an opponent, we can forego the regular season games and the sudden-death elimination play-offs and go right to the finals for the championship trophy. There also appears to be a shortage of volunteers for the committee to go out and buy the championship trophy. Good luck, Seth.

  Don Carey has again dropped out of the varsity football tournament due to heavy merging traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway. This will come as no great shock to you, since the attendance at last week’s tryouts was one — Coach Murphy.

  Finally, Mr. Gamble would like to remind student body president, Mike Otis, that staff members are still willing and anxious to meet with him, although he has made no effort to see anyone thus far in his term of office.

  That’s all. Have a good day.

  In chemistry class that day, Daphne Sylvester showed further signs of being alive. When Paul’s Bunsen burner decided to go up in a pillar of flames, she actually demonstrated concern for his welfare by saying, “Okay?” which seemed to be a shortened version of “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” breathed Paul, his hand still on the gas knob. “And my eyebrows will probably grow back.”

  Daphne didn’t appear to appreciate this brave attempt at humor. Her attention, such as it was, had wandered back to Wayne-o, who was burning his name into the counter with pure, concentrated sulfuric acid. He was later caught at this, and Mr. Schmidt decided to mark him absent.

  In geography, the first of the presentations on “The Industrial Giants” began. Samuel Wiscombe led off with a presentation on Japan. He walked to the front of the class and began to set up various maps, charts and graphs, much to the delight of Mrs. Wolfe. He perched on the teacher’s desk, took out a small stack of notes written on file cards and began his introduction.

  “This project deals with the economic factors affecting the direction of industry in China —”

  “That’s Japan!” shrieked Mrs. Wolfe.

  Samuel shrugged. “Same difference.” />
  When Mrs. Wolfe turned away from admonishing Samuel, she found her class stoic as always, with the exception of Sheldon and Paul, who were red-faced with laughter, tears running down their cheeks.

  “You two! Out!”

  The two boys couldn’t even manage an apology. They got to their feet and stumbled out into the hall, still laughing.

  “Well,” gasped Sheldon, finally getting himself under control, “we seem to find ourselves with a two-hour lunch. So do we head for the cafeteria and dine on mildew, or do we check out the limitless vista of establishments our fair city has to offer?”

  “I’ll settle for the mildew,” said Paul feelingly. “It’s safer. Besides, I’ve got to study for my French test this afternoon.”

  Sheldon winced. “There’s that ambition again. I thought you had it under control. Every now and then you just plain turn into a student. It’s disgusting.”

  They had lunch, and Paul excused himself, saying he was heading for the library to study.

  “Have you ever been in our library?” Sheldon called after him. “The lighting’s so bad you can’t see to read.”

  When Paul got to his locker, it was not, however, his French book he pulled out; it was his 35mm camera, which he slung over his shoulder. And his destination was not the library but the parking lot. Guilt for excluding Sheldon from this mission was not his major emotion — it was embarassment. But his embarassment did not outweigh his curiosity. Mike Otis’s car had to be something, but what?

  As he left the school building and stepped onto the broken pavement of the parking lot, he observed that, if an exiting vehicle ever jumped the guardrail on the 22nd Street ramp, it would drive right into Feldstein’s stairwell. Then he saw Mike’s car. It was bigger, shinier and blacker than anything on the lot.

  Camera at the ready, he examined the car from hood ornament to taillights. There were absolutely no identifying marks, with the exception of the Roman number VIII in tiny chrome letters on the back right-hand fender. Glancing furtively around him, he began to snap pictures of the car from every conceivable angle. This done, he returned to his locker, feeling self-conscious and not just a little foolish.