The Odd 1s Out

by James Rallison

  You never forget the moment when that realization hits you. Hopefully you won’t be wearing a stupid T-shirt at the time, like I was. Until then, I had never really considered that style was a thing.

  I know most everyone picks up on these social clues earlier than I did. If you haven’t already picked up on them, I’m really sorry, and also don’t worry about picking up on them, because what you wear ultimately doesn’t matter. Save yourself; be happy while you still can.

  Anyway, up until this point, on PE days, I’d worn my basketball shorts underneath my jeans. That way, no one saw my underwear when I changed. I may not have been cool but I was practical. And self-conscious. Now I finally realized that none of the cool people wore shorts underneath their jeans. Cool people don’t care if you see their boxers. At least not in the locker room. (I think they might care in math class, though.)

  Now that I’ve grown up, I’ve got this cool thing mastered. So sit down, kids. Wait, you’re probably already sitting. Well, stop slouching and sit down more seriously because I’ve been through seventh grade and survived it. I mean, barely, but still. Here are some tips for you to follow so you can be just as cool as me.

  1. Wear low socks. The lower the cooler. If you’re really cool, people shouldn’t even be able to tell you’re wearing socks. If the only low socks in your house are for the opposite gender, so be it. Be cool and put them on. Your socks may slip down your heels and bunch together in an uncomfortable lump at the bottom of your shoes, but no one said coolness doesn’t require sacrifice. When people start to question whether or not you can afford socks, you know you’ve done it right.

  2. Wear skinny jeans with holes in them. If you have to pick between skinny jeans and jeans with holes, pick skinny jeans. You can make the holes later. Your jeans should be so tight that you can’t bend down. If you need to pick up something on the floor—too bad. That’s the level of skinny we’re talking about. Be prepared for old, uncool people to frequently make comments to you like “Why do you pay for pants with holes in them?” And “How do you even fit in those jeans?” Ignore these people. When they were in seventh grade, they wore knee socks.

  3. Wear something with a skull on it. Now some of you might be thinking, “James, all this advice sounds like you’re just trying to be edgy.” Yeah, well, that was the sort of thing that was cool when I was in seventh grade. Wearing the remains of dead people is a fashion choice. Also, try to listen to songs with depressing, angsty lyrics. Cool doesn’t necessarily mean happy. You gave up happiness when you started caring about what other people think.

  4. When heading to the cafeteria for lunch, don’t run ahead of everyone to be at the front of the lunch line. For some reason, cool people don’t do this. Personally, I would rather eat first, but whatever. I don’t make the rules. Except in this case.

  Don’t get excited about anything, ever. Cool people are too cool to actually care about things.

  5. Wear a shirt that says, “I’m cool.” This will trick people into thinking you’re cool.

  Seriously. Just go look around your school and see how many people are wearing designer labels.

  • • •

  In case you’re doubting all my advice, I’ll have you know that after months of implementing these exact methods, I finally got noticed.

  No, just kidding. That’s not what happened. But one of the popular girls came up to me in class and gave me an invitation to her thirteenth birthday party. You may not know this, but turning thirteen is a big deal because it means you’re legally a teenager. You finally get to add the word “teen” to the end of your age.

  The girl was having a swim party in her backyard. She had a huge house with an amazing pool that ran right up next to a man-made lake. Stray ducks could just glide by you as you swam. That’s cool. If you don’t have stray ducks in your pool, just give up trying now. You’ll never be as cool as this thirteen-year-old girl I knew.

  Anyway, going to a pool party meant that not only was I going to be with the popular people, I was going to be shirtless with the popular people. It was all part of hanging out with the elite.

  Unfortunately, there were three problems with going shirtless:

  One, I have an indented chest. I sort of look like someone punched me in between the nipples. It does come in handy when I’m lying down. Then I have a place to put snacks.

  Two, I also had stretch marks all across my back from an intense growth spurt. Imagine tiger claw marks but without the good story to explain them. They’ve faded now, but in seventh grade they were purple.

  Three, I didn’t have abs. And all seventh graders need to have abs. That’s the sign of a cool dude. (Make that my tip number six: Have abs.) So for the week leading up to the party, I did sit-ups in my room every night for as long as I could.

  You’re probably thinking, “This sounds like something an insecure person would do.” Well, yeah. I never said cool people weren’t insecure.

  I had an idea that would take care of both the stretch marks and the indented chest. I decided to wear a towel hanging over my shoulder that covered my chest and back, sort of like a Greek toga. Then when I got to the party, I would quickly hop in the pool and never get out.

  When the big day came, I was ready.

  I confidently went to the party and was shown to the pool. All the popular people were there. I knew who they were, although I don’t know if they knew who I was. There were also quite a few of the not-so-popular people around the pool. Like, the birthday girl obviously invited a lot of people from our grade. I think she just wanted the presents.

  Oddly enough, my twin sister didn’t get invited.

  So after all of my intense preparation and training, being at the party turned out to be a lot like being at school—except I was shirtless and my stomach hurt from all the sit-ups I’d done.

  Some of you reading this book might be in seventh grade or starting seventh grade soon. Maybe you’re an adult who still doesn’t feel cool. I could say something cheesy like “Be yourself.” Or “You’ll be fine. It’s only seventh grade.”

  Instead, I’m going to tell you the truth: No matter who you are, you will be awkward in seventh grade. And when you’re older, you’ll still feel awkward sometimes. There are no real cool people.

  You might think, “But I’m pretty mature for my age. I wear skeletons.”

  No. You’re still not cool. Just get through the seventh grade. One day you will morph out of your tadpole-like stage and become a beautiful butterfly. I mean, frog. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. You’ll be better than a seventh grader.

  Chapter 4

  Perks of Being the Younger Brother

  People have always compared me to my older brother, Luke. It’s easy to do, considering we’re polar opposites in many ways. He has curly brown hair. I have straight blond hair. Even as a child he was tall and muscular, while I was short and skinny. I wanted to be a cartoonist when I grew up. He wanted to be an assassin. They’re both unreasonable dreams, really. (We’re, like, 57 percent sure he was joking.)

  Even at a preschool age, Luke was much bigger than me. When I was four years old, I wore the shoes he’d worn as a two-year-old. And since he was three years older than me, he was always faster, more mature, and better at just about everything. Luke did gymnastics for years and because of that, he was always much stronger than me and anyone I’d ever met. He liked to play rough, push me, pin me to the floor, that sort of stuff.

  When I was a freshman in high school, Luke was a senior. At freshman orientation, some of Luke’s senior football friends came up to me. (Did I mention that he was also a starting player on the football team? It probably didn’t need saying.) One of his friends looked at me and said, “You’re not nearly as muscular as Luke.”

  Some people might have felt bad in that situation, but at that point I was used to feeling bad. I had trained for it a
ll of my life. Without missing a beat, I said,

  Because it was true. We can’t all be Lukes.

  But being a younger brother also has its advantages. Historically, older brothers used to get all the inheritance. Since then, younger brothers have made great strides. Now all older brothers get is the right to be Player 1 in video games. So being an older brother isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

  Older siblings are supposed to be the responsible ones, so whenever the two of us would get in trouble, he’d take all the blame.

  Luke had a serious sweet tooth. At our house, nothing containing sugar was safe from him. Mom made cookies? Instantly gone. I spent Halloween night going to all the right houses and getting the perfect mix of candy? Gone by morning. My parents hid chocolate chips in the pantry behind cans of green beans, and Luke used his stealthy assassin skills to steal them. My parents finally put a lock on their closet door and hid the key so that they could keep sweets in the house without having them immediately disappear.

  One day when I was about seven and Luke was ten, my parents forgot to lock their closet and foolishly left a three-pound bag of Skittles completely unprotected.

  Luke found them.

  For some reason, he believed that he wouldn’t get in trouble for eating all the Skittles if nothing remained of the crime. Stealing Logic 101: You have to get rid of the evidence. He knew he wouldn’t be able to eat the entire bag while Mom was out, so he enlisted my help.

  You know how adults always tell you that if you eat too much candy you’ll get sick, but you never do? Well, that’s because you’ve never eaten three pounds of it. Three pounds is how much a small Chihuahua weighs. We ate the equivalent of a Skittle Chihuahua. But we accomplished our goal.

  When my mom came home, she was none the wiser. Totally didn’t notice the missing Skittles bag or the fact that our tongues were multicolored. Everything would have been fine if I hadn’t blown our cover.

  You might be expecting me to say that I slipped up and mentioned the candy. But no. I kept the secret. Unfortunately, my stomach didn’t. The Skittles wanted to make a reappearance. And they did, when I threw up all over the family room carpet.

  The thing about throwing up Skittles is that it’s pretty obvious that you ate something rainbow-colored.

  I didn’t have to fess up. The proof was in the pudding, or in this case, the rainbow-colored throw-up.

  For punishment, my mom always handed out extra chores. Luke had to go to the backyard and pull weeds. And I got to lie on my bed and recover. When Luke protested that this wasn’t fair, my mom said,

  As I said, there are advantages to being the youngest.

  But this wasn’t the only time I got into trouble with my brother. Remember how I said Luke wanted to be an assassin? I wasn’t totally joking. One of the video games he always played was Prince of Persia. In the game, the main character does cool parkour. He runs up and across walls, does backflips, and has a dagger that can turn back time. Luke took a lot of inspiration from this character and was determined to try some moves himself. Since he was in gymnastics, he knew what he was doing.

  Sort of. He wasn’t that good at it. (Sorry if you’re reading this, bro.) With one hand on the banister, he tried to run horizontally around our stairwell.

  His first step went right through the wall.

  No matter how unobservant your parents are, there are some things they are bound to notice. Like foot-sized holes in the stairwell.

  Thinking of the simplest solution to avoid a lot of extra chores, I ran up to my room and grabbed a “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster. (Back then it wasn’t a dead meme. I thought it was inspirational.)

  Before I had a chance to get tape, my mom walked out of her room and began heading down the stairs. I just stood there, holding the poster over the hole, and said,

  My mom walked by and said,

  and then she just walked away. I’m still dumbfounded to this day at how well my plan worked.

  Of course, the poster technique didn’t work for long. Mom vetoed our decorating attempts and found the hole.

  Let’s just say she didn’t follow the instructions on the poster.

  I believe our yard was free of weeds for several weeks afterward.

  Besides getting you into trouble, older brothers have other good purposes. Being Luke’s younger brother taught me a valuable lesson: It’s okay to be number two. It’s okay to lose at every video game and board game. As Luke grew more competitive, I became less so. Now that I’m older, if I’m playing a video game with somebody, sometimes I lose on purpose just to make the other person happy. And I always feel a little bad when someone else loses because I know how they feel. I used to experience that feeling every day, repeatedly.

  Plus, when you’re doing something awkward or cringey, older brothers tell you. Kinda like a bully who also loves you.

  I guess at this point, I should mention that I have a little sister, which technically makes me an older brother too. I do my best to fulfill the older brother role and frequently tell her when she’s doing something wrong.

  In conclusion, older brothers make us who we are today: anxious, traumatized, and slightly neurotic. So thanks, older brothers, you’re the best!

  Chapter 5

  Freshman Year:

  Accidentally Dating My Sister (Not Clickbait)

  Starting ninth grade is probably the worst decision I’ve ever made.

  Okay, I didn’t actually have that much choice in the matter. The educational system made me go to high school. But if I could go back in time and change anything about my life, it would be my entire ninth grade career. High school is such a weird time to be a person.

  Luckily, I wasn’t that social in high school, which left me plenty of time to draw comics. I went to very few parties and at the ones I did go to we played Magic: The Gathering or watched Disney movies. So, yeah, those parties were always pretty crazy.

  High school is nothing like it looks in the movies. No one sings, there’s no catchy dance numbers, and in Arizona no one even has lockers. Schools don’t trust kids to have lockers. Nope. Too much responsibility. Lockers only lead to trouble.

  But I didn’t go to a public school in ninth grade. I went to a preparatory school that made us wear uniforms, wake up early, and use lockers. (Responsibility!) Now, don’t go thinking that attending preparatory school turned me into some preppy smart person. Maybe the opposite happened.

  The school was so small that everyone in the same grade knew each other. For the ninth graders, there were four possible sections to be placed in and everyone in your section had classes together. We didn’t switch around like the working-class public school. None of that mixing, mingling, and making new friends for us. We had to look at the same faces all day long, all year.

  When my twin sister, Faith, and I went to the school with our mom to pick up our schedules, we weren’t expecting to be together for every single class—including French, which was a language I didn’t even want to learn.

  It turns out, our mom requested that we be in the same section. Because apparently, she didn’t think we could handle being in high school on our own. Which is strange because Faith and I had only been in the same classes together up until the second grade. After that we split up and would only ever see each other on weekends, like kids in a divorced family who picked different parents. So we were pretty used to not having classes together.

  Initially neither of us was happy about being in a section together.

  Mom said she could talk to the administration and request that we be split up, and asked which one of us wanted to switch schedules.

  Here’s the thing, though: Neither of us wanted to be the one to switch. We were too socially anxious and awkward to go through the bother. So in some ways, it’s a good thing we had each other. Well played, Mom.

  Anyway, that’s how we ended u
p in the same section.

  After the shock of having my sister in every single class wore off, I found that there were some advantages to having a more responsible twin in class with me. She could help me with my homework.

  She remembered what the lessons were.

  And she helped me take tests.

  So since Faith and I didn’t know anyone, we sat next to each other in all of our classes. As the school year went on, we got to know more people and made new friends. It was a long year of waking up early, writing pages of essays, and having to deal with lockers, but soon it was all going to be over.

  Then one day—it was about the second-to-last week of school and classes had just ended—Faith and I were walking back to our lockers. While we went down the hallway, I thought of this random joke. Keep in mind, we were both fourteen, so you know, we were still kind of weird: puberty and stuff. I turned to my sister and said, “Faith, you know what would be funny: if you bump into someone and then say, ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you. Let me apologize with my sympathy rub.’”

  And then I proceeded to rub my sister’s arm, slowly and gently, because that’s what a sympathy rub is.