by David Lubar
On the way out of homeroom, the new girl—her name was Lee—said, “Your speech moved me to tears. I voted for you. You owe me ten dollars.” She held her hand out.
I stared at the black fishnet sleeve that covered her arm.
“Duh,” she said. “Joking.”
She turned and walked off before I could say anything clever.
“Good luck,” Patrick said at the end of the day.
“Thanks. But I don’t have a prayer.”
“Come on. You’ve got to at least kind of think that you could possibly win.”
“I guess.” Maybe he was right. Even though I knew for sure that I wouldn’t win, I also sort of thought I might. It didn’t make sense, but that’s how it was. Everyone who was running probably thought the same thing. Which meant six of us were wrong.
I’d find out soon enough.
October 17
I hope you’re sitting down. I mean, sitting down when you read this. Right now, I guess you’re floating. I wonder if you can blow bubbles? Ick.
Anyhow, here’s the shocking news. I won. My speech worked. I’m a student-council member. Can you believe that? It would be great, except that Julia lost. I made it and she didn’t. I’ll bet you saw that coming. You’re probably laughing your head off at me while you’re reading this. Your squishy, transparent, fishlike head with beady little black dots for eyes.
Mouth lost. He only got three votes. But he came right up to me and said, “Congratulations.” That’s a shortened version.
I wanted to tell Julia that I was sorry she’d lost. But I figured she wouldn’t want to be reminded of it. Especially by someone who won. Oh crap—I didn’t even think about that. I probably just killed any chance I had. Not that I had a chance. Though I sort of thought I did, even though I know I don’t. Like I thought I had a chance to win the election.
Friday afternoon, I could see Patrick’s grin from all the way down the hall.
“Now what?” I asked when I reached him and Kyle.
“We have to go,” he said.
I looked at the poster he was pointing to. There was a harvest dance next week, right after the game. “No way.”
“You have to go,” Kyle said. “Unless you’re planning to spend the next four years with your nose in a book.”
“No argument,” Patrick said. “We’re going. It’s for your own good. Someday, you’ll thank us for dragging you out into the world.”
I reached inside my backpack. “I’ll tell you what. While we’re doing each other favors, let me do one for you.” I handed him my copy of Ender’s Game.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just read it. Trust me.”
“Weird title.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“I’m sort of busy.”
“With what? You told me you aren’t getting much homework. Just give it a try. Okay?”
He shrugged. “I’ll see.”
“What about the game tonight? You going?”
He shook his head. “I think I’d rather read a book.”
Back at home, I found myself facing another interesting weekend. Mom suddenly realized that we didn’t live in a house—we lived in a baby-mauling machine. My God, the horrors that surrounded us. Electricity running through the walls. The horror! Deadly poisons behind the cabinets. Beware! Sharp tools. Heavy objects. Zillions of plastic bags. Mold spores by the billion! It’s a wonder Bobby and I survived the sharp-edged, smothering, high-voltage death trap we called home.
Mom went on a mission to remedy the situation. She drafted Dad to help. I suspect that eventually there’ll be nothing in the house except foam-rubber furniture and rodent decals.
October 20
Hey, you awake in there? Got a question for you. I’ve been trying to figure something out. Sadly, you’re the only entity who’s available at the moment. Anyhow, here’s the question. I’m thinking about doing my next article as a series of couplets. They’re easy to write. It’s just two lines that rhyme. Like, if you were describing one of our football games, you could say:
We had the ball.
Not at all.
Sometimes, a couplet has a title that’s longer than the poem.
Our Quarterback’s Strategy for Finding a Receiver
He threw each pass
Right at the grass.
You get the idea. And don’t worry, I’m smart enough not to write anything that will get me in trouble. Like:
A Brief History of Panther Touchdowns
Vernon
Didn’t earn ‘em.
So what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Send me a message. Kick once for yes and twice for no. Wait, I forgot, you probably don’t have any muscles yet. Or feet.
Oh, ick,
You can’t kick.
{fourteen}
monday, in English, Mr. Franka said, “My friends, allow me to introduce you to Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
After we’d stopped laughing at his name, we spent the period reading his poems. While I wasn’t super thrilled by his stuff, Mr. Franka mentioned that his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wrote Frankenstein. He also told us that the two of them were friends with Byron. And they all hung out with this other guy named Polidori, who’d written a vampire story. Now I knew I had to get my hands on that ghost poem.
Tuesday, we studied haiku. Wednesday, we got our school pictures. I had no idea that my hair was that weird after gym class. I looked like a chipmunk. Mom went all gooey when she saw the picture, like she doesn’t see me live and in person every single day. But she’d been pretty emotional the last couple weeks. She cried a lot when she watched movies on TV. Even during funny shows. I think there’s more going on inside her than Dad and I will ever understand.
I got cornered by Mouth on Thursday at the bus stop. “Hey, ready for the dance?” he asked.
I glanced over at Julia and tried to think of some reply that would lure her into the conversation. But Mouth didn’t leave me an opening.
“What are you planning to wear? I bought a new shirt. It’s got stripes, so it makes me look taller. Girls like tall guys. Your brother is real tall, isn’t he? I don’t know if I should wear shoes or sneakers. What are you wearing?” He actually paused long enough for me to slip in an answer.
“Sneakers,” I told him.
“That’s what I thought. But what if everyone else is wearing shoes? Maybe I can put a pair of shoes in my locker. Extra shirts, too. Because I sweat a lot. Mom says I have a fast metabolism. I go through deodorant like crazy. I tried a roll-on, but I think a stick works better for me. I don’t want to use a spray because you can breathe it in, which is a big waste since lungs don’t sweat, right? I mean, there’s no way they could, because then we’d all drown. Imagine that. Drowning in your own sweat.”
At that point, I stopped listening and passed the time composing couplets. Such as:
Me dance?
Fat chance.
I went to the dance right from the game. I wore old sneakers and an old shirt. It didn’t matter. I could have dressed in a tux or wrapped myself in aluminum foil. The result would still have been the same. Patrick, Kyle, and I stood near the wall the whole time, drinking store-brand soda and eating those really cheap potato chips—the ones that are so thin you can read through them and so greasy they almost slip out of your fingers.
We had a contest to see who could whistle first after eating a handful of chips. We usually did that with crackers, but sometimes you need to improvise. Patrick won. The floor lost.
As I looked around the gym, I had this scary thought that I couldn’t help sharing. “What if this is as good as it gets? We might look back years from now and think how great life was when we were freshmen.”
Patrick shook his head. “Don’t say that. It has to get better.”
Kyle glared at Mitch, who was dancing with his girlfriend. “Hey, if a loser like him can get a girl, so can I.”
I nodded as a show of support, but didn’t bother to
lie out loud.
None of us danced. We just kept pushing one another and saying, “Ask her.” “No, you ask her.” “No, you ask her.”
Mouth actually asked a bunch of different girls to dance. It was painful to watch. The scene reminded me of a bee trapped in a window. He’d buzz over and explore a spot, discover there was no opening, drop back and hover for a while, then try another spot. The bees never find a way out. Their dried corpses litter the windowsills.
But maybe I shouldn’t feel sorry for him. He didn’t seem to feel any pain. In a way, he was better off than the rest of us.
Julia was there. Dancing with Vernon. She was a great dancer. Vernon, on the other hand, moved like a cardboard robot from a really cheap science-fiction movie. When I watched them together, I felt like someone was cutting small holes in my lungs with a sharp knife.
Saturday afternoon, Patrick called to tell me he was halfway through the book and really enjoying it.
Sunday, he called again.
“Finish the book?” I asked. I wondered what to give him next.
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t it great?”
“Yup.”
He sounded weird. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re moving.”
“Where?”
“Texas. My dad got transferred. We’re leaving next month.”
“Crap. That’s halfway across the country.”
“Yeah. Crap.”
October 29
I tried something different. I wrote about the football game in the form of a play.
The dance was pretty awful. I’m not doing that again.
This is stupid. I don’t want to talk about my article or the dance. What I want is to punch my wall real hard. A bunch of times. I can’t believe Patrick is moving. We’ve been friends since second grade. That’s like almost my whole life. He can’t leave. It’s not right. How can his dad do this to him? All parents ever do is screw things up for their kids.
• • •
“Take arms against a sea of troubles,” Mr. Franka said. He always paced in front of us when he recited stuff, as if the power of the words gave him so much energy he couldn’t stand still. “Recognize it?”
A bunch of us said, “Shakespeare.”
“Right. But think about that line. ‘Take arms against a sea of troubles.’ Anyone troubled by it?”
I’d heard that line a bunch of times, but I’d always let the words run through my brain without examining them. Now I saw the problem. I was pretty sure that arms meant weapons or battle or something like that. Why would you take weapons against a sea of anything? It didn’t make sense.
As I sat there deep in thought, Julia raised her hand. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“Exactly!” Mr. Franka increased his pacing speed. “It’s what we call a mixed metaphor. In Shakespeare’s case, he can pull it off. But lesser writers can really drop the ball. Or, to use a mixed metaphor, they can fumble the beans.”
He gave us a couple more examples, then asked us to come up with some of our own. Toward the end of class, he said, “In a similar vein, we have oxymorons. Words that seem to contradict each other. Jumbo shrimp is a classic example. Those are words that just don’t belong together.”
Like Julia and Vernon, I thought. They definitely didn’t belong together. Mr. Franka might be able to explain all about language, but I needed to take this particular issue to a different expert.
“Why do girls go out with jerks?” I asked Mom when I got home from school.
“Lots of reasons. Maybe they don’t think the boy is a jerk. Or maybe they’re just going through their bad-boy stage.”
“Bad-boy stage?” That didn’t sound encouraging.
“Don’t worry. Most of them grow out of it. And then they’ll notice there are nice boys like you to date.”
“How long does that take?”
“It depends. Not long for the smart girls.”
Well, that, at least, was a glimmer of hope. Julia was definitely smart. Not that she’d leap into my arms if she left Vernon. At least, not outside my dreams.
October 31
Happy Halloween. I can’t wait to dress you up in a costume. A mummy would be cool. It would be a good chance for me to practice my fishing knots. Of course, that’s assuming Mom doesn’t go for something a bit cuter. Either way, there are only two things you need to remember. Number one—share your candy.
Number two—I get first choice.
{fifteen}
he’s trying to kill us,” I gasped. Bits of frost coated my words as they left my mouth.
“Cold air is good for us,” Kyle said.
“Maybe if we were TV dinners.” I couldn’t believe Mr. Cravutto was still dragging the class outside. “Doesn’t he own a calendar? Or a thermometer?”
I wasn’t the only one complaining. Nearly everyone tried to point out to Mr. Cravutto that the weather had turned slightly brisk. He didn’t care. He stood there and shouted, “Suck it up, babies. Make your own heat! Come on, hustle!”
I wondered what it felt like to have sweat freeze on your face. I had a sinking suspicion I was going to find out. All I could think about was those Jack London stories where people were stuck in the Yukon wilderness as the temperature plunged to forty below zero. I really didn’t want my toes to break off. Or my nose. If that made me a big baby, I could live with it.
Mom and Dad spent most of the weekend shopping for a mobile to hang over the crib. They hadn’t bought a crib yet, but the logic and order of their purchases was just another of the many mysteries of birth.
Monday, after school, I went to my first student-council meeting. All we did was talk about ways to improve school spirit. I tried to suggest some ideas, but the older kids completely ignored the freshmen. This did little for our spirit.
Tuesday, life took an unusual twist. Everyone has something he checks out. Dad’s interested in cars. Mom notices babies. Ever since Kyle got a Rolex watch from his rich grandfather last year, he’s always looking at people’s wrists. Patrick knows every brand and style of sneaker. The way he walks around gazing at feet, he’s going to end up with a bent neck.
As for me, if I see anyone carrying a book, I try to spot the title and author. It’s always nice when someone’s reading something you like. Though half the time I look at books now, I end up staring at whatever junk Mouth just reviewed.
On the way out of homeroom, I noticed that Lee was carrying a paperback. I didn’t recognize it. I sped up and glanced at the book as I went by, figuring I could do it without her noticing. I’d expected something really dark, like Anne Rice or H. P. Lovecraft. Instead, peeking out at me from the front cover, I saw the name S. Morgenstern. I was so surprised, I stopped walking.
I guess she noticed I was staring. Which she should be pretty used to, what with the pins in her face, the green hair, the eight pounds of mascara, the weird shirts, and all.
I didn’t want her to think I was staring at her face or clothes or anything, so I pointed to the book and said, “Morgenstern …” One of the best books ever is The Princess Bride. It’s by William Goldman. The cool thing is, the book itself is supposed to be about a book that Goldman read when he was a kid. So Goldman made up this author, S. Morgenstern. As far as I knew, the only book “written” by S. Morgenstern was The Princess Bride.
It’s always great to find out that a favorite author has a book you didn’t know about. It’s like thinking you finished your soda but then you grab the can and there’s still some left. Only it’s a thousand times better.
She held up the cover. The Silent Gondoliers: A Fable by S. Morgenstern. “You like Goldman?”
I nodded. Now that we were face-to-face, I really didn’t want to start a conversation. Ick—I think she’d just gotten another ring in her nose. Not that I kept count. If civilization ever broke down, she could probably survive for months by bartering all that metal for food.
“You like The Princess Bride?” she asked.
“Ah, I see you’re the strong, silent type.”
While I was trying to think of something to say, or some way to avoid saying anything, she tucked the book under her arm and headed down the hall. On the back of her shirt, in a sea of black, a yellow pair of Cheshire-cat eyes, hovering above a smug smile, stared at me.
Later that afternoon, between sixth and seventh period, she glanced toward me as we passed in the hall. I sort of nodded, out of reflex. But I hurried away. I didn’t want her to start talking to me. She was just too weird.
• • •
November 7
It’s weird. I’ve known Julia since I was little. But we drifted in different directions. When we pass each other in the hall, she never even looks at me. I’ve sort of nodded at her a couple times, but they were the small nods a guy uses when he isn’t sure he’s going to get anything in return.
What would have happened if we’d stayed friends? Would she have dumped me when she turned gorgeous? I’d like to think not, but I have no idea. I guess I really don’t know anything about her except that she’s beautiful and smart. Does that make me shallow? I don’t care. I want her to notice me. I want her to like me and laugh at my jokes and walk down the street holding my hand. I hope I figure some of this stuff out. Not just for your sake, Smelly. For mine, too.
Oh great. It just hit me. You’re going to be exactly like Bobby, with girls following you all around and everything. I’ll get to watch it again. No. I’m not going to wimp out. We’ve read all these poems in English about guys who worshipped someone from afar and never spoke up. No way that’s happening to me.
Tomorrow morning, I’m going to say hi to Julia. That’s all. I’ll just walk up to her at the bus stop and say hi. There’s no reason not to.
