How to Win at High School

by Owen Matthews

  There’s Alton Di Sousa, starting point guard on the basketball team. Still a junior, but already seeing offers from Division One schools.

  There’s Jessie McGill. She’s dating Paul Nolan. Tall, gorgeous brunette. She looks like that movie star, you know the one. The one who looks like the pop singer.

  There’s Leanne Grayson and Janie Ng. The original BFFs. Their dads work together, some biotech firm. They vacation together in Maui.

  And then there’s Sara Bryant. Sara Bryant rolls into school every day in a cherry-red Porsche convertible. Her dad’s the personal-injury lawyer you see on all the billboards. Big, cheesy smile. Thousand-dollar suit. A full office of rich mahogany and leather-bound books in the background.

  (“Sam Bryant: Help me to help you win the settlement you deserve.”)

  Sara freaking Bryant.

  And she’s beautiful—your prototypical California blonde, somehow marooned up here in the Rust Belt. But not for long, though.

  She’s going to be in movies.

  Everyone knows it.

  She already has an agent and everything.

  Sara freaking Bryant, it turns out, is Adam Higgs’s lab partner. Physics, second period. This would be good news, except that she sits beside him and texts on her iPhone and files her nails and does everything except talk to Adam Higgs.

  She doesn’t even know his name.

  But Adam knows her name. He knows every popular kid’s name. And every day when Sara Bryant breezes into physics and sits down beside him, he watches her and waits. Waits for her to notice him. Waits for a smile. A kind word.

  Anything.

  He’s still waiting.

  14.

  How Adam Higgs came to be at Nixon Collegiate with all these rich kids:

  Easy.

  His dad was laid off.

  His dad was laid off and his measly settlement checks couldn’t cover the mortgage, even with Adam’s mom busting her ass.

  Adam’s parents owned a nice house. East side of town. Three bedrooms upstairs. A finished basement. An aboveground pool and parking for two cars.

  Too expensive.

  The real estate agent didn’t even try to sound hopeful. “Bad timing,” he told Adam’s mom. “The plant’s closing. Nobody’s buying houses right now.”

  What are you going to do, though?

  They took a bath.

  Packed up the nice East End house and migrated westward, to Remington Park. Sounds decent, right?

  Wrong.

  I mean, it’s not dangerous or anything. Just, you know, the houses are small.

  Really small.

  One-story bungalow thingies with one bathroom and shitty little kitchens. Peeling linoleum. Paper-thin walls.

  Adam can hear his mom and dad arguing—

  (About Sam, mostly, because:

  -Adam’s mom doesn’t think Sam should live on his own, but:

  -Adam’s dad says there’s no room to keep him in the house, and:

  -anyway it’s not like he’s completely a cripple, and:

  -this is usually the point where Adam’s mom starts to cry.)

  He can hear Steph’s awful pop music, loud and clear. And she’s wearing headphones, two rooms away.

  Every morning, there’s a line outside the bathroom. The hot water runs out about two showers in. You’re third in the shower, you’re freezing.

  Remington Park.

  The new ’hood.

  Just so happens, a couple streets in the Park fall into the Nixon school zone.

  Just so happens, a few poor kids each year get signed up for Nixon.

  Just so happens, Adam Higgs is one of them.

  15.

  Sam doesn’t have much to do but work at the doughnut shop and think about how great his life was back when he could still walk.

  He’s always talking about how amazing high school used to be. How every year at Riverside just got better.

  The parties.

  The girls.

  The relentless adulation.

  “It’s unbelievable,” he tells Adam. “Freshman and sophomore years were okay and all, man, but junior year is where it really gets dope. You’ll see.”

  Adam just laughs. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m so fucking jealous of you,” Sam tells Adam. “I could have been king of that school.”

  Adam just laughs.

  Sam laughs too. But it’s kind of a hollow laugh.

  16.

  It gets to Adam, you know? It just feels like such a waste.

  (After the accident, Sam:

  -left Riverside

  -spent months in the hospital

  -spent years in rehab

  -stopped going to parties

  -stopped dating pretty girls

  -stopped winning.)

  (Hell, even his friends stopped coming around eventually.)

  And meanwhile, here’s Adam, as able-bodied as can be, a loser. Two years of high school wasted. Another two years left to waste.

  Adam looks at Sam and feels like they’re supposed to trade places. Like the universe would be a better place if Sam Higgs was a junior at Nixon and Adam was just some mope selling coffee at a drive-thru—

  (Cream and sugar?)

  And the worst part is, Adam knows Sam feels the same way.

  17.

  Adam Higgs is sick of being a loser.

  That’s the last thing you need to know.

  18.

  So, some kids, they get sick of being a loser, they take things to the extreme. Maybe they bring a gun to school. Or maybe they hurt themselves.

  (It’s not like Adam has never thought about it.)

  Real talk? High school is hard. It’s hard for everyone. It’s especially hard when you’re the kid nobody likes, when you’re getting your ass kicked by some Neanderthal every day, when you can’t get a date to save your life.

  When the only way to make it through the day is to cut out and smoke a jay in peace somewhere, and even then you’re watching your ass for the vice principal because he already suspended you once this year and the next time they’re talking about kicking you out.

  So yeah, Adam’s thought about going drastic. Couple problems with that strategy, though:

  a)He doesn’t really want to hurt anyone.

  b)He doesn’t really want to be dead.

  That destructive shit, it’s the wrong vibe. Not even an option. It’s like, you’re thirsty, you don’t blow up the water fountain. You sure as hell don’t slit your wrists.

  You’re thirsty? You fucking fight your way up to that water fountain and you drink, motherfucker. You quench your thirst.

  Adam’s thirsty.

  He’s ready to drink.

  19.

  Maybe you know that movie Scarface.

  (If not, you have homework tonight.)

  It’s old, but it’s worth it. And if you’re into hip-hop, you should know that every rapper’s self-styled rags-to-riches mythology mirrors that movie to a T.

  We all want to be Tony Montana.

  You already know that our boy Adam Higgs doesn’t have many friends. And what do you do when it’s summertime and school’s out and your only friend—

  (and we use the term loosely)

  —is a Pizza Hut delivery driver working nights?

  You watch movies, I guess.

  You hang with your crippled older brother.

  You play Xbox.

  Sometimes you jerk off.

  Adam Higgs sees Sam twice a week. Adam plays a lot of Xbox. He’s never had a girlfriend, so you can figure out how much jerking off he does. And when he’s not playing video games or jerking off, he watches a lot of movies. He watches a lot of Scarface.

  And there’s this scene in Scarface, right at the beginning (no spoilers), where Al Pacino arrives in Miami and it’s beautiful, man—a land of opportunity. Women, wealth, everything a guy could want.

  Except it seems like the whole world’s against him. Nobody wants to hang with him, give him a j
ob. The women laugh at him.

  He doesn’t blow up the city.

  He doesn’t walk away.

  He sure as hell doesn’t slit his wrists.

  No, man, he doesn’t do any of those things. He goes to work. Little by little, he takes over the city.

  The world is yours.

  Say hello to my little friend.

  All that jazz.

  Fuck suicide. Scarface is the answer.

  20.

  Adam Higgs walks into Nixon on the first day of junior year and nobody knows his name. Nobody knows a damn thing about him except that he’s another pipsqueak with acne and shitty taste in clothing.

  (And his sister’s, like, the hottest freshman girl in the school.)

  But forget about Steph for a moment.

  See Nixon how Adam sees it:

  That long, lush expanse of front lawn, the whitewashed, country-club facade behind it. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, and the flag atop the flagpole is new and crisp, and all you need is a decent soundtrack and this is a killer tracking shot for the movie.

  To the right of the school is the football field, the big Nixon N on the scoreboard, a bunch of cheerleaders already working on their routines. To the left is the parking lot, all gleaming chrome and cherry paint.

  And everywhere—lawn, school, field, and lot—are the students.

  Stoners.

  Nerds.

  Athletes.

  Actors.

  Band kids.

  Skaters.

  B-girls.

  Baseheads.

  Punks.

  Post-punks.

  Goths.

  Intellectuals.

  Aesthetes.

  Gamers.

  Smokers.

  Hipsters.

  Dancers.

  Thugs.

  Students. Everywhere. In clusters and groups, passing cigarettes and iPhones back and forth. Throwing balls around, Frisbees. Couples holding hands, making out, copping feels.

  Normal kids, most of them. Decent kids. Average. They have friends, most of them. They have boyfriends and girlfriends. They go on dates to the movies and shop at the mall, swipe booze from their parents on weekends, break curfew and throw up in the neighbors’ azalea bushes.

  Normal kids.

  But among them walk the gods.

  You know their names already. Rob Thigpen. Paul Nolan. Alton Di Sousa.

  Jessie McGill. Leanne Grayson. Janie Ng.

  Sara freaking Bryant.

  They jog after the football with that lazy, confident air. They wear the hypest fashions. They have perfect teeth, perfect tans, perfect hair. They are perfect.

  There’s not a girl at Nixon who doesn’t want to fuck Paul Nolan. There’s not a guy who wouldn’t give his left arm to be Rob Thigpen. These are the popular kids. These are the charmed ones.

  These are the people Sam would have become.

  (Until the accident.)

  These are the exact polar opposites of a loser like Adam Higgs.

  21.

  So that’s what our boy sees when he walks up to Nixon on the first day of junior year.

  Adam is two years into a four-year high school career. He’s wasted two years already at Riverside High getting spat on and shat on by the popular kids. He’s sick of it. And he’s sick of having to lie when Sam asks him about school.

  (“You dating any girls yet?”)

  (“Been to any parties?”)

  (“Well, are you making any friends, at least?”)

  (Uhhhh, no.)

  (Sorry, Sam.)

  (Oh, yeah. Tons. *sarcasm*)

  The point is, Adam’s sick of underachieving. He’s sick of feeling like a waste of space and energy. He’s sick of Sam looking at him like he’s a failure, like Sam’s the hungriest guy in the world, but it’s Adam who’s sitting at that Vegas buffet.

  Adam wants to be popular more than he wants anything in the world, and not just for him, but for Sam, too, to maybe give a little bit of meaning to Sam’s life, maybe cheer him up a little.

  Adam’s been thinking about this a lot. He’s been watching a lot of Scarface. He’s been listening to a lot of hip-hop. He rolls into Nixon like he’s Tony Montana on day one in Miami—

  (some runt)

  (some loser)

  (some funny-looking nobody)

  —looking around at a world of opportunity and calculating just how he can make it all his own.

  Adam’s ready to make Nixon his own.

  He’s ready to make Sam proud of him.

  He’s ready to claim what should have been his all along.

  He’s ready to become a god.

  22.

  So how do you take over a high school?

  (Take over? Sounds violent. Invasive. Destructive connotations. Let’s rephrase: How do you win at high school?)

  Winning.

  Like an Xbox game: Unlocking achievements. Racking up a high score. Attaining god mode. Basically becoming THE MAN.

  Winning.

  (“Junior year’s where it all begins, man.”)

  Adam doesn’t sleep at all that first week at Nixon. He racks his brain, trying to work out a Tony Montana strategy, and every day that passes feels like a waste. Unforgivable. It’s time to take action.

  The popular kids are rich. They’re good-looking or they’re good at something. Sports. Music. None of this describes Adam.

  He’s never played an instrument.

  He’s terrible at sports. (Airrrrrrr-ball.)

  And he’s not rich. Not in the slightest.

  Adam figures he’s probably not going to make the football team. He’s not much of a swimmer, either. And he doesn’t have a guitar. But at least he can look like a popular kid.

  Look like a popular kid, be a popular kid.

  Dress for the job you want.

  Pick up the swag.

  Hashtag YOLO.

  At the very least, trash the fucking mom jeans.

  Okay, so step one: Adam gets a job.

  23.

  Brian O’Donnell is pretty sure he can hook Adam up with a job at Pizza Hut.

  “Working in the kitchen or something,” he says. “You want?”

  Adam shrugs. Making pizza isn’t glamorous, but none of the cool stores in the mall will even call him back, not with that hair and that outfit—

  (and don’t even ask about the résumé, because it’s not like Abercrombie & Fitch gives a fuck about thirteen-year-old Adam Higgs’s PennySaver route)

  —and it’s not like Adam has the connections to, say, land a job at his doctor parents’ office, filing paperwork and eating candy bars for twenty bucks an hour like some of the popular kids, so he just shrugs and tells Brian, “How hard can it be to make pizzas?”

  Short answer: it’s not hard.

  Shorter answer: immaterial.

  The manager doesn’t want Adam making pizzas. He wants Adam bussing tables. Not that Adam cares. Same wages. Less responsibility. Less potential for cataclysmic screwups.

  So Adam works. Three or four nights a week, he clears tables for minimum wage. Pizza trays, soda glasses. He cleans baby puke off a high chair. It isn’t glamorous. It isn’t even particularly lucrative. But it gets Adam out of his mom jeans.

  Step one: achieved.

  24.

  Abercrombie.

  Aéropostale.

  American Apparel.

  Armani Exchange.

  Banana Republic.

  Billabong.

  Burberry.

  Campus Crew.

  Cheap Monday.

  Club Monaco.

  Gap.

  Gucci.

  Guess.

  H&M.

  Hollister.

  J.Crew.

  Lacoste.

  Levi’s.

  LRG.

  Naked & Famous.

  Nudie Jeans.

  Pure Blue.

  Ralph Lauren.

  Rag & Bone.

  Topshop.

  True Reli
gion.

  Zara.

  Yeah, you aren’t buying much of that on those Pizza Hut wages. But Adam hits the mall anyway. Cashes his first paycheck. Picks up a couple shirts and a new pair of jeans and bam, the paycheck’s exhausted. Barely enough left over for a Happy Meal.

  It’s a start.

  Adam lies awake all night. The proverbial tossing and turning. Can’t focus his mind, keeps looking over at his new gear hanging on the doorknob, just waiting to be worn. Wakes up the next day and pulls on the new jeans, the fresh polo, and rolls into math class, first period—

  (The school year at Nixon: First semester, four classes, September to January. Second semester, four new classes, February to June.)

  —and right away, this kid beside him, Darren something, looks over and gives him a nod.

  “Hey, man,” Darren says. “Sweet shirt.”

  Darren’s an okay guy. Kinda bland. Kinda average. An okay guy, anyway. And he noticed Adam’s new clothes, which is cool.

  Adam gives Darren a nod back. “Thanks,” he says. “I just picked it up yesterday.”

  “Looks sharp,” Darren says. The math teacher, Hawkins, walks into the room. Darren and Adam watch him fiddle with the attendance sheet. Then Darren leans over again. “You going to Sara Bryant’s party this weekend?”

  Whoa.

  Double-take.

  Party?

  “I don’t know yet,” Adam says, shrugging, nonchalant. “Are you going?”

  Darren shrugs too. “Maybe,” he says. “I might have plans that night, though.”

  “Yeah, I feel you,” Adam says.

  Darren leans closer. “Okay, truth? I don’t even know where Sara Bryant lives. I figured you might know or something.”

  Adam debates this. Bluff or no? “Nah.” He shakes his head. “I have no idea.”

  The bell rings. Hawkins clears his throat. Starts in on the lesson: sine, cosine, tangent.

  Adam isn’t paying attention. He’s thinking about the party.

  It’s just about all he can think about.

  25.

  Sam’s eyes light up when Adam mentions the party.

  “Oh yeah,” he says. “The parties are where it all goes down, buddy. You have to go.”