“Oh, my gosh. My little sister is constantly talking about ‘Frozen.’ She watches it practically every day when she gets home from school, and then she tells me all about it, like she did the day before, and the day before that.”
“Try buying some quiet time with a joke.”
“Zoe can’t possibly be quiet for an hour.”
“Start with half an hour.”
“What’s the joke you used for your stepsister?”
“My sort of stepsister.”
“Okay, so what’s the joke you used for your sort of stepsister?”
“It might not work for your sister.”
“C’mon!”
“Okay. Why are elephants smarter than chickens?”
“Why?”
“You have to guess.”
“Because they have bigger brains?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Think about it. They have to be smarter, because have you ever heard of Kentucky Fried Elephant?”
Rosie laughs and laughs. It’s kind of musical and tinkly, but hearty at the same time. I love her laugh. She’s a great audience for dumb, corny jokes. She probably wouldn’t ever like me, like for a boyfriend, but...?
It’s a minimum day schedule. We check in at classes, get our textbooks and whatever else teachers hand out on the first day, reading lists, schedule of assignments, that stuff. There’s a note on my program card from Mr. Kaiser, the senior counselor: “See me at 12:30.”
I go to his office after 6th period when what I most want to do is go to lunch. I text Brent. Me: Stuck in Kaiser’s office.
Brent: I’m starving. Frowning face, triple taco emojis
Me: Go ahead. I’ll catch up.
Brent: Just hurry.
Me: Thumbs up.
Brent: Say yes and nod your head to everything.
Me: Okay emoji
I’ve already had five texts from Brent, all saying “hurry!” and three texts from Cameron saying “starving” by the time Kaiser calls me into his office. He takes my folder from the “permanent records” file cabinet next to his desk and opens it.
“What classes are you taking?” he asks.
I hand my program card to him. He frowns. Shakes his head. Turns the open folder to face me. There’s my whole high school history, neatly recorded grades next to every class I’ve taken, in consecutive order, semester by semester. I know what comes next. It’s the old “not living up to your potential” talk that I got from my freshman counselor, and sophomore counselor, and junior counselor. It always comes within a week or two of when school starts in September, and again a week or two before school gets out in June. Usually though, they don’t give me the talk on the very first day of school. This first day thing totally gets in the way of my back-to-school lunch tradition with Brent and Cameron.
Mr. Kaiser points to numbers in a box at the top of my transcript. “Look at these test scores, Eddie. Some of your college-bound friends would be thrilled with such test scores.”
I shrug.
“And look at this!” he says, pointing to another section. “All through high school, you’ve taken the easiest classes you can get by with and your grades are mediocre at best. And this?” He pushes my program card back to me. “This is a joke! WriteLight, and Yoga,” he sneers, then lets out a long sigh. “You’ve got such potential! And you’re squandering it. Why?”
I shrug.
Another long sigh. “What’re you going to be doing next year, after all of your friends are off to college, working their butts off to make something of themselves? You gonna be sitting around wasting your excellent brain on video games?”
“I don’t play video games,” I say, which is mostly true.
“People in your class are going to be doctors, and educators, and musicians, and business administrators, and tech experts. What are you going to be?”
I hate that “what are you going to be?” question.
“I already am.” I tell him. “I’ve been from the day I was born.”
Long pause. Slow head shake. “Okay then, how will you be wasting your brain while all of your friends are growing theirs in college? What will you be doing?”
“I’ll be working with my stepdad in his painting business.”
Kaiser shakes his head sadly again, like painting houses is work for losers or something. It pisses me off. I bet William’s read twice as many books in his life as this college graduate guy has. William drives a year-old Lexus. Kaiser drives an old beat-up Prius. So, I don’t know where he gets off thinking college is so much better than going straight to work at a job I like. After another long sigh, Kaiser puts my records back in the file folder and pushes it aside.
“Okay. I give up. Waste it if you want to. It’s your life,” he says.
“Right. I know that.”
Cameron and Brent are waiting by my car when I get to the parking lot. “Starving!” Brent says.
“Double starving,” Cameron says.
Our first day of school lunch is always at the Taqueria. It’s close to 1:30 by the time we get there, and the lunch crowd’s mostly gone by now. Much earlier and there’d be a line out to the sidewalk. We order at the counter and take a table toward the back. I hear the cook and one of the busboy guys in the kitchen, arguing in Spanish about the best way to cook a goat. Rotisserie over a fire pit, one says. The other says it’s got to be grilled.
Except for a few (maybe more than a few) swear words, and words for family—abuela, abuelo, tia, tio, gracias, de nada—I don’t speak much Spanish. I understand almost everything, though. While I was living in Redville with Tia Josie and Tio Hector, they’d always slip back and forth between Spanish and English, and Spanish was the playground language when I was going to school up there. I took Spanish in the ninth grade to check off the foreign language requirement for high school graduation, but that was a different kind of Spanish.
Cameron looks back toward the kitchen. “I’m weak with hunger,” he says, slumping down in his chair.
“Calculus is going to be a bitch,” Brent says. “It’d be a bitch with anyone, but I’ve got that asshole Epstein.”
Epstein has a reputation for being one of the toughest and meanest teachers on campus. Brent’s frowning so hard his eyebrows practically meet in the middle. “God, I dread that class.”
“Know what you mean,” Cameron says. “Fourth year French is gonna kill me.”
The goat cooking expert brings our order to us. I’ve got three grilled fish tacos, refried beans, and a salad. Cameron’s got carnitas and a double order of refried beans, with a double order of cheese on top. Brent’s got the super burrito. Really, I think it’s got every single thing on the menu all rolled up in a giant flour tortilla, then slathered in red sauce and cheese.
Cameron looks at my tacos. “Fish? Grilled?” he says.
That’s something else we rag on each other about. What we eat.
I nod toward his carnitas. “Pig? In lard?”
Brent cuts into his too-big-to-put-in-your-mouth burrito and takes a giant forkful, but he’s staring off into space like he doesn’t even hear us.
“Why not give yourself a break?” I say. “Take Business Math instead of calculus. It’d be an easy change—same period as Epstein’s calculus. I could help you.”
He gives me a long, serious look. “Then, could I come live with you when my dad kicks me out?”
Cameron groans. “High school’s supposed to be the best years of our lives, but I already know I’m going to hate senior year. What if I’ve already lived the best years of my life? That sucks.”
“Yeah, I know this is going to be the worst year of my life, ever,” Brent says.
“Take Yoga. It’d help you de-stress,” I tell them.
“Just looking at Yoga Joe stresses me out. I couldn’t sit through fifty minutes of him every day,” Brent says, shaking his head. “Hey, but you know that book that was on our summer reading list? Into the Wild? I’ve been thinking maybe
that Chris McCandless guy had the right idea. Get away from all the pressures of school and parents, live in the natural world.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Cameron says. “You don’t even like to go camping. Besides, the guy died out there. Starved to death. No burritos.”
“Yeah, well I’d take more stuff with me, and warmer clothes . . .”
That’s weird. I read the same book and no way did it sound like anything I would ever even think about doing. I know Brent feels stressed with the whole math thing, but into the wild? Really?
CHAPTER THREE
Smart Enough
Monday morning, second week of school, I’m waiting at the door when Miss May, loaded with books and notebooks, and a big tote bag full of I don’t know what, comes swishing down the hall in one of those loose-fitting kind of dress things she always wears. And it’s always swishing because she’s always in a hurry. She’s tall, with super close-cropped hair, like that Danai somebody in “Black Panther.”
Her name’s May Tucker, but she tells people to call her Miss May. Says she doesn’t want to be formal. I don’t think it’s about being formal. I think she doesn’t want some smart ass calling her Miss Fucker.
I’ve been her aide since the middle of my sophomore year, so over two years now. Being an aide in two classes makes me sound like a suck-up, but that’s not how it is. Except for WriteLight, which is zero period, and Yoga, which is 6th period, I slide by.
Miss May shoves her stuff at me, unlocks the classroom door, and swishes inside. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows. I’ve never seen her sleeves unrolled. Unrolled. Is that even a word?
When I started the WriteLight class back when I was a sophomore, I thought maybe she was pregnant because of how she always wore the same kind of loose dress-thingy, but in lots of different colors. One day, Jessica, this girl with an annoying, baby kind of voice and a too sweet smile, said, “Miss May? Some of us are wondering, like, when’s your little baby due?”
Miss May grabbed a long string of beads from the prompt basket and tied it tightly enough around her bunched up dress to show a waist about the size of Imani’s and, matching Jessica’s too sweet voice and smile, said, “My little baby’s due sometime between ten years from now and never. How about your little baby?”
That got a big laugh from everyone but Jessica, who turned bright red. Her smile turned upside down, like maybe she was going to cry. At first, I thought, “That’s what you get for asking such a stupid question,” but then I felt kind of sorry for Jessica. I mean, she only asked out loud what a lot of us had been wondering about. Maybe Miss May felt sorry for her too, because a few minutes before the end of the period she told Jessica, in front of us all, that today wasn’t the first time anyone asked, “When’s your baby due?” She guessed maybe she invited such questions because of the way she dressed, but she was all about comfort and convenience. Let people think whatever.
But back to now. Miss May says, “Just dump that stuff on my desk. We’ll sort it out later.”
I have a regular aide routine for Miss May. First, I clean all the tables. The transportation department uses this room at night for school bus training classes and they’re a bunch of slobs. They bring in hamburgers, fries, pizza, Big Gulps, cans of Red Bull and sodas, you name it; if it’s junk food, it’s part of learning to drive a school bus. And they never bother to throw their trash away, much less wipe up their spills.
After the tables, I unlock the supply cabinets and get out the pens, pencils, composition books, and snack stuff. We never used to lock anything up, but when the transportation department started using the room, things started to go missing. At first, it was pens and markers, a little bit at a time. Then we noticed the supply of composition books was dwindling. And a stapler went missing.
The morning Miss May discovered the huge canister of ground coffee she’d opened days before was nearly empty, that was it. From then on, it was lockdown. It turns out, school bus drivers can’t be trusted.
So now the coffee maker is doing its thing. Water’s come to a boil in the electric tea kettle. Tea bags, sugar, creamer, napkins, plastic spoons, all there. The box of bottled water is also on the coffee/tea table. Bananas, oranges, and protein bars fill a basket next to the coffee maker. Miss May says it’s hard to write if you’re hungry.
Mr. Taggerty, the music teacher, comes in and pours himself a cup of coffee. Miss May and Taggerty have what May calls an “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” arrangement. He gets his morning coffee, and she gets to use the copy machine that’s in the choir room next door.
“Did you hear Agent Orange last night? About the Mexican criminals and rapists and drug lords at the border?” Taggerty asks Miss M. “How is that not racist?”
“Shhhh,” she says, nodding in my direction.
“I know!” he says. “But how is he even a candidate??”
Miss May takes Taggerty by the arm and leads him out to the hall. There’s some rule about teachers not talking about politics in school, but Taggerty’s not the only one who can’t help himself. It seems like a lot of teachers are just as worried as Max and William are about the coming election.
6:55. FIVE MINUTES before the zero-period bell. I step out into the hall to see if I can “happen” to catch Rosie on her way to choir. I get a glimpse of long, shiny, dark brown hair and cut through the crowd to meet her. If Rosie’s hair were a paint sample, it would be Roasted Chestnut, Glossy.
“Hey, Rosie.”
“Hey, Eddie,” she says, flashing her Polar White smile. “Zoe loved your smart elephant joke.”
“Zoe?”
“My little sister.”
“Oh, yeah. Did it buy you quiet time?”
“I’ll try that trick with the next joke...”
With the beginning of the annoyingly loud BUZZZZ of the tardy bell, we both rush to our classrooms. I slide into my seat as the last ZZZZ goes silent. I’m a master at sliding into my seat at the last nanosecond.
Phong's already in the desk next to me, his sketch pad out on the desk. While Miss May gives the general set-up of the class, Phong flips from one sketch to another, showing me new ideas for “Vernon the Cowardly Vampire.” We both pretty much know the writing routine by heart. We write to prompts. Even though we’re getting English credit, we don’t mess with grammar, punctuation, spelling, or making every paragraph start with a topic sentence. There aren’t any heavy, assigned topics, like analyze the symbolism in The Scarlet Letter, or “In a five-paragraph essay, explore the character development of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.” It’s called WriteLight because we have a light-hearted attitude about writing.
Sometimes people write about heavy stuff though, like their dad beats them up or their mom’s always drunk or something, but that’s when the other part of “Light” comes in. Like it’s shedding light on something that’s been in the dark. WriteLight’s the official name but we mostly just call it “Write.”
The first week or so, the only people who read what they write are kids from last year’s class. But after that, almost everyone reads their stuff. Miss May writes, too, and reads her work. She says we’re all in it together.
Today, the prompt is to write about a place where you, or your character, feel safe. I think about where I feel safe—home, my car, this classroom, with family in Redville. But I end up writing about Simba, who feels safe on Pride Rock, where he can look out over the whole expanse of land, and rivers, and creatures of all shapes and sizes. I made it sound better than that, but you get the idea.
When it’s Phong’s turn to read, he starts off with how Vernon the Cowardly Vampire feels...that’s as far as he gets when kids who were in this class last year start clapping. Everyone loves Vernon the Cowardly Vampire.
Phong starts over, “Vernon the Cowardly Vampire feels safe at the crowded Vegan Co-op meetings, where there’s no pressure for him to refill his blood supply.”
One girl reads a story about a mom who’s addicted to oxycontin. It’
s supposed to be fiction, but she cries when she reads it, so I’m pretty sure it’s her own story only with names changed. We talk about what’s strong, or what will stay with us. What will stay with me is the image of the little brother trying to get his mom to wake up while the big sister is calling 911.
Back when I was a freshman, when I first took WriteLight, I never wanted to read my stuff out loud in class. First off, I’m a quiet kind of guy, and second, I didn’t think it was any good. But Miss May kept pushing me. Not demanding exactly, but she kept at it. She did that with another kid, too, this girl, Felicia.
After weeks and weeks of inviting me to read and me dis-inviting myself, Miss May asked me to stay after. By this time, everyone in the class but me and Felicia were reading their stuff, and I was afraid maybe May was going to kick me out of the class. Really, I liked WriteLight better than any of my other classes except Yoga, which was pretty much tied with WriteLight for best class. The rest of my classes were tied for worst place.
Anyways, Miss May was cool and funny, and I liked hearing what other kids had written. So, I stayed after, dreading whatever was going to happen. Probably some demand that I either start reading my stuff or get out.
Instead, Miss May took a paper from her folder and said, “This is a good piece, Eddie. Do you mind if I read it out loud? I won’t use your name.”
I was happy not to be getting kicked out, but still...
“I’ve got five other pieces that I want to read anonymously, so it won’t be like your paper’s the only one...It’s funny. We can always use a laugh.”
I nodded. And she read my paper and Felicia’s and some others the next day. Mine was about my dog, Buddy. I got Buddy back when things were hard for me, when shit kept coming back to me. I was so messed up, I even had to see a shrink for a while. But the good part was that the shrink thought a dog could help me not be so anxious and scared. I liked that idea. I’d never had a dog before. Dr. Cranston, the shrink, said it would be a specially trained dog. A comfort dog.
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