American Dreamer

by Shawn Wesley Ballenger

  Brandon rubbed his hands along the arms of the chair, surmising that the guy must have brought in his own furniture since this definitely wasn’t the standard issued cheap particle board stuff found in the secretary’s office.

  Dr. Anderson sat down in the matching antique walnut chair behind his desk and leaned forward, propping his elbows on its top.

  “I received your transcript from your previous school via e-mail this morning.” He said as he picked up the print-out from the top of the neatly stacked papers on the corner of his desk.

  Brandon smiled to himself, feeling a sense of satisfaction knowing his spoofing skills had fooled the overly educated man.

  Dr. Anderson held the transcript up and cleared his throat before giving Tommy a severe look. “Channing’s last transcript from eighth grade shows a point-nine grade point average. I’m sure you’re aware this is a failing GPA.”

  “Umm,” Tommy stuttered and glanced over at Brandon, “my nephew has had a rough life.”

  Completely ignoring Brandon, the principal remained entirely focused on Tommy. “As much as I’d like to, I cannot allow him to enter ninth grade when he hasn’t passed eighth.”

  Dr. Anderson looked over the top of his glasses, making Tommy feel he was the one to blame for his nephew’s failure.

  “My nephew only came to live with us last week. His mother recently died in a car accident.” Tommy explained.

  The principal finally looked over his glasses at Brandon sympathetically. “I’m sorry, son.”

  “It’s okay, sir. I know my mom is in a better place.” He made the sign of the cross and began laying it on thick. “You see, sir. My mother had a bad drug problem. The only money we had was from my mother…frankly, sir,” He cleared his throat and forced his eyes to water, “selling herself. She would bring men into our trailer all hours of the night. A man named Gerald lived with us sometimes, and he hated me, sir. He would tie me to the radiator and beat me with a water hose because I ate his food. I was starving, sir. I’d go days without eating. Sometimes I’d sneak over to our neighbor’s trailer and eat the food she put out for her cat, Mittens.” Brandon’s voiced quivered. “Some days, sir, I just wanted to die. I’d say ‘please, God, please take me from this place.’” Brandon continued his testimony and looked towards the ceiling. “I guess God got the wrong person ‘cause he took my mom instead of me.” Brandon nodded, pointed upwards, choking up. “But you know, sir? The big guy upstairs had a plan. Doesn’t he always have a plan, sir?” He looked to Dr. Anderson, who nodded. “He sent Uncle Tommy and Aunt Kathy to rescue me. I now have a real home to live in. I have all the food I could possibly eat. They even have a swimming pool, sir!” Brandon’s eyes lit up before pointing to Tommy and nodding. “That man. That man right there saved me, sir.”

  Stunned at Brandon’s overly-dramatic speech, Tommy used every ounce of his willpower not to burst out laughing.

  Brandon looked at the principal, who had lifted his glasses and was wiping his eyes with a tissue. “All I ask for, sir, is a chance to start over. I’m smart, and I know I’ll do well in my classes if you’ll just give me the opportunity to prove myself, sir. I feel like me coming to live here in Phoenix and go to your school is God’s plan for me. Isn’t God great, sir?”

  “Yes, son. He is.” Dr. Anderson nodded emphatically.

  Ten minutes later, Brandon walked out of the office holding, his ninth-grade class schedule. As soon as they were outside, Tommy turned to Brandon.

  “You are fucking nuts!” He yelled, then quickly covered his mouth, shooting his eyes from side to side, checking if the coast was clear. “Please, God, please take me from this place.” He mocked.

  “Hey. It worked, didn’t it?” Brandon laughed as he waved his schedule in the air.

  “Dude! I almost shit my pants!” Tommy cried with laughter.

  “Maybe I should join the Drama Club?” Brandon tapped his finger on his chin.

  Tommy put his arm across his waist and leaned forward. “I bow before the Master of Bullshit.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.” Brandon punched him on the shoulder. “I have to get to class.”

  Brandon searched the hallways for his first class. He tried to avoid the other students who would occasionally bump into him. He glanced down at his schedule. Programming Language I. Fate is playing some kind of cruel joke on me, he thought to himself. Being a transfer student, most of the good classes were already full, he didn’t have much choice in his schedule. 3A. 3A. Brandon repeated the room number he was looking for in his head as he glanced up at the signs. 1A…2A. He stopped in front of an open door and peeked into the classroom at the rows of computer terminals.

  This has to be it.

  About that time, another student pushed past him and stopped, looking down at Brandon’s feet.

  “Dude, those shoes are drippin’.” The student with the long hair pointed down with both index fingers.

  Brandon lifted his foot and checked the soles of his shoes. Earlier, in the boys’ bathroom, he had to step around an Olympic pool-sized puddle of urine. Maybe he had accidentally gotten some on his shoes after all? Teenage boys were pigs.

  The kid burst out laughing as he continued into the classroom. “You’re too much, dude.”

  Brandon shrugged, realizing he obviously misinterpreted the boy’s meaning of the word. He proceeded into the classroom cautiously. The walls were plastered with posters advertising Oracle Database Solutions to “How to Detect a Spoofing E-mail?” Apparently, Principal Anderson hasn’t seen that particular poster, he laughed to himself.

  Finally, Brandon’s eyes landed on a very attractive lady, who looked like Emma Stone, bent over a student furiously typing away on his keyboard. Her ample bosom squeezed into her tight-fitting red dress. He watched as the student’s eyes occasionally glanced at her cleavage. Brandon yawned. This was obviously the teacher, and she was obviously a walking wet dream for most of the male students, but she obviously wasn’t Brandon’s type. The teacher stood up and spotted Brandon standing at the front of the classroom, holding his transfer slip in his hand.

  She gave him a friendly smile and held up her index finger, before leaning back down and pointing to the student’s screen. Brandon checked out the rest of the classroom while he waited. Six rows of tables with five workstations upon each filled the large classroom. He watched as students filed in, taking their assigned terminals. A few moments later, the teacher came up to him.

  “Hello.” She greeted him with more enthusiasm than was necessary. “I’m Miss Landeau, and you are?”

  “Bran—" Brandon quickly corrected himself. “I’m Channing Burkhart.”

  “Nice to meet you, Channing.” She smiled.

  Brandon shoved the transfer slip at her.

  “Have you had any programming experience?” She asked as she read the slip.

  Brandon almost let out a laugh but stopped himself. “Some.”

  “Good. The class is taught in C Sharp.” She smiled again, gauging Brandon’s reaction as if testing his knowledge of programming languages.

  Brandon gave her a confident look. “Yes, miss. I’m familiar with C Sharp.”

  “Excellent! You shouldn’t have any problems then.” She looked at the rows of tables before pointing to the empty terminal at the end of the third row. “You can take that terminal.”

  Brandon looked at the empty seat.

  “Thank you, miss.,” He answered.

  He plodded to his chair, took off his backpack, and shoved it under the seat. Making himself comfortable, he looked up at his monitor that was waiting for his student ID and password. He reached back down to his backpack, unzipped a pocket, and retrieved the paper he was given in the principal’s office. As soon as he had logged in, the Visual Studio application automatically loaded and sat ready to receive its first set of programming instructions. Brandon scrunched his face at the application he’d seen almost every day for the past twelve years. There’s no escape even in death, he thoug
ht to himself.

  Turning his head to his nearest neighbor, he checked out the Korean boy with spiked green hair and diamond stud earrings sitting two seats down from him. The boy turned his head towards Brandon and winked.

  Brandon recoiled in surprise. The kid turned his body towards him and licked his shiny gloss-laden lips. “You look like a lonely variable? Could I declare you mine?” The kid wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Umm…?” Brandon was taken aback. It took a moment for his mind to process and respond to such a bad pickup line. He had heard some really bad ones, but a pickup line punning computer programming took the prize for the worst in his book.

  “Well?” The boy waited impatiently for his answer.

  “I’m…um…” Brandon stuttered before forming his response. “I’m declared.”

  “Straight, of course.” The kid clicked his tongue. “Too bad ‘cause you are fiiiiiiine.” He snapped his fingers sassily before turning back to his monitor.

  “As a matter of fact, I’m gay.” Brandon’s lips pursed together as he snipped back, offended that the kid assumed that because he wasn’t interested, he had to be straight.

  The kid jerked his head back towards Brandon faster than an overclocked CPU.

  “Hello!” The kid put his hand on his hip and rolled his head. “My name is Lo, and I’ll go as low as you want me to go.” He eyed Brandon’s crotch, obviously not picking up on Brandon’s brush off.

  Brandon immediately squeezed his legs together as Lo stared at him like a basement-dwelling nerd at the ultimate gaming machine. About that time, a backpack landed on the floor between Brandon and Lo, interrupting the awkward encounter.

  “Keep it in your pants, Lo.” A kid with shaggy blonde hair said as he slid into the seat between them.

  Immediately, Brandon’s eyes widened, and he let out a small gasp. “Corbin?”

  Corbin turned towards Brandon with a puzzled look as he kicked his backpack under the table.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Go away, straight boy.” Lo interrupted. “The new guy was about to show me his output device.” He giggled.

  “Ugh!” Brandon wrinkled his nose and shook his head with disgust. "In your dreams, pal.” He said as he maneuvered his head around Corbin and gave Lo a dirty look.

  Lo laughed evilly and turned back towards his monitor, obviously satisfied that he’d successfully embarrassed the new kid.

  Corbin shook his head in pity at Lo before turning back to Brandon. “You look familiar.” He shook his finger at him as he searched his memory. “How did you know my name?”

  Breaking out in a cold sweat, Brandon's eyes darted around until it landed on Corbin’s backpack. “There…on your backpack…your name.” He pointed.

  “Oh.” Corbin looked down. “Yeah. My mom. She thinks someone’s going to steal my shit, so she writes my name on everything.”

  Brandon laughed nervously. “I hear ya’, man. I’m Channing, by the way.”

  “Corbin.” He nodded.

  “Cool.” Brandon ran his hand across his sweaty brow.

  Much to Brandon’s relief, their conversation was disrupted by Miss Landeau, clearing her throat to get the attention of the class. Of all the high schools and classrooms in the entire city, I’d end up sitting next to Corbin in a stupid computer programming class, Brandon thought as fate once again gave him the middle finger. As the teacher lectured, he glanced at Corbin's Big Bang Theory T-Shirt.

  “Psst.” Corbin leaned over. “I know who you are. I need to talk to you at lunch.”

  “Corbin. Please pay attention.” Mrs. Landeau scolded him.

  Corbin jerked back up. “Yes, Mrs. Landeau.”

  Brandon immediately went into panic mode. He was so screwed.

  The rest of the morning dragged on for what seemed like forever. Brandon found it hard to concentrate when his mind was preoccupied with the fear that Corbin actually recognized him. There’s no way he’d know who I was. No way possible. He’s never seen me as a kid, he tried to reassure himself for the thousandth time as he walked into the cafeteria.

  He stopped just inside the door, and his eyes immediately went wide as he stood in awe at the foodservice splendor. Students walked away from the food selection counters carrying varieties of mouth-watering cuisine and took seats around the cozy little round tables randomly placed on the decorative tile floor. A few larger tables were positioned around the room to accommodate larger groups. His face lit up at the impressive neon signs above food section counters for a pizza buffet, a burger station, a grilling station, and even a sushi bar. Holy shit! This is what school cafeterias are like nowadays? He thought as his mind drifted back to his memories of school lunches and his not-so-favorite menu, which consisted of macaroni and cheese, black-eyed peas, cornbread, slaw, fruit, and milk. He gagged a little as his taste buds recalled the awfulness of the meal.

  Brandon focused on the pizza buffet as his mouth began salivating for his favorite food. He couldn’t help but smile a little as he dodged the other hungry students on his way to fill his stomach. He grabbed a plate from the beginning of the buffet line and proceeded to pile on two large slices of pepperoni and three slices of supreme. Paying for the meal using his student ID that doubled as a charge card, he meandered his way to an empty table in the middle of the room and sat down.

  He had just torn open a small packet of parmesan cheese when he felt a bump on his shoulder from someone sitting down in the chair next to him.

  “Hey, man.” Corbin greeted him.

  “Hey.” Brandon forgot about the cheese he was about to sprinkle on his pizza, momentarily losing his appetite in anticipation of the words that would spill from Corbin’s mouth.

  Looking down, Corbin causally began opening ketchup packets and squeezing the contents over his enormous mound of fries.

  “So,” Corbin began as he squeezed his fourth package and licked his fingers. “I know who you are.”

  “You do?” Brandon swallowed hard.

  “Yeah,” Corbin said brightly. “You’re that dude that’s been taking care of that lawn over on Evans Street. The adobe house with all the cactuses in the yard.” He finished squeezing the last of the ketchup packets and grabbed a fry.

  Brandon breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah. That’s my Uncle Tommy’s house. I moved in with him and my Aunt Kathy last week.”

  “Ah. Okay.” Corbin bit into the fry. “You did a nice job. That yard used to look like shit.”

  “Oh.” Brandon grinned. “Well, thanks, man.”

  Brandon smiled, thinking about how Tommy never maintained his own lawn and refused to hire someone to take care of it, claiming he was “particular,” which really meant “cheap,” in Tommy’s vernacular.

  “I need a partner,” Corbin said, causing Brandon to drop the pizza slice he was about to ravenously attack.

  Corbin choked, realizing how Brandon interpreted his statement.

  “Not that kind of partner.” He pounded his chest a couple of times and cleared his throat. “A business partner. I have too many lawns, and I can’t take care of all of them. Most nights, I’m not getting home until after ten, and my mom has started bitching about it. Honestly, I’m fucking exhausted, dude. You do good work. You interested?”

  “Well, I umm.” Brandon trailed off as he considered it. “Me? A lawn boy?” He laughed. “I never thought about it.”

  Brandon remembered being envious of Corbin a little over a week before at his having such a worry-free job. It occurred to him that he’d be earning money and that it would help Tommy and Kathy with their new expenses from taking care of him.

  “Yeah, man. I’m interested.”

  “Cool, man!” Corbin bounced excitedly in his seat. “We’ll split it fifty-fifty. Smaller lawns we can do separately and the larger ones we can do together. I’ve got a list of customers that I’ve had to turn down because I was booked, but now we’ll fucking clean up!”

  Corbin held out his fist.

  “Awesome, dude!�
�� Brandon bumped Corbin’s fist with his own, feeling giddy that he just landed the first job of his new life. Sure, it was just mowing lawns, a position most people would not be very excited about, but he was now a carefree fourteen-year-old just like Corbin. His dream was finally becoming a reality.

  Brandon’s moment of Zen was interrupted as loud laughter came from behind him. He jerked his head towards the three jocks carrying trays full of food towards the large table that the entire football team was crowded around. His eyes immediately focused on the leader of the bunch, and his face dropped.

  "Cam,” he gasped.

  Brandon watched as one of Cam’s buddies elbowed him and pointed towards a table of girls, the blonde one turning and waving to him. Brandon observed as Cam waved back and made an obvious joke that made his buddies laugh.

  Corbin stopped eating and followed Brandon’s eyes.

  “Fucking prick.” Corbin cursed, quickly turning his head back to his burger.

  “Huh?” Brandon, aghast, turned to Corbin, who looked as if he’d just eaten a bad fry.

  “That dude. Cam. The dude’s a fucking prick.”

  Brandon felt blood rush to his face and tried his best to hide his anger at Corbin insulting his son.

  “Why is he a prick?”

  “Look at him all smiling and joking and shit. His father killed himself last week, and he’s acting like nothing happen.” Corbin stopped and shoved his tray away. “Pisses me off. I mowed his dad’s lawn. His dad was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. He’d always give me a little extra every time I mowed. One time I bent one of my mower blades in his back yard, and I couldn’t get the fucker off. You know what Mr. Daniels did?”

  Brandon thought back to that day when he’d just got home from work and saw Corbin from the window, his push mower turned upside down, using a wrench to try and loosen the bolts that held the blades in place.

  “What?”

  “He went out of his way to help me. Not only did he get the blade off, but he also took me to the hardware store, bought me a new one, and even helped me put it on. He also picked us up some Burger King on the way back, and we sat on his patio, eating burgers and talking cars.” Corbin’s eyes watered. “He was such a cool guy.”