AVERY: This is not something I’m proud of.
BIZZY STANHOPE, prom date of S. Graney: Avery and Seany barely dated. It was way back in middle school, when relationships didn’t even really count, and it lasted for all of two minutes. I don’t think you could really even call Avery Sean’s ex-girlfriend.
AVERY: I think it was some kind of reaction to Liam Padalecki. Maybe I needed a totally and completely opposite boyfriend—which Sean definitely was. He was like a reverse Liam.
HUTCH: I believe the phrase AD was looking for was “Negaverse Liam Padalecki.”
Editor’s Note: That is definitely not the phrase I was looking for.
AVERY: However, I do think it’s important to note that back in eighth grade, Sean Graney definitely still had a neck.
HUTCH: AD said he had a neck? Sure he did. I’ll believe in past Sean Graney’s alleged neck when I see some photographic evidence.
SEAN GRANEY, Avery’s ex, Bizzy’s current: Yeah, Li’l Sean had some serious game back in middle school.
Editor’s Note: If he referred to himself in the third person as Li’l Sean for the entire interview, this would be the shortest one yet.
COCO: Sean is, um, sporty. Not exactly the, uh, intellectual type.
CRESSIDA SCHROBENHAUSER-CLONAN: Sean Graney is the stupidest person I’ve ever met. He makes Tripp Gomez-Parker look like a Turing Award recipient.
TRIPP GOMEZ-PARKER: Cressida thinks I could win an award? Dag, that’s sweet. I always knew she had a thing for me. What? Who? Graney? He’s an okay dude, I guess. He’s a big dude. He was big, even in middle school. Like, who knew little middle school dudes could have muscles?
SEAN: Li’l Sean was mad ripped. Big Sean is ripped and big, but Li’l Sean was just mad ripped. His bigness wasn’t there yet.
Editor’s Note: I cannot believe I dated this moron. Was I suffering from a traumatic brain injury at the time? Liam Padalecki may have been kind of a nerd, but at least he was smart. And by all accounts, he’d been a good friend to Hutch, even if he was “a bit of a showboat on campaign.” (Hutch’s words, not mine.) Sean had nothing going for him except biceps. How could eighth-grade Avery have been that shallow? More horrifying thought … Was twelfth-grade Avery still that shallow?
BIZZY: Seany’s dedication to his musculature has always been impressive.
CRESSIDA: Sean Graney is the textbook definition of all brawn and no brain.
HUTCH: Sean Graney and I don’t have any classes together. But my locker is pretty close to Bizzy Stanhope’s, and I have seen some things I dearly wish I could unsee.
SEAN: Things have always been easy with the ladies. They just throw themselves at me, you feel me?
Editor’s Note: Please God tell me I did not throw myself at him.
BIZZY: Knowing Avery, I’m sure she just threw herself at Sean.
HUTCH: For AD’s sake, I hoped she hadn’t instigated this relationship … but all past signs pointed to the fact that she probably had.
SEAN: Avery Dennis? Yeah, we dated. I’ve dated every single hot girl in this school.
COCO: Yeah, I dated Sean Graney … once … for about a week … Shut up! This interview is about Avery, okay? Avery, not me!
SEAN: I saw her in the hallway and was like, “Whoa. You still dating that little weaselly dude?” She said she wasn’t, so I asked her out. Boom. Li’l Sean had bagged another hottie. See? I told you Li’l Sean had mad game.
Editor’s Note: I blame post-goblins-induced trauma.
HUTCH: Well, at least Sean asked her out, technically. Maybe that’ll help AD sleep at night.
BIZZY: Let me remind you, again, it was eighth grade, and it lasted all of a hot minute. They. Barely. Even. Dated. No wonder Avery doesn’t have a prom date. She can never hold on to a guy. This is exactly why she’ll be going to prom alone. Which is probably for the best—she needs to get used to her inevitable forever alone status.
Editor’s Note: The only bonus of counting Sean Graney among the exes: It was clearly pissing Bizzy off to no end. Mwahahahaha …
AVERY: This was obviously a dead end. I was trying to glean some self-knowledge from this horrible lapse in judgment, but if the fact that I’d dated Sean Graney was going to tell me something new about myself, I’m not sure it’s something that I’d want to know. Maybe some things are better left unknown.
HUTCH: It seems pretty obvious to me. The most popular girl in school dated a football player. Even AD isn’t impervious to clichés. They happen to the best of us. One time I bought a Star Wars Monopoly set just because it felt like it was something I was supposed to do. I don’t even like Monopoly. Weak game play.
SEAN: How’d we break up? She ended it, man, she ended it. Didn’t want to come watch me lift. I need a girl who can commit to a healthy lifestyle.
Editor’s Note: Dumping Sean Graney? Probably the healthiest decision I ever made.
COCO: I like to call Waylon the “Fixer-Upper.” Is it weird that I am an expert on all of Avery’s boyfriends? I feel like it’s weird.
Editor’s Note: Not weird. I could draw you a pie chart of Coco’s boyfriends broken down by zodiac sign. The Aries slice of the pie is disturbingly large.
HUTCH: There’s no Waylon Underwood at our school. He must have left before ninth grade.
AVERY: Waylon had indeed left San Anselmo Prep after eighth grade. I wasn’t too worried about finding him, even though we’d lost touch. But when I went to look up Waylon on my Facebook friend list … he had vanished. Gone. Poof. Had he unfriended me?!
COCO: Luckily for Avery, there is no Facebook-stalking challenge too great for the incomparable Coco Kim. Seriously. There is no connection too small. No profile pic too vague. If you are on Facebook, I will find you.
Editor’s Note: Ashley Jenkins! I forgot to ask Coco to find Hutch’s Ashley Jenkins on Facebook. I should start keeping a Facebook To-Stalk list.
HUTCH: Avery had told me many times that Coco could find anyone on Facebook, but I wasn’t sure. Waylon Underwood had absolutely no digital footprint whatsoever. He appeared to have simply vanished.
COCO: This was the greatest challenge of my Facebook stalking skills to date. I won’t bore you with the nitty-gritty—the hours of googling, the fruitless phone calls, the emergency M&M’s snacking—but I found him. I told you. No man is safe from Coco Kim.
AVERY: When Coco finally tracked Waylon down, he was not where I expected him to be. Well, who really expects anyone to be living at an ashram in Arizona?
BIZZY STANHOPE, still the worst, but unfortunately relevant to the topic at hand: House of Light? Oh, yeah, I know that one. My mom goes there like twice a year to spiritually cleanse and lose ten pounds. It’s, like, the best ashram outside of India.
Editor’s Note: Typical Bizzy. This is not an actual representation of what an ashram is.
AVERY: Waylon had renounced the world entirely. Did he really need to get away from me that badly? That couldn’t have been good.
BIZZY: There are some people who live at the ashram full-time—I don’t really get it. And then there are the normal people like my mom and a ton of A-list people in the industry who go there for short stays to recharge.
Editor’s Note: By “the industry,” she meant like celebrities and stuff. Only she said it in the most pretentious way possible. Obviously.
COCO: The House of Light does have a phone, but the people who live there aren’t supposed to use it. It’s for outsiders to call in and book their stays. I figured out where Waylon was, but I had no idea how Avery was going to get Waylon on the phone. I think the yogis who lived there were supposed to renounce technologies. Because of the energies or something.
BIZZY: The gift shop has these totally amaze Kabbalah bracelets. They’re one of the reasons I have such good energy.
Editor’s Note: I think her bracelets are defective.
AVERY: I did the only thing I could do. I called the House of Light and told them I was interes
ted. But that I needed to talk to someone under twenty to get the youth experience.
HUTCH: Nothing about this was going to end well. I was waving my arms at AD, whisper-screaming, “STOP. PUT YOUR CREDIT CARD BACK IN YOUR PURSE,” but she completely ignored me. Like usual. I probably should have tackled her.
AVERY: I may have put down a deposit on a weeklong stay at a yurt in August. Which was going to be problematic when Dad got the statement for my “emergencies only” credit card. Maybe I’d pretend it was a surprise for him?
PAUL DENNIS aka DAD, father, partner at Dennis, Godfrey & Markham: A yurt? Avery, why on God’s green earth would I want to stay in a yurt? Is it adjacent to a squash court?
AVERY: There was no way Dad would believe the yurt was for him. But what else was I supposed to do? I needed to talk to Waylon!
HUTCH: She did what with a yurt?! AD cannot go to an ashram. She will ruin everyone’s inner peace. Also, if Bizzy Stanhope’s mom goes there, I don’t even want to think about how much that yurt cost.
Editor’s Note: I don’t want to think about it either.
COCO: I wondered if Waylon would be different now. Although the ashram was definitely my third-favorite part of Eat, Pray, Love. More eating and loving, please.
AVERY: It was definitely Waylon on the phone. I hadn’t talked to him in forever, but I recognized his voice immediately. He did sound calmer.
WAYLON UNDERWOOD, ex-boyfriend, on the path to total enlightenment: It seems like a lifetime ago that my mom and I joined the House of Light. Well, perhaps it was—I suppose it was before I truly started living.
HUTCH: This House of Light thing is serious. I googled. Articles on Huffpo, a feature in Goop, celebrities wearing white linen pants, as far as the eye can see …
WAYLON: Yes, the House of Light has received its fair share of press over the years. Print, as a medium, can’t really convey what the House of Light does, but I’m glad more people are hearing about it.
HUTCH: Is this a cult? Or a fitness retreat? I don’t know, man; anything where adults electively wear uniforms gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Editor’s Note: Totally normal reaction to the San Anselmo Prep dress code.
WAYLON: I’ve heard what people in the outside world sometimes call the House of Light, but it’s not. It’s a collective. Gwyneth understood.
BIZZY: Yeah, Gwyneth was totally there when my mom was there. They shared a yurt once.
Editor’s Note: Sure.
HUTCH: It costs how much to stay there?! The only thing they’re collecting at that “collective” is a fat stack of cash.
Editor’s Note: I could definitely kiss that “for emergencies only” credit card good-bye.
WAYLON: My mom had gotten more and more into yoga after my dad left and credited it with helping her find herself. She wanted to move us to a place where her practice wasn’t just part of her life, but was our lifestyle.
BIZZY: Would I move to the House of Light? Um, no. Those white linen robes would totally wash me out.
WAYLON: Did I want to go? Of course not. I told my mom she’d have to pry my Xbox out of my cold, dead hands. But I was only a kid, really—what else was I going to do? Find my dad? Tried to, and couldn’t. So we left everything behind and moved to Arizona. I didn’t want to go, but I’m so glad I did. Mom saved my life. Well, she gave me a new one. A better one. I was reborn in the House of Light.
COCO: I was totally fascinated that Waylon had completely reinvented himself, because this wasn’t the first time. In eighth grade, he was completely reinvented by Avery. Some people are really susceptible to strong personalities.
WAYLON: Avery Dennis? Oh, yes, Avery with the long blond hair. Of course I remember her.
Editor’s Note: Is this seriously my only distinguishing characteristic? Why am I not more memorable? Had no one noted my fine eyes? My elegant toes? My extraordinary attention to detail? What about “Avery with the rapier-sharp wit?”
COCO: Waylon Underwood was a completely average boy. Average height, average build, pale skin, brown hair, brown eyes. There was really nothing memorable about him whatsoever—until Avery started dating him.
WAYLON: Up until eighth grade, I’d flown pretty much under the radar at San Anselmo Prep. I played video games with my friends on the weekend, hung out, nothing too exciting. Then Avery Dennis asked me out.
HUTCH: She asked him out? Aha! Another one to confirm my hypothesis! Oh, but I couldn’t forget about Sean Graney. And Camp Kawawa Charlie, too. Shoot. Maybe that’s AD’s pattern—there is no pattern. Or maybe it was my weakness as a scientist, wanting so badly to see a pattern where there wasn’t one that I created one anyway. Classic apophenia. What? Oh. Apophenia is the typical human tendency to perceive patterns in random information. We want to see connections so badly that our brain creates them even where no connections exist.
Editor’s Note: Classic Hutch convo. Apophenia. Well, if nothing else, between this and the beelzebufo, I was learning a lot.
WAYLON: Frankly, I have no idea why Avery Dennis asked me out—but she did, and everything changed.
HUTCH: This poor kid. Even over speakerphone, I could tell he was no match for AD.
AVERY: I asked him out because I thought he was cute, okay? And it’s not like I made him do anything he didn’t want to do! He just didn’t have any direction. I was helping him! Motivating him! I mean, we were almost in high school. College was just around the corner! I knew he was going to need way more extracurriculars to eventually round out his college application. I was doing him a favor.
HUTCH: Who has direction in eighth grade?
Editor’s Note: Hutch is so full of it. In eighth grade, he won the Broadcom MASTERS competition and some LEGO thing sponsored by NASA that sounds dumb but I think is actually insanely prestigious. So don’t talk to me about direction, Hutch.
COCO: No one even knew who Waylon Underwood was, and by the end of September, he was Student Council president.
WAYLON: Did I want to be on Student Council? No, no, definitely not. That was all Avery’s idea. I didn’t like talking in front of other people, or making decisions, or being in charge of anything. But Avery made it sound like a really good idea.
HUTCH: Why didn’t AD just run for Student Council president herself? Disappointing. I thought she had more feminist drive than that. That she wouldn’t want to just be the little woman standing behind the man in power.
Editor’s Note: I didn’t run for middle school Student Council president because I had already been Student Council president in sixth and seventh grade. Principal Patel instituted a ridiculous term-limit rule.
PRINCIPAL PATEL, principal of San Anselmo Prep: The term-limit rule is necessary, and I certainly did not institute it solely to keep Avery Dennis out of a position of marginal authority.
Editor’s Note: I do not take the following accusation lightly … but this is definitely a lie. The patriarchy was trying to keep me down!
COCO: Oh, yeah, I remember the whole term-limit thing. Maybe Avery is more of an FDR than a JFK. I am not nearly as well versed in the Roosevelts, unfortunately.
WAYLON: Luckily, Avery was my vice president, so she pretty much did everything, but I still had to be in charge of the meetings. It was terrifying.
AVERY: I didn’t know he was terrified! I thought he was having fun. I loved Student Council, so I thought he would love it, too! I thought it would be a nice way for us to spend time together after school.
HUTCH: My God, AD was the Lady Macbeth of middle school Student Council? I’m surprised everyone made it out alive.
AVERY: I was still busy with tennis after school, though, so I thought Waylon should probably play a sport, too, so we could train together. That sounds fun, right? At least, at the time, I thought it did.
WAYLON: I joined the football team when Avery suggested I take up a sport. I ended up being the kicker, and she’d come in and lecture the coach if she thought he wasn’t putting me in
enough. One time she offered him a giant basket of mini muffins in exchange for giving me more field time. He declined.
COACH OWENS, football coach: Yeah, I can tell you what our best seasons are. The seasons when Avery Dennis isn’t dating any of my players.
WAYLON: Sports and Student Council weren’t enough extracurricular activities for Avery, though. So she assumed they weren’t enough for me. But she said none of the existing clubs were prestigious enough, so she thought I would really enjoy it if I founded my own club, because she had had so much fun when she founded the debate team. My new club? It was a premed club—I think she called it Future Doctors of America when she filled out the new club approval form for me.
AVERY: When I asked him on our first date what his future career plans were, he had said he thought he might want to be a doctor! I know that med school is competitive—I was trying to give him an edge, that’s all.
WAYLON: I said I wanted to be a doctor? I must have just picked something totally at random. I don’t remember that at all.
HUTCH: This poor Waylon kid sounded exhausted just remembering the time he dated AD.
WAYLON: I didn’t have time to play video games anymore. And I couldn’t relax. I had no idea how Avery could do all of her activities. I was so tired, I’d fall asleep in my Cocoa Puffs every morning and nod off during fifth period. But Avery was superhuman. Who has that much energy? All I wanted to do was sit on the couch and eat cereal out of the box! Avery never just sat on the couch.
AVERY: I felt awful. I had no idea I’d caused Waylon so much stress! I thought he’d liked all the activities we did together. He was a good Student Council president, and Future Doctors of America was fun! And he looked so cute in his football uniform.
WAYLON: Mad at Avery? No, of course I’m not mad at her! I’m grateful to her, if anything. If I hadn’t been so tired, maybe I would have fought my mom harder on the House of Light thing. I needed to let go of all these things that were dragging me down. I let go of all of them, I let go of the past, and now I’m light. I couldn’t be the way Avery wanted me to be, but now I’ve found a way to just be.
It's Not Me, It's You Page 6