Sophomores and Other Oxymorons

by David Lubar

  She was wearing basic black. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black nail polish, black makeup of various sorts that girls use around their eyes and whose names I could never keep straight. Her piercings had remained stable, except for several additions to her left ear.

  There was a test on each desk. Nothing like starting school with a bang. “I hope this isn’t an omen,” Lee said.

  I folded mine diagonally so the top edge was lined up with the side, forming a triangle with a rectangular base, and held it so it cast a shadow on my desk from the morning light coming through the windows. “If it’s not an omen, it could be a gnomon,” I said.

  “Scott, it’s too early for wordplay,” she said. “Though that is sort of clever, in an obscure, geeky, word-nerd kind of way. But, really, it’s too early.”

  Mr. Stockman, a thin man dressed in a tan suit and plaid shirt, with a fringe of hair encircling three-fifths of the geometry of his head, walked over and stared at the origami in my hands. Or maybe it was testigami. He didn’t say anything. I contemplated explaining that I’d folded the test to look like the thing in the center of a sundial. But I realized that would mean explaining about Lee’s “omen” comment, and hoping that the teacher knew the shadow-caster in the sundial was called a gnomon, while also hoping he had a sense of humor.

  “Sorry.” I unfolded the test and put it back on my desk, where it no longer lay flat. I hoped I hadn’t made a bad first impression. I reminded myself that my teachers would be meeting me for the very first time today. It would be smart to sit back and let someone else stand out in each class as the problem student.

  Mr. Stockman headed back to his desk. Halfway there, he turned, pointed at my test, and said, “Gnomon?”

  “Yeah.” I guessed maybe he’d heard Lee’s comment.

  “Cool.” He awarded me a smile. “Nice example of gnomon-clature.”

  Lee groaned, then whispered, “You found your tribe.”

  “Score one for the geeky word nerd,” I whispered back.

  “This test won’t be graded,” Mr. Stockman said after he reached his desk. “I just want to get an idea where you all are, as far as core concepts.”

  That seemed fair. I looked at the first problem. It was basic algebra. Solve the quadratic, give the two values of x. I had no trouble remembering how to do that. The next two questions, about slopes and coordinates on a graph, were also pretty easy. Then there were some questions about points and lines. For the handful of questions where I wasn’t positive about the answer, I was able to make a good guess. The fact that we weren’t being graded made the test pretty stress-free for me. As I scanned the room, I saw a range of reactions. Most kids seemed pretty relaxed. But one or two were hunched over, gripping their pencils like they might be called upon to switch tasks and kill a vampire on short notice.

  Lee finished before me. I wasn’t surprised. She had a good head for math.

  After Mr. Stockman collected the tests, he introduced us to some of the basic concepts of geometry, and tossed out a pun or two. The best one was “Are Euclid-ing me?” The worst one was the well-known joke about the acorn saying, “Gee, I’m a tree.” So, yeah, I was back in school, back to learning things in a classroom environment, and pretty relaxed about everything. It was going to be an easy day. My little glitch with the gnomon had turned into a good thing. And I’d participated enough in the classroom discussion to show him I wasn’t a slacker or a clown.

  When the bell rang, I said, “See you at lunch.”

  “Stay out of trouble,” Lee said.

  “That’s the other Hudson,” I said.

  “Bobby or Sean?” Lee asked.

  “I think they’d prove equally problematic in the classroom.” I double-checked my schedule, then headed to history.

  “Welcome to AP U.S. History. The study of history isn’t about dates. It’s about people, and the things they do,” Ms. Burke said. She looked the way I’d imagine the stereotypical Mrs. Claus would have looked in her late forties, before her hair had turned white, but after she’d developed her rosy cheeks and sunny smile. “We are going to be working very hard all year. We have a lot of material to cover. But there’s no reason we can’t take a few minutes on our first day to get to know each other. Write three interesting facts about yourself. Share a bit of your history.”

  The air filled with the scribble of pens. Everyone else started writing immediately, as if they’d entered the room with a fact on hand. Or in mind. I glanced to my left, at Phil Nelson’s paper. I once ate a whole pepperoni pizza.

  I knew I could do better than that. Better fact, I mean. Not better pizza consumption. Five slices pushed me pretty close to my gastronomic comfort zone. I wanted my facts to be good. What was interesting? I guessed the fact that I’d read 5,000 Amazing Facts would make a cool fact. Yeah, a fact about a book of facts. I loved the self-referential aspect of that. One down. What else? My mom just had a baby. That would work. I’d probably be the only one in class who could say that. Two down. But I needed something really awesome for the third fact.

  As I stared at the page, I heard the clicks and clatters of people around me dropping their pens. I glanced over at Phil. His list was finished. Besides the pizza, though hopefully during the course of a different meal, he’d eaten an entire rotisserie chicken. Not surprisingly, his third fact was that he’d recently bought a new belt and several pairs of pants.

  “Okay,” Ms. Burke said, “pass them up.”

  Kids passed their papers forward. Kristen Valence, in the seat ahead of me, twisted a quarter turn and held out her hand.

  I couldn’t give Ms. Burke two facts when she’d requested three. There had to be something I could add.

  Kristen cleared her throat in an obnoxious way.

  At this point, the fact didn’t even have to be good. It just had to be. What did I do this summer? What did I do yesterday? What did I do ten minutes ago?

  Think!

  I dug deep and found something. Lee had given me three Venus flytraps on the Fourth of July. I never did figure out the connection, if any, between carnivorous plants and declarations of independence. But the plants were definitely cool. They eat insects. You can give them hamburger, too. I fed mine flies and the occasional ant. That was sort of a fun fact. I could even do it as a couplet: I just feed my plants / live flies and dead ants. I figured everyone would appreciate a bit of light verse during the readings.

  I hesitated. I actually had only one Venus fly trap, since two of them had died soon after I got them, but plants worked better in the couplet, so I needed to take some poetic license. Though I guessed I could go with flies and an ant.

  As I was mentally tweaking the words, Kristen reached for my paper.

  I scrawled I just feed my plants—

  I dashed off the rest in a sloppy line as Kristen yanked the paper out from under the pen.

  Shoot. But at least that would make three.

  Ms. Burke took the gathered sheets and started reading them aloud. The class had to guess who’d written each one. That was pretty easy, since most of us knew one another.

  About midway through the pile, she got to mine.

  “‘I read a book called 5,000 Amazing Facts,’” she said.

  A couple heads turned my way, and I heard at least one whisper of, “Hudson.”

  Ms. Burke read the second fact:“‘My mom just had a baby.’” Most of the heads turned my way, and I heard my name whispered by several other kids. Sean’s arrival was far from a secret. The third fact would be sort of stupid, but I didn’t care. At least I wouldn’t be branded a slacker.

  Ms. Burke frowned at the sheet in her hand, tilted her head slightly to the left, squinted, tilted her head slightly to the right, lifted her glasses up, put her glasses back down, then shrugged and read, “‘I just peed my pants.’”

  “No!” I shouted. “That’s not what I wrote!” Not
that anyone would hear me over the laughter that bounced around the room like a barrage of jet-propelled dodgeballs.

  As the class settled down from howls and guffaws to chortles and snickers, I said, “‘I just feed my plants flies and ants.’ I have Venus flytraps.”

  It was pointless.

  Someone behind me whispered, “Venus flytrap,” but substituted the obvious rhyming body part for Venus. In other circumstances, I would have found that amusing.

  Ms. Burke studied my handwriting for a moment, then said, “Oh, right. I see. I guess that word could have been feed. And, yes, plants would make sense. It even rhymes. Were you aware of that?”

  I nodded.

  “Very clever,” she said. “I love poetry. Well, I guess we can move on, since we know who wrote this one.”

  Great. Halfway into history, and I was history.

  At the end of the class, some kid I didn’t know pointed at my crotch and said, “Hey, you peed your pants.”

  I could ignore him. But that might inspire him to try again, or get others to join in, preventing the whole thing from fading away. On the other hand, I could smack him down so hard, he never got back up. Maybe even so hard, it would scare off others. I don’t mean with my fists. There’s an old saying: Never get in a war of words with a man who buys ink by the barrel. If I was as good with words as I thought I was, I could end this decisively, right now. But I had to act immediately. If I hesitated, he won.

  I planned to stagger him with a lightning-quick one-two punch, then take him out with a knockout blow.

  First jab—surprise him by agreeing.

  “Yeah, my pants are wet . . .”

  I saw his brows knit closer as he tried to decipher what I was doing. Little did he know he’d just been disarmed.

  Second punch, make it about him, and go for the stagger.

  “. . . because I was laughing so hard at your face, I lost all control of my bladder.”

  And, now that he was stunned, throw an uppercut, to put him out of my misery. I pointed at my opponent, and addressed the mob: “The next time you’re constipated, give Zitgeist here a call. If he can empty a bladder so easily, think what he can do to clogged intestines.”

  I could tell from the smirks of the crowd that I’d scored a victory. I headed out.

  Yeah—two classes down. One disaster averted. One set of bus-stop bullies thwarted. One pun-loving teacher discovered. Sophomore year was definitely rocking. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and I’d already come back from the dead.

  I met up with Lee down the hall from the cafeteria.

  “How was your history class?” I asked.

  “Dated,” she said. “How was yours?”

  “Epic.” We got in the food line. “This is a ridiculously early time to eat lunch.”

  “Think of it as brunch,” Lee said.

  “Brunch is for adults,” I said. We weren’t close enough to see the food yet. I sniffed the air. “And I don’t think tacos or chicken cutlets are traditional brunch items.”

  “How do you do that?” Lee asked. “It all just smells like a barely contained grease fire to me.”

  “It’s a gift. Hey, speaking of which, why did you give me three Venus flytraps for the Fourth of July?”

  “Because I know from numerous sad experiences that two-thirds of them die right away,” she said. “How many do you have left?”

  “One.”

  Lee grinned. “As my dad likes to say: asked, and answered.”

  We both got the tacos. I bought chocolate milk. Lee got a soda from the machine. They’d tried to replace all the soda with water and juice last year, but the mayor’s brother is a hotshot executive for a major soda company, so carbonated beverages had a lot of support in our town.

  If I’d been by myself, I would have stood amid the tables for five minutes, trying to figure out where to sit. Freshman year, my social circle had been torn apart and stitched together. I’d lost old friends, and gained new ones. But Wesley had been a senior last year. So he was gone, leaving Lee and me as our entire high school clique.

  Lee grabbed a seat at an empty table. She would have done the same thing even if we weren’t together. Or she would have sat with the most popular kids in the room, like she did last year, just for fun. She didn’t seem to worry about stuff like social structures, clique hierarchies, and the intangible nature of popularity.

  I joined her. I was happy not to have to figure out where I’d fit in best.

  Richard Elkhart hovered nearby. I knew him from the paper. I pointed at the empty seats, inviting him to take one. Edith Cutler, also from the paper, joined us. We compared schedules. We all had the same English class. That was good. Richard was in my Spanish class, and Edith was in bio.

  The kid I’d thrashed in history walked over. I clenched my fists, ready to protect myself if he took a swing at me, or flung the food on his tray at my face.

  “That was funny,” he said.

  “Funny?”

  “Yeah. You really got me good.” He looked down at the table. “Can I sit here? I don’t know anybody.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.” He sat, and doled out basic data.

  His name was Bradley. He’d just moved here from Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Apparently, where he came from, insults were exchanged between adolescent males as readily and forcefully as high fives, and didn’t lead to fights.

  That was a new way to make friends. One more miracle this morning and I was going to apply for sainthood.

  I scanned the room to see whether there had been any major social upheavals or revolutions during the summer. Things looked pretty much the same. Except for one thing.

  “Kyle and Kelly aren’t together anymore.” I pointed to where Kelly sat.

  “Maybe the alliteration was too much for them,” Lee said.

  “That theory is as good as any,” I said. I examined “Scott and Lee” for any signs of intolerable cuteness. The conjunction seemed fine, marred only by its current status as just a theoretical pairing.

  “I heard she dumped him over the summer,” Edith said.

  “Ouch.” No matter what had happened between Kyle and me, I felt a bit sorry for him. I knew how badly he’d wanted a girlfriend last year.

  I turned my attention to my lunch. I ate the French fries first, since the cooler they got, the less they resembled food. The tacos weren’t bad. They were only flawed by being small and few. As a rule of thumb, a taco should never be smaller than your hand. Or your thumb. I ate both of mine pretty quickly. My tacos. Not my hands. Lee nibbled at one of hers, made a face, and put the other one on my tray. “Want it?”

  “Sure.” There are some things you never turn down. After I finished my taco, my cubed pale crunchy fruit in sugar water, and my red sugary gelatin desert, I wiped the tortilla-shell grease from my hands and grabbed my notebook. As I sipped my chocolate milk, I compiled a list.

  Scott Hudson’s List of Things You Should Never Turn Down

  A pristine taco of any size.

  A ride in a sports car.

  The volume.

  Advice from a magical talking fish.

  Scott Hudson’s List of Things You Should Always Turn Down

  A seat next to Lyle “Sardine Breath” Sabretski (even if he ever gets a sports car).

  A bite from a half-eaten caramel apple.

  Advice from a talking fly-infested pig’s head on a stick.

  Lee took a small sip from her soda. This was only her third tiny slurp, at most. She held the soda out to me. “I can’t finish this. Want it?”

  “Sure.” I put the nearly full can on my tray, slugged down the rest of the milk, then chugged the soda, and added it to my list. I’d never seen Lee drink a whole soda. That worked out pretty nicely for me.

  The bell rang. “Time to conquer the next clas
s,” I said.

  “Someone’s feeling invulnerable,” Lee said.

  “Hey, we’re sophomores,” I said. “There are no pitfalls left for us.”

  “Here’s hoping irony doesn’t bite you on the butt,” Lee said.

  Irony, it turns out, has a big mouth, sharp teeth, and a craving for Hudson butts.

  FOUR

  Despite the popularity of various housing clusters of little pigs, assorted tradesmen in a tub, gruff billy goats, blind mice, and other well-known trios, three is not always a good number. I probably could have survived the smell, if it had been alone in its assault on my senses. I might have survived the sight, if it hadn’t struck me immediately after the smell. Toss in the third element, which in this case was itself a dangerous trio in the form of gobbled cafeteria tacos, and I didn’t have a prayer. Or a convenient tub.

  The smell hit me right after I walked through the classroom door, as I turned past the large lab table at the front of the room. If you mixed nail-polish remover with paint thinner in a bucket, tossed in a couple of raw chicken thighs, a mackerel, and assorted slices of deli meats, and let the whole thing sit outside in direct sunlight for a week or two, the stench would seem like fresh-baked apple pie compared to the air in the classroom. Nothing solid, liquid, or gaseous that Sean had blown out of his lower intestines came close to being this awful. And Sean could clear a room.

  The sight smacked me as I looked for the source of the smell. A cat—actually, make that something that had once been a cat—was pinned, belly-up, to a wooden board on the table. Make that belly-up and belly-open. His mouth was agape, as if he were still trying to come to grips with the horror of his current situation. I turned away from the sight as the third taco, which was the last one to go down, exploded from my stomach and rocketed up my throat. I guess it was eager to clear a path for the second and first tacos, which enjoyed a flume ride on the waves of chocolate milk and soda that had tasted so good going down.

  I hadn’t thrown up in a long time. Not since I had the flu in sixth grade. I saw another splatter of vomit near mine. An instant later, I heard someone behind me joining the puke party.