Something was definitely up. Admiral Ackbar was probably shitting lobsters at this point.
“What do you want?” I said.
Aaron’s smile flinched. “So I don’t normally do this,” he said, “but, um…sorry?”
I blinked.
“Jesus, I suck at apologizing,” he said.
I blinked again.
“You should say something,” he said. “This is awkward.”
Was I still high? How long did it take for marijuana to wear off?
And that’s when Kyle dick-for Dunston breached the invisible quarantine force field. Maybe I wasn’t so high after all. He was holding his lunch tray and wearing this curious half smile, as if wondering why his best friend hadn’t let him in on the joke.
“Hey, man,” said Kyle. “We eating with Neanderthal today?”
Shit got weirder. Aaron’s face flinched. His eye twitched.
“Can you give me a sec, man?” said Aaron. “I need to talk to Cliff.”
“Uh…” said Kyle. “Okay…?”
But Kyle stood there for another ten seconds, waiting for the punchline. Aaron waited. I waited, watching the awkward standoff like I had inadvertently ventured into the Weird Part of YouTube.
Finally, Kyle left.
“Sorry about that,” said Aaron. “Listen. Um. I know this is weird, but I need to tell you something important. Maybe the most important thing I’ve ever told anyone in my entire life. Just don’t freak out, okay?”
Pro Tip: Telling someone to not freak before you tell them something usually has the opposite effect.
I just kept staring, waiting for this delayed marijuana hallucination to disappear.
“Are you familiar with near-death experiences?” he said.
Aaron waited for me to answer the question.
Near-death experiences?
If he was referring to the phenomena associated with out-of-body experiences, some sort of wonky afterlife, and a whole lotta light at the end of the tunnel, then yes, I was familiar with near-death experiences.
I was also of the opinion that they were bullshit.
“Yeah…” I said. “What about ’em?”
“What if I told you that I had one?”
“I would probably tell you to go see a psychiatrist.”
“Cliff. I had a near-death experience.”
“You should go see a psychiatrist.”
“I don’t need to see a psychiatrist. I need to talk to you, Cliff.”
“Me? What the hell for?”
“Because you were a part of it.”
Okay. My Weird Shit-O-Meter was currently off the scale.
“I mean, you weren’t in it, per se,” said Aaron. He hesitated, suddenly looking self-conscious. “I didn’t see you. But…listen. This is going to sound crazy, okay?”
It was a little late for that.
“I need to tell you this,” said Aaron, “and I know I don’t know you, but you’re just gonna have to be okay with that because this is real, okay? Like, realer than football.”
Marijuana my ass. That joint was laced with mushrooms.
“Okay, here it is.”
Aaron’s face went rigid with a laughable amount of seriousness, his eyes narrowing on me like mini-cannons. He was apparently mentally bracing himself for whatever bomb he was about to drop on me. And that’s when he said the craziest shit I had ever heard.
“I saw God.”
Welp. Didn’t see that one coming.
“You saw what?” I said.
I was secretly hoping that I had heard wrong. That I had somehow switched the letters around in my head, and he had actually said “dog.” I saw dog. Yeah, that was it. Aaron was just an illiterate moron who saw this really cool dog, and he thought that Neanderthal was the only one who could appreciate his awkward canine fetish. Anticlimactic, yes, but I could swallow that.
“God,” Aaron repeated. “I saw God.”
Dammit.
“Also,” said Aaron, “God told me that Happy Valley High School needs to change. He gave me a list of things to do. And he told me I need your help. And yeah. So that’s why I’m talking to you.”
My jaw unhinged.
“So…” said Aaron. “That was about as awkward as expected.”
Aaron waited for a response from me. Something. Anything.
And then I did the unthinkable.
I stood up. I turned around. And I walked out. I abandoned my entire uneaten chimichanga lunch—and Aaron—in the cafeteria. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
Have I mentioned how fond I am of chimichangas?
Here is an in-detail account of my entire religious history:
1. During elementary school, my parents, Shane, and I went to Christmas/Easter Mass at St. Matthew’s Catholic Parish in Kalispell a grand total of four times—two back-to-back years.
2. Shane and I watched Bruce Almighty approximately fourteen infinitrillion times.
The end.
But seriously, Bruce Almighty was our movie. We could quote that thing backward and forward and upside down—not just a figure of speech. We would literally hang upside down by our legs on the monkey bars at Meyer Park and quote the movie. We would go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until so much blood had rushed to our heads, we couldn’t even think straight.
As far as we were concerned, God looked and sounded exactly like Morgan Freeman.
And then Shane died.
Now obviously I wasn’t religious to begin with. But when Shane died, God did too. And if God wasn’t dead, I hated his guts, and I wanted to punch him in his Great Omnipotent Face.
But now the heavens had opened and the Prophet Aaron Zimmerman had been given a divine mission. And apparently I was his Holy Sidekick.
I felt sick.
I barreled into the very first bathroom stall I could find, dropped to my knees, and puked my guts out. Niagara Falls would have been jealous. When I was done, the aftermath looked like it could have been chimichangas once upon a time.
The cruel irony.
That’s when I heard the shoes scuffling in the handicap stall beside me.
“The hell are you doing?” a voice whispered with not-so-whispery panic.
“It’s okay,” the other voice whispered. “Just chill.”
Due to the extreme nature of their whispery-ness, I couldn’t attach the voices to faces. But I knew one thing:
They were both dudes. In a stall together.
I had a formidable suspicion as to whom one of them was.
The neighboring stall door opened and closed. Whoever was still inside made sure to lock it.
I glanced up from my barf just in time for Noah Poulson to peek around the corner.
I actually knew Noah a little more personally than I knew most kids at HVHS because he tutored Shane in Algebra. Not Shane’s first choice—being tutored by a gay kid a year younger than him. But then again, Shane actually cared about his grades because he wanted to go to college. That would have been a first in the Hubbard family tree. And he never would have passed Algebra if it wasn’t for Noah.
And honestly, I don’t think Noah was what Shane expected at all. He dressed mostly in earth tones, his moppy hair looked like it had never seen the likes of a comb in its follicular existence, and he always wore band shirts. Lots of band shirts. Kick-ass band shirts like Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, and Nine Inch Nails, with the occasional softie like Death Cab for Cutie. Currently, he was wearing a badass Tool shirt featuring this large peering eye with two pupils.
“You okay, Cliff?” he asked.
I gave a thumbs-up. “Yep. Just…trying out the…bulimia thing,” I said between exhausted breaths.
“What? Are you serious?”
Noah’s brow furrowed in concern. My sarcasm was obviously far too advanced for how depressingly huge I was and how catastrophically I was puking.
“Bulimia is a dangerous eating disorder,” said Noah. “Not to sound preachy, but if you’re having body image issues, an
d you feel like bulimia is the only answer, you need to talk to someone. There’re people who help with this kind of—”
“Noah?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not bulimic.”
“Oh,” said Noah. He seemed to consider this for a considerably long moment. “Are you sure?”
“Painstakingly.”
“Oh. Okay.” Again, Noah hesitated. “Do you need to talk?”
I glanced at Noah. Then I glanced at the wall separating me from the dude in the adjacent stall. Back to Noah. Not to be rude, but I wasn’t keen on having a heart-to-heart in front of Noah’s mystery make-out man.
Noah followed my gaze and blushed. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
I tilted my head down, eyes still trained on Noah. My skepticism amplified tenfold.
“It’s not!” said Noah. “We’re just having a coming-out pep talk.”
Actually, I believed him. Despite being openly gay, I’d never seen him with another guy. Hell, I’d never even seen him flirt with another guy. That wasn’t really his style. Honestly, his coming out seemed more like a friendly girl deterrent than anything else—which he probably needed. I knew for a fact that Elizabeth Darley spent the better part of middle school shamelessly crushing on him. In the small capacity that I knew Noah, he was the sort of genuine friend who would give a pep talk to the sexiest guy at school, expecting nothing in return. He’d do it simply because it was the right thing to do.
“I’m good, Noah,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”
Noah nodded. He started to turn. Then he stopped again.
“I know it’s old news, but…I’m sorry about Shane.” He paused. Apparently he was trying to think of the most outrageously nutty thing he could say to me. Because that’s what came out of his mouth. “God loves you, you know.”
The end-of-lunch bell rang.
“Dammit!” said the guy in the stall. The lock unlatched, the door exploded open, and he dashed out of the boys’ bathroom—so fast, I didn’t even catch a glimpse of him.
“Hey,” said Noah. “Wait!”
Noah was gone. It was only me and my floating pool of vomit.
For the remainder of school, teachers’ mouths moved, but I only heard one line:
God loves you, you know.
To fully fathom what a stupid thing this was for Noah to say, you had to know his sister, Esther. Esther Poulson was the leader of the resident Christian clique, the JTs (Jesus Teens). And I use the term clique generously, because really they were more of a malevolent cult.
As I left school, I crossed the Quad and watched the cult leader herself, ending another day in Babylon. She was elevated above the crowd of her congregation—fifty or so teenagers circled around her, holding hands—standing on what I swear to God was a portable pulpit. As always, she was spewing her usual sugarcoated vitriol.
“God loves everyone,” said Esther. “Therefore, it is our job to love everyone. Even the people who don’t deserve it. Especially the people who don’t deserve it. Unfortunately, we don’t have control over the sinners and the million ways they know how to sin. It’s God’s job to judge them. It’s our job to be better than them. As I like to say…”
Apparently this was a verbal cue, because then every one of the JTs chanted with her:
“SINNERS GONNA SIN; WINNERS GONNA WIN.”
Esther was beautiful. Esther was popular. Esther was smart—equipped with top-notch grades and razor-sharp wit. Not to mention, she was the student body president. When you coupled all those things with religion-fueled elitism, she was arguably the most dangerous person at school.
The fact that the JTs were a social group composed of other social groups only amplified their power—Zeke Gallagher, who was in with the rockers; Roy Porter from the football team; Lacey’s friend Heather Goodman, who was a cheerleader and a member of the Fashion Club. Really, the scope of their grasp on the HVHS social sphere was staggering.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was Noah—the only person who openly recognized the JTs as a problem.
Noah was the only out kid at HVHS. Had been his entire stint here. Sure, there were other gay kids—like whoever that was in the bathroom with Noah—but they seemed to have no intention of coming out. Who could blame them?
Noah was confident. Noah was smart. Noah knew that something needed to change. So, over the course of his almost three years at HVHS, he had been fighting to implement a Gay-Straight Alliance.
“I think a Gay-Straight Alliance only works if there’s more than one of you,” Esther had said. “Seems a little narcissistic, wanting a whole club devoted to yourself, don’t you think?”
“I’m not the only one. That’s the point.”
“Whatever. We all know you just want a place to hit on dudes. As the Babylonians say: Keep it in your pants, bro.”
The JTs heckled Noah endlessly. But at the end of the day, they couldn’t stop the formation of a GSA. Even the student body president didn’t have that sort of power.
But they could sure as hell complain to their parents.
That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Poulson came in.
You see, Mr. Poulson was a pastor at the local Church of (insert long line of ostentatious and yet mildly ambiguous Bible buzzwords here—seriously, I can’t remember the name). But it was big. The sort of big that is less a church and more of a franchise. And when the words gay and straight and alliance were injected into the rumor mill, the entire congregation went on the offense, because clearly Jesus did not eat with sinners.
Of course, there were laws regarding this sort of thing. Banning an extracurricular club like this was not only discriminatory. It was illegal—unless you banned all extracurricular clubs.
That’s what HVHS did.
Principal McCaffrey was hardly homophobic. But when an angry mob storms the castle waving torches and pitchforks, well…not all of us can be Joan of Arc.
Of course, getting rid of all extracurricular clubs was insane. Parents were well aware of this. But fortunately for them, they had a very sneaky student body president on their side. One who would claim that a certain club wasn’t extracurricular, but rather, curriculum related. The Glee Club, for example, was related to choir. All sports-related clubs were an appendage of PE.
Remember Heather Goodman’s Fashion Club? Apparently that was related to Home Economics.
Esther drew these obscure lines between every club and its “related” curriculum. Every club except the GSA.
Still, Noah kept fighting.
God loves you, you know.
That was the oddest thing about Noah—he didn’t just believe in God. He was, like, full-on, level-80 Christian. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t just a phase for him. I’d seen Shane confront him about it on multiple occasions.
“The Bible teaches you to hate gay people,” Shane had stated once—so matter-of-factly, you’d have thought he’d read it out of a textbook or a dictionary. “So why the hell would you believe that shit?”
“Does it?” asked Noah, feigning cluelessness.
“Well, yeah. Duh. Have you heard your sister talk?”
“Love your neighbor.”
“Huh?”
“Love your neighbor as yourself—that’s the second most important commandment.”
“What does my neighbor have to do with anything?”
“It’s a phrase. It means love everyone.”
“Oh. Well, what’s the most important commandment?”
“Love God.”
Shane snorted, and rolled his eyes, and shook his head. “That’s a little egocentric, don’t you think? Why should I love God more than everyone else?”
“It’s not about loving God more than everyone. It’s about loving someone whose sole purpose is for you to love everyone. That’s what God is—the embodiment of love.”
God loves you, you know.
I respected Noah. I really did. But all this “love your neighbor” bullshit was going to get his as
s kicked. The Rules of High School (One, Two, and Three) applied to everyone.
The stress must have been getting to me. My walk home was derailed as I clutched my gut, bent over, and barfed again on some poor bastard’s well-kept lawn. Like, where the hell was it all coming from?
“Damn,” said the last voice in the world I wanted to hear.
I jolted up. Aaron was standing only a few feet away, head tilted. His mouth was pulled in a grimace.
“You okay, man?” said Aaron. “That’s a lotta puke.”
“What do you want?” I said.
“Um…” said Aaron. “Well, I guess I kind of gave you the CliffsNotes version of what I want. But if you really want to know what I want, it’d be helpful if you listened to what I have to s—”
I turned around and started walking.
“Cliff!”
I kept walking.
“Dammit, Cliff!”
I could hear him jogging after me. I walked faster.
Yeah, I may have been a semi-evolved humanoid porpoise, but I was one with humongous legs. When I wanted to walk fast, I traveled a couple Machs short of light speed.
And then, because the universe hated me, I heard a car approach. It slowed down, only to pull up beside us at a leisurely roll.
“Aaron, what are you doing?”
It was Lacey. I recognized her voice but turned my head anyway. Her silver Camry was rolling in perfect synchronization with Aaron’s determined jog.
“Oh,” said Aaron. “Hey, Lacey. I’m just…talking to Cliff.”
“Cliff?” said Lacey. Her questioning tone made me grit my teeth. “You mean Neanderthal?”
Lacey looked at me. We only maintained eye contact for a brief second. I turned away, glaring with furious determination on the path ahead.
“His name’s Cliff,” said Aaron. “But yeah.”
“It doesn’t look like he wants to talk to you.”
“Thanks for your input, Lacey. We’re fine.”
I walked even faster, just to prove how not fine this was.
“Is this a joke?” said Lacey. “Like, is this some kind of prank? Because Kyle says he has no idea what the hell you’re doing.”
Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe Page 5