“Suit yourself. Cotton candy’s the shit.”
Normally, Esther had no problem condescending to anyone who dared to crash JT gatherings. She was, after all, the very definition of alpha. But Tegan was in a category all her own. She was more like a lone wolf. A Gigantor-size, Mordor-bred wolfasaurus rex from Middle-Earth. With rabies. She would tear the esophaguses (esophagi?) out of any pack that dared to challenge her.
I think Esther was a little intimidated by Tegan.
“Satan is disguised beneath a cloak of so-called tolerance!” said Esther—louder and more maniacal than usual. “He takes sin and sugarcoats it in political correctness. But this idea of ‘tolerance’ simply means tolerating sin. And I, for one, won’t tolerate it.”
“This bitch makes me wanna punch a brick wall,” said Tegan loudly. “How can people even listen to this bullshit?”
I shrugged. “She’s a good public speaker, I guess.”
“She’s a good public menace.”
“Yeah, but she knows how to articulate things.”
“You know how to articulate things.”
“Not in front of a crowd of people.”
“Do you and Aaron know what you’re gonna say?”
“Do you mind?”
That came from Esther, who was clearly done with our loud side conversation.
I was suddenly staring down a scowling army of upper-class white kids with a Sunday School complex.
“We’re trying to have a spiritual moment here,” Esther continued.
Tegan stopped chewing. She spit out her gum like a viscid pink bullet, halfway across the Quad.
And then she marched straight toward Esther.
Esther, realizing her spiritual bubble was being encroached upon, panicked and took several steps back.
“Hey,” said Zeke, stepping between them. “What do you think you’re— Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”
Tegan grabbed Zeke’s skinny arm and twisted it behind his back. She held it for only a few seconds before shoving him aside.
She closed the gap between her and Esther, who had unwittingly cornered herself against the fountain, calves pressed against the Aztec-tiled surface.
“Lemme tell you,” said Tegan. “I’d love nothing more than to kick your self-righteous ass to the Vatican and back.”
Esther swallowed hard.
“But I don’t have to,” Tegan continued, “because Cliff and Aaron are gonna do that for me. When this Sermon Showdown goes down, they’re gonna blow you out of your holier-than-thou stratosphere and power-slam you down to Planet fucking Earth where you belong, you hoity-toity psycho bitch.”
With that, Tegan turned and left Esther and the JTs in the metaphorical dust of her badassery. She made a drive-by grab at my hand and towed my shell-shocked ass behind her.
“Hey, Tegan,” said Esther. “Just curious—who’s the man in this relationship?”
This earned more than a few laughs from the JTs.
“I’m sorry,” said Tegan. “Tegan’s out of the office right now. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can take them up with her secretary.” Tegan flipped her middle finger, and then brought it to life with a cartoonish, falsetto voice: “Hello, how may I fuck you?”
And on that note, we left Esther and the JTs.
“So…” I said, finally—when I was sufficiently convinced that the JTs wouldn’t mob us and subject our pagan asses to death by pressing, Salem witch–style. “You know there’s no way in hell Aaron and I can out-preach Esther, right?”
“I know.”
“Oh,” I said, mildly wounded. “Well…thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I’ll tell you what your problem is,” said Tegan. “You need to stop worrying about out-preaching her. Preaching is the problem. Show her what it means to be a human being. I’m pretty sure the whole damn school knows how to do that better than her.”
That’s when it happened. My brain was the Death Star, and Tegan had just fired a couple of proton torpedoes into the thermal exhaust port, and BOOM!
“Holy shit,” I said.
“What?”
“I have an idea.”
I told Aaron my brilliant idea. At least, I hoped it was brilliant. Aaron was sort of the determining factor. Tegan told me the idea was “dope”; however,
1. she was a biased entity interested in boosting my fragile self-esteem, and
2. I also recalled Tegan calling Sharknado—an objectively terrible movie—dope, and now I had all sorts of mixed feelings regarding its connotation.
I told Aaron the idea. He basically had a conniption of raging excitement.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” said Aaron.
I nodded, cluelessly. “So…is that a good ah or a bad ah?”
“Good ah! Definitely good ah!”
Oh phew. I let out an intense sigh of relief.
“It’s brilliant!” said Aaron. “This is it. This is the sermon that’s gonna kick Esther’s ass.”
“Technically, it’s not a sermon.”
“No, it’s better than a sermon! Shit, we need to talk to Jack and Julian ASAP.”
Jack and Julian were essential to the plan in one crucial aspect. And because Aaron was experiencing a nuclear-powered adrenaline rush, we found them rather quickly. It helped that it was lunchtime, and they were sitting at the nerdiest table this side of Comic Con.
Jack and Julian were merely the tip of the geeky iceberg. When you dared descend to the shady underbelly of HVHS’s fandom subculture, there was no unseeing and unhearing what you saw and heard. The major players in this pit of nerdophilia included:
1. Seth Glover—chubby, with a mushroom cloud of curly hair, and visibly sexually frustrated. It was also rumored that he could quote the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica.
2. Diego Martinez, whose life was cosplaying. Even now—at school—he was half-cosplaying. Today, he was wearing an official Assassin’s Creed jacket, gothy fingerless gloves, and combat boots that reeked of Hot Topic.
3. Becky Winston, who kind of resembled an anthropomorphic aardvark from the PBS cartoon Arthur. She was also deeply, romantically, sexually in love with the Doctor. The character from Doctor Who. All thirteen incarnations.
Naturally, they were taking part in the archetypal nerd debate:
SETH: Star Wars and Star Trek are two entirely different things. You can’t just say one is better than the other.
JULIAN: But I did. Star Wars is rad, and William Shatner has the past tense of shit in his name.
BECKY: Dude. Shatner is so hot.
DIEGO: (melodramatically) Shatner’s idea of…acting resembles a teenage…girl trying to drive a…stick.
BECKY: Dude. I drive a stick. You drive a Prius.
SETH: Okay, Shatner is bad. But both series have had highs and lows. I mean, what about Attack of the Clones?
BECKY: Dude…Hayden Chris…tensen is so…hot.
DIEGO: Nice use of the Shatner pause!
JULIAN: Clones only sucked because Jar Jar Binks got so much hate, George Lucas decided against revealing him as a Sith Lord.
JACK: Oh boy, here we go.
SETH: That’s just a fan theory. Jar Jar Binks is not a Sith Lord.
JULIAN: That’s what Lord Jar Jar wants you to think.
SETH: He’s also not a real person.
JULIAN: Why do you think Count Dooku was such a lame villain?
JACK: Because George Lucas is a shitty writer?
JULIAN: Because he’s a filler villain! Because it was meant to be Jar Jar all along!
Enter AARON, Savior of Happy Valley High School; and CLIFF, his ginormous-ass sidekick.
“Trek and Wars are great and all,” I said, nonchalantly strolling onto the nerd scene, “but have you seen Firefly?”
“OH MY GOD, YES,” said Diego.
“THANK YOU,” said Jack.
“MAL REYNOLDS IS SO HOT,” said Becky.
“Wow,” said Aaron. “Nice icebreaker. So you guys like bugs?”
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“Not that firefly,” I whispered.
“Right.” Aaron cleared his throat into his fist. “Hey, guys. And girl. Not to interrupt, but Cliff and I are working on a…film project…of sorts. And we were wondering if any of you nerds knew anything about filming. And video editing. Bonus points if you have equipment.”
“Um, do you have a smartphone?” said Diego.
“Disregard this Hot Topic–clad, wannabe-assassin imbecile,” said Julian.
“Hey!”
“What you want is a Galaxy S7 Edge. It’s a twelve megapixel f/one-point-seven shooter. Best dynamic range, widest aperture, best texture and contrast, best low-light shooting, and fastest autofocus. You can even shoot it underwater! Sort of. Also, I have one.”
“Or you can use an iPhone,” said Jack.
“Or you can use an iPhone if you want to Snapchat nudes to your hipster baby mama while using a filter to turn your face into a piece of toast BECAUSE YOU’RE A MORON.”
“Star Wars sucks.”
“Okay. That’s it.” Julian pushed his chair back and stood up from the table. “I’m gonna karate-brown-belt your ass.”
“Is a ‘brown’ belt what they give people who are full of shit?”
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” said Julian, hands in karate-chopping position.
“Whoa, hey hey hey!” said Becky. “Chill, boys. You’re both pretty.”
“Look, we’re just trying to film something for the Sermon Showdown,” said Aaron.
That shut everyone up. It also stopped what might have been the funniest martial arts battle of all time. But it was a loss I was willing to take because we had shit to do.
“Wait,” said Jack. “You want us to film your sermon for the Sermon Showdown?”
“Well, it’s not really a sermon per se,” I said. “But yeah, basically.”
“I’m filming,” said Julian.
“No, I’m filming,” said Jack.
“I’ve got some video-editing software,” said Seth.
“Do you need music?” said Diego. “I can mix music.”
“Hey, I wanna help!” said Becky.
And just like that, we had an entire crew of techie geniuses at our disposal. It was time to get started.
Aaron and I were pumped. We were actively discussing the details of our highly experimental film project—set to begin ASAP—when we walked into fifth-period English.
There, sitting behind Mr. Spinelli’s desk…
…was Mr. Spinelli.
I made it about three steps through the door before I stumbled to a halt and said, “Holy shit.”
“Language, Mr. Hubbard,” said Spinelli. He sent me a stern, Grinchy glance.
And then he smiled.
The tardy bell rang. Aaron and I hurried to our seats, but our mouths were hanging permanently open.
Spinelli stood up, grabbed his mangled copy of The Old Man and the Sea, and began pacing. “Some of you,” he said, “might be wondering why Mr. Spinelli cares so much about this godforsaken book. Maybe you’re saying, Well, this doesn’t apply to me. I don’t even like fishing.”
This earned him several laughs. I wasn’t one of them because I still couldn’t figure out how to move my mouth—a necessary function for laughter.
“From the very first page,” said Spinelli, “the old man, Santiago, is characterized as a person struggling to overcome defeat. He’s gone eighty-four days without catching a fish—almost reaching his eighty-seven-day record. Everything about Santiago is downtrodden and defeated. He is a mere speck in a vast ocean that is so much bigger and more powerful than he is. And yet, despite the complete and utter hopelessness of his situation, he resolves to sail beyond the other fishermen, to the deepest, darkest, uncharted reaches of the ocean where the greatest fish are rumored to reside.”
Spinelli ceased pacing, and turned to face us. His eyes were deep and strange.
“Why?” said Spinelli. “Why does he do this?”
Lacey raised her hand timidly.
“Yes, Lacey.”
“Because he has hope?”
“Hope is certainly a part of it. But hope in what? Does he hope that the universe will just cut him a break and give him a fish already?”
I thought of Aaron and the List. I thought of who I was before I met him, and all of the horrible, horrible shit that had happened. And I thought of who I was now.
I raised my hand.
Spinelli’s eyes narrowed on me. “Yes, Mr. Hubbard.”
“He has hope that the ocean will make him into something stronger,” I said. “Maybe even strong enough to defeat the ocean.”
Spinelli smiled.
“We are all in an ocean,” he said. “Every one of us. Some of us are barely swimming, some of us are drowning, and there are some of us still who are being tossed in waves and dashed upon the rocks. And often we feel that we won’t survive. Maybe that ocean is school, and we’re struggling to get decent grades, or to fit in, or maybe we’re just trying to survive the hurtful words and actions of people who don’t understand their own cruelty. But one thing is certain—something that Hemingway is trying to teach us through Santiago—we, as human beings, are made to transcend. I believe that there is something deep down inside of us that resonates with the universe. A purpose. And once we learn what that purpose is”—Spinelli looked directly at me—“even the whole ocean cannot stop us.”
Aaron and I split up to cover more ground. Jack followed me, and Julian followed Aaron.
What we were filming was basically an interview/montage/documentary/poem.
This involved talking to lots of people—although we didn’t really have set questions. It was mostly just explaining the nature of the project and letting people say what they wanted to say.
The results were rather astounding.
We started with the easy targets—those who were morally obligated to talk to us (aka Tegan and Lacey), and branched out from there. Heather Goodman, Jed, Carlos…even faculty like Spinelli.
Even Robin, who seemed like she was doing okay.
Even Noah, who clearly wasn’t.
Even Niko!
It helped that our cause had already become the stuff of bizzaro legend. Everyone knew about Aaron’s alleged God experience, that Neanderthal was his “divinely appointed” sidekick, and that the Sermon Showdown was essentially another bullet on the List. And whether people thought we were insane or awesome or—most likely—both, everyone was fascinated. Our cause was so weird, it was impossible to feel indifferent about it. So when word spread that we were making a film and “interviewing” people as our response to the Sermon Showdown, we didn’t even need to find people. They started coming to us.
Some more awkwardly than others.
“Neanderthal!” said Frankie. “’Sup, dawg.”
He swooped up from behind and gave me a sideways hug/fist-bump thingy. Actually, it all happened so fast, I wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed assuredly masculine.
Jack went rigid, like he was witnessing a mugging.
“Heard y’all were making a movie,” said Frankie. “Interviewing people for this Sermon Showdown shit. Thought you’d like to talk to the most spiritual-ass person here.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
“Uhrrrm…” I said. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.”
“Great. So. Um…” For whatever reason, his volume dropped to a whisper. “Do you think Tegan will see this?”
Again, an appropriate response seemed to elude me.
“Probably…?” I said with infinite indefiniteness.
“Okay,” said Frankie, nodding with increasing enthusiasm. “Okay, cool. Yeah. Great.”
We filmed Frankie. And what he said was kind of mind-blowing.
Frankie wasn’t an anomaly. Everywhere, people were opening up.
Jack was kind of amazing, too. Whenever I wasn’t interviewing people, he was filming everyone and everything—capturing the world in its every waking moment. The sun had reached th
at perfect spot in the sky when it was bright but not glaring, warm but not uncomfortable, breathing light and life across the small-town horizon. I heard thrushes singing their whirling, reedy love songs, and the cicadas had composed a symphony in the western yellow pines—a sound track to a simpler form of life. You could feel the human connection. It was an existential string connecting soul to soul in a web with a perfect center.
There was a togetherness to the world. A fullness. Everything was in its right place.
Everything just felt…more.
That night, the Nerd Herd (Jack, Julian, Seth, Diego, and Becky) pulled a video-editing, all-nighter pizza party—funded by Aaron’s college tuition. This involved four larges from Pizza Hut, every caffeinated product known to man, and several hours of raw footage that needed to be chopped down to five minutes tops—preferably three, according to Jack and his “YouTube statistics.”
“You go longer than five, and you’ll lose everybody’s five-minute attention span,” said Jack. “Four is better. Three is ideal.”
Fortunately for us, pumping five teenage techie geniuses full of caffeine was the equivalent of building a sentient supercomputer.
The day of the Sermon Showdown had arrived.
The school was buzzing—a beehive of throbbing, pulsating anticipation. The halls were so filled with excited chatter, all the words and squeals and laughter blended together into a whirring drone. It was giving me a headache. Aaron too. Except his headache looked like he was being crushed in a trash compactor of sound claustrophobia.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
I spotted Aaron hovering in front of his locker, index and middle fingers pressed to his temples, attempting to locate his cerebral Make It Stop button.
“Yeah,” said Aaron, kind of blankly.
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. If you’re sure…”
And that’s when Aaron collapsed. His body went limp, and he dropped like a noodle.
The good news was that Aaron regained consciousness within fifteen seconds. The bad news was that I had no way of knowing if his brain was bleeding again or not. So consciousness notwithstanding, I cradled Aaron in my arms like the world’s buffest baby and ran him to the nurse’s office, screaming “Nine-one-one! Somebody call nine-one-one!”
Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe Page 25