Dismantling Evan

by Venessa Kimball

  “A little,” I admit.

  “It is completely normal,” she breaks in. “You don’t know anyone here and you are a senior, but it is okay. You can make new friends, build new relationships,” she adds, all preachy like.

  Okay, I already have one shrink, I don’t need another. I cut her short, “I do know people here.”

  She seems shocked. “Oh, I thought you were new to town.”

  “I am, but I have met a few people since moving here. Nikki Bell, Asher Vega, and Brody and Gavin Ferguson.”

  “Oh” she says, her smile fades slightly and she starts straightening the multiple stacks of documents on her desk. “The Fergusons.”

  The way she says their last name leads me to believe she has had a negative encounter with them. “Yes, they are my neighbors.”

  She nods and raises her brow acknowledging my response. “Yes, they are coming back today.”

  Coming back? I want to ask where they were last year, but don’t. Instead I make small talk. “Gavin seems...Different; nice though. And Brody, well he…” I pause.

  “He could use a friend Evan. They both could,” she says, somberly. “Brody has more pressure on him than the average high school athlete.”

  Athlete? He was a jock! I wouldn’t have ever pegged him for a football player. I mean he has the body for sure, but I just didn’t see him as a jock type I guess.

  “With his father gone and his mom working he had to stop playing football last year. Everything went downhill for them after that.”

  I remember him saying his dad was gone. Did he just up and leave?

  “He works part-time on the weekends and watches out for Gavin constantly, God bless him.” She shakes her head, pitifully. “I can only do so much here at the school for Gavin. Our hands are tied with resources being unavailable, but Brody helps so much.”

  Resources for Gavin? This only heightens my concern for Gavin and his seemingly odd ways.

  She pauses then looks at me like she has said too much. “I shouldn’t be talking about this.” She rises from her seat and smiles softly. “Just know they could use a friend if you are willing to offer it.” The pleading look in her eyes suggest her words are heartfelt.

  I nod even though I am utterly confused by this chain of dialogue.

  She leads me to her door. “Have you thought about college?”

  I haven’t really. Other circumstances, aka the breakdown from hell, kind of replaced the idea. “I haven’t had a chance.” I murmur.

  She adds, “Well, when you are ready or if you or your parents have any questions about the process of applying, I would be happy to help. Don’t hesitate knocking on my door.” She stops at the door and says cheerfully, “Welcome to Braxton Springs High School.”

  I thank her and walk down the office hallway toward the exit. I’m about to text Nikki as I open the door when I look up and notice Gavin approaching me with a wide smile on his face. Brody is walking behind him closely, his hands tucked into his jean pockets and his backpack and Gavin’s slung over each shoulder.

  I notice the students around them watching them move toward me, looking at them like they have horns growing from their heads or something. “Hi Gavin,” I say when he gets closer.

  He nods his head deeply. “Hi Evan.”

  Upon hearing my name, Brody looks up and our eyes meet for just a second, then he quickly looks away from me at the gawking onlookers. I want to say hi to him, but his guarded body movement and his eyes darting every direction but mine makes me reconsider.

  Suddenly, some guy bumps into Brody, causing him to bump Gavin. Brody rights himself quickly. I notice the muscles in his neck tighten; he is angry. Brody moves around Gavin and opens the door to the office. “Come on Gavin. We need to see the registrar.” Again, he completely ignores that I am standing there in front of him, but I know he sees me.

  “Bye Evan,” Gavin says, quietly.

  “Bye Gavin, “I say, noticing Brody’s eyes dart to meet mine, then quickly look into the office as he holds the door for Gavin. I feel about two feet tall as I turn around and see random students milling around to get a view of Brody and Gavin in the office. Hushed whispers ensue and a few of the students are looking at me now.

  I walk slowly down the hall and start to text Nikki, when she steps in front of me blocking me from moving forward. “Hey.”

  She takes hold of my arm and pulls me in the opposite direction. Passing the main office again, I glimpse Brody shaking hands with a man in a suit; probably an administrator, principal maybe.

  “What were you thinking?” Nikki asks me abruptly as she stops our forward motion.

  “What?” I didn’t get what she was so flustered about.

  “Walking out of the counseling office and into the vulture feeding ground without me; that’s what!” Her blue eyes are as wide as saucers.

  I look around us, noticing a few kids are looking at me still. I overhear one girl in a pack of three cheerleaders whisper, “Who is she?”

  Heat envelopes my face and a nausea settles in my stomach from the comment.

  Asher comes up behind Nikki and with one giant bear hug, lifts her off the ground distracting both of us. Nikki giggles and swats him as he brings her back down to earth, still keeping his arms tightly around her waist. He asks, “Got your schedule?”

  I raise it up and fan it lightly, noticing a group of three girls pass us and look me up and down before continuing. I look at Nikki; she is watching me cast my stunned reaction.

  “See, I told you. Vultures, ready to pick at road kill and you my friend aren’t going to be road kill today,” Nikki says in a low tone.

  Asher tells Nikki he has to run, but will see her at the car after school. “You too Evan,” he says just before kissing Nikki on her head then walks off. She intertwines her arm with mine and tugs me a little as we walk behind the three girls that looked me up and down and commented.

  “That is Celine O’Keefe and her minions,” Nikki says, softly, then suddenly raises her voice, “Hi Celine!”

  The way she says it is so girlified and un-Nikki. I pinch my lips together and look down to hold my laughter in.

  I look up to notice Celine angle her made up eyes over her shoulder with a furrowed brow, then smiles thinly and says in a sly and uninterested voice, “Oh, hey Nikki.”

  She looks at me again briefly, then whips her head around, tossing her dark auburn hair back over her shoulder. The two other girls, I mean minions, look at each other in shock like they can’t believe Nikki just alerted everyone in the vicinity she was in fact greeting the one and only Celine O’Keefe.

  Nikki tugs me to the right down a corridor while Celine and her small entourage walk in the other direction.

  “FYI, Celine and I don’t get along any more... just in case you were wondering. In fact, Celine doesn’t get along with anyone, really.” Nikki says leaning into me as the crowd of people around us thickens.

  I shake my head and mumble under my breath, remembering the “Celine” from my old school. “So, she is a Samantha Johnson.”

  Nikki smiles at someone passing by. “What? Who’s Samantha Johnson.”

  “Someone from my old school.”

  Nikki smirks. “A beauty queen?”

  I smile, recognizing the category. “No, cheerleader.”

  “Same thing. Here, let me see your schedule.”

  We stop in the hallway as I hand her my schedule and she takes a picture of it.

  Based off Nikki’s description, of “the vultures-slash-beauty-queens” and her inadvertent description of me being potential road kill, I see my predictions of teen life at Braxton Springs High School confirmed. Just like home but bigger.

  Nikki helps me find my locker and I put my backpack away. She even takes me to my first class: English.

  “Thanks Nikki,” I say, standing out in front of the classroom.

  Nikki shakes her head and crinkles her nose. “No thanks necessary. I’ve got you covered. Hey I gotta go, but I
will meet you right here after class, all right?”

  Feeling bad she is doing all this running around for me I tell her, “Nikki, you don’t have to. You are busy with your own schedule.”

  “Totally want to,” she says, shaking her head before walking off with her backpack over her shoulder. “See ya.”

  “See ya.”

  Students start entering the classroom and I slowly filter in behind them. I don’t make eye contact with anyone, just head to an open seat toward the back of the room with all intentions of remaining as invisible as possible.

  “Gavin Ferguson? What is he doing back?” asks the guy sitting in front of me.

  I look up at the doorway. Brody is walking away as Gavin comes into the room. Gavin’s normally stiff posture stiffens further and he keeps his eyes down cast. He walks down the aisle next to mine, gripping his binder to his side. I watch everyone’s mouths gape as they ogle him.

  The guy in front of me asked what he is doing back. Back from where? I need to ask Nikki what she knows when I get a chance. Gavin suddenly trips over a purse laying in the middle of the aisle, but he catches himself awkwardly. The guy in front of me chuckles, “Watch that first step, Gavin.”

  My heart sinks for him as he lowers his head, cowering like he has been struck by something physically. He quickly scoots into the seat next to mine, but doesn’t notice me.

  The guy in front is wearing a football jersey with the last name Morietti on the back. He looks back at Gavin, then shakes his head, “What are you doing back?”

  Gavin doesn’t respond or even look up the binder on his desk. I totally have the urge to hit this jackass in the back of the head.

  I turn toward Gavin, “Hey.” I call to him, but he continues to stare at his desk while students around him intermittently glance at him. What is everyone’s problem?

  Feeling anger boiling over in me, I whisper a little louder, “Hey, Gavin.”

  I watch his eyes dart over in my direction, but he doesn’t quite see me and decides to focus back on his binder and the pen he is holding.

  “Gavin,” I call louder.

  Guardedly, he slights his head toward me. As soon as he sees it is me, he grins kookily from ear to ear. “Evan.”

  Morietti angles around to see who Gavin is talking to. “Evan? That is a dude’s name,” he scoffs looking me up and down. I immediately think of Darren Crawford and how he had the same brash and egotistical attitude. The guy across from him laughs and both of the nimrods high five each other before the guy narrows his eyes back on me. “Do you seriously have a guy’s name?”

  I sit back in my chair and roll my pen in between my thumb, index, and middle finger not even considering answering the A-hole jock, Morietti.

  “All right settle down, settle down,” says the older male teacher at the front of the room.

  “Spencer Morietti, turn around,” he says. Others are looking at me now, waiting to hear if I am really named Evan, except Gavin who is still staring down at his closed binder, silently.

  The teacher, Mr. Thompson, introduces himself, then attendance is taken. When Mr. Thompson gets to my name he says my entire name, “Evangeline Phillips.”

  “Here. Um, it’s just Evan,” I respond, cautiously, not knowing how he will take me correcting him. He looks over his bifocal glasses, smiles lightly, then says, “All right. Evan.”

  As he moves on with roll, the guy next to Spencer who was laughing and high-fiving moments ago looks back at me and sneers. I look away and tell myself to just ignore all of them, just like I did back home.

  I make it through class this way concentrating on first day information like the syllabus, our reading list for the year and what not. When the bell rings, I try to catch up with Gavin, but he slips from the classroom and I’m stuck behind a slow cluster of students.

  By the time I get out, Gavin is nowhere to be found, but Nikki is standing across from the doorway leaning against a locker.

  I walk over to her. “Hey.”

  She comments, “Mr. Thompson huh? I heard he is strict. How was it?”

  “Fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nikki Bell!” a voice bellows from behind me; it’s Spencer.

  Nikki sighs and leans in to me. “Shit, never mind. I can see what happened. Spencer Morietti. Let’s go.”

  We are about to walk away when Spencer and the guy that was laughing with him stand in front of us, blocking our path. “Hey where are you going?”

  He looks between Nikki and me then asks, “Wait, you are friends with the new girl?” He winks at me. “Evan, right?”

  Did he seriously just wink?

  “Yes, gotta go, Spence,” Nikki says, pushing him out of the way, and we make our escape.

  Once they are out of sight I comment, “He is a real asshole.”

  “Spence? Yeah, he is like the guy version of Celine.”

  “Awesome,” I announce, sarcastically.

  “What did he do?” Nikki asks, loathing in her voice.

  I didn’t want to seem like I was tattling or anything so I went light with the details, “He was just picking on Gavin Ferguson, the guy that lives next door to me. It pissed me off.”

  Her lips thin and she shakes her head as we continue down the hallway, then take a left down another. “He doesn’t let up; effing asshole.” She leans in closer as we walk side by side. “Listen Evan, here is the scoop.”

  I am all ears hoping she is going to tell me why everyone seems to treat Gavin and Brody Ferguson like the plague or freaks of nature.

  “Celine, Spence, Brody, Asher, Gavin, me - we used to all be friends, like a long time ago. Before high school, before middle school. Everybody’s friends then right? Well, we get to middle school and everyone kind of takes their stake on the social real estate market. Brody, Spence, and Asher became jocks, Celine and her little lemur friends had ownership in the cheerleader and beauty queen clique. Even though he was a jock, Asher did his own thing, kind of like me. We are kind of like Switzerland when it comes to social crap. But, in the social jungle, if you don’t claim a clique, you are placed in one. You know what I’m talking about.”

  I nod, understanding completely.

  She goes on, “Asher started playing football and track and field in 8th grade, so he kind of melded in with Spence and Brody who were already athletes. Asher and Brody became really close and by freshman year, they were inseparable while Spence kind of grew apart from them. Spence’s dad pushes him to be the best, but Brody was always better and Mr. Morietti knew this and it only made it harder for Spence. With Brody and Celine going out, we hung; you know... double date crap.”

  My skin tingles - Brody and Celine were a couple at one time. I can just picture her in her cheerleading uniform and him in his Braxton Springs Jersey. It’s stupid, but it feels like fire is shooting through my veins just thinking about Brody and Celine dating, like I have any claim over my new neighbor who can’t even look at me. How could he go out with such a... I refrain from even thinking the “B” word.

  “Brody and Celine went out freshman and sophomore year, but by the middle of junior year, he got sick of Celine’s crap and dumped her. Celine being Celine started dating Spencer to kind of get back at Brody for dumping her ass, but that didn’t last long. Celine broke it off really quick with him and it left Spence pretty bitter, not only at Celine but with Brody. I wouldn’t have put it past Celine to have told Spence she wanted to break it off because he wasn’t Brody. That is the kind of manipulative crap she does.”

  The way Nikki’s voice fills with frustration, I wonder if Nikki had done something to her to make her so angry. I wonder where Gavin fits in this. “You haven’t said anything about Gavin?”

  Nikki breathes in, laboriously. “Gavin.” She looks at me, guardedly. “That is a long story. The short of it for now is while the rest of us... progressed, you know finding our own social path and growing up, Gavin kind of didn’t.”

  I can see that completely. Gavin was
different in social circumstances. That was a no brainer. I wanted to know why Gavin has the challenges he does. Yeah, it is fine to be different, but Gavin is very different and Spencer seems to be a real ass to him for no apparent reason.

  Nikki stops walking and looks up behind me. “This is you.”

  I have so many unanswered questions. The burning one spills from me though, “Spencer made a comment about Gavin being back. Where did he go?”

  Nikki looks down the hall at the clock over the locker and starts to back away. “I gotta go. I will talk to you about it at lunch. Meet you at your locker, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  She disappears into the sea of people rushing to class and I slip into my chemistry class. Throughout this class and U.S. History I am only partially present as I create a fill-in-the-blanks story about the friends and how their lives might have played out over the years. All of them getting along, much like I did, in elementary school. Middle school they start branching off, trying out sports, spreading their wings and making new friends, then high school... settling into their role in the social fish bowl. Yeah, Nikki’s fish bowl reference is a perfect visual and is sticking.

  The likeness of Nikki’s and my own social journey is uncanny. The one I have dreamed up isn’t far off from my own observation back home. Suffice to say, the hope that things here might be different is looking bleak.

  I head to my locker after History to meet Nikki. She is already leaning against it when I round the corner. I rotate the combination lock right-left-right landing digits, then pull it open. The halls are full of students putting books in lockers and heading to lunch. I put mine in and Nikki and I start walking. “I have U.S. History with Persyn next, does she totally suck?” asks Nikki.

  “Nah, she is all right,” I tell her.

  “Cool.”

  I look at her. “Do we have any classes together, other than Newspaper?” remembering she had taken a picture of my schedule.

  “Yeah, Espanol, “ she says.

  I smile at her use of language, and pull my schedule out of my pocket. I have gym at the end of the day which I’m happy about. Last year I had a class after gym and I hated going into it with damp hair. Asher is walking toward us swinging his keys around one finger. Where is he going? When we are close enough to him, Nikki jumps into Asher’s arms. He wraps his arms around her and chuckles. “Hey babe. Miss me?”