by T Cooper
“Small, Small,” Miss Jeannie says, scrolling. “Smaaaall.”
I wait at attention with my elbows propped on the desk. The first period bell rings out in the hallway, and I startle. There are just a few stragglers in the office, mostly doped-out-looking kids who don’t seem to care about getting registered—or anything, really. One kid with his long ratty hair pushed back in a plastic headband looks up and makes eye contact with me; he gives a sleepy-eyed version of the universal nod meaning, S’up?
I nod back, S’up?
“Here we are, Small, Or-ee-on,” Miss Jeannie says after a few more seconds. “I gotcha. Hmm. Looks like you’re all set.” Then she seems surprised. “I see you’re new in town from . . . Georgia! You like peaches?”
“I guess,” I say. “But I’m more of a nectarine girl.”
“And do you play football, hon’?” she asks, completely unaware of my blunder.
My face is burning. “Uh . . .”
But she doesn’t wait for an answer, seems scarcely to be listening, instead just pushes a blank blue 3"x5" file card across the counter and tells me to fill it out with name, date of birth, any medical conditions, and emergency contact information—which I do, carefully trying to recall everything that was contained on the first page of the packet on Oryon Small that the Changers Council sent over this morning.
Peck-peck. Punch. Peck-peck-peck. She silently works the keyboard, hair as turtle-shell shellacked as ever, jowls vibrating as she mindlessly completes each step in the process of making Oryon Small official at Central High. She’s not as TMI as when we did this freshman year while I scrawled Drew’s emergency information on a bright pink file card. Not that she’d remember, but Miss Jeannie was more than happy to let Drew in on the menopausal hot flashes she’d been dealing with this time last year. I mean, we were such instant girlfriends she practically styled my student ID photo shoot like it was for Teen Vogue.
Maybe she’s just having a bad day. Or her husband just had a hip replacement and everything’s falling to her. Or times are tough, and she’s supporting a grandchild with diabetes on a crappy Tennessee state salary and Medicaid.
“Okie dokie,” she says when ready. “Stand over there on the tape and take a gander up here at this camera.” She taps the eyeball lens atop the giant beige monitor with a long acrylic fingernail painted like a ladybug.
I do as I’m told, even smile.
“That’s a big grin,” Miss Jeannie says, snapping the shot and pressing Enter on the keyboard. The printer starts humming, and after it spits out my schedule, she presses another button and my ID slowly follows. All I can see are my dimples and teeth in the tiny square photo. “Almost done. You’re going to have to hightail it to homeroom, Mr. Or-ee-on.”
“Yes ma’am,” I say, as she separates my ID along a perforation and feeds it into the laminator.
“You’ll get your new student handbook in homeroom” (I don’t need it, I think). “There’s a used-book exchange in the gym after school today and tomorrow” (Do I look like I can’t swing new books?). “And other than that, welcome to Central High; not that we hope to see you in here often,” she winks (Do I look like the kind of kid who winds up in the principal’s office?).
My ID comes out crooked and bent inside the laminate, but she’s not gonna do it over, just cuts it out and hands it over to me, still warm.
“Thank you,” I say, and head out of the office. I know exactly where homeroom is.
When I get to the door, I take a sharp breath and push through: Mr. Crowell is half-sitting on the front of his desk in midsentence, blabbing on and on (I might change, but some things never do), something about Sancho Panza from Don Quixote. He stops talking when I walk in, looks over at me.
“Sorry,” I say. “I think I’m supposed to be in here?” Ergh! Just say it, don’t ask it! I yell at myself in my brain.
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Crowell replies, a curly dark chunk of hair flopping down over his forehead as he refers to his roll sheet. “You must be . . . Nina Jackson.” He looks up hammily, and the class starts laughing. “Of course not. You must be . . . Mr. Small?”
I nod yes, feeling every eye in the room on me. I don’t return any contact, instead spot a free chair toward the back of the room hailing me like a beacon.
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Mr. Crowell gestures toward the same chair. “Anybody know Ms. Jackson?” he asks the class.
“Sorry, Ms. Jackson,” a familiar voice sings from the corner of the room, “I am for reeeal!” It’s Jerry, who appears to have grown something like three inches over summer. I give a giant knowing grin when he looks over at me. But there’s no recognition in his countenance—even though he seems as genial as ever.
My pulse pounds in my ears as I weave through the rows toward the empty seat. I notice some girl’s bare legs dramatically move out of my way when I pass, like I have bubonic plague or something. I surreptitiously follow the legs up to the short-shorts, to the tiny tank top, to a veritable Technicolor palette of eye shadow, to an absurd curtain of perfectly blown-out bangs, to . . . Chloe. Of course, who else would it be?
“Thank you for the musical interlude, as always, Jerry,” Mr. Crowell says, and then to himself, “We’ll give Nina a little more time before we get started in earnest,” and checks off something from his clipboard.
I finally plop into my seat, and everybody stops staring. I glance around the room, trying but unable to identify every student.
“So as I was saying,” Mr. Crowell continues, “we’re trying out a new homeroom system where you will be stuck with me—and I stuck with you—throughout all four years here at Central.”
“More for some people,” Chloe snipes, cutting her eyes at Jerry.
“We feel like this will build a sense of both continuity and community,” Mr. Crowell says, ignoring her, “where you always feel you have a trusted advocate on the faculty, and we can really mature with one another over the years.”
“Or not,” Chloe snickers, again at Jerry, as her partner-in-petulance Brit giggles and slaps Chloe’s hand across the aisle. A couple heads from the front row turn around.
“Give it a rest, it’s day one.”
I recognize that world-weary voice from the first syllable. Audrey. At the recognition, my heart clatters in my chest like dropped china.
“Okay, okay,” Mr. Crowell raises his voice, keeps talking about how the schedule’s also different this year and begins scribbling his office hours and e-mail address on the board.
Hard as I try, I can’t quit staring at Audrey. She’s tan. She got a short haircut, the kind where it’s super short in the back and much longer in the front. She looks good. Really, really good.
“What’s your drama, mullet head?” Chloe hisses to Audrey.
“A mullet is pretty much the exact opposite of this haircut,” Audrey answers coolly. “You know, party in the back?”
“Whatever, carpet muncher,” Chloe spits, jerking her head back and forth to see who’s laughing along.
Audrey sighs. “Now that would be a party in the front.”
I sputter hard, and noisily, at Aud’s comeback. She turns toward me, as do Chloe and Brit and a handful of other students, and suddenly it’s clear I’ve laughed far too loudly.
I smile wide at Audrey like I did two minutes earlier at Jerry. Knowingly. But she just turns back around, a little creeped out, if I had to guess. I mean, I would be if I were her and some random new kid was staring at me and grinning like he knows me intimately.
“Ooooh, burn. Too bad your boring little girlfriend isn’t here to watch and applaud,” Chloe taunts Audrey. “I guess even that retard couldn’t stand being around you anymore. Did you chop off your hair after the break-up?”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Mr. Crowell says in that composed, neutral voice authority figures are taught to use when they need to calm down crazy people. “Please try to be kind.”
It suddenly lands on me: Chloe is talking about me. I’m the retard. We
ll, Drew is.
I know the Council wants us to feel what it’s like to be treated differently based on our outsides, but it’s starting to seem downright sinister—schadenfreudey at best—to watch as my friends wrestle with me being MIA, and to see and hear what they really think about me. It’s like being alive at my own funeral. To all those folks who wish they could be a fly on the wall, I’m here to tell you: no, you don’t. Nothing good comes from being the fly.
“Oryon?” Mr. Crowell is prompting. “Oh-rye-on?”
Crap. That’s me. “Present.”
“Indeed. Go ahead, stand up,” he says.
I can’t move my legs.
“Or sit,” he adds mercifully. “But introduce yourself. Who are you, what do you like? What’s your relationship to the Bard?”
“Uh . . .” I start. I struggle to keep my voice monotone. “The Bard is dope?” Crap. Another question.
“What’s your favorite play?”
I look at Audrey, who’s intensely studying her fingernails. “Romeo and Juliet,” I loudly proclaim. She doesn’t flinch, still scarcely registering me.
“A perennial favorite,” Mr. Crowell says. “Too bad you weren’t here for your freshman year—we covered that play from ruff to merkin, wouldn’t you all say?”
Chloe nods self-importantly. “I was Juliet.”
“I was Romeo at my old school,” I venture, eyes trained on Aud, willing her to look at me, but there’s no reaction. Is she thinking about me? I mean Drew? How we kissed in this very room when performing the party scene from Romeo and Juliet? She has to be thinking about it. I would be. Am.
I wonder what she’s heard happened to me. Where I am, if not sitting here in homeroom and starting our sophomore year together, fighting the good fight against Chlo-Jo and the Queen Bees. I feel awful for dropping out of her life, but I didn’t know what else to do besides disappear. Seemed like that would maybe hurt less.
“Okay, Romeo, share something else about yourself,” says Mr. Crowell, not letting the Q&A go. Dude, give it a rest.
“I’m new here,” I try.
“Yes, that is imminently clear. And . . . ?”
“I like skateboarding,” I say. Now Jerry is looking directly at me. Chloe and Brit are looking. Mr. Crowell is looking. Everybody, it seems, but Audrey is looking. I hesitate, stutter, hesitate some more, and finally a curious Audrey rotates just enough to catch my eye. What can I say to let her know we like the same things? My brain hurts. “I like reading. Daft Punk. Potato chips, track . . . cheerleading!”
Everybody laughs.
“Me too, bro,” Jerry yells raunchily. “Cheerleaders are everything.” Everybody laughs even harder, except Chloe, who rolls her eyes like it’s her job.
“And where do you come to us from?” Mr. Crowell continues.
“Atlanta. Georgia. I, uh . . .” I can’t freaking remember. “I, I’m . . . my parents died in a sudden accident when I was young. I bounced around a bunch of situations and now I live with a foster family,” I blurt rapid-fire.
The room goes silent. Pre-hurricane, air-vacuum-suck quiet. Great. I’ve single-handedly killed any swag I might’ve started with. Not to mention, big thanks, CC, for giving me what suddenly becomes clear is a racist backstory. I couldn’t be a genius math scholar from another country, or a piano prodigy, or even just a normal foreign exchange student? I gotta be “the sad kid of color”? At least they didn’t put my pops in federal prison or make my mama a dope fiend.
All of my classmates are now unabashedly rubbernecking the train wreck that is the new pitiful orphaned foster kid in the back row. Even Chloe is looking at me with slightly kinder eyes. And Audrey. Audrey is compassionate, perfectly sensing what someone might need in this situation and focusing her gaze elsewhere.
“So yeah, that’s the 4-1-1 on me,” I say, clearing my throat.
People slowly start pivoting back around in their creaking seats. Somebody drops a pen and it rolls on the linoleum.
Mr. Crowell coughs a couple times. “Thanks for sharing, Oryon. We’re happy you’re home now in the Central community. I’m sure your classmates are eager to get to know you better. As am I.”
A few students nod uncomfortably in agreement while Mr. Crowell shuffles his papers, pretending to look for something on the top sheet secured to his clipboard. More creaking seats.
“Okay, so,” Mr. Crowell chirps, trying to move past the tragic Dumbo in the room, his timbre nervous, hesitant. “As you all know, you’ll be enjoying my company every morning when the first bell rings. I presume you all have your schedules, but if you don’t, please see me; I have copies up here. If there are any problems, conflicts, dramas”—here he looks up at Chloe—“please come to me first. I’m still teaching ninth grade English, so I won’t be seeing you fine people in class, but I would love for all of you to join me on the Peregrine Review lit mag. I’ve even arranged with the English department for your participation on the Review to count as extra credit this year.”
Blah blah blah. After that point I have essentially no clue what else was said for the rest of class. All I can remember after my “Little Orphan Oryon” speech are random images: the angry mosquito bite on the back of Chloe’s left calf, and how she anxiously bounced her crossed legs for the remainder of homeroom; Brit’s new aqua-colored contacts that seemed to be bothering her because she applied eyedrops every three minutes; the coffee stain on the ankle of Mr. Crowell’s retro-striped socks. (How does that even happen?) But mostly, obviously, overwhelmingly, what I recall is the contour of Audrey’s shoulders, the precise tilt of her head from behind, her hidden expression clear in my mind, having gazed into her face so many times before, her features as familiar to me as my own. Well now, more so.
After the period was over, I bolted out of there as quickly as possible and slipped into the same boys’ bathroom I almost mistakenly went into last year when Audrey first touched me, grabbing my forearm and informing me I was going into the “wrong” bathroom, silly.
I stepped into a stall and pulled the door shut behind me. (There was no lock, of course; finding a secure stall in the boys’ bathroom is like finding a shark tooth on the moon.)
I stood there staring at the beige rectangular tiles behind the toilet. Something foul was smeared across the back of the porcelain with toilet paper stuck to it. It was like a monkey house crammed into a port-a-john. And school had been open less than an hour.
I turned around and tried to breathe through my mouth while catching my breath. Not an easy task. I noticed some graffiti scrawled in black Sharpie above the toilet paper holder: a rudimentary sketch of girl with frizzy hair labeled, Rhonda Suck-You-In-Your-Honda, to which somebody else had added with an arrow, presumably, her cell number. Man. Boys are assholes.
I hurriedly exited the bathroom feeling bad for Rhonda-Suck-You-In-Your-Honda, who probably had never even been in a Honda, let alone done what she was rumored to, when I smacked right into Audrey, now standing so close I could smell her (sesame body oil, by the way). It seemed like she might’ve been waiting for me, although she quickly made it look like she wasn’t.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Aud—” I started.
She looked confused, a little horrified even, at what sounded like a complete stranger knowing not only her name, but my nickname for her.
“I’d . . . I’d . . .” I quickly corrected myself. “I’d . . . be wondering where my first class is if you weren’t fortuitously standing here in front of me. Chem lab?”
She thought about it for a sec but then seemed placated. Aud sounds enough like I’d. “Upstairs, two down on your right,” she said, and then: “I’m sorry about how that was in there earlier. People don’t really know how to deal with anything.”
“Oh, it’s okay.” I wanted to hug her.
She studied me.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself.” She nodded her head a little, offering a hand like we were at a job interview. “Audrey.”
I took her hand. It was warm.
“Oryon,” I said quietly. Firmly. Not a question. “Like the constellation,” I added.
“Orion the Hunter?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
I didn’t want to let her go. But I could tell it was verging on strange how long I was clinging to her hand, just rocking it slightly back and forth in the otherwise empty space between us.
“I think it took a lot of courage to say what you said,” she told me, prying her hand away. “I guess I just wanted to let you know.”
“Not really.”
The cliché about getting shot through the heart is not such a cliché when you actually feel it: a literal stabbing and twisting in my chest as I stood there so impossibly close to her. Thankfully, any anguish I betrayed on the outside could conveniently be played off as deep sorrow over my supposedly tragic start in life.
This was Audrey. My Audrey. And she had no idea whom she was talking to. I felt like a complete ass-hat and considered taking her aside, as I had so many times before, and spilling all. She could be trusted and would probably understand. Maybe not at first. But if the movies are any reflection of reality—and of course they are—she would come around, and we would fall in love anew, and the credits would roll as we skipped along the seaside, hand-in-hand, heads thrown back laughing at this crazy, wild, wonderful life. But then an imaginary figment of Tracy popped onto my shoulder like the fairy godmother she fancies herself, chiding, Against the rules, cupcake, and the first period bell shrieked over my head, and there was no time to say anything, much less betray my entire Changer race to a Static.
“Chem lab!” Audrey hollered over the loud bell, pointing me in the direction of class.
“Chem lab,” I echoed as the bell wound down, and she hurried off in the opposite direction.
I watched her go for a few impotent seconds, then Jerry blew by on his way to class and punched me on the shoulder, hard. “Trust me, bro, you have NO chance with that chick,” he declared, then continued running down the hall, his right skating sneaker squeaking with every other step.