Sprout

by Dale Peck

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a variety of specialty porn,” I said, and then, while Mrs. Miller blushed, I threw in, “Ty told me he doesn’t have to stay late because he works for his dad.”

  Mrs. Miller rolled her eyes. “As far as I know, Phil Petit’s only source of income is stealing copper from construction sites and selling it to the scrap metal yard down in South Hutch, which why that doesn’t violate the eighth commandment is beyond me. Look,” she silenced me with a semi-parental voice. “The school has known Phil Petit beats his children ever since the oldest one, what’s his name—”

  “L.D.”

  “—ever since L.D. first went home with an F and came back with a black eye. But if you try to talk to them about it they deny everything. Mr. Stickley and Mr. Philpot thought maybe the girl—”

  “June.”

  “June.” Mrs. Miller shook her head like, June, what a Seventh Heaven kind of name. “The Phil-bot and Sticky thought maybe June would fess up, but instead she started dating boys from the south side of town, and, well, when you have three kids—”

  “Four.”

  “Oh!” A slightly embarrassed smile flashed across her face. “The other one.”

  “Holly.”

  “Right. Hollis.” Her eyes softened and she shook her head sadly. “What was I saying?”

  “Four kids.”

  “Right. When you have four kids—”

  “Three.”

  Mrs. Miller sighed heavily.

  “When the children deny their father mistreats them, there’s pretty much nothing the school can do. So we push their F’s to D’s, their D’s to C’s, whatever it takes to pass them through to the next grade, and we invented day-tention, because if we make them stay after school they come in the next day with a fresh set of bruises. Assuming they come in the next day at all.”

  “Oh!” I said like I was just getting it. “Day-tent-ion.” I over-enunciated the t, ended up spitting on my paper. “I thought you were saying day-tens-ion, like, you know, a really tense day, or ten-sion during the daytime.”

  Mrs. Miller glared at me. “I didn’t make up the term, Sprout.”

  “Yeah, but you use it. You do it.”

  “Actually, I’ve never had a Petit. They’re not exactly what you’d call honor students.” I must’ve made a face, because she raised her hands helplessly. “What do you want me to do? Call Child Protective Services and say hey, I think this guy beats his kids, even though they claim he’s the bestest dad in the whole wide God-fearing world? Maybe I should just go to his house and tell him he’s a bad, bad man?”

  “I think you should stop”—BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP—“ing my dad.” I broke off, stared at Mrs. Miller in surprise. “Was that a cell phone?”

  Not only did Mrs. Miller not carry a cell herself, she was said to have once made a girl hand-copy the entirety of her user’s manual when her phone went off in class—including the Spanish, French, German, and Japanese versions. Mrs. M. blushed now, but a smile flickered across her mouth, a little proud, a little defiant, a little hopeful too. She rolled her chair backwards to the opposite side of the room, a move that would’ve come off better if the casters hadn’t tangled in the half-shredded industrial carpeting and almost tipped her over. She used her heels to drag herself the last couple of feet, pulled a TJ Maxx shopping bag from beneath the counter. A tangle of black cords protruded from the bag, plugged into a power strip. She tipped the bag towards me. It was filled with dozens of Sonys, Sony Ericssons, Nokias, Motorolas, LGs, even a BlackBerry. Blue, gray, silver, pink, green, some cracked and scratched, some covered with FUCT and OBEY and R stickers, others shiny and new. There’d been a second BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP as she scooted across the room, and now a closed Samsung clamshell let out a truncated BLEEP BLEE and then presumably went to voicemail.

  “Twenty-nine,” Mrs. Miller said before I asked. “Eight years of confiscation by Mr. Johanson and I.”

  “Mr. Johanson and me. You keep them plugged in? Really?”

  “Freddy and I got curious. We wondered how many students deactivated their phones after we took them away, as opposed to how many were too embarrassed to tell their parents that their phone’d—their phone had been confiscated. So we picked up a few chargers, rotate them to keep the batteries powered up. You’d be surprised. Some of these puppies have been yipping away for more than a year. And the buzzing.” She moved her thumbs like she was texting. “It sounds like a sarcophagus full of scarab beetles.”

  I thought about asking what a scarab beetle was, but figured I could just google it Monday. The Samsung BLEEPed, announcing a new voicemail, and Mrs. Miller chuckled. “That’s Vicki Watkins’. I took it from her yesterday, so it’s been busy.”

  “She’s a popular girl.”

  “She’s a slut, is what you mean.”

  I shrank away from the overladen shelves as if they might fall down like the walls of Jericho. For a teacher to call a student a slut—on school property, no less—was a bit like wearing a hooded black robe in a Baptist church at Christmas. But then Mrs. Miller wheeled back across the room and took my hand and said, “I’ve missed you, Sprout,” and I suddenly realized the word and the hopeful look in her eyes had more to do with me than Vicki Watkins (who was a slut, when you got right down to it, which most of us would be if we had the guts for it, or, in her case, the ass). Mrs. M.’s use of the word “slut” was the equivalent of leaving me alone on her patio so I could pour tequila into my margarita, or dissing Mrs. Whittaker’s English class as remedial. She wanted to prove she was still on my side, not theirs, whether they were cliquey girls or square teachers.

  I looked down at my hand in Mrs. Miller’s as if I was just noticing it sat in a pot of boiling water, but I didn’t pull it away.

  “You’ve had me in class every day.”

  Mrs. Miller held my hand a moment longer, then let go. “I have Peter Bowen in class too. And—ugh!—Samantha Hardy, and that Loomis girl.” She barked a brief, bitter laugh. “For her paper on Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, she wrote Booger and Carter, every time, I swear to God.”

  “That was probly spellcheck.”

  “That was probly laziness, if not simply stupidity. That is definitely what I have to deal with around here, ninety-nine days out of a hundred, with ninety-nine percent of my students, and ninety-eight percent of my colleagues.” She sighed again, but it was less plaintive, more wistful. “I’ve missed you,” she said again. “Missed this. Our little talks.”

  “Hey, no one asked you to start dating my dad.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Miller said, and you could tell the word had come out before she’d taken the time consider it. I remembered Ruthie’s question from the day before school started, about whether I’d intentionally played matchmaker, or whether it’d merely been unconscious (okay, she didn’t use the word “unconscious,” but it’s what she meant).

  Mrs. Miller drew a line in the air with her hand.

  “I’m not going to talk to you about my relationship with Bob. That’s a discussion for him to begin, not me. What I would like to talk about—” she tapped the paper on the counter between us “—is this.”

  Somehow I didn’t think she meant the essay. The language, I mean. “Esoterical grammatical constructions” and “nonlinear narrative progression” and all that. But once again she threw me for a loop.

  “Do you know what a clitic is?”

  “No, but it sounds dirty.”

  “A clitic,” Mrs. M. said, tapping my essay again, “is a particular form of a word that doesn’t have any real meaning until it attaches to another word. The simplest example is the contraction. The apostrophe-M in I’m, or the double-L in I’ll. Or that little e in email. A clitic has lost its ability to be independent, can only exist when another, stronger word comes along to prop it up.”

  “Um?” I said, cuz, like, what else was I going to say? “I liked it better when I thought it was dirty.” But as I stared cluelessly at her finger tapping my ess
ay, I noticed that it was covering and uncovering the word “Ty,” and one of those lightbulbs went on in my brain. Well, it didn’t go on as much as flicker a bit, but I thought I sort of understood what she was trying to tell me.

  “You’re saying Ty is a . . .” The lightbulb flickered out. “Contraction?”

  “Clitic,” she said. “Good lord, Sprout, you work some complicated metaphors. Give me one of my own.”

  “You—think—Ty—” the words dropped out of my mouth one at a time, as I tried to figure out what she was saying “—is—dependent—on—me?”

  “Think about it. A twin who lost his brother. A boy with no mother, no friends, no future. It makes sense that he’d latch onto anyone who’d let him.”

  “You’re saying—” I gulped, struggling to keep my voice level “—you’re saying Ty’s friendship with me isn’t real? That I’m just, I dunno, handy? A prop or something?”

  Mrs. Miller shook her head rapidly, her long blonde unhair-sprayed locks swishing back and forth like a Clairol commercial. “It’s real, Sprout. Of course it’s real. I’m just not sure it’s what you think it is. What you hope it is.” I started to say something, but she waved me silent. “Look, it’s not Ty I’m concerned about here. It’s you.”

  “Why? I thought he was the clitic. The apostrophe-M. I’m just the good old noun.”

  “Pronoun.” Mrs. Miller allowed herself a grin. Then: “It takes two to tango, Sprout. Or, in your case, to wrestle, fall out of trees, and dig holes in the ground. Since you’ve met him, your one stable friendship has fallen apart, you’ve been kicked off the cross-country team, and you’re on academic probation.”

  “Don’t forget that I’ve started shooting heroin and dismembering small animals.”

  “This is serious, Sprout.”

  “The only reason I did well in school was because I had nothing better to do. I’m as smart or as stupid as I ever was. I’m just not regurgitating it on some test.”

  “Well, what about writing? Don’t tell me that was just a way to fill up time. You were too good at it not to care.”

  “I’m still good at it!” I tapped the essay on the counter. “Don’t tell me this isn’t good, cuz I know it is.”

  “Sprout—” Mrs. Miller’s voice fell. Up till then she’d sounded stern yet pleading. Now she just sounded defeated. “Of course it’s good. It’s great. But—you know you can’t write about this.”

  “About what? Ty?”

  “Not Ty. Not exactly. About—”

  “What? About being gay?”

  Mrs. Miller shrugged helplessly. “You know the state you live in, Sprout. If you turn in an essay like this, an essay about this, the judges aren’t going to see your inventiveness, your humor, your compassion. They’re just going to see your sexuality. And they’re not going to like it.”

  “And that’s a good reason not to write about it? Because some bigot in Topeka will be offended?”

  “No. Because some bigot in Topeka will keep you from winning the contest you deserve to win. From getting the scholarship that’ll help you go to the college of your choice, and heading towards the life you deserve to have.”

  I started to protest again, then closed my mouth. It was so confusing. On the one hand, there was what I’d said to Ruthie about how I wouldn’t come out at school because I didn’t want everyone to think of me as the gay kid. But on the other hand there was this feeling that if I couldn’t write about being gay for the State Essay Contest, then I wasn’t actually representing myself. And even though I understood that it wasn’t my fault people got all bent out of shape when they saw the words “gay” and “teenager” next to each other in a sentence, still, I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job dealing with the problem.

  So what’d I do? What anyone would, I guess. I changed the subject.

  “I don’t need the scholarship. My dad put aside money—”

  But Mrs. M. was shaking her head. “There’s no money, Sprout.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I asked Bob. He says he doesn’t know where you got that idea.”

  “I got the idea from him telling me he put money aside. When he sold our house on Long Island.”

  “If he ever said that, he doesn’t remember.” Mrs. Miller’s raised eyebrows acknowledged that there were probly a lot of things my dad didn’t remember about the last four years. “At any rate, there’s almost nothing left. He’s looking for a job now. You don’t think he’s shaving for me, do you?”

  I ignored her weak attempt at a joke.

  “But how am I going to pay for college?”

  “By getting good grades. By winning this contest, and getting the scholarship you deserve. By giving up the idea of saving Ty, and concentrating on yourself.”

  “I don’t want to—” I stopped. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t a liar, and I knew just as well as Mrs. Miller that I really did want to save Ty.

  Mrs. Miller let the silence sit between us another moment, as though it were cementing our agreement. Our alliance. Then she glanced at her watch. “Oh dear, look at the time. I need to be getting you home.”

  “Yeah, um, sure.”

  “Don’t forget this.” She tapped my essay like it was one of the twenty-dollar bills my dad left on the counter for me.

  “Sure,” I said again, stuffing the pages in my pocket. “Whatever.” I stood up slowly, followed her out of the office.

  You’d think the day would’ve thrown enough at me by that point, but apparently the universe still had one more surprise up its sleeve. As we stepped from Mrs. Miller’s classroom, I saw a pair of figures halfway down the hall, their bodies glued together at lips, hips, and ankles.

  “Ahem.” Mrs. Miller did that fake clearing of the throat thing, and then said, “Ahem” again, because whenever you do that fake clearing of the throat thing you usually end up having to clear your throat for real.

  The figures separated. Not that I needed to see their faces to know who it was.

  “Oh, hey Sprout.” Ian Abernathy rubbed fuchsia lipstick off his mouth with what looked like a sigh of relief. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

  I ignored him. Ian and I’d had two classes together that day, like we did every day. My eyes were glued to the second person, who was busy reapplying the lipstick she’d smeared all over Ian’s lips before she actually looked at me.

  “Oh, hey Sprout,” Ruthie Wilcox said, her voice brighter than all the lighters at a Pearl Jam concert when they sing “Jeremy spoke in class today-ay.” Her and Ian’s fingers tangled together like a pair of mating octopuses. “I’m so glad this happened. Now we can finally tell you our big news.”

  Cave Canem

  “—and I mean well of course I knew him. How could I not know him? My folks got divorced when I was six and my mom and me moved to Prairie Dunes that summer, so I started first grade at Union Valley and of course Ian here”—shoulder squeeze, in case I didn’t realize which Ian Ruthie was referring to—“this big ol’ hunk-a soccer-playing beefcake-in-the-making lived on north Lorraine and already went to UV. And so anyway, yeah, I guess I’ve known him for a whole decade now. Ten long years, yet somehow I never saw his best qualities. Who knows? Maybe it was just”—BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP—“I mean, ever since I got these babies”—Ruthie took her hand from Ian’s shoulder and squeezed the same nonexistent breasts she’d brandished four years ago on the Buhler Grade School playground—“I’ve looked at the world a little differently. I mean, it kind of makes you wonder if biology really is destiny. Estrogen and cholesterol start racing through your system, and before you know it the boys you used to think were so icky and like, gross and oh my God I’m gonna PUKE if he sticks his tongue down my throat suddenly seem”—BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP—“the word I’m looking for, honey? Ian? Honey? What’s the word I want?”

  “Um . . . ”

  “Vital! That’s the word! Boys just suddenly seem, like, vital for your continued existence. Like text messages, or the right
shade of lipstick, or, I don’t know, one of those Balenciaga bags Nicole Richie is always carrying around. I mean, Nicole Richie is so over, duh, but whatever: why was Ian the right bag for me? It’s not like I even liked him before. Heck, I kind of hated him if you want to get right down to it. I’m not saying I spent my nights fantasizing about him driving his car into a telephone”—BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP—“and going through the windshield and cutting his pretty little face into Freddy Krueger hamburger or, I don’t know, reaching his arm into an auger and getting it chewed off or having an engine fall off a passing 747 like it did in Donnie Darko and kill him while he slept. Nothing like that. But he was such a guy’s guy. Know what I mean, Sprout? A guy’s guy? The kind of guy who goes boo-ya! whenever someone mentions the Crusaders, and makes farting sounds when the teacher’s back is turned, and has to take his whole”—BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP—“ing shirt off just to wipe the sweat from his forehead in gym. But, you know, off goes the shirt, and out come the abs. Show Sprout your abs, baby.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s—”

  “Show him your abs!”

  Ian squirmed like a nervous dog looking for a place to pee, then finally pulled up his shirt to expose a couple inches of skin.

  “Pretty nice, huh? Right, Sprout? Ian’s abs? Nice?”

  “Yeah, they’re, um”—BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP.

  “They’re hard to tell if she was acting or not. “Ugh,” she said. “I hate myself, but I’m a slave to these abs.”

  Ian’s face was as red as a paddled bottom, but at the same time there was an excited glint in his eyes, a half-proud, half-sheepish smirk on his face. He had great abs, and he knew it.

  “But I mean he’s not all abs—or biceps, for that matter, or those cute li’l dimples when he smiles.”

  Ian’s smile, still nervous, widened, and the dimples obligingly appeared.

  “He’s got a great butt too!” Ruthie’s laugh burst from her mouth like a cuckoo jumping out of its clock. “Kidding!” she sang. “I’m kidding! No, he’s actually a reasonably nice guy”—BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP—“for-crap taste in music though.”