“Michigan,” he said, not turning from the pre-class prompt he was writing. “Your new seat is over there by the window, second down from the front.”
“But—“
“Uh-uh,” he said with a short laugh, looking at the board. “Uncle Marcus say, student do, that’s the way of things here in the nuthouse.” She just stood there for a second, and his voice got a bit louder and clownish.
“C’mon, Michigan, don’t be shy.” He was motioning at her now with overly exaggerated “C’mon-ins,” his arm doing big cartoon bull dozer scoops. “That’s it, march, like you’re in the army, hut-two-three-four, five-seven-nine-twelve.” She walked past him through the spatter of classroom giggles, unable to do it outside of his rhythm. That made her laugh a bit herself, and she moved quickly to her new seat next to the weird girl with the red librarian glasses, she who was wearing a flowered dress today that seemed far too soft for her abrasive personality.
Marcus was good, Becky had to admit it. Kids hating switching seats, like it was a badge of failure or something, and he’d handled it quickly and effectively. He’d guessed she’d be the easier one to budge, and successfully split her from Cody Hatcher in one fell swoop. The problem was that sitting next to someone was easier than sitting across from him, and now she’d have to work extra hard not to look at the jerk, making sure he wasn’t looking at her.
“Darn,” Mr. Marcus said. He’d broken his chalk in two and was left with a nub. “I have to go get a new box,” he said.
“Oooh!” Hatcher spouted, hand shooting into the air. He was wearing black jeans today and a rather dirty looking army jacket. He’d cut himself shaving and had left the little toilet paper square there on his cheek with the tiny red dot in the middle. “Can I go get your box of chalk, Mr. Marcus?” he said.
“No,” Marcus muttered. “It’s got to be signed for by a faculty member.” He turned, looked back at the board, and shouted,
“Whoa!”
Everyone jumped in their seats a bit, and Mr. Marcus’s voice had a big smile in it.
“Look at my handwriting,” he said. “I mean, look at it! Am I imagining this, or does it sort of slope down to the right and fall off the cliff?”
“Sure does, Mr. Marcus, sir,” Hatcher said.
Marcus spun.
“If I’d wanted you to chirp, Hatcher, I’d have built you a little house and fed you birdseed.”
That one made the class chuckle, even more openly when Mr. Marcus forfeited a grin, letting on that he’d played for the laugh all along. Yes. That was going to be his thing. Fearlessness, raw humor, and you’d never quite know when he was joking. K. Got it.
Mr. Marcus went to his desk and rummaged a bit. No chalk. He put his hands down then, palms flat.
“Your attention, please. I’m going to go thirty feet down the hall to the office to sign out some chalk. Cody Hatcher will erase the board for me, and you will all sit here in cheerful obedience.” His eyes gained an extra twinkle. “Now, now, kiddies. No pencils chucked into the drop ceiling, no fires in the trash can, no pianos pushed out the window.” He looked at them all meaningfully. Then, abruptly, he left.
Silence.
Then came the whistling.
Whistling with a trill in it. Horror movie whistling.
It was Cody Hatcher, feet jutted out from under his desk, unbuckled black boots crossed at the ankles, fingers webbed behind his head: the La-Z-Boy pose. Suddenly he stopped whistling and faked waking up violently, “What? Huh? Gosh!” all jerking and flailing and banging his forearm into the big kid sitting next to him, who shoved Hatcher away with a tight grin.
‘Sorry,’ he motioned, palms out. ‘Sorry.’ He turned, looking slowly around him, and then he slapped the desk.
“Well looky-looky what kind of crew we got here now, will ya?” He cleared his throat, his signature move evidently, then made like straightening a bow tie. Suddenly he was up on his feet, and as he made his way behind people across from where Becky was sitting, he purposely kicked into their chair legs, apologizing in the overplayed tone of a country simpleton, “Sorry ma’am, golly gee, pardon, shucks.”
Becky blinked. A hick joke? Really? A Syracuse insult? Her stomach had tightened into a slick knot a few seconds ago, and now her mouth went coppery. Hatcher poked his head out into the hall and looked up and down. Then he let the door swing slowly shut. When he turned to again take measure of the room, his eyes were smiling so brightly it stung to look at him.
He started whistling again, to the tune of “It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas,” and his hands were behind his back. He made his way over to the board like he was strolling through the park in one of those old fashioned movies where guys wore crew-neck sweaters and slacks and broke into song for no reason.
He took the eraser in his hand and stopped whistling. He seemed to weigh it, bobbing it up and down slightly. With his other hand, he stroked his goatee all professor-like, and nodded in casual, professional approval of the instrument. He gave it a soft test-sweep across the board, and muttered, “Hmmm, yes, that’ll do,” and then he was erasing the board in slow motion, relishing every stroke, making sure to get every little line and scribble, using it flat, then at its edge to wipe up every possible trace of powder.
“Stop staring at me, you weirdos,” he said to the board. Laughter rippled, but not much, a few weeds poking up, that was all. He made sure to dab at the chalk dust gathered in all four corners and even rubbed across some stray marks up at the top of the board that were hardened and permanent. Then he turned slowly, looking around the ‘U.’ He was holding the eraser felt-side up, nodding patiently like everyone’s daddy, making it seem there was going to be a punishment and that it was going to hurt him far more than it was going to hurt them.
He started walking over to the side of the ‘U’ near the door, lips pursed, shaking his head like he was so disappointed, and he stopped right in front of the Asian boy Becky had sat next to on the bus. The kid had been absent yesterday, and she hadn’t really noticed him until now, fixed there in his place opposite her, eyes like little black beads looking straight ahead. He had on a dark sweater and a dress shirt underneath with a soft blue collar. His complexion had gone pasty, and the tips of his ears were burning red. Hatcher leaned over him, cocked his head, and said thinly,
“You staring at me, boy?”
The guy didn’t respond. He looked straight ahead as if he had made the spot decision that the best defense was to be hard-set and above it all, expressionless and still at all costs. Hatcher moved to the side, partly behind him, and leaned down again, almost in the guy’s ear.
“I said...was you staring at me. See…we don’t appreciate guys who like to stare, at least ’round these parts.”
No response. Hatcher straightened, took a deep breath through his nose, and then shouted,
“Tree frog!”
He windmilled his arm and smacked the eraser on the top of the boy’s head, making a whapping sound, flat and hard, the chalk dust exploding up into the air and rising toward the ceiling. The boy’s head was totally powdered, his hair frosted, his shoulders whitened, and Hatcher went all apologetic. “Oh, gosh, let me help you with that,” he said, dropping the eraser on the desk and slapping the boy with his open palms, hard, whapping all across the head and shoulders, a flurry of an attack that ‘ironically’ clapped most of the dust off of him, and the boy just sat there and took it, hands gripped to the edges of the desk, knuckles bone white.
It lasted about ten seconds that seemed like hours, and suddenly, Hatcher bounded across the room—of course, bullies had fantastic internal time mechanisms, and he could tell Marcus would be coming back momentarily. He stuck the eraser on the steel lip at the base of the board and then stopped, just for a moment, right there in the middle of the floor.
He looked over at Becky.
“Tree frogs jump branches,” he said.
Her mouth dropped open. Did he just threaten her? Did she hear that right? Did t
his jerk really think she was going to take this home and worry about it, dreading the moment Marcus decided to go take a whiz, or sneak down to teacher’s lounge for a fresh cup of tea?
She wanted to say something brilliant and cutting, but all she could think of was, You’re the tree-frog! so she settled for her best icy girl-stare. Marcus came back in right on cue then, and the rest was the same old all-American story. No one told. It was against code. And maybe if they kept quiet, Hatcher wouldn’t look their way tomorrow or the next.
Well, Becky was going to tell. Just not in front of everybody.
She’d wait until the end of the period, that’s right. So what if she was five minutes late to swimming? On Thursday’s it was on stagger-schedule with art, and she had it before lunch. It was clear that none of the mean, pretty girls were going to miss her all that much.
But Becky never got a chance to tell.
Marcus worked them to death, running them through a rubric sheet he was going to use to aid him in his ‘holistic grading technique,’ all grammar codes for the “issues I always see that make me feel like I’m cleaning your rooms, like rambling sentences, pronoun antecedent, blah, blah,” and by the time the bell rang, they were all seeing double.
The moment the period ended, Hatcher bolted as fast as he was able, and most followed suit. A couple of girls approached Marcus at his desk to confirm the place on his website to look up homework, and Becky waited. Someone was behind her, and she turned.
“Please,” the Asian boy said. “Don’t say anything.”
He still had a bit of the chalk dust in his eyebrows and slashed across his cheek like the Nike logo. He had his umbrella tucked under one arm and his books in a briefcase. He might as well have had ‘target’ stamped on his forehead. “Please,” he repeated.
He moved off to the hall then, walking in a slow, measured way that was either an attempt to front dignity, or to melt silently into the wall shadows. Becky sighed and made her own exit a few moments later.
Tree frogs jump branches.
Sure, she respected this quiet boy’s wishes, but what about her, what about tomorrow? There was no way she was going to let Cody Hatcher hit her on the head with an eraser. She’d die first.
Defense options?
Not many. Becky rounded the corner and made for the gym area. Her bra was tight, and she gave it one of those aggravated tugs and jerks from both sides. She didn’t care who was looking. Her skin felt suddenly cold, and she broke a nervous sweat, beads collecting on the bridge of her nose. She put her head down and plodded along, her thumbs tucked under her backpack straps.
She was going to have to fight a boy.
And he was the type that would punch her like a dude, she just knew it.
“Hey,” someone said. She had been watching her sneaker laces bounce, and she looked up. It was just some kid with black, dyed hair dangling over one eye coming the other way, saying hi to his buddy walking across the hall from her with the studs, black lips, and half-shaved head. Becky chewed at the inside of her cheek and kept moving. For a second, she thought Baseball Boy had shown up out of nowhere to give her some pointers, or better yet, to boast that he would fight Hatcher for her. A lump rose in her throat. Though she had no doubt that this Danny could scrap with the best of them, the thought of his coming away with even one scratch or bruise on that beautiful portrait of a face broke her heart.
Becky got out of swimming again—the other fakers simply cut class—and she sat in the bleachers, did her homework for Marcus, and looked in the school catalog. She had only been block-scheduled for one major subject this semester, and the distant spring had World History, Geometry, Biology, and Spanish waiting for her like dark omens. Was the counseling department insane?
The bell sounded, making her jerk in her place. It was like a basketball buzzer in here, echoing off the walls, making her skin vibrate. She made for the aisle, and Mr. Troy called out that he expected her in the water next time like the other girls. He looked at her an extra second from down there, and she saluted back in his general direction. So lame! At least after Christmas, she wouldn’t have to wear a stupid bathing cap, or play matt ball like a dork, or put a condom on a wooden penis like she’d heard was coming up in health class next month.
She walked into the crowded hall. Boys with fro-hawks were playing pseudo-soccer with an old, crimped up coffee cup. Members of the Gay-Straight Alliance stood in a crowd before a picture collage on the block wall, and a group of girls kept poking each other and screaming. Becky Michigan had never felt so alone or insignificant in her entire life.
Across the hall, there was something taped to her locker. People merged in front of her, and Becky went up on her tip-toes for a second, absently pushing her fingers in her front pocket for the slip the office sent last week with the number and combination. Then she didn’t bother digging it out after all. Sure, she was still a bit disoriented, but she was absolutely positive that it was her locker over there, down to the right of the fire alarm with the crack in the glass that curved like an eagle’s claw.
Becky crossed the hall, weaving her way between the crowd of students doing that strange mob shuffle both ways where they had no apparent concern for creating lanes that made sense, the note on her locker waving as passers-by created a cross breeze.
“I wrote it for you,” Danny said.
Becky whirled around, almost cracking her elbow into some audio equipment a teacher was pushing through on a black cart right behind her. Over the shoulder of a girl with big fake eyelashes, sleek bangs, and a big red hair ribbon, she thought she saw a flash of blond and baseball cap.
“No, Becky. This way,” he said in her other ear.
She spun furiously and almost fell down. In fact, some big guy from behind caught her by the backpack, righted her, and gently guided her to the left, never breaking stride and continuing without a hitch to brag to his friend about the keg party he was planning this weekend in the woods behind the quarry.
Becky was five feet from her locker now. People passed behind her and all the sound seemed to fade and wash out to the edges.
There, taped right below her number 157 and drawn on a sheet of loose-leaf, was the picture of a big heart, real Valentine stuff six months too early. Her own heart pounded and her face burned. She walked up closer, and in her head, Danny’s voice said,
“I see you everywhere, Becky. I see you in the reflections on the water, in the trees, in the wind. I see you in the sun and I see you in my dreams. Mostly though…Becky Michigan, I see you right here.”
In her mind, she could picture him pointing to his heart, and she almost burst into tears. She walked forward and took a closer look. There was an inscription below the two big curves coming down to a point, and in her own head she knew that it would be Danny’s careful printing, each letter worked in perfect parallel and spacing from the others, claiming, ‘I see you right here.’
Becky took the paper from the bottom edge and looked closer at the writing. Simply, it said, ‘This is Mrs. Washington bending over.’
Becky’s lower lip fell and her face went ashy and crestfallen. Mrs. Washington was the fat librarian who had prattled on earlier this week during orientation about the continuing relevance of shelf texts as opposed to electronic articles you could find on Google. And this note was nothing more than some random joke that happened to find locker 157. There was never any Danny in her head, pointing to his heart, and she was no more than…random.
Head down, shoulders slumped, she went to the cafeteria, and it smelled like old fat and bleach. Oh well. Dream boys or not, voices in her head or just hopeful echoes, she had to move on, as disappointing as that seemed, considering how nice that boy’s tone had sounded in her imagination just now. Becky almost laughed at herself. So she wanted strange whispers, mysteries, and disappearing acts? Well, no, not really. She was just tired of being random and boring and plain all her life.
She got in line. In her ‘well planned’ exit out the door this morn
ing, she’d forgotten to check the fridge for her lunch, and now she had to buy. She made a half-hearted effort to see the steam table, and it looked like a choice of Sloppy Joe’s or tacos. Not her thing. And sandwich-bar bread was always stale, at least in any school Becky had ever attended. She exited the line, thinking maybe she would adopt a new vegetarian lifestyle, always allowing for hot dogs and Chicken McNuggets, of course.
Becky looked around at the seating choices. All week she’d had B lunch, but Thursday put her here in the A-group, noisy and jam-packed, mostly boys sitting with boys and girls sitting with girls. There was a group in the back doing little rap battles, a collection of quieter kids studying to the right along with the ear-bud zombies staring off into space, and a busted table in the middle of the room by the trash cans temporarily surrounded by passing boys playing keep-away with someone’s hat. There was friendly shoving, girls kneeing up on the benches and shouting in each other’s faces, a couple of long-hairs tapping quarters on the tables, and some upper classman trying to make a smaller kid eat something gross…a zoo, just like her old school.
So.
It was either the study-kids or the one empty table by the trash cans next to the concrete support beam that had a poster of Frederick Douglass on it. It was an old science desk at the edge of the walking aisle separating the two halves of the room, and one of its legs was broken at the base. The wobble-table. For losers.
Becky's Kiss Page 5