Pirates of the Retail Wasteland

by Adam Selzer

  A few seconds later, Hunter was out the door. I leaned over to where this kid called Jonas was sitting. Jonas was one of those people who try to be funny but are actually just annoying. But I couldn’t help talking to him—he always laughed at my jokes.

  “Gee,” I said, “now, who at this school would possibly want to harm the kindly old gym teacher?”

  “Ha ha ha,” Jonas laughed. “Leon.” That was the way Jonas laughed. He’d actually say “ha ha ha,” then he’d say the name of whoever had told the joke, with so much emphasis that he could be described as saying it in italics. He even laughed at Coach Wilkins. Every five or ten minutes, I’d hear him going “Ha ha ha…Coach Wilkins!” But I couldn’t help trying to crack him up from time to time. It’s like, that’s what he was there for.

  At lunch, I told Dustin and James all about it, and they acted like I’d just told them their army had won the First World War.

  “So he not only got it, but he was depressed by it? Croll!” said James.

  “Hey,” said Dustin, “I don’t mess around. If I write a poem to depress someone, you’d better believe they’re going to be depressed.”

  “How did you even get it into the office?” I asked.

  “It’s almost never locked,” said James smugly. “I collect things from it.”

  “No way,” I said, though I honestly wasn’t surprised.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s the sport of Spanish kings!”

  “Like what kind of stuff?”

  “Little things like whistles,” said James. “Not stuff that could really get me busted, like his grade book or his computer. You can really get it for that.”

  James wasn’t really the shoplifting type or anything—I never felt like I should count the change in my pocket after he left—but he sure did pick interesting things to collect. His other hobby was collecting Neighborhood Watch signs.

  Toward the end of lunch, I talked about getting The Wildewood Singers Sing the Beatles for my wall.

  “You know, Leon,” James said, “I gotta say it. The bad album covers are fun and all, but your thing last year of covering a wall with speakers was more…ambitious, you know?”

  “It was more dangerous, too,” I said. “The first time I tried them I knocked all the electricity out, and the second time the garage caught fire.”

  “Yeah,” said James. “But it was still cooler.”

  “Well,” I said, “these albums are uncool by definition. That’s what makes them cool. Camp value, you know?”

  “I’m not saying it isn’t,” said James, though he still sounded skeptical.

  “It’s not as bad as my parents’ hobby,” I said. “This week they’ve been dressing like hicks and calling each other Lester and Wanda while they cook food out of this nasty cookbook about grilling.”

  “How’s that so much worse?” asked James.

  “It is…,” I said. “At least I’m being ironic. I’m not sure they are.”

  “I don’t know,” said Anna. “The whole grilling thing sounds kind of fun.”

  I felt a few of my inner organs churning. Like she’d just crammed her hand into my stomach, going in through my belly button, and was jiggling my guts around.

  “But it’s dorkier than the album covers, right?” I said.

  “Well, the album covers are funny,” said Anna. “I mean, they’re a bit dorky, too, but they’re funny.”

  At that moment, I wished she’d just move up from jiggling my internal organs and squeeze the life out of me altogether. Just find my windpipe, squeeze, and hang on.

  I mean, even my dad knew that the album covers weren’t as dorky as the food disasters. Here I was, trying to feel like I could keep up with Anna and her dad, in terms of overall coolness, and she had to go and endorse my parents’ embarrassing hobby while calling mine dorky. When I thought about it later, I realized that she hadn’t actually been bad-mouthing me, or really even giving my parents a ringing endorsement, but it felt like she was. Combine this with the fact that Sip had six months to live, which I still hadn’t gotten around to telling anybody, and I was starting to feel way worse than any of Dustin’s poems could ever make a person feel.

  As fate would have it, my next class was gym. And as I’d suspected, Coach Hunter made the whole class feel like an interrogation. When we ran laps around the gym, he ran alongside me.

  “Who was it, Leon?” he asked. “Which of you put that poem in my office?”

  “I don’t know!” I sputtered.

  “Then you won’t mind dropping and giving me twenty, will you?”

  Four times over the course of the class, he made me drop and give him twenty. I wished I had been carrying enough cash that I could just drop down and give him a twenty-dollar bill—I would have gladly paid it to get out of the push-ups.

  And he kept making it rough on me. All through class, all I heard was “Harris! Let’s see those arms!” and “Harris! Get that butt in the air!” It was almost exactly the way my grandfather described the army. But I didn’t crack. He couldn’t make me talk.

  I was practically delirious by the end of the period, feeling half dead, and nearly ready to just give up on trying to be with Anna, if it could make me feel like this. I wanted to just bury myself in the nearest hole and let worms come and suck my eyes out of their sockets. If I were with Jenny, I would be the cool one, not the wannabe. It would be a much easier pace to maintain.

  But I wanted Anna.

  I know it sounds incredibly geeky, but I wanted her to think I was cool and sophisticated and intellectual. I wanted her to think I was gutsy and dangerous and dark. Maybe the reason we hadn’t moved any further than occasional kissing and the whole “are we or aren’t we” crap was that she wasn’t sure I was ready for that kind of thing. What would happen if she met someone who was? Surely it wouldn’t be hard for her to find a guy who knew better than to think there was anything cool about The Wildewood Singers Sing the Beatles.

  After the school day ended, I waited for Anna outside as I usually did, but I didn’t say much to her; we just walked along to the edge of the parking lot and she acted the same as ever, as though she hadn’t implied at lunch that I was just as dorky as, if not dorkier than, my parents. I didn’t try to kiss her, or make a move like I was going to. When she turned to go, she smiled, and I offered a kind of a weak smile back, and I walked straight home, going in through the front door and up to my room, where I stared up at the bad album covers above my bed.

  The Voices of Carbondale. The Wildewood Singers. Satan Is Real. I felt like I should tear every one of them down from the wall and take them back to the thrift store from whence they came.

  Maybe it was true. Maybe I was just too much of a dork for Anna. I wasn’t dangerous enough. I was going to end up just like my dad—working some dull job, killing time with embarrassing hobbies. I probably wouldn’t even have the nerve to get a Mohawk.

  I was the biggest dork in school. I looked up at the albums on my wall and tried to do a Jonas-style laugh. “Ha ha ha,” I went. “Satan.”

  Damn. I was good at it.

  Dad got home from work shortly thereafter, delighting Mom with stories about how his boss freaked out when he saw the green Mohawk and started saying he was going to fire him. Dad had threatened to quit accounting to become an accounting consultant, and his boss had immediately shut up and let him get back to work.

  A short while later, he put on his John Deere cap and started pretending to be Lester, walking around and talking about how he’d “kilt him a barr” for dinner that night, just like either Davy Crockett or Jed Clampett. He wasn’t sure which. My mother, in her Wanda outfit, said he’d better not make too much noise while he grilled it.

  “I’m sick and tired of hearin’ you talk while I’m watchin’ my stories!” she said.

  “Woman!” said Dad/Lester, “I got a story for you! The story of a True American who kilt him a barr to keep his fam’ly fed!”

  While I was being called a dork for my hobbies
, this guy had been out scoring points on his boss after showing up with a Mohawk.

  If I’d felt so inclined, I probably could have written the poem that would push Coach Hunter over the edge right then and there. But I didn’t. Instead, I made up my mind that things were going to be different, and decided to act before I chickened out and changed my mind.

  I picked up the phone and called Edie.

  “Yeah?” she said. Telephone manners were not her strong suit. It’s entirely possible that she was morally opposed to them.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s Leon. I’m in for your movie idea. The takeover. And not just setting up an office in Wackfords, but taking it over. The pirate thing.”

  “No way,” she said, incredulous. “You and Anna were saying it was all illegal and too risky and stuff.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but what good is security, anyway? In today’s job market, it’s not like we’d be throwing away promising futures.”

  “Security is superstition, and you must live a daring life, or not live at all,” said Edie. “Helen Keller said that. Did you know she was a Socialist?”

  “Can’t say that I did,” I said. “But seriously, I think we should take over the Wackfords and turn it into an office, and stop people from buying anything. And make a movie out of it.”

  “Seriously? You think we can do it?”

  “I think we have to,” I said. “You know George, the owner of Sip?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “I heard him talking to Troy and Trinity. And he said Sip is going out of business in about six months. Because of the Wackfords, I assume.”

  “Well, all right, then!” said Edie. “We have to take them over—maybe we can stop them before Sip closes! Is Anna in, too?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to convince her, I guess.”

  “No kidding?” asked Edie. “I figured she probably talked you into it.”

  “Well, she didn’t,” I said. “You think I’m not enough of a risk taker?”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “I believe you.”

  “I’ll talk her into it tomorrow at lunch,” I said. “Just leave it to me.”

  When I hung up, I was already starting to feel good again. Or better, anyway. Maybe getting out of that in-school suspension alive a few months before had made me sort of complacent. Deep down, maybe I’d felt that since I’d already made a bit of a splash with La Dolce Pubert, I could just relax for a while. Maybe I was getting to be a little bit dorky. Helen Keller was right—you have to do something daring every now and then.

  Taking over the Wackfords might not prove any real point. It might not save Sip. But at least I’d be doing something.

  I went downstairs, brewed a pot of coffee, and drank it black.

  The next morning was the first activity period of the semester. The semester before, I’d had “advanced studies,” an activity led by Mr. Streich back before he was in charge of the gifted pool. That was the class I actually did the avant-garde movie for. This semester, they hadn’t offered advanced studies as an activity at all, probably just because of my movie. I hated to think I’d ruined it for everyone else.

  Since I was sick on the sign-up day, I wasn’t able to sign up for the art history activity Anna was taking, or even the politics one Edie would be terrorizing. By the time I got to sign up for an activity, most things were full, and I was left with a choice between Skills for the Job Market and something called Social Problems, which I imagined was full of those stupid things where you read a short story about someone dealing with peer pressure and then discuss how they should react. I didn’t want to meet the kids who signed up for either of those very much, and decided on Skills for the Job Market strictly by tossing a coin.

  I knew I was in hell even before the bell rang. The class was mostly a bunch of “career track” kids who were already working on their college applications and reading books about how to be a rich asshole instead of just a regular asshole. There were kids there who had joined the football team because it would be “a good place to make connections.”

  Joe Griffin, the biggest religious creep in school, was there, too. His dad was a sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyer who advertised on television, and he seemed to think he was God’s own Angel of Judgment, vested with powers to tell the rest of us we were going to burn in hell. Joe had been instrumental in getting me suspended over La Dolce Pubert. He later apologized for that, and I forgave him, but he was still a creep. He sat in the front row of Skills for the Job Market. I couldn’t see his face, since I naturally sat in the back, but I imagined that he looked awfully smug, as usual. All the kids there looked pretty smug.

  The teacher was a social studies guy called Mr. Morton who always tried to come off as a dynamic young go-getter. He was wearing an orange button-down shirt with a yellow tie, a combination that made him look like he was dressed as a fruit smoothie or something. He spoke fairly rapidly and quite confidently, and talked about what a great leader he was for the first ten minutes. Humility was clearly not a virtue the guy treasured—but the rest of the kids ate it up.

  For the first class, his topic was motivation. He recommended putting up those motivational posters, the ones my dad loved so dearly, in our “study environment.” Joe Griffin then told him he’d be granted more success if he used posters with Bible verses on them.

  “If that’s what inspires you, go for it,” said Mr. Morton.

  “You should surround yourself with inspiration.” I wondered how many of these jerks would be putting up pictures of Mr. Morton.

  “I’m inspired by porn,” I said. “Should I fill my study area with centerfolds?”

  Joe turned around and gave me a dirty look.

  “Stick with the motivational sayings,” said Mr. Morton. “Porn would give you the wrong kind of inspiration.” Everybody snickered, and Mr. Morton went right back to talking about how great he was.

  “I’m not going to be teaching social studies forever,” he said. “Just a couple of years. It’s the kind of experience a lot of companies love to see. You see, you can’t just get a job by having a college degree anymore. You need things to fill out the resume, and working as a teacher in a successful school will make me much more desirable to employers. After a couple of years, I’ll use what I’ve learned here to help me out in the business world.”

  Well, I thought, I’m very happy to be your guinea pig. I hope I teach you well, dingle-dorf. When the bell rang, I was the first one out the door.

  I practically ran down the hall and ended up being the first one to arrive in Coach Wilkins’s history class, except for Coach Hunter, who came in at the same time as me.

  Coach Wilkins nodded at me and smiled as I took my seat, then turned his attention to Coach Hunter.

  “How ’bout it, Gene?” asked Coach Wilkins.

  “I found another one,” Hunter grumbled. He held out a sheet of paper, and I pricked up my ears.

  “Let me see,” said Coach Wilkins. It was “The Final Push-up,” the one Dustin had read at Sip. Wilkins read it and chuckled. “It’s hardly vulgar,” he said.

  “Whatever,” said Coach Hunter. “I’m at the end of my rope, Ron. In this one, it sounds like they want me to put my head in the oven! Hang on to it in case I need it for evidence.”

  “It’s just a poem, Gene,” said Wilkins. “It can’t hurt anybody.”

  “That’s what you think,” he said. He then turned and looked right at me. “Who was it, Harris? If you don’t tell me now, there’s going to be a locker search of every one of you gifted-pool types.”

  “That can’t be legal,” I said. “Do you have a warrant?”

  “You don’t need a warrant for locker searches, actually,” said Coach Wilkins. “The lockers are school property, not student property. But I think he has a point, Gene. What makes you so sure it was someone from the gifted pool?”

  “Who else is it gonna be?” he asked.

  “I’ll keep my ears open, Gene,” said Coach Wilkins. “
But I think your best course of action is to ignore it.”

  “This is out of hand, Harris,” said Coach Hunter. “I’m turning every one of these in to Dr. Brown. If I find out you’ve been holding out on me, you’re in enormous trouble. You and every last one of your friends!”

  “I’m not sure that’s legal,” I said.

  “I don’t think it is, Gene,” said Coach Wilkins. “You might have a case if the poems were threatening or obscene, but there’s no rule against poems that are just depressing. If Leon hears anything, I’m sure he’ll let you know.”

  And he winked at me as Coach Hunter left. I hate it when teachers wink at me. And I’m pretty sure they only wink at kids they think are dorky enough to think it’s cool. All the more reason to become a pirate, I figured.

  When the class filled up, Coach Wilkins went into his usual routine, and Jonas spent the whole class period using his fingernail to scrape at a crayon. About midway through the class, he tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention and showed me that he’d been sculpting it to look like a penis.

  “Cram it, Jonas,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.

  “Ha ha ha,” said Jonas, thinking I was being funny. “Leon.”

  Two hours later, at lunch, I relayed Coach Hunter’s latest rant to James and Dustin, who were thrilled.

  “Man,” Dustin said. “Two days’ worth of my poems and the guy’s already out of energy. I’m a king, man!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And I get to be your whipping boy. You should see what he’s doing to me in gym!”

  Anna came in and nudged me in the arm.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Go for it.”

  “I think we should go ahead with the pirate thing.”

  She took a sip of Coke and then looked at me with an eyebrow raised. She had the cutest eyebrows I could possibly imagine, and when she raised one of them, that alone could usually get me to change my mind about something. But I was resolved to stand firm.

  “Edie’s idea?” she asked. “The illegal one? I thought we were just going to set up an office there.”