Exiled to Iowa. Send Help. And Couture

by Chris O'Guinn

  Keith was at the far end of the table, sitting next to a short African American guy. There were several empty seats around them, and I timidly approached. Keith had invited me, sure, but the day I had been having had left me pretty shaken. I was terrified that one more rejection would be the proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back.

  Keith and his friend looked up at me. Mild curiosity melted into cautious welcome and they nodded to me. Grateful beyond any words to express it, I set my tray down and settled opposite the two of them.

  “You must be Collin,” Keith’s friend said, holding up a fist. “My name’s Nick. Keith told me about you. Said you were the man responsible for his killer threads.”

  I fortunately knew that straight-boy signal and bumped his fist in with mine. It was then that I noticed Keith was wearing one of the shirts I had picked out for him. That made me feel a lot better; accepted in a way that was very simple and yet very important. My day was finally starting to get a little better. Now if I could just find a way to eat with my jaw hurting as badly as it was, things would be great.

  “I thought you were going to eat with Becca and her friends,” Keith mentioned around a sporkful of noodles.

  I shrugged and shook my head. “I hate crowds,” I told him simply, swirling the spaghetti on my plate experimentally.

  Keith gave me a puzzled look and then glanced over at his sister and saw who her lunch date was. “Oh. You’re avoiding Billy,” Keith observed.

  I looked at him, startled by his keen perception. “Uh…. Huh?”

  “I heard someone say Billy beat on the new kid,” Keith summarized, clearly not seeing any need for further explanation.

  “Aw, crap, sorry man,” Nick said, shaking his head. “Billy is just a jerk. He’s taken a swing at just about everyone from time to time.”

  “Really?” I asked, feeling a bit better. “Wh-Why does he get away with it?”

  “Because his dad’s the mayor and no one wants to kick that hornet’s nest,” Nick explained. “So, yeah.... Just stay clear of him.”

  “That was actually the key to my clever plan,” I admitted with a wry smile.

  One bite told me that eating was not going to be a lot of fun. I gave up on the spaghetti. It wasn’t good enough to be worth the slowly-increasing amount of pain that masticating—that’s chewing, by the way—was causing me.

  I sighed and put down my spork and got out the form that Principal Kretchmer had given me. It would be nice, I thought, to have one little oasis in this screwed up world I had been dumped in. It would only end up being me and a couple of other kids with nowhere to hang at lunch, but hey, it would be something.

  “Dude, you are not doing homework at lunch, are you?” Nick asked me in disbelief.

  I looked up and shook my head. “No.... It’s something Kretchmer gave me.”

  “That guy gives me the creeps,” Nick told me. “I swear they’re going to find human skulls in his desk when he leaves.”

  Keith laughed at that. “Human skulls.... You’re a freak.”

  Nick rolled his eyes. “Dude, you’ve never been to see him.” Nick glanced at me while pointing a thumb at Keith. “Mr. Goody Good here has never been to the principal’s office.”

  “I don’t cut classes,” Keith replied directly.

  Finished with his lunch, Keith brought out a book of Sudoku games and flipped through many well-worn pages to the middle, where he started on a new puzzle. It looked like he had already torn through about fifty of the things and the book didn’t seem that old.

  I looked from him to Nick, who shrugged.

  “Yeah, I know. Weird huh? He’s got a new book every day, it seems. Teachers were taking it away from him to get him to pay attention in class until he learned to hide them in his textbooks.”

  “It helps me concentrate,” Keith commented, filling in boxes at a rate that made me a little dizzy.

  “So, what did the Lord Inquisitor want with you?” Nick asked.

  “He wanted to talk to me about my anger management issues and how I need to not pick fights with gorg— Er, guys who can tie me into balloon animals.”

  Keith laughed at that, looking up at me. “Balloon animals…. I love it.”

  Nick shook his head. “Sounds like a great first meeting.”

  “I always like to start off at a new school with a threat of expulsion. Sort of makes things exciting.”

  They both gaped at me. “He threatened to throw you out? Over just one fight?”

  Oh, how to explain that I had been trashed by my previous principal without letting them in on the why and the who and the other drama-soaked facts?

  “Er, I had some issues at my old school that the principal there blew out of proportion so Herr Kretchmer of course wigged out. It’s a thing.”

  Nick grinned. “Wow, you’re quite the troublemaker.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s me—the bad seed.” I rolled my eyes and attempted to eat pudding. It was easier than solid food and I deserved it.

  My eyes tracked over the lunch crowd, taking in the various and unavoidable cliques—jocks, geeks, stoners, cheerleaders ... a sizable number of wholesome young people I assumed were Bible thumpers and there, off in a far corner was the mysterious young man and his aura of darkness. Just as in class, there was a wide chasm of emptiness around him, and given how crowded the lunchroom was, that was something of a feat.

  “That’s the school nutjob,” Nick told me. “He transferred in last year, second semester. I hear he was going to blow up his old school, so they didn’t want him there anymore.”

  “Sometimes, blowing up the school seems like a really good idea,” I commented distractedly, studying the well of hostility who was currently reading something I couldn’t make out the title of.

  “His name’s Austin,” Keith supplied, still working on his puzzle. “His dad’s a coach here. I tried talking to him once, but he just walked away like he didn’t hear me.”

  “We just call him ‘Psycho.’”

  “Which isn’t really cool,” Keith pointed out.

  I turned my attention away from the resident loner and back to my two new friends, who seemed to be rehashing an old argument. Nick was rolling his eyes, but Keith was not really paying him any attention.

  “Yeah, well, you threaten to blow up the student body, that’s gonna kinda ruin your rep. I don’t even know why they let him still come to school.”

  “Check it out, guys, looks like the loser has found some loser friends to hang with,” a revoltingly familiar voice crowed.

  I found myself hunching down as Derek and his minions approached our table, likely on their way to collect Billy. I could not afford another confrontation, though that did not seem to be up to me.

  “Jesus, Nick, it was bad enough you hanging with the retard, but now this little fag too? That’s just pathetic, man.”

  Nick was on his feet in a moment, his eyes burning. “Get lost, Derek.”

  The bully laughed and looked at his friends. “Big man. You want a piece of me?”

  Calmly, Keith stood up and glared threateningly at Derek. He didn’t say anything and he didn’t have to. The message was very clear. Even an idiot like Derek could tell there was more trouble here than he wanted to party with.

  “Whatever. Catch you girls later,” he told us and went over to Billy.

  I watched the strange moment that took place over at Becca’s table. She was staring at Derek with undisguised loathing and when he told Billy to come with him, the big blond thug actually glared at him. Then the moment passed and Billy went off with his fellow bullies.

  I turned back to my new friends as they sat back down. “You guys are insane. They would have killed us all.”

  “Derek’s mostly all talk. Billy’s his muscle,” Nick said with contempt.

  “Seems like you know him.”

  Nick frowned distastefully. “We used to be friends, a long time ago.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  Keith shrugged
his broad shoulders. “When we were in third grade ... my mom was worried I didn’t have any friends. So, she paid Nick to be my friend.”

  “Say what?” I asked.

  Nick shook his head. “It wasn’t like that at all!” He mulled it over. “Well, not really ... only sorta.” He fidgeted with his spork. “Our moms know each other…. She gave me five bucks a week to look after Keith—let him hang with me and my friends and—”

  “Be my friend,” Keith said with a laugh.

  “She never put it that way,” Nick protested with a little smile. “But yeah. Anyway, one day this huge fifth-grader—I mean, like, Godzilla-huge—came up to me and demanded my money and my new sneakers. My ‘friends’—Derek and a couple others—scattered like roaches when the lights come on. But Keith here—he just stood there and told the dude to step off. You should have seen the kid’s face. It was awesome.”

  Keith looked embarrassed. “He wasn’t that big.”

  “Dude, the guy blotted out the sun,” Nick corrected him expansively. Keith shook his head but did not comment further. “Anyway, the guy didn’t want to back down but he really didn’t want to get put on his ass by a third-grader and Keith was big even then. So, the dude and his pals took off.”

  “Awesome,” I approved.

  “It was, yeah,” Nick said, and there was a somewhat worshipful note to his voice, like he still couldn’t believe that Keith had done that. “Anyway, so this guy here, who I hadn’t treated too well, saved my ass from a serious beating while my buds had left me high and dry. I was a jerk, yeah, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew how to recognize real friends. The next day, I told them all that they would knock off the names and smack talk about Keith or I wouldn’t hang with them no more.”

  “Most of them bailed,” Keith commented, not looking terribly bothered.

  “Yeah, Derek didn’t like it at all. A couple others eventually moved away. But that was fine by me. Keith’s been a better bud than those losers ever were.”

  I could tell the praise was making Keith uncomfortable, so I didn’t make too much of a fuss over it. But I was happy to know that I had fallen in with good people. It made the whole situation that I was in seem a whole lot less grim. Maybe I could start over, make a fresh beginning and not screw it all up like I had before.

  Anything was possible—or so the clichés told me.

  I got through the rest of my classes without any more drama, which I felt was a tremendous victory for me. My parents, being the wonderfully protective (re: controlling) people they are, had made a sweeping declaration that I would only go home with my brother. This would ensure I was not home alone, because we all know how insane it is to let a nigh-sixteen-year-old be at home alone for a couple of hours.

  Is my bitterness showing again?

  So, after classes, I found myself consigned to one of my least favorite places in the universe—the school gym. I could have gone to the library, but libraries sort of freak me out. All that quiet is just unnatural. So, even though I had some mild PTSD-y issues with the school gym, it was the preferable of the two.

  I sat upon the bleachers, going over my homework half-heartedly and occasionally paying attention to the goings-on courtside. Unlike most boys my age (of my particular persuasion) jocks did nothing for me. You get tossed into enough Dumpsters, pantsed a few times and knocked around a bit, all by guys in jerseys, and the appeal wears off— or it did for me, anyway.

  Still, they did look nice when they moved.

  At some point, a now-familiar icy presence stole over me. I blinked and looked up at the darkness named Austin, surprised to find him there. The even stranger thing was the fact that he was now looking right back at me. That made me deeply uncomfortable and I had the irrational fear that he might think I was stalking him. I certainly had gaped at him enough in one day.

  I resolved to focus on the fascinating events of pre-Christian Europe and not think so much about the miniature terrorist sitting a few seats up from me. I didn’t want him to think I was in any way curious about him, after all, which I completely wasn’t, and I didn’t want him to think he needed to blow up my house or anything. It wasn’t that I liked my house or anything, but it beat living in a cardboard box.

  If only I could get over the feeling that he was boring holes into my back with his patented “the whole world needs to burn” glower.

  I watched someone on the court pass the ball to someone else, who pranced around for some reason or another before passing the ball to yet another player, none of whom were my brother. I tried very hard to be supportive of Shawn, but there were some divides that even love could not bridge.

  “Basketball fan?”

  I blinked, trying to process the idea that the darkness behind me had spoken. It seemed like an odd thing for darkness to do, really—just strike up random conversation with a boy who was trying so very hard to not get into any more trouble.

  “Er, not on purpose,” I replied, risking a glance over my shoulder. “My brother…. He’s, uh ... a center....” I at least knew that much.

  “Ah.”

  “You? Basketball groupie?”

  “No. Dad’s the coach.”

  “Oh, right.”

  There weren’t a whole lot of places I could go with that awkward moment, which was probably wisest. After all, I was just starting off at the school (and not doing a very good job of it) and so it wasn’t a really good idea to make nice with the resident sociopath, only he didn’t really seem quite so crazy close up.

  “Now, if they broke out into a song and dance routine, then I’d be interested,” I volunteered for absolutely no justifiable reason.

  There was a nervous silence as Austin turned my little comment over in his allegedly-murderous thoughts. “That would actually be sort of scary. I’ve heard the point guard, Justin, sing. It’s not pretty.”

  I nodded and let it drop, not knowing where to take the painfully stalled conversation from there. My little “High School Musical” reference had fallen flat (which wasn’t surprising) and I didn’t know what else to say to someone who (possibly) harbored murderous impulses. It did not exactly make for good small talk.

  “Of course, Zac Efron’s not tall enough to be a basketball star either, though, so I suppose it all balances out in the end.”

  “Oh my God, did you just make an HSM reference?” I asked, shocked.

  “You started it,” Austin replied uncertainly.

  “Oh my God! Who’s your favorite? Troy? No, I bet it’s Chad.... I mean, no, er.... Gabriella, right? I can’t wait for HSM3. I’m dying to see it. I wonder if it will even play in this town.”

  Like a startled turtle, Austin hunched in on himself in the face of my excitement. His haunted gaze was inscrutable (which is to say, I had no idea if I had just ruined any chance of making a new friend or not) and his body language was completely closed off.

  “Er ... sorry ... just ... didn’t think anyone in this burg might have.... I didn’t think I’d meet another fan ... or … guess you’re not.... Okay, shutting up now.”

  I returned to my staggeringly boring pre-Christian Europeans, knowing I was beet-red from my embarrassment. My Irish heritage does not allow me to hide my humiliation well—or at all, really. Usually, I am able to keep my cool and not spazz out on someone, but after the day I had been having, the notion of finding someone with a shared interest was like chilled water down a parched throat.

  “I liked Ryan, actually. The way he learned to stand on his own was awesome.”

  I had been spun around so many times at this point I was actually starting to feel a little dizzy. I bit my lower lip and stared blankly at the pages in front of me and debated my options. I could respond—roll the dice and see how many other ways I could mess this up. I could smile politely and go back to my reading, sort of close down the conversation in the most innocuous way possible. I could flee, making up some story about a forgotten errand.

  They all had their advantages and disadvantages. I had just had su
ch a rough day that the idea of being messed with once more seemed too much to bear. He could easily be yanking my chain, trying to lead me into saying something that he could use against me; but that didn’t seem to make sense. Mr. Brooding Silence had not spoken to anyone in a while, by all accounts, so why would he strike up a conversation with me just to be a jerk to me?

  I turned around, smiling a little and firmly reining in my hyperactive tendencies. I didn’t want to send him running, after all. “My name’s Collin,” I introduced myself.

  He nodded, apparently having gotten that bulletin. “Austin.”

  Awkward silence followed. I was in a death match with myself over what to not say, how to not say what I wanted to say and some odd concerns over how my hair looked after a long day in the hot and humid school. That all sort of tied up my tongue and left me unsure how to proceed.

  Austin apparently had a degree in being taciturn, so he did not offer me a rope to pull me out of the pit I was in.

  “Er, I liked Ryan too.” Of course, I had a mad crush on Troy, but I can hardly be blamed for that. “He dared to be different.”

  Well, he dared to be queer, in my eyes, but I wasn’t going to say that.

  “I didn’t try to blow up my old school,” Austin blurted.

  “Oh.... Huh?” Now I was totally lost. How had we gotten here?

  “I know what people say,” Austin told me quietly, his expression guarded. “But I didn’t try to blow up my old school. That’s not.... That isn’t why I got transferred here.”

  Silence reigned for a moment while I processed that information and tried to figure out why he was giving it to me. It was nice to know, sure, but why did he care what I thought about him?

  “Okay.... Good to know….” Wow, I failed at life sometimes. I had no idea what to say. How did one casually change topics after that, after all?

  “Where did you come from?” Austin asked me.

  “Mars,” I replied. “Or, might as well be, as alien as I am around here.”