by Bruce Ingram
“That’s not what boys think about chubby girls,” she said.
“Who cares what immature boys think,” I told her. I then told her that white guys, black guys, Hispanic guys, Asian guys—they all need to grow up, well at least the vast majority of them do from what I’ve seen. I’m not going to spend my high school years trying to fit into some stereotype of what my figure is supposed to be like, what kind of makeup I’m supposed to wear, and what kind of clothes I have to wear. I just don’t care. I’m happy with myself.
Then Elly said she agreed with all that, but then she said, “Still…,” which really meant that though she agreed with what I said, she wasn’t going to change her outlook. Then she got out some new blush and eye shadow that she had bought for her dates with Jonathan and asked if I wanted to try them on and I started to say, “Not really.” But then I thought that would hurt her feelings, so I said okay. I admit that it was fun to put that stuff on and seeing how I looked with a lot of makeup was interesting, but that wasn’t the real me with all that stuff on my face. I’ve worn a little makeup when I’ve been out with Luke. I’ve worn my newest jeans a couple times. We’ve talked about going out to dinner at a nice restaurant when he can drive on his own, and I want to wear my Sunday dress when we go do that, and maybe put my hair up some kind of way or sweep it around so that it falls over one of my shoulders. I would definitely wear some makeup when we go out to dinner that time, but not a whole lot. We talked about the expense of going out to dinner, but then we both agreed that we could go do some extra job and dedicate that money to us going out to eat somewhere nice. Neither one of has ever been out to what Poppa calls “a sit down restaurant,” and I’d like to experience that.
Elly finally got off the weight and makeup topic, and then she wanted to show me some of her new skirts and dresses that she and her mom have bought shopping since Elly has lost weight. Some of the dresses were exactly the same, except maybe they were a little shorter or a size smaller from the ones she already had. It just seemed like such a waste of money. I didn’t tell her that, though.
The next topic was guys, and she said she wasn’t real happy dating Jonathan and asked what I thought about him, and I told her the truth… that I had only ever had him in one class ever and I didn’t have any feelings one way or the other about him. He just seemed like a typical guy, which was sort of an insult, and I thought Elly took it that way, too. Then she said that Caleb had been flirting with her a lot lately and that he was her dream guy and what did I think of her maybe breaking up with Jonathan and really letting Caleb know she was available?
I don’t like Caleb. I do know him, and I think he is cruel and immature and has a totally undeserved high opinion of himself. Yeah, he is super good looking, but so what. He doesn’t have a kind heart. He just goes from girl to girl because he thinks life is like that. What a jerk. But I didn’t think I could tell Elly that.
She kept pestering and pestering me about Caleb and finally I said, “You can do better than Caleb, Elly, a lot better. It would be a mistake to go out with him.” That was about the nicest thing I could say about Caleb. I could tell my comments upset her a little, and I hadn’t wanted that to happen, but she shouldn’t have insisted so much about me giving some sort of opinion about him. Elly should be glad that I didn’t tell her what I really thought.
Then Elly wanted to know what it was like to be dating Luke, and I said it was “Absolutely wonderful, that it was as good as I thought it would be.” That he was kind and attentive to me and cared about my thoughts and opinions on things and that he treated me with respect. Maybe, I shouldn’t have gone on and on like that. Maybe, it sounded like I was bragging about having such a great boyfriend. I don’t want to ever come off like that. But Luke is great. Elly said I should hang on to Luke, and I smiled and said, “I intend to.”
I was really upset when a few days later, Elly called me and said that Luke had been injured at football practice when Caleb and Jonathan came up from behind and tackled or hit him or something. Luke is too small to be playing football, even for extra credit or whatever the reason he was out there, and I had told him that. But he said Coach Dell had told him that there would be no tackling or physical contact. I asked Elly about that, and she said Caleb and Jonathan had broken the rules and got suspended from the football team for a game because of what they did to Luke. That should tell her all she needs to know about the two “boys” in her life. Elly is a wonderful, kind person, but she’s making bad choices about guys.
Good Classes/Bad Classes
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Luke
Things finally hit rock bottom in Geometry class right before Christmas break. We were reviewing for our big test at the end of the semester and poor Ms. Waters was trying to get people to listen to her. But as usual only about four or five of the kids in the room were, and one of those was me, and I didn’t know what the heck she was lecturing about. She was explaining how to measure angles and something about the angle of elevation of a triangle, which had just followed the lesson on theorems and proofs—real head exploding crap that nobody will ever use in life unless they become a geometry teacher. I looked around the room and some of the kids were on Twitter, some were on Instagram and showing each other pictures, a couple more were asleep, and the rest were texting or listening to music.
And the woman just snapped. She walked over to Thomas, who never pays any attention to her and said, “Hand over your phone and give me your earbuds, too.” School policy says that students can only listen to music if teachers give them permission to do so after work is done for the day. The policy also says that student use of phones is at the discretion of the teacher, which basically means that a kid can’t have his phone out unless the student is using it for research or to take notes or if the student has been given permission. Thomas just ignored Ms. Waters, and she said, “One more time, give me your phone,” and again he ignored her, and she just snatched it out of his hands and began walking away.
Well, this caused Thomas to cuss at her, and the next thing I knew he and three of his fellow losers were yelling at Ms. Waters. He was threatening and following her up to her desk and kept on cursing at her the whole time. Some of the students started taking videos of what was going on to post online, like it was all some kind of big joke. The weird thing was that for about the first time all year, everybody was focused on Ms. Waters. I never act up in there. I can’t stand a lot of the people in that room. I understand their frustration, but they have like this open hostility toward her. That’s just wrong. Ms. Waters is a first year teacher, and I guarantee you that none of the classes she took in college prepared her for us. I don’t know what’s going on in Geometry any more than anybody else, but some of the kids are just plain cruel to that woman.
So Thomas was cursing at Ms. Waters and was threatening to hit her if she didn’t give back his phone, and she just started to bawl. I felt so bad for her that I got out of my chair, went over to the intercom and hit the emergency button and said we needed an administrator in the room immediately. Ms. Waters and Thomas both looked at me and she said thank you. Then Thomas sent some choice profanity my way and said he and his boys were going to take care of me right now before Mr. Caldwell or whoever arrived.
I moved in between Thomas and Ms. Waters, because I was afraid that he was going to do something to her and I told him, “Yeah, only a tough dude like you would hit a woman. If you touch her, I’ll beat the crap out of you!”
Thomas came firing up to me and got in my face and about that second, Mr. Caldwell rushed into the room and yelled at me and Thomas to follow him to his office. I was shaking. I don’t know if it was from anger or fear… maybe both. I might have gotten in a few shots at Thomas, but sooner or later he and his buddies would’ve beaten me to a pulp. Caldwell then looked over at Ms. Waters and saw her crying, then he used his walky-talky to ask the school resource officer to come watch the class. He also told Ms. Waters to come to his office, too, when the resource officer arrived
. I’ve been bullied before, especially when I was in middle school and a ninth grader, and I wasn’t going to stand by and let that jerk Thomas bully Ms. Waters.
The four of us got to Mr. Caldwell’s office, and Ms. Waters blurted out, bless her, that I was the one who had used the intercom to call him and that I had gotten out of my chair to protect her, that Thomas had threated physical violence against her. Caldwell, then said, “Thomas, what have you got to say for yourself?”
He said, “She took my phone without asking me,” which is about the dumbest thing he could have said.
“Did you threaten her with physical violence?” Caldwell then asked and Thomas cursed at him and said yeah and then it was Caldwell’s turn to come flying out of his desk.
“You’re suspended for 10 days,” said Caldwell. “You can come back to school on the 11th day providing one of your parents is present to hear what the consequences will be the next time this type of behavior is shown.”
After that, Thomas was sent to where the secretary sits so he could wait for somebody to pick him up, Ms. Waters went back to her room, and it was just Caldwell and me in his office.
“Thank you for standing up for Ms. Waters, Luke, I really appreciate that,” he said.
“I appreciate you saying that, but you know Thomas is not going to let this rest until he gets even with me,” I said. “Sooner or later, he and his pals are going to jump me in there. I’m begging you. You’ve got to help Ms. Waters control that class.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Caldwell. He started looking at the master schedule and then it looked like he went under the administrator part of Power School, and I heard him mutter under his breath, “Every student in there has a D or F average.” Which was a surprise to me because I thought everyone was failing. He did some more scanning around and then he told me that Thomas and all three of his buddies were getting schedule changes for the second semester, that none of them would be in Ms. Waters room and none of them would be in the same math class together.
So I guess the high point of Geometry class for me for the year will be that I won’t get beaten up in there, that my other great accomplishment for the year will be that I will hopefully have a high to medium F…whoopee-do.
Chapter Thirty: Elly
I love ending the school day with Yearbook seventh period. There’s pressure to meet deadlines, but Ms. Hawk has got everything so organized, and everybody in there wants to be in that class and create something that people will want to have for the rest of their lives, and it’s just fun and meaningful to be a part of something like that.
I really like being on Luke and Mia’s team, too. Sitting around with them and planning what we’re going to cover on our spreads. And see what kind of pictures I will need to take and how we will lay out the copy and photos so that a spread is visually appealing. There’s time for us to talk about school and things while we’re working on some project, and that’s nice, too.
The other day, we started talking about what we were going to do over the Christmas holidays, and I started telling about how Dad was going to take everybody to the beach for four days because he had found a condo really cheap to rent and it would be nice to get away and eat at some really great fresh seafood places and go to some museums down there. Then I realized that saying something like that might have been hurtful to Mia and Luke because they wouldn’t have any concept what it would be like to have money to spend on “getting away from it all,” and I was ashamed of what I had said… maybe I had sounded braggy.
So I quickly decided to change the subject and asked them what they were going to do for the holidays. I meant what they were going to do as individuals, but both of them started telling me what they were going to do together. Mia said the thing they were going to do that she was looking forward to the most was going on an all-day six-mile hike in the national forest for their Ecology project. That Luke had come up with the idea to ask Ms. Jenkins if they could research what birds they found and whether they were year-round residents, winter residents, or just passing through because of present weather conditions. Then he and Mia would also make note of what kind of habitats they found the birds in and what were the likely foods the birds were feeding on in those micro-habitats and that would be their research project for Ecology.
Mia said she was in charge of lunch and snacks and that Luke said he would identify and find sassafras roots and they would steep them over a campfire and have that to drink while they were cooking their lunch. Right after they had told me about that, Ms. Hawk asked Luke to come talk to her about something on one of his spreads, and I asked Mia if her parents were okay with her going off deep in the woods with Luke. I said I knew Luke would never do anything wrong, but were her parents understanding about them being alone like that?
Mia said that her mom had told her earlier that month that she had tried and tried not to like Luke, and her mom had hoped by not trying to talk her out of dating him, that eventually Mia would see that she could do better. But then her mom said, “The more I’m around Luke, the more I like him. Honestly, I don’t see how you could find someone better.”
I said I was surprised to hear that and asked her if her dad felt the same way and Mia confessed that she and her mom still had not told him about Luke and her being together, that he still thought that the only thing the two of them had in common was their L&M Enterprises business. We then started talking about Christmas and getting presents for our family, and I said I didn’t know what to get Jonathan, that I was dreading buying him something, that what I really wanted to do was break up with him before Christmas because it was just a waste of time to keep dating him.
Then Mia said, “I don’t understand why you would go out with somebody you don’t like, it doesn’t make sense.” Which really made me think. Then she said she and Luke had decided what to get each other for Christmas, that they had talked about it and talked about it and finally they decided that she would make him a sweater and he would buy her a baby goat. I laughed out loud at the goat thing, but then I realized she was serious.
Luke and her had come up with the idea of raising five goats in his granddaddy’s yard. They had ordered five young goats and one of them was for her, and they would raise the goats until they got bigger, then sell them as an organic health food. They would also make a bunch of money off their goats, just like they had made off the chickens when Luke helped her expand the chicken run.
About that time, Luke came back, and I said, “Mia told me about the goats, you two can make money off just about anything.”
Mia next said, “Tell her about that $150 you made off your writing.” Luke said Ms. Hawk had encouraged him to try to publish the article he had written for English, “The Day Granddaddy and I Went Deer Hunting,” and Luke said that he had sent the story to Lindsay Thomas, the editor of Quality Whitetails, which is Luke’s favorite deer hunting magazine. That Mr. Thomas had bought the article for the Fire Pot section of the magazine and asked Luke to send some more stories in for consideration. Luke said he was going to try to write some fishing stories for magazines, too… that maybe he could write more and stop having to work so hard on the lawn mowing business, that he and Mia could start maybe getting more into the goat, chicken, and livestock end, maybe they could raise a beef cow next and there would be more money in that than lawn care.
When I listened to all that, I realized that Luke and Mia would never be jealous of me going off to the beach, that they were the lucky ones because they were going to be together during Christmas and loving being together. When I got home that afternoon, I called Jonathan and broke up with him. I feel good about my decision.
Chapter Thirty-One: Marcus
Before the year started, I was absolutely sure about how a bunch of things would turn out and almost nothing happened like I thought it would. Take the football season, for instance. We ended up 4 and 6, I missed four games because of the suspension and later a concussion, and Caleb and I never got on the same page on th
e field and now we’re barely even talking to each other at school. There were no playoffs, no first team district for me or anybody else, no college scouts at our last couple of games, and no team unity.
I thought Caleb and I would be hanging out and double dating, but that all fell apart, too. I used to think it was cool for him to be juggling two or three girls at a time, but now he just seems pathetic in the way he looks at girls as something to conquer. I know I shouldn’t talk too much because I was basically doing the same thing last year. But now I realize it’s best just to have a steady girlfriend, like Kylee… a girl that will get all over me when I mess up, but will let me know when she’s proud of me, too. The other day she told me how proud she was of my school grades, that they were more important in the long run than my accomplishments on the football field. I don’t know if that is really true or not, but it’s a whole lot better for her and my parents and Joshua praising me for my improved grades and attitude than being all over my case, like they were last year.
I’m actually liking some of my classes this year, especially history. Everything Mr. Wayne has gone over this semester has been really interesting. The Black Death wiping out a whole lot of Europe, all those wars of religion and the Catholics and Protestants slaughtering each other, the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers and how many of them knew slavery was wrong but didn’t know how to deal with it… the French Revolution, Robespierre and all those people going to the guillotine. The other night, Kylee and I went out to dinner and somehow we got on the topic of history and we must have talked about history stuff for most of our meal.