by S. G. Wilson
“It was okay, I guess,” I said.
She was about to press me for more details, when an enormous kid appeared at my side, his huge frame blotting out the fluorescent light.
Nash, the seventh grade’s most popular monster, had arrived to make my life even worse.
“Hey, bro, how are ya?” Nash wrapped a thick arm around me, squeezing my shoulder blades against my spine.
Twig whipped out her phone and aimed its camera at Nash and me. What a couple we made: me with the bad hair and general scrawniness, him with the wavy black locks and action-figure physique. He looked like a statue of a magnificent soldier mounted on a horse. I looked like a goofy little pigeon taking a dump on the statue’s head.
“Perfect!” said Twig. “Just act natural, you two. Do your thing. Don’t mind me.”
Nash smiled with the patience of a parent playing some stupid game with a kid. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m working on an episode about the different faces we wear. You know, how someone can have a lot of different sides to them. You’re a perfect example, Nash. Can I interview you?”
“Uh, sure.” Nash squeezed another year of life from my body.
“Great. Now, would you say that along with being an athlete, a top student, and a promising young actor, you also wear the hat of…a bully?”
Nash let go of me. I had to hunch over a little to catch my breath. “A bully?!” he said.
Twig kept the camera on him. “Isn’t it true that you pretend you’re being nice to Meade but you’re actually messing with him? All the roughhousing, all the embarrassing extra attention. Isn’t that more or less as bad as if you were to beat him up?”
Nash grabbed my arm in a vise grip and pulled me in for a bro-on-bro head rub. “I’m just horsing around with my good buddy!”
A pack of nearby kids snickered at this.
“Exactly,” said Twig. “On the surface it sounds good, but aren’t you really trying to be mean? What are your feelings on that?”
Nash forced a smile as he tightened his hold on my arm. “What do you think, Meade? Am I some kind of big bad meanie?”
What was I supposed to say? Twig was right. Nash was a stealth bully who worked his evil behind the scenes. But if I called him out on it, everybody would think I was a whiner. I just couldn’t win. And Twig had made it worse by bringing it up in the first place.
“Um, it’s cool,” I said.
“See?” said Nash. “We’re just havin’ fun! Thanks for including me in your show, Twig. Let me know when you post it.”
Annoyed he hadn’t taken the bait, Twig shoved the phone into her pocket and headed toward science. “Come on, Meade, let’s get to class.”
Nash wrapped his arm around me again, nearly fusing the bones and muscles in my back. That’s when a strange fizzing spread through my body. At first I thought my limbs were falling asleep, but it was just the opposite. I felt stronger and tougher, not weaker. For a second there, I even thought I could break free of Nash if I tried. But I didn’t. Whatever this was—adrenaline, stress reaction, nerve damage—it wouldn’t help me. So I ignored the feeling until it went away.
“Actually we have some basketball team stuff to discuss,” said Nash. “He’ll be there in a sec.”
Nash and I were teammates in name only. He was the captain; I barely got to play. Not that I cared: basketball was just another fake goal for the MeMinder, to keep Mom and Dad happy. They were thrilled to see me try a sport, even a sport I stank at.
“Meade?” said Twig, waiting for me to join her.
Our audience laughed again. Nash tried to shush them, but it didn’t work. “What’s so funny?” Nobody could miss the wink-wink in his voice, and they laughed harder.
I’d be facing even more embarrassment if I let Twig bail me out of this, so I played along with Nash. “Yeah, we’ll be right there.”
Sucking her teeth in frustration, Twig headed to science as Nash pulled me in the other direction. “Make way for my best bud, the coolest guy in school!” he shouted. The way he always bellowed to the world about how cool I was made me less cool every time.
I had no clue where Nash was taking me, but I knew it couldn’t be anywhere good. The halls had mostly cleared by the time he dragged me to a door I’d always figured for a janitor’s closet. He whipped out a key, made sure the coast was clear, then opened the door and pulled me inside.
I came face to face with shelves full of scientific grossness: bug displays, tubs of algae, and jars stuffed with dead snakes, frogs, and much worse floating in formaldehyde. Mr. Lunt sometimes trotted out these oddities for his lectures. They were disgusting enough in class, but flat-out horrific in this dark and tight space.
“This is Mr. Lunt’s supply closet,” Nash said, shutting the door. “I run errands for him, so I’ve got the key. Figure this is the perfect place to teach you a lesson about pranking your team captain.”
I didn’t want to face Nash just then, but it was either him or a jar of dead baby pigs soaking in alcohol. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t remember what you did to my homework? Every page of it folded up into those dumb little creatures you make all the time? You turned my research paper for Mr. Lunt into an entire zoo’s worth of animals!”
“I didn’t…I wouldn’t!”
“Cut the bull! It was fancy origami. Who else but you folds paper like that?!”
I had a very strong suspicion about exactly who had done this. “Uh, these origami in your locker: did they have any, um, notes on the back?”
“No! But you knew that already, didn’t you, Meade?! Because you’re the one who made them!”
There could be only one reason somebody would turn Nash’s homework into origami: sabotage. My stalker had folded Nash’s research paper just to sic him on me.
Nash picked up a jar stuffed with four dead baby armadillos, each of them chalk white. “Did you know the armadillo is one of the few animals that have identical kids? Almost always four babies, quadruplets just about every time.”
I hated how, on top of everything, Nash knew more than I did. It would be one thing if the kid who’d ruined my reputation and routinely threatened my very existence was just a dumb jock. But like Twig said, Nash had many sides. When he wasn’t scoring the most points at every game, he was earning straight As, making music with his band, and generally “achieving” all over the place. He was the most well-rounded bully I could ever have hoped would pick on me. If I accomplished in a year just a tenth of what Nash accomplished all the time, Mom and Dad wouldn’t bother me about the Achieve-O-Meter ever again.
“But I didn’t bring you here to talk about armadillos,” Nash continued. “Or even that stupid prank with my homework. We need to have a chat about Twig.”
“Twig? What’s she got to do with this?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at her. You want to be more than just her friend, don’t you?”
He had me there. I used to just like Twig, but lately I’d started to really like her, as in like-like. The problem was I didn’t know what to do about it. I hadn’t realized until now that Nash liked her too.
Nash smirked. “Thought so. Remember, she and I are starring in the play together, so I’m her friend now. And that means you can’t be.”
So that was it. Nash saw me as a rival. No wonder he’d started picking on me more than usual lately. I knew for a fact that Twig didn’t go for jocks like Nash, but this wasn’t the best time to bring that up.
Nash stormed out of the closet. “Keep talking to her, and next time I’ll find a place worse than Lunt’s closet for you!”
He slammed the door, locked it with a loud click, and stomped away, leaving me alone in the dark with nothing for company but four identical dead armadillos and their chemically preserved friends.
If there’s on
e thing I’m good at, it’s avoiding eye contact. But that wasn’t a possibility in Mr. Lunt’s science-specimen closet of horror. Tiny dead eyes, milky and unblinking, stared at me from the shelves. The armadillos especially skeeved me out. Four carbon-copy bodies stuck together forever in a lab jar. That’s probably what Me Con would feel like—if it were real and not just some stupid prank.
I did my best to ignore all those dead animal eyes and focused on the door. It had an old lock, the kind a thief on some TV show might pick open with the right tools and know-how. If only I had tools and any kind of know-how. My only ticket out of here was to scream like a baby until someone came to my rescue.
I opened my mouth to get it all over with when the fizzing returned. It was the same sensation I’d felt at the lockers, but this time it buzzed in my hands, not my arms or legs. I twirled my fingers in the air, amazed at how light and nimble they’d become. They practically danced around with a mind of their own, so maybe it was their idea to pick the lock. All I knew for sure was that it suddenly seemed like the most natural thing in the world to shove a paper clip from my backpack into the lock and twist it around a few times until the door popped open.
I had no idea how I’d just pulled this off, and no time to think about it either. I jumped out of my prison and ran to class, nearly knocking over Mr. Clark, the janitor, on the way.
* * *
—
The MeMinder showed that I’d missed only five minutes of science. That was still long enough to get a nasty look from Mr. Lunt when I slunk into his room. I scurried to the lab counter I shared with Twig.
“Nash told me you had bathroom stuff to take care of after you two talked,” Twig whispered as I took a seat. “Feeling sick or something?”
Nash, at the next counter, gave me the world’s most menacing wink. I took the hint: any mention of what really had gone down and I was toast. So I just shrugged and let Twig think I had diarrhea or whatever.
Twig plopped a small bowl of bubbling sludge in front of me. Yeast. We’d spent a very boring week in this room watching yeast bubbles clone themselves under a microscope. Copy after copy of the same yeast, over and over, nothing ever changing. If it weren’t for the excitement of leaning in close to Twig as we shared the microscope, I’d have fallen asleep in here ages ago. Maybe that’s what Me Con would be like, if it were real—everybody as boring as matching yeast bubbles, and without Twig around to break up the monotony.
“I went ahead and made today’s specimens,” she said. “Care to do the slides?”
“Yeast?! My favorite! You shouldn’t have!”
Twig laughed, so of course Nash shot me a vicious look that no one but me noticed.
“We never talked about my latest episode,” said Twig. “What did you think?”
My answer to this dreaded question would have to wait. On the lab counter, just beyond the bowl of yeast, I saw an origami white-mouthed mamba, yet another of my supposedly original creations. In a panic, I lunged for it, elbowing the bowl of yeast in the process. It sailed straight off the lab counter and splattered on Nash, coating him in a thick wad of goo.
The class went silent as Nash took in the mess all over himself.
“Sorry!” I said, knowing I was dead whether I apologized or not.
Nash laughed like this was all a big joke and paper-toweled himself dry. But the moment everybody got back to their lab work, he flashed me his most sinister I’ll kill you later look.
I shoved the mamba in my pocket as Mr. Lunt made an announcement. “Let’s spend the rest of class on final prep for your science fair projects. I’m sure you’re all done. This is simply a chance for me to get a peek at your presentation and offer some feedback before tonight.”
I hadn’t expected to be put on the spot like this. Suddenly, yeast didn’t sound so bad.
Nash shot up his hand and called Mr. Lunt over, showing him a poster crammed with all kinds of information about “The Impossible Pipe Dream of Cold Fusion.” It only took a few seconds for Mr. Lunt to proclaim, “Nash! This is brilliant! It perfectly captures how cold fusion simply isn’t possible.”
“And Golden Boy does it again,” said Twig.
“Well, he hasn’t won yet.”
She smirked. “So you’ve actually started on your project already?”
“It just so happens I have!”
“Geez, lighten up. I’m only joking.”
I might have apologized, but Mr. Lunt appeared at my side. “And how’s your project coming along, Meade?”
“Oh, it’s great.”
Mr. Lunt stared at me over the rims of his droopy glasses. The guy had it in for me. “Then, where are your notes?”
“Uh, I left them at home. Didn’t think we’d need them today.”
Naturally, the MeMinder chose this moment to butt in. “Begin science fair project immediately!” Its robot voice filled the room. “Project due this evening! Only one percent complete. Begin work immediately!”
Everybody laughed, even Mr. Lunt. “You should listen to that doohickey on your wrist,” he said. “I guess we’ll see what you cobble together by tonight.”
Once Mr. Lunt had moved along to the next counter, Twig punched my sore shoulder hard enough to make me wince. This was her way of bucking up my spirits. “Don’t worry, you’ll think up something,” she said. “You always do.”
Out in the hall after class, I unfolded the mamba to read more unfamiliar words from a very familiar hand:
Hi, Me,
Nash giving you a hard time? I may have had something to do with that. Sorry, we Mes can’t resist getting the better of that kid when we have the chance. You’ll learn how to get the better of him too—at Me Con. You’ll pick up tips from other Mes who’ve put their versions of that jerk in his place. You may even learn a thing or two about getting Mr. Lunt off your back, or getting Twig interested in being more than your friend. I’m telling you, it’s the real deal. The Janus South. After school. Be there.
Ours sincerely,
Me
Any kid at school could have written this note. Even people I’d never talked to knew me as the kid who got more attention than he wanted from Nash. And anybody who cared probably figured I had a thing for Twig. It was the most obvious letter so far, but also the one that really got me thinking. If there actually were different versions of me out there dealing with Nash and Twig—not to mention Mom and Dad—some of them were bound to have advice. It was a nice little fantasy to daydream about, at least.
The rest of the morning didn’t go much better than the way it had started. The origami notes kept coming, all of them in shapes I’d thought were solely mine: a bat-eared fox under my desk in algebra, a Norwegian forest cat by the cafeteria’s Build-a-Spud station, a stickleback gar shooting out of my saxophone in band, an Asian house shrew in my PE uniform. Whoever had left these creations knew my schedule right down to the bathroom breaks, if the alligator snapping turtle on the flusher of my go-to urinal was any indication.
Having a stalker was bad enough, but a stalker who stole my best origami ideas was even worse. And then they’d rubbed it in my face by not even trying hard enough. Though these creations technically weren’t bad, there was something a little too by-the-book about them, like whoever had made them wasn’t having any fun.
The notes themselves got more and more wacky, but that also made them harder to resist. They tried to sell me on the same pitch about how Me Con was the solution to all my problems, the place for tips on improving my grades, doing better at band and basketball, becoming more popular, etc. A lot of them ended with the line “What kind of Me do you want to be?” The only Me I wanted to be was the kind who didn’t get any more of those letters. But I still read and reread each one, searching for clues about who’d written them.
I got so absorbed in the mystery of it all that I was late fo
r Ms. Assan’s drama class. No big loss. There was nothing for me to do there anyway. I was Nash’s understudy in Benedict!, a middle school version of the hit Broadway rap musical about Benedict Arnold, the notorious traitor of the Revolutionary War. Nash played the lead role, and I was supposed to memorize his lines in case he missed a show. The thing was, Nash, the perfect physical specimen, never got sick. That left me with nothing to do but sit through the rehearsal like always, watching Nash ham it up with Twig, who played Mrs. Arnold. As the two of them performed a flawless duet of “Call Us Mr. and Mrs. Traitor,” I cursed myself for choosing “acting in a play” from the list of preprogrammed Achieve-O-Meter goals.
At least Nash was so busy with the play that I didn’t have to worry about him getting revenge on me just yet. Instead, Twig cornered me backstage during her first break. “Seriously, why are you acting so cagey about last night’s episode? What did you think of it?”
Any other day I might have lied, if only for the sake of our friendship, not to mention a lifelong fear of confrontation. But today wasn’t any other day.
“You really want to know?”
“I’ve been waiting all this time.”
The notes, the stalking, Me Con—it all swirled around in my head until the words spilled out: “It just would’ve been nice if you hadn’t used me as an example of a loser to the entire internet.”
Twig looked crushed. “I didn’t call you a loser! I didn’t call you anything! I didn’t even use your name!”
“You might as well have!”
The backup dancers, dressed like minutemen and redcoats, started to stare. There’s nothing drama kids like better than, well, drama.
Twig lowered her voice. “I’ve tried to talk to you for weeks about this stuff. This achievement nonsense, this need to have a ‘thing.’ It’s just stressing you out.”