Forever for a Year(4)

“I prefer you being my chauffeur.”

“Trevor. Now.”

Lecture time. Yay. I climbed over the seat and slid headfirst into the front passenger seat before twisting around and seat-belting myself in.

“I know the move, and all the stuff with Mom, has not been easy. But in four years colleges aren’t going to care how rough you had it, so you have to start buckling down. Work hard. Working hard can help you forget about things.”

I almost said, Like working hard helped you forget your wife hated life so much she tried to off herself?, but I didn’t. Just because. Sometimes it’s easier to ignore my dad than argue with him, even though ignoring him makes him think I’m listening. Which makes him think he’s wise. Which annoys me. Because he’s not.

He continued talking, telling me he’d put a call in to the football coach to see if I could play even though they’d started practice a couple of weeks ago. I used to love football. I have a pretty good arm. Played quarterback in eighth grade for the park district team. But football just doesn’t interest me anymore; it’s so serious and ridiculous at the same time. Dad just wanted me to make friends, which I suppose would have been nice if I could snap my fingers and have super-cool friends who weren’t full of crap. But the long-drawn-out process of making friends, being fake and generic so you don’t scare anyone off, just seemed like such a headache. I’d rather play video games and talk to Lily.

When Dad stopped outside Riverbend High School, he said, “I love you, Trevor,” and for a second he seemed real and vulnerable and awesome, so I said, “I love you too.”

But then he added, “Keep your head down and work hard,” which was a cliché and meaningless and pointless. So I didn’t hug him, just flung open the door and walked inside without looking back.

*

I had to go to the front office since I arrived after first period started. The lady behind the desk asked why I was late. I wanted to say something clever and over her head, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I just said, “Missed the bus.”

The office lady asked if I had my class schedule. “Yeah, of course,” I said, only to realize that I didn’t. I had left my backpack at home. Or maybe in the back seat. “Actually, can you print it out?” She nodded and handed me a copy of my schedule, a map of the school, and a hall pass. Hall passes. So insulting. Just let kids go where they want and figure it out. Or give adults “life passes” so they can’t wander off. Because I guarantee you, right this second, more adults than kids are in places they shouldn’t be.

Riverbend High School had two major wings, east and west. The east seemed to have all my classes, including first-period biology. Connecting the wings was a long hall, with the cafeteria and library on opposite sides. The gym, pool, and auditorium were north, down another long hall.

When I found the biology classroom, I thought about not going in. What was one more day, right? Then I thought: Exactly. What was one more day avoiding the inevitable? Might as well get this crap started and over with. So I walked inside. All the kids, in eight rows that were four desks deep, turned to me. The teacher kept talking, not noticing or caring that I was entering or that the rest of his students had stopped paying attention to him. Mr. Klenner was old with greenish skin and a baggy neck, like some giant frogman. Maybe I just thought that because he was a biology teacher.

There were two empty seats. Remember when I said all the kids looked my way? Well, that wasn’t exactly true. One didn’t. At least not for more than a second. A girl with brown hair. One of the two empty seats was next to her, and for some reason I decided to sit by her even though it was closer to the teacher.

After I sat down, I realized everybody was back to taking notes. Which I couldn’t do. Because my bag was in some undetermined place. I didn’t care. I’d just daydream about better stuff.

Then two sheets of paper and a pencil appeared on my desk. It was the brown-haired girl, but by the time I turned to mouth thanks she was already back to staring ahead. As pathetic as this sounds, what she did was one of the cooler things anyone had done for me in a long time.

I felt I almost had to start taking notes or else it would be an insult to her cool thing. So I did, even though it made me a robot brainlessly writing down crap a teacher said so we could regurgitate it to him later. Pointless! Why can’t people see this? Someone should realize how absurd school is and make it better.

I would do it if I cared. Which I don’t. But I do care about being cool back to people who are cool to me, like the brown-haired girl. I’d have to figure out a way to repay her.





3

Carolina’s first day doesn’t go according to plan

Okay, listen: Even though science is my worst subject, first-period biology—my first class of high school ever—started perfectly. As it should have, since I had been envisioning it all summer. Most other classes come easy to me, like Spanish, or I find them really interesting, like history, but I knew I was going to have to work extra hard and pay extra attention in biology.

Which I was totally doing until this boy showed up late to class and sat right next to me. He was a new student. Definitely didn’t go to junior high with us, which most kids at Riverbend High School did. And he didn’t have a bag or a notebook or anything, so I gave him a pencil and some paper to take notes with. Not because I cared about him—I mean, I’m nice, but the real reason I did it is I just knew if I didn’t give him paper, I would be thinking the whole class how he didn’t have any, and then I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.