I'll Stop the World (2)
One day, she’s going to be famous; I’m sure of it.
And I will still be here. Alone.
Onstage, the mayor steps up to the microphone. “It’s good to be back here at Warren High, although it had a different name back when I walked these halls,” he says with a smile. “Looked different, too. Did you know the layout is reversed from what it used to be? In my day, this was the administrative wing, and the auditorium was on the other side of the school. But although much has changed over the years, there’s one thing that hasn’t, and that’s the high standards we set for our students. Which is why I’m so proud of each of the applicants for this year’s Buford County Citizenship Award. As you know, we receive applications from all over the county . . .”
He drones on, building up to the ultimate announcement of who’s won this year’s citizenship award, this giant scholarship the county gives out every year, always to the same type of kid: honor roll, student council, lots of extracurriculars, community service, blah blah blah. The type of kid who doesn’t really need a leg up, because they’ve already got so many, but they keep sprouting more anyway, like some sort of overachieving mutant spider.
I slouch in my seat, tuning him out.
“Why does the whole school have to be here for this?” I grumble, closing my eyes. “Why not just email them or something?”
“Shhh,” Alyssa hisses, one of the only kids around us taking Shaw’s shut up command seriously. “It’s a big deal,” she whispers, her voice barely louder than a breath. “Besides, it’s getting us out of Government.”
“But Government is where I nap.”
“You and most of Washington,” she says with zero humor. Alyssa is one of those people who registered to vote the second she turned eighteen, and not just because the school was giving out homework passes for anyone who could produce a valid voter registration. She literally has an election countdown in all her social media profiles that she updates every day.
She made me register, too, although honestly, I mostly did it for the homework pass. It’s not that I don’t care about my civic duty or whatever; it’s just that it feels a little like getting excited about a glass of water while the whole building burns.
Alyssa pokes me in the arm with the back of her charcoal pencil. “Sit up. You’re messing up my angle.”
I oblige, trying to find the same position I was in at the beginning of the assembly. Alyssa and I have been friends since her family first moved here freshman year and she was seated in front of me in every class. Our last names—Vizcaino and Warren, respectively—function as the alphabetical equivalent of an arranged marriage, constantly smashed up against one another on the attendance sheet through no action of our own.
As opposed to my relationship with Alyssa in real life, which is regrettably, tragically, platonic.
“But seriously, I don’t think it’s that big a deal,” I say, trying to hold as still as possible. “It’s just a stupid scholarship.” I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince more, me or her.
Alyssa smiles, but it’s an empty one. The kind you give a stranger who tells you to have a blessed day, or when you happen to run into your mailman at the grocery store. On the paper, Alyssa’s pencil traces the curve of my ear. “You don’t have to make me feel better, Justin. I’m okay.”
I turn to face her, trying to get a better look at her to gauge whether she’s telling the truth, but she frowns and pivots my head forward again with her hand, the tip of her pencil scratching my ear. “Stop moving so much.” Her touch sends a shiver down my spine that I hope she doesn’t notice.
“Next time, maybe you should pick a model who isn’t so ADHD.”
“Next time, maybe my model should take his medication.”
“I’m out again.”
Alyssa sighs, but knows better than to say anything more. I try to make my one-month prescriptions last as long as possible, but they always run out eventually. I managed to stretch the last one for nearly three months, hoping Mom might have managed to save up the hundred bucks needed to refill it by then. I should’ve known better.
Mr. Jensen in the guidance office has been telling me for years that I could do better in school “if we could all just sit down and figure out the right accommodations,” but that would require a mom who can regularly afford the medication, or who would ever bother to show up to a parent-teacher conference.
Besides, it’s my senior year. Seems like a waste of time to change things up now. All I’ve got to do is make it through the next eight months without flunking out of school, and I’m golden—if by golden, I mean I will live at home and work at the Dollar Tree until I die, which I guess is a pretty narrow definition, but you know. It is what it is.
Onstage, Mayor Rothman introduces the entirely predictable winner of the citizenship award, who struts across the stage like a self-important turkey, beaming as he shakes the mayor’s hand. Keeping with tradition, he will now be insufferable for the rest of the school year.
Even though the Buford County Citizenship Award is a scholarship, they always present it in the fall, since they like having the winner do things like throw the first pitch at Little League games and flip on the lights for the town Christmas tree, and these things are kind of hard to do if the winner is away at college.