We Are the Ants(6)

I was on a sinking ship in the middle of the expanding ocean, terrified, sick, and unable to do a goddamn thing about it. The boat would rock, dipping and swaying with the waves, and I’d fight the queasiness. I’d barter with God. I’d pray for anyone, angel or demon, to keep me from being sick, but no one was listening or they didn’t care. My puke splattered into the water—chunks of my breakfast still -recognizable—-someone, usually Charlie, would make a joke about chum, and I’d crawl into the cabin and curl up on the padded bench for the remainder of the fishing expedition.

Eventually, Dad gave up trying to include me and left me behind. One Saturday morning I woke up and discovered his car gone, Charlie’s bed empty. Then Charlie started high school and was too cool to go fishing anymore. He was too cool for everything. He divided his time between watching porn, masturbating, and trying to figure out ways to score liquor to impress his mouth-breather friends. I was convinced that high school transformed boys into porn-addicted, chronic-masturbating alcoholics.

I was wrong. It turns them into something much worse.

Most of Calypso is paradise, and is home to some of the wealthiest families in South Florida. Rich teenage boys are also porn-addicted, chronic-masturbating alcoholics, but they have access to better porn and booze. They also have cars and money. I have neither, which means I started CHS with two strikes against me.

High school is like those fishing trips with my dad: I want to be there, I want to enjoy myself like everyone else, but I always end up huddled on the floor, praying for the end.

Jesse once told me that if I focused on a fixed point on the horizon, I would be okay, but Jesse hanged himself in his bedroom last year, so the value of his advice is dubious at best.

? ? ?

Ms. Faraci stood at the Smart Board trying to explain covalent bonds, which we were supposed to have reviewed the previous night. Judging by the downcast eyes and bored expressions worn by most of the class, I was the only one who’d actually done it.

Ms. Faraci doesn’t care about societal conventions. She rarely wears makeup, frequently shows up to class in mismatched shoes, and is obscenely passionate about science. Everything excites her: magnetism, Newtonian dynamics, strange particles. She’s a pretty strange particle herself. And she never lets our apathy discourage her. She’d teach chemistry with jazz hands and finger puppets if she thought that would inspire us. Sometimes her enthusiasm makes me cringe, but she’s still my favorite teacher. There are days when her chemistry class is the only reason I can stomach school at all.

“Hey, Space Boy.” Marcus McCoy whispered at me from the back of the classroom. He has money and a car. I ignored him. “Yo, Space Boy. You do the chem worksheet?” Muffled laughter trailed the question. I ignored that, too.

I stared at the illustrations of molecules in my book, admiring the way they fit together. They had a purpose, a destiny to fulfill. I had a button. My mind wandered, and I fantasized about the end of everything. About watching all the Marcus McCoys of the world die horrible, bloody deaths. I’m not going to lie: it made me want to masturbate.

“Space Boy . . . Space Boy.” Their sadistic giggling irritated me almost as much as the nickname.

On my left, Audrey Dorn sat at her desk, scrutinizing me. She has an easy Southern smile, calculating eyes, and usually dresses like she’s on her way to a business meeting. She’s the kind of girl who doesn’t believe in “good enough.” We were friends once. When she noticed I’d seen her staring, she shrugged and returned her attention to Faraci.

“Come on, Space Boy. I only need a couple of answers.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Marcus McCoy was leaning forward on his elbows so that his biceps bulged in his tight polo for everyone to appreciate. He wore his thick brown hair parted neatly to the left, and he flashed me his entitled grin. No doesn’t mean to Marcus what it means to those without money and a car.

“Do your own homework, Marcus.”

Adrian Morse and Jay Oh, two of Marcus’s buddies, snickered, but it was aimed at me, not him.

“I don’t have little green men to do it for me,” Marcus said, drawing even more attention.

“What’s so funny?” Ms. Faraci scowled at me and Marcus. She took the sharing of electron pairs seriously.

“Nothing,” I mumbled.

Marcus said, “Nothing, Ms. Faraci,” barely able to finish the sentence before cracking up.

I have Charlie to thank for outing me to the entire school. He was a senior when I was a freshman, and he considered telling everyone I’d been abducted by aliens and turning me into a social pariah his greatest achievement. I don’t know who thought up the nickname Space Boy, but it stuck. Most of the kids in my class don’t even know my real name, but they know Space Boy for sure.

When the bell finally rang for lunch, Ms. Faraci caught me at the door and pulled me aside. I stared at my shoes when Marcus passed. Adrian whispered, “Space Boy sucks alien dick,” on his way out. To the best of my knowledge, sluggers don’t have dicks, which probably makes it difficult to masturbate. People have a lot of theories about why boys fall behind in school when they become teenagers, but all I’m saying is that I’d probably get a lot more schoolwork done if I didn’t have a dick.

Ms. Faraci sat on the edge of her desk. “Rough day?”

“Not the roughest.”

Her concern made me uncomfortable. It was one thing to be ridiculed by my classmates, another to be pitied by a teacher. “You’re a smart kid, Henry, with a real knack for science. You’re going to show those boys one day.”