[No Subject]
“My dad stopped at a cowboy store once on a road trip. He said he had to pee, or something like that, but there was a McDonald’s right across the street so I think he just wanted an excuse to go into the store,” Justin paced in front of the line of desks. His fingers collecting stray dust as they grazed the table tops. “Man, was that store strange?! They had dead everything. Made into boots and chaps and stuff. Racks and racks of assless chaps. Assless chaps for men, women and children. All shapes, sizes, and colors of assless chaps.”
“Aren’t chaps supposed to not have a butt?” Harris tipped his chair back, nonchalantly balancing on the back legs. A creased, dirty sneaker toe hooked around the bars of the desk.
That earned him a glare from two very different vectors. Justin reversed his pace to pause in front of Harris’ desk.
“I know that! I just wanted an excuse to say assless. I don’t get to say it that often.”
“Ri-ght,” Cue blatant eye roll.
“Assless!” Justin’s hands fell to the high-gloss particle board. “Ass-less! Ass-less!” Each syllable was punctuated by the sound of his hands beating the desk like twin pork chops. Thin slabs of meat and bone slapped wood substitute, moving the desk back the barest few inches. Just enough to loosen the hold Harris’ toes had on the stiff bars.
Before he fell back, I moved a couple of feet to the right. Like hell I was getting tangled up in another avalanche of chair and student. One or two per day were enough, but this was the fourth time since school started that day. My compassion only goes so far. Grabbing my backpack, I wrestled out something that looked like homework and would only cause minimal pain. As logic would have it, Mrs. Fain’s shrill voice would exchange their fun for a lecture in about thirty seconds.
“Four on the floor, Shannon.” That was Harris’ real name, but he’d abandoned it years ago in favor of something more masculine- like his last name. She clucked at the huffing pile of brand-name clothing and cheap plastic chair before turning her scalding attention onto Justin. “Mr. Goriden, how many times have I asked you to expand your vocabulary this year?”
“Assless: adjective. Used to describe the state of-“
“Shut it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled innocently at her. Believe me, it fooled no one. I rolled my eyes and buried my nose in the math book I’d wound up with.
It was the same routine by weekday. More regular than Mrs. Fain taking roll. The guys would do something to injure and make fools of themselves and I would pretend to be bored with all of it. I don’t think I could be truly bored with it. Not in the least. There is some strange, innate part of the human mind that revels in another’s pain and watching those two make clowns out of themselves satisfied my affiliation with it.
I grabbed the desk next to Justin’s for the rest of class. A lot of people used to be confused by this. “Oh, so you two are dating now?!” They would say, eyes all alight and their voices giggly. I have never understood why guys and girls can’t be close to one another and not have some sexual ulterior motive. Sure, it happens, but not all the time. There are other, more worthy, things to think about most of the time. Like…not getting caught passing notes. An electric pink post-it had attached itself to the desktop while I was scouring my bag for a pencil.
“E-mail?” It whispered. I don’t know why, but I always think of notes having voices, like they do on t.v. and in the movies. They contain some semblance of the voice of the person who wrote them. This one sounded like Marv.
“Got it,” I wrote back on my own post-it. A nifty teal one, my favorite color.
Despite the name, Marv isn’t a guy. Far from it. She’s all curves, leg, and much envy on my part. The name is short for Marvelous. Her parents were really funny people a few years back, quite a few years back. Now, they were lawyers. I stuck the note onto her shoulder. It was the only thing I could reach.
Her e-mails were always something interesting. Flash videos in a language only she understood, but I found amusing anyway. Excerpts from famous dead people’s books, who were probably only famous because they were dead, and her comments about them. She was always more interesting than I was. Her e-mail last night was something new, though. Something unlike her, a whole other flavor. It was lame. Meg lame.
It was one of those lists. The same lists Letterman puts out each night, but more Lifetime. “Ten Things Teenage Girls Won’t Tell You”. It was full of sentimental bullshit that parents are supposed to pretend to care about. Though, I’m sure there is one or two of them that do care, the full majority couldn’t give a damn. They made sure it was mentally impossible when they started working full-time in their own worlds. They’d left us to ourselves and I couldn’t blame them for not coming back. I didn’t want to be where I was and I’m sure they didn’t want to be here either.
I’d been thinking about it since I’d read the list. Scrolling down through the hundreds of names and e-mails of the people who had read this version of the list. I thought about all of the other e-mails I’d seen pass my way with the same headings and impossible history of names. They’d all said something cryptic about death and wishes. Things you must pass on. This one didn’t. In a way, it was something new and special, even if it was lying.
“Enjoy?” The new post it said from it’s perch on my finger.
“=/” I wrote back. Sometimes everything I want to say doesn’t fit on a square inch of florescent paper.
“No?”
“Lies.”
“Mostly.
I tell my mom things. I don’t know if she ever listens, but I speak anyway. I don’t follow the list. I abhor the list. There are some things that parents aren’t interested in. Who wants to hear everything about another’s life? There’s no excitement in that. There’s no pleasure of having held something back. When someone else knows another so completely, they cease to be separate. I didn’t want to be my mother, but I wanted her to be a part of me. I wanted to hear her voice I heard when I remembered being at home.
“Karen!” I jumped. My pencil hit the floor and rolled to a stop under Justin’s waiting foot.
“Yes.”
“You aren’t listening.”
“I am…I just…” I cringed, trying to cover my small collection of post-its.
“You weren’t. Listen now.” And I listened.
All that I heard was the bell. School bells aren’t really bells, more like an electronic buzz. Just as well, that buzz dictates our lives. Within it’s confines, we’re semi-attentive, semi-conscious students. Outside of it-we are people, just newer versions. Some of us went off in search of rides, others to practices of a various sort, I looked for a good spot on the bus. There are never enough.
I ended up staring at the messages of generations past on the ten minute ride. Semi-legible cries of love, pain, hate, and good places to party covered the worn leatherette. There are other sides to the stories, in the public bathrooms and other buses, but these were the ones I grasped. The ones I’d turned into my own and cherished more than the others. I felt as if I knew Johnny’s forever love of Sarah. Helenbaker did completely rock. I’d seen it in my dreams.
The bus stopped down the street from my house. It was a short walk and conserved gas, so I didn’t mind. The comforting weight of my textbooks on my back and the soft voice of Justin kept me from caring. He’s always softer when I’m the only one around. I don’t understand that, but I don’t understand a lot of things. I just accept them. We parted ways at his house, mine being a few hundred feet beyond. He rested his hand briefly against my cheek and smiled like everything was fine. Everything was fine.
I closed the door as quietly as I could when I entered the house. My mom’s car was the only one in the driveway. Ever since I was little, I tiptoed into the house when she was the only one home. Curious to know what exactly it was that adults do when they were alone. I peeked out from behind the doorframe at her. My mother was on the couch, a novel balanced on her knees and a cup off coffee on the low table beside her. Without looking up, she asked me how my day was. And I told her.