Casey Barnes Eponymous (5 page)

Ben was new that year.
 
He and his mother moved to Bethesda over the summer from
California.
 
Everyone in class knew
this because on the first day of school Señor Griffin asked everyone where they
were from.
 
Everyone, except Aisling
Cheng, said Maryland.
 
However
Aisling Cheng moved to Bethesda in junior high.
 
It was old news that she was from China
and her Dad worked at the World Bank.
 
But then Señor Griffin got to the gawky new kid whose hair stuck up at
the scalp line.
 

Casey also noticed that sometimes Ben put his hand under his
glasses, rubbed his eyes, and then left his glasses crooked.
 
Once, during the first week of school, she
was watching him eat lunch alone on the far side of the cafeteria and Leigh saw.
 

“Who’s that?” she asked.
 

“Just this new guy in my Spanish class.
 
Do you think he’s cute?”

“Not yet.”
 

Anyway on the first day of school Señor Griffin, in his
patriot’s accent, thick as gravy and wielding its roots like a two by four, did
the customary ¿De dónde eres? aka Where are you from?, and
Ben
said he was from California.
 
Heads
turned.
 
Señor Griffin sensed the
interest and made a big thing out of it.
 
He began asking more specific questions.

Ben answered abruptly.
 
“Northern.”
 
“San Jose.”
 
When Señor Griffin asked about Ben’s
parents Ben did not say anything.
 
A
moment passed.
 
The entire class was
looking at him.
 
Señor Griffin repeated
the question more loudly.

“Yo vivo con mi madre.
 
Mi padre vive en Paris.”
 
I
live with my mother.
 
My father
lives in Paris.
 
Ben’s Spanish
accent was miles better than Señor Griffin’s.

“Paris!” Señor Griffin boomed, “¿Por qué Paris?”
 
Then Ben did something that under any
other circumstance Casey would have found admirable but that under this one was
weird.
 
He pointed to his throat and
pretended he could not speak anymore.
 

Señor Griffin was not happy.
 
Teachers did not like kids who gave
attitude on the first day.
 
But
Señor Griffin had also been teaching long enough to know that getting into a
power struggle with a fifteen year old on day one was the equivalent of being
felled by a sucker punch ten seconds into a boxing match.
 
He moved on to Aisling Cheng.
 

After that day Ben proved himself to be a consistent source of
antagonism en la clase de español.
 
But he was also an ace.
 
His
accent sounded way more like the Spanish kids who smoked around the back of the
school than Mr. Griffin’s did, and he could regurgitate conjugations with the
facility of Charo.
 
Sitting behind
Ben in Spanish, something Casey did on the first day of school without even
thinking about it, was turning out to be one of the few blessings of the school
year thus far.
 
She got perfect
scores on the two quizzes Señor Griffin gave them, courtesy of the gap Ben left
between his elbow and the desk.
 
Even
her homework score was flawless.
 

Until that week, that is, when Ben’s elbow made a precipitous
and suspicious shift in positioning.
 
That week she found herself daydreaming about a hallway accident that
would leave his elbow significantly smaller but at the same time not hinder his
ability to do homework.

Señor Griffin was getting closer.
 
She did not want to lose another homework
point.
 
She scooted to the edge of
her chair, pretended to stretch, and leaned out as far as she could.
 
This was, of course, in order to see
Ben’s homework.
 
Instead, the following
results were achieved:

1. She slipped out of her chair and fell on the floor.
 

2. Everyone turned to look.

3. While on the ground she glanced in the direction of Ben’s
bag and saw a pair of drumsticks peaking out.
 

4. As Señor Griffin asked her, en español, if everything was
okay, Ben looked at her and said, “It would take half the effort to do the work
yourself.
 
Also, the Cat Power song
was a nice touch.”

For a moment Casey remained frozen on the floor, struck by the
double whammy of having the whole class see her fall and hearing Ben comment on
the playlist she slipped to the skinny blonde in the library the day
before.
 

“Excusem-moi,” she announced to the class, “Dropped my…pen-o.”

Senor Griffin frowned.
 
“Pluma, Casey, pluma.”
 

“Sí.
 
Yo drop-o mi pluma.”
 

Senor Griffin walked back to the board.

“You mean your magic copying pen?” Ben said voluminously enough
for her to be scared Señor Griffin heard but not so loud that he had.
 

“How’d you know about that Cat Power song?” she hissed in his
ear.

“Por favor!” Senor Griffin snapped from the front of the
room.
 

She dashed off a note in her notebook.
 
How’d you know?
 
HOW?
 
Senor Griffin turned to write
on the board and she slipped the note under Ben’s elbow.
 
He languidly picked the note up, read
it, and put it down.
 
Senor Griffin posed
a question to the class.
 
Ben raised
his hand and answered it perfectly.
 
Then, as Senor Griffin focused on another student, he wrote a
response.
 
Catherine’s
my lab partner.
 
She showed me the
playlist the period after you gave it to her.
 
When she described you I knew who she
was talking about.
 

He passed the note back to her.
 
She read and put pen to paper
again.
 
Why’s
that?
 
His response:
 
Because you were wearing a
Runaways T-shirt the day you passed her the note.
 
Not many people running around this
school in Runaways T-shirts.
 
She
scribbled another.
 
Are you a drummer?
 

He waited an evil six minutes to reply, in which time he
volunteered to put an answer on the board.
 
When the reply finally came back it said
Yes
.
 
She made a face.
 
She started to write something about
playing guitar.
 
But then she
crumpled the paper up, stuck it back in her bag, and started again.

Congratulations.
P.S. I suggest you hold your elbow closer to your rib cage during class
hours.
 
They’ve done studies and realized
that holding elbows at odd angles for prolonged periods of time can be a
pre-cursor to strokes.
 
She
passed it.
 
He shook his head, but
did get his next response back more quickly.
 
Nice try.
 
Have fun doing your Spanish homework for
the first time tonight.

She held out her middle finger and tapped it on the desk.
 
Before he could turn around and see, the
bell rang and class ended.
 
Just
like that, he was up and out of his seat in a flash.
 
There was not much time to think about
it, however, because two periods later, it happened.

The Return of Alex Deal.

7

She was in the library, her back to the door, observing a set
of twins. They were freshman and wearing the same polo shirt in different
colors.
 
Their hairstyles were even
the same: straightened and parted in the middle.
 
She was thinking a recommendation of
Elliott Smith and The Helio Sequence would be a nice start. Perhaps a little PJ
Harvey too.
 
But which twin would
she slip the list to?
 
Both?
 
As she pondered these questions, she
heard it.
 
Alex Deal’s voice.
 

She turned.
 
He was
standing in front of Mr. Cole, pointedly avoiding making eye contact with her.
 
He had on a TV On the Radio T-shirt.
Casey pounded a fist against her thigh.
 

“Where are the books on World War II?” he asked.

Do something, she commanded herself.
 
Mr. Cole pointed Alex Deal towards the
far side of the library.
 
He walked
away.
 
She let out a stressed
exhale.
 

Mr. Cole turned and gave her a strange look
.
 
“What’s eatin’ you?”
 

She grabbed her bag and prayed she had not thrown it out.
 
A moment later she breathed a sigh of
relief.
 
It was there, under her math
workbook and the note she exchanged with Ben earlier in the day.
 

It was stained from coffee and crumpled from having been at the
bottom of her backpack, but the playlist she came up with for Alex Deal the
night before was still intact.
 
On
the other side of the library he took a book down from a shelf, walked to a
table, and opened it.
 
One of the
twins approached the counter and asked Casey where the books on art history
were.
 
She motioned towards Mr. Cole
with her head.

She spread the list on the counter and realized it needed to be
copied over.
 
She grabbed a pen and
paper.

1. Song 1…
Alex Deal did not
need a pop song to lure him in.
 
He
did not need to be
told that song #1 was a pop
song.
 
Alex Deal was in a different
class of music listener than the skinny blonde in the bad sweater or the twins.

1. Song 1 - “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” by
United Rhythms of Brazil.
 
United Rhythms of
Brazil did an entire album of Guns ‘n Roses covers bossa nova style, of which
“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” was the standout.
 
Casey prayed he had not already heard
it.

2. Song 2 - “Brothers On a Hotel Bed” by
Death Cab for Cutie.
 
She had gone back
and forth between two Death Cab for Cutie songs for the number two slot.
 
“Title and Registration” was the other
choice.
 
It was transcendent pop, smart
and fast.
 
“Brothers On a Hotel Bed”
was slower and more emotional.
 
Yet
the more she thought about it, the more weight she gave to the following
reasoning: transcendent pop would do what it does, i.e. make Alex Deal feel
good and continue his day at its typical pace.
 
It might even quicken his pace.
 
But a slower, more emotional song would
get him thinking about love and who his next girlfriend was going to be.
 
She glanced up.
 
He placed his book on the shelf and took
another one down.

3. Song 3 - “God Moving Over The Face Of The
Waters” by Moby.
 
When she first
heard this song she listened to it seven times in a row until Yull threatened
violence.
 
And so what if she wasn’t
sure if she believed in God and Moby was vegan (NOT something Casey approved of
in a rock and roller.
 
How far was a
plate of seitan dogs gonna get you in trashing a hotel room?
 
Huh?).
 
So what
.
 
The song was ethereal and
haunting and it made her feel like anything was possible.
 
Even Alex Deal saying the Melanie
Corcoran interlude had been a horrible, horrible mistake.

He walked towards them with a book on World War II in his
hand.
 
She started to fold the list
up but then stopped, grabbed a pen, and scribbled
Rehoboth Mix
on top.
 
Her heart
palpitated like a hummingbird.
 
Mr.
Cole went to pick up the scanner gun.
 
In one swift movement she beat him to it.
 
He gave her a baffled look.