How to Win at High School (3 page)

It's old, but it's worth it. And if you're into hip-hop, you should know that every rapper's self-styled rags-to-riches mythology mirrors that movie
to a
T.

We all want to be Tony Montana.

You already know that our boy Adam Higgs doesn't have many friends. And what do you do when it's summertime and school's out and your only friend—

(and we use the term loosely)

—is a Pizza Hut delivery driver working nights?

You watch movies, I guess.

You hang with your crippled older brother.

You play Xbox.

Sometimes you jerk off.

Adam Higgs sees Sam twice a week. Adam plays a lot of Xbox. He's never had a girlfriend, so you can figure out how much jerking off he does. And when he's not playing video games or jerking off, he watches a lot of movies. He watches a lot of
Scarface
.

And there's this scene in
Scarface
, right at the beginning (no spoilers), where Al Pacino arrives in Miami and it's beautiful, man—a land of opportunity. Women, wealth, everything a guy could want.

Except it seems like the whole world's against him. Nobody wants to hang with him, give him a job. The women laugh at him.

He doesn't blow up the city.

He doesn't walk away.

He sure as hell doesn't slit his wrists.

No, man, he doesn't do any of those things. He goes to work. Little by little, he takes over the city.

The world is yours.

Say hello to my little friend.

All that jazz.

Fuck suicide.
Scarface
is the answer.

Adam Higgs walks into Nixon on the first day of junior year and nobody knows his name. Nobody knows a damn thing about him except that he's another pipsqueak with acne and shitty taste in clothing.

(And his sister's, like, the hottest freshman girl in the school.)

But forget about Steph for a moment.

See Nixon how Adam sees it:

That long, lush expanse of front lawn, the whitewashed, country-club facade behind it. It's a beautiful, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, and the flag atop the flagpole is new and crisp, and all you need is a decent soundtrack and this is a killer tracking shot for the movie.

To the right of the school is the football field, the big Nixon
N
on the scoreboard, a bunch of cheerleaders already working on their routines. To the left is the parking lot, all gleaming chrome and cherry paint.

And everywhere—lawn, school, field, and lot—are the students.

Stoners.

Nerds.

Athletes.

Actors.

Band kids.

Skaters.

B-girls.

Baseheads.

Punks.

Post-punks.

Goths.

Intellectuals.

Aesthetes.

Gamers.

Smokers.

Hipsters.

Dancers.

Thugs.

Students. Everywhere. In clusters and groups, passing cigarettes and iPhones back and forth. Throwing balls around, Frisbees. Couples holding hands, making out, copping feels.

Normal kids, most of them. Decent kids. Average. They have friends, most of them. They have boyfriends and girlfriends. They go on dates to the movies and shop at the mall, swipe booze from their parents on weekends, break curfew and throw up in the neighbors' azalea bushes.

Normal kids.

But among them walk
the gods
.

You know their names already. Rob Thigpen. Paul Nolan. Alton Di Sousa.

Jessie McGill. Leanne Grayson. Janie Ng.

Sara
freaking
Bryant.

They jog after the football with that lazy, confident air. They wear the hypest fashions. They have perfect teeth, perfect tans, perfect hair. They
are
perfect.

There's not a girl at Nixon who doesn't want to fuck Paul Nolan. There's not a guy who wouldn't give his left arm to be
Rob Thigpen. These are the popular kids. These are the charmed ones.

These are the people Sam would have become.

(Until the accident.)

These are the exact polar opposites of a loser like Adam Higgs.

So that's what our boy sees when he walks up to Nixon on the first day of junior year.

Adam is two years into a four-year high school career. He's wasted two years already at Riverside High getting spat on and shat on by the popular kids. He's sick of it. And he's sick of having to lie when Sam asks him about school.

(“You dating any girls yet?”)

(“Been to any parties?”)

(“Well, are you making any friends, at least?”)

(Uhhhh, no.)

(Sorry, Sam.)

(Oh, yeah. Tons. *sarcasm*)

The point is, Adam's sick of underachieving. He's sick of feeling like a waste of space and energy. He's sick of Sam looking at him like he's a failure, like Sam's the hungriest guy in the world, but it's Adam who's sitting at that Vegas buffet.

Adam wants to be popular more than he wants anything in the world, and not just for him, but for Sam, too, to maybe give a little bit of meaning to Sam's life, maybe cheer him up a little.

Adam's been thinking about this a lot. He's been watching a lot of
Scarface
. He's been listening to a lot of hip-hop. He rolls into Nixon like he's Tony Montana on day one in Miami—

(some runt)

(some loser)

(some funny-looking nobody)

—looking around at a world of opportunity and calculating just how he can make it all his own.

Adam's ready to make Nixon his own.

He's ready to make Sam proud of him.

He's ready to claim what should have been his all along.

He's ready to become a god.

So how do you take over a high school?

(
Take over
? Sounds violent. Invasive. Destructive connotations. Let's rephrase: How do you
win
at high school?)

Winning.

Like an Xbox game: Unlocking achievements. Racking up a high score. Attaining god mode. Basically becoming THE MAN.

Winning.

(“Junior year's where it all begins, man.”)

Adam doesn't sleep at all that first week at Nixon. He racks his brain, trying to work out a Tony Montana strategy, and every day that passes feels like a waste. Unforgivable. It's time to take action.

The popular kids are rich. They're good-looking or they're good at something. Sports. Music. None of this describes Adam.

He's never played an instrument.

He's terrible at sports. (
Airrrrrrr-ball.
)

And he's not rich. Not in the slightest.

Adam figures he's probably not going to make the football team. He's not much of a swimmer, either. And he doesn't have a guitar. But at least he can
look
like a popular kid.

Look like a popular kid,
be
a popular kid.

Dress for the job you want.

Pick up the swag.

Hashtag YOLO.

At the very least, trash the fucking mom jeans.

Okay, so step one: Adam gets a job.

Brian O'Donnell is pretty sure he can hook Adam up with a job at Pizza Hut.

“Working in the kitchen or something,” he says. “You want?”

Adam shrugs. Making pizza isn't glamorous, but none of the cool stores in the mall will even call him back, not with that hair and that outfit—

(and don't even ask about the résumé, because it's not like Abercrombie & Fitch gives a
fuck
about thirteen-year-old Adam Higgs's
PennySaver
route)

—and it's not like Adam has the connections to, say, land a job at his doctor parents' office, filing paperwork and eating candy bars for twenty bucks an hour like some of the popular kids, so he just shrugs and tells Brian, “How hard can it be to make pizzas?”

Short answer: it's not hard.

Shorter answer: immaterial.

The manager doesn't want Adam making pizzas. He wants Adam bussing tables. Not that Adam cares. Same wages. Less responsibility. Less potential for cataclysmic screwups.

So Adam works. Three or four nights a week, he clears tables for minimum wage. Pizza trays, soda glasses. He cleans baby puke off a high chair. It isn't glamorous. It isn't even particularly lucrative. But it gets Adam out of his mom jeans.

Step one: achieved.

Abercrombie.

Aéropostale.

American Apparel.

Armani Exchange.

Banana Republic.

Billabong.

Burberry.

Campus Crew.

Cheap Monday.

Club Monaco.

Gap.

Gucci.

Guess.

H&M.

Hollister.

J.Crew.

Lacoste.

Levi's.

LRG.

Naked & Famous.

Nudie Jeans.

Pure Blue.

Ralph Lauren.

Rag & Bone.

Topshop.

True Religion.

Zara.

Yeah, you aren't buying much of that on those Pizza Hut wages. But Adam hits the mall anyway. Cashes his first paycheck. Picks up a couple shirts and a new pair of jeans and bam, the paycheck's exhausted. Barely enough left over for a Happy Meal.

It's a start.

Adam lies awake all night. The proverbial tossing and turning. Can't focus his mind, keeps looking over at his new gear hanging on the doorknob, just waiting to be worn. Wakes up the next day and pulls on the new jeans, the fresh polo, and rolls into math class, first period—

(The school year at Nixon: First semester, four classes, September to January. Second semester, four new classes, February to June.)

—and right away, this kid beside him, Darren something, looks over and gives him a nod.

“Hey, man,” Darren says. “Sweet shirt.”

Darren's an okay guy. Kinda bland. Kinda average. An okay guy, anyway. And he noticed Adam's new clothes, which is cool.

Adam gives Darren a nod back. “Thanks,” he says. “I just picked it up yesterday.”

“Looks sharp,” Darren says. The math teacher, Hawkins, walks into the room. Darren and Adam watch him fiddle with the attendance sheet. Then Darren leans over again. “You going to Sara Bryant's party this weekend?”

Whoa.

Double-take.

Party?

“I don't know yet,” Adam says, shrugging, nonchalant.
“Are you going?”

Darren shrugs too. “Maybe,” he says. “I might have plans that night, though.”

“Yeah, I feel you,” Adam says.

Darren leans closer. “Okay, truth? I don't even know where Sara Bryant lives. I figured you might know or something.”

Adam debates this.
Bluff or no?
“Nah.” He shakes his head. “I have no idea.”

The bell rings. Hawkins clears his throat. Starts in on the lesson: sine, cosine, tangent.

Adam isn't paying attention. He's thinking about the party.

It's just about all he can think about.

Sam's eyes light up when Adam mentions the party.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “The parties are where it all goes down, buddy. You have to go.”

You
have
to go.

You just
have
to.

You probably figured this out already, but,

our boy doesn't get to many parties.

I mean, birthday parties? Yeah, back in the day. Cake and ice cream and balloons and shit, sure. Someone's backyard, a swimming pool, McDonald's, Chuck E. Cheese's.

Parties
, though?

Like,
real parties
?

Kegs and red plastic cups and sloppy make-out sessions, cops and bongs and hookups?

Nah, man. Only on TV.

Never in real life, not for a guy like Adam. The old Adam, anyway. Riverside Adam. Adam 1.0.

Nixon Adam, though, he's Adam 2.0: Bigger and Badder. He's changing his life. Already got the fresh gear to prove it. So you can see why he's pumped for this party.

And he's pumped, all right.

Second period, physics class. Sara Bryant breezes in—

(a girl like Sara Bryant—she doesn't
walk
anywhere. She sure doesn't
run
.

No, man, Sara Bryant
breezes
.

Like she's in a different world.

A more advanced plane of existence.

Like the concept of time doesn't apply to life-forms on her level, like she's evolved beyond your petty concerns.

She
breezes.

She knows Mr. Powers, the physics teacher, is going to hold up the class until she's sitting down anyway.

(And he totally will; he'll stand at the front of the room and let his eyes linger on that short skirt, those long legs, just like every other guy in the class—and half the girls.)

Sara Bryant
breezes
into physics class, my friend.

Like she's better than you.

Because she is.)

So Mr. Powers waits until Sara Bryant is settled in beside Adam to start the lesson (Newton's Laws).

And Adam curses because he got here early,
rushed
over here like a regular chump, like a loser, to make sure he caught Sara Bryant before the lesson started.

(Forgetting, of course, that Sara Bryant operates by her own clock, and she's never on time.)

So he can't ask her about the party. Not before class, anyway. And he has to sit through Mr. Powers's very long, boring lecture about gravity and acceleration, glancing across the lab workstation at Sara Bryant every couple of minutes, listening to her giggle as she texts with Jessie McGill across the room, catching a whiff every now and then of the Marc Jacobs perfume she wears every day like it's her personal scent—

(which it might as well be)

—waiting, just
waiting
, to ask about the party.

And finally the bell rings, cutting Powers off midsentence, and everyone's on their feet and stuffing books into their backpacks, and Sara Bryant has her nose in her iPhone and she's standing and
breezing
away and it's Friday, damn it, and Sara's not in any more of Adam's classes and he needs an answer
now
, and he kind of panics and gets desperate and just says her name—