Out of Whack (5 page)

       7:45 p.m.: Travis, using his astounding powers of observation, inquires as to whether or not I have recently pissed my pants. I throw myself at his mercy and quietly beg to use the jacket. He is understandably displeased by the thought of his nice jacket coming into such close proximity with urine that’s not his own, but allows me to borrow it for the token fee of being his personal slave for the next two weeks.

       8:00 p.m.: The tire has been replaced, just as we officially become late for the movie. We pile into the car and drive off.

       8:01 p.m.: My dad asks if anybody remembers him tightening the lug nuts.

       8:02 p.m.: I join in the screaming this time as we careen out of control, minus one spare tire. We smash into an expensive-looking car, which smashes into another car, and so on until we have a splendid six-car pile-up.

       8:03 p.m.: Travis asks for his jacket back.

       8:45 p.m.: The four kids and our respective parents are all seated in the emergency room, with plenty of bumps, bruises, and broken bones to go around. Miraculously, nobody was killed. Michelle has a broken collarbone. Heidi’s stomach is hurting, and she is taken in to see the doctor.

       9:00 p.m.: The doctor is pleased to report that Heidi has no internal injuries. But she’s pregnant.

       9:01 p.m.: Heidi’s dad reacts poorly to this news.

       9:01 1/2 p.m.: Chaos.

       9:05 p.m.: Chaos (continued).

       9:08 p.m.: The matter is brought to some resolution. It is determined that Travis and I are not “goddamn rapist bastards,” and that an unnamed high school student is in deep ka-ka.

       10:30 p.m.: My parents and I finally leave the hospital. On the way out of the parking lot, we drive over a broken bottle and flatten one of the front tires.

       10:31 p.m. and beyond: You don’t even want to know. Trust me.

       It was a long time until my second date.

“How to Become Cool Through Pranks and Combat”

       Wow, I actually made it to chapter six (okay, five if you count the fact that I forgot chapter four, but it probably wasn’t any good anyway)! Let’s celebrate with some raw, uninhibited sex!

       “Oh, Roberto, that was incredible,” said Felicia.

       “It certainly was,” Roberto agreed. “Hey, wasn’t the bed on the other side of the room when we started?”

       Now, back to our story, joined in progress...

       Though Travis and I did have other friends, for the most part our social life consisted of just the two of us. We eventually gave up the action figures and sold them to younger kids in the neighborhood for ridiculously low prices, unaware that
Vantor: The Movie
would come out the next month and make the figures worth a fortune.

       Travis had undergone some sort of gradual transformation during his time in junior high, and upon entering high school, well, he wasn’t a dork anymore. His hair was now in an actual style, and his features had matured into something that I hated to admit was handsome. I, however, was still a dork, and might as well have been wearing sex repellent.

       Despite that, high school was a fun time for both of us. Each year we made sure we had identical schedules except for math classes, where Travis tested substantially higher than me, the wiener.

       During these high school years, Travis and I developed a little prank for when we had advance notice that our regular teachers would be out for whatever reason. It was known as Operation: Sub Freakout. Because it involved class participation, and because there was always some moron who couldn’t stop giggling and gave away the joke, it failed the first couple of times. But it wasn’t long before we came up with a list of who could handle it and who couldn’t.

       Once we knew we’d have a substitute teacher, we usually went over to my house, which was more desirable than Travis’ house in that it did not contain a bratty younger brother who I liked to call Satan’s Understudy. We’d pore over the next day’s lesson, and prepare our index cards. Then we’d call the people we had deemed worthy to join us, or wait until the next day to track them down, and give them their lines.

       The one that sticks out most in my memory was American History, as substitute-taught one sunny day of our junior year by Ms. Rowe. She gave us the usual spiel about how having a substitute didn’t mean it was going to be free time, and instructed us to open to the current lesson. Now, I don’t remember the names of all the students who were involved, and no, I didn’t keep the lists we made. I don’t know exactly who said what in the following bit, and I don’t particularly want to be sued by them anyway, so the names are fake, and the quotes may not be exact. Of course, that’s true for most of the book—you don’t think I remembered all of those times in the first date saga, do you? Bear with me.

       The lesson had begun. One of our partners in crime, Frank, raised his hand. “I have a question about John Tyler.”

       “Yes?”

       “I know it’s not going to be on the test, but what state was he governor of before he became president?”

       Ms. Rowe smiled, thrilled that a student would care about something like that if it weren’t going to be on the test. “Virginia.” This woman knew her stuff.

       Eddie raised his hand and was called on. “Isn’t the same true of Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe?”

       Ms. Rowe blinked, a bit surprised. “Yes, it is. Well, you students are certainly up on this material.”

       Susan raised her hand. “Ms. Rowe, do you think that all the best presidents were governors of Virginia?”

       “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Ms. Rowe. “Abraham Lincoln was never a governor at all.”

       “I think the whole Virginia debate is ridiculous,” said Tracy, reading directly from her index card and thus costing her a position on our list for next time. “Since Grover Cleveland was our best president, and he governed New York, the whole discussion is moot.”

       The success of Operation: Sub Freakout at this point rested on either the teacher remaining silent and letting the conversation flow, or else the ability of our peers to adapt their lines to what the teacher had to say. In this case, it was the former.

       “I totally disagree with your assessment of Cleveland,” said Buzz. “The man served as both our twenty-second and twenty-fourth president, with a gap in-between for Benjamin Harrison to serve. Anyone who failed to be re-elected after his first term clearly wasn’t serving the public interest well enough.”

       “But he was re-elected in 1893,” protested Gerda, “meaning that after time to reflect, the public realized that his contributions were very strong, including a veto of many pension raids on the Treasury and an enlargement of the civil service.”

       At this point, some twit started giggling. But Ms. Rowe was baffled enough at this point that she didn’t pay any attention.

       Albert spoke up. “Plus, even though he was defeated by Harrison in the 1888 election, his popular vote was higher, which to me signifies a major weakness in our political system.”

       Now it was time for Travis and I to get into it. “You people have no clue what you’re talking about,” I said. “The only president who ever did anything for this country worth writing about was Benjamin Harrison’s father, William Henry Harrison.”

       “I just can’t agree with that asinine line of thinking,” Travis told me. “The man served for only thirty-one days before he died of pneumonia.”

       “So? Think of all the other accomplishments that have been made in thirty-one days. That’s an entire month, you know.”

       “I’ll grant you that portion of the argument, but William Henry Harrison simply didn’t do enough to justify your almost religious admiration. Why don’t you just go form your Bill Harrison cult and quit pestering the rest of us with your poorly-defended ideas.”

       “He ran for office with the slogan ‘a log cabin and hard cider.’ That is poetry! That says it all. Once you’ve heard that, nothing else matters.”

       “The man was a blabbermouth! His was the longest inauguration speech in history! It lasted nearly two hours, and was 8,445 words long! And to make things worse, it was a chilly day when he gave it, forcing the poor commoners to stand outside freezing while he yammered on and on. Do you know why he caught pneumonia? Because of being out there in the cold blah blah blah-ing everyone to death! He was a lousy president!”

       “He was the greatest man who ever lived!” I slammed my history book shut to make my point, then Travis and I both looked at Ms. Rowe, expectantly.

       There was a long pause. Then Ms. Rowe smiled. “April Fool’s in February, right?”

       Incidentally, both Travis and I aced the test. All our preparation for this prank turned out to be educational, damn it.

* * *

       It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I truly became a man, and got into my first real fight. Now, I’d wrestled with Travis on countless occasions, but the first fight where I stood to suffer actual bodily harm and/or death was at the hands of Kirk “Big Disgusting Nasty-Smelling Prick” Tonnew.

       To get an accurate mental picture of Kirk, first envision Hollywood sensation Mel Gibson. Now, change that mental picture to an incredibly ugly version of Mel Gibson. Don’t be stingy with the acne. Give him a facial expression refreshingly free of intelligence, and one continuous eyebrow. Make the teeth crooked with a coating of yellow. Add a generous helping of flab on the arms, legs, and belly. Insert a voice that feels like the word “Duh” should precede every sentence, and you’ve got Kirk.

       He was universally gross, sort of a bulky version of that dweeby little kid you may have known who ate bugs for attention. If any scientists were interested in studying how saliva begins the process of food digestion before swallowing, they could have gotten all the research material they needed just by sitting near Kirk at lunch. One time I saw him eat an apple with a worm in it. Admittedly, he did avoid the worm, but I really don’t think he was trying very hard. He was a living, breathing
faux pas.

       Kirk and I never really crossed paths during my first couple years in high school. I’d seen him beat up several kids for such offenses as breathing oxygen he’d claimed for himself, but I kept my distance and he never went out of his way to bother me.

       Anyway, my encounter with Kirk took place on a Friday right after the final bell, with me at my locker and Travis in detention for throwing a spitball that almost knocked a student unconscious. In Travis’ defense, the student was picking on Michelle, who had become an okay friend of ours after The Date. Travis had soaked a big wad of toilet paper in the bathroom sink, then hurled it across the hall at him, smacking the guy right between the eyes and causing him to stagger backward against a garbage can, fall, and hit his head on the floor.

       There I was, trying to decide if I actually wanted to take any education-related materials home with me or just pass on any personal growth for the weekend, when I smelled Kirk’s approach. He leaned against the locker next to mine and glared at me.

       I gave him a nod of greeting and pulled my
Algebra II: The Sequel
book off the top shelf, revealing a forgotten banana that had given up every last gasp of its yellow appearance. I considered offering it to Kirk, but wisely changed my mind.

       After a long, uncomfortable silence, Kirk folded his arms and said “So?”

       “Hmmm?” I said, not wanting to top his syllable usage and have him think I was showing off.

       “So what’s your problem?”

       I had the usual problems of a high school student, but none of them seemed directly related to the individual next to me. “I don’t have a problem,” I told him.

       “That’s not what I heard.”

       “What did you hear?”

       “I heard that you’ve been talking about me.”

       I know I’ve said some unflattering things about Kirk these past couple of pages, but it’s the truth when I tell you that I hadn’t been talking about him. Okay, maybe a witty comment to Travis every now and then, but nothing to anybody who would have turned me in, and nothing within at least the past three or four months.

       I shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”

       “That’s not what I heard.”

       Since the conversation seemed to have lapped itself, I turned to face him. “What did you hear?”

       “I heard that you said I smelled like a decomposing buffalo butt.”

       While my own highbrow, genteel sense of humor would never allow me to use an insult such as that, I wasn’t able to stifle my laugh in time. I quickly tried to change my expression of amusement into one of outrage. “I never said that,” I insisted. “Who said I—?”

       WHAM!!!

       One thing I’ve noticed about most high school fights is that the participants spend a good chunk of time taunting each other, a sort of foreplay before the actual combat begins. The conversation usually goes something like this: