Things Are Gonna Get Ugly (12 page)

Suddenly, I am sensing someone sitting next to me. A male, breathing or wheezing through his nose in a way that screams,
I regularly use an inhaler
.

Yes, it's Winslow, holding a can of chocolate Yoo-hoo. Why does he have to come the minute I'm reading “10 New Ways to Flirt with Your Guy”?

Immediately, idiotically, I spread my hands over the article so he can't read what I'm looking at. My life is SO annoying.

He snort-laughs and slaps the back of the chair like it's a poker buddy. “Can I try that too?” he asks, splaying his hands next to mine over the article. “Wow, it worked. See, we are flirting,
ma chérie
.”

I can feel myself turning red. He is
such
a pain. I close the magazine and throw it on top of the rack. “Here,” I say, handing him the algebra homework. “I think I've pretty much nailed these. It was SO EASY. The whole multiplying each term in the left polynomial by the entire second polynomial and using the distributive property to simplify the thing.”
Wow. I'm sounding math-smart. I
am
math-smart.

For a moment, his eyes leave his notebook and scan the problem sets. “Yeah, they're fine.”

He pulls out his binder, and I glimpse the warrior-covered notebook. I have the urge to snatch it and flip through the pages, but I don't. Instead, blurtation, “You ever notice how Ms. Stuckley always has her photo in the yearbook in profile?”

Winslow closes his eyes and thinks a moment. “Yeah. That's right.”

“What's up with that?”

“I dunno.” Winslow shrugs, and Einstein, who's featured on his T-shirt today with a thought bubble that says IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KNOWLEDGE, appears to wink at me. “Maybe on one side where she's got her nose ring she's covering up a big wart.”

“Or she imagines herself on”—I flip a penny out of my pocket—“on money. Replacing Abe maybe.”

He starts to laugh and I'm noticing this man and woman on Winslow's PDA screen saver. They look like the kind of super good-looking young couple in love you'd expect to see on the little piece of paper that comes with a frame. “And why do you have that?” I ask, trying to figure out who they could be.

“Oh,
them
,” says Winslow. “My parents. An old
photo from before I was born. My mom put it there yesterday because I was asking whether Dad was born with his beard because I've never seen him clean-shaven, so she put this on my PDA.”

“Oh,” I say, completely baffled. “I didn't think somehow…,” I flick my eyes at Winslow.

“That'd they'd be normal-looking?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Trust me. They're not. Sometimes I'm not sure my dad can see me. Thick glasses. Like this.” He spreads his hands apart six inches.

My jaw must be dropping because Winslow laughs.

“I'm kidding. He's got twenty-twenty vision. My dad's a pretty cool guy. Just quiet, actually. Not a big talker. I'm more like my mom in that way. But my dad is a big guy. Most people look at him and wouldn't go, ‘SLAC shooting particles down a mile-long tube.' They'd go, ‘coach' or something. Except for the thick glasses.”

“I thought you said he doesn't wear them.”

“He doesn't. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.” He jabs me on the shoulder. “But the SLAC part is real.”

Slack? Sounds like me as a student. Okay, I can't
stand it anymore. I have to ask. “Uh, what's ‘slack'?”

Winslow shakes his head. “Where have you been? It's right on Sandhill. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center? Internationally famous, at least among science geeks. A mile-long underground tube for people who like to shoot subatomic particles—we're talking a
very
expensive toy. My dad finds it much more interesting than his family. I would too, if I were him.”

“What about your mom?” I ask.

He lowers his voice. “This is going to sound sick. But she's pretty hot, actually.”

“You have a hot mom?”

“And sister. She's a sophomore at Cal. Yeah. Sorry to say. It's kind of weird when my friends say it. My mom's really beautiful and smart, and on me all of the time about how much time I spend on the computer playing my game. Which is SO funny since she makes money off of people like me who are obsessed with computers. She works for a high-tech venture capital fund. She's a math head. Just more corporate than my dad. My dad basically lets her rule and redo the house as long as he gets to spend time underground at SLAC.”

I'm pondering this, putting together this really sophisticated woman and thinking
This is her son
? She looks like the kind of mom I'd want to have. One who cared about how she looked. One who might actually take me to the Stanford Mall and buy me things. “Doesn't your mom care about you? I mean, you write all over your jeans. You wear a chain. Duct-taped shoes. Doesn't this bother her?”

Winslow pulls on the little hairs on his chin. “No, I think it reminds her of my dad. She's into geniuses.”

“So you're saying you're a genius.” I sit, taking in his big, goofy smile.

“That's it. I'm a genius,” he says in a singsongy voice. “You're right, for once!”

I throw a
PC World
at him that's conveniently hanging on the wooden rack in front of me.

Winslow stands in front of me, squaring off.

I pick up a green cushion from the nearby couch and hold it over my head.

He picks up the other cushion and holds it over his head.

I whack him over the head. He whacks me back. The cushions tear apart as we slam each other. Pieces of yellow foam fly everywhere. A fern knocks over and dirt spills onto my shirt. “Now I smell like mud.
You are
so
dead.” I grab Winslow's opened Yoo-hoo and fling it into his face. But the boy ducks!

He opens up another one and dumps it over my shirt.

As bits of chocolate soda drip down onto my shoes, he grins. “Now you smell much better.”

The Notebook

Winslow leaves, but not his backpack. With all of the Yoo-hoo flinging, he forgot it somehow. This leaves the perfect opportunity to look at that dragon-covered notebook. Quickly, I unbuckle the canvas bag and slip it out. The blood pounds through my center. What could possibly be in there? When I crack open the book, I see nonsense words that mean NOTHING to me. Here's an example:

Two, eight, eight

Kibon

Taegeuk

Palge

Everything changing

No end

Not Me!

Olivia is raging on the phone to me and Ninai. “You should have seen the library. The cushions on the
green couch were completely ripped apart. You know, the ones by the magazine rack. And chocolate milk was EVERYWHERE! Not a pretty sight.”

“Yuck,” says Ninai, groaning into the phone.

“Yeah, who would do something like that?” I ask, feigning total horror and disgust. I'm such a skilled liar. Could I make a career out of this?

Double Dribble

In Dribble's class, there is no one for me to talk to because Olivia and Ninai actually take notes, so I'm finding that there is nothing left for me to do but pay attention to Dribble. “Listen up, people,” he intones. “Four more days until your test on the Constitutional Congress.” He waggles his puffy mustache. “So I heartily suggest you remember in all of your weekend socializing to set aside some study hours. Got it?”

I get it, Dribble. The whole thing. And it's scaring me.

More Delusions

Before algebra, I could swear that Petra winked at Winslow in the hallway. The likelihood of this would be the equivalent of me waking up tomorrow morning with a chest the size of bowling balls. Then Mrs. Grund
actually compliments me on my homework. This feels very strange because in the past she complimented me on my jeans or fabulous hair, which nobody can figure out the color of. (It's reddish blond—no, blondish red or brownish blondish red) and my ability to sell dance grams. And then I think about how in all of these algebra problems they're always using
x
, so I started to wonder why
x
and so I actually raise my hand to ask Mrs. Grund. “Why
x
?” I ask.

“Why not,” she answers.

The Big Drip!

Ms. Stuckley reminds us in her pseudo English voice that “our eagerly awaited oral presentations are due on Tuesday, December sixteenth. Five more days to polish.” Then she intones, “Please get out the book that you are working on, so I can go around the classroom to visit each one of you for an update on how your oral report is coming along.” I start to open up
Oliver Twist
, but then I bolt to borrow the bathroom pass because I REALLY have to go.

But who should be coming in when I'm going out the door, who isn't even in Ms. Stuckley's class?

Tyler, freaking-I'm-so-beautiful-I-could-just blind-you-with-the-sum-combination-of-my-white-teeth-
green-hair-and-general-swimmer-boy-buffness. That's who. Tyler who escaped from kidnappers, that's who.

I try to edge around him but he stops me and goes, “Hey.”

Just like that. “Hey” to me now. In this form, with the stupid giant bathroom pass in my stupid hand that is attached to my body. I can't help it. To revive myself, I take in his kidnapped-boy scent. Today, he's all chlorine and mint.

“Hey,” I say back.

“Is this, like, Ms. Stuckley's room?” he asks, barely moving his mouth when he talks. I think that is SO cool. It's like he's already in training to be made into a statue, like Michelangelo's
David
.

He's looking down at my right hand, which is not exactly covering over the length of the jumbo-size wooden bathroom pass because you can definitely see where it is carved in black letters—BATHROOM PASS. It might as well be written I NEED TO PEE.

As I try not to bounce in place, Tyler's eyes flick over at the pass.

Why me? Why do you have to look there now? You barely move your mouth, do you have to move your eyeballs and lock on to the piece of wood that lets you know that I have to either go number one or number
two—and am holding the most embarrassing piece of wood ever? It's bad enough that my name is Ernestine and I have frizz head, but this means that you, Tyler, eighth-grade god, know that I need to relieve myself at this
very
moment.

My hand clamps down on the wooden pass and with my other hand I make a fist and cover the rest of the pass, like I am riding a bicycle. Or waterskiing. Waterskiing is sexy. Yes, I'm a brilliant waterskier on holiday.

Vacations are sexy, especially near large bodies of water.

I, Ernestine, at this moment am sexy.

Tyler flicks his shamrock-green eyes at me. “Well, looks like you better get going.”

“Yeah, probably.” I shrug. “No worries.”

Then I'm hearing heavy, sloppy, slouchy footsteps and nose breathing and there's Winslow Fromes, of all people, flanking me on my right. “What's going on?” he asks. He looks from Tyler to me then back at Tyler again. Then Tyler hands Winslow a plastic Safeway bag. There is something small and white—it looks like a tooth guard. Why would Tyler give a tooth guard to Winslow, who's wearing a T-shirt that says
ACTUALLY I'M QUITE HUMBLE, WHICH IS RARE IN
PERSONS OF MY GENIUS AND CHARISMA.
First Winslow and Petra then Winslow and Tyler. What's up in my upside-down world?

I am pretending to water ski with a wooden bathroom pass and I'm witnessing a very strange transaction.

Then Ms. Stuckley spins around. “What are the three of you standing there for?” She glares at Tyler. “I presume you have a teacher to annoy somewhere else in this building?”

Tyler gives a school-picture grin, waves, and shuffles away with his hands in his pockets. As I stand there in awe of his coolness, Ms. Stuckley snaps at me and Winslow. “Back to your seats immediately!”

“But I've got a bathroom pass!” I say. All eyes are on me as I bicycle-hold the pass. Ms. Stuckley clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Ernestine, did I say you could have the bathroom pass?”

“No, but…I…” Is she going to make me beg?

Ms. Stuckley sucks her teeth. She does this periodically to clean them. I guess she doesn't believe in dental floss. Yes, she is going to make me beg.

I get down on my knees. I am Ernestine. I have nothing to lose.

X Marks the Spot

“Historically,
x
is the favorite letter of a variable,” Olivia says, absently drawing in her journal. “Also,
y
and
z
are popular members of the algebraic alphabet, too.
A, b
, and
c
represent a constant.”

And that gets me thinking. If I were an algebraic expression, which part of me is
x
, representing change, and which part of me remains constant? Am I now more
x
than
a
?

ONE More to Go!

I look at his hand as Winslow scans each algebra problem during the break after orchestra. His hands are big, pretty much man-size, except without hair. He's aware of my staring, and I feel exposed. He doesn't look up at me, though. He goes back to his book, fascinated by something. Not by me. I guess.

I've got to get his attention. I remember the silly, playful Winslow in the library and I want him back. As Ernestine, it's MUCH harder to access that part of him. “Winslow, want to know how to find your celebrity name?” I ask impulsively.

“My what?” he asks, fiddling with the IN DOG YEARS I'M DEAD button on his canvas backpack.

“You heard me.”

What's in a Name?