“We’re No-Names!” She said it with an earnest mix of relief and, even, pride.
“We’re what?”
“We’re No-Names.”
“No. I heard you. What does that mean?”
The first few days of Freshman year had been a blur. That is not to imply that the experience of entering High School being an overwhelming whirlwind of emotional stress and physical panic is unique, but to acknowledge that, though not special in his plight, Huey was not breezing through the journey.
The same could also be said for a majority of his peers, which was slightly comforting. Being that he was known more for not being known than for making himself a presence, he tended to take on more of an observational role in the greater social schematics of the class. He watched his fellow Freshmen as they all took their first steps out of the comforts of their Middle School existences and stepped into this, once mythic, now very real ninth grade world towering around them.
Some seemed to be in a state of perpetual fog. Managing to get around, but with a shaky daze like someone who had just been woken up too early. Others seemed to be teetering constantly between a brisk walk and full out run. More keenly aware, assumedly, of their new purpose, but less confident in their abilities to achieve success. The worst, from Huey’s perspective, were those who looked on the verge of collapse, evidenced by both their pained, close to tears expressions and the buckling of their knees under the weight of their full-of-every-book backpacks.
Huey, regrettably, had been such a student on his first day
And maybe the second.
This new school, in addition to being full of shockingly large, very confident humans, who he could not even begin to believe were only one to three years older than him, was also structurally defined as what one calls a campus. That’s right. Campus. A blurry word when you say it too much, campus, and that might partly be because of it being too overwhelming an idea to focus on. Gone were the days of navigating one corridor of a single building. He would now be traveling between various floors of three different buildings because the High School was not arranged by the grade level of the students, but by department. That’s right. Department. Not even subjects. Departments. A campus consisting of three buildings, cleverly named A, B, and C, respectively, housing various departments. What was this? A job office?
Huey’s sole priority on his first day of High School was to get to every class, without struggle, on time. So, he, like many of his classmates, kept every book he accumulated throughout the day in his backpack until, at the end of the day, he could barely zip it shut. His goal on his second day was not different, which meant all of those books from the previous day stayed with him, but this time from the very beginning of the day until the very end. It was only halfway through this second day that he started to notice the number of times throughout the day he passed directly under and, once even directly past, the apparently prime location of his B building locker. That night, he drew up a plan to navigate his way between classes without needing his backpack. That’s right. Not needing it at all. Not just keeping it light enough to not cause back problems for his future self, but to be able to slip it into his locker at the beginning of the day and carry all his necessities under his arm like James Dean might do were he in this situation.
Much of the success of this plan hinged on a single folder. No notebooks, no binders, no clutter. One folder. He would keep loose-leaf pages of lined paper in it at all times for in-class note taking and all the essential leaflets and paper paraphernalia from every class tucked away in one spot. This meant the only hand-offs from class to class would need to be textbooks.
And it worked.
He felt godlike on that third day as he walked between buildings with only a single book, a folder with a pen clipped on the edge of it, and a calculator tucked under his arm. His pencil for Math was slid behind his ear, which felt especially Dean-worthy. Did a few upperclassmen who had not yet mastered the art of a backpack-free high school lifestyle even glance up and down at him as he passed breezily by them in the parking lot on his way from History to Math? Maybe they did. And maybe he would be ok at this High School thing, after all … maybe.
Nobody would be quite as ok at it, though, as those people.
You know who they are.
While most struggled to find their footing those first few days or weeks or, for some, years, there was that certain group of people who were not just very, but very, very good at it very, very quickly.
Huey knew he had a certain ingenuity that allowed him to briefly hack the system, but for a select few students the whole thing was just … easy. It was as if they had been there the whole time. Born and bred in High School. He knew this wasn’t the case. He had spent the past three years in Middle School with them and some had known since Kindergarten. They, too, were Freshmen. This was an undeniable fact. But even he at times, with a quick glance, mistook them for Sophomores, Juniors, even Seniors.
They walked slowly, if at all. Never in a rush. Often just effortlessly posed by a locker at a seemingly random spot along any corridor. Maybe not even theirs. Never right in the middle, never too close to a classroom door. Just anywhere, but also exactly right there. Always sure of where they needed to be and without fear that they might not make it in time. There would always be a seat waiting for them, always a bell ringing at the exact moment they walked in the door.
They never traveled with more than one textbook, delicately wrapped and smaller or larger somehow than anyone else’s, depending on their size, like they had been measured to fit their unreasonable symmetry. They would carry a single notebook and unlike Huey’s folder, which was clumsily bulging after just a few days, these were as slim and crisp as an unread children’s book. There was rarely a writing utensil in sight, unless it was a statement pen operated primarily as an accessory for attention-getting. You weren’t even allowed to use pens in Math. But, then again, maybe these were the kinds of people who were beyond the need to erase.
“No-Names.”
“Just because you keep repeating it doesn’t mean I suddenly understand.”
“Two girls in my Gym class were talking about it.”
“I haven’t had Gym yet. What did you have to do?” Huey was dreading Gym (another blurry word, by the way) and he would have to finally face it first thing the next morning.
“It was just attendance and you get your locker and a tour and stuff and then it’s a study. Nothing real happens this week.”
“Another locker?”
“In the locker room. Just to use for class, only the sports people get permanent lockers.”
Robyn didn’t realize this, clear by the nonchalance in her tone, but she could not have made a more spine tingling statement to Huey. Gym was one thing for someone with no athletic prowess and a penchant for being picked last, but a locker room? He wasn’t even totally sure those were real. Yet another thing Junior High had left him woefully unprepared for. Huey felt the warm, familiar blanket of panic start to curl around him, but was swiftly snapped back to the apparently more pressing matter at hand that Robyn, unaware of his having dazed off, had plowed on with.
“... obvious Nerds, right? Like the ones who are super smart and good at school. You’re kinda like that, but I think you have to be in the highest Math level to actually earn that classification.”
“Are you saying I’m not good enough to be a Nerd?”
“And then there are the Dorks, who seem like Nerds, but aren’t good at school so they’re, like, a little below them and they include the Spookies and the Goths and basically anyone who isn’t a Nerd, but looks like they smell bad.”
“Could a bad smelling smart person still be a Nerd?”
“Yeah, of course,” she said with a level of duh that was physically painful to absorb. “Then there are the Geeks. Basically all the artsy people. Drama Geeks, Band Geeks, Choir Geeks, AV Geeks, Art Geeks … I think that’s all of them. They’re, like, a step above Nerds, but obviously some Nerds are also in those groups, so then they get to be in that group instead of being a Nerd. And above them is us.”
“Us?”
“No-Names.”
“How are No-Names above people with names?”
“Because we aren’t associated with any of the Geeks or the Nerds or the Dorks.”
“But we don’t have names.”
“It doesn’t matter. Plenty of them don’t have names either, but they stand out for their association with something Geeky or Nerdy or Dorky.” The three words melted together in a way that sounded like she had slipped into some kind of baby talk, which made Huey giggle, but had completely eluded Robyn’s awareness, so she confidently continued.
“We don’t. We dress ok, we don’t have bad hair, we don’t smell, we don’t look like we smell and we don’t do anything connected with one of the groups below us.”
“I might do Drama, though.”
“Yeah, I was worried about that. Please consider not. It would be super helpful.”
Huey decided that he would honor her request. At least for now. High School was tricky enough as it was, he thought, and maybe this No-Name social positioning could benefit him in some way. Maybe it wasn’t worth giving up until he had a clearer idea of what the cache was worth.
“Well, so who’s above us?” He asked. “Just everyone who’s popular?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Of course not.”
“Right above us are the Stoners.”
“The Stoners? Why aren’t they the lowest? They don’t do anything.”
“Because people who are popular use them for, you know -”
“Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.”
“Then, it’s the Dumb Jocks.”
“Are there Smart Jocks?”
“Of course. Don’t be so closed minded.”
“Sorry.”
“They’re usually the ones who get elected for Class Office and stuff and who actually have a chance of getting into a good college, so they’re, like, a little higher up than the dumb ones, but they obviously still all intermingle.”
“Obviously.”
“Collectively, above us is basically everyone who goes to the same parties together.”
“Sure, of course.”
“But there are still factions that break out among them.”
“Right.”
“Above the Smart Jocks are the Populars.”
“Just, generally?”
“Well, yeah. Everyone who’s kind of just Popular for being Popular.”
“Don’t they have, like, a catchy name or something?”
“They aren’t known for their creativity.”
“Got it. Well, thank you for that very informative and enlightening journey through the class system on this Titanic that is our High School. Glad we aren’t in Steerage.”
“I think technically we might be Steerage. But we’re not in the engine room!”
“It’s good to be us. Let’s go so we can sit next to each other in Algebra.”
“I’m not done.”
“Oh. There’s more?”
Her face and voice changed to a chilling sincerity. “Above the Populars -”
“There’s something above Popular?”
“The Sexy Seven.”
“The what?” He sort of laughed out, incredulously.
“The Sexy Seven.” She said it in the exact same tone, which sent a shiver up his spine and melted his face.
“What - What is that?”
“The seven most popular or, no, not even popular. Right? Literally beyond popular. The seven most coolest, most smartest, most fashionable, most -”
“Sexy?”
“I mean, yeah. The seven most influential people in the whole school. Probably the whole town. The Seven.”
“Ok. So, who are they?”
“I don’t need to tell you.”
“Oh my god.”
“No. No. Now that you know, you’ll just know.”
“That is the weirdest thing you have ever said to me. Which, you know, is saying a lot.”
“Mhm. And each grade apparently has, like, a list of potential recruits that they’re, like, training. And those are the people they pick from to join the ranks.”
“Recruits? Ranks? What is this, the High School Militia?”
“No. That’s JROTC, they’re a weird cross section of Nerds and Dumb Jocks.”
“Good to know.”
“The Sexy Seven is … everything.”
He could see the earnest mysticism in Robyn’s eyes. She had decided she wanted to be a part of this elusive septet, but given their current social standing as she had laid it out for him, it seemed an impossible feat. He didn’t want to trample on his friend’s dreams, though. Everyone should be able to hope for the best High School experience they can possibly have and if this is what she wanted, he would support her wholeheartedly.
“So, how do they choose people to train?”
“It’s unknown to anyone outside the organization, but I imagine it’s based on your level of notoriety at the end of each year.”
“So, I guess we don’t have a shot, do we?” Unfortunately, despite his best intentions, Huey was a compulsive cynic.
“Oh, I hadn’t thought about it.” She tried to mean it. “I guess not.”
“I mean, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but we’d have to jump over a lot of groups to get ourselves there, right?”
“Right. Yeah.”
“And become Stoners and Jocks along the way.” He meant it as a joke, it didn’t land.
It’s not that Huey didn’t also feel the sparkly tug of whatever this The Sexy Seven fantasy was. It must be nice to be spoken of with such wonder and intrigue. But he had fun with Robyn and Sammi, the other member of their best friend triad. He had spent plenty of years with friends of convenience who he didn’t really like and who didn’t seem to really like him, either. And then there were the other, even darker ages, with no friends at all. So, to have two best friends who he had a genuinely good time with was, to him, far greater than whatever riches The Sexy Seven or any other level of High School popularity could bring him. More importantly, though, he didn’t want to have to sit next to Eric White, a member of the aforementioned Dumb Jock enclave, during Algebra again because Robyn couldn’t get it together to be on time, so social climbing aspirations would just have to wait.
“Look. We have a whole year to figure out who we’re gonna be in this place. Let’s go to Math now, ok?”
“Ok.”
Robyn was obviously crushed and it was obviously his fault. He wasn’t even a week in and High School was already proving to be a very tumultuous and unpredictable journey.