“Do you have a pencil?”
“No.”
“What about that one?”
“The one I’m using?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m using it.”
“So?”
Eric White had been a nemesis of Huey’s since seventh grade. He appeared in Huey’s life not unlike the Wicked Witch did in Dorothy’s. A terrifyingly loud burst of smoke one day and there was Eric White laughing in his face. Literally. A person Huey had never known existed in the world was all of a sudden standing in front of him, locked in his gaze, just laughing. At him, clearly, but without discernible cause.
Huey had spent most of his life being an embarrassing person. It’s not an uncommon condition and he had learned to live with it. Falling, spilling, saying the wrong thing, wearing the wrong thing, looking the wrong way, stepping in something gross, sitting in something gross … all very familiar to the day-to-day of his life. It is because of this that he had developed an acute sense of when he was being embarrassing and when he was not. He knew when he was being laughed at or whispered about and he generally knew why. It’s true that sometimes it was not for a good reason, but it was rarely without some semblance of a root. Eric was the first person to introduce Huey to the notion that you can sometimes be laughed at for just existing.
A bleak reality, yes, but one that is better to acknowledge than to ignore.
This dynamic continued throughout Middle School. Others would push, trip, call names, ask demeaning questions, you know - the norm. Eric would laugh. Anytime he saw Huey, he would make sure they made eye contact and release. From the bowels of his soul. A hearty and satisfying and almost enviable spewing of hilarity. It was a brand new kind of evil for Huey. The senseless kind. Only once did Huey ask Eric what exactly he was laughing at - a rookie mistake, sure, but he had been driven to insane desperation. Eric, of course, laughed. Even harder, even more maniacally. I mean, duh. What did you expect, Huey? A reasonable conversation?
The only salvation had been that they never overlapped in classes. Only during lunch, when the entire grade was together in the Cafeteria and occasionally in the halls would Huey be subject to Eric’s hysterical torments. This was High School, though. A world where consistency was thwarted and chaos reigned. Where anyone could be anywhere at any given time. Where classes fell one slot on your schedule each day until they dropped off completely, only to return in first position a day later. Where people chewed gum and wore hats without admonishment. Where people drove cars. Actually drove them.
In High School, Huey had classes with Eric White.
It was a shock, to say the least.
The jump from History to Algebra was the most significant on Huey’s schedule. History with Mr. Mendoza was on the top floor of A building in the classroom at the far end of the hall. The corner pointing in the exact opposite direction of C Building. Algebra with Mrs. Bird was on the top floor of C Building at the far end of the hall pointing, yes, that’s right, in the opposite direction of A Building. Now, technically it could be worse because the top floor of C Building is actually at ground level. It is a building that descends as the floors go on. Math is at the top, on the first floor, level with the ground floors of Buildings A and B. Science is on the second floor, one floor below the first floor and below ground level. The third floor, colloquially referred to as “The Dungeon” is as far down as you can get, maybe ever, and is where the Shops are. Wood, Auto, AV and Photography, to be precise. Huey hadn’t yet journeyed to the Dungeon, those were electives for the upper grade levels, but if Algebra had been in the Dungeon it would have been a far more harrowing trek.
Breathless, Huey lept into Algebra and scanned for Robyn, who had promised to save him a seat in preparation for his inevitable knick-of-time arrival, when, suddenly, his stomach hit the floor. There was Robyn, shrugging apologetically, sitting next to Ashley Dunbar. The whole room became a blur of faces and bodies and full desks. He considered just leaving. Just walking out and giving up right then and there. He didn’t live too far away from the school. He could walk home and start a new life.
“There’s a seat right there.”
It wasn’t a kind voice, despite its helpful intention. Mrs. Bird was a severe looking woman with alabaster skin and inky black hair that fell in curls down her spine, but the front of which she slicked back tightly just to remind you she meant business. She spoke with a gruff, gravelly tone that, while intimidating, actually sort of warmed up her chilly exterior, if you can imagine.
He spotted the seat and set off, nodding an urgent thank you to her on the way. He could feel heat from the eyes of all his classmates burning into him like he was an ant under a magnifying glass. He rushed to avoid bursting into flames and then he froze.
Eric White. He would be sitting next to Eric White.
He took a deep breath, braced for laughter, and went to sit down. It was the kind of desk you slip into from the left side, but because it was the desk on the right side of a pair, it meant Huey would need to squeeze in uncomfortably close to his sworn enemy. He was also still going through the early days of full-of-every-book-backpack wearing, but had been too disoriented to remember his oversized turtle shape and nearly beheaded the people in the desks behind him. He reversed out from between the seats like a car pulling out of a tight parking spot. He veered right to get himself back into the aisle, where he could extricate the bag from his body. He let the backpack fall down his arms, trying, but failing to catch it with his right hand so it dropped with a shocking thud to the ground. Someone even gasped. He opted to let it sit there and wait in the aisle until he could situate himself in the desk.
He briefly caught the gaze of Robyn and Ashley Dunbar’s pitiful stares, one significantly more compassionate than the other, as he pondered which side of his body should face Eric White as he maneuvered himself into his seat. He landed on trying to remain as forward-facing as possible, hoping to avoid any further awkwardness by unmentionable parts facing in Eric’s direction. And as he felt his left thigh ever so delicately graze along Eric’s right arm, he knew he had made the wrong decision.
Huey finally fell into the seat and yanked his backpack over to his side. Mrs. Bird had already begun speaking, Huey knew this, he could hear the crunchy pulsing of her voice exfoliating the room, but the fog of the moment hadn’t cleared yet. It wouldn’t, really, for the rest of the day. Once one thing goes wrong on your first day of school, High School no less, recovery is a long and tumultuous journey.
The third day would be his chance. Going backpack-less had been a huge boon for his ego and he felt like his luck was changing. Seats hadn’t been assigned yet in most of his classes. A strange thing happens in high school where some people switch up their schedules after the first few days, so very little gets set in stone until after the first week. Today, Algebra would come after lunch, which meant that he wouldn’t be rushing from History, but could calmly saunter from the Cafeteria in B Building, and could sit next to Robyn and Ashley Dunbar could fend for herself. The plan seemed air tight.
It wasn’t.
There was a lot to love about Robyn. She was silly, easy to talk to, non-judgmental and more herself than anybody Huey had ever met. She was also a certified space cadet. And that’s being overly polite. Sometimes Huey would be on the phone with her and she would just forget. Like, she would just stop. He would hear her eating chips, hear the tv in the background, hear her laughing at it, hear her talking to her cat, all while holding the receiver to her ear, completely unaware she was on the phone with someone. He would use these opportunities for his own amusement, calling her obscene and R-rated names, saying she did obscene and R-rated things and had crushes on Spookies and Goths and Dorks and people he knew she would be embarrassed. She heard none of it. Eventually he would hang up and they would both move on with their lives until it happened again the next day.
The walk from the Cafeteria to Algebra wasn’t a long one, but Huey knew it would take a long time. Robyn wasn’t great at walking and talking. If she was in the middle of something she was particularly passionate about, she would stop wherever she was to give it her everything. Even in the middle of the hallway, while people were walking behind her. Stop short. Wouldn’t even phase her when she’d cause a pile up and get bumped and nearly knocked over. It was too much, maybe, to be able to focus on walking and give the story the platform it deserved.
Huey respected this. He thought he’d rather have a friend who spoke with such passion that she couldn’t focus on anything else and then would become so exhausted by speaking that she would just slip away into temporary nothingness than a friend who didn’t do that. It made her weird. And he felt weird. And he liked that they shared that.
Except sometimes he didn’t.
Robyn and Huey were the last ones to Algebra that day. Robyn had stopped to talk to three different people, two of whom he wasn’t convinced she even knew. She tied her shoes. She got a sip of water from the fountain. She needed to stop at her locker for something, but then when they arrived she forgot what it was. And that is all on top of her requisite stops to emphasize plot points in her stories.
At least Huey no longer had his backpack and had learned that facing his butt in the direction of Eric White was better than his thigh making direct contact with Eric White. And both were preferable to the other option, which he had attempted the day before and wished to erase from his memory.
“Just use a pen, it’s not a quiz or anything.”
Pens were expressly forbidden in all Math classes, as previously discussed, but it didn’t seem to Huey that Mrs. Bird would care if Eric used one just for taking notes.
“Do you have a pen?”
“You have a pen.” Huey gestured to the pen sitting on the desk in front of Eric.
“It doesn’t work.” Eric scribbled in his notebook to prove the futility of the utensil.
Huey begrudgingly slipped his own pen out of his folder and handed it to Eric.
“Thanks.”
It dawned on Huey that this was the first conversation he and Eric White had ever had. There had been two years of one-sided laughter and two days of silent, next-to-each-other Algebra learning, but this was the first time Huey had ever heard Eric speak words. And where was the laughter?. Was Huey suddenly not funny? That first day of school he had been at peak levels of embarrassing and Eric hadn’t even cracked a smile. Barely acknowledged him, even. And now he was saying, “Thanks.” What undiscovered level of cruelty was this?
And then.
At the end of class.
Eric handed the pen back. Unprompted. Huey was sure he’d steal it. That the kindness was all a ruse to kidnap Huey’s pen and keep it forever. He had already resigned himself to this reality and was part of the way through his grieving process and planning a stop to get a new one from his locker.
“Thanks, Hennessey. See you tomorrow.”
“Uh. Yeah. Ok. See ya. Eric.” Huey was never great at the whole calling people by their last names thing, but the way he said Eric’s first name was still far from casual.
He sat in a buzzy, paralyzed stare until Robyn broke his daze.
“Did he say anything about me?”
“Huh?”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“Who? Eric?”
“Yeah.”
“You like Eric White now?”
“No. I’m just asking.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Well, if he does, you’ll tell me, right?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
It happened at that moment, for whatever reason, we can’t plan these things - a shift in the universe and a wave of something glittery washed over him. He snuck his pencil behind his ear, then single-palmed his minimalist collection of High School essentials and in one fell swoop, slid from the desk and tucked his book, folder and calculator to his side as he spun himself into the aisle, and began a graceful glide out of the room. It wasn’t a move he was sure he could pull off when the desire to attempt it struck him, but even Robyn seemed impressed.
“Where’s your bag?”
It stung a little to know that despite ditching the monstrosity for the entirety of the day, he still presented as a backpack user, but he wouldn’t let it break his stride.
They stepped out into the curved, cavernous hall of C Building. It was a puzzling design choice. Huey might have even thought they designed the halls to match the letter. Make it a C. But it was clear to him that B Building was the newest of the three. Not to say it was new, but it was cleaner and more modern than the other two. So, that would mean at one point C would not have been named C at all, being just one of two and so the hall shape wouldn’t have been relevant. Strange, though, to be standing at one end of a long hall and be unable to see the other side.
Huey started to instinctively turn right out of the door, when Robyn vigorously grabbed his arm. Her nails dug a little too deep and he lost his casually cool grip on his stuff. The calculator and the book were one thing, but his entire High School life was in that folder, he couldn’t risk it tumbling to the ground and scattering its contents throughout this oddly shaped hallway. He bent forward as he tucked both arms into his body, to sort of cradle his belongings tightly and keep them from falling. It worked. A rare moment of successful equilibrium for an accident prone embarrassment sufferer. The only real casualty was his pencil, which went careening out from behind his ear and onto the slippery linoleum. Instinctually, Huey bent down to go grab it, but felt another tug. Robyn was pulling him back by his shirt.
This was not welcome. Huey was not a very body confident High School Freshman, so any action that threatened to too accurately reveal the details of what was lying underneath his shirt was a dangerous threat and he quickly snapped back, aborting the pencil retrieving mission.
“What are you doing?” He freed his left hand to pull his shirt back into its comfortable, shapeless position.
“Her.”
Robyn stared off, hypnotized, and not looking at him while she spoke.
Huey followed her gaze. Who her was, Huey didn’t know, but he half expected to see a backlit Goddess flanked by cherubs cascading in slow motion down the suddenly windswept hallway based on her awestruck expression.
What he actually saw was far more miraculous.
“Who is that?”
“Jenny Lo.”
Jenny drifted down the hallway like she wasn’t even touching the ground. She somehow moved slowly and swiftly at the same time. Huey had never seen a human with skin so free of blemish. Not even in a magazine. Was she glowing? Her hair was as black as Mrs. Bird’s, but soft and shiny as it bounced on her shoulders in perfect harmony with her steps, in perfect harmony with the delicate sway of her arms, in perfect harmony with other parts of her body that softly bounced and also seemed more perfect than any he had ever seen in his life. That is not to say she was showing off any particular part of her body, she was not. And that is not to say it would not have been acceptable or even welcome. She just wasn’t. It would be simply impossible to focus on any one part when everything was so beautifully in tune. She wore a flowery dress with short sleeves that hit a subtle V just below her collar bone. It was a sort of soft chartreuse, a color Huey was especially fond of because he enjoyed colors with overly complicated names, not so much because he considered it to be a lovely color. Somehow on Jenny Lo, though, it was positively glorious.
She stopped as she reached them. Not short, as Robyn was prone to do, but with a keen awareness of every possible consequence of this reprieve. Huey became aware of her intention and felt flush. The pencil. It had interrupted her otherwise unobstructed journey through life and school. He felt a mix of horror and guilt and thrill. Would he be in trouble? She wasn’t a teacher, but he felt as though he had done something wrong and Jenny Lo might be the strongest anchor of authority in this and any of the three Greyport High buildings. What would she do? Maybe nothing. Or maybe she would unhinge her jaw, releasing a monstrous lizard demon that would eat him alive in one bite. Both options seemed equally plausible and equally exhilarating.
As she bent down, he watched her hand, determined, but gentle, whisk up his suddenly extremely ugly and unworthy and humiliatingly chewed up Ticonderoga #2. Her hair scooted off to the left as she looked up and into his eyes. He could’ve sworn her head didn’t even twitch, it was like the strands just knew what she needed and all worked together to free her sightline.
“Here you go.”
Huey wished at this moment he were Shakespeare. He wished he could drum up all the most perfect words that this most perfect of beings deserved to have fall upon her ears. Her eyes were a soothing, sincere, cushiony brown leather and she smiled honestly, not with dismissive condescension or eager artificiality. She gave exactly the right measure of what the moment merited. No more, no less. He opened his mouth to clumsily utter whatever thank you he could muster.
And then she was gone. Swiftly and slowly, just as she had arrived. Huey was left gazing at the curve in the hallway. He didn’t even really remember seeing her disappear along its arc. It could have been a dream. He may have even had a better time believing it if it was, but the experience was all too real. He could feel it tingling all over his skin.
“Why didn’t you say thank you?” Her words punched with the same aggression as her fist did into his bicep.
“Ow. What?”
“Jenny Lo just picked your gross ass pencil off the dirty, f***ing ground of C Building -” She did not have stars in her version.
“Hey!”
“Sorry, but it’s Jenny f***ing Lo.”
“Enough with the F’s, Robyn, jeez.”
“That was our chance, Huey. That was our in.”
“Our chance for what?”
“Duh.”
“The pencil?”
“She picks up your pencil, you say thank you, she says, ‘No problem.’ You say, ‘What’s your name?’ She says, ‘Jenny Lo.’ You say, ‘I’m Huey’ and you bat your pretty blue eyes at her.”
“You think I have pretty blue eyes?”
“Shut up.” She punched him again.
“Stop doing that.”
“Then, she’s like, ‘Who’s your friend?’ ‘Oh, that’s Robyn. She’s rad.’ And then she’s like, ‘Wow you two seem cool, I should recommend you for The Sexy f***ing Seven.”
“Oh, is she -?”
“Are you f***ing stupid?”
“What has happened to you?”
“What has happened to me? You just ruined my life, that’s all. All you had to say was, ‘Thank you.’ Is that so hard? It’s what you say when someone does something nice. You’re the nicest person I know. That’s all anybody ever says about you. Being polite is what you do the best and you failed. Hard. What happened to me? What happened to you, I say?”
“I said, Thank you.’”
“No you didn’t. You said nothing. Nothing.”
“I think I did say something.”
Huey didn’t know what he thought he said, but he was sure words came out of his mouth.
“You said nothing. And now we will never be in The Sexy Seven because she’s gonna go tell everyone we’re weird and rude.”
“She seemed nice, I don’t think she’d do that.”
“You don’t know her.”
“Neither do you.”
“And now I never will.”
“Why does it even matter? If that’s all it takes to not be in The Sexy Seven, I don’t think I want to be in The Sexy Seven.”
“Of course you do, everyone does.”
Suddenly, the bell was ringing and Huey and Robyn were still standing in the hall outside of Mrs. Bird’s classroom.
“F***.” Robyn blurted as she darted off to wherever her next class was.
Huey had to get to class, too, but it was Science just a floor below and he reasoned he might be able to squeak by pretending his Algebra book was a Science book today. Sammi would be sitting next to him, too, and they could share.
As he headed for the stairs, he thought about Robyn. He had heard her use words like that before, but never with this much frequency and so near to teachers seemed very risky. More significantly, though, he had never known her to care so much about what someone she didn’t even know thought about her. Or him. Huey had always been embarrassing, but it never seemed to matter to Robyn or Sammi. Suddenly, he felt wrong.
High School was changing all sorts of people in all sorts of confusing ways.