Into the Wild Nerd Yonder (2 page)

The final month of summer became a smoky Denny’s extravaganza. The ’Hoppers were there almost every night, and since Bizza had made her mind up,
we
were there every night, too. Such a bummer because the end of summer is usually so amazing. Yeah, the back-to-school sales are unbelievable, but there’s also something about the August air that’s the perfect blend of summer and fall. It’s so warm and wonderful. Bizza, Char, and I have spent every August since forever together in Bizza’s backyard “tree house” (a floor of wood shoved into the top of her weeping willow tree) looking up at the sky and playing Would You Rather? Now I play Would You Rather? in my head every night we’re at Denny’s:

Would I rather

a) Be in the Denny’s smoking section

b) Eat a live turtle, shell included

c) Lick a turkey’s ass

Yeah. Tough call these days.

I have always held a mix of admiration and embarrassment for Bizza. It’s amazing how she gets people to pay attention to her, something I could never do, and how she thinks she is so good at everything. Even when she sucks (as in her
singer/guitarist days), she thinks she’s a star. When she gets a seventy-five on a test, she thinks it’s because the teacher doesn’t know how to teach. And when a guy doesn’t like her (god forbid), he’s
obviously
gay. And on one dark and smoky night when Barrett drove the three of us to Denny’s, she somehow managed to convince him that it would be acceptable to let us join the Crudhoppers’ table. When we arrived at the smoky booth, Bizza gestured to me with her eyes as though I was supposed to introduce, or maybe even
announce
, her.

“Um, hey, guys.” I tried to sound casual.

“Hey, Jessie.” Van smiled. I always wondered if the reason Van was nice to me was because Barrett told him that I’d had a major crush on him since sixth grade. I had been borderline crushing on him for a while, as younger sisters do on their brother’s friends, but then I had this über-romantic dream about him, which changed the status from borderline to obsessed. Van has this amazing smile, a freaky cool crooked nose, and dark hair that looks so perfectly imperfect. “Who are your friends?” Van asked, smacking me back into the reality that almost anyone is more interesting than me.

“This is Bizza. This is Char.” The guys smiled and nodded as the girls charmed their way into the squished booth. I pulled up a chair. Coffees were ordered (loaded with cream and sugar), cancer sticks were puffed, and conversation followed the usual, musical route, but with many vapid Bizza interjections:

“That new Smokin’ Chokes CD is shit. Why’d they replace Emery Gladen?” A ’Hopper mused.

“I love the new color of your hair, Van. How do you get it to stay so black?” Bizza blathered. This could have bothered me more, except any conversation between Bizza and a guy sounds flirty. Kind of annoying, but meaningless and completely the norm.

“We gotta get ready for our show at the Interoom. Our new songs aren’t tight enough,” a ’Hopper suggested.

“Did you get those shoes at Nordstrom, Eric? I totally saw them there. I almost got the same ones,” Bizza noted importantly.

Each summer night was filled with identically inane conversations. All I wanted to do was stay home and sew, and look forward to the joyous day that I’d go back to school and homework and all of the smart-girl excuses I get to use so as not to waste my life at Denny’s every night. I frequently tried telling Bizza that I had some sewing I wanted to finish this summer, but she would just say something like, “Whatever, Holly Hobby, you can sew later. We’ll miss you if you’re not with us,” which made me feel simultaneously good and bad. Bizza is an expert at that.

So my final nights of summer were wasted with mediocrity and cigarettes. Barrett drove us to Denny’s, Bizza acted like Bizza, and, as usual, her magical Bizzabilities charmed the pants off of them. Not literally, of course. The conversations
turned away from music and moved to food, TV, movies—anything that Bizza deemed worthy of chatter. As the days went by, my skirts got smokier, and the weeping willow tree house got lonelier. Thank god, the summer is just about over.

Yeah, I used to like the first day of school. Until my best friends decided to turn punk.

WHAT THE BUTT? I ALREADY HAVE A Mr. Punk Rock Cool Guy brother; I don’t need Punk Rock Wannabe friends. And today is their big debut: the first day of school, where summer can transform anyone and it’s almost always accepted. Like Jenna Marny, who left school after eighth grade a fat, invisible nobody and came back a skinny, nose-jobbed somebody. Now she’s going out with the captain of the soccer team. Or lacrosse. Or maybe both? Summer can do that to a person. Now Bizza and Char can be added to the list of the Great Transformed.

As I get ready for school (choosing a homemade skirt with pencils and rulers for first-day-of-school flare), I brush my straight brown hair, the same hair I’ve had for the past five years. (Obviously it’s the same hair I’ve always had, but I mean the same “style.” The only style, really, that my hair will do.) I sort of have a fear of trying anything different than shoulder length, parted a tad off to the side, ever since the Mushroom Cut Debacle of third grade. Who knew that, shortened, my hair would fluff up and become bizarrely fungi-shaped? The
trauma left me with no choice but to leave my hair as is for the rest of my life, to ensure that nothing hair embarrassing ever happens again.

I experiment a little with some fun eye shadow colors and decide that green looks best with my brown eyes. I don’t normally wear makeup because I’m too lazy and tired in the morning (and besides, what’s the point? It’s not like anyone else would notice.) but it’s always easy for me to wake up on the first day of school. The excitement of new classes, seeing people who I like in an everyday way but not an outside-of-school way, and organizing my locker always springs me to life. Not to mention the joy of finally getting to legitimately use all of the school supplies that I’ve been hoarding for weeks. I follow every back-to-school sale in the Sunday paper, compare prices, highlight the ads, visit all of the necessary stores, and then hide the supplies in my genuinely worn, not faux-distressed, red backpack. I love opening the backpack on First Day of School Eve and—surprise!—there’s all my new stuff.

I take one last look in the mirror before heading down to breakfast. I look kind of cute in my new skirt and eye shadow. Not much different than last year, but not all of us are dying to turn into someone else. Most of the time, anyway.

At breakfast, Mom and Dad run around, grabbing for newspapers and coffee cups. Both of them are teachers, although we like to refer to Mom as Doc, since she received her Ph.D. in education last year. I never quite understood how regular teachers could turn into doctors. (Like our old, horrid,
Southern gym teacher, Dr. Stunter. What did she have a Ph.D. in—Dodgeball? Rope climbing? Child torture?) until Mom spent three grueling years in night school. Not that I’m not grateful, since it forced Dad to hone his cooking skills and prove once and for all that a man’s place is in the kitchen. At least in my house.

Dr. and Mr. Sloan always leave the house a little before me and Barrett, to uphold the appearance that all teachers do, in fact, live in their classrooms. Both of them are wearing suits, which they usually do for the first week or two of school to scare the children into thinking they’re
serious teachers
. After that, it’s all Dad can do not to wear his ratty old Cubs hat to work (to cover up his ever-expanding bald spot), although Mom usually at least wears skirts until the slush of winter forces her into cords. She keeps her makeup to a minimum, and her hair is straight and brown, like mine, but in permanent mom-bob. People always tell us we look alike.

Barrett slouches at the kitchen table, his Mohawk a faded, barfy orange, flopped over, sans gel. “You didn’t fix your hair?” I ask him.

“I’m tired of it. Maybe I’ll shave it off tomorrow.”

“I like when you have hair, Barrett. Don’t forget senior pictures. I don’t want you looking like a skinhead,” Doc Mom says. She kisses Barrett’s head, then kisses mine, and says good-bye.

Dad grabs an apple and blogws a kiss. “Happy first day!” he calls.

“Excited about going back?” Barrett asks. He knows how much I don’t hate school.

“Yeah. Kind of,” I say, not trying to sound too eager.

“Just kind of? What’s the prob?” Barrett chomps on a Strawberry Frosted Pop-Tart (untoasted), his favorite.

“I’m just a little nervous about what it’s going to be like this year.”

“Same as last year for you. Now for me, the senior, this will be a year of college crap, followed by the joy of slackness once I get accepted to NYU.”

All Barrett talks about is going to NYU next year; I don’t even think he’s applying anywhere else, although I don’t want to ask him. Too momish. And the more we talk about him going away to college, the more I have to think about the fact that he’ll be
going away to college
. “That’s all well and good for you, Mr. Leaving His Sister All Alone, but I have to worry about the mortifying morphing of my friends.”

Bizza’s and Char’s official physical transformations started this past week, when Bizza received a bunch of money from her mom for mowing the lawn all summer and doing other various around-the-house tasks that most other teens (i.e., me) don’t get paid for. Bizza went straight to the Hot Topic in the mall and bought all of the kitschy T-shirts, skanky stockings, suspenders, studded jewelry, patches, buttons, and stickers mow money could buy. I wanted to tell her that, according to Barrett, any real punk would never set foot in a mall to buy
their clothes. (Barrett gets everything he owns from thrift stores, punk shows, and online.) Char opted for a more vintage-looking mix of old dresses and a giant pair of combat boots she found in her attic (I think they might have been her dad’s. They look really huge and make her walk a little like a tripping Frankenstein). She bought a ton of buttons of punk bands and covered her messenger bag. I guess this is how one dresses according to the overnight punk handbook.

“Ah, the poseurettes,” Barrett smirks.

“Do you still think they’re poseurettes? You
did
let them sit with the ’Hoppers at Denny’s.”

“I can’t say no to your friends, Jess, at least not when they’re already there. I knew them when they were Barbie toddling dorks. But I don’t care how much Manic Panic they put in their hair, they’ll always just be my little sister’s friends.”

I’m happy to hear he’s not fooled by their punk-in-a-box makeover, but I wonder what everyone else will think.

I flip my Berry Berry Kix around in my bowl.

“Hey, don’t look so worried. I’m sure they’ll find something else to glom onto next month,” Barrett tries to assure me. “And just think, if your friends are all punk, we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.”

“Yeah, before you abandon me and go off to college.”

“We have a whole year before I abandon you. Ready?”

“I guess.” I grab my backpack, deflated without the weight
of homework, and head out in Barrett’s car. Fugazi yells out of the stereo and onto the streets through our open windows. I watch myself in the side-view mirror, my straight hair poking me in the eye every minute or so. I hope it doesn’t ruin my eye shadow. Why do I even bother?

THIS IS FAR WORSE THAN I EVER could have imagined. I’m at my locker, trying to remember the combination that I spun twenty times a day as a freshman, when a black figure lurks up on me. I see it out of the corner of my eye, but don’t think much of it until I hear a creepy voice. “Jessie Sloan . . . Jessie Sloan . . .” It’s like a ghost or a dream, but when I finally look, it’s way scarier.

“Shit!” I jump. It’s all I can say. Before me stands Char, her once-beautiful blond hair muddied with equal stripes of black and red. Her left arm is covered up to her elbows in black, ropey, studly bracelets. On her right wrist is—wait—a tattoo? Small black stars are etched neatly in a bracelet around her wrist.

“You got a tattoo?” I ask in an annoyed yet intrigued way. There are about a million more things I want to ask her, but I refrain. Do I even want to know?

“Yeah, well, sort of. It’s a drawing. Van did it for me.”

“Van?” Barrett’s Van?
My
Van?

“Yeah. This weekend at Denny’s. I said I wanted a tattoo, and he said he could give me one. Then he drew it. It’s hot, right? He could have given you one, too, if you were there.
Touched your hand the whole time,” she smirks. “Why didn’t you come?”

I want to tell her that I was sick of listening to all of the nonconversations and inhaling the dirty air, but instead I just say, “I had to finish this skirt. You like?”

“Hmmm. It’s cute. Funny,” which I would have taken as a compliment, but she said it with such dismissal in her voice. I didn’t say anything bad about her hair, so what gives? “Have you seen Bizza?” Char looks around.

“No. I don’t know if she’s here yet.”

“Oh, she’s here. I wondered if you’ve
seen
her. You’ll die. She looks so cool.”

I’ll die, huh? Of what, exactly? My brain starts making a list of all of the twisted things Bizza could have done to garner even more attention. Then I catch her face coming my way down the hall. But what’s missing? Ah yes, her hair. Bizza has shaved her head completely, so the only hair left is a soft layer of fuzz.

She holds herself so high that everyone in the halls can’t help but notice. Her hair is gone. It’s something I could never do,
would
never do. Without her hair, she looks like a different person. Just like Char does. And here I am: same as freshman year. And eighth grade. And seventh grade. Bizza looks so smug and confident and, dare I say,
punk
. And what am I again? Oh yeah, nothing.

“Hey, Jess, what do you think?” Bizza does a mock-fancy turn and runs her hand over the top of her buzz. She’s truly interested in my answer.

I almost say that I actually think it looks kind of good, but I just can’t. Usually I’m pretty generous with the compliments because why not try and make someone feel good? But there is something so annoying to me about this extreme hair show. “Fuzzy,” I decide. She seems satisfied with the answer and quickly moves on to looking around the hallway for other reactions.