Sophomores and Other Oxymorons (11 page)

L
ee and I ended up studying for a long time, because her dad worked late. But her mom brought us several nutritious, high-fiber snacks. She was a phlebotomist, so she was professionally oriented to be even more aware of nutritional perils than the average parent. When Lee's dad finally arrived, he came loaded with takeout Italian food from a place near his office. The food was well worth the wait.

As I was walking back from the bathroom after dinner, I passed Mr. Fowler's office. He usually kept the door closed. It was open this time. I guessed he'd dropped something off when he got home from work. I glanced in, curious about what the room would look like. No surprises leaped out at me. No statue of Beelzebub, or a cage full of weeping of orphans. No towering pile of Dalmatian skins. There was a large desk of dark wood. Maybe cherry or mahogany. There was a sturdy leather chair of the swiveling sort. There were bookcases filled with volumes that unanimously featured mundane spines. I
saw a framed piece of needlepoint on the wall behind the desk. It looked like it had a sentence in fancy script in the center, but I couldn't make the words out from the hallway.

“Go ahead,” Mr. Fowler said, walking up from behind me. “Take a look. Lee made it for me back when she was in eighth grade.”

I walked in. As I got closer, I realized why I couldn't read it. It wasn't in English. I was pretty sure it was Latin. I sounded it out, to see if it meant more when the words were spoken, “
Aedificare in tuo proprio solo non licet quod alteri noceat
.”

“It's one of the many Latin phrases they make you memorize in law school.”

“Why do they do that?” I asked.

“To thin the herd. To weed out those who lack sufficient will. It's an honored tradition.” He touched the needlepoint. “Any guess what it means?”

“Except for
in
,
solo
, and
non
, I'm totally clueless. I can't even think of any words close to the rest of those.” Usually, if I saw a sentence in a language I didn't know, I could figure out some of the words, based on the way they resembled roots or prefixes from English or Spanish.

“‘It is not lawful to build on one's own land what may be injurious to another,'” Mr. Fowler said.

“But isn't that exactly what—” I caught myself. From what I knew, his clients wanted him to help them build things that were harmful to others. They skirted environmental laws,
and he found ways for them to avoid fines or other forms of punishment.

I guess he knew what I was going to say. But he didn't get angry. He laughed. “Remember who gave it to me. . . .”

“Right. I'll bet she spent hours looking for the perfectly ironic phrase.”

“That's my little girl.” As he walked off, he said, “Nice shirt. You should dress like that more often.”

I stood there and memorized the quotation. Knowing the meaning made that easier. I figured it would be fun to spring it on Lee someday, should she ever do something that might be
injurious to another
. Or maybe spring it on her at a totally unrelated time, which could be even funnier. And I happened to know the Latin phrase for that:
non sequitur
.

Zenger Zinger for October 7

Last week's answer:
“The tomb is filled with blood-sucking insects,” John Peter said cryptically.

This week's puzzle:
“Edgar Allan wrote some less serious works,” John Peter said
_________
.

Tuesday, I got a letter from Mouth. That's his nickname. We'd started freshman year together, but he'd left Zenger. We'd written to each other once in a while, after he left. I think we might have been the last two kids on the planet to write actual letters, not counting parent-mandated thank-you notes. I
hadn't heard from him in a while. Since last summer, I think. And I guess he hadn't heard from me, either. But it was nice he got back in touch.

Dear Scott,

Remember me? Of course you do. We had a lot of good times at the bus stop last year. There's no way you'd forget me in a couple of months. Unless you got a girlfriend and can't think about anything else except her. And I sure couldn't blame you if that was the case. I know, if I ever get a girlfriend, that's all I'll be able to think about. But even if you were madly in love, you'd still remember me, since we hung out all the time at the bus stop, and at the newspaper meetings. Those meetings were great. Anyhow, I just wanted to say hi and let you know how I'm doing, and where I am, since you're the only one who cared about me back at Zenger High. Well, you and the school nurse. We moved to Nebraska. I guess you can tell that from the postmark on the envelope. Unless you already threw out the envelope. People are nice here. They smile a lot. Nobody tells me to shut up. Sometimes they don't stay until I'm finished telling them what I want to say, even if it's important, but they are very polite when they walk away.

That's enough about me. How are you? Did your mom have her baby? That must be weird. Some people think clowns are scary. I think babies are scarier. I'd hate to have to sleep near one. How's school? Are you on the paper? I loved your articles last year. I cut all of them out and put them in a notebook. I show them to my friends. Well, to people I've met. People here are nice. I told you that. But nice is sort of different from friendly. My doctor told me not to think too much about friends. Especially if it makes me sad. But I think about you. And that makes me not sad.

I have to go. I hope you write back.

From far away,
Louden “Mouth” Kandeski

Wednesday after school, I waited outside the meeting room, again, so I could catch Mr. Franka.

“I really wish I'd run that opinion piece right away,” I said when he reached the door.

“Why?”

“Mrs. Gilroy is nailing me for all kinds of stupid things,” I said.

“Like what?”

I held out the essay I'd written during a free-writing
session, and pointed to one of the many sentences she'd circled.

Hoping it would be an amazing summer, my bicycle carried me down the street, leaving my home behind me like a fragile cocoon abandoned by a butterfly.

“That's good writing, isn't it?”

Mr. Franka responded to my question by staring at me. He didn't say a word.

“Well, isn't it?”

“Pretend someone else wrote that. Read it slowly and carefully. Read it out loud, for that matter.”

I read it out loud, slowly. “Sounds fine,” I said. “Sounds like good writing.”

“The
bicycle
has hopes?” Mr. Franka asked.

“No. That's not what it says. Wait.” I read the sentence again. Oh, crap. It did sound like the bicycle hoped it would be an amazing summer. My hand dropped. I felt like crumpling the essay.

“Hey, cheer up, Scott. Everyone makes that sort of mistake. It's very common. That's why there are teachers,” Mr. Franka said. “The cocoon thing was pretty good.”

“Thanks.”

“You can write, Scott. You have talent. But it's a huge mistake to think you have nothing to learn.”

“I guess. But it's a lot easier to learn from some teachers than from others,” I said.

I expected him to accept that as praise, since he was
definitely one of the teachers I liked learning from. But he responded, “And it's a lot easier to teach some students than others.”

“I'm not hard to teach,” I said.

“I never said you were.”

“You didn't say I wasn't, either.”

“That's true, too.”

“That's
parisology
,” I said, dredging up one of the more easily memorized words from Mrs. Gilroy's list. Too bad all of them didn't contain parts that resembled the names of famous cities. “It's the intentional use of ambiguous phrasing.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “I'm glad to see you're learning something.”

“I'm learning something,” I said ambiguously, as I followed him into the meeting.

As I took my seat next to Jeremy, I realized I still hadn't written an actual article that was going to run in the paper. That was okay. There was an issue every week. I just needed to think about something where I had a strong opinion. Or look for a good feature story.

October 9

Sean, my biology notebook is due tomorrow. This is a big part of our grade for the marking period. I spent three hours going over it tonight. I double-checked every fact against the textbook. And I checked
everything against my class notes. It's perfect. There isn't a single thing I can lose points for. Even the grammar is perfect, not that Ms. Denton would care. If she's at all fair about grading, she has to give me a hundred. Maybe that will get her off my back. After school tomorrow, I can take a break. Believe it or not, Lee allowed Wesley and me to convince her to go to the Columbus Day football game at school. I don't think she's ever been to a game. I hope she likes it.

“Wow, look at all the little kids,” Wesley said.

“Everyone looks little to you,” I said.

“Where should we sit?” Lee asked.

“Near the top,” I said. “We want to be able to see everything.”

We threaded our way up the home team bleachers. A lot of people shifted when Wesley came near. I suspect more than a few of them had donated their lunch money to him during the years he was in school.

“It's going to be weird not covering the game.” I spotted the two freshmen from the newspaper, Teresa and Doug, standing right by the fence at the edge of the field. So far, they'd done a good job reporting on the games. Though they didn't get very creative.

“Think of it this way: You can relax and watch the game,” Lee said.

“I'm not sure I know how to do that,” I said. “I spent all of
last year trying not to miss anything important.”

“Sounds stressful,” Lee said.

“Nah. It was fun, once I got used to it.”

The other team kicked off. One of our guys—I think it was Dominic Manzini—caught the ball just behind the five-yard line and started a run straight up the middle. Then, breaking a tackle, he cut to the left and plowed through an opening, right between two defenders.

“Whoa,” Wesley said.

“He's going all the way!” I said as Dominic reached the fifty.

By then, the whole crowd was standing and screaming. Dominic nearly got tackled on the twenty, but he shook that off, too, slipped past the last defender's desperate dive near the ten, and cruised into the end zone.

“Sweet,” I said.

I looked at Lee. She'd stood, too. Her face was alive.

“Fun?” I asked.

“Fun,” she said.

I couldn't have wished for a better start to Lee's first football game. “He broke through the defense like it was made of moonlight,” I said. I liked that phrase. It was a keeper. I reached for my pad to write a description of the run. I had no pad.

“Is every play this exciting?” Lee asked.

“Not exactly. But that's part of the fun.”

October 11

You're actually making human speech sounds, Sean. I thought it was babbling, but Mom said it's called cooing because it all pretty much sounds like vowels right now. But that gives me hope we'll be able to belt out parts of “Old MacDonald” together pretty soon. If people can teach parrots to recite the Gettysburg Address, I don't see why I can't teach you to go “E-I-E-I-O.”

“If you are interested in running for class president or student council, pick up an information sheet at the front office,” the principal said during morning announcements on Tuesday.

When I got to geometry, Lee said, “Running?”

“Sitting,” I said.

“As in sitting it out?” she asked.

“Exactly.” I'd been on student council for a while last year, for all the wrong reasons. I'd seen enough to know it wasn't something I'd enjoy doing again.

“You might have a shot at president,” Lee said. “You're not exactly unpopular.”

You just want to be first lady.

That was the joke that popped into my mind. Luckily, it didn't all pop out of my mouth. I got as far as “You just want to be” when I realized that
first lady
implied a much more serious relationship than we currently had. I scrambled to think of a neutral way to finish the sentence.

“Be what?” Lee asked.

“A campaign manager,” I said.

“Dream on.”

And so I did. But I had something I wanted to ask her. I thought about it all through geometry and history, and all through lunch. There was a school dance the Friday after next.

“Hey,” I said as we were getting up from the table.

“What?” she asked.

The words should have flowed. Six words. Six syllables. Eighteen letters.
Want to go to the dance?
Nothing flowed. The words had formed a logjam. Lee frowned. The silence grew.

“What?” she asked again.

I pointed at her tray. “You didn't finish your fries.”

“As usual,” she said.

That was true. She rarely finished her fries. She tended to eat slowly, and as I'd mentioned, the fries tended to get exponentially less edible as they cooled.

“Did you want them?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sure.” What else could I say?

“All yours.” She put the tray on the table in front of me. “Eat up.”

“Thanks.” I took one of the cold, greasy fries and started to chew. It was like eating a buttered slab of congealed mayonnaise, wrapped in raw bacon.

As I swallowed my clotted-starch treat, I thought about Ms. Denton's class.
This is a mistake
. The single fry felt like
it was expanding in my stomach. I could picture it sending tendrils throughout my digestive system. Or evacuation notices. Lee stared at me. I ate the rest of the fries.