Authors: Loretta Ellsworth
Mom's optimism must have rubbed off. On my fourth day of school at Madison High I walk into the boys' bathroom, the one on the first floor, whistling the theme song from
The Andy Griffith Show
, and I'm completely blindsided by a hefty arm that squeezes my neck, pulling me into a headlock several inches above ground, leaving my feet dangling.
At first I think
Dink!
and I almost pee my pants. I don't want to die in the boys' bathroom. How did he find me so soon?
“New kid,” a voice behind me belts out, “this is the
senior
bathroom.”
Thank God it's not Dink. “How am I supposed to know that if I'm new?” I try to ask, but only a small gasp escapes.
“We're gonna have to help you
remember
so this doesn't happen again.”
Good luck with that.
There's a swarm of them now, big football types, circling me. The bathroom is smoky, with a smell that's skunky but sweet at the same time. My face is tilted up toward the hazy fluorescent lights and the triangle-shaped tiles of the ceiling. Another guy moves into view. All I can see are black nose hairs and a pimply forehead. The beefy arm holds tight against my neck, preventing any movement and allowing very little breathing. But the voice behind me is twice-baked potatoes, warm and comforting. It's hard to believe that voice really wants to hurt me, even if the arms connected to that voice are wrapped around my neck. Of course, I'm a coward, so I don't fight back. I don't do anything except worry about my three-hundred-dollar atomic solar quartz watch. It was a gift from Dr. Anderson.
But the stress is too much. “Twice-baked,” I squeak. The words come out before I can stop them.
“What? Did you just say âtwice-baked'?” The grip loosens.
I force out a small nod, not having much room to move my head.
“That's weird, dude.”
“Maybe you're squeezing too hard and you stopped the blood flow to the brain,” says the voice with nose hair, and he sounds like tar paper.
The grip loosens. I crash into the sink, gasping, rubbing my neck.
“Welcome to freshman orientation,” Twice-baked says.
He shoves me and I land near the door. I use the opportunity to exit before tar-paper voice grabs me.
“Don't come back,” they holler. Their laughter echoes in the hallway, an odd combination of tar and potatoes.
My watch! There's a scratch on the right side, probably from crashing into the sink. Why'd I go into that bathroom in the first place? Then I messed up by calling that kid “twice-baked.” Dr. Anderson thinks that my synesthesia might have something to do with my unusual memory. Some people see numbers as colors, textures, or sounds. The number four could be green and pointy. I hear voices that way. But I don't tell people about it. I don't go up to girls and say, “Hey, did you know you sound like a shade of purple?” How would that affect my popularity index? Worse than wearing a SpongeBob T-shirt.
I'm six minutes late to Science. “Sorry,” I murmur as I make my way to the back of the classroom. There's only one empty seat, and who's sitting across from me? None other than Halle Phillips. Even though my neck stings like rug burn, I'm out of breath, and sweat drips down my face from running up two flights of stairs, I decide that today is a good day. I wipe my forehead on my shirt sleeve.
Halle leans over and whispers, “It's not that hot out. Besides, I'd think you'd be used to the heat after living in California.”
“Running. I overslept,” I whisper between pants. That isn't technically a lie. I did oversleep. I was running.
“You weren't here yesterday,” I add after I've caught my breath.
Her slim eyebrows shoot up. “Surprised you noticed. I switched from sixth period.”
Mrs. Ball is calling for yesterday's homework. Halle passes hers up to the guy in front of her.
Crap. My backpack is on the bathroom floor three stories down. I'm not about to go back and get it. I think of the books and notebooks, the new pens and pencils, the calculator Mom bought me with an extended warranty. Will any of it still be there later?
I raise my hand. “I don't have my homework with me.”
Mrs. Ball clicks her tongue. “You lose five points each day it's late.” Double crap.
The rest of the class copy notes from the board. Halle hands me paper and a pencil.
“Thanks.”
She nods like it's no big deal. She probably thinks I'm a slacker. First I need a tutor. Now I don't even have the basic supplies and my assignment is late.
It's hard to pay attention to Mrs. Ball the rest of the period with Halle sitting next to me. I steal glances at the pink stitching that runs down the sides of her jeans, the way a piece of hair sticks out of her brown barrette, and the way she squints when she's looking at the board. I pretend to take notes but watch her instead. Her handwriting is big and loopy and she makes little circles above her i's instead of dots.
After class, I duck and move in front of two other guys so I can walk out the door at the same time as her. Then I turn with her down the hallway, even though it's the opposite direction of my next class.
“Don't you hate Mrs. Ball?” Halle asks, as though it's perfectly natural for me to be there.
“Uh, I don't really know her.”
“Consider yourself lucky. I've been badgering her for an Environmental Science class for two years, even when I was in junior high. She says it doesn't fit into the curriculum. How crazy is that? We live in a town run by the taconite industry, our families are dying of mesothelioma, and our school doesn't care about environmental issues.”
“Yeah, crazy,” I agree. “At least your science books are newer. They were published in 1998.”
She stops. “How do you know that? You don't even have yours with you.”
I shouldn't have opened the book at all. Shouldn't have read a word of it. Then all this junk wouldn't be stuck in my head. I let out a nervous laugh. “I looked at it yesterday. Wanted to compare it to our books back in California.”
“Oh. How do we compare?”
“Your books are newer.”
“Well, there's that, I guess. But she still stinks as a teacher. Honestly, I could miss a whole year and just read the book and be ahead.”
Funny, that's pretty much what I did for three years.
“What's mesothelioma?” I ask.
“It's a cancer caused by asbestos. My grandpa died of it last year. Lots of the mine workers here get it. It's found in taconite tailings, a waste product from extracting iron ore.”
She stops in front of a classroom and lets out a small breath. “Thanks for listening to me rant. I'm done now. Promise. At least until next Science class. See you during homeroom.”
I watch her disappear into the room and then I continue to stand at the door until the bell rings. That's how hopelessly, utterly mesmerized I am by her.
My next two classes are a blur. I don't even attempt to listen during World History. Instead I work on Mr. Shaw's assignment for Friday: to write down all the descriptions of Daisy Buchanan from the first three chapters of
The Great Gatsby
. My book is in my backpack somewhere on the third floor, but I don't need it. I borrow paper and pen and I write how Daisy had bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget. I write how she had a “lovely shaped face and a charming little laugh,” the words Fitzgerald used to describe her. But the whole time I'm writing those words I'm thinking about Halle, of how they could apply to her. I wonder what Daisy Buchanan's voice would sound like, how it would compare to Halle's daffodil voice.
It's trouble to be spending so much time thinking about a girl who could potentially recognize me from Pascal Elementary. If I had a normal memory, would I have remembered her from kindergarten? Her righteous anger when I ragged on her imagination? The freckles around her nose that had faded slightly?
I like to think that I'd remember her regardless. But Halle can't possibly remember me. At least she left before I became known as the know-it-all kid who constantly corrected my teachers and challenged students to trivia contests. I was just trying to impress people the only way I knew how, with my memory. Throughout the three years Dr. Anderson spent studying me and performing memory tests on me, Mom wouldn't let him do any brain scans. After all that had happened, she said she just wanted to protect me. Or was she afraid of what he might find?
Most days I don't know what to hope for. A man named Solomon Shereshevskii who was born in 1886 had a near-perfect memory and synesthesia, too. He ended up working in a freak show performing feats of memory.
Personally, I'm hoping for something better than that.
Not many guys get a second shot at love, so I intend to make the most of mine. The first thing I do is buy a bag of jelly beans. I only buy green ones because they're her favorite, or at least they were back in kindergarten. Then I talk Mom into buying me a yellow shirt, but I don't buy Big Bird yellow. I go with more of a straw color.
I place the bag of jelly beans in the middle of the library table before Halle arrives and lean back in the chair with my arms over the sides to show off my shirt.
Stay cool, suave, relaxed
, I tell myself. So I lean a bit more. Then I almost fall over backward.
My arms flail around in the attempt to catch myself. I can hear laughing and my face feels like I've just swallowed a hot pepper. This is one of those moments I wish I
could
forget. Then I see Halle standing next to me.
“What was that?”
“Impromptu workout.” I twirl my arms. Stick out my chest under the yellow shirt.
“Right.” She rolls her eyes. “Ooh, jelly beans. Can I have some?” She opens the bag and pops two in her mouth. “Green. My favorite!”
“They're my favorite, too,” I say as I take a handful. Okay, that's not really true, but I do like them.
“Well, now that you've had your exercise, tell me what you know about the story.” Halle's eyes fasten on mine like a clamp.
This is the hard part. I have to be careful not to spit back the book word for word, not to recite verbatim an entire chapter or a summary that sounds like something I got off Wikipedia. In the past teachers accused me of copying when I used the exact words, at least until they found out about my exceptional memory.
I stare down at
Gatsby
and try to pick my words carefully. A library helper walks by with a cart full of books. I read the titles as she passes. Two years from now I'll still remember them, be able to list them in alphabetical order. If I'd been born three hundred years ago, I could have been burned for witchcraft. If I'd been born eighty years ago, I could have been stuck in an insane asylum. Odd behavior begets odd punishment.
I should be doing math homework right now for my fifth-period class. My backpack was returned to me this morning after the janitor found it in the toilet in the first-floor bathroom. Miraculously, most of the contents weren't too wet. The calculator still works and my math book is readable, although the pages are curling at the bottom.
Halle crosses her arms and lets out a small sigh, as though I'm a hopeless case.
“Okay, let's try it another way. Do you think Nick is a reliable narrator? You have to remember that everything is filtered through his eyes.”
“You mean do I believe everything he says?”
Halle nods.
“Yes and no. I mean, we have to look beyond what he says about himself and the other characters.”
“So you don't trust him?”
“I guess I trust him to be true to his experience of the world. But he sees his own truth. We all see our own truth.”
“What's the truth in these chapters?”
“Well, when he first sees Gatsby on the lawn, he's staring out at a green light across the sound and Nick thinks he sees him tremble. That green light promises something. Maybe hope or love, we don't know what yet. But we know that light and that action have some significance even if it is filtered through Nick's eyes.”
“That's good, Baxter. Really good.”
“Thanks,” I say, relieved.
Then she crinkles her nose, what I've noticed she does when she doesn't understand something. “There's just one thing I can't figure out.”
“What's that?”
She leans closer. “Now that we know the truth in
Gatsby
, tell me, what's the truth in Baxter Green?”
My jaw tightens and I press my thumb down hard on the book as I fight for control. “What do you mean?”
“I can tell you're smart. So why does Mr. Shaw want me to tutor you?”
“I got a C-minus on my first test.”
“Yeah, but why did you get a C-minus? I took that same test. It was super easy.”
The trouble with lies is that they don't hold up. It's like using a colander, trying to keep the truth from straining out with the watered-down lies. It always leaks through. Even Dink, who pitched lies more often than Mom smokes a cigarette, got caught.
I almost sound like Dink as I take the attack approach. “I'll tell you if you tell me why you sit in the back and don't wear your glasses when you can't see the board.”
“How do you know I wear glasses?”
“You squint.”
She stares at me long enough that I start feeling uncomfortable and I want to look away. But I don't. To look away would be backing down, admitting that I'm hiding somethingâwhich I am, but there's no way I'm admitting it.
Halle puts her elbow on the table and rests her chin in her hand. “Most guys would never have noticed that kind of stuff. Then there's the fact that we both like green jelly beans. It's so weird.” She takes another handful from the bag.
I'm starting to sweat, but I fake a smile and raise one eyebrow. “I can't wait to find out what else we have in common.” It's a cheesy thing to say. What I really want to tell her is that it's not weird, that there's a connection between us stretching back all the way to kindergarten and that you can fall in love when you're five, even if it's a different kind of love at that age, and that I notice everything about her; I always have. But that sounds even cheesier than what I said.
My comment brings a blush to her cheeks. But she recovers and smiles back at me and says something that takes me completely off guard. “So do you want to go to a protest rally after school?”
The funny thing is, she never said a word about my yellow shirt.