Bad Blood at Madden High

Chapter 2

The early bell hadn’t yet rung, yet half the desks in Room 103 were already occupied. Not surprisingly, the desks in the back row remained completely vacant, as if reserved specially for those who were most likely to stroll in tardy. Anderson knew what they would look like when they arrived. Some would be slouched forward, with hands in pockets, baseball caps worn slightly off-center, denims much too large for their bodies, shirts they overpaid for so that they could display some brand-name that they saw someone on television wear. Others would be tan and hairy, wearing shorts tight at the waist but loose around the legs and reaching to mid-calf; their tee-shirts and tank-tops would be decorated with some surf logo. The rest would be tall, brawny fellows with sweatpants and sports jerseys, and they would laugh much too loudly so that everyone knew they were having a better time than anyone else because their stories were funnier and their adventures better and if you weren’t already in on the joke, you never would be.

He wasn’t looking for a fight, but he knew one was coming. He didn’t know when or where or with whom, but he knew it would be soon. Men who have spent their time in classrooms and have paid attention know these things, and Anderson had been in many classrooms. The faint hum of life becomes like a language to a man if he will simply take time to listen, but most men will not. The speed with which they traverse the halls will not allow it, but the man who looks will see, and the man who listens will hear. Anderson was a high-school junior, a man who knew the ways of the schoolyard, and with that sudden change in the air, that slight alteration in the hum of school life, he knew that by day’s end, he would be fighting.

A man who enters a classroom alone, especially when he is entering it for the first time, does not have the advantages of men who enter with others. He must select his seat quickly, eyes scanning the aisles and faces rapidly, assessing the social strata, determining that place where the flora and fauna were most likely to be helpful and least likely to cause harm. A pretty girl here might be appealing, but whose pretty girl was she, and what kind of a brain did she have in that pretty head? Answers needed to be formulated on the fly, while the newcomer’s eyes dart from desk to desk and his feet carry him to his destination, wherever that might be. To stand at the doorway and hesitate, to conduct one’s survey frozen in tableau, would be to invite the stares and challenges of those already seated. “Don’t even think about sitting here,” those stares would say. “What are you waiting for?” would be the challenge. “Don’t you know who you are?”

Anderson didn’t have to feign the assurance with which he made his assessment or the ease with which he walked as he moseyed toward his desk. The gamers and computer-lovers were lined up against the far wall, next to the windows, in the front half of the room. He was not one of them, but would eventually be welcome in their company once they took a liking to him, which they always did. Next to them, friendly toward but not exactly with them, were three girls who would be beautiful in a few years but didn’t know it. They were too smart and too quiet to be noticed by anyone but the computer-lovers (who would wait until prom season to make their moves), but too sweet and too pretty to need makeup. This lack of adornment and this preference for simplicity had the paradoxical effect of serving as a disguise. The makeup that caked the faces of girls like those he’d seen in the hall only revealed those girls for what they were. These three, these probable honor-roll girls, were like the anole that climbs from twig to leaf, turning from brown to green so as to avoid detection. Anderson, though, could see the curves hidden beneath the layers, he could see the sensitive eyes obscured by bangs and eyeglasses. He knew those legs, hidden always beneath those jeans. Here were girls who could ride his Fat Possum and look good doing it, not that they ever would. That was the way he liked them. Nobody rode his Fat Possum but him.

The three girls were lined up, one behind the other. He took the seat next to the one in the middle, putting him in the third row and two columns away from the computer guys. He liked the idea of offering the girls a choice and making that choice visually plain. On one side, him. On the other, them. The girls’ backs would be turned to the computer guys because of the way the desks opened up to the left and because that was the direction they would face when paying attention to the teacher. The computer-guys knew what they were doing: Seeing without being detected. Anderson knew what he was doing, too.

He felt the eyes watching as he set his messenger-bag on the floor and slid into his seat. He flashed a quick smile to the girl sitting next to him, but only quick one, so as not to be threatening. He took his planner from his bag, setting his pen on top of a blank page, and slouched behind the desk ever so slightly. Casually, but without much interest, his eyes scanned the front of the room. This was a history classroom, judging from the posters on the walls. The chess club was meeting today. The cheerleaders were having a bake sale. The National Honor Society wanted canned goods. The Fall Musical was going to be Once Upon a Mattress and the auditions would be next week.

As the tardy bell rang, the teacher entered the room, accompanied by four guys wearing warm-up pants and identical jerseys. The teacher wore Dockers and a Hawaiian shirt that seemed to have been selected for its inability to contain his bulging biceps and forearms. His crew-cut hair was brown and spiky, his ears slightly cauliflower. On his forearm was a small tattoo: A black S in a red circle. One of the four guys walked down his aisle, and on passing, his large gym-bag caught Anderson in the side of the head.

“Oh! I’m sorry, my man,” said the klutz. “Didn’t mean to get you.” He laughed and took a seat in the back, alongside his buddies.

Anderson chose not to respond. Entering right behind the teacher and musclemen were the boys in deejay clothes, the boys in board-shorts, and the girls with too much makeup.

“Ey, Mista Lee,” shouted one of the jocks. “We doing anything fun today or what?” He and his friends erupted in raucous laughter.

“What you think?” Mr. Lee responded. “You guys are in Eleven L! You know what that L stands for?”

“Lee!” the guys shouted.

“No. Losers!” the teacher yelled.

More laughter, this time from almost everyone in the room. “So if you want that L to stand for something else, like Lovely or Laughter or Large-and-in-Charge, we’re gonna have to work on that,” the teacher continued. “I got big plans for us, but until we do some of ‘em, we’re just losers, and I don’t like losers taking up my homeroom time. So get out a pen while I take the attendance.”

Anderson was sure he was going to hate this teacher, but he was sure, too, that he was stuck with him and resolved to make the relationship at least workable if not friendly. He was not a fan of cheerleaders of any gender, but cheerleaders who happened to be male teachers in their early thirties and were supposed to set the tone for a productive learning environment got under his skin like the mites that sometimes go into your sleeping back when you camped out on the beach during those cold summer nights on the windward side of the island.

“We have some new people in the room,” began Mr. Lee, “but I won’t embarrass them with stupid getting-to-know you activities. Instead, let’s do the old index-card thing and we’ll have a little discussion about what’s going on in school this week and what we’re going to do about it.”

Anderson hated getting-to-know-you activities. Maybe he wouldn’t hate this teacher after all.

“So grab an index card, and write your answers to these questions,” continued Mr. Lee. He raised the movie screen, revealing a list of the standard first-day-of-school questions for students to provide on their index cards. Someone in the back row loudly asked the classroom population for a pen. Mr. Lee walked to the back of the room with a pen and returned to the front of the room. “Don’t spend all morning on this: We have other things to do, so if you’re having difficulty, just take your card home and bring it back tomorrow.”

“Ey, Mr. Lee!” shouted the pen-borrowing jock. “Dis pen no work!”

“Come up here and get another,” said Mr. Lee.

“Here,” said one of this friends. “I’m done. Use mine.”

Anderson, his back to the loudmouths, wished fervently for the end of the period. He was picking up a bad vibe and couldn’t wait for this homeroom to be over. That’s when the ballpoint pen hit him in the back of the head. It didn’t hurt, but it made a loud cracking sound that caused everyone in the room to look away from their index cards and at him.

“Holy, I’m sorry!” yelled the guy in the back row. “Didn’t mean to get you!” He walked up the aisle to pick the pen up off the floor and return it to Mr. Lee. On his way to the front, he kicked one of the legs on Anderson’s chair. “Sheesh, sorry again.” He returned the pen to the lending can on Mr. Lee’s table and turned back. As he returned up the aisle, Anderson pretended to be absorbed in his index card, and when his chair leg received another kick, he stuck his foot out into the aisle and gave it a little left, hooking the jock’s other foot as he was stepping forward. The jock lost his balance, stumbled forward, but regained his footing before he could hit the floor.

“Sorry,” said Anderson. “I didn’t see you there and I was getting up to turn in my card.”

“Oh, you wanna go?” asked the guy. His friends began to whisper encouragements to him.

“Gentlemen!” Mr. Lee said. “You will not continue this behavior! Kaneshiro, let me see you after class!”

“What? Why? He tripped me! I didn’t do anything to—“

“I said see me after class. Enough.”

Anderson thought it interesting that the protest ended right there, and that Kaneshiro shut up after just that initial complaint. A confrontation like this usually didn’t shake him, but when he’d gotten out of bed that morning, he hadn’t expected that trouble would find him so quickly. He’d hoped for a fresh start at a new school where nobody knew his past. Now, he shook slightly on the inside, wondering what he’d said or done to invite this unsavory interaction. Was this the way all new students were welcomed on the first day of school at J. Madden, or was this a special greeting just for him?

The remainder of the homeroom period was uneventful; the class, led by Mr. Lee, discussed its plans for the upcoming year, making suggestions for homecoming, for a class service project, and for some kind of social. His new classmates kept their contributions mostly positive, and with the exception of the ridiculous, overly loud laughter from the guys in the back row, the obvious jocks, it was a pleasant discussion. The surfer dudes, too cool for the front of the room, were at least earnest, with dumb-but-harmless senses of humor. They’d crack a dumb joke, laugh like crazy at themselves, and be joined by the rest of the class, which laughed at them laughing at themselves much more than at the dudes. The hip-hop baggy-pants guys kept their mouths shut except when prompted by the teacher, when they would mumble one-syllable responses nobody else could hear. Mr. Lee had no problem understanding; perhaps he was fluent in hip-hop mumble. The too-much-makeup girls participated eagerly in the discussion, but it seemed to Anderson that every contribution they made was merely to draw attention to themselves, a quality Anderson perhaps hated more than the too-loud laughter.

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Locale: Grace’s Inn and Starbucks Kapalama
Word count, this selection: 2125.
Cumulative word count: 3869.
Words left: 46,131.
Tunage: Pain of Salvation, Be and Frost, Milliontown.
Consumables: 1 meatloaf plate lunch, 1 grande nonfat latte, 1 bottle of water
Spirits: Weary, but encouraged.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 7:53 pm and is filed under The 2006 Novel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.