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Warnings: if you're uncomfortable with excessive cussing (or romantic situations later on), here's your warning. otherwise, please enjoy. :)
It's about time I graduated from this shithole.
Man.
I open my locker.
I’m three months away from getting out of James Ty Central High School, and I’m starting to count A’s because I’m .057th of a point away from being valedictorian. Point o-five-seventh of a point. Since when does that number exist?
All right, it’s possible I’m ghosting over a few technicalities here. To be blunt about it, it wouldn’t in my world. I should have a perfect 4.175 (bless you, AP classes) and be tied with the guy who is the current valedictorian. To be honest about it, at this juncture in the time space continuum, I’d settle for a tie over having to scrape and study and outright bitch about my grades every waking second — or hey, hey, did the teacher just mention more extra credit?! Because I’ve wanted to be valedictorian more than I’ve wanted to breathe for the past four years, ever since my father told my impressionable self that it was the best thing to be in a high school career; he likes to label school as a ‘career’ (in that case, what a shitty job that we’re all pretty under-qualified for). He thinks being valedictorian is “the scholarship credit card to your number one.” Yeah, he also likes business metaphors. “A guaranteed Golden Ticket to get you into any college you want to go to, Rudy.” And Roald Dahl.
Just a little too much.
Newsflash, dad, I’m not fucking Charlie Bucket here. Though I kind of like ‘Bucket’ better than ‘Bahar.’ Sounds like Babar, king of the elephants. Besides, I can’t put V-A-L-E-D-I-C-T-O-R-I-A-N on my college applications because they’re already filled out and gone, and we won’t know who comes out on top until the very last week of school. Way after I get rejected from every corner of the country. I’m just waiting. Impatiently. Destructively, too, if I get the wrong whiff of Mr. Meka Deepak, current vale-dick-torian.
So I’m pretty much only in this position because of my father. I’ve grown to realize that being number one in the class isn’t everything, and I’ll be okay without the title, and yadda, yadda, blah, blah, feed the ego, lift up the dead confidence. But I’m a sucker for his proud smile and the way he cuffs my shoulder when I get a good grade. Sure, that’s it. And I stomach listening to him about things like this (the future, go figure) because he should know. He’s a Berkley Alum, and he got where he is — that would be a Blackberry-toting, I-have-million-dollar-settlement-cases-every-other-week, I-am-one-of-the-best-damn-lawyers-in-this-city attorney — by being valedictorian of his class, back in the yee-haw countryside of Pennsylvania. He was in a class of thirty-seven. Big accomplishment. Try a class of five-hundred-fifty-nine.
It might go without saying that I’m a big, fat nerd. Which I blame on my father. And an only-child in a single-parent home. Which I blame on myself, most of the time. Personally, I think the former is less awkward to admit in a social scene, just because people accept you being a nerd without much of an uproar, but always seem to have a problem with the ‘trauma’ of living with only one parent. Boo-fucking-hoo. Hey, I think Magic the Gathering tournaments are pretty traumatic, too, but you don’t see me bawling my eyes out over whether or not to tap my Mana.
…Pretend like I didn’t say that last part.
Besides, my dad’s a great guy, when he’s not stressed by an important case. Nothing the Bahar household can’t take. I get by. We get by. I guess my mom gets by too, wherever she is.
The very buried-in-all-that-shit point is I’m proud to be a nerd. Card-carrying member since 1988. It’s the best lifestyle. How else can you get away with wearing whatever you damn well please, saying what you want and obsessing over awesome video games without shame? People just chalk it up to you being weird and get on with their lives. Sometimes they ignore you too, but since when is some little shit (who you don’t care about in the first place) not talking to you a punishment? Being sociable and popular must take a lot of time out of the day because I don’t ever see the quarterback of the football team playing Mario Kart on DS, which, I might add, is a pretty sick game.
Watching my grades and studying take out a lot of video game time, too, but that’s what summer’s for. And summer never lets me down.
With the exception of that one year when my dad shipped me off to a camp for six weeks and claimed it’d be good for my health and budding social life. His words.
I have three friends and I eat pretty much anything fried. Lot of good camp did, dad, thanks for nothing.
"Rudy!"
I look down the main hallway of school and break out into a contagious smile when I see Delilah hurrying toward me. She’s my best friend — since the womb, practically — and fellow nerd. Or so I try to tell myself because, from what I can tell, she’s hot, and there must be something, anything weird about her to bring her down to my level. Quite possibly her obsession with Tinker Toys and Beast from X-men. She has a plastic, kid’s book bag with him all over the place on it. It’s pretty cool; boys think so at least.
She’s had it since she was ten. It barely even slips over both her shoulders anymore. She has to stand at just the right angle, and she can’t fit her three-hundred-page Biology book in it. What a sacrifice.
It’s amazing it’s still in one piece, even, but I’m almost positive she takes it home every night and cleans it with a sacred rag, worships it at some dark, satanic alter; I wouldn’t put it above her.
“Hey, Dee.” I adjust the black baseball cap on my head. A habit. No hats are allowed during school hours, so I always break it out of my locker at the end of the day. Oh yeah, sweet rebellion. Fits like a glove, mostly because I’ve worn it in just right around the edges.
Namely, my Dumbo ears. Too bad I can't fly.
“What’s up?”
“Not much. But you’re gonna love me. I just went and asked Mr. Santos if he’d graded our Calc tests.”
Grades? “Hi, have you met me?”
She grins around her words, “We both got A’s.”
“Good A’s or—” I teeter-totter my hand, “—bullshit A’s?”
“Phenomenal A’s. I guess all that studying this weekend re—”
“Yes!” I clench fists in front of me and do my patented, slow-motion, touchdown dance — the one good thing I took away from my stint in the junior football league, ten years ago. “Only a few more tests and I’ll kick his pansy ass!”
“Rudy, chill. You’re going crazy here.”
“Crazy? I’ll tell you who’ll be crazy. Meka. In a few days, he’ll be crying cuz he’ll no longer be numero uno.”
“Yeah, yeah… If you don’t stop running your mouth and hurry up, I’m gonna leave without you.”
I nod. Not the first time she’s threatened me like that. I’ll deal with it. Besides, we only live ten minutes from school, and I could, in a perfect world, walk home. But Delilah, unlike most nerds, has a nice car (courtesy of her well-to-do, psychologist mother), and her house is two down from mine. Global Warming can suck it.
It’s been raining a lot lately, anyway, and as much as the drowned rat look works for me, I’d rather not come strolling into the house, only to throw my coat off and say hello to a table full of my father’s Dressed to the Nines colleagues for the fifth time since this semester began. All staring at me and wondering if I’m a). a soggy Rudy Bahar or 2). one of the hobos by the train tracks that got loose again.
My dad says, in that fatherly way, that he’d rather not have me running around all wet because I’ll get sick. More importantly, and read between the lines, he doesn’t want me to embarrass him. I just wish he understood that sentiment when I told him to stop showing off my baby pictures to said Dressed to the Nines colleagues, and yakking out impressive stats that I really don’t live up to. Especially when the pictures are of me playing naked in the sandbox that still sits old and clumpy behind our house. I’d prefer not having people connect my eighteen-year-old face to some ugly, naked, Persian kid, who is just as good at reciting the technical names of plants as he was learning how to poop in the Big Boy Toilet.
“Besides, Meka's a brain. He’s like a machine. He doesn’t study half as much as you do, and he’s still number one,” Delilah’s voice cuts in. I glance over at her in time to catch the residue of a smirk.
Way to pad the friendship, Dee.
She continues, “Numero uno, chico. Hate to break it to you, but this whole thing is getting out of hand. I love you, but you don’t need to be valedictorian to get into a good school. You’re going to do fine, anyway. Chill for a while. Let this last semester be your fun semester.”
“Fun semester?”
“I heard about a few school functions. Like the chess tournament or the Mayfest or we could try a tennis match this year. I know the whole football game fiasco last semester wasn’t so great.”
“Thanks for being so considerate. However no. I’m not about to give in on this. I’ve used up four years trying to be number one, and I think it’d be fuckin’ sick to beat Meka when he’s so sure he’s gonna win.” I watch Delilah take a few steps to her locker — five down from mine, a tolerable distance between friends.
“We can talk more about it later. I really want to go to that tournament, if nothing else.” Delilah scrolls through the lock on her locker, popping it open and fishing out the small paperbacks she’s rented from the library.
Another thing about her dorkiness (aside from her abnormal love of Beast and watching chess jocks sweat over their castles): she loves bad sci-fi books, though she won’t admit it to just anyone. A few fiancés might even break off a wedding or two when they find out. What a shame.
“Chess is boring.”
She rolls her eyes and stuffs a notepad or two into her backpack, gives me a twenty-second dose of the Silent Treatment while she pulls her Biology book — the sacrifice — out, setting it in the crook of her arm.
“But I’ll go if you want,” I amend myself.
That wins her over before the words are even untangled from my mouth.
Delilah shuts her locker with a firm hand, swinging her big black eyes my way, “I knew I kept you around for something.”
“Aside from the side-splitting laugh factor?”
“Hurry up, little boy. Grab your stuff and let’s get outta here.”
“Five minutes. I have to find that project slip for Mr. Feldmer’s Lit poster.”
“Five minutes. I’m counting.” She shifts her Biology book into her other arm, bouncing on her heels. “If you’re not out in the parking lot by then, walk home.” She’s lying. “And it looks like rain today, too!”
“Shut up.”
I stifle a toothy grin when she gawkily resituates the book bag on her back and turns to walk toward the front doors of school, looking goofy but so reassuring. Most days I wish she was my sister.
With a tilt of my hat, I shift back to my locker and make an effort to find the tiny paper Mr. Feldmer handed out a few days ago that outlines our allegory project. I think I can remember maybe…one of the bullets, so it’s either brace myself and face the trash dump of a locker I lay claim to (#171, prime pickings) or—
No, no, that’s pretty much the only option. Other than walking all the way back to Feldmer’s classroom to ask him for another one, but I’m too lazy for that.
It takes a few minutes — less that five, though — and I’m finally wrestling it out from between two of my binders; it doesn’t survive the trip without a huge tear along the corner, but it’s still legible. Good enough.
I figure, on the whole, this isn’t a bad way to end a Monday. Another A to add to the stack, a relatively incident-free five times up and down the stairs, actually finding something in my locker for once and a pal to chauffeur me home (something like that). Not to mention getting three more cookies than I‘m technically allowed in the cafeteria.
It does pay to flirt with the lunch ladies.
Even if you don‘t swing that way.
Hell, all things considered, I think I hit the jackpot here.
It’s maybe a little too sad that I’m being serious.
Overall, not a bad Monday at all.
But maybe I’ve spoken too soon because the second I wander a few steps up the hallway and throw hellos at the five or so people who bother to know my face, I see Meka strolling my way, his cult zombies following close around him and talking their yaps off. Damn.
Our run-ins are never that hilarious, but I always try to act the bigger person and lighten him up. The last time I did that, though, he knocked my books out of my hand and walked away. All for telling him a kickass knock-knock joke.
For such a smart guy, he’s pretty immature. But, on the upside, it pleases me to assume he was just being a douche because he didn’t get the punch line.
It pleases me even more to assume he went home afterward and cried into his pillow all night.
Meka Deepak.
Delilah wasn’t kidding when she said that he’s a brain who doesn’t study half as much as I do. But I take great pains not to think about that because it never fails to make me feel like a deadbeat. He’s one of those guys who walks around bookless and backpack-less, acting high and mighty while the rest of us nerds pile our books into our hands because there’s no more room in our bags. While we’re timing our library bathroom breaks during studying for finals, he’s picking his fingernails and dicking around.
In two words, I'm jealous. I’ll admit it.
But I control myself. Mostly.
And this time, maybe the good Monday won’t give out on me from the floor up. I think Meka might just be in my way for the moment because he never seems to think he has to be the one to move first; you can’t ever tell if he’s gunning for you or just being himself. He’ll walk and walk and shoot you a hard scowl like you’re supposed to understand his importance in life, and an unacceptable number of people deem themselves lesser enough to move to the side. Or push up so close to the wall that they think they’re hiding.
I don’t.
Like he could beat me up in a fight, anyway.
But I’m wrong that he’s just passing by.
He saunters right up to my personal space, standing over me and glaring down his nose. Damn big nose it is. I settle the itch in my palms to tell him I can see a shitload of boogers. Even though I really can’t.
And so he’s a good foot taller than I am, a bitch because instead of looking down at him with indignation, I have to look up at him with indignation, which contributes a lot less to the 'fuck you' face that I‘ve perfected over the years of building myself up in my head, only to be walked on in the real world.
The height difference is also solely responsible for the fact that I know I can’t land the perfect punch on him. I’d probably knock his Adam’s Apple into his brain if I tried to start something.
Although, not a bad alternative. Maybe he’d sound like a girl for the rest of his life. If I hit him at the right angle.
“What do you want, Deepak?" It’s an unspoken rule between the two of us that we never use each other’s first names. Too personal. By now, at this juncture in our acquaintance, both Meka and Rudy would probably be synonymous with something like “I love you. I’ll die without you. Never leave me, you fathead!” In so few words. But I drawl out a “you’re in my way” instead.
The dull ‘move’ command I expect to hear is covered by a wringing of his hands in front of his chest. And I want to say something smartass, but then he shuffles his palms together, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth repeatedly, so fast that I don’t really have a good pause to even understand what’s going on, much less articulate my stupidity.
Is he trying to start a fire? A dumb question.
No.
Suddenly, he slaps those warmed hands against my cheeks and squashes my face in. Hard. Hot nastiness on my face!
“Chura chaja tam o tam!”
His eyes lighting into mine and the pressure of his hands on my skin still me for the second it takes him to spout off his gibberish and then let go of me, with arms swung out wide, like he’s backing up to see if something happens.
When nothing in my immediate future changes, I cock one of my eyebrows (I can do that. Yeah, it’s sexy.) and look at him skeptically. But I can’t keep the composure long enough, busting out laughing, shaking my head in the direction of his goons. What a buncha schmucks.
What the hell was that?
I mean, what, what, what the hell did he do?
“What’d you—do—Deepak?” I wheeze out between voiceless, entirely satisfying howls.
Meka just stares at me. He’s apparently too cool for laughter. (As a side note, I wonder if he was born with that stick up his ass or if someone shoved it up there for him, good and tight.)
“I just cursed you.” He reaches forward to pluck a thread of my hair out from underneath my hat.
That sobers me up, but his words are lagging behind; they don’t register at all. “Hey, pal!” What did he just say? “Wait, what? Explain to me what you did?”
His mouth thins into a nonplussed line, and he shoulders past me, his friends following.
And, for the first time in the last minute, I swallow my confusion and bug my eyes open enough to notice they’re smiling. The whole lot of them, smiling under their breaths, into the sentences that they start back up automatically, coming off pause, the show over.
He’s brushed me off before, but this is the only one that is getting under my skin. What—
Did he say he cursed me?
...Can you even do that?
To anyone who has read my other stories and is more or less pissed that I started yet another one (all the...one of you, if there are any of you at all, haha): I am definitely going to keep updating them. This is just something I had fun starting and thought would lighten up a lot of my more angsty stuff. Speaking of which, Jeeves’ll be updated relatively soon. No news on GnaS.