put in: Monday, Early Winter
hit: PLAY

1. Hiding Low - The Kooks [Naive (single), 2006]
2. Don't You Evah - Spoon [GaGaGaGaGa, 2007]
3. That's Not My Name - The Ting Tings [We Started Nothing, 2008]

“Yes, Nicholas?”

“I was just wondering, sir, how long this experiment has to last for?”

“It needs to run from tomorrow until the start of winter break.”

He smiled at me, which I’m sure was supposed to be a nice gesture, except it wasn’t really all that nice looking.

“Thank you, sir.”

Eighteen days? I thought. God.

My locker was in the coveted spot right in the middle of all the school’s wings and on a top row. Any sophomore would give up anything for that spot when they signed up for lockers on the first day of high school.

I wasn’t “any Sophomore” then and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t just “any Junior”. So having the spot? Worthless. It just made it easier for everyone in the entire school to see me at least once per day and laugh at my t-shirts and shoes.

Like, honestly, why would anyone want to waste their time laughing at someone’s shoes? It’s not that insulting, especially when the shoes aren’t really your favorite ones because you only ever wear your favorite ones on the weekend when you don’t have to go to school.

Actually, to be fair, I only wear my favorite shoes on Saturdays, because Sundays are when you should wear really nasty clothes you don’t even care about. Because Sundays are the worst days. I mean, at least I wouldn’t risk wearing my favorite stuff on a Sunday. I’d probably end up getting run over by a car and then what would I be left with? Blood all over my favorite stuff. Some help that would be with getting friends, yeah?

So I was at my locker after that Monday morning Psychology class, spinning the combination mechanically while I thought over the idea I’d gotten as I had left the classroom.

See, when I had been about to go through the door, because I’m always first out the door since I like to be on time to each and every class, when I heard this guy say to someone else, “You know, your shoes really look nasty, man. I like, honestly. Please just get a new pair or something, because those are pure mange.”

And that was when I figured out what my social experiment would be.

I was going to tell people what I thought. About anything. About everything. It seemed to work for other people, so why shouldn’t it work for me?

And I did think, then, for a split second It shouldn’t work for you because nothing works for you, ever, and you know that every day has felt like a Sunday lately, and that is a perfectly reasonable reason for you to screw it up so big, Nick, that there will be no coming back from this one. This will be the Sophomore Year Talent Show Fiasco all over again, kid, and that would truly suck.

But I pretty much decided to ignore that and go for it even though I am not much of a go-for-it kind of guy. Like in all my life, I do not think I’ve ever “gone for” anything at all.

Except maybe concert tickets, because I like to get ticket number one.

But that really isn’t the point here, I don’t think, since school is not a concert. I mean, yes, I wouldn’t mind if it were, but it just isn’t. Which is sort of lame, actually, because if everyone at school were like people at a concert, I think it would be a lot more bearable. Even if there wasn’t good music or anything. I think it would still be a good idea.

I made sure to write this idea down on my forearm, which is where I write down important ideas when I don’t actually have some paper, so that I would remember to put it in that suggestion box they have in the library.

Because that was honestly pretty genius of me to come up with.

School is mostly always the same for me, which is to say that every class is just like the last one, except the teacher says something different to you in each one. And there are usually different people in the class, but even if they are technically different they all act the same, so it doesn’t really make a difference.

Like, I’m sure the Activists at school would, like, shoot me for saying they don’t make a difference, but when it all comes down to it, the Activists are just like the Yearbooks and the Prom Queens and the Rugby Players. I think that maybe the only way you can tell them apart is by how they dress, so if you were blind, you wouldn’t even know. If I walked through school with my eyes closed, nothing would have any variety at all.

So I sat down in my English class, which is about ten times better than Psychology, and pulled out my homework from the night before. The girl who sits next to me, whose name is Miranda, smacked her gum a few times before putting it under the desk, which she does every day.

Which may seem gross when you hear it, but it only gets worse when you see it and when you see her take it back at the end of the period it is basically puke-worthy and I always do try to make faces at her like “could you please stop doing that?” but she never looks at me, so it’s sort of a pointless thing to do. I do it anyways, though, because she has to look this way sometime and it will hopefully be when I’m making at a face at her.

Like, I just want to ask her how she knows she isn’t putting someone else’s gum in her mouth instead of her own? I mean, what if she was? If grammar could be applied to actions, I think that would be pretty much grammatically incorrect. Like if you ever wrote a sentence like that, I don’t know if you would really be fit to speak.

I pretty much think that you wouldn’t be, but I guess it’s not ever really up to me. Even though I do get one-hundred percent on every grammar assignment and I know that Miranda doesn’t.

Like, I think she shoved her paper off the desk one time and I picked it up for her and I happened to accidentally see the grade and that was when I figured out that in English we could get negative points, which I had thought until then wasn’t actually allowed.

So anyway, I sat down and had taken out my homework and I set it on my desk and I put my book off to one side and then Miranda looked at me and said something.

“Um, excuse me?” I said, since I had missed it the first time.

“I said, is that, like, a shirt from that huge concert last night? That, like, the entire school went to?” She looked at me, her mouth a little open so I could see the practically down her throat.

“If you mean the one with Tokyo Police Club as an opener, then yes.” I was about to turn and look up front again, but she kept talking.

“Who are they? I didn’t know concerts like that had openers.”

“Ah, they do. I usually only ever go for openers.”

“Hey!” Someone said from my other side. “You went to that Christmas concert? Man, I thought you were an atheist, Mikey!”

“Uh?” I turned to look at the guy who sites to my right.

“Oh, sorry man. Sorry, yeah, you’re not Mikey, huh? Yeah, sorry.”

Usually stuff like that doesn’t happen to me, but when it does, it’s always a little weird and usually around the time of big holiday concerts that all the big bands are playing at and there are always really good openers. So I save up for them all year so I can afford a few of them at general admission plus a few t-shirts.

And somehow, that’s how people notice me like it’s a Christmas present or something that I should be happy about.

And the weird thing is that I’m almost always called Mikey and there must be something like ten Mikeys in the school who are atheists, or something. I don’t know what that’s all about, like if it’s some sort of Order of the Mikeys or what, but it’s a little weird and I’m not a fan of the name Mikey, so I don’t really like being called Mikey. I never thought that Nick was such a hard name to remember until I got out of elementary school.

I mean, I wasn’t aware that it was such an exotic name where I happen to live.

Especially when I am one of seventeen Nicks in just my school, not to mention the district.

So whatever that’s all about, it completely escapes me.

I think that a lot of people at school see me as the sort of kid who would still take the bus to and from school. They’re wrong, but I bet that’s what they think. I actually have a fairly nice car that I got the summer after Sophomore year for my birthday and it has a really nice stereo and I have this gigantic CD holder in there that takes up maybe the entire shotgun seat because I just have a mix for maybe every day of the week for each season and all that because I really do like doing mixes in my free time. And since I’m efficient with homework, unlike the other ninety-nine point nine percent of the student body, I usually have a lot of free time.

Which some people would say makes me a loser, but I think I’m getting by a little better than most people when it comes to having fun.

Like, I’d like to see them trying to cope with three concerts in one week and still managing to have a four-point-oh. If I was the betting sort, or the sort to talk to people at my school, I would maybe put this challenge out in the open.

But since I’m not, I just put on the Monday Mix for Early Winter because it was Monday December the third and there’s a lot of good stuff one Monday Mixes since they come right after Sundays and that’s really when I need a boost.

I went to bed that night after listening to a full album, which is really what calms me down, but I didn’t fall asleep right away. I thought about what I was going to do the next day.

If someone asked me about my concert tee the next day, I was going have to say more than a few words about openers to them. I was going to have to say “what do you mean, you don’t know Neutral Milk Hotel? Are you stupid?” and I was going to get back what I shelled out.

I think that night was when my fears really set in about that, because I just had this feeling that if I ever commented on someone’s mangy t-shirt of a crappy band (which is not to say that people at my school actually wear band t-shirts, except for me, because they don’t) then I was pretty sure I’d get punched. Or laughed at. But probably mostly punched.

I dreamed that I was under strobe lights, and everyone’s faces were red and green and blue and yellow and my heart was beating really fast and then someone hit me in the back of the head.

My eyes were wide open and the alarm clock was blaring and I was sweating and I had woken up to the start of something that was going to do me in. And if it didn’t do me in then it was sure to change my life forever.

Honest, the songs make it better. So find them if you can. And trust me, if you look, you can.

2008 Nano Novel, one basic edit.

Falcon