I was down the hallway to my bedroom door and I could hear my brother in the background as I locked it, making the kind of soothing sounds people make to calm a fidgeting horse. I just slipped out of my clothes and into bed and closed my eyes really tight, making that picture come back, the shock of blond hair flying into the air and Kimberly’s arms pushing Garrett away. She looked just awesome and I’d give just about anything to be Garrett for just that minute, or better yet, the minute before I burst in, as long as I didn’t have to stay Garrett forever. The last thing I want to be is Dad’s favorite sports star.
So to put it mildly, I don’t have the kind of practice Garrett does at these sorts of things, and when I pick up the phone I’m kind of stuttering so that Brit has to say, “Seth? Is that you?”
“Yah, no nah,” is what I actually spit out.
“Seth?
Finally I manage to say yeah.
“Oh great. Hey, the reason I’m calling your house is that I don’t have your cell and if you check Facebook I’ve friended you. Anyway, you know that final group project thing that we have to do for history?”
Brit Leigh’s Facebook friend? After an entire year of trying to get up the nerve. Just like that? As far as a history project, I’m thinking, but blanking.
“Anyway, Ben and Katie and I wanted to know if you’d be in our group?”
Something about this project thing is in the back of my mind. Maybe a handout we got a few weeks ago?
“We’re going to meet at the library tomorrow afternoon at four, you know the branch over by Panera?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, will you?”
“What?” I muttered.
“You know, be in our group…”
“Ha, yah,” I mutter, thinking, what a moron.
“Seth?”
Finally I managed to say, “Yeah, sure, I guess…” and then, before I can stop it from actually being uttered I add, inanely, “but why…”
There was a pause, and she said, “Seth, you’re kidding right?”
I shake my head before I realize that she can’t see me and say “no.” And I’m not kidding.
“Seth, everyone knows you’re like the smartest kid in class. Like when Mr. Hobson asked about that strategy thing during the Battle of Gettysburg and no one knew a thing about it and you finally raised your hand and explained it like you had just spent a week preparing a report on it?”
“Oh, that thing.” Mr. Hobson asked if anyone could give an example of a critical tactical maneuver in the Battle of Gettysburg. There was a long silence. Since I knew a little bit about the Twentieth Maine’s famous bayonet charge on Little Round Top I finally raised my hand and blabbered on about it for a while.
A couple summer back my mom had decided it would be good for Garrett and me and her to have one last vacation together before he left for college. Since money is always an issue, she got my Uncle Andy to lend her his lake house in Northern Wisconsin. So it takes us almost two days to drive there, which is pretty awful to contemplate in itself, and then we’re stuck in this little house without any Internet connection and a TV that gets three stations.
Uncle Andy has a job with some big corporation in Minneapolis, but his hobby is the Civil War. So I’m stuck up in the middle of nowhere and he’s got about five-hundred books, all on the Civil War. With nothing better to do I read though a couple of them. And what’s sad is that I was actually getting interested, especially in the whole battle strategy thing. I mean, it’s not all that different than the strategies I use in Starfare. So I had read a couple accounts of the Twentieth Maine’s wheeled bayonet charge, which is one of the more famous battle maneuvers in the whole war. That’s why I could answer Mr. Hobson’s question. I got so into it that I went up to the board and drew a diagram, which I can scarcely bear to think about, it’s so embarrassing.
So just like that I’m in the Brit Leigh History Group. I say this out loud about ten times. Like pinching yourself to see if you’re in a dream. All because Mom tortured me with that vacation to Uncle Andy’s lake house. The world works in weird ways.
I immediately get on Facebook and sure enough, there’s a message from Brit. Of course, now I have to worry about what Brit saw. I glance through my friends list and realize that it’s not as bad as I thought. Not all geeky gamer guys. There’s a couple of girls who used to play Magic with us at the local card shop. Becca, who’s my friend Eric’s girlfriend. And some of Becca’s friends. And a bunch of girls from school I don’t know that well who probably friended the entire class. And Mercedes, this girl from middle school who told me she was not named after the car. We had this lame unit on ballroom dancing in eighth grade and we sort of became regular partners. I’m not even sure how it happened. After the unit was over she was always sending me dumb little emails and asking if I was going to the football game that night or the mall over the weekend or if I wanted to get together to study. Which at the time was no, no, no because I wasn’t wasting prime gaming time at football games or hanging around the mall and I never studied. Thinking about it now, I just sort of shake my head because she was pretty and nice and I was just clueless.
Then I look more closely at the picture I’ve got posted. It’s awful. And that’s what Brit saw. It’s a picture Mom took of me when we were on vacation. I was sitting on the side of the dock, just sort of staring at the little fish that poke around the slimy poles that hold it up and didn’t even know she took it until we got back home. It was near the end of the vacation and my hair was lighter than it usually is. It’s not as though I liked the picture. It’s just that I hate having my picture taken and that was the only one I could find.
People always say I take after Mom, mostly because my hair is light and wavy like hers, while Garrett has my father’s straight, dark hair. I also got my mom’s height gene, because last time we stood next to each other I was about a half-foot shorter than Garrett, although Mom tells me that all the boys on her side of the family were late bloomers. Come to think of it, my pants aren’t dragging on the ground like they used to, so maybe I am still growing. Anyway, Garrett’s no giant himself. Dad says the only reason he wasn’t recruited by any of the big D1 basketball schools was because he’s not even six foot, although that’s what the high school programs said.
At least it’s an interesting picture, the way the sun was playing off the water behind me. Maybe, I thought, someone would like the way I looked, like I was contemplating the meaning of life or quantum mechanics. Like I was one of those brooding, sensitive boys who get the girls in bad teen movies, when everyone knows in real life they don’t. Anyway, I was probably thinking about some Starfare battle of the past, trying to figure out a more efficient way to harvest lifesource points.
6.
Mom has this big guilt trip over taking her current boyfriend Martin to a week at this yoga or meditation or some other drink-the-Kool-Aid institute in California. She gets all wound up about me staying alone and eating sugary cereal and fast food, but I tell her after all these years of taking care of us, she deserves it. After managing to avoid a teary goodbye scene with them I’m getting really comfortable over at Dad’s. I’m finishing up my third Starfare win in a row when I glance at the computer clock and realize I’m going to be late to Brit’s history group. Especially since I have no choice but to bike. I’m still gasping as I ditch my bike
