nods silently.
We’re standing in front of the door to Mr. Golden’s classroom.
“Well, here we are,” I say feebly.
“Try to contain your excitement,” he says, smiling as he pushes open the door.
The room we walk into looks more like a lounge than a classroom. Mr. Golden likes to rescue and reupholster couches and bring them in for us to sit on during class discussions. He’s decorated the walls with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Mixed in with the posters of Freud and diagrams of the human brain are old concert posters for The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. He even has a black light he turns on for special occasions. A large green plant that looks like it could swallow me hulks in the corner.
“Looks like we have a newcomer,” Mr. Golden booms. “Take a seat wherever. I’m not into seating charts.”
Zane folds himself into a beanbag chair. He’s so tall, his knees almost hit his chin. The girls who aren’t sneaking looks at him are openly gaping. A little seed of pleasure bursts within me when he looks my way and grins.
Rollins sits on an orange sofa in the corner, doodling in the margin of his textbook. I plop down next to him and pull out my notebook. Mr. Golden may let us sit wherever we want, but he draws heavily from his lectures when writing his exams. I got a C on the last one, so I figure I’d better actually try to follow what Mr. Golden is saying about classical conditioning.
“Who’s that?” Rollins asks under his breath, nodding in Zane’s direction. Rollins doesn’t bother to take notes. He’s got some kind of photographic memory; he remembers not only what he sees, but also what he reads, hears, and even smells. Ask him what was for lunch last Tuesday, and he’ll remember just how nasty the burned meatloaf smelled in the hallways.
“Uh, Zane Huxley,” I whisper back when Mr. Golden pauses to blow his nose. “He’s new. I met him in the nurse’s office. Sliced my knee open pretty good.”
Rollins’s eyes dart down to my leg. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just kneeled on a beer bottle under the bleachers. No. Big. Deal. Anyway, where were you during lunch?”
Rollins pauses before answering. I can tell he knows there’s more to the story, but I don’t want to rehash the conversation I overheard under the bleachers. It’s just too depressing.
He tugs his lip ring. “I was printing off the latest installment of Fear and Loathing in High School. My finest work, if I do say so myself.” Pride creeps into his voice. Rollins makes his own zine, in which he reviews concerts and writes articles about the suckiness that is high school. It’s completely do-it-yourself, literally cut and pasted from Rollins’s journals and drawings.
“Ooooh, can I have one?”
“They’re in my locker. I’ll give you one later.”
Mr. Golden launches back into his lecture. By the end of the period, I’ve covered a whole page with my loopy handwriting.
When the bell rings, Mr. Golden raises his voice. “Remember to read the section on the different theories of motivation tonight. There might be a quiz Monday, just so you know.”
I’m stuffing my notebook back into my backpack when Mr. Golden turns to address me.
“Sylvia, can I speak with you for a moment?”
Rollins pokes me in the back. “See you later.”
When we’re alone, Mr. Golden perches on a sofa and crosses his arms over his chest. I hover in the middle of the room, wondering what he could possibly want with me. I’m pulling an overall B in his class, despite the C I received on the last exam. I would be an utterly unremarkable student if it weren’t for my so-called narcolepsy.
“Sylvia, is everything okay?” he asks, his voice full of concern.
“Yeah,” I say, racking my brain for any reason for him to think things are not okay. I must be sending out some really not okay vibes today. “Why?”
“It’s just that I noticed you got a C on the test last week. The work you turned in prior to that test was of much higher quality. I don’t mean to pry, but is there something wrong? Did you not study for the test?”
If I wanted to, I could probably play the narcolepsy card and say I wasn’t able to concentrate on my studies. I’ve been having such a rough time, I tried my best, really I did . . . but that would be a lie. And there’s something about Mr. Golden that makes me want to be honest with him.
“Sorry, Mr. Golden. Guess I just forgot to study. I’ll try harder.”
He leans forward and lowers his voice. “Listen, Sylvia, if you ever need some extra help, I’d be happy to oblige. Why don’t you come in after school some night?”
I look down and shuffle my feet, trying to think of a polite way to say I don’t really need his help—the problem was that I didn’t open my psychology book for like a month.
“Oh, um. Thanks, Mr. Golden. I’m usually pretty busy after school, though. I’m sure I’ll do better on the next test if I just study a little more.”
Mr. Golden straightens up. “Well, just keep it in mind. I’m here for you, after all.”
I smile and nod before turning to leave. He follows me to the door and closes it behind me with a firm click.
After school, Rollins stands waiting at my locker, holding a stack of xeroxed booklets. “So what did Goldy want?”
“Oh,” I say, waving my hand. “He just wanted to know why I’m such a slacker. I told him I’m naturally lazy. Can I have one?” I gesture to the zines.
He pulls out a copy wrapped in plastic. “I know what a germaphobe you are,” he says teasingly. That’s Rollins’s explanation for why I don’t like to touch things other people have handled—I’m totally OCD.
I unwrap the zine and examine it. On the cover, it says, Fear and Loathing in High School No. 7. There’s a hand-drawn picture of a grotesque dog making its way down a hall lined with lockers, bags of weed and capsules hanging from its drooling jaws—a reference to Jimmy Pine’s arrest, I’m guessing.
“Nice artwork,” I say, admiring the cover.
He does all the drawing and writing in Sharpie, then goes to Copyworld to make dozens of copies. Every couple of months he comes out with a new issue. He sells them for a dollar apiece at the record store where he works, Eternally Vinyl, but more often than not he hands them out for free. Sometimes he rides the bus and sneaks them into people’s bags or pockets.
Looking over the table of contents, I see there’s an article about how the administration had no right to search Jimmy Pine’s locker without a search warrant; a concert review for a local band, Who Killed My Sea Monkeys; and an article about the hypocrisy of the kids in Wise Choices, the student group against substance abuse.
I turn to page five and scan the article entitled “Dumb Choices: City High’s Goody-Goodies Exposed.”
