long and the sockets that my eyes sit in are off-kilter sizewise, as if I were meant to have a larger eye on the left. My hair might be thick but it’s full of dandruff like a snowstorm. (Me and Michael used to have dandruff battles, actually, ruffling our heads violently in a sunbeam to see who had more glittering scalp waste.) My lips are drawn back and ghoulish. My earlobes are huge. When I get enough money for plastic surgery, I’m going to start with—
“Goood morning,” Dad says, ushering himself into the bathroom.
“Uh, hey,” I say, breaking my stare with the mirror, turning the water on so it looks like I was washing my face. Dad is completely naked, as usual before 10.00 a.m, except for his black socks. “Um, could I, um, get a little privacy in here?”
“Son, you’re catching me midstream,” Dad says.
“Yeah, I can hear that.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. Pretend we’re in the army. No other heads available. Ten-hut.”
“Dad, you were never in the army.” I turn toward him, then regret it because his naked butt looks weird. It always looks like it’s pressed up against a sheet of glass.
“How’re my two boys in there?” Mom asks from outside in a sing-song voice. “I’ve got to take a sho-wer!”
“Ho pippity pum pum!” Dad says, shaking his penis—
“Jesus, what is wrong with you people?!”
“Jeremy?”
“Can you finish off in the second bathroom? Please?!” I plant my hands to either side of the sink and close my eyes.
“Jeremy?” Mom asks, cracking the door. Then, hissing at Dad: “Put a towel on!”
“It’s not like he’s a girl,” Dad retorts. “We never had a girl.” I hear a soft ruffle as he grabs a towel and gets it around his wide body. Mom comes in and puts a hand on me. “What’s wrong, Jeremy?”
“Nothing.” I open my eyes and look at the mirror image of me and Mom, with her face slightly wrinkled before she gets the make-up in the creases, and Dad on the right, a naked fat face with a naked fat body, hands securing his towel like a happy Buddha. We look like an example of two people who shouldn’t breed and what their offspring would be.
“Humuckuggg…” I say. Then I stomp out of the bathroom, put on clothes, grab a fresh Humiliation Sheet and walk to school.
I almost forgot about the walking to school. I live very close to Middle Borough—there’s just one big field between it and my house, and a gravel driveway that no one minds if I walk across, and then seven trees and a pile of garbage and I’m there—so I walk.
It’s weird to walk to school in Metuchen. Nobody walks to school. If you’re a junior or a senior, you should absolutely have your own car and drive to school every day, and it had better be a shiny car with a multiple CD changer. If you’re a sophomore and you’re Cool then you should ride with one of the aforementioned juniors or seniors (it helps to have an older sibling—that’s like an automatic Cool Person); if you’re a dorky, weird or impaired sophomore, you ride with your parents. If you’re a freshman, you’re forgiven for riding with your parents, but it’s your job to find peers who will give you rides when you hit sophomore status. If you’re poor, you ride the bus.
I walk, though, this morning like every morning, and once I get inside, Christine is at her usual spot at the front of math. I give her a look as I pass by; in fact I stare openly at her, apologetic, terrified, but she doesn’t notice. I move to my seat.
Guess who Jenna is talking about today: “Then Elizabeth was like, ‘But I don’t know how to do it!’ And the guy was like, ‘all you do is take this resin and this chopstick—’”
“Be quiet,” I say. “Everybody is sick of hearing about ‘Elizabeth’.” Only I don’t say that. Instead, I sit silently and look at Christine all period.
“There he goes again,” Jenna says halfway through; I try not to notice.
“What?” Anne asks.
“The stalker, look at him,” she nods her head at me the smallest bit.
“Oh, yeah.” Anne turns around as if she’s trying to pop the joints in her back. She looks at Jenna; Jenna gives a smiling look back; Anne looks slightly sad and pleading for me; Jenna responds with a withering look. I didn’t realise girls could communicate like this, with their eyes, like evil monkeys.
“Don’t say anything, he’ll put it on one of his sheets,” Jenna says.
Jenna knows about the Humiliation Sheets?
Fuck. The pit that forms in my stomach stretches down quickly to suck/tear at my bladder. If Jenna knows about the Humiliation Sheets, thirty other people do too. Cool People are like termites: for every one you see, there are thousands back at the hive with the same basic nervous system and world view. I stare forward like I usually do in times of crisis, not daring to note this particular offence on my sheet. Not yet.
“What’s the deal?” Michael asks as I leave math. “You OK?” Michael’s sitting cross-legged in the hall; I’m looking for a place to update my sheet.
“Yeah.” I stoop down. I try to slap his hand but miss.
“Redo,” he smiles. We connect.
“All right. Take a seat.”
“Why? I hate sitting on the floor.”
“You should.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
I do.
“Anything new happen with Christine?” Michael prods.
“Nope. Today’s been really crappy.”
“Well it’s about to get good.” Michael absently picks at his headphone cord. “Take a look.”
We are in the absolutely choicest position for spying girls’ knees and calves in the hall. I figure that’s what Michael plans to do, but then, across the way, a particularly fine parade of knees and calves emerges. They belong to Katrina, Stephanie and Chloe—the Hottest Girls in School.
Michael is admirably calm as the three of them slink out of whatever class they were in (human sexuality, I think—seriously) in triangle formation with Katrina at the lead. I’m the one with the motor control problem, sitting like a tormented puppet, my wrist twitching and my neck grinding against itself as the legs pass by. My heart tightens and the whole lower half of my body aches in a sudden, silly way that reminds me of last night on the Internet.
“Guh…”
It’s unfair that I should have to go to school with Katrina, Stephanie and Chloe. They cover all the bases of things that you might possibly be attracted to if you think girls are attractive in the slightest bit. Katrina is blonde; Stephanie is brunette and Chloe is a redhead (dyed). Katrina wears bright, preppy stuff; Stephanie wears Goth things with collars; Chloe does raver clothes. All their outfits are tight and imaginative, as in: it’s easy to imagine them not being there. The Hottest Girls in School came to Middle Borough together in my grade and have been inseparable ever since, a force to be reckoned with, discussed, analysed and penetrated by the upper echelon of Middle Borough men.
They do not react to Michael or myself in any way as they pass.
Then again, we are on the floor.