I go down. Karl goes down. The kid behind us—I don’t know his name, but I think he actually is on the track team—goes down. The three people behind them have to stop so short that one of them loses her balance … and she goes down. It’s like a snowstorm-induced, twenty-car pileup on I-35. There are groans, cuss words (mostly at me), and at least one knee scraped badly enough to be bleeding.
The gym teachers, who were off in a corner talking about whatever gym teachers talk about—I’ll go out on a limb here and guess sports, or, I don’t know, maybe sadomasochism—don’t notice at first. When they do, they come running like a herd of buffalo.
I look up just in time to see Eliana’s butt disappear into the door that leads to the girls’ locker room. Getting blown off in film class was kind of hard, but knowing she witnessed this cluster, and probably knowing my looking at her was the reason, is a whole new level of embarrassment. Worst of all, I couldn’t help but notice that the butt retreating through the door was kind of cute.
Why am I thinking about this girl so much?
Curse you, Yia Yia!!!
Eliana
I am such a turd. Like, the world’s largest, stinkiest turd that comes at the worst time, when you’re in a school bathroom and you think you’re by yourself, but then a group of girls comes in and you’re the only one behind closed doors, so when you flush and exit the stall, they know it was you that stunk up the place.
That’s the kind of turd I am.
The boy from my film class fell on his butt, and I didn’t even stop to see how he was. I ran and left him in a pile of jocks and gym clothes. What could I have done, though? It wasn’t my fault he fell. Who am I, Carrie? Oh my god. What if I have telekinesis?
If only.
He was probably just noticing I forgot to shave my legs. Or what a clompy runner I am. I hope he wasn’t checking out the lack of support this bra gives me during gym class. But who wants to change their bra for gym class? That would require actually getting naked in a room full of other people. I’m still grateful the school phased out showering after gym class to allow for more time in the day for actual education.
He couldn’t have been looking at me because he likes me. I mean, he doesn’t even know me. What could he see in me? Aside from how hot I look in green polyester. Even if he did like me, which I highly doubt, I’m sure he thinks I’m a complete fartblossom for running and then, you know, running.
I’m not a girl who makes people trip and fall. Most people tend not to know I exist, which is generally how I like it. I am, however, a girl who can’t help but notice pairs of other teenagers grinding against each other in the hallways. I try not to stare, but I doubt they’d notice if I did. How is it a person can be so intimate with another person in front of everyone? How is it that they have so much confidence that they not only find their ways into relationships but put themselves on display? And how is it that they have any freaking idea what to do in those situations?
I watch movies. Lots of movies. I have seen people kiss. I have seen people get naked. I have seen people do … other things. But when it comes to real sexy stuff … not so much. I have kissed a boy. One time. It was at this girl Mara Sidell’s bat mitzvah, during the snowball dance. This is the dance for which I both shivered in anticipation and sweated profusely with dread. At the start of the song, kids paired off with a partner and glided around the floor until the DJ called, “Snowball!” That was when you were supposed to kiss your partner. My partner at the time was Adam Schulman, a boy who stood one inch shorter than my already not-very-tall height. He had braces, and our kiss was more like a scraping of metal against enamel. After the kiss, the goal was to switch partners until the DJ called “Snowball” again, and the magic continued. Somehow, there wasn’t a spare partner for me after the initial snowball, although admittedly I didn’t search that hard. Envision the awkwardness of scanning a dance floor for your next lip-crushing victim. Instead, I bolted back to my designated table and played a game on my phone. That is until Adam approached me several songs later and asked if I wanted to see the sculpture in the banquet hall foyer. He pronounced it “foy-yay,” which I thought was wrong at the time but didn’t say anything. It didn’t occur to me that this “foy-yay” visit was a ruse for him to bump his braces into me again. We made out in a corner of the golf club’s lobby until I was sufficiently grossed out and excused myself to pee. I believe my exact exit words were “I have to pee.” I was never attracted to Adam Schulman, and I have no idea why he was the boy who I kissed in the foyer. I suppose because he was the one who asked me. End scene.
I change out of my gym clothes and stuff them back into my gym locker, the ripeness of the fabric a reminder that I haven’t brought the ensemble home since school started. It would be a shame to stink if, say, a definitely cute boy from one of my classes possibly was looking at me for good reasons rather than the innumerable bad ones I can concoct in my saboteur brain. But that’s a ridiculous thought. Clearly.
The bell rings, and I check myself in the mirror before my next class. I finger-comb my bangs over my left eye and smooth some cherry-flavored lip balm over my lips. I consider what a foyer make-out session with the boy from film class would be like. Then I realize I’m standing in a gym locker room and berate myself for thinking such thoughts in a public locale.
Ten feet out the door of the locker room, I run back inside, slam open my gym locker, and grab my gym clothes. Might as well take them home and wash them tonight. Just in case.
Dmitri
“Your politics
Make me sick,
So I’m gonna kick
The shit out of you!”
Okay, maybe not the best lyrics Chad ever wrote, but he’s singing it well.
More than that, the tune sticks in your head.
More than that, the groove, if it doesn’t sound too egotistical to say, is crazy good. Drew uses a pick to play bass, which gives it a clicky, trebly vibe, and his lines are so full of melody they sound like they’re intended for a six-string guitar. Because of that, or maybe in spite of it, the bass complements my drumbeat unlike anything I’ve heard before. Kyle’s guitar—distorted, but not so much as to be muddy—fuses with the rhythm section to create this wave of sound that crashes over you again and again.
In short, it’s a really, really good song.
At one of our gigs a few months ago, some older guy in a denim jacket—he was like maybe thirty-five or forty, so too old to be wearing a denim jacket—told me we sounded like Hüsker Dü. Truth is, I had no idea who that was, which kind of blew the old dude’s mind.
“You’ve never heard of Hüsker Dü? Kid, they were Minnesota punk rock royalty!” Chad was eavesdropping on the conversation and jumped in, heaping praise on Hüsker Dü and doing his best to make me feel stupid. When I got home that night I went straight to iTunes and downloaded this album called Candy Apple Grey. I really wanted to hate it—mostly because Chad liked it, but partly because the old dude was a bit sanctimonious (thank you, PSAT prep, for the vocab word)—but holy crap! Those guys were awesome! And while our sound is different, I did get where Old Denim Dude was coming from.