About two weeks into freshman year, I climbed on the city bus after school as usual. Mom, Dad, and my sister, Gabrielle, cared not at all that the city bus was a cesspool. In fact, they seemed to enjoy that I had to get up so early to make it to a bus that would get me to school on time, and catch a bus home that would take twice as long as a car. “I had to do it too,” Gabby had sung during breakfast on my first day. “Have a good one, freshman!”
The city bus idled in a pull-out just beyond the school parking lot. I didn’t know Robby when I sat down in the seat next to him. It was one of the few empty seats available, and I didn’t blame anyone else for not wanting to sit there. Robby had headphones on, and he used his thighs as a drum kit for whatever noise he was listening to. He sang all the parts: vocals, guitars, drums, the works, alternating one for another.
Sighing to myself, I sat gingerly on the blue upholstered seat. He didn’t even turn.
“‘Fatality!—reality!—await the final kaaaaaaaaaaa!’”
I had no idea what the last word was, because his voice reached an impossible pitch. He stopped drumming his legs long enough to throw two heavy-metal devil horns with his hands, turned to face himself. He was his own crowd.
At least he was having a good time. I turned to look out the window so as not to bug this weird kid . . . and saw Becky near the parking lot.
I sat up straight and watched as a flashy gray SUV pulled up to the sidewalk where Becky stood. She didn’t move. A minute must’ve gone by, during which the weird kid beside me began singing another song. Finally, a woman got out of the driver’s seat and walked around the back of the car toward Becky. I assumed it was her mom. The woman wore workout clothes with a baseball hat, hair pulled through the back, in a way that made me think she got dressed up and wore makeup to go exercise.
The woman paced quickly over to Becky and grabbed her shoulders. Pleading? Apologizing? I couldn’t tell.
“‘Trapped in purgatory!’” the kid beside me sang. “‘Galactic all triple eye!’”
Huh? I wasn’t sure if those were the actual lyrics or if the kid had no idea what they really were. Well, whatever.
The woman gave Becky a quick kiss on the forehead, scooted back to the driver’s side, and climbed in. Becky didn’t move; hadn’t moved, in fact, since I’d noticed her. After another few moments, she walked to the SUV and got in. I watched the SUV drive quickly out of the parking lot and head west away from school.
I almost yelped in shock when Robby whirled on me and thrust the headphones in my face.
“Dude!” he cried. “You gotta listen to this. Do it! Listen to the double bass, man, just listen!”
Shocked, I took the headphones from him and put them up to my ears while he scrolled to the beginning of another song. I didn’t recognize it, and it was too heavy and fast for my taste.
“You hear it?” Robby said, practically into my mouth. “Hear that double bass going?” He demonstrated the effect vocally.
I shook my head. “Sorry, man, I—”
“Listen!” Robby insisted, and started the song over again. “Listen deeper. Further back. Underneath the guitar.”
All I heard was noise, but with him sounding out the particular sound he was talking about, I was able to finally pick it out. And he was right: it was pretty cool once I could hear it.
“Yeah, that’s . . . cool,” I said, trying to give the headphones back.
“No, no! Wait for the bridge!” Robby said. “Nuh-nuh-nuh-NAH, nuh-nuh-NAH, nuh-nuh-NAH!”
I started laughing because I couldn’t help myself. This worried me, because generally speaking, people don’t like to be laughed at. But Robby just laughed right along with me.
Eventually, he allowed me to give him the headphones back as he went on and on about the band’s drummer. About halfway to my stop, he donned the phones again and resumed pounding out rhythms on his legs.
Robby and I both reached for the stop bell at the same time, about fifteen minutes later, and touched hands, which made us both jerk back and look embarrassed. You know how that goes. He ended up pressing the long yellow strip, and he followed me as I got up and walked off the bus.
When we both took a few steps in the same direction, Robby stopped and pulled the headphones off.
“Okay, so where are you going?” he demanded. “Because I don’t want to be all walking right next to you.”
I pointed in the direction of my street. “Pinetree,” I said.
“Aw, man, I’m on Cottonwood,” Robby said. “Well, I guess I’ll be walking right next to you after all. Unless you can’t keep up.”
With that, he started walking up the street. And I fell into step beside him, mostly because I needed to ask one question.
“Where’d you go to school last year?”
“Mohave,” Robby said. “You?”
“Navajo,” I said. “That’s weird. You live on Cottonwood? That’s only three streets up from me.”
Robby shrugged. “Districting, I guess.”
Turned out he was right about that. Our districts just happened to separate a block from my house. We ended up talking all the way to my street, mostly about our surrounding neighborhood and how weird it was that we’d never run into each other until today.
The next day, I got to the bus stop a little later than I’d meant to, and there was Robby, wearing a Megadeth T-shirt and playing drums on his legs again. When he saw me coming down the street, he waved and gave me devil horns.
“Morning, sunshine!” he shouted toward me. “By the way, I’m Robby.”
We’ve been friends ever since.
***
“Rob, dude, stop!” I plead, trying to shove Justin off me. But Justin just grinds another narrow elbow into my ribs, laughing the whole time.
“Tyler?” Robby says to Becky over my phone. “Tyler . . . Darcy? Yeah, he’s here somewhere.”
“Rob! Seriously!”
“Yeah, here he is. Oh, wait! We had a question for you.”
“Rob, I swear to god . . .”
“Yeah, we were wondering . . . what’s up with you two? I mean, why won’t you go out with him? He’s a good guy. Talented. Smart. Sexy as all hell. Am I right?”
I punch Justin in the face.
***
I met Justin through Robby. They shared an Earth science class, and had banded together at lunch. I’d been eating by myself, reading and also watching for Becky. One morning as we got off the bus, Robby told me to meet him in the cafeteria, and I agreed.
Justin sat reading a book at a table in the cafeteria, earphones plugged into an iPod. His face was screwed into a scowl as we walked up.
“Whatcha reading?” Robby said as we sat down.
“S’fer English,” Justin said. “The Glass . . . Ménage à Trois or something.”
“Menagerie,” I said.
“Hey, watch your mouth!” Robby said to me, and laughed at himself.
Justin and I hadn’t so much as exchanged names at this point. He looked at me and said, “What’re you, in Honors English or something?”
I was, but wasn’t sure I should admit it. So Robby did it for me.
“Yeah, man, he’s totally freaking brilliant!” he said. “Right, Ty?”
I didn’t answer because I spotted Becky two tables down from us. Justin launched into a tirade about how stupid his English class was while I tried to figure out a way to get a better angle from which to see Becky.
“What’re you listening to?” Robby asked Justin.
Justin took the earphones out and threw them at Robby. “Pink Floyd.”
“Who’s that? Any good?”
“No, they suck. That’s why I’m listening to them,” Justin said.
I barely heard Robby and Justin because I’d made up my mind: I would talk to that girl. I’d just walk up and introduce myself, ask her her name, and ask if I could join her for lunch. Maybe I could ask what she thought of Night Shift. Yeah! Perfect!
So I stood up with my lunch tray and ignored my thumping heartbeat as best I could. I took two steps—and stopped as some guy sat down right beside Becky.
I think my shoulders dropped all the way to the floor. Figures. The one time I grew a pair, and some dude got there before me. Older and bigger, too. Definitely a senior. I chucked my tray back on the table and sat down.
“Rough day at the office, sweetie?” Robby asked as he stuffed Justin’s earphones into his head.
“It’s nothing,” I said, totally disgusted with myself.
“Ah,” Justin said. “So it’s a girl.”
Whatever the look on my face was, it made the two of them bust up.
“Which one?” Justin asked me.
I tipped my head to the side. “Two tables down, on the end,” I said. “Red-and-white baseball shirt.”
“Oh yeah,” Justin said, looking over at Becky. “I got her in math.”
Justin became my newest, bestest buddy ever. “You do?” I said. “What’s her name? What’s she like?”
“Dunno,” Justin said. “She doesn’t talk much. Er . . . ever, actually, that I know of.” He nodded appreciatively. “Cute, though.”
“Do you know who she’s talking to?”
“Mmm . . . nope. No idea. Parole officer?”
I did not think that was funny. Well—maybe sort of, but basically, no. The girl was an angel, anyone could see that.
“Dude!” Robby cried, with his hands cupped over his ears. “This song is . . . is rapture! This is like audio orgasm! Listen to this! Listen! Doesn’t it just make you . . . wanna . . . fuck a guitar?”
He was so earnest that both Justin and I started laughing at him.
“What?” Robby asked, looking genuinely surprised.
“Can you even hear yourself?” I said, while trying to maintain a covert eye on Becky and figure out at least what grade the guy beside her might be in.
“I hear plenty,” Robby said. “You filthy bitch.”
Which made all three of us laugh even more. And by the time we’d finished, Becky and the guy who’d sat beside her were gone.
Of course, I didn’t know that was her name then. Despite Justin having a class with her, I didn’t actually learn Becky’s name until I met Sydney.
You’ll see the irony momentarily.
My English teacher, Ms. Hochhalter, ruled her classroom with an iron fist wrapped in unicorn stickers and glitter: Do what she says, you get along fine. Cross her, and you’re done. Rumor had it she was into Roller Derby and stuff like that, which I largely think was BS.
That day, the same day I met Justin, Ms. Hochhalter stood in front of her desk waving a handful of papers at us as soon as the bell rang.
“Of all these autobiographical essays,” she said, glaring at us, “only the barest handful are worthy of being written by students in my classroom. Sydney Barrett?”
On the far side of the room, a girl with thick, dark, springy hair raised her hand. “Here!” she said.
“A,” Ms. Hochhalter said, flipping the essay at the girl, who yelped and caught it in one hand. “Tyler Darcy?”
“Here?” I said.
“A,” Ms. Hochhalter said, throwing my essay at me. I did not catch it, despite a heroic effort. Sydney Barrett watched me not catching it.
“Teena Fortenbaugh?” Ms. Hochhalter went on, and called out only two other names of people who’d gotten As. I tried to hide behind my desk as the rest of the class growled at us. Honors English got a little competitive, I’d noticed.
“The rest of these papers?” the teacher said. “Sad, lonely, pathetic, heartbreaking. I’d sooner have chewed on a nice wad of tinfoil than grade these abominations.” Ms. Hochhalter moved on to detail our next assignment, something about expository writing.
One of the cool things about her class was you could sit wherever you wanted, unless she moved you. The next day, Sydney Barrett sat down in the desk next to mine for the first time. I remember thinking there was something Greek about her, like she should’ve been lounging in a white marble colonnade in the first century. Her skin glowed pale olive, and something blazed magnetic in her eyes.
“Hi,” she said, putting a hand out. “I’m Sydney.”
“Uh . . . Tyler,” I said, shaking her hand.
“My fellow A-getter,” Sydney said, smiling. A nice, sweet, and confident smile. “We should form a club. You can be president if you want.”
“I’m not too political,” I said.
“Then I’ll be president and you can be treasurer,” Sydney announced. And smiled again.
The girl operated like a charming semitrailer, bulldozing her way through the world. It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest. Not unlike hanging out with Robby and Justin, actually, but like them, something about her fire-on-all-thrusters attitude impressed me.
As Ms. Hochhalter started class, I thought, What if I’d been this up front with that girl in the cafeteria on the first day?
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