Monday, May 12, 2008
Mean boys. Badass girls. Your worst first-day-of-high-school nightmare, to the millionth power ... and in Marin County, Calif.
Sep 17, 2004 | Liza's first-day-of-school outfit, one she thought was fetching, instantly branded her as socially undesirable. She wore a diagonally striped minidress, high, white ankle-boots, and a braided metallic headband, having assembled the components at a strip-mall store named "WOW! EVERYTHING UNDER $10!" that her mother Peppy had taken her to for back to-school clothes.
In the main building, Liza could hear girls giggle as she passed by. A pack of preppy boys stared at her with their mouths open in cruel mock-shock.
"Catching flies?" Liza snapped.
They laughed heartily.
"Want to bob on my knob?" one of the boys yelled as she clicked away on her heels. Liza had no idea what he was talking about but flipped him the finger anyway.
Liza's homeroom was her English class, which was taught by a species of woman indigenous to Marin County: a fading beauty-cum-rich-ex-hippie clotheshorse, partial to flowing "art to wear" garments of hand-painted silk with bleeding color patterns that resembled magnified bacteria. Mrs. Gubbins -- "You can call me Kay!" -- had married well, divorced well, and married so well again that she was at leave to pursue her altruistic mission of teaching high school English as an aside to her real "life goals," which were apparently proselytizing for a certain faddish, Marin "self-actualization" cult known as everBest. Her mediocre, uninspired English teaching was peppered with shrilly enthusiastic everBest-ial axioms and smug truisms.
"Let's situate the desks into a circle so we can all monitor each other's eyes, shall we?" Kay trumpeted to her class of miserable, pocky fourteen-year-olds, all craving invisibility. Kay had all of the students go around the circle and say their names, their nicknames, and what they'd "rather be doing other than being responsibly here, now, in the present."
A striking, skinny boy with sardonic eyebrows and a crooked red mouth sat next to Liza. He had long auburn hair pulled back into two Willie Nelson braids and slouched angularly in his seat, his eyes barely open. When the circle came around to him, a few other boys in the class started snickering before he even said anything.
"Uh, my name is Anton Grosvenor," he drawled in a hoarse voice that sounded hungover. "But my friends call me Kay."
o?= At this several boys in the classroom fell over with hysterical laughter. A couple of them mumbled, "Go, Tonto ..."
"And, actually, I feel totally actualized, here. I don't want to be anywhere else. Ever."
The kids became alert, watching to see how the teacher would handle such scorching insincerity.
Kay looked at him with a tight-lipped smile.
"Kay? Shall we call you Kay?" she asked with no humor at all.
"That'd be great."
Kay opted to ignore the fact that she had just been successfully undermined.
Liza was next.
"Elizabeth Lynn Normal," Liza mumbled. "I've always been called Liza. I'd rather be at the High School of Performing Arts in New York, which is where I'll be next year."
"Are you a dancer, or an actress?" Kay asked.
"Mostly a singer," said Liza.
Liza felt a bump near her leg -- Anton Grosvenor was handing her a note. She unfolded it carefully in her lap.
IF YOU ARE A "SINGER" WHY DO YOU DRESS LIKE A WHOARE? ARE YOU A WHOARE, ALSO?
Liza had never even kissed a boy and was shocked by the visceral power and violence of the word whoare, even while misspelled. She ignored him.
Another note came banging against her knee:
HOW ABOUT MY UNIT DEEP IN YOUR FACE FOR $6?
Liza got out her pen and wrote back:
FUCK YOU
The note came back:
o?= OK HOW ABOUT $7
Liza ignored it. Another note came:
OK $7.35 THATS MY FINAL OFFER
Liza wrote back:
I HAVE A BIG BROTHER A-HOLE SHUT YOUR FACE
Anton smirked. He wrote for a while, as more students droned their least thoughtful answers to Kay's questions while nobody listened. The note came back:
CHANGED MY MIND YOU HAVE TO 1. GIVE ME $8 THEN 2. WRAP YOUR LAUGHING GEAR AROUND MY SNOT STICK.
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