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Well,
you stayed up all night, but today came anyway. Your head aches, your stomach
groans, and your palms are sweaty. In short, you're nervous. You are starting
high school today even though you are far too ill to be out of bed.
There is no point
in hoping the bus won't show. You can see it in the distance, surer than death
and taxes. The yawning doors swallow you up and you pay your fare. On the way
to school you make a pact with heaven that you will be good forever--at least,
fairly good--in exchange for divine intervention in the horrors to come. Maybe
high school can't be avoided, but with help from above, surely some of the blows
can be softened.
You arrive at school
to find that all those cutthroats who are seven feet tall are your fellow students.
The only people who don't have beards are the girls, and even one of them has
managed a creditable mustache. You wonder if the school crest depicts a lead
pipe on a field of blood red.
Your first assignment
is to find your locker, in which will be kept all your worldly possessions.
This is far more difficult than it may seem, as all secondary school halls have
been laid out as a maze. It's part of a biological experiment designed to discover
if high school freshmen are as intelligent as white mice. If you learn to negotiate
the halls, you have triumphed over the experiment; if you do not, a shoe box
containing your remains will be sent home by third-class mail. It is not a place
for the timid or the stupid, and since the most strenuous or intellectually
challenging activity of your summer was heating up a TV dinner when the folks
were at the country club, you are not in shape for a life-and-death struggle.
Once your locker
has been located, you can concern yourself with the intricacies of the combination
lock. Since you have a faulty memory for numbers, you have cleverly written
your combination, along with all other vital information, on the waistband of
your underwear. This system has one serious drawback: it is impossible to maintain
your dignity while consulting your notes. Nevertheless, rooting around under
your belt in public is infinitely preferable to being found sobbing in front
of your unopened locker. 24--26--28. No, that is not your locker combination;
that is your underwear size. Finally, the lock opens, and you stow your coat.
You are the only one in sight with this particular style of coat. You wonder
if, while you were hibernating in front of the television set all summer, fashion
changed radically, leaving you a museum piece. Your hair is too short, or maybe
a little too long, and---you look down. Your shoes are absurd! Why, there is
nothing a peer group sinks its claws into faster than absurd shoes!
Taking a wrong
turn on your way to your first class, you are very nearly recruited into a spirited
touch football game, but you manage to escape to English class just a little
late. The only vacant seat is located right under the teacher's nose, and her
hot breath and windmill arm motions begin to take the curl out of your hair.
As she rambles on about the joyous learning experiences she has planned for
this semester, you muse on something that has been bothering you subconsciously
for some time--why is the school office so concerned with obtaining the name,
address, and telephone number of your next of kin? Any well-rounded TV addict
knows that next of kin are the people notified when the body washes up on the
beach. Do they expect you to die? Exactly what is the mortality rate in this
place?
The teacher then
issues a textbook complete with dire warnings of what will happen to you if
this book is lost and/or mutilated. She says that you will be charged "a
reasonable sum of money" for replacement. The book weighs roughly thirty
pounds and has an expensive look about it. You picture yourself washing dishes
in the cafeteria for the rest of your life trying to raise the reasonable sum
of money.
As you leave the
class, it is your misfortune to stumble between two wild-eyed students who are
having a ketchup fight. Red slop is flying everywhere. Your first impulse is
to save the textbook at all costs. Dropping it to the floor, you fall upon it,
shielding its precious pages with your body. Your left shoe is splashed, rendering
it even more absurd than before.
Because of a short
but perilous trip to the bathroom to clean up, you are late for your next class,
which is instrumental music. You rush into the music room, your heart set on
a saxophone. They are taken. Your second choice, trumpets, are all in other
hands. Ditto, trombones and clarinets. Okay, sacrifice the macho and go for
the flute or piccolo. All taken. As a matter of fact, there is only one vacant
chair, one instrument at rest. Face it, you are stuck with the tuba.
As you strain to
pick it up, you feel your innards drop. You make a mental note to ask your next
of kin if your health insurance extends to hernia. The teacher explains how
to blow into a tuba. You draw a mighty breath, put your mouth to the mouthpiece
(did the guy in period one have pellagra?), and blow until you start to black
out. Not a sound. A big cheer goes up from the class as you and the tuba clatter
to the floor. The teacher then informs you that, for destruction of an instrument,
you will be charged a reasonable sum---in the case of a tuba, about eight hundred
dollars. He explains that the instruments may be borrowed for additional practice
at home. You have a giddy vision of yourself hauling this brass behemoth onto
the bus and being charged another fare for it. Does a tuba qualify for the student
discount? Idly, you wonder how your next of kin will take to an evening of oom-pah-pah.
Your French class
is right across the hall. Your teacher, who is Madame Something-or-other, hands
you a textbook and probably tells you about the reasonable sum. You're not certain,
however, because she says it in French. She might have been saying almost anything.
Her stream of gibberish virtually uninterrupted, she strolls through the class,
stopping directly in front of your desk-the one you had selected as the least
noticeable spot in the room. You look up in alarm. Her monologue has ended on
a questioning note, and she is looking at you expectantly. You decide to take
a stab at it.
"Oui. "
She beams, thanks
you profusely, and moves on.
A voice comes from
behind you. "Psst. Do you know that you just volunteered to make the decorations
for our first French party?"
French party? What's
a French party? How would you decorate one? When? Where?
You are then exempted
from the homework because you have so much to do. As the period ends, you are
confronted with a choice. You can stay and find out exactly what is going on,
or you can obey your every instinct, which is to run for your life. Retreat
wins out. After all, you should get a head start searching for the cafeteria.
You make for your
locker but abort that plan to follow an intelligent-looking student who is walking
purposefully down the hall carrying a paper bag. In this way you end up in the
biology lab where your man rips open the bag, pulls out a dead frog, and begins
to dissect it enthusiastically. You stagger out of the lab, no longer hungry.
At length you locate
the cafeteria and stare in horror at the chalk board which displays today's
menu. Could anyone here know that your mother spearheaded the parents'-group
campaign for more nutrition in the school lunches? That your mother, the formerly
beloved fairer half of your next of kin, was responsible for today's entree,
the alfalfa sloppy joe? You look at all the innocent people in the line behind
you and feel a terrible guilt. As you pay the cashier, you notice that there
is a big puddle of split-pea soup on the cover of your French book. Oh, no.
Is this mutilation? Will you be charged a reasonable sum?
You eat a miserable
lunch in the company of a few friends from elementary school. Everything is
going along beautifully for them. They are waxing eloquent over the joys of
high school, the freedom, the challenge. They don't have to make French decorations.
They don't have to play the tuba. They don't already owe a reasonable sum. It's
obvious that they are survivors and you are a casualty. What happened to your
pact with heaven? Haven't they been paying attention up there? Your friends
have obviously been graced with help from above. Why are you the odd man out?
You check the timetable
on your underwear and discover to your dismay that your next class is swimming.
This is particularly disquieting, since the larger part of your lunch is still
lodged in your upper digestive tract. You imagine the coroner's certificate:
Cause of death--sloppy joe. Well, at least you know where to find the
pool.
The water temperature
is kept slightly below the tolerance level. This, the instructor informs you,
is to keep you active. The only thing that is active, however, is your lunch,
which is rising. You know a brief moment of panic as you realize that your clothes
are unguarded in the change room. If you lose your underwear, and with it-your
locker combination and all other vital data, you will never see home again.
"Ten lengths?"
As you thrash wretchedly along, fighting off a paralyzing cramp, you wonder
if anyone will pull you out if you go under. Probably not. Who would risk hypothermia
to save the life of a guy whose mother is a PTA activist responsible for fifteen
hundred counts of first-degree heartburn? You sincerely hope that, if you die
here, your next of kin will charge the school a reasonable sum.
As the class ends,
you are just alive enough to listen as the instructor tells you that your crawl
is pitiful and that you tread water like a Hovercraft. You would like to explain
the extenuating circumstances, but you are hyperventilating.
Soggy but dressed,
you move on to your science class, where you are immediately informed that you
are far too wet to work with any electrical equipment. You look around the lab.
There is the emergency eyewash and the emergency extinguisher for chemical fires.
The radioactive material is kept in that locked cabinet. Everywhere there are
signs and instructions on what to do until the doctor comes. This place is obviously
a death trap.
A reasonable sum
of money will be charged for the loss of an experiment booklet or the destruction
of equipment. This is where you learn your first natural law of physics--glass
beakers shatter when dropped on the floor. You are standing in the ruins of
a whole tray of them. Your socks sparkle with glass slivers, forming regal crowns
for your absurd shoes. The debt is mounting.
You decide to stash
your books for safety's sake, and find your locker without too much wandering
around. You are just about to pat yourself on the back for your powers of navigation
when you see it. Someone has scratched an obscene word into the paint of your
locker door. It is not just any obscene word, but one of that elite group of
obscenities guaranteed to grow hair on the palm of your hand, rarefy the atmosphere,
and make a lumberjack blush. Where are you going to find paint to cover up this
crime against society before the principal or the morality squad sees it? Everyone
knows school lockers are painted in a gray-beige so drab that it can never again
be matched. How will you explain your innocence? And why you in the first place?
There are rows of lockers in both directions as far as the eye can see, all
of them immaculate, and yours is the only one that says -------. This is going
to cost you.
You are a good
ten minutes late for your last class of the day, Industrial Arts. As you slip
into the wood shop and slink toward the nearest vacant seat, the voice of the
teacher cuts the air like a razor:
"How considerate
of you, young man, to take the time and trouble to appear before us in this
humble classroom and gild our wretched selves with your exalted presence. Do
sit down and add your genius to our unworthy efforts."
Well, this is
the cherry on the bitter ice cream sundae. Heaven, which has seen fit to catapult
you from disaster to catastrophe all day, has decided to top your afternoon
with the meanest man in the world.
As he lectures
on the various pieces of equipment in the shop, with an uncomfortable stress
on the damage potential of each, you find it difficult to draw your attention
from the razor-sharp stiletto which he is absently using to pare his fingernails.
It seems like only yesterday that your teacher marched the class two by two
to the local shopping center to visit Santa Claus. Now you are trapped in a
wood shop with a maniac with a knife. How time flies.
You are selected
for the class demonstration of the wood lathe. The Maniac hands you a partially
finished salad bowl, which you fit onto the spindle as per instructions. You
flick the switch. The bowl begins to spin, picking up speed. There is an unpleasant
screech, and the salad bowl, now a lethat projectile, shoots from the lathe,
whistles past the instructor's ear, and sails out the open window into the parking
lot. The class breaks into admiring applause.
"You missed
me," says the Maniac, following this up with a barrage of abuse and sarcasm
aimed directly at you. The class laughs harder with each barb until you sink
into your absurd shoes and contemplate a course change. Maybe a history of Teflon
manufacturing in Sweden. It might be boring, but at least the teacher won't
carry a knife.
As you make your
weary way to the bus stop. you notice that the vice-principal's new car has
a broken windshield and a salad bowl in the front seat. There is a faint chance
that this will be blamed on equipment malfunction and not you, depending on
whether the school can charge a reasonable sum for damages occuring outside
the building. What if the damage starts inside the building and then leaves,
say, by a window? Forget it. Go home. You are ill.
Your next of kin
is at the door waiting for you. She asks "How was your first day at high
school, dear?"
A long, elaborate
sob story forms in your mind. "Fine," you reply. Next of kin wouldn't
understand such things.
Copyright © 1989 Gordon Korman, used by permission