“I really don’t know why I even try anymore,” Alan said after cracking open a bottle of Coke from the fridge. “The teachers are so focused on being right that they can’t stand to see a ‘kid’ like me correct them.”
Jimmy smiled. Alan’s detention had been a result of being disrespectful to a substitute teacher in math class the Friday before. According to Alan, a girl had asked if he had an extra pencil, which he did, but then accidentally dropped while handing it to her. It was his vocal apology that had landed him in trouble, the substitute teacher deciding to scold him for speaking when they were supposed to be quiet. Alan had tried to explain that he was simply apologizing for dropping the pencil and the substitute had exploded. Not long after that Alan had been in the assistant principal’s office learning his unjust sentence for being polite. “I think you should write to Oprah about it.”
“Yeah, but then I’d probably get suspended or something. Remember that kid that got in trouble with Facebook?”
Jimmy remembered several stories of kids getting in trouble for things they had written on Facebook, which the school tried to monitor either with fake profiles or reports from kiss-up students, and not just in Ashland Creek, but in places all across the country. Actually teachers were getting in trouble too, the memory of a California teacher being fired for posting pictures of herself drinking while on summer vacation coming to mind. It was ridiculous. “Which kid?”
“Oh it doesn’t really matter,” Alan said with a wave of the hand. “I’m just glad summers almost here so I don’t have to deal with this bullshit anymore.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said, his mind suddenly focusing in on the fact that he had no idea what he was going to do now that he was almost finished with high school. Most of the other kids in his class had plans, the majority either going to college or the military. Some had jobs lined up. Jimmy had none of that, though his grades would have been good enough to get into most colleges. The trouble was he hadn’t applied anywhere because college just didn’t seem right for him. He also feared going into the military, not because he was scared of going to war – he actually relished the idea of going into combat -- but because he worried that he would have no outlet for his bondage fantasies.
Then again, up until today, he had never had an outlet anyway, the movies online and the videos he ordered from catalogs having been his only release since hitting puberty.
“You hungry?” Alan asked.
“Um, yeah,” Jimmy said. Earlier during lunch he had been too nervous to eat, the thoughts of grabbing Samantha after school having taken over his mind.
“Let’s go to Taco Bell.”
“Sounds good.”
With that the two started walking into town, a trip they often took when they were bored or hungry. The journey took them by the Hood place. Jimmy looked toward it, his mind picturing Samantha suffering in the secret fallout shelter. Once beyond the house, however, he went back to thinking about Taco Bell and the tasty Cheesy Gordita Crunches he would be devouring.
Chapter Two
Tina Thompson had been debating with herself for two days on whether she was going to ask Jimmy to the prom. During this time she had been waiting for him to do it, but he hadn’t, and now prom tickets were only being sold for one more day. She was going to have to do it.
Tina had first met Jimmy Hawthorn in the lunch cafeteria way back in January when she had been forced to move from Glen Ellyn to Ashland Creek to live with her estranged mother after her father had died in a car accident coming home from a business dinner in Chicago. It had been a hard move, one she had not wanted to make, and it had only been made worse at school as she had gone from class to class on her first day at Ashland Creek High because no one wanted to talk with her. All the little groups were full, and were not looking for new members. Later she realized her shyness had probably played a part as well, but at the time it was an unknown factor.
Lunch, of course, was the worst because she had nowhere to sit. Seats in a classroom didn’t really become group possessions, but lunch tables did, and if one sat at the wrong table there was generally trouble. There were open seats around the room, but none of the tables seemed that inviting. The students at each were happily talking among themselves, and did not need her to join them.
After five minutes of standing by the wall with a tray of greasy food, Tina had noticed a boy sitting alone at the end of a half-filled table. Rather than talking with the four kids on the one end he was writing something while eating an apple.
Tina debated for a few seconds on what to do, and then finally decided to sit with him.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
He looked up. “Um, no, go ahead.” His voice had a startled ring to it, though he did not seem at all annoyed about the interruption.
“Thank you.” She put her tray of food down and took a seat. It was a relief not to be standing.
He looked back down at his apple.
An uncomfortable silence settled.
Eventually she said, “I’m Tina. Today’s my first day.”
“Oh,” he said without looking up. “I’m Jimmy.” His fingers began peeling away the sticker on the uneaten portion of apple.
Tina thought for a second, her mind desperately wanting a conversation, yet at the same time not wanting to press him too much or ask the wrong question. “How come you’re sitting all alone?” She regretted the question before it even left her lips, yet was unable to stop its progress.
He shrugged while giving a weak smile and said, “I don’t know, I just like to I guess. It gives me time to think.”
“Oh.” Did that mean he still wanted to be alone? “But it’s okay if I sit here?”
He looked up, a partial smile forming and said, “Yeah of course, I don’t mind.”
“Good, because I don’t know anyone yet and, well, it’s hard.” She opened her hamburger while speaking and took a bite. It was awful. The bun was stale and the meat not meaty.
“Oh, well, first days are hard,” Jimmy said. “Especially in a town like this where everyone has known each other since day one.”
“I guess you were a new student too at some point?” Tina asked.
“No, no, I grew up here.”
Yet you are sitting all alone? For some reason this intrigued her, especially since he didn’t look like an outcast -- outcasts usually didn’t have muscles pushing against a normal everyday hooded sweatshirt — and the two had talked for the rest of the lunch period. After that they realized they each had gym together during the next period and walked to it while talking, and then, at the end of the day, the two stumbled upon each other again outside the building, and walked home, Jimmy and his little brother Alan showing her the way to her mother’s house, which was on the way to their own.
Now, several months later, Tina continued the debate on whether to call Jimmy and ask him to the prom. She had hoped he would do it, but apparently he wasn’t going to despite the fact that the two were good friends. Unlike most teenage girls Tina was not insulted. During their months of friendship she had learned quite a bit about Jimmy’s personality and knew he rarely worked up the effort or motivation to do anything out of the ordinary — things like talking to people he did not know, staying after to speak with a teacher if he didn’t understand something, walking a different route between classes, and asking a young pretty girl that he obviously liked very much to go with him to prom.