So that is what was happening in my life. My schoolwork was definitely suffering, for example. Mr. McCarthy even took me aside to talk about it.
“Greg.”
“Hi, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Purvey a fact for me.”
Mr. McCarthy had ambushed me in the hall on the way to class. He was standing squarely in front of me and adopting an inexplicable stance. It was like the stance of a sumo wrestler, except with less stomping.
“Uh . . . any fact?”
“Any fact, but it must be presented with extreme authority.”
I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep for some reason, so I actually had some trouble coming up with a fact.
“Fact: A change in one part of an ecosystem, uh, affects an entire thing.”
Mr. McCarthy clearly wasn’t impressed by this fact, but he let it go. “Greg, I’m gonna waylay you for five minutes. Then I’m gonna give you a note so you can go to class.”
“Sounds good.”
“That’s what’s about to happen, right now.”
“OK.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
We walked into his office. They still hadn’t finished rewiring the teachers’ lounge, so the oracle was on his desk, presumably containing marijuana-infused soup. Seeing it, I immediately started panicking that Mr. McCarthy was going to confront me and Earl about drinking from the oracle. This panicky feeling got worse when Mr. McCarthy said the following thing:
“Greg, do you know why I brought you in here?”
There didn’t seem to be a correct answer to that question. I’m pretty bad in pressure situations, also. This should not surprise you at all. So I tried to say “No,” but my throat was dry from fear and I sort of just made a squeaking noise. I also probably looked like I was going to throw up. Because honestly, it was too stressful to think about what a big crazy tattoo-covered wacko like Mr. McCarthy would do if he knew we had discovered that he was doing something illegal. I was sitting there realizing that while I liked Mr. McCarthy, I was also deeply terrified of him and suspected that he might actually be a psychopath.
This suspicion deepened when, without warning, he tried to crush me with his giant brightly colored arms.
I was too terrified to fight back in any way, so I kind of just went limp. He had closed in on me and was sort of hugging me to death. A lot of thoughts were running through my head at that moment. One of them was: This is exactly the sort of dumb way a stoner would try to kill someone. By fatally hugging them. What is up with stoners? Drugs are asinine.
It took an embarrassingly long time to realize that he was actually just giving me a hug.
“Greg, bud,” he said after a while. “I know how tough things are for you right now. With Rachel in the hospital. We’ve all seen it.”
Then he let go. Because I had gone limp, this caused me to fall most of the way down. Unlike your average high school student, Mr. McCarthy did not find this hilarious. Instead, he became very concerned.
“Greg!” he shouted. “Easy, bud. Do you need to go home?”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m fine.”
I got up. We sat down in chairs. Mr. McCarthy had a look on his face of deep concern. It was definitely out of character for him and it was sort of distracting me. It was like when a dog makes a human-style face at you and you’re temporarily thrown off guard by it. You’re like, “Whoa, this dog is feeling a mixture of nostalgic melancholy and proprietary warmth. I was not aware that a dog was capable of an emotion of that complexity.”
That’s what I was like with Mr. McCarthy.
“We’ve all seen how you’ve been affected by Rachel,” said Mr. McCarthy. “And we’ve definitely heard about all this time you’re spending with her. Bud, you’re a great friend. Anyone would be lucky to have a friend like you.”
“I’m really not,” I said. Mr. McCarthy did not seem to hear me, which was probably good.
“And I know school is not your number one priority right now,” added Mr. McCarthy, staring me in the eye in a way that was really nerve-racking. “I get that, bud. I was like you in school. I was smart, and I didn’t apply myself, and I did just enough to get by. And until recently, you’ve been doing enough to get by. But hey.”
He got closer to me. I was trying to imagine Mr. McCarthy as a student. For some reason, in my head he was a ninja. He was sneaking around the cafeteria late at night, preparing to assassinate someone.
“Hey. Your schoolwork is definitely suffering. This is a true fact. I’ve talked to your other teachers. In all of your classes, you’re unfocused, and you’re not participating, and you’re forgetting to do assignments. And in a few classes, bud, you’re pretty deep underwater. Let me unload another fact on you. Rachel . . . doesn’t want you . . . to fail your classes.”
“Yeah,” I said.
To be honest, I was pissed. Partially, I was pissed because Mr. McCarthy and I used to have this casual teacher-student relationship that involved zero earnest annoying talks like this, and that relationship was great. And now apparently it was over. And partially I was pissed because I knew he was right. I was definitely not doing all of my homework. Teachers had been pointing this out. I had been ignoring them, but it was harder to ignore Mr. McCarthy, because despite being an insane stoner, he was the only reasonable teacher in all of Benson.
“Bud, this is it,” Mr. McCarthy said. “This is the last year, and then you’re gone. Let me tell you this: After high school, life only gets better. You’re in a tunnel right now. There’s a light glimmering there at the end of it. You gotta make it to that light. High school is a nightmare, bud. It might be the worst years of your life.”
I didn’t really know what to say to this. The eye contact was giving me a headache.
“So you gotta make it out. You can’t fail. You’ve got the best excuse in the world right now, but you can’t use it. All right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna do everything I can for you, because you’re a good kid. Greg, you’re a fucking great kid.”
I had never heard Mr. McCarthy use the F-word, so this at least was sort of exciting. Still, my Excessive Modesty reflex would not be denied.
“I’m not that great of a kid.”
“You’re an absolute beast,” said Mr. McCarthy. “That’s all there is to it. Get to class. Here’s a note. We all think you’re a total . . . ferocious . . . beast.”
The note said: “I had to meet with Greg Gaines for five minutes. Please excuse his absence. He is a beast. Mr. McCarthy, 11:12 am.”
Meanwhile, at home, Gretchen was going through this phase where she could not make it through an entire meal if Dad was at the table. This was in part because Dad was going through a phase of his own wherein he couldn’t stop pretending to be a cannibal. If we were eating anything with chicken in it, he would pat his stomach and announce, “Huma-a-a-a-an flesh. TASTE LIKE CHICKEN.” This caused Gretchen to burst into tears and stomp out of the dining room. Things only got worse when Grace started doing it, too, which was insane, because a six-year-old pretending to be a cannibal is one of the greatest things there is.
So that’s what was going on at home. Actually, that’s not even relevant, but I wanted to write about the cannibal thing.
And as for filmmaking, I dunno. Earl and I didn’t really end up doing the Two Poncy Dudes movie. We met up a few times to watch David Lynch films, and we knew that he kicked ass, but for some reason we were having trouble coming up with a script of our own. We’d kind of just sit around staring at the laptop screen. Then Earl would go outside for a cigarette and I would follow him. Then we’d come back and do more wordless staring.