Notes from the Blender (13 page)

“I try not to anymore,” he said. “Because the thing is, all those things I regret doing also led me to the things I am proud of doing now. My mom gave me a choice after the locker incident: go on a service trip or to a wilderness program for the summer. I picked the service trip and ended up working at a
comedor
—kind of like a soup kitchen—for little kids in Argentina. There were close to a hundred kids there every day, and my job was to play with them. That’s it. Just play. These kids lived in houses made of scraps of stuff their parents had found lying around, and lots of them were abused, or from broken homes, or were, like, one of ten siblings. And all they wanted was some love and affection, so I gave as much as I could. It didn’t take me long to realize that not only did I have so much more material stuff than these kids, but I also still had two parents who loved me more than anything in the world, regardless of whether they were divorced and my dad and your dad were together. And since then, I don’t know…all the anger—it just kind of fell away. At the end of the summer, I came back here, fixed up my relationship with my dad, and started teaching ESL after school so I could keep going with the work I’d started in Argentina.”

My mouth was pretty much hanging open by this point. Griffin was quite possibly the coolest guy I’d ever met. “So what happened to the blue Mohawk?”

He ran his hands through his awesome, choppy rock-star ’do. “It scared the kids, so I dyed it back to my natural color and grew it out.”

“And what about Camilla? Did you guys ever get back together?”

“Nope. But we’re kinda getting to be friends again, so that’s a good thing.”

“How’d you manage that one?” I asked, peeking across the room at Dec and Chantelle. They still looked entirely uncomfortable, like they were barely speaking.

“Time, mostly, to show her how much I’d changed,” he said. “Well, that, plus I wrote her a kickass love song.”

I imagined it must’ve sounded totally like a We the Kings tune. And that he’d sung it to her while staring deeply into her eyes. “Well, all I can say is, she’s one lucky girl,” I told him.

My life was getting more complicated than ever. But in a good way this time.

I FREAKING HATED SARAH. “OH, LET’S RECONNECT
with our awkwardness and blahblahblah!” Chantelle would barely even look at me, much less speak to me.

“Look,” I said, “I’m not like that.”

Long pause. Interesting. The nonresponse appeared to be a way to say
bullshit
without actually saying it. I filed that away for possible future use. In the meantime, I fell back on my usual bad strategy: babbling.

“I mean. Look. I’ve been at community service, where I met this really cool vegan metal guy—wow, that sounded kind of gay, I mean, actually homosexual gay, not gay like stupid gay, not that I think gay is stupid, I mean, not with my family, not to mention my extended family. Right? I mean, so Neilly’s dad is marrying a dude here—Roger is his name. Huge guy. Did that sound gay? Homosexual gay? Anyway, so, right, it’s been a little bit of a stressful time in my life, you know, and that guy, Sam, well, we totally made up at community service, when I saved him from bullies by saying he was my boyfriend. Wow, that sounded gay again, didn’t it? Okay. What I mean is this: I’m not a violent guy. It’s not me, you know? I mean, yeah, it’s something I did, but it’s not who I am. I’m not proud of it. I’m actually pretty ashamed. I’m also totally ashamed that you were there when I had my first and only walk on the psycho side, because, yeah, you know, I wanted you to think I was dangerous in an alluring way, not in a cross-the-street-to-get-away-from-me way. You know?”

Chantelle still said nothing. I was pretty sure I saw her suppressing a smile the third time I thought I was sounding gay, though.

“Well, maybe you don’t, because probably you have more common sense than I do, not to mention the fact that you probably don’t have jocks riding you all the time—wow, that sounded unintentionally sexual. I meant riding in the sense of taunting, which—”

“Do you really think I don’t have people taunting me?”

“Well, I mean, you’re, like…you’re not…why would they?”

“Oh my God, you’re serious, and that’s actually kind of sweet.”

Sweet. I was so in. Babbling didn’t work, so I was into listening now.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m, like, the only nonwhite face in the entire school. I mean, there are the normal, annoying, but ultimately harmless things, like the girls who can’t stop asking me about my hair, the girls from the basketball team who keep asking me to try out, and a surprising number of girls who want to know if I’ve got an older brother—don’t know what that’s about—but anyway, there’s all that stuff, the way everybody looks at me whenever anything black is mentioned in English class, like,
Hey, Chantelle, you want to read ‘Still I Rise’ for us? You’re the black one, after all!
I freaking hate Maya Angelou!”

“Oh. I guess I never—”

“And the stupid guys who just happen to be singing ‘Brown Sugar’ every time I walk by? Do you think that doesn’t make me want to kick someone until they die?”

“Well, I guess it probably would—”

“But I don’t. That’s the difference, Declan. My mom made it really clear to me from the time I could walk that the first time a guy raises his hand to you is the last.”

“Well, technically, it was a foot, and I raised it to Sam, but—”

“I don’t care, Declan. If you get violent when you’re stressed out, how am I supposed to know what direction that violence is going to be aimed in next time?”

“Uh.” It was a damn good argument. “I guess you can’t.”

And that was pretty much it until Neilly drove me home, blahblahing the whole time about what an interesting guy Griffin was and obviously not thinking what I was thinking about—which was pulling the car over and making out just because we could.

The French, as Dad never tires of telling me, have a name for this:
l’esprit de l’escalier—
the spirit of the staircase. It’s not a creepy transparent lady floating on stairs like they show on that ghost photographs show on TV, it’s when you think of the perfect thing to say as you’re walking down the steps after the argument.

Or, in my case, when your hot stepsister is driving you home. She was all happy about Griff, as she had started calling him, and I was pissed about that. The girl who understood and forgave me didn’t even see me, and the girl who saw me didn’t forgive or understand me. So I texted this to Chantelle:
If you wait for someone perfect you’re gonna have a long wait.

Mean, I guess, but with the memory of her out-arguing me ringing in my mind, and Neilly buzzing in my ear about another guy, I was feeling pissed. Which, I suppose, kind of illustrated Chantelle’s point. And yet, I got this in return:
If I wait for some one better than you it wont be long.

I laughed aloud, and Neilly looked hurt. “What? I mean, I’m sorry, but Sam and I have a history—”

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t what you said. Chantelle just busted me. I think I’m in love. I sent her a nasty message because I was pissed about her basically saying I was an unredeemable psycho, and she just texted me back and totally busted me!”

Neilly looked at me. “And you’re happy about this why?”

“Did you miss the part about how she texted me back?”

She smiled. “Gotcha. Abuse is better than neglect—is that the theory you’re working on?”

“Hey, I’ve seen movies. I watch TV. I know hostile banter is just a cover for attraction.”

“Uh, sometimes it’s just hostility.”

“Don’t wreck my good mood, okay?”

“Okay. But so, what should I do? Should I listen to whatever Sam has to say? Or just keep blowing him off?”

“Forget him. You’ve got a hot guy right under your roof.”

“Ew, no offense, but I don’t think your dad is hot, and anyway, he’s marrying my mom.”

“Gross! I wasn’t talking about my dad!”

“I know. Just busting on you.”

Hey. Is that the kind of thing that masks attraction?

The exchange of text messages did not lead to a more general thaw with Chantelle. She still pretty much ignored me and just walked around looking hot. There was only this one single bright spot, and it was bright only as much as something that reveals the depth of my classmates’ idiocy and cruelty can be.

So we were walking out of math class, and my ears were slightly more attuned to this since Monday, and I actually heard two morons going, “Deaw-de-ne-ne-neaaawww!” which was their attempt to sing the guitar part from the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” which I had looked up the lyrics to, and, I mean, really, I can’t believe Dad frets about death metal lyrics with that racist crap floating around.

I really had no desire to engage with the idiots, and I probably wouldn’t have, except that I was kind of staring at Chantelle’s butt at the time, because that’s what I do when she is walking in front of me, and I noticed, up above her butt, that her shoulders tensed up. I thought about her wanting to kick somebody until they died, and how crappy it was to be picked on for just being who you are. And I did something stupid.

I got loud. First, I feigned a fit of hysterics until everyone in the hall was staring at me. I pointed at the two idiots, laughing really loudly and obnoxiously, and managed to choke out, “Oh…they’re singing ‘Brown Sugar’! Get it? ’Cause she’s black! Ha! Oh, that’s good stuff, guys. Funny …” Smiling, I wiped away imaginary tears, and the morons, as I’d hoped, turned their attention to me.

“Shut up, Columbine. What, are you tappin’ that?”

“Nah, your mom keeps me pretty busy,” I replied, and I know this is where the fist hits the face, and I really hoped Chantelle was watching me not square off to fight, just standing there like Gandhi offering nonviolent resistance. (Yes, I did study this stuff in social studies, and I know that it’s supposed to involve brotherly love and not sarcasm and “yo mama” jokes, but, hey, one step at a time.)

I braced myself for the impact, and then something funny happened. Nobody hit me. I opened my eyes and found myself staring at Sam’s back.

“Cool it, guys,” he said. “Chill out.”

“But Columbine—”

“Gary. It’s been a year. That joke was never funny, and it hasn’t gotten any funnier. And neither has the ‘Brown Sugar’ thing. Come on, man, we’ve got a game on Saturday. Don’t get suspended for this.”

“Whatever,” said Idiot No. 1, apparently named Gary, and he walked away. Idiot No. 2, apparently too much of a follower even to have a name, quickly followed. Sam turned around, smiled, said, “Now we’re even, boyfriend,” and walked away.

My phone vibrated, and I got this from Chantelle:
Thx.

Well, it was something.

I sat down with Dad and Carmen and told them that I was really, officially going vegan, that after learning all this factory farm stuff, I really couldn’t see myself eating animal products. (Also, I was hoping that even if Chantelle wasn’t impressed by the rejection of violence that my vegan diet implies, there might be hot vegan girls around who see meat eating as a deal breaker, which would, of course, improve my odds tremendously.)

Dad sighed. “I—I’m not trying to be unsupportive here, but, what will you eat? Salad?”

“Actually, Ulf sent me all kinds of recipes, and there are cookbooks, and—”

Carmen jumped in. “Dec, I’ll spring for the cookbooks if you help me do the cooking.”

“Uh…okay.” So the next day Carmen came home with a bunch of vegan cookbooks, and before I knew it, we were cooking all kinds of stuff, mostly Asian dishes, since those are pretty low in dairy to begin with, but also some stuff with silken tofu and nutritional yeast.

This stuff is, I guess, an acquired taste. But I like it because I don’t have to hear screaming pigs in my brain while I’m eating it. Dad and Neilly wound up eating a lot of steaks and burgers that he “discreetly” grilled outside after they had picked over the dinner that Carmen and I made.

“I don’t know if it’s just being pregnant, but I swear to God, this stuff tastes awesome. I’ve been craving beets all day—can we make something with beets tomorrow?”

“Hell, yeah! How could I not like a vegetable that stains your poop blood-red?”

Neilly rolled her eyes. “Beets, Mom? Really? Why not just eat a shovelful of dirt?”

“If that’s what your little sibling”—she patted her belly—“wants, that’s what I’ll eat. But right now, the order is for beets.”

Neilly wanted help planning the big Halloween party, because, as she put it, “With this house, we need decorations somewhat weirder than the pumpkins and cats I’d come up with, but not as weird as the rotting corpses you’d probably like to have. I figure between the two of us, we’ll come up with something workable.”

Planning party decorations, even weird ones, is not high on my list of stuff to do. And the fact that these planning sessions always seemed to happen late at night, in Neilly’s room, with her in pajamas (she favors fleecy bottoms and tank tops, but still) made it that much more torturous. Especially when we wound up in that too-tired-to-move, too-awake-to-go-to-sleep state and wound up talking about stuff beyond dry ice. (Oh hell, yeah, my Halloween party was gonna have dry ice. Are you kidding me?)

Like, for example, Neilly’s seemingly eternal question: Should she listen to whatever Sam had to say to her, oh my God, he shut Gary up, that’s so cool, he’s really grown as a person, or would that be stupid for her to totally forgive him for macking on Lulu, that was so uncool, what kind of person would do that?

And I was like, “Well, I don’t know, Neill”—I call her Neill ’cause we’re close like that—“I mean, I guess it comes down to this: Does he have what you want in a guy?”

“I think so,” she said. “I mean, I want somebody I can talk to.”
Check. Got that—we’re talking now.
“Somebody who makes me laugh.” Yup
, several times a day.
“And somebody who’s, you know, sensitive without being wussy.”
I was pretty sure I had demonstrated that quality on several occasions.
“And, of course, someone who’s smokin’ hot.”

Well, three out of four is 75 percent. Not great, but a solid passing grade. Something to build on.