Stand-Off (6 page)

Or so I thought.

So, yeah, it was a shock for me to see Sam Abernathy timidly enter my Creative Writing class, and it was entirely natural for me to assume the little crouton was simply lost in a forest of gigantic lettuce leaves. Or something.

But no. And of course, I had no way of knowing anything about the Abernathy, because
I refused to converse with him
.

Sam Abernathy was an open book as far as I was concerned. I didn't need to ask about any details in the kid's two-sentence biography. I decided then and there to make a chart (that's not creepy of me, is it?) in which I would predict everything about the Abernathy, and then I could check it off during the course of whatever period of endurance I'd have to endure with my unendurable roommate, just to see how very right I could be:

“Oh. Hi, Ryan Dean.”

“Hello.”

“Is it okay if I sit next to you?”

“No. Because you're not in this class.”

The Abernathy unzipped his notebook. He had one of those really big, zipper-shut notebook organizers that nobody would ever willingly be seen with in public. He took out his class schedule.

“Is this Creative Writing, with Dr. Wellins?”

Mr.—Dr.—Wellins, a monumentally renowned pervert, had been my American Lit teacher in eleventh grade. Apparently, over the summer, he had earned a PhD in misidentifying sexual subtext in classic literature. I liked Mr.—uh, Dr.—Wellins, despite the fact that he was really creepy.

I sighed and waved my hand at the empty seat beside me.

Annie would be pleased at how nice I just was, I thought.

Sam Abernathy sat down, all smiles.

“I'm so glad I actually know somebody in one of my classes,” he said. “This is going to be fun!”

Fun.

Dr. Wellins came in, wrote his name and the date on the board at the front of the class, then launched into a dramatic speech with lots of hand gestures about how we were only to refer to him as
Dr. Wellins
, and that we were all going to find this the most uncomfortable (he was already right about that) and difficult class of our career—so we might rethink committing to the course right now.

I was used to this type of opener. A lot of the teachers at PM were so full of their own credentials, they tried to scare down the number of papers they'd have to grade right at the start of each term by proclaiming their impermeable magnificence. I looked around at the sets of terrified eyeballs staring at the master of all things creative and wordlike.

There were sixteen kids in the class, and ten of them were girls. Score on that one. Also, I was pretty sure I was the only senior. Everyone else looked really young (Sam Abernathy looked like a fetus with a necktie). But the other kids probably thought I was a tenth grader or something, anyway.

Then Dr. Wellins fired off a machine-gun barrage of requirements for his course, which included specifics on font size and page layout of our work, our responsibilities regarding deadlines, our openness to criticism, and his general prohibition against a list of verbs (he
gave the ones he never wanted to see, which included any form of “to be”), all adverbs, and anything ever written in first-person point of view.

“And, if you are not aware of what an adverb is, or one-P-P-O-V, then I would suggest you consider transferring into beginning finger-painting class immediately,” Dr. Wellins said.

I was thinking if he only banned a few more language devices, we could all hand in blank pages and ace this shitty class.

Here's another thing: I hate alphabetical order.

Opportunities are supposed to be randomly distributed, right? There are only three possible terminal initials worse than
W
when it comes to the unfair allocation of choice or turn taking, and
nobody
has a last name that starts with
X
. I mention this because as Dr. Wellins called off the names on his roster he asked each student to name the person in the class with whom they would like to be wed for the term as a crit partner.

“ ‘Crit partner' is what WRITERS”—whenever Dr. Wellins said “writers,” it always sounded like it was in all capitals, like he was attempting to describe celestial angels to the tongueless half-beast spawns of hell—“call their critique partner. It is a significant relationship, one based on trust, openness, integrity, and support. The commitment is akin to the faithfulness and dedication of a husband or wife. Do I make myself clear?”

I mentally counted the number of “to be” verbs in his proclamation.

Don't look back. There were three.

Nobody said anything.

To be honest, I think most of the kids in the class stopped listening to Dr. Wellins when he told us all about his doctoral dissertation, which was an analysis of the underlying themes of homosexuality and narcissism in Robert Louis Stevenson's
Treasure Island
.

Besides that,
husband or wife
?

Was Dr. Wellins already concocting some bizarre fantasies about the kids in his Creative Writing course? Also, who ever says “akin”? Look, I knew how much I'd changed over the summer, and I was certain that Isabel had lost her virginity, but Dr. Wellins, since earning his PhD, had transformed into an even bigger self-absorbed douche than he was in eleventh-grade American Literature, and the scale of that was almost impossible to imagine.

But, to return to the egregious miscarriage of justice known as
alphabetical order
, the first kid on Dr. Wellins' roster happened to be the Abernathy.

“Samuel Abernathy?” Dr. Wellins said.

The Abernathy raised his little pink baby hand. “Here, sir.”

“Do you know anyone here in this desiccated wasteland of imbecility with whom you would like to bond as a crit partner?”

Dr. Wellins swept his arm across the breadth of the room like he was scattering chicken feed in slow motion.

Please don't bond with me, Sam Abernathy. Please don't bond with me, Sam Abernathy. Please don't bond—

Then the Abernathy pointed at me and said, “Yes, sir. I would like to partner with Ryan Dean.”

Unfortunately for me, Dr. Wellins's factory of creativity—like our (
my!
) dorm room—was on the ground floor, which eliminated the possibility of a desperate leap from the window.

And Dr. Wellins's pervert-tumbleweed eyebrows rose like the spines of twin cats about to fight when he realized the target Sam Abernathy pointed at was the same Ryan Dean who was also in his American Lit class the preceding year.

“Ryan Dean West?” Dr. Wellins was practically salivating.

I apologize for using a “be” verb
and
an adverb.

I also apologize for not being able to deny my existence.

“Hello, Dr. Wellins.” I gave him a half-elevated pope wave. “Congratulations on the sheepskin.”

“I didn't recognize you! You must have grown a foot!”

“Hyperbole,” I pointed out, avoiding first person, be, and adverbial modifiers.

I totally
owned
that old pervert.

“Well, I expect nothing but the best from you, young man! Nothing but the best!”

You see, here's the thing: I had creepy old Dr. Wellins figured out from day one. I knew exactly what he wanted to see from us half-wits. He was an incredibly shallow audience who was so easy to satisfy.

Instant A.

If only I could get away from the Abernathy. But I realized it was beyond hope when Dr. Wellins, beaming, wrote down the first official crit partnership on his whiteboard:

Abernathy/West

I glared at the Abernathy, who smiled at me and bounced up and down in his little Creative Writing desk like he was five years old and waiting to open all his Christmas presents.

OKAY. EVEN THOUGH I KNEW
in chapter nine that I'd end up reencountering my crit partner, the Abernathy, in Culinary Arts, I didn't
really
know it until just before the class began, which is going to happen in a few paragraphs.

So hang in there.

The Culinary Arts room was as big as a grocery store. Instead of desks, there were prep tables with built-in sinks. There was an entire wall of gleaming steel ovens and cooktops, and even a walk-in refrigerator and freezer. There were microwave ovens, too, which made me flash back unpleasantly to the sleep-deprived night before.

This was all new to me, though, especially the teacher, Mrs. O'Hare, whom I had never seen around Pine Mountain before. Mrs. O'Hare was the exact opposite of what I'd imagine a cooking teacher to look like. She was young, with billowing blond hair, and long slender legs that you couldn't help but notice in her tapered chef's pants. She also wore one of those perfectly white, double-breasted chef's tunics with just one button seductively undone. No boy in his right mind would have to break out the candy thermometer to know that Mrs. O'Hare was the hottest thing in the kitchen.

I wondered if she was a widow.

Something cool and soft touched my hand, and I snapped out of my stare-down contest with that
one button
.

“I've been waiting for this all day. Well, since breakfast, at least.”

Annie.

We held hands beneath our prep table and leaned close enough that our shoulders and legs touched—just innocent enough that Mrs. O'Hare (my new favorite, hopefully widowed teacher) wouldn't think anything rule-breaky was going on.

“Oh man, Annie! I am so happy to see you. Do you realize I had to endure an all-boys Health class, where we were forced to take a pledge and promise that we'd learn stuff like healthy attitudes and behaviors toward our penises, and then I just had the worst experience ever in Creative Writing class,” I said.

“What now, Ryan Dean?” (hot scolding tone).

“Well, first off, it's taught by Mr. Wellins, who is now
Dr. Wellins
, which means his obsession with sex is going to be even more creepy and condescending, and then Sam Abernathy turned up in the class—and Dr. Wellins had us
pair up
as permanent writing buddies—and he even made us write something together called a
tandem dialogue
. It was a nightmare. We had to take turns, where the setup was assigned by Dr. Wellins, then we alternated writing dialogue between two supposedly fictional characters. Here. You should read this.”

And I slipped Annie Altman the shared paper that Sam Abernathy and I had written our first partner project on.

Sam Abernathy

Ryan Dean West

Creative Writing Assignment: Tandem Dialogue

Dr. Wellins

Assignment: Write a dialogue scene with your partner, taking turns to alternate between speakers. Be sure to utilize proper dialogue tags and punctuation. Limitations: (1) YOU MAY NOT USE ANY FORM OF THE VERB “TO SAY.” (2) YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE “REAL PEOPLE” IN YOUR STORY. The situation is as follows: Two speakers are present, engaged in dialogue. One of the speakers finds out that his/her friend is having unprotected sex.

Ready? Set? Write!

I could not believe what Stan Abercrombie just confessed to me. “You've been having UNPROTECTED SEX?” I asked.

Stan Abercrombie considered the question for a moment and then retorted, “I thought you weren't allowed to write in first person.”

I conceded, “Stan, I will overlook your use of a form of ‘to be' if you will just go with the one-P-P-O-V. The
bigger issue remains the fact that you've been engaging in unprotected sex!”

“Ryan Dean

“Rodney Dan,”

“Richard Dick,” Stan Abercrombie explained, “I don't really know what unprotected sex is.”

“Wait,” I ejaculated, “are you
fucking
kidding me?”

Stan Abercrombie
nervously
admitted, “No. I really don't know what that means.”

“That isn't what I was talking about,” I bellowed. “Why the hell would you name me RICHARD DICK? Nobody would ever be named Richard Dick! Who would name a kid Richard Dick?”