Biggie (9 page)

Chapter 17

The Cool Group

I need to show Annabelle that I can be just like everyone else—a “brick in the wall” as Pink Floyd sang. To do this I will need to make friends, tell jokes, and be social—all things I don't normally do at Finch High School.

But what do I say? Which students do I talk to? When do I say these things? Days keep crawling by and I'm still just sitting in the back of the classroom, listening to teachers, taking notes, and preparing for quizzes and tests, all the while saying nothing and doing the things Annabelle finds really, really weird. For years, she would sneak a peek at me now and then. The glances weren't followed by any real facial expressions, but there were glances. I didn't imagine them.

Now she never looks at me when she walks into class, so I know she's really angry. Not surprisingly, the Gmail account that gave me access to her secrets has been closed. She sent me a three-word direct message:
Turned Gmail off!
Worse, she hasn't stopped in the convenience store since the night she called me weird.

Days pass, and instead of opening my mouth, I think about Annabelle in the parking lot. I can't shake the memory of her scarlet cheeks and dilated eyes. I still can hear the slamming car door and whispers from the nosy people watching in the parking lot.

After two weeks, I've decided to give up. I will not be able to talk in class. It's impossible. I need a new plan—one without potential panic attacks.

Instead, like an undercover narc, I start to listen to everyone to collect information and formulate a plan to become popular. Since the parking lot incident, I've started following every classmate on Twitter and Instagram to see what people are doing and saying. I've taken a break from long-distance relationships and started solely focusing on Finch High School.

Slowly but surely, the plan comes together. Rather than taking notes in trigonometry, I craft how to fix things between Annabelle and me. Just like a five-star general, I plot the perfect path to win her heart. As I put my plan to paper, the tip of my black pen races over the white sheet. I now have the time line from sweaty student to Annabelle's make-out partner. As perfect as my scheme is, the first step sucks. I, the disappointing son of a school legend, need to ask Coach Phillips for a favor.

Sitting inside Coach Phillips's office, I look out the window and see students walking, running, talking, and hanging out. There are plenty of people at Finch who would love to be my friend. Heck, I could hang out with any freshman I want, but that doesn't help me with Annabelle. She needs to see me out and about, chitchatting with fellow students. Hanging out with kids outside of the cool group won't change her mind about me being a weirdo hermit.

I spin around in a squeaky old vinyl chair and try to remember the last time I asked anyone for help. I'm pretty self-sufficient—a huge job requirement for shy guys who prefer silence to small talk. I always have plenty of good-working pens and clear, crisp sheets of paper for class. I wear a watch so I will always know what time it is. And I have mastered simple truck and computer repairs. Unless something crazy happens, I should never have to ask anyone for help. With these skills, my life has been perfectly calm until Annabelle went all crazy in the convenience-store parking lot.

I have been completely out of sorts in the three weeks since our fight. My note-taking has fallen off so much that in the last week, I have ripped apart three assignments with a
B
scribbled at the top. I toss and turn every night in bed because of a bad mixture of headaches and stomach pains that just won't disappear. I'm desperate, which is the only reason I'm trying to sit still in this crappy chair in Coach Phillips's office.

Since he's nowhere to be found, I reread my plan's five steps, starting from the last step and working backward to the first. The final step puts Annabelle Rivers in my arms. She will be my girlfriend and we will kiss, sneak into each other's bedroom windows at night, go to homecoming and prom together, and pass notes in class. We will be full-fledged—no doubt about it—boyfriend and girlfriend.

The other steps are to become friends with Michelle and Becky. Before that I will become friends with Killer and Jet, and before that I will become friends with Kyle Reddick by helping him with his homework, which he will think is Coach Phillips's idea.

Becoming friends with Kyle shouldn't be too hard. We are locker mates and he usually keeps his mouth shut. With the exception of everyday greetings like “Hey” or “What's up?” or “How's is it going?” we never talk and I think he likes that setup as much as I do. He grew up in Chicago and spent two years in Des Moines before moving here in ninth grade, which makes him an outsider, a horrible thing to be in small-town Iowa. He might as well wear a big
O
on his shirt.

Outsiders are never truly accepted. Everyone assumes their parents have come to town to steal jobs, and their kids have come to the tiny high school to steal girlfriends and starting spots on sports teams. Towns like Finch are like some bad sci-fi movie where a kid is given his job in kindergarten and there's no going back. Everyone's fate is set. If someone comes to town late and throws those initial plans out of whack, they are assholes and must be destroyed.

Well, Kyle's family has yet to be destroyed, although I think his parents split a while back when his dad couldn't find work. I guess Kyle's dad found out the hard way that it's tough to find a job when you're an outsider.

Kyle showed up two years ago standing six feet tall and weighing almost two hundred pounds without an ounce of fat. He's ripped and has sandy blond hair and a small smile that's always accompanied by a couple of head shakes—sort of like a human bobblehead doll. Unlike most kids at Finch, he doesn't have a nickname. Nicknames tend to be handed out on the elementary school playground and since he was hundreds of miles away when I became Biggie, he's just Kyle.

All the girls went crazy when he showed up. He was like Justin Timberlake. Girls just stood in the hall like zombies and watched him walk past.

There's an urban legend that a junior girl, two years older than Kyle, dropped her books as he walked by. When he, a lowly freshman, handed them back to her, she fainted. I'm not saying it's true, but that's the story.

Somewhere between the fainting and today, Michelle tamed him. The class's most energetic and fun-loving person fell for the school's second-most shy kid. The two started dating as sophomores. Since there was no way that Michelle's parents were going to let her go to the movies with an outsider, she asked Annabelle and Becky to go with them to the theater. Killer and Jet saw that Kyle had a couple extra girls and they sat down and introduced themselves to the outsider. Before the previews were over, Finch had its cool group.

To become the group's first new member in twenty-four months, I need Coach Phillips to help me, which he won't be thrilled to do. I can't prove he hates me, but his cold, emotionless stares remind me how frustrated he is with me. He thinks I have wasted my legacy. Instead of coaching the offspring of Aaron Abbott, he has had to deal with a fat ass bringing I-don't-want-to-play notes from made-up, out-of-town doctors.

“Biggie, how can I help you?” Coach finally walks into the room.

I clear my throat and wait for him to file a couple papers into a drawer. After clearing a big enough space in the middle of his desk for his elbows, he rubs his goateed chin with his thumbnails. “Did you bring a note?” he asks.

“What?”

“A note to get out of gym class.”

“No,” I say. “I'm not getting any notes this year.”

He leans back as I grip the aluminum handles on my chair, squeezing them so tight I expect the nails to pop out any second.

“Then why are you here?”

“Is it true that Kyle may be suspended a couple of football games to get his grades up?” I ask.

Coach just stares at me, and my breathing slows to a point where warm air feels like a wool blanket on my tongue.

“I can't talk about football players, Biggie,” he says.

“Well, I'm his locker partner and I heard him telling Jet that you might sit him out a couple of games to make sure he passes all of his classes this quarter,” I say deliberately. “You said you didn't want a repeat of last year when Kyle failed two classes and didn't play in the playoffs.”

“I can't talk about it, Biggie,” he repeats. “Anything else?”

“I'll tutor him, teach him study skills,” I say. “I can help him.”

“Are you looking for a job?” he asks. “Because I can't pay you.”

“I'll do it for free,” I say. “I just want to help out.”

Coach rocks back and forth in his chair, making a creaking noise like a cricket chirping. “What are you up to?” he asks.

I run my tongue across my lips and chew on my bottom one for a few seconds before answering. “Kyle's nice, nice to me, and I want to help him. If I work with him, can he still play on Friday? I mean it's only Monday. There must be stuff we can do before Friday night, right?”

Coach sits back up and looks at me. I feel like I should say something, but I just look back. He's reading me. Coach knows I'm up to something, and I am, but nothing diabolical. I really do want to help Kyle.

He finally leans back and says, “There's a quiz in my geometry class tomorrow. If he gets a
B
on it, the entire football team will be thrilled.”

“So no suspension?”

“Biggie, can't talk about suspensions with you, but let's just say everyone will be happy, including Kyle, if you can help him get a
B
.”

“Cool,” I reply. “So you'll say something to him?”

“Excuse me?” Phillips asks.

“You'll tell him that he needs to study with me?”

He laughs. I'm not sure what's so funny, but I smile back anyway.

“Sure, I'll tell him to come to your place at seven thirty tonight.”

“Thank you, Coach.” I get up.

“Biggie, are you still throwing with your step-dad?” He snaps open a cold aluminum can of Diet Coke and takes a long drink.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Good. Keep me up to date on how that's going. We could use a big left-hander who's in baseball shape.”

I nod.

Kyle's late, which only makes me more nervous. I know it's stupid, actually idiotic, to be nervous about a kid I see everyday coming to my house to study, an activity I've mastered. While I should feel comfortable, instead I'm very, very nervous. I should call and cancel; erase this five-point plan, this overreaching attempt to solve my Annabelle problem, as a foolish idea. Ever since she called me a weirdo, I haven't been able to think about anything else. When I run in the morning, I think about her yelling at me. I can't study, not well, because her voice constantly rattles in my head.

“You're so weird,” I hear over and over and over.

I need to change her mind before I lose my mind.

Forty minutes later, Kyle knocks on my door.

“Don't screw this up,” I whisper to myself, while I walk to the front door.

“What's up, Biggie?”

“Nothin',” I say.

“Kyle, great game last week.” Maddux pops in from the kitchen. “Three touchdowns—and the third one, running over those four guys. Awesome!”

“I don't think it was four,” he says.

“This week, remember to hold on to the ball. The Lions love to strip it from you.”

“Maddux, get out of here,” I say. “Kyle's not here to talk football. He's here to talk about math.”

“Nobody cares about math,” Maddux says. “Football's king.”

“Actually, little guy, I need to care about math or I won't be playing on Friday.” Kyle high-fives my brother and Maddux looks like he's going to faint right there, just like that junior girl two years ago.

“Are you serious?” Maddux asks as Kyle messes up his hair. “Coach can't kick you off. You're our ground game.”

“Maddux, get out of here!” I repeat.

“But,” Maddux protests.

“I'm taking care of it,” I say. “Now go!”

He mopes off into his bedroom, and Kyle and I set up shop at the breakfast table in the kitchen.

He opens his book and pulls out a small green pencil. I've never seen such a weird-looking writing utensil. He wraps his hands around it and then scratches letters like a three-year-old would color in a cartoon dog.

“Here.” I hand him a real, freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil. “You won't be able to write legibly with that.”

He takes the pencil and twirls it around, inspecting it. “Are we writing tonight? I thought we were doing math.”

Before I can answer, his phone vibrates on the table.

“Damn, I forgot to call Michelle,” he says as he types something on his phone.

“Is she mad?” I ask.

He sets the phone back down. “No, not really. She's getting pizza with Annabelle.”

Every inch of my body wants to ask him if we can join them, but we need to study. If I don't keep Kyle from being suspended, he won't want to be my friend. Tonight's about work. Hanging out with Annabelle comes later. I need to be patient.

“So where do we start?” he asks.

“Has Annabelle ever said anything to you or Michelle about me?” I can't resist asking. It's only eight o'clock, and math can wait a few minutes.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know about our fight in the parking lot of the convenience store?”

“No,” he says. “All I know is that you stood her up at Killer's party a couple of weeks ago.”

My body goes numb. I need all the strength in my neck to keep my head from falling face-first onto the wooden tabletop. I feel hollow inside like I'm in a dream, which might be a nightmare. “What?”

“She said you asked to hang out with her, and then she told you to come to Killer's party and you were a no-show. I don't know about a fight. I didn't even know you two hung out.”