It Looks Like This (2 page)

I mean they would say small-talk things like Can I borrow a pen? or What page are we on?

I watched them. After a week or maybe a bit longer, Victor said, Hey.

Just like that.

When Fuller came in, I mean.

Fuller looked at him for a bit and then said, Hey.

That was it, though.

But the next day they started talking a bit more.

After a couple weeks they seemed to be friends.

This morning Victor’s standing at the edge of one of the driveways and smoking a cigarette and looking at his phone. He has on black jeans and a green T-shirt too big for him. He brings the cigarette up to his mouth, holding it between his first two fingers, and then he takes a drag. And then he pulls the cigarette back down with his thumb and index finger.

He keeps doing that, switching his fingers, and then he looks up from his phone at us. His hair gets in his eyes and he brushes it away. Straight and parted and really, really dark.

I can’t tell if it’s his house or not, but I sort of doubt it ’cause he’s smoking, and he’d probably get in trouble if his parents saw him. It’s a mostly gray house with weird spires that remind me of Disneyland and a long, winding gravel driveway. There are three really wide willow trees.

I love willow trees.

I’ve never smoked before, except one time to try it when my friend Kris back in Sheboygan Falls got one of his stepsister’s packs of Virginia Slims. That’s supposed to be a girl’s cigarette but it was all he could get.

We both tried it. Kris could do it pretty easily because I think he’d done it before. He said he got a buzz going.

I tried to inhale it like he showed me, but it just made me cough a lot. Kris said that happens to everyone the first time but then it gets better.

I didn’t really want to try again, though.

Anyway, Victor seems to know what he’s doing, like he smokes a lot. I bet he does.

He just keeps smoking and staring at us as we turn onto the rich people’s street and walk toward the bridge over Blushing Creek.

After we get past a few houses, Toby says, Who was that?

I say, Nobody, Toby.

She says, Is he in your grade?

I say, Yeah.

She doesn’t say anything for a minute.

Then she says, He smokes like a damn pro.

She’s always saying stuff like that. I mean stuff that normal eleven-year-old girls don’t say.

I say, Don’t say damn. Mom’ll get mad.

She giggles a bit and says, Whatever you say, Mike.

I’m leaving the bathroom right after Biology and I hear:

You’re Mike, right?

just as I open the door.

I sort of stop in my tracks because it takes me by surprise. The door starts closing and it hits the back of my heel. It hurts a bit, but not that much because I have thick sneakers on.

I look around and it’s Victor. He’s standing off to the side near the water fountain.

I say, Yeah.

He says, Mike Mike Mike.

Just like that. Three times really fast, kind of under his breath. He isn’t smiling or anything but he isn’t frowning either.

He says, What are you always looking at in class?

I say, Huh?

He says, In Ferguson’s. You’re always staring at me and Fuller.

I don’t say anything.

He says, Why are you always staring at us?

I say, I’m not.

He still doesn’t look mad or upset. He doesn’t look anything, just blank.

He says, I see you staring all the time.

I say, You sit in front of me and I’m just looking that way because Mrs. Ferguson is talking.

He doesn’t say anything.

For a couple moments we just look at each other. I don’t know what to do because he isn’t doing anything and he doesn’t really have any expression on his face. He’s looking at me like I’m a rock or something.

After a while he blinks and says, Don’t stare at me in class.

And he walks off.

I have some friends.

I’m not like a popular kid at my school or anything but I have some friends.

These are my main friends:

• Ronald

• Jared

• Terry

Also there are some kids in my classes that I talk to sometimes, but we don’t really hang out after school or anything.

Terry is a friend from church, but he goes to a different school, so I only see him every now and then. We don’t have a lot in common, really. He’s in my youth group and seems to like talking to me for some reason, so we became friends. But we aren’t like best friends.

Jared and Ronald and I hang out after school and on weekends and stuff. Plus we eat lunch together.

I met them at freshman orientation just before the school year started. They were nice to me and I didn’t know anybody.

Victor walks away, and I watch him leave, not sure what to do.

Then I go to lunch. I usually get to the cafeteria late because Biology is kind of far away from that part of the building.

The tables are either square or circle and seat four or five kids. Sometimes kids put them together when they have big groups. They aren’t supposed to, but usually the teachers don’t do anything because they don’t care and everyone knows it’s a stupid rule anyway.

Jared and Ronald and I always sit at the same table, a square one in the far corner, near the band hall and the side entrance. We like it there because it’s more open and we can watch people walk in and out of the school and around the elective classes.

Jared is already there when I show up.

I sit down and say, Hey.

He says, Hi, dude.

Sometimes Jared says dude even though it sounds weird coming from him. He’s taller than me, taller than most kids, and really skinny and kind of awkward. He has a kind of nasal voice, but not like ridiculous or anything. His hair is straight and really dark brown, and it hangs down over his ears and covers his face a bit. He has a big nose, which I think he’s self-conscious about. He’s kind of pale and has red lips.

I asked him once why he says dude like he was a football player or something, and he rolled his eyes and said, I’m being ironic, dude.

I don’t mind that he’s awkward, because I know I am too.

I say, Where’s Ronald?

A voice really close by says, Right behind you, dumbass.

Ronald comes around and sits down. He doesn’t look anything like Jared at all. He’s a bit shorter than me but not as skinny, and his hair is kind of curly and strawberry blond, and really messy. He said once it was because he was part Welsh, and that’s also why he has light skin and all those freckles too. He likes to wear loose button shirts and jeans that cover the backs of his shoes.

I say, Hey, Ronald.

He says, What’s going on, Mike?

Ronald frowns at his spaghetti. He looks a bit disgusted but also kind of resigned. They have spaghetti every Wednesday, and Ronald always gets it even though he complains about it and even though he could get something else if he wanted.

He picks up one of the strands of spaghetti and holds it in front of his face, pinching it between two fingers. He looks at it for a few seconds, not saying anything. Jared and I watch him.

Then Ronald leans his head back, lifts the spaghetti high over his face, and lowers it into his open mouth.

Then we hear someone approaching our table. Jared looks up. Ronald doesn’t notice until he hears the girl’s voice.

She says, Hey, are you using this chair?

She’s older, maybe a junior or senior, dressed in shorts that are probably too short for the dress code and a bold turquoise shirt with short sleeves. She has really bright glittery lipstick and auburn hair and she’s very pretty.

Ronald brings his head level again and just looks at her. There’s a tip of spaghetti hanging out of his mouth. His eyes are wide. Very slowly, he sucks the spaghetti tip into his mouth and starts chewing.

He says, Hey there.

The girl looks back at Ronald. She still has her hand on the fourth chair at our table. I can tell she doesn’t know what to say.

Jared says, No, you can have it.

His voice cracks just a bit.

The girl smiles wide and says, Thank you!

And then she takes the chair and leaves.

We all watch her go for a while, and then Ronald turns to Jared and punches him in the arm.

He says, You idiot, I was talking to her.

Jared snorts and rubs his arm. He says, She didn’t want you, she just wanted the chair.

Ronald turns back in the direction she went and shakes his head, slowly. He says, Man, she was smoking.

I look over. In the distance I can see her sit down at one of the big groups of two tables pushed together.

I say, She had a lot of makeup on.

Ronald says, Yeah, that’s what smoking is.

We are in the middle of doing depth exercises in Art.

Mr. Kilgore has us draw two of the same objects, one near and one far away, and explains how to draw one of them smaller than the other to give the illusion of depth.

It is kind of pointless because I already know how to do all that, but Mr. Kilgore gets mad sometimes if you don’t do things his way. He tells us exactly how to draw lines between the two objects to make a convergence and tells us about shading and how that can help with the illusion.

Mr. Kilgore likes to make us follow a bunch of rules when we draw. It’s pretty stupid. I told Mom that once, but she said that it might look that way but maybe he knows more than he seems to.

I didn’t say anything to that. Maybe she was right. But I sort of doubt it, to be honest.

I’m doing everything Mr. Kilgore says:

I draw two paddleboats, like they used to have on the Mississippi River.

I make one big and one small.

Then I draw lines for the sides of the river, going away from the viewer.

I draw some more lines to make the current and the wake from the paddles, and make all the lines look like they are converging.

It is everything Mr. Kilgore says to do.

If he didn’t have us always follow his rules exactly all the time, I probably would draw something else, but it would still have depth. It would look good.

Plus paddleboats are harder to draw than converging lines anyway.

Mr. Kilgore comes by. He bends down to look at my drawing and I can smell his aftershave. It smells like my dad’s.

He pulls down his glasses to get a better look, letting them rest just on the tip of his nose.

I can see his big bushy brown mustache through the lenses. The hairs are magnified and look tangled and dense, with gray ones twisted in here and there. I try not to, but I look anyway. He has four lines going across his forehead, which make him look like he’s deep in thought. Above that he’s mostly bald, except for some brown hair along the sides.

One or two strands stand up on the top of his head, because of static.

He studies my drawing for a while and says, That’s not bad, Mikey.

Then he sort of smiles, but not really, and walks off.

I hate it when anyone calls me Mikey and he knows it, but he still sometimes does it anyway. I keep drawing for a bit, but then I hear this sort of snickering sound.

I look up and I see Victor and Tristan and Fuller laughing about something.

Victor and Tristan have been friends for a long time, not like Fuller. I could tell because they were talking like they were friends even on the first day of school. By this time Fuller is sitting with them in Art, so I guess now he’s friends with Tristan too.

I don’t like Tristan.

I see them laughing quietly to themselves, and then Victor kind of points in my direction and Tristan looks.

My ears get hot.

Then they start laughing again, and they keep glancing at me while they laugh.

I go back to my drawing and try really hard not to look up. For a while I barely move.

Then Mr. Kilgore says, Cut it out, Tristan.

Then they stop laughing. I glance up really quick and see that they still have these smiles on their faces.

I know Victor and Fuller are telling Tristan about me staring in Biology.

I look back at my drawing and realize I’d accidentally made this big black spot where I pressed the pencil too hard. I wasn’t paying attention because I was concentrating on not looking at Victor.

I just look at it for a while wondering if I could erase it, and then I hear, really soft:

Hey, Mikey.

It’s Tristan. I bend over my paper and pretend to keep drawing. Then he does it again:

Heeey, Mikey. You gonna stare at me too?

I just keep working on my drawing like I don’t hear.

Then, super quiet this time, so that I almost don’t hear it for real,

Come on, queer.

Then Mr. Kilgore says, louder this time,

Tristan, cut it out. There’s no need to talk.

Then all three get quiet for good.

I just keep drawing.

These are the classes I like: Biology, English, French.

These are the classes I hate: PE, Art, Geography.

I don’t care that much about Algebra.

That’s mostly going by who the teacher is and what other kids are in the class, though. It would be different if I was just talking about the subjects themselves. If it’s just the subjects, I would switch Art and Biology.