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Anyway, it gets him laid, I hear. Doing the horizontal mambo with sympathetic cheerleaders is, apparently, a-okay in God’s book, and it doesn’t upset your spine like football. Of course, now he’s dating my sister, Jenna, so I’ll just be flipping on the denial meter for that one.

Mr. Glass is undisturbed. “Okay, settle down. I haven’t dismissed you yet.”Advertisement

You dismissed us on day one, I think. It’s the kind of sardonic comment that would be good to share with a mate, a pal, a sidekick and coconspirator. If I had one.

“¡Hola! ¿Quién puede decirme algo sobre Miguel Cervantes?” It’s Mrs. Rector, Calhoun High School’s Spanish teacher, to the rescue. This year, the administration has decided to have coteachers on certain segments. The idea being that we need to cross-pollinate our educational experience with tidbits from history and literature, social studies and foreign language skills, chemistry and home ec, which might prove valuable if we get the urge to make a highly volatile banana cream pie.

Mrs. Rector translates some of the text from Spanish, adding the proper “r” rolls and flourishes. She’s got a reputation as the town lush. ¿Quanto costa una grande margarita, por favor? The fluorescent lighting is zapping out its periodic Morse code of odd sounds: We are hungry. Send us more of your bug kind. All in all, I’m ready to ride out the class under the radar. Just another ten minutes till I can blow through Calhoun’s front doors, past the school buses lining the drive for the away game, past the phalanx of cars and trucks ready to follow them anywhere Texas sporting loyalty demands, and hotfoot it downtown to Eubie’s Hot Wax—half-price CDs and old vinyl.

“Is Don Quixote mad or is it the world that embraces these ideals of the knight-errant that is actually mad? That’s the rhetorical question that Cervantes seems to be posing to us. But for our purposes, there is a right answer, and you need to know that answer when you take the SPEW test,” Mr. Glass says, pointing to the board, where STATE PRESCRIBED EDUCATIONAL WORTHINESS test is underlined twice. Mr. Glass’s monotone is lulling me into slumber. Zap, buzz, goes the overhead lighting. I’ve put my head on my desk, where I can hear the minute hand ticking hard in my ear. My eyelids are heavy. Almost … Asleep …

The room is on fire. A row of flames shoots up into my field of vision. I leap out of my chair, knocking it over. It hits the ground with a loud thwack.

“Mr. Smith? Are you okay?” Mrs. Rector asks.

When I look up to the front of the room, everything’s fine. No fire. Nothing but every pair of eyes trained on me, which is a strange sensation. Usually, I’m famous for being looked through or over or some other preposition besides at.

Mr. Glass crosses his arms. “Yes, Mr. Smith?”

“Uh, no. Sorry. It was a … um …”

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Mrs. Rector’s pursed lips seem to be holding back the words “Usted está un pendejo.”

The silence is filled by the ego-pulverizing laughter from the gaggle of gum-popping girls on the right. Somebody singsongs, “Fuh-reak …”

“It was a cockroach on my desk,” I blurt out. “A big one. Like, SUV big.”

A few of the girls scream and pull their legs up. Our resident class clown makes slurping sounds, which grosses out the Korean exchange student next to him.

“Nice going, Smith,” one of Chet’s doughy football buddies says, laughing. Steve or Knute or Rock. One of those muy macho-sounding names. A name that says “I can waste you on the Astroturf.” Not like Cameron, which sounds like the person who gets wasted on the Astroturf.

Mrs. Rector claps for attention. “Mi amigos, silencio, por favor. Settle down, please. Señor Smith, I will give you un pase de pasillo so that you can find el conserje to come spray.”

“The rest of you,” Mr. Glass pleads, “please turn in your SPEW test prep books to Chapter Five: Why Thinking Can Cost You on Test Day.”

I take the Get Out of Jail Free pass and head right to the men’s bathroom on the fourth floor. The Conspiracy Theory & Gaming Society—Stoner Kevin, Stoner Kyle, and Part-time Stoner Rachel—is in residence. Technically, girls aren’t allowed in men’s bathrooms, but since only the losers, present company included, ever use this one, it’s a nonissue. Besides, Rachel’s five ten with six tattoos and seven piercings. Nobody gives her shit.

I guess we’re sort of friends. If getting high in high school bathrooms and occasionally sharing a table in the caf counts as friendship. We exchange “heys” with limited eye contact—my preferred greeting—and they offer me some of the weed they’re using their bathroom huddle stance to try to disguise, as if the smell isn’t a dead giveaway. pqdm.com