Ninety minutes each way. That’s almost three times what it was last year. It’s a long time to sit here by myself and stare out the window. I’ve already seen this drive enough times in my life to predict every turn in the road with my eyes closed. Sean gets a ride to school with his dad, who works in Oakhurst. All of my other friends ride the second bus. There are two buses that pick up kids who went to our elementary school. Number twelve and number eight. I don’t know how many buses they actually have. This high school has kids from six different schools: Raymond, Oakhurst, Bass Lake, North Fork, Coarsegold. Everywhere within a fifty-mile radius. When I was in little league, we’d go to these schools for games. There’s something strange and exciting about being at a different school when you’ve only gone to one school all your life. Just going to the bathroom feels like a new, slightly naughty, experience.
I’ve been to Yosemite High School before. For baseball games and stuff. It looks different from this angle. The dusty, yellowed fields – the part of the school I’m most familiar with – sit off in the distance, at the bottom of the hill. Above the parking lot, where I’ve joined a mass exodus that has come forth from rows of yellow buses, mounds of concrete sprout out from the dirt like bulbous teepees every few hundred yards. Spattered down the hillside are rows of portable classrooms, intended to be temporary at first, but permanent fixtures for the last decade or so, judging by the chipped, gray paint and assorted graffiti.
Apparently, there’s no organization to the classroom numbering. They’re lettered and numbered by department, but some rooms are used for various classes throughout the day and the portables are not grouped together in any logical manner. One class is in 914, but there are only three rooms in the 900 building. My next class is in DT-109, a drafting class in a row of portables, between health class and algebra. I’ve deduced that the 100-900 buildings are the cement circus tents and the letters mean a portable trailer.
I haven’t seen any of my friends yet today. I don’t have any classes with Sean, Eric, or Adam at all this semester. The four of us have been in the same class for the last two years. In junior high, the day was divided into periods, but they were all in the same classroom, with the same teacher. Only in the afternoon, after lunch, did we leave that room for an elective. Our little group always took the same electives, though.
In third period, I sit next to Brent at the back table of the auto-shop warehouse. He’s kind of the outsider in our group, Brent. He has long red hair, thinning like an old man’s, draped over his trench coat. It’s August. T-shirt weather. He’s always playing with knives, too. This is why we don’t usually invite him over. That, and the time he shot me in the back with a BB gun when we went to his house to play D&D. And then there was the time he puked Red Vines all over the boat we rented for eighth-grade graduation. I think he hangs out with Eric sometimes. They both live in the Indian Lakes area. But when I go to Eric’s, we don’t usually invite him over.
Brent has an acoustic guitar and he’s plucking at the strings while the teacher is explaining the class syllabus. We’re sitting at the back of the room and it’s hard enough to hear what he’s saying in this warehouse. If I ask Brent to stop with the guitar, he’d probably start cutting into the wood-block table with his pocketknife or something equally distracting.
The guitar makes a loud clang, and a cloud of white dust appears in front of us as a chalkboard eraser bounces off the strings. The wooden stool beneath me sways on its uneven footing as I lean back in a much-too-late attempt to dodge the projectile. “Put it away!” the obese, bearded man bellows from across the room. Brent shoves the guitar back in its case and flips the teacher off, but it’s too late – he’s already looking away and swearing at the computer on his desk.
“I’ll print out the first assignment as soon as I can get this damn computer to work. Just talk amongst yourselves.”
After waiting a minute or two, looking around at the thirty other faces, hoping somebody else will do it, I get up and walk over to his desk, offering to help. There are like ninety-seven jobs in his print queue. First, I cancel all of those. Sorry, Mr. Monahan, but I’m not going to take the blame when it spits out a thousand copies of your assignment. The print drivers aren’t loaded. Simple fix. Two minutes later, the worksheet on how to check tire pressure is coming out of the LaserJet. I’m not making any friends by helping the teacher, I’m sure. They’d rather just sit and talk for the next forty minutes. Dumbasses. We’d just have to make it up later.
Monahan offers to pass me on the assignment, and the next several assignments, if I help him with some other computer problems he’s been having around the shop. I’d rather learn about cars than fix computers, but I don’t think I have a choice. I don’t want to get on his bad side on the first day; he seems like an asshole.
My next class is in 806. I go to the building nearest my first class, 914, and it’s the 800 building, but it’s the administration office. After waiting in the crowded lobby with a dozen other students for about fifteen minutes, the gray-haired lady compares my class schedule to the laminated map on the counter in front of her. She takes a long pause to moisten her cracked lips before telling me that the class I’m supposed to be in is all the way across campus, in a portable. I’m already late.
They don’t have a cafeteria at this school. No hot-lunch trays or salad bar. No little cartons of milk. I’ve never seen a school without some kind of food counter.
There’s a Subway Express window at the top of the hill, by the student store. Even if I get a sandwich, there’s nowhere to sit. The three or four picnic tables scattered around the dry grass are occupied by throngs of juniors and seniors, shouting excitedly at each other. Exuberant reunions of band geeks and cheerleaders alike. In addition to Letterman jackets and gym shorts, the student store sells chips and candy. I get a Baby Ruth and a Butterfinger. That’ll be my lunch today.
Making my way to the edge of the concrete patio, I spot Eric and Sean in the driveway below, flicking pennies at each other. When I get down there, I suggest we test out the ‘standing-group theory’. Our hypothesis is that any group of three or more, standing in the middle of a crowded space, will grow exponentially over time.
Within a couple of minutes, Adam shows up and our circle expands. Next, Brent pushes his way into the group, leaving his ragged guitar case in the walkway behind him. By the time the bell rings to summon us to sixth period, the crowd of teenage boys has grown to nine, completely blocking the asphalt driveway and forcing passers-by to cross the grass.
I walk with Eric down to the row of portables by the bus depot, continuing our discussion about the latest first-person shooter game. I have math and he has health, two rooms over. Math is boring. But not as bad as seventh period.
English.
I like to read, but Romeo and Juliet? Jane Eyre? I’m not looking forward to this semester. I heard the other class gets to read The Catcher in the Rye or even pick out their own books to read.
Before the bell rings for class to start, the teacher is shouting at everyone to sit down and shut up. That seems to be the school mantra. Everyone is excited for the first day of school to be over and it’s almost three o’clock. She’s like a hundred, so you’d think that she’d be used to first and last day of school antics.
On the bus, I bum a cigarette from Lindsay. She sometimes babysits my brother and sister and we’ll sneak out for a smoke together after she puts them to bed. She gave me my first cigarette last year. I feel guilty, always asking her, but I don’t know how else to get them. None of my friends smoke. My family hates smoking. Both of my grandpas smoked and they’re dead now, but I still like it.
It’s about a mile walk from the bus stop to my house. I try to hurry. I’ve got less than an hour before my mom gets home. If I get back quickly, I can smoke this cigarette and then wash my hands and brush my teeth. I can’t smoke out here by the road, someone might drive by and see me and tell my mom.
I get a little dizzy when I take the first drag. It’s still summer, but the smoke feels cool in my throat. I hear a noise up by the house and I press the cigarette into a mound of dirt between the dry weeds, in case my brother comes out looking for me. After waiting, frozen, for a minute and not seeing him looking down from the back patio, I grab the butt and hurry up the hill to stash it in the outside garbage can. I can hear the series of engine revs that indicate someone is coming up the driveway.
My mom’s friend, Jim, gets out of his car and calls out to me with a wave. I nod to him and go through the back door, into the house, hoping to avoid an awkward conversation. He’s such a phony.
“Hey Loser, Jim is here!” I yell down the hallway. Nick comes half-running, half-skipping through the house. There’s a pile of laminate flooring in the living room and he trips on it, stumbling into the front door.
Jim shows up sometimes and rides the horses with my brother. Most of my mom’s friends each show up about once a week when she’s not here, pretending to be looking for her, as if they don’t know when she’s here. Or maybe they came by because they “needed to borrow some eggs.” Never mind the fact that the store is a shorter drive from their house. It’s pretty obvious why they’re really coming over.
I’m returning everything to my backpack when I hear my mom’s car racing up the driveway. I cringe. No telling what she’s going to be yelling about when she gets home.
Today, it’s laundry.
“Get up off of your lazy ass! I told you I wanted the laundry folded and put away!”
“I was going to. I’m just finishing my homework.”
“When I leave a list, I want it all to be done when I get home! Where are your brother and sister? You know you’re responsible for them when I’m gone. I expect you to set the example around here! Can’t I count on you to do anything?”
They’re in their room, playing with toys, I tell her. She opens the door and instructs them not to come out. From the hallway, she yells at me to finish the laundry and then stay in my room until dinner. A few minutes later, my brother comes into our room and closes the door. She told him to wait in here while she walked Jim to his car. In the driveway.
I’m three or four levels into a new game of Shining Force when the phone rings. I don’t hear my mom call out that she’s got it, so I run to the kitchen to answer. It’s one of my mom’s friends. I open the back door and lean out to yell for my mom.
“I told you to stay inside!” she screams from next to Jim’s faded-blue Pinto, where they’re both leaning, side-by-side, against the passenger door.
“It’s Cheryl,” I call back.
“Get inside! Tell her I’ll call her back!”
I hang up the phone and go back to my game until I hear my dad get home. My mom’s in the kitchen now, heating up some Hamburger Helper. Dinner is always when he gets home. We all come out of our rooms and find our designated chairs at the table. I eat silently while my siblings, wide-eyed and grinning, tell him about their first day of school.
Freshman year is going to suck.