Part 1 (2/2)
2. You cannot become too deeply enmeshed in any one group. This follows from point one, above. One must instead be at the periphery at all times. Befriend the goths, but do not under any circ.u.mstances dress like them. Partic.i.p.ate in band, but avoid their hour-long jam sessions in the band room after school. Make appearances at the church's ridiculously decked-out rec room, but shun any activity wherein someone is actively talking about Jesus.
3. At lunch, before school, and at all other times in public, you must keep an insanely low profile. I mean, just forget about lunch. Lunch is where you are asked to demonstrate your allegiance to one group or another by sitting with them for all to see-or, G.o.d forbid, being asked to sit with some poor sap who's not even in a group. It's not that I have anything against group-less kids, obviously. My heart goes out to them, the wretched b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. In the chimpanzee-ruled jungle of Benson, they are the cripples, hobbling along on the forest floor, unable to escape hara.s.sment and torture from the others. Pity them, yes; befriend them, never. To befriend them is to share their fate. They try to hook you by saying things like, ”Greg, d'you wanna sit with me.” What they are really saying is: ”Please hold still while I stab you in your legs, so that you cannot run when we are overtaken by the Biting Ones.”
But really anytime you're in a room with a bunch of groups mixed together, you have to disengage as much as possible. In cla.s.s, at lunch, wherever.
At this point, you may be asking: ”But what about your friends? You can't ignore your friends if you're in cla.s.s with them.”
To which I say: Maybe you haven't been paying attention. The whole point is that you can't be friends with anyone. That's the tragedy and the triumph of this whole way of being that I'm talking about. You can't lead a typical high school life.
Because here's the thing: The typical high school life sucks.
You may also be asking: ”Greg, why are you talking trash on the group-less kids? It sounds like you're basically a group-less kid.” You have a point, sort of. The thing is, I was in no group, but I was also in every group. So you can't really describe me as group-less.
Honestly, there's no good word for what I was doing. For a while I thought of myself as a pract.i.tioner of High School Espionage, but ultimately that was too misleading of a term. That made it sound like I was sneaking around having illicit s.e.xual liaisons with voluptuous Italian women. For one thing, Benson doesn't have any voluptuous Italian women. The closest thing we have is Ms. Giordano in the princ.i.p.al's office, and she's kind of lumpy and has a face like a parrot. Also, she does this thing women sometimes do with their eyebrows where they just completely shave them off and draw new ones in a different weird place with a Sharpie or something, and the more you think about it, the more your stomach starts churning around and you want to claw your own head.
That is literally the only appearance Ms. Giordano is going to make in this book.
Let's just move on.
So I guess we should start with the first day of senior year. Which was actually awesome until Mom got involved.
I mean, ”awesome” is a relative term. My expectations were low, obviously. Maybe ”awesome” is too strong a word. The sentence should be: ”I was pleasantly surprised when the first day of senior year did not make me want to freak out and hide in my own locker pretending to be dead.”
School is always stressful, and then the first day of any school year is especially insane because the hangout spots have to be realigned. I failed to note in the previous chapter that the traditional groups of Rich, Jock, Smart, Theater, etc., are further subdivided by grade: The soph.o.m.ore gothy dorks live in resentful terror of the senior gothy dorks, the smart juniors are dismissive and mistrustful of the smart freshman, etc. So when a cla.s.s moves out, all of the spots that they used to occupy before school are up for grabs, and there's usually some weirdness as a result.
Mainly it made for a busy morning for me. I showed up stupidly early to see how things would play out, and there were already some kids staking out their ground. These tended to be representatives of Benson's more d.i.c.ked-upon groups.
INT. HALLWAY IN FRONT OF THE LIBRARY - MORNING
JUSTIN HOWELL is hovering nervously near the door to the library, hoping to claim it for the theater kids. He is pacing back and forth humming THE THEME FROM RENT OR MAYBE CATS. With visible relief, he notices GREG approaching.
JUSTIN HOWELL.
clearly relieved that it is not a jock or g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger or anyone else who will immediately call him a f.a.ggot Oh hi Greg.
GREG GAINES.
Justin, good to see you.
JUSTIN HOWELL.
Good to see you. Greg how was your summer.
GREG.
It was hot and boring, and I can't believe it's over already.
JUSTIN HOWELL.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
OH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
HA HA HA HA.
This seemingly innocuous JOKE has caused Justin Howell to completely lose his s.h.i.+t. Perhaps it is the MIND-DESTROYING ANXIETY of being back at school.
Meanwhile, this was not quite the response Greg was hoping to get. He had intended to say something bland and unmemorable. Now he is SHRUGGING and FIDGETING AWKWARDLY and attempting to avoid EYE CONTACT, which he usually does when people are laughing at a thing that he has said.
JUSTIN HOWELL (CONT'D) turning his eyebrows into a weird shape HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
HA HA HA.
MRS. WALTER, the librarian, arrives. She is glaring at both of them. She is almost definitely an ALCOHOLIC.
JUSTIN HOWELL.
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