Description: Bildungsroman and wondering.
a/n: i hate this story. some proud moments, but... i don't like this overall. sorry.
*a/n: This is a short story written for the creative writing intensive that I just took. It's a second draft and by no means finished, but I thought hell, why not post it? Enjoy.*
The classroom was too bright and the fan was too loud. Someone sneezed. There were etchings in the soft wood of my desk, messages from tortured souls past. Andy was here; Brian '95; xoxo Allison; John & Claire, a sloppy heart drawn around those names. I added to the graffiti, carving 'George was here' in an empty space. I didn't hear the teacher, an old guy in a gray sweater vest, call the name of the girl in the third row. I also didn't hear him welcome me to my first day of ninth grade English like he was speaking at a funeral. I saw Freshman English scrawled on the board in cursive, and I saw the girl.
She wore blue jeans and Chuck Taylors. Her hair was loose, brown waves spilling down over her shoulders and back. She had deep brown eyes that stood out against her pale skin. I watched her all through class. As the bell rang, I watched her stand to greet a friend on her way out, wrapping her lean arms around the girl and smiling.
Two uneventful classes later, I glanced through a doorway on my way to the bathroom and saw her in bio class. She was staring at her pencil as it drew spirals on her lab notes, gazing at it as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. She flicked a piece of brown hair away from her face, tapped her fingers, twirled the pencil. I continued through the unfamiliar hallways and thought about the way her eyelashes brushed together when she blinked. When I returned to class I sketched a girl on the KWL chart that I should have been filling in. I wrote "Jenny" next to it, because that was a pretty name, and she was beautiful.
After school I walked home alone. My mother left a pink sticky note for me, telling me she'd gone to the nail salon. My father's shoes and jacket were sitting by the front door. He must have come home early from work and gone upstairs for a nap. The house was silent. As I passed my brother, Aaron, heading for my room, he took off his headphones to ask me how my first day of school was. I didn't answer -- he'd already put them back on. My father woke up later in the afternoon and argued with Aaron. I paused to wonder what about, until I remembered it didn't matter, and went back to my homework. My mother got back at five thirty, but didn't remember to say hello.
At dinner that night, Aaron asked for something else to eat. He wasn't satisfied, apparently, with the spread of "roasted" chicken, rice, green beans, and potatoes. I wasn't either, but there wouldn't be anything else better to eat. My mother made him a miniature pizza. My father complimented her on how quickly she cooked it up. I wondered if she'd gotten it at King's or Whole Foods.
"One of you, pass the green beans," my father asked. I thought I'd better not pass them, because they were soggy and revolting, but I knew my father would praise my mother for them anyway. I thought about how my science teacher last year said that humans were vertebrates, and yet my father was spineless. How interesting.
He told my inattentive brother about accounting as we ate. My mother twirled her hair and stared at her nails. I wondered if Jenny's brother also put in earbuds during dinnertime to avoid conversation. Probably. Parents tend not to notice these things - even when their son is listening to rock 'n roll instead of them.
I watched my father heap rice onto his plate and spill it on his trousers. My brother chuckled. I chuckled. My mother hushed us -- "Quiet, don't laugh at your father" -- and we stopped, Aaron still smirking to himself as he tugged the chewy crust of the pizza apart with his fingers. I traced the scratch on the polished wood of the table. Aaron had dropped the cake knife on his twelfth birthday. Back then, he only listened to pop music, and then only at parties. He got half-decent grades, too, all the way through middle school. He had a big group of friends, and a best friend, Jack, who was always hanging out here. He and Aaron used to bother me while I was playing games or doing homework, and I'd complained while relishing the attention.
