A Clique Clicks

So what if Steven hangs around Justin and the kid known as Voltar? They were a little weird, but they were exceptionally cool guys. No one could doubt that. On second thought, everyone doubted that except for Steven, but it was definitely more cool to be secretly cool than openly cool. Think about it.

At the same time, Steven was worried that he sacrificed something when he consciously decided to hang out with them. After all, most high school kids place some stake into developing their reputations, and Steve was no exception. Usually, even talking to people like Justin (who faked being retarded) and Voltar (who thought he was from the future) could have calamitous ramifications on one's social life, but actually being known associates of them... Not even modern mathematicians could calculate the social effects of that!

It was mostly girls that Steven was antsy about. They were the greatest mystery of all. He used to hate them; they were previously known to him as the people with long hair who didn't much care for playing in the dirt. When he was eight, he accused them of having cooties, and he invested a lot of dear time and effort avoiding that disease, whatever it was. But he caught it eventually. Cooties were the stuff that made him suddenly grow dizzy and short of breath whenever a girl crossed his field of vision. Cooties made him want to stop playing in the dirt, put on nice clothes, and take that certain type of girl out to a steak dinner! What a rotten disease! But at least it was more exciting than pink eye. Steven knew that he was interested in girls in that peculiar way, but he still wasn't sure what he wanted from them exactly. He figured that it wasn't worth bending over backwards for them until he knew what it was. That was the logical thing to do.

But after seeing one particular girl in gym class, wished for a more flexible spine. She was, without question, the most amazing looking girl he ever saw (except for Kate Winslet perhaps, but she was really old, and he never saw her in person anyway). He only saw this girl's face for a period of 20 seconds, no more, but there was something about it that made him want to look at it more. It was like he'd stared into the pure white light of the Sun only it didn't hurt his eyes. She was a vision. A divine statuette. To gaze at her was to gaze at God (OK, God was a dude, so maybe it was like gazing at a very important angel). The sight of her turned his heart into a frog dancing on lily pads. In just that 20 seconds, she was the culmination of ever girl he'd ever seen and never seen. It was the most electrifying 20 seconds of his life... It had to have been.

In the ensuing minutes, he thought about her face so much that it became twisted and he forgot what she looked like exactly. She was sitting about 60 feet away from him, Steven was earnestly staring at the back of her head hoping that she would turn around briefly so that he could refresh his memory. She was sitting with a close group of friends, girls who were chattering. She could use a male friend, Steve thought. But would she associate with him when there's a kid pretending to be retarded sitting on his right, and a kid who thinks he's from the future on his left?

He might not remember the details of her face, but he could not forget the exact details of how her name was inscribed on her T-shirt gym uniform. The way the name “Leah,” was written in big letters in decorative cursive somehow seemed just as appealing as her face. Could Steven be so lucky to spend a few passing moments with someone with such good penmanship? Steven continued to look at the back of her head, at that perfect blond hair bundled perfectly in a blond ponytail, just as the gym teacher was taking roll.

“Harvey Klinkman Ivy,” Mr. Langford called into the sea of whispering and gigging freshman. He was listening and watching carefully for some sort of response; he had called for this student thrice, and no one had responded so far.

That was Voltar's real name, but Voltar didn't answer to it. (Well, actually, it was Harvey Klinkman IV. You could blame Mr. Langford for pronouncing it like an idiot, but Steven would rather place the blame on Voltar's parents. They should have known better than to give him one of those old-fashioned lineage markers. They weren't kings; Harvery the Third, bought and sold scrap metal.) Voltar's refusal to answer to his name often confused teachers on the first day of school, but they would soon figure out who he was on the process of elimination. But Mr. Langford never would.

“Is there a Harvey Klinkman Ivy here?” he repeated, scanning the kids with squinted eyes. Steven was imagining that he and Leah were dancing around the gym together in some sort of musical theater performance when he realized he had to shake out of it to alert Voltar that his name was being called out.

“That's your name. Raise your hand!” Steven whispered forcefully, nudging him with his elbow. The sleepy-eyed, pimply boy lethargically obeyed.

“OK,” Mr. Langley acknowledged, making a check mark on his roll sheet, “Hustle it up next time.”

“You have another name, you know. Why can't you just raise your hand when they call it?” Steven whispered to Voltar with an ounce of irritation in his voice. He regretted that his beautiful daydream was interrupted. Voltar leaned in to speak of the future, where he is from.

“In the future, we don't use our bodies to signal each other. We use our minds,” he told Steven who decided not to respond to that.

Justin, cross-eyed and tongue sticking out, had an untied shoe, and he was earnestly trying to convince his hands to tie it for him.

“Jus' go over an' makka loop!” he pleaded to them. “'Seasy!”

Steven was asked to tie the shoe a few times, but he knew very well that Justin knew how to do it. It was best not to humor him in some things.

~*~

Steven was a much faster runner than that, but he was nevertheless jogging laps around the perimeter of the gymnasium at a snail's pace alongside his two best friends. Justin probably could run faster also, but not a whole lot. They hadn't been doing that for five minutes, and Justin was already sweaty, tired and babbling to himself. Voltar was the one who was holding them back. He was running as though his legs were made out of lead and the wheezing noises he made sounded something like a broken lawn mower. That combined with his droopy eyes made it look like he would conk out right there on the gymnasium floor within seconds, but some invisible force seemed to keep him going.

Steven didn't mind trotting with his friends instead of running with the rest of the class, but what he did mind the quintet of jocks who slapped each of them across the back of the head whenever they passed them, which had been three times thus far. After getting hit fifteen times in the same place, Steven was starting to get anxious. But Mr. Langford, who had spent the whole time laying on his back on a bench reading a bass fishing magazine, saved them when he tossed a basketball in the middle of the gymnasium.

“Guys against the girls,” Mr. Langford hollered. He expected all 60 kids to get into an epic, battle-for-the-sexes basketball match. Of course, they didn't. The girls walked off to the sides and started chatting, and so did most of the guys but on the other side of the gym. The only people who were actually playing the game were those five jocks. (Oh, and there was a small blond boy named Jason who ran back and forth across the basketball court begging to participate, but no one passed him the ball, and he nearly got trampled a few times.) Mr. Langford, noticed the mass lack of participation but he only snorted and shrugged. He didn't care what anybody did as long as it wasn't illegal. He laid back down on the bench and reburied his nose in that fishing magazine. He wished the gymnasium floor would turn into a fishing pond and all the kids would turn into bass.

~*~

“Twenty-three percent of the people in this room are extraterrestrial, I'm sure of it,” Voltar told Steven, right out of the blue. Seconds ago, they were talking about how they might make cold fusion work, but Voltar had a way of changing to subject from one sci-fi topic to another with the blink of an eye. “They gain sustenance by sucking on human brains through the ears.”

“Yah!” Justin responded with a snort, and he then pointing at one of the jocks who was hanging off the basketball hoop cackling like an old witch after having just made a slam dunk. “He hadda axident, an' sucked hiz own brainnout!”

Steven had gazed at Leah for a bit; he wanted to make sure he knew exactly where she was in the gymnasium at all times. She was sitting with a small group of giggling friends at the other side of the gym where she had been for the last 10 minutes. What would happen if he should go talk to her, he wondered. But Justin's latest outburst shook him out of that vision, and he was howling with laughter.

“Yeah,” Steve snickered. He pointing at a nearby jock. “And that one keeps his brain pickled in his locker that he's saving for later.”

Unfortunately, this jock saw Steven pointing at him. He'd also heard the jibe, but he wasn't sure what it meant. His name was Terrence, and he hated, hated, hated little toads like Steven who pointed at him.

Terrence was indeed a force to be reckoned with. Only fully-grown, professional wrestlers would beg to differ. Most jocks would pop footballs as a cute parlor trick, but Terrence would pop bowling balls. He didn't so much breathe as he growled (that was really annoying on test days, by the way). He had beady duck eggs for eyes, and a neck with the same thickness and hardness as a lamppost. To look at Terrence on one of his good days was to look at a giant, ticked-off badger with big teeth and a complex. He also had the most amazing, orange skin that you ever saw. It had the look and texture of a soft leather that would look really great on a couch.

Steven hadn't noticed that Terrence was looking at him, but as soon as he did, he had the instant look of grim death in his eyes. Terrence's neck had all sorts of veins sticking out, and his duck egg eyes looked like they were about to hatch. Steven had the look of a kid on a super-speed roller coaster that just derailed. All of his organs that had, moments ago, been in the upper part of his abdominal cavity had fallen to the lower part.

“Wrassa dassay?!” Terrence screamed with an ultra-deep voice, which sent a violent burst of wind that rustled Steven's hair. (Talking unintelligibly like that was the only downfall of having such a thick neck.) “Ja wranna marke sompin?”

Steve was frozen and speechless. He didn't even put up a struggle when Terrence picked him up by the shirt collar and held him up three feet in the air. With his other arm, Terrence made a fist; his bull muscles were bulging and pulsating.

When Terrence was just about to send this trembling rabbit to kingdom come, he was interrupted by a cockroach that had kicked his ankle. (It wasn't actually a cockroach, but that was what Voltar looked like to Terrence.) With steam huffing out of his clenched teeth and his face as red as a blood, Terrence tossed Steve to the floor who fell like a rag doll. He lifted Voltar up by the shirt collar even higher than he had lifted Steven. His fist was clenched so hard that his fingernails penetrated the skin on his palms; his bulging arm muscles would have ripped his gym uniform if it wasn't stretchy.

Amazingly, the expression on Voltar's face didn't look any different in than it did normally. He still had that sluggish, droopy-eyed appearance as though he was about fall asleep. However, his voice didn't match it. He spoke with the voice of a buzzsaw with such a command that he could have delivered the Gettyburg's Address to a crowd of one billion.

“Why don't you talk properly, you big baboon!” Voltar screamed. Everyone in the gymnasium was silent, gawking at this spectacle. They didn't know if they should gasp or giggle. With that, Terrence's breathe-growls had turned into one long continuous growl, his face was purple now, and he shook the gymnasium floor beneath him like an 8.6-magnitude earthquake. As soon as he brought back his arm, gaining momentum to thwack Voltar's head clean off his neck, he was interrupted by a piercing whistle behind him. It was Mr. Langford, and he was quite perturbed. Mr. Langford was two-thirds the height of Terrence, and one-fifth the body mass, but when that man blew his whistle, it had the power to turn Terrence into gelatin.

“PUT HIM DOWN NOW!” Mr. Langford screamed, blowing into that whistle again with such utter intensity that it almost didn't work. With that, Terrence's duck eggs retreated back into his eye sockets, and his towering shoulders sunk deep into his chest. His skin turned from purple to red and then to orange again. He set Voltar back on his feet gently with such a surprising amount of grace that one would think that he secretly kept a priceless collection of glass figurines.

“REPORT TO MY OFFICE ON THE DOUBLE!” Mr. Langford screamed. Terrence whimpered a bit like a puppy and looked like he was about to cry. He trotted to sit in the teacher's office, gently closing the door behind him.

Mr. Langford didn't like cockroaches more than Terrence did, but the only thing worse than them were their parents. As soon as something like that happened in one of his classes, he knew he would they would spend the next six months screaming in his ear. People like that had no business producing such useless spawn.

“Are you OK, kid?” Mr. Langford directed at Voltar without looking into his eyes. He didn't even give him any time to respond before he said “Good” and walked off to his office. He was going to have a curt talk with Terrence, but in his mind, he would be offering him a cigar and handshake.

Steven, who was still laying on the floor, was blurry eyed and in intense pain. He was conscious during the events that had just transpired, but his brain had yet to process it. He couldn't immediately recall what had started the whole ordeal, but he was too preoccupied with making his limbs work to figure it out. He had to rub his eyes before he discovered that someone was standing above him. It was a girl, and she looked incredibly familiar to him. He couldn't immediately place her. He looked more carefully. The more he could make our her face, the more warmer and comfortable he became. Then he gasped, suddenly. He knew exactly who it was. It was Leah. He could read that on her gym uniform. And she was more beautiful than he remembered.

“Oh dear,” she said to him with kind brown eyes and a voice as soft as silk. She knelt beside him and neatly brushed his hair. “That was Terrence—he gets like that sometimes. He's a big cranky old ox, but he's really sweet if you get to know him.” She took his hand and held it for a second before putting it down again.

“May I help you up?” she asked. Steven was technically still in pain, but he could feel it, looking at her. She didn't hold his hand for long, but it sent such an incredible electric shock through his system that it would be quite awhile before he'd start feeling the pain again. He eagerly and silently nodded; his eyes were wildly excited and he was breathing rapidly, like a little mouse. She took Steven's hand again and helped lift him up.

“Well, how are you feeling now?” Leah said to Steven, who had only been able to gaze at her for the goddess she was, which words cannot describe. He nervously gulped, and his pubescent voice crackled and squeaked and was barely audible.

“I'm feeling wonderful,” Steven managed to eke out with his lungs, which seemed like it had collapsed. He flashed her an awkward smile.

“Good,” Leah said to him, beaming. She touched his shoulder with her sweet, china-doll-like fingers. “My boyfriend won't bother you again, I'll see to it. I'll have a talk with him—he does everything I say.” And she meant it. Leah was always good for her word.

“Cool,” Steven mumbled, half aware of what she just said. Her hand was still on his shoulder. Every part of him tingled; he could get used to that. But what seemed like would last an eternity only lasted 15 seconds. She removed her hand, and walked toward the teacher's office to confront her short-tempered boyfriend.

It wasn't until was halfway across the gymnasium before Steven realized what Leah actually said to him.

“He's her boyfriend?” Steven squeaked miserably. The pain had returned to his body, which was more intense than it had been before. He cowered back to the floor with a pain-filled groan. “I don't believe it.”

~*~

On top of the bleachers, there was Justin who never took these sorts of confrontations well. He had his shirt tail over his head and was squawking like a parrot. The other kids in the class were trying to ignore him the best they could, but it was hard to repress the snickers. They didn't know what, but there was something terribly wrong with that kid.