Grouper's Laws - A 1960s Tale of High School Hijinks and Romance

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

 

Like toothpaste oozing from a tube, Blondie squeezed his lean body through the frenzied throng and off the bus, wishing all the while he was more nondescript. At six foot three, he towered over his new schoolmates, his corn-silk hair floating like a whitecap above waves of brown and black scalps. Why did he have to sport hair like an albino’s? Why couldn’t he ever gain any weight? Why did he have to look like a fucking Ichabod Crane?

He avoided looking at himself in the glass panes of the school entranceway. He didn’t want to be confronted by the sight of his prominent ears, ready for lift-off, and his Adam’s apple, ready to burst through his throat. For years, he’d pushed his ears closer to his skull and his larynx back into his neck. All he’d ever gained for his efforts were red ears and a sore throat.

Blondie kept his chin up and his eyes dead ahead as he bobbed through the stream of untouchables thrashing their way through the double doorway. He wasn’t going in looking at the ground. He would maintain his dignity no matter what horrors the day offered up.

Remember to breathe. Pace yourself. Don’t trip or you’ll go under. Yet, within yards of the doorway, the milling crowd divided and dispersed like runoff from a spring shower. Soon, he was nearly alone, staring down long corridors of shiny black linoleum flanked by gunmetal lockers.

He was supposed to report to the principal’s office, but which way was it? Every hallway looked the same. Blondie stopped to get his bearings and was launched from his spot by a sudden impact from behind.

“Kee-rist, don’t just fucking stop in the middle of the hall,” a voice growled.

Blondie turned to face a squint-eyed youth in an embroidered denim shirt. He was leaning toward Blondie and glaring at him as if ready for a fight.

“I’m sorry,” Blondie said, immediately regretting it. What had he done wrong?

The boy was a good four inches shorter than Blondie and even thinner, his neck thin and crooked as a vulture’s. But his reddish arms were hard, as were his angular face and colorless eyes.

“He’s staring at you, Buford,” said a nearby fat kid in coveralls.

The hard-faced boy ignored his companion and continued staring at Blondie. The boy’s eyes bored into his self-confidence like augers. His legs began to liquefy.

“You know what he reminds me of, Buford?” the chubby one called to his friend. “A giraffe. A white giraffe.” He started to giggle.

Buford’s eyes never wavered. Blondie returned his gaze though his heart was racing. Seconds congealed into minutes, then eons, as the boy continued to stare. To break the unbearable tension, Blondie asked: “Did you know that monkeys stare at each other as a way of establishing dominance?”

Later, he thought maybe he’d meant it as a joke.

“I think the giraffe just called you a monkey,” the fat kid said.

Buford’s eyes narrowed even more and his body shifted as if he were going to strike out but, whatever his intention, it was cut short by a shout from down the hall.

“Is there a problem, Barnwell? Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Blondie, who’d been suffering the dread thought that others were watching the mortifying confrontation, unlocked his eyes from Buford’s and looked around. The hallway was empty except for a man approaching in a rumpled brown suit.

He was a big man with a big face and a powerful ambling gait.

“It’s the Bear,” the fat boy whispered to his friend.

“Why aren’t you ever where you’re supposed to be, Barnwell?” the man demanded of Blondie’s tormentor. His eyes looked like they’d just been stropped.

“This jerk ran into me.”

The big man ignored the boy’s challenging tone.

“It’s amazing how many people run into you,” he said to Buford with an air of tedium. “Now, get on to class.”

“I’ll remember this,” the hothead whispered to Blondie as he passed.

The man now turned to Blondie. He was as tall as Blondie, but much heavier. Although his anger seemed to have passed, Blondie found him intimi-dating.

“Why aren’t you in class?” he asked in a surprisingly soft voice.

“This is my first day. I’m supposed to see the principal.”

“Well, you’re going the wrong way.” The man’s annoyance returned.

Blondie wanted to turn and head right back out the door. His classmates at Percy had been right. Kids at Fenton were animals — and so were the staff. What had the skinny kid called this hulk? The Bear?

“Follow me,” the man ordered.

Resisting his impulse to flee, Blondie followed him down a series of corridors to a door bearing, in gilt letters, the word “Office.” Once inside, the big man delivered Blondie to a frail gray-haired man with baggy eyes and strolled away.

“Thank you, Mr. Bearzinsky,” the tired-eyed man mumbled after him. “Name?”

“Reimer,” he stammered.

“Mrs. Spritz, can you find a file for a Reimer?” the man wheezed.

Blondie looked at the hand-lettered wood sign on his desk: Jacob Clapper. Blondie assumed he was the principal, although he seemed much less powerful than the man who’d brought him here.

Genie-like, a slender frizzy-haired woman appeared, carrying a beige paperboard file in her hand. She flitted about the small room like a hummingbird until Clapper held out his hand. Then she dropped the file into his palm and zipped away.

Clapper opened the folder and took out a single sheet of paper. He looked at it for several minutes before murmuring, “Bernard Reimer.”

Blondie twisted in his chair. God, he hated that name. It had to be the all-time nerd name. Luckily, since seventh grade, everyone but his parents and his teachers had called him Blondie.

Clapper cleared his throat and gave him what Blondie supposed he intended as a fatherly look.

“It must be difficult changing schools between your junior and senior years,” Clapper said, mustering a heavy-lidded look of concern, while failing to suppress a yawn.

Blondie set his jaw and fixed his gaze on the balding crown of Clapper’s head.

Clapper coughed. A faint line of spittle appear-ed between his lips.

Don’t choke on me, Blondie silently begged.

Clapper began reciting a litany of school rules. As he went on, his voice wound down like an unplugged phonograph.

“… dressed appropriately and on time,” Clapper intoned as he ground to a halt. His head slumped forward and his eyelids drooped to half-mast. Just when Blondie feared the old man had expired, he drew one more breath and exhaled the name of his assistant.

The bird-lady appeared instantly as if she’d been counting down to Clapper’s finale. She towed Blondie from the office and escorted him down the hall. Ahead was a windowed green door. A muffled pandemonium emanated from it. To Blondie, the sound was a composite of all the fierce epithets and indignant protests of sinners cast into hell. Don’t open that door, lady. He was sure a geyser of gremlins and goblins would explode from the room.

As they drew nearer, however, the sound from the room began to diminish and the harsh tapping from Mrs. Spritz’ wooden-heeled shoes grew louder and louder. By the time she opened the door, shoving Blondie forward by the small of his back, the room was hushed and every eye was upon him.

Blondie’s throat constricted and his stomach rumbled so loudly he was sure it was audible to all. His eyes scanned the room looking for danger, each new face contending for his attention. One arrested his gaze.

It was a face such as he’d never seen on a head such as he’d never seen — the face of a boy-man on a head squeezed from his collarbone, growing larger as it progressed upward. Except for his thick lips and protruding eyes, the boy’s face would have been smooth as a balloon. His nose was almost nonexistent, his ears small and flat, his dark hair parted in the middle and plastered onto his head. His face was pinkish purple, as if from the pressure of whatever filled his head.

This boy-man looked at him. There was no threat to his gaze, no curiosity, no surprise. It was as if he were looking at someone he’d seen many times before.

“Take a seat,” the teacher ordered. Blondie looked her way and was astounded to see a woman as tall as he, an Amazon with equine features. He figured she must have escaped from one of the horse farms that surrounded Fenton.

The woman arched her brows and Blondie realized he hadn’t moved. He followed the angle of her inclined head and began making his way toward the back of the room. He felt the eyes of at least two dozen onlookers scraping his face and setting it ablaze.

He banged his knee into the sharp edge of one of the metal desks as he pinched his way down the narrow aisle. He winced but uttered no sound. To cry out would surely call his classmates down upon him. He fell into an empty seat at the back of the room.

A small fellow in the next desk looked his way. His face was broad and concave as if a giant had pressed his thumb into it. Hair the color and texture of straw spiked at all angles from the flat crown of his head like pick-up sticks. Just Blondie’s luck — he’d been seated beside a fucking troll!

For a long while, Blondie stared down at his lap, willing the teacher to speak, to break the awful stillness his arrival had caused. Finally, she did, and Blondie felt safe enough to open his...