Page 52 of Until Now
Bing
“Fix your hair. It looks weird.”
I’m watching Hunter in the boys’ bathroom mirror, trying to comb down the piece of hair that sticks up and to the side.
“What do you think I’m doing? I slept on it wrong, shithead.”
Hard to see the extent of the damage with so much water spray and pimple puss stuck to the glass. It’s official; boys are pigs. It’s not just our lousy aim at the urinal that proves it.
My mother has no idea I don’t follow home rules at school. Splashed the mirror? Pissed on the floor? So what? Why is that funny?
“You gonna ask her?” I say.
Sticking the comb in his back pocket, Hunter takes one more look and sighs.
“That’s all I can do with it. She’ll have to accept me as is. Uh, yeah. I’m gonna ask her at lunch.”
“You nervous?”
He just shrugs an answer. That’s a yes.
“Maybe I should pop this zit,” he says, coming close to the mirror and touching his face.
“No! You’ll make it bleed. Just leave it alone. She already knows you have acne. It’s not like it’s gonna be a big surprise.”
“But there’s a head on it. She’s gonna be looking at that when I’m asking her to meet me at the dance.”
“Forget about it. We all have zits! Look at this one on my neck! It looks like it might have eyes!”
He laughs and accepts my take on things. We exit the bathroom just as a line of guys come in.
“Hey! Hope you win the Battle of the Bands,” says the quarterback of our losing football team. “You’re the best that tried out.”
That’s hardly a compliment, but I appreciate the thought. We’re like the football team. Not everyone can play at this level, but it doesn’t mean we’re any good. More like the best of the worst. Mom always says we need to start somewhere.
“Thanks. We’ll find out soon enough.”
“You guys have gotten a lot better since Hunter started singing,” the guy behind him says, laughing.
Fuck off, asshole. I think it but decide not to say it out loud. As we pass, I hear a final comment.
“Your girlfriend sure likes it,” he says to his friend. “Did you see her staring at him when he was singing?”
I recognize the ninth-grader. We all do. He’s hard to miss. Standing six feet tall, he towers over the rest of us. It gives him a kind of weird power to say whatever he wants. Sometimes he goes too far for a laugh.
Leaving them behind, we take our places in line for lunch.
“What’s that weird smell?” Hunter asks.
“Desperation and hormones.”
My one-person audience never fails to laugh at my jokes. It always eggs me on.
“You’re so funny! I think you should consider becoming a comedian. Have you ever thought of that?”
“No.”
“You could be the youngest comic on TV, or no, you should go on YouTube or TikTok. I bet you’d have a big following.”
