Chapter 4B: Let me introduce myself

Mrs. Bates next instruction was for us to go around the room and read our combined lists. This took a while, because after each group read she explained what they were missing and why it was so important, constantly reiterating that no one present was ready to take home a real baby. I did the reading when she reached Milo and me, and we managed to impress her. Milo was the only one in the room who'd come up with things on his list like a good paying job, college savings, and safety equipment for around the house. I came up with a nanny. Mrs. Bates looked nicely impressed by the time I was finished reading.

"Very good, boys," she commented. "It looks like all your baby is missing is diapers."

Milo and I exchanged glances, and I watched him roll his eyes.

"Our baby doesn't have diapers," I told him.

He smirked. "I'm sure you have a few favorite shirts hanging around."

For the rest of the class, Mrs. Bates mostly talked, and we started to read the first chapter of our Introduction to Childcare books. I didn't talk to Milo, but I did find myself comfortable in his presence, and once again I wondered about him, and hoped that by the time class was over he wouldn't be asking me why I was sitting next to him.

He went to my school. This was a situation that I hadn't quite imagined. And now that I had a class with him, it meant that I'd get to talk to him. I didn't exactly have a good track record when it came to talking to him. All of our conversations seemed to end badly, and I was hoping to change that. I thought about what Chad had told me to do. Really introduce myself to Milo. Let him know that I wasn't a complete asshole. Of course, in order to do this I'd need a reasonable amount of cooperation from him.

I decided to say something to him after the bell rang, and everyone began to gather up their things as Mrs. Bates instructed us to read the first chapter in our books overnight. He had his backpack in his lap, and was zipping it up when I turned to him.

"Hey," I said, and he lifted his eyes long enough to let me know I had his attention. "Listen, I know we haven't exactly gotten off on the right foot..."

"Don't bother doing that," he cut me off, but I refused to be discouraged. I smiled at him instead.

"I'm Nelson," I continued. "And I like the way you paint."

Milo cocked his head at me, looking somewhat amused, but said nothing as I stood up and went to meet Haily so we could walk out to the parking lot together.

...

Parenting quickly became my favorite class of the day. From the moment I stepped foot in the school, I looked forward to getting there all day long. Milo was in that class with me. We didn't exactly talk. It became very clear very quickly that Mrs. Bates was a lecturer who didn't want boys socializing with girls while in her class. Haily wasn't very happy about this. She probably thought that I should have been more upset, since it meant that I could never talk to her. But, I was too preoccupied with Milo for that. There were no assigned seats, just tables, and every day he sat next to me, and every day before class I'd... introduce myself. On Wednesday, as soon as he'd sat down I'd told him that I was Nelson, and that I liked to draw comics. After school, when class got out and we were packing up, I'd told him when my birthday was. I'd only smiled when he said he already knew, because Haily had mentioned it when she bought me the painting, which I'd reimbursed her for since.

I think by the end of the week, Milo found my new hobby of introducing myself to him and giving him any little fact I could think of, as funny, and maybe a little irritating. He'd been rolling his eyes at me by Thursday. But, at least he wasn't flat out telling me to go away anymore.

I never saw Milo outside of class. I guessed that he had a first lunch, because I'd looked for him, but never saw him. I could have been wrong, though. My friends and I left campus to eat almost every single day. I never saw him in the halls, either. I saw Jame, though. Twice a day on the way to and from world history. He'd started aiming his smile--the one meant to annoy Caleb--at me. And truth be told, I was beginning to understand why Caleb wanted to hit Assface all the time. But lately, Caleb wasn't even mentioning him. Like the rest of us, he was settling into the new year easily, and helping me with my English assignments. I'd been interested in creative writing, but I'd had no idea that I'd be expected to read my assignments in front of the class. I didn't share anything I wrote. Caleb had been helping by forcing me to read my assignments to him before I brought them in to class, and I had to admit that it was helping, just like it helped for the four of us to get together every other afternoon to study. It seemed that we had a lot more homework this year than last, and that made finding time to stop using the more intelligent part of our brains a little more difficult. Of course, we still made it to Hangman with our classmates every once in a while after school, and on the weekends. Although, the first weekend after school started was used to go to parties people were throwing as a back-to-school thing. The second weekend, though, it was back to Hangman.

The first week of September, we'd made it through three weeks of school and the beginning of fall seemed to come a few weeks early as blue skies clouded and the trees began to turn. People were finding more leaves on their lawns than in their trees, and Caleb and Joe were beginning to talk about charging people for cleanup services. I helped my dad cut down a good portion of the field one last time for the season, and the venders at Hangman Cove began to thin out.

It was Sunday, an hour after I got home from church with my family, Grannie Tenny, and Mr. Hoover, and I was in my Buick, still dressed in my black slacks and green dress shirt, on my way to pick up Caleb from the city park, where his older sister had left him when she thought she was having contractions and drove herself to the hospital without warning. It had turned out to be a false alarm, but Caleb was still stranded, and from the looks of it, entirely insulted as I picked him up across the street from the library in the park's little round-about parking lot, right across from the jungle gym, swingset and larger of the three yellow slides.

Caleb had a downcast expression as he moved into the passenger seat of my car. His blond waves were windblown on his head and he looked somewhat disheveled in his baggy jeans and the black jacket, torn at his left shoulder.

"You wanna come over for a while so you don't have to kill your sister?" I asked him.

Caleb nodded, his bottom lip pouting beneath his cleft chin. I waited for him to close his door before I started driving. When I noticed smoke in my car with a distinct scent, I looked over at Caleb and the packed red pipe in his hand.

"Run into Sam, did ya?" I asked, and then waved Caleb away when he offered the pipe to me.

"I'm having a really bad day," he said glumly.

"Come on, Caleb," I insisted, cracking my window. "It's not that bad, and Julie probably didn't mean to leave you. She's eight months pregnant. I'm not taking her side. But give her a break."

"I don't care about Julie," Caleb responded. "She's always crazy, pregnant or not. But it was really fucked up of her to leave me. It's just this stupid dream..."

"Another one?" I asked, not surprised at all as I glanced in his direction, trying not to laugh at the way he looked incredibly serious while hitting the pipe again.

"No, not just another one," he stated. "The same one. I mean, the same, but different... but they're all the same. Dude, I'm dreaming about a girl."

And that was enough to make me laugh. "And this is new to you, Caleb?" I remarked. "Do I need to have the talk with you, because..."

"I'm serious, Nels! It's the same girl, all the time. What do you think that means? Like, I should ask her to homecoming or something?"

"You mean it's a girl you know?" I asked, sobering. Usually Caleb's dreams were either weird, or full of sex with random women from magazines that I had no fascination in looking at.

"Yeah, I know her," Caleb replied. "It's kinda freaky, I think. Like, do you ever have any really, really hot dreams about someone you know?"

I had to pause and think about my answer for a moment. "Not really." Caleb probably wouldn't want to hear about my most recent recurring dream, where Milo Trust invited me over to his house and asked me to take off my clothes. Then, he'd paint my portrait and tell me to go away. "Who's the girl?" I asked.

"Ronnie, something. I don't know her last name. Do you think that's bad? Shouldn't I know her last name?"

"Caleb, they're dreams, and you don't even know most of the girls' last names that you've fucked around with in reality--and Ronnie... isn't she that one girl..."

"Glasses, brown hair, really cute nose, nice little ass..."

"Ask her to homecoming," I cut him off.

"Really?"

"Yeah," I said as we turned onto my street. I followed the road down until I reached the long dirt driveway and followed it all the way up to the white brick house where I parked in front of the garage and leaned back in my seat, not getting out. Caleb offered me the pipe again. I took it this time, and after nearly choking myself on some particularly strong shit, I handed it back to him.

"What if she says no?"

I laughed. "Dude, when have you ever worried about a girl saying no?"

"I don't know," he responded defensively, and I studied him for a long moment. He actually looked nervous, and fidgety as he brought the pipe back up to his mouth. This really wasn't like Caleb at all, especially when it came to girls.

"You really like her."

"I did not say that," he said. "But yeah, maybe." I unbuckled my seatbelt, but made no move to leave the car as I leaned back in my seat and bemusedly watched a goofy smile crawl over my best friend's face as he stared straight ahead at the white garage and passed the pipe to me. "She's in health class with me, and she gets really shy when I talk to her. Like, she can't even talk sometimes. I kinda think it's annoying, but the other day I was talking about a bunch of shit, you know? And like, someone brought up Assface, and you know how I get when..." I nodded, and Caleb smiled. "Anyway, she just got really annoyed with it for some reason and told me to shut the hell up because I was being stupid."

"And this is a girl you like?" I asked incredulously. Although, I wasn't really one to talk. He hadn't told me to shut up for a while, but if I had any sense when it came to Milo Trust, I'd just figure out that he wasn't into me and move on.

"Yeah. So you think I should ask her to homecoming?"

"Sure," I replied, shrugging. "Why not? And... I don't think she's gonna say no."

Caleb just smiled for a moment, seemingly thinking to himself before he turned his glossy chestnut eyes on me. "So what about you?"

"Huh?"

"Homecoming," he said. "You gonna ask Haily? You know she's waiting for you to."

My smile faltered at that.

"Nah. I don't think so."

"Why not? You have someone else in mind?"

"No... I just don't wanna... I mean Haily..."

"Dude, we all know she likes you, so stop with the modesty and just say it."

"I don't want to lead her on," I stated, and Caleb rolled his eyes.

"I don't know why you guys don't just hook up," he remarked. "She likes you; and, she's the only girl you ever hang out with."

"I hang out with girls when I'm with you all the time!" I retorted.

"Yeah, but that's different. You never even wanna hook up with them. You know, if you're into Haily..."

"I'm not, Caleb," I said honestly. "I love her, but it's not like that."

"Okay... hey, no big deal. I just thought I'd ask. You could still think about taking her to homecoming, though. I mean, it's not like you'd be leading her on if you just went as friends."

I sighed, not really wanting to think about anything as complicated as Haily and how to handle whatever interest she had in me. "Maybe," I replied, and when Caleb's brow went up, I added, "I'll think about it."

...

It was a Wednesday morning, and once again, rain had chosen to fall over Heywell during daylight hours. I'd left for school early because both of my parents had gone to work early--my mom, still filling in at the elementary school a week after her time there was supposed to have ended; and my dad to the bakery on the north side of town, which was having a problem with one of the ovens. Driving to school the rain was coming down so hard and the clouds were so thick that I'd hardly been able to see. At least I stayed dry, though. I'd remembered an umbrella, and I'd dug my black raincoat out of the back of my closet for extra protection. I wasn't necessarily fond of rainy days. When the skies turned gray over Heywell, everything else seemed bleak, too. But, this was a good rainy day, I decided, when I actually saw Milo Trust outside of the brick-colored trailer that we attended parenting class in.

The halls were mostly empty, forty-five minutes before the first bell rang, and Milo was sitting in one of them, leaning back against a purple locker with a notebook in his lap, his jeans-clad legs outstretched on the white linoleum beneath him. His usually light flowing hair, which hung perfectly around his face, was dripping wet, pushed back out of his way and dripping down the side of his face; but he seemed unbothered by it, bundled tightly in a dark red coat. What he did seem bothered by, was the pen in his hand as he moved it over his paper violently and then inspected it, looking irritated. He seemed to be out of ink. I had a pen out of my backpack before I even thought about approaching him.

He appeared startled when he looked up and found me standing over him. I was pretty sure that I was still smiling.

"I'm Nelson, and I have a pen you can borrow."

I held a black ballpoint down in his direction, and after his very scrutinizing emerald eyes flashed over me for a moment he took it and turned his attention down to his notebook.

"Thanks," he mumbled, sniffling as he pushed more wet hair out of his face.

I cocked my head to get a better look at what he was working on, and then abruptly took a seat next to him, leaving a respectable four inches between us as I looked down at the neatly written paragraphs leading halfway down his paper. He went momentarily rigid when I sat, and when he turned his head to look at me, he was glaring sternly.

"Look," he said cockily. "I'm kinda busy right now, so I don't really even have time to tell you to go away, but I swear to god, if you so much as start a sentence with I'm Nelson..."

I interrupted him with laughter. "What are you working on?" I asked, and he turned his attention back to his paper.

"My history teacher gave us this stupid assignment yesterday because some fuckhead pissed him off. I was up all night reading eight chapters and now I'm supposed to have five thousand words by the time class starts."

"Hey," I said, taking interest. "You don't have Mr. Danner, do you?"

Milo looked at me, frowning again.

"Yeah..."

"Dude, don't worry about it," I insisted. "He's never even gonna look at that paper."

"What do you mean?"

I grinned. "I'm Nelson, and I had him last year," I announced. Milo flashed me an impatient look, so I continued quickly. "He's a hothead. He assigns shit like that when he's pissed off. Last year, I wrote a three-page essay on why I had five toenails on my left foot and how I kept them clean. He never knew the difference. All he's gonna do when you get in there is hand out one of his stupid tests, and it'll probably be open book."