Chapter 7: The Rest of the School Year

Monday, February 2 to mid-June, 2004

For the last half of the school year, there was the good news and the bad news.

All the girls in my new classes were a year older and much nicer to look at, the extra year's growth making a delightfully noticeable difference to them. Being much more status-conscious high-school students, a lot of them dressed much nicer too, sometimes "nicer" in ways that teenage boys very much appreciated and admired.

Not so good was that all the guys in my new classes were a year older too, including those that took exception to a young kid being smarter than them. I had thought the bullying intolerably unpleasant pre-merge, and it'd gotten worse when my 226 IQ (hehe) started showing up, but it quickly became WAY worse after becoming a freshman. Enough of the high-school bullies knew me already, and apparently my being smart enough to be jumped a grade really ticked off those morons, so I got lots of very unwelcome attention. And God help me if I was spotted "appreciating and admiring" any of the girls in my new classes; one of the guys was sure to "teach me a lesson." Despite my being so smart, they felt the need to teach me that lesson extremely frequently. Often preemptively, just in case.

[This school has an unusually serious problem with bullying. I learned later that the main reason bullying was so bad here was the Principal's being so weak. It was good for me that Mom had been able to push him in to advancing me, but bad in almost every other way. The testosterone-hyped football coaches had been pushing the Principal around for years, getting all sorts of dispensations for "their boys". Naturally, the power went straight to those boys' heads, no doubt aided by the suction effect of a vacuum. Once a culture of jock-centered violence was established, it got worse year by year, as many of the other boys enjoyed it and joined in. It was especially bad in high school, where the older jocks weren't restrained effectively, if at all.]

Without my in-built friend, the bullying would have been intolerable, but he made a world of difference. As bad as being a smart student made the bullying, all things considered, I was much happier than I had been pre-merge, for several reasons:

• I had some excellent, self-contained companionship, which was a wonderful cure for loneliness.

• The mere fact that I had an in-built companion made me special and - I thought - unique. That made me feel much better about myself.

• I was enjoying being smart. My new classmates being a year ahead of me just made them more knowledgeable than me, not smarter or able to go faster so I quickly caught up on their lead and then got ahead of most of them in most subjects.

I didn't have any trouble with my scars in PE. They'd faded nicely, and while they were still visible I had a way of making sure I kept them facing away from anybody near me. Whenever I had to bare my forearms, I allocated one mind to concentrate on keeping my forearms hidden. Regardless of whether #1 or #2 was doing that, he had more control over my forearms than the general body movements made by the other mind.

To my surprise PE changed from being a problem into something enjoyable, as I became not only less clumsy but increasingly physically adroit, and I discovered some real skill at soccer. I trained my feet to be ambidextrous (doesn't that word apply just to hands? Told you English ain't my best subject). I could kick with either foot, and could run and dribble very fast and skillfully. With two minds I could also keep a very good awareness of where the other players and the ball were. To further surprise me, I had quick reaction times. I seemed to react faster to ball movements than the other players did. I guess whatever mind worked out the trajectory of the ball first started my body moving first. And having one mind watch the ball while the other watched the players meant that I nearly always knew where the ball was and could react quickly to its sudden changes in direction. So having two minds made me much more physically skillful. Not something I'd thought would ever happen to me, but very welcome.

My increased food intake was starting to show up on my body. I was still skinny, but with a slowly increasing amount of muscle under my skin. Not much, but more than I'd ever had before. Not being clumsy anymore, I was getting somewhat more exercise these days. Not weight training or anything deliberate and pointless like that. Because I enjoyed soccer and enjoyed getting better at it, I was doing quite a lot of soccer practice. It's a good game because it genuinely requires skill, rather than football's simply running into your opponents, which any moron can do. I was also doing more "goofing around" with Donna at home (that's what our family called doing some sort of sporting activity for fun, usually with Donna), and there was the usual biking around. None of it was serious exercise, but it was nice that it was producing some muscles. Even more than I thought it should, but I assumed that was because my body had finally pulled finger and was catching up to the increased musculature that's supposed to come with adolescence. Better late than never.

As I settled into my new grade, I noticed considerably more loneliness or sadness in high-school kids than I'd seen in middle school. I noticed kids get rebuffed, or sitting in a corner, or just not connecting to what was going on around them. I found it easier to approach someone and ask to sit with them during lunch, or to ask for their help in a subject if they were in one of my classes. I didn't really need much help with that, but it was a believable excuse.

Having two of me agree to go and talk with someone made it easier to do so. I didn't feel so self-conscious or worry about rejection. I was often told to go away, sometimes rudely, but it was much easier to handle because I was not lonely: there were two of me so we'd wander off talking to ourself. Rejection was far less painful than it'd been pre-merge because we supported each other.

By the way "talking to ourself" wasn't something we ever accidentally did out loud. The mental communication process was easier and somewhat faster than out-loud speech, and it quickly became second nature with us. The greatest problem we had was avoiding saying "we" in reference to myself when talking to someone else. When we made that mistake, the other person usually assumed I was talking about me and them, which covered the mistake but occasionally resulted in a meaning that I didn't want.

Of course, everything wasn't perfect; far from it. I liked looking at the girls in my classes, but NO 15-year old girl is going to talk with a 14-year old, nerdy, pimply, beanpole; even if the guys in the class let me get close enough to try, which they most definitely did not. Being romantically linked to one of these girls was NEVER going to happen. Possessing ambidextrous feet wasn't quite cool enough, and I doubted if my being able to juggle four pairs of socks would make up the difference.

I came to hate bullies even more, as hard to imagine as that is. It was much more of a problem in high school than I'd anticipated, especially as so many of the jocks thought they were minor gods and therefore entitled to walk over the top of everyone else. Plus there were many non-football-playing thugs too, who just liked beating people up. Aggressiveness was common, and it was a very rare day that I wasn't on the receiving end of at least one painful incident.

There were even female bullies. A surprising number of them were physically aggressive, but even more common were the beautiful-but-nasty bitches who made themselves feel better by making everyone else feel worse, and who seemed to devote their every waking moment to putting everyone else down in as snide a manner as possible. That hadn't been much of a problem in middle school, but it was far more prevalent in high school. I could see and comprehend the effects of their actions, and I hated them.

I didn't like the life that I was in, but I loved that there were two of me in it. That made a HUGE difference.

I was getting along with some people better. Particularly with Mom and Carol, as they both made an effort to emotionally help me advance grades. Mom because that's what moms do, and because she wanted to monitor my progress after the grade advancement. Carol because she was a studious person who agreed with some of my new values of trying to excel academically. The more time I spent with them, the better we got along. With Carol, that made a very pleasant change from the pre-merge days.

Donna was fun too. Donna and Dad like physical activity, and I got to enjoy joining in. Whether goofing off around home with a ball - whether a soccer ball, basketball, baseball, or whatever - we did more things together, and I discovered a generally increasing level of physical coordination, and eventually even skill at physical activities. It's certainly far more enjoyable to do friendly sports when you don't keep missing every ball and falling on your face, as I used to. Donna and I often went outside and did some sporting stuff together when she wanted to burn off some excess energy, which was a frequent need of hers.

One incident particularly improved my relationship with Carol. One morning at breakfast Carol looked very tired and obviously hadn't had enough sleep the night before.

When Mom asked her why, Carol answered, "I have a Math assignment due today. I've already done most of it, but I stupidly left the last few questions till last night and then couldn't understand them. I tried for ages but I couldn't get it, and it was too late to call anyone."

I could see Carol was frustrated and upset with herself, so I said, "You could've asked me. I would've been happy to help, especially with Math."

Carol looked at me strangely, as my helping her had not featured heavily in our past relationship. "You were asleep."

"Next time wake me up. There's no point in you banging your head against a brick wall for hours, especially on something I find as easy as Math. It probably wouldn't take me more than a few minutes to show you what you needed to know."

"Are you serious?"

"Sure."

Carol immediately pulled out her assignment and we started going over the troublesome questions. From that day on she politely asked for my help when she needed it. Very cautiously at first, but that improved when she saw that I was truly willing to help her. I must admit that I asked her help with English a time or six too. We got along better.

I was also amused when toward the end of the school year, my helpfulness got extended beyond homework. Boys frequently try to hit on Carol, which annoys her when they persist too much, as boys have been known to do. I couldn't blame them at all, as Carol has grown herself an exceptionally good figure and very pretty face. She was nearly thirteen now, and even with her having been advanced a year she was still more developed than nearly all the girls in her grade. I hadn't seen hardly any of those girls, but I had no doubt Carol was more developed than them because she was also more developed than nearly all the girls in my grade.

Carol could normally get individual boys to stop hassling her, but sometimes one of them wouldn't get the message. One guy had been bothering her at school and also often calling her at home. She eventually complained about him in my hearing, which I took as a request for help.

It'd be easy and I was happy to help. After being humiliated in public by bullies for years, I knew how much humiliation hurt and how effective it was against kids. It wasn't for nothing that it was one of the teachers' favorite means of control.