Antsy Does Time

Mrs. Ümlaut fretted a lot when we told her about our plan. Fretted: that’s a word they used during the dust bowl. (“Fretted,” “reckon,” and “/all” were very popular in those days.) But since the backyard was mostly crabgrass already going dormant for the winter, she reluctantly agreed to let us kill the whole yard as long as we promised to redo everything in the spring. I couldn’t help but glance at Gu

I figured the biggest problem with the dust bowl was Gu

Before we began murdering helpless vegetation, Gu

“I consulted with Dr. G yesterday,” Gu

I let out a nervous chuckle. “Whatever it takes, right?”

I still didn’t know if he was serious, or just playing along. The kids who donated their months were, for the most part, treating it like a game. I mean, sure, they were hung up on the rules, but it was more like how you argue over a Monopoly board, and whether or not you’re supposed to get five hundred bucks if you land on “Free Parking.” The rules say no, but people still insist it’s the cash-bonus space. In fact, my cousin Al once busted a guy’s nose over it—which sent him directly to jail, do not pass “Go.”

The point is, even when a game gets serious, there’s still a line between game-serious and serious-serious. If I was sure which side of that line Gu

“I’ll never forget,” he said to Devin Gilooly, “that you were my first friend when I moved here. Would you like to be a pall-bearer?”

Devin went bug-eyed and vampire-pale. “Yeah, sure,” he said. The next day, he not only switched to a different novel, he switched to a different English class. If it were possible, I think he would have switched to another school altogether.

“Doesn’t your culture ululate for the dead?” Gu

“What’s ‛ululate’ ?” Hakeem asked, making it clear that any cultural traditions had been lost in hyphenation. Gu

After that, it was just Gu

He didn’t talk about himself, though. Instead he talked about me. And his sister.

I was all set to put a painfully ugly shrub out of its misery when Gu

I turned to him, and ended up spraying herbicide on his shoes. “Sorry.”

He took it in stride, just wiping the stuff off with a rag. “You shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Not with that kiss all over the school paper.”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “It wasn’t all over the paper. It was on page four. And anyway, it wasn’t really a kiss—it was just a peck. Or at least I think it was supposed to be.” But I couldn’t help but think about what Lexie had said. “Has Kjersten ... said anything about it to you?”

“She doesn’t have to say anything—I know my sister. She doesn’t kiss just anybody.”

There it was—confirmation from a sibling! “So, are you saying she Likes me, as in ‛Like’ with a capital L?”

Gu

“So ... are you okay with her liking me?”

Gu

I wasn’t sure whether he was REALLY okay with it, or just pretending to be okay with it. The only similar situation in recent memory had to do with Ira’s ten-year-old sister, who was kissed in the playground by some twelve-year-old last Valentine’s Day. The second Ira heard about it, he assembled a posse to terrorize the kid, and now she might never be kissed again.

This situation was different, though. First of all, she kissed me, not the other way around. Secondly, she’s Gu

“She likes you because you’re genuine,” Gu

This was news to me. I don’t even know what “thing” he meant, so how could I be the real one? But if it’s a thing Kjersten liked, that was fine with me. And as for being “genuine,” the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a big deal that was. See, there’s basically three types of guys at our school: poseurs, droolers, and losers. The poseurs are always pretending to be somebody they’re not, until they forget who they actually are and end up being nobody. The droolers have brains that have shriveled to the size of a walnut, which could either be genetic or media-induced. And the losers, well, they eventually find one another in all that muck at the bottom of the gene pool, but trust me, it’s not pretty.

Those of us who don’t fit into those three categories have a harder time in life, because we gotta figure things out for ourselves—which leaves more opportunity for personal advancement, and mental illness—but hey, no pain, no gain.

So Kjersten liked “genuine” guys. The problem with genuine is that it’s not something you can try to be, because the second you try, you’re not genuine anymore. Mostly it’s about being clueless, I think. Being decent, but clueless about your own decency.

I don’t know if I’m genuine, but since I’m fairly clueless most of the time, I figured I was halfway there.

“So ... what do you think I should do?” I asked, parading my cluelessness like suddenly it’s a virtue.

’You should ask her for a date,” Gu

This time I sprayed the herbicide in my eyes.

My advice to you: avoid spraying herbicide in your eyes if at all you can help it. Use a face mask, like the bottle says in bright red, but did I listen? No. The pain temporarily knocked Gu

I spent half an hour in the bathroom washing out my eyes while Gu