Charles Benoit - You

3) Are Romeo and Juliet simply “star-crossed lovers” or are they responsible for their tragic mistakes?

Even if you didn’t know the quiz was coming, you knew this question would be on it. No matter what you’re reading, Ms. Casey turns it into a lecture on personal responsibility.

A poem? Discuss how the author inspires readers to take control of their lives.

A Greek myth? Show how Odysseus created his own fate.

A short story? Explain how the narrator’s refusal to assert her free will led to her downfall.

It’s Ms. Casey’s favorite topic and you know exactly how to answer it, even if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Bonus Question (+5 points): Name five of the actors besides Leonardo DiCaprio who were in the movie version we watched last week.

Extra points for knowing some piece of People magazine trivia.

That’s your fate.

No wonder you hate this class.

“Hey.”

It’s Max and he’s standing near your locker. You nod. “Hey.”

“What up?”

You spin the combination lock and jerk open the door.

“Where were you this weekend?”

“I was busy.”

“Yeah?”

There’s something sharp in his voice that makes you look over. He’s got his arms crossed and he’s leaning back against the row of lockers. Max the Tough Guy.

“Ryan says you went to a party at the queer kid’s house.”

A week ago you’d have been quick with a denial, now it’s not worth the effort. You turn back to your locker. “What did you do?”

“Derrick found a box of wine in the back of a pickup truck at the 7-Eleven. You should have been there.”

“Gee, sounds like fun.” Kyle the King of Sarcasm.

Max starts in with the F-bombs, but then he stops midword and the first thing you think is that there’s a teacher walking up behind you, so you keep fumbling around in your locker. You’re not getting blamed for that one.

“You’re Kyle, right?”

There’s a hint of spice in the air, expensive and subtle. You turn around slowly.

She’s as tall as you, so you’re looking right into her eyes. Sky blue eyes, the makeup perfect, the face golden bronze, also perfect, the straight blond hair bouncing below her smooth shoulders, down to her chest. Perfect, perfect, large and perfect. A senior, but not a senior like Jake the Jock. The rare kind of senior, the kind who seems to float through the building, above it all, above the cliques and the gossip, the Senior Class crap and the little school romances all so quaint and foreign to them. The kind who already have jobs in offices or boyfriends in their twenties, new cars and exotic tastes, the kind who never work hard in school but whose names are called over and over at honors ceremonies, the kind who are never there to pick up their Xeroxed awards. Always girls-no, always women -and always stunning. Not teenage adorable, not high-school pretty. Stunning. Girls like this don’t talk to guys like you, don’t know that you live on the same planet as they do.

“Victoria said she met you the other night at Zack’s,” she says while you stand there with your jaw on the floor.

“She said you were a cutie.” She smiles the kind of smile that tells you to forget it, you’re way out of your league. But still, she’s talking to you.

“So, you have a good time?”

You nod. “Um, yeah. Yeah it was fun.” Kyle the Idiot.

She gives a perfect little laugh. “They always are. Did he make you one of his margaritas? You gotta watch those, they sneak up on you.”

You give a stupid little laugh, nodding like a bobblehead.

“And I hear he got Brooke crying.” She rolls her eyes. “Not that that’s hard.”

“Yeah, that was kinda, I don’t know, mean.”

“That’s our Zack. He finds your weak spot, then keeps pushing till you crack. Still”-she shrugs-“he makes a good margarita.”

She laughs and you laugh because you don’t know what else to do. You should ask her what else she knows about Zack, things like what he did to get kicked out of that school and how he gets away with throwing parties at his house and what he’s done to other people when he finds their weak spots. But you won’t. Girls like this don’t talk to guys like you, and when one actually does, you don’t start asking questions about some other guy.

“Right, I gotta go,” she says, checking the time on the cell phone she’s not supposed to have in school. “Let me know the next time Zack’s having a party. I’ll give you a lift.”

She walks off and naturally you watch her go. That’s perfect too.

You turn back to your open locker and Max is staring at you, his eyes wide at first, then they narrow and you can guess what he’s thinking.

One word from you and it’d be okay, everything back to normal, back to the way it was.

But you just look at him and smile.

No, not smile.

You smirk.

It makes no sense kicking a kid out of class for not doing his homework.

Maybe he was busy actually doing in-class work when the assignment was supposedly given, or maybe the teacher wasn’t as clear as she claims she was. There’s the chance that he heard the assignment and chose not to do it and take the zero, but a better chance that if he heard it he just forgot about it, that he doesn’t want the zero and certainly doesn’t need it. But he’ll get one anyway. So now the kid’s behind, but if he pays attention in class he might be able to piece it together and catch up. After all, it’s only one fill-in-the-blank worksheet. It would make sense to keep him in there. The teacher could give him detention, or better yet, give him a break for once, let it slide, but that never happens and the kid gets kicked out of class, sent to see the vice principal. And when he comes to class the next day, guess what? He won’t have that day’s homework.

In any case, it makes no sense. And this is what you’re thinking as you hand the preprinted form to the vice principal’s secretary and she tells you to take a seat in the long row of empty chairs that line one wall of the office.

Like you haven’t done it a thousand times before.

The VP’s door is shut, but you don’t think there’s anyone in there. She may not even be in the building and you may end up sitting here for the whole morning, forced to listen to the secretary’s radio, set to a station the DJ calls “adult contemporary.” Maybe that’s the punishment. You’ve heard that the secretary can write a pass, get you out of seeing the VP and send you off to your next class, but out of all your trips to this office-and there’ve been a lot of them-it hasn’t happened yet. And you don’t think it’s going to start today. You put your head back and slouch down in the seat and settle in for a nap, but your eyes aren’t closed ten seconds before three sharp raps on the outer office door let you know that you have company.

“Zachary McDade, reporting as ordered.”

It figures.

You glance over and he’s standing with his back to you, facing the secretary’s desk, his right arm sweeping up in a theatrical military salute. The secretary laughs-why, you don’t know. “Zachary, what are we going to do with you?” She’s said the same thing to you before, but she wasn’t laughing when she said it.

“Oh, Mrs. Clevenger. You know I’m your favorite.” You can hear the wink in his voice and you can’t believe she’d buy it, but she does. She says something witty to him and he says something back, and then she says something else and they both laugh, and you’re wondering where he learned to talk to adults. A simple conversation, nobody yelling, just talking. If an adult talked to you like that, you wouldn’t know what to say. But that’s all right, adults don’t talk to you. They talk at you.