Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“How is little Nick Eisner?”


“He’s the same. Still glued to his guitar.” And he’d be totally butthurt if he knew Alice still calls him little. Nick has had a minor-level crush on Alice since we were in middle school.

“I was about to ask. So cute.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“Yeah, don’t do that.” Alice sinks her head back into the couch cushion, rubbing her eyes behind her glasses. “Sorry.” She yawns. “Early flight. And catching up from this week.”

“Midterms?” asks Nora.

“Yup,” says Alice. And it’s so obvious that there’s something else, but she doesn’t elaborate.

Bieber does this sudden loud-ass yawn and rolls onto his side, so his ear flips inside out. And then his lips twitch. He’s a weirdo.

“Nick Eisner,” Alice says again. And then she grins. “Remember his bar mitzvah?”

Nora giggles.

“Oh God,” I say. It’s really the perfect time to bury my head in a pillow.

“Boom boom boom.”

No wait. It’s the perfect time to smack Alice with a pillow.

She blocks it with her feet. “Really, Simon. We can clear a spot on the floor right now if you want,” Alice says.

“Simon Spier dance break,” says Nora.

“Yup. Okay.” Nick’s mistake was inviting my whole family to his bar mitzvah. Mine was attempting to pop and lock to “Boom Boom Pow” in front of them. There’s no such thing as a good idea when you’re in seventh grade.

“Don’t you wish you could go back in time and just shut it down? Like, hey. Middle school Alice: stop it. Stop everything you’re doing.”

“OMG.” Nora shakes her head. “I can’t even think about middle school.”

Seriously?

I mean, Alice was the one who once spent a month wearing elbow-length silk gloves. And I’m pretty sure it was me who ate five cookie cones at the Ren Faire in sixth grade, and then vomited into a wax mold of my own hand. (Worth it.)

But Nora? I don’t even know what she has to be embarrassed about. It doesn’t seem like this would be genetically or developmentally possible, but she was kind of cool in middle school. Under-the-radar cool. The kind of cool that comes from teaching yourself guitar and wearing normal clothes and not running a Tumblr called “Passion Pit OBSESSION.”

I guess even Nora is haunted by the ghosts of middle school.

“Yeah, I wish someone would have told middle school Simon to please try to be awesome. Just try.”

“You’re always awesome, bub,” says Alice, stretching over Bieber to tug the end of my foot.

I’m bub and Nora is boop. But only to Alice.

“And your dance moves are super awesome,” she adds.

“Shut up,” I say.

Everything is a little more perfect when she’s here.

And then Alice leaves and school starts again in all its suckery. When I get to English class, Mr. Wise gives us a villainous smile that can only mean he’s finished grading our short essay quizzes on Thoreau.

And I’m right. He starts handing them back to people, and I can see that most of them are wrecked with red ink. Leah barely glances at hers before folding and tearing off the bottom and creasing it into an origami crane. She looks extra pissed today. I’m 100 percent certain it’s because Abby came in late and squeezed in between her and Nick on the couch.

Mr. Wise flips through the stack and licks his finger before touching my paper. I’m sorry, but some teachers are seriously gross. He probably rubs those fingers all over his eyeballs, too. I can just picture it.

When I see the perfect score circled at the top of my paper, I’m a little bit amazed. It’s not that I’m bad at English, and I actually did like Walden. But I think I got about two hours of sleep, max, the night before that quiz. There’s just no freaking way.

Oh wait. I’m right. There is no freaking way, because this isn’t my freaking test. Way to remember my name, Mr. Wise.

“Hey,” I say. I lean across the aisle to tap Bram on the shoulder. He turns sideways in his chair to face me. “Looks like this is yours.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he says, reaching out to take it. He has long, kind of knobbly fingers. Cute hands. He looks down at the paper, glances back up at me, and blushes slightly. I can tell he feels weird about me seeing his grade.

“No problem. I mean, I’d keep the grade if I could.”

He smiles a little bit and looks back down at his desk. You never really know what he’s thinking. But I have this theory that Bram’s probably really funny inside his own head. I don’t even know why I think that.

But seriously: whatever inside jokes he has with himself, I think I’d like to be in on them.

When I walk into rehearsal that afternoon, Abby is sitting in the front row of the auditorium with her eyes closed and her lips moving. Her script is open on her lap, and she’s got one hand covering some of the lines.

“Hey,” I say.

Her eyes snap open. “How long have you been standing here?”