Populazzi

Chapter Three



"My reputation precedes me," Mr. Woodward boomed as Archer and I tried to sneak in. "You were afraid to enter my class. You were wise."

The room tittered as we sat, and Mr. Woodward retreated to a closet. He pulled out a two-foot-long billy club. Archer gave me a knowing look. He had told me Mr. Woodward was infamous for this: "the Bat." No one knew what the Bat was for or what horrors it could unleash, but it was legend. A chill ran down my spine and my palms started to sweat. Was he taking out the Bat because Archer and I were late?

Mr. Woodward sat at the end of the horseshoe of three long desks. He held up a book and said, " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." As good, trained automatons, we all scrambled to pull out our copies, but Mr. Woodward cleared his throat and shook his head. "Watch and learn."

He held the Bat by its handle and let it rest on the desktop. He started to read.

"'Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky...'"

As he read, he let the Bat rise until it was almost at a ninety-degree angle to the desk.

"'Like a patient etherized upon a table.'"

He let the Bat drop back down.

He did this for several lines of the poem: let the Bat rise as the narrator got excited about his topic, then let it drop when his enthusiasm deflated. Finally, with a gleam in his eye, Mr. Woodward turned to us. "What is Eliot illustrating with his choice of words?"

It seemed pretty obvious what Mr. Woodward was illustrating, and while Eliot was doubtless illustrating the same thing, no one in the room wanted to say it out loud. Several people in the room snickered, but none of them tried to answer.

"Come on, kids, this is the good stuff. This is Junior English. This is T. S. Eliot. Let's dive into this! What is Eliot doing with his images? Anyone: shout it out!"

I almost giggled when I realized I could now say this twice in one hour. "Um..." I began, "he's making them stand erect?"

"Yes!" roared Mr. Woodward, and this time Archer didn't hide his smirk. "You've almost redeemed yourself for being late..."

"Cara," I said.

"Cara," he repeated. "So each time, Cara, when his images are at the peak of their 'erection,' if you will, what does Eliot do to them?"

There was only one answer, and I wished I could say it without blushing. Still, I didn't hesitate. "He lets the images go flaccid."

Mr. Woodward thrust the Bat into the air. "The woman is correct! In just the first stanza, this is what we're learning about J. Alfred Prufrock. Metaphorically, this is a man who can't keep it up. He can't make a decision, he won't face tough choices, and though he feels the longing pull of his hopes and dreams, he's too paralyzed to do anything about them!"

Wow. The entire class was riveted. The next forty minutes flew. By the time the bell rang, several of us had gotten so involved in fervent Prufrock talk that we weren't even sitting on our chairs anymore—we'd migrated to the tops of the tables. That never would have been allowed at Pennsbrook, but I guess here it was part of the whole charter-school-teachers'-and-students'- creative-thinking thing. Whatever it was, I liked it. And although poetry had never been my thing, I was now willing to make an exception for anything by T. S. Eliot.

As we filed out of the classroom, Archer asked what I had next. "Precalc," I said.

"Ah," said Archer, "I was hoping it might be geometry. More opportunity for you to talk about verticals."

"Ooh, you're right. Bummer." I looked at my schedule. "I have art fourth period, though; I could propose we erect a statue on campus."

"Not bad." Archer nodded. "Or you might want to come to my seventh period theater class. We're going to do some directing."

I winced.

"Too big a stretch?" he asked.

"Too big a stretch."

Archer glanced down at my schedule. "We both have fifth period lunch. Maybe I'll see you then. I promise I'll work on being more clever."

He gave me directions to my next class, then disappeared down the hall in the other direction.

This was great. I'd had an amazing class, I was maybe making a friend ... things were going well. Maybe I wouldn't even need the Ladder. It's not like I had to be Supreme Populazzi. One or two good friends, that would do it. Two—so I wouldn't be totally lost if one was out sick. Two people to hang with between classes and at lunch. I'd be happy with that.

I took a seat in precalc and was pulling out my notebook when a breeze of fruity vanilla-jasmine made me look up. The Supreme Populazzi girl had just slipped into the desk in front of mine.

A bolt of panic surged through me as I remembered her look of disgust when she saw me through the window. I slunk down in my seat.

What was she doing in here, anyway? Was she a junior? I'd assumed she was a senior.

Whatever. It would be fine. As long as she didn't turn around, it would be fine.

"Trista!" a guy behind me called out.

She turned around and—looked right at me.

No!

But Trista's eyes passed right over me, then locked on the person who'd called her. "Hey!"

Wait ... had she not recognized me?

Or maybe she and her boyfriend had never actually seen me. It wasn't like their tree was right next to the window. Maybe they'd been making faces at something else entirely.

Whatever it was, I'd totally dodged a bullet.

"Sweet party Saturday," the guy told her. "You rock."

"Thanks," she said.

That opened the floodgates. Now half the room piped up to tell Trista how much they'd loved her party. The other half—clearly the Happy Hopeless and Cubby Crews who hadn't made the cut—looked out the window or down at their books and pretended to ignore the conversation.

I was impressed that Trista herself didn't talk about the party at all. She let everyone else rave about it, and she was nice and thanked them, but she didn't go into it or anything. It was like she knew the other people wished they'd been invited and she didn't want to rub it in. It was cool.

I wondered what she'd do if I introduced myself. Would she say hi? If she did, what would I say back? What could I say that would be interesting to a Supreme Populazzi?

I spent the entire class trying to think of the perfect conversation starter, but since "So have you always been the most popular girl in class?" was unforgivably lame, I let it go.

After precalc I had study hall, then the whole school got a fifteen-minute break. Most people probably welcomed this, but I dreaded it. There's nothing worse than free time when you don't know anyone. I walked the halls and tried to look like I belonged—like I was alone because I wanted to be alone. At the same time, I tried to exude approachability.

End result? Me with a dopey smile on my face, looking hopefully at all the students who passed ... then pretending I was smiling at some invisible person just beyond them when it became clear they weren't going to notice me.

It was exhausting and depressing.

I wished Archer was around. I could've talked to him.

I wished I could call Claudia, but she'd be in class.

I wished I was Trista, with everyone in school falling all over me to be my friend.

I wondered if she and the other Populazzi were back in that oak tree.

I went outside to take a peek, and realized what I'd seen that morning was only part of the picture. The Populazzi's tree and the flat lawn around it actually sat at the top of a steep, grassy hill. The hill sloped down away from the school, so I hadn't seen it this morning. It was dotted with more Populazzi, sprawled out and talking in clusters.

I walked closer, curious.

"Hey, loser!" a large Populazzi guy yelled.

He was looking right at me.

I stopped in my tracks.

"Yeah, you!" he said. "You a senior?"

He looked intimidating. I got nervous and words tumbled out of me.

"Um, no. I'm a junior. Cara. Cara Leonard. I'm new here. Hi."

Someone needed to smack me. How had I not shut up yet? Why was I introducing myself to this guy? He'd just called me a loser!

"Senior Slope," the guy said. "You got ten seconds. Ten...! Nine...!"

All the other Populazzi on the hill were watching now, and they joined in on the countdown: "Eight...! Seven...!"

If my legs didn't unlock, I'd still be on the Slope when they got to one, and I didn't want to know what would happen then. I backed away and made it to the top of the hill by three, at which point I tripped and fell on my butt.

"Nice one!" someone called. Hot shame crawled up my neck, but I turned around. Trista, her boyfriend, and all the others at the oak tree—which I now understood was the hangout for the junior class Populazzi—were laughing at me. For sure they'd all heard the guy call me a loser. I had the instant, hideous sensation of being five years old, soaking wet, with Heather Clinger's witchy finger pointing at me and twenty-nine high-pitched voices shrieking in my ears.

I was desperate to run away, but I knew that would only make things worse. I pretended to be unruffled, stood up, and strolled off as normally as possible, my head held high. It helped. I actually started feeling indignant, which was way better than ashamed. How was I supposed to know it was the Senior Slope? It was my first day! It's not as if they had signs posted. Now I was a loser because I couldn't read their minds?

I had the feeling Chrysella was loaded with land mines like this. I wanted no part of them. For fifth period lunch, I grabbed a Diet Coke and a Zone bar from the vending machines and retreated into my car. If this were Pennsbrook, I'd have driven off somewhere, but Chrysella's rule was that students stay on campus during the school day, even for free periods and lunch. More of the "Charter School Difference," I supposed.

I turned on the car, cranked the air conditioner and the radio, and called Claudia, hoping she'd ended up with fifth period lunch, too. The times didn't match up exactly, but she should be free to—

"Are you Supreme Populazzi yet?" she answered.

I groaned and told her everything.

"When you've reached the top of the Tower, you're going to look back on today and laugh so hard," she said.

"Did you not hear me? I was just officially introduced to two years' worth of Populazzi as 'Loser'!"

"It's the first day of school! You shouldn't be anywhere near the Populazzi. That's not how the Ladder works."

The Ladder. Just this morning I'd thought I might not even need it. Now I'd already had a complete social meltdown. Clearly I could not be trusted to handle high school on my own.

"What do I do?" I asked.

"Stop hiding in your car. At this moment, your cafeteria is awash in potential targets: lower-level Cubby Crew guys who would kill to have a girlfriend like you. Get in there, find one, and start going after him!"

"It's just so not me, Claude," I said.

"Are you happy right now, Cara?" she shot back.

"No."

"Does Trista seem happy?"

"Yes, but—"

"Don't you want to be as happy as she is? Don't you deserve it just as much?"

That one I had to think about a minute.

"Yeah. I do."

"Yes! You do! That smell in the air? That's not just sloppy joes; that's your future! The Ladder awaits you, Cara Leonard! Once more onto the rungs, deer friends, once more!"

I laughed and promised her I'd do my best, then hung up feeling much lighter. I walked into the "awash in potential targets" cafeteria. It was filled with eight-person tables, and most of them were full. Somewhere among them sat my perfect target ... I just had to find him.

A voice boomed across the room. "'From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar, / Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore. / 'Kill him! Kill the umpire!' shouted some one on the stand; / And it's likely they'd a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand.'"

Okay, that was weird. Some guy at the back of the cafeteria was standing on his chair and shouting poetry to everyone in fifth period lunch.

Wait ... it wasn't just some guy. It was Archer. I recognized the Gatsby hat. I walked closer and I realized he was performing the poem, but it's not like he was trying to get people's attention. It seemed more like he was doing it for his friends, the other Theater Geeks. He was just so into it and so good that most of the cafeteria was watching. Happy Hopeless, Cubby Crews, DangerZones ... even Trista and her Populazzi had stopped eating to check out the show.

I watched, too. It was weird. I'd spent a big chunk of the morning with Archer, but I'd been so busy making sure I didn't come off like a complete idiot, I'd never really looked at him. Now I did. His clothes were pretty traditional—so much so that they actually seemed unique. Khaki pants, blue-and-white striped oxford with the tails hanging out, abused sneakers he'd probably worn for years. I could even see the outline of undershirt sleeves on his biceps. He topped it all with the gray tweed Gatsby hat with the brim snapped down. He wore his black hair short, cut bluntly at the nape of his neck. His skin was a rich coffee color, and his brown eyes seemed impossibly huge.

How had I not noticed it before? Archer was cute. Really cute. And he was smart—I had noticed that. And he made me laugh. And I seemed to make him laugh...

Archer's shoulders slumped, the picture of resignation. "'Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; / The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, / And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; / But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.'"

Silence ... then Trista stood and applauded. Everyone at her table and most of the cafeteria followed her lead. For the first time Archer seemed to realize the size of his audience. It didn't faze him. He took off his Gatsby hat and gave a deep, exaggerated bow, then plopped back down into his seat.

Wow. Even the Populazzi thought Archer was amazing. Claudia would definitely approve.

I started walking toward his table, getting more and more nervous with every step. I reminded myself he'd said he'd see me at lunch—it was totally normal for me to walk up and say hi. Besides, it's not like I was really risking anything. I was just playing my part in a grand social experiment.

I told myself that ... but it didn't stop my palms from sweating.

I had found my first target.