The Genius of Little Things (29 page)

Before I get into that, I want to share some of the things that happened over the past two and a half months. I think they’re important.

I received perfect grades for the fall semester. My teachers granted me dispensation, due to my breakdown and brief hospitalization, and I was able to take my remaining finals after Christmas break. I even did extra credit assignments in every class, something that wasn’t needed, because I aced every final. And I had the sympathy of every teacher, if not the sympathy of Principal Nicks.

Carl and Janet went to bat for me and prevented me from being suspended for the Ritalin. They had to go over Principal Nicks’ head to do so. Principal Nicks hated me even more after this, but he could do nothing about it. My previous suspension did not show up on any permanent record that my fall back schools would see.

Janet and Carl didn’t separate after all. I asked Carl how everything was going. That was my casual way of prying. He said they were still patching things up and it would take time. Janet opened a private practice as a life and career coach. To make ends meet while building up a client base, she took a part-time job as an accountant for some businessman. She was sure the guy was laundering money, she said, but she couldn’t prove it.

Between Janet’s jobs and Carl’s new class at UNLV, they have been doing better financially. They stopped selling furniture, which was a good thing. The place has become pretty empty. There is an echo in the living room.

I obeyed Janet’s command not to look for another job. This has been the longest period of my life, since I was fourteen, that I have not been employed. I haven’t even looked for new tutors. Eddie Kim and his mother moved to Korea, quite suddenly. He sent me a well-written note thanking me for everything.

I couldn’t tutor Levi, either. Right after Christmas, he begged his parents for forgiveness and reaffirmed his commitment to the church. They allowed him to move back. He didn’t want to risk his position there by coming over to see me. I still receive calls from him every so often, mostly status updates. He plans to go on the mission. I have offered no advice on this matter, because he hasn’t asked for any. I miss him and Eddie Kim.

My physical relationship with Rachel gave me impetus to accept Carl’s offer to borrow his Sentra. I have been taking her out once a week. She is a cheap date. I don’t mean to be disparaging. It’s the truth. Typically I will park at a restaurant, and Rachel will want to stay inside the car and “talk,” which means a little talking and a little making out. Then she will suggest a more private place to “talk,” which means more making out than talking. Then, she will say it’s too late to eat. Parking in Las Vegas is difficult. Many dark spots are kind of scary—at least Rachel thinks so—and the brightly-lit parking spots tend to be in casino garages. But there is a good thing about half-empty neighborhoods. We can park under street lamps for safety and not worry about being seen.

Rachel’s article was posted on a political blog soon after the beginning of winter semester. The piece contained only one paragraph about Principal Nicks’ stupid reasons for keeping the stall doors off. Rachel didn’t mention me by name. She told me it was a conflict of interest to write about someone she was romantically involved with. In the article she referred to me as an
ambitious, sensitive senior at a Nevada high school who just wanted some privacy
. I never thought of myself as sensitive, but whatever. She said my stall door stump speech put me on
a collision course with an uncaring and authoritative principal
. I might have just referred to him as a jerk who looked like a warthog. This was one reason news reporting would not be my contribution to the world.

The bulk of the article covered students who used Facebook to launch a campaign to stop genocide in Darfur. When I read it, it occurred to me that if others could stop genocide, the least I could do was bring back stall doors to the rest rooms of a high school.

I asked Rachel to help me organize a sit-in protest inside the faculty rest rooms, which had stall doors. I thought there would not be enough brave souls to do this, because it would mean a detention, or worse. But during the first lunch period, the faculty rest rooms were full. They stayed full for the second and third lunch periods, as students rotated in and out. I didn’t participate in the sit-in because I was working with Mr. Proudfoot on an eleventh-hour change to my science fair project.

I need to digress a little more. Someone at a high school on the east coast had taken first place in her science fair a month earlier, with a project very similar to my bee-pesticide idea. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if it hadn’t been reported in the
New York Times
. Mr. Proudfoot was apoplectic. He made me come up with another project, pronto. My experiment, “Cyanobacteria in Our Water: Every Day a Little Death,” merited an honorable mention. I should say congratulations to Charity Singh, who won the Nevada state science fair with “Cell Mutation in Marine Diatom Protoplasts and its Implications for Transformation and Nanotechnology Techniques.” It was highly accomplished, as cell formation from cell mutation in marine diatom-type projects go. I agreed with the judges that she exemplified the “qualities necessary for success in science.” If she were to ask me for advice, which she wouldn’t, I would tell her to choose better names for her experiments in the future.

Here’s the best part about the rest room protest. A local TV station did a short segment on the sit-in, complete with interviews. They didn’t mention my name, but Principal Nicks knew I was behind it. Everyone knew. He did not retaliate against me, because he probably didn’t want the station to do a follow-up story about how poor Tyler Superanaskaia was punished for trying to give fellow students a bit of privacy while they pooped. Within a week, stall doors were put up. For two weeks after that, I received daily back slaps and high-fives from my Firebird High brethren. How’s that for leadership skills, Caltech?

Speaking of colleges…

Thick envelopes began arriving on March 14.
Thick
envelopes.

The one that interested me most was from University of California, San Diego—ranked third in biomedical engineering, FYI. They offered me a full-ride scholarship, tuition, room, board, and books.

I have not decided where I will go. As much as I have trashed UNLV, I am seeing some value to staying in Las Vegas and going there.

I have one more thing to add. At the risk of anthropomorphizing a venerable institution of higher learning, I must say, IN YOUR FACE, CALTECH. In your freaking FACE.

Seriously. In your face.

THIRTY

September 14. Text messages:

Rachel: I can’t believe I have to work today. I want to see you off.

Me: You “saw me off” last night.

Rachel: Haha. Perv.

Me: You started it.

Rachel: Don’t make me regret it.

Me: Are you going to be all right with all those UNLV guys?

Rachel: Maybe. Are you going to be all right will all those UCSD girls?

Me: Maybe.

Rachel: You better come back at Thanksgiving.

Me: Is that an order?

Rachel: It is.

Me: Okay then.

“Glad to see you’re getting some use out of that phone,” Carl said, looking back at me from the front passenger seat of the Lexus.

Janet reiterated her disapproval of text messages. “Pretty soon the world will stop laughing out loud. We’ll just say L-O-L. When we have sex we’ll scream O-M-G.” Carl gave her a look and they were both quiet for a minute. Finally, Janet said as long as I kept in touch with them, voice or text was all right.

Janet rarely took her eyes from the road as she drove. Occasionally she would have a choice epithet for someone driving too slow in the fast lane. They set the music on shuffle, half her songs and half his. Her choices were 80s Brit pop bands. Carl had chosen all female singer-songwriters, heavy on the acoustic ballads. Janet once derided his taste as “menses music.” I thought that phrase was funny, but I chose not to laugh.

I didn’t expect them to drive me to San Diego. Janet insisted on it. She said she was stressed out from her jobs and needed a little vacation. They wanted to spend a day or so sightseeing and buying me some new things. I planned to dissuade them from spending money on me. There wasn’t much I needed. And I had just spent the last two days divesting myself of junk. As I packed, I went through Milagro Sanchez’s box and decided there was nothing of value. Throwing out her box started me thinking about my own Box o’ Crap. It was already overstuffed. I would be accumulating things at college and would need room. So I culled everything but the photographs.

Forty-five minutes from Las Vegas, the questions started. Did I know who my roommate would be? When would I choose my classes? Would I have my own kitchen?

 “No. Already chosen. No, there’s a cafeteria in the dorm.”

Janet asked me whether I would miss them.

“I promise I’ll call,” I said, which was not really an answer to her question. I followed up with, “sure.”

In a few weeks, on my eighteenth birthday, I would age out of the foster system. My foster “relationship” with Carl and Janet would officially end. They weren’t taking in any new foster kids. They wanted me to come back for holidays. They wanted to pay for the expenses the scholarship didn’t cover. These were things parents did for biological kids, from what I’d heard. I still didn’t quite get it. But I didn’t complain.

Rachel needed to look after her mom, so she didn’t apply to out-of-state schools. She said she UNLV would be fine. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the top journalism school in the country. Rachel basically insisted that I go to UCSD. She even said she would break up with me if I stayed in Las Vegas just to be with her.

So in April, I responded to UCSD with an enthusiastic, “hell
yes
.”

I should mention that San Diego had the best weather in the country. One of the best beaches in the world was within walking distance of the campus. Not that I would have much time to spend there.

Carl asked me why I had been determined to go to Caltech. I told him that a middle school teacher said I should consider going there. It was a passing statement, but it stuck in my head for years. This was right after my BiMo died, when I was in my first foster home. I guess I saw Caltech as the right place to land. Plus, at that point, I took everything Mr. Gurganus said as the gospel. Good thing he didn’t tell me I was destined to become a stripper.

As we crossed the Nevada/California border, Carl said the strangest thing, out of the blue. “It’s too bad your mother didn’t see this. She would have been proud of you.”

She certainly would have envied me living near the beach. Proud? That was not clear.

I’ve decided to call her mother from now on.
BiMo
sounds stupid.

My mother did love the ocean, which made me wonder why she ended up in Nevada. She never really explained that one. One time, when we lived near Houston, we took a trip to the coast. It had gotten dark. The sea was calm and the moon cast a beam on the ripples. She said she wanted to walk out on that beam, all the way to the end. I panicked and begged her not to try walking on the ocean, because she would drown. “I wouldn’t really do it,” she said. “Where do you get these ideas?”

We exited the freeway at Baker, California, home of the World’s Biggest Thermometer. Janet said she needed a restroom break and something for her headache. She stopped at a gigantic gas station/restaurant/convenience store. Carl spotted some tourist store across a dusty strip of nothing. There was a green alien head on the store’s sign. He asked if anyone wanted any “alien stuff.”

Janet looked at store’s sign and scrunched up her face in disapproval. “
Alien
-fresh
jerky
?”

“They have other things,” Carl said. He turned to me and asked what I wanted.

I felt a tickle in my throat. “Nothing, thanks,” I said, hoarsely.

They got out of the car at the same time. Janet left the keys in the ignition so I could enjoy the A/C and music. Alanis Morissette sang about being thankful, except the lyrics were about things that most people aren’t thankful for, like terror and disillusionment and dangling carrots.
Thankful for disillusionment
! My mother liked the song as I recalled.

Carl came out of the convenience store, looked at me and gestured toward the alien jerky store. Then he did the goofiest thing. He put his free hand on top of his head and with two fingers made a V while he bulged his eyes out. He was trying to be funny for my benefit, something my mother might have done in one of her better moods.

In the song, Alanis recommended “unabashedly bawling your eyes out.” I wondered whether this might be a message. My mother believed music had subliminal messages. Regardless, I blame Alanis Morissette for what happened next.