4
Loners
IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS: Headphones that aren’t necessarily playing anything. Sad eyes. Stand out just enough to let you know to stay away.
HABITAT: Basement-level lockers.
MATING HABITS: Weird porn. Like, German weird. Leeches and electro-rods. Stuff that gets your laptop blinking on a registry somewhere.
The Sorting Hat of Anderson High had spoken, and Norris Kaplan was to be a Loner, which was fine by him. Better than Hufflepuff, by all accounts. Two weeks in, Norris had discovered object permanence to be one of the many things the American teenager was still struggling with as, for the most part, he’d simply become furniture around the school. Not trying had paid off, and the novelty of the New Black Canadian Kid had dissipated. He was now the guy who didn’t do much except go to class or take strolls between said classes, which again was fine. His new school philosophy was “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Being a loner mostly involved a lot of walking around. Guidance counselor Kolb had officially turned Norris’s missing language requirement into a free period.
“This is actually a great opportunity for you to get some content for your diary! Getting involved in school activities is important here!” She had gesticulated during their second meeting in a way that led Norris to believe that “here” meant the 3.8 million-square-mile expanse of America. Judith likewise agreed, and as far as she knew, her son was joining clubs left and right and ate lunch every day with a small but meaningful group of wacky new friends that dressed in black and white and danced with umbrellas in the school fountain.
Fortunately, Kolb had framed it as a suggestion, which meant that Norris would not capitulate until “strongly encouraged” turned “mandatory.” For now, he spent that hour browsing the emptier corners of this megaplex high school and not at all hoping to run into a certain Indian girl with a camera, who had disappeared without a trace after saving him from certain death via beheading-by-cheerleaders.
Ever since their encounter in the hall, Norris had categorically not been stalking Aarti. For one thing, stalking required prey, and Aarti was nowhere to be seen. If Aarti was actually a student of Anderson High and not just some cheerleader-vanquishing mirage, attendance was not a priority.
Whatever: it really would make sense that the only interesting person in Texas might have been an apparition. At least that’s what he thought until one week in, when the algebra teacher managed to confirm her existence.
“Aarti? Ms. Puri?”
“Absent,” someone near the front volunteered. “She wasn’t in art class either.”
“Of course,” the teacher whose name Norris had forgotten said with a sigh. By her tone, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Norris hoped she would finally make it to algebra at some point or that he would run into her again but, ten days in, that did not seem to be in the cards.
His locker was thankfully away from the douchebaggier corners of the school. No Madison had been spotted yet. It was a particular breed of students that ended up in row N in the sloped basement, by the pool. He’d taken to nodding “sup” to the tall Asian kid who had the locker right above his. There was a certain safety in sup. Sup wasn’t some feral Canadian or the newest entry to the cheerleaders and jocks’ crap list. He could go a full day exchanging nothing but “sups.” If nothing else, it made for an easy yearbook quote.
The first skill an only child learns is to be alone and completely satisfied. Norris had fourteen years of experience under his belt; having someone else to talk to was nice, sure, but it had never been a necessity. So he spent his free period and his lunch hours walking around. The earbuds were mostly for show, to externalize his desire not to engage. Besides, he really did like walking for walking’s sake. Back in Montreal, he used to leave his hockey equipment at the rink overnight and walk home instead of trekking it back and forth on the bus. Aging into an old man with a collection of pimped out canes did not frighten him one bit.
He was wandering the halls between classes and had glanced into an empty classroom when he turned around and came face-to-face with a very long torso that turned into a mess of curly brown hair at the top, staring down at him with uncomfortable intensity.
“Jesus Christ!” Norris yelped. (Actually, not yelped: screamed. It was a Viking-like scream of virility, not a yelp.)
“Are you a ghost?!” Norris yelled, his heart beating out of his chest.
“No,” the guy under said hair answered after a moment, as if he’d actually taken the time to consider the question.
“Liam,” the strange boy continued. He had light brown eyes, sharp features, and the gum over his left top front tooth went down a bit, giving him the mouth equivalent of a lazy eye. “Liam Hooper.”
“Sup.” Norris nodded through a throat clear.
The boy showed no sign of moving out of Norris’s personal space. He really was quite tall, which probably explained his slouch. At the moment, he ranked somewhere between a close talker and good old-fashioned creep.
“You’re the super-rude Canadian, right?” he asked with a deeper voice than expected.
Was that how the Madisons were marketing him to the public at large?
“All right then,” Norris said, sidestepping this strange human pole. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to have to ask you to screw off, Liam, Liam Hooper.”
“Yup, it’s definitely you,” Liam said, sounding satisfied—the first thing close to an emotion he came to displaying.
“Me what!” Norris snapped, pocketing his noiseless headphones because this was clearly going to be a whole thing.
“Sorry, I wanted to be sure,” Liam said. “I’m game. Let’s do it.”
“Dude, what are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m a beginner,” Liam said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “A nonbeginner, really. Haven’t begun yet, y’know.”
Why was he fidgeting?
“I don’t really know how to do it exactly, but I’ve seen plenty of videos online,” Liam continued. “It doesn’t specify beginners or, like, advanced, and I figure it can’t be that hard, right?”
“Um . . .” Norris mustered. “I’m eighty percent sure you’re talking about porn.”
“Ice skating,” Liam finally volunteered. “I’ve always wanted to learn. It just seems cool and—”
“Liam, Liam Hooper,” Norris interrupted as a ghastly picture was starting to form in his head. “What are you talking about?”
“The ad,” Liam said.
The boy reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper that he proceeded to flatten by pressing it against his flat torso before extending it to Norris. A glance was all it took for Norris’s mind to collapse into itself.
“At first, I thought it might have been some old dude looking to fondle, but then I heard there was a new black Canadian kid here, and it’s blurry, but the guy in the photo is black, so, y’know . . . Connected dots and all.”
Credit where it was due, Norris did not scream.
Nor did he instantly burst into a long, protracted scream, strip naked, and walk out of the school, all screams and nudity and heading straight into traffic, which was a very close second choice.
WANTED: HOCKEY ENTHUSIASTS & OTHER FRIENDS
Nice, charismatic young man, new to the area, seeks new friends who share his interest in all things hockey. Has lived all over the world!
Most offensively, the flyer was written in Comic Sans. At the bottom of the glossily xeroxed sheet was an email address that Norris knew to be Judith’s spam account.
“That’s you, right?” Liam asked calmly, which was how Norris suspected this boy did most things.
The picture under the text was definitely Norris. He didn’t have enough photos of himself floating around cyberspace like most teens to lose track of one, let alone that one.
The red Canadiens hockey jersey. The dented black helmet. There was probably some irony in seeing one of his proudest moments on the rink coming back to gnaw him right on the penis—and in Texas of all places. If one of the jocks from chemistry saw this . . . or, worse: Aarti.
“Where did you get this?” Norris whispered, instantly crumpling the sheet into a ball.
“You’re a very intense person,” Liam noted, watching Norris’s hands.
“And tall men are at a higher risk for prostate disease!” Norris snapped back, continuing to crumple the ball of paper until his palms were red. That sucker would never be crumpled enough. “Where did you get this?”
“It was by the turtle pond.”
“Dude! I don’t have time for pothead poetry here,” Norris said. “Where?”
“I don’t smoke weed,” Liam said solemnly, sounding almost offended. “And I’m serious. It was on this billboard on the UT campus. They have a sweet turtle pond in their quad I like to check out sometimes.” After a beat, he added, “My dad works there.”
Norris shoved the now warm and perfectly spherical ball into his pocket and walked away. He made it halfway down the hall before giving in to the urge to look over his shoulder. Liam was still standing there, eyeing him perplexedly from fifteen feet away.
“Do I follow you or was this you walking away from the conversation?” he asked. “I’m not familiar with your walking tempo yet.”
What the hell?
“S—stay! Go! Whatever you want, dude. I—I have class now!” Norris sputtered. “This was a mistake. I’m good on both friends and interests, thank you very much.”
“Why did you put up the ad then?” Liam asked.
“Does this really look like the reaction of someone who put up the ad, Liam, Liam Hooper?!” Norris tried very hard not to shout back.
“It looks like the reaction of someone that needs the advertising,” Liam mumbled in reply.
Norris pretended not to hear it, plugging his headphones back into his ears with such power, he might have perforated something. Norris did have class, albeit in another hour. He could not deal with this weird, affectless, tall boy, and his turtles, or whatever the heck he’d been talking about. There was matricide to prepare.
Norris did not fuss that night. Instead, he patiently and maturely waited until it was dinnertime and he had a stomach full of oven-baked mac and cheese to confront his mother with the undeniable proof that it was, in fact, her deepest wish to ruin his life.
“Were you a dancer? Is that it, Mom?” Norris casually brought up while loading their plates into the fancy dishwasher built into their new kitchen.
“What are you talking about?” Judith asked distractedly, glasses already back on and laptop open. The apartment almost felt like home now that their pristine new kitchen had slowly turned into a landfill of grocery bags that had been emptied but not put away, thick dissertations held by rubber bands, and the near-constant buzzing of the printer coming in from the living room. Judith was a quick nester.
“Did I ruin your body in some unforgivable way on my way out? Was that the start of this mother-son grudge?”
Judith finally looked up from the screen with that half-perplexed, half-confused frown that Norris had come to call the Norris Frown.
Norris reached into his pocket and tossed the paper ball at her.
“I don’t think two cities qualifies as me having lived ‘all over the world’ by the way.”
“Ah.”
“Ah.”
“Why is it so crumpled?” Judith asked, trying to pick the ball open with her fingertips.
“Because I don’t own a lighter!” Norris said.
“I don’t understand why you’re upset,” Judith said, putting the unopened ball down. “It’s how I met my Old Movies Club.”
“Your what?”
“Oh, I must have told you. I put a notice on a faculty bulletin board, and a few people reached out,” she chirped. “It’s just me and a couple of gals during our long breaks on Tuesdays, but it’s growing.”
“Neat. Sounds fun. Do you blame me for dad leaving?”
“For God’s sake, Norris.”
“Well, it has to be something! Because this, this is just mean, Mom. High schoolers are not university faculty members. Why would you do this to me?!”
Judith closed her laptop on a slow exhale.
“Because I know you, Norris,” she said. “I made you, quirks and all. You haven’t been eating lunch every day with Phoebe, Ross, and Joey. Honestly, do you think I live under a rock? We had that show in Haiti too.”
Crap.
“You say that you’ll try to make things work here, but it will be just enough to throw your arms in the air and say ‘That’s that!’” Judith continued. “I’m not letting that happen.”
Did she have cameras in the school or something?
“You remind me that you made me way too often, by the way,” Norris noted after a beat.
“I’m mostly reminding myself,” Judith answered dryly.
“Have you never watched a teenage movie in your life, Mom? This thing could have so easily been photocopied and left in every locker in that damn school!”
“Language.”
“Darn school,” he mechanically corrected. “Some kid came up to me with it!”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know, Mom.” Norris sighed. True, Liam hadn’t seemed too bad as far as dwellers of Anderson High went, but . . . “It was weird. He had a real leather-trench-coat vibe.”
“He was wearing a leather trench coat?”
“No, but I could tell he would if the weather permitted it, y’know.”
Norris knew how ridiculous that must have sounded.
“Well, as long as you know,” Judith said, eyes back on her screen.
“Was it—”
“Yes, yes, it was the only one I posted in my unending cruelty,” Judith said. “Now shoo, I have a lecture to plan.”
Norris paused. She only ever mentioned specific lectures or panels when she was nervous about them. This was something Norris was not even sure she knew about herself. “When is it?”
“February fifteenth.”
“Let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask,” Norris offered.
Judith looked up at him for a good, long moment.
“You’re in high school, Norris,” she finally said. “You don’t have to attend my boring old department lectures.”
“I know. But there’s not much to do around here, Mom.” Norris shrugged, taking the ice cream bowl with him into his room. “I’ve got an online appointment to get to.”
“All right, babe,” she said with a smile. “Say hi to Eric for me.”
Of course Norris had to attend her panels. The idea that his mom might one day give a speech to an empty room was something that made Norris incredibly sad for some reason. These events, well respected as they were, were always sparsely attended, but Judith could at least always count on a one-man round of thunderous applause from him. His dad’s absenteeism would not extend to him. Somewhere along the way, he had decided that he would be the first Kaplan man to appreciate how incredibly smart and occasionally kickass his mother was.
At least when she wasn’t a busybody monster with unsupervised access to a printer.
@Eric53 is online.
@Norrtorious—Finally!
@Eric53—Sry, man. Busy times
@Norrtorious—No kidding
@Eric53—You have 10 mins before I legit pass out, so skip the whining, Kaplan. It’s past midnight here. How’s Austin!!!
@Norrtorious—Groan
@Eric53—I’m gonna need more than that
@Norrtorious—G-R-O-A-N
@Eric53—Lol, man, I miss the Norris Kaplan drama
@Norrtorious—I could literally keep typing “Groan” all night and it wouldn’t lose its meaning
@Eric53—It can’t b that bad
@Norrtorious—You have no idea. AND the Penguins are wrecking my fantasy league stats, which only adds to my long list of sufferings
@Eric53—Haha, I know! You’re at the bottom of the league. Perfect GPA aside, u really do suck at stats. Btw, you left your biology notes in your locker. The new guy found them
@Norrtorious—It was a gift for your ungrateful midterm-failing ass.
@Eric53—Aww, shucks. Thx.
@Norrtorious—Wait, who has my locker?
@Eric53—Marc-André. New kid from Sherbrooke. He’s cool
@Norrtorious—Wonderful
@Eric53—Are you fucking pouting, Kaplan?
@Norrtorious—No
@Eric53—Omfg. Did I say “cool”? I meant he’s my new best friend, a killer hockey player, and 2 inches taller than u
@Norrtorious—I’m not pouting. Enjoy the romance.
@Eric53—Lmao I don’t have a crush on him. He’s just a new guy that’s all. Probably straight anyway.
@Norrtorious—Is he really taller than me?
@Eric53—Narcissism: The Story of Norris Kaplan.
@Norrtorious—Starring Taye Diggs
@Norrtorious—Seriously, dude! Everyone here is out of a bad 90s teen movie, it’s insane. Douche jocks and nasty cheerleaders as far as the eye can see!
@Eric53—Mm
@Norrtorious—What?
@Eric53—Just wondering who the “misunderstood outsider” is in that scenario lol
@Norrtorious—I really don’t like you
E@ric53—U love me. But I’m passing out. Off to catch some ZZZs. Lata
@Eric53 is offline.
Norris shut his computer off on his third yawn and slouched into his bed, which was already in disarray. He hadn’t actually made it more than a handful of times since they’d moved in, and his new bedsheets still smelled like an unfamiliar detergent brand. Lavender still, but from a different field. Most things about Austin still felt temporary, like a road trip that had stalled in the middle of unknown terrain.
Norris couldn’t even remember how he and Eric had become friends in the first place. It had been at school, yes, but he couldn’t connect it all back to a single interaction. Hanging out with Eric was just a fait accompli of life back in Montreal. Staring down the barrel of hundreds of new strangers every day here—strangers who either didn’t know him or already only thought of him as the “Rude Canadian”—was something he preferred to opt out of altogether. That weird, tall stoner guy might be nice—very, very weird but perfectly nice—but Norris would still be out of here in two years, 716 days, to be exact. What is even the point? he thought, closing his eyes.
It was not a great sleep, all things considered.