The Art of Faking Straight

Chapter Fifteen

         When I told Kyle to hurry up because we were going to be late to school, I thought he'd increase his pace. I thought when I told Dad to get Kayla dressed, he wouldn't fall back asleep and he'd dress her properly. When I grabbed the stuffed bunny off Lilly's floor I thought it was the bunny she told me she had to take to daycare. When I went into the kitchen to grab a granola bar, I didn't think they'd be all gone. Then when I thought I grabbed my lab homework – that was a diagram of a pig - for Mr. Yitz's science class, I didn't think I grabbed one of Kayla's stupid pictures of that pig from Charlotte's Web.

         So basically, I thought wrong all morning. Needless to say, this will probably be a bad Friday.

         “Wasn't dinner incredible last night?” Jack asks me as we stand at our lockers before going to second period. It feels like he's asked that one hundred times today. Yet, I answer him the same way every time.

         “Of course it was, Jack, completely unbelievable.”

         He looks at me sideways for a moment, and then a cheeky grin spreads across his face. “I feel like the luckiest man in the world. The game tonight is guaranteed to be a winner.”

         “Yeah, they won't know what hit them,” I tell him, but it shows in my voice that I'm not that enthusiastic. Yet, how can I be? My day has just been getting worse and worse by the second, but fortunately for him, Jack's day has been going swell. Perfect. Terrific.

         I'm being all pessimistic again.

         Yet, I can't help it. It's as if that's simply how my mind works. I can't really change it. It's the default way I think. Some people can be optimistic with a hint of pessimistic, some people can be completely neutral, and then others, like me, are almost always pessimistic with a hint of optimism thrown in.

         “You got that right,” he says as he slams his locker shut. “See you tonight?”

         I don't trust myself to verbally lie, so instead I just nod my head. Wait, lie? It's as if I've already made up my mind without meaning to. Shit.

         He smiles, and then he takes off to some class he's guaranteed not to pay attention to and I'm left standing at my locker confused as to what to do. Since when did my relationships with people get so complicated?

         Shaking my head at the world, I close my own locker and turn around to head to class.

         “Where's your lab worksheet Mr. Kingsley?” Mr. Yitz asks as he passes my table. He's usually more than frustrated when students don't do their pre-lab worksheets. If you don't do them, then you can't actually participate in the physical labs. I guess it makes sense, but it still sucks for those of us who do them, but are too stupid to know how to not lose track of them. Though, I wouldn't be lying if I said they were the last thing on my mind yesterday.

         “Um,” I say, then let my eyes drift down to my books that are sitting on my desk. “I don't have it.”

         “Very well then,” he says. “But you could have at least tried Mr. Kingsley, all you had to do was color it in and label each part. If you would have looked in your book then you'd have seen that all you had to do was one of the pages.”

         “I did,” I say. “I just forgot it at home.”

         “Forgot it, you say?”

         “Yes.”

         “What do you mean forgot it?”

         “I mean I forgot it,” I begin to explain, “like to lose the remembrance of. Forgot. It's a verb and means I unintentionally disregarded it on my way to school. I was in a rush and grabbed my sister's stupid drawing of a pig. I don't even see why we're dissecting pigs anyway. It's stupid. Really stupid. If we weren't dissecting pigs then I wouldn't have mistakenly thought my sister's stupid drawing of that dumb pig from Charlotte's Web was my diagram of the stupid ass pig we're drawing in here.” Mr. Yitz begins to say something, but I hold up my hand to stop him. “God, I don't know how else to explain it. I don't have it. Just fucking give me a zero. I don't have it with me.”