Kurt
I’ve been watching Alice, ever since that day I saw her sobbing on the bleachers outside of the school earlier this fall. I’ve wrestled with myself, attempting to find some way to speak with her. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t talk to girls much, or to anyone at school, really, and this state, while unusual to many, seems natural to me. I do make an exception for Mr. Becker, my Physics teacher. He is one of the few teachers at Healy High who seems more interested in the subject matter at hand than what was happening on the football field or at the pep rallies. I often wonder how someone like Mr. Becker ended up staying in Healy, not married, living in a garage apartment behind his sister’s house (even though I’m sure he could afford something nicer). He certainly is a good enough instructor to move on to a bigger city school somewhere. Earn more money. Teach more advanced students.
He and I were sitting in his messy classroom yesterday afternoon discussing quantum gravity. Because of the Halloween holiday, everyone in Healy High had cleared out early to prepare for a night of debauchery and pranks. Everyone but me, of course. At one moment during our discussion, the conversation waned a bit, and I asked him why he hadn’t moved somewhere else.
“It’s such a pleasure to teach you, to talk with you,” he continued. “You have a gifted mind.” He leaned back in his chair, his arms behind his head, and I could see the yellowing stains on his shirt, under his arms. If Mr. Becker knew they were there, he didn’t seem to care. Nor did he seem to care that he was almost completely bald and had pockmarks on his cheeks from bad acne, or that he had several unknowable stains on his tie.
I have a gifted mind, all right. I know enough to know that I do not want to turn out like Mr. Becker. And I know enough to know that to ask Mr. Becker about how to talk to Alice would be more complicated than discussing quantum gravity. I get the sense Mr. Becker doesn’t know how to talk to girls either.
Girls were still on my mind as I exited Mr. Becker’s room after school. Well, truth be told there was only one girl on my mind, and as I stepped out into the hallway magically there she was, as alive and real and beautiful as she is in all of my dreams. Alice Franklin. She was standing in the doorway of Mr. Commons’ classroom, her lovely frame covered in that bulky sweatshirt. Only she didn’t have the hood pulled up as she often does, and her gamine haircut caught my eye first. Her neck was so amazingly swanlike I had to look away.
I tried to make myself seem preoccupied by leaning down and tying my shoe. Such a predictable move, I realize, but it worked in that I was able to listen as Mr. Commons spoke aggressively with Alice about a paper she was holding in her hand.
“No, there is no extra credit in my class, Alice,” he was saying as I untied my tied shoe and retied it again. “I realize a 63 is going to kill your average, sweetheart, but you need to focus more in class.” Mr. Commons did not say the word sweetheart in a comforting, reassuring manner. Rather, the way he said it reminded me of a mob boss in a bad movie. It was condescending.
“Okay, fine,” Alice said, her voice small with only a trace of spunk or life left in it. I waited for Mr. Commons to offer help or tutoring, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. When I took his Algebra II class as a freshman, he thought it was fun to make me get up at the board and teach the subject’s basic principles so he could relax at his desk. (I’m certain that piece of information makes it quite clear why I have no friends at Healy High.) I even waited for Mr. Commons to address the possibility that what had happened to Alice this year was having an impact on her grades. That perhaps becoming the Slut Who Killed the Star Quarterback was making it difficult to focus on her studies. But he didn’t mention it. I’m sure he knew about it. But I doubt he cared. Maybe he was even glad Alice was failing his class. After all, he is one of the assistants to the football coach.
Alice walked past me. I remained bent over like a deformed hobgoblin maniacally focused on its shoe. I didn’t know if she even realized I was there, but that night, sitting in my bedroom, I got an idea. It came to me in such a rush—in as much of a rush as my thoughts about quantum gravity and game theory come to me—but this thought was much more exciting. It was the thought that could change everything.
But I had to ask myself—did I want to change everything? In truth I was quite happy with things the way they were. Perhaps the better word would be satisfied. I had worked out a system of living in Healy that provided me with a relatively calm existence where I was mostly left alone to do as I wished, and I enjoyed that peaceful sense of being. Sure, I had experienced the clichés of high school life that someone of my social standing is usually forced to endure—jocks calling me a nerd in the hallways or making perverted gestures at me when I spoke in class, pretty girls rolling their eyes when I asked too many questions of the teacher—but over time even those elements of my life had faded as the community simply became accustomed to me and I to them. I was Kurt Morelli, space alien from another planet who had been granted temporary residency in their world. I had my routines: my evenings were spent reading or chatting online about science and literature with some of the university students and professors from my coursework, my Saturday afternoons watching history documentaries with my grandmother. And there was even Mr. Becker to chat with at school. In another year and a half I would be gone and in college. Why change anything?
And then I remembered Alice Franklin’s tremendous knees and beautiful face and the way she cried on the bleachers after school that day. And I remembered everything I knew about her. I remembered until my comfortable cocoon started to feel slightly claustrophobic, and I knew I simply had to follow through with my idea before I chickened out. So before I lost the little nerve I had, I ripped a piece of paper out of a notebook and spent an hour drafting until I wrote the following:
Alice,
I’m wondering if you would be interested in some tutoring help in Algebra II. I remember helping you with your Geometry homework last year, and I thought perhaps you’d still like the help. If so, just let me know. I’m happy to assist you as math is one of my strongest subjects.
Sincerely,
Kurt Morelli
This morning I folded the paper in half and slid it through the vent in Alice’s locker. And I began to wait.