Page 10 of My Own Kind of Person

Pivoting left, I make eye contact with Jay Romero. He’s been my possible-nemesis since an ecology center trip last year when he kept asking if I wanted to fight. Today he’s extra-tanned with combed-back hair on top of his buzzed sides and a collared shirt that’s skintight. The top twenty-five students get to put a quote on a bulletin board at the end of the year, and last year Jay argued all the way up to the principal to use one from a “men’s rights activist” who’s under house arrest for sexual assault allegations. Jay said it was his freedom of speech. The principal eventually agreed, but after a few students pushed back, he asked Jay to find a different quote, which allowed Jay to make an even bigger deal about being “silenced.” This was around the time the principal blocked the creation of a civil rights club because it was “too controversial.” Our school district is mostly Irish and Italian, with a lot of police officers who drive to the city for work and complain about the city after work. Everyone’s great-great-grandparents moved to this country “the right way” and “worked hard,” so now everyone covers their cars in angry stickers.

Jay and I pretend we don’t see each other, and I turn down the arts wing. I hold open a double door for a ninth grader with purple-and-blue hair, and motion them through like I’m a butler wearing white gloves.

In the center of the art room is a still-life of pears, a truly thrilling first-day project. I sit at the corner table and take out my sketchbook and pencil.

My phone buzzes. It’s Christy.

Slept through 3 alarms and we’re out of coffee

UGH

I’m relieved she replied and terrified about how to respond. I tell myself to write something, but that only makes me more incapable of writing anything.

The counselor at one of my old schools told me panic attacks are physical experiences. They don’t only make your brain panic. Your body panics. Your organs panic. She didn’t say how to calm them, though, or if she did I was too panicked to hear it.

Oh no, I type. I’m so sorry!

Can I get you a coffee??

She doesn’t reply.

Andi drops their backpack beside me.

“You grow your unibrow even longer since the other night? It’s time to give that thing a tweeze.”

Their teasing is like a salve on the wound that is my brain.

“We prefer the term monobrow,” I say, slipping right into friendly-BS mode.

They sit and open their sketchbook. “We?”

“Those of us in the movement. The Monobrow Movement. Unibrows are classless, they’re a sign of poor grooming. A monobrow is a choice. A lifestyle.”

Andi tosses me their skeptical glare.

The bell rings but Ms. Esposito doesn’t look up from her sketchbook. I had her for 3-D Art last year. She occasionally remembers she’s the teacher.

I put on my dopey voice. “Maybe I should make my new set for McGuinn’s all about monobrows.”

Andi sketches a pear, and it immediately looks real. “Yeah?”

“Their proper grooming. Their political connotations. Their function as a source of personal power.”

They add a speckle to the pear.

“What?” I say.

They don’t look up. “I already said you shouldn’t care what anyone in that club thinks.”

“I agree, but it’s the only club around here.”

“And everything around here is awful.”

“So where am I supposed to go?”

“Literally anywhere else.” They still don’t look up. “I don’t understand why you don’t just post online instead of—”

“The art of stand-up requires a live audience in order to—”