Page 13 of My Own Kind of Person

“What.”

Tony frantically searches on his phone while muttering, “This is all happening in the next week. The competition is at Captain’s Comedy Club and the big show with Joe Johnson is a few nights later at the Vanderbilt.”

“What,” I say again.

Tony holds up a seating chart on his phone. “The Vanderbilt can fit a thousand people. If you opened for Joe Johnson you’d get to perform in front of a thousand people.”

“If I opened for Joe Johnson I’d get to meet Joe Johnson.”

“You’d skip the line of performers who’ve been churning out content since their seventh birthday. You’d go straight to having an actual career.”

“I have to get on this show.” I try again to reload the page, but my phone is frozen.

“It specifies that competing comics aren’t allowed to have previously headlined or toured,” Tony says. “Joe must know tons of people. Why would he want a newbie as an opener?”

“He always does weird things. His first special was released on VHS.”

“Whyever he’s doing it, it’s working.” Tony holds up the headlines of all the articles that have already been written about the competition. How did I miss this?

His mouth drops open.

“Yes?”

“It says, ‘Performers for the competition are chosen from monthly showcases of up-and-coming comics here and at our little sister club…McGuinn’s.’ ”

Like a punch in the chest. If I had gotten into the showcase at McGuinn’s, I would be eligible for this show. And I would’ve gotten in if I’d been like the other guys.

“We should still get tickets,” Tony says. “It’s gonna be a great show.”

My thoughts are so loud they push my eyes closed. By the time lunch ends and I rejoin the hallway herd, my inside world is louder than the outside world. I think about how last year in English, we did book groups pairing an older classic with a more recent classic, and my group read Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I liked both and gave my underlined copies to Andi along with a big dramatic note. But before wrapping them up, I carefully cut out the pages at the end where the characters are hospitalized for their mental health and they realize the traumatic parts of their past that caused them to be the way they were. It never felt true to me. Or it doesn’t feel true for me. I’ve tried to figure out the Big Reason I’m like this—depressed and anxious—but there was no singular traumatic event. We were broke? Mom had highs and lows? Doesn’t feel traumatic enough. I just get sad and worried and I don’t know why and I don’t know what to do about it.

Or maybe sad and worried aren’t the right words. Walking into Student Leadership, I want to smash my head against the wall.

By the time I’m sitting in last period English, I’m struggling to stay upright.

When the bell rings for the end of the day, the sound is miles away.

Christy writes, Banana wing?

The panic wakes me up. Adrenaline pumps as I stand.

“You can do this,” I say aloud to myself as I stand. “You’re gonna make it.”

I enter one end of the curved hallway of yellow lockers—the banana wing—as Christy enters the other, and we dance toward each other. I do hands in the air. She moves with her butt. When we get close, she puts both hands on my face and kisses me.

“I just had the best cookie of my life,” she says.

“Today you did?”

“Today I did.”

“What a day,” I say.

“I saved you a bite.”

“What a life!”

She swoops her mini backpack off her shoulder and takes out a piece of a white cookie with white seeds on it. Seeds on a cookie sounds disgusting but I pop it in my mouth. It’s soft and crunchy and a flavor I’ve never had.