The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [17]
Eli almost never went out on weekends. Occasionally, he hung out with one or two friends and played cards or board games. Mostly he stayed home. He tried to make new friends and create social plans, but people insisted they were busy. Eli didn’t wallow in self-pity. He knew plenty of people who had it worse. One of his closest friends, Dwight, was a mildly autistic student from another school. Dwight and Eli at first had bonded over their love of travel. As they got to know each other, their friendship deepened because they had a similar sense of humor and were both outcasts. Dwight also had been teased often in school. In eighth grade, when a science teacher joined in on the teasing, Dwight transferred to a private school. For Dwight it was worth waking up at 5 A.M. and taking a two-hour bus ride to and from school just to avoid the gibes.
Eli supposed that, like Dwight, he looked the part of the nerd, with short, straight reddish blond bangs, pale coloring, and a slouch that shortened his six-foot frame. Eli carried a gigantic backpack and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He used an expansive vocabulary and tended to fill awkward silences with jokes that inevitably made sense only to himself, though he wouldn’t realize it at the time. Sometimes he tried repeating other people’s jokes, like his math teacher’s line: “Six over infinity equals zero. Kind of like my income over the federal debt.” Eli’s friends reacted with blank stares.
Eli was sure that his manner of speaking caused strangers to think he had Asperger’s Syndrome. Eli would begin to say something, but the words in his mind weren’t necessarily the ones that exited his mouth. He would think, “How are you today?”, change his mind to say, “How are you doing?”, and the jumbled result would be something along the lines of “How are doing?” When that happened, he would close his eyes for a second, take a deep breath, and try again, enunciating each word carefully. People would give him a half-understanding, half-wary look that made him feel even more self-conscious.
That was better than when they laughed at him, though. He guessed that classmates assumed he was vulnerable, so they took their aggression out on him without worrying about repercussions. Eli was vulnerable emotionally, but he typically didn’t bother to fight back because, he explained, “It’s just not that important to me. I figure I’ll win the fight in twenty years or so anyways when I end up with a decent life and they’re unemployed and living at home.”
After classes ended, Eli and two friends walked together to a classroom to turn in homework early for extra credit. Josephine, an ADD nerd, approached the door, also with homework in hand. “Oooh!” she said to one of Eli’s friends. “Let me check my answers with you!”
While they compared papers, Eli tried to jump in. “Did you get ‘E’ for this, too?” He held up his paper and pointed.
Josephine gave him a withering glance. “Um, excuse me!” she said. “I’m pretty sure I was talking to her, not you!”
“Oh, sorry,” Eli muttered, and backed off. But he wasn’t surprised. As he lamented later, “Awkwardness defines my life.”
JOY, CALIFORNIA | THE NEW GIRL
On her first day of school, nearly a month later than everyone else’s, Joy rolled listlessly in bed, unready to get up and move forward with her life. Please let things be different here, she pleaded silently. Please let this school be different.
Joy had worried about this day for months. Not only was she changing cultures, but she was also starting school late. Although she would be a freshman, these weren’t first-time high school jitters—in Jamaica, high school began in grade seven. She had already been told that high school was the “first day of the rest of your life.” But she wondered what she would do in this new country, whether she would make friends, and how long it would take her to stop missing home.
Joy cycled through