Free Fruit by Brian Francis Page B

be different for me by the time high school started. I planned to start my life over as a whole new Peter Paddington. I’d be thin and wear all the right clothes and I’d be very popular. When I walked down the halls, everyone would say “Hi Peter!” but I’d pretend like I didn’t hear them. I’d head straight for the cafeteria to eat my lunch with my new friends. I wouldn’t have to go home for lunch anymore and I wouldn’t have seen an episode of I Love Lucy in I don’t know how long.
    The thing is, I never thought about sharing my locker with anyone. But after hearing Margaret and Julie, I realized how stupid I was. But I can’t just go up and ask a boy in my class to be my locker partner next year. You have to be friends first before you ask personal questions like that. But what boy would I ask? Who could I pick to be my boy friend?
    My biggest problem is that I don’t know how to make boy friends. I never know what to say around other boys and I’m afraid that if I do say something, I’ll sound stupid. I guess I’ve always felt weird around other boys. It’s like all the other boys are normal, except for me.Sometimes, I’ll spy on everyone at recess from behind the library curtains. I’ll watch Eddy and his Short Group members playing King’s Court from the library window. Or I’ll watch Craig Brown and his friends playing touch football in the field. Or Brian Cinder and his goons leaning up against the side of the school. And I’ll think to myself, “They don’t have Bedtime Movies. They’re not fat. They don’t have taped-up nipples.” It’s like being a boy is the easiest thing in the world for them.
    But enough is enough. I have to swallow my fears and find myself a boy friend on the double. There’s no time to lose.
    I sat down at my desk and wrote out the names of all the boys in my class. Then I pretended having conversations with them.
    “Hi Brown. Would you like to teach me how to play football?”
    “Hi Sean. Want to look at pictures of mutilated people this weekend?”
    “Hey Eric. Got a light?”
    But instead of each one saying “Sure” or “Let’s meet up after school,” all I could hear was Brian Cinder’s voice.
    “Peter Paddington is just one of the girls.”
    Then I came to Andrew Sinclair’s name. He’s the most attractive boy in grade 8. He has long eyelashes, blue eyes, and really thick brown hair. I wonder if he conditions it. I put Miracle Whip in my hair once, because I read that mayonnaise is a good conditioner. But I guess I left it in too long. My hair was greasy for days and I smelled like an egg salad sandwich gone bad.
    Andrew is also very fashionable. He wears button-down shirts and khaki pants and penny loafers. But instead of pennies, he puts dimes in them. He’s that kind of guy. Andrew is rich, too, so he can afford to buy designer clothes I see in magazines.
    When Andrew came to our school, all the girls had crushes on him. I think it was because he was new. Most of the time, people move away from Sarnia, not to . Margaret Stone liked him the most. She bought him little gifts, like rabbit’s foot keychains and chocolate-scented stickers, and left them in his desk for him to find.
    Margaret never said she was the one leaving the gifts, but everyone knew it was her. She even made a friendship pin for herself with Andrew’s initials on it, although I heard her tell Eddy Vanderberg that “A.S.” stood for “Absolutely Smart.” She made all of her Goody-Goody friends write Andrew notes in class. Margaret would never look over at Andrew while he read the notes. Instead, she’d pretend to be doing her work or arranging her scented stickers into smell categories.
    Sometimes, Andrew wrote back to the Goody-Goody girl who had sent him the note, sometimes not. Depending on his mood. I saw one of his notes back once. It fell out of Margaret’s coat pocket one afternoon and I picked it up before anyone saw me.
    “Dear Andrew,” it read. “How R U?