Free Anton's Odyssey by Marc Andre

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    In an attempt to spare Hammond from utter humiliation, I tried to divert attention away from his rather obvious lack of clinical insight. “There’s a double negative,” I called out. “It could confuse the reader. Also it’s a bit of a run on sentence.”
    “Crab is spelled with a ‘c’ and not a ‘k’!” said a willowy brunette with high cheekbones. Either she, too, was trying to save Hammond from embarrassment or was very naïve. She had an innocent quality about her, so I guessed the latter.
    “Uh Uh!” Hammond said, “I’d seen it with a ‘k’ at sea food restaurants.”
    “That means it’s fake crab and not real,” the girl scolded.
    If only he remained silent, I thought. I buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t bear to watch what was sure to happen next.
    “You can’t catch pubic lice at the beach, you moron!” a skinny boy called out.
    “You can if Hammond’s momma’s there!” said another boy. Everyone started laughing. Hammond face turned deep red. He was having a rough start to the new school year.
    “Settle down class!” Ms. Gross said, trying to silence the uproar, but the raucous continued. “Settle down!” she said loudly, and by some miracle, the class actually forgot about Hammond’s itchy jock, settled down, and focused on the next paragraph: “The Dim Sum at Andy Guo’s Mandarin Palace is exquisite.”
    “Oh I would definitely agree,” Ms. Gross said. “I’ve had it before, and it is exquisite.”
    “Explains the junk in the trunk,” the boy to my right whispered softly. I ignored him. Junk or no junk, I rather liked Ms. Gross’s trunk.
    Ms Gross was looking right at the willowy brunette when she said, “Have you ever been to the Andy Guo’s in Hollywood?” Apparently the two knew one another from a prior voyage.
    “I was there last week,” the brunette replied.
    “Is it near the Walk of Fame?” Ms. Gross asked.
    “It’s right on the Walk of Fame.”
    “Oh that is so rad!” Ms. Gross said, “I am so going there the first day we return to Earth.”
    Social studies was a total bore. My teacher was some fit looking guy named Mr. Fox who had a really weird hairdo. Science was even more boring than social studies but not nearly as bad as math class because at least I could understand what was going on.
    My elective, art, was pretty fun. We had to draw a partner with these old-school charcoal pencils. As a partner, I was assigned the willowy brunette from English class. Her name was Ellen. My drawing came out pretty well. Ellen wasn’t the type to extend compliments. She said it was just “okay,” but I could tell she was really impressed because she asked if she could keep it. I said “sure” in a manner that feigned indifference. I had no idea how to act around girls. Billy once told me that the best way to get a girl to like you was to act like you don’t like her. The advice didn’t seem very logical to me, but Billy seemed to do pretty well with girls and even felt a boob once.
    The picture Ellen drew of me wasn’t very flattering. My teeth and nose were really big, and I wasn’t sure if she thought I was ugly or if she was just a bad artist. She asked me if I wanted to keep it and I said ‘no,’ which might have been a mistake because she pouted afterwards and wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the class.
    When the teacher dismissed us, the school day was over. On the way home, I ran into Hammond holding a skinny boy by the wrists, the kid from English class who had loudly declared that Hammond’s mother had pubic lice. The unfortunate boy was com pletely over powered. Hammond completely controlled his movements. Hammond shoved the kid’s hand back into his face. “Quit slapping yourself!” Hammond said, repeating with the other side, “Quit slapping yourself!” Utterly humiliated, the boy’s face remained expressionless and pale. To his credit though, the kid didn’t burst out into