Terry and Lupe's Roman Holiday

 

1. Henpecking

Lupe

Oh, shit! Sarah Wilcox stood in my way! Fucking loser with her lame pony tail and her Little-Miss-Sunshine ruffled blouse. Lame-oh!

"What's it this time, Sally?" I asked her tiredly, knowing that she hated her nickname.

"It's Sarah, you bitch!" She was so easy!

"Whatever you say, Sally," I gave back cheerfully. "Again, what's eating you?"

"What's going on with you and Elroy?"

A really stupid question. Nothing was going on with Elroy. He had seemed interesting at first sight, a few weeks ago, wearing the right brand of polos, the right jeans, and showing off his pearly-whites to good effect. So I gave him a test ride, nothing more than three movie dates to check his potential. He screwed up royally during the third date, trying to stick his nacho dip-smeared hands under my skirt as soon as the lights were dimmed. He was history as far as I was concerned before the last trailer was showing, and he walked funny when he limped out after me. Outside he started to spew his vitriol at me, calling me a spic slut, a cock tease and worse things, until I decked him for good.

It has to be my Latina heritage. I am Guadeloupe Calderón. My friends would call me Lupe, but then again, I don't have many friends. I'm a spic after all, a brownie, one of those people, to the lily-white rest of the class.

My parents are third generation Americans and comfortable. Papa owns a chain of tyre dealerships and Mama is an environmental lawyer, slugging it out either with the EPA or some multinational corporation. They have an active social life too, and usually not much time for me, adding to my feeling of suppressed anger. All right, I do have a bad temper, so sue me!

Well, Elroy tried suing me, but the two guys behind the food counter — Latinos like me, only second generation — backed me up, testifying that he had been threatening and abusive, and he was laughed out of the DA's office. Sally was still standing there, her hands on her hips and trying to look mean. Pathetic!

"Nothing. I'm finished with him, and if you're just a little bit smart, you'll give that douchebag a really wide berth. He's a slime ball."

"He said you provoked him!"

I gave her a pitiful look. "He would, wouldn't he? Sister, he's bad news. I took one for the team trying him on for size, and you better understand that and wise up. Okay?"

"You only took him to hurt me!"

"Oh, puhlease! Why would you figure anywhere in my thinking? Get real! He fancies himself as a bad boy, and you are… Okay, I'm trying to be nice here: you come over like a good girl, a girl who'll introduce him to her parents, and that's the last thing he'd want. You're better off finding yourself a nice nerd, one who'll bring flowers for your mom when he picks you up."

"God, you're one arrogant bitch!" she spat at me instead and turned around.

Oh, dear! Some people just want to misunderstand you!

—————

Cut, to lunch break.

My day wasn't getting any better. I was sitting alone at my table, trying to force down the scrumptious cafeteria food — no, I'm not a snob, but it's bad considering what tuition costs — when the next lame-oh approached. Mary-Rose Carpenter, the self-anointed valedictorian-to-be and ass-kisser supreme. I'm a pretty good student, even if I say so myself, but I can't stomach her. She's obsessed with her GPA and uses every half chance to move up higher in the rankings. She's good at memorizing things, I give her that, but that only makes her a smart parrot. I learned that today's great minds are supposed to stand on the shoulders of giants, but Mary-Rose climbs up on the small people's backs and then kicks them in the face when she's on top.

"Hey, Mary-Rose, wassup?" I asked her as nicely as I could.

"Have you thought about my proposal?" she asked imperiously.

"Which one?" I was playing dumb.

"About us teaming up in AP Chemistry? You have good hands-on skills, and I have the background knowledge. We'd simply be awesome together."

"I told you, I'm already partnering with Terry Weaver."

"So tell him you reconsidered. Come on — the bastard? Is this your one charitable act for the year?"

I shook my head. I had asked Terry to partner with me, firstly, because I knew he was good in the lab, and secondly, because he had — literally — wiped the cafeteria floor with Elroy Warden two weeks before, when that asshat had kicked Terry from behind for no discernible reason, other than feeling too big for his Carhartts. Terry's food and drink was splattered over the floor. Invisible, untouchable Terry Weaver had put the hurt on that asshole Elroy without breaking a sweat. It was too precious and demanded recognition. The way he had stammered and blushed when I asked was the cherry on top. No way I would go back on my offer.

"Now that would be very rude of me, wouldn't it? He wouldn't be able find a new partner on such short notice."

"Who gives a shit about that slob. If you want to go slumming, find a stoner!"

"Look, Mary-Rose, I told you, I'm committed. I never go back on my word. Why don't you try Livia?"

"She's a freaking dyke!"

"So what? Think of it: she'll do anything for you if you pop a button or two on your blouse," I answered with a nasty grin.

"You're disgusting!" she spat indignantly, turning on her heel already.

"Yeah, and you're a fucking princess! Next time you're up the principal's ass, post a picture on Insta, willya!"

Yeah, my temper. I get it. They're not calling me The Bitch for nothing.

2. Three Months To Go

Terry

Just three more months! Three more months of snubs, three more months of derisive remarks behind my back, but loud enough for me to hear. I know, I shouldn't care. Next fall I'll be attending Penn, and Adam Quonsett Academy will lie in my past, soon to be forgotten. Penn doesn't hand out scholarships, but I won't need them. My sperm donor left me enough, and my grades are good enough to get in. My social activity record is a bit thin, but I was a junior volunteer firefighter in my hometown, and that must have helped.

Well, first things first: I am Terence Weaver. My mom, Lydia Weaver, was a young nurse trainee in my sperm donor's office when he got her drunk and took her cherry. He was sloshed, too, and forgot to put on a rubber or at least pull out, and nine months later, yours truly entered the world as the illegitimate son of Dr. Jerome Hamilton, MD, PhD. Good old Jerry was quite loaded, making his money with knee and hip replacements, and he had to pay mom maintenance and support. Mom was a good one, but when I was seven, we had a minor collision at a downtown intersection. I was securely ensconced in a kiddie seat, but Mom, ever in a rush, had not buckled up for the half mile to another store, and she suffered a fatal head injury. My memory of her is getting hazy already, but I have a few photographs to refresh it once in a while. The child support money was then managed by mom's attorney, the trustee for her estate, and I was placed in foster care.

The Williams, my foster parents, were thrifty, and they socked away a large part of the payments coming from Jerry Hamilton, making me live frugally instead and making me wear the clothes left by their former foster kids. They also made me the laughing stock in school with my hand-me-down clothes. For nine years, I had not a single piece of new clothing. I had never even been in a clothing store of any kind. What they had was a shitload of books on any subject under the sun and from all genres, all bought in bulk at estate yard sales, often together with my "new clothes". You could say that I became a bookworm because of that.

Gary Williams, my foster father, also gave me fighting lessons after I turned ten, first wrestling grapples, then graduating to hand-to-hand combat strikes. He did it well, being a retired Army drill sergeant and Desert Storm vet, but he also taught me judgement, when to use what level of force and such. Very valuable.

Since the Williams were living off their three foster kids and Gary's pension, he was at home a lot, making sure I did my homework and reading assignments. He was also a handyman extraordinaire, and I learned many useful skills apart from making the jerks who gave me grief cry.

When I turned sixteen, two things happened. First, Gary was fixing a leak in the roof when he slipped and fell. He had a bad landing in the junk which he kept in the yard and snapped his neck. It was horrible. Janice, his wife, went off the rails after that. We hadn't known that Gary had kept her from boozing, but now she was out of control. As the oldest in the household, I found the youth services office after school and gave them the beef.

I also collected my courage and visited to the offices of Mister James Wheeler, Esq., mom's attorney, who in turn alerted Dr. Hamilton of my situation. Since Jerry's other son had gone off the rails, too, and joined Club Fed for a nickel on a possession with intent charge, Old Jerry had the brain wave to take custody of the other male fruit of his loins and had me enrolled in his old prep school, Quonsett, as a boarder. Gee, thanks, Dad!

As quickly as he started to notice me, he forgot me again, and here I was, with the clothing sense my foster parents had instilled in me. They had not raised me to attend a private boarding school, either. In the first days, I naively told another student about my family situation, and before that day was over, I was the Bastard to everybody.

Then, a year ago, good old Jerry had one too many drams of 12-year-old Bunnahabhain, his favorite, and keeled over, smack-dab in the middle of a surgeons convention, and not even a dining hall full of sawbones could resuscitate him. Of course, the bastard son was not invited by his real family to the big funeral, which included his convict oldest son, out on parole, but Mister Wheeler filed the requisite claims, and I got what was my due, inflating my trust fund inordinately. I have a healthy allowance now, but still no clothing sense, and I am still standing on the bottom rung of Quonsett's social ladder, not that I give a shit anymore, with a little over three months left in senior class.

Mister Wheeler, the attorney, also got me emancipated, and that allowed me to become a day student at Quonsett, living off-campus in an efficiency apartment during my senior year and escaping my fellow students after the last bell every day. This made things a little easier for me, but my social life is still non-existent. Hell, even the fire department here didn't want me, with my qualifications from out of state. You might think that with an apartment of my own close to school, I would be included a little more. Not so. The A-listers in my class had decreed me to be an untouchable, scorned and ostracized, and things remained as they were at school.

Edwin Pennington (the third, of course) is my main bane, constantly harping on my bastard epithet, and being the son of a shady but apparently well-heeled developer, he's surrounded by enough sycophants to make it stick. Mary-Rose Carpenter is another nemesis, jealously defending her position as the valedictorian-to-be, and putting me down at every turn. Elroy Warden, another privileged prick, had found it funny once to kick me in the knees from behind when I was carrying my lunch tray. That I had used him for wiping up the mess from the cafeteria floor secured his hatred against me and also made Sarah Wilcox my enemy. The girl had an unrequited crush on Elroy. Of course, Elroy and I both got detentions, a week for Elroy and two for me, showing me exactly where I stood with the principal.

The A-listers very nearly had coronaries when the hottest girl in our senior class, strike that: the hottest girl in the whole damn school, Guadeloupe The Bitch Calderón, picked me as her partner for chem lab a week before. At first, I thought she was setting me up for some nasty put-down, but she meant it. I know that she's no slouch in the lab either, so I have a little bit to look forward to in the last three months. The only thing I'm worried about is that I'll probably pour some acid over my dick while staring at her. The girl is a safety hazard for 80% of the males and about 20% of the girls in AP Chemistry, even when she's wearing a white lab coat.

Imagine 115 pounds of firm female tissue distributed fetchingly around a 5 foot 8 frame, wrapped in flawless, dusky skin, complete with dark brunette hair and a face… I better stop now before I drool or worse. Sadly, she's also a ballbuster of the highest magnitude, and her moniker, The Bitch, is well earned. So far, she's treated me indifferently, like the guy who sweeps the marble floors in her shrine; marginally noticed, but mostly ignored. Maybe I'm unfair, but being seen with anything but scorn and disdain by girls does not feature in my memories.

Lately, and with the looming end to my school career in mind, I have started to let my own disdain show in my interactions with the snobs, and since the images of the sniffling Elroy on the cafeteria floor are still in people's heads, nobody gets in my face about it.

—————

As I was heading for the chow line in the culinary temple known as Quonsett's cafeteria, I saw one of my nemeses — is that really the plural of nemesis? — approaching and got ready for another hostile encounter. It was Mary-Rose, our resident spitlicker, ass-kisser and ruthless user. She's the prime candidate for valedictorian, mostly due to her ability to learn by rote and disgorge required buzzwords on cue, but without a lick of understanding their meaning and context. Seeing me, she blocked my path.

"You must tell Lupe that you can't be her partner in Chem Lab!" she decreed in a voice that brooked no dissenting opinions by peons like me.

"Why must I?" I asked with the right touch of mocking disdain. She's a backstabber, but, hey, it's only three more months. I'll survive her wrath.

"You'll just drag her down."

I understood. Learning by rote does not work in the lab, and Mary-Rose was likely to torch her lab bench without competent guidance, or rather, somebody doing the experimental chores for her. Being the pariah in a group of people you don't like and not depending on anyone can be vastly liberating.

"You need her, because you know you can't hack lab work by yourself. Whatever you touch, you'll burn it or break it. You need a peon to do the practical work, so you can shine. So, no, I won't tell Lupe to find another partner. I don't like you anyway."

"Suit yourself. Come tomorrow, she'll tell you herself!" she spat haughtily and left me standing.

Me, I just shrugged. If Lupe dropped me, I would still graduate in three months, and I would be less likely to burn or poison myself while drooling over her.

—————

Three days later, Quonsett was buzzing. There would be a party the coming weekend. Sarah Wilcox, the prim Miss Goody-Two-Shoes and small town banker's daughter, would be throwing a party on Saturday, at her parents' place in Rome, a small town forty-two miles to the South, and she was inviting the whole senior class. She made certain that I knew and asked me to attend, and she even gave me the departure time for the train, stressing that most people would arrive by train. A map, cropped from Google Maps, gave me the directions to get to the street address of the place from the train station, and she even put her hand on my arm.