It didn’t take long for people at school to figure out that Amy and I were an item.
I didn’t think we were being all that obvious; it’s not like we were making out in the halls or anything. I would walk her to some of her classes, and we would eat lunch together.
But because everybody else at that school had been either ignoring or abusing her, that was enough to get noticed. Soon enough, I started seeing people staring and making comments from behind their hands.
I shouldn’t have let that stuff bug me, but it did.
See, right from my first day at Gierman High School, I’d been hearing obnoxious jocks and their wannabe friends razzing each other by saying stuff like, “You’re so hard up you’d do it with Amy LaBlob.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine what was being said behind those hands.
At least no one was saying anything to our faces.
Well, no one except the Germ.
Amy and I were in the student commons studying for an English test. Ms. Peel had been teaching us all kinds of Greek and Latin root words. Since a lot of the big, difficult English words are made up from combinations of Greek and Latin root words, this knowledge would, (she assured us), be a great benefit to us in our future lives.
Or at the very least, it would get us good vocab scores on the SAT.
Ms. Peel explained to us that if you know that in Greek the word geo means “earth” and the word logos means “word” or “study”, when you come across a word like geology, you can figure that it has something to do with studying the earth. Since Dad had been throwing Greek and Latin at me since I was in diapers, it was all pretty much review for me.
Anyway, there I was, quizzing Amy, asking her to come up with definitions for all these weird words like necromancy and heliocentric, when up walks the Germ.
“I just think it’s so sweet that you two finally found each other,” he smirked. “You know I like to think that I had something to do with bringing the two of you together. I was hoping you’d consider naming your first kid after me.” He leered at Amy. “So are you expecting soon?”
I said something unprintable, but Amy just glared at him and said, “No, I’m not expecting, but if I was, I certainly wouldn’t name anyone after you. No child of mine is going to go through life with the name "Asshat.”
The Germ was dumbstruck. After all, he’d probably only heard Amy utter three words max in all the time she’d been at Gierman. He probably didn’t think she could complete a sentence, much less cut him down like that.
Before he could dream up a comeback, the warning bell rang. Someone called out and reminded him of what Mr. Sneed would do to him if he was tardy to P.E. again, and he hurried off.
“I could easily get to hate that guy,” I said as Amy and I packed up our stuff.
“Don’t be too hard on the boy,” she said. “He can’t help himself on account of his disability.”
“Disability?”
Amy nodded. “Obviously he’s suffering from a severe case of coprocephalus.”
“Copro-what?”
“Cop-ro-ceph-a-lus,” she repeated. “Use your Greek.”
“Okay. I know cephalus. It means ‘head’. Back when I was in my dinosaur phase, my favorite was the Pachicephalasaurus, which means…uh, ‘big ugly-headed dinosaur’, or something like that. And hydrocephalus means you have water on your brain. But copro…” I started thumbing through my study guide.
Amy laughed. “You won’t find it in there. Would it help, Mr. Former Junior Paleontologist, if I told you that a coprolite is a fossilized dinosaur turd?”
It took me a second, but I got it.
I started laughing. Totally lost it. If I’d been drinking milk, it would have been two-nostril fountain time.
“Oh yeah! Coprocephalus! Brilliant diagnosis! The Germ has all the symptoms. He’ll need immediate medical attention. Probably a head transplant.”
“Too late for that,” Amy said. “He’s too far gone, a hopeless case.”
“You’re right, of course, much too late. Maybe we should have a telethon or something so we can save others.”
Amy laughed. “Yes, wouldn’t Jeremy make the perfect poster child?”
We were walking down the hallway now, really getting into it.
“I can see it now,” I said. “Millions of Americans suffer from coprocephalus. Until now there hasn’t been a cure, but you can help change all that. Just dial 1-800…”
We headed down the hallway laughing hysterically and making up rude 1-800 numbers.
We may have been at the bottom of the Gierman High School pecking order, but we were having way too much fun to notice.
It was February. Mid-winter break was coming, and I was looking forward to spending time with Amy away from all the weirdness of school.
Dad had finished a first draft of his translation of Eugnosis of Alexandria’s book and shipped it off to a literary agent.
His agent had been calling two or three times a week with all kinds of exciting ideas about publishing the book.
Success loomed on the horizon, and after the last day of school before President’s Day weekend, Dad decided to celebrate by taking us out for Chinese food.
As we sat in our little booth, our table piled with plates of General Tso’s Chicken, fried rice, egg rolls and all, Dad started updating us on the latest news from the publishing world.
“They’re saying that there could be a huge market for this thing. Not just for eggheads and academics either. Susan, my agent, says that when the media buzz starts up with the story of how Eugnosis was discovered after over 2000 years, all kinds of people will want to read it.”
He poured us all another round of tea.
“Eugnosis has a little something for everyone,” he continued. “On one level it’s a travelogue, a unique portrait of south central Asia in the 4th Century B.C., especially the various schools of philosophy. This has been a black hole in historical scholarship and suddenly I get to fill it in!”
Dad took a sip from a bottle of Chinese beer before continuing. “But the best part is the man himself. He has a unique voice, questioning, but skeptical, analytical but ironic. His personality comes through in a way that I haven’t seen in other classical philosophers. The guy is actually funny, sort of an ancient Greek Mark Twain…”
Mom laughed. “You might have a best-seller on your hands.”
Dad shook his head. “Susan is talking about booking me onto all sorts of TV talk shows. And money? You won’t believe the numbers she’s quoting me!”
Money? The family Swartz with money?
It boggled the mind.
I broke open a fortune cookie and read the message inside: “Great things come to those who persevere through disappointment.”
The next morning I called Amy’s house.
Her grandmother answered. “Is this Marcus? Oh good. Amy isn’t here. She wanted me to tell you that she was sorry she couldn’t reach you herself. She tried to call you last night, but I suppose you weren’t home. She’ll be out of town this weekend. She’s gone to Boston.”
“Boston?”
“Yes, her aunt Sylvia called yesterday and sent her a plane ticket. It’s all a spur-of-the-moment thing, but that’s Sylvie all over. She lives in Boston, you know. She’s a lawyer of all things. I try to get her to come out here to visit, but then she’s always busy with one thing or another. I know that what she does is important, court cases and trials and whatnot, but still…”
I managed to thank Amy’s grandmother for the message and say goodbye before I had to sit through Aunt Sylvia’s entire biography.
That last night, after our Chinese dinner, we’d all gone out to a movie. The movie sucked and now I’d missed Amy’s call.
Oh well. It was only one weekend.
So why was I so depressed?