Style: Narrative
Statement: The passage above is from a work in progress about a person who is extremely lazy when it comes to his studies but does not want to be lazy. This takes place somewhere in the UK. When finished, this work of literature will hopefully convey themes of the complexities of human nature and why we do things. There is not much research behind this, because it's only a draft.
“You know what I think?” Hal told Ty.
Oh, great. “You think?” Ty said. The two boys sat on the bench by the track. They were benchwarmers, but Hal only sat next to Ty on the bench because he was still recovering from an injury, so really, Ty was the benchwarmer, and Hal was just being nice.
“Shut the hell up. I think that maybe you shouldn’t have partnered up with Parris,” Hal said. He had a tendency to be infuriatingly condescending at times to his male peers; it was thanks to Hal that Ty understood what “mansplaining” was.
“She’s the topper, though,” Ty muttered, slouching as he watched the guys scream at each other. The school’s football team was a bit of a mess. The coach was the equivalent of a deadbeat father, except he showed up on the day of games. That left Riddle, a stupid prick with an ego twice the size of his forehead, to become the football team’s self-appointed captain. No vote or anything, he’d just decided himself. Nobody argued with Riddle because he was a big guy, and he was extremely emotional - “Has been for the past two years.”
Instead, Hal really should have been the team captain. He was brilliant at football, had the best grades, and loved the game more than anything, except for his mom. Hal definitely should have been the team captain if not for two faulty personality traits that glared like high-beam headlights in the rain. He could be a condescending jerk, but he was also a doormat. Ty had a theory that he was condescending to others because he was self-aware of that particular shortcoming. Hence, why Riddle was now the football team’s captain, and why the Staces Academy of Fine Sorcery hadn’t won a game in two years. It was a humiliating record when Staces was supposed to be the best at everything.
“Yeah, she is,” Hal agreed. He hesitated, before he said, “So why did Parris decide to partner up with you?”
Ty scowled at him. “What do you mean why?”
“You’re failing every other class, mate.”
“Except for AP Lit,” Ty said proudly, which was one of the hardest classes Staces offered. “Oh, and Fine Sorcery. Carey Parris has got nothing on me in those classes.”
“Ty, be for real for a minute. She’s the bloody topper.”
“Whatever.” Ty snatched up his water bottle and took a long swig from it even though he hadn’t moved since their warmups. “She’s a topper, which is all the better for me. I’ll get that delicious First Honours, and stay in all my other classes.”
“You never even stopped to consider why she partnered with you?”
“Um, she wanted to partner with me? The hell are you gettin’ at?” Ty frowned at Hal. He was a hopeless romantic, Ty knew. He was subscribed to that stupid article “Love in the Twentieth Century”, and he saved all the magazines they sent him. He would regularly rent out all the Mills and Boon copies at the library, on top of whatever was trending right now. He was worse now that he had gotten a girlfriend who was just as sentimental as he was. It was absolutely dreadful being stuck in the same room as him.
“I’m just saying,” Hal said mysteriously. “You never know what Carey Parris could be up to.”
“She’s not lookin’ to hook up with me, I bet. She’s a topper. Valedictorians haven’t got time for that.” Ty gave a massive roll of the eyes. Hal opened his mouth to say something but Ty quickly interrupted him. “Give it a rest, Hal.”
When they got back to the boys’ dormitory, they found Hal’s girlfriend, Missy Kaneko, mooching about their room. Ty discovered that Missy was good friends with Carey Parris when the boys found out that Missy had decided to take Carey along with her.
Carey and Missy seemed to be very different people. Missy did her hair in stringy curls and had a pretty smile. Carey’s dark hair was tied in a low ponytail that made her look like a Parliament member from the seventeenth century. And she was pretty. Really pretty. But when she glanced at Ty, she looked like she wanted to stick her finger into his eye.
“How did you get into my room, Missy?” Hal said bleakly.
“I picked the lock,” Missy replied, hopping onto his desk. Carey laid her head on her lap and Missy patted her ponytail. “Let’s go out, Hal.” She ignored Ty, who sauntered over to his side of the room and rolled onto his bed. “I want fried chicken.”
Hal groaned. “My car’s out of petrol.”
“Mine isn’t.” Missy leapt off the desk, overturning Carey onto the floor. “I’m leaving you behind, Carey. But don’t leave the room. I know you’ll lock yourself up again.” She didn’t give Carey as much as a cursory glance before she left, who glowered at her over the top of her cracked glasses.
“Can I come?” Ty asked.
“No.” Missy glared at him and pulled Hal out of the room. She really hated Ty. It was probably because Ty had said very loudly in front of her to Hal that his back hurt from last night. Hal had nearly beaten Ty to death and Missy had screamed at both of them for ten minutes.
“Why are your lenses cracked?” Ty asked Carey.
“I’m saving up to repair them,” Carey replied, not answering his question. She had a flat American accent, and she drew out her words in a slow, relaxed, and a tad condescending manner. She was probably not from New York.
“You from the States?”
“Yeah. California.” I was right!
“I heard the girls over there are hot,” Ty said without thinking. Carey scowled. “That’s what my mates told me.”
“You’ve got interesting mates,” was Carey’s patronizing response. Ty didn’t mind it much. He had had it coming.
“So. Have you read the project syllabus?”
“Yeah.” Carey picked at her nails. “I’ll just do all the work, okay?”
Ty stared at her. “You-you don’t have to do that—-”
Carey turned to glare at him. “Why do you want to do work so badly?” she snapped. “You're at the bottom of the junior class.”
Ty blinked, feeling somewhat affronted. “Hey, I can’t be at the bottom, mate, I’ve got First Honours in Fine Sorcery and AP Lit. You know. The class that we’re both taking. The class we’re working on a project for. Together.”
Carey looked doubtful. “What percentage?”
“97,” Ty bit out. “You?”
“99,” Carey replied. She looked over him scornfully. It pissed Ty off, the way her eyes roved over him like she was better than him. Sure, she was, but they were the same damn thing. It wasn’t as if Ty was an entirely different species just because he wasn’t as smart as her. “Can’t be bothered to try in your other classes, can you?”
“No,” Ty said coldly. “I guess I can’t.”
“That says a lot about your work ethic,” Carey said matter-of-factly. God, Ty had only been in a room with her for five minutes and he already wanted to punch her in the face. “Why do you care so damn much anyways? I’ll be doing the work for you. It’ll be an easy A.”
“You really think so highly of yourself, do you?” Ty asked, shoving his fists into his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels, trying to feign nonchalance. “You think you’re better than me?”
Carey leaned back comfortably against the wall, nice and cozy sitting on his mattress, her arms folded across her chest. “I don’t think that. I know that I’m better than you.”
Ty scowled at her. “You’re a pretentious bitch,” he snapped.
Carey smiled. She looked like she wanted to punch him in the face. “Well, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m the valedictorian,” she said coldly. “And you’re not.”
Ty couldn’t stand her presence in his room anymore. “Fine,” he retorted. “Work your ass off on that stupid project for all I care. I don’t give a damn about it.”
“Yeah.” Carey snorted. “I figured.”
“What the hell are you trying to prove?” Ty yelled, throwing up his hands in the air. He wasn’t usually this melodramatic… he must have picked it up from Hal. Listening to his dramatic readings of Romeo and Juliet had gotten to him in a way he never could have expected. “You’ve known me for five minutes and you already have a bone to pick. Is that how it always is with you? Are you really that insecure?”
“Just trying to figure you out, man,” Carey said, shrugging. She looked ticked when she said, “You could be topper if you tried. And you don’t. Says a lot about you.”
Ty hated her even more now, because she was right. He didn’t try — he was too lazy to try. He knew very well that he could give that stupid Parris girl a run for her money, but he didn’t want to try. “Get the hell out,” he hissed.
“I’m staying till Missy gets back,” Carey said flippantly. “I want fried chicken.”
“Well, I’m not leaving either,” Ty said, infuriated.
“Think I care?”
“Yeah.” Ty scowled, taking a seat on Hal’s desk chair. He crossed his arms. “I thought you hated me.”
Carey rolled her eyes. “I couldn't care less about a guy who’s at the bottom of the class.”
“Maybe you should,” Ty said coolly. “I’m just one place below you in Literature.”
“And twenty-three seats below me in every other subject,” was Carey’s easy response.
Ty blew out a breath and swiveled around in the other direction. He knew he was acting immature as hell, but he honestly really, really wanted to punch Carey’s stupid nose in. He couldn’t seem to get over her words as easily as he could others. There were a lot of people who told him that he was an idiot, and maybe it was different with Carey because she hadn’t called him stupid. She had seen through him. She knew that he wasn’t stupid — she knew that he was just lazy. Somehow, being lazy seemed so much worse than being plain stupid. The bloody topper knew that he wasn’t in her place because he couldn’t be bothered to make a little effort.
Carey, much to his relief, didn’t make any other remarks afterwards, and let him brood in peace. The two students sat in a tense silence, waiting anxiously for their respective friends to return with fried chicken, and a good fifteen minutes passed of just waiting. In the waiting time, Ty dug up his cassette tapes and listened to some old songs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carey put in some earbuds and listen to something on an MP3 player. So she is normal.
Ty had always been under the impression that valedictorians and such had no life at all, and to be fair, he hadn’t yet met any class toppers that had defied that stereotype. That is, until he actually started to compile the small, careless observations he had happened upon on the rare occasions he came across Carey. He knew that she was popular, even though she was a topper. She excelled at fine sorcery. It came so easy for her, as easy as blinking. Everything seemed to be easy for Carey. Ty was a little jealous of her. How come everything was so easy for him, and not her? The girl worked hard, for one thing. Ty did not. He knew it just as well as she did that he could have made something of himself had he put in a little effort. But he was too lazy to. He didn’t know why.
Clearly, it bothered that stupid Carey girl just as much as it bothered him. Priss, Ty thought as he glanced over at her, sitting on his bed so comfortably — his freaking mattress for God’s sake — all nice and curled up against the headboard with her MP3 as if she hadn’t insulted his entire being just a couple minutes ago.
Priss. Ty leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes.
When he woke up, Ty found that Hal, Missy, and Carey were delightfully snacking on fried chicken from an American franchise. KFC, he read.
“Oi.” Ty poked Hal with his foot. “Pass me a piece.”
Hal handed him a wing, and Ty took a bite and promptly spat it out into the trash can. “Bloody hell that shit is spicy.” Missy snorted and Carey laughed. “The fuck is up with them?”
“They’re Asians,” Hal explained. “They think you’re weak.”
“We got mild, you know,” Missy told Ty. “Just for you.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Ty muttered, reluctantly taking another bite. He wanted to ask Carey why her name sounded so white if she was Asian, but he decided against it. Did he really want to take the initiative to force a painful interaction with her again? He thought against it, and just settled for glaring at her across the room. Carey seemed blissfully unaware as she and Missy giggled about whatever the hell valedictorians and their friends giggled about.
Thankfully, Hal shooed Missy and Carey away so that he could shower, and Ty stared at his biology homework as his roommate sang “Wonderwall” at the top of his lungs. He wasn’t going to do his homework. He was making that decision, and he wouldn’t regret it. He often told himself that he wouldn’t regret this stuff, and often he knew he would, but Ty had problems with learning from his mistakes. Instead of finishing up his post-lab, he reached for his copy of The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth. That was one poet that was especially close to his heart, for various reasons. He had too many volumes of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and not enough of William Wordsworth. If there ever was a man destined for literature, it had to be Wordsworth. Word was in his name afterall. Ty was partial to his poems because of his father. When he was still alive, he would quote miscellaneous lines from Wordsworth at random, and Ty, a curious young boy, had set out to hunt for the lines in his father’s book of poems. His collected poems of Wordsworth were originally his father’s copy. The bookmark was still at the page his father had left off of; Ty couldn’t bring himself to pluck it out from its spot.
In time, Hal emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped about him and went picking through the drawers they shared for clothes.
“We need to do the laundry,” Hal told him.
“I already took my load to the laundromat,” Ty said pointedly.
“Why didn’t you take mine?!”
“You told me not to!”
Hal grunted and snatched up a pair of briefs and gym shorts. At the end of the week, gym shorts and his soccer uniform was the only thing that stayed clean, figured, because Hal never went too the gym and he was neurotic about keeping his soccer uniform spic and span after every single practice. He’d borrow one of the guys’ washing machine and blow it dry with Missy’s hair dryer, and then he’d take an iron to it and press it all nice and neatly. He let his actual school uniform get rancid, but he always had to keep his soccer uniform ironed and clean.
Ty listened to Hal hum “My Heart Will Go On” underneath his breath as he idly flipped through his dad’s book of poems.
“You should practice for the sorcery assessment tomorrow,” Hal told him, reaching above him for his spellbook. “Come on, mate, you’re still on basic charms.”
“Well, I’ve got an 89 in the class.”
“Being the headmistress’s son will only get you so far.”
Ty turned slowly in his swivel chair to scowl at Hal. “What the hell are you implying?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Hal rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you’re talented, but you gotta put in a little effort.”
“I’ll be fine,” Ty said, shrugging.
Hal snorted and opened up his spellbook. “Well, since you’re such a smartass, why don’t you help me with this pronunciation?”
Ty rolled lazilly over towards him and peeked over his shoulder. “Huh. I’ve never seen things like that before. What in bloody hell is that?”
Hal glared at him. “I told you, mate. You need to try harder.”
“Give it a rest, Hal!” Ty exclaimed, standing up indignantly. He knew very well that he was a lazy fuck. Carey Parris had just rubbed it in his face earlier, and he didn’t need his roommate to get on his back either. “Jesus Christ, what is with you today?”
“Nothing, mate,” Hal said, staring at him. “I’m just worried about you.”
“You don’t need to,” Ty muttered. He slumped on his bed and rolled himself up in his blanket. “I’m going to bed.”
“Alright,” Hal said uncomfortably. “G’night.”
Ty didn’t reply and closed his eyes.
Comments