Anton's Odyssey (7 page)

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 tears.

“It was good meeting you,” I said to Hammond.

Hammond let the kid go, clearly more interested in me. The kid ran off down the passageway, passing up the perfect opportunity for a sucker punch.

“Yeah, you seem cool,” he said. “If you’ve got nothing to do later, it’s open rec at the gym at seventeen hundred.”

“Okay,” I said, “maybe I’ll see you there.”

I arrived home to find our living quarters empty. Mother was
probably still scrubbing vomit. I worried that Cotton got lost on the way home from school. To kill time, I flipped though the channels on the vid screen only to discover that the entertainment programming and video gaming options had been deactivated. Bob the Steward had found yet another way to stick it to my family. All I could access on the vid were ship announcements such the mess hall menu and washateria closings due to IASAS contamination. Cotton would have to walk an extra three hundred meters next time he wanted to pinch a loaf. He was not going to be happy.

Cotton finally arrived and I asked him crossly where he had been.

“Detention,” he said indifferently.

“You serious, it’s the first day of school!”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“How many days?”
I asked.

“Every day for two weeks.”
Cotton hadn’t just pissed off a single teacher. Somehow, he had offended the entire system.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Cuttin’ class.”

“Why did you cut class?”

“Dunno.” Cotton said, shrugging his shoulders again. No doubt he had acted out on some hare-brained impulse.

“Come on!” I cried. “I told you a thousand times before. You should only cut class if it’s really nice out, which is never going to be
the case out here in deep space or if some goon in school wants to beat your ass and you have no chance at winning.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, unapologetically.

“Then why did you cut class?”

“I guess I was hungry.” On cue he burped. Ever since he had recovered from IASAS, Cotton had spent almost all his free time at the mess hall, pushing the expression “all you could eat” to new limits. He was careful only to eat those foods that Dr. Zanders would describe as having a high caloric density and low nutrient value. He completely avoided vegetables, unless
they were deep fried. My brother had gained quite a bit of weight in a short period of time. His shirt was way too tight. His gut pushed the fabric upward, exposing his unwashed midriff and filthy belly button. His stomach always full, he burped and belched constantly, even while asleep.

“How did you get caught?” I asked.

“The fat security guy,” he said.

“Makes sense,” I said. “He’s the only person who spends more time at the mess hall than you.”

“Yeah but he just seemed to ignore me most of the day. He didn’t do nothing for hours until we were both in line to get a refill of deep fried corn nibblets. He was all like, ‘These corn nibblets are good, and I don’t even really like corn.’ And I said, ‘Yes, they are tasty,’ although they tasted a bit like fish because I guess they never change out the oil in the deep fat fryer. Then the server guy put down a dish and said, ‘This here is the last of the nibblets,’ so I grabbed them before the security guy did, and he got really mad because he was ahead of me in line. His face turned all red and he was like, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in school?’”

“What did you tell him?”

“I gave him the reason we always told the cops back home. I told him it was an administrative teacher work day.”

My jaw dropped, and
I buried my face in the palm of my hand. “That trick’s not going to work up here!”

“Yeah, I was wondering why he knew I was lying.”

“Cotton, back home there are dozens of schools, and it’s a real pain in the ass for the cops to look up your school and call the principal. Also, back home the cops have real crimes to deal with, people getting knifed and hoodlums jacking cars!”

“So?” he asked defiantly, urging me to get to the point
.

“So, here, do you see people getting knifed?”

“No.”

“You see any cars to steal?”

“I guess not.”

“And how many schools do you think there are?”

Cotton’s eyes darted back and forth as he thought. “Oh crap!” he said, finally reaching the obvious conclusion.

“How many?”
I asked. I wanted to hear him say it out loud so that he would have no other choice but to admit he was an idiot.

“Just one,” he said sheepishly.

“Yes,” I said, “just the one, and the guards here don’t seem to have anything to do except hang out in the mess hall, the very place you chose to cut class. Hell, you might have even gotten away with it if you hadn’t stole Mr. Boldergat’s french-fries.”

“Fried corn nibblets,” Cotton corrected, “and he said we’re supposed to call him Sergeant Boldergat, not ‘mister.’”

“Whatever!” I snapped, pretending to be angrier that I actually was.

Cotton looked at his feet and said he was sorry. He skulked into our bedroom to either sulk or read comic books, but within five minutes he got bored and came back out to the living room.

“Did you go to any of your classes today?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Yeah the last one.”

“Which one was that?”

“Social studies.”

“Who’s your teacher?”

“Some strong-looking dude with a really funky hairdo.”

“Yeah, Mr. Fox. I have him too,” I said. “Learn anything?”

“Naw, it was mostly pretty boring, but the teacher did talk about this president guy who hanged himself in the oval office.”

“Present Jimenez,” I said.

“Yeah that’s the guy,” Cotton said, disinterested.

“Anything worth watching on the vid?” Cotton asked.

“Nothing,” I said, “just some stupid public health announcement. Bob the steward cut off our access to all the good channels.”

“Man, I wish someone would hang that guy like President Jimenez.”

“Careful what you wish for,” I said
dispassionately with neither belief nor conviction, “because it just might happen.”

Cotton sighed with boredom. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

It was 17:15, and I remembered what Hammond had said about open rec. “You wanna go mess around in the gym?” I suggested. “There will be other kids there.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Still having problems finding our way around the ship, we took a side door to the recreation center by mistake and not the main entrance. We found ourselves in a physical training room that overlooked the gaming gymnasium below. A rather poorly planned layout, every now and then a stray basketball would find its way among the dumbbells and treadmills, and someone would have to chase it down and toss it over the banister down to the players below. Most of the people in the training room were adults. I spotted Hammond in the corner bench pressing a huge amount of weight without a spotter.

“That’s gotta be like 100 kilos!” I said, impressed. I never really lifted weights myself, but I wasn’t bad at doing push-ups and pull-ups.

Hammond looked up and smiled. “This is just my warm up,” he said. “I can lift a lot more.”

“Wow, you’re pretty strong!” Cotton said.

“Naw it’s the gravity. Point seven eight G’s means I can lift twice as much as I can on Earth.” Hammond’s math didn’t seem right to me, but I wasn’t one to pass judgment. Hammond stood up and gestured to the bench. “You wanna grab a set? I can spot you.”

“Naw,” I said, nodding towards Cotton. “We’re here to play around with a ball.”

“Okay,” he said, “maybe I’ll come find you later.”

We retreated down the steps to the gymnasium. Center stage was a full court scrimmage. Mr. Fox, my boring social studies teacher, wore a stripy shirt. He ran up and down the court blowing a whistle as referee. The bright light from the flood lamps above allowed me to study his funky hairdo more closely. His
red hair had a rather unnatural quality. There wasn’t a single patch of grey. As he ran up and down the court, not a single strand of hair ever seemed to move out of place. It almost seemed like he was wearing some sort of hair-shaped helmet.

The shirts played the skins, a pickup game. With reduced gravity, most of the tall boys could dunk without difficulty. Ellen played with the shirts. She was pretty scrappy and held her own when things got physical. Cotton tugged at my arm, bored of just watching. Reluctantly, I stopped ogling Ellen so that I could entertain my brother.

Near the sides of the gym, kids were playing half court games or just practicing free throws and three pointers. I took a ball off the rack and tossed it to Cotton who dribbled it clumsily.

“Over there,” I pointed. “That basket is completely free.”

Our basket was probably meant for little kids and was much lower than regulation. Cotton had trouble making the adjustment to the low basket and reduced gravity. He shot high, tossing the ball completely over the backboard. I chased it down and toss it back. It took Cotton twelve attempts before he finally sunk a free throw.

Cotton wanted to dunk, so I got on my hands and knees so Cotton could leap off my back and grab onto the rim. Even with the reduced gravity, my spine popped uncomfortably under Cotton’s weight.

Mr. Fox gave two long blows on the whistle, suspending the full court game. He ran over to me and yelled, “How many times do I have to tell you kids not to hang on the rims. You bend one; we can’t exactly go to the store and buy a new one!”

“Sorry,” I said meekly, “we’re new here and didn’t know.”

Cotton let go of the rim and landed unharmed on his generously padded rear end.

“Well, that’s no excuse,” Mr. Fox snapped. He turned away to resume his officiating. Ellen, who had watched Mr. Fox’s tantrum, gave me a dirty look.