All the Birds in the Sky

BRAD CHOMNER GAVE Laurence a Dumpster swirlie after fifth period a few days later. Laurence looked up, head soaked with slime, rusty walls tearing at his uniform shirt, and Brad was grabbing Laurence by the lapels and hauling him up so they were almost face-to-face. Brad Chomner’s neck was thicker than Laurence’s whole torso. Worse yet, when Brad let Laurence fall to the cement walkway he saw that his indelible forever crush, Dorothy Glass, had been watching the whole thing.

“I don’t know if I can take four more years of this place,” Laurence told Patricia when the two of them were sitting at one end of the lunch table, uncomfortably close to the garbage cans so soon after his trash baptism. His head still itched. “I keep thinking maybe I could transfer to the math-and-science high school in town, instead.”

“I don’t know,” Patricia said. “You’d have to get up early every day and take the bus alone. You’d be spending so much time on the bus, you’d probably miss out on all the after-school stuff.”

“Anything’s better than this,” Laurence said. “Mr. Gluckman, the math teacher, already wrote a letter for me. Now I just have to get my parents to sign the form. I have a feeling they’re going to be weird about me going to school so far away, though.”

“They just want you to have a real childhood. They don’t want you to grow up too fast.”

“They worry about me too much, ever since I ran away from home this one time, to go see a rocket. They just don’t want me to stand out.” While Laurence was talking, a Tater Tot hit him in the head, but he just kept talking as if nothing had happened.

“I think it’s good that you have parents who care what becomes of you.” Patricia seemed to have a soft spot for Laurence’s parents, maybe because they weren’t scary overachievers like hers were.

“My parents are cowards. They’re always terrified someone will notice them and they’ll have to explain themselves.” A second Tater Tot impact. Laurence barely flinched.

Lunch was almost over, and then they had separate classes. Laurence changed the subject. “Hey, do you want to talk to my supercomputer?” He was gathering up all his stuff into his book bag. “I think it needs more interaction with different people, to help it learn how humans think.”

“What would I talk to it about?” Patricia said.

“Just whatever you want,” Laurence said. “Think of it as a friend to confide in.” He pulled a scrap of yellow lined paper out of his bag. “This is the computer’s IM account, on all the main services. Its name is CH@NG3M3.” He spelled that. “It’s a temporary name, just like it sounds. When CH@NG3M3 becomes fully sentient and starts thinking for itself, it can choose a new name. But I like that name. It’s like I’m challenging the computer to grow and change and find an identity for itself.”

“Or maybe you’re asking the computer to change you,” Patricia said.

“Yeah,” Laurence looked at his own handwriting on the notepaper. “Yeah, maybe I am at that.”

“Okay,” Patricia said. “I’ll try talking to it.” She took the paper from Laurence and stuffed it into her skirt pocket.

“Anything you tell CH@NG3M3 will be between you two,” Laurence said. “I won’t ever read any of it.”

“Speaking of which,” Patricia said, “I hear the new guidance counselor is actually pretty okay. Maybe you should go talk to him about your Brad Chomner problem.” The bell rang, and they ran their separate ways.

Laurence decided to take Patricia’s advice, since he’d heard other people say that the new guidance counselor was cool. He’d only recently taken over, after the previous school counselor got run over by a meat truck. The new guy did have an easy, talk-show-host vibe about him as he told Laurence that he could share anything inside this boxy office, with its antidrug posters and bookcases instead of a window. Theodolphus Rose was a tall man with a shaved head — no eyebrows, even — and grotesque, knobby cheekbones and chin.

“I just,” Laurence said. “The bullying. It is interfering. With my ability to achieve academically. When I get locked in a Dumpster, it causes me to miss Social Studies class, which is going to drag my grades down. I am not an escape artist.”

If Laurence didn’t know better, he would think Mr. Rose was studying him. Like a bug. Then the moment passed and Mr. Rose looked friendly and supportive again.

“It seems to me,” the guidance counselor said, “that the other children see you as an easy target, because you’re so noticeable, and yet so defenseless. You have two options in this situation: to make them respect you, or to become invisible. Or some combination of the two.”

“So,” Laurence said, “stop standing out so much? Stop eating lunch in the cafeteria? Build a death ray?”