Jimmy the Geek

By James Buckley Heath

Being a teenager is never easy. There are those turbulent hormones, the pressure to fit in, societal expectations, and, of course, never enough sleep. Add all of that to a new friend who threatens to overwhelm the tenuous balance. Brian Landis and his friends Harry, Kathryn, and Melinda are about to become sophomores at Afton High School when Jimmy Rosen and his family move to town from Ohio.

Jimmy is really skinny. Hes a sickly kid who cant play sports like the other students. Jimmy likes playing cards and games and listening to classical music. Hes funny, hes witty, and he knows how to say things that make people laugh. Harry, Brian, and the gang befriend Jimmy but there are others at the high school who cant accept Jimmy. Theres a lot of bullying and meanness, and by the end of the year, things just explode.

Jimmy the Geek, a novel for teens, calls attention to the subjects of discrimination and its effects on kids. It shares a story of friendships, loyalty, betrayal, homophobia, bullying, and bigotry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491776810

James Buckley Heath

James Buckley Heath was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. He acted professionally on stage, in film, and on television in New York City. He then taught English and drama in both independent and public schools. Heath and his wife, Edie, live in Sedona, Arizona.

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JIMMY THE GEEK

Copyright © 2013, 2015 James Buckley Heath.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

cover by Harrison Orr, Timothy Heath

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-7680-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7681-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015916538

iUniverse rev. date: 11/17/2015

Contents

Foreword

1    Jimmy Was Really Special

2    Harry & Kathryn Sittin’ In A Tree

3    Being Fair

4    Wonderland

5    Jimmy’s Way

6    The Milk of Human Kindness

7    Get It Away

8    Peanut Butter Banana and Chopped Walnuts

9    Circle of Friends

10    Fire Burn & Cauldron Bubble

11    Cool Pizza

12    Momma Rosen’s Cookies

13    A Promise Is A Promise

14    Jimmy The Geek

15    The Rock & The Hard Place

16    Except for Mr. Huggar

17    Broom & Melinda Sittin’ In A Tree

18    The Birth of KOSFOD

19    Something’s Happening Here

20    Hey, Hey. Ho, Ho.

21    Bat Boy In The Boys’ Room

22    Little, Less, Nothing.

23    Idiopathic Dilated Cardio-myopathy

24    Sophomore Year

Brian’s Vocab Words:    Formal definitions, context, & Brian’s definitions.

I am indebted to my editor and brother, John Aloise Buckley. Without his counsel, infallible ear, and tireless, creative, and so often brilliant work, Jimmy the Geek’ would still be Sophomore Year and not worth your time.

Since 1990 when I completed the first draft, many others patiently read the manuscript and offered their unfailingly good counsel: my Aunts Patricia Bozell, Jane Buckley Smith, and Priscilla Buckley, all of whom are now deceased. My Aunt Carol Buckley, my former colleague, Julia Cowans Wilhelm, my quondam agent, Elizabeth Backman-Potter, and one of the first sophomores I taught in my public school career, Lee Gotheimer.

And finally, my greatest and best friend, my wife, Edie, who very likely could recite much of the book by heart. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For aught that ever I could read

Could ever hear by tale or historie,

The course of true love never did run smooth,

But either it was different in blood.

Or else misgraffed, in respect of years.

Or else it stood upon the choice of merit.

Or if there were a simpathie in choise,

Warre, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it;

Making it momentanie, as a sound:

Swift as a shadow, short as any dreame,

Briefe as the lightning in the collied night

That (in a spleene) unfolds both heaven and earth;

And ere a man hath power to say behold,

The jaws of darknesse do devoure it up:

So quick bright things come to confusion.

William Shakespeare

A Midsommer nights Dreame, First Folio

Act I, scene i

Foreword

The tenth reunion of my high school graduation will be in June of 2016. Because I was editor of our yearbook, I suppose, the reunion committee asked me to write a class history. I wanted very much not to do that, and I tried as hard as politeness would let me to beg off, but the head of the committee, Joe Sider, who had been president of our class three of four years, said if I wouldn’t do it, he’d do it himself.

Since I haven’t seen Joe in nine years, I can’t be sure he’s not still the jerk he was in high school. He could have changed in that time, enough, I mean so he wouldn’t embarrass himself and everyone else who might read his version of the History of the Class of 2006. On the other hand, if he hadn’t, then I’d have to sit listening to him, and the last time I did that was more than enough. So, I agreed.

Joe sent me the filled out questionnaires which not much more than a quarter of our classmates submitted. Forty out of a class of 157. Of those, exactly nine provided more information than you’d need to include just to tell yourself you did it: address, phone numbers, email, spouse (not too many of those), children (even fewer), colleges, degrees, employment (not so much on that front either).

To write something that didn’t sound like the worst history lecture you have ever heard in your life based on what Joe sent was not going to be possible. Unhelpfully at all, Joe had enclosed a note saying I should contact the guidance department at the high school if I had any questions about anyone. I was pretty sure the obsession with privacy we all are subject to these days would make that a dead end. What I did, though, was call home and ask my mother what she thought.

She suggested contacting old friends. I asked her if she had anyone in mind. Oh, she said. You haven’t kept in touch.

No, I said, I haven’t.

I’d done my undergraduate work in New Hampshire. Graduate school (archeology for no better reason than it interested me and my interest in journalism had waned) in Pennsylvania. At the moment, I am teaching science at a boarding school in New Jersey. Anyway, I said, I never had many friends to begin with.

She didn’t respond to that, and we were both quiet for a while. I would have thought the call had been lost except I could hear her breathing. You need something to jog your memory.

Gee, Mother, I knew you were the right person to call. What a great idea! Something to jog my memory.

Brian. You may be almost thirty years old and the teenagers you teach call you Mr. Lister, but you will never be old or important enough to be snarky to your mother.

She was right, of course, and I apologized. She accepted and went on. As it happens, I was not simply speaking for the sake of filling the silence. I have something in mind that will, I am certain, do the job. I shall send it to you.

A day later a FedEx overnight envelope was stuffed uncomfortably into my campus mail box. I knew right away what it was. Nevertheless, I waited until I was back in my apartment before opening the envelope. I carried what I needed for my classes, and anything else I thought I might want during the course of the day, in a back pack which I used instead of a briefcase. The school’s campus is large and the dormitory my apartment is part of is distant and three flights up.

The apartment opens into a small foyer, small but large enough to fit a short bench against the wall across from the door. I put my backpack down and removed the FedEx envelope, opened it and removed the very old manila envelope. Leaving the backpack on the bench, I took the envelope with me into my living room / dining room / study.

I had one very comfortable chair my father had given me, leather, with a footrest that could be extruded with a lever. He imagined me, Mr. Chips-like, reading winter afternoons away, chatting with adoring students sitting round me on the floor, napping occasionally.

The reality was different. The chair became my office. I corrected there, prepared classes, read enough earth science and biology to stay a few weeks ahead of my students, and, on the rare night completely free of other responsibilities, read for pleasure and drank a beer or three. Each of my classes had a spot of floor within reach of my chair. The two freshman classes (earth science) were on my left, the two first year biology classes on my right, thus mercifully leaving no room for enthralled students.

I brought the envelope to the chair. On the back, in black, faded magic marker, I had written Sophomore Year. Inside was a manuscript I had begun to write late in my sophomore year, and didn’t finish until summer vacation was almost over.

It did jog my memory and then some.

1

Jimmy Was Really Special

I can’t tell you I wanted to go to Jimmy’s funeral. Now I say that, I guess nobody really wants to go to a funeral. Of course, Jimmy’s wasn’t the first I’d gone to, but it was the first one for someone even close to my age.

I didn’t completely make up my mind to go or not to go, either. That decision got made for me by Harry. He refused to go. I found that out from my mom. Harry’s mother called her to ask her to ask me if I would be willing to say something at the funeral. When she told me that, I got completely scared and was about to say no, but she saw that coming and held up her hand to stop me. Here’s why you have to do this. The Rosens called Harry to ask him to speak. Harry can’t do it.

Is he going to the funeral? I said.

He is not. Mrs. Landis is very concerned. She said…well, she said he’s having a very hard time with Jimmy’s death. So that is why you have to stand in for him. He is your best friend and even if honoring the Rosens’ request were not the right thing to do, speaking in Harry’s stead is the fair thing to do.

So I really didn’t have any other choice.

You probably know that if you’re Jewish, you have to be buried right away. Tuesday was too soon because it was pretty late Monday night when Jimmy died, but the funeral happened first thing Wednesday morning at the Kennedy Funeral Home.

Most of the people there were adults. The chapel they held the service in was the biggest they had, but still it was so packed a lot of people who came too late had to stand basically out in the lobby and try to hear what everybody said.

Not that many kids went to the funeral, but that was okay because Dr. Frank had already made plans for a memorial assembly at the end of the week. Supposedly the funeral was going to be mostly for Jimmy’s family and their friends, but as I said, many people showed up. After all, everybody in Afton, in all of Connecticut probably, knew about what had happened to Jimmy: about his being taken away in the ambulance, again, about his dying in the emergency room later; about the demonstrations and the people trying to stop him from being able to go to school. There was a story in the paper Tuesday morning, and TV trucks from the local stations were parked in the funeral home’s parking lot. They wanted to talk to the Rosens, of course, but that didn’t happen. They didn’t have any trouble finding people to talk, though.

I wasn’t the only kid who stood up to say something about Jimmy. Two other guys from student government were there. John Battistoni, the president of the Student Council, was honest. He said he hadn’t known Jimmy, but he remembered him from the time John had visited Jimmy’s homeroom to ask kids if they had any suggestions for improving our school. Apparently Jimmy had made a suggestion and the other kids gave him a hard time; but John told Jimmy he thought it was a good idea and promised the student council would give it serious consideration. Then John mostly talked right to Jimmy’s parents and told them how sorry the whole student body was about Jimmy’s death. He told them about the money the student council was going to collect for some sort of memorial for Jimmy.

Then Joe Sider got up. He was president of the sophomore class and a prime jerk. I guess what they say about sophomores is true because Joe certainly wasn’t elected for being sensitive or hard-working or a good student or anything else you could possibly imagine would be a good idea for voting for someone to be the president of your class. He was elected because most sophomores are jerks. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true. So voting for Joe felt very familiar. Joe is also, however, very smooth. He stood up at the podium, hair all neat and combed, wearing a new dark suit his parents probably got him just for the occasion. He looked solemn and sincere, and that was the only time I thought it was a good idea Harry wasn’t there. If he had been, we would have looked at Joe, then at each other, and started to laugh, funeral or not.

Joe said he had stayed up late last night thinking about what he should say. He said deciding was so hard because Jimmy was the kind of kid you could say so much about; he just couldn’t decide where to start. Then he reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. As he did, he said, I finally decided I couldn’t hope to say anything on my own even close to adequate – I remembered to remember that exactly because I knew Harry would want to hear that; he would say that at least Joe said something true. So, if no one minds, Joe continued, I’ll read John Donne’s Death because for one thing I know Jimmy really respected and admired John Donne. The ironic thing was he was probably right, but he didn’t have any idea. He just made that up. But at funerals, people are in a mood to feel sad, and good about anybody who helps them feel that way, too, so he got away with it.

Then it was my turn, and I still didn’t know what I wanted to say. Well, that’s not true; what I wanted to say was nothing at all, but here’s what I did say, as nearly as I remember:

"Mr. and Mrs. Rosen, I’m really sorry Jimmy had to die. I feel sad about it for Jimmy’s sake and for mine and for my friends; but mostly I feel sad for you. I know you loved Jimmy a lot. All of us could tell by the way you three talked to each other. I think it’s too bad you guys didn’t move here sooner than last summer ‘cause then we would have been able to get to know Jimmy better, but from the little time we did get to know him, I can tell you one thing for certain: Jimmy was really special; we never knew anyone like him before.

I wish Harry had been able to come here today. You know, he knew Jimmy better than any of us, and he would have been better at this than I am. Anyway, there really isn’t too much for me to say except that we’ll miss having Jimmy around, and everybody in his class will never forget him, ever. As I said, he was really special, really an individual.

After me, some adult friends of Jimmy’s parents got up, and finally Jimmy’s father. He didn’t make much sense. He kept jumping around from when Jimmy was a baby to how he nearly died once already this year, then to how tough the move from Ohio was on everybody but especially on Jimmy. He told a lot of stuff about Jimmy and what he enjoyed, but I knew that already; I think most everybody did. Finally, when Mr. Rosen got to talking about how Jimmy had always wanted to grow up to be a conductor like Marin Alsop or Gustavo Dudamel, he started to lose it, so the rabbi went over and helped him back to his seat. The funeral finished up pretty quickly after that.

Even though I didn’t want to, I went to the burial, and then I went back to the Rosen’s house afterwards, but the only other kids there were Joe and John. I wouldn’t have hung out with Joe no matter what, and John was more or less kept occupied by adults. I didn’t know him that well anyway. After about a half-hour, Mom came over to me and said I could go now if I wanted to, but make sure I said something to the Rosens before I left. I found Mr. Rosen in the kitchen with his business friends. He shook hands with me and thanked me and said I was welcome to come over anytime.

Mrs. Rosen was in the dining room. She just hugged me and said, Bless you! You’re such a good boy. Such a mensch. Jimmy loved you, too. Then she hugged me again, and I said thank you or something lame. I started to go, but she wouldn’t let go of my arms. Please come some afternoon for cookies. I’d so much like to see you. And if you can, ask Kathryn and Harry, and Melinda, too. All right?

I said I’d try.

Then I left to go to Harry’s house because I needed to see him and talk to him.

2

Harry & Kathryn Sittin’ In A Tree

Harry hated his name, or at least he used to. His real name, Harold Orpheus Landis, wasn’t the one he hated because he never used it. Look, he’d say, if your name is Harold, everybody’s going to think you’re a dork no matter what you really are. Anyway, he said Harry was the name he hated because it sounds like a name for a little kid.

He started hating it when we were getting ready for ninth grade, first year of high school. He said every time he heard his name, it felt like somebody’s mom calling out the backdoor, Ha-ree! Time to come inSIGHeed. Your DIN-DIN’S redee!

That summer, Harry tried out a bunch of new names. The first: Har. One morning when my folks were already gone to work, Harry just let himself in the back door and came up to my room. I was already up even though I usually slept later than Harry did. He held out a piece of paper in front of me and asked me what I thought. He had the name all written in capital letters – like this: H-A-R. At first I had no idea what he wanted. What’s this? A secret code?

No, jerk. It’s my new name. What do you think?

Har? (I pronounced it the way it was spelled so it rhymed with tar.)

No, fool. Har, like the way you’d say the first part of arrow, only with a H. Say it right, say AR, and then say it with an H in front.

Okay. Ar. Ar with an H in front. I thought that was pretty funny, and I couldn’t help laughing. I can usually crack me up. Even Harry laughed a little.

You are such a jerk. Come on, say it right. And if you say, ‘It right,’ I’m going to waste you.

So I called him Har the way he wanted me to. At first he thought it sounded all right, but by the end of the day, Harry decided Har was more like for someone who sold used cars to people who can’t speak English. That was the end of Har. The rest of the summer he ran through about a dozen new names. I can’t remember them all. A lot of them didn’t last much more than a few hours, but two came pretty close: Dutch and Stab. I have no idea where those names came from. Harry’s ancestors were mostly English and German. They definitely did not come from Holland. Harry just said he’d heard the name Dutch in a movie or something. And Stab? Harry couldn’t even begin to say how Stab came into his brain. He just liked it, liked the way it sounded.

Stab lasted the longest. Harry really worked on getting that to be his name. He made me call him every night, not on his cell, and ask to speak to Stab. He always knew I was calling, but he never answered the phone. He figured this way, we could get his parents used to calling him by his new name, but they never did. Mr. or Mrs. Landis would answer the phone, and I’d ask to speak to Stab. They’d say, Just a minute Brian, I’ll call him. HaREE! Brian’s on the phone.

Right up until the first day before we had to go to school for Freshman Orientation, Harry was insisting I call him Stab. We both lived close to the school, so we walked. I met up with Harry on West Afton Road, about a half-mile from the high school.

So, I said. What are you going to do when they take attendance?

What are you talking about?

The teacher is going to say, ‘Landis, Harry, not Landis, Stab.’ What’s your plan for that?

No plan. I’ll say, ‘Here.’ I’m wasting Stab. I don’t like the way it sounds anymore.

Harry gave up on trying to find a new name. He didn’t like his old one any better, and at least once a day he’d say to someone, Don’t call me that! I HATE that name! But he never told anyone what to call him instead. So, mostly people didn’t use his name unless absolutely necessary, like if he was standing with a bunch of guys and you needed to say something only to him. That was pretty much the way it was until about Thanksgiving when Harry started going out with Kathryn.

Of course, I knew something was up before anyone else did, but it didn’t take long for people to notice. He and Kathryn started hanging out down by the library every morning before homeroom. Not exactly a private place. Pretty soon nobody could think about anything else to talk about. It was so lame. First some guy would say, That’ll never last! Then someone else would go, They won’t make it to Christmas. Then the girls would start in, "How can she even like him? or, How can he