Memoir: Mystery Achievement

A desperate act, a shocking outcome

Mr. Grove’s advanced English class began after lunch period. It was held in the last bungalow at the farthest end of the row of temporary classrooms bordering the school’s unpaved spillover parking lot. Even though my cheap boxy import car would be coated with dust, I always parked it in front of Mr. Grove’s classroom so I wouldn’t have far to walk when the bell rang. I’d eat a greasy slice of pizza or mystery meat taco while listening to cassettes on the stereo I’d installed in the car. I’d also mounted an equalizer below the dashboard ashtray and cut holes in the doors for my eight-inch coaxial speakers. The speakers prevented the hand cranks from fully lowering the door windows, but the inconvenience was worth being able to play my music loud – songs asking questions I most cared about, sung by soulmates I’d never meet:

Am I experienced?

What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?

Is she really going out with him? And of course, and always:

Who are you?

One day I was listening to a song about a mystery achievement, the low end of the EQ cranked to near-distortion to accentuate the steady driving bass. I’d finished my lunch and was sitting with my textbooks on my lap listening to Chrissie croon, “Where’s my sandy beach?” I heard a knock on the roof of my car. Standing next to the driver's side door was a girl I’d seen around school – she was wearing cheetah print leggings and a t-shirt emblazoned with a ska band’s logo. Her auburn hair was held back from her face by a pair of candy apple-red wayfarers propped on her head. Her eyes were lined with black mascara and her pale cheeks were splashed with freckles and a few pimples. She was chewing gum. I rolled down the window as far as it could go and looked up at her. She said, “Is it okay if I stand here and listen to this song with you?”

I said sure. As Chrissie sang, “I could ignore you,” I tried not to look at the girl. I knew that her book locker was in the same hallway as mine. She wore platform heels and when she walked, her hips swayed as if to some wonderful song in her head. I didn’t know her name. I was too shy to ask. I could have invited her to sit with me in my piece of shit Japanese import car. But I didn’t know what I’d talk to her about. I didn’t know how to tell her about me. And I didn’t know what to say to her so that she’d tell me about her.

The song ended and she said, “Thanks,” and walked away. I watched her cheetah print hips move in the California sun. I never saw her again. I’ve thought about her often.

The bell rang and I went to class. I was part of a group of students who had been codified as “gifted” because of test we took as children, administered by adults who had asked us questions like, “What does it mean when they say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover?” The answers given sent some kids to shop classes, and others to classes labeled Advanced.

It gave us the false belief that we were better - somehow elite. Most learned later that this was not the case. But for our time in high school, we were treated as if we had more to offer.

The kids in Mr. Grove’s Advanced English class were allowed to do independent study. Some taught themselves Russian. Others played board games like Diplomacy and wrote papers about them. We all read books – the girls liked Ayn Rand and du Maurier, the boys read Tolkien or Asimov. I read Hunter Thompson, making me a rebel among nerds.

Mr. Grove was a gay man with a cherubic face, fashionable glasses and a goatee. I think he wore a toupee, but it could have just been the way he combed his hair. Even though we lived in a SoCal culture of Birdwell shorts and tank tops, he showed up to school wearing tweed. He seemed the kind of man who would run a book club with an iron fist, and all the single ladies in it would flirt with him, to no avail.

Mr. Grove demanded that we write 500 words every week in a journal. We turned the notebooks in to him on Thursdays. He did not grade what we wrote. He just put a checkmark on the page to indicate that we had done the requisite amount. We were allowed to write about anything. I tried to write things that angered or provoked him. I wrote 500 words about how writing 500 words a week was a waste of time. I wrote that I could learn more flying kites in Balboa Park or going to the Del Mar Fairgrounds to bet on horses than I could in his Advanced English class. No matter how much I baited him, Mr. Grove never commented. Every week I got my journal back only to see his checkmark. I started using swear words, done so effectively by Joseph Heller in Catch-22. Still nothing from Mister Grove. Finally, on the bottom of the page of my latest tirade, he wrote, “Please see me after class.”

I was thrilled to have finally gotten to him but was apprehensive about whatever punishment he’d level at me. I waited until everyone was gone and walked to his desk, where he was neatly sliding papers into his leather satchel.

“Mister Ahn. I have an assignment for you. I’d like you to read to the class.”

“Read what?”

“Your writing.”

“Why?”

He looked at me. “You’re a passionate writer. You deserve an audience.”

I didn’t know what to say. He shrugged nonchalantly. “Of course, you’d don’t have to. It’s up to you.”

“I’ll do it.” I didn’t know why I accepted, but the thought of an audience was thrilling.

“Fine. Tomorrow then.”

That night I sifted through my journal. Re-reading my entries, I was mortified: it was all pompous and false. My classmates would see through the inane posturing and stolen wit. Mr. Grove had ensnared me in a trap I willingly entered, lured by my own vanity. I would be destroyed.

I don’t think anyone in the class thought about me enough to generate an opinion other than my friend Kerry, who I’d known since middle school – and his girlfriend Meg, who detested me. Kerry liked me, but he liked everyone, and was well-liked himself. Meg, who had long red curly hair and wore big green glasses, sat in the seat assigned next to mine. I purposely said and did whatever I could to provoke her into rage. She and Kerry were in band together, and now that they were officially coupled, he spent all his free time with her. I was envious that Kerry had a girlfriend, which was expressed by telling Meg that any music, movie, or book she liked was stupid, and that any cause she supported was doomed to failure. I was truly a dick to her, and I knew that reading something to the class made me vulnerable to revenge, and she would leap at it.

That night I flipped through my journal several times, and, finally giving up on reading anything I’d previously written, turned to a blank page and desperately began making up a story. I wrote in the first person about a boy who had a best friend and their adventures growing up. The best friend saves the protagonist from certain death, only to later be diagnosed with a fatal disease. The story ends with the protagonist at the best friend’s bedside, surrounded by hospital machines struggling to keep his friend alive. The protagonist felt helpless, confused, and trapped - amplified emotions of my having to read to the class.

The following day, Mr. Grove announced that I would be sharing some of my writing. I sat at my desk and read the story. The words were maudlin, the plot ludicrous, and my recital clumsy. I didn’t dare to glance from my scrawl.

When I was done, the room was silent. When I finally summoned the nerve to look around, I saw my classmates staring at me in a way I’d never experienced. I was confused. I’d expected smirks and cruel giggles. I’d expected eye-rolls and whispers followed by stifled mocking laughter. What I saw was that as bad as that story was, they had somehow been moved by it.

I turned to Meg. She was close enough for me to touch her. Her eyes were watery, her head cocked to one side. She locked eyes with me, opened her mouth and said, “Aww….”

I laughed in her face - the involuntary exclamation of a condemned man set free – relief, joy, exultation. Meg’s expression changed from tenderness to fury. I regretted the reveal, but I now knew what I could do to get a girl to pay attention and perhaps even share herself with me: I could tell her a story.