Monkey Business. Sarah Mlynowski

a smidgen ahead of myself. He might have taken a look at my fat ass and decided I was repulsive. Or he might already be married. He might already have a Blue Eyes Junior. I should know by now that you have to look at a man’s left hand before you look in his eyes. Unfortunately, since he’s sitting diagonally behind me, two seats over from Jamie, from my position there’s no way I can get a good look at his ring finger.

      He doesn’t look married.

      “Okay, guys,” the class leader says, “it’s time for you to divide into groups of five. Remember, you’ll be working with these people for every group assignment this semester. LWBS’s policy is to allow students to choose their own work groups within their Blocks. Some B-schools assign the groups, but LWBS believes you are capable of making the decision. I would suggest that you talk among yourselves, to get better acquainted. Each group should be made up of people of diverse backgrounds so that you’ll be able to attack assignments from various angles. For example, you don’t want five engineers in one group.”

      Panic. This must be how the heavy girls felt in gym class. No one will pick me. What can I add to a group? Uh, nothing? How’s this: two accountants, one engineer, one banker…and a diaper model. I slouch in my chair. Through the slits in my eyes I watch my fellow students mill about. I don’t look up in case they’re pointing at me and shaking their heads. No, not her. No morons in this group.

      What happens to the people who don’t get picked? Will we be rounded into the corner to become the loser group? Maybe I’ll be the only one left. I’ll have to do all the assignments by myself. First I’ll struggle to understand them, then I’ll fail them, and then I’ll get booted back to Arizona.

      “Psst, Kimmy.”

      I practically pirouette at the sound of my name. Jamie. Sweet Jamie.

      “Want to work with us?”

      As far as I can tell, us includes himself, (gulp) Blue Eyes who has now moved to sit next to him and a skinny bleached-blond guy making a beat with his pen on the edge of his desk.

      “Sure,” I say, way too quickly to appear nonchalant. Wow. They want me. They want me to work with them. Maybe there’s some merit to being the class slut, after all. Three boys and me. One boy who wants me, one who’s a stud, and one who looks like fun in the musical I-have-a-garage-band way. This will be awesome—until they realize that I’m totally useless and start to hate me. What if they have secret meetings and vote me out of their group, Survivor-style?

      But awesome until then.

      I catch Blue Eyes’ gaze and exude my best come-hither smile. He grins back.

      Jamie jumps out of his chair and sits on the table. “Excellent. She’s Kimmy, by the way,” he says to the other guys.

      “We figured,” Musical Blond Boy says, smirking.

      “The smart ass over there is Nick. The beautiful Lauren is on his right—”

      Lauren? No one said anything about a gorgeous Lauren. I take one look at the stunning African-American beauty and want to cry. She towers over Nick and is sitting with perfect posture, her perfectly perky breasts at attention. Her hair cascades in jet-black curls down her back.

      I noticed her when I walked in. How could I not? Every eye in the room followed her when she strutted to the back of the room, parading through the rows like she was on a catwalk.

      Bitch.

      I know it’s wrong to hate women just because they’re better looking than I am, but I don’t care.

      “Hey,” she says, leaning into her palm, her elbow on the desk.

      “Hi,” I say, trying to infuse my greeting with enough suspicion so she’ll know I’m on to her.

      “And,” Jamie continues, “the ugly guy sitting next to me is Russ.”

      Russ. I smile and lock eyes with Blue Eyes once again.

      “Nice to meet you,” he says, extending his right hand to shake. His fingers are soft and warm. And how is his left hand?

      Ringless.

      The year is looking up.

      Sunday, September 7, 1:20 p.m.

      russ omits one significant detail

      Need better reading material. But I feel like a hoser walking to the washroom with a newspaper. Everyone on the floor doesn’t need to know when I’m planning on pinching a loaf.

      “Hey, Rena,” I hear a chick say. I know Rena from Toronto. She’s a friend of Sharon’s older sister. She’s a second year, but lives on my floor. I’ve been told I’m supposed to call her and get together, but she’s seriously annoying. Speaks in a nasal voice and wears ties. Thinks she’s Avril Lavigne. Why would a woman wear a tie if she’s not in a music video? I think she thinks it’s sexy. It’s not.

      “Hey. How are you?” she replies in a voice so nasal, if there were any windows in here it would shatter them.

      Oh, man. Just what I want to listen to. Nasal female voices while I’m taking a dump.

      This whole coed deal is not for me. Yesterday I watched a chick from my Block tweeze her eyebrows. Did Superman ever watch Lois Lane groom? I don’t think so. And then she took a People magazine to the toilet. That’s just gross. I don’t want to picture chicks taking a dump.

      In junior high I had the unfortunate experience of watching Linda Stalwart, a girl I worshiped from afar, burp the alphabet. It was nasty. Not that she cared—she wouldn’t have looked twice at me then. Ha. She should see me now. Well not now, as in on the throne. Now, as in at LWBS. Built. No longer known as Pizza Face.

      My little cousin once called me that. Wasn’t trying to be obnoxious. He was only five. Came over for Christmas dinner and pointed to my face and told me I looked like a pepperoni pizza. My aunt tried to shut him up, but he was laughing and pointing and jumping up and down.

      Oh, man, my aunt felt so bad. Tried to convince me it was a compliment. Pepperoni pizza was my cousin’s favorite, she said. I hid in my room for the rest of the night with my comic books, picking my face. Disgusting habit, but I couldn’t stop. Once there was a piece of available skin I’d play with it and end up pulling it off. When I finally went on medication and kept my hands in gloves to stop picking, my skin took a year to heal.

      Linda Stalwart. I wonder what she’s doing now. Probably married and fat and teaching little kids how to belch.

      Once when I stopped by Sharon’s, she opened her door with that white stuff on her lip. You know, mustache bleach. “That’s something I wish I hadn’t seen,” I said, shielding my eyes.

      “Then don’t come over uninvited.” She slammed the door in my face.

      I apologized a million times. Then she went on a rampage about how she could stop bleaching if I preferred, let it get dark and style it.

      The talking chicks finally leave. To keep myself occupied I stare at the bathroom wall graffiti. You’d think that by this age, people would stop using the wall to express their inane thoughts, but no. In green marker, it says:

      Sweet Kimmy,

      Violets are blue

      Roses are red

      Let me marry you

      And I’ll please you in bed

      Yours forever,

       Jamie

      What a hoser. The way to get the girl is not by writing cheesy-ass poetry on the back of the bathroom door. I’m not sure if he’s kidding or serious. Kimmy knows he wants her. Everyone knows he wants her. Thursday night a bunch of us went out for dinner, and he dove into the seat beside her and kept telling her how hot she was. She laughed and smiled at him, but I doubt she was interested.