A Little Insurrection Now & Then

For Matt, who remembers.

And Bill, wherever he ended up.

THE TABLE OF CONTENTS appears on the last page of this e-book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash

ONE

I GOT CAUGHT SMOKING pot under the bleachers during the first week of sophomore year with my friends Devin and Lindsay. Which, admittedly, wasn’t the brightest move I’d ever made, but it’s not like I was some kind of juvenile car-jacking criminal.

It took going to a Christian high school to become one of those.

I got suspended for five days, which made Mom and Dad have this epic meltdown. Epic by their standards, anyway, which meant Dad raising his voice an octave and Mom frowning so hard I could’ve hiked the lines in her forehead like a free solo rock climber and Grandma giving me sad shakes of the head.

[Things don’t exactly get crazy at my house.]

I didn’t think it was any big deal. I assumed I’d go right back to Central High School after the suspension was over, but instead, Mom and Dad decided I needed more discipline in my life. I thought that was their job, but was just barely smart enough to not point it out. When I point things out, I get in trouble.

[I point a lot of things out.]

I stood doing the dishes at the sink when they told me about this particular Consequence for smoking a little pot after school on campus, like it’s not already legal in some places and will probably be legal all over the country soon.

It’s called Christ Lutheran Academy, Dad said, squinting through his glasses at a model kit for a 2010 Mustang GT Coupe. He’s got a huge collection of model cars in his home office, mostly Mustangs. It’s his thing.

Christ Lutheran? I said, laughing. "Isn’t that a bad word? Like, Aw, for Christ’s Lutheran!"

I found that to be mildly hysterical. No one else did.

Jon, don’t, Mom intoned, and Grandma made a clucking sound. It was the same one she gave Dad at least once a night.

Well, how do we know Jesus was Lutheran? I said. Is it in the Bible?

Oh, he wasn’t Lutheran, Grandma said, polishing her saxophone with a microfiber cloth.

[Yeah, my grandma plays sax. Hold on, we’ll get back to that.]

Grandma went on: Everyone knows Jesus is Catholic.

Ma, he wasn’t Catholic, Dad said. He was Palestinian.

Palestinian isn’t a religion, I pointed out.

Dad shrugged, searching for a miniature bumper on the plastic frame.

I thought he was Jewish, Mom mused, frowning at her Sudoku puzzle.

I’m pretty sure Lutherans aren’t Jewish, I pointed out.

Catholic! Grandma thundered. He was a good Catholic boy. Ask anyone.

Ma! Dad whined.

Okay, see, this just proved my point, I said, taking advantage of the chaos. "If you don’t even know what Jesus was, how can you send me to a school where they probably got it wrong?"

It’s a very highly regarded school, Mom said, adjusting her glasses.

Highly regarded by who? I asked. Palestinians?

Jon . . . , Dad said.

I’m just saying.

"Well, you can stop just saying, Mom said. We signed the paperwork this afternoon, not to mention a very large check, Grandma is taking you shopping for your uniform, and you begin on Monday. The end, book closed, credits roll."

Wait, I said. What was the middle thing? Uniforms?

Keep scrubbing those dishes, Dad ordered. He twisted a door off the rack of mini car parts and studied it.

I grabbed a plate encrusted with spaghetti sauce and punished it with a brush. Scrubbing, see? Now what was the uniform thing?

White button-up shirts Monday through Thursday, Mom recited. How she had this memorized, I do not know. Red polo shirts allowed on Friday. Navy blue trousers. Black or brown leather shoes—

"Trousers? What the hell is a trousers?"

Grandma clucked at me, but smiled when she did it because I’m totally her favorite person on the planet.

I turned off the faucet. This is a joke, though, right? I mean, for real. You’re not really sending me to another school.

Mom, Dad, and Grandma were silent.

I’ll spare you the altercation that followed. Suffice it to say it ended with me putting a large hole in my bedroom door with my foot and Dad threatening to call the police if I didn’t settle down.

[On rare occasions, I have a temper problem.]

Christ Lutheran Academy?

Jesus Christ.

And I should probably remind you right now, she dies at the end.

TWO

WHAT KIND OF SCHOOL is it where the admin people interview your parents?

Exactly. That’s exactly the kind of school this was.

And I had to write an essay to get in. Like homework.

Things started off badly because the title of the essay had to be Why I Want To Attend Holy Jesus H. Christ Lutheran Correctional Facility or whatever it was called. Since I didn’t want to attend, then I was basically lying. And lying is expressly forbidden by the Holy Shit Church Code Of Conduct.

So which was it? Lie and say I wanted to be there, or don’t and not get in?

[Let me point out here that I did have an alternative option. Dad explained it to me during the aforementioned altercation on the previous page. My other option was called Desert Lifeline, and it was in Utah. YOU-TAH. Fuck that. It was some kind of armed camp for gangbangers or something where they make you dig holes and look for buried treasure and don’t give you any water or something like that. Unsurprisingly, I chose CLA. Christ Lutheran Academy.]

So, given my options, I figured God wanted me to lie on my entrance essay.

Here for your reading pleasure is my essay for CLA. Enjoy.

I want to attend Christ Lutheran Academy because Jesus is da bomb. It turns out Jesus was what they call an insurrectionist, which is someone who starts riots. That’s actually kind of cool. I will absolutely go to a school founded by someone who starts riots. I hope there’s a Riot Club and I can join it.

Thank you so much, hugs and kisses, love and ponies,

Jonathan Eli Matthew, DDS.

[DDS means dentist. I’m not a dentist. But you probably knew that.]

That is the essay I wrote, but it is not, sadly, the one the school received. What they got was the one Dad made me rewrite to say a bunch of crap about furthering my education and spiritual formation. Pretty much copied straight out of their brochure. Nicely done, Dad. Nicely done. I’ve never cheated on anything in my entire life except once playing Risk with my older sister who’s in college, and I learned my lesson, but here was Dad saying Just pick out the key words in the brochure, Jon, all right? So that’s what I did.

Okay, so, the interview:

The interview took place on a Thursday afternoon. Mom tried to get me to wear a tie, but somehow, all my ties went missing. When I suggested it was, perhaps, a miracle, Mom was unimpressed.

The school wasn’t even nice looking. There appeared to be only one way in and one way out, and that was through a small fenced and gated parking lot guarding some old vans. A whitewashed adobe arch hovered over a single glass door that led into the main office. Cars parked alongside the sidewalk on the two-lane street outside.

No guard towers? I asked. No machine guns? Razor wire? Ooo, attack dogs!

Jon, Mom said.

What?

Stop. Please.

Oh, I’m just getting started, I pointed out, but sort of quietly.

Dad parked the car in the tiny lot and we all walked to the entrance. I raced ahead to open the door for Mom, which made her give me a suspicious look. Not fair! I do something good and get the stink eye. How was I supposed to further my spiritual formation under these conditions?

"Jonathan Matthew, reporting as ordered, sir!" I said to the old woman at the reception desk, and snapped a crisp salute.

Please stop, Mom begged.

So I did. But I smiled.

[The old lady had a mustache. Just for reference. Not like a full-on Avett Brothers urban-bro ’stache, but it was there, I swear it. Also she didn’t even crack a smile at my rapier wit.]

Sorry, Dad muttered to the old ’stache lady. I’m Chuck Matthew, we have an appointment with Mr. Harmon?

Sign in here, said the old lady, tapping a clipboard on the counter.

"Sign in here—please," I corrected.

She bared ferociously yellow teeth at me. Dad didn’t seem to notice her shameless act of aggression. Geez, I was just trying to help her learn to be polite!

Dad signed his name to a sheet of paper the same color as the secretary’s teeth, and we sat down in matching puke-green vinyl arm chairs lined against the painted brick wall. Did Jesus hate decorators or something? ’Cause seriously. This place looked like one of those Locked Up shows on TV. Plus it smelled like dry erase markers and guilt.

I tapped my feet and fingers while watching the only interesting person in the vicinity: one chair down on my left sat a girl with narrow eyes and short, chunky black hair that I could only hope was styled that way on purpose. She wore the dress-code approved uniform for da ladies: blue pleated skirt, white button-down or button-up shirt—I honestly didn’t know the difference—and black leather shoes. Her socks, however, were double-plus ungood—that is, non-regulation. They had Santa Clauses on them. Jesus wouldn’t wear Santa Claus socks! Jesus would probably kick the shit outta Santa Claus! I’d have to make it a point to ask the principal who he’d bet on if they were matched in the octagon.

A big kid, a senior probably, came into the office from the doors opposite the main entrance. I caught just a glance of a white-walled hallway with a Mexican tiled floor as the door swung shut behind him. The dude came up to the secretary’s counter with a big Jesus-y smile and handed her an envelope. A payoff? I wondered. The secretary smiled her yellow teeth at him; clearly they were good buds. Then before he turned to leave, the dude cast a douchebag smirk at the girl beside me and said, "Nice socks."

He said this with a lazy, I’m too cool to be bothered with your pitiful attempt at fashion tone. And walked out. And I thought, That’s the best you can do, man? I shit better insults than that.

The girl on my left didn’t seem to pay any attention to him, but I did see her clench her teeth. Since there was nothing else to do, and no one else to do, ha ha, I leaned on my elbow and smiled at the girl.

Hi. What’s your name?

She slithered her serpentine eyes at me. They were brown, I suppose, but so dark they looked black, like a shark.

Don’t bother, she said.

Dang! Okay. I tried again: Personally, I think your socks are pretty cool, unlike Captain Shitpants back there. The hell was wrong with him? Shove a stick up his ass, he’d be a cocksicle.

My mystery girl arched an eyebrow as if pleased, but only for a second.

Molly, she drawled, making two syllables stretch into three and half dozen.

Hi, Molly! I said with a truckload of false excitement. I’m Jon. You seem disaffected and prone to manic depression with probable attention deficit disorder, and you are probably in need of a supervised medication regimen. Is that accurate?

[Quoted from my last school’s guidance counselor. True story. And another thing: pot makes me sleepy. Lethargic. You’d think for all the trouble I get into because of my robust energy—another quote—they’d be glad to have me sleepy part of the day, right?]

Molly almost grinned.

Jon, settle down, Mom said.

"Hey, I’m really trying here, Mom, you see that, right? Ask my new BFF Molly. Molly, meet my Mom. Hey, that was almost like a freestyle! Molly meet my mom/She’s a massive mighty mom . . . Uh! Yeah! Here we go, here we go . . ."

A snarky grunt from Molly made me face her again. She settled back into her seat and crossed her legs while Mom shut her eyes tight. Gosh, you’d think I gave her headaches or something.

You’re gonna fit in just fine here, Molly said.

Mr. Matthew? the hairy secretary called.

Dad stood up. Mom stood up. I feigned a stroke.

Mr. Harmon will see you now, the secretary said.

Thank you, Dad said. Let’s go.

I opened one eye. Me?

Yes, you, let’s go, I don’t want to keep him waiting.

I sighed as melodramatically as I could and threw myself to my feet. My work here is never done, I said to the secretary, who, based on her expression, had taken a juicy bite out of fresh lemon and asshole right before she looked at me.

As I shuffled past Molly, I heard her whisper, Cut the shit with Harmon.

Mom and Dad kept walking. I guess they didn’t hear her, but I stopped.

Naughty naughty potty mouth, I said. I found her intriguing. If all the girls here were like Molly, maybe this place wouldn’t suck donkey balls.

I’m not kidding, she said, tipping her chin down so severely mostly it was the whites of her eyes showing as she looked up at me. I felt like my vision was doing a slow zoom-in like in the movies as she spoke:

He’s German. He knows a dozen places to bury your body. He can make you cry by sheer force of will. Pull the smart-ass crap with your math teacher if you want. Don’t pull it with him.

I raced through a number of pretty bright retorts, if I say so myself—and I do—but I didn’t say any of them. For one thing, I was having trouble linking German and bury my body. For another thing: What the hell was she talking about?

Jon, let’s go, Dad said from the end of a short hallway, where he was standing with one hand on the doorknob of a half-open door.

You’re serious? I asked Molly.

"Oh, as a sale at Macy’s," she said, blinking lazily.

Okay, so, no help there, I said. "See you around. If you’re lucky."

I did a little gun-cocking noise between my teeth and winked at her, and ran down the hall before she could out-smartass me. I didn’t want the competition.

Dad held the door open for me, and I made a great show of sliding in without touching him.

[Maybe I need to clarify here: I love my dad. I love my mom, too. But I did not, did not want to be at this stupid fucking school. Ever. I hated every second of this absurdity, so I wasn’t about to go down without a fight.]

Rant off. For the moment.

When the man behind the desk stood up and put out a hand, I shook it. Why, you ask? Because Molly was right. I didn’t want to cross this guy, and for me, that’s saying something.

I made a principal cry once. In seventh grade. Didn’t mean to, but, what can you do. That wasn’t going to happen with Mr. Harmon. He wasn’t a huge, weight-lifting type of guy or anything. Hell, I might’ve been taller than him by an inch, and Dad’s shoulders were bigger than this dude.

But his face.

Look, I don’t know what war he might’ve fought in or how many lives he’d actually taken, but holy shit, he had eyes like icicles frozen from the tears of orphans, you know what I’m saying? Maybe he was an X-file freak emitting fear pheromones or something, but man did this guy scare me.

[At first.]

His handshake was firm, but not crushing. He gave my hand one mighty pump then dropped me like a dead fish, moving on to my mother and then my father.

Please be seated, Mr. Harmon said, gesturing to three chairs just like the pukey ones in the lobby. He spoke like he had a recently healed tracheotomy, Darth Vader speaking through radio static.

From behind me, mounted high on the wall, an intercom speaker buzzed to life. Mr. Harmon sat back in his chair, hands folded in front of him, as if he expected the announcement.

"Good morning and buenos dias, students! a man’s voice said over the speaker. His English was perfect but heavily accented. It is I, Armando Ramirez! And it is now time for another episode of Who Will Kiss The Pig?"

I turned in my chair to look at the speaker as if it held the answer to my first question, which was, "What the fuck?"

One demerit, Mr. Harmon said.

I turned back around. Say again?

"Will it be Vice Principal Alma Stutgarten? Will it be Coach Wallace? Or will it be I, Armando Ramirez!"

This guy on the announcements apparently loved his name. He said it like a game show host announcing someone’d won a new car. Everything came out with an exclamation point.

One demerit, Mr. Harmon repeated, staring at me with those apparently lidless blue eyes of his. I swear he had not blinked yet. That’s one day of in-school suspension.

Whoa, wait, what? I said, glancing at Mom and Dad. I haven’t even started here.

But before we announce who will kiss the pig, we have important announcements from the senior class president, Amy Cisneros!

I wanted to laugh so hard at these ridiculous announcements, except I was still focused on this whole in school suspension thing.

"You are enrolled, Jon," Dad said, wiping his hands on his khakis. I think Harmon made him nervous, too.

Pending the results of this interview, yes, Mr. Harmon corrected him. "A full handbook was sent to your home by certified mail. As we have the reply card, I know it was received."

Dad didn’t seem to know what to do with that. Mr. Harmon smiled, but it was fake as hell.

Now, Jonathan, he said to me, if you’re finished laughing at Dr. Ramirez’s announcements, why don’t you tell me why you wish to attend Christ Lutheran Academy.

Oh, wow, I said. You’re really serving up some easy ones for me. This is the part where I lean back in my chair and sarcastically say, ‘I don’t.’

I see, Mr. Harmon said.

Good morning, everyone, a girl said over the intercom. This is Amy Cisneros, your senior class president.

Well, Mr. Harmon said, standing. Thank you all for coming.

He gestured toward the door.

Wait, that’s it? I said. I was just kidding.

"Do you wish to attend Christ Lutheran