How to Make a Human

I sat in Mrs. Goilleur's first period literature class, secretly proud that I had arrived on time, and secretly disappointed that neither Shane nor Demetri was present. I glanced at the clock, squinting to make it look like I was having trouble seeing the time. It took me a while to read analogue clocks, so I pretended to be able to read them perfectly by squinting my eyes to make it seem like I couldn't see very well. Better to look vision impaired than to look stupid, I always say. It was 8:17AM. Well that's good, right? Class starts at 8:15AM. There was still a chance that I wasn't ditched by my desk mates.

Mrs. Goilleur handed out a photocopied chapter of a book that we were supposed to read and annotate by tomorrow. I flipped through it and sighed when I realized that it was published in the 1700's. Well, shit. How was I supposed to read, let alone understand, this?

The door kicked opened and Shane bounded in, face flushed, uniform askew, and red hair covered by a plaid black hat with a furry flap in the front and two furry flaps covering his ears. He glanced at the clock briefly before shouting "I made it! Dear god, I made it!"

"Made what, Mr. Henry?" Mrs. Goilleur asked, tearing her eyes away from the book she was reading and peering over her glasses. Today Mrs. Goilleur was wearing white tights, a black dress, a magnificently huge golden pendant, and purple sequined cowboy boots. It was almost normal.

"I'm on time!" he cheered, before a raised eyebrow from Mrs. Goilleur silenced him, "Aren't I?"

His face fell when he looked at the clock, "I'm not."

"No, Mr. Henry. You are not on time. And what else was wrong with your entrance?"

"Besides being late? Uh, I was loud…?"

"Well, yes. There is that, but it was expected. What else?" Mrs. Goilleur asked, standing up and folding her hands patiently.

"And I…um," he sputtered, scratching his head nervously, when he felt his hat his eyes lit up, "And I came in with my hat on! I'm wearing my hat inside!"

"Yes. Now, you know what to do," Mrs. Goilleur waved her hand, sitting back down and resuming her book. Shane slouched out of the room, shut the door, then came back in, this time walking slowly, closed the door again, and clutched his frayed hat in his hands, mumbling, "I'm sorry I'm late, Mrs. Goilleur."

"Not a problem, Mr. Henry. Take your seat," she replied, flipping a page in her book. Shane walked slowly to our shared desk, his eyes focused on the ground and his shoulders slouched. His red hair was messy and frizzy from being under his hat. I had a moment of panic where the insecure twelve-year-old girl inside of me overpowered my logical side. Why wasn't he looking at me? Why was he walking so slow? Did he not want to sit next to me? Maybe he showed up late on purpose! Maybe he didn't plan on coming to class today because he didn't want to sit next to me! Maybe that's why Demetri didn't show up! Shit, shit, shit. Why was I so terrible at first impressions?

Shane fell into the chair besides me and scratched his head, causing a couple of small pieces of paper to fall out. I didn't question it. Shane was Shane. That's all I needed to know. He turned to me and smiled. Oh, thank god!

"Hey Betty," he mumbled quietly enough so that Mrs. Goilleur wouldn't hear. I masked my disappointment. He didn't remember my name.

"Hey Shane," I said, passively aggressively rubbing in his face that I remembered his name. "It's Bobbie, by the way."

"What is?" he asked, turning away from the assigned packet that he was lazily browsing through.

"My name. It's Bobbie," I confirmed, trying not to sound desperate.

"Oh." There was a pause. "That's what I said isn't it?"

No. You called me Betty, you ignorant twit. "Oh, I guess I misheard you," I beamed, the smile so fake and so painful I thought my face would split.

"So, how was your first day?" he asked, throwing the required reading aside.

Shitty. "Awesome!" I practically sang.

"Wow. You smile a lot more then I thought you did. Yesterday you weren't half as--"

"Joyful?"

"Uh… peppy, I guess. Maybe even annoying," he shrugged. My face fell.

"Oh," I sighed.

"Haha, just kidding, Bob!" he laughed, patting me on the back. I smiled brightly. Voila! A nickname!

"You just seem different from yesterday," he shrugged again before he narrowed his eyes and gave me a skeptical look.

"Now, take off the happy pants. How was your first day seriously?" he interrogated, his lighthearted disposition dropping immediately.

My fake grin faltered slightly before I regained my composure. "Seriously. My first day was awesome," I chirped. Shane's eyes narrowed even further and his neck craned even closer to me.

"It was shitty," I finally sighed, "Maybe the worst day of my life."

Shane smiled, "That's what I thought!"

"Great."

"Well, no. It's not great. Have lunch with me today?" Shane smiled brightly, and not a fake smile like mine. His eyes twinkled like he was friggin' Santa Clause. I couldn't help but let the corners of my lips tug upwards slightly. Shane was just so nice.

"Sure," I mumbled, uncertain of how to go about accepting the offer.

"Alright, good!" he boomed, clapping his hands together loudly.

"Mr. Henry…?" Mrs. Goilleur began before Shane cut her off.

"I apologize, Mrs. G. I stubbed my toe," he said smoothly. Everyone, including me, I am proud to say, gave him the classic, teenage "wtf" look. He glanced at me and then shrugged casually.

"So you celebrated aloud?" she questioned slowly.

"Well… it didn't hurt as bad as it should have," he lied, "I was excited."

"Ah," she nodded her head understandingly, rolling her eyes when she thought he wasn't looking.

"Anyway," he blurted in a hushed whisper, "I'm thinking that we could put a giant ass fan in the hallway, put a giant stack of papers, like all the teacher's freshly graded papers, in the hall near it, and then glue the on switch on, so that they can't turn it off! The papers will go everywhere!"

Was he serious? "Uh, what if they unplugged it?"

"Oh, shit. Then I guess we'll glue the plug in too."

My eyebrows shot up. He was serious. Dead serious. I vaguely remembered the conversation between Demetri and Shane from yesterday. Shane planned on pissing in the heater. So this was the first friend I managed to make?

I nodded my head fervently, "Hope you have superglue!"

Shane shook his head enthusiastically, and I threw him another fake smile. Luckily for me he was so blinded by joy he couldn't tell how panicked I was.

"Bob, you are awesome!" he cheered quietly, patting me on the back again. I continued to smile brightly and shake my head as he began to doodle a fan blowing a stack of graded papers through the halls.

Shit, shit, shit. I don't want to go to the principal's office on my second day! None the less for a prank so juvenile! I take it all back! I don't want friends! I don't want a nickname! Bob is a boy's name anyway!

"So meet me by Gert's room at lunch?" Shane asked, looking up from his doodle and pulling me out of my thoughts.

"Oh hell yeah!" I gushed with enthusiasm so obviously fake that even a rock would be offended.

"See you then!" he smiled, throwing his hand in the air for a high five. I missed when I tried to hit his hand and ended up hitting the table, but I recovered quickly and gave him a light high five with my fingers slightly curled so it was more like… hands cuddling.

"This is going to be awesome!" he smiled again. I wanted to tell him I gave up. I wanted to tell him no way in hell would I do something so dumb. I wanted a friend. His smile reached his caramel eyes and I strained my cheeks trying to match it. It amazed me how he could pick up on my fake smile so easily before, but now that he was excited about something the lack of enthusiasm didn't even register.

"Yeah, completely awesome!" I agreed. I hate my life.

-

I waited out front of Mr. Gert's room, just like we had planned. I drummed my fingers impatiently against the wall I was leaning on, continuously checking the clock hanging on the wall opposite from me. Lunch began at 12:30PM. It was now 12:34. Once again I found my insecurity yelling at me, drowning out my rational thoughts. Yeah, sure he was just four minutes late, but what if he wasn't going to show? What if he was joking? Trying to embarrass me? Oh god, the "what ifs" were torture.

“Hey there, BELLA. Bella Swan.”

I looked up and saw Ron glaring at me.

“It’s Bobbie.”

“Oh, yeah, of course, Bella Swan, the new girl in school. How do you like being compared to a fictional character?”

“The girl from the werewolf books?”

“From Twilight,” he corrected.

“Have you read those?”

There was a pause. “No.”

We had a brief stare down before Ron scoffed and skulked down the hall. I smiled to myself.

"Bob!" I heard Shane call. My head whipped around to see him standing at the base of the hall, waving enthusiastically and beckoning me over. I sighed in relief, but then sucked in a sharp breath when I realized what I was going to do. A prank. The only prank I've ever pulled was when I was seven, and all I had done then was hid my Opa's lawn gnomes all over the house. I jogged up to Shane who was now leaning against the locker, talking to himself. Oh no. He was talking to Demetri, who was also leaning against the locker, just hidden in Shane's shadow. While Demetri was a fair height, Shane towered over the both of us at 6'2".

"Hi Demetri," I mumbled awkwardly.

"Bobbie," he nodded curtly and then turned back to Shane, "Dude, look at how uncomfortable she is. This is dumb."

I looked down. Was I that obviously uncomfortable?

"She's not uncomfortable! She's excited!" Shane practically squealed, throwing an arm around me. I smiled and nodded my head as if to prove how "excited" I was. Apparently I looked terrified because Demetri grabbed my arm and pulled me away from Shane.

"But we were gonna do the fan thing!" Shane whined, stomping his feet like a child.

"The fan thing?" Demetri asked, before a look of realization came across his face, "the fan thing! Damn it, Shane! No way. Number one: that idea is terrible. It won't friggin' work. Number two: Bobbie is new here. Either befriend her like a normal person would, or don't befriend her, but don't drag her into one of your stupid pranks. Number three: I'm hungry. I actually want to eat during my lunch, not waste time on some stupid joke."

I felt my muscles relax. Thank the lord for Demetri and his moody ass. Demetri felt my arm go limp like jello and let go.

"Let's go to Subway or something," he shrugged.

"Are we allowed to go off campus for lunch?" I asked, interrupting Shane's sulking. Shane paused his pouting to look at me to see if I was joking. When he saw no sign of a joke on my face he laughed and grabbed my head, hugging it tightly against his chest.

"God! You're so cute! You're like a naïve, little chinchilla!"

"So we can't go off campus?" I asked, my words muffled by his chest which he was still squishing my face against.

"Of course not!" he stated, letting go of my head and grabbing my shoulders instead, and holding me an arms distance away. I must have looked like I was going to shit my pants. Of course we wouldn't be allowed to leave campus! It was a private school! We had uniforms for god's sake! People in uniforms can't do anything!

Demetri rolled his eyes, "We'll get you back to class on time. No worries."

"Yeah, of course. I'm not worried," I snorted as we began to walk. I was focusing so hard on pretending to be at ease I tripped on Shane's foot.

Shane laughed and swung his arm around my shoulder, "Me thinks a good friendship is to come from this."

I smiled and hoped he was right.