The Nemesis

Here begins the saga of the Nemesis. This was the ARSE to end all ARSEs. Um, so far (God help me). This story began in sixth grade and didn't end till I was out of college, despite not seeing him for several years in between. I'm not sure whether it were made more or less awkward by the fact that so little actually happened. There was an enormous amount of context surrounding every move made, though. The whole mess was a Machiavellian chess match with no winner, a juggernaut of two diametrically opposed individuals engaged in a silent battle of wits that neither possessed, at least not in the proportions necessary to win such a game. If either of us had, none of this would have happened and we would have totally ignored each other—really ignored each other, instead of only pretending to.

The prologue occurred in sixth grade P.E. Unathletic dork that I was, I never failed to embarrass myself or my teammates in games. A chronic case of the last one picked, indeed. Actually, I minded that less than the standing around waiting for it to be over. Anyway, my girls' P.E. class played against a boys' P.E. class in a game of soccer one afternoon. As with all sports, I was terrible at it and mostly ran aimlessly around the field trying to avoid actually playing. And then I saw him.

He was tall, with dark brown eyes and smooth brown hair. It was sandy in the sun but, I later learned, naturally darker. His mouth caught my attention immediately—he smirked or sneered but rarely smiled, although, I later discovered, his smile was devastatingly disarming. Impish and boyish and infinitely amused, that smile could charm the dress right off a woman (and no doubt did many times in later years). He also possessed breath that could slice through a bank vault, not that I was to know that just yet.

No, I only saw the cute but apparently rather mean boy who was good at sports where I was not. I tried to keep him in my line of sight while staying out of his. The physical impossibilities of this necessitated me being the unfortunate recipient of his cruel smirk a few times. I doubt he really noticed me, but I decided to stay out of harm's way just in case, and I lurked behind other people whenever I could.

I saw him a few more times that year, but I never spoke to him. I managed to learn his name and stored it for future reference. I recognized that our social circles were total opposites and it was unlikely anything favorable would ever happen, but after all, he had a pretty mouth.

Fast forward to seventh grade—and when things really began to happen. The Nemesis, I discovered to muted delight on the first day of school, was in one of my classes. I nearly didn't recognize him because his hair was darker than it had looked outdoors the year before, but the name was the same. He sat on the other side of the room, so I barely saw him and rarely thought of him. I had other awkward situations going on in different classes, after all.

But in the spring, the teacher reassigned our seats as he did every six weeks, and he placed me next to him. I was excited. He ignored me at first, but all too soon he did indeed begin to pay attention to me. Alas, the smirking and sneering of the year before that had betokened a cruel streak proved all too true, all too soon. He became my Nemesis. He made fun of the books I read, always calling the authors gay. I remember in particular The Scarlet Letter. The Nemesis, pointing at Nathaniel Hawthorne's name, asked, "Wasn't she gay?" "It's a man!" I said, astonished and pointing at the picture of the bearded Hawthorne inside the back cover. The Nemesis blinked and replied, "Yeah, well, wasn't he gay?" "I don't know," I said. (Incidentally, he was not.)

At one point I challenged him by accusing him of not even having read any of the books he mocked. "Yes, I have," he said with such absolute conviction that I couldn't question him. I was inclined to doubt and sneer, of course, but I looked into his eyes and saw none of his usual sneering sarcasm. I was utterly baffled, but that didn't stop me from fighting back. After all, I reasoned, having read a book didn't make him any more human. It certainly didn't make him less homophobic.

He called everything gay. I suspected he wasn't sure what the word even meant; either that or he was suppressing his own severely closeted homosexuality. Either way, he had some kind of bizarre obsession with human sexuality. He would frequently ask, "How are your ovaries today?" . . . There wasn't really anything I could say to that. It did occur to me that I could shut him up by offering to check, but fearing that this tactic would backfire, I never responded with more than a silent glare.

I didn't always glare. When he wasn't being a homophobic idiot, he could sometimes be funny. I looked forward to each class with secret glee. I would lie awake the night before, plotting my vicious retorts. I tried to deliver them with a straight face but frequently failed. He did laugh—probably at me, but no matter.

It didn't stop at his homophobic remarks, of course. He would use other taunts and interrupt my work instead. These tended not to work since I was obsessed with finishing all my work in class. This had absolutely nothing to do with being conscientious; it had everything to do with not wanting to have to lug my science book home on my bike. Alas, the teacher noticed my hard work and decided to use me as an example.

One day, my Nemesis was goofing off with the other two students who sat at our table, having given up on teasing me since I was diligently—more like frantically—scribbling answers onto my worksheet, always with one eye on my watch. The teacher, noticing my Nemesis slacking off, called him up to his desk and began lecturing him—quietly, for once. I heard the teacher mention my name and glanced up, concerned. Oh no. He was using me as an example. "Her pen hasn't left the paper," he was saying. I blushed, wondering if I should perhaps pipe up and observe that actually, I wasn't working for its own sake at all, I was merely avoiding hauling a book home. But no. I would not get involved. Much as I believed in students in solidarity against teachers, partiuclarly bad ones like our tyrant, I could not, would not help my Nemesis under any circumstances. He glanced over his shoulder. I wrenched my neck back to my paper and pretended to be writing an answer, vaguely wondering where the hell I'd left off.

My Nemesis sat down again, glancing awkwardly at me. I tried and failed to pretend I hadn't noticed. My concentration in cureless ruin, I desperately pretended to be working hard as the teacher had insisted I was. The Nemesis worked furtively and sporadically for the rest of the period. I couldn't decide whether to smirk. I was proud that he'd been forced to pay attention to me in a supposedly favorable context, but since said context involved schoolwork, it wasn't what might have been desired. Still, what with his homophobia and reeking breath, that might have been for the best.

Naturally, it did not end there. When Things begin to happen, they are apt to keep on. Inevitably, the Nemesis realized that his homophobic remarks were wearing out as I became immune and ignored him more successfully (but not, alas, his foul breath, of which he seemed utterly oblivious). He upped the ante and began poking me. Oh dear. Oh no. I would have none of that. Predictably, scuffling ensued. Miraculously, we never got in trouble—apart from getting yelled at fairly regularly, that is. But neither of us could be bothered with our teacher's admonitions; we'd rather fight. Alas, the results were less than satisfactory, mostly because I was considerably smaller than he and as such could not hope to smack him productively. Therefore, I was forced to plot.

One day, at the end of the class before the class with my Nemesis, I took the compass that I used for math and arranged it in my little blue pencil bag so that just the tip was pointing out, barely visible but more than tangible. I then went to my next class, suppressing my snickers—or, more accurately, disguising them as reluctant laughter at the Nemesis's joking.

Then it happened. He poked me one too many times, and the consequences were swift and severe. I seized my pencil bag with such energy of action that if my Nemesis had been a bit brighter, he would have fled in terror. He did not, however, and, moving like lightning—or, well, a blur of reddish brown hair and blue vinyl—I brought down my pencil bag, compass point out, shiny and needle-sharp, onto his exposed arm. I listened to the muffled thump of pencils on flesh in fiendish glee, suppressing a malevolent cackle as the two other students at our table collapsed in peals of laughter.

Predictably, I was immediately called to the teacher's desk.

"Miss Brown," he began, "what exactly is going on over there?" I stalled, not wanting to tattle.

"Well, I really don't know, sir." He glared. "But-it's-mostly-him." The teacher barked the Nemesis's name, ordering him up to the desk. I sat down and tried not to look like I was listening in on the lecture that followed. Mostly it was all delivered sotto voce, but I did catch the phrase "if you so much as breathe in her direction."

Obviously, when the Nemesis came in the next day, sat down, and glanced at me with a look of singular disbelief, possibly fear, and definitely loathing, I could not resist hissing, "Stop breathing on me!" The two kids across from us snickered.

Thus ended our daily fights. I couldn't honestly say I missed the daily attempts at destroying one another, but it was probably good for my concentration. I did, however, miss the attention. It might have been negative, but nevertheless, I had been able to see that cute smile of his frequently, even if it was usually exhibited in the form of derisive laughter. Alas, we parted deadly enemies.

Over the summer, I wondered if we would have any classes together the next year, and if so, how they would go. I outwardly expressed dismay at the idea; secretly, I hoped I would see him. The next year, I did not see him in class, but I did indeed see him almost every day in the halls. Apparently he had the same teacher I did for one subject but an hour earlier, and so I would see him and two friends (not uncoincidentally, also people I disliked) leaving the room and walking in my direction. The other two, not having any real reason to dislike me beyond general social differences, ignored me. He and I exchanged death glares regularly. And so our arch rivalry continued, latently, through eighth grade, slumbering and ready to activate in high school the following year.