Category Archives: Dweezil

Dweezil, Drawing, and Why the Hell Am I Not Capable of Eye Contact?

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May is coming to a close and in the grand scheme of the high school narrative, things are actually going really well. Jane is out of the hospital, I have three English classes, and the soccer team keeps winning playoff games. The semester is almost over. Summer is almost here.

We’re two weeks from finals, and teenage Brenna is surprised to realize that despite her general lack of enthusiasm for public school (also, that right there is a gross understatement intended for comedic effect), she’s not really all that impatient for the semester to end.

This time last year, I was restless, annoyed, unsatisfied with pretty much everything. (I was probably a little insufferable.)

But now, I feel strangely light. I want to dance around and put lilacs in my hair, and toy animals and feathers and tiny paper cocktail umbrellas. I want to roll in the grass like a puppy. I’m just not the same girl I was at 16.

The change is mostly apparent in little ways, like how the underclassmen on the soccer team will sometimes look to me when it’s time to organize ourselves for relay drills, and the way my teachers have started treating me like they expect me to take charge of projects or volunteer answers, and the fact that my hair has grown more than five inches and comes down almost to my hips when I wear it loose.

Also, now I sometimes wear my hair loose.

I have a whole closet of eclectic DIY clothes, some of which are disastrous, but some of which are excellent. I have a sister who looks like a best friend. I have pastel-pink fingernails and cinnamon lipgloss and I get picked for things, group presentations and committees and teams in PE. People say hi to me in the halls—sometimes people I’ve never even talked to. They nod and smile when they see me, and even though I’m still marginally terrified of strangers, I keep my chin up and work hard to smile back.

I am (sort of/kind of) someone-in-the-real-world, and I don’t even know exactly how it happened. keep reading…

The Fence

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This is the story of how I did not behave honestly or say anything useful or kiss #4 over the fence, even though I kind of wanted to.

This is the story of how I eventually decided that whatever was happening between me and Dill had to end, and how it still took two more weeks for me to actually do anything about it.

This is the story of how I knew once and for all that I was a bad girlfriend.

Right now, I’m just going to go straight into the excerpt, because personal realizations aside, the excerpt is pretty much the whole story. It’s the part that matters.

Dill got a PA system for his truck. Now, he yells at people when he doesn’t like their driving. It’s kind of embarrassing, but kind of funny, too.
     On Saturday, we were coming down from my house, and we were at that T-intersection by the Jif Store when we saw a big white Blazer come bouncing through the field and careen onto the road. Dweezil was by himself, blank-faced in the driver’s seat, vacant as always.
     Dill grabbed the PA speaker. “Dweezil, you punk-ass!”
     Dweezil didn’t turn though, or act like he’d heard. He never hears. In Fishwoman’s class, I drew his portrait during the figure drawing unit, skinny and smooth like a weasel. I spent two whole days just concentrating on his hands, his narrow, squinting eyes. Fishwoman put the picture in the art show at the mall.
     She said, “You’ve made him look so . . . pensive.” Like Dweezil in real life is incapable of thought.
     He drew his self-portrait using the reflection in the back of a spoon, blurry around the edges. It was kind of amazing. She always just treated him like he was stupid.
     Dill yelled again, holding the speaker close to his mouth. “Dweezil! Look at me, m*****f*****!”
     We were stopped behind him at the light, but Dweezil didn’t glance around.
     And yeah, Dill and I had Drawing with him last quarter, but it’s not like we actually know him. So, he used to sit with me sometimes on the bus, so what? He wasn’t even really sitting with me. Just next to me. What is that? Stoned before class and drunk on the weekends. Not an actual friend of ours.
     We were just beginning to gain on him when he turned off the main road and onto a side street down by the Lutheran church. Dill followed, screaming to a stop by the side-yard of a low, dingy house. Dweezil’s Blazer was parked out front. Dweezil was standing in the yard, smoking a cigarette with Holden and #4.
     Dill pulled right up to the fence, so close that I wouldn’t have been able to open my door if I’d wanted to get out, and reached for the PA again.
     “Dweezil, you crack-fiend! I been chasing your ass down since the light at JJ’s Lounge, buddy!”
     His voice boomed out over the neighborhood, amplified, alarming, and the boys in the yard all flinched.
     #4 came to the fence and leaned on his elbows, smiling wide and nervous.
     Behind him, Dweezil was giggling in that slow, stoned way he always does. “Holy shit, m*****f*****! Just, holy shit.”
     #4 cleared his throat. “So, what are you doing here?”
     He was looking at me steadily over the chest-high chainlink. I’d never really seen him in the sunlight before. Back in M’s Foundations [of English] class, there were windows and so there was always light shining in. But one stray beam is not the same as the whole outside dropping down all at once. This was not tenth-grade #4 smoking in the rain, not last August, blood-smeared in the bus circle. Now he was clean, clean, clean, leaning on the fence. He was still looking at me, a cautious, complicated look, and it occurred to me that he really did expect an answer.
     I grinned a little, awkward. “We’re not really doing that much, just saw Dweezil driving. We were trying to get his attention for like two miles. Since the Jiffy Store.”
     #4 took a deep breath, cigarette burning down in his hand. “Oh. Hey, look, we’re going camping* later on and . . .”
     He ducked his head down, not finishing.
     Dill threw the truck into gear. “Well, you guys have a good time. See you around.”
     #4 lifted his head, looking at me, only at me, nowhere but me. “Yeah. Bye.”
     He waved gently over the fence, then turned and walked away, back to where Dweezil and Holden stood. Smoking.
     We peeled out on the gravel, light and vicious like nothing else. And then we got in a fight. It was so stupid.

keep reading…

Dweezil (Alternately Titled: The Time I Almost Got Yelled At)

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As promised, news and announcements are taken care of, the contest is all squared away, and it’s time for another high school post!

Looking back over my First Semester Ever of public school, I’m beginning to notice a pattern. We might call it a pattern of inactivity. Or, we could just be honest and say that sixteen-year-old Brenna is wildly, tragically passive about a whole parade of highly unacceptable things—watch-theft, face-licking, etc. In a perfect world, I would cue the voiceover and say, “But that’s all about to change . . .”

Unfortunately, this is the actual world and profound transformations don’t happen by the end of the episode. However, I will make allowances and say that it’s all about to change a little. This is because of three things that happen in relatively quick succession and today, I’m going to talk about the first thing.

Some quick background: there are 24 boys on my bus route, but I only like three of them. Irish, naturally. And Trip, because he’s slow and sleepy and once SugarRay (who can be a total jerk) slapped him in the face and made him cry, which was very embarrassing for everyone involved and then I felt sorry for him.

The third one is Dweezil.

Dweezil is fifteen, with dark shaggy hair and half-closed eyes. He’s skinny and sullen-looking and most of the time he doesn’t wear a coat, even when it’s obscenely cold out. I like him for various reasons—how flat his voice is, how completely tasteless his jokes are, but mostly I like that on days when Irish would rather sit with SugarRay, Dweezil will sometimes flop down next to me and not ask first if it’s okay. He never talks to me, but I like the way he nods sometimes and doesn’t quite make eye contact. I like that when he tells jokes, he includes me in the audience. On his radar, I am completely, perfectly neutral, and that is the most relieving thing. keep reading…