Her name was Nancy, but everybody knew her as Onion. Dave gave her that name early in our sophomore year, before the three of us had become best buds. Nancy always wore layers of clothes no matter what the weather. The look was definitely unique, almost to the point of being a classroom distraction.
So one day Dave said to a bunch of us in the cafe, “She’s like an onion. If you peeled off all her clothes, layer by layer, soon there would be nothing left.”
The name stuck.
Now, you would think a girl would hate a name like Onion, what with the bad smell and bad breath connotations. But the day after Dave’s comment went viral, Nancy showed up wearing something like half a dozen blouses—no two alike—two hats, two pairs of pants, and a skirt, willing to go along with the joke. She made a point of coming by our table at lunchtime to show us.
“You look like a pumpkin,” Dave said.
“Why, thank you,” she said. “Aren’t I glamorous?” And she spun about like a rock star, her arms raised as high as all those clothes would let her. “Besides,” she said, more seriously, “if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?”
Dave stared hard at her. “You mean you don’t care what the sheeple say about you?”
I could tell he was testing her the same way he tested me on the bus the day we first met.
She didn’t hesitate to answer. “Why should I? I live my life the way I want to, not the way the sheeple do.”
It was then that both Dave and I realized she was more than just okay. She was a kindred spirit. We cleared a space for her at our table, and she joined us every day after that.
In time, Onion became like the sister I never had and Dave the older brother I never had, even though he was older than me by only a few months.
Dave used to joke that Onion’s mom and my dad should get married so Onion could be my stepsister, but I could never imagine it. My dad and Onion’s mom were two completely different people. While they say that opposites attract, there still has to be some basis for two people to get together in the first place. My dad only spoke when there was something to say; Onion’s mom—like Onion—was always talking. My dad never showed any outward signs of worrying about anything, while Mrs. Gordon couldn’t wait to tell you what was troubling her. Thanks to his stint in the Navy, my dad liked things orderly and shipshape—“A place for everything and everything in its place,” as he said a thousand times—while Onion’s house overflowed with their strewn belongings on the tables, the chairs, everywhere.
“Not too much more than this,” Dave once whispered during a visit as we stepped over a pile of Onion’s clothes, “and they’ll officially be hoarders.”
“Maybe that’s why Onion wears so many of them,” I whispered back. “Just to get them off the floor.”
When Dave persisted that my dad and her mom should meet “just to see what happens,” Onion finally shut him down.
“Please. Let’s not turn this into The Parent Trap or anything hokey like that, okay? Just stop already. Stop. That’s an order.”
Dave never brought it up again, which should tell you who’s in charge.
And if you ever have any doubt about that, you should have seen Onion in gym class. She didn’t just want to win—oh no, she wanted to crush and thoroughly humiliate her opponents . . . and usually did. With every goal or point Onion scored, she cackled in delight like it was the most fun she’d ever had. Needless to say, nobody wanted to play against her, and when players were picked to form teams, she was always picked first. Onion didn’t win any friends in gym, but at the same time I think it made all the girls show her plenty of respect both in and out of it.
“What can I tell you?” she said once at our cafeteria table when I brought up her total lack of mercy. “I’m a tough broad.” She grinned.
Dave and I just grinned stiffly at her in return like a couple of idiots. Neither of us would have ever dared call her that, even though it was absolutely true.
Every now and then, Dave would engage me in discussing The Movie since he had a vague interest in time travel from a philosophical point of view. Mostly, though, he just made fun of the plot.
At our usual table in the cafe one day, we were discussing the scene where George the time traveler rescues Weena—one of the Eloi and the time traveler’s eventual love interest—from drowning.
“So Weena’s screaming for help—”
Dave broke out in laughter.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “The name just struck me as funny. Who names their kid Weena, anyway?”
I stared at him. “It’s thousands of years from now, remember?”
“So what? It will always be a stupid name.”
The one thing Dave never laughed about was when I started talking about Filby. He seemed to grow impatient if I gushed too much about what a great friend Filby was, an ideal companion whose friendship was unparalleled.
“Nobody’s that perfect,” Dave would argue, refusing to look at me.
“But he supported George no matter what other people thought.”
“So? George was an eccentric inventor. Of course everybody thought he was crazy. Who wouldn’t?”
“Filby,” I countered.
Dave didn’t respond.
Why Filby was such a sore point with Dave I didn’t know. I guess he thought that kind of unwavering friendship was impossible, while I still hoped to find my own Filby someday.
Dave’s mom and dad were nothing like Dave. Nothing. He didn’t even particularly resemble either of them, especially in width or height. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was adopted, and sometimes I still wonder. Dave’s parents were a matched pair of always well-groomed, well-dressed optimists who just laughed at Dave’s cynicism, as if he couldn’t possibly be serious. Oddly, Dave took it all in stride.
“What did you expect? They’re old people,” he would say, even though they were both younger than either Onion’s mom or my dad. “I’m related to them, but I can’t relate,” was his mantra.
Dave lived even farther away from The Big Brown Box than I did, in a neighborhood with sprawling homes on spacious lots with fancy street names like Diamond Court and Country Club Lane. Me, I lived on Third Street. I don’t know if Dave’s cynicism was due to his embarrassment at his parent’s wealth or his rejection of their preppy “sold on suburbia” attitude. Either way, it sure seemed like he was trying hard to be and do the exact opposite.
Something of a physics scholar, Dave once referred to where he lived as “the anti-neighborhood. If it ever came in contact with a real neighborhood, they would explode.”
I wasn’t all that familiar with the inside of Dave’s house because Onion and I were seldom invited over. Not because Dave or his parents were ashamed of us or anything like that, but because Dave’s parents led very active social lives and were always hosting fancy dinner parties that Dave avoided like the plague, which was why he was usually available to drive us wherever we wanted to go. The few times I went there, it almost seemed like Dave didn’t belong, as if he were an imposter in his own home. With his usual rumpled, untucked shirt and big, baggy jeans with tattered cuffs, he looked like a lost soul wandering the wide hallways and spacious rooms with their tasteful, expensive furnishings and pricey wall art. His bedroom was the only place that was a reflection of the Dave I knew—strewn with papers, books, a couple of acoustic guitars he barely knew how to play, and piles of unwashed clothes on the floor almost identical to the ones he was wearing.
The first time I saw his room, I had to call him on his hypocrisy.
“And to think you make fun of how Onion lives.”
He shrugged as if that weren’t a valid comparison. “This is just one room. With them, it’s their whole house.”
The last time I was there, Dave’s mom smiled and said, “Isn’t he such a silly boy? But we love him anyway,” which gave Dave a scowl for the rest of the day. Not surprisingly, Dave never invited me back.
The last but most important thing you had to know about Dave was his car.
Dave’s car was old, large, and loud, and it sucked up gas the way a boat with a hole in its side sucks up water. A kind of sickly green, it had a once black vinyl-covered top that was now a mottled gray, with scratches and gouges galore. And a radio with a cassette player, even though not one of us had ever owned a cassette to play in it. That kind of car.
“I tell you, they don’t make them like this anymore. And it’s a good thing, too,” Dave liked to joke.
Over time, Dave had personalized it with seat covers, bumper stickers, books, papers, clothes, and trash that seldom got taken out until it was a one-of-a-kind, rolling home away from home you could spot a mile away in any parking lot.
“What, no fuzzy dice?” Onion asked him when she saw it for the first time.
“Too corny,” Dave said, “although one of those flat pine tree air fresheners would be nice. It stinks in there.”
For Dave’s next birthday, unbeknownst to each other, both Onion and I gave him half a dozen. After we laughed about that, Dave unwrapped all twelve and hung them up like a miniature forest or something, making the inside of his car smell like Christmas every day of the year. A very potent Christmas.
The car was less his pride and joy and more an extension of who Dave was. When Dave slipped behind the wheel, he became the car; the two seemed nearly indistinguishable when he was in it.
I met Dave on the school bus the beginning of our sophomore year, just a few weeks after school began and a few months before he bought his car. Since I had barely made it to the bus stop before the driver closed the doors, the bus was packed. The only open seat was next to this intimidating-looking guy with a full beard who was so wide there wasn’t much room next to him. But since I didn’t need much room, I approached him cautiously. He sat staring out the window with kind of a stoic look, as if accustomed to sitting alone.
“This seat taken?” I grabbed the overhead shelf to brace myself as the bus roared around a corner.
He turned to me, seemingly surprised that someone was talking to him.
“Could be. Are you a nitwit?”
“No. No, I’m not.”
He nodded and tried to scrunch over as far as he could. “All right, then. Just so you know, I don’t tolerate fools.”
I was beginning to understand why the seat was available.
“Thanks,” I said, and slid in next to him. “I’m a sophomore.”
Why I felt it necessary to reveal that I’m not sure. It kind of sounded like an apology or something, but I guess I thought he would appreciate knowing.
“So am I.” He looked away.
Two things happened when he said that. First, I was kind of startled. He looked old enough to be a fifth-year senior, maybe even older. And second, I wondered if he never had a seatmate on the bus because of his appearance, especially his imposing beard. If so, that was kind of sad.
We didn’t speak for a while after that, and then we both spoke at nearly the same instance.
“I’m George.”
“I’m Dave.”
We both laughed a bit at the awkwardness. I racked my brain for something intelligent to say so he didn’t think I was a nitwit after all and eject me from the seat.
“Man, I hate getting up this early. It’s like death. How about you?”
That seemed like a safe conversation starter, since everybody on the bus looked like they hated getting up early. Some even looked like they were falling back to sleep despite the swaying, noisy ride.
Dave didn’t answer. Instead, he just stared out the window again with a faraway gaze.
Complaining about the food in the cafeteria was another safe bet, I figured, since it was uniformly awful day after day. I had yet to have anything either nutritious or delicious from the place.
“Do you eat in the cafe? The food is just horrendous, isn’t it? They seldom serve anything edible.”
He seemed to stir a bit at that remark, as if he were overhearing me talk to someone else.
I sighed quietly to myself, determined to either be accepted or labeled a fool.
“You know, you could try a few ice-breakers yourself just to be a little friendly.”
He turned his head slowly—very slowly—toward me.
“Do I look friendly?”
I accepted the challenge.
“Actually,” I said, looking him up and down, “I was hoping there was a nice guy in there somewhere just waiting to bust out.”
His grin was faint. “Good. You’re sarcastic. That scores points. Yes, I hate getting up this early, and yes, the food in the cafeteria could kill you and might yet. Anything else you want to talk about? Anything . . . meaningful?”
Studying his cold expression, I had the feeling he was daring me be to friends with him, testing me to see if I was worthy. He struck me then as one of those perpetually dissatisfied souls, always angry at the world, always complaining about some injustice somewhere whether it affected him personally or not.
That was only a hunch, but I went with it. I could be a dissatisfied soul, too, at times. Besides, now he had me feeling feisty no matter how intimidating he looked.
“Sure,” I said, “Let’s talk about how we’re not just being educated, but indoctrinated by the powers that be, forced to conform to their idea of what it means to be a solid citizen, a contributing member of their society, as if that’s all that really matters when what we should be learning is to embrace our individuality, only they’ll never teach us that because then we could be a real danger to their regime. Should we talk about that instead?”
While his expression didn’t change, his eyes betrayed him as they fleetingly registered his astonishment.
“You don’t mean that,” he said, and looked away again.
I knew right then my hunch was right.
“Sure, I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
He turned back to me. “Come on. You’re like everybody else,” he nodded once to our fellow sleepy bus passengers. “Follow the rules, be a good boy, don’t rock the boat whatever you do. That what I peg you for.” It was his turn to look me over, only he didn’t look so sure of himself—in fact, he almost looked like he wanted to be proven wrong.
“Yeah, I play along with the school’s little mind games,” I said. “The thing is, I know it’s just a game. The truth is, I’d rather think for myself.” I tapped the side of my head. “You can’t take everything you read or hear at face value. I mean you can, but then you really would be a fool, wouldn’t you?”
I did mean that, although I wasn’t about to take up arms over it or anything. My mom had said to always keep an open mind, which seemed like good advice for anyone.
Dave’s tough guy facade broke right then and he sat back relaxed, looking at me with newfound respect.
The bus lurched into the main drive to the school. People stood up to gather their belongings as the driver pulled behind a long line of buses parked by the main doors.
Dave and I got up, too. He tapped me on the shoulder as we inched our way forward down the aisle.
“Far corner of the cafeteria, last table. Meet me there at lunch. We’ll talk more.”
And that was the beginning of our friendship.