The Boy Recession by Flynn Meaney Read Free Book Online Page B

it’s that I think it’s possible that Bobbi Novak might be—as Derek would say—feelin’ the kid.

CHAPTER 7: HUNTER
    “Male Point of View Underrepresented at Julius Due to Student Senate’s Overwhelming Female Majority”
    “The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth,
The Julius Journal
, October
    I always liked meetings with my guidance counselor. They get you out of class. Plus, the guidance office is awesome. It has these cinnamon plug-in air fresheners, so it always smells like Christmas. Plus, my guidance counselor, Ms. Duff, keeps a bowl of candy on her desk. She’s got some good stuff in there, like little bags of Sour Patch Kids.
    My meetings with Ms. Duff have pretty much followed the same pattern since freshman year. She asks me, “How are you
doing
?” in this understanding voice and tries to figure out if I’ve got any big emotional crisis going on. I never do, which I think disappoints her.
    Then she’ll talk about how awesome my standardized test scores are. I do pretty well on those kinds of tests—the ones you don’t have to study for. I kicked ass on the PSATs. At my meeting in the spring, Ms. Duff said I was “highlygifted” and called me a “natural test taker.” She showed me all these charts that said I was some kind of math genius. She moved me up to precalculus and signed me up for AP chem.
    Usually, after she strokes my ego, she gives me a pep talk about putting more effort into my homework and essays and all that crap.
    This meeting seems different, though. It’s October now, which is when juniors are supposed to start planning for college applications. Maybe it’s because meetings about college stuff are supposed to be intense, or maybe Ms. Duff is stressed out because the other guidance counselor left, but I’m getting a bad vibe from her. First of all, the candy bowl is missing. Even worse, Ms. Duff is armed with her Fahrenbach file, which has all my grades and test scores in it, and she launches right into the investigation.
    “What happened on this precalculus test last week, Mr. Fahrenbach?” Ms. Duff asks. “Can you tell me why you got a sixty-eight?”
    “Uh… well… that was a pretty tough test,” I say. “There were some trick questions at the end, I think. Everyone in the class was, like, freaking out.”
    “The class average was a ninety-two.”
    She also has the class averages for every test, quiz, and essay from this year.
Faaaantastic.
    “When are you going to complete this lab report forAP chemistry? Why were you late for U.S. history every day last week? Why didn’t you participate in the President’s Physical Fitness Test?”
    Man, I’ve got to get some excuses going. I can’t tell Ms. Duff that I skipped the President’s Physical Fitness Test to sit in the locker room and eat a White Castle burger.
    “Well, for me, it’s like…”
    I try to pull myself up so I’m sitting straight in the chair, so I look more serious. But the chair is really soft leather, so I’m still slouching.
    “What about this pop quiz in humanities?” Ms. Duff demands.
    “Yeah, I…”
    Ms. Duff looks up from the file. “Honestly, Hunter,” she begins—I’m Hunter now, instead of Mr. Fahrenbach—“you shouldn’t even be taking this humanities course. You should be in AP English.”
    Ms. Duff shuts the Fahrenbach file.
    “Hunter,” she says, “I am now the guidance counselor for every single student at this school. I know everyone’s abilities. I know everyone’s grades. So I know that you are more intelligent than ninety-five percent of the students here.
    “But almost every single one of them,” Ms. Duff continues, “is trying harder than you.”
    I don’t want to look Ms. Duff in the eyes, but everything I look at in this office reminds me what a slacker Iam—the college pennants, the books about writing a killer résumé.
    “What about extracurriculars?” Ms. Duff asks.
    “Um, I’m in the band,” I say. “But… I guess that’s… The band