Symphony

I was laying down my Pokémon comforter when the doorbell rang. Shit, he was here early; he was just too eager to get here. I adjusted the comforter, making sure that the shoebox hidden underneath it protruded like a pimple, and then I answered the door. I looked down at the wide smile on his face.

“Hi Dino!”

We embraced as I kissed him on the forehead. “Hi Trungy.”

He slipped past under my arms and ran up to the edge of the comforter. “What’s this?” He pointed at the bump in the center.

“It’s your present, duh. Now don’t lift up the comforter because I wanna get this on camer—TRUNG!”

He yanked off the comforter in one fell swoop, revealing an empty shoebox and what it was actually trying to divert attention from: a blanket depicting a giant green dinosaur stomping around in a bed flowers, with brown mountains and a blue sky in the background. Three clouds floated in the sky, each one carrying a checklist item: EAT, POOP, SLEEP. All but SLEEP were checked off.

Trung’s face already began lighting up as he pieced together what it was, but he needed confirmation: “What is this, Brian?”

“It’s a dinoblanket! Since I can’t be around to hold you all the time in your sleep and be your dinoblanket,” I paused to watch the glee overcoming Trung, “I figured I’d make you a more literal one that can be with you when you’re at UCLA and I’m at UCI.”

“DINOBRIAN!” Trung leapt right back into my arms with a giant grin on his face. I caught him, almost losing my balance, and held him back tightly. I ran my hand through his hair and kissed him gently on his head as we rocked back and forth, soaking in each other’s warmth and celebrating to ourselves.

“Happy late one-year anniversary,” I whispered, “or happy early thirteen-month anniversary, and merry late Christmas, Trung. I love you.”

“I love you too Dinobrian.”




Two hours past midnight, I looked at the date just to double check: August 26th, 2010. I smiled and messaged Trung online: “Happy one-year break up anniversary!”

“IN ABOUT SIXTEEN HOURS ONE YEAR AGO,” he joked, “I WILL BE CRYING.” He then proceeded to criticize me on how a ten-day blogging challenge I was doing on Tumblr was dumb, and that each day would be all about him anyway (according to him: ways to win my heart, people who mean a lot, things that cross my mind a lot, things that turn me on, etc, except for things that turn me off, of course).

On August 26th, 2009, some time past 10 PM, I picked up Trung at his house and parked the car around the corner under a lonely street light and some trees. Everything felt ironic; everything felt like it was coming back full circle. Back before we even officially declared our relationship status on December 8th, 2007, this was where Trung and I originally made out and did lewd things before I felt safe enough to bring him inside my house around my parents. Five months later, he forced me to choose between my relationship with him and my friendship with my friend Anh. I brought Trung back here to tell him I was choosing the friendship, but he fought and fought and insisted that I was making the wrong choice. He managed to convince me, and fifteen months later, we found ourselves back here again. We had grown a lot and come a long way since that first almost-breakup incident (and Trung even befriended Anh during times of turmoil in our relationship).

To this day, whenever my friends asked about why I broke up with Trung, I’d always give a very vague answer, because frankly, I couldn’t remember why. But what I was trying to remember was the reasons I gave Trung at the moment of the breakup, the reasons I listed in my breakup letter that I read to him. They were some pretty bullshit reasons, which was why I could never remember them, and both Trung and I knew they were all bullshit as I read them aloud. I knew the real reasons in my heart, and of course I could never forget those.

The contents of the letter never really mattered, because what Trung and I discussed after I read it was far more significant.



“So, in conclusion, uhh,” I folded the letter and set it in my lap, “ever since that one incident, our almost-breakup five months into our relationship, it was never meant to be.” I prepped myself for all the reasons Trung was going to list off to try to get me to stay again, but he remained silent. No yelling, and even more surprising, no tears. I looked at him. “Aren’t you going to try to convince me that I’m making the wrong choice again?”

Trung’s expression was cold and blank as he stared out through the front window. “Last night,” he began, “after I got back home from your place, I talked to Anh. I told him about how you wanted last night to yourself to write a letter about what was bothering you, and even though you said you probably weren’t going to break up with me, we concluded that that letter was going to be a breakup letter. After talking about it to Anh, it was right then and there that I accepted it. So no, Brian, I’m not going to try to convince you to stay.”

The whole time, I had felt a knot in my throat, but as Trung said those last words, I’m not going to try to convince you to stay, I thought I was going to burst into tears. A part of me had hoped that he could somehow save us. He’d always be the one to save our relationship when we had problems, but I understood that he could no longer play that role anymore.

“It’s funny,” Trung chuckled feebly. “Last night, Anh pointed out a bunch of the ironic things about this. We’re back here again, yeah, but you know how our friendship started in the first place, Brian? You read my blog and then messaged me on myspace. Essentially, our friendship started when you wrote to me, and now our relationship is ending the same way, your letter.”

I swallowed my tears and tried to appreciate Trung’s attempt at lightening the mood. “Ha, yeah, it’s true.”

“Brian,” Trung turned to face me, his voice more stern. “As much as I still want to be friends—you still want to be friends, right?”

I nodded.

“As much as I still want to be friends, I know we’re still going to have some problems at first. But can you just promise me one thing?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Can you keep Mop, please? Keep her with Op so that he doesn’t get lonely? Don’t burn her or shred her.”

I nodded. “Of course, I promise. I actually wanted to ask you the same thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Dinoblanket—you don’t have to sleep with it anymore, but, just keep it, yeah?”

He nodded. “Of course, I’ll keep it. I promise.”

We both looked away and stared out through the front window again. Silence fell. The window fogged up until there wasn’t anything to look at anymore, leaving us to do nothing but soak in each other’s warmth for what could’ve been the very last time.

That’s Just the Way It Is: Redux

(Continued from “That’s Just the Way It Is: Part 1” and “Part 2”)

Even though I didn’t like the fact that Breakthrough took place this year at a fancy private rich school in the equally rich and white and white-collar neighborhoods of Los Gatos this summer, I had to admit it was nice that, for once, the students had access to multiple microphones for celebration night.

Back in 2008, during evaluations after celebration night, I suggested getting more than one microphone because hardly anyone could hear the students who didn’t have one. Cesar retorted, “Great idea Brian. Feel free to buy us more microphones.” No one at that point in time ever thought that within another two years, Breakthrough would (unnecessarily) spend exorbitant amounts of money just so that they could ship their low-income students on buses every morning to a white, rich school—and I do say “white” and “rich” with some resent (looks like my students’ internalized racism has rubbed off on me, in combination with the things I’ve learned about white privilege and other stuff in college ethnic studies classes). But at least this summer, sitting in the very back on the bleachers in the gym I could hear every word that the students spoke on stage.

7 PM. The gymnasium thundered with applause as Breakthrough’s summer 2010 celebration night came to a close. Families shot from their seats to find their kids, while the kids scrambled to find their teachers for last-minute photos. As I sorted my way through the crowds, I found Timmy.

I was hoping that maybe we could pause to just chat a little bit more. Crack some jokes, discuss his summer, show off tutting combos, but he seemed to be in a hurry. Our conversation was limited to my request for a photo with him, our pose, and then his farewell as he disappeared back into the crowd.

I didn’t think too much of this until ten minutes later when Ross, one of this summer’s new teachers, emerged from the commotion with a New Era fitted cap in his hand. It was Timmy’s hat. A gift from him, Ross confirmed.

I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and slid it open. The picture that greeted me on the screen was a photo of me and several students at the first Super Saturday, including Timmy. He was wearing a hat, the same one that now rested on Ross’s head.



“Hey,” I sat down on a concrete ledge next to one of the new seventh graders. I already knew pretty much all the eighth graders because I worked with them the previous summer, so, now during the second week into my second summer at Breakthrough, I had decided it was time to get to know some of the new seventh graders. “I was standing over there when I noticed what you were doing,” I said.

“Oh yeah? What was I doing?” he asked.

I held out my left arm and bent my wrist at a right angle, and then I bent my elbow at another right angle and rotated my forearm up. “You were tutting. Well, finger tutting. I can kinda do tuts, but they’re not too clean.”

“Oh tight! You tut?”

I nodded.

“I know a finger tutting combo. Wanna learn it?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He’d later introduce himself as Timmy, and he would never get the chance to finish teaching me his tutting combo.



The crowd started to die as more families left for home with their kids. I was mostly standing around at this point instead of actively searching, but I still got requests for photos and hugs from students. That was nice. What really made me happy though was seeing the formerly shy Rosalina running up to me with a grin. I held out my right arm for a side hug, but she stopped when she got close. She asked me if I had seen Maymay anywhere. I pointed her toward the right direction. My shoulders slumped as she turned to run off, but I guess she noticed. She turned back around and approached me with open arms and a timid smile, one that I was more familiar with. We hugged, and then I let her go find Maymay.



“Breakthrooough twoo thousaaand and eeiight.”

I turned around to face a student who was trying to read some graffiti that my seven grade writing students drew on the whiteboard the other day. Rosalina, Cil, and a few more of my students from my dance class wandered through my door and sat on top of the desks. One quickly located my rolly chair and started to slide over the carpet. Students often liked to drop by my class in the morning before first period to hang out and get away from the cold.

“Brian,” Cil said, “when are you going to start teaching dance again?”

“I’m not sure. Since dance class is a supposed to be a ‘dance around the world in thirty days’ class, I probably won’t get another chance to teach breakdancing. Augusto will probably teach for the rest of the summer since he knows a bunch of different kinds of dances, enough to teach one a week. I only knew breakdancing.”

“Aw man!”

“What, you don’t like cumbia?”

“I don’t like Augusto,” a student interjected. Rosalina nodded solemnly.

“Yeah, you made dancing a lot funner,” Cil added.

“Really?”

They all nodded and agreed.

I turned my back to them and continued to write the agenda on the whiteboard, but I was really trying to cover a huge smirk.



There was actually one more student that I had to say goodbye to: Matty. I realized that I hadn’t seen him all night long except for a brief “hey” before the celebration began. All the families had filtered out of the gym at this point, leaving the teachers and a few students still inside. Matty wasn’t among them, so I headed outside, where there wasn’t much to see. Tarps getting taken down, tables getting folded together, bees buzzing around trash bags, families and kids taking off in their cars.

I spotted a small group of students chilling and headed toward them, but when I got close they all turned to look at me. None of them was Matty. I smiled, and feeling a little awkward, I bent down to pick up a paper plate, trying to play myself off as having clean-up duty.

I teetered my way back into the gym and planted myself on the bleachers, but I quickly jumped up when I spotted the elusive Fernando with his family and a few teachers in front of the stage. None of the other ninth graders nor I could find him earlier, so I had thought that he simply didn’t show up. But he was here. He and his family started to make their way toward the exit, so I got up to intercept. I was ready to run toward him, ready to shout his name and to wave my camera around in the air. But my feet didn’t take more than two steps before I slowed to a stop. I didn’t have anymore energy to lift my legs.

My eyes followed Fernando as he and his family walked out the door. Once their silhouettes disappeared, orange sunrays shined through the open door. I shielded my eyes until the door swiveled its way back into the doorway, slamming shut and locking out the sun. No more students. Clangs rang through the gym as teachers began folding up chairs.



9:30 AM. The students were coming, but one last thing remained. I scrawled today’s date on the top left corner of the white board in my best cursive: June 23rd, 2008. I turned around to see students already walking in and finding their seats.

A short boy took his seat. His hair was slicked and neatly combed to the side. He put down his backpack, pulled out his binder, placed it on his desk, and cupped his hands in his lap. He’d later introduce himself as Fernando, and he’d later be one of my only two seventh grade writing students to finish all three summers that the Breakthrough program had to offer.

A skinny girl took her seat. She had pale, barely brown skin and long straight dark hair. Her backpack remained strapped to her back. As she leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands, she shook her bangs aside, but they lazily fell back down across her face, obscuring her long, bored gaze. She’d later introduce herself as Leandra, and she’d later teach me how frustrating it was to work with and to control her, but also how rewarding it was to see her shine in her best moments.

A chubby, perhaps overweight boy took his seat. He wore pants and a white polo, which had some visible stains; this was probably his school uniform, although Breakthrough never enforced a dress code for the summer. He dropped his backpack by his side and reclined in his chair. His head turned toward the window, and he looked like his mind had already drifted somewhere beyond the classroom. He’d later introduce himself as Paulo, and I’d later learn about his processing disorder and be one of his first and only few friends at Breakthrough.

A few more students straggled through the door and found their seats. Once I counted ten students, I prepped myself and began. “Hello everyone,” I said, “and welcome to Breakthrough. My name is Brian, and this is my first summer teaching at Breakthrough, just as this is your first summer attending it. I just recently graduated from high school, and this fall I’m heading down to SoCal—that’s Southern California—for college at UC Irvine. I’m majoring in French, and I hope to become a French teacher. If all goes well, I should be graduating in four years in 2012. Some things I like to do include—”

“Hey!”

I turned my head toward a student standing at the door.

“Is this Mark’s seventh grade writing class?” he asked.

“Well, this is seventh grade writing,” I answered, “but Mark’s class is down the hall.”

“K, thanks!” He rushed off. I’d later learn that that kid was Mickey. When he saw my face and I saw his, neither of us had ever suspected the kind of crazy bullying that he would have to put up with and the kind that I would fail to prevent in my classroom a year later.

I poked my head out the door to see if there were anymore students lost in the hallways. Everyone had found their way to their classrooms, so I returned to the front of the whiteboard.

“Well,” I said, “it looks like everyone’s here...” I glanced over my students and took turns locking eyes with each and everyone of them, and they’d timidly smile back as I smiled at them, all of us unaware of the kinds of relations we’d form, the struggles we’d go through, and the breakthroughs we’d make together.

I clasped my hands. “Alright!” I cheered. “Let’s get started.”

That’s Just the Way It Is: Part 2

At 4:30 on a hot sunny Saturday, parents and kids came together to congregate outside a school gymnasium. As they lined up for the potluck table, they fought for shade under the tarps so that they wouldn’t sweat in their Sunday outfits. Families sat at picnic tables, on concrete ledges, and in the grass underneath the trees. The kids introduced their parents to their new best friends they made over the summer, and different families sat together to get to know one another. Smiles and laughter set the day’s mood, the right kind of mood for a prideful celebration of success, friendships, and education. Tonight, the night of July 31st, was Breakthrough’s summer 2010 celebration night.

Trung and I were busy standing at a sign-in table and handing out programs to arriving parents.

“Are you my daughter’s teachers?” a mom asked us.

“Oh yes, your daughter was in my French class,” Trung answered. She smiled and then turned to me.

“Oh, I’m not a teacher this year,” I said as I pointed to the last line on my name tag. It read BTSJ Summers ‘08 & ‘09. “However, I knew your daughter last year!” She smiled again, though not as big, and then she left quickly to get in line for the potluck.

My smile turned crooked. “Alright,” I said, “I’m going to go catch up with the students.”

I spotted Patty lingering around the side of a building by herself. I sighed and chuckled to myself; Patty was still Patty, sweet and smart with a slight sting of self-importance. Time to go rescue her from loneliness.

As I headed toward her, she looked up at me and started walking toward me. I waved my hand and smiled, but to my surprise, she kept on walking and stared right past me. It wasn’t until we were a yard apart when she noticed and stopped. “Oh hi Brian! You actually came all the way from Irvine?”

“Yeah, of course I—”

“Pattyyy!!!” A student came up from behind me and hugged her. It was Lylith, a student who shared one of my eighth grade classes with Patty last year. “Did you bring the present?” she asked her.

“Yeah, it’s in my car right now. I wasn’t too sure if I should’ve brought it out. Are we are going to give it to her now?” Patty said.

“Yeah, of course!”

Gift? “Wait.” I tried to cut into the conversation. “Gift for who?”

“For Maymay!” Patty answered.

Maymay. She was the language arts teacher for the ninth graders—all seven of them.

Two more of the ninth graders gathered around to discuss the secret gift. One of the two was Rosalina, who took my (and another teacher’s) dance class as a seventh grader, a very shy seventh grader. Now she was taking a very active part in the discussion. Lan and Jake couldn’t make it to celebration night tonight, and no one could find Fernando, the seventh ninth grader. The four ninth graders present decided that it’d be just them who’d give the gift to Maymay.

“Alright,” Patty said, “I’ll go to my car and grab the present.” She turned around started running, but I called out her name.

“Patty!” I caught up to her. “Need someone to accompany you to your parents’ car? Y’know, just in case the forest monsters come out of the tree and try to grab you.”

Patty smiled, humoring me. “Sure Brian, protect me from the forest monsters.”

“Alright,” I said. She took off running, and I followed close behind her to the parking lot.



“Brian! Slow down!” Patty caught up to me as I rushed through the hallway to the staff room to get my lunch. I knew what she wanted to talked about, so I spoke before she could.

“Patty, it’s the last day of Breakthrough. Spend time with your crew, say goodbye to them at the very least.”

“They can wait,” she said. “I was never really one for crew time. I’ll have to see them all again anyway next summer.”

“Not a lot of students come back for the ninth grade program.”

“Are you coming back next year for the ninth grade program?” she asked.

“I, uh...” I stuttered. “Alright Patty, what did you really want to talk about?”

“Oh you know what I wanted to talk about,” she laughed. “I just can’t believe you all had us a fooled.”

I shrugged. “Well, you guys kept on guessing girl teachers.” My students knew that I was dating another teacher on staff, and they had been trying to figure out who all summer long. Only very few knew because they managed to find holes in my privacy settings for MySpace and FaceBook before I readjusted them, but they respected my request to not let the secret out. On the last day of Breakthrough, I had given them permission to tell anyone who asked. Pretty much all of my students who didn’t know went straight to them.

“You and Trung,” Patty said. “It makes so much sense now.”

“Definitely makes a lot more sense than me and Olga, right?”

“Yeah, definitely. You and Trung are adorable; I hope you two last.”

I nodded. “Let’s hope so too. You should probably go line up with your crew now so they’re not waiting on you.”

“Alright, fine. I’ll talk to you later!”



We all gathered behind a building. I leaned against a tree watching as Lylith brought Maymay over to Patty, the two ninth graders, and the really big, wrapped shoulder-to-shoulder length box, which was topped off with a nice and neat bowtie. Maymay saw the box and covered her mouth.

“This is from all of us ninth graders,” Patty said. “Lan and Jake couldn’t be here today, and no one knows where Fernando is right now, but they pitched in. We all did.”

Maymay stood in place, speechless.

“What are you waiting for?” Lylith said. “Go ahead and open it!”

Maymay carefully kneeled down in front of the box and undid the bow. She lifted the lid and pulled out the tissue paper, gently laying them all to the side. Then she reached inside with both hands and pulled out a thick fleece hoodie.

“Oh my gosh!” she cried. “Is this because...it’s always...” she paused to fight back tears. “It was always freezing in our classroom and how I...”

“...and you never had a sweater,” Patty finished for her.

Maymay fanned herself profusely, overcome with surprise and joy. “My gosh, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry tonight.” She took a deep breath and suddenly turned to me. I was taken aback by her teary pink eyes. “Were you in on this too, Brian?”

“Nah, I didn’t find out about the plan until fifteen minutes ago. I just helped transport the gift from the car to here. It was in a pretty big heavy box, y’know. It was all these four here, and the rest of the ninth graders.”

She turned back toward them, beaming. All four of them surrounded her in a giant group hug, as I, now feeling awkward leaning there against a tree, glanced away, but I couldn’t help but sneak peeks every now and then to see if they were still swaying in their huddle. Yep, still hugging.

The Breakthrough summer class of 2010. They started out in seventh grade in 2008, and I started with them. We originally started with over sixty, but when they came back as eighth graders in 2009, a good handful had dropped out, leaving us with fifty. Throughout Breakthrough’s history, only few students ever come back for the ninth grade and final summer, however, and so for this year, the Breakthrough class of 2010 only came back as six students.

I had grown with my students, being the seventh grade writing teacher when they were seventh graders, and being the eighth grade writing teacher the following summer when they were eighth graders. I wasn’t there for the few ninth graders that came back. (Hell, I wasn’t too sure if they would’ve given me ninth grade language arts if I had come back for a third summer.)

After looking at the ninth graders give Maymay the gift though, and after hearing all the great things about her from my students during my first visit four weeks ago, them today at celebration night, and Trung throughout the last six weeks, I couldn’t be any happier that the students who I raised the past two summers ended with a strong and great teacher, one that was a far better teacher than I had ever been. Clearly.

6 PM. The doors to the gymnasium opened. It was time to head inside and commence Breakthrough’s summer 2010 celebration night. I didn’t want to break up the giant group hug, so I quietly left the scene to head inside.

That’s Just the Way It Is: Part 1

I made it.

I really made it. I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to scream, jump, and cry, all at once because I knew that this was the start of something new in my life. Out of the hundred people that tried to get it, only very few actually got it. My last few years of dedication and wanting something like this finally paid off.

I sat on the toilet again to listen to the voice message on my phone one last time before heading back out to work: Hello Brian, this is Cesar Mendez calling to inform you that after looking over your application again and carefully considering your interview, we would like to offer you a position as a teacher this summer for Breakthrough 2008.



The bus finally departed from the parking lot. I sat next to the window, staring out at the sky and trying to avoid any conversation with the crazy Vietnamese lady sitting next to me. I planned on sleeping through the entire seven-hour bus ride because I didn’t get any after I came back from the summer intensive kick back at 4:30 AM, which was five hours ago.

My brain filled with thoughts, however. I was on my way back up to NorCal for Breakthrough’s Celebration night. My main concern was whether or not this trip was worth it, because I was starting to doubt. Would my being at Celebration Night have any real impact for the students? I know when I visited my Breakthrough students at the end of their second week, they were excited and missed me very much. But that was only the second week, the second out of six weeks. Four weeks had passed since then, giving my students enough time to adjust and finally make friends with the new teachers. Four weeks also gave them time to forget about me, to find their replacements.

Hell, I felt like sometimes I wasn’t even that memorable. Last year at celebration night, the students roared like crazy when the first picture of me came up in the slide show, but it was, I figured, because I was a fun guy. Fun—something that only lied on the surface level. There were other teachers, including Trung, who had students that confided deep dark secrets to them. Trust and respect—that was what I thought made a teacher memorable. Anyone could be fun. I made a lot of jokes with students, but I hardly ever had anyone confide in me their secrets.

But this kind of shit happens, I tried to convince myself. It’s part of being a teacher. Every beginning of the school year, students get new teachers, and teachers get new students. Everyone is able to move on and forget about each other. So why did I still hang onto the students I had last summer, and hell, the students I had two summers ago?

When I taught at Breakthrough, I had convinced myself that the students needed me, and in turn, I needed them.

Somewhere along my line of thinking, I finally fell asleep.



“Oh my gaaaaaaawd it’s so hot in here,” a teacher groaned.

All twenty-six teachers retreated into the classroom, sat at our seats, and planted our faces on our desks, groaning and tired after having returned from a “team-building” day at a laser tag arena.

Theo, who was always bursting with limitless energy, paraded through the door carrying his boom box. Having been a veteran Breakthrough teacher, this summer he came back as the Dean of Students, a role that he very much deserved because of his insight into who these students we’d be teaching really were.

The second he opened his mouth to talk, all groans and murmurs ceased. “Alright everyone!” he began. “The first day of teaching starts in three days on Monday. Y’all made it through a very long and hard week of training. I know y’all are tired so I’m going to let you guys relax some more, but I’m going to play a song and I want y’all to really pay attention to the lyrics behind it. I didn’t just randomly choose a song for y’all to knock out to. I think this song really represents some of the struggles of our Breakthrough students, and when you guys listen to it, I want you to think about things like, how can I help my students? How can I be a teacher, role model, and friend to my students? What kind of impact am I making on their lives? Remember, these students—they need you.”

He finished his speech on that note—the students needed us. Us. The room remained silent as we tried to comprehend the meaning of this.

Theo, glad to see us reawakened, set down his boom box and hit play.

A nostalgic-sounding string of piano notes filled the room. I thought it sounded nice, nothing else, but nearly everyone else applauded in approval. The bassline kicked in, followed by the lyrics. It was rap.

Come on come on—
I see no changes wake up in the morning and I ask myself,
is life worth living, should I blast myself?
I’m tired of bein’ poor and even worse I’m black.
My stomach hurts so I’m lookin’ for a purse to snatch.
Cops give a damn about a negro:
Pull the trigger kill a nigga—he’s a hero.
Give the crack to the kids—Who the hell cares?
One less hungry mouth on the welfare.

I looked around shifty-eyed and then decided that I should nod my head, pretending that I recognized this apparently old-school song that everyone had heard.

We gotta start makin’ changes.
Learn to see me as a brother instead of two distant strangers,
and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
How can the Devil take a brother if he’s close to me?
I’d love to go back to when we played as kids,
but things changed, and that’s the way it is

Come on come on...
That’s just the way it is.
Things’ll never be the same.
That’s just the way it is.
Aww yeah.

Weeds

I slouched back on a couch and watch an inebriated Alfonso play Marvel vs. Capcom against another inebriated guy. It was 3:30 AM, just an hour and a half after we all got some Mexican food and celebrated the end of our dance camp’s July session. The impromptu kickback at an apartment of a dancer we hardly ever talked to already started to die. At least, it was dying until a few others came through the door with a fresh bag of greens.

No one wasted any time. In less than a minute, people were already lighting up a bong.

After taking a few hits, one particular dancer named Walden planted himself next to me on the couch. “Since you refused to drink,” he said to me, “you have to get high.”

I rolled my eyes. “No,” I told him.

“Com’n, just one hit!”

I folded my arms. “No, and don’t bother trying. You’re not going to convince me.”

“Look, I don’t want to convince anyone to try anything that they haven’t ever done before, which is why I’m leaving your friend Kelvin alone over there, but you said you’ve tried it once before. Why not do it again?”

“Because I didn’t like it my first time.”

“Why didn’t you like it?”

“It’s complicated and it’ll take forever to explain. So just know, I didn’t like it before, and I’m not going to like it now.”

“Maybe you didn’t smoke with the right people. Maybe you need to smoke it with uuuh-uh-uh-us.” He motioned at some people standing in the kitchen chatting amongst themselves. I looked at Jacob, who was sitting on another couch taking a hit. He looked up at me and shook his head, cautioning me not to give in.

“It’s not about the people,” I said. “It’s about smoking itself. It’s the effects that I don’t like.”

“What’s wrong with the effects?”

“Look, my full reason is long and convoluted, so I’ll just tell you this: I like reality the way it already is, and I hold my perception of it really dearly to me. I don’t let anything or anyone come and change my reality and the way I perceive it. Okay?”

“So you won’t even take just one hit?” Walden asked.

“No, I won’t.”

Walden dropped his shoulders and sighed. “Ok, fine.” He lifted himself off the couch and left somewhere outside.

I sat there quiet, still slumped in my seat and twiddling my thumbs. With Walden out of my face, I buried myself deep into my thoughts, deep enough to seriously consider whether or not I wanted to do this.



“Realize what?” Trung asked.

My eyes followed a bright green sign until it disappeared over the roof of my car. Two miles until the Bay Bridge, a four-mile menace that hung some several hundred feet over a deep dark boundless body of treacherous waters. I took several deep breaths and grasped my steering wheel with both hands.

“Maybe I was wrong,” I paused to take a breath and noticed that my emotions were starting to overwhelm me. “And maybe I’ve been wrong the last entire two years.”

“Well hell yeah you’ve been wrong!” Trung chastised me. “Rainy was pretty much all you could ask for in a guy. Dancer, singer, Filipino, not a douchebag, yet you broke up with him! And for what, Brian. For what?”

“Well it was because—”

“It was so you could continue calling special ed kids stupid! So that you could make fun of students with mental disabilities for not being as smart as other kids their age.”

I kept my hands glued to the steering wheel. The last exit before the Bay Bridge was approaching in less than half a mile. Should I use this chance to escape? “It’s more than that,” I tried to rationalize. “It was about the way I think, the way I see things, which was what Ranier tried to change. And you know that I can’t let go of the way I see things. It makes me who I am, and who I’ve been for a really long time. I made a sacrifice and...”

“And what?”

There was no use rationalizing, especially since I already admitted the truth to myself. “Like I said, I—I’m wrong. I...I made the wrong choice.” My throat throbbed.

“Look Brian, I know this whole thing with you calling special ed kids stupid and your rationale for doing it—I know that this is you, that this is something you can’t and won’t change for a really long time, but...” Trung looked at me and noticed my lips quivering. “...Are you okay?” he asked.

I barely uttered the “f” in “I’m fine” when I felt every little bit of anguish pent inside of me come bursting out in an embarrassingly high-pitched wail. Tears immediately streamed down my face.

“Brian!” Trung lifted both his hands as if to do something, but his seatbelt restrained him.

“I’m...” A pant accompanied each syllable, and each syllable came out distorted by my struggle to fight back more sobbing. “I’m. Fucking. Fine. God fucking damn it!” I pried one hand off the steering wheel so I could wipe off my tears, and shielding my face from Trung, I wept under my breath and panted through my nose.

“Brian...” Trung sighed. He placed his hand on the back of my head and rubbed it gently. “It’s okay, Brian. Let it all out...and maybe you should get off the freeway before we get onto the Bay Bridge.”

I looked through the rearview mirror to see the last exit disappear behind me. It was too late to get off. But that didn’t matter. I opened my mouth and breathed out, letting the cries stagger out.



I leaned forward on the couch and scratched my head. “Alfonso,” I said. “I wanna take a hit.”

Alfonso, bong in hand, exchanged a glance with Kelvin. “Wait, what?” Kelvin said. “Did Walden change your mind?”

“No, he didn’t. Just pass me the bong.” Alfonso sat down next to me with the bong, and Jacob came over to ask me if I really wanted to do this. “Yeah,” I told him. “Don’t question my reasons. Just light it up.”

The Gummy Octopus

Our teacher sat in her big red comfy chair, and we sat on the floor. We looked up at her. She held something in her hand. A clear tub with a bunch of colors inside.

She said, in Vietnamese, “Do you know what this is?” she lifted the tub up.

I tried to see more inside of it, but there was a really big fat sticker covering the front part of it.

A student raised his hand, and the teacher called on him. He said, “I think the label says... gummy...oc-to-...”

“Gummy octopuses!” she smiled. “It’s the second week of first grade, and we just had our first English spelling test last Friday. Every week, I’m going to award each student who gets an eighty percent or better on his test with a gummy octopus.”

Gummy octopus! Eighty percent or better! I scooted up to the front and smiled really big. She smiled back and read a list of names. They got the gummy octopuses. I listened for my name.

She read: “Tuan, Alexis, Ly, Qui, Ben, Bao, Joanna, Trang, Phuc, and Daisy.” They all got up to get their gummy octopuses. I waited for my teacher to say more names.

They all sat down, and I still waited. She put the lid back on the tub and put it away, and she told us to go back to our seats. No more gummy octopuses for today.

I stopped smiling and felt sad. I wanted to say something but I didn’t know what to say. I must of got a seventy-nine percent. But I thought I did really good! One of the spelling words was ‘turkey,’ and I put ‘red’ instead because I thought that was a more better word. Maybe next week, I’ll get a gummy octopus.



The clock ticked 1 AM when I sat down on the floor in the middle among twenty other dancers. Tired, sweaty, and hungry, we had just danced our way through an intense four and a half hours, and now we all wanted to leave, go eat, and go back home. But now we all waited anxiously as our captains reviewed all their notes and made their final decisions about who they would cast in which of our set’s seven pieces.

I had been taking dance classes five days a week all throughout June. I drove to Covina for classes at Stylz Studio Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, and on Tuesday and Thursday I drove to La Habra for a one-month long session of dance camp from Team Millenia. The classes at Stylz were no more than classes, but the choreography that I learned with Team Millenia would actually be put together in a performance for a big showcase of all the TM dance camp sessions at the end of the summer, like the Funksters Summer Intensive dance camp I took (and whined about a lot) last summer. Throughout the month we had been auditioning for each piece, and tonight, we auditioned for our last two. The captains had waited until the very end of the session to tell us which pieces we were chosen for, and now, they were going to reveal who got into what piece.

My friend Angela sat down next to me. “What pieces do you think you’ll get into?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. We’ll see. I don’t wanna get my hopes up.” Secretly though, I knew I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get into like at least two because then I would feel like I didn’t improve at all since last summer.

Then I learned that by default, each dancer got into at least three pieces. So I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get four or more.

Our two captains stood up in the front with their lists, ready to read us names. “Alright, so we’re going to go through each piece and read the ones who got casted in them. Ready? We’re starting with TL’s piece, so listen for your name.”

They went through the names in alphabetical order, so when they read “Brent” followed by “Cameron,” I sighed and dropped my shoulders a little. Then they went through the list for the next piece. Again, they skipped from “Binh” to “Carly.”

“...and Randy. That’s it for CJ’s piece. Now we’re going to read names for Will’s contemporary piece. We only chose thirteen dancers for this one. Congratulations to Adriana...”

When I auditioned for this the previous week, the judges told me that I really, really surprised them in a great way. I wasn’t too sure if I could believe them, because my body was made too awkwardly and too inflexibly for contemporary. So, I didn’t get my hopes up for this one.

“...Ben, Brian—”

My eyes widened.

“OOOOOH SHIT!” my friends all turned toward me with their high-five hands already raised.

“Congrats dude,” Alfonso patted me on the back. I shrugged. I had yet to get my default number of pieces, so I didn’t want to think much of getting into this one piece, yet.

Then I got into the next piece. Alright, I was in two.

The captains started on the list for a piece that we auditioned just today and only had two days to practice. Maybe no one else practiced it really thoroughly, because I got into that one too.

There were two more pieces left that I might’ve been casted in. I wondered if I was in at least one of them. That one more would mean a lot. If I didn’t get it, then I’d have trouble convincing myself that I didn’t just get relegated to my three current pieces by sympathetic default. But if I did get that fourth piece, then I could turn my interpretations completely around and think that it was not the captains, but me who put in the time and effort to place myself in the pieces.

I didn’t get the second to the last one. Instead, I got the outro, my fourth piece. I closed my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. Once the captains finished reading their lists, all the dancers around me erupted into chatter about what pieces they got into. My friends were still congratulating me about managing to get into the contemporary piece, but now, at this point I just wanted to go eat and then sleep.

My friends and I did eat, but then we all got invited to party/have a kickback with the other TM dance camp dancers, but what ensued was a totally different story.

This is not a Phone Conversation

“Brian, Brian!”

“What’s up Trung?”

“Guess what I read on Tumblr today!”

“Ugh, this better not be about ‘saggin’ spelled backwards.”

“No it’s not.”

“Ok, what’s it about?”

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Get this: There’s a ‘lie’ in ‘believe,’ ‘over’ in ‘lover,’ ‘end’ in ‘friend,’ ‘us’ in ‘trust,’ and ‘if’ in ‘life.’”

“First of all, you’re really behind on Tumblr. I read that like in April, and now it’s mid-July. Second, all of that shit is stupid.”

“What?! Don’t you think it’s crazy?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes it does. ‘Lie’ in ‘believe’? That’s like describing one of your philosophies!”

“Have you ever heard of apophenia?”

“A what?”

“Apophenia. It’s like a psychological kind of phenomenon where we people find meaning and patterns in random events that don’t really have any kind of meaning or patterns. People survive freak accidents so they think the hand of God must have come to intervene when really, they were just really lucky. Someone’s clothes all turn pink in the laundry, and he thinks it’s a message from his dead girlfriend whose favorite color was pink, but really, that shit happens in the laundry all the fucking time. And like this, ‘lie’ in ‘believe’? It’s a coincidence.”

“Oh my god Brian, why can’t you see the art in this?”

“What art? There’s no art in it. Someone just decided to compile a list of words that happened to have other words in them, and those words happened to be words that everyone could relate to. Is there any meaning in the fact that ‘tart’ is in ‘start’ or ‘pies’ is in ‘spies’?”

“Brian, for once can’t you just appreciate what’s presented right before you? You’re the type that would actually look at a painting of a pipe and say, ‘This is not a pipe; it’s a painting.’ You always have to go through this convoluted thought process where you logically deconstruct everything until it loses all its meaning, and not only does it lose its meaning, but it loses its enjoyment and entertainment value. You’re just left bored and without any kind of imagination. Nothing in your life excites you.”

“There’s stuff that excites me, but it just has to have meaning. What’s the point of appreciating something if in reality, it doesn’t mean anything? Y’know, if you take ‘lie’ and ‘believe’ and translate them to French, then you’ll realize that there’s no meaning. Because really, is there a ‘mensonge’ in ‘croire’? No, there fucking isn’t.”

“Well, ‘lie’ being in ‘believe’ might not have any inherent meaning, but you can give it meaning. I could write a piece of spoken word about it. In English.”

“Ugh, you and your spoken word. So melodramatic.”

“And of course, you can’t appreciate the art in things like spoken word. Y’know, we were like this too when we were together. You always acted on your convoluted form of logic and rationale, and I acted on feelings and morale. Each of our ways of thinking had its pros and cons—”

“Look, it’s 2 AM and I would like to go to sleep. Can we just say that I win this debate? I go with the logical way of thinking, and that’s the kind of thinking that makes the world go around.”

“Who says? Emotions and feelings make the world go around. And you know you’re not going to go asleep. You’re going to be chatting with your sex buddies.”

“I don’t have sex buddies—anymore—and yes, I am going to sleep. G’night Trung. Have fun teaching at Breakthrough tomorrow.”

“Alright, fine, g’night. Loser.”

Drive

There’s something about driving alone late at night, something so relaxing and so illuminating. It’s the only time when I can (and have to) force myself to stay awake while doing nothing for a really long time, nothing except, of course, resting my foot on the gas, keeping my left hand at the bottom of the steering wheel, and staring out into a road. No distractions.

Even though I know my destination, I feel like I’m driving nowhere because I’m not getting there in half an hour, in the next hour, or the next five hours, and the only thing I can see before me is more road heading into a black abyss. This is when I find the time to think and to reflect deeply, real deeply, far more deeply than the amount of reflection I do when I write.

I left my home in NorCal for UCI on the evening of July 4th, of all days. I figured, y’know, traffic would be a bitch the day before when everyone traveled to visit their families, and a bitch the day after when everyone drove back home—with hangovers. But it wouldn’t take much for anyone to figure that this was some lame excuse, some kind of ulterior motive because really, why the hell would I leave friends and family on an iconic American holiday?

While driving through the deserts of Central Valley, I glanced into my rearview mirror every now and then to soak up the last few moments of the sun as it set over the horizon behind me. I mused about the symbolism of my situation: I was driving farther and farther away from the light as I headed down an endless shadowy road. The dark sky through my front window stood in stark contrast to the image in my mirrors.

I tried to keep myself somewhat active by sipping on two pearl milk tea drinks, one of which was Trung’s. Just before I left, Trung and I got drinks from Tapioca Express. We actually did this the day before, too, and in fact, I had originally planned on leaving the day before, July 3rd. We went to Tapioca Express, and as we wandered around the plaza with our drinks, Trung urged me to stay an extra night and hang out with Peter and black John. I was supposed to hang out with them on Friday for an early July 4th barbeque, but after I got home from Breakthrough, I passed out on my bed for five hours. Trung convinced me, so the two of us chilled at Peter’s house with him and John. We played Super Smash Bros Brawl and I learned how to play beer pong, but knowing how destructive a single beer was to me, we used water so that I wouldn’t wake up the next day feeling too shitty for my solo drive back down to Irvine.

10 PM. The sun had been long gone now. Black skies through my front window, black skies in my mirrors, black skies everywhere. Trying to hold onto any glimmer of light, I found myself staring into a circuit of city lights far away in the east. Maybe it was Fresno, or Visalia. I doubled back between watching the road and watching the cities, but eventually, something completely stole my attention: a burst of red, white, and blue sparkles over the island of yellow lights. I had an entire firework show in the left corner of my eye.

I turned to the passenger seat with my mouth already halfway open and words ready to come out, foolishly thinking that for a second, I had someone to tell, “Oh my god, did you see that?” But no, there was no one, no one but my stuff animal whale, Op, and his mate, Mop. So, I resolved to enjoying the fireworks with only these two and the quiet company that they kept.

The fireworks, they made me think about a lot of things. Like the time my family and I took a vacation to Hawaii and watched fireworks from the shores of Honolulu, and my old brother and I skipped rocks over the warm ocean water—that was 1998. I thought about the time my high school friends and I watched fireworks from the hillside of a rich country club neighborhood, and I tried to flirt with a friend’s friend from her taekwondo class—that was nearly ten years later, in 2007. And the following year, Doug, a fellow Breakthrough teacher, Trung, and I drove around Cupertino tracking down a decent place to park and watch fireworks. We gave up and tried to catch glimpses of fireworks from a school parking lot, but we could only see so much shrouded by the dark silhouettes of redwood trees. We had better luck in 2009, fortunately. Doug directed us atop a mountain in a small town where street lights were a scarce luxury. We stood in the outskirts of the entire Silicon Valley where we spectated the firework shows of several cities across the south bay. I held Trung close in my arms, and occasionally we both reached and grasped the air, pretending to catch the fireworks in our hands as if they were confetti strewn about the night sky.

After seeing a third city’s firework show, I realized the reason I left on July 4th: I didn’t have anyone to enjoy it with. I stopped talking to almost all of my high school friends right after graduation, I broke up with Trung, I broke up with Ranier, I didn’t come back to Breakthrough, I left my family for college three hundred miles away from home, and I just sorta popped back into Peter and Black John’s lives after inexcusably missing out on scheduled hangouts over the last ten months.

But maybe there was more to my reason; the more I reflected on the people I abandoned, the more I realized that maybe I left because, well, I didn’t think that I deserved to enjoy it with anyone. This lonely six-hour trip on the night of July 4th was my punishment.

I got my last firework show around 11 PM, and, trying to keep the last images of light ingrained in my brain, I drove my trip’s last two hours in darkness back to Irvine.

You Are My Best Friend

I bit my lips as I felt my face soften, and, copying the students, my lips curled to a smile, a humble one. I nodded slowly as I spoke in a lower voice. “Bonjour classe,” I breathed. “Bonjour.” I took Trung’s place at the whiteboard in front of his ten students and asked, “Ça va?”

“Oui, ça va,” they all answered in unison.

I scanned the faces of his students. Many of them were familiar, but there was on particular one that I had to stop at. I locked eyes with Matty, and we gave each other a subtle wassup nod.

“Alors,” I clasped my hands together, “Allons-y!”



After the students left for the lightrail station at 3 PM, I retreated back to the staffroom to rest a little before what would probably be a really long staff meeting. With Breakthrough ‘09 commencing in less than a week, we teachers would be finalizing every huge and every minute detail of our celebration night’s in-school practices, transportation, songs, displays, and the event itself. I looked over the student song, which my co-crew leader and I would have to review with our crew of 10 students the next day. In honor of Michael Jackson’s death five weeks ago, the students had voted to sing a Breakthrough-fied version of “Beat It.”

“Hey,” Nicky, my co-crew leader, said as she sat down next to me. “Guess what came up at lunch at our crew table while you were away working with your dance students?”

“Oh my god, what large animal did Matty liken Gabrielle to this time?”

Nicky laughed. “No, ‘pig’ was just that one and only time. But anyway, we were all sitting close together playing Egyptian War when Gloria sat down and was all like, with this shady look and shady tone, ‘Yo guys, I heard Brian is gay.’ And she said it like she was all disgusted too.”

“Oooh, yeah, Gloria doesn’t like me too much because I make her do her work in my writing class. For example, today I told her to pick up her pencil. So what’d you say to her?”

“Nothing. Matty jumped right in, and he pretty much jumped down her throat. He was all, ‘If he’s gay, why does it even matter? Brian’s still Brian. He’s a great crew leader, a great teacher, and a great friend!’ All the other students agreed. He put Gloria in her place.”

“Wow” was all I could manage. I leaned back and rocked in my chair. “Wow.” Matty was only 12 years old.



All the students giggled as their heads followed me around the room. I pranced from corner to corner like a giant leaping leprechaun, waving my hands in the air and awkwardly doing dance moves. I kicked over one of my speakers trying to jerk.

“Alors!” I yelled. “Tout le monde, une fois ! Jeeeeeeeeeeee—”

They all joined in as we sang the last line of the song together. “Jeeeeeeeee suizzz uune piiiizza, tombée en ruine!”

I applauded the students. “Bravo, vous êtes toutes les pizzas! You are all pizzas.”

After class ended, I walked out with Matty to Breakthrough’s brunch time. He was excited to see me, as I was to see him. But we only got to catch up really briefly because once the picnic area came into view, I heard another familiar voice that made my heart leap.

“IS THAT BRI—”

“OH MY GOSH IT’S BRIAN!”

I was suddenly ambushed by three or four girls, particularly ones that liked to be touchy with me when I was a teacher last year. I shook them off of me and tried to individually give side hugs to each one, and then I noticed some guys lining up, including Timmy.

“Where you’ve been man?” “Brian’s back!” “Are you swimming for pool day?” “Are you teaching today?” “Stay the whole day Brian!” “Brian’s not wearing glasses any more!” “You still have your funny walk!”

I side-hugged a few more students and then decided that this would take forever if I let it continue, and I actually had to go to the copy room to copy some worksheets for Trung. They were getting wrinkled in my hand. I shrugged and ducked my way out of the crowd of students and turned around to wave at them as I ran off. “I’ll be back in a bit!” I shouted to them.

You should’ve come back, Trung had told me. It was something that he told me every night over the phone when he’d tell me about his day at Breakthrough. The kids miss you. My second French class got distracted for ten minutes talking about you. You should’ve come back. I didn’t know whether to believe I really should’ve, but the moment when all those kids ambushed me outside the picnic area—that was when I realized it was true.

Throughout the rest of my visit at Breakthrough, I caught up with several students. Timmy wants to go to a military college. Lilly and Belinda don’t like their dance teacher at their school and wish I were theirs instead (lol). Patty is going through that teenage girl phase where she feels like she’s the only sane person left on the planet. Lorenzo is crushing on Lan, one of six returning ninth graders and one who I taught in my seventh grade writing class in 2008, my first year, and in my eighth grade writing class in 2009. I remember thinking in 2008 that I would teach all the way until the end of 2010 so that I could see how much the seventh graders I started out with would grow through middle school.

The one thing that every student who I talked to told me was, of course, “You should’ve come back.” I had to watch over Trung’s English class while he went to the bathroom to poop, and they all wanted to know, “Why didn’t you come back?” I wish I could tell them. To myself, the reason was understandable: I ran my class to be extra “fun” at the expense of discipline, and some students suffered, socially and academically, and I didn’t want to subject more students to the same suffering. But I felt like all the students would just think I was too much of a coward to come back to try to improve myself. Well, I didn’t know if that was what they would’ve thought, but it was what I started to believe.

The school day ended at 4 PM. The students lined up in front of the buses, and I waved them off. Before leaving, Matty asked me if I was going to come back the next week. Or the week after the next. I was sad to tell him that I’d be back down in Irvine, but I assured him that I’d come back up in four weeks for Breakthrough 2010’s celebration night.

“You definitely should,” he said. He smiled, and I was glad to see that my assurance was enough to make him happy. There was no way I’d miss celebration night.



Matty and I sat down next to each other on the lightrail. I had chaperon duty during the last week of Breakthrough, so I was riding it back with the students to make sure that they got home safely. Matty and I chatted, and he revealed to me that the directors were helping the student make a special surprise for the teachers on the last day of teaching. Matty could not keep any kind of secret, but fortunately I already knew because this was my second summer teaching at Breakthrough, and the students had done something similar during my first in 2008.

“Sorry, I just had to tell you,” Matty said, “because I wrote you something really good and I couldn’t keep it inside.” He exaggerated a shiver.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a rap.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny white note. “Can I read it to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, here’s the rap,” Matty took a long, deep breath. “Brian’s so Asian, he likes to eat rice with beef on the side. You love salmon, which can get a little smelly, but at least it fills your belly. You are my best friend of all of breakthrough; our friendship will always be true...ya!”

I was speechless. Matty could probably tell by the look on my face that I approved, sincerely. He handed me the note, and I reread the rap carefully. Then I flipped to the backside, where there was one last message: I will never forget you, my best friend.

The French Teacher

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

“Aujourd’hui, vous allez présenter vos présentations. Vous avez cinq minutes pour lire et étudier vos phrases, d’accord? Alors, allez-y.”

The middle school students understood hardly half of the French, but they still nodded at their teacher. They poured over their notes on how to introduce themselves and how to talk about their birthdays and the things they liked to do, and their lips quivered as they silently repeated to themselves their French sentences over and over again.

“Hey,” one girl whispered to a boy next to her. “I hear he’s going to be here today.”

His face lit up. “Really?”

“Qui parle?! Est-ce que tu voudrais présenter premièrement?”

The students ducked their head down.

“Well, the five minutes I gave you guys to study your sentences are up anyway. Are you guys ready to present?”

Everyone looked away, trying to avoid locking eye contact with their teacher. They knew that whenever their teacher used English, something serious was going to go down.

“Well, before I call on someone, I’d actually like to introduce another person first. A special guest, and some of you may already know him. He’ll be here to listen to your introductions because he wants to get to know you, and after you guys introduce yourselves, he’s going to teach the class.”

The students shot nervous glances to each other. Guests usually meant older adults in business suits, the kinds of people that made them nervous.

“Alright, can our special guest please come out?”

A crash, and then a sudden slam startled the students in their seats. All heads shot to the back corner of the room to investigate the intrusion.

“BONJOUR CLASSE!”

The students stared in awe.

I closed the doors to the closet behind me and marched forward. I stood there, my face beaming, my hands placed on my hips, and the morning sun shining through the blinds against my face. I glanced at Trung, who stood at the front grinning, and then I looked at the students. Their lips slowly curled to a meek, but happy smile.

I bit my lips as I felt my face soften, and, copying the students, my lips curled to a smile, a humble one. I nodded slowly as I spoke in a lower voice. “Bonjour classe,” I breathed. “Bonjour.”



One Week Earlier

2 in the afternoon. Trung stood at the white board readjusting the class agenda while his students slowly trickled through the door and sat at their desks. When he finished, he turned around to see Lilly raising her hand.

“Que voudrais-tu, Lilly?”

“Wasn’t Brian a French major?”

The eighth graders looked up from their notes at the sound of the name. A few seventh graders new to Breakthrough this summer glanced around confused.

“Who’s Brian?”

“He taught at Breakthrough last year!” Lilly answered. “And he taught the year before last one’s too. He was my dance teacher and my crew leader.”

“Yeah, he was my dance teacher too,” another student added. “He was pretty much one of my favorite teachers.”

Trung saw the excited looks on his students’ faces, and he tried to cut them off before this conversation went any farther. “Alright, classe, sortez vos—”

“Remember when he sang Boom Boom Pow at celebration night last year? He said the ‘s’ word!”

Murmurs erupted into excited chatter as students recounted their favorite memories of one of the “coolest” and the least teacher-like teacher from the past two summers. Trung sighed as he dropped his shoulders and leaned up against the whiteboard. He smiled. Damn it Brian, you still somehow manage to cause disruptions even when you don’t teach at Breakthrough anymore.

“Trung, why isn’t Brian back?”

“Yeah, what’s he doing right now?”

“Well...” Trung paused to think up of an excuse. “Brian really wishes that he could’ve been back. Trust me, I talk to him every day, and he’s sad that he couldn’t be here for his third summer. He’s just...he’s really, really busy this summer with...important stuff.”



2:10 in the afternoon. I dragged my shirtless self out of my bed and into my desk chair. I felt like browsing porn on Xtube, so I did. Guy jacks off in the library? ...ew, he’s fat and hairy. Next. Asian man gets it in both holes? ...is that a bald spot on the back of his head? Next. Then I did my thing, wiped up my mess, and crawled back into bed. I needed twenty more minutes.



After all the students departed on school buses at 4 PM, Trung retreated to the staff room to wait for the staff meeting to start. One of this summer’s new teachers approached him to ask a question.

“Hey Trung, who’s Brian?”

“Brian?”

“Yeah, my student Timmy says I remind him of one of last year’s teachers, Brian. Is that a good or bad thing?”

Trung chuckled. “It could be good, it could be bad, it could be both.”

“Speaking of Brian,” Doug, a veteran Breakthrough teacher of three previous years joined in, “Why isn’t he back this year, Trung? I really thought he was going to come back. He should’ve. What’s his sad excuse?”

“Well...” Trung didn’t want to divulge all the reasons in front of a new teacher, so he tried to think of a temporary one to use until he could discuss the actual reasons with Doug later in private.

“He’s just really busy with his studies.”



4:15 PM. I was sitting at my kitchen table with a bowl of stale Honey Nut Cheerios and my laptop when I couldn’t believe what I found online: two hundred pages of philosophy. The best philosophy ever, the kind that I could spend all night reading and commit to memory. I read the title of the book to myself out loud, “The Philosophy of...The X-Files. Fuck yes.” I began to read in my head. I would like to say—and, dare I say, want to believe—that the divergent approaches embodied in the characters of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder are a bit analogous to those of two giants from the history of philosophy: Plato and Aristotle... This was fucking amazing.