MY GOOD FRIEND BARRY
A young adult novel
By
Jeff Provine
Episode Three: The Brain Trust
The much-anticipated bell, whose ring sounded the end of another day of education, woke me from my reading, and I had hurried to catch my good friend Barry as he left his senior English class. The teacher there was nice enough, perhaps one of the best at the school, and I had more than once sat through one of her discussions of literature and society. Today was a vocabulary test day, though, and I had no desire to watch students furrow their brows over words they would never use, like “hale” or “misanthropic”.
The hallway was crowded with eager teenagers rushing from their rooms and packing into the tight corridors. I dodged and dove, winding around the squirming bodies and slamming locker doors. By the time I reached the English room, it was empty, and I moaned to myself as I again plunged into the roaring torrent of students. The tide carried me toward the doors, trying to flush me out of the school building along with all of the others fleeing school grounds for their hangouts or bedrooms to watch television and complain about their absurd amount of homework. I fought myself free of a band of skateboarders, swam upstream through the mass, and at last came to the proper hallway just in time to see Barry’s shaggy black hair and button-covered backpack disappear into the trivia bowl room. Chasing after him, I stumbled into the room and collapsed onto a desk, panting and promising myself that I would never make such a foolhardy mad dash through school ever again.
I finally found my good friend Barry just as he was turning out of the busy hallway and crossing through the doorframe of Classroom 21. He half-smiled when he saw me enter, but said nothing. Instead, he stared wide-eyed at the arrangement of buzzers, wires, and clocks that made up the intricate machine on which the game of trivia was played. Barry had always enjoyed the idea of being at the buzzer set, though he had only touched it once before in his life. All around the scattered wires and bits of plastic, there were several students already seated, each staring up at Barry and back and forth at one another.
“It’s Weird Kid,” a whisper blew out like the wind among tree leaves.
“What’s he doing here?” another answered.
Weird Kid, Barry, ignored them and moved slowly toward the setup. The nickname had been given to him years ago, probably about fifth grade just after he gave a lengthy report on why we should believe in Yetis. It stuck well, and everyone knew him by it, even those who did not know his real name. Despite being alienated and usually quiet, Barry was a bit of a celebrity: infamous for always doing something strange, whether it be mumbling to himself or sneaking class pets out in his pockets so that they might be liberated from the torturous students that tried to feed them pencil erasers.
“I don’t get it,” the whispers continued. “He’s never come in here before.”
“Quiet,” another hushed him. “I’ll sort this out.”
The cluster of nerds, as terrified by the presence of a newcomer as they were of natural sunlight, slowly parted, and one stood tall. Quite tall, in fact, as he was very much over six feet in height, and his lankiness made him appear even more gigantic. He might have been the captain of the basketball team, if not for his obvious lack of reflexes and coordination. Fate is cruel like that.
“Um, hey,” he said, snorting and breathing heavily as he approached Barry. “What’s up?”
Barry froze, staring up at the giant and struggling to remember to breathe. The nerd wore thick glasses, and his thin, red hair was combed in a perfect part that had not been in style since the early 1970s. His Dungeons and Dragons t-shirt was tucked into his jeans, which were unfortunately too short to cover a line of blindingly white skin above his socks.
“Dude,” I called, snapping Barry from his state of living death. “Let’s get out of here. We don’t need this trivia garbage.”
Barry looked over at me, frowned, twitched, and then looked back upward to the giant. “I’m here to join the team.”
The tall nerd laughed, his head lurching forward and back as he chortled under his raised upper lip. “What? You can’t. We’ve already got a great lineup here.”
“You do?”
The giant turned and thrust a hand toward his three teammates. They were as equally nerdy as their leader; one even carried a briefcase, guaranteeing that no girl would ever talk to him. Pointing to the briefcase-wielding mouth-breather, the tall nerd said, “This is Bill, he’s our science man.”
His finger moved to a South Asian boy. “Sandeep has math.”
He paused again as he moved to point out the final team member, who was cracking his red knuckles nervously. “Oscar is literature and history.”
“And I’m geography and politics,” he said, looming over Barry, who shrunk slightly in the shadow of the giant. “There’s only four places, and we’ve got every field filled up. We don’t need you.”
“What about pop culture?” I shouted from my desk, furious at any insult thrust toward my friend. Barry was much too passive, and I had taken it upon myself to be aggressive for him. The nerds, not hearing me, continued to stare at Barry with their burning eyes. Barry, however, jumped and glanced toward me. I half-smiled as I continued, “And medicine? And there’s no way one kid could know everything from physics to chemistry to technology.”
“Right,” Barry told me. He nodded firmly and said, “Look, I’m just here to show what I can do. If you guys really are better than I am, then whatever.”
“Heh, yeah, whatever.” The giant snorted and ambled away, returning to the cluster of nerdiness behind him. They exchanged a few more whispers, then went suddenly silent.
Exactly at that moment, Mr. Johnson appeared, reading a folded newspaper and drinking from a coffee cup that had not been washed since the beginning of the school year. He moved wordlessly to the clock at the center of the trivia mechanism, never looking up from his paper. Everyone sat silently till he was finished, and then he looked up with a deep breath.
“Ah, Barry,” Mr. Johnson said. “Good to see you. Well, we’re late already, so let’s get started and… Barry, why aren’t you at a buzzer?”
“There are only four,” Barry said softly. The established players had already taken root at the assembled buzzers, smiling to themselves and at the ostracized newcomer.
“Good, then we’re not needed, and we can get out of here,” I announced. “If we’re lucky, we could catch a bus and be back to your house in time for Batman.” Barry ignored me, and my heart sank a little deeper.
“Frank, plug in another one,” Mr. Johnson ordered.
The giant’s eyes widened, but he dare not oppose the teacher. He slunk to a cardboard box and fetched a rarely used fifth buzzer, unrolling the wire and assembling it with a deep sneer. Thrusting the controller into Barry’s hand, he returned to his seat, muttering a not-so-witty insult of, “Loser.”
“Now,” Mr. Johnson said, opening a thick book of trivia questions to a random page and setting to work, “Who was the seventeenth president of the United States?”
I watched Barry’s eyes fill with knowledge and fear. His thumb twitched over his button, unable to force itself to ring the buzzer. Meanwhile, lanky Frank counted on his fingers and at last came up with, “Andrew Johnson.”
“Correct,” Mr. Johnson said. He looked over the top of his book toward Barry, twisted his eyebrows, and then continued reading. The nerds noisily exchanged congratulations, and Mr. Johnson ignored it.
A sly smile rose over my lips, and my sinking heart leaped up to a happier position. Barry was smart, of course, but he was reserved, far too reserved to take place in a competition like this. Taking a test was one thing, as his numerous medals in the Math Olympics showed, and this was something completely different. For someone who never raised his hand in class unless absolutely sure of his point and its importance, pushing down with his thumb was an impossible task. Everything was quickly sliding into place. Soon Barry would learn that trivia bowl was not the place for him, and he would leave it again, forever this time. We would get busy with the Ninja Football League, and I would soon be victorious in my return to Barry’s side. I sat back in my desk, tucking my hands behind my head and slipping my feet onto the seat in front of me. All I had to do now was wait for the inevitable.
The practice game thus continued on, Mr. Johnson reading off questions whose answers he had never dreamed of knowing, and the brilliant students across from him ringing in to answer the ones that they could. All but one student, that is, as Barry sat motionlessly, his stare affixed to the clock in front of him except for quick glances over at his gloating foes. The questions came on and on, Barry’s thumb twitching over almost every one, pausing while the others searched their brains and eventually rang to answer.
“Who were Rome’s opponents in the Punic Wars?” Mr. Johnson read.
It was then that the flames of my warm feeling of victory died down. Oscar correctly answered, and Barry nodded knowingly. Barry sighed slowly and set his buzzer down, giving up fully. His dark eyes grew darker, frustrated with himself and his crushed dreams. The question was quite fitting since it signaled the end of the first attempt at trivia bowl as well as the second. It was almost as if some otherworldly force had planned it like that.
It was then that a horrendous realization dawned upon me as I looked at Barry’s disparaged expression. I froze and then lowered my head to the desktop in front of me. A long and dark thought flooded my mind: in my quest for friendship, I was dropping the important facets of such a relationship. A true friend would help through such a situation, but I was doing nothing. If I were to urge him onward, I would be doing a great deal of harm to myself. The thought of ceasing to exist loomed darkly over my head, conflicting with the blackness of Barry’s disheartened mussed hair on his hanging head.
My mind was being torn in two, morality and selfish philosophy battling within me like a pair of rabid tigers with chainsaws. It all boiled down to a simple question: Did I care more for myself or for Barry?
“The British game of cricket has how many players on the field?” Mr. Johnson read, looking to the answer and making a surprised, unknowing face.
The nerds twitched in horror. Athletics was their downfall as their physical shortcomings prevented them from taking part in any sport more intensive than hopscotch. Just as jocks despised knowing anything about science, the nerds despised the thought of any contact with athleticism, unless it was trivia about the ancient games in Greece or how much weight a barbarian could lift with a plus two belt of hefting. They sighed and shrugged, then turned to stare at the clock as it counted down the ten seconds.
“Barry!” I suddenly found myself shouting as the large red numbers on the clock ticked downward. “You know the answer! It’s eleven!”
Barry merely shrugged.
“Ring in, you coward!” I ordered. He was again motionless.
Leaping from my desk, I tumbled, recovered awkwardly, and tackled Barry from behind. I reached for his fallen buzzer, only to find it snatched out of the way by Barry’s video-game-refined reflexes. We wrestled over the control for a moment, I slowly began to lose my grip on it. Just before the clock ran out of time, the controller snapped up into Barry’s fist, inadvertently pressing the button. A loud buzz filled the air, and Barry’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Yes, Barry?” Mr. Johnson called. He eyed Barry strangely as the student had been flipping the controller around in his hands before at last ringing it.
Barry froze, stuttering wordlessly. I frowned and slapped him in the back of the head, knocking the answer out of him.
“Eleven, right,” Mr. Johnson nodded after Barry coughed out the correct number. The four nerds grimaced, their myopic eyes narrowing behind their glasses. How dare a newcomer answer a question that they could not.
Barry settled in his seat, staring at Mr. Johnson and looking suddenly ecstatic over his success. It had been years since he had heard the satisfying ring of his own buzzer, and he blinked hastily as if to make certain that he was not in some strange dream world. With a firm smile, he took his controller in hand with a confidence that I rarely saw within him.
“Who wrote Henry IV?”
Oscar, with well-popped knuckles, sat forward in his chair, as though realizing the question fell within his category. His skills, however, had been weakened by practices in which the nerds did not push one another, and Barry promptly rang the buzzer. The literati turned toward him in horror, and Oscar dropped his controller in rage. Beaten at an English question for the first time since the last season, he pouted, consoling himself only with the soft cracks and pops of his fingers.
“What is the negatively charged particle that orbits the nucleus of an atom?”
Barry swiftly beat down Bill, who was paying little attention as he fiddled with his briefcase. Sandeep fell soon afterward as Barry quickly recited the sine of thirty degrees. Only the giant remained unbeaten, and he squeezed his buzzer tightly, waiting for the perfect question to launch into a combat of mental power with Barry.
“What is the capital of Sri Lanka?”
Both students pressed their thumbs with deafening speed, and time itself slowed to watch the heroic battle. Twin electric bolts flew rapidly through the wires, each racing to be the first to reach the central control box of the trivia system. One was the winner, of course, and the timer stopped as it roared out a loud buzz.
Mr. Johnson leaned over the box to see the tiny blinking light that registered which student had been first. “Barry?”
“Co-lom-bo,” Barry said firmly, sounding out each syllable in triumph.
Frank gaped in horror at his failure, breathing great gasps as if he were struggling to convince himself that it had actually happened. It looked like his whole work of making team ideal, each with their own area of expertise that performed well at trivia meets, had failed. His calculations were far from perfect, and Frank’s skills in leadership had only led to the defeat of his team by a single player. While they had grown lethargic and slow, knowing that no one in practice would beat them, Barry had been constantly improving himself at the controllers of video games. I smiled.
And so the match continued, the tables turned and Barry soundly defeating the quartet of nerds at nearly every question. They were in shock at their loss, mumbling to one another and feeling that their whole existence as the trivia bowl team had been reduced to rubble. I could not help but laugh at them, proud of my instrumental position in leading to their downfall. Perhaps now they would think twice before again prescribing to elitism as a mode of thought.
Mr. Johnson was ecstatic, even more thrilled than Barry. He rapped his hands happily on the table as he called the practice to a close. “Oh, this was a good practice. Nice work, Barry… and everyone. I--we will have a great season this year, I’m certain.”
The five students picked themselves up and stumbled out of the classroom in a daze, one from elation and the others from defeat. I hurried after Barry, nudging him in congratulations till he at last calmed enough to have a conversation.
“Well, did you get that out of your system?” I asked.
“Out of my system?” Barry asked, pulling his backpack onto his shoulder. We walked down the hallway speedily to ensure that we would catch a late bus that would take us back to Barry’s house.
I nodded. “Yeah. You showed them and yourself that you could do it, and now we can get back to more important things.”
Barry breathed slowly. “I don’t know. I really like it there.”
“You what?” I said, raising my eyebrow.
“I like it,” Barry said. “It’s fun to ring in and answer and stuff. Like on Jeopardy, and here you don’t have to put up with Alex Trebek making fun of you every time you miss a question.”
“So you’re going to stay with it?” I winced, my stomach twisting with physical pain. “I thought you would just try it and then move on.”
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“No, you didn’t,” I told him. “Heck, most of the time you’d assure me that it was a waste of time and school money.”
“Yeah, I did,” Barry said, nodding slowly. He stopped and added, “But maybe I was wrong.”
“Seriously, you’ve never wasted much time with it before.”
“I’ve always wanted to be on the trivia bowl team!” Barry hissed, his voice rasping with mixed emotion. “You of all people should know that!”
I swallowed as my mind floundered, not quite knowing how to react. Barry’s spectrum of emotions usually only ran from happy to quietly depressed. He almost never dipped into such an anger, especially toward me.
Reacting more with instinct more than wisdom, I sharply retorted. “Oh, I get it. You suddenly get all this acceptance, and you’re going to run with it. I’m sure you’ll be very happy with your legions of fans. Well, you know what? Nobody there really likes you. Mr. Johnson’s just using you, and I am positive that the nerds downright despise you. And, if you hadn’t noticed, nobody takes the trivia bowl team seriously, so it’ll hardly help your standing with the rest of the school.”
Barry’s dark eyes flashed with rage. “Shut up. I just like it is all!”
“Right,” I agreed with much sarcasm. “You seemed to be enjoying it a whole lot before I made you start ringing the buzzer.”
“I was doing fine!”
“So that’s the big thanks I get for helping you out?” I protested.
Barry sniffed defensively. “I was just getting used to it.”
“You’re a coward, and you know it.”
Barry went silent, seething and unable to retort to something so true. He looked away from me, gazing forward toward the bus that would soon be leaving. The kids inside were doing their best not to stare out the windows at him, though they eagerly murmured that the Weird Kid was talking to himself again.
Wordlessly, Barry climbed onto the bus. I stood alongside, kicked the tire, and made an angry sigh. He paused and looked back curiously despite our anger.
“I’ll walk,” I told him.
He frowned, then nodded. In a moment more, the bus went off, disappearing into the streets beyond the school.
Another sigh escaped me, this one mournful rather than angry. Machiavelli would have called me an idiot for disenfranchising the source of my life like that, but sometimes we just are not able to control our tempers. Not only had I succeeded in helping Barry become interested in something other than me, but I had also succeeded in deepening the separation between us. I imagined that Barry would be rid of me in a few weeks at the longest, and it was all my own fault.
“What have I done?” Kicking a few rocks out of my way, I slowly began to walk down the hard, gray sidewalk westward to Barry’s house.