Mr. More Than Average

-1: Max the Less-Than-Average Boy

Her name was Jess, and she would be Max’s greatest friend.

But before Jess, there were Sam and Luther. And right now they were celebrating because Luther had just passed his road test. Since Luther was held back in the third grade for reading comprehension, he was one of five people in the sophomore class to have his license. “This is just my temporary license,” Luther said. “The real one should come in about a week.”

Luther had reddish-brown hair and a freckled face and wore only striped polo shirts. Max had never seen him in anything else.

“Do you have a car yet?” Max asked.

“I’m working on it,” Luther said. “You can’t exactly get rich from working at Burger King.”

“Are they hiring?” Sam asked. “Zoe wants me to get a job.”

Sam was a lovable, pudgy boy with an unfortunate bowl cut, and despite his pudge, he was actually the most active of the three.

“You don’t want to work there,” Luther said. “Trust me.”

Max didn’t feel the immediate need to get a job, and Sam didn’t either until his older sister advised him to. Zoe occasionally gave Sam advice, which he then passed onto the group. Even if he wanted one, his parents would think it was a bad idea. They would blame his less-than-mediocre grades on his lack of time rather than his lack of motivation and/or intelligence.

They spent the next weekend job hunting for Sam. They looked briefly at the newspapers Max’s parents read in the morning, but checked online for most of it. “What’re you guys up to?” Mrs. Bishop asked.

She chuckled when they told her. “You know, I got my first job when I was your age. I was a waitress at the Blue Pontoon.” She laughed to herself. “Such an odd place to work. Are you looking too, sweetie?”

The others waited for Max to realize he was the only “sweetie” in the room. He shrugged. “Should I?”

“I don’t want you to have to juggle school and work like I did. Focus on getting into college, okay?”

Max nodded absently as she walked out of the room. “She just roasted you,” Sam said.

“No way,” Max said.

“She did it nicely. Like, instead of on a stick over a fire, it was in an oven on Thanksgiving.”

“Nicely put, man,” Luther said, giving him a high five.

There was a lull in the conversation before Luther subtly mentioned Annie. “I think they’re going to break up soon.”

“Who?” Max asked.

“Who else?” Sam said. “Annie and Charlie.”

“I heard it from Louisa.”

“Louisa actually told you?” Sam said.

“Well, no. I heard Louisa and Annie talking about it in the band room after school.”

“She probably was just complaining,” Max said. As much as he wanted Annie and Luther to be together, Luther saw meaning in even the most trivial of things. “It’s not like Louisa’s a stranger. She’s her best friend.”

While Luther would deny this, Max thought part of the reason Luther wanted her so badly was because she was dating his sworn enemy. Max knew that Luther would never stoop so low as to break them up. He wasn’t that type of guy, and even if he were, it’s not like Annie would forgive him.

When Mrs. Bishop politely excused Sam and Luther, Sam declined Luther’s offer for a ride home. “I don’t mind biking,” he said. Sam was nicer and less lazier than Max would ever be. He respected that.

His friends left, leaving Max alone with Lucy in the dining room. Max was convinced that the Devil himself brought Lucy into the world‒she was Satan in a French braid. When she was mean, she was just “playing around,” but when he defended himself against her, he was “mean” and “being a jerk.” Sam claimed he was mean to his older sister as a child and that Lucy would grow out of it, but Max thought he was lying to make him feel better. Sam was a teddy bear, and Lucy was a hungry grizzly.

“You’re not supposed to put the fork there,” Lucy said, pointing to his fork placement. “It’s supposed to go on the other side.”

“Who cares? It’s just us.”

“Mom likes it like that.”

“Well, this is my placemat. She won’t even see it.”

“Mom sees everything.”

“It’s fine, Lucy.”

“Fix it or I’ll scream.”

He looked unimpressed. “Go ahead. Scream. See what happens.”

Max knew he shouldn’t have baited her like that. Lucy had no qualms about letting the neighborhood know when she was upset, and most times she’d get what she wanted anyway, which was getting him in trouble. This time was no exception.

Mr. Bishop ran in from the living room, frantically looking for anything that could upset his daughter. When his eyes settled on Max, his body relaxed before stiffening up to ask, “What happened?”

Lucy looked at her brother. “He told me to scream.”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did. You said, ‘Go ahead. Scream. See what happens.’”

Mr. Bishop looked at Max and sighed. “Don’t be an instigator.”

“But I‒” Max didn’t finish. What was the point if he never came out a winner?

☁

Sam was the only one with a basketball hoop in his driveway. Max pulled up on his bike and saw Sam and Luther standing in the driveway. “Look,” Sam said, pointing to the house across the street.

There was a U-Haul truck parked in the for-sale house’s driveway. The house had been on the market for as long as Max could remember, and they were starting to wonder if it was haunted.

“They were there when I woke up,” Sam said.

The for-sale house was long forgotten when Luther brought out a ball. Sam was the only one who was any good, but that’s because he was on the team. He tried to get Max to try out, but Max knew he was too lousy, even for JV. This way, he could think, “I rejected basketball,” rather than the other way around.

“Hey, Luther? Do you still have those cones you used for parallel parking?” Sam asked.

“They’re probably in the garage somewhere.”

“Can I borrow them? My parents don’t trust me to practice with real cars.”

“That’s because you’re a terrible driver,” Max said.

“At least he’s taken driver’s training,” Luther said.

Max shrugged. “I’ll do it eventually.”

He tried not to let his annoyance show. There was always something that Max needed to do, and everyone in his life was happy to tell him to do it. He knew his friends didn’t mean to make him feel bad‒his parents did, but that was their job. What he didn’t understand was why his siblings thought that they had a say in his life.

While everyone was thrilled to have Quinn home for Thanksgiving, Max was indifferent. Even though only two months had passed since he’d first moved into the dorms, seeing him home was weird. “Need homework help, bud?” Quinn asked Max as he was finishing up his trigonometry.

“I’m okay,” he said.

“You might want to recheck some of them.”

Normally Max wouldn’t fix them if he knew there were errors, but he felt obligated to since Quinn insisted on hovering. “Which ones?” Quinn pointed them out, taking his question as a cry for help, and sat down next to him.

When Quinn was certain that every problem on Max’s homework was correct, he suggested a tutor for Max. “It’ll be good. One-on-one homework help for you, and volunteer hours for someone else. I know a couple of people if you’re interested.”

Mr. Bishop overheard and chimed in. “Good idea, Quinn. Might want to get someone who’s talented all around.”

“Can do, Dad,” Quinn said.

Quinn contacted a few people over the next few days, and on the last day of his break, he told him his tutor would be Kate Machiavelli. “She’s really patient and really smart.”

Max met Kate in the library after school and immediately thought that this was the type of girl Quinn would date. She had the whole”girl-next-door” vibe with her curly blonde hair and perfect posture.

She stood up and waved when he walked through the doors. “Hi, I’m Kate!”

“Max.”

“How are you?”

“Good. You?”

She smiled. “I’m doing well. So Quinn told me you needed help with trig. Did you want to work on that today? Or did you have another class you wanted to focus on?”

He shrugged. “We can work on trig, I guess.”

Before they got to the homework, she reviewed the unit circle and basic angles with him, which made this particular homework assignment the easiest he had received all year. When five o’clock came, she apologized for having to leave him before his ride came. “I normally would wait, but I’m going to be late to volleyball practice. I’m so sorry.”

Max decided that Kate was too nice for her own good.

☁

Every third day of the month, Luther, Sam, and Max would skip class for ten minutes in the hallway where the shop classes were held. The hallway, “G-Section”, was dusty and isolated.

“You guys want to come over today?”

“I can’t,” Max said. “I’m on house arrest.”

“What’d you do?” Sam asked.

“It’s what he didn’t do,” Luther said.

“Homework?” Sam said.

Max nodded. “My parents are so obsessed with PowerSchool. What happened to the days where I could just throw my report card away?”

“Technology, man,” Luther said. He turned to Sam. “You in?”

“Sure, I have nothing else to do.”

“You can just ride home with me. I dropped my mom off at work today, so I get the car.”

“I rode my bike.”

“We could cram it in the back.”

“That’s okay,” Sam said. “I don’t mind biking. Besides, it’s not that far.”

Luther looked at his watch, which made Max squirm a little because it’d belonged to Luther’s dad. When Luther told him that his dad had moved out, he had no idea what to say. Max had never dealt with anything of this caliber before, and he already sucked at feelings, so he sort of just sat there swinging his legs. Sam, on the other hand, expressed his condolences with a hug and more questions than Luther probably would’ve liked. Luther hadn’t talked about his dad since that day.

“It’s almost noon,” Luther said.

Max took the long way back and arrived just in time to take a quiz on a short video he had missed. He guessed “C” for all of the questions.

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