Baker's Dozen: In 13 Days, Justin Baker and the World Will Change
218
Baker's Dozen: In 13 Days, Justin Baker and the World Will Change
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Overview
A high school student's search for identity unfolds in the backdrop of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11 in this honest and heartfelt novel by a recent high school graduate. Love, faith, animosity, and friendship struggle for balance as protagonist Justin Baker works through the 13 seminal d9ays of his senior year. Already ensconced in a sometimes-bewildering life of high school intrigue, nocturnal pranks, and chance encounters with Vanilla Ice, the tragedy of 2001 informs Justin's rite of passage into adulthood, inspiring him to discover himself and the purpose of society. Written as a series of journal entries, teenagers will be moved by the intimacy of the language and the unique vividness of 9/11 as it is experienced though the eyes of a 17-year-old.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781615473076 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holy Macro! Books |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2005 |
| Series: | Fresh Voices series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 218 |
| File size: | 512 KB |
| Age Range: | 13 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Baker's Dozen
By Joshua Matthew Moorhead, Rick Friedline
Fresh Writers Books
Copyright © 2005 Joshua Matthew MoorheadAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-932802-96-2
CHAPTER 1
It's our generation. Nobody hears us. I think it's because we don't have anything to say. Wow that was pretentious ... right? No really I don't know how people do this. Write I mean. That's gotta be some living, but I don't really know how people live doing it. How must you feel like when someone asks you "What do you do?" and you say "Well, I write." That's not a job, not at all. But you probably get more money, at least more recognition, than they do. And they're the real people, the real workers, doing the real things to keep everything really moving. So how could you be a writer, writing, thinking that people really care about what you have to say when you're the one cog that isn't turning? I don't know what that feels like. So I'm glad I don't have an audience. I'm glad this is just between you and me. But in case it gets out to anyone else – believe me, I know, I'm an ass.
I don't even know how to start. Think back. Third grade maybe, the basics. Beginning, middle and end. I'm glad this is a journal so I don't necessarily need any of those, but I guess they wouldn't hurt. Maybe keep things interesting. Oh crap, I forgot the first step to every journal, the date.
Friday, August 31st
That's good, italicized and pretty. Oh, the year's 2001, but I didn't really want to feel like I was heading a paper or anything. This is supposed to be fun, right? I don't know, I've never kept a journal, but when kids at school say they write for fun, or that it's a hobby, I always get this weird emotional slushy of disgust and curiosity. That stems from the following: 1) if you write for fun you're either a vast cavern of despair and angst that's buried deep from "mainstream society," or 2) for lack of a better word, or maybe just to appeal to a universal understanding you are a nerd. You define the stereotype – glasses, D&D, dragon t-shirts and a deck of Magic cards in your pocket – you run the gamut, and you're proud. To be fair, this would also mean these are the stereotypical "deep" and "smart" people, so there must be something to it, right? So why not give it a shot. Here we go, knuckles cracked and everything. I'm ready to start, I promise. Well I guess I already did. I don't know how much I liked it though. Let's try again, okay?
Drum roll ... please. No, no – I have it. I'll pause for effect. Ah ha. Did you pause? Okay. My name is Justin Baker. I am 17 years old. I live in the American Midwest, the heart of it all. Just believe our license plates. By legal definition I am a boy, (juvenile to go with the jargon). By my school's counting I am a Senior, by my parents' I am a "young man." That means I should be paying car insurance, but I'm really just buying DVD's. It also means I can't get into Chuck E. Cheese by myself, but I am "too old for it" which no matter what you try to say is one of the great paradoxes of our universe by my standards. It also means I'm young enough to have dreams and consistently told I can reach them regardless. But we all know that really there's just a cubicle waiting for all of us. And besides, I waste all of my lofty dreaming on that one girl three rows over and four seats up in first period. You know the one I'm talking about. We all dream about her.
But when I'm awake, well, that's when I'm living. That's when I'm living my life while millions of others my age live theirs concurrently. And with so many lives living all at once, with so much laughing and crying and gossip and last -minute cramming and all-important teenage love happening all in the instance of a second so many millions of times over, that's when I start to wonder how there can be a cubicle for all of us. And I ask how my one millionth of that one second can be any better or worse than the next guy's. And I guess that's why I'm writing right now. I guess I'm writing because twelve years ago I thought more like an Ewok, and now that I'm going into 12th grade I'm starting to meditate more like Yoda. And tell me if I'm wrong, but I think I just showed signs of the dark mysterious cavern and the invariable nerd. I assure you I'm neither. I'm just me. I'm just Justin Baker, and if you really want to know why I'm writing, well, it's probably because of a feeling that I rarely ever feel but that lately I just can't shake, nostalgia.
You ask why. It's not the coolest feeling to have really, nostalgic sentiment. And it's probably not the manliest. After all, girls are the ones with shoeboxes filled with mementos and scrapbooks filled with pictures, not dudes. But I am a dude and being that I have no desire to scrapbook, I might as well write. So why start today? Today was the first Friday of my senior year, which got me to thinking. I only have so many of these left. But I only thought about that after this one was so good that I realized maybe I never wanted them to stop coming. It all started with the girl three rows over and four seats up in first period. It all started with the one we all dream about.
First periods are always rough. We all know that. Too tired, announcements too long, and the "work" too pointless. But if there's ever a reason to wake up in the morning besides the relentless cawing of your Mother, it's her smile. So it all started with my head down on my desk first period.
"Hey ..."
Too distant.
"Hey ..." I felt a tapping on my head this time, nothing worth getting up for.
"Bakes, Leah wants you." Let me tell you, that's one name any guy in this school would love to wake up to, so I did.
"Alright Crawford where is she?"
"Door," he said.
Alright, I better establish some setting. In Journalism it's all your responsibility to get your projects in on time, no real cattle prodding. So on a day like today there's really nothing to do. This means every morning's the equivalent of the water cooler at your Dad's office. Everyone's talking about what happened on fill -in-the-blank last night or who's doing fill-in-the-blank this weekend. I didn't find any of the gossip interesting enough to stay up for so I figured maybe I'd dream some up, until her name came along.
But Crawford, well Billy Crawford is a guy you can't quite put your finger on. Somehow he seems to know everyone. He floats without effort from one clique to the next and he seems to get by doing it with an aura of good humor. The thing about Billy Crawford is there's no real reason to dislike him, but everyone only seems to like him because it's the cool thing to do. So when Billy Crawford, the good humored thrower of punch lines, woke me up to tell me Leah wanted me I should have known better.
Leah, well there's two of them in my graduating class and both of them mean a good deal to me. But the Leah everyone dreams about, that's not the one that wanted me. Instead of three rows over and four seats up, my attention was drawn to the doorway of our class.
There stood Leah Rand, a girl I've known for at least a good five years now, maybe six – and known very well, which means we're not always particularly fond of each other. To spare you the details for now, if there's one good phrase that describes Leah Rand, it's "the girl next door". Every cliché is rooted in some truth.
I yawned and rubbed an eye. "A little early to be interrupting classes, don't you think?"
"Not for our senior year," she said.
"I'll give you that one, so what's up?" I then noticed Ms. Rand was looking particularly nice today.
"Are you going to the game tonight?"
"Well, yah." You should know if you go to high school in the mid-west that on Friday night you will be at your school's football game.
"With me?" she was curious.
"Well, I don't know exactly, but it only is first period." I make a ritual of keeping my options open. Some might say I'm just indecisive.
"Fine, I see how it is." Leah said this half jokingly, which means obviously she was half serious, and this is about how everyone communicates in high school. You tell a girl she's hot and you want to date her, and you tag on a simple, "just kidding" eliminating any chance of awkwardness. Knowing this, I knew how to respond.
"No, no you know I'd go with you. It's just I don't know who else is going – we'll talk later. It's not a big deal or anything. Where are you supposed to be anyways?"
"Psychology, but I haven't been there yet."
"That's risky, why not?"
"Well, I was late because last night I was on the phone until like three in the morning with Regess, so I accidentally slept through my alarm." This was curious to me.
"I thought you and Regess broke up."
"Me and you talk on the phone. Does that mean we're together?" I guess we had opposing viewpoints on the keys to a relationship.
"I wish," I said, half jokingly.
She gave me a "ha" and then started on her way for Psych.
Here's the thing about Leah Rand. She's a juggler. Some juggle pins or produce. Leah Rand juggles men. And that's why I'm not always fond of Leah Rand, either because I don't want to be juggled, or because I want to be but am never considered. The truth is I'm not totally sure. But when friends of mine are, like Jesse Regess, my heart goes out to them.
Now I was being called out to go back to my seat.
"Sure Ms. Norris, sorry – you know, business." I told her.
"Oh yeah, sorry all this class time gets in the way of your kids business," Ms. Norris's a crazy lady. Her hair is all frizzled, or frazzled, or whatever you'd like to say. For that reason we often wondered if she kept a magic school bus somewhere hidden in the expanse of the parking lot. But she could also be eccentric and paranoid, her glasses always gleaming with flashes of conspiracy theory. Maybe that's why she was the Journalism teacher. But it was for her old days as the elementary gym teacher that we feared her discipline, because of her mastery of the martial arts we had seen long ago we called her Chuck, and feared her like a Texas Ranger.
"So what'd she want?" Crawford wondered as I sat down.
"Nothing, just to know who I was going to the game with."
"Who are you going with?" said Crawford the social butterfly, peeking from his cocoon.
"I'm not sure yet. Why who are you going with?" I left him a door open in case he was looking to go with me and whomever.
"Oh, Leah – the other one. Well, talk to you later. Gotta get back to business you know."
Never mind. I think he just wanted to show off.
"Yeah, business," I said, and then I let my eyes wander to Leah (the other one) three rows over and four seats up, well, in terms of tables anyways.
She was talking with a few other girls not quite of her social status. But she was genuinely friends with them, and she laughed her own ditty of a laugh, which I think would be distinctive to anyone, not just me. It was much more of a he-he than a ha ha. Oh well, what am I talking about? I'm describing Leah Leslan. For the record, Leah Leslan is of the same social type as Billy Crawford, except she puts Billy Crawford to shame. Because like Billy, she can hang out with anyone, but unlike Billy she calls the elite home – whereas Billy, when he's not hanging out with anyone else, settles at a lower level. Truth be told no one is particularly picky about the whole "levels of the social stratosphere" thing, not this late in the game anyways. Everyone talks to everyone almost always cordially and without sarcasm, but everyone still knows who you go with and what row you're in at the football games on Friday nights. What defines your own social status is not school time itself, but after hours. I guess if you work enough over time with enough people you can be Billy Crawford.
And there's the other difference. Everyone knows who Billy Crawford is but everyone wants to know Leah Leslan. I'm lucky. I know Leah Leslan. She is a friend. I just don't see her much after hours. Billy Crawford does. And that's why I don't like Billy Crawford quite as much as everyone else. Because me and Billy Crawford, well, we both know what direction we're both looking in first period. And today we both know who ended up at the doorway.
In class I lost my train of thought thinking about all of this, and the next thing I knew there Billy was, moving into conversation with her. And now her more subtle "he-he's" had turned into robust "ha-ha's", and I'd run out of reasons to stay awake.
First Ms. Norris snapped me out of my day dream. "You going to work on your article today or what?"
"Is Billy?" Taking my chances against the risk of kung fu I put my head down.
That's how the day started, nothing too terrible but nothing to actually work on my project over either, not that I even knew what I was going to do.
Lunch comes a few periods later, and that's where I'm headed now, at least for the sake of this writing. There isn't anyone who doesn't know the significance of the cafeteria. It's where any and all social lines are drawn most obviously, and they're done so geographically nonetheless. Goths in the East, underclassmen in the West, achievers with books and copiers with pens and blank paper at the ready in the South, and the hot chick table in the North, just like the northern lights, always dazzling and never realizing they are the center of interest for every table in there. Or maybe they do.
So, my friends and I sit down in the southwest, not because we're achievers or copiers, and definitely not because we're underclassmen, just because we needed a table big enough. Here's something interesting about my friends and me. There's a lot of us. Ok maybe not that interesting, but I'd say there's at least twenty of us around that table on any given day. The other thing is we've know each other, or at least most of us have, for a very long time. From recess playing "Donkey Kong" jumping from tire to tire on the playground in second grade, to recess playing "smear the queer" in sixth grade (there's nothing politically correct about playground games by the way, so save it) to now, sitting around that table with lunches still packed courtesy of mom still talking about the same table in the north we had been since before we ever had Sex Ed in Health class. That's who we were and are, the guys. I couldn't call us anything else except for well ... ha, ready for story time?
This is how the guys really became the guys. My biggest achievement in school, and arguably all of the guys's was a little thing called RT. If you remember rt from school you're remembering d=rt from either your Physics or Math class, and that's not what I'm talking about, so don't check out yet. In ninth grade we created an empire. It all started with Ben really. First of all, Ben's an unassuming kid. Ben is also arguably my best friend. I don't know who's arguing though. But every high school cliché I've ever known Ben's never got caught up in. He's mostly straight A's without ever having attended a chess club meeting in his life. He gets the grades because he does – not because he cares or shows it. He never got too caught up in the school spirit thing, but he's not one of those whiney, "I hate this place and these people" paint-your-nails-black- pierce-your-nipple types of people either. When all of us get caught up in girls, and fall harder than a piano in a Looney Toon, Ben's still playing his peacefully. The thing about Ben is he's always been Ben and never anything or anyone else, and he's never changed. That's the thing about most of us guys though. We're all who we are, and we all have some quirks that are almost sitcom-esque, but for as many years as I can remember we've all been accepted around here for who we are. But it wasn't until ninth grade that we all really pulled together and began hanging out all together at a time. It wasn't until ninth grade that the Rancid Teddybears became a reality and RT bent the rules of the social game.
Ben named RT and was its unofficial leader until it all kind of collapsed on us because of egos. You know in those movies or TV shows about high school when someone in Home Ec gets that fake baby they have to take care of for a week? Well, in ninth grade we created this faux little society that we were trying to nurse, and for the longest time it was running without a hitch. It had a ridiculously humble beginning, a bunch of people meeting at Ben's house before a football game of all things, when his Dad came from upstairs and said the fateful words, "You guys look like a gang or something."
Then Ben responded with those even more fateful words "Yah, we're the Rancid Teddybears." Just two random words the kid had in his head.
I'll admit it, I wasn't even there but I know the story well enough to tell second hand. But I did meet them at the game, and as a joke I did become one of the RT members. Somehow over the following weeks and months that year the joke grew into something real. I know the perfect comparison if you know what I'm talking about. Have you ever seen This Is Spinal Tap? Hilarious movie, please watch it right away if you haven't, but if you have, you know what I mean. Here's this mockumentary about a heavy metal band that wasn't even real but then ended up touring in real life anyways. That's kind of like what RT was.
Well when I was in ninth grade some of the more popular fellows formed a union they called "Mutiny." You have to wonder if they even knew what that meant, but to them it was a Crypts for suburbia. They were all "ghetto," which means they were more BET than CMT, even though this area's more CMT than anything else – even though we are the MTV generation, but whatever. Point is they took this thing seriously enough that it was funny. It was taking the clique concept to a whole new level.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Baker's Dozen by Joshua Matthew Moorhead, Rick Friedline. Copyright © 2005 Joshua Matthew Moorhead. Excerpted by permission of Fresh Writers Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Page,
About the Author,
Acknowledgements,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Friday, August 31st,
Saturday, September 1st,
Sunday, September 2nd,
Monday, September 3rd,
Tuesday, September 4th,
Wednesday, September 5th,
Thursday, September 6th,
Friday, September 7th,
Saturday, September 8th,
Sunday, September 9th,
Monday, September 10th,
Tuesday, September 11th,
Wednesday, September 12th,
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