Some weeks passed and Aiden was still talking to me, actually it was a daily thing. And since we ate together, talked in and out of class we could have been categorized as friends, but I tought he was just taking a step into the social stairs. In this case someone had lied to him awfully, there’s not climbing while tagging along with the geeks. And the first evidence of my so called hypothesis was brought the second week of class

“So you don’t really go out much like the rest of the kids right?” Aiden asked while eating his shiny apple.—No pun intended—

“What do you mean, didn’t you noticed how three girls invited me to their my-parents-went-in-a-cruise party?” I asked, the only way I knew how to use rhetoric, sarcastically.

“So don’t you go out at all?” he asked, looking actually complex by the fact.

“I mean, I do come to school, it can be a very wild party sometimes. Just the other day Agnes –the (imaginary) librarian—, a couple of peers and I got the radio on some good tunes and danced the twist” I said, trying to make my best 50s American value film imitation.

“Yeah… well Agnes is a hot chick huh?” Aide said back, perfectly knowing that the actual librarian was a thirty-four-year-old man named Raj, he was actually cool, couldn’t dance twist though. He was halfway through his shiny apple

“Well, you’ve been here for two weeks, haven’t your jock charms gotten any invitations?” I asked, turning my failure into his. Yet geeks will be geeks and jocks will be jocks.

“Actually I’ve gotten plenty, but I just don’t feel like going” he said, kind of wanting to change the subject. People like me don’t change the subject at this point.

“Are you afraid it won’t turn out as in California where you had your kind-of-little-kind-of-funny-yet-not-funny-looking group of friends and were all popular and loved?” I said, still trying to read retired from prom king jock Aiden. If only I had known then. There was no longer a shinny apple

“You know, your observations always turn out to be more about yourself than of your subject. But that’s not my fear. What about you? Are you worried that if you lower your “I’m a helpless antisocial” barrier and open up yourself to people they won’t like what they see and so you finally see what a real outcast you are?” ouch, that guy knew where it hurt

“I don’t think anyone really makes a protect-me-from-having-friends barrier” I said to myself, trying to really think about it

“Greg… that’s the only barrier there exists.” He said, and just as the good mystery he had became for me, he took his Physics book and took off, leaving behind only an itchy thought in my head (and his physics homework.)

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“Hey Carny” said Aiden coming to me, yet I didn’t reacted; it usually happens when I’m not called by my common nomenclature, damned automatic responses, they have us so trained.

“Maybe it was too soon for a nick name” Aiden said, while looking at me, as if trying to find a better nick name to fit me. Modern society, names are no longer satisfying the need of belonging.

“Carny what kind of name is that, even more, now we have nicknames? Should I make us T-shirts with matching fonts and colors so we can wear then to special occasions?” I said, all –falsely— eager.

“Carny, as in Carnot, never mind. The thing is that I got us into a party” he said, sounding like if he had found a deal for some red Mustang 68 we had been looking for, for years.

“So are you an M or an S?” I kept on

“It’s at this Kelly Greenstone’s, apparently her parents are in the cruise too” he said, not sure of the name, as it was common around parties, I guessed.

“I guess the colors should be blue and orange, blue kind of compliments my sharp face” I answered as I pulled a blue notebook near my face so he could embrace the sharpness.

“It should be fun, I mean, there will be people you have never talked to—which wasn’t hard to find—so you you get a fresh start into this hominid rituals” he said, the boy had spent too much time around me, he was now using words such as “hominid” and “ritual” in his common jargon. Damn, I always screw up people.

“Maybe they would be in italics, so they’re sober yet stylish” I went on.

“So, I’ll meet you around the park at like 8?” he said, obviously giving me a I-still-don’t-know-why-I’m-doing-this-for-you look

“So S blue it is” we concluded. Now I had to prepare myself for something I hadn’t signed up for. And disappoint myself by the fact I wouldn’t really have that S blue T-shirt saying Carny. We were both idealists, although I didn’t believe in the perfect machine, just the perfect universe.

By I'm the penguin