Social Norms

Chapter 3

On Monday, Ryder stops by my locker before third period as usual. He casually leans against the lockers next to mine, trying to look cool, but annoying the people next door trying to change their books. I can't help but laugh. He drawls in his best Matthew McConaughey voice, "Hey, Pepple." I try to drawl back, "Hey, Ryder, sup man?" Then, to the relief of my locker neighbors, he straightens up and says, "Taylor's giving me a ride home today, so you don't have to wait for me after school."

I'm a little surprised by this and to be truthful slightly irritated, "Oh, okay...so, you're just going to trade in Avocado Toast for a sweet Audi? Just throw her under the bus like that? It's okay, she won't mind." He smiles that smile and says, "You're not mad are you? I can just tell Taylor that I can't ride with her..." This makes me feel really stupid and like a jerk. Immediately, I shake my head, "No, no, I'm not mad. I was just kidding. Don't worry about it. I need to work on my English project anyway. It's due this Friday." He says, "Okay, so we're cool?" I reply with a smile, "Yeah, Ryder, we'll always be cool. Have fun hanging out with her."

***

It's finally Friday, and I'm watching the Idol English project presentation. It's a video of a stage production of excerpts from the three Theban plays. Where they got a stage from, I'll never know.

It's in the backyard of what looks to be Cooper Bend's house because you can occasionally see pieces of her mansion and pool in the background. She's the wealthiest of all of the Idols and the cheerleading captain. She also has a 4.0 GPA.

The video is finally on the Antigone part. Taylor is playing Antigone, of course. Cooper is Ismene, John Michael Jablonski is Haemon, and Logan is Creon. Taylor and Logan are the only two who are even remotely good at acting.

After the video, Jacob Pritchard leads the nerds in their presentation, which is a large colorful map of Thebes with the locations of each of the plot points in the Theban plays drawn on the map. It looks really nice, actually. I can tell Mrs. Harrison is much more impressed with their project than she was with the Idol's.

Lucas Williams, the edgelord, then presents his project, which is just an oral report of the role of civil disobedience in the Theban plays. He actually describes Sophocles as a revolutionary. It's cringey as hell, and I think everyone in class, including Mrs. Harrison, is just annoyed by his presentation.

It's now my turn to present my project, and I'm extremely nervous. Butterflies are churning hard in my stomach when I stand up and walk to the front of the class.

I take a deep breath and begin, "When we started this unit, Mrs. Harrison compared the three Theban plays to The Matrix trilogy. For those movies, the first one was very good, but the other two were not. However, Antigone is actually a much better story than Oedipus Rex. So, I thought, instead of The Matrix, what if the Theban plays were more like the Batman movies? For the Batman movies, the first one was pretty good, then there were several really bad ones, and then a good one, and then a really good one, and then an okay one..."

I realize I'm droning on when Lucas scoffs, "Are you really comparing 3,000-year-old literature with Batman, Pepple?" Mrs. Harrison tells him to shut it. I ignore him and continue, "I thought, what if we continued to add to the Theban plays like Hollywood keeps making Batman movies? So, in that spirit, I decided write a fourth play. I call it The Redemption of Creon. It takes place ten years after the death of Antigone."

I begin to read off the characters in the play. My plan is to give a synopsis of the plot for the class and give the copy I made on antique paper to Mrs. Harrison. She stops me in the middle of my character list and asks, "So, you wrote your own Theban play?" I nod. She then says, "Let me see it." I hand it to her, and she intently reads through a couple of the pages. She takes the page with the character list out and hands me back the rest. Then, she says, "Take that to the office and make twenty-one copies of it."