“Guys, this is the single greatest fart scene in all of literature.”
Mr. Ellis. I’m not sure if he’s joking, or if he’s being sincere, or if it’s a strange mix of both. But I don’t really care. This is maybe the single greatest class I’ve ever had. And it’s the one I was dreading the most coming into high school.
Official course title: English Honors Nine—Introduction to Literature and Composition. Which sounds freaking brutal—like the name of some ancient, pictureless English textbook. Which, in fact, it is.
At least a hundred of them are stacked on the low bookshelves beneath the windows, their cracked and faded red bindings lined up like an exposed brick foundation. Ellis calls them Ilca, as though the collection itself is a living organism—in his mind, a cranky old teacher. And he regularly talks to her during class.
And sometimes, oddly enough, Ilca responds, Ellis’s voice dropping to that of a woman who’s spent the better part of her forty-year career puffing two packs a day in the faculty room.
I’m pretty sure Ilca is just a rough acronym of the title printed along each of the tattered spines—Introduction to Literature & Composition—with an A thrown on the end for a more feminine-sounding name, as opposed to just Ilc or Ilco or whatever. But when anyone asks what kind of name Ilca is, Mr. Ellis claims it’s a common nickname for Ilcagene.
Ilcagene Hephaestus McDougal, her full name.
The rumor is that Ellis made a deal with his English colleagues that he’d take all the freshmen if they left him alone to teach whatever the hell he wants. So he kept the course title and liberally interprets it as “Reading Awesome Books and Writing Crap That Matters to Us.” His words.
We’ve just finished reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, an amazing book about basketball, and masturbation, and feeling shitty and alone, and how Indians are perpetually screwed. And also farting.
“Seriously, guys. Most beautiful fart lines in all of written history. I went and saw Alexie give a performance a couple of years ago, and he was amazing. Did you know that all this really happened to him? From the hydrocephalus when he was born and the giant freaking glasses, the leaving the rez school for the all-white town school, the basketball, the heartbreaking lives of his family and fellow Indians on the rez. All of it.”
We’re completely hooked. Mr. Ellis goes off on these rants, usually about books he wants us to read and love as much as he does. This one may run to the end of the period, but no one minds.
“You know, I got to meet him for a minute afterward to get my book signed, and I told him I was hoping he’d read the fart-in-the-tree scene. And he said—in all seriousness—that he can’t get through it. That there’s a few scenes he can’t read out loud without choking up…and the fart scene is one of them!”
Trip and I have been quoting the fart line ever since we read the book. It’s given us a whole new appreciation for farts, especially Trip, who’s taken to ambushing me ninja-style, letting loose when I least expect it. All in the name of literary appreciation.
I glance over at Trip, sitting next to me, and he’s just staring at me, an evil little grin dancing at the corners of his mouth. I shake my head.
“Other people,” I whisper, indicating the innocent classmates surrounding us. I try to focus on Mr. Ellis. Engaging Trip only serves to egg him on.
“What?” he says quietly, feigning innocence. “I’m making a text connection.”
“Text connections do not leave visible evidence in your underpants,” I say without looking at him.
Trip puts his head down as Mr. Ellis continues his point. “Seriously, guys, if your fart scene is too emotionally charged to read out loud, you know you’ve nailed it. Alexie ripped my guts out and made me laugh out loud, and that’s another level of brilliance. There’s a fine line between laughter and pain. And I think, sometimes, it’s the only thing you can do with your pain. Sometimes things suck so bad that you have to laugh at it.”
Mr. Ellis may have lost it, here, at some point, and I’m not clear if he’s talking about the book anymore. But something definitely feels true about what he’s saying.
“You know, when I read this scene,” he says, “I actually had to put the book down, I was laughing so hard. That’s awesome.
“Quick side note: three books I’ve read in the past year that have made me stop reading and put the book down because I was laughing. Ilca,” he says toward the bookshelves, “you may want to write these down.”
“I hate you,” Ilca replies, the growl from the corner of Ellis’s mouth getting a chuckle from the class.
After class, Trip hangs a left to head to geometry, but I stop when I see Tabby at her locker to the right, outside of Mr. Ellis’s door. She looks like she’s in a hurry, shoving books into her bag and looking down the hall, away from me. Branson leans against the wall at the end of the hallway, waiting. No Lily in sight. Shit.
Tabby hasn’t been on the bus at all the past week or so. Not since football season officially ended. So I’ve been riding home on the bus by myself, my iPod cranked, trying to convince myself that I really like the solitude, the chance to zone out to my music each day.
Luckily, basketball practice starts Monday, so I won’t be on the bus in the afternoons, either. And Branson’s afternoon schedule will be full again, as well.
I catch up to Trip and take my seat in geometry a few minutes before class starts, Trip in the desk directly in front of mine.
“Shit. Trip, did you finish all the homework?”
Trip laughs to himself without turning around. “I’m laughing at your pain.”
“Dude, I don’t think that’s what Mr. Ellis meant.”
“And I just farted.”
“I hate you.”