The Devil on Kazoo

15: School Daze

"Seems to me
You don't wanna talk about it
Seems to me
You just turn your pretty head and walk away"

"Seems to Me" by James Gang

Smiley's pencil tapped against his notebook, three times for every second that ticked on the clock.

The rest of the class was still taking their history exams. Smiley's had been sitting in front of him, finished, for exactly...seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Thirty-nine seconds. Forty...

"Smiley Gibbs," his teacher, a woman about as old as the dirt his school was founded upon, said. "I don't take kindly to absent staring. Get to work."

Smiley knew better than to argue, so he bent down and took out the scrap paper he'd been assigned but never used.

He scribbled down the piano harmony he'd composed in his head while taking the exam. For the past two weeks, Smiley had done something that he rarely did within school walls: applied himself.

It was a strange feeling, not getting sent to detention for being distracted in class or having to go up to the teacher's desk to explain why he was not only passing notes in class but passing notes to the wrong people just to cause chaos amongst his peers.

For the past two weeks, Smiley had actually worked hard in school. It was a good distraction from everything else going on. He almost felt guilty that no one else on the boat had a way to escape Crumb Radio, not that Smiley ever wanted to be away for long.

Being at school allowed him to sit back and think about things. To remember that there was, in fact, a world outside of the wharf.

And it reminded him that this world needed music. It needed The Crumbs.

Although Smiley was deemed "antisocial" among the general teenage population, there wasn't much about society that didn't escape his scrutinizing eye.

He'd come to realize that people were simply that: people. All different, which made them all the same. It was as beautiful as it was terrifying.

As the only teenager aboard Wolgemoth & Sons who was ever actually around other teenagers, Smiley noticed a common thread throughout his peers. They were all being raised by parents who had suffered greatly during the 1940s. People who were scared then and who were scared now, which was a recipe for disaster when it came to change.

Smiley never remembered his parents being that way: overprotective, controlling, always hovering.

He knew they'd love the music of today. He knew he wouldn't be like the kids around him, who acted as if their parents were the only things holding them back from living life.

He wondered what it would've been like to have his parents now. Would Bash look so tired? Would Smiley have been making A's all along? Would his parents have taken them to see The Beatles in concert?

He wouldn't be living on a boat, that was for sure. And he would never have met Syl or Kathy. Would he rather have his parents or the life he had now without them? And why did this question make him feel guilty either way?

It was all a strange thing to pontificate upon as Smiley doodled a sunshine on the top corner of his paper.

"Students, your time is up. Please place your exams on my desk before leaving in an orderly fashion," his teacher announced.

Smiley was the first one up and chucked his paper onto the desk before his teacher could even get "Slowly, Mr. Gibbs!" out of her mouth.

He shouldered his way through the busy hallways, though he barely heard all the clamor. The harmony was playing in his head like an endless sonnet. He had to get to his piano before he combusted.