A Merit Scholar Named Trevor
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A/N: Every time I watched the Odd Couples episode, I always wondered what was going through Trevor's mind…
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Hey, let me introduce myself, my name is Trevor. I'm 16 years old (A/N: is he? Anyways same age as London and Maddie) and a merit scholar at Bostonian High School. Recently I won an award from the school to attend a Merit Scholar Seminar. (A/N: don't know if that's what it was called) Basically it was just a weekend-long event where merit scholars could choose different lectures that they were interested in. The cool part of it was that these lectures were held by professors who were experts in the subject they were teaching. World-famous scientists would be there, sharing all of their knowledge with us high school students. Man I was so excited when I walked through the doors of the Tipton Hotel...
-----SLOZAC-----
I walked in, looked around, and spotted a woman with a nametag. I walked forward and shook her hand. "Hello."
"Hello there. Are you here for the Merit Scholar Seminar?"
"Yes I am."
"Well here you go." She handed me a bunch of papers. I glanced through them, and then put them into my folder. They were the schedules and other information about the lectures.
I thanked her, and she walked away. I turned around, and jumped because a very pretty Asian girl was standing behind me. Before I could react, she spoke. "Hi!"
"Hi," I said, with a nervous laugh.
She smiled at me, and then said "are you here for the Merit Scholar thing?" It was odd; she turned and stared at another girl when she said the word scholar. I was kind of surprised that she called it a thing, shouldn't she know what it was if she was attending it?
"Yeah, yeah I'm Trevor." I held out my hand. "Phi Beta Kappa," I said, trying to impress her.
She took my hand, and smiled, saying "I'm London, Buy Lotsa Stuffa."
I laughed, a girl with a sense of humour. "Alright, that's clever. You know my mom belongs to that club. Last month my dad couldn't pay the Renta." Well I thought it was funny.
The girl in front of me only gave a little smile. She partly turned, looking at the same girl, a pretty blonde I noticed. "By the way, perchance, might you tell me, what is the time of day?"
Odd choice of words, but here was an opening and I wasn't going to turn it down. "Actually, I think it's time to escort a pretty girl to lunch." I held out my arm. She smiled at me, and took it. As we were walking up the stairs, she turned around for a few seconds. I kept walking, thinking that I was the luckiest guy in Boston. I hadn't been in the hotel five minutes and already I'd met a beautiful, nice, smart girl.
-----SLOZAC-----
After lunch, we walked back to the hotel. We came through the doors. "You're so delightfully acerbic."
She laughed and said "well, I do acerbicise." We both laughed, and we walked down the stairs.
When we reached the bottom, a well-dressed man said, "no, London. Acerbic means - " How did he know her name? His name tag said that he was the manager, so I suppose it was his job to know each of the guests.
"I know what it means. After all, I am a MERIT SCHOLAR." Why did she emphasize those words?
She turned to me, and we both laughed again. I hadn't laughed this much in ages. We were standing talking. I was telling her a story about this girl in my grade named Enid. "And then she said 'who' instead of 'whom'. Now I'm not a grammar snob, but it's just outrageous when someone uses the subjective instead of the accusative case." She was staring at me like she didn't know what I was talking about. I laughed to show that it was supposed to be funny, and she laughed too, very loudly.
"Will you 'accuse' me for one moment?" I laughed; really this girl was amazingly funny. She left, and I started looking through my folder. I saw that there weren't any lectures I was interested in on Saturday. Should I ask this girl London out? We'd only met that day, how would she take it? I decided that I might as well ask, and I'd better do it before I lost the nerve.
London was talking with that same blonde girl. I walked up to London and said "London, I just wanted to ask you out."
"Well how about that?" The blonde girl said, with a sarcastic little laugh. I was very confused, but there wasn't any time to think about that.
"So, what do you say, Saturday? Do you like modern art?" Today was Thursday. On my way to the hotel I'd noticed a modern art gallery.
"Oh, I liked anybody named Art, and I don't care how old they are." She smiled, and I laughed. It was a joke, right?
I turned to the blonde girl. "Isn't she just - " words failed me: the blond girl was very attractive.
"Oh, she's just alright," the blonde laughed, hitting me lightly on the arm. At that brief contact a shiver ran down my spine. My eyes widened and I turned quickly back to London. I shouldn't be thinking about this other girl when I had London.
"Well I'll see you later; I don't want to miss the lecture on Genealogy. I walked quickly away; I had to get as far away from that blonde girl as possible. I had a date with London. My walk slowed as I thought of London.
-----SLOZAC-----
Our date was going great! I was in the groove: I was funny, charming and I was wowing her. Wasn't I? Why the heck did her attitude keep changing?
"Okay, this is either a work of staggering genius, or it was painted by a cat." I thought it was a pretty funny thing to say.
"How does he hold the brush?"
I laughed politely, thinking that she was just deadpanning, but my laugh faltered when her expression didn't. She was serious? "Ri-right." I quickly led her to the next painting. "So, what do you think of this one?"
"Hmm, what do I think of "sunset" by Ishauau? Born 1920, died 1983." She'd been doing that all day. Maybe when she was looking at it she was taking into account the time in which it had been painted. That showed that she really was smart, most people didn't do that. She turned around, and said "I feel that it's a passionate statement against nature, I mean ABOUT nature. That uses light in a new and creative way."
I was a little confused at that slip of hers, but her interpretation of what the painting meant astounded me. "London, you are amazing!"
"Well," she gave a little laugh. "Modern art is my life!" She said, sitting down on - was that what I thought it was?
I gasped; I needed to get her off of that. "Um, you do know you're sitting on a masterpiece, right?" I said, trying to get her off as politely as possible.
She laughed and pointed to her pants. "I knew these pants made me look good."
I looked around, not too many people had been looking. I reached out my hand. "I wasn't talking about the pants, but now that you mention it, wow." I couldn't care less about her pants; I was more interested in her mind. All day she had been amazing me with her ideas about music, literature, art and many other things. We were so much alike. I led her away, and started another conversation.
"So what's your favourite piece of art, you know, that you haven't sat on?"
She looked like she was thinking hard. "I'd have to say - " This woman walked by, muttering very loudly. I ignored her; I was looking only at London. "The Jackson-Pollock. He's such a perpetrator heading south on McClellan highway. Proceed with caution."
Now I'm a merit scholar, which means that I'm pretty smart. Smarter than most of the people in my grade, but I could not follow that last sentence. "Excuse me?"
She gave a little laugh, and said "never mind." We continued walking through the gallery.
-----SLOZAC-----
"You know I made something exactly like this is first grade and I got a D. Do you like Tuttle?"
"Oh do I!" She walked away and whispered something. I moved on to the piece of artwork on the wall.
"Yes London." She said, making me turn around, thinking that she'd been talking to me.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Oh never mind," she said a forced smile. She'd been doing a lot of that today.
"So what's your favourite class?"
"Upper."
"That's a great one, if you can get into it." Why does she always joke instead of giving me a straight answer? Seeing that she wasn't going to return the question, I volunteered an answer. "I like poli-sci."
"Oh, I love science fiction. Stupid!" As I said before, I'm one of the smartest people in my grade, but I had no idea why she said that.
"What?" I smiled at her, hoping that she wasn't referring to me. We'd had a great time talking that day, and she was so amazing.
"What do you want to do with politics?"
"Oh," I'd never thought about it before. I just like discussing issues. But I had to impress her! "You know, Mayor, Governor, Senator, President and then, talk show host."
"Oh! Maybe I could be vice talk show host!" She said with a peculiar little smile.
Did she honestly prefer a talk show host to a president? Maybe I'd been wrong about her.
"So, how are you going to help the environment when you're president?"
London didn't seem like an environmentalist to me, so I said "actually I think there are too many restrictions against developing the wilderness already." I smiled at her, but her next words made the smile slip from my face.
"How could you be such a jerk?"
"Excuse me?" I was shocked.
Her eyes widened, and she stepped back. "I'd rather not."
"Rather not what?" I was getting more confused by the minute.
"Tell you that jerks like you are killing our planet." It wasn't her words, it was her expression. It changed into an expression that I couldn't read. Now I was really confused.
"You are so fired!" I didn't see anybody else around, so she must have been talking to me, right?
"I don't work for you." I was bewildered.
Then, from behind the wall, I heard a girl's voice say "and neither do I!" I walked over and looked.
"And you can tell Mr. Merit Scholar, hello!" She said, noticing me standing there. She laughed uncomfortably. It was that blonde from the hotel. What was she doing here?
I looked at London. She must know what she's doing here. "Pay no attention to the woman behind the wall." Well I wasn't going to just ignore it!
"Who are you, and why are you insulting me?" I needed to know what was going on.
"I'm London's brain." My eyes widened. Huh? I turned back to London, and she nodded. I turned back to the blonde. "I'm the one who's been talking to you all day, and I can't listen to your drivel for one more second." She took off that ridiculous flower and threw it on the ground. She started to walk away.
She thought all I'd said was drivel? "Whoa, whoa, whoa" I ran after her and stopped her. "Okay, what's this all about?" I turned back to London, and she had a guilty look on her face.
"Look, the truth is. Maddie's been coaching me through this computer chocolate chip."
Things were getting more and more confusing. "But why would you need coaching - wait a second," I turned back to the blonde, she must be Maddie. "Did she just say computer chocolate chip?"
Maddie nodded, "enough said." I turned back to London.
"Well, I'm not smart. I'm not a merit scholar. I'm not even sure what we've been talking about for the last two days."
"So, all the stuff you were saying about art and music and literature, those weren't your opinions?"
"Nope!" London said cheerfully. So if they weren't her opinions, they must have been Maddie's. "Oh! Except for what I said about the banana nut muffins. I really do like them. They're soft from the bananas, yet crunchy from the nuts." She smiled at me, moving her body back and forth. I turned to Maddie, the girl, I now realized, that I had been falling in love with all day.
She smiled at me, "it doesn't get any deeper than that. The good news is nut girl will probably vote for you, unlike me."
Oh, she still thought I wanted to be president. Well, I couldn't back down now. I said the first words that came to my head. "Yeah, well I don't need the vote of some tree hugger." Okay, I've got to restrain myself, wow she's cute when she's mad.
"If you have it your way there won't be any trees left to hug!" Restrain, restrain. Make a witty comeback.
"Next you're going to blame the oil companies for global warming." That was stupid: that's what I believe! Restrain, Trevor. You can't just randomly grab her and kiss her!
"Yes, cause they're to blame!" Restrain.
"Oh cry me a river!" What a stupid comeback. Being near her is affecting my debating skills. Though it's pretty hard to just randomly start debating against something you believe in.
"If I did you'd probably pollute it." Don't laugh, that's a GOOD comeback. No, no I can't like her, I won't!
"You bleeding heart liberal!" Yes, Trevor. That's the way to get her to like you…
"Establishment puppet!"
Oh screw this! "Do you want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss you?" I held my breath, here the rejection came.
"I'm surprised someone as smart as you would have to ask!" She wanted to kiss me!
The next thing I knew she had grabbed me by the shoulder. I slipped my arm around her waist and kissed her. It was amazing. At that moment, I knew she didn't hate me, as much as she would pretend to, I knew she didn't.
"I hate you!" She yelled, breaking our kiss.
"I hate you more!" I yelled back, leaning back down for more.
-----SLOZAC-----
And that is the story of how I met my girlfriend. After that little kissing scene, I asked her for a date. That night I told her everything, how I noticed her at the hotel, but felt guilty because I'd just asked London out. I told her about how I fell in love with her through London, and about how I didn't want to become president, how I'd only wanted to impress London, and about how I was only pretending not to agree with her.
Maddie talked with London, and it turns out that London isn't mad that we got together. She told Maddie that her head hurt too much during our date.
We've been going steady for a year now. Bostonian High is close to the Tipton and I used to visit her at her candy counter all the time. But Mr. Moseby got mad at me because she was supposed to be working. So I settled for walking her home from work every day. Yes, if things keep going as great as this: I plan on marrying her when we graduate.
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A/N: So, did I get what he was thinking right?