A Line Among Arcs
It was the Screaming Gophers reunion picnic, and everyone brought something to share—and by everyone, I mean everyone except Heather. Heather was content to mooch off of everyone else. Trent was happy to see all his old friends again, but was unfortunately a little bit overwhelmed. Gwen walked up to him and asked, "Oh, Trent, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Trent responded, "I just need some alone time."
"Well surely you can get some alone time around here. This park is huge, and there's only eleven of us," Gwen pointed out.
Trent sat down and sighed. Then, his eyes lit up, and he said he had an idea. He took a piece of cardboard out of his bag, and scrawled a message on it. It said, very clearly, "Straight Guys Only." He put it facing outward in front of the apple tree.
"Yeah," Trent said, patting the sign. "This'll keep all the trouble away."
"Right," Gwen responded sarcastically rolling her eyes.
"I'm serious!" Trent responded, "It will!"
"Good luck with that," Gwen said to Trent as she walked away, to where LeShawna and Izzy were starting to eat their lunch.
Trent felt calm and serene. This feeling lasted all of five minutes when Owen showed up in front of his sign. "Straight Guys Only? Hehe! I'm straight!" Owen said, as he headed for the tree.
"No you aren't," Trent pointed out.
"Yes, I am," Owen said.
"You fawn over Justin nonstop!" Trent responded.
Owen turned his eyes, and said, "Yeah… but… I want apples!"
"Is it even legal to harvest fruit in a city park?" Trent asked, concerned.
Owen giggled, and then began to climb the tree. He held onto a limb, and then his weight caused the limb to fall to the ground. Suddenly it flung him off, along with all of the apples.
"Good news, guys! I got apples!" Owen said triumphantly. Trent sighed. Owen carried an armful of apples back to the rest of the group.
Gwen walked over again, looking smug. "How's it going?" she asked sarcastically, waiting for a response from Trent.
"It's going fine, mostly," Trent said, "Owen was just a fluke! Don't worry about any of the other guys coming to my place of sanctity."
Gwen shrugged, and went over to help Beth open her bag of potato chips, which Lindsay had managed to inflate like a balloon. A potato chip landed in Heather's hair, which Gwen found amusing. Trent laughed at this for a minute, and was totally distracted from noticing that Justin was headed straight for his tree.
"Justin," Trent said, "You're not allowed."
"Why not?" Justin asked, pouting, "You let Owen in…"
"That was an accident," Trent responded.
"But I'm actually straight…" Justin retorted.
Trent guffawed at this notion, which caused Justin to turn very angry and glare. Trent turned very serious for a second and said, "Sorry." He then continued with a broad grin, "But it was so obvious, throughout the entire second season that you totally liked Owen back…"
Justin simply walked by, pushing Trent over, offended by his statements. He then headed for his true destination… the pond behind the tree. He whisked his bangs out of his eyes and stared deeply at his face in the pond, checking for blackheads and god forbid blemishes. He sighed in relief when he saw there were none. Trent also sighed, although not in relief. Rather, Trent sighed in annoyance.
"Your sign is working so well, Trent," Gwen commented.
"Gwen, you know, your biting remarks are very hurtful," Trent said to his unimpressed love.
"I'm sorry," Gwen said, "It's just that… if this is how well you keep these two out, imagine how hard it will be to keep out those two." She pointed to Noah and Cody, who were sitting apart from the crowd, playing Trivial Pursuit.
"This game sucks!" Cody screamed. "I keep losing!"
"I'm sorry, Cody, but being a sore loser is not part of the rules… unless you want me to set a handicap for you!" Noah responded, not bitterly but rather jestingly sarcastic.
"You should go stick that head of yours into a beehive!" Cody joked, as he meandered over to Trent, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have some business to attend to."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Trent said, "Who said you could come over here?"
Cody skidded to suddenly brake when he came up to Trent's hand. He explained sheepishly, pushing his fingers together, "Well this sign says Straight Guys Only, so I was assuming this was a place to talk about how hot girls are…"
"Why would you want to talk about how hot girls are? After all, we all know you're in love with Noah," Trent said, looking at Cody.
"Uh… Trent?" Cody asked, "No I'm not. I'm in love with Gwen… you know, the same girl you're in love with?"
"But what about all those 'moments' you had with Noah?" Trent asked.
"Those were Noah's fault," Cody pointed out, "Plain and simple. I had nothing to do with them. Now," Cody continued, as he carefully sat down next to Trent, "Gwen's sure well-endowed, isn't she?"
Trent quickly agreed, hoping this would shut Cody up, but Cody continued for nearly a half an hour talking about how beautiful Gwen was. Eventually, Trent just picked up Cody and put him in the picnic center, where Lindsay was now having her cookies eaten by ants, while Izzy chased LeShawna with a dozen habaneras, trying to force her to eat them.
Gwen looked at Trent's exhausted face, and said, "Trent, wow. This sign prevented a total of zero people from approaching you. And the one who hasn't tried yet is a bull."
Trent said to Gwen, "Don't worry. I've got this one."
Cody walked back over to Noah, apologizing for the immature display earlier.
"That's alright, Cody," Noah said, "I was getting bored of that game anyway. I'm going to go read a book. Now, where's a nice, shady spot?"
Noah's eyes pinpointed the tree that Trent was under, and he approached it. Like Cody, he was stopped by Trent's arm.
Trent said, "Can't you read the sign? It says Straight Guys Only."
Noah responded, "I know," in a deadpan voice. He, being relatively short, merely ducked under Trent's arm as if it were a limbo pole, and sat next to the tree. Then, completely oblivious to (or just purposefully ignoring) Trent's angry glare, he began to nonchalantly read his book.
"NOAH!" Trent yelled. "Okay, I've had enough of this. You are. Not. Straight!"
"Wow, projecting much?" Noah asked sarcastically.
"And neither are you!" Trent yelled in Owen's general direction. Owen was busily munching on apples. "Or you!" he yelled at Justin, who was still busily inspecting his face for flaws. "Or you!" he said to Cody who recoiled in fear.
"Yes I am!" Cody shouted, still indignant. "But that doesn't mean that Noah is."
Noah shot Cody an evil look. Cody quickly changed his answer, "I mean… uh… of course, Noah is straight too!"
"Cody, honestly, even I don't talk about Gwen's looks that much! You must be hiding something," Trent said.
"Wow, Trent," Noah responded, "Way to be Izzy."
Izzy had finally caught up to LeShawna, because the latter was exhausted. Her ears perked up when she heard her name. "Huh? Is someone talking about me?" She immediately dropped the peppers and ran to meet the guys.
"Argh!" Trent ranted, "Night after night after night after night… I wish I had someone to talk to about… you know… girls! But the only one of you guys who is supposedly straight, is in love with the same girl that I am. And I know, that if the girls all died, you four could make do! But I couldn't! I just couldn't! I am a line among arcs!"
"Wow, that's deep," Owen said.
"Sounded rather petty to me, actually," Justin disagreed.
Noah was going to make a snide comment on Justin's hypocrisy, but was too distracted by Trent's rant to. Instead, he directed his cynicism towards the alleged 'line among arcs'. "So, basically, what you're saying is that you don't fit in with the rest of us because you're generic? Wow, I feel so bad for you. In fact, I wouldn't know what suffering was until I walked a mile in your shoes."
"Could you tone down the sarcasm just a smidge? He's obviously in pain," Cody pointed out.
"He called you gay," Noah reminded.
"He called you gay too…" Cody answered.
"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!" Noah said, "The point is, why feel sorry for someone who insulted you?"
"Will the two of you quit fighting? You're making Izzy upset…" Owen said, looking at her. She was pouting—hard. She was also tightly gripping a sausage.
"It's always Izzy, Izzy, Izzy! You never talk about me like you used to, Owen," Justin said, hurt.
"Nobody asked you!" Izzy screamed, squeezing the sausage she was holding until it fell free of the casing and landed right between the four guys.
They stared at the sausage. Owen tried to eat it, but Justin convinced him not to. Trent walked over to the group, and picked up the sausage. "You shouldn't leave junk on the ground," he said. This caused Owen to giggle. Justin didn't understand what was so funny at first, but then he caught on and began to laugh gently. Noah snickered softly, and so Cody followed suit by chuckling. Soon all of the boys except Trent were roaring with laughter. "What? What?" Trent asked.
Gwen saw Trent with the sausage in his hand, and saw the uproarious laughter from her other former teammates, and began to grin, and then started laughing herself. "Izzy, you have got to see this!" Gwen pointed out.
"What? What?" Izzy asked, "Hey! That's the sausage that I dropped! The… symbol sausage!" Izzy said. Then she started rolling around on the ground laughing uproariously, kicking her feet.
LeShawna noticed Izzy laughing, and started laughing herself. Heather looked at her former teammates laughing. "Look at them, laughing for no reason! Come on, we should get out of here," she said. Beth and Lindsay did not follow suit, but in fact joined the crowd.
Lindsay didn't know why everyone was laughing, but she thought something must be hilarious, so she laughed too. Beth just wanted to fit in, so she started laughing, too. Surrounded by laughter on all sides, Trent asked again, "What is so funny?"
"Oh, nothing!" Gwen responded, teasingly, "Line."
Trent continued to be confused for the whole rest of the day, until he was going to bed that night. Then, he realized, "Oh! Those clever guys… but how could they have gotten Izzy to…?" He thought about it harder and then said, "It was just a coincidence."
Izzy stood outside Trent's window on a tall ladder, grinning like a maniac. She yelled "Woo! My plan worked!" This caused Trent to look over to the window which shocked Izzy. She fell over backwards and landed in the dumpster. She quickly brushed herself off, and leaped out of the trash, pretending that she had not fallen two stories. Trent was worried at first, but after Izzy walked away acting as though nothing had happened, he assumed it was fine, and went to sleep.