Lucy Scavinger Points Captain Average in the Right Direction

It didn’t help that the room was about a thousand degrees. John tugged at the neck of his hooded Panthers Baseball sweatshirt and tried to follow the woman speaking at the front of the room. Kelly…something. A college essay specialist. His mom had poked her head into his room last night when he got home from the latest trouncing his team was currently taking from pretty much every other team in their league.
“Remember. You have that essay workshop at nine.” She looked sleepy from reading on the couch.
“What essay workshop?”
Long sigh. “John. I told you. It’s on the board.”
His mother had been keeping a college board in the kitchen complete with SAT dates, colleges for him to think about touring, essay topic ideas, etc.
“Why do I have to write my essay now? I’m a junior.” John peeled off his smelly socks and lobbed them one at a time towards his hamper. O-2.
Another sigh. “It’s a pretty important part of the application. Anyway, this is just to get ideas.”
He stared at her. “Okay.”
Now, the flickering of the lights, the low chalky buzz of them, plugged up his eyes and ears. Sweat trickled down his back.
“Um?” A hand shot up from the front row. “Ms. Jenkins?”
Lucy Scavinger. John was surprised to see her here.
“Please, call me Kelly.” The woman waited for Lucy to drop her raised arm.
“It’s about a thousand degrees in here. Could we turn down the heat.” Lucy
blinked at Kelly. Lucy had stripped off what looked like a man’s tweed overcoat, leaving a thin white t-shirt that said, “Oh, really?” She wore a pair of boys jeans and flip-flops.
John studied her. Lucy’s real name was Lucy Havinger, but pretty much everyone John knew called her whole family the Scavingers. The Savingers were kind of a steady presence in Clarkville. They homeschooled all four of their kids and lived in a yurt by the river. They sold honey at the farmers market and were always downtown at rummage sales or pulling their rusty Volvo over anytime someone left something with a big “free” sign at the side of the road. Actually John had almost hit Wally Scavinger, Lucy’s big brother, the other day on Broad Street because he had whipped to the side of the road in one sudden jerk when a free bookshelf had made its appearance around a corner.
Lucy wasn’t really the type to take essay workshops.
“Um, yeah.” Kelly frowned. She looked red-cheeked herself. “Why don’t we take a ten minute break and I’ll try to locate the thermostat.”
Outside, a chilly March wind cooled John’s face. He found a bench, and tore the wrapper from an energy bar.
“You guys win last night?” Lucy plopped herself next to him on the bench, the overcoat back on and about six sizes too big. She sipped from a dented metal thermos, brushed some brown hair from her eyes. John had never really noticed how pretty she was, green eyes and smatters of tiny freckles across her nose.
“We don’t actually win games this year,” he smiled, taking another chunk out of his bar.
She squinted at him. “It’s John, right?”
“Yeah.”
She held out her hand. “Lucy Scavinger.”
John choked.
Lucy offered him the bottle. He took a long drink, wiping his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Sorry. Sorry. You kind of caught me off guard.”
She pulled her legs into a tuck. “You don’t think we know people call us that?”
John shrugged. “I guess I just never expected that you would call yourself that.”
“Why not?” Lucy screwed the cap back on her bottle and tucked it into a huge coat pocket. “I mean, that’s kind of what Kelly’s talking about in there, right? You gotta be who you are. I’m writing my essay about it.”
John frowned. “About being who you are?”
“About being a Scavinger.”
John shrugged again. Students milled about, ate snacks, talked on their phones. He knew most of them from school. Most were stand-outs in class or in sports or drama kids who recited Shakespeare from memory. He couldn’t get his brain around what Kelly was talking about in there. Be specific. Show don’t tell. Find your way to stand out in the crowd. John had pretty much made it his life’s work to not stand out in a crowd. Even his role as probably the worst catcher in the league let him wear a huge mask most of the time. He wasn’t particularly interested in standing out. Or college for that matter. But his parents went to college. His sister went to college. He was going to college.
“What about you?” Lucy asked.
John shifted uncomfortably. “What about me?”
“What makes you specific, unique, stand out from the crowd!” She said the last with a flourish of her hands, her voice slightly mocking. “What makes John, John.” She trailed his name out dramatically.
He studied the couple under a nearby tree. Brittany McClellen with her arms wrapped around Thad Mason. Those two. The future president and her husband. “Nothing.” He shifted his gaze back to Lucy. “I am completely, totally, boringly ordinary. I excel at nothing. Except for maybe holding the record for double-doubles eaten in ten minutes. Oh, and maybe the neighborhood record for how many times I’ve seen Hoosiers.”
“Never seen it.”
“You never seen Hoosiers?” John shook his head.
“Alas, my cinematic education is sadly lacking.”
John shook his head, popped the last of his energy bar into his mouth.
Then Lucy did something weird.
She clapped her hands on either side of his face and pulled it towards hers. Their eyes were inches away from each other. John’s heart began to pound. “Maybe,” she whispered. “Maybe you’re a superhero.”
“Unlikely,” he managed to breathe.
Her green eyes glittered. “Maybe you just don’t know it yet. Captain Average. Leaping small mounds of earth and double-double wrappers in a single bound.”
She let go of his face. He could still feel the lamp-light warmth of her hands there.
“Maybe that’s your essay.” She wrapped her coat like a cloak – or a cape – around her, started to walk back toward the classroom.
“Lucy!” John called out, his heart settling, but something warm along his skin, something liquid, remained.
She turned on a flip-flop foot.
“Come over later and watch Hoosiers with me.”
“Will do.” She laughed and disappeared through the doorway.