Asher ✓

13 | english

SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 / SYMONT MIDDLE SCHOOL

Utter terror shook Asher awake on the first day of autumn, which coincided with the first day of school. 

Though he had mastered waking up at the right times, a headache usually followed him throughout the day like his shadow — one step away from catching up to him. Jet lag released its grip on him slowly; he was not quite free yet. 

In no way did Asher regret coming to America, but damn, American schools scared the shit out of him. There were bullies and vapid people and useless teachers; of course, Russia had all these shadowy facets to its educational diamond, too, but Asher (as a result of peripheral nationalistic messaging) thought here, it would be amplified ten-fold.

They had settled in over two weeks and one day, and that was pretty much how Asher Delrov spent his summer, because the first half was spent having goodbye hangouts with his friends, farewell parties with his relatives and packing up their things. Since arriving in New York, not once had he gone to the library (Asher liked reading) or the park (Asher liked riding his bike) or even talked to anyone other than his father over his punk music, or to his friends over Skype.

One could sympathise with the imperfectly formed boy, with a body that broke too easily, that had to go to a school in which no-one (probably) spoke his language. As both he and Vasily knew, Asher would be put in the English language learners class, with people 'like him.' 

Except, he was sure no-one in his new class would be 'like him.' If he happened to meet another student with a near-debilitating disease, then Asher would eagerly pop his ego bubble and try his best to overcome the barriers to friendship.

Vasily drove him to school in the car they'd used for years — Aria was very thorough in shipping their larger possessions over — and asked Asher, "Will you be okay?"

Really, he meant, "Am I going to have to drive you to the hospital today?"

"Don't worry, Papa," Asher was already using his map to determine the location of his homeroon class. One didn't need to speak English to know how to read a map. "I will see you at home, okay?"

Their maroon station wagon slid out of the roadside parking space, only for another car to pull in and deliver two girls with matching pigtails. Asher had neglected to attend the orientation day for the new students, because — oh, silly him — he wasn't in the country at the time, and probably wouldn't have understood a word of what they told him. There were already a number of teenagers outside his classroom door, speaking a variety of tongues, when he arrived five minutes before homeroom class started.

Asher's form teacher was a stout man, thirties-ish, who might have looked normal behind a bank counter, or in a hot dog suit. He was undoubtedly a thoroughbred American, who spoke the standard accented English.

Asher was fascinated with accents. He imagined specific ones could be written a specific way. 

For instance, a French accent speaking English would be looping cursive. British English would be neat print, every letter perfectly formed and sitting on the line. Australian would be long letters, slanted heavily backwards. And American accents, big round letters that lean to the right, reflective of this eager, drawling language that seemed to fill each syllable with as much sound as possible.

"Good morning, class!" he greeted slowly when the class was seated, with a caffeinated smile. "My name is Mr. Snider, and I'm your homeroom teacher for the year."

Asher's class was comprised of fellow English language learners. It was a stark, refreshing difference from the kinds of people Asher knew at home, and the types of things Russian education had told him. 

At every table, it was clear that a separation was already forming. First days always saw the people who had similarities band together, pulled by the innate orbit of wanting to be with people who understood them. Asher knew what that felt like; it was why he could tell anything to Giorgi Polzin and his mother, but could only muster a weak, "I'm honestly fine," with his friends.

Two Italian exchange students (they wore name tags with Italian flags in the background) fired giggles and gossip between them, in a fast-paced lingual tennis match. There was a table of Filipinos, and Asher thought that they were siblings from the way they all chatted like family.

Dark eyes hid behind glasses, framed by perfectly straight black hair. The Indian girl at Asher's table was confidently talking to three Africans — one with cornrowed hair, two with buzzcuts. Her voice was husky, heavily accented, and Asher took a liking to the way her mouth seemed unable to speak English fluently — like him. Accented also were the replies from the boys and girl she talked to, but all four of them were clearly fluent. 

Asher wondered how they had arrived in the English language learning class.

He noted that very few people had fair skin or blonde hair in his class. Were there no European international students? Or had all of them — save the Italians and himself, who were in this class out of obvious necessity — been filtered into the mainstream classes? Asher, like his father, was not political, but he was not blind either.

He noted how the brown eyes of his classmates subtly slid to him, resting his head forlornly on folded elbows as if the hunch in his back was intentional, and would disappear when he sat up. He noted how they shifted their bodies away from him when his hazel eyes met theirs, deciding against trying to befriend the white foreigner.

"This class will focus on catching your English up with the mainstream students," Mr. Snider's voice was just another dialect that sounded wild to Asher, but he spoke with the same tone of authority his teachers in Russia used. "I think we'll have a great time together, and look forward to knowing you all."

Mr. Snider circled between the desks, distributing booklets with a cartoon globe on the cover. In a comic speech bubble where Africa was supposed to be were the words, English Skill Learning Cohort, which translated to: you can't speak our main language, so you'll be learning separately till we deem you normal enough to interact with Americans.

The girls and boys at his table were speedily and diligently working through the assigned pages. Asher dipped his head and poised his 2B pencil over the paper. On the first page, he was asked by a bunch of inky letters to write his full name (he wrote it in Cyrillic script), his date of birth and first language.

Ekaterina had given him just enough knowledge for him to pass this task, with tremendous effort and considerable time. Understandably, when he pushed the page over, Asher hopelessly dropped his pencil with a clatter.

The longest English word he knew was osteogenesis — and he knew it would sound like complete trash if he wrote it under the next heading, tell us about your hobbies. All oblivious to his struggle, the foreign but fluent students which Asher shared his class wrote away. Tired already, Asher sighed, and started doodling robotic helmets on the booklet he had no chance of finishing.

Falling from the coveted position of highest over-achiever in a class of over-achievers, Asher, for once, felt like the dumbest person in his school.