The Smart Guy
What's your name?:I'm called Theo. I'd rather you not use my full name, I've never really liked it, and nobody besides family members and teachers on the first day of school ever use it.
Well, fine, if you must know, it's Enrique Theodosius Navarro.
Apparently, Enrique was my grandmother's idea, back when she used to live in the condos near our house. My parents wanted Theodosius as my first name, but my grandmother didn't think that was a strong name for a boy. She says that boys need strong names to survive in this world.
...We don't live near my grandmother anymore.
How old are you?:I'll be fifteen in two weeks. Other kids in my grade are making it out to be the bees knees with getting their learner's permit and everything, but I don't even think it's a big deal. There's nowhere to go in Bradbury, unless you count the four hour round-trip to Plattsburg and back. Even when I lived in New York it wasn't going to be anything special, traffic in NYC sucks and the subways go everywhere. And the taxis go everywhere the subways don't.
What do you look like?: Probably like someone who doesn't fit in. I mean, how many Latinos have you heard of who make it big and then move to Nowhereville in upstate New York?
So, yes, I'm Latino. No, I'm not Mexican or Cuban or Chinese (and, sadly, someone actually asked once). My mom's side is Chilean, and my dad's is from Ecuador, but both my parents were born in the US. I grew up as American as one can be, my parents both speak English at home and I don't even know Spanish except the few prayers my grandmother always used as expletives.
Oh, right, what do I look like?
My hair is brown and a little curly and bushy, but I usually try to wear it gelled down so it looks more normal. I've got a long forehead up to my hairline, and ears that kind of stick out a bit. I can hide my ears by wearing my hair longer, which I do. I have bushy, brown eyebrows above brown eyes (you getting the picture here?) against light-brown skin. It's definitely not dark skin, but it's not white like the Irish or Italian descendents that populate most of New York. Maybe more of like an olive color. That's pretty much it for brown, except for the
really light mustache that's coming in above my lip.
I'm about five foot five, and I'm
so happy that I'm finally passing some of the girls in class again; junior high with girls towering over me was hell. My parents think I'm still pretty skinny for my age, but at least I'm not like most kids from NYC these days, overweight and diabetic. I'm not muscular at all, nor am I really athletic, so my arms and legs would probably be flabby if they weren't so thin. I still have the advantage of a flat stomach that I can show off at the beach, even if I'm lacking the six-pack figure.
So, that's kind of what I look like.
Do you have any hobbies? Please feel free to discuss them here:I love video games. Shocking, I know, that the nerdy kid is gamer. I've still got all my consoles, so my collection includes a Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo Wii, an Xbox 360 and the new Xbox One. It's pretty cool to be able to talk to the xbox and have it do stuff, and I don't have my games in my bedroom, so it's not like I'm worried about the NSA spying on me in my underwear.
I'm into strategy and RPG games, although I still have a weekly Titanfall game with my friends from junior high, we play online now. Nobody around here really has much in the way of video games, and I think I'm the only one in town with the new Xbox One. But knowing this place already, I'm going to guess I got moved to a Playstation town, it'd be just my luck.
Okay, what else? So I also think chemistry is really cool, and science in general, but especially chemistry. I want to go to college to be a chemical engineer, it sounds way cooler than just a regular chemistry degree, or going into the medical field. I can't take chemistry yet until my junior year, but my parents got me the whole 'junior chemistry set' when I was a kid, and I loved all the experiments and finding new ways to combine things. I may or may not have set a few fires in the process.
I like technology, too. I mean, I’ve got a Samsung smartphone, but I'm not one of those computer nerds who gets pale from being inside and online all the time. That would really make me a geek, wouldn't it?
Any dislikes?:I’m not a fan of this move to Bradbury. My parents moved us here last summer, when my dad accepted a new position at work that has him based in Bradbury. I have no clue why he’d be based in Bradbury, there’s nothing here, but he is. I’m not even really sure what he does, except that it has to do with social media marketing.
But yeah, I’m really not feeling Bradbury. There’s nothing to do besides hang out at the mall, or the ice cream shop (when it’s open, apparently the shop closes here in Bradbury for winter). School has definitely come down a notch, I was enrolled in Columbia Prep School in the Big Apple, but Bradbury doesn’t even have a STEM program! It’s not that it’s easy, it’s just boring now that there aren’t oodles of projects to work on every month.
Okay, besides that, even though I like video games, I’m not the biggest fan of Sony Playstation. Yeah, it’s petty, but I’ll take Xbox and Kinect any day over Playstation.
Also, as you might have already guessed, I’m not the most well-liked kid in school. In fact, I’m probably the least popular kid, besides the
actual computer nerd with glasses and asthma who can’t run twenty feet in gym class. I don’t think it helps that my school, and this town, is full of white people who have barely ever seen a Latino, much less one living in Grand Oaks with a housekeeper and chauffeur. I don’t do sports, either, and I’m actually good in school.
So, yeah, I’m not really well liked. I’m not picked on, but it’s not like I get invited to all the parties or to hang out from time to time. It gets kinda lonely being the outsider, that’s all.
Tell me, what are your goals for the future? Both immediate and long-term.:My goal? Survive high school, what else? I already mentioned how popular I am (in case you forgot, I’m not), so I’d just as soon like to get the next three years over and done with.
Then I want to get the hell outta dodge. Or at least out of Bradbury. Seriously, I would like nothing better than to just leave town and start my life over in New York or Atlanta or San Francisco. I’ll find a good school for chemical engineering and go there.
Any other goals? Well, I’d like for Gregor to stop following me all over the place. Maybe my parents could trust me with
something, it’s not like there are stalkers and kidnappers living in this hick town.
What's your home life like? Specifically, what is your relationship like with your parents?:It’s just me, my mom and my dad. Oh, and Soong-Li, our housekeeper, as well as Gregor, our...well, he drives my dad around a lot, especially on business trips.
Yeah, we’re a bit well-to-do. I didn’t choose to be, and I don’t try to flaunt it, but I’m sure I come off a little spoiled.
I’m really not. I may not have to clean and do chores, but my parents are really keen on making sure I do really well in school and don’t just screw around. They often love to send Gregor with me when I go to the mall, or to watch me when I’m outside in the neighborhood. It was fine in New York, when Gregor would kind of blend into the crowd (even though Gregor really
does not blend into the crowd) and I could forget he was there. In Small Town, New York, it’s a bit more creepy and annoying.
Suffice it to say, things are a bit tense with my parents right now. I’d love to get out of Bradbury, but we just moved here and my dad says his job will last at least three years. Which sounds like exactly the sort of job someone would accept just as their kid enters high school, so there’s no chance of escape through four straight years of hell. Typical.
Siblings?: Nope, none. My parents both have plenty, which means I have lots of cousins that I grew up with and still see at holiday gatherings, but I’m the only child of my parents.
What's your favorite animal, and why?: An octopus. They’re supposed to have big, sectioned brains like humans, and they use tools and such to get their food. They can also squeeze into just about any crevice to hide or escape becoming prey, plus they have the ability to squirt poisonous ink at their foes. Smart, flexible and have built-in defenses, who wouldn’t like octopi?
Favorite color?:Green. It’s the one color I didn’t really see growing up, unless you count it on signs or stoplights around the city. There was plenty of non-greens around, red brick buildings, blue skies, yellow streetlights, orange construction cones, and so forth. Whenever I needed a color in grade school, I always chose green, only later did I figure out why.
You wake up late one night to discover that your house is burning down. What do you do?:I would grab my phone, wake up my parents, and call 911 while we went outside. After that, I dunno, I guess my parents would probably put us up in a hotel until they figured out what to do. The house burned down, not my whole life, and it’s not like my parents don’t have the money to replace everything. I’d be a little sad to lose the medal I won from science fair a couple years ago, but it probably would have been tossed out as junk at some point anyway.
Finally, a tricky one; which came first, the chicken or the egg?:How should I know? I’m into chemistry, not biology!
mattmanganon,
Supermaxx,
Sep,
Roman,
Cyrania,
Half Pint,
Captain Uni,
Tlaloc
