THE NOBLE GASES are the student council. HELIUM is the nice guy who will come out of the closet in college. XENON is the ridiculously hot salutatorian candidate who is also a minister’s daughter; she will resist all romantic advances until the senior graduation party, when she’ll get drunk and make out with KRYPTON, captain of the glee club, who is resultantly quite gleeful indeed. Nobody likes NEON, who unsurprisingly goes into pre-law.
BORON is the nose tackle for the football team. He doesn’t like to be called “Bo,” so nobody does.
RUBIDIUM is the quiet kid who draws all the time and sometimes has unpleasant diabetic reactions. Nobody will remember his name after graduation.
The ACTINOIDS run the A/V club, and sometimes, when the coast is clear, put illicit slides of Bettie Page into the projector and honk at the images. They are furtive and sly and fearful of VANADIUM, who for reasons known only to himself, stalks the hapless Actinoids with single-minded fury, and has a penchant for dishing out cruel titty-twisters.
YTTRIUM is the foreign exchange student who roams the halls with a quizzical half-smile on his face, wondering why nobody will talk to him. (Because he’s different, of course.) Finally, gregarious SODIUM one day invites him to a party, where he stuns everyone with his unearthly capacity for alcohol. BISMUTH vomits unceremoniously into a houseplant.
BERYLLIUM has a sniggering reputation for terrible flatulence that isn’t really justified, but rather lives on through the typically cruel rumormongering so prevalent amongst teenagers. He will show up for the ten year anniversary driving a BMW, feeling pretty good, but will nonetheless be tormented with an onslaught of fart jokes anyway.
TUNGSTEN is just as comfortable smoking in the parking lot with HAFNIUM as he is playing D&D with dorks like LAWRENCIUM and TIN. He is friend to many and enemy to none; sort of the polar opposite of the widely loathed STRONTIUM, who resembles a malignant ox.
NIOBIUM reads Sylvia Plath, and is aggressively upfront about her sexual proclivities. She will briefly run away from home with the sinister and violence-prone COBALT, but will return amidst vague, hoarse rumors of gunplay and extradition, none true. They just ran out of money.
SELENIUM will break your heart every day if you let her, and you do.
You are IRIDIUM, bright and rare and largely unnoticed, and you’re just all fucking right with me.
We hang out with MOLYBDENUM, so there’s usually no trouble. Let’s go play pinball.