Superbowl Sunday

Sunday mornings the paper come pregnant with inserts, comics, coupons and adds. Mom, nestles in her hooded lime almost monastic overcoat slicing coupons and storing them in a retired shoebox. Sunday’s dad revs up our 88 station wagon with tinted windows, bushels thick as beer crates. The papers are dropped off in front of our house in thickly trussed stacks. Dad gets me up in the morning and accompanies me on my jaunt, asking nothing for the money in return. He slides down the opposite side of the street, bag lumped over his shoulder, scooping into the contents, creasing the inked bulletins, placing them inside mailboxes and screen doors. The oval yawn and intermittent buzz of the streetlamps cast a yellow cone above our morning amble. Across the street father is my mirrored image. Fishing his hand into the pouch, traipsing up to the front porches. It is early morning. My school books remain home. The locker I will go to. The gourmet coffee I will grind first and then brew. The flakes I scoop into my mouth calling it nourishment. I count the days down, wondering when I will leave wondering what I will discover when I go to that place and never come back.



ASs I arrive home from the route my mother is smiling. She is  holding the paper open.
It is a copper centerfold. It takes up the entire page. The headline is THE JOURNAL STAR SALUTES THE BEST OF THE BEST.  The top of the page shows the finalists from both the county and city competition. It is a page high spread of Big Ben and parliament, the bottom of the page features the winners visages sprouting out of the House of commons in two giant screens, it as if the house of Lords is wearing reading lenses.

The paratactic bio is basically a synopsis of the article which ran Thurs. It says that I am active in Track, Cross country and bridge.
 
 
I am embarrassed by the full page spread.
 
 
I cannot wait to meet Nat Plederer.
 
I feel I will find a brother indeed.

During the church service I am the crucifer. I wear robes that are slightly reminiscent of a bridals veil concocted out of kleenex. I sit in the front of the church, next to the associate pastor, robes drooping down into a billowy pond near our ankles. As the service begins I configure my hands in the fashion of a color guard cadet around the bottom stem of the crucifix, lifting high the emblem of Christ, leading the pastors and the choir from the community narthex, sailing down the center aisle like a ships as all the parishioners attired in their dated Sunday best tilt in the direction of the staff I am hoisting as the  cross above my forehead all I can think about is Renae, naked, lying on my bed, the peninsula of her legs slightly forming geometrical angles.

News begins to spread like spring arriving early of my accomplishments. That Sunday I turn around and see Mr. Wilber and Mr . Schaffer, two elders at church, each hold out hands as if wanting to be the first to shake mine and congratulate me. I am coy. I am nervous. I am not used to this much attention. People inquire what I plan on doing over seas. Russell Disbro, the pastor’s son, asks if he can borrow my Sega genesis during the two weeks in which I am away. While walking out of the sanctuary, Rev Schudde comments my name rather loudly in his stately baritone applauding the Judges selection by saying congratulations as his hand grapples mine
As is seemingly his fetish Eggplant Elmore follows me into the bathroom at Christ Lutheran Church before Sunday school. The green wallet sized Gideon bible is still in my back pocket although I am dressed in my church pants.

            “I can’t believe you broke up with Renae.” Eggplant says to me, his face a riddled doily of acne and post-adolescent blemishes.

            “The time was right.” I say to him, perhaps mimicking a line I heard from a televised drama.

 

            “She was really in tears. All day in class. You really broke her heart.”

 

            I stand over the urinal placing the confirmation bible that my aunt gave me and the Styrofoam coffee cup above the urinal.  The bible has my name and confirmation date emblazoned on the bottom front cover in silver font, her cursive loops inside the front cover reminding me that God is always there for me and urging me to go to God even with the little things in life.  I unzip and try to concentrate as Elmore continues to blather in a eunuchesque monotone claiming that he can’t believe I had the gall to call things off with Renae Holiday when things were apparently going so well between the two of us.

“Quit standing behind me, I’m trying to concentrate.” I say, my legs arched apart in a aqueduct. 

            The door to the Eggplant Elmore looks both ways as if he is about ready to say something important.

“Personally Dave, I would have effed her first.” Eggplant Elmore says to me. I frisk the side of my pockets as if I am going through customs, verifying the position of the moss colored Gideon bible. I look at myself in the mirror and winder if I did the right thing.

            “Effed.” I say to myself, as if I am looking at a French test in Mme Suhrs class and have somehow failed.    

                                                                                  ***

After church I go for a run. I run the cross-country course at the golf course three times for a total of 10 miles.  The snow is melting. It is unseasonably warm for the month of January.

I am purportedly going to England.

 

It is Super bowl Sunday. The Buffalo Bills are in their third consecutive Super bowl though they just can't seem to win. Michael Jackson is the halftime entertainer

When I get back home I call Dawn Michelle and get no answer. I call Renae and the line, as always, is busy. Part of me was somehow expecting that Renae would perhaps call me up and congratulate me on winning the trip and somehow  I would tell her that I was wrong and ask for forgiveness and somehow we would agree to meet and kiss and get back together a week later.

Part of me is wondering if she knows I one the contest.

Part of me is wishing that I would have effed her first.

                                                                         ***
 
It is Superbowl Sunday It is the SuperBowl. Buffalo Bills are wresting against the granite defense that is the Dallas Cowboys. It is the SuperBowl.  It costs 800,000 to air a commercial that will be seen by twice that amount. Michael Jackson is scheduled to perform at halftime. Stats are projecting that over a billion people will be watching, that half the earth will be an watching.
 

During the SuperBowl I go out collecting knowing that if my subscribers are home they will be watching the game. When I get to Bob and Frank’s house they are testing the strobe-lights for their Club thirty gala sometime in the next year.

Bob answers the door. He is wearing pants.

He answers me with the colloquial Well Hey.

The moment I enter their abode. There are cheers. Both Bob and Frank are pelting handful of confetti. There are streamers. Above the half-finished stage near the singular strobe light testicle is a banner. It reads: CONGRATULATIONS DAVID!!!

They are clapping. They are patting me on the back. They say they have been waiting for me to come.

“We are really proud of you winning the trip. That’s really amazing man!!!”

I look at the banner. The two of them are smiling at me.

I am humbled. I can tell they went to work in decorating their house. I tell them they didn't have to do that. I tell them thank you again for writing that recommendation. They tell me it is no bug deal. They smile. They ask if I would like to have some of that Hawaiian coffee that I enjoyed so much before and watch the SuperBowl.
 
I smile and tell them I would love to.  
 
We eat cake. We watch the Superbowl. For the first time in my life I partake in the global majority and watch Michael Jackson defying gravity in sputtering dyslexic pirouettes accompanied by  accelerated motown panache. I have another cup of the doctored Hawaiian coffee.  

They are smiling . Bob and Frank are my friends. I thank them again for writing the recommendation. They lift their cup of Hawaiian coffee and say no problem.

"Just remember when you are over seas to pose naked next to Big Ben, Frank and I have a bet on which one is larger. He has you.”

I am confused. The two of them laugh. Bob and Frank are my friends. I am laughing as well.
 
 

It’s hard not to laugh when Bob and Frank are around.

                                                                                         ***

When I get home from collecting my sister is yelling that there is a phone call for me. When I go to take it downstairs Beth says that it is a girl that I should take it upstairs.

I take the stairs two at a times. It is Dawn Michelle. Perhaps it is Renae. When I get into my parents’ bedroom I take my glasses off and look in the mirror.

When I answer the phone I hear someone address me as Dave.

It is not Renae. It is not Dawn Michelle.

It is Amy. Patrick’s Amy. I wonder what he has done now.

The last phone conversation I had with Amy was one week ago when she drilled me a new asshole for breaking Renae’s heart.

“Hey, listen I just wanted to call and say congratulations on winning that trip to England. That’s really cool.”

“I am smiling, It was nice of her to call.” We have been bithcy-bantering back and forth ever since she dissipated from Patrick and then I dumped Renae.

“It was crazy. We were paging through the Sunday paper today when I saw your face. I remember Renae saying that you were in some sort of contest.”

I wonder if Renae gets the paper. I wonder if she saw my visage in the paper today. I wonder if she is using it as a dartboard.

 I want to inquire about Renae. I want to convey to Amy that, due to feelings of unbridled lust, I felt there would I had to sacrifice the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world to gain admittance to the expressway of formative adulthood.

I have heard rumors  that Renae has been talking with David Best every night for four hours.

We blather on for fie minutes straight. I refrain from asking about Renae. Amy notes that my friend Patrick has been spotted several times lurking the hallways in a mischievous prowl but so far no harm no foul.


Amy tells me to bring her back something British. She tells me to have a good trip,

I don't ask about Renae even once.

When I get back to my bedroom I supplicate to the caps of my knees and thank whatever higher deity there is that I am going.  I look at the centerfold. I think about how I can't wait to meet Nat  Pflederer. I wonder if in three months time the two of us will congregate to swap photos and  reminisce about the trip that changed our life.

On the back of the centerfold is an article.

Germans mark the anniversary of Hitler's rise to power.

I am leaving in seventy-two days. 

 

Superman’s body is stagnant. Everyone is standing around his body as if it were a coffee table Unmoving. Lois has lifted the tattered cape of his gaunt countenance as a relic for the being she loves. There are fights between the chief of police and Starlabs. Guardian is saying that he can’t get a pulse no matter how many times he genuflects down on his knees and blows into through his lips. There are arguments. Here are procedures. A fellow newscaster is harping at Lois informing her that she has a job to do as a reporter, unaware that Lois was engaged to the super hero’s doppelganger, unaware that she has lost two people she loves.

 

The creature now monikered as Doomsday is being lifted up with anti-gravity pods. He is still impossible to move. The man of Steels friends are toting a energy defibrillator, winged policemen are firing at it, Bilbo the amicable lush whose life Superman saved years ago is administering the initial shock.

 

He is gone.

 

Lois is back at the planet. She is at her computer. There has been no sign of her co-worker and fiancé Clark for over ten hours. He is among the missing.

 

She sits in front of her computer in a welt of tears and does the one thing she knows how to do.

Luggage

It is a blue Jordache suitcase with a leathery-wrangleresque handle and nylon sides and wheels  and it is 80 dollars down from 150 at Sears in downtown Peoria and Grandma is asking me if I like it. It is the blue suitcase and it is larger than our Zenith television in the living room. It is the blue suitcase which the skinny-tie sales clerk has already informed us is top of the line, crème de la crème, optimal for international travel. It is the blue suitcase which I will pack with  jeans and underwear and my running shoes, clothes that will be scrupulously assayed and configured in economical heaps to save room, sweaters folded like mortar boards. It is the suitcase and Grandma has already told me twice that if I don't like it we can always go somewhere else.

The suitcase if expensive. I don't want my grandmother to spend this much money on me.


Grandma tells me to make sure when I pack it in Peoria the first time to leave lots of room for all the souvenirs I want to bring back home.

 I don't want my grandmother to spend this much money on me.

Grandma tells me that I need something to take with me. I need a square-shaped tote to stow provisions and toiletries. I wonder if my ubiquitous silo-shaped can of Aqua Net will be usurped in customs. It is the wheeled trolley that I will plant my life attire inside of that will be cached in vector of the plane roaring 4-miles over the icy swills of the Atlantic ocean, the suitcase I will wait around a carousel bin and fetch finding myself


You need a suitcase, my grandmother says to me.

When I ask grandma what she wants me to bring her back from England she tells me nothing. She tells me that Grandma just wants me to have a goof trip.

Grandma always refers to herself in the third person as grandma.

 

I pick up the suitcase by its leathery lobe and proceed to checkout at Sears. As I am walking to the aisle I see Beano and his girlfriend Corrine. Beano who started the season as one of our top five cross country runners and then became insouciant. Beano who gained weight over the course of the season. Beano who just wouldn't leave my hotel room when we crashed in Mattoon and he shoved a picture of a poxed-riddled pudendum in my face and told me to lick it.


 I haven't seen Beano all semester.

Next to him is his girlfriend Corrine. She went to grade school with me  since third grade. She started dating Beano last year when she is in 8th grade. Corrine is 14 years old. She is three months pregnant.


Grandma asks me if there is anything else I need that could possible help me as I travel to another world.

 

 

Mom picks me up the next day from high school, since there is no indoor track practices on Friday until mid-February. The sun is tackling mounds of dirty snow transitioning them into taupe puddles that looks like medicinal tea.  I step into he side wing of our 86’ Mercury station wagon with the tinted windows.  We are going downtown to get my passport and then to drop the papers off at the Journal Star.

 We go to the Bank one building downtown, the building with the ruffled spire acending into a corrugated peak overlooking all of downtown Peoria. The building where my mother keeps her safety deposit box containing my birth certificate.

Mom says that it is really thoughtful for the Journal Star to reimburse us for everything.

"Did anyone see your face in the newspaper at school today?" Mom inquires.

I am embarrassed. I don't want to tell her that in two classroom the article is cutout and placed on the back wall. I don't want to tell her that Coach Mann gave a soliloquy in front of the classroom and even Cool Jow Thomas who I have lovingly reviled since the first day of school even made me march up to the front of the classroom so he could shake my hand.


"Yeah, I think a couple of people saw it Madame Suhr seemed really excited."

Mom tells me that Madame Suhr is a really sweet lady. I am called into the passport room. The photographer seats me in front of a white canvas.Again they are telling me to tilt my head a certain way so that the shades of my glasses are not evident. So the apparatus I use to see does not cast a pernicious shadow across the slope of my nose.

                                                       

                                                                                ***

Upon arriving home we sift through the paperwork. There are three copies of the consent and release form, one for myself, one to be kept on file at the Star and one for PARADE. There are several sheets offering CONGRATULATIONS followed by the date of the trip. Apparently before leaving for overseas the group as a whole is attending orientation in New York where I am to meet my counselors. There is a form stating that I need a physical, mom telling me that she has already made plans to visit my doctor Monday after school so that we can drop the paper work off ASAP.  There is a slip for jacket/shirt size. A slip for camera insurance that dad says we're just not going to do so don't lose your camera or any rolls of film. There is a consent form my parents' have to sign stating that if I am in need of medical attention.


There is a form for life/accidental death insurance, which I am to sign, stating that my family will be compensated 100,000 dollars if an accident occurs on the trip.

I am picture flying overseas, the plane exploding into a morning glory of incendiary sparks, bodies sparkling above the icy swills of the late-night Atlantic in a blink of loss.


"They have to do that David." My  father says, "For legal purposes. They have to place in a life-insurance form. Every member of your trip has to sign the forms."

Father says that its no big deal. He tells me that I am going to go to England and have the time of my life.



                                                                       ***

The final slip in the package is the Young Columbus pledge. It is Faustian, I am bartering some undiscovered facet of my soul with the cursive loop of my inky signature. I am agreeing that as a Young Columbus delegate I am to follow the

I want to sign in blood.


                                                                         ***

Later that  night I am at Roosevelt. It is the play I was in last summer. It is the play where I fell in love with life. I am a pending world traveler. I am seated in Roosevelt’s moribund yet refined auditorium with the shellacked brown chairs and the feeling that the audience is ensconced together in a cigar box.  I am watching last summer float across the stage.
The person playing Charlie the Anvil salesman is a burly bearded man who roars on stage.

He is gruff. He is downright acerbic. He looks like a vile antagonist to an unwritten Disney movie about the dangers of shaving. When he says Girly-Girl it sounds like a convicted White Trash pedophile offering a Blow pop to an innocuous eyed four year old.

When he says no-good-two-bit thimble ringer Harold Hill I am the only person in the audience who cackles, thinking of Pam.

I was the better Charlie.

I will always be Charlie.

At intermission Uncle Larry calls me out to his truck and tells me he has something for me. It is a laminated copy of the Journal Star. In the corner he has scribed out a novella telling me that persistence and kindness definitely pay off.  I've always looked up my Uncle Larry. I smile at his approval.
 

As I re-enter the theatre I look at the stage, reflecting over last summer, my production in the theatre—the odor of Peoria players, the wafting musk and painted vignettes from past show. How backstage at the theatre somehow connotes that all this life really is is a dress rehearsal, that the audience has yet to enter the finish the final act, how even with a tautly-rehearsed script nobody can be quite certain what the rise of the second act curtain will bring. 

peristence pays...

It is morning on the second day of the rest of his life. As he awakes father has already splayed the paper open like a board game and is pointing the tip of his Sunday-school guitar calloused finger into the article as he was the same with the year before, as was the same with Nat yesterday, the article just shows  a black and white visage looking out of a window past an black and white abode shingled simply with words. Father is excited as he again puts his arm around my shoulder. His smile is beaming, leaking off his face, almost reminiscent of Anastatia’s last summer. At school today all of his colleagues will eke into his classroom handing my father clipped copies of his sons face, shaking his hand, telling him that they are proud he raised a man of character. I think about the look in Tom Otten's eyes, rattling his fist, saying yes, a muffled, modest variation of Kelly with the unpronouncable   last name only two years and a decade earlier. 

The houses on Sherman and Moss seem to swim past father and I walk on respected sides of the avenue, reeling out flaps of paper and tucking them.

                                                                              ***

\

There is five minutes left of homeroom. I am looking down into the books of the classes I have missed the previous day. Madame Suhr looks at me and tilts her head and then inquires something almost unintelligible en francais. I look back at her and say pour-kwa. She asks me again before rephrasing the question in my native tongue.

“The contest you had yesterday? How did you do?”

I look down. For some reason I don’t want to make a big deal of it. For some reason I just want to ignore the adulations that is to follow and concentrate on the assignments that I have missed.

“Oh,” I say, not looking at her directly. “I won.”

“You won!!!” Madame Suhr seems almost ecstatic. Immediately she shuffles something French through her lips featuring the word,”gagne.” Several other heads turn in my direction as if arrowheaded inside a compass. Theresa Whitiken inquires a that means your headed to England. I tell her yes. In April. Madame Suhr is still looking at me with an almost quizzical expression sewn into her lips. Judging from the akimbo forearms of the clock I have less than two minutes of home room to go before the nasal shrill of the bell releases us. Madame addresses me by my French name. She addresses me as Raoul. I can’t understand the latter-half of the sentence but inferring from her motions it is clear that she wishes to see me at the front of her classroom, at her desk right now.

“Raoul, you won?” She says. I nod. The paper is next to her desk, still scrolled and rubberbanded like an antique telescope. I tell her yes. Her face seems to erupt into smiles.

“I had to give a speech. I nailed it. I’m going to be going to Europe in three months.” I say then look down into my shoes before informing her that there’s an article in the paper this morning.

 “Vraiment?’ She says, still excited.

 “I grab the paper and unfurl the rubber band like taking a condom off a banana in health class. I open to the last page of the LOCAL section and show her the article. Madame still has a stuttered look on her face. She continues to smile.

\“It’s all right here.” I show her the article. Immediately half-the class rushes up and huddles around the splattered newspaper like an atlas.  Todd Shepherd says hey, that’s you.  I nod.

“So you’re going to London?”

 I tell her we. I tell her that I don’t have much information on the trip so far only that I know I’ll be leaving on said date and that tonight after school my mother is picking me up so I can go and fill out my application for my passport.

I look at the clock again. Thirty seconds.

“So you are going to London?”

I tell her that its over Easter break. I tell her that I will have to miss one week of class and apologize in advance for my absence.

“London.” She says again. There is high-pitch reverberation of the bell. I walk back to my desk and scoop up my books one-handed. As I   look back I tell Madame I will see her sixth hour.

She looks at me. She is nothing but smiles.


                                                                        ***

There is silence followed by frenzy but there is silence first. Gravid, pendulous spitting silence. Silence where he lies stagnant, more super meat than super man. 

Lois is screaming that someone needs to do something. Lois is screaming that he deserves more than this.

There is silent. There was seismic activity and toppling of skyscrapers moments earlier but for now only a bleeding silence prevails.

                                                                        ***

 

I recline in the library for Study Hall, first hour. My books are precipitously stacked in the order of classes for the day. Mr. Mannnioni’s history class is next.  A bronze countenance of Pharaoh adorns the book.

During first hour study hall two copies of the Journal Star are delivered. Everyone vies for a copy of the paper. I have Coach Mann's book teepee'd around my head. Two popular juniors Michelle Shepherd and Monica Bixby are paging  through the paper. As I look of Michelle is looking at me, her lips agape as if in some sort of I-just-found-out-my-boyfriend-got-drunk-and-ejaculated-on-a goat-over-the-weekend-look.  

            “That’s you.” She says again, looking down, looking into the crooked glasses of the quiet kid who doesn’t talk much.

Mme Suhr didn’t mention anything at all home room until the last second. Michelle Shepherd found out on her own during study hall.

“Yeah,” I say to Michelle Shepherd. I am trying not to raise attention to myself. I am trying to act like it is no big deal.

Her lips are still open. She is looking at the paper as if my visage is unexpected results of a home pregnancy test

            “Let me see,” Monica says, as she peers down onto the page, spoting the article headlined with the word Persistence.

"That's you," She points, I looks down. 

            “Yes,” I nod, still nonchalantly.

Before I realize it the entire room is starting to clap. I am embarrassed.


Again I look down.

                                                                         *** 

  

The ruffled stage curtain of the universe clearing its throat. Everyone is looking at the rippled being in frayed blue and red pajamas and the slab of alien granite lying dormant next to him.  The flutter of his cape, a flag to an unknown country capitulating in loss and defeat, surrendering everything it has ever known for a language never heard until this day.

She is crying.

Somebody do something.

Something.

                                                                     ***

This is the first time Coach Mann has not been in the classroom as we entered. Students are tossing wads of paper. The Christ Lutheran asswipes in the back row just will not shut the hell up. Coach Mann enters he is carrying a copy of the Journal Star under his arm like a musket. He is walking in the same almost patriotic gait that I see him walk every time I see him on the football field or between classes.

 “I don’t know how many of you had an opportunity to peruse this morning’s edition of the Journal Star but we have a celebratory in our midst.”

 I am looking around feigning naiveté.

 Coach M is pointing in my direction. It was less than two weeks ago when he refereed the nuclear scuffle between myself and fuckwad Rothmann. Now he is referring to myself as a celebrity. He is referring to myself as a world traveler. He is smiling. He is conveying to the classroom that one of his students now has the opportunity to witness the tangibility of everything we have discussed this past semester.

"David I'm sure I speak for your fellow students' in stated that all of us are extremely proud of your accomplishment."

I smile and look down. I am shy. From behind me I can hear Aron Rothman smirk in disdain.

                                                                                ***


Third hour is Cool Joe Thomas. Thomas which I got a C in last semester. Cool Joe Thomas with the Toupee that looks like kitty litter and the COFFEE KEPS ME GOING coffee mug. Cool Joe Thomas who stands in front of the classroom and tells anecdotes and has spent maybe fifteen minutes this entire semester teaching. Cool Joe Thomas who embarrassed me yesterday . 

I sit next to Amy Wherli, my lab partner whose  blonde hair drapes the side of her face. Her cheeks are orbital swirls of red. I sit, unprepared for Biology.

              

I am sick of people congratulating me.

"People have been talking about you." Amy Wherli says.

I nod and say oh really. Angelina Lighthouse keep twisting her neck back at me as if she has a nervous tic.

"Yeah, they say you won that contest."

I give her an unprepossessing look as if to say I don't have any clue what she is talking about.

"You know, that contest that you were all dressed up for yesterday. That contest that Mr. Thomas was making fun of your suit and tie."

I tell her yeah, that one.


"They say you are in the newspaper this morning. They say you won the contest. They say you will be going overseas in a couple of months."

I want to ask Amy to whom the gender-neutral singular pronoun they refers. Instead I stoically nod.

"Yeah, I guess I won."

Angelina Lighthouse is looking back, smiling in a way I was never capable of making her smile the first six weeks of the semester when I was gaga drooling over the fragrant scent of her smile 24-7.
Amy Wherli leaves her position next to me, in the back of the classroom.

“Let me shake your hand.” I hear Joe Thomas. “Come up here and let me shake your hand.”

I walk up and shake his hand. The whole class seems to erupt in applause.

Later in the class period when Cool Joe Thomas passes out the grades from the last test and announces I have a C he states, publically, “Von Behren, you cannot go to England now.”

I wonder if winning the contest  really changed things all that much  at all.

                                                                          ***

Ice comes forward. She is coy. She is wetting her frozen rosemary cheeks with icicles. No one know what to do. A still-life with a bowl of dead superhero silence avails.

"Here'" Ice says, as she encroaches the body of the super man. She rests her gloves on the tips of Lois's shoulder. She is talking to her as a woman who has lost her planet. She is talking to her as a friend.

Without worry she walks up to the tattered cape dangling on a lance of detritus. Without thinking she removes the cape from the metropolitan flotsam and walks over to the avatar of the DC universe.

Without thinking she lays the cape over the body of the fallen hero.

Without thinking she cries.

                                                                            ***


By the time I get to fourth hour Mr. Reents has already cut out the article and paste on the lascivious black and white bulletin board showcasing staid lips and half naked models. Fifth hour is Mrs. Peabody's class I am transferring. It is only high school algebra but the class is full of mostly juniors. Mrs. Peabody looks at me as if she is going to bite the inside of my arm. Out of all the teachers she is only one who doesn't congratulate me for winning the trip.

"So you are in this class this semester?"

"I spoke with the office last week."

"This class is way too easy for you."

"Yeah, but the last class period everyone was getting C's."

"You are not gonna learn anything in this class."

"Well, it's not like I'm going to be Euclid when I grow up."

Mrs. Peabody smirks. She tells me that there is a problem and I am not on her attendance log and that I need to go into the office to straighten things out.

"But I was on the attendance log first hour for study hall."


Mrs. Peabody says that I can't be in the classroom until she has it in her attendance that I transferred.

Mrs. Peabody is a bitch.


I take an orange reference sheet.


I have never be sent to the office before.


As I walk in the secretary is smiling.

"Mr. Sumner has been waiting to speak with you."


I wonder just what I did.


                                                     ***

"Again, that’s quite an accomplishment.”  My counselor Mr. Sumner has just switched my math classes. he apologizes for the snafu. He keeps inquiring about my trip. I keep looking down. I don’t want to talk about my glory. I keep asking questions. I inquire if the number of days I will miss will effect my GPA. Like when talking when Madame Suhr I keep feeling the need to apologize for the length of time that I will be gone.

“You will be fine.” My counselor assures me with a stolid nod. On a bulletin board in his classroom there are newspaper cut outs of his son from the late 80’s who was purportedly a quarterback at the high school on the rich side of town, the school where Dawn attends.

He asks me if I am excited. I think about Coach Mann and how excelling in academics and excelling in athletics are equivalent to sculpting of a human being.

I am wearing my boots. I look down. I then look at the cardboard jowls of the man who is to lead me through the annals of adolescent, into the aching cusp of adulthood.

“I can’t wait.” I say, before stepping up and extending my hand like a lance in his direction. We shake hands and the bell will explode and I realize that I am to leave for the next class, the shuffling of bodies skirting past the windshield of my vision.

I am leaving for Europe in three months. Somehow I still don’t know where I am going at all.