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?”
“Oh,” I say, not looking at her directly. “I won.”
“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.
I look at the clock again. Thirty seconds.
“So you are going to London?”
“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.
***
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.
“Yes,” I
nod, still nonchalantly.
Before I realize it the entire room is starting to clap. I am embarrassed.
Again I look down.
***
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 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.
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.
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.