A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip (13 page)

The school is asleep in the drizzling rain. From Mr. Weatherly’s room comes a burst of laughter like a balloon popping: pierce a crowd with a needle, and
bang!
—that’s the noise it will make. It vanishes in an instant, the seconds sliding closed around it, so quickly that Kevin might almost believe it had never happened, except that the quiet in the hallway seems fuller, deeper, just the
tap-tap-tap
of dress shoes and the softer sound of Reeboks.

He is following Mr. McCallum to his office. Once or twice, glancing up, he sees the principal make a little sideways movement of his chin, as if to discourage a bug from touching down, but it is December and too cold for bugs. Kevin guesses he must be rehearsing his questions.
Now tell me, who started all this exactly? When did they begin, would you say, these difficulties of yours? I’m sorry to hear that, but whose fault do you think it was? Is that so? Is it? Then why did you wait so long to speak up? Can you look me in the eyes, right now, Mr. Brockmeier, and contend that you’re one hundred percent certain you didn’t get exactly what you deserve?

Nothing in the world is one hundred percent certain.

Really? You and I are both here talking to each other—isn’t that one hundred percent certain?

Maybe ninety-nine-dot-nine-nine-nine percent. Everything could all be a dream.

So what you’re saying is that the trouble you’ve been having might in fact have been your fault? It’s possible, you’re saying?

Not at all. You’re distorting my words.

And just like that Kevin is lost in a reverie of debate.

That’s not what I meant
, he says,
and you know it
.

Yes, technically, sure, anything is
possible, he says,
but so what?
Possible
isn’t the same as
true.

Well, sir
, he says,
if you’re looking for absolute proof, I can’t give it to you. No one can. Prove one thing absolutely. Go ahead. I’m waiting
.

But as soon as Mr. McCallum guides him to one of the padded chairs by his desk and lowers his gaze to listen more carefully, encouraging him to “Take your time now, son. Go ahead. Talk to me,” the argument in Kevin’s head ceases, and a surge of confession billows through him. He can’t help it. A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to obey the Scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. Adults make Kevin uneasy. They always have, and they always will. With teachers he knows how to be a good student, with parents a good kid, but beyond those borders is a no-man’s-land of bullets and broken earth. The sight of it stretching in at him from the distance, so gigantic and impenetrable, frightens the living hell out of him. He has never been able to have a difficult conversation with a grown-up without leaking nervous tears—tears of shock, not sadness or pain—and this time is no different. The room seems to flicker through a projector. He can feel his cheeks becoming wet. He
tries to restrict himself to a bare handful of important facts, the stairwell and the parking lot and
Cut it out, guys
, but each detail reminds him of another, a third and a fourth and a fifth, and with every tiny particular, his memories grow further out of their shape. The story is such a hard one to be his.

Mr. McCallum wants to know more about the time Shane Wesson heaved him against the wall, of all things. “Stop right there, Kevin. Did anyone else grab you, trip you, push you, or hit you? Physically, I’m talking. With their hands.” He seizes the air like a pair of shoulders.

“No, just Shane.”

But what, Kevin wonders, does
that
have to do with anything? Shane isn’t the problem. Shane didn’t hurt my feelings. Shane didn’t even
mean
it.

“So no one else laid a hand on you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It was Shane and Shane alone?”

“Yeah.” Blink. “But he didn’t bother me so much.”

“All right. Continue.”

“Thad and Kenneth were the actual instigators,” he says, and the time has come to describe the
la la la
’s. It was their most perfectly engineered bit of teasing, he tells Mr. McCallum, perfect because it was so simple, just the two of them adding
la
’s to the conversation, one after another, like bricks, and Kevin trying to speak around the corners, until before long, in the quiet of his imagination, he began adding the word himself:
la la, la la, la la la
. They had done something to the word so that it was not itself anymore. He could hear it faintly behind everything he said, and sometimes he still can, and maybe he will forever. The bell sounds the same in the
office as it does in class—not any softer and, surprisingly, not any louder. The noise of students fills the hall like a flock of birds shotgunning out of a tree. Though Mr. McCallum seems not to notice the commotion, Kevin has to stifle the urge to collect his books and take off at a stride. He will be the last person across the building: the loser.

“You know SRA’s fixing to start. I’m about to miss roll.”

“SRA … that’s Mrs. Bissard, right? I’ll give you a tardy pass. Mrs. Bissard will understand. Anyway, we’re nearly done here, aren’t we?”

Kevin’s not so sure, but “I guess so,” he says.

A few minutes later, when he leaves the office, Thad and Kenneth are already waiting in the outer room. They pretend not to notice him, unlike Shane, who arrives with his backpack slung from his shoulder, wearing the snow-day look of someone without a care in the world. He says, “Hey, what’s up, K.B.? Where you been?” as he passes Kevin in the doorway. Then he frogs him cheerfully on the biceps. It is the usual harmless jab, the one all the guys trade with each other in the locker room, and if it bruises Kevin, that’s only because he is puny.

That night, during Kevin’s last few minutes of phone time, Bateman calls to tell him about the punishment the principal handed down: a week’s detention for Thad and Kenneth and a two-day suspension for Shane. “Two-day vacation, more like,” Bateman says. “Hell, two full fucking weeks.”

Christmas begins on Friday—that’s what he means. It will be 1986 by the time Shane returns to school. “So what will it take for you to get me suspended, too?” Bateman asks. “I figure (a) I can shove you against a wall, or (b) you can catch
me drinking beer at school, or (c) doing drugs, or (d) I can stab you.”

Bateman says: “I’m easy. Take your pick.”

He says: “There’s also electrocution.”

He says:
I’m joking so the hard part is over
.

He says:
We’re still friends, you and me
.

Percy is trotting across the kitchen toward his water dish, his tiny steps so exact and unvarying that Kevin always imagines the floor is simply sliding into place beneath his paws, like a giant moving sidewalk. The microwave shows 9:00 and then 9:01. From the VCR he hears the first tinkling music-box notes of
All My Children
. Before his mom can tell him it’s getting pretty late, isn’t it, my goodness, will you look at the time, he says to Bateman, “Hey, man, I gotta go. See you tomorrow,” and Bateman says, “Okay. Stab you tomorrow,” and Kevin returns the phone to its cradle.

He shakes a few chicken-flavored Bonkers into his palm. Percy changes course, snapping the treats up, then harvesting the spice from Kevin’s fingers with his tongue. Kevin scratches his brow, that funny flat spot where it looks as if styling gel has been combed through his fur. He is a long silver muffler of an animal, so agreeable that sometimes Kevin walks around the house wearing him draped across the back of his neck, his little round head perking this way and that. Once, in the middle of the night, playing on top of the washer-dryer, Percy tipped the laundry basket down around himself, meowing from behind its bars until Kevin woke up and let him out. And last week, aiming for the Christmas tree topper, a kind of dunce cap with a big silver star, he landed a foot too low, clambering through the branches until the whole construction
came crashing to the carpet in a hurricane of lights and tinsel. For once Kevin is going to keep him overnight. Jeff, home from school with a fever, has been monopolizing him all week. Does Percy get bored, Kevin wonders, watching him read a
West Coast Avengers
and change into his sweats? What would he say if he could speak? As usual, at bedtime, Kevin tries to get him to stay under the covers, but he would rather trot along the bedspread and bat at the lumps of Kevin’s feet. Eventually, he cozies up against the backs of his knees. Kevin can feel his purr rumbling into him through the layers of sheets and blankets. Either that or he simply hears it so clearly he imagines he can feel it. The sound keeps softening and escalating with Percy’s breathing, like a car navigating a switchback. The restfulness of it makes Kevin’s mind hum. It is almost enough to make him believe he has never felt any other way.

The next day, before Bible, Thad crouches next to Kevin’s desk and asks him if he still likes Billy Joel. He pronounces the name with the penned-up destructiveness of someone cracking an egg against a frying pan: Billy-Joel
tack-tack
.

Kevin can’t believe it is starting again. “Billy Joel’s a hell of a lot better than Mötley Crüe,” he says, and braces himself for the repercussions, but Thad just stares at him and “Jeez,” he says, “I was only wondering. Bite a guy’s head off, why don’t you.”

Boothby, Braswell, Brockmeier, Brooks: Thad’s seat is right behind Kevin’s. He takes it without another word, and why not? The way he holds Kevin’s gaze says everything. Kevin likes Billy Joel. No one but gaybaits likes Billy Joel. Figure it out.

Maybe—probably—the only reason Thad stays so quiet is because he doesn’t want to get in trouble, but that’s okay with Kevin. He’ll take circumspection over open abuse any day.

Following English, just as the bell is releasing everyone to third period, Miss Vincent gives him a greeting card with a drawing of a hippo standing on its hind legs. She hands it across his desk unassumingly, offhandedly, like homework, and no one pays much attention. Though the caption looks handwritten, it isn’t: “When everything really starts to get to you, DON’T DESPAIR! DON’T GIVE UP! Just do what I do,” and on the inside, “Eat.” There beneath the punch line is the blue ink of her cursive, full of circles, like the pattern at the corners of a fancy napkin: “Hope you are feeling better about things today. Things will get better, just be patient. Have a good day! Love— Ms. Vincent.”

The words make a kind of drumbeat in Kevin’s head.

Things, things. Better, better. Love
.

Things, things. Better, better. Love
.

For nearly an hour he listens to it, opening the card every so often to read the note again, and then geography has ended, and he is surveying the lunchroom. Where should he sit? The Thad table is an impossibility, and so are the girl tables. And the majority of the others are already taken by older students, eighth- and ninth-graders who have known each other for most of a lifetime.

Kevin shoulders up against one of the pillars. Too many people aren’t his friends. He feels as if the sheen of paint on the walls, the fluorescent lamp sputtering above the door, the shadows of the tree branches on the windows are all whispering a secret to him, one he could hear if the rest of the kids
would just be quiet, something about time and school and where his life is taking him, but instead there is only the popcorn of everyone’s voices, bursting and bursting and bursting.

He decides to sit with Leigh Cushman and Mike Beaumont. He finds a barnacle of gum on the underside of the table and picks at it with his fingernails. Before long Saul Strong joins them with his sandwich bag and his Ruffles and “Hey there,” he greets them. “It’s the Tough Guys,” which is the name they have given their volleyball team in PE. They’ve even invented a chant:

“How’s it going with y’all?”

“How’s it going?”
Leigh complains. “I’m totally gonna fail this Bible test, that’s how. Are you gonna fail it? ’Cause I am. All those begats and he-dieds and crap.”

“See, you just don’t remember memory verses. That’s
your
problem.”

“My point exactly! I only remember things I already know. That’s what they should have:
knowing
verses.”

“ ‘ ’Cause knowing is half the battle,’ ” Mike says.

“Meep meep,” Kevin adds.

Saul shakes his head. His feathered hair does a little landslide. “Man, that’s the Road Runner, not G.I. Joe.”

“No, no, there’s this episode where Shipwreck kicks a coyote into a canyon, and when it lands, he says meep meep. It’s a Road Runner
joke
, not a Road Runner
mistake
.”

“My whole
life
is a Road Runner joke,” Leigh says.

“
My
whole life is a Road Runner mistake,” Kevin says.