A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip (15 page)

“
And
he’s off,” Brandon Ostermueller says.
“Ándale! Ándale! Arriba!”

No answer from Kevin. He veers past the lockers and skids up to the bench. He is already stretching his shirt off with his elbows. Everyone has a talent, and dressing out is his. The nimbleness of it, the zip—for him, undressing is like sprinting or shooting baskets: a sport. Back in December someone noticed he was always the first one to return to the mats after the whistle blew, and ever since, he has been changing faster and faster, trading his school clothes for his gym clothes like a frog hopping between puddles. Suddenly, mysteriously, he has developed a reputation. It belongs to him now. He feels obliged to maintain it. His shirt and his shoes and his jeans,
go, go, go
, then his white Mustang T-shirt and purple athletic shorts,
go
, then his shoes again, laced so loosely he is able to step back into them without jimmying at the heels, and in forty seconds he is out the door,
go
, leaving behind the white towels slung over the wooden benches, the long dicks hanging from nests of black hair, all the things that make him feel like a little kid.

He beats everyone else by at least a minute, sharing the big empty gym with Coach Dale, who coughs quietly, rattling his wristwatch as if it might be broken. “Kev my man, you need to slow down and smell the roses. You ever hear that expression?”

“No, Coach.”

“It means you keep running so hard and you’re gonna miss all the good stuff.”

But that’s not right. It’s not right because the world is running as fast as he is. If he slows down he’ll fall behind, and everything will rush away from him. The flowers will disappear in a million paint streaks of color.

Today the class is finishing up its hockey segment. “Let’s go, folks,” Coach says. “Let’s go, let’s go, come on, put some lead in it.” He gives the whistle a shut-up blast, the kind that keeps lengthening out of itself in a single shrill note, then ends without so much as a flutter. He divides the class into teams and distributes the sticks. The grips are wrapped in padded white handlebar tape, and so are the blades, and thank God, because Craig Brooks has spent the past two weeks flailing at the ball from all directions, leaving checkmark-shaped bruises on everyone’s legs. He keeps grunting, body-checking, and heaving his shoulders, punishing anyone who gets in his way. And in fact not a minute goes by before he hits the knob of Kevin’s ankle with a hard downward chop, like a woodcutter splitting a log. Needles of pain rise to Kevin’s knee. Enough, goddamn it, he decides, is enough. He waits for his moment, following the fray from one side of the gym to the other until a gap opens up and he can take aim at Craig’s shin.

“Holy mother!”

Craig holds his fist to his neck and does a quick little hunched-over evangelist’s walk:
And the Lord spoke to me, brothers and sisters, and in my darkest hour I heard His voice
.

At the end of class, in the locker room, he poses with his leg out behind him and complains, “Man, someone literally smacked the hell out of me back there. It was like
wham
, and I was like
Jesus
.”

Kevin hides his smile inside his shirt as he changes. Thirty seconds and he has returned to his polo and his blue jeans. Another ten and he has stamped his feet back into his shoes. The concrete walls repay the slightest sound. Kevin always carries two bags to PE, his duffel bag for his gym clothes and his camera bag for his books. He stands by the exit with a bag on each shoulder, waiting for the 3:30 bell. The guys who shower are showering, and the guys who don’t are spraying angel wings of deodorant under their arms, and Shane Wesson is thrashing the air with his hands, flinging his clothes left and right. “I’m,” he gasps, “in,” he gasps, “training,” he says. “Better watch out, Brockmeier. I’m coming for you.”

There is a part of himself that Kevin dislikes, some guy on a ladder who is constantly testing the rails for vibrations from below. “Give it your best shot.”

“Oh, I will, little man. Trust me, this shit is on!”

“Yeah, sure, whatever, Shane.”

And then, as always, the bell.

It is mid-February, homegoing week, which is like homecoming week on its way out the door—five days of spirit activities leading up to the final basketball game of the season. Thursday is the big one, the fun one, costume day, with a different assignment for every grade. The seniors are supposed
to dress like seventh-graders, the seventh-graders like seniors. For more than a week now, Kevin has been putting together his outfit—blue jeans, shaded glasses, and a button-up shirt, along with a wig he has scissored down to a tight black chop and a can of shoe polish for his face, neck, and hands: Darnell Robertson. Darnell is the only black student at CAC, the coolest and most recognizable of all the seniors. People will know who Kevin is right away, no question. But there is a long strand of pep rallies and free-throw competitions to get through before Thursday, so his costume will have to wait.

That night there is spaghetti with garlic bread, and Prince and “Darling Nikki,” and New Edition and “Cool It Now,” and
TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes
, and a geography chapter and a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and lights out at 10:30. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

On Tuesday, before English, Miss Vincent is in some weird hawk-mood. She sizes everyone up from her seat at the corner of her desk, swiveling her neck to watch them as they cross the room. Before the bell rings she announces that there won’t be any classwork today. Instead they can play a game. “Any ideas?”

Kevin suggests the youth group game, but he has trouble describing the rules. “Okay, so there’s a guy in charge, and there’s a player. You sit in a chair and you cover your ears, and then you pick one, two, or three, and it’s like one someone sings you a song, and two someone rubs your shoulders,” and three Sarah Bell kisses you on the cheek—or no, the lips—a leisurely French kiss—and nobody else is there, and the room
is so dark it’s like you’re both dreaming, and she stumbles, landing right on top of you, with her hands on your shoulders and her legs doubled together around your hips, pinning you down so that you can’t move unless she lets you, and
why hello there
.

“And three maybe someone kicks you on the shin.”

Tania Pickett coughs up a look. “Why would you want to be
kicked
?”

“It doesn’t have to be a kick. Anything. It could be anything.”

“Let’s play a different game.”

Miss Vincent suggests something called Laps. It’s simple, she says: she’ll ask a question, and if your answer is no, you’ll keep your place, and if your answer is yes, you’ll move to the next chair in line—maybe an empty seat, maybe a lap, maybe a whole stack of laps.

Does your first name start with a vowel?
No
.

Do you play a musical instrument?
No
.

Were you born here in Arkansas?
No
.

Have you studied for tomorrow’s quiz?
Yes
.

Soon there are scattered chains of abandoned desks everywhere, along with a few stray clumps holding two people or three. By the big glowing courtyard painting of the window—all red bricks, white mortar, and blue sky—sits an isolated chair where the kids are banked five laps deep, like a caterpillar posed upright on a throne, an image so clear Kevin must have seen it in a picture book.

Have you ever flown in an airplane?
Yes
.

Do you know how to swim?
Yes
.

Do you know how to water-ski?
No
.

Have you ever seen
Casablanca
?
No
.

Have you ever visited another country?
No
.

Do you listen to Bruce Springsteen?
Yes
.

“Today,” Miss Vincent asks, “right now, as we speak, are you wearing white underwear?”

And of course Kevin is, his usual Fruit of the Looms, but he’s confident no one will put him to the test, and if he has to lie about it, then fine, no problem, he’ll lie because Noelle Batch is sitting on his lap. He knows that if he were watching himself from across the room the way he watches the couples at the shopping mall, his limbs would practically tingle with his hunger to trade places. This kind of craving is so familiar that he has almost grown to like it.
My God, does that guy know how lucky he is? What Kevin wouldn’t give to be him for a while!
Bodies begin shuffling like beads on an abacus, but Noelle doesn’t move, so neither does he. A stillness settles over him as he waits for Miss Vincent to ask the next question.

“What color is
your
underwear, Kevin?”

Another night and another day and on Wednesday, after school, Bateman comes buzzing into Kevin’s driveway on his moped and punches the horn. It is a sunlit winter afternoon, so peaceful that only the crowns of the trees are stirring. To the dogs across the street the engine noise seems to signal a calamity.
Danger! Danger! Warning!
they bark. They have never heard anything like it.

Bateman is (1) adventurous, (2) cheerful, (3) freckled, (4) independent, and (5) hilarious. Something about the way his voice rises into a joke and then stops dead, like a mountain climber calling it quits just before he reaches the peak, makes
it impossible not to laugh at him. His freckles, he says, are the source of his power. He and Kevin have been friends since the second grade. So many years, so many jokes. Together on his moped they set out through Leawood to Hillcrest, where the new comics have just hit the racks at Gadzooks. Kevin balances himself on the back edge of the bike’s seat pad, the metal frame vibrating beneath him like a washing machine. The sun sparks through the trees, and the wind makes a sputtering noise, and he traces the strands of tar on the road, their slender black lines railroading open and shut. “Feeling steady back there?” Bateman says. “Here, grab hold.”

Kevin clings to his waist as they tilt around the corner. Sometimes people are fat beneath their clothing.

Grant, the Gadzooks guy, has ice-blue eyes, a silver necklace, and a beard that’s mostly mustache. “You two gentlemen,” he says, and he pistol-points at them, sorting through the boxes until he finds their names, then fanning their comics out on the counter like playing cards, “had some monthlies come in this afternoon.” These days the store is reserving
X-Men
,
X-Factor
, and
West Coast Avengers
for Kevin, along with
Secret Wars II
, which is finishing its run, and the
Punisher
miniseries, which has just started. His total usually comes to something-ninety-eight or something-seventy-three. He likes to slide the pennies back to Grant with a casual keep-the-change, like a man in a suit at a bar.

Today, after looking over the new releases, Kevin picks his way through the junk chest. The comics there are three for a dollar and you never really know. Once, claims Grant, as an experiment, he tucked a mint-condition
Iron Man I
in with all the
Dazzler
s and
Mad House Comics
to see if anyone would find it. No one did.

You never really know
. Lately Kevin has been bothering himself with the idea that nothing is certain, nothing can be proven. Not one thing, not in all the world. The sun will rise tomorrow.
Prove it
. The sun rose this morning.
Prove it
. The sun is in the sky.
Prove it
. There’s a sun at all.
Prove it
. The world is like a box of Kleenex, every doubt pulling another along behind it. You can always find a new reason to distrust the facts.

Kevin has been wondering if he shouldn’t become a lawyer, but the last time he mentioned the idea, Bateman said, “So you keep telling me. Why’s that again?”

“Because I like arguing. I’m good at it.”

“You are?”

“Of course I am.”

“Kevin, you can’t just say prove it and expect to win cases. The phrase is reasonable doubt, not demented and annoying doubt.”

He replays the conversation as he rummages through the comics.
Prove it. Demented and annoying. Prove it
. Is it just his imagination, or does the browning paper smell stronger in the winter than it did in the summer? He holds an old
Marvel Two-in-One
up to his nose and ruffles the pages. Woody, dusty, plastery. Like a scratch-and-sniff peanut sticker. Maybe there’s a difference between how strong comics smell in the heat and how strong they smell in the air conditioning. It’s a good idea for a science experiment.

I see what you mean now, Kevin. How could I have been so obstinate? This court pronounces the defendant innocent of all charges
.

Bateman is clearly wrong, and Kevin is clearly right.

He pays for his monthlies at the register. This time, though,
Grant refuses to keep the change. “No, man, look, you gotta start taking your money with you. Hell if I’m gonna let you bump me into a higher tax bracket.” That’s how he talks, a grown-up among grown-ups. Kevin seals his comics in their Mylar bags and slips them into a brown paper sack, squaring the edges off so that he has a perfect little floppy rectangular package he can stow between his belt line and his coat. Plastic, paper, and cotton—three layers of wrapping. Bateman could lay his bike down in a skid of sparks, send it tumbling like a playground jack over the asphalt and the grass, and it wouldn’t matter, Kevin thinks, his comics would be absolutely fine. Hell if the accident would even scour the gloss from the covers.

The two of them go dragonflying up Kavanaugh, accelerating over the hills and kicking at the pavement on the curves. By the time they reach Kevin’s driveway, his mom is already home from work, his brother home from the creek or the playground. The place mats are set, the frying pan sizzling on the stove. For dinner there is Steak-umms and macaroni salad, and for TV there is
Highway to Heaven
, and then Kevin has gone to sleep and woken up, and it is finally Thursday, and he has locked himself in the bathroom, coloring his face and his neck, his hands and his arms, with the shoe polish his dad gave him for Christmas. The paste appears against his skin in raised streaks, blackish-brown bands that remind him of the currents of slush in a freezing river, cooler and denser than everything around them. He does his best to buff them smooth with a rag.