Crap Kingdom (8 page)

“Agent Taylor,” said one of the secretaries. “Could you please move your van? It’s blocking the school buses.”

Tom got called down to another office after school: Tobe’s.

Tobe was the head of the Drama Department. He directed all the plays and taught all the drama classes, including a class in which older students could direct their own one-act play, so at any time he was overseeing four or five little productions and one big one, in addition to student-run forays into video and comedy and dance. He talked constantly about needing “a life of his own outside of school” and not being able to have it because of all these projects, but then he would turn around and start another new project. Tom and thirty or so other kids loved him for it. He was bald and had a silly-looking mustache, gave no indication of ever having been young, and they would have followed him right into hell.

On the way down, Tom imagined that the conversation would center around Tom’s brilliant performance in last night’s show, and perhaps the very obvious sparks between him and Lindsy Kopec. Tobe wasn’t generous with praise of any kind, and he certainly had never asked Tom about his love life, but for some reason, that was the image that formed in Tom’s mind of what was going to happen. When he imagined it, a high five was involved. It was natural that he would be called in to Tobe’s office for something good after being called to the principal’s office for something bad. Tom felt that the stuff that happened in the Drama Department after school balanced out any unfortunate stuff that happened to him during the school day. It healed his wounds.

Whatever it was, he was going to enjoy it.

“I can’t be in the show at all?”

“The school policy on extracurricular activities dictates that a student who misses any portion of the school day for a disciplinary reason can’t participate in any activities the following afternoon or evening.”

“Okay, but I didn’t do anything. The guy told Principal Scott I didn’t do anything.”

“I understand that.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you. But the policy is the policy. I get an e-mail sent to me at the end of every day that tells me who’s cleared to participate. You weren’t on that list.”

“But there wasn’t any disciplinary . . . anything, because it was a mistake! It was totally random.”

“I understand, Tom. But I’m not supposed to concern myself with that. I’m supposed to concern myself with the e-mail.”

“That’s so unfair!”

“Yes.”

“You won’t even call the principal? He’ll tell you—”

“Tom, I don’t think you did anything wrong. It isn’t fair, but this is the policy. I’m sorry. Kyle’s the swing, he’ll fill in tonight and tomorrow.”

“Wait, tomorrow night too?”

“Disciplinary issues from a Friday carry over to the weekend. Again, policy. It’s not how I would have it, but it’s how it is, and I can’t make exceptions. We get to do a lot of very neat, very creative stuff here, and the only reason I’m allowed that freedom is because I stick to their rules.”

Tobe’s office was awkwardly placed, in a room that was really just a hallway between the auditorium and the drama room and the makeup room and the scene shop. For a moment, Tom could not remember which of the many doors lining Tobe’s office he needed to leave through. He knew he needed to leave, though. He thought he might cry, and he didn’t want to cry at all, but he definitely didn’t want to cry in front of Tobe.

Tobe never would have gotten the e-mail if Gark hadn’t appeared in the guise of an FBI agent. Last night Gark had robbed Tom of his moment with Lindsy, and today he had robbed him of the chance to try to re-create that moment after the two remaining performances.

Tom remembered what door he needed to go out of. He started to back up, but something tripped him and he fell backward into the door, hitting the bar that triggered the latch. The door swung open and he fell all the way out into the hallway.

“Oh! Jeez. I’m sorry.” Tobe ran out to help Tom up.

Tom looked down to see what had tripped him: it was pink and furry and lying on the floor in a heap. A pink bunny suit, complete with a big furry bunny mascot head sitting on top of it.

“Sorry,” Tobe said, “I let some kids use it for a skit in class this morning. They were supposed to hang it up when they were done with it. Are you okay?”

Tom was standing now. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m fine.”

Now he’d lied to Tobe too.

Tom never knew if something good was going to happen, but he was good at predicting bad things. Not big ones, just little things. As he got on his bike after school, he knew that he would ride home and fall asleep and wake up just when he would have been stepping onstage had he not been banned from the play. He wouldn’t set an alarm or anything. It would just happen.

He woke up at 8:04
PM
. He experienced the momentary disorientation of waking up when it’s dark outside after falling asleep in the afternoon, and then he remembered where he was and who he was and what he’d predicted to himself that day after school, after talking with Tobe.

He heard his mom’s keys jangling in the front door. She was just getting home from work. He predicted more bad things. She would wonder what he was still doing home: didn’t he have the play tonight? He would tell her what happened. He wouldn’t lie, exactly. He would exclude the parts about the FBI agent who was actually Gark but he would tell her that he’d been called down to the principal’s office but it had turned out to be a misunderstanding and his name had been cleared. Regardless, she would say something like “
What
is going on with you?” in reference to their talk earlier that week and the phone breaking and the staying out late and then this, missing the play because of disciplinary action. And she would tell him no more plays, no more anything, until he got focused.

He turned out to be right about everything she would feel and say, except he hadn’t predicted that, after the whole discussion was over, she would tell him to order a pizza. But that was a good thing, and he was only good at predicting bad things.

Tom spent the weekend in his room, thinking and sleeping.

He woke up early on Monday morning. He went into his mom’s bedroom and sat on the side of her bed. He was never awake before she was, unless he’d stayed up all night trying to finish some essay for school that he’d put off until the last minute, but on this particular day, he’d actually gotten a good night’s sleep.

“Mom?”

She rolled over and opened her eyes.

“Hey, I was thinking. . . . I’ve been thinking about everything you were saying about my life is happening in the present tense and I have to balance school and after-school stuff, so if I come home right after school and just study and work really hard and bring my grades up, I mean, I can bring you progress reports from my teachers and everything. . . . Auditions for the next show are in three weeks. If I work really hard until then, and I mean, not just until then but in general, but from now on, can I audition? Would that be okay? All the stuff that’s happened this week, I’m never going to let it happen again.”

She took a deep breath. The covers rose and fell.

“Let’s see how you do,” she said.

Tom shut her bedroom door quietly and went into the kitchen. He knew there was still a slice of pizza in the fridge. He’d been rationing them out all weekend instead of just eating all the leftovers on Saturday morning the way he usually would’ve. This, he felt, was a sign of his newfound maturity.

After breakfast, Tom took a notebook from his backpack. He wrote the word
NO
on a piece of notebook paper in big, unmistakable letters with a Sharpie. He ripped it out, folded it up, and stood for a second. Then he crumpled it up and threw it in the trash can under the sink. He bent over the counter and on another sheet of notebook paper wrote
NO
in smaller letters, in pencil. He ripped it out, folded it up, then got a Ziploc bag out of the top left drawer next to the sink and put the folded paper into it. He zipped up the bag and put it in his pocket.

He put his backpack on and went down the stairs and got on his bike and rode to the Kmart parking lot. He stopped his bike next to the clothing donation box and put the kickstand down. He walked to the box. The little door creaked as he opened it. He held it open with one hand and took out the plastic bag with the paper in it and brought it up to the little door, putting it just inside, still holding on to it with two fingers. He paused. Then he moved his two fingers apart and the little bag with the folded piece of paper in it slid down and Tom heard it hit the bottom of the rusty box that would every so often become the portal to another world. He released the handle and the door closed:
Wham.
He walked back to his bike, got on, and rode to school.