Golden Delicious (5 page)

The thought darkened to a deeper shade of green. At home in my basement bedroom, I turned over in my sleep.

Shrugging off the worry, my thought turned around and pushed the skateboard toward home—down Grassy Gutter Boulevard and onto Apple Hill Road. When he looked back over his shoulder, though, he saw the round lights of the Duster still behind him. Was that car
following
him? He stopped his skateboard and stared into the windshield. He saw a flash in the B’s eye.

The thought custom-swore and sped up, skating down
Apple Hill and then a quick left onto Coventry—a shortcut. When he looked back again, he didn’t see the Duster. He took a few deep breaths and slowed down, coasting down Coventry and back toward its intersection with Apple Hill. When he hit the corner, though, the thought saw the Duster’s lights again. The driver gunned the engine. The thought bore down, hauling toward the intersection with Converse, the car’s bumper inches from the skateboard’s tail. Emerald green. Military green. When he saw the backyard of my house through the trees, the thought jumped off the board and sprinted—through the grass, over the bushes, into the yard. The driver stopped the car, jumped out, stretched into a single line—a
—and slithered after the thought.

The thought slid across the hatchway and dove through the open basement window. Then he turned and looked back at the figure on the lawn. Standing upright at the edge of the patio, the figure changed shape from an ! to a ? to an &. Then it grinned, straightened out, and dove into the ground.

The thought shut the window and thought across the room, back into my ear. I sniffed in my sleep—I was dreaming of green.

Once I began to talk I wouldn’t shut up. It was like my thoughts had stored all of those words I’d heard in the Vox, and now that I’d figured out how to translate them from my ears to my mouth, I couldn’t stop making language. At four or five, even, I’d walk around all week repeating one word. “One week it was
sundry
,” my sister told me once. “Sundry Sunday and sundry Monday and sundry Friday. Sundry socks and sundry macaroni and cheese. It was so
annoying
.”

Then, in the fourth grade, I roykoed this habit—a “nervous tic,” my Mom called it—of repeating anything anyone said. I couldn’t help it—the words I heard mirrored themselves in my mouth and resounded without my even thinking about it. I’d be sitting in Mrs. Trombly’s fourth-grade class when the dialogue would start to form on my tongue. “Turn to page twenty-two,” Mrs. Trombly announced one day, while her white-blond wig pointed to words on the chalkboard, “and you’ll find a study guide for tomorrow’s quiz.”

“Tomorrow’s quiz,” I muttered from my seat.

“I’m sorry,
?”

“
?” I said.

“Did you have something to add?”

“Something to add?” I said.

The class laughtracked.

“Stop that,” said Mrs. Trombly.

“Stop that!” I said.

“That’s it. Detention! After school!”

“Detention! After school!” I shouted.

Detention, in our school, was a series of cages. The usual detention terms were two weeks for tardiness and three weeks for an outburst. I got
four
weeks for mimicking Mrs. Trombly. “Shit, man,” asked the cage during week two of my sentence. “What did you do?”

“Shit, man,” I said.

“Seriously,” said the cage.

“Seriously,” I said.

“Stop it,” said the cage.

“Stop it,” I said.

When detentions didn’t curb the behavior, the school convinced my parents to send me to a special quietschool—Appleseed Silence Academy—three afternoons a week. I was there in Principal Booth’s office when he suggested the idea to my parents. “
’s teachers concur,” said the phone booth, “that he’s something of a pest.”

“Excuse me?” said my Mom.

“That was Mrs. Bowe’s word,” said the principal—who was, as his name said, a phone booth. Booth opened up a folder and showed my parents a sheet of paper. “See,
’s creativity scores are very high. But emotionally?” He held up a piece of paper.

My Dad looked at my Mom.

“How dare you,” my Mom said to the phone booth.

I sat there in my chair, drawing on the soles of my Converse hi-tops.

“We don’t advocate total silence as a rule,” said Principal Booth, adjusting his toupee. “But we
are
trying to teach verbal
control
.”

“Control,” my Mom said.

“That’s why I’m suggesting Silence School,” said the phone booth.

“
doesn’t need lessons in silence,” my Mom said. “He was in a Vox for the first three years of his life!”

“Which may be why he’s having trouble, actually,” Booth said. “He’s overcompensating.”

“How much meaning is it?” my Dad asked.

“Silence School?” Principal Booth told him the cost.

“Total?” said my Dad.

“Per month,” said the phone booth.

My Dad took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes.

The Academy was located up on Homicki Hill. It was built to house a small group of silent bessoffs who supposedly prayed, silently, every moment of the day.

I only ever saw one or two bessoffs my entire time there, though—the classes I attended were in the classrooms toward the front of the building. In a lot of ways it was like regular school—they still chained you to the desk with math, and all the clocks were dead or dying—except that the only lesson was silence. The teacher, a giant feather boa, wrote
SHUT UP!
in big bold letters on the blackboard, and every day she’d create new prompts designed to challenge our ability to keep quiet. Once, she brought in an entire
pizza from Red Rose, ate one slice, and then asked all of us if we wanted any. If we answered, we were punished with an additional week of classes. Another time she showed us a video disc of
Decision Man
and stopped it right before the final battle with the Multiple Choices. If you shouted for her to continue the movie—to finish the story? More classes.

I really struggled in Silence School. One day, the boa walked up to my desk and asked me a direct question. “
, what is the brightest spot in Appleseed?”

I knew I was supposed to just sit there quietly, so that’s what I did. But when I didn’t respond, the bright purple boa put her hands on her feathery hips. “You live in Appleseed,
, and you don’t know the brightest spot?”