Paper Covers Rock

When my dad gave me this journal two years ago and said “Fill it with your impressions,” I imagine he had a more idyllic portrait of boarding school life in mind. I imagine he pictured a lot of bright things, sending his only child to an institution whose official motto is
Ad Lux
. But these pages have remained blank. I have not had much to say until now—when now is everything.

If you are reading this, you have happened upon it by accident. Call me Is Male.

My apologies to Herman Melville, from whom I may have to steal a few words to tell the story that is about to be told, that is in the middle of being told, that will never stop being told. Such is the nature of guilt; such is the nature of truth. But it is also the nature of guilt to sideline the truth.

Welcome to the sidelines, Dear Reader.

If you get bored with my literary efforts, with the plot or characters, if you find that good ol’ Is Male is putting you to
sleep, read a real novel, a Great American one. Read
Moby-Dick
. Read to your heart’s content. Though if you are a reader, the heart is never content.

Newspapers may tell you the plot, but they never tell you the real story. And they never, ever tell you what started the whole thing to begin with. But when the end is death, maybe what comes before doesn’t matter. What happens on September 30 is still going to happen.

So, what happens?

1. The bell rings at exactly 11:45. I have been waiting for this bell. I own a watch just so I can set it to Birch School time, just so I can know exactly when this Saturday bell, the one that dismisses us from six days of classes in a row, will ring. The Birch School, like all boys’ boarding schools, is timeless; time drags on forever here, which makes the bell mean something.

2. I leave the classroom for the dining hall and eat lunch. (Not worth elaborating on—sorry boys’-school food.)

3. I go back to my room to change clothes. (We all wear blazers and ties to class.) My room feels depressing at this time of day, when I am normally in class during the week. The carpet looks like it hasn’t been replaced in twenty years because it probably hasn’t, and in the corner near my closet, some other guy who had this room before left cigarette burns that I have never noticed until this moment. My roommate, Clay, hasn’t made his bed (typical), and a half-eaten bag of Doritos sags near his pillow.

4. I start down the hill to the river by myself at approximately 12:30, but my friend Thomas catches up with
me. We arrive at the designated meeting spot at approximately 12:50. No sign yet of Glenn and Clay, so Thomas asks me a question: “Do you remember what it is that makes the sky blue?” Because on this day, the sky is bluer than it has ever been.

“I think it has something to do with the spectrum of light and the nitrogen in the atmosphere absorbing all of the other colors except blue,” I say.

“It’s weird to think about living under a green sky, or a red one.”

I agree.

Thomas says, “Blue is the right color for it, that’s for sure.”

I say, “I always thought it was weird to think about how you’re under the same exact sky as some kid in China who has no idea that you exist, and you have no idea that he exists, only that there has got to be at least one kid in China looking at the sky right now.”

“Isn’t it night over there, though?”

“Yeah, but there still has to be some Chinese kid looking at it.”

“Maybe he’s counting stars,” says Thomas. “Did you used to do that?”

I did.

Thomas says, “I wonder why we don’t do that anymore.”

This is our last real conversation, verbatim. Every conversation you will find in this book I am writing is verbatim. There may be a comma where the speaker intended for there to be a semicolon, but other than that, my journal/Not-So-Great American Novel is entirely accurate. Even though I haven’t
slept for two nights in a row, what you see scrawled throughout this journal that my dad gave me is real. I am big on verbatim because I am big on truth. Truth: as important and essential as rain.

Death Notice, Raleigh
News & Observer
,
October 2, 1982

Rock, Paper, Scissors

After the accident, Thomas’s body is carried up to the infirmary on a stretcher, and the whole time Glenn and I are sitting on the bench outside, I’m picturing Thomas’s drowned body inside, wrapped in towels. Mr. Armstrong, the Headmaster, and Dean Mansfield, the disciplinarian, question us out on the porch so that we don’t get the infirmary furniture wet. Glenn and I both know enough to let Glenn do the talking because he is athletic, popular, smart—prefect material—and I am not. I am what is thought of at Birch as a Good, Solid Kid, one of many. Glenn is thought of as a Golden Boy, one of a few.

Dean Mansfield tosses up question number one like a tennis lob, and Golden Boy delivers it neatly back into the Dean’s court: “We told Thomas everything we knew about jumping from the rock, not that we’ve done it that many times ourselves, but, yes, we have done it before, haven’t we, Alex?”

Good, Solid Kid nods his head, and Golden Boy continues. “Teenagers take risks, Mr. Mansfield; that is part of growing up. A person doesn’t grow if he doesn’t take risks.”

“That is true, Mr. Everson, but the seed of risk does not always grow into a straight trunk. The tree can rise crookedly out of the ground.”

“Yes, sir,” Golden Boy and Solid Kid say in unison.

“You hold in your hands the opportunity to tell the truth about what happened at the river,” Mr. Armstrong says.

“Yes, sir,” says Golden Boy.

“Yes, sir,” says Solid Kid.

“You, the students, are the caretakers of the Birch School Code of Honor,” says Mr. Armstrong. “It is your code, not mine. Do you understand me, boys?”

Yes sir yes sir yes sir yes sirree Bob. We are, like most of our peers, unfailingly pragmatic. If the school finds out we’ve been drinking, we’ll be kicked out, no questions asked, and the call will be made to our parents, who will have to stop whatever it is they are doing, hop into the car, and make the winding ride across the mountains to take us home. So Glenn and I do what most any other boy in our shoes would do: we lie.

I lie to my dad, too, over the office phone that Dean Mansfield lets me use while I stare at the poster on the back of Dean Mansfield’s closed door. “Character: Build It,” it says in red capital letters that arch, rainbowlike, over a kid standing by a pile of bricks. My dad wants to come right then and check on me, but seeing as he is currently in Maine on sabbatical from his university professorship, that proves difficult. I convince Dad that I’m okay, that I will be okay. I call my mother, too, but she isn’t home, and I begin to worry that if the school reaches her first, she will drive down, unannounced, from Potomac, Maryland, where she lives with her boyfriend, a man named Victor with thick white hair. So I call my dad back and ask him to call his ex-wife. He says that he will.

My dad is good that way—responsible to a fault, calm in crisis—and whatever goodness I have is because of him. He
had been a boy who, if presented with a pile of bricks, would have built a tall tower—not a fort, but something that made you thoughtful, that lent you foresight. If someone had given my mother a pile of bricks, she would have thrown them at every window she could find, delighted at the drama of breaking glass.