The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl (2 page)

But they're still on The List. No one gets removed from The List. That's sort of the point.

I give myself a moment to let the sensation of touching the bullet calm me. I found it one night, left neglected and lonely on the workshop bench in the basement at home. The step-fascist must have dropped it behind something and forgot about it. It just sat there on the bare workbench, glinting in a shadowy pocket near a box of screws. I stood there for a long time, having trouble catching my breath. I waited for some-one—Mom, the step-fascist—to show up and say something.

Nothing.

So I grabbed the bullet in a fist closed so tight it went white, and I've had it ever since. My lucky totem; my safety blanket.

Relaxed now, I head into school, where Mark Broderick is swallowed up by the throngs of students (but his name is now indelibly imprinted on The List) and Dina Jurgens goes off into whatever world is inhabited by Senior Goddesses, and I go off to homeroom.

But before I get there, I see Cal by the lockers. He's my only real friend at school, the only one I bother to hang out with outside of school. (or, the only one who bothers to hang out with
me
might be more accurate.) He's also one of ten black kids at South Brook, and the fact that I know there are exactly ten black kids at my school should tell you something right there.

He's taller than I am and bigger and just generally cooler. Plays football and lacrosse. Wrestles. unlike the rest of the JJ, though, he's smart and he doesn't treat me like dirt. He loves comic books, too. That's actually how we met—back in eighth grade, he saw me reading
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
and stopped at my desk. "When did that one come out? I've been waiting for it."

I couldn't believe it—here was a guy who had girls swooning over him, more friends than I could count, and the weird sort of cachet you get by being a fun, friendly black kid in a white school ... and he was into comic books?

At first I thought it was yet another ruse by some ill-intentioned idiot designed to lead me into a trap for the amusement of others. Like the time a few years ago when I gave a passionate report on collectible card games as a metaphor for cultural change in a social studies class. Todd Bellanger told me afterward that he had some rare Magic: The Gathering cards in his locker. I couldn't believe it. Well, actually, I couldn't believe he had them and I also couldn't believe that Todd was even bothering to talk to me, since he usually was one of my tormentors. But maybe we'd found a common ground.

So I went to his locker, and instead of Magic cards he shoved a bunch of pictures of naked men into my hands, then shouted, "No, I don't want your gay porn!" really loud, so that everyone in the hallway turned and saw me with the pictures and laughed and laughed...

So I was suspicious of Cal immediately, especially since I knew little about him—recent transfer, played football, hung out with a lot of jocks. I'd been burned before.

"Yeah, well, this is the issue after the one with the Wright Brothers," I said.

Cal blinked, obviously confused. "What? I must have missed more than one. When did the Wright Brothers show up? I didn't know they were in the story."

They weren't. He had passed my test, and so I cautiously entered into a conversation with him, which eventually evolved into the only friendship I have at South Brook.

"Hey, Cal!" I close in. "I found this website last night that lays out the whole Xorn-is-Magneto thing from Morrison's run on
New X-Men.
This guy, it's unreal. He's got scanned-in panels and pages and he annotated them all and there's a timeline and—"

"Yeah, that's cool," Cal says, but it doesn't sound like he thinks it's cool. He looks around quickly. I've seen this behavior before.

"But I didn't tell you all of it." I'm rushing, trying to get it in. "There's also links to a whole site that shows all the other times Magneto disguised himself, and a thing about
House of M—
"

"Uh-huh." Cal gives me a quick grin, then walks away. Down the hall, I see Mike Lorenz and Jason Benatovech waving at him. Football players.

Well, that's life being Cal's friend. When the jocks call, he goes. on the mean streets of hick rural high schools, you have to keep up your popularity and your cool factor if you want to survive as a black kid. And being seen with me—especially talking comic books—is the best way to see your cool stock plummet.

Cal doesn't even really know he's doing it. I can tell because he never refers to it, never acts as if he's done anything wrong. It's just survival. Just high school crap. It doesn't bother me. Not anymore. Not really.

F
OR SOME REASON (IT'S NOT IMPORTANT)
, South Brook High School has been taken hostage. Mike Lorenz, Jason Benatovech, Pete Vesentine, and Ronnie Warshaw are all dead with bullets in their heads. Todd Bellanger has been shot, too, but he's not dead, just writhing in pain and crying. I note with some satisfaction that Mark Broderick is also among the deceased.

I'm hiding in the computer lab, and that's when I realize that everyone is being herded toward the gym. Cal is with them, and he looks angry and scared all at once. I realize that with a single distraction Cal would be able to disarm one of the bad guys and probably rescue everybody (even the ones who don't deserve it).

From the computer lab, I'm able to hack into the bell system, which is all automated. I can kick off the distraction and save everyone.

And that's when my arm explodes.

I look around. My fantasy of the school invasion has to be put on hold. (It's a good fantasy, and I add more details each time I relive it.) What the hell just happened to—

Again. Pain. Erupting in my right shoulder. I rock to one side with the force of the blow and bite my lip to keep from crying out.

I'm in gym class, or, as the idiots who teach it insist on calling it, "Physical Education." "Education," as if they're teaching us something other than the utterly useless skills of volleyball, flag football, and pushups.

And my personal favorite (I'm being sarcastic), dodge ball. What genius invented this game? What unrelentingly stupid jackass decided that it was a good idea to take a cluster of people with widely varying body types, strength levels, and skill sets (to say nothing of ever-shifting moralities and ethics), and then encourage them to
hit each other
with a ball?

I always try to get out early and easily—a glancing shot off my leg or shoulder. So I was standing in the Dead Zone of the game, whiling away "Physical Education" in my fantasy world, when the pain hit me.

And again.

I look over. The only other person in the dodge ball Dead Zone with me is Mitchell Frampton, a big stupid junior with shaggy blond hair that hangs over his eyes. He's grinning a dumb grin, his lower lip dried and cracked as he chews on it, and then he hits me again, in the
exact same spot.
My shoulder feels like it could just detonate, dropping my arm to the floor.

"Pussy," he says. "Pussy. Whatcha gonna do? Pussy." And wham! Again. Same spot. Uncannily in the same damn spot. My vision goes red for a moment with pain.

Why is he doing this? I don't even
know
him. I've never even
talked
to him before. I look around quickly. No one's watching. On the gym floor, everyone's busy being physically educated by firing rubber balls around, what fun. The two gym teachers (sorry,
physical educators
) are standing off in a corner, talking and gesturing to each other, totally useless, not even watching the

Ow! Again!

Not even watching what's going on. I want to yell, but no one would hear me unless I screamed bloody murder at the top of my lungs and then I'd just be another wimp, another wuss, another

Again!

tattletale. I'd be the crybaby, the momma's boy, the pussy, the weakling, the
Again!

Victim. Let's see, what else have I been called over the glorious years? How about—
Again!

"Please stop," I say to him.

"Make me." Again. Again. Same spot, over and over. It's as if a Mitchell Frampton's fist-size part of my arm has become a mass of raw meat and screaming nerve endings. "Make me."

I can't. He knows I can't. I'm a computer geek, a comic book geek, a study geek. Even in the Fast-Track classes, I'm apart. To complete the stereotype-made-flesh that is me, I'm also half a head shorter than most guys my age, and while I'm not a ninety-eight-pound skeletal weakling, my body is, in some ways, like one of those armature dolls, all straight, uninterrupted lines, uncut by any sort of evident muscle tone. I've got my South Brook High gym T-shirt on, and that's it as far as armor goes.

"Just ignore them," my mother used to tell me, when I was a kid, when I was younger, when the other kids would tease and make fun. "Why do you care what they think? Just ignore them and they'll go away."

They didn't go away, though. She was wrong about that.

And the more I told her about them, the less she wanted to hear, and even when I was a kid, I could tell that she didn't want to hear about it. She had other things to worry about. She had to leave my dad and run off with her boyfriend, and for some reason she decided to add to the complications by dragging me along, too. Dragging me along, then ignoring me when I told her the other kids were making fun of me, were tormenting me, and what great advice: "Ignore them." So I did, even though they didn't go away, and pretty soon there was nothing to say, nothing to do, because how are you supposed to suddenly stand up to them after years of silence and nothing? Besides, I
can't
get in trouble. I just can't. I have one thing going for me: my brains. My ticket out. And college means transcripts, so unlike the rest of these idiots, my permanent record actually means something.

When I was a kid (when my parents were still married), I was terrified of our basement. My dad had an old winter coat that he left hanging on a hook down there to use if he suddenly needed to go out the basement door for some reason. one time I went downstairs to get something, looked into the darkened basement ... and saw a shaggy form with arms—
arms
, no doubt about it—lumbering there, leaning against the wall, and I ran like hell, ran up the stairs so fast that when I tripped I fell
up
the stairs into the foyer, slamming my knee into the metal strip that sealed the bottom of the front door, my knee exploding with a pain so sudden and sharp that I thought my leg had been sheared off.

Ten stitches in my knee. Blood everywhere. My first experience with unreasoning, unrelenting pain. I didn't know it at the time, but it was a preview of the rest of my life. Pain for no reason. Pain in different varieties. It was just Dad's coat, of course. Morphed by bad light and a particular angle and a kid with a wild imagination into something out of an old Steve Niles comic. Morphed into pain I didn't even deserve.

So I guess I'm used to it. I just wish my bullet weren't in my gym bag along with my clothes; I need it. But I stand there and stare straight ahead while Mitchell Frampton giggles and keeps hitting that
same damn spot.
And I realize that someone else
does
see. Someone sitting up on the bleachers at the far side of the gym. Someone dressed in black, with black hair, the face just a white blur. Watching.

Good. At least someone sees.

B
UT OVERALL IT'S STILL A GOOD DAY
. Dina is on the bus for the ride home, and I scored A's on an English essay and a chem test, so all's not too bad. I contrive to get on the bus after Dina, so I do get a moment or two of Watching the Goddess Walk Away, not a bad sight at all.

I finish my trig homework on the bus and read most of the chapter of
Catch-22
that I needed to do, too. Figure an hour at home, tops. Then I can spend the rest of the night on the computer, working on my secret project. Yeah, it's tough to get things accomplished in between crashes and system freezes, but it's worth it—this is going to be my ticket out of Brookdale and away from everyone in it. It's the—

The bus stops to drop Dina off—I watch her smooth, tan legs swish by in the aisle and memorize them.

At home, Mom's half reclining on the sofa in the "family" room. (We're not a family—why pretend?) The step-fascist is home early—oh, joy—standing at the refrigerator. I flip a mental coin. Heads, he's getting a beer. Tails, a beer.

A second later, I hear the click-hiss of a Bud can opening.

He looks at me with that weird combination of contempt and puzzlement. He can't understand a kid who doesn't want to play football or shoot a bow and arrow or drop out of high school like he did. It's been about five years since I stopped even with a polite "Hi" when I see him. He's one case where Mom's advice to "just ignore" seems to work. He sees me, grunts, and goes into the "family" room with Mom, where the TV is offering up a show about remodeling speedboats or something. Yawn. The step-fascist is, I swear, sitting on the edge of his seat.

Mom pretends to be engrossed; she sighs and just lies there, rubbing her hands on her big, stupid, pregnant stomach. When she first told me that she was pregnant, I thought I'd puke. She and the step-fascist called me into the "family" room and tried to make it all a big deal, and Mom's face glowed with something like hope, as if she thought that this would be the special elixir that would make me "come around" to her way of thinking, the element that would make the step-fascist and me get along, and make us a family for real.