The Dead Circle (4 page)

Kevin dashed off the bus and went back into the school heading towards his locker. Even fifteen minutes after the final bell, the hallways were almost empty. It made him wary. Kevin thought the school always felt a little different after the end of the day. In some ways, being in the hall after final period was nicer because he didn’t have a class he had to go to, but it also filled him with anxiety. Without all of the structure of the class schedule and without the constant supervision of all the teachers, the empty school felt wrong in some way, unpredictable.

That year his old family dog Maggie had begun to grow cataracts. He loved her with the sureness of a child. No matter what he used to do to the black and white collie when he was an enthusiastic toddler—pulling her ears or poking her eyes—she was always patient and gentle as if she knew the young human didn’t know any better. She was a truly kind and affectionate animal. The family loved and trusted her completely, but when she became elderly and went blind and increasingly deaf, things changed. She couldn’t see or hear people coming and was frequently startled. Then, one day Kevin reached under the dining room table to pet her, like he had done a thousand times before, and Maggie made a horrible yelp of fear and viciously bit his hand. It wasn’t a warning bite, she held on to his hand for several seconds. It felt like an eternity before she let go and her teeth drew blood in several places. Kevin had been shocked. Maggie, the most loving and fundamentally good creature he knew, had become aggressive. She had always been safe and then instantly she was dangerous. The betrayal stung worse than the bite. Of course she hadn’t meant to hurt him, she had just been scared. But Kevin would never pet her again without being nervous. Intentionally or not, trust had been broken.

Empty hallways reminded him of Maggie.

This is what the Wild West must have felt like,
he thought.
It’s like I’m walking down one of the dusty streets in Deadwood.
In this hall, there were no rules, no laws, other than what you could get away with. If he ran into some eighth graders, there would not be any adults who would come to his rescue.

He’d been caught before by Morgan Carver in a situation just like this. One day after school, after most of the teachers had gone home or retreated back to their classrooms to put together tomorrow’s lesson plan or grade tests, Morgan and his two zit-pocked buddies pushed him up against a row of lockers. He was completely pinned and had to watch while Morgan went through his backpack.

“Make a noise and I’ll punch you in the nuts faggot.”

Kevin hadn’t made a noise. Not when they smashed his left-over peanut butter and jelly sandwich into his history book. Not when they stole his iPhone. Not when they tossed his notebook onto the top of the lockers where he couldn’t reach it. He remembered Morgan’s foul breath more than anything else. It was a sour mixture of grape bubble gum and Marlboro cigarettes. Kevin knew his only defense was to try to remain passive and let them do what they wanted. There were no teachers in ear-shot and he couldn’t possibly fight all three of them. He just willed himself not to cry. It didn’t work. He helplessly stood there, eyes brimming with tears, desperately trying not to blink. He knew that if he did, he would send his tears cascading down onto his t-shirt, or worse, onto the arms of the assholes pinning him to the locker. He had no choice but to wait for them to get bored of tormenting him. They all knew that he wouldn’t tell anybody about what they did. Sure, they might get in trouble, but then he would be even more of a target. They’d find a way to make him regret ratting them out.

So, on that fateful Friday, when Kevin returned to the scene of the crime to retrieve his earth science book, he definitely looked both ways before he raced to his locker.

To his great relief, the hallway was empty and he appeared to be alone this time. But he wasn’t going to hang around too long to test the theory. Kevin tossed his book into his already insanely heavy book bag and scurried through the halls and out the front door.

 The school had cleared out fast and most of the buses had already left. He could see the beginnings of soccer practice on the field behind the school. With nothing better to do, he sat on the bleachers and watched for a while. He liked walking home. His mother didn’t get back from work until about 6:30, so he had almost three hours all to himself. It felt very free, very
adult
.

Of course he knew his mom didn’t like him being outside alone, but Kevin figured what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Come on Mom! I’m in sixth grade now. I can take care of myself! Well, unless I get cornered by assholes like Morgan…

He sat watching soccer practice for an hour or so, doodling in his notebook and playing paper football on the splintery wooden bleachers. When boredom crept in, he figured he’d take a walk. He didn’t have a plan. Sometimes he just liked walking. It gave him time to think about important topics like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Karen Tyson’s bra strap.

He meandered down Brush Street for a while. This area used to be a neighborhood, but now, once you got past Erskine, it was mostly empty blocks of grass. Most of the houses had been abandoned or burned in the 1967 riots and were torn down years ago, but every once in a while he’d come across one lonely house that survived the blight. It was flat and quiet and—most importantly—if you kept walking down Brush across the freeway, you got to Ford Field.

Ah! That’s where I should go!
 
Ford Field.
Home of the Detroit Freaking Lions!

He’d only been to three Lions’ games, but they were his favorite thing in the world. Each of the games had been Christmas presents from his stepfather. He wasn’t so fond of Ted, but it was totally worth it to watch Matthew Stafford throwing touchdowns to Megatron in person. What he loved most was the noise. When Detroit scored it was exhilarating. Hearing seventy thousand people all shouting in unison created something that went beyond sound. It made his chest vibrate. It was
so
exciting.

Kevin liked to walk by the stadium. It was enormous, a vast grand building of brick, steel and glass. He could almost feel the
importance
of what happened here crackling in the air. It was hallowed ground.

As he walked down Brush Street with the stadium looming in front of the billowing fast-moving clouds, he tried to visualize every single touchdown that Megatron, or Calvin Johnson to the boring people who didn’t follow the Lions, caught last year.

He had just traversed the overpass over the Fisher freeway when he caught a glimpse of something impossible.

Was that a naked person!?!  

Kevin wasn’t sure, but he’d seen a flash of what looked to be
skin
. Whoever was wearing it had just ducked behind the parking garage at the corner of Brush and East Montcalm. He—or hopefully
she—
was now out of sight. Kevin’s mind raced in a hormone-fueled frenzy.

I think that was a naked person. A naked woman! Maybe it’s some sort of protest? Like about not wearing fur or something? Holy shit! Could this possibly be the day? The day I see my first live boob?

He unconsciously quickened his steps, trying to appear casual, but definitely trying to catch up to…
could it be
? He girded himself for disappointment. He’d been fooled before by tan clothing and other annoying tricks of the adolescent mind but when he rounded the corner onto East Montcalm, his heart almost exploded.

That is, without a doubt, a naked woman!! Like, full-on naked. I can see her butt! Oh thank you Jesus for this bounty—or booty!—that you have given me!

Kevin looked around to see if anybody else was in the area. He prayed that some adult wouldn’t walk by and stop him from seeing this wondrous thing. He sheepishly continued to walk down the street, trying to catch up and—
oh my God—
see the front of her. He worked hard to appear to be casually taking a stroll and paying no attention to the naked woman in front of him. Kevin surveyed every part of her body that he could see and tried to take mental pictures he could revisit later.

She was probably in her late twenties. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t terribly thin. A survival job behind a desk as a group-sales ticket broker for the Detroit Tigers had softened and rounded her curves just a touch since college, but she was still in good shape. She had short dirty-blonde hair that looked like she had tried to get an aggressive pixie cut about a month ago, regretted it, and was in the process of growing it back out. To Kevin, she was the most beautiful creature that ever existed. Karen Tyson’s bra strap be damned.

Her arm twitched out from her side and almost simultaneously, her left foot kicked backwards. She stumbled for a second, and then regained her slow, steady stride west.

Is she dancing?
Kevin thought.
Oooooh, that’s what it is. She’s some sort of weird dancer!

Ted used to call them Hippie Protest Dance Morons. He said they were all lesbos and tree huggers
.
Kevin wasn’t entirely sure what all of that meant, but he certainly was a fan of Hippie Protest Dance Morons today.
 

He had worked his way closer, now only about twenty feet behind her. For a second, his joy and excitement stuttered when he saw her step on a jagged piece of glass from a broken bottle of Bud Lite. Kevin winced and instinctively reached towards her, expecting her to cry out and possibly fall to the pavement. Much to his surprise, she did not. She apparently hadn’t even noticed stepping on the broken glass and she kept walking down the road. Her shoulder jumped up for a second then returned. She must have been continuing her choreography, but now she was leaving a bloody footprint every time her left foot hit the ground.

After the brief moment of being fazed by the grossness, Kevin remembered what was important.
What am I doing? I need to get around to the front! There’s no way this is going to last long. She’s going to see me and put clothes on, or some adult is going to tell me to leave. If I don’t see her boobs, I’m going to throw myself onto the freeway and die!

So Kevin half-walked half-ran ahead, trying to come up with an innocent excuse for stopping and looking at her. Deciding that he was definitely going to have to double-check that his shoelaces were tied once he got a half a block ahead, he passed the Fox Theater and looked down Park Avenue. He stopped walking mid-step. From his spot, he could see into the empty lot. There, marching in a huge circle were several more naked people.

Holy shit! What’s happening? Six, seven… ten people?! It totally is some sort of protest! Oh man, I’m going to see so many boobs!

Dropping any pretense, he turned and looked back at the woman he had been following. And there they were: the first real, in-person boobs of his life. They were just the most amazing things he’d ever seen. The excitement he felt staring at her chest was so intense it felt like he was staring directly at the sun. After gawking at her breasts for a time that felt like an eternity and a split second at the same time, he worked his way down her body and saw her…
bits
. Although to his surprise he couldn’t really see them, they were tucked behind a small patch of hair. He looked up and down her body over and over trying to memorize the image. He stood in a stupor for a while before he realized that he had been holding his breath for over a minute and sucked in oxygen greedily to keep from passing out.

After regaining his senses, Kevin was startled by the fact that the lady was now very close to him. She must have been ignoring him because there was no way she couldn’t see him as she walked almost directly into him. The naked woman was now close enough that if he had the courage, he could have reached out and touched her. Kevin felt compelled to say something, but he had absolutely no idea what people say in this situation.

“Um. Hello. Uh… it’s a beautiful nice day huh?”

He turned beet-red from embarrassment, but she continued to ignore him.
Thank God
. But when he looked to her face for the first time, he took a startled step backwards.

Jesus. What’s wrong with her eyes?! They’re all white like Maggie’s were. Or like some horror movie. That’s so gross. Maybe she's wearing special effects contacts? Weird!
He stopped his train of thought.
No! What am I doing? Who gives a shit about her eyes?! Look at her boobs!

Kevin followed her into the empty lot and saw that there weren’t ten more ‘protesters’, but twenty or thirty. And more of them seemed to be coming from everywhere. He watched as a beautiful woman with flaming red hair walked by, followed shortly by an older black gentleman, both just as naked as the first lady.

He stood there for a moment gaping before—with yet another jolt of terror—he realized he was not the only clothed person watching the event. Dotted around the lot were confused residents of Detroit staring at the naked people. To his right stood a young mechanic in greasy overalls and a middle-aged businessman in an expensive suit. Kevin made sheepish eye contact with the mechanic.

“Uh… I was walking to… uh. I’m not-”

The mechanic grinned at him. “You’re here to look at the naked chicks. Go ahead kid, I ain’t your dad.”

*

An hour later, the circle of naked bodies has grown exponentially. It seems to Kevin that there must be thousands of them now. His twelve-year-old brain is in overdrive. Sure, he has spent plenty of time looking at naked people on the internet late at night. To a sixth-grader who knows anything at all, the Cyber-Sitter software that his mother had installed on his laptop was laughably easy to get around. But this is so different. In the last hour and a half, Kevin has learned the lesson that all boys who like girls learn at some point: seeing a boob on the internet and seeing one in real life is a
completely different thing
. And here they are. Hundreds of them! They are big, small, young, old, fake, real, saggy and just plain weird. He invents the word ‘boobucopia’ and giggles to himself. Sure, there is lots of stuff he isn’t interested in seeing, an old man’s droopy scrotum flopping back and forth (
gross
), a woman who kinda looks like his mom (
grosser
), sooooo many penises (
ick
). But all in all, if he has to see some gross stuff to see boobs, it is a deal he would take every time.