A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip (9 page)

It takes the audience a moment to realize the play is over. Once they do, they erupt in cheers. And okay, Kevin’s not stupid, probably the applause is so loud because the performance ran longer than a sermon would, chopping a good fifteen minutes out of second period, but that’s all right, he doesn’t mind. You don’t clap because you’re overjoyed. You clap because it’s time to clap.

The rest of the day glides lightly over the treetops and to the ground. Kevin has a funny sensation of freedom and blamelessness, as if he is secretly at school on some dream of a Saturday, pretending along with everyone else that it’s important to attend class and obey the bells. The bulletin boards, the polished floors, even the fluorescent lights make him curiously happy. The whole giant building could cascade down around him in a sheet of water. It would hardly seem any less real. He wonders if this is how the others feel all year long.

In English, Miss Vincent hams it up for the class, holding her wrist to her brow and calling Kevin “my rescuer.” In geography, Coach Dale gives him one of his certificates with the drawing of the hand making the A-OK sign—Attaboys, he calls them, and “I’m awarding this particular Attaboy to Mr. Brockmeier for being our Playwriter of the Year.” And that afternoon, in PE, before dressing out, when Kevin joins the rest of the kids by the thick purple-and-gold mat Velcroed to the wall beneath the scoreboard, Bateman makes a point of posing his head on his neck just so and presenting an enormous laugh, a big barking show-offy thing that goes on
and on and on. Kevin can’t quite tell: Is he laughing because he thinks Kevin embarrassed himself, really and truly, or because he decided he would laugh and by God he’s going to laugh?

By the next morning, the school is mostly itself again, with only a trace of yesterday’s weird agreeability. Even that disappears when Ethan shows Kevin the book he found:
Another Fine Myth
, with Skeeve the magician, Aahz the demon, Gleep the dragon, and the ivy-haired assassin Tananda, her short dress spray-painted onto her curves. The four of them march along a cobblestone path between hillsides studded with castles and houses and evergreens.

Kevin can’t believe it. “Where did you unearth that?”

“Lucky find. The B. Dalton in Park Plaza. They had the other three, too. Tananda is
hot
, isn’t she? Way hotter than I pictured her.”

“Wait. There are
three
others?”

“Yeah, mine and yours and
Myth Conceptions
, plus a new one called
Hit or Myth
, with Skeeve and Gleep and that same absentee unicorn on the cover. Except I bought this one, and it was their only copy. I’m waiting for my dad to give me my allowance, then I’m going to snag the others.”

The bell sounds, and a couple of latecomers slip into their desks. The door stutters closed on its hinged brass doorstop. As Mr. Garland takes roll, Ethan tucks the novel into his backpack, trading it for his notebook, which he opens to a new page and headlines with the date and the name of the class. That handwriting! So well scrubbed, so meticulous. One time, in sixth grade, Thad said that it reminded him of a penis. It was such a strange remark to make, and yet so unexplainably
true, that Kevin has never forgotten it. He wonders if he can convince his mom to drive him to Park Plaza tonight. It’s important, he’ll say. Mom, I have something I need to do. It’s important. It’s really important, Mom. I have someplace I need to go. I cannot get there fast enough.

They are crossing the wooded side of the building, Thad and Kenneth and Kevin, carving their way down the narrow belt of grass-stitched dirt. To the left of them are the red bricks, to the right the bare brown trees. Before them is the path, running along the slenderest of threads before it empties into the yellowing schoolyard. There is no door for Kevin to step through, no clearing where he can turn around. There is only this roofless natural corridor he cuts shorter with every stride, a rift between the bricks and the trees where their voices turn sharp and echo.

Bateman was with them when it started, standing at the light box of the Coke machine, but he peeled away before they left the lunchroom.

Now it is just the three of them. No one else.

Thad. Kenneth. Kevin.

Except that Kevin is out in front, and Thad and Kenneth are baying along behind him. So Kevin, then Thad and Kenneth, and between them a terrible howling few steps of space, which keeps diminishing and expanding, so that he never knows how close their voices will be when they come, or if he will feel their breath whisking across the back of his neck.

“Hey, Kevin, is it snack time yet?”

“By now it must be snack time.”

“Yeah, isn’t it snack time, Kevin?”

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think I’m ready for a snack.”

“For snack time let’s share some M&M’s.”

“M&M’s make friends.”

It’s as if they are tied to him with elastic cords. Each time they start to fall behind, he accidentally yanks them closer.

Maybe, Kevin thinks, if he doesn’t say anything, if he just carries on walking with his coat wrapped around his body, holding his face to the smoke-gray sky, they will wear themselves out, the day will take some unimaginable hairpin turn, and they will change back into his friends. Yesterday they were his friends.

“Let’s get some M&M’s at the gas station,” Thad says. “The gas station is where I like to get my M&M’s. Where do you get your M&M’s, Kenneth?”

“Same as everyone. Duh. The gas station.”

“Me, too. The Superstop.”

“It’s super! The Superstop is super!”

“Super
-
buh
.”

“Superb,” Kenneth agrees. “The perfect place for chips and candy. Today, for snack time, I don’t know about you guys, but I recommend we walk to the gas station.”

“Hey, Kevin, have you ever made a super stop?”

“Will you be our pal—our supe—our
super
pal, Kevin?”

“Can we spend the night with you and eat Steak-umms for dinner?”

“Super Steak-umms.”

“Steak-umms at dinner
time
! And before bed
time
, at our pre-bed
time
snack
time
, can we eat some Crystal Light powder with a spoon, Kevin?”

“We love Steak-umms and Crystal Light powder.”

“And M&M’s.”

“Yeah, M&M’s.”

“What do you say, Kevin?”

“Kevin.”

“Kevin.”

“Hey, Kevin.”

“Super Kevin.”

They are conducting an experiment. How many times can they say his name before it will become meaningless, like the pulsing of crickets, an empty, ugly music? What are the softest tools they can use to hurt him? The food he likes. The words he uses. What else?

“Hey, Kevin, when we spend the night, should we go to the mall or to the zoo?”

“Will you buy us some M&M’s at the mall?”

“Or the zoo.”

“Yeah, or the zoo.”

“Some M&M’s and shoe stickers?”

“And then will you lose the comic books you bought and start crying?”

“Is the giraffe your favorite animal at the zoo, Kevin?”

“Yeah, what’s your favorite animal at the zoo, Kevin?”

“The giraffe? Is the giraffe your favorite animal?”

“Everybody has a favorite animal.”

“It’s favorites time! Time for favorites!”

They have turned the corner. Before them stretches the real world, where kids stand on the patio of the school eating chips and sandwiches and the clouds cascade over the parking lot, their reflections floating along on a great curved river of windshields. He sees Chuck and Alex in their letter jackets,
and some ninth-graders massed by the hallway’s glass doors, and girls, too, at least a dozen girls, with their white Keds and purses, earrings and cosmetics mirrors, and the sight of all those people whose lives are theirs, completely theirs, their lives and not his, people who have spent the last few minutes mingling in front of the school with no one looking for ways to hurt them, makes him feel unusually bold.

So far the ordeal—and that’s what it is: an ordeal—has been private, a secret. Kevin senses that if he can take the next moment in his hands and bend it with just the right demonstration of relaxed confidence, like a strongman flexing a metal pipe, Thad and Kenneth will slip back into the habit of liking him. They’ll do it. They will. They won’t think twice.

As disinterestedly as he can, then, he pivots around and tells them, “Cut it out, guys.”

But he has miscalculated.

They transform the words into a chant: “Cut it out, cut it out, cut it out, cut it out, guys.” They stalk him across the grass as they recite it—just Kenneth at first, but then, quickly, both of them together. BOOM boom-boom. BOOM boom-boom. BOOM boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom BOOM. How do they agree so easily on the melody, without even rehearsing? It is a marvel. Cut the record and ship it to the stores and it will sell a million copies, filling the Camelots and Sam Goodys of the world. You’ll hear it playing long after the needle has lifted from the platter. It’s your heart, that’s why, and it won’t stop beating the time. And when the record wins a Grammy, they’ll accept the trophy with an air of dumfounded good fortune. Where did it come from, such a beautiful song? They honestly couldn’t say. Call it a gift from God.

They are following Kevin along the rim of the bluff, and nearby someone is laughing about something, and Carina DeCiccio slings her heavy black hair out of her eyes, and he has always been so nice to her, he’s such a sweetheart, such a cutie, and maybe everyone is watching him, or maybe no one is, but don’t ask him, because damn it if he’s going to look.

Then the three of them are in the parking lot, Thad and Kenneth and Kevin, clipping through the aisles of cars. Thad interrupts the chant with, “Hey, Kevin. Hey, guy. Will you be our pal?”

“Yeah, our favorite pal?”

“Hey, little pal. Hey, little buddy.”

“Our favorite little super pal guy?”

“Do you think Dolly Parton is super?”

“Dolly Parton!” Kenneth can’t believe he didn’t think of it first. “That’s good—Dolly Parton.”

“Do you think boobs are super?”

“Yeah, Kevin, don’t you wish you had big boobs?”

“Are big boobs your favorites?”

“Big protruding boobs, like Dolly Parton’s?”

“Protrusions.”

“Protrusions are super.”

“Is that why you wore that dress on Halloween, Kevin?”

“What are your favorite protrusions?”

Kevin knows better than to answer, but “I mean it,” he hears himself saying. “Cut it out,” and the trigger proves irresistible. They forget about Dolly Parton and take up the chant again. CUT it-out. CUT it-out. CUT it-out. Cut-it-out GUYS.

HERE he-is. AT the-school. WITH his-friends. Pun-ish-ing HIM. ALL he-wants. THEM to-tell. HIM is-why. What-did-he DO?

Thad tugs at the handle of a pickup, and it springs out of his fingers and chomps at the door. The sound is like a hole in the air.

“So, Kevin, could you fit your dick in this lock?”

“Hey, guy,” Kenneth says to Thad, “cut it out.”

“I’m sorry, guy.”

“That’s okay, guy.”

“Don’t mention it, guy.”

Then Kenneth wonders, “Now which is it? I forget, so you’ll have to remind me, Kevin. Is your dick
wide
enough but not
long
enough, or is it
long
enough but not
wide
enough?”

“My dick is my own business.”

“Hey, hey, Jesus, Kevin. Whoa there. Why all the dick talk?”

“Yeah, guy. Why so much dick?”

“I think the guy has dick on the brain.”

Once, in fourth grade, during recess, a bad kick of his sent the soccer ball leapfrogging over the yard into the street, where it burst beneath the tires of an eighteen-wheeler. A startling double explosion—
Bang! Bang!
—and then “Oh,
man
,” the kids groaned, and “Great!
Now
what?” and Kevin crawled under a car in the visitors’ lot. He lay there staring into the otherworld of springs and axles, thinking how funny it was of him, how clever, to persuade his classmates that he was hiding in embarrassment, when look at him, just look, resting happily on the cool asphalt, faking everyone out. He remembers it all so clearly.

The engine was painted with sprays of orange dirt. They looked like goldfish tails. The sun fell at a slant, making hunchbacks out of the shadows of the tires.

“I’m not paying any attention to you guy—to either one of you,” he says.

“La la la” is Thad’s answer, the tune of some daydreamy little kid tracing butterflies through a meadow. “La la la. La la la,” and Kenneth follows along with him. “La la la la la.”

Their tongues add a strange thrust to each syllable, as if something wholly beyond their control is happening. The sound is an egg, and they can’t keep it from hatching.

“Is it snack time yet, Kevin? You still haven’t told us if it’s snack time.”

“Yeah, can you point us to the nearest Superstop?”

“La la la.”

“La la la la.”

“La Kevin la snack la la.”

“La Steak-umms la la.”

“Hey, Kevin, are you still going with that hot girl from Eight Wheels?”