Authors: Heidi Ayarbe
I cup my hand over hers.
She wipes a tear from her cheek and swallows as I turn up Old Clear Creek Road, eyes scanning the road for signs of death.
We drive to Costco, through the parking lot, and down the road again. We stop where Mom saw the cyclist, and we get out of the car looking for signs of any kind of accident. “See? Nothing.”
She exhales. “Nothing.”
I won’t look at the time now. I can’t. It’s too late. Everything was wrong from the beginning today anyway.
Mom wraps her frail arms around me. “Thank you, Jake. Thank you.”
“It’s nothing. C’mon. I’ll take you home.”
“You’ll be late,” she says in a lame attempt at being a mom.
“I won’t be late.”
She accepts this as the truth because she needs to get home fast and go to bed. Maybe drink something. I don’t know.
I mentally organize the afternoon. It’s like trying to piece together the remains of an explosion, putting together the puzzle of shards so it’ll look like the day it was supposed to be.
What if I can’t play tomorrow? What if the spiders never leave?
I swallow down the possibility. There’s gotta be a way to play—to get to class—to make it up. I’ll fucking do detention for the rest of the year.
I just need tomorrow. I need the game.
When we pull into the driveway, Dad’s car is parked behind Mom’s. He’s walking melted groceries into the house; his uniform is sticky from the ice cream and who knows what else. He turns and sees Mom and me in the van and nods.
Mom wrings her hands. “We can’t tell him.”
“We won’t.”
“Thank you, Jake,” she says, and steps out of the van. “Have a good day at school,” she says. She walks toward the house, wisps of dandelion hair blowing in the wind. I rev the van up and drive away before Dad comes out of the house.
* * *
1:23 p.m.
One twenty-three. Good number. One plus two is three plus three is six divided by two is three. OK. One times two is two plus three is five. OK.
I wonder since I missed a class if that’s technically being late.
Friday, 1:31 p.m.
One thirty-one. One plus three is four plus one is five. OK.
I pull into Mera’s parking spot and work my way to the side of the building. Some ROTC kids are walking in, and I slip in the doors behind them.
Perfect record.
I walk down the empty hallways. It’s already last block. It’s pretty stupid to be here at all. I should’ve just stayed in Mera’s van until it was time to dress out for practice, but there’s something great about wandering around empty school halls, not having to avoid anybody, not having to hide.
I peek into a classroom where some substitute is trying to break up a fight. I wander past the drama theater and band room. The horn section of the band is working on a new song—something for the winter concert. I pause. It sounds like “Winter Wonderland.” Kind of.
I work my way to the auditorium. It’s dark except for a dim stage light. Mera’s sitting, drawing her bow across the strings. I slip in the door and sit in the shadows, leaning my head back against the chair, listening to the repetitive song, how she plays it louder and louder, the same notes, the same melody.
In the background there’s a CD playing a rhythm—on a drum. The longer Mera plays, the more it feels like the notes she’s playing are trying to break free of the steady background beat. A couple of times it’s almost like she’ll make it, like the notes will change, but then she pauses a few beats and begins again.
The beat doesn’t change. Her notes don’t change, and no matter how hard she saws on that violin, she’s stuck in the same melody.
Then there’s this weird, discordant note and a fitful end.
It’s over.
The ending leaves me unsettled. As if the melody gave in to the tapping of the drum, the rattle of nails rapping a window.
Mera sits on the stage, her chin resting on the violin, the CD whirring to a stop, then looks up where I’m sitting, shading her eyes with the palm of her hand. “Fine. Church songs and people. Sperm donor: ‘My Cup Runneth Over
.
’”
“Sperm clinic nurse: ‘Kumbaya
.
’” I pronounce it “Cum-Boy-Yeah.”
She cracks up. “That’s cheating.”
“Somebody in this country, somewhere, would pronounce it like that.”
“Fair enough.”
I laugh and feel the tension ease out of my shoulders. Mera covers her eyes from the glare of the overhead stage light and looks my direction. “Why are you always hiding?”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Whatever, Magic Martin.”
I rub my sticky palms on my sweatpants. “You hide too,” I finally say.
She looks up to where I’m sitting.
“You do. Behind your anger and I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude. Because you
do
give a shit. We all hide. We’re not so different.”
“You know what your problem is?” Her voice is tight.
I don’t. But I sure would like somebody to tell me. We stare at each other across the dark auditorium.
Mera stands up and moves the music stand across the stage in a horrific screech. She unplugs the CD player and cradles it under her arm, holding her violin with the other hand. She shakes her head and sighs. “Never mind. Anyway, it’s
Bolero
. By Ravel.”
“Bolero,”
I echo.
“They say he had frontotemporal dementia when he wrote it, which might explain the fact he wrote a sixteen-minute, one-movement song.” When she talks, her words echo off the auditorium walls, so even though she’s standing in front of me, it sounds like she’s coming from everywhere.
“Frontotemporal dementia?” I ask.
“Yeah. His brain was getting all mushy.” She stands, staring at the darkness, then starts flapping her arms up and down. “‘You
dare
to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!’”
I stifle a laugh. It’s nice to know somebody’s as weird as me in this world.
“ ‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!’ ” She puts her hands on her hips. “Okay, Oz, time to come out.”
I stay seated, wishing she’d just keep playing.
“Weird-o.” She whistles and leaves the stage just as the bell rings.
But the music’s still here, in the air, the beat still pounding in my head, keeping the melody trapped inside those short, even notes. I listen until a crackly voice interrupts the drumming:
“Jacob Martin.”
Oh fuck. I’m totally losing it. Totally.
The voice repeats:
“Jacob Martin
.
”
This time clearer.
And I wonder if crazy people think they can hear God. Or what if I
do
hear God? And it’s a chick. Like who’s gonna believe that?
It sounds like thunder followed by heavy breathing:
“Jacob Martin, please report to the attendance office.”
I shake my head and look up. The school intercom is right above me.
I leave the auditorium, running into half the orchestra. “Hey, man, they’re looking for you,” some kid says.
“Yeah. Thanks,” I say, pretty relieved I’m not hearing voices, too.
Yet.
Maybe I have that brain-mush problem.
“Hey. Good luck on Saturday!” He waves at me. Friendly. Nice. “You’re totally wick.”
“Did you just say
wick
?” some other kid asks.
“Well, yeah. Wick. You know. As in wicked. But short.”
“Not as in candle?”
“C’mon, Craig, you can’t tell me you’ve never heard
wick
before?”
And I’m out of earshot before the orchestra determines whether
wick
is an appropriate abbreviation for
wicked
, which would mean I’m pretty much amazing.
Which I’m not.
Friday, 2:03 p.m.
Two-oh-three. Two plus three is five. OK.
I dress out in Mera’s van and watch everybody stream out of the school. When I squint, it looks like everybody’s drowning, heads bobbing up and down in a sea of Carson High blue. And there are no lifeboats.
I turn my phone on. Seventeen missed calls from Luc. One from Kase.
Kase. I’ll talk to her tonight. She can tell me about her day. And everything will go back the way it needs to be.
Nobody says anything when I walk out onto the field. Luc’s seething. Major Univision mode.
Fuck you,
I want to say.
Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you
.
And the closet smells return—damp boots, last year’s wool sweaters, forgotten half-eaten sandwiches in coat pockets—all faintly masking the musty animal smell—that sterilized sick-dog veterinarian-clinic smell.
The whisper of death.
If I could just go back to the day
before
that night and do things right, change the order, I wouldn’t be like this.
The spiders stop spinning on the loom of my brain. That night, stuck in the closet, waiting for the time on my Indiglo to match Mom’s squiggly clock hand, they came to stay. I’d felt the spiders before, but after that night . . . That’s when I figured out how to keep them back—how to count them away.
It’s like all this time they’ve been waiting for perfection.
Tomorrow is perfection. Tomorrow I will be normal.
I catch myself and reverse my thoughts.
There’s nothing wrong with how I am. Nothing.
Fuck you
.
The team sits in a circle, stretching to Luc’s count. I strap on my guards and start to warm up, running around the field. I don’t need them.
They need me.
They need the magic.
So when I make the goals, everything will be okay. Life will go back to normal. We’ll win the game and it’ll all be over. The spiders will disappear.
Then I can just walk away.
Coach is talking to Principal Vaughn. A bright blue vein throbs in Vaughn’s temple—a neon strip against his blotchy, sun-damaged forehead. Vaughn’s suit jacket and pants flap in the wind. The only thing not moving is his gelled hair.
The wind has wrapped his purple tie around his neck, and he yanks on it, trying to keep it from sailing behind him.
I put my head down and run.
Coach hollers at Luc. “Get the nets out for soccer tennis, Luc! You’ve stretched enough.” His hands are balled in fists at his sides, his face a scrunched raisin.
Luc catches up to me and says, “
Hijo de puta
. You’re total smegma. Just one fucking day to be on time. One day to normal out.”
“Fuck you,” I say under my breath.
I am normal.
Then all I feel is the pounding. Luc becomes his dad—his clenched fists and hate words. The sour smell of his breath and bloodshot eyes.
I try to push the thoughts away—to stay away from that night—but I can’t breathe with Luc lying on my chest.
Her screams have stopped. I don’t know what’s worse, the screaming or the way the house creaks in the wind, the tick-tock of the grandfather clock with its heavy pendulum swinging back and forth, pushing through the thick silence of the house.
“Kasey! Kasey, answer me!”
I stand up, pushing myself off the ground, my hand grazing the thick rat tail. I jump back, knocking over a box of Halloween decorations, shiny plastic clown masks, glow-in-the-dark skulls.
What if she’s hurt? Or worse?
My heart pounds and pumps blood through my body. I kick against the door with the heels of my feet, then crumple to the floor, pushing in the Indiglo light to see the time, concentrate on the numbers.
Working the numbers in the fluorescent green light is the only thing to keep the spiders from eating me alive—the only thing to keep Kasey safe out there.
“Fight back,
marica.
” Luc pounds and pounds.
What if . . .
“This game is everything. And you’re gonna fucking blow it.”
The thoughts whirl around my head—some kind of carnival
Wheel of Fortune
with all the
what if
s gyrating, waiting for the wheel to stop when it slows down to its final
tick, tick, tick
.
I search for my watch, to see the time.
But I can’t move—pinned under Luc.
I feel panic rise inside me like a crashing wave. Terror. My heart pounds harder and faster—a jackhammer against my body. A scream gets trapped in my mind and shatters into thousands of pieces.
What if . . .
The pounding, the hate, the anger go on until Diaz grabs Luc and holds him back. Luc spits a long, spiraling blood loogie that explodes into thousands of minibubbles in the air, all spattering my left leg.
I lie on the prickly grass and curl my legs to my chest, closing my eyes, waiting for the earth to swallow me up.
Two, three, five, seven, eleven . . . one hundred three . . . two hundred seventy-seven. . . .
I look at the distorted faces through the slit that was once my right eye and feel the Pop Rocks blood vessels exploding under my skin, spilling into my tissues all over my chest, face, neck, and back.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Coach and Principal Vaughn drag us into the main office. Coach leaves Diaz to run practice, saying, “Nobody leaves. Nobody. Until we get this sorted out.”
I inhale. When I breathe in, there’s a sharp pain in my chest. I think about Kase. Maybe I’ll get my one phone call. I can call her right now. Maybe that would make things better. It would just be better to talk to someone.
Anyone.
I turn to Luc. He’s gone, turned into his dad, so I look away. All the
what if
s crowd my brain—pushing aside anything else. The only thing that helps are the numbers and the routines—getting things back on track.