Playing with Matches

I’d like to thank my editor, Claudia Gabel, who made this possible. None of this could have happened without you. I’d like to thank Barri, Margo, Heidi, and Elaine, who helped me knock this story into shape. I’d especially like to thank my wife, Sandra, who put up with her husband’s neurosis and believed in me, even when I didn’t.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

“S
o I was reading this Vonnegut novel,” I said to Samantha. “The main guy figures out that the number of people he’s killed and the number of women he’s slept with are the same.”

Samantha didn’t look up from her newspaper, as if she hadn’t heard me. I went on.

“It was seventy-two.”

Samantha pointedly turned a page. Every morning, we would repeat this ritual. She would sit at a cafeteria table, bottle of water to her left, low-fat bran muffin to her right, copy of the
St. Louis Post
in front of her. I would sit opposite and talk at her until she could no longer concentrate.

I continued my literary review. “So do you think that number’s kind of high?”

Samantha folded her paper with a sigh. “For what, Leon? Killing people or sleeping around?”

“Either.”

Samantha always reminded me of a splinter of flint. She was narrow, hard, and angular. At seventeen, she was already a little old lady, with rimless glasses, short hair, and an enormous nose. Her breasts didn’t sag, of course; she didn’t really have any.

“Leon, how would I know? Why do you always want to discuss things like this?” She returned to her paper. The first-hour bell wouldn’t ring for a few minutes, and I looked around the cafeteria for a distraction.

The Zummer High lunchroom was immense. Early-morning sunshine streamed pleasantly over us, thanks to some slanting windows near the ceiling. Now that spring was here, the windows turned the cafeteria into an unbearable greenhouse. At one end of the room, a poorly painted dog declared
GO ZUMMER BULLDOGS
! On the opposite wall, a portrait of General Montgomery Zummer glared at us over the soda machines. He’d once slaughtered many Indians on this very spot, back when St. Christopher, Missouri, was still just a frontier outpost.

Around us, teenagers poured into the school, back from spring break. A sea of white faces. Suburban students, all dressed in the same clothes, telling the same stories, sharing the same hive mind. If there was one thing more depressing than a suburban high school, it was a suburban high school in Missouri.

I turned back to Samantha. “You know, it’s the same with me, Sam. I’ve killed and slept with the same number of people.”

She didn’t look at me. “A nice, round number, Leon?” She drew a zero in the air with her finger.

“It’s bound to change.”

Samantha took a swig of Evian. “Who are you planning on killing?”

I shoved the rest of her bran muffin into my mouth. Samantha had guessed my number correctly. Zero was the number of times I’d had sex. And the number of dates I’d had since the fall. Here it was, just after spring break of my junior year. I hadn’t had a date since Angie Herber and I had made out after the homecoming game. She gave me the “just friends” speech the next day.

Why did every girl want to be my friend? They didn’t even want that; Samantha was the only girl who came close to being my friend. Or my only friend who came close to being a girl.

The warning bell rang. Actually, it wasn’t a bell but a long droning buzzer that grated on my nerves like an early-morning car alarm.

Students began to lumber to class. Samantha neatly separated her recyclables, grabbed her books, and walked away.

“Hey, Samantha,” I hollered. “What’s your number?”

She turned and indicated a digit with her middle finger.

Older high schools are architectural wonders, with the ornate exteriors, wooden trim, and murals by long-dead alumni. Newer schools are marvels of the twenty-first century, with gleaming metal fixtures, air-conditioning, and toilets that flushed.

Monty Zummer had been built in the 1960s. That meant blocky. Ugly. Cramped. Three generations of Zummer students had attended what was essentially an enormous bomb shelter. We used to joke that a busload of mental patients was accidentally delivered to MZH and it took them two weeks to realize they weren’t in an asylum. The asylum served better food.

I stopped by my locker to get my stuff for chemistry class. There were almost two thousand students at this school, and half of them were female. So how come whenever I asked a girl if I could have the privilege of paying for her food and entertainment she always said no? Aside from the fact she didn’t want to kiss me.

When I was in junior high, I was a nerd. The kind of guy everyone picked on. The last one chosen for teams in gym class. Now, after years of struggle, I’d succeeded in becoming an unknown. And when no girl knew you existed, odds were they wouldn’t be receptive when you tried to get them horizontal.

Of course, my looks didn’t exactly make girls turn their heads and drop their pants. At only five foot six, I had to look up at many of the girls at school. Puberty had come and gone without leaving me so much as a chest hair or a whisker. And my face…Some guys are just born handsome. I had a mug that looked like it should be hanging in a post office somewhere, with the title
WANTED FOR SHOPLIFTING AND CREDIT CARD FRAUD
.

Instead of wavy brown hair, I had stringy locks the color of old hay. When I wore a hat, I looked like a scarecrow. I’d inherited my father’s generous ears but not his noble nose. I was stuck with my mother’s petite button nose.

And then there were my eyes. Some guys had steely blue orbs that, despite any physical shortcoming, could just freeze a woman in her tracks and hypnotize her with their raw power. I had two beady brown eyes that, no matter how hard I tried to look mysterious and cool, always seemed to say “It wasn’t me who just farted.”

I kicked my locker shut. Three billion women in the world, and the universe couldn’t spare one for Leon Sanders.

“Excuse me?”

Female voice! I swirled, waiting to see whatever gorgeous teenage queen wanted my attention.

Disappointed wasn’t the word. I was…

Okay, disappointed
was
the word.

Her name was Melody Hennon. Everyone in school knew Melody. At least, everyone recognized her.

Like at any school, some people at Montgomery Zummer were universally shunned. That girl in the wheelchair. The guy with leukemia who was obviously going to get his own page in the yearbook before graduation. The retarded kids from the resource room. And Melody.

Sometime in her youth, Melody had been in an accident. A fire. I didn’t know the details; she hadn’t started at Zummer Elementary until the third grade.

The flames had eaten away most of Melody’s face and left her with no ears whatsoever. She didn’t have much of a nose either, just the bony ridge over her misshapen nostrils. Her lips still remained: puffy, clownlike masses of tissue covering the teeth she never showed the world. She usually wore a scarf around her head, hiding the scant fuzz that poked out here and there from her withered scalp. Only by looking directly into her eyes—those sad gray eyes under her grafted-on eyelids—did you realize you were looking at a human face. And no one ever looked Melody Hennon in the eyes.

She was staring at me with what I supposed was an expectant look on her face. Unconsciously, I stepped back. Then I realized I’d jumped back, so I quickly stepped forward. Then I was too close, so I stepped back again. It was the first time I’d ever danced with a girl.

Melody’s eyes narrowed. She was showing disgust, pain, or amusement—it was hard to tell.

“Did you say something?” I asked.

“You’re standing in front of my locker,” she whispered.

“Huh?” No way. Her locker wasn’t anywhere near mine. That wasn’t a face I had to see every day.

“That’s not your locker,” I told her, perhaps a bit more bluntly than I meant to.

Melody’s mouth opened for a second, revealing her immaculate teeth. Then she turned and dashed away.

Jesus, she forgot where her own locker was. At least I wasn’t the only one whose brain wasn’t turned on that morning. As I slouched to the chemistry lab, I took a little comfort in knowing that there was one other person at this school whose number was zero.

IS IT HOT IN HERE, OR IS IT JUST A CHEMICAL FIRE?

H
igh school chemistry was like the can opener on a Swiss Army knife: it was there because it had always been there, not because anyone would ever use it. When was the last time someone had to calculate the molarity of hydrochloric acid in real life?

Still, first-hour chemistry wasn’t boring. Not because of the subject matter, but because I had Mr. Jackson. No one got bored in Jackson’s class. Stop paying attention for a moment and you risked losing an eye.

Jackson was on his second ex-wife and his third nervous breakdown. He had failed in life as a husband and father, and as a research scientist, and was now proceeding to fail as a teacher. Every day for a semester and a half, he stood in front of us, droning in his whiny monotone, reading out of the textbook, while we dozed. That was, until lab days. Then Mr. Jackson transformed into a 1950s mad scientist.

Strange things happened with the experiments. Chemicals caught fire. Test tubes exploded. Fifty-gallon emergency eyewash stations inexplicably opened, flooding the classroom. I still deny I had anything to do with that last incident.

Today was a mere lecture day, so students talked, passed notes, or copied each other’s homework in search of that elusive C-. I sat alone at my lab table, doodling in my textbook. Before I could finish adding a mustache to Marie Curie, I was interrupted.

Jimmy and Johnny Thomson were the same height and weight as a pair of industrial refrigerators—and almost twice as smart. They were twin brothers, and the only way you could tell their bushy-haired, pockmarked faces apart was that Jimmy’s broken nose had never healed quite right. Predictably, they excelled as linebackers on the Zummer High football team. It was the only place they could bust heads without being arrested.

The brothers had attached themselves to me in the seventh grade, when they’d realized I didn’t mind them copying off me during tests. In return, they ensured I didn’t get my clumsy ass kicked too often during PE. And they had a pool table at their house. Friendships have been built on less.

Jimmy and Johnny flopped down into the seats on either side of me. This enabled them to copy my lab reports more easily (though they probably could have xeroxed them for all Mr. Jackson noticed). I could have put up with Jimmy’s constant sinus snorting and Johnny’s onion breath. What I could do without was the way they spent every science class pounding the holy hell out of each other. That day was no exception.

“Butthole!” hollered Johnny at his brother.

“Fartface!” Jimmy yelled back, and socked his brother in the arm, narrowly missing my jaw.

“Asswipe!” countered Johnny, swatting Jimmy in the back of the head. I ducked down against the table, out of the line of fire.

“Um, students…” Mr. Jackson addressed the class in his normal nasal voice. Good thing too; the twins would have had each other in wrestling holds in a few seconds.

There was a loud belch of static from the intercom, which always preceded the morning announcements.

“Good morning, Zummer High,” said Principal Bailey, in his constipated, recorded-sounding voice. “Today is Monday, March tenth.” Across the room, students continued to chat.

“Welcome back. We would like to remind all female students that tops must be worn full to the pants line. No stomach-baring shirts.” Next to me, Johnny pulled up his shirt to his chest, revealing his hairy gut.

“For all students interested in trying out for the spring musical, there will be an informational meeting in the choir room after school.

“Finally, a reminder to all students with lockers numbered 5001 to 5050. New locker assignments were handed out this morning. See Ms. Anderson in the office if you have any questions. Thank you, and have a nice day.”

I leaned over to Johnny. “Why did they change everyone’s lockers?”

“They painted a bunch of them over spring break. The painters took all the doors off, and they lost the numbers for some of them, and no one knows the combinations. Probably just an excuse for Bailey to search our stuff.”

My laughter was cut short when I realized that Melody was probably one of the refugees and I really had been standing in front of her new locker. I made a mental note to apologize to her next time we ran into each other. If her new locker assignment was permanent, that would be quite often.

Mr. Jackson opened the teacher’s manual of the chemistry text. Like a bunch of zombies, we flipped our books to whatever chapter he would forget to teach us about. His shrill monotone filled the air. Ears began to rest on tables. Doodles appeared in notebooks. The muted sound of someone’s hidden iPod could be heard from the back row.

I guess I was the only one who enjoyed that class. Not because of the lectures, homework, and occasional melted glassware. I enjoyed it for the same reason I never asked to be moved to a different table. At the seat diagonally in front of me sat Amy Green.

Amy. I’d known her since the fourth grade. We had once been friends of sorts; she’d even come to my tenth birthday party. Of course, back then girls were just boys who played with Barbies. But in middle school, the girls began to grow up and out (or, in Samantha’s case, just up). By the time we hit high school, Amy looked like the sort of girl you’d see in a new picture frame. And with each cup size, her popularity swelled. I don’t think she’d wasted a thought on me since elementary school.

All I could see from my seat was her long, long blond hair and those bare muscular arms. Still, I remembered exactly what she’d been wearing when she’d sat down: tight jeans, a blue sweater with no sleeves, and white sneakers. If someone had asked me what shirt I was wearing at that moment, I would have had to look.

I couldn’t wait for the spring pep rally, when I would see Amy in her cheerleading uniform. Those tanned shoulders, those athletic legs, the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled (at other people). The slight indentations above her collarbone. The tiny scar just under her right knee.

My fantasies were rudely interrupted by the appearance of Johnny’s leering face at my shoulder. “Not in a million years, Leon,” he whispered.

“She wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire,” echoed his brother, flashing a crooked-toothed smile at me. “But since you aren’t on fire, she just might.”

“Dudes,” I snapped, “shut up!” It was a good thing Mr. Jackson was too clueless to notice us.

“Just trying to do you a favor,” said Johnny. “She’s out of your league. Besides, she’s a lousy kisser.” He wiggled his tongue at me.

“And she stuffs her bra,” added Jimmy.

“I don’t have a thing for her,” I lied.

“Why not, are you gay?”

Since I was trapped between them, it was impossible to turn away.

Johnny flung his huge arm over my shoulder in what he must have assumed was a friendly gesture.

“Want some advice, Leon?” he whispered.

“No.”

“I’ve seen you around chicks. You’re about as subtle as a boner in church.”

Jimmy leaned in from the other side. “I remember when you tried to ask out Laura. Christ, why didn’t you just ask for her used panties?”

I thought back to the incident that had happened after school the week before. Laura had turned me down, but I wasn’t
that
forward, was I?

Jimmy inhaled a wad of snot from somewhere in his nasal cavity and visibly swallowed it. “If you wanna get to know Amy, tone it down. Be friendly. Be cool.”

“And don’t be yourself,” added Johnny.

“Shut up!” I hissed, loudly enough for Mr. Jackson to glance in our direction.

Be subtle? This from a guy who showed me his butt the first time we met. In truth, maybe I was kind of…abrupt. It wasn’t easy for me to talk to girls. How could I start a conversation?

It probably had a lot to do with junior high. I guess after three straight years of being insulted and picked on every day, I took it for granted that no one liked me. That any girl I asked out would turn me down. It had been years since anyone had gone out of their way to torment me, but inside I would always be twelve years old, with the other kids laughing at me the second the teacher’s back was turned. Maybe that was why I was seventeen and had dated only four girls, three of them from other schools.

Chemistry couldn’t have lasted longer than fifty minutes, though time tended to slow down in there. Eventually, the bell buzzed. Students walked, ran, or in the case of the Thomsons, brawled out the door. I stayed. Amy was still there, talking to one of her friends. I guess Mr. Jackson was there too, frantically trying to think of something to teach the next class, but he could be ignored.

Be subtle.
Could Johnny and Jimmy have been right for the first time in five years? If I just played it cool, maybe Amy would notice me again. Why wouldn’t she?

Because you’re Leon Sanders, vice president of the Key Club, Computer Club secretary, and Monty Python enthusiast.

It was true. Even without all that middle school popularity crap, the only reason a guy like me should approach Amy was to leave a burnt offering at her temple.

I started to gather my stuff. Why couldn’t I be really cool? Why could I never just talk to girls? Why not right now? Maybe my worries were all mental. Amy was probably as friendly as she had been in the fourth grade, and would happily talk to me if I just made the effort.

Slowly, slowly, I approached her.

It’s now or never. Go talk to her.

Amy and her disciple were deep in conversation about a new cheerleading routine. I waited until there was a pause in the discussion.

“Hi,” I said, my voice sounding several octaves higher than normal.

“Er, hi,” Amy replied, probably wondering why I hadn’t made an appointment with her social secretary.

“How’s it going?” Even as I spoke the words, I was aware of how forced they sounded. As opening lines went, it ranked right down there with
What’s your sign?
and
Wanna see a dead body?

“Fine, I guess.”

“Yeah, I’m fine too….” Long, awkward pause. Amy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. I felt about as welcome as a persistent panhandler.

I babbled a goodbye and scurried off. Maybe if I snuck in with the bell for the rest of the year, Amy wouldn’t notice me. A mere human like me couldn’t just strike up a conversation with an angel like her.

So much for listening to the Thomsons. If I was going to take romantic advice from two guys who got nostalgic over their greatest farts, then I deserved to be embarrassed.

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