The Danger of Being Me (11 page)

Helen went silent at that.  Phil glanced over the card in his hand.  Winnie looked from Helen to Phil to Ben to me, and shook her head.  "Warwick Davis?"

"The eponymous character in
Willow
," Ethan told her.

"
Eponymous
, huh?" Ben said.  "Seems everyone is taking indecent liberties with their Word-a-Day calendars."

"You're aware that he's half your size, right?" I said.  "Almost literally.  You have nearly three feet on him."

"I've seen the entire
Leprechaun
series," Ben said.  "And I own
Willow
on Laserdisc.  I'm well aware of his stature."

"Any particular reason?" I asked.

Ben leaned back in his seat, laying his hands over his stomach as he said, "many."  He paused for a handful of seconds, then turned back to Phil.  "Next question?"

"What playing card is called 'The Curse of Scotland'?"

"The Nine of Diamonds," Ben said, grabbing the die off the table.  "So who will star in
The Helen Regan Story
?"

Helen glanced past me.  "Shohreh Aghdashloo."

I saw a grin flash across Ben's mouth before he rolled the die.  "You're aware that she's 46, right?" he told her.

"I don't intend to do my best work until middle-age."

Ben contemplated which direction to move his piece, and nodded.  "Fair enough."  He slid his piece clockwise to a blue space, looking up at Phil, and crossed his arms.

"Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was alive?" Phil asked, watching Ben across the table.

Ben considered the question as Winnie said to me, "I don't suppose you'd like to be played by Fred Savage."

I laughed, and shook my head.  "Owen Wilson."

Ben snapped his fingers.  "The Hanging Gardens," he said, grabbing the die and rolling again.  He moved his piece, then looked up at me, and asked, "Wasn't Wilson the dude from
Bottle Rockets
with the fucked-up nose?"

"Uh, yeah," I said, gesturing at my own face.  "Did you happen to take notice of my schnozz lately?  The damn thing's a rock.  It's a peak.  It's a frakking cape."

"A cape?  Hell," Ethan said.  "It's a peninsula."

"Turn sideways," Helen told me, so I did.  She nodded.  "Just as I suspected.  I can't see Ben anymore.  I'm gonna need you to sit like that for the rest of the afternoon."

I lifted my soda and finished the drink.  "I just don't know if Wilson is going to want to stay in the role when the movie gets adapted into an HBO series."

"Yellow again," Phil said, glanced down at the yellow piece already tucked into Ben's gamepiece.  He smirked, and read the question off the card: "What president dismissed Ed Asner's remarks on U.S. foreign policy by asking: 'What does an actor know about politics'?"

"This is the best you've got?" Ben said.  "No wonder I'm the reigning champ."  He grinned.  "That was R– "

The rest of the answer vanished as the door crashed open and slammed into the counter.  Winnie jumped in her seat.  Ethan spilled a mouthful of Irn-Bru down the front of his t-shirt.  Helen couldn't stop herself from laughing.

"Jesus Christ, Gale!" Ben barked at the ample blonde.

She blustered into the room and came to a stop at the lip of the table to Ethan's right.  Her eyes swept the group of us before coming to rest on me, and she opened her mouth to speak.  Phil beat her to it: "Helen Mirren."

Gale looked away from me, blinked at Phil.  Across the table, Winnie shook her head.  "I'd have to go with Annette Bening.  Haven't you seen
The American President
?"

Phil shook his head.  "Politics gives me hives."

"Fionnula Flanagan," Ethan said, snapping his fingers.

Winnie turned to him.  "Who in the world is that?"

Ethan grinned.  "Nobody you guys would know."

"Angela Bassett," Ben said, cocking a finger at Gale like a pistol.  "Saturn Award for Best Actress. 
Strange Days
."

"Ass-kissers," Helen said to the table at large.  "I can't be the only one envisioning Patrick Swayze in drag."

Ben laughed out loud.  Phil grinned behind the card in his hand.  Winnie coughed to cover up a laugh of her own.  I smiled, watching Gale as I told Helen, "Maybe not, but I'd wager that I'm the only one picturing Nina Hartley."

Ethan snorted, and I had to laugh at that as I told him, "That tells me a whole lot about your private life."

"I make no apologies," Ethan insisted, grinning as he tipped back another mouthful of Irn-Bru.

Gale surveyed the group and shook her head.  Then she turned to me, and her nostrils flared as her dangerous hazel eyes sizzled.  I didn't like it.  Not even a little.

"In the hall," she demanded.

I felt a sweltering scarlet veil swirling, churning, rising up in my brain like a bloody thunderhead.  The fine hairs at the back of neck stood on end. I sucked in a deep breath, watching her, waiting for her to continue the sentence.  She didn't, so I said, "If you left the rest of that thought back in your car, I can wait here while you run and get it."

Helen snickered, and Gale glared at her.

"We need to talk," she snapped.

I nodded, leaned back in my seat.  "Until either of us masters the art of telepathy, I'm afraid you're right."

"Now," she said, seething.

"Hey Mike," Ethan said.  "I think you need to talk."

"So it seems," I told him.

"In the hall," Ben added, leaning forward over the table on his elbows.  He flashed a toothy grin.  "N– "

I stood, jamming my seat back across the carpet.  The chair crashed into the easels behind me, knocking one of them over into the bay of lockers against the wall.  Gale jumped at the noise, and the anger in her eyes sputtered briefly, just a bit and just for a moment.  I nearly smirked as I rounded the table, passing behind Ben to reach Gale.  I leaned toward her, said in a quiet voice, "Let's talk."

Her dangerous hazel eyes flicked to my face.  I crossed to the door in one long stride, held it open, and watched Gale until she passed through.  As I turned to follow her, I heard Ben tell Phil, "The answer was Ronald Reagan."

Then I stepped out into the barren hallway as the door to the newsroom clicked shut behind me.

"What's so goddamn important – " I started, but I didn't get past the first four words before Gale cut me off.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" She hissed.

I shook my head at her, and demanded, "When?"

"When you called the fucking police on Roy!"

"Could you keep your voice down?" I said, straining for civility. I glanced around the corridor, found no one within earshot, and turned back to Gale. "First of all, I had no idea that was Roy.  And second of all, I don't fucking care."

I turned my back on her then, reaching for the door to the newsroom.  I got my hand on the handle just as I felt her fingers wrap around my bicep.  I spun back suddenly, looked down at her hand and then back to her face.  My nostrils flared.  The taste of brimstone and cordite burned the back of my throat, and I felt that sweltering scarlet veil churning around me.  I stared at her without blinking.

Gale's hand slipped quickly back to her side.  "Roy's got enough problems right now without piling this on top."

"You see this?" I said, holding out my hand to her.  She looked down at my empty palm, and then back to my face.  I flashed a vicious grin.  "This hand is full of all the fucks I give about Roy McCleary and his fuckin problems."

I lifted my hand up until it hovered at Gale's eye level, palm still facing up.  She glared at me.  I grinned wider, tilting my hand as if pouring out all of my concerns onto the floor.  I brushed my palms together, and sighed.

"I'm so very glad that we had this talk," I told her.

I turned my back again.  This time, I didn't even get my hand on the handle before I heard Gale behind me.  "Roy's dad has been writing about the corrupt cops in this fucking town.  The Chief of the Police Department has been trying to stop him, because he's as dirty as the rest of them."

I sighed.  "What's any of that got to do with Roy?"

"Nothing," Gale said.  "Until last night.  Now Roy is in a spot where the Chief can use him against his dad.  Because you decided to call the police on him for no reason."

I shook my head.  "Sorry.  What I meant to ask," I said, turning back toward Gale, "was what any of that has to do with why Roy was out there trying to steal a Porsche."

"That's not the fucking point!" she barked.

"Oh, of course not."  I smirked at her.  "It's politics."

Gale glared at me, nostrils flaring, her dangerous hazel eyes sizzling.  I waited as she bristled for a long moment, then sighed.  "I don't know what you expect from me."

She watched me without blinking, considering for a few seconds.  Her voice had lost some of its edge by the time she said, "I think you need to apologize to him."

I laughed out loud.  I couldn't help myself.  It took me a good ten seconds to regain my composure, and when I did, I saw that Gale was sincere.  I laughed again, harder.  "Are you fucking stoned?  There's no way in the nine circles of Hell that I'm apologizing to that fucking degenerate."

"He could lose his scholarship to the Carter Medical School because of this!" Gale hissed.  "Because of you!"

I felt the corners of my mouth tugging into a smile, and straightened my expression.  "That's a damn shame," I said somberly.  "But how would an apology from me help?"

Gale's glare hardened.  "You know what?" she said, her voice tight as she jabbed a finger in my direction.  "Don't worry about it.  Roy doesn't need anything from someone like you."  Her throat bobbed like she had more to say, but she thought better of it.  She turned on her heel and stalked away down the barren hallway toward the cafeteria.

"There is no one like me," I called out to her retreating back.  She didn't turn to face me.  "There's just me."

I watched Gale disappear around a corner, then pushed back through the heavy door into the newsroom.  I threw the door open harder than I meant to, and it slammed into the counter.  I saw Winnie jump as I entered the room.

"Jesus Christ, Mike!" Ben blurted.

Helen looked up at me as I rounded the table again.  "Ron Perlman," she said.  "From
Beauty and the Beast
."

Phil squinted at me.  "I see Michael Rapaport."

"You should get your eyes checked," Helen told him.

I laughed.  Ethan said, "I can't argue against his casting of Owen Wilson.  Especially with that nose of his."

"I'd go with David Duchovny," Winnie said, popping another handful of Reese's Pieces into her mouth.

I cocked an eyebrow at her.  "That is high praise."

Winnie flashed that broad, endearing smile of hers as Ben snapped his fingers, pointing at me.  "Jaleel White."

"This fuckin guy," Helen said, shaking her head.  I collected my chair off the floor and set it back at the table, dropping into the seat.  I bent forward over the table on my elbows, reaching for the protein bar as the die clattered across the table toward me.  I glanced up to find Ethan grinning.  "You gonna roll that thing?  It's your turn."

I turned to Ben.  He shrugged, and told me, "Turns out that Lake Como is not, in fact, located in Quebec."

"No shit," I told him.  "It's in Italy."

He threw up his hands.  I laughed, and rolled the die.

5.

After second period on Wednesday afternoon, I made it to the Writers Club meeting room four minutes late.

The thirty desks ringed the periphery of the room in a nebulous circle.  Winnie, Phil and Helen clustered around the teacher's desk, which doubled as a snack table with the addition of a two-liter bottle of Ramp and three bowls containing pretzels, cheese puffs, and potato chips.

Ethan and Ben had claimed seats against the back wall, and Rose Zarenkiewicz sat to Ben's right, laughing along as he recited some undoubtedly well-worn anecdote.

Across the room, huddled between to a pair of her own classmates, I spotted Regina, her arms folded.  The three sophomores sat on the ledge in front of a window looking out on the courtyard from the second floor vista.

My sister cast a vague glance around the room before she found me.  I smiled and nodded.  She flashed me a curious look, just for a second, and then she nodded back and smiled.  One of her friends looked my way as well, then turned back to Regina, leaning toward her.  Regina glanced back to me, laughed once, shook her head.

Her friend giggled, and I felt a scarlet flush creeping out of my collar as I crossed the room.  I reached the seat to Ethan's left and tossed my bookbag into the wire basket under the desk, dropping into the chair.  Ben bent forward over his desk on his elbows to look around Ethan at me.

"I was just telling Rosie about your little misadventure out on Prophet's Point last summer," he said.

"I hate it when you call me Rosie," she said, laughing.

"He knows," Ethan told her.  "That's why he does it."

She laughed again.  I smiled at the sound.  It reminded me why she had received the Jack of Hearts' most recent letter.  She had a laugh as bright as a clear morning.

"You really got struck by lightning?" she asked.

"The stone got hit," Ben corrected her.  "He wasn't even touching it, but it threw him like a fucking shotput."

I leaned forward onto my desk and asked, "Did he tell you how he shrieked when he thought I was dead?"

Ethan laughed at that.  Rose turned back to Ben with a crooked grin splashed across her lips.  "No he didn't."

"I have never shrieked in my life," Ben insisted.  "And certainly not over him."  He turned to me.  "No offense."

I waved him off with a laugh as I spotted Dr. Lombardi stepping into the room with his writing portfolio in hand.  Three more students followed him in before he pulled the door closed behind them, and I bent to reach for the wire basket under my seat.  I unzipped the main compartment of the bookbag, fished around inside it for a moment, and pulled out a notebook with a faded-green cover.

I laid the book on my desk and flipped the cover open.  A pink sticky-note occupied to the bottom left corner of the interior cover, bearing a single sentence hand-written in pencil.  Ten words scribbled in a nearly-illegible scrawl read only: "This story is true, but this book is a lie."