The Fall (2 page)

“I'm Mr. Laneway, one of the social workers here at school.” He extended a hand. This was awkward, because my hands were full with apple juice (right hand) and brownie (left hand), and he was all, “Oh, oh, your hands are full, never mind, it's fine,” before I figured that I could free up my left hand by balancing the brownie in the crook of my right elbow. I gave him my hand, upside down and backward.

(Genius.)

After the handshake ritual was complete, I made for the exit.

“You won the essay contest last year,” Mr. Laneway said. “I remember.”

This took me off guard. How did he know?

“I was one of the judges,” he explained. “Your composition really stood out. Excellent work. It felt honest.”

“Thanks, thank you,” I said and really hoped we had reached the end of our conversation. Last stop! Everyone off the bus!

“I hope you're still writing,” Mr. Laneway said. “You have talent, Sam.”

I shifted on my feet. I didn't ordinarily love this kind of under-the-spotlight deal. He wasn't a creep or anything—I mean, he was actually saying nice things—but I wanted to be invisible about the whole writing thing. Keep it on the down low. I never should have entered that contest.

“You probably want to join the others,” Mr. Laneway observed.

(Yes, I super do!)

“You should try keeping a journal,” he suggested. “It's important, at times like this, to have a place to go with your thoughts and feelings.”

I gave him a blank look.

He waited, wanting more.

“Maybe I'll try it,” I said.

“Please know, Sam, that you are welcome to come by my office anytime if you”—his perfectly round head tilted east, then west, then east again—“if you want to discuss things or, you know, talk about Morgan, or—”

“Yeah, I mean, yes! That'd be great, thanks,” I sputtered. “I might.”

(Unlikely!)

Mrs. Kalman, the principal, asked for us to all gather around. (Except she said, “Gather
round
,” though I don't completely get why.)

She made some important and serious remarks in an official manner. Clearly Mrs. Kalman was trying to say all the right things, but it felt artificial to me, like the orange soda at Walmart. I totally regretted coming to this meeting/gathering/get-together thingy. All the adults were just way too eager to be sensitive and supportive. I kept wanting to shout, “Minimize, minimize!”

I faded in with a small group of students, quasi-friends and familiar faces. Mrs. Kalman talked and we listened, still numb. I don't think anybody knew how to act, even the adults—or maybe
especially
the adults. The bizarre thing is that I felt perfectly normal in so many ways. I woke up, ate the standard amount of frozen waffles (four, starving!), rode the bus (groan), laughed when something funny happened in school—then immediately felt bad about laughing, because it was so obviously wrong to be alive and happy at a time like this. There was a weird vacuum suck inside me, like an air bubble under water, and I felt like, I don't know, I had to burp all the time. But I couldn't. I just walked around with that swollen, full-up, burpy feeling. The pressure building, building.

A school counselor spoke. She gestured to a table with stacks of papers and fancy pamphlets and told us that we should consider taking this time to fill out one of the worksheets. She said it might be a good mental exercise. I grabbed one, to be exactly like everybody else, thinking:
Burpies for brains
,
this is so yuck
. I folded the sheet and stuffed it into my pocket. Some girls actually took out pencils and chewed on their erasers in a thoughtful manner. I grabbed another brownie—sue me: they were
really
good!—and waited for this grim gathering to conclude. When they asked us to hand in our activity sheets at the end, I was all, “Huh, what?”

I guess I didn't really see the point. They treated us like we needed to be cured or fixed or something. I don't know, maybe they were right about it. But this didn't feel like the way to get it done. It did get me thinking about Morgan, though. And if it makes anybody out there happy, I had a hard time getting to sleep that night.

 

THE FIRST TIME

This is how we met. It happened by accident, late in October, months after she had become Athena Luikin's favorite target.

So I'm saying: This is the first time I talked to the real person. Not just through the internet or as the nearly invisible person drifting through the school halls. I mean the real girl.

I looked Morgan in the eyes, made her laugh, saw her smile, heard her voice, smelled her shampoo. I'm trying to say that she became real to me. That should have changed things. I know that. I know how it makes me look. And I really know how it makes me
feel
. But let's forget about that for now. Let's focus on … not me.

It was the Pumpkin Fest, and I had volunteered to help out. Well, okay, not true. My mother signed me up and told me I was doing it.

“No choice?” I protested.

“No choice,” she answered.

“That's not fair,” I said.

“I pay your monthly phone bill,” she countered.

So I volunteered to help out at the Pumpkin Fest. I figured it couldn't be too terrible. I like little kids as long as they 1) don't try to bite me; 2) don't have goobers running down their noses; and 3) don't act like little brainiacs who want to tell me all about dinosaurs or
Star Wars
or whatever (though, yes, I can talk the history of Marvel Comics all day long).

I've got a little brother and sister at home and I'll say it: I love those guys almost all the time. Which is a pretty high percentage, if you think about it. I've compared notes with other brothers, so I know what I'm talking about.

At the Pumpkin Fest, I hoped I'd get assigned to the corn maze or the haunted house, something cool like that, where I could jump out with a plastic chain saw in my hand and scare the candy corn out of those kids. That, I would enjoy.
Bwa-ha-ha-ha!
Giving four-year-olds a cardiac arrest? I'm all in.

So it sucked when I was told to go over to the Face Painting Station.

“Seriously?” I asked.

I received an enthusiastic nod from a seriously coffeed-up yoga mom. She was like the queen of volunteers and actually had a clipboard tucked into her armpit.

“I'm no Picasso,” I said.

“It's easy,” she assured me. Big smile, blazing white teeth, crazy stiff hair, bony arms. “The kids want stars or pumpkins or rainbows. Simple stuff. There's a sheet you can follow.”

I hesitated.

“You'll have fun,” she lied, and shoved me in the direction of the Face Painting Station.

It's hard to say no to an enthusiastic yoga mom. After all, I had volunteered, which was like showing up with a giant “YES!” markered across my forehead.

I trekked over to the picnic table, which was surrounded by a ragged bunch of twerps. I wondered if the PTA ladies realized that they basically created a training class for the future tattooed freaks of America.

Morgan was painting a jack-o'-lantern on the pudgy face of a freckled, red-haired girl. It was pretty sweet, actually, the way that little girl stood with her arms frozen to her sides, trying to hold herself so perfectly still.

“Does your nose itch?” I asked the little girl.

Her eyes narrowed as a new worry entered her skull.

I made a big show of scratching my nose very dramatically. “It's hard to hold still when your nose itches, don't you think?”

The little girl's rabbity nose twitched. Her shoulders wriggled.

“Don't listen to him,” Morgan said, grinning. “You can scratch if you want.”

The station consisted of a picnic table and a hand-lettered sign that read, you guessed it:
FACE PAINTING STATION
. An assortment of paints was scattered on the table, a total mess, very haphazard, if you ask me. An untidy line of future gang members stood anxiously waiting their turn with the fake tattoos.

“So, um,” I pointed back in the direction of the hyper mom, “she said I should come over to help out.”

Morgan put the finishing touches on the redhead's chubby cheek. “There you go,” she said, holding up a hand mirror. “What do you think? Do you like it?”

The kid nodded solemnly. She asked, “Will it come off?”

Not missing a beat, Morgan replied, “Yes, it will wear off in a year or two.”

The kid's eyes bulged out like a cartoon character after it realizes that it's raced off a cliff. Nothing but air under its feet. Scooby-Doo's “Ruh-roh.” Funny.

Morgan smiled. “I'm joking. A little soap and water will wash it off.”

The relieved kid waddled over toward the cupcakes.

“Can you paint a spider on this girl's face?” Morgan asked me.

And that was the first time we ever talked.

It was about a spider on the day I sat down beside her.

Clever, huh?

 

SOMEBODY ELSE

I sometimes daydream about becoming somebody else. Anybody else.

Not me.

I imagine how I might lose myself, my old self. Shed it like a winter coat on the first warm spring day. I'd become something new. Something free.

I'd be older, with a car, and I'd drive around from state to state, a nameless drifter hitting all the nowhere towns. I'd get a series of mindless jobs that didn't matter. Maybe I'd work as a dishwasher somewhere, happy to punch the clock, or I'd find construction work with a roofer, like my cousin Tim. I'd haul heavy packages of shingles on my shoulder and climb high ladders. Develop serious muscles, get all ripped and studly. I'd wear floppy hats, bang nails till sundown, shirtless and tan, not a thought in my head. Just hauling and banging, stopping for lunch and sunscreen, then hauling and banging some more. I wouldn't have to think. I'd meet people who didn't know anything about the old me—I would be a clean slate. There would be no “I.” And I, this person with the pen, would become whatever anyone wanted me to be.

“Do you like electronic music?” somebody might ask.

And I'd smile real big. “Oh, yeah! You bet I do!”

Even when the old me might have thought,
Hell no I don't!

I'd be happy. For a while, at least. Then I'd feel that old yank of the heart, you know, gotta move on. The mysterious drifter. I'd shove off to some other place, maybe steal a little money along the way, not too much, nothing crazy, break into a house while rich folks slept, grab enough to get by till I found a new job somewhere. And I'd invent myself a new life, in a new place, and maybe even fall in love. Or better still, find someone, anyone, who could fall in love with me.

She'd ask my name.

And I'd look into her pretty blue eyes and say, “Baby doll, I don't even know who in the world I am.”

 

THE SHRINE

At the shrine, there's lots of things.

Teddy bears, flowers, candles, rings.

Somebody left a CD case, maybe a song

in there meant something, I don't know.

Pink strings, heart-shaped balloons, hand-made

friendship bracelets, photographs, white

Crosses, ballet slippers, notes about now

being in a far better place, the letters

“R.I.P.” constructed with duct tape and

aluminum foil, a T-shirt signed by every girl

That's ever walked the earth, and on and on

it went, everybody leaving their mark,

Their scent, I was here, I peed on this tree,

see how much, how deeply, how dearly I care.

I just stand and stare and stare. No tears

come, but my teeth clench. I remember

thinking:
I don't know if I can do this.

 

WHAT'S DONE IS DONE

I had a talk with Fergus today. Morgan had been gone for a week. Dead and buried. Most of the shock had worn off, and things shifted back to normal. Newspaper reports talked about how she was “terrorized on social media,” but nothing more had come of it.

No “bullies” were named.

Rumors flew, but the cops didn't arrest anybody. Morgan's parents didn't seem interested in pressing charges. They kept to themselves.

We were all relieved.

The news moved on to the next disaster. A typhoon in the Philippines … Killer wasps in China … A shooting in a mall somewhere in Texas … Another celebrity in rehab.

The coast was clearing.

I was worried anyway. Before I climbed on the bus after school, I saw Fergus by the bike racks. “Do you think the police will find out about … you know?”

Fergus didn't even turn his head to look at me. He kept spinning the numbers of his combination lock.

I persisted. “I mean, obviously they know. But will they find out who posted those things? Can they trace a computer's IP address or whatever?”

“Those sites are encrypted. It's anonymous. That's the whole point, Sherlock. Besides,” he added, wrapping the chain around his seat, snapping the lock shut, “I don't know what you're talking about, Sam. What did you do?”

(What did
I
do?)

It hit me like a baseball bat. Right on the sweet spot.

Fergus spat. “I wasn't involved in any of that shit.”

“But—”

He stood tall, the bike frame resting against his muscled thigh. Fergus placed a powerful grip on my shoulder. He glared, leaned close, and spoke softly, hardly above a whisper. “Listen, Sam, friend. I don't know what you're talking about. And I don't care. What's done is done. So shut up. Okay? I mean it. Don't ever, ever, ever talk about this again. Not to me, not to anyone.”

Fergus pulled back his right hand and gave me a short punch to my chest. Not a hard one, but a message just the same. Two words: Shut up. And two more: Or else.