The Tragedy Paper (2 page)

He leaned toward the desk—the room was so small, you could reach anything from any point without getting up or
moving. The CDs sat neatly stacked with a folded note. He unfolded the paper slowly—it was typed, and signed in that scrawled handwriting,

Duncan could hear everyone in the hall. He wanted to be out there with them, but he had to admit he was curious and, if he was being really truthful, a little scared. He pulled his laptop out of its bag, put it on the desk, and slipped in the first CD. Then he put on the headphones and pressed Play.

First, let me say thank you for deciding to listen. I’ve thought so many times about our last encounter, and how I wish I’d made a different choice. In the end, it wouldn’t have changed most of what happened—that was already done. But it might have made a difference for you—assuming any of this had an effect on you. I can only guess that it did.

I picture you at my desk, your desk now, fiddling with the CD cases, and the idea of you there listening to my story gives me comfort. In reality, it’s the only comfort I can find, short of figuring out a way to go back and do it all over, which will never be possible. So here it is—my best attempt at making sense of everything. I will try to recreate what happened, but you have to understand what led up to it first—that is important too. The conversations you’ll hear are pretty close to the truth, but one thing is for
sure: I remember every word Vanessa ever said to me and every word I ever said to her.

I have spent a lot of time trying to decide where to start my story to you. I can see now that in many ways the place where this begins is really the end of so many other things.

The day I went to Irving, I was the last one to leave my house, and I don’t mean for the day. I mean forever. My parents—my father died when I was a baby, so I am referring here to my mother and my relatively new stepfather—had already moved to New York. Their things had moved there anyway; they were in Italy for six months starting a branch of their travel business. So I slept two nights alone in the house. I didn’t mind, really; I like being alone. I had my laptop and microphone and kept busy recording the familiar house sounds, since I knew I would never hear those exact noises again. At night, I burned them onto CDs so I could take them with me. I slept in a sleeping bag on my bedroom floor. Then it was finally time to go. I tried not to look back after I locked the door and walked toward the cab. I’ll admit it, I looked back once.

The cab driver didn’t say much, and I spent the whole drive watching heavy gray clouds cover the sky. I liked the ride to the airport: it was a relief to be out of the house, and I always preferred to be tucked in somewhere—not out in the open. I just had to make it through the airport to my seat on the plane before I could tuck in again.

I guessed, when I really thought about it, being tucked
in to me meant being as out of sight as I could possibly be. As you know, I’m pretty hard to miss, and when people first see me, they stare—almost always. I have tried many things to blend in over the years: makeup, which just made me look like a goth wannabe; dyeing my hair and eyebrows black, which made me look like a vampire. My mother hated all that, and by the time I turned fifteen, I hated it too, so I decided not to try anymore.

What did you think when you first saw me? Had you seen many other albino kids before? Did you rush back to your room, the way I imagine people doing, to look it up and see what caused it and if it was contagious? If not, I’ll help you out: it is not contagious, and it simply means that I have no pigment in my skin or hair; that’s why my hair is shockingly white and my skin is even whiter. Sometimes I feel like I have a spotlight shining on me as I walk in a crowd—that’s how washed-out I think I look. Even in the airport, with tons of people all around, you still can’t miss me.

The drive to the airport went way too fast. When the cab driver asked which airline I was flying and then pulled up to the curb, I didn’t move. To be perfectly honest, I wanted my mother. As grown-up and normal as we all pretended I was, as I assured my mother and Sid I was, I was about to travel halfway across the country to a school I had never been to. Maybe I should have started the story here to let you know why I was going to Irving in the first place.
My mother met Sid about three years ago, and all I can say is I wish she had met him sooner. Before that we were okay, but something was always missing. I was seven months old when my father died, so I don’t even remember what it was like to have him around, but my mother always did. When she met Sid, she was so happy, right from the start. She wanted to take it slow, but we both couldn’t resist him, and, I’m happy to say, he couldn’t resist us. It wasn’t too long before he got my mom interested in his travel business, and he moved in. I was just slogging through high school. I liked lots of the classes, but, how can I say this nicely? The kids just weren’t my cup of tea. Or maybe I wasn’t theirs. So I went to school each morning, came home, and waited for it to be over.

I talked to Sid about this a lot, and he was a good listener. But I think Sid didn’t want to come into our lives and take over too much, I get that. He had loved high school. Guess where he went? You guessed it: Irving. So at some point, he later confessed, he couldn’t stand by and watch me suffer, knowing that he had something that could make me happy. My mom was all for it. They knew they had to make a change when I came home the first week of my senior year with a calendar I had drawn up during lunch counting down the days to graduation. Sid talked to Mr. Bowersox and arranged everything. For my birthday in October, they gave me the gift of a last chance at enjoying
high school—I would spend the second semester of my senior year at the Irving School. In the end, it made sense for all of us, and freed Sid and my mom to be able to move sooner. And really, I had nothing to lose. Or so I thought.

Don’t misunderstand me, I was excited. But to get there, I was going to have to navigate the airport, walk off the plane on the other end, find my way to another cab, and, once there, I worried there wouldn’t be too many places to tuck in. I got out of the cab, grabbed my humongous backpack—everything else had been sent ahead—ducked my head as close to my chin as I could, and let the automatic door welcome me in.

The airport was packed. I had checked in electronically with my boarding pass on my phone, so I walked right to the gate, stopping in the bathroom to gather myself for a minute. Luckily, they were boarding when I reached the gate. In a minute I’d be on the plane. There might be someone sitting next to me, but that would be okay—it’s the initial shock I hate reliving over and over. Once someone gets used to me, it isn’t usually so bad.

I saw Vanessa before she saw me. I know this for a fact, and it isn’t something I am usually able to claim. The reason I know is because she had her eyes closed. She was sitting in the first seat on my left in first class as I stepped onto the plane. There was a bit of a line, some holdup or other as someone far into coach was trying to jam a carry-on into the overhead bin. I noticed her immediately, not for
all the reasons that came later, but for the very reason that she wasn’t looking. Who doesn’t look to see who else is getting on the plane with them? I mean, in this day and age, aren’t we told to look out for suspicious activity? And there she was, eyes closed, iPod buds in her ears. Then I noticed everything else. Her long blond hair (pretty blond, not, most definitely, albino blond) was in two braids fastened with green rubber bands. From what I could see, her earbuds were also green, the green wire leading from her jeans pocket, across her tight yellow sweater, to her tiny ears. Her big backpack was at her feet. She had spread out her caramel-colored shearling coat face-up behind her, and she was sitting on that.

I am usually careful not to stare. It is one of my rules of life. I don’t turn my head to see which baby is crying so loud in a restaurant; I never let my eyes wander to someone on crutches who is missing a leg or someone wearing an eye patch. In the airport, for example, just a few minutes before, a woman walked toward me whose face was disfigured, but it was subtle. Had she been burned? Was there something wrong with the muscles in her face? I could see, or actually I should say I could feel, everyone around me looking at her, trying to figure out what was wrong. But I didn’t. I looked straight ahead and kept walking. It didn’t matter how she got that way, really; it wouldn’t change my life in any way, and I knew too well what it was like to be stared at.

So I was shocked when Vanessa opened her eyes and caught me looking at her. She pursed her lips slightly and widened her eyes before I forced mine to drop to the thinly carpeted floor. I felt a shove from behind as the line heaved forward, and then I was out of her sight.

I kept my eyes down as I slipped into my seat at the back of the plane, then looked out at the darkening sky. The plane revved up a bit, and we pushed away from the gate.

“Are you okay?” I heard someone screech behind me. Heads turned, but I looked straight ahead.

“Robert? Robert?” the voice yelled, panicking. “You’re scaring me!”

“Is there a doctor?” someone else yelled. “We need a doctor!”

I concentrated on not turning around. I didn’t want to break my no-staring rule for the second time in less than twenty minutes. By then everyone was turned to face the back of the plane. In a lot of ways, it was more interesting to look at them. I could get the story there, I was pretty sure. Some people looked pale, others looked excited. Funny how some people hate a crisis but others love it, welcome it, and try to rise to the occasion, as they say. Although I don’t think that was what actually went through my head at that moment. I had not yet had that revelation.

Things did not go well. I won’t bore you with the grisly details, but the man had to be taken off the plane by paramedics. I remember feeling vaguely sick while we waited
for that to happen. I have never been good in an emergency. I heard words—
headache, seemed okay, unconscious
—but I tried not to listen either. My eyes focused on the curtain between coach and first class, which had been neatly tied back in anticipation of takeoff. And that was when I saw her again. When I thought about it, she was the only one sitting in first class when I walked by; maybe she was lonely. Vanessa stood on her side of the curtain looking at the back of the plane, her eyes wide.

With all the commotion, I felt freer than usual. I wasn’t the freak show here. There was a scarier show going on behind me. The plane moved back to the gate. We had gone only a few feet, I realized, but that first push away from the airport always seems so huge to me—like there is no going back. But apparently sometimes there is.

I wanted out. I have a tendency toward claustrophobia. It’s funny, really, because there is nothing I like more than being in a small place hidden from view, but it has to be on my terms. I don’t like being held hostage, and that was how I felt. I thought we’d just get started again, but by that time it was snowing, so we were all asked to deplane. We were told that even though it wasn’t awful in Chicago yet, airports were closing up and down the East Coast. I had to, once again, untuck myself, and get off the plane and wait in the terminal.

I found a seat in the corner facing a wall and started to read a comic book I had stuffed in the front pocket of my
backpack. I had the fleeting thought that I could catch a cab back to my house—spend one last night there. But then I remembered the weather, and the fact that as of the next morning, the house no longer belonged to me and my family. I realized at that moment that I had literally no place to tuck in—I was, at least for the moment, homeless.

Duncan sat for a minute, waiting, but it seemed that Tim had stopped talking. He looked around, almost startled to find himself where he was. It was quieter in the hall now, but he decided to stop listening, to go see his friends. He took the CD out and put it back in its case, glancing at the next one. Slowly he slipped it in, telling himself he would listen for only a minute.