SOMETIMES stars go out. Snuffed by the dark matter of human interchange. The monsters lurk around the corners and under the futon. Our living rooms made death chambers. The proffered hand of assistance and thrusting renewal finishes the brightness. The boy did not have one friend at the entire school. His pants were a bight fluorescent orange. On other days he wore cotton green pants. The demands of the tribe spoke of denim accoutrements or venom in the absence of that fabric.
The question on the lips of the elite when the arrival of a new student made its way through their cobwebs of communication was always “Do they dress well?” The assenting nod a seal of acceptance no matter what their fiber. They had made the grade.
The boy was out with these, and with everyone else. He was out with the geeks. They had denim jeans as well. Their survival depended on their scorn of the boy. He was out with the jocks. He could not run fast enough and could not name a single player on the sport shirts he begged his mother to buy from the thrift store in an effort to bay them off. He brought those shirts to school on his back and with it he brought the smell of blood to the ocean of sharks. Goading them to snarl and circle, continuing the isolation in a fervent progress that they saw as duty and sport. Shark dogs.
Ignoring them, finding his own spots to sit and wait out the time between the refuge of supervised classes brought them to close in packs. Sight of his person in the halls or the seating areas triggered the response immediate and their howls were as dogs and their teeth white with Colgate perfection.
They would pull his pants down in the halls when he had no option but to walk by them. No strategy from any book or after school special worked a wonder on them. Bravery and a straight back only created the image that he was not beaten, and their lust was a freshly challenged force, their actions further in intensity.
The pants being pulled down, the utter humiliation. The other students in the halls stopping and standing around for the show. Worse than the time where the boy put his hand to the back of his jacket at the arcade down the street from the school. Feeling the clumped communal sputum of a score of faceless gargoyles that had been unable to contain their laughter after standing behind him at the machine. Slapping his ears, the back of his head. The boy had ignored all these things. They had been frustrated that the old tricks were not working. They combined their spit and made a gloss of mucous on his jacket.
The boy had drawn his hand back from his jacket as the imped howls of the other boys had coursed out of them, unrestrained. His hand covered with bits of peanuts and half-chewed gummi bears held in gelatinous goo. The fluids of the dogs.
It was an ageless ritual. The days stretched to damp hours that hung on each threat and betrayal. For hours at a time they would say he had taken enough. That he had toughed it out. That he could begin to climb the ladder. He had a chance at a rung they said.
Within moments of his cautious move towards their huddle they would be upon him again. Stealing his cigarettes from his hands, a habit he had taken up only to fit in to the round hole with his right angle edges. Kicking him in the ass when he would turn to confront the thief. Turning to face the kicker with a shriek, another square in the ass from the one who had taken his smoke.
This was the kind of thing that bred shootings. The imagination of the boy was filled with a thousand sequences of gore. Each of them more creative with drama. Scripted with the cadence of comic books. This energy, applied to the sciences, or the creative arts might have fostered incalculable boons and given him the moniker of prodigy. Instead, his free time in the prison of his movements was spent on the defense mechanism of creative revenge.
The studies of the boy faltered and sputtered. Nose dived, and then crashed. As close to zero as the testing and faculty could allow without the need for outside counseling merited by regulation. Meetings were held. The parents of the boy despaired over the performance of their offspring.
“But he has some of the highest scores in the province on his aptitude tests!” his mother protested in the vice principal’s office.
“Yes Sally, we know. And to add to that his IQ scores are…Brendan, could you leave the room for a moment please and wait outside in the office?”
And it went. The counselors explained that his future would be a tossed ruin if he did not begin to apply himself.
In class he would read unassigned books. Fiction from the library. The teacher bringing attention to him in class.
“Brendan! How many times have I said that you are not to read in class? Now pay attention, it is unfair to the other students when you go off into your own little world like that!”
The dogs seeing an opportunity and reason enough for another go at him after class.
Brendan was sitting on a patch of grass behind the basketball nets when they walked towards him. He got up and started to leave and they closed on him with speed.
“Quit disturbing the class faggot!” one of them shouted in his face when they got up to him, punching him in the face.
“Yeah! Some of us are trying to learn and shit!” another one screamed in his face. Then one of the other boys held him and the screamer shoved dirt and grass into his mouth.
“Open up you little fuck!”
The boy did not say a word. The boy began to cry.
“Look at this fuckin’ pussy cry!”
“What a faggot!”
“Quit fucking crying or we’ll cut you up!” another one yelled, pulling out a jack knife from his pocket, unfolding it, and motioning it towards the boys face.
The boy wriggled out of the hold and started to scamper away, tripping in the middle of them with his hands breaking his fall. A foot in front of his face and then his face into the ground, the foot on the back of his head. They started kicking him now. Laying it into the boy’s ribs and his back. His ass, his legs. There was no escape. The boy got out from underneath the foot on his neck and began to crawl away. Another foot came down with a stamp on his hand.
“Aw, leave him the fuck alone.” Said a voice that was walking away.
More request than demand. Hope in the process of being dashed. Not a glimmer.
They continued.
The boy sat alone as he always had. Jeans today. Shielding denim. He even caught odd looks from the teachers in the halls. The boy had begged his parents for jeans and now the day had come. Blue denim around his hips. A band of protection.
He stood up from his spot in the hall, a different one every morning. He began to walk towards his locker. Every hallway in the structure held terror for the boy like vines on the side of the walls. He was sick with fear all the time. His belly rolling with acid and nervous fear.
“Nice fucking orange tabs faggot.” Said one of the boys in the hall.
“What?” the boys asked, eyes wide.
“What, are your fucking parent’s on welfare or something?” the other boy asked, leaning against his locker, one of his friends standing there next to him. This other boy came around Brendan and looked at the back pocket on the right hip. There it was, a little orange tab sticking out. No wider than a folded match. No taller than a cigarette filter.
“Hey! Look at his orange tabs! Nice orange tabs loser!”
“What’s the goddamn difference?” the boy asked.
“Watch how you fucking talk to me skid!” the first one said. Pushing the boy in the chest.
In the most uncharacteristic response possible, Brendan shot his leg out, going for the boys balls and succeeding with a connect to the shin.
The other one from behind sent a punch into Brendan’s ear. It flared, and Brendan turned, dropping his books on the floor. One on each side now, normal odds.
“You fucking kick me huh!” the first one said, pushing Brendan into the lockers with a crash. The first one’s coming up into Brendan’s nose, bloodying it.
“What’s going on here? Break it up!”
It was Mr. Duncan, the science teacher. Crippled at nineteen in a car accident, he rolled on up in his wheelchair.
The first one pushed the boy again into the locker and spat into his face. Making the suspension worthwhile. Fighting of any kind at all in school, when caught bought you a three-day vacation.
“Fucking faggot. You’re fucking dead, you know that? This time we’re really going to kill you!” the first one yelled into his face, his friend standing back, playing it for a stern lecture and not the three day home stay that the first one was sure to get.
“Stop it! You,” Mr. Duncan roared, pointing at the first boy, “with me. You!” pointing at Brendan, “You too! And you!” pointing at the other boy, “You go to class.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” Brendan protested. “I just had orange tabs on my jeans and he started in on me!”
Brendan was near tears again. That and now this. When did it end? The office! Suspension! His parents! It whirled his mind to a spinning pool and that pool flooded out of his eyes in tears. Other students walking by saw the crying boy, the teacher, the popular boy. They pointed. They laughed. Brendan turned and faced the lockers.
“To the office! NOW!” Mr. Duncan roared, grabbing Brendan by the arm and turning him around.
They walked and rolled down the hall, the three of them. A procession. The first boy sullen with act, angry with performance, he made sure to walk behind Brendan. The first one walked on Brendan’s heels with his shoes, scraping the tendon through the blue denim of his orange tab jeans.
They entered the office.
“You sit here.” Mr. Duncan said to Brendan. “You, come with me. We’re going to have a nice little talk with Mr. Gardner.” He said to the first boy. Mr. Gardner was the principal. The door to his office was open. Mr. Duncan wheeled his chair to the door and the first boy looked back and Brendan and made a gesture across his throat with his thumb.
There was one other person in the waiting area and Brendan sat next to them on the only other chair available. Tina McDuggan, the prettiest girl in school. A star in anyone but a fool or flits eyes. Straight blonde hair. Figure of light. Legs with red tab jeans on them. Her smile would stop the devils of hell from their advance.
She sat there, looked over at Brendan, saw the mark of tears on his face, and said it.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
She looked right at him, into his eyes with hers of silver gray and broke out that smile. The boy could not say a thing. It was the first time in two years that someone his age had set anything to him that was not a set up for the barb or the sting of the thorn.
“Are you okay? You can talk right?” she asked, and shone the glow of that smile onto the boy’s face. Glory of miracles that smile widened to a curvature even more wondrous.
“Yeah. I’m Brendan Stevens.”
“You’re Brendan Stevens?” she asked with astonishment, her eyes wide.
“Yeah. I guess that’s reason enough huh?” he asked. And Brendan, the boy, smiled as weak as his little pole arms. Her smile returned and the warmth from it brought out the first full grin he had exercised since camping with dad three years previous.
“Well, you seem nice!” she said, and patted him on the leg with her soft white and. Twice.
Brendan was in love.
Tina was in the office because she had sworn out loud in class.
“All I did was call Nathan Page a stupid shit. And he is a stupid shit you know. You can’t get anything done in class with him always saying shit and bothering everybody,” she whispered to Brendan.
“Why are you in here?” she asked. “I know it’s because of him, but what happened?”
“Because that guy there, he punched me and did the regular right. Cuz I’ve got orange tabs on my jeans. But that’s not it. It’s always like this. I could be dressed in gold and this would happen. I’m just that guy in this school. Like in bad stories. I can’t buy clothes! I don’t have any money. My dad just started his own business so they can’t buy me the best stuff. Like red tabs. I didn’t even know! I just wanted jeans because I thought that maybe they would leave me alone a bit you know? Now he says that they’re gonna kill me good this time. Worse than ever. Every day it’s like this for me. It’s always something. I can’t do anything. It’s all because I had long hair and sweatpants in the first month of school.”
Brendan looked down, not sure of anything.
Then she did it again. The star alighted her had on his right leg, on the top, and said, “Hey, don’t worry. In a year you’ll be in a different school and you’ll be nobody. New friends. Everything. And after that, it’s over. My sister told me. She’s a hairstylist now. She said that it’s all just a joke, and it goes away so fast when it’s over that you don’t even think about remembering it.”
“Really?” Brendan asked.
“Well, yeah. It’s not all good though. My sister has a hard time making rent, and she drinks. But that’s how it is. Nothing’s easy Brendan.”
“Easy for you to say.” Brendan said.
“What’s that?” the star asked.
“Because you’re so pretty. People’ll always be nice to you no matter what. Guys’ll fall all over themselves trying to make sure you’re happy.”
Brendan stopped. Screaming at himself inside and hating his stupid words. She’d start calling him a goof and a faggot and a crybaby any second now. Oh he’d messed it up all right. He just knew it. The star was going to become a moon. A black moon in the distance of his time here. Luna Negra.
Instead, Tina threw her head back and laughed. Water and sunshine the sound out. The secretary in the office looked up and saw Brendan and Tina sitting on the chairs at the sound of the laughter. Two small bodies just starting to make the move from little tall to the awkward mechanics of the pre age they were entering.
The laughter was a field of sprouts on the walls with the lurch of a billion puberties. The secretary smiled at them before returning staring at a corner of the desk.
Brendan just sat there and looked at Tina. Afraid and in love with that banana sweet sound. His stomach did not feel so bad now. Hell, it felt good.
“You’re a funny guy Brendan!” she laughed. Still shaking the flavor from his skin, the worry from his tense body. The boy began to ease.
“If that’s so true Brendan, why does my boyfriend treat me like shit?” she whispered, mindful of the penalty for cursing in the office of all places. Double trouble.
The mention of her boyfriend made Brendan ill with jealous hate. Matt LeBlanc, one of the worst kids in the school. He had pulled Brendan’s pants down in the halls and told him that if he didn’t bring twenty dollars the next day for him then Brendan would wish he were dead. At that point, Brendan always wished that he were dead.
“Because Matt is the piece of shit.” Brendan said. “You know it. He’s not even smart, at all. He’s just going to wind up selling drugs or stealing stuff when he’s older and you know it.”
“You’re right Brendan,” the star said. She lit her hand on his leg once more, for a couple of seconds. Brendan could not believe it.
“Ms. McDuggan, the vice principal will see you now.” The secretary said from her staring.
“Well, I’ll see you around. Don’t be a stranger okay? Even if they’re around.” The star shone, and walked into the vice-principal’s office.
“Helloooo Ms. McDuggan! And what causes you to grace my…” The door closed and the false bellow became a fraudulent murmur.
Click, clack. The door do the principals office opened, and the first boy walked out of it into the back of the office where the auxiliary staff room was, sending eyes Brendan’s way.
“Mr. Stevens, would you please join Mr. Duncan and me in here?” the voice of the principal intoned from inside his office.
Brendan stood up out of his chair and smiled. He walked into the office, and did not feel scared anymore.
“Hey Brendan! How’d it go in the office?”
Brendan almost jumped out of his socks into the shoes of the air. No one had ever greeted him like that before in his life. He had heard other kids talking like that to each other sometimes, but he had always tuned it down.
There she shined, bright as night in the middle of the city.
“Uhh, I got suspended. Three days. My parent’s are going to kill me.” Brendan said.
“Well it gets you out of here for a while right?”
“Yeah, but my mom won’t let me do anything. She doesn’t work so she’s always at home. Same as when I’m sick, I’ll only be able to stay in my room.”
“But it must beat this place right?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Well have fun all right? Remember, this’ll all be over before you know it.”
“Thanks Tina. You’re real nice you know that?”
She blushed fast as flame to paper. Just like in a storybook. The boy had never seen it before. Now it was his. Trophy enough and not a plastic angel with hands held high in false glimmer. Even stars can blush, he thought.
She stepped up to hum and that put her arms around him and brought him close in an embrace. One squeeze. His first. God she smelled good, the boy thought. If the fires at the edge of the sun had a smell, this was it.
“Hey look Jamie! Faggot’s got a girlfriend! Dontcha know faggot’s can’t have girlfriends?” a knife of a voice cut across. It was another boy, one of the regulars. Standing just down the hall, Jamie Rohaten walking beside him. The week past Brendan had been drinking chocolate milk in the hallway when Jamie had walked by and kicked the container in Brendan’s hand right into his face, covering his shirt with brown milk.
Brendan came loose quick from Tina. She did not want to let him go from the hug, but Brendan wriggled out and stood back a step.
“You’re gonna be nothing but a crack smoking loser your whole life.” Brendan said, the words too big for his mouth. It came out in a gusher of rushed bravado.
“What’d you fucking say to me you little shit?” the other boy stammered. It had never gone like this.
“You f-f-fucking heard.” Brendan had no cool to lose. His arms began to shake with adrenaline. Tina stood back a step.
“Tina? What the fuck are you doing hugging this fag? Don’t you know who he is?”
“Why don’t you losers just leave him alone?” she said.
“You’re fucking dead man. She’s Matt’s girl. When he finds out you touched her he’s going to cut your fucking throat,” the other boy said.
“Fuck you, and Matt, and you too Jamie. You guy’s are nothing alone. All you can do is fight and be a dink. Even if you beat me up, you’re still nothing,” Brendan said. Rushing it all out in a flood. Arms shaking as if they were touching live wires.
“You little faggot!” the other boy screamed with his breaking voice. He came towards Brendan with his fist.
Brendan, who had only gotten beaten up and had never hit back until earlier on today, shot his right arm out at the other boy’s chin.
It hit the button, a prizefighter would have wondered at the comical and unbelievable success of the strike. It connected with a thud and a small TINK sound came from the other boy’s mouth. One of the other boy’s lower teeth flew out of his face and hit Brendan in his right eye.
“Ow!” yelled Brendan, his hand going to his eye.
“Ack!” the other boy screamed, holding his mouth, beginning to cry.
“Pick up his fucking tooth you faggot! Pick it UP! You fuck! Look what you did!” Jamie screamed.
Tina turned and ran one way. Brendan turned and ran the other. Down the hall, out the doors, and into the hot sun reflecting of he stationary chrome peppered around the bike racks. He slowed to a trot and began walking up the street back home, the only place he knew to go.
On the way home he passed Matt LeBlanc’s house. On the driveway was Matt LeBlanc’s moped. Matt drove it with Tina riding pillion on the weekends. Brendan hated the moped, hated Matt Leblanc, and hated the house where he lived and had since they had gone to elementary since the third grade. He wanted to burn the house down, with Matt in it.
He wanted to start the moped up and the drive it into Matt’s house while it was on fire. Chasing Matt up his own burning staircase into his room where he would run him out the window he would crash out of onto the barbecue below. His spine would shatter into a million fragments.
Brendan looked around and saw that the street was deserted. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell ten times in a row in an impatient symphony. He didn’t even have a cover story if anyone was home.
No one came to the door, all he heard was the sound of a dog that was more rat than canine coming from behind the door. Pitiful little scratches came from low behind it. Brendan walked back onto the driveway and took his book bag off his shoulders and put it on the ground. He opened it up and took out his geometry set and his pair of scissors from his pencil case. Good long steel ones.
Brendan too the compass out of the geometry case and jammed it as far as he could into the moped’s front tire until he heard it go pop. He really had to work at it. Then he went and popped the other one, this one twice as hard, but he got it.
Then he took his scissors and cut three of the hoses on the moped. He put his things back in his book bag, and slung it over his shoulders. He took one more look around the deserted street to make sure and then kicked the moped over onto the cement of the driveway to a scratch and denting sound of metal on stone.
He walked down the driveway, turned onto the sidewalk, and started walking home again. His stomach was a roiling see inside of him, green foam and lightning hovering above it.
“Brendan! Phone for you!” his mother called from the basement. She was on the couch again. Full of pills. She had watched her mother get slowly eaten alive by cancer over the course of a year two years before. It had destroyed her. All she did now was lie on the couch, take pills, and watch television.
“Coming!” he yelled back. No one had ever phoned for him except the library when his books were overdue. He always got a yelling to about that from his parent’s. It would be just what he needed.
He walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
“Got it!” he yelled.
The click in the receiver signaled privacy.
“Hello?”
“Hey Brendan!”
“Tina?”
“Yeah. How ya doin’?” the question followed by a sparkling giggle.
“Fine, okay, yeah. Hey, how did you get my number?”
“The phone book silly. You’re the third Stevens in the neighborhood that I’ve called. Matt told me that you live in Knotwood. You went to elementary with Matt right?”
“Yeah, yeah I did.”
“Yeah. Someone smashed up his bike real bad the day before yesterday. Cut a bunch of things and popped his tires. No one was home so no one saw anything.”
“Really, that’s terrible.”
“Well,” she said, “I was sitting here, thinking about you, and thought I’d give you a call to see what’s up. What’s going on? You enjoying your suspension?”
“It’s okay. I’m just reading a lot. My mom says I’m not allowed to go on the computer or watch TV while I’m suspended, which is fine.”
“What kind of book are you reading?”
“Oh, just this thing about dragons and stuff and knights. Geek stuff.”
“Dragons huh? Is there a princess?”
“Not a princess, but there is a pretty girl who is sick and they have to bargain with a wizard to get the cure, it’s like halfway through the book where this is happening so there’s plenty more to go.”
“Cool. But you should put that stuff down for a while and go outside. Just relax. How are you going to get a girlfriend if you’re always buried in a book?” she said as she added another sparkle of a giggle.
What was she saying? Besides what she was saying, Brendan thought.
“Well I’m just not the girlfriend type I guess.”
STUPID, he thought. Perfectly nice conversation and he was playing the prick all of a sudden. Trying to act suave when his experience consisted of the two conversations with her previous. He had blown it, he thought. Into the air in a cloud of smithereens. Smaller than smithereens. Just smithers.
“Ha ha ha! You’ll get all the girl’s with that attitude Brendan! I’m serious you know that? That’s great!”
“Are you being sarcastic?” he asked.
“No! Girls love that. The guy who plays hard to get. The one who pretends he doesn’t like a girl. It drives them crazy. Don’t forget that!”
“I won’t.” said Brendan.
“You’re funny Brendan. You know that? And nice. How’d it go with Ryan?”
“Ryan?”
“The boy whose tooth you broke out! It’s practically all over the school! He want’s to kill you.”
“Yeah, what else is new.”
“You didn’t even know his name did you? Do you know any of their names?”
“Some, yeah. I mean, I hear them being read out in class, but I don’t know. I know you’re name though!”
Lame, Brendan thought. Real smooth.
“Yeah, you sure do, and don’t you forget it!” she said into her giggles to laughter. Starlight edging over the copper wire into the receiver. Into the boy.
“I like it when you laugh,” the boy said.
“That’s real sweet Brendan. You know…Oh! I gotta go! My moms home. I’ve gotta help her with the groceries. I’ll call you before your suspension is over, okay Brendan?”
“Yeah, that would be nice. Thanks.”
“Nothing of it. Take care okay? Stay cool. Remember, everything is going to be okay.”
“Okay Tina, thanks a lot.”
“Bye Brendan.”
“Bye Tina.”
She hung up.
So did he.
She called once more the day before his suspension was over. Eve ry time the phone had rang that weekend he had raced to it like a dog after excitement. Going for the rabbit on the heels of Hermes.
“Hello?”
“Hey Brendan, miss me?”
“Yeah, uh…No!”
“You’re learning! You are! Hey, I talked to Matt and told him that you and me are friends, so he better leave you alone and tell the rest to do the same.”
Oh no, Brendan thought. He was finished for sure. They would kill him and kill him and swear him to silence. Matt would thump him the most. What had this girl done? Didn’t she know?
“Don’t worry!” she said. “It’s not what you think. I know what you’re thinking and it’s not like that. We girls have a few tricks that you don’t know about.”
“Okaaay, uh, thanks Tina.” He did not know what else to say. What do you say? To anyone? To the sun, the stars? This star? This friend? This new?
“You’re welcome. I don’t know why they do it anyway. But you don’t deserve it. No one in the school gets it like you do. Even on TV kids don’t get it as bad as you do in school. I remember hearing it all the time from them, hanging out with Matt. ‘We got Stevens good.’ Or them laughing how you couldn’t run away because someone else was stepping on you. It’s disgusting, and you don’t deserve it.”
No one had ever spoken like this to Brendan. Not even the teachers that saw it all going on. He got the feeling a lot of the time from them that they thought that it was him that started it all the time. That he was getting what had been coming to him. They liked Brendan even less than Matt and the rest it seemed.
“So what have you been doing all weekend? I want all the details.”
“Well, I’ve been mostly playing around on the computer. I do stuff like make my own games on it eh?”
“The computer?! It’s been so nice outside, look at it today! You should be in the sun, running around, riding a bike or something!”
“I like doing stuff on the computer though.”
“Do that on rainy day’s Brendan. There’ll be plenty of time for that later, when you want to make money doing it. Who’s gonna hire a thirteen year old boy to make video games anyway?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess, yeah, I should spend some more time outside.”
“You’re damn rights you should. Like right now! It’s gorgeous outside. What are you doing right now?”
“Just sitting around in my house really.”
“Well get out there silly! Take a walk! Anything! The sun is SHINING!”
“All right! All right! I will!” Brendan said, laughing.
“Good! I’ll see you at school okay?”
“Okay Tina.”
“All right, now get out there! See ya!”
“Bye Tina.”
Click.
The next morning the boy walked to school. It was the best he could remember. His orange tabs on his legs and a pair of Converse One Star’s on his feet. The sun was shining. Earth’s star. He passed Matt LeBlanc’s house on the way and saw a tarp over the moped with locks fastening the bottoms together like a cocoon. Brendan smiled wider.
The school approached over the hill as slow as his steps carried him. How would he see her? In the hall? At the smoking area? No, she didn’t smoke. Stars burned, they didn’t fume he thought. Maybe in the field? Or by the nets?
He came to the bike racks outside the school, just over the little hill before them. The bikes leaned locked in the racks, secured.
He walked towards the entrance when he heard a voice.
“Hey Brendan, have you seen Tina?”
He turned around and saw the girl who was addressing him. It had sure been a week for firsts. It was Angela Casanova, a name he remembered since she had been excluded from the sexual education classes on the request of her parents. They were Jehovah Witnesses. Brendan had guessed that the parents didn’t have sex if they didn’t want to let Angela learn about it. Maybe they were trying to protect her from their pain.
“Hey space cadet, have you seen Tina?” she asked louder with insult. The type of speech that implies that you’re an idiot.
The question sent a shock through Brendan; it’s oddness hanging over the air like a web.
“No I haven’t yet. Why?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
Brendan’s stomach became a green rolling sea.
“Heard what?” the boy asked, time slowing down. The air more clear, his view molasses detail, every angle curve and color possessing more power.
“She’s missing. Some guy picked her up in a red truck right here yesterday after school and she hasn’t been seen since. Did you see a red truck?”
The world died and Brendan rotted with it. Tina, gone to horror and away. Tina, his only friend. Tina, the corona who crested the copper wires and burned his face with a smile. Tina of the banana laugh. Tina, the shining star. Gone.
“What’s with you?” Angela Casanova asked, looking at the boy with the same face of anyone else in the school. “It’s not like she was your girlfriend. The police are here and are asking everybody questions. I’m talking to them in first period. There was an announcement.” As she said this she put her hands on her hips and stuck her chest out a little but with her chin angled quickly upwards.
The boy, Brendan, turned and walked to the little hill before the racks. His bag fell from his shoulder to the ground with a limp movement of his arm. He slumped to a sit and stayed there.
“Weirdo!” Angela Casanova said.
The boy, Brendan, put his face into his hands and could not weep. There were no tears to do it with.
That night at dinner, after the announcements on the address system, after the quiet stares in the classes, the loud talk in the halls, and the hushed whispers in the cafeteria, Brendan sat with his parents as the news came on TV.
“The case of a missing young girl in the south of the city has become more tragic and frantic as the man suspected of abducting her Monday afternoon, Gary Mackistalker, was found dead in his home. Police are ruling it as an apparent suicide. Tina McDuggan, fourteen years old, described by family members as a shining star in their lives, was a student at…”
Brendan left the table with his dish, his parent’s watching him and washed it up in the sink. He put the dish away on the drying rack and walked to the patio door and opened it. He walked out onto the deck, put on the pair of shoes his father always kept near the door, and walked out into the yard.
The boy walked to the back gate, opened it, walked through it, and began to move through the grass in the field beyond his house that led to the edge of the city.
He looked around and saw the setting sun. It looked like any other, this time with some purple in the clouds. The boy turned and walked in the opposite direction.
copyright 2004 robert jay lutener
illustration copyright 2007 patrick henaff
