Tangerine

  Then a scene came back to me. Just like the other morning in Houston. Entirely on its own, a scene came back to me:

  I remembered another bus stop. And a shiny yellow school bus.

  I was standing at the back of a line of kids, waiting to board the bus for one of my first days at kindergarten.

  Mom had driven me to school on the actual first day. This was the first day when I would be accompanied by no one except Erik, my fifth-grade brother. But Erik did not accompany me for long. He was standing at the front of the school-bus line with his fifth-grade friends when one of them turned, made a gesture, and called to me, "Hey, Eclipse Boy, how many fingers am I holding up?"

  I didn't realize at first that the boy was talking to me, and I had no idea what he meant. Erik and his friends laughed about the joke, then the bus doors opened and we all filed in. I can't put all of the details in order now, but it became clear to me later that, for some reason, the big kids on the school bus were calling me Eclipse Boy.

  The fact is we did have an eclipse that summer, around three weeks before school started. Based on that, Erik was telling his friends this story: The reason for the Coke-bottle glasses on my eyes was that I had stared at the sun, unprotected, during that eclipse.

  The story puzzled me then, and it puzzles me now. I do not remember doing any such thing. And yet when I search through our family photos, I can see that I never wore glasses of any kind before that summer. But right after the eclipse, I was wearing these thick lenses that I now call my regular glasses.

  Puzzled or not, I went right along with the story. I even told it myself. It gave me a special kindergarten identity. It made me somebody. I was the boy who had not listened and who was now paying the price. Look at me if you dare! Teachers and other adults seemed to value me as an example. I was the living proof that you shouldn't look at an eclipse or you'll go blind; that you shouldn't play in an abandoned refrigerator or you'll suffocate; that you shouldn't go swimming right after you eat or you'll get stomach cramps and drown.

  So there I sat on that yellow school bus—Erik Fisher's younger brother, Eclipse Boy, visually impaired and totally incapable of following in his brother's footsteps.

  The scene faded. I stood still for another minute, trying to remember more, but nothing would come. Then I made myself turn away from the wall, and I made my legs move again, one step in front of the other, to the end of the street.

  As I turned the corner, I was surprised to see other kids standing next to the guardhouse. In my two weeks here, I had never seen any other kid in Lake Windsor Downs, even though I had ridden my bike up and down all of the streets at all times of the day. Now here they were, spread out in a lazy line, about ten kids of various sizes.

  I quietly took my place at the end of the line, next to a guy who was slouching so badly that I thought he might actually fall over. He wasn't alone, either. Everyone seemed to be depressed, to be sorry to be there. I wondered if that was just an act, or if they really didn't feel any excitement about the first day of school.

  "What's up, goalie?"

  I turned, startled to find that someone was standing right behind me. I hadn't seen him coming. It was Joey Costello. I held out my hand and said, "It's Paul. Paul Fisher. You're Joey, right?"

  "Right," he answered, shaking my hand.

  "I met your brother over at my house. I met your father, too."

  "Yeah, they said something about that. They said your brother can kick fifty-yard field goals."

  "Right. Yeah, he can."

  "Mike says Coach Warner has him holding the ball for him. His name's Erik, right?"

  "Yeah. I had a feeling Mike might be holding the ball for Erik when he told us he was the backup quarterback."

  Joey thought for a moment, then said, "Mike's getting a bad break, you know. Mike's a good player, but he's a lineman, not a quarterback. And now he's playing behind Antoine Thomas, the best quarterback in the state. He'll never get to play unless something bad happens to Antoine. And then everybody'll be mad because Mike ain't no Antoine."

  "Yeah. He can't win."

  The bus turned into the entranceway and stopped in front of us. When we climbed on, Joey sat with one of the soccer players from the other day. I found an empty seat near the back and pulled out my class schedule. The school had sent us a computerized schedule that showed my six periods, teachers' names, and classroom numbers.

  With the schedule had come a map of the high school-middle school campus, which I appreciated, and a handwritten note to Mom from Mrs. Gates, which I did not. It said, "Vision-impaired students should report to the office for assistance." That made me mad. What did she plan to do? Assign me a dog and a cane?

  The bus turned into the campus and drove around to a circular driveway that said BUSES ONLY. I looked again at my schedule, feeling jittery. It said, "Homeroom 8:15–8:25, Portable 9." I moved along with a big crowd of kids, circling the main building and funneling into the wooden walkways that led to the portables.

  I found the one that said p-9 with no problem whatsoever. There was a green sign on the door that said, MS. ALVAREZ. I climbed the three wooden stairs and opened the door. Ms. Alvarez gave me a cheery "Good morning" and told me to find an empty desk.

  The class seems to be made up of the same type of droopy kids that had stood with me in the bus line. In contrast, Ms. Alvarez has a lot of enthusiasm. She told us she was "truly excited to be here on the first day of a new year." She went on to tell us that we're her first homeroom ever, and that she's looking forward to starting each day with us. We sat there and stared at her without much reaction, but she smiled bravely through it, and we passed the first ten minutes of the school year together. She asked us to all take out our schedules and check them. Mine said, "Science 8:30–9:25, Portable 12."

  Ms. Alvarez read some announcements from a computer printout, but there was nothing about the soccer team. The speaker in the room crackled to life with the sound of a gong being struck. This was our signal to funnel out again onto the wooden walkways. We had four minutes to get to our next class, but it took me less than one.

  I climbed up a set of stairs marked p-12, where the green sign said, MRS. HOFFMAN. Mrs. Hoffman was standing right inside the door, scowling and holding a seating chart. She's clearly at the other end of the teacher food chain from Ms. Alvarez. As she would soon tell us, she has been teaching science for twenty years. She asked my name and then directed me to the last seat in the first row. The kids in this room seem a little more lively.

  Just five minutes into Mrs. Hoffman's class there was a knock on the door. A girl came in holding a block of wood with the word PASS painted on it. She whispered to Mrs. Hoffman, who checked her chart, looked toward me, and said, "Paul Fisher, go with this young lady, please."

  What could I do? I got up. I followed the girl out the door and onto the walkway. I said, "Where are we going?"

  "Mr. Murrow's office."

  "Who's Mr. Murrow?"

  "He's the head of guidance."

  We went to a small office inside the main office. A man with a brown suit and thick glasses like mine was sitting at a desk. He had a pile of those IEP forms spread out in front of him. He said, "And what is your name?"

  "Paul Fisher, sir."

  He found my IEP form. "All right, Paul, this is Kerri Gardner, one of our school volunteers. Kerri will act as your eyes, so to speak, until you've learned your way around our campus."

  "I can see fine."

  He seemed genuinely surprised. "You can?"

  "Yes, sir. I've been to two classes already."

  Mr. Murrow looked back at my IEP form and then at me. He said, "Well, perhaps since you're new to our school, Kerri could just take you around for the first day. What harm could that do?"

  I didn't know what else to say. I didn't know how to describe the harm that that would do to me. Nothing more came out of my mouth, so he said, "Why don't you two go on back to Mrs. Hoffman's class."

  I followed Kerri Gardner
back to P-12—actually, to the wooden steps outside of it. That was where I finally found my voice. I stopped still and said as calmly as I could, "Look. I'm sorry. I don't mean to mess up your job, but there's no reason for anybody to show me around. OK?"

  She looked at me, puzzled, so I explained, "There's nothing wrong with me. This is a mistake. I can see just fine."

  Kerri answered matter-of-factly, "So then what's with the glasses?"

  I reached up and fingered the thick plastic frames. I finally answered, "I had an accident. I had some kind of damage to my eyes when I was five years old."

  Kerri clearly did not mind being released from her duties. She thought for a moment, lowered her voice, and said, "Look. I'll hold on to the pass until the end of the day and then turn it in. Nobody'll know."

  "OK, thanks."

  Kerri started off but turned back to ask, "What was the accident? What damaged your eyes?"

  "I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure," I replied.

  She took off again, leaving me thinking. Why didn't I answer that question? I used to have an answer ready to that question. I used to tell people that I once stared too long at a solar eclipse.

  But if that's the truth, if that really happened, why can't I remember it?

  Wednesday, August 30

  I'm in my room now, at the computer, listening to the sound of Erik kicking a football into a net in the backyard. It's a short, violent sound, like some big guys holding up some little guy and punching him over and over in the stomach. Poomph. Poomph. Poomph.

  The Erik Fisher Football Dream seems to be materializing. Arthur Bauer is holding the ball for him today, crouching low and spinning the laces away, just like Dad, just like Mike Costello. Arthur is a senior, like Erik. Unlike Erik, he seems to have no special talent for football. And yet here he is, a third-string benchwarmer kind of guy, holding the ball for the great Erik Fisher.

  Arthur has a sister named Paige, who is a sophomore and a cheerleader. Paige is down there, too. She is clearly going to be Erik's girlfriend. Arthur's girlfriend is named Tina Turreton. She's sitting next to Paige. Tina is a junior and, of course, a cheerleader.

  The four of them are hanging out in the smoke of a late-afternoon muck fire ignited by an early-afternoon lightning strike. Poomph. Poomph. Poomph.

  Mom has already done her research on Erik's friends. She pumps him for information over dinner every night, and he tells her whatever she wants to know: Arthur and Paige Bauer are the yellow Stuart with the brick front. Their father is a building contractor and a major in the Army National Guard. They moved in three years ago. Tina Turreton is the white York, like ours, but with avocado trim. She's only lived here a year.

  They're a strange foursome, sitting back there in the smoke. Basically they pay no attention to each other. The girls are on the cement patio, sitting at the redwood picnic table, doing homework. The boys are on the grass, kicking the ball into the net. Poomph. Poomph. Poomph.

  I guess Paige and Tina want to date football players, so these two will do. Erik and Arthur want to date cheerleaders, so these two will do.

  I watched them all pull up to the house in Arthur Bauer's truck, then I hurried upstairs. Arthur has a white Toyota Land Cruiser that he's jacked up and put big tires on for "mud runnin'." That's what they do around here. They take their jacked-up trucks out into the swamps and "mud run." When they can't do that, they run up and down the dirt road behind our wall, the perimeter road. Arthur's truck has a big spotlight mounted on top, at the center of the windshield, so he can go mud running at night.

  Now he can take Erik mud running. And he can take Erik to practice. And he can take Erik wherever else Erik says to take him.

  You see, Erik doesn't drive. Can you believe that? One of the greatest things about high school is that you can drive. All by yourself. You're free. But Erik doesn't drive. He has never even expressed an interest in driving. Tell me that isn't strange.

  From my bedroom window I can see them all clearly, especially Arthur Bauer. And I can predict his future. Arthur is about to get his big break, his chance to be somebody at Lake Windsor High. Let's face it, Arthur Bauer is no Mike Costello. He is not the backup quarterback to Antoine Thomas. He has not already been accepted into FSU's School of Engineering. He has never really accomplished anything, until now. This is his shot at the big time. He will somehow, with Erik's help, beat out Mike Costello for the job of holder on placekicks. It will be Arthur's backside featured in the newspapers, holding the ball for Erik Fisher's fifty-yard field-goal attempts.

  According to Joey Costello, Arthur has never even gotten into a game. Now he'll be out there when the crowd is roaring, and the cameras are flashing, and the game is on the line. What will Arthur do for an opportunity like that, for that kind of fame and glory? What will Arthur do for Erik, his sponsor, his benefactor, his ticket to the big time? Let's face it. He will do anything. He will do anything that Erik asks. He has found himself a place in the Erik Fisher Football Dream, and he will do anything to stay there.

  I've always been afraid of Erik. Now I get to be afraid of Erik and Arthur.

  Thursday, August 31

  In addition to my regular glasses, I have special goggles, prescription goggles, for playing sports. They're made out of some kind of astronaut plastic that could crash-land on Venus and not break. Nothing can break them. If the dinosaurs had worn these goggles, and the Earth had been bombarded by mile-wide asteroid boulders, the dinosaurs would still have died, but their goggles would be intact. Nothing can break these goggles.

  The reason I bring this up is that Ms. Alvarez read the announcement this morning that tryouts for the soccer teams, boys' and girls', will start tomorrow. I have my goaltending gear—the prescription goggles, knee pads, and elbow pads—in a drawer in my room. I just checked the drawer to make sure everything was ready. I didn't want to find out tomorrow that my gear was all packed away in our climate-controlled storage place on Route 22.

  Mom and I took some stuff to the storage place today. Mom is not adjusting well to the smoke from the muck fire. She took down her mother's drapes from the dining room and packed them up with her grandmother's quilts from the bedrooms. "I won't have them ruined by this smoke," she told me as I lugged the boxes out to the car. "We'll put them back out when your grandparents visit in December."

  My grandparents are Mom's parents. Dad's parents died when he was young—his father when he was ten, and his mother when he was a freshman in college. Dad never talks about them. It's like they never existed.

  Mom doesn't talk much about hers, either. I know that my grandfather retired from the army as a master sergeant. He still works as a security guard in an office building. My grandmother always ran a day-care business out of her home, wherever that happened to be, right up until last year. Mom says that's where she inherited her own organizational skills.

  Mom is now donating those skills to the Homeowners' Association of Lake Windsor Downs. Mr. Costello asked her to be on the Architectural Committee. It's a powerful position. If you have any plan to improve your house, even if it's just planting a new tree, you have to have it approved beforehand by the Architectural Committee.

  Because of this, Mom has taken to spotting irregularities whenever we drive into or out of the development. She's taken to saying stuff like, "Look at the trim color on that Lancaster. That's not a regulation trim color. It looks like pea soup."

  Today she said, "Look at the mailbox on that Tudor. That's not a Tudor-style mailbox."

  I said, "Lighten up, Mom."

  "Don't tell me to lighten up. These people all read and signed the regulations before they bought houses here. Those regulations are serious, Paul. This development has a certain look to it. If you like that look, then you buy a house here. If you don't like that look, then you buy a house someplace else."

  "What harm could it do to have a non-Tudor mailbox?"

  Mom thought about that one. "Not much, I suppose. I won't send them a letter about the mailbox,
because the one they have doesn't look bad. But if twenty more houses decided to put up twenty different styles of mailboxes, it'd start to look like a shantytown around here."

  Mom suddenly got very serious. "Paul, I'm talking as somebody who never, ever, lived in a nice house growing up. Or even lived anywhere near a nice house. This is not a joke to me. Your house is your family's biggest investment. And you have to protect that investment."

  At the storage place, Mom showed her ID to an elderly guard, who waved us on. I unlocked our bin, pulled up the sliding metal door, and stacked the boxes inside. On the way home I turned the conversation to the soccer tryouts.

  Mom actually had a good suggestion. She said, "You should call that Joey Costello boy. You two could run some laps tonight. Maybe we can get a soccer-team car pool going with them, too."

  I called Joey as soon as we got back, and asked him if he wanted to start running. He said he runs every night at six-thirty, and I could meet him at the guardhouse if I wanted. I said OK and hung up.

  That was odd. If he ran every night, why had I never seen him?

  Anyway, Joey turned out to be pretty funny. Up until now he'd been a little stiff. We started to run with the sand at our backs and just a trace of smoke in the air. On our second lap he pointed to a house, a white Stuart on a corner lot. He said, "You see that house? Mr. Donnelly and his son live there. They've been hit by lightning three times."

  "No way."

  "Absolutely. Three times. Are they losers or what?"

  I had to laugh when I noticed the sign on their front lawn. "Hey, look! It's for sale!"

  "Yeah. Like they've got a prayer."

  "I don't know. When you're looking at a house, does anybody tell you bad stuff like that?"

  Joey said, "No way. They'd never mention it."

  "What if you found out?"