Tangerine

  I didn't know how to behave. I had never been through anything like this before, so I copied Mom and Dad. They walked up to the casket and knelt on the padded kneelers. They said a short prayer and got up. I waited for them to finish, then I knelt down alone at the casket. Closer up, Mike Costello didn't look so terrific. There was no hair on the left side of his head. There was no hair on his left hand, either.

  I got back up and looked for Mom and Dad. They were waiting behind another couple for a chance to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Costello. I walked up and stood with them. I was surprised to hear how light their conversation was. They weren't even talking about Mike. They were talking about the lake at our development and about what might be happening to the koi. I looked around for Joey, but I didn't see him. I saw football players and cheerleaders and Student Council types spread out all over the room. Mr. Bridges was there. So were Coach Warner and the other football coaches.

  When it was our turn to talk to the Costellos, Mom expressed how sorry we all were about the terrible accident. I just muttered, "I'm sorry," and shook hands with them. Mrs. Costello said, "Joey will be glad to see you here. I know he wants to talk to you. He wants to ask you something."

  The room was just about filled, mostly with high schoolers and adults. But then I did see a group of middle school kids coming in, and Joey was with them. A girl from my math class named Cara, Cara Clifton, gave him a big hug right in front of everybody. In fact, she kind of hung on him. Then she and the rest of the middle school kids went over and found seats. Everybody in the room seemed to be sitting down.

  Joey was alone for a minute, so I went over and said, "How's it goin'?"

  "Hey, Fisher. It's goin'. It's goin'. What's happening at soccer practice?"

  "I don't know. I got kicked off the team."

  "Yeah. Right."

  "No, no kidding. I really did. I got kicked off."

  "No way!"

  "Yeah way."

  "Uh, look. The priest just came in. I gotta go sit down. But I want to hear about this. I gotta ask you something, too."

  I went over and sat with Mom and Dad. A young priest came in and started saying the rosary with everybody. We didn't know what that was all about, but we sat there with our heads bowed and said some of the prayers. Then the priest spoke about Mike. He talked about what a good guy he was. What else could you say about Mike? I don't know anybody, except Erik and Arthur, who wouldn't say that about him. A lot of people in the room were crying. A whole lot of people.

  After the priest left some of the kids left, too, and some of the adults got up and started to talk again. We stayed in our seats for a while. Mr. Donnelly went back to the casket and knelt there, with his eyes tightly closed, for a long time. Mom pointed out people from Lake Windsor Downs—a gray-and-white Tudor, a York with a circular driveway. Paige was talking to a man I recognized from the football practice meeting. He was her father, Arthur Bauer, Sr. Mom pointed out Tina Turreton's mother, too; she looked like she could be Tina's older sister—very young-looking. I recognized a few of the other parents who had come to the meeting in our great room, but I don't know their names.

  After a few minutes we walked out into the lobby. That's where I saw Joey again. He had one arm around Cara Clifton, who was crying uncontrollably; he was shaking hands with Coach Warner with his other arm. A couple of guys from the soccer team were there, too, a couple of the toe stubbers. They obviously hadn't heard that I was off the team. One of them said, "What's up, Mars?" which I didn't mind at all. That nickname is all I'm ever going to get from the Lake Windsor soccer program.

  Kerri Gardner came up and put her hand on Cara's shoulder. She looked over at me and said, "Hi." She explained to Cara that their ride was waiting and they had to go. Then she turned back to me and said, "I hear you're a great soccer player." I just stood there, unable to think of anything to reply. Cara let go of Joey, asked Kerri for a tissue, and the two of them left.

  Joey joined his mother and father near the door, where a line had formed to say good-bye. It must have been a tough thing to stand there and say something to every one of those people, but that's exactly what they did. When Mom and Dad got up there, the Costellos started asking them about the meeting in our great room—how it had gone and who had said what.

  Joey picked up our conversation where it had left off. "So how did you get kicked off the soccer team? I thought you were on the bus."

  "I was on the bus. At least I think I was."

  "Walski kicked you off?"

  "Yeah. I don't know. Sort of. Murrow sent him this memo saying that I'm in a handicapped program, a program for the visually impaired. He freaked. He said he'd lose his insurance policy or something."

  Joey was shaking his head. "Oh, man. Man, that's cold. Maybe my dad can file a lawsuit for you or something."

  "Is that right?"

  "Yeah. He's a lawyer. He can file a lawsuit. It's gotta be against your civil rights. Your parents are paying taxes so you can go to this school, right? Why shouldn't you be allowed to play on the school team?"

  "You're right."

  "It's not your fault if you're a geek."

  "Thanks. Thanks a lot."

  "Hey, you know what I'm saying."

  "Yeah. Yeah."

  "Look, do you want to go to the carnival with us tomorrow?"

  I was shocked to hear Joey say that. I answered, "Uh, isn't tomorrow the funeral?"

  "Well, the funeral is first thing tomorrow morning. My mom thinks it's a good idea that I go out and do something with my friends tomorrow afternoon. 'Life goes on,' she said. We've been doing nothing but all this funeral stuff, you know, since it happened. So she says I need to get out and do something to take my mind off it." He looked over toward his parents. "They're more worried about me now than they are about Mike. You know what I'm saying?"

  I looked at Joey's parents, then at mine. He asked me again, "So are you up for it? For the carnival?"

  "Yeah, sure. I guess. I don't know anything about it. I heard the announcements about it at school."

  "It's pretty cool, for Tangerine. It's low-rent, but it's cool, in a low-rent kind of a way. I'll call you tomorrow afternoon."

  "Yeah. All right."

  Mom and Dad and the Costellos finished their conversation. I wish I knew what they talked about. It must have been serious, because Mom and Dad didn't exchange another word all the way home.

  That was all right with me. I needed time to think. I looked out the window at the starry night, at the high-tension wires and the osprey nests, and I thought over and over again about what I could have said back to Kerri Gardner.

  Saturday, September 9

  Life goes on, all right.

  When I came downstairs for breakfast, Mom and Dad were arguing. Mom was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter. Dad and Erik were standing in the doorway, ready to exit. Erik was letting Dad do all the talking.

  "Look, there's nothing wrong with me taking Erik to practice this morning."

  Mom clearly did not agree. "You don't schedule a football practice on the morning of your team captain's funeral."

  "It's a private funeral. We were not invited to attend that funeral."

  "That's not the point. You should show respect for the family by canceling practice on the morning of the funeral."

  Dad had heard enough. "Well, Coach Warner did not think that was appropriate, so he didn't do it. The season begins in one week, and we need to get out there."

  "You need to get out there?"

  "That's right. Every team in this county is practicing this morning, and so are we. And while we're at it, Coach Warner did not schedule this practice on the morning of the funeral. These weekend practices have been scheduled all along. It's not fair for you to say that the coach doesn't care about his players, or that he doesn't care about Mike Costello, just because he continues to do his job."

  Mom didn't reply, so Dad and Erik completed their exit.

  Mom's final word on the subject was to me.
"Coach Warner cares so much about his players that he pushes them out into the lightning every day."

  Joey called at 2:30. Mom answered the phone. She offered to drive us, so Joey showed up at our door at 2:45. Mom asked him how the services went. He said, "Fine," and that was that. We didn't talk about it again. Life went on. We got into Mom's car and drove to the carnival.

  I was curious to finally see the town of Tangerine. In the time we've lived here, we've driven in every direction but this one. We've gone west to the supermarket, south to the mall, north to the schools, but never east to the town. As we headed up Route 89, Joey said, "My dad told me that this all used to be tangerine groves, as far as the eye could see. It was the tangerine capital of the world."

  Mom turned off the highway at Route 22 and drove east through the citrus groves. The air was filled with a remarkable scent.

  Joey said, "What is that smell? That's gross." I said, "You're crazy. I love that smell. That's the citrus. Something is in bloom now. Huh, Mom?"

  Mom said, "I don't know, honey."

  We drove for another mile. We passed a cluster of lime green houses made out of cement block. I said, "Check out that color, Mom. You'd better notify the Architectural Committee."

  Mom was not amused. "This isn't a development, Paul."

  "Then how come the houses are all the same color?"

  Mom thought about that and replied, "Maybe you're right. Maybe this is some kind of early development. Maybe the owners of the packing plant built those houses for their workers."

  "The migrant workers?"

  "No. I don't think so. The migrant workers would come and pick fruit for a few weeks and then move on. But there must have been permanent workers, citrus packers, who lived here year-round. Like Joey was saying, this used to be the tangerine capital of the world ... Now the tangerine industry is dead. Look. Over there. That's the old packing plant."

  It was strange to see an old packing plant, to see an old anything. But it was also comforting to hear that something around here has a history. That something actually belongs here.

  It makes sense. I can see how it worked: The citrus packers walked from those lime green cement-block houses into that packing plant—that huge and magnificent structure. It must have been built, red brick by red brick, to be the most magnificent building the workers had ever seen, like a European cathedral.

  So why did it stop working? When did it all go wrong? Whose fault was it? Maybe the people from the lime green houses just got tired of walking into this building every morning. Maybe they stopped seeing how magnificent it was. And now it's gone. It's all over. Someplace else is now the tangerine capital of the world.

  We didn't see much else of the town, because suddenly, right in front of us, were the rides and tents of the carnival. "Low-rent" was a compliment for this thing. It was set up in a big field of dirt, next to a sign that read TANGERINE FLEA MARKET EVERY SUNDAY. Mom dropped us off in the parking lot, which was another field of dirt across the road. She said, "Are you boys sure you want to get out here?"

  "Yeah!" Joey laughed. Maybe he thought Mom was kidding.

  Mom sighed. "OK. When do you want to be picked up?"

  "I don't know. Joey, what do you say? Seven o'clock?"

  Joey thought about it. "Yeah. That's cool."

  Mom called, "All right. I'll see you two right here, on this spot, at seven o'clock. Be careful."

  "We will, Mom. Bye."

  As we waited to cross the busy road, Joey handed me a discount ticket and said, "They're from Coach Walski."

  Just outside the entranceway I saw a group of guys with a soccer ball. They were good. Three of them were doing the juggling bit with a ball, like Tommy Acoso does, but they were passing it back and forth, too. I stopped to watch for a minute, and a kid called over to me, "Hey! Give me one of those tickets!"

  "I only got one," I said.

  "Yeah? So I only need one. Hand it over."

  Joey grabbed my elbow and hustled me away. "C'mon, man. Don't mess around with those guys. They're from Tangerine Middle."

  "So?"

  "Don't talk to them, and don't look at them." We handed over our tickets and passed through a turnstile. "They have gangs in Tangerine Middle School. They have kids with guns, man. Real gangstas. Some of them have AK-47s."

  "No way."

  "Hey, don't believe me. Just don't mess with them, 'cause I ain't bailing you out."

  We walked quickly past the Octopus and another ride that looked like a swinging-ax pendulum. Joey called out, "There they are! There's Cara and Kerri and the guys!"

  I was thrilled. I had been secretly hoping this would happen. Cara came up and put her arm around Joey right away. Unfortunately nobody, Kerri included, paid much attention to me. The three guys, who I sort of knew from classes and lunch, were all talking about going to a freak show in the back of the carnival. Cara and Kerri were saying things like "Oh, gross" and "No way."

  Everybody was disappointed when we actually got inside the freak show, called Wonders of the World. Everybody except me. I was really fascinated as I prowled through the dark, partitioned rooms of the exhibits. They were mostly photos, but there were some wax statues, too. The exhibits had names like the Woman with a Third Eye, the Buffalo Man, and the Frozen Fräulein.

  I lost the rest of the group when I stopped to read about the Boy Who Never Grew. According to the sign, this boy stopped growing at the age of five, but he went on to live to the age of eighty-nine. And although he was studied by the top doctors in Europe, he remains a mystery to this day. No one ever discovered what happened to him to cause this strange affliction. I peered into the eyes in the photo for a long, long time.

  When I came out of Wonders of the World, blinking in the sun, my classmates were all gone. The guys who I had seen at the entrance with the soccer ball were there, waiting to go in. They were too busy karate-kicking at each other to notice me.

  I turned left and headed toward the big double Ferris wheel. I watched it being loaded, seat by seat. The wheel rotated up, and I saw Cara and Joey close together on a seat. It rotated again, and I saw Kerri. She was sitting with one of the guys from the group. A guy named Adam. A guy who doesn't wear glasses and who knows how to talk. I spun around and walked the other way, eventually stopping at a snow-cone place. After about half an hour by myself, I caught up with the group again. No one had noticed that I was gone. Kerri wound up going on the Caterpillar with Adam, too. I didn't go on any rides.

  Seven o'clock finally came. I went and stood at the entrance. I could see that Mom was already parked in the lot. Joey kept me waiting for ten minutes, then ran up and said, "You ready?"

  "Yeah. I've been ready."

  We crossed the road and climbed into the air-conditioned car. Mom cried out, "Look at that!"

  We looked, and we saw the gang of soccer kids from Tangerine Middle all climbing into the back of a light green, classic Ford pickup truck.

  "Yeah. Cool truck," Joey and I said, almost at the same time.

  "No! No!" Mom continued. "Look at the truck and tell me what's wrong with this picture."

  We looked again, and I noticed the words TOMAS CRUZ gROVES, TANGERINE, FLORIDA written on the door. "Do you mean that they spelled Thomas wrong?"

  "Honestly, Paul!" she snapped. "Can't you be serious when I ask you a question?"

  "But I am being serious."

  Mom pointed at the pile of kids, who were now riding toward the exit. "Seatbelts! They're not wearing any seatbelts. Not one of them. And how could they? They're all bouncing around in the back of that truck like a bunch of golden retrievers."

  "Well, that's up to them, right?"

  "No, that is not up to them! That is against the law. One good bump and they'll all break their necks! Why do we bother passing safety laws? People will still throw six kids into the back of a truck and then drive them out onto the highway."

  Mom drove in silence all the way home—angry about the driver of the pickup truck. It doesn't take mu
ch these days to make her angry. I was feeling pretty miserable myself—about Kerri Gardner, about soccer, about my whole life here. I remembered the face of the Boy Who Never Grew, the face of that eighty-nine-year-old little boy. I remembered the fear in his eyes. I know that fear. It's my fear. They may as well stick me in there next to him.

  A picture came to me, nasty yet satisfying. I could stop trying to be what everyone else is and accept being a freak. They could open a new exhibit, starring me. A modern exhibit called the Children Who Wouldn't Listen. Stomach Cramps Boy, who went swimming right after lunch. Refrigerator Door Boy, sealed forever to stay fresh. And Eclipse Boy, studied by the greatest doctors in Europe but still a mystery to this day.

  Monday, September 11

  I was up for a long time last night, listening to the rain. It was still raining when Mom dropped me off at the guardhouse. I stood next to Joey, but neither one of us had much to say.

  Lake Windsor Middle School is a very uncomfortable place to be when it's raining. Hundreds of kids crowd into the walkways between classes. The kids with umbrellas smack them into each other. The kids without umbrellas panic because they're trapped in the cold, pounding rain, unable to move behind the kids with umbrellas.

  I was one of the kids with umbrellas, even though the coolest guys don't carry them. Of course, the coolest guys don't have to take off their glasses and dry them before they can see again, either.

  It was still pouring during third period when a kid came into my math class in P-19. He was soaking wet and holding one of those wooden office passes. The teacher, Mr. Ward, called me up to the front and said, "You're wanted in Mr. Murrow's office right away."

  I let the kid with the pass share my umbrella as we crossed over the ocean of mud and ducked into the building. When we got to Mr. Murrow's office, I noticed Mrs. Gates and Coach Walski standing with him next to his desk. Lined up on a long couch against the opposite wall were Joey, Adam, and the other two guys from our group at the carnival. I went over and sat with them.