It's not until right now, with Cal standing in front of me, that I realize how extraordinary it was, what I did this weekend. Ignoring his messages. I've never done that, but I didn't even give it a second thought until now.
"I'm sorry. I was having computer problems."
"You need to download a Windows patch. I'll e-mail the link to you."
"Nah, I don't—"
"It's no big deal. Don't worry about it."
"OK."
"Look, I wanted to tell you that we won the game Saturday, but you probably saw the papers."
Not hardly. "Really?" I feign interest.
"Yeah!" His eyes start to dance. "We're going to the playoffs! Can you believe it? I mean, half the team is from the JV side. Most of us just started playing this year. It's unreal."
"Sure is."
"So you gotta come to the game, man. I mean, really. Come on. You never come, but this is the playoffs. You gotta see us play."
Again, he just doesn't get it. It's like he thinks I've been waiting for an invitation and then I'd come to the games. It's more than that. But he's earnest and he's my friend. It won't kill me to do it this once. It's the only friendly thing to do. Don't know why I'm in such a good mood. "Yeah, OK. So when is it?"
"One o'clock. Saturday."
I start to smile because he's joking with me, but his face doesn't change at all. Nothing but broad, open excitement there, a big smile, flashing white teeth, eyes lit with joy. He's not joking.
"Saturday? Dude..."
"Yeah, at one. Right here on the field—"
"Cal, Saturday's the show."
He stares at me. Slowly, his face turns into something like puzzlement.
"The show," I tell him. I can't believe I have to remind him of this. "The comic book show. Bendis...?"
He blinks. He licks his lips. "Hey, look. This ... Man, this is the playoffs, you know?"
No way. I cannot believe this is happening. I cannot believe that this stuff is more important—"Cal, you can't do it. We have to go to the show. We've been planning this—"
"It's the playoffs. "
"—for months. Months. What are you doing to me—"
"I can't let the team down. Come on, we can go to another convention—"
"Bendis is at this one. There is no other—"
"Dude, you can see him another time. There's—"
"Stop it!" I almost shout it. Some people nearby turn and look at us. They're wondering when the stud athlete will decide his pet geek isn't funny anymore and pound me into the ground. I can't help myself, though. I lower my voice, but my tone is the same. I reach into my pocket for the bullet, the safety totem. "There is no other show."
"There will be."
He doesn't get it. I've never showed him Schemata. "You don't understand. There'll be other lacrosse games. It's just a game. This is important. "
He steps away like I hit him, a laughable prospect, but neither of us is smiling. "Do you understand what I'm telling you?" he asks. "This is the playoffs. "
"Yeah, I get it. I get it because you've only said it a million freaking times in the past ten seconds. God, I should have known." I'm heated up now. "I should have known you wouldn't go through with this. I thought you were my friend, but you're just another jock—" And I stop myself, because this isn't me. It isn't like me to do this. I didn't mean to say any of this.
I look up at Cal. I'll explain it better. More calmly. But he's looking at me with something so huge and so ugly in his eyes ...I can't believe it. It's not anger or even sadness. It's ... I don't know. It's...
He backs away from me, shaking his head.
"Cal, wait a sec." But he's turning. He's really leaving!
No, no, no, no, no!
And the bell rings for homeroom, and I can't go after him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
MONDAY FIRST PERIOD IS MRS. HANSCOMB'S English class. My brain is in a blender. Cal sits and doesn't look anywhere near me. Across the room, Lisa Carter reveals lime green panties that could be a thong, but I don't even spare a second glance or go to my notebook. The Panty Algorithm experiment is suspended until further notice.
I'm sorry, I think fiercely, concentrating, imagining concentric circles of telepathy emanating from my forehead like an old drawing of Professor X. But if Cal's picking up on my vibe, he doesn't show it.
I've gone and lost my best friend in the world.
Mrs. Hanscomb calls on me to answer a question about Poe even though I haven't raised my hand. I hate that. Why do that to me? Why not just announce to the class, "You're all a bunch of idiots, so I'll call on the class brainiac because even though he didn't raise his hand, I know he knows the answer."
I just look at her. Poe. Melancholy. Despair. Drugs and alcohol.
Smart man. I slip my hand into my pocket for the comfort of the bullet.
"He was a genius," I tell her. I don't know if it answers her question or not. "But no one knew that in his lifetime." I think of the pages of Schemata in my backpack. I think of melancholy and despair.
She goes on to someone else. Good.
Between first and second period, I try to catch up to Cal, but no good. I see Kyra heading to one of her classes, and she winks at me. Between looking for Cal and the wink, I'm so flustered that I almost commit suicide-by-senior, coming perilously close to colliding with someone ten times my size and garbed in a letter jacket. Kyra's hair is spikier than usual and she's wearing a long-sleeved black sweater even though it's warm. Covering up those wrists. Always covering up those wrists.
Cal is gone by the time I collect myself, and I make it to history just ahead of the bell.
The more I start to think about it (and I do think about it, while Mr. Bachman drones on about the Cross of Gold), the more I get pissed off. How many years have we been friends? And he doesn't even let me finish? Doesn't give me the benefit of the doubt? He chooses them over me? Over me? The only person he can have an intelligent conversation with in this town? The only one at this school he can talk to about race? The only other person who knows that The Autobiography of Malcolm X was written by someone other than Malcolm X? The only white person at this school who doesn't say stupid crap in February like "Why isn't there a White History Month?"
He's going to give up this comic book convention, this one chance to meet some of our idols, for a stupid game? A game played with Neanderthals who can barely put together coherent English sentences? And I'm the bad guy?
No way. No way.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
TERRORISTS HAVE SEIZED SOUTH BROOK HIGH SCHOOL. The usual suspects are dead or dying. I'm in the computer room, tapped into the security system, watching everything. Cal stands up and a terrorist gets a bead on him. All I have to do is activate the bell and the terrorist will be distracted long enough for Cal to escape.
That's all I have to do.
But I don't.
Cal goes down in a hail of—
No.
Cal gets winged, spins around in a spray of his own blood and collapses—
No.
Cal ducks, but hits his head and the terrorist thinks he's dead—
No.
I don't know. Not anymore.
God, Cal hangs out with all of them. All of my tormentors. Pete Vesentine. Ronnie Warshaw. Todd Bellanger. Mike Lorenz. Jason Benatovech. Almost the entire roster of The List.
And Cal knows so many of my secrets. I've cried in front of him, when I talked about missing my dad. I've told him almost everything. God, I told him that I liked Dina Jurgens! God, he knows everything. I thought it was hell here before—Cal can make it worse. He can make it so much worse. All he has to do is talk.
In gym, I don't even care that we're playing dodge ball again. I welcome the glancing blow that sends me into No Man's Land. And then, just because the world hasn't dumped on me enough, Mitchell Frampton is there with me.
I stare straight ahead, then look up slightly as his first blow pounds my shoulder. Kyra's sitting up
in the bleachers, so I stand there, trying to look like an Indian warrior.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I USED TO THINK THAT IF IT EVER GOT BAD—really bad—that Cal would be on my side. That he'd choose me.
So, I was wrong.
I don't even bother looking for him for the rest of the day. My shoulder feels like pounded hamburger, but my head feels even worse.
I see Kyra a couple more times, passing her in the hallway. She walks with her books clasped to her chest, like she's hiding something, her arms thin black bands crisscrossed over geometry and history texts. She's wearing black eye makeup and she keeps her lips pressed tightly together, as if daring someone to ask her to talk, but when she sees me, she flashes that magic grin, that tilted lip-piercing, just long enough for me to register it, then she's back to Hard-Core Kyra again as she walks by.
I also see Dina in the hallways, as I usually do on Mondays and Thursdays. She's surrounded by a cluster of lesser Senior Goddesses (demi-goddesses, I guess), brunettes and dirty-blondes and girls desperately trying to be as gorgeous, but it's like Venus and the sun. Only one is the real deal. The other's just a pretender that fools roosters sometimes.
The whole time I'm in the hall, I keep a hand in my pocket, on the bullet. Even in class I try to keep my fingers at least resting on my leg right where the bullet lies.
I can't stop myself from thinking of the Joker. I don't know why. Cal always used to talk about how he liked A. J. Lieberman's version, how he thought it was interesting that Lieberman saw the Joker as an intellectual presence despite his insanity. I preferred Frank Miller's version, the one that embodies insanity almost as an elemental force of nature. We eked three hours out of that topic alone, hanging out at his house, flipping through his collection. I completely lost track of time, that's how happy and engrossed I was.
Won't be happening again. And Kyra isn't the sort who would spend more than ten seconds even thinking about the Joker, much less discussing him as if he mattered.
At the end of the day, I grab my books and head straight for the bus. I don't understand how it happened. I still don't get it. How did I make this the worst possible day?
Before I can get on the bus, a car horn blows enough to annoy me into looking up. Kyra pulls up in a big chunky Buick that's got to be at least a hundred years old, battleship gray and designed to fight a war. She's too blasé to wave or anything to get my attention; she just leans back in the seat, staring straight ahead while one of the bus drivers starts flapping his hands at her, yelling at her to get out of the bus lane.
The idea of going through the bus trip is sheer mental torture. I hop into the car. It smells like menthol.
"The rental had to go back," she tells me before I can even ask.
"Don't tell me this is your sister's other other car."
"No, dumb-ass. This is Dad's."
She hits the gas and we're gone.
"I had to look around for you. Why were you getting on the bus?"
Is that a note of hurt in her voice? Did she miss me? I hope so. She's my only friend right now.
"I forgot. I had a bad day."
"Yeah? I saw Frampton pounding on you again."
"No, it wasn't that. Cal and I had an argument. I don't think we're friends anymore."
She pulls into the parking lot of a gas station, out of sight of the tanks. "Aw, did you guys have a spat?"
"Shut up."
"Lovers' quarrel?"
"You're not funny."
"You need to loosen up."
"Says the girl in all black."
"Oh, please. See this?" She points to the reverse-image smiley face, which she always wears at her throat. "It's, like, a statement. It's a whole post-Goth thing. No one gets it. This Goth Girl shit is, like, 2001 or something."
"Post-Goth? You're making this up."
She shrugs. "Doesn't matter. You gotta be you, right? Just let everyone else go to hell. They don't matter. You matter. This matters." She taps my forehead, and I feel like something warm has entered there, then spread until it suffuses my whole body. "Now show me this comic book."
I hesitate, clutching my backpack. I can't do it. It's too much. I've never shown it to anyone before. Not even Cal.
But Cal didn't really care, did he? Lacrosse was more important. He's not the one sitting in a parking lot with me, gazing at me with unreadable hazel eyes that demand compliance. "C'mon. Let me see."
I sigh and open my backpack. I brought ten pages in all, the ones that are most finished. They're not in any particular sequence. Two of them are just Courteney talking to her class, but I like the details I added, like the lesson written in chalk on the board, and the kid in the back row who's prepping a spit-ball that will be thrown on another page.
I hand the pages over. I feel like I should say something, make some kind of presentation speech.
She clears her throat and settles in, turning in her seat so that she's got her back against the door, her feet up on the seat between us. She's wearing black shorts that are baggy and loose, and I realize that I could probably look up them if I wanted to, which—let's be honest—I do want to, even though she's just Kyra, not Dina, not even Lisa Carter. She's got black sandals on, which she kicks off now, revealing black-tipped toes that are almost too close to my leg for comfort. I humor myself—for just a second—that she's trying some kind of coy seduction, but she's not even looking at me. Her face is covered by the papers.
I wait. This is excruciating in its own way, waiting to see what she thinks. Is she going to hate it? Laugh at it? Should I have brought different pages? What do I do while I'm waiting? I can only occupy myself with not looking up her shorts for so long.
"Um, on these pages, the—"
"Shh!" she tells me.
Right.
A rustle of paper and she turns a page out so that I can see it. "Spent a lot of time on this one."
It's an almost blank page, with Courteney in the upper-left-hand corner, her eyes open in shock as she stares at nothingness.
"There's going to be a computer effect there. I haven't Photoshopped it yet."
"I figured." She lowers the papers to grin at me, magic grin. "De-stress, OK? I'm just messing with you." To drive home the point, she nudges my thigh with her toes, then leaves her foot resting against my leg. It's like five tiny, soft, hot pokers are lying up against me.
I roll down the window a little bit, just to let out some of the menthol smell. Why are her toes so hot?
"This is..."
I don't want to whip around like I'm too eager, but I do turn to face her, which somehow puts her feet up on my leg, practically in my lap.
"This is kinda cool..."
Yes!
"...I guess..."
"What do you mean, you guess?"
She shuffles the pages and starts organizing them in her lap. "It's tough to tell with just these pages. But the art is really good. It's not what I thought it would be. It's a little more cartoony than I figured for a superhero guy."
"It's not a superhero comic."
"I know. I know." She stares down at the pages in her lap. "And your dialogue is pretty good. I mean, I had to remind myself it was a guy writing a woman."
"Thanks."
"It's pretty good." She tosses the pages at me and kicks her feet out of my lap, almost catching my chin as I grab for the paper. By the time I've got Schemata back in my backpack, she's tucked her feet into her sandals. She lights up a cigarette, then starts the car.
"Where are we going now?" I've begun to accept that I'll never know with her, but I'm willing to just stick along for the ride.
"Taking you home."
"I thought we were gonna hang out again."
"Not anymore." She flicks her eyes left and right, then pulls out into traffic. "Taking you home so you can work on more of that"—she tilts her head generally toward my backpack—"and show me some more tomorrow."
I wonder if it would be going too far to flip down the visor and chec
k my smile in the mirror?
"If you've got something you want, you have to go for it, you know?" she says, talking around the cigarette. "You can't let shit like Frampton or your buddy the jock interfere, see? Screw 'em."
I hadn't even been thinking about Cal until she brought him up.
"Other people are just ... there." She drags heavily on the cigarette, blows a stream of smoke out the window, then flicks the butt out after it. "If they aren't helping, they're just in the way. Weave around them, knock them over, do whatever you have to, but get past them."
"Which are you?"
"It's like dealing with the teachers and the other idiots who run that place." She's ignoring me. I realize that I should keep an eye on the road for her, just in case. "Beginning of the year, the Spermling called me into his office."
Mr. Sperling is the assistant principal. Some kids call him the Spermling. I don't really think it's funny, but it is a little amusing to hear Kyra say it.
"He's all passive-aggressive and shit, making me wait outside his office, then calling me in, then making me sit there while he's on the phone pretending to be important. Like he'd be a friggin' assistant principal in the middle of nowhere if he mattered at all.
"So he finally decides to admit I'm sitting there and he says to me, 'Your teachers are getting a little bit tired of your acting out. We all are.' And I said, 'Tough titty.'"
"You said that?"
"Yeah."
"Wow." I roll through the implications of saying "tough titty" to my mom, to the step-fascist, to anyone. "You're hard-core," I tell her.
She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I'm Batman. So he gets all red-faced and starts playing with this pen on his desk, bending it, tapping it, you know? But I just wasn't going to put up with his shit."
"Did you tell him about your sister?"
"I told him I didn't care if people were pissed about my 'acting out,'" she goes on, ignoring my question. "I mean, he's this creepy little pissant. Who the hell is he to tell me what to do and how to act?"
He's the assistant principal, I want to say ... but why should that matter?