A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade

The ride was called the Kamikaze. Kevin had been lying next to it in the gravel when a boy’s face had appeared above him like a pale moon.

  “He just wanted to know if I was all right. I told him my head was spinning but yeah. He called me mister.”

  Thad strips the batter off a pickle with his teeth. “Wouldn’t it be badass if we could float alongside the rides and pretend nothing special was happening? Like if we were just sitting there all la-di-da with our legs crossed, swooping around and around. People would fucking freak.” His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “These pickles, by the way? Totally disgusting.”

  It is an interesting expression, la-di-da. Kevin repeats it a few times. La-di-da. La-di-da. The wind gusts between the trailers, and a cotton candy cone goes somersaulting over the black extension cords, and from the far back of nowhere a memory comes to him, a few seconds of radiant filmstrip in which he is standing over a busy street, his eyes locked on a sunlit concrete ledge where an orange peel rocks back and forth like a baby’s cradle. How old was he? he wonders. Where did it happen, and when? Was he alone? No, no, wait, he was holding the tail of someone’s shirt, wasn’t he? That shirt, he thinks—it is like a gap in a puzzle. If only he could remember whose it was, his life would fit together without a single missing piece. Would snap flat and turn into a picture. Would look the way it does on the box. For the rest of the day, he feels as if he is on the verge of understanding something momentous, something he knew long ago, knew to his bones and then forgot, a hundred years before he was alive.

  The morning after the fair, he wakes on a pallet of blankets on Bateman’s floor. The birds are calling to each other in twos and threes, and he lies there listening to them, testing himself for the sense of enlightenment he felt, or nearly felt, behind the food stand. It is somewhere nearby, burning its slow way toward him. And the next day, and the next, whenever he stops watching TV or reading comics for a while, letting his mind go clear and quiet, he can feel it fluttering inside him, thinning away little by little.

  It is another two weeks before it vanishes completely. And what has he lost? Maybe nothing. He no longer knows. By then it is Halloween, and he is walking through CAC in a blond wig and a gingham dress, wearing a bra stuffed with balled-up hand towels.

  He is one of eighty or ninety kids in costume. He catches a junior named Wesley Walls saying, “The few, the proud, the umpteen,” and stores the line away to use with his friends, none of whom are there to hear it. Instead, crowded into the foyer and the gymnasium, are airline pilots and Draculas and three older girls dressed identically as flappers. There is a big gray battering ram of an eighth-grader in a lab coat and corpse makeup. There is a Cyndi Lauper and a Madonna and a Judd Nelson or a Judd Hirsch (Kevin can never remember which is which: the one from The Breakfast Club). And there are the usual cheerleaders and football players and drill team girls, costumed lazily as themselves. But no one else is gathering the same looks he is. He notices people turning as he passes—teachers, seniors even—their attention breathing lightly all over him. The tickling sensation he feels could be pleasure or it could be embarrassment. It’s hard to tell.

  Craig Bell corners him outside Bible and asks, “Exactly who are you supposed to be?”

  He adjusts his cowboy hat. “Dolly Parton.”

  “Kevin …” Chris completes the thought by motioning up from the ground. “No. Just—no. You’re not hairy enough to pretend you’re a girl.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Put it like this: you look too much like a girl when you pretend you’re a girl. It’s disturbing. It weirds people out.”

  Kevin thinks of several comebacks, but he isn’t happy with any of them. In the end he resorts to, “No, I don’t. No, it isn’t.”

  Though probably he is wrong. Probably he does, and it is, and good, and so what?

  In the bathroom, before second period, when he takes his stance at one of the urinals and lifts the hem of his dress, the three older guys lined up beside him vanish into the hall like bottle rockets flying through a PVC pipe. As Kevin tucks himself into his underwear, someone else opens the door and does an instinctive about-face. Whoosh. It is like a game. At the mirror he adjusts his bra strap, dropping his shoulder and tugging at the elastic. Margaret Casciano watches him pick a flake of lipstick from his lips. She is one of those girls he has known since he was six, like Julia Harris and Tara Watson, so long that the thought of her should stir a thousand competing memories, but for some reason his mind always fetches up the same one: how in the fourth grade she sat behind him during a slideshow and in the dark, without speaking, scratched his back through his shirt.

  Miss Vincent has already covered half the board with a pronoun chart. On the other half she is copying out a dozen numbered sentences. A cirrus cloud of chalk decorates her sleeve, raining traces of powder onto the floor. Kevin picks the smell up in his sinuses, that bitter scent of aspirin crushed with the back of a spoon. He takes his seat by the wall of comics she has clipped from the Sunday papers. So far, he has given her two strips to add to the collection, a Marvin with Bitsy the dog and a B.C. with Grog and the clams. She took both of them with an odd stretched smile he couldn’t quite figure out. There was some strange brain work behind it—a reluctance, an embarrassment, something—she was trying hard to disguise as kindness. And there was also the actual kindness, the kindness that lay in the effort to wear a disguise in the first place. I’m uncomfortable right now, but I’ll try to keep it hidden. You’re monumentally weird, but I’ll stay quiet about it if you will.

  Pronouns are easy: he, she, me, you, nobody. Kevin listens with only half an ear as she conducts the lesson. He has a trick he likes to do with his pencil, angling the cylinder just so on the edge of his textbook, then watching as its tilt carries it up the desk. When he gets it exactly right, it will roll to the top of the book, fall off, and slide away toward the arm of his chair, tick-tacking over the polished wood like a log tumbling down a slope. It’s the kind of thing he can do again and again, like playing catch with himself against his bedroom wall. He doesn’t stop until Miss Vincent passes out the day’s worksheet, which, as usual, he finishes before anyone else. “You know,” she says to Kevin when he hands it in, “you’re all the talk in the front office.”

  “I am?”

  “You. They had a meeting to decide what to do about your costume.”

  “It’s for Halloween.”

  “I know. That’s what they decided.”

  “Decided what?”

  “That you can cross-dress on Halloween.”

  “Yeah, and ultimately it was pretty easy. Mom had the dress left over from some square-dancing thing she did with her sorority.”

  In chapel, before the opening hymn, the air rings with footsteps and conversations, with six big sets of wooden bleachers cracking their joints. The sounds echo against the roof of the gym, coming back fuller and crisper. Kevin looks up, tracing the V-shaped struts and parallel lines of the metal girders. He has seen kids smack them with their palms after shimmying up the ropes in PE. From down here it seems nearly impossible. His own arms are like ribbons, and inevitably, when it’s his turn, he just clings to the rope shaking until one of the coaches gives him permission to let go and leap to the mat. But what if he could crawl directly into the beams—there, from the side wall, where they almost touch the bleachers? And what if he was on the basketball team, and it was the final round of the playoffs against Oak Grove or PA, and CAC was behind by a single point, and at the last second he caught a wild throw from Steve Mollette, took aim at the basket from directly overhead, and swish: two points!—or would it be three?

  He could be a champion, a star.

  If only someone were watching.

  Joseph Rimmer spots Kevin in his Dolly Parton getup and nudges Shane Roper, who says, “Man oh man! Thad told me you were all fagged up today, but I had no idea.”

  To which Kevin has no answer. He tries, “The few, the proud, the umpteen,” and Shan
e says, “Umpteen? Pray tell me, good sir, who is this umpteen of which you speak?” and Joseph says, “Umpteen Dumpteen sat on a wall,” and they both break up laughing.

  “It’s like a bunch, isn’t it? ‘Umpteen’?” This from Sean Lanham, whose small round skull has inspired Coach Dale to name him Peahead. Nearly half the football team has been rechristened by the coach. Joseph Luigs is Moose; Barry Robertson, Curly; Randy Garrett, Hitman; Peter Vickerel, Pickle. With his thin arms and wheaty mustache, Coach looks too slight to be an athlete, but his voice seems to rumble up from somewhere far belowground, and the uncommonness of it, the surprising density, makes the nicknames he concocts sound affectionate rather than insulting. Let’s face it: nicknames are cool. Kevin has always wished someone would give him one. But his real name, his full name, suits him too well already. Why hello there, Kevin Brockmeier. Oh my God, did you see what Kevin Brockmeier’s wearing? Mrs. Dial, Kevin Brockmeier keeps kicking the back of my chair. He has never been—wait a minute. All fagged up?

  Mr. Garland taps for quiet on the microphone, and Kevin finds himself wondering—did he understand Shane correctly? Did Thad call him a faggot? He remembers a conversation the two of them had once about the Bible, when Thad said, “It seems unfair that God would make someone gay and then send him to Hell for it,” and before Kevin could answer added, “Shut up. I’m not a fag. Shut up.”

  It takes Thad two full periods to notice that Kevin isn’t speaking to him. Today Kevin is the guy in the dress—that’s what he’s doing. He could suffer an epileptic seizure in total invisibility. Look at those boobs heaving around on the floor. Look at that wig jerking back and forth. Midway through lunch, Thad unwraps a giant Tootsie Roll, sets it on the bench behind Annalise, and points it out to the table. In his Goon voice he says, “Chocolatey chew.”

  Kevin gives a flat “Ha ha ha,” and Thad makes a face. “What’s got you so pissed off?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe something about you telling Shane I’m gay?”

  “What? What the frick are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about me being quote-unquote ‘all fagged up.’ ”

  Honestly? Kevin appreciates the chance to act indignant. Sometimes jokes float into a conversation like soap bubbles—there they are, and you have to pop them. It’s irresistible. He understands that. Kevin is wearing a dress, so he’s gay—voilà!—joke accomplished. But if he gets angry, or if he has the right to be, then Thad will have to apologize, and what’s the difference, really, between someone asking for forgiveness and someone asking for friendship?

  “Just a minute now,” Thad hedges. “Don’t you remember at the fair, when you said we wouldn’t believe anyone who lied about us?”

  “So Shane’s lying—is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying we made a promise and—wait, you know what? Fuck off.”

  “Me fuck off?”

  “Yeah, you, Islands-in-the-Stream.” Clearly he has been holding the name in reserve. “Fuck off. You don’t want to believe me, don’t believe me.”

  “Fine. I don’t want to believe you.”

  “Fine.”

  Outside, by the bluff above the field house, Shane Wesson is practicing his pitching, using clots of dirt he has pried from the bare ground at the treeline. He twists around on himself, then whips forward, over and over again, as if his bones are made of braided metal rope. One by one the balls disintegrate in midair, pattering down on the slope of brush and leaves. Kevin walks to the edge of the hill. There is a fringe of unmown grass beneath the rim. It nods in the wind, flexing up over the school lawn with the sound of someone dusting flour from his palms.

  Kevin inserts himself in the sea of blue sky Shane is using for a strike zone. This time he knows exactly what will happen: the confrontation, and the shove, and that remarkable watched feeling of falling. The long rest of the day and the long rest of his life.

  “Hey, man, what are you doing?” Shane says. “Get out of the way already,” and Kevin faces him and says, “But I’m enjoying the view. It’s such a beautiful day. Why should I go anywhere?”

  Then the big hands are on his chest, and his dress blossoms up around his waist, and the weeds pour over him in a rush.

  A dragon and a unicorn are playing tag, galloping past a man in a tunic and a demon with scaly green skin. Myth Directions, the book is called, and according to the list in front, it is the third volume in a series, after book one, Another Fine Myth, and book two, Myth Conceptions. Kevin found it in the checkout aisle at the grocery store, racked with the horrors and romances, all those fat glossy paperbacks in their tilting columns of black and cream. From the illustration alone—the flabbergasted expression on the man’s face, the towelliness of the demon’s bathrobe, the way the dragon was thrusting his tongue out—he knew he would love it, and he was right. It is amazing, enthralling, mythterious, mythchievous, unmythable.

  At home now, lying on the floor with his head propped against his bedframe, which draws a hard indentation along the back of his skull, he interrupts his reading again to glance at the book’s cover. He keeps waiting for the story to correspond to the picture. The dragon is named Gleep, the man Skeeve, the demon Aahz. So far there is no sign of the unicorn. Every chapter begins with a made-up quote, like “ ‘That’s funny, I never have any trouble with service when I’m shopping.’ —K. Kong” or “ ‘This contest has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.’ —H. Cosell.” It is totally hilarious—or supposed to be, anyway—and even when it isn’t, it is at least agreeable: funny in a jokey-uncle sort of way. It makes Kevin feel clever for getting what the K stands for, and the H. Ever since junior high began, several times and for no reason at all, he has woken in the small hours of the morning with the conviction that he’s far from home and that his room, his posters, his comics, his record player—that none of it belongs to him. His desk is like an ancient altar on some faraway hilltop, standing beneath the ruined white moonscape of his ceiling. Where could he be? How did he get there? But he is never more comfortable, more at peace, than when he’s stretched out on his carpet in the quiet of the afternoon, reading by the light of the window, the sun making the pages of his book glow like milk in a clear glass. He feels as if he was born here, right here, between his bed and his dresser. As if he has never moved so much as an inch.

  After church on Sunday, he finishes the Myth book and puts it in his satchel with his worksheets, folders, and notebooks. He has never lost that old elementary school show-and-tell impulse, the sense that every cool new thing he discovers immediately becomes a part of him, a hallmark of his personality, with its own little interior ribbon-cutting ceremony. He has to carry it around with him, whatever it might be, or how will anyone know who he is?

  In Bible the next day, before the bell rings, he shows the book to Ethan Carpenter. “This,” he says, “is the single best thing I’ve ever read. I’m talking, in my life.”

  “Sweet. Can I borrow it?”

  “What? No.”

  Mr. Garland has stepped across the hall to talk to Mr. Shoaf, and Leigh Cushman—a guy with a girl’s name—is pacing at the chalkboard, smacking his palm with the back of his hand like a substitute. “You kids’re in big trouble. Take your seats. Stop talking right now, or you’re all going to D-Hall. I mean it! This instant! That’s it, every one of you’s going to D-Hall. I’m giving you all checks. One check. Two checks. Corn Chex. Wheat Chex,” and maybe in the end it was just a reflex, Kevin thinks, but if he had to guess, he would say that the reason he doesn’t want to loan the book out, to Ethan or anyone else, is because of the part of his personality that is one gigantic record-keeping system, a complex sifting and filing scheme that dictates what goes here and what goes there, turning his life into so many marks on a tablet. His mind would busy itself with the book’s whereabouts every second it was away. He knows it would.

  “Okay, yes, you can borrow it, but Ethan? Look. You have to be careful.”

  “Dude …” Ethan says, me
aning, You’ve seen my comic books, haven’t you? His collection is as big as Kevin’s—bigger even. He keeps it in a row of long white boxes he tends like a garden, gently maneuvering each issue into a clear Mylar bag with an acid-free board, then taping it shut, vertically not horizontally, so that the tape doesn’t fray or separate, and arranging it with the others in alphabetical and numerical order. Side by side his comic boxes have the quality of giant Japanese fans, their slats closed chock-chock-chock. Kevin wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Ethan dusts them.

  He surrenders the book across the aisle as Mr. McCallum begins the morning announcements. Just like that it vanishes into Ethan’s backpack, throwing a few scattered dots of color through the mesh of the front pocket.

  For the rest of the day, Kevin feels the way he did that time he locked himself out of the house and saw his house key resting on the kitchen counter. The book is behind a window. The book is his, but he cannot touch it. Part of him would rather bike back to Kroger and buy another copy than wait for Ethan to return it. He is Like That, always Like That. He is no good at hiding it. A few Saturdays ago, sitting by the fountain at the JCPenney end of the shopping mall, he realized he was missing the bag with his butter mints and his pop-its and his Song Hits Magazine, and Kenneth said, “Kevin. Stop it. Good Lord. Look,” gesturing to the ledge where he had set the bag while he was tying his shoes. “You’re about to cry, aren’t you? Why are you like that all the time?”

  In SRA, Mrs. Bissard—Mrs. Bizarre, everyone calls her: it is irresistible—gives them a reading comprehension test, and as soon as Kevin has finished, he begins working on a detective story, the kind he has been writing ever since the first grade, hypothesizing that someone he knows, usually a kid from his class, has vanished, and he has been appointed to solve the crime. The Case of the Missing Sarah Watts. The Case of the Missing Craig Bateman. Or this time, for a change, a teacher: The Case of the Missing Miss Vincent.

  He plunges into the mystery with, “The authorities were baffled,” then sketches the facts of the case—how two days before, in fifth period, Miss Vincent had discovered Clint Fulkerson snoring at his desk and, when she couldn’t wake him, left to fetch the principal.