Spontaneous

by Aaron Starmer

  The rest of the party wasn’t as blatantly cultish, but it was blatantly fun. Dylan downed some more ladles of elixir and the sort of drunk he became was a . . . sleepy one. He was goofy and kissy at first—not at all scary like some boys who use numbness as an excuse to paw and punch in equal measure. He said “I love you” almost every time the alcohol touched his lips. But then, halfway through the party, he nodded off on the couch. So I sat there stroking his feet, sipping from the cauldron, and enjoying the company of my once and future classmates.

  There were still many other classmates to convince, of course. The party lured mainly the extroverts and overachievers, and even some of those stayed home. Tess, for instance, didn’t attend, which puzzled me more than it pissed me off. I texted her as the festivities were coming to a close.

  Me: Missed you here.

  Her: Sorry. Busy. What happened?

  Me: Might’ve convinced everyone school is cool.

  Her: You’re kidding. Good for you.

  Me: Good for all of us.

  Her: I really am sorry I didn’t make it. That house though. The things that have gone on there.

  Me: Oh. Yeah.

  Her: I hope you’re not mad at me.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. I knew Tess wasn’t comfortable with Laura Riggs’s place and yet I had totally disregarded it during the frenzied planning stage.

  Me: I’m the one who’s sorry. I will never be mad at you, Tess McNulty. Never never ever.

  how we got home

  Asking your dad to drive your passed-out-drunk boyfriend home isn’t usually the best course of action, so when I couldn’t rouse Dylan, I texted Rosetti for a ride. A response arrived seconds later, as the headlights from her Tesla flicked on and shone through Laura’s window.

  Rosetti: Already here.

  I was pretty drunk myself, so I don’t remember who carried Dylan to the car, but when we were on our way, with him snoozing in the back and me riding shotgun, I raved about what a success the night had been and I thanked Rosetti for her encouragement.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been much help,” I said as I checked once more to make sure Dylan was asleep. “You know, with the whole fightin’-da-man thing.”

  “You are helping,” Rosetti replied. “If you get the school open, that’s a big deal. And I will be there. Staying one step ahead of them. Keeping an eye out for you, Tess, and Dylan.”

  “Fuck ’im,” I said.

  “Dylan?” she asked, her chin shooting up as she checked the rearview.

  “No, no, no, of course not,” I replied, and I blew a kiss over my shoulder to the backseat. “I adore my sleepy puppy boy. I’m talking about da man. Fuck Uncle Sam.”

  “Well. Easier said than done. It will require a lot of legwork. Speaking of which, have you talked to Tess lately?”

  “All the time,” I said, though I thought it best not to mention what we’d talked about during our bike ride. “Tess has her own stuff going on and I don’t wanna pressure her into helping with this whole school thing, you know?”

  “I can understand that. My only concern is that she hasn’t called or texted. She said she has some theories and I’d love to hear them, but she’s been incommunicado.”

  “She’ll come around. She’s always there when I need her.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. It takes time to warm up to new social arrangements,” Rosetti responded and she left it at that.

  We drove in silence for a while, and the lingering effects of the elixir made me consider all sorts of things to ask Rosetti. Are you into black licorice? Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? If the universe is infinite, then—

  “Do you think he’s dangerous?” I suddenly blurted out.

  “Who? Uncle Sam?”

  “No, this guy,” I said, motioning with my head to the snoozing fella in the back. “You don’t want him to know what we’re doing. You think he’ll mess it up? Is that what worries you?”

  “He’s a boy,” she replied. “All boys are worrisome.”

  It reminded me of All the Feels. I had never considered the hero, the hunky and yet down-to-earth Xavier Rothman, to be worrisome. Sure, he was afraid of having too many emotions, but who isn’t afraid of that? The truly worrisome ones, that’s who.

  “Do you think Dylan did it?” I asked Rosetti. “I mean, did he post that whole ‘burn all you fuckers to the ground’ on his brother’s wall?”

  “You haven’t asked him?”

  “He said it was to help Warren. That Warren wanted to come home.”

  Rosetti shrugged. “Motives are strange things. But they usually make sense when all the evidence presents itself.”

  What I may have lacked in evidence, I made up for in imagination. I closed my eyes. I pictured a twelve-year-old Dylan sitting all by himself on a floor scattered with Transformers. I pictured him cross-legged, a laptop resting on his knees as he logged in to Warren’s Facebook account and scrolled through the photos, through countless images that didn’t include Dylan. I pictured him typing and retyping the post before finally hitting send.

  I’m gonna blow . . . No, no, no, not explosions.

  I’m gonna set fire to the office of . . . No, no, no, too specific.

  I’m gonna burn all you jerks . . . No, no, no, who burns jerks?

  Fuckers! Fuckers will work. The world is full of fuckers!

  I’m gonna burn all you fuckers to the ground!

  Perfect. Done. Send.

  Oh shit, what did I just do?

  I opened my eyes, turned to Rosetti, and said, “I don’t think it was Warren who wanted to come home. I think it was Dylan who was lonely and wanted his brother back.”

  Rosetti checked the rearview again and said, “He’s not lonely anymore, is he?”

  I nodded. “I hope not.”

  We sat in silence again, the glow of streetlights splashing across our faces as we passed them. Silence is something I avoid in normal circumstances and absolutely hate when I’m drunk. Which means I opened my stupid mouth again.

  “So you never went to prom?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Better things to do?”

  “I thought so. I was young. Sixteen. But already focused on college and career. I was recruited into a government youth program and thought that was a better use of my time.”

  “You were too cool for prom,” I said as I gave her a playful punch on the arm. “I know that much.”

  She shrugged and said, “You probably would have thought I was the opposite of cool if you had gone to school with me.”

  “So you’ve changed a lot since then?”

  “Not much at all actually,” she said, and the car slowed to a stop. We were in my driveway. The clock on the dash told me it was two in the morning and the charge on the Tesla’s battery had fifty miles to go. “Go to bed, Mara. I know where Dylan lives. I’ll take it from here.”

  how we got it done

  The morning after the party, a group gathered at the high school with assorted tools and cleaning supplies. This was the do-tank I was talking about. Boys and girls pushing mops and swinging hammers, bringing my thoughts to fruition. Malik’s parents ran the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, so they served as the experts and told us what we were capable of fixing. Dylan was a trouper, rolling up his sleeves and doing his part, sweating off what I assumed was his first hangover. Meanwhile, I walked around offering thumbs-up and pats on the back, which was equally essential work, don’t you think?

  The school wasn’t in terrible shape, actually. The water had been shut off after the #ForBilly riot and once we swept up the glass and debris and jerry-rigged a bathroom into working order, it seemed nicer than the sad old Shop City Mall where the youngsters were matriculating. Granted, it was water stained and stinky as hell. Black mold was a certainty, but we only needed the place for about fiv
e months. If our bodies didn’t self-destruct during those months, they certainly could endure a few spores.

  Next on our agenda was winning over some teachers, which was essential if we were to have any chance of convincing the school board to approve our plan. We opted for email because we figured even if the teachers had left town, they’d be checking their old accounts. Elliot Pressman did his late girlfriend, Cranberry, proud by hacking into the city records and collecting the email addresses of anyone with a teaching license in the county. Then we sent out a short blast written by our political mastermind, Skye Sanchez.

  We, the seniors of Covington High School, have seen our classmates perish. We, the seniors of Covington High School, wake up every day wondering if it is our last. We, the seniors of Covington High School, have hurt no one, and yet, everyone has hurt us by denying us the simplest and most fundamental rights and freedoms. We, the seniors of Covington High School, deserve to learn. Teach us.

  Four brave souls answered the call. And after Skye presented our proposal to the school board, which had shrunken to three nothing-to-lose members, we got our wish.

  “There’re still a few bucks in the budget and we appreciate your sticktoitiveness,” loopy octogenarian and School Board President Louise Mender said. “Can’t guarantee the state will recognize any of your grades or accomplishments, but you go on and enjoy the rest of your senior year. It’s the least we can do.”

  It was the least they could do. There was enough money to pay those four teachers, as well as a lunch lady and a janitor willing to pitch in. There was one bathroom, two barely refurbished classrooms, a modified cafeteria. Not much, but it would have to suffice, and we tore our way through as much red tape as possible to get things ready for a speedy return.

  Not that anyone noticed. As January rolled along, bigger things happened. A jumbo jet went down over Brazil. A tsunami killed thousands in the Philippines. The cast of a new comic-book movie was announced. In other words, as we geared up to go to school, the citizens of the world shifted their attentions. Like some foreign war that people get sick of hearing about because they don’t understand the politics, our plight was deemed unwinnable and no one cared about some human interest story starring plucky kids asserting their right to an education. Save that shit for NPR. There was no recent carnage, so there was no reason for most journalists to stay. Sure, a few dedicated professionals remained embedded, but the others chased after stories with fresh entrails and clear endings. As long as we, the cursed ones, stayed put, the world seemed comfortable not thinking about us.

  Classes for the underclassmen started at the Shop City Mall right after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which seemed appropriate considering the man always valued education much more than capitalism. Then, on February 6, amid very little fanfare and nearly three months since we’d last been inside its not-so-hallowed halls, Covington High reopened to welcome back its senior class.

  school redux

  Of the approximately two hundred seniors trapped in town, forty showed up. Not bad, considering. Rather than split up, we gathered everyone together in what we decided to call Room the First. Jocular and muscular Latin teacher Mr. Spiros greeted us. I’d never taken his class (because, come on, dead language) but I knew his reputation. Outspoken, passionate, considered swoon-worthy by the ones who appreciated beefy braininess. Tess, for instance.

  “I’ve been in it,” he said with a fist raised. “Ears deep in it. Iraq, Afghanistan. The real deal, friends. Until now, I’ve stayed hush-hush about my experiences as a marine because there were certain sensitivities. Yes, a teacher without tenure is a cowardly creature. But tenure doesn’t matter much anymore, does it? They can shove their sensitivities up their keisters as far as I’m concerned. Time to get real, right?”

  A chorus of “oorah!” from a few lacrosse players in the crowd was enough to fuel him, and he started pacing around the room.

  “Right on, right on,” he said. “We’re getting real. Real real. Now, let me tell you about some real things. Post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly known as PTSD, is most certainly real. I had it. Or should I say, I have it, because that SOB don’t simply fly away like a sparrow on the breeze. The flashbacks, the panic attacks, the sleeplessness, the deep-deep-deep holes. I don’t doubt that many of you know what I’m talking about. And I don’t doubt that you’re drinkin’ or druggin’ it away. Well, that will only take you so far. You need to talk about this stuff. You need to grab it by the cheeks and give it a good look, and I’m here to help you with that. Because I understand. Boy, do I.”

  “War is over for you, Spiros,” Eric Chambers hollered. “We’re still in the thick of it.”

  “True dat,” Spiros said in the most earnest and adorably lame way. “But I know you can get through it and out the other side. Who here has read Michael Herr’s Dispatches?”

  No hands went up, but the never-ever-shy Greer Holloway asked, “Is that one of those dystopias?”

  “If you’re asking, ‘Was the Vietnam War a dystopia?’ then you better believe it was, sister,” Spiros said. “I first read that book when I was twelve and my dad, who did three tours in ’Nam, dropped it in my lap and said, ‘Now you don’t have to bug me with questions.’ There’s a quote in those pages that I think is especially appropriate for your situation. Herr says, ‘All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.’”

  “Hits home, homey,” Greer said.

  Spiros blasted Greer with finger guns and said, “That’s what we’re gonna work on. Honoring the ones we lost and making sure you aren’t forgotten by the ones who haven’t done right by you. And how are we gonna do that? By broadening our minds.”

  “Can we read that book?” Greer asked. “Sounds rad.”

  “It is most definitely rad, Miss Holloway,” Spiros said. “And I think reading it is an excellent idea. It will be your first assignment for my class, which we will be calling Livin’ 101.”

  He wrote it on the whiteboard, replacing the g with an apostrophe and everything.

  Livin’ 101 turned out to be a mishmash of history, philosophy, psychology, and good old-fashioned arguments. Had she lived to experience it, debate-team queen Gayle Heatherton would have adored it. It was, I imagine, what school used to be like way back in the day. A safe space to share ideas and challenge peers on common assumptions.

  Since we had only four teachers, we decided to have four classes, running an hour and a half each, with a break for lunch. Our next class that day wasn’t as intense, but it was equally, if not more, fun.

  Essentials of Filmmaking was held in the other room, Room the Second. We’d never had a filmmaking class in school, which had always flummoxed Ms. Felson, an English teacher well liked during her time at Covington High, though her time here didn’t last. She had been “let go” the previous year when someone found compromising pictures of her and those pictures made their way onto every kid’s phone in about fifteen seconds. Never mind that the images were relatively tame—boobs, basically—and more than thirty years old. There was instant concern that she was some crafty cougar, a GILF ready to pounce on any unsuspecting, thin-mustachioed Romeo. She was quickly and thoroughly canned.

  As for those pictures, they were screenshots from Ms. Felson’s brief stint in Hollywood, most notably as a topless bit player in a series of early eighties “boobie movies” with such awesome titles as G-String Commandos, Follow that Virgin!, and T&A A&M. Good for her, I say, because she looked smoking hot—at least she did in the blurry stills I saw—and, it would seem, she learned a thing or two about framing, lighting, and editing while she was at it.

  “You’re all carrying movie cameras with you every moment of your lives,” she told us. “That’s a distinct privilege. Yet you’re pointing the lenses at yourselves. Which can be fine. Which can be lovely. Some of the time. How about we use the res
t of the time to turn them around? Create the narratives you all deserve, not the ones the world is foisting upon you.”

  Next up was Ashtanga yoga with former driver’s ed instructor Mr. Harmsa. Why Ashtanga yoga? Because Mr. Harmsa always wanted to teach Ashtanga yoga, and this was the only place he could teach it without certification. While I grumbled at first that it was a waste of time, I will admit that I felt more relaxed and focused after twisting around on the cold floor of Room the First. Becky Groves told me that it was the only time since Katelyn’s death she’d felt “at one with the world.” A bit of a stretch for a bit of stretching, perhaps. But hey, if it calmed Becky’s nerves, we could all be thankful. No one ever needed to hear that girl scream again.

  After yoga, we were treated to a lunch prepared by Kiki Barnett, a Food Network–obsessed junior lunch lady who had aspirations beyond chicken cutlets and taco bars. She whipped up braised short ribs, a black bean and quinoa salad, and key lime pie. Fortified behind the sneeze guard, she passed us our trays and her sorrowful looks, the kind reserved for incontinent pit bulls at dog shelters. When Tess thanked her for the meal, Kiki said, “If a guy on death row gets to eat like royalty, then so should you.”

  Right on, Kiki. We’ll all be sure to pass our parents your card in case they need someone to cater our wakes.

  Finally, it was back to Room the Second, where a teacher who’d never actually taught in Covington greeted us. This was Mrs. Dodd, a kind-faced woman who’d arrived in town with the initial wave of Bible thumpers. She wasn’t on the email blast, but once word of our plan reached her, she was determined to be involved. Her first order of business was to nail a carved slab of wood to the wall. The Ten Commandments. Next to it, on the whiteboard, she wrote, “The Old Testament.”

  “Separation of church and state, lady,” Claire said. “Separation. Of church. And state.”