My brain is about to burst from so much gratification delaying, by the time I get up to my room and boot up my computer. My skin hurts from waiting. My flying hands try to soothe my skin. My feet are tapping because my hands are flying, which makes my skin hurt more. And finally I can read my message from Rebecca.
You must be really good in language arts, she writes.
Then she tells me all about her day.
PS, she writes again. So sorry to hear about your dog, Lester. He sounds like he was really special and he was lucky to have you.
I have never felt lucky before, that I can remember.
But I do now.
My parents are happy with me.
I haven’t had to leave school for any reason in over a month.
All my teachers gave me good progress reports, even my art teacher, Mrs. Hawthorne. And the probation period for not having a one-on-one aide has passed. We have another IEP, and it is decided I should stay inclusionary. No one-on-one necessary at this point in time.
They think now is a good time to tell me about a trip they have planned for me. They were going to wait to tell me, but they think it’s a good time right now.
Kind of a reward, they tell me.
They are big on rewards. My mom and dad have come into my room at the same time. They never do that. There is barely enough room.
“Would you like to go to the Storyboard convention this year?” my mom is asking me.
There are Storyboard conventions every year, all over the United States and hundreds of people go to them. Some people go dressed in costumes of their favorite characters, with fake ears, hats with horns, swords, and lightsabers, and most of the stories are either from movies or books that were made into movies. And then you notice that sometimes they even start using the actors’ names in their stories instead of the characters’.
That’s just plain confusing.
The Storyboard convention is for all the people who post on the different Storyboard websites. All the different ages. Lots of people go. It’s something I’ve been talking about ever since I found the website.
“Yes, we mean it,” my mom says.
She must be reacting to my face, because I didn’t say anything.
“We know how much it means to you and how long you’ve wanted to go,” my dad says. “We’d like all four of us to go, but that would be a little bit too expensive, so just you and one of us. Either Mom or me.”
Either Mom or Dad?
Mom hands me a brochure for the Storyboard Sixth Annual Writing Conference in Dallas, Texas.
“It’s not just that fan fiction stuff,” she tells me.
“There are writing workshops,” my dad says. “On all different topics.”
“And readings,” my mom says. “From published authors. Real writers.”
“Like you’re going to be one day,” my dad says.
I put my head on his shoulder, and I let my eyes close. I put my hand on my mother’s leg, and she puts her hand on top of mine.
I am going to Dallas, Texas.
Truthfully, language arts is my best class, but not because I have a good grade in it. I like it because there are no right answers, even if the teacher says there are. Even when they mark something wrong on your test or book report, it’s really just their opinion, and in my opinion they could be wrong. It’s like when you read the directions on the back of a package of brownie mix.
Two eggs or three?
Do you want chewy or cakelike?
There is no wrong answer.
Books are like brownies.
I also like language arts because everyone asks me for help.
“Jason, can you fill in this last page in my vocabulary book?” Kids who don’t ever talk to me otherwise. “But make the handwriting messier so it looks like mine.”
“Jason, how do you spell ‘definitely’?”
“‘Veterinarian’?”
“‘Facetious’?”
“Hey, what happens at the end of this book, Jason? It was so boring I couldn’t finish it.”
“How about ‘potato’? Is there an E at the end?”
When I ask my language arts teacher for my homework for next Friday, because I am going to miss school, because me and my dad are leaving for Texas. He asks me where I am going.
“Texas.”
Mr. Shupack laughs, the nice laughing. “I know, Jason. But where? What are you going there for? Do you have family there? Do you have family in Texas?”
Mr. Shupack is pretty nice. He is very tall and has facial hair that connects from his sideburns all the way around to his chin and under his nose. There is no mistaking him for someone else. I always feel comfortable around him, even when he thinks he’s right all the time, but I hate looking at the birthmark on his arm. I try never to see it.
I look at him out of the corner of my eye.
“No,” I say. “I am going to the Storyboard writing convention in Dallas, Texas.”
I think he will like this, since he is an English teacher and they are supposed to like writing. And then I realize I am not leaving for another week and a half, and maybe Mr. Shupack doesn’t know what the homework will be that far in advance. I remember that I have not yet told my parents which one of them I want to come with me. And my dad says he needs to know so he can make the reservations. He told me that this morning when I was brushing my teeth.
So then I say, “Vizcaíno.”
It is the word that came into my head this morning, but I didn’t think of it until just now. I was thinking of too many things when it first came to me. And now it comes to me again.
It always just happens like that.
“The pitcher?” Mr. Shupack says.
“What?”
But now I know I shouldn’t have said it out loud. It was the consonant sounds, the slippery, sliding sound of the word. Remembering this morning and the decision I have to make.
“Luis Vizcaíno? The guy who used to pitch for the New York Yankees?” Mr. Shupack says.
I had no idea. Sometimes that happens.
I must have heard it somewhere.
On TV maybe.
“No,” I say. “My father.”
I am sure now.
Chapter Nineteen
The most important thing to do when you are writing a story is to find a dilemma for your character to grapple with. You can have the greatest, most interesting characters, and you can have something really important you want to say, but you need a story. You need conflict.
And you don’t have to look very far. It’s all been written before.
In every book in the library.
Every fable and myth, every play and legend, every fairy tale and story.
You can make up this whole new world and all these amazing characters, but it’s just that in order to make a story, basically, something bad has to happen.
It’s not that I don’t know that my mother is upset, or that I don’t know why. I just don’t know what I could do about it.
“Your mother gets her feelings hurt easily,” my dad tells me. “But she understands.”
I don’t.
Because I don’t talk much, my mother thinks I am not feeling. For my mother, talking about feelings and feeling feelings are the same thing. But for me they’re not.
So she is sitting very quietly, watching TV, and she looks okay, but I know she’s not.
My dad is on the phone making airline reservations. I know my mother wanted me to pick her, even though she didn’t really want to go. My mother doesn’t like to travel. She doesn’t like to leave the house, really. She gets nervous when she has to drive to new places. She always turns right when the directions say left, and then she looks like she is about to cry. She gets lost pretty much every time she goes somewhere she has never been before. So she tries not to do that.
Which makes perfect sense to me.
Why do something that you’re not very good at? Why?
“Women like to know they are wanted,�
�� my dad told me. “They want to know they are needed.”
I want to—
Sit right next to my mother.
On the couch and touch her. Touch her hair. I used to love the feel of the smoothness between my fingers, and when I was little, I wouldn’t even realize I was touching her hair, in and out, between my first two fingers. I could see the color with the touch of my hands. I could hear the rhythm when I closed my eyes, like water over slippery rocks.
Touching my mother’s hair was soothing, and that’s why I did it. So now I am too old for the soothing, but I never seem too old to have the stress.
I have a lot of stresses.
If I had asked my mother to take me to Dallas, Texas, would my father be upset instead? Maybe, but he wouldn’t be sitting in his quiet, like my mother is. And what about Jeremy—maybe he’s mad because nobody ever takes him anywhere?
Except Jeremy did go to Six Flags Great Adventure. Twice.
I really want to go to the convention. I want to be around all those people who write stories and talk about stories. Around real writers whose characters come to life in their minds so real they can hardly tell what they are trying to say from what their character is actually saying.
I want to e-mail Rebecca and tell her my good news.
Maybe I am lucky.
I am thinking Rebecca will be very excited for me that I am going to the convention, like Mr. Shupack was.
And maybe someday I will be a famous writer.
Maybe someday I will write a book about my life.
I can see Bennu, in my mind, considering all his options. I am seeing him looking at the other people around him, but I know I have to put him somewhere to do this. Like at a party or in school. So he can see lots of different people and think about whether he wants to be more like they are.
I have to think really hard what it would feel like to be so short. What the world would look like to him. What he would look like to the world. And what can I have happen that will make things any worse than they already are for Bennu?
And then I have to listen.
I have to listen and let Bennu tell me what he wants to say.
I can’t wait to tell Rebecca about my trip to the convention. I am sitting at my computer for a long while before I want to turn it on. I am thinking about how I will write to Rebecca.
So that she will be most impressed.
It is the upper right-hand corner button, and you have to hold it down for at least two seconds. You can’t just push it like the other keys on the keyboard.
I like the noise my hard drive makes when it begins to wind up. The whirling and grinding noises, like there are little gears inside cranking, little tiny lights blinking on. The fan starts spinning. The screen goes from black to dark blue. And besides, I like to give my computer a rest at night. Not to always be on alert, as if any moment it has to light up and start working. I like to give it a little warning.
All the icons appear on the screen, one by one.
And then it prompts me for my password.
I am still thinking of Bennu. In a way I can actually see him, but not the way you’d see a real person standing in front of you or in a movie even, but the way you see a memory. The way you see a dream. The way the words, and images, and realness and not real all get mixed up. The way you can remember a dream and know exactly what happened, and what that person who sold you the giant ice cream cone looked like, but it doesn’t translate into being awake.
The letters are the same, but the language is different.
I am ready to write a message to Rebecca, but I see that she has already written to me, even though it was my turn next.
Jason, you’ll never believe this. She writes, The Storyboard convention is going to be right in my hometown this year. And guess what . . . I am going to go! There are tons of workshops and some real authors will be there. I will make sure to take really good notes and I will share everything with you when I get home. Yours truly, she writes. Rebecca.
I think something bad has just happened.
Chapter Twenty
My parents want to know what’s wrong.
That is the question I hate second most in the world.
Is something wrong?
My mother is asking me, “Honey, is something wrong?”
“What’s going on, Jason?” my father is asking me.
I can’t answer this question. It would be like trying to catch drops of water at the bottom of a waterfall. That’s just what it feels like, a ton of water falling on my head. Constantly bombarding my brain. It’s hard to breathe under all this falling weight of water.
I can’t let Rebecca really see me.
Pounding.
She’ll know exactly who I am.
Falling.
Who am I?
I want to get a haircut now. My hair is killing me.
I can’t go to the convention now. No, I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell anyone.
“Jason, stop pulling at your hair. Jason, stop. Stop flapping. Look at me. What’s wrong?” My mother is saying.
Jeremy is quiet.
He is always quiet when I am loud.
And the other way around.
Everybody was somewhere else, but now they are all here. In the hallway. I have to throw something, from my hand, into space. Into the space that is attacking my brain. I have to throw the thing that I feel is in my hand.
But none of this probably would have happened if my mother hadn’t come into my room in the first place. She opened the door to my room without knocking. Even my talk therapist has said she is supposed to knock.
“Are you all right?”
That is the question I hate first and the most.
“Jason, are you all right?”
Am I ever all right?
“Jason, I am talking to you,” she went on.
Rebecca likes me. She thinks I’m a good writer.
“I heard noises up here,” my mother said. She was still standing in my doorway.
She’s my girlfriend.
But she won’t be for long.
“Jason, stop it. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
But nothing could hurt more than this.
I am awake but dreaming. I can see Rebecca seeing me, even though I have never seen Rebecca and I don’t know what she looks like. Now she is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a great scarlet bird, two-dimensional, its head to the side, its wings spread like arms, surrounded by flames. That is how I know it is her.
It is crowded in the convention hall. And hot, because it is Texas. There are tables set up when you first walk in, two tables with big signs that say IF YOUR LAST NAME STARTS WITH A–L and another one that says, IF YOUR LAST NAME STARTS WITH M–Z. There are three people sitting at each table, and people are already pushing to get to the front and sign in. The check-in people are very friendly; I can tell by their voices. I am sure if I could look up they would be smiling. My dad does all the talking. When I start to rock a little, my dad doesn’t even act like he notices. If he cares that the lady next to us on my left, is looking at me and that she even takes two very tiny steps away, he doesn’t let on.
When you sign in, you get a name tag, which is not the sticky peel-off kind but a real one in a plastic sleeve that hangs on an elastic cord to put around your neck.
And my dad gets one too.
I look down at the tag hanging around my neck:
JASON BLAKE
WESTON, CONNECTICUT
STORYBOARD MEMBER
THREE YEARS
There is no escape now.
The thing that I threw at my mom to make her stop talking to me hit Jeremy instead.
Luckily, it was just my computer mouse.
But his head bled a lot.
It’s easy to feel bad about yourself.
And then even worse.
Chapter Twenty-one
It’s about the plane trip.
It’s anxiety, they decided.
And I
let them—
So my dad brings home two movies from the video store: The Wedding Singer and Air Force One. The Wedding Singer is so funny, and at the end everyone on the plane cheers for Adam Sandler when he gets the girl. My parents know I like Adam Sandler movies.
Then my mom sets up a chair in the living room, with another chair in front and one on each side.
“Just sit here, Jason.” She calls Jeremy. “Jeremy, come help.”
I am sitting here.
“Ten more minutes,” my mom is saying. She wants me to sit here for ten more minutes, because they think I am nervous about having to sit still in a plane seat for four hours.
This is the way they got me to ride on elevators when I was young and wouldn’t get inside. First we just walked near one. And the next day I pressed the button and watched the doors open. After a few weeks of that, once a week, I just stood inside, but my dad held the doors open. We did that every week for a few months until finally I consented to ride up the elevator to my therapist’s office, so after a year we didn’t have to walk the twelve flights of stairs. I don’t even go to that therapist anymore.
We turn off Air Force One as soon as the terrorists hijack the plane and start killing people. My mom is yelling at my dad for his poor choice of movies.
But I know they will keep working on this. My mom always says you have to face your fears. This has nothing to do with being scared to get on an airplane, but it’s better than telling them the truth.
I am afraid that Rebecca will see me.
I am going to need some time to figure out how to get out of going to Dallas, Texas, for the Storyboard convention.
But my dad has already bought the tickets.
I always listen to the morning announcements at school.
I like the way the words come out of the loudspeakers. I like the voices that have no bodies, that say things from far away so clearly. I know it is really just the lady in the main office, the one with the hard hair, but without a mouth and a face and eyes that look at me I can hear her better.
Anything but Typical Page 7
