Anything but Typical

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  Every morning I have to stand at the front of the room by the door, because it is noisy in homeroom. My homeroom teacher leaves a note with instructions, so even if we have a substitute, I am allowed to stand here. I have to stand and face the wall. But I listen. I want to hear the lunch service for today, even though I’ve read the menu. I want to hear which teachers are absent and which buses are late. I don’t like there to be surprises.

  This morning I am surprised.

  “Our biggest congratulations,” Dr. T.’s voice is coming from the PA system. “To sixth grader Jason Blake for winning a creative-writing contest and a trip to the Lone Star State . . . and for those of you who don’t know, that’s Texas. Have a great time, Jason. And don’t forget, Jason, to . . . represent.”

  Now he is talking about today’s assembly on dental hygiene. Now he is talking about parent-teacher conferences and the eighth-grade field trip to Washington, DC, next month. But Dr. T. got one part wrong. The part about me.

  I didn’t win anything. My parents just signed me up and this makes me wonder about everything else. My parents had to get permission from the school, from Dr. T., for me to miss next Friday. So they must have explained it to him then. I guess NTs don’t listen to each other very well either.

  But now, worse than him getting it wrong—everyone knows, and I will have to go.

  Everyone in the whole school knows I am going to Texas.

  I will never be able to get out of this.

  The problem inside my room, inside my house, inside my head, is growing bigger and bigger. The problem that Rebecca will see me at the Storyboard convention in Texas is growing bigger and wider.

  All my worlds are colliding.

  I never wanted it to happen this way.

  When we go to the library, Miss Leno seems very excited, even though a couple of months ago she said I was rude.

  “Jason, what wonderful news,” she is saying to me. “Don’t you want to go on your computer? It’s empty. It’s waiting for you.”

  Computers don’t wait for people.

  But I don’t want to go on the computer.

  I can’t check my e-mail from school. They won’t let you, but if they did, I sure wouldn’t want to. I didn’t respond to Rebecca’s message yet, the message that says she is going to the Storyboard convention.

  I don’t know what to write to her, so I think it’s best not to write anything.

  I don’t know what to tell my dad or my mom. Thing are set into motion, and I can’t stop them. Bad things.

  When Rebecca sees me, she will not like me anymore.

  “Jason?” I hear Miss Leno’s voice, but it is behind me now, because I have turned away.

  I can walk to the window, where I can see the parking lot and the line of trees. I can almost put myself across the asphalt and into the coolness of the woods. I can hear the leaves, every one nearly the same as the one beside it, brushing against each other, and if I listen—

  “You need to be doing something this period, Jason—”

  Listen—

  “Jason, have you finished your library project? Why don’t you come over here and work on your project?”

  Listen, very carefully, I can hear their meaning:

  There is nowhere to hide.

  Not in the letters.

  Not in the words.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  My parents sit with me on the four chairs lined up in front of the TV for a full twenty-five minutes this night with no movie. Jeremy gets really impatient. He won’t wear the make-believe seat belt, and my parents start fighting.

  “Jeremy doesn’t have to do this,” my dad is saying.

  “We are a family,” my mom says back.

  I am watching the TV screen.

  Jeremy takes off.

  “Wanna read me a story?” Jeremy is asking.

  The book he wants me to read to him is open, and Jeremy is sitting in the exact spot, not too close, not too far, next to my pillow.

  But I am not in the mood. The feeling I have wraps up my whole body. I can’t get it off. I can’t get out.

  “No,” I say.

  Jeremy doesn’t move. I knew he wouldn’t.

  “Read,” Jeremy says.

  Sometimes it feels like there are bugs in my brain, bugs like the ones that bang themselves against our front screen door at night in the summer, when the light is on outside. I can hear their wings spinning, caught inside the glass hood of the lamp, vibrating in desperation.

  What will happen when Rebecca sees me?

  I have a math test tomorrow. I can’t do the math. What will she think of me? My shirt, this shirt, is stained from lunch. Why do I do that? And it is very hot in here. I can’t stand it. My skin hurts. All of it.

  And Jeremy smells like bubble gum. Why does he smell like bubble gum and ketchup?

  Rebecca will not like me the minute she sees me. Like all girls don’t.

  The bugs throw their buzzing bodies against the screen, in no order, over and over, with no hope. There is no way they can get in, and why would they want to, anyway? What’s in here for them?

  “Is it because of the bird girl?” Jeremy is asking me. “The one you write to online?”

  The tight wrapper around my body loosens when he says that, giving my heart room to breathe.

  I nod.

  “What about her, Jason?”

  I am reading the book, and Jeremy is listening. But I am also telling him. In between pages and pictures the words get tangled up, but Jeremy understands.

  “She is going to Dallas, Texas, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s good, isn’t it, Jason? Isn’t she your girlfriend? Don’t you want to see your girlfriend?”

  I shake my head. No.

  Now Jeremy is quiet. He is resting his head on my pillow, right where my head sleeps at night. I smell the ketchup and the bubble gum. Jeremy doesn’t move when I slip a piece of his hair between my fingers.

  In and out, until one by one all the bugs fly away.

  For now. For tonight.

  The next day is the beginning of a C schedule, and just like the hard-haired office lady announced, there are Italian dunkers today—my favorite. And garden salad, dinner rolls even though it is lunch, and cherry Jell-O. Usually this food makes me happy, but today I carry my tray across the black-and-white-checkered floor and sit by myself.

  There are a million little specks inside the top of this table, specks of color that run so deep into the plastic they seem suspended in space. Colorful snowflakes that never move and never fall.

  Bennu can hardly imagine what life would be like as a normal-sized person. His parents, surprisingly, are not pressuring their son. Bennu’s father tells him the decision is his to make. It’s your life, Bennu. Your body. We love you, Bennu, no matter what your size, no matter what your limitations.

  His mother cries and cries, but she also agrees to stick with whatever decision Bennu will make. We want you to be happy, Bennu, she says. The doctor tells them he will wait three days for an answer, and only three days.

  That night Bennu has a dream—

  “Jay-Man, come sit with us.”

  I don’t have to look up. I know it is Aaron Miller.

  “Hey, man, nobody wants to eat alone,” he is saying.

  Sometimes I can block out the noises in the cafeteria like my therapist taught me, grab the sound and throw it away like all the food in the garbage can.

  The clanking of plates being dropped onto the metal counter.

  Grab it and throw it away.

  The cafeteria lady, the one with the red bandanna and the yellow teeth, arguing with one of the kids about his lunch card. She says it’s not his. He says it is.

  Grab it and throw it away.

  The sound of the dishwasher, way in the back, humming and steaming, clicking on and off in cycles.

  Chairs scraping across the floor.

  Paper bags crumpled.

  Angry voices.


  Happy voices.

  Laughing. Whispering.

  Nobody wants to eat alone.

  “C’mon, Jason,” Aaron says again. “Look, nobody else is sitting there. They left already. C’mon. It’s just me.”

  I pick up my tray and follow Aaron’s feet. I slide as quietly as I can up to the table. And I watch the lights on the ceiling, which are not one color but made up of all colors and which move and flicker and dance if you pay attention.

  If I had the words out loud, in my mouth, the words that told a story, that made a connection, that could draw a picture for Aaron to hear, I could ask him for help. I would ask Aaron what he would do. Aaron is a boy people like. Even when they look at him. And see him. And know who he is.

  Bennu—

  Who is real but not real, only Aaron does not know this.

  I—can see Bennu but not see him.

  Bennu is a dwarf.

  Who likes a girl, a girl who is average height.

  But oh, see now!

  There is a cure.

  There is a doctor.

  An operation he could have.

  He has three days.

  What should he do?

  Aaron is very quiet.

  Am I talking? Really talking? Most everyone is gone from the cafeteria. Fewer noises. The lights shutter. The dishwasher far off in the kitchen shuts off.

  “Wow, great story,” Aaron is saying. “Bennu, huh? So, he decides he is going to have the operation. Scary stuff, man.”

  Aaron is putting the crumpled paper from his cupcake, the tinfoil from his sandwich, and the stems from his grapes into his paper bag. He is done eating. He pushes his chair out behind him.

  He says, “Well, good for Bennu, I guess.”

  Aaron stands up. He bends his arm all the way back, behind his head, the paper bag in his hand.

  He says, “But hey, wouldn’t it be weird—if Bennu wakes up from the operation, and he’s all tall and stuff, and then he doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror?”

  I hear Aaron’s paper bag hit the plastic rim, and I hear it fall inside.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Irony is a trick in literature.

  It is very hard to explain what irony really is. It is one of those abstract things like those similarity questions on IQ tests. It can be something someone says or something someone does or something that happens. Irony is when the exact opposite of what is expected happens.

  Irony can be used to be funny.

  Or to make a point without being obvious.

  I wrote a story last year for language arts about a man who was so afraid of dying, getting hurt, or getting ill that he did everything he could to avoid it from happening. He had air machines pump filtered air into his house. He had a special car built for himself that was virtually indestructible. He ate only food that was grown in his special clean-soil-and-water greenhouse. He had every surface in his house padded so he would never get a bruise or a cut. If he ever had to go outside, he wore a specially designed suit that protected him from the other people, objects, the sun, and any polluted air. It even had a lightweight metal helmet in case something fell from one of the other buildings or from the sky. And then one day while he was taking a walk, one of the air hoses in his suit had a malfunction and the man died right there on the street. He suffocated in his own invention that was designed to protect him.

  That is irony.

  My teacher really liked it, but she said it was a week late, and I got a B minus. That is not ironic, that is just very unfair.

  I have sat in a chair pretending to be flying on a plane for a total of one hundred and thirty-seven minutes over the course of this whole week and a half. I wasn’t nervous at all about flying before, but now that my dad has told me not to worry about the announcement about the exit row and how the seats can be used as flotation devices, I am a little worried.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he tells me.

  Rebecca.

  And I feel my eyes sting.

  “I’ll be with you the whole time, Jason,” my dad tells me. His voice is so soft. I know he loves me, but I can’t tell him. I would cry.

  Boys are not supposed to cry.

  I am scared.

  And boys are not supposed to be scared.

  This is something he can’t fix, like he used to when I was little. When I was little and my dad and mom could make everything all right just by being there. Or saying something. Or telling me what to do. Or making cookies.

  My dad can’t fix me now. No matter how much he loves me.

  So I don’t tell him what’s wrong, because I don’t want him to feel bad about that.

  It was ironic, however, that for my fourth birthday, the year my mom signed me up for nursery school, the year Jeremy was born, my dad bought me a toy truck as my present, and I hated it.

  It was metal with rubber tires and a light on top that really turned on. The light was red and spun around inside its plastic cover. The metal was cold and sharp, and the light hurt my eyes. It was too big and too small at the same time. It was hard to push along the ground. It hurt my hand, and I couldn’t see the fun in that at all. It hurt my knees, too, to be down on the floor pushing this truck.

  What I really wanted was a new computer game for my birthday that year.

  “Do you love it, Jason?” my dad asked me. “Isn’t it cool?”

  So then I knew my dad loved the truck. And in that same moment, even though I was only four years old, I knew my dad would be hurt if I didn’t—

  Like the truck too, as much as he did.

  Maybe more.

  So I said, “Yeah.”

  I was just trying to protect my father from having his feelings hurt.

  Irony is also when the true meaning of a character’s actions or words are clear to the reader but, ironically, not to the character himself.

  I don’t remember very much from nursery school, but I remember the first day, seeing my name spelled out in my cubby. I remember it was all capital letters, and that bothered me. Only the first letter should be capitalized. I wasn’t feeling very good about this experience. I didn’t want to go inside the room.

  I didn’t like those letters, but no one else saw it.

  I moved forward.

  I remember warm apple juice that just smells so bad.

  The man who played the guitar that hurt my ears.

  And then one day I remember my mother fighting with Miss Baum. My mother’s voice was sharp. Miss Baum’s voice was scratchy.

  “He’s fine, Miss Baum,” my mother said. “I don’t see you talking to some of these other parents.” I felt her arm sweep over my head. I felt the breeze. I heard the music coming from the other room. I remember the music. They were singing “The Wheels on the Bus.”

  B-A-U-M

  B-O-M-B

  Miss Baum but not miss bomb.

  Not like a bomb, Miss Baum. Different spelling but similar personality.

  “Some of these other parents,” my mother said, “whose kids are so mean. The kids who make fun of other kids. Or how ’bout that Samuel Diamond who won’t let my Jason on the climber? And pushed him? Is pushing more normal to you, Miss Baum? Is that more acceptable?”

  “Mrs. Blake, I am just suggesting some kind of testing might be a good idea.”

  “Ridiculous. Unless maybe your eyes need to be tested, Miss Baum. So you can see what’s going on in your own classroom.”

  “Here, Mrs. Blake, if you change your mind. Yale–New Haven. It’s not far.”

  “Ridiculous,” my mother said. I felt her hand pull me and pull me away.

  I think my only choice is to never write to Rebecca again.

  If only I wasn’t going to the convention.

  It has already been two days. Then Rebecca wrote me again and asked if I got her last message.

  Rebecca is a girl. And she is a friend. So I should be answering her notes.

  Rebecca is my girlfriend, like I told Aaron, and if I want to keep
it that way, I can never talk to her again.

  So maybe she’ll think I dropped my computer and it’s in the shop, or we went away somewhere without Internet. I could be in the hospital. There are many reasons I could think of that a person would never go on their computer ever again.

  If only I wasn’t going to the convention.

  She’ll never know, but at least she won’t really know.

  Another reason is I could be dead.

  Now a series of unrelated events occurs.

  It rains heavily on the East Coast for five days in a row, and the play-off games scheduled for Boston and New York City are postponed nearly a full week.

  The assistant producer at the SportsNow Network, where my dad works, gets a stomachache, throws up three times in one day, stops by the emergency room at St.Vincent’s on his way home from work, and is rushed into surgery for an appendectomy.

  Our flight to Dallas/Fort Worth is cancelled three days before we are supposed to leave, and the only nonstop flight they can get us on is in two days.

  My dad says he can’t possibly make it.

  Besides, things at work are now very backed up.

  My parents are downstairs fighting about it right now. Family should come before work, my mother is saying. It’s not my choice, my dad is saying.

  The word that came into my mind this morning while I was brushing my teeth was “serendipity.” I have never had my word have so much meaning to what is going on, which in itself is serendipitous. This word I knew already. “Serendipity” means “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”

  I am happy and beneficial.

  I don’t have to go to the convention.

  I watch my computer boot up. The blue screen and then my screen saver. The clicks click and the whirls whirl. Even my computer sounds happier.

  I will write to Rebecca now. We can stay friends.

  Rebecca, sorry it took me so long to write you back.

  I was thinking of making up a reason I didn’t write right away, but I decide against it.

  The ending to your story is really good. I like how the people figured out they really needed each other after all. I could see it made into a movie. That’s great news about the convention. You won’t believe it, but I was almost going to go too. But my dad just found out he has to work that weekend.