The Basic Eight

by Daniel Handler

  “I’m sure even those of you who didn’t see it happen are shocked,” he said. “But Vice Principal Mokie can confirm it.” Vice Principal Mokie stood up from the front row and waved inexplicably. The principal and the vice principal looked at each other for a moment, and then both of them coughed in perfect unison. “Well, without further ado–” Bodin said, and out of nowhere an impeccably dressed woman came out from behind the auditorium curtain and approached the microphone. Bodin gave a little bow–a little bow, what was going on?–and she began to talk. And talk. As follows:

  Hello, children. I’m here to talk to you today about a story. My story.

  “Hello, children,” Natasha said to me, waving and making a goofy face. I snorted and got glared at by some fat Latin teacher.

  “Is it grammatically right to say, ‘I’m here to talk to you about a story’?” Kate whispered to me.

  “Grammatically correct,” I corrected her. It got quiet, and when I looked around me everybody was staring at us. I wondered why, until I looked at the stage and saw that woman staring at us hardest of all. Staring at me. That’s how it felt, later: metaphorically. I thought I was just hanging out with my friends but it turned out everyone was staring at us, and that woman–can you guess who it was?–was staring the hardest. Staring at me. I stared right back at her and smiled; the best defense is a good offense or vice versa or however that goes. She looked down, looked up and started again. She had the ugliest hairdo you can imagine. Go ahead, imagine one–that’s what it looked like.

  Hello, children. I’m here to talk to you today about a story. My story. When I was your age, I thought I was on top of the world. I had participated in some beauty contests, and although I hadn’t won any trophies, I was offered a job as a female flight attendant after graduation. I didn’t have to go to college! I was on top of the world.

  “She’s really speaking to me,” Natasha murmured.

  “What?” Kate whispered in mock horror. “No trophies? Were those judges blind?”

  Before too long I was promoted to first class. It was hard but rewarding work. On one flight, though, I was really exhausted. I could barely get on with my work.

  “Executives must have gone pillow-less,” Natasha said, and took a sip.

  One of my fellow flight attendants noticed how low I was, and gave me something he said would perk me up. He was right: it was cocaine. I had heard a few bad things about cocaine, sure, but my fellow flight attendant told me it was perfectly safe. It felt great. I felt like I was flying.

  “You were flying,” Kate and Natasha and I said in unison.

  Of course, before too long I was taking cocaine regularly, just to perk me up, I thought. I was in deep denial, and I’m not talking about a river in Egypt. I said I’m not talking about a river in Egypt. Well, you probably haven’t learned about it yet, but the Nile is a river in Egypt, and when I said “denial” it sounded like–well, never mind. Sometimes I’d get too wired to work and would help myself to the complimentary champagne to calm me down, so I became an alcoholic as well. My alcoholism enabled me to continue my cocaine addiction, and vice versa. Do you understand that expression? I mean my alcoholism enabled me to continue my cocaine addiction, and my cocaine addiction enabled me to continue my alcoholism. I was under a lot of pressure–

  “Cabin pressure,” Natasha muttered. I can’t resist adding these jokes.

  –to perform well in my job, and ironically–that means, well, tinged with irony–my drug and alcohol problem prevented me from doing so. The method I was choosing to deescalate my pressures was escalating them instead, which is always what happens in addictive situations. I know that now. Now, I’m a survivor. That’s why I’m here to talk to you today. One of your teachers received an overdose of drugs. Whether he took them on purpose or was given them doesn’t matter in the slightest. What is important is that drugs have entered this world of Roewer High School as phony solutions to the pressures you face. That’s what I’m here to tell you! Drugs are not the solution! I am the solution! Listen to me! My name is Eleanor Tert and I am here to help you all!

  Thursday October 21st

  Ten days. It seems like a good idea to add a sort of countdown to the proceedings here. Normally I wouldn’t do anything so crass–I’m a writer, so I value narrative structure above all else–but I think the murder is something of a surprise.

  I’m in homeroom now, and Bodin is over the loudspeaker with an update on Carr’s condition, which remains unconscious. An enviable condition on boring days like this one. He told us that Carr is on the seventh floor of the Rebecca Boone Memorial Hospital if we wanted to send cards or flowers. Cards or flowers to an unconscious person?

  There was a television show on when I was little, the premise of which was as follows: It is the future. We live in a space station on the moon. One day a comet breaks the presumed-permanent contact between the moon and the Earth and the moon breaks out of orbit. We are totally screwed and must spend several network seasons trying to get home. Strangely enough, I was experiencing a first-episode feeling as I left school, right in the middle of lunch: the sun hitting my bare arms as I opened the door like a singeing comet, the Roewer gravity clinging to me like some drippy friend, some love interest in an episode who doesn’t bring in the ratings and so is never heard from again, like, I don’t know, Gabriel, say.

  The bus driver gave me a why-the-hell-aren’t-you-at-school look and I gave him a shut-up-you’re-a-bus-driver-so-bus-drive look right back. The suspicion that the idea I had was a bad one began to gurgle inside my head as I watched the sights go by: Chinese restaurants, video stores, doughnut shops, a hospital, shit. Had to walk three blocks the way I had just come, bought overpriced flowers in the lobby and before I knew it I was asking a bitter-looking seventh-floor nurse what room he was in.

  This is one of those scenes that is going to be dreadfully overplayed in Basic Eight, Basic Hate, I’m afraid. Can’t you just see it? Carr in a gossamer bed, with some romanticized token hospital equipment near him–maybe a little gauzy bag of IV equipment or a screen with green heartbeat lasers moving across it like ocean waves. The camera moves around me as I speak, occasionally focusing on Carr’s unseeing eyes, provided by contact lenses so the hunky actor can blink unnoticed behind fake plastic comatoseness. “I’m so sorry,” she weeps, tears perfect like crystal. Nothing red or splotchy. “I’m getting therapy now from Dr. Eleanor Tert, so with the help I need, and with your forgiveness, I can go on with my life.” More after this.

  The real hospital room wasn’t blinding white but an irritating shade of pink that made everyone’s clothing look awful. Apparently someone had dropped a box of plastic tubing on Carr and it had slithered into any available orifice in an effort to hide. His face looked like something that under no circumstances whatsoever you should eat. Yellow bruises splotched him like cheap discolored blush, and little larvae of what I knew was dried blood lurked around his nose, though it looked more like those plastic scars gross fourteen-year-old boys buy for Halloween. There were a few bunches of wan flowers and some cards propped open on a table that could swivel into position over Carr’s bed, if he ever woke up, if he ever ate. I could see the insides of the cards, some of them signed by thirty or forty people. Whole classrooms were grieving for the person who lay there, I guess. There was nobody in the room.

  The urge to leave school and come here was so impulsive I expected some emotional supernova when I finally saw him, but I just stood there thinking about nothing–thinking about fourteen-year-old boys’ Halloween costumes, for God’s sake. I looked over at Carr expecting some rush, but he just looked like a lump of nothing. There was nowhere to put the flowers, so I filled the little pink trash can with water from the empty clean bathroom–shower but no shower curtain–and stuck my cheap carnations in it. There was no room for them on the swivel table so I put them on the floor where they really looked like trash. Carr’s eyes were closed. Outside somebody was paging a doctor over and over, and the squeaky whee
ls of something were making their rounds. Maybe the lunch cart, or maybe somebody in pain on a gurney. I was so seized with self-consciousness I felt like I had to say something, but neither triumph nor remorse washed through me. My hand itched.

  “You deserve it,” I said, finally, but I didn’t think that either.

  Friday October 22nd

  If Adam had only nine days to live, how would he live his life differently? Believe it or not, Hattie Lewis is making us do dictionary exercises because somebody didn’t know what corpulent meant. (Of course I do.) It’s amazing how one person’s mistake can wreck it for everyone. But the point is, I have tons of time to write down Adam’s activities for the day. Of course, it’s only second period, but he started early.

  “I don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Natasha said grumpily. We were rattling along two cars behind Adam. I had bribed Natasha into following Adam with a double latte plus a blueberry muffin with a crunchy glazed sugar topping that I could never eat if I wanted to keep fitting into my jeans. “I’ve never driven this slowly before in my entire life. Even this crunchy sugar topping isn’t worth this.”

  I nibbled my thumb, my only breakfast this morning. Ahead of us, Adam was taking advantage of some red-light time to stare in the sideview mirror and brush his hair back from his head. His other hand was dangling loosely out the window, so limp it might have been severed, his skin beautiful even against the smoke of exhaust streaming from the bus ahead of us. We weren’t driving to school. We were getting closer and closer to Kate’s house, but I wasn’t quite ready to accept that. He could have been going anywhere. Anywhere near Kate’s house.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Natasha said, gunning the motor. The car sounded strained from being kept at such a low speed. “He’s going to pick Kate up. Why is this so surprising to you?”

  Adam’s fingers were tapping in time to something I couldn’t hear. “I love him, I just love him, I can’t help it,” I said.

  “You know, love means a lot of things,” she said. “The first definition is ‘intense affection,’ followed by ‘a feeling of attraction resulting from sexual desire,’ ‘enthusiasm or fondness,’ and then there’s ‘a beloved person.’ But the last one is important, too. Last but not least. ‘A score of zero.’” Sorry. Every so often I’m opening the dictionary and pretending to be working on these stupid exercises.

  Kate’s street, Kate’s block, Kate’s house. “Pull over behind the parked car,” I said.

  “Oh Jesus,” Natasha said, but she did it. “I need a drink. Open the glove compartment.”

  “You drink too much,” I said, handing her the flask.

  “You follow boys too much,” she said. “Flan, what do you want from him?”

  “I want him to be my boyfriend!” I shouted and then realized immediately how ridiculous that sounded. Because–listen to me, Eleanor, Peter, Moprah–it was more than that. All the words in this dictionary couldn’t describe what it was. Large.

  “I don’t suppose it’s at all relevant to point out you have a boyfriend,” Natasha said.

  Kate’s stairs, Kate’s door, Kate. Natasha and I ducked down low and Natasha took another swig. I was afraid to peer out and watch them so we just waited until we heard his car start.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said, looking after them.

  “I can’t believe it either,” Natasha murmured, but she was looking at me. “This boy is bewitching you, Flan. Why are we following him? You were always a maiden never bold, of spirit so still and quiet that your motion blushed at herself. And yet in spite of your nature, of years, of country, of credit, everything, you fell in love with such a jerk! Look at him! Your judgment is maimed, imperfect! Why would you fall for him? I mean, Douglas turned out to be a–well, you know how Douglas turned out–but he has always been kind.” She practically spat out the word. “And now you have another kind boy, a nice boy, who would do anything in the world for you, and who do you follow in a car? Somebody who screwed you over, who will probably screw Kate over, and are you angry about this? Are you going to heed your fucking Calc teacher just once in your life and do something? What has he done to you, Flan? I vouch again that with some mixtures pow’rful o’er the blood or with some dram, conjured to this effect, he has wrought upon you!”

  “What the hell’s a dram?”

  “Look it up,” she snapped, and pulled out from the curb.

  “Don’t drive so fast,” I said, “or they’ll see us.”

  “You’re acting like a nut,” she said, swerving and sipping. I watched her throat swallow it; she looked so alive, like I could just reach out and touch her neck, her hair.

  “I can’t believe you’re calling me a nut,” I said. “Have you forgotten who the famed Roewer Absinthe Poisoner is?”

  She grinned, finally relaxing, and turned to me as she ran a stop sign. “Poisoness,” she said.

  “Poisonous is right.” Our wit will preserve us all. “You’re missing the student lot.”

  “No, no,” she said, lurching into it just in time. “Do you think I could get away with parking in the faculty lot, like V__ does?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I think it’s your shrunken head earrings that make you look most like a–”

  Oh.

  “What?” she said, and followed my eyes. Kate and Adam were kissing, quietly. It was the quietly that got to me, I think. If they’d been passionate about it–tearing their clothes off and rebuttoning them incorrectly–they’d have been lustfully reckless. But they were kissing in short bursts, little pats like kisses from birds. Kissing quietly, softly, like they were in love. I was crying and crying.

  “Oh my dear Flan,” Natasha said quietly, tossing her head back and finishing the flask off. She licked her lips and then wiped them on her hand, her dark lipstick staining her wrist like a suicide. “What has he done to you. What has he done to you.”

  “I don’t know,” I blubbered.

  She sighed, equal parts exasperation and love. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  “What?”

  “I said I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Natasha, no,” I said.

  “What, am I setting a bad example for the other children?” she said, smiling sharply.

  “No,” I said.

  “No, I’m not a bad example, or no, I shouldn’t take care of things?”

  “No,” I said. Let it be known, I said no. Nine days.

  Vocabulary:

  RESONANCE

  DEPROGRAMMED

  COMATOSENESS

  INTERROGATED

  SUCCUMBED

  DRAM

  SOMBER

  SINGEING*

  * Not “singing.”

  Study Questions:

  1. Did your opinion of Eleanor Tert change when you learned that she’s a recovering cocaine-addicted stewardess? (If you already knew this due to her numerous television and radio appearances, not to mention her books, pretend you just learned it.)

  2. Has your opinion of Flannery Culp changed over the course of this book? What changes your opinion of people, and what should be done about that? Consider that Eleanor Tert is now enormously successful and Flan is–well, you know where she is.

  3. The Rebecca Boone Memorial Hospital is named after Rebecca Boone, pioneerswoman and wife of Daniel Boone. Though the Boone family is now regarded as a pillar of early American history with their exploration of the frontier and their support during the Revolutionary War, the Boone family was twice forced off their land due to legal loopholes against which Daniel had a philosophical and moral objection. Despite these attempts by the legal system to destroy these people, however, Americans eventually learned the truth, and the Boones have now had their reputations overturned to the point that Rebecca Boone has a hospital named after her. Can you think of anyone else who is being treated unfairly by the legal profession? Can you help spread the truth about her, perhaps give her name to a new library, or bookstore?


  4. Do you think friends should do things for one another, or people should do things for themselves? Consider the consequences of doing things–at least certain things–before answering.

  Monday October 25th

  Six.

  “Homeroom has been extended today so all of you have the chance to complete this voluntary survey. Dr. Eleanor Tert, who all of you saw speak last Wednesday at the all-school assembly, has provided for us an all-school survey to help us. Recent events at Roewer High School have revealed problems which are facing virtually all adolescents in our country today, and Dr. Tert will be conducting a study here at the school through informal interviews of select students and faculty as well as these completely voluntary all-school surveys. You have twenty-five minutes to fill them out. Please don’t forget to put your name in the upper right-hand corner. Anonymity is guaranteed.”

  1. PLEASE CIRCLE ALL THAT APPLY (male, female).

  Well, both “male” and “female” apply. Just one of them applies to me. I circled “female.”

  2. PLEASE CIRCLE ALL THAT APPLY (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior).

  I circled “Senior.”

  3. PLEASE CIRCLE THE SENTENCE THAT BEST DESCRIBES YOUR FAMILY:

  a. My family is perfect.

  b. My family has few problems.

  c. My family has problems but is mostly OK.

  d. My family has many problems.

  e. My family has lots and lots of problems.

  f. Orphaned.

  Orphaned? I looked over, but Natasha was still hunched over her desk.

  4. PLEASE CIRCLE THE SENTENCE THAT BEST DESCRIBES YOUR SEXUAL ACTIVITY:

  a. I have had no sexual contact with the opposite sex (i.e., virgin).

  b. I have had little sexual contact with the opposite sex (i.e., kissing).