Wednesday November 3rd
I was dripping in my towel, opening my drawer, when the cancer hit. A black clump of memory, a little velvety bubble of carbonation, stretched against the confines of my skull, squatting and sulking like a bad plum. Everything I’ve forgotten is still balled up behind my eyes, inscrutable and sensitive to the touch, a cold, impenetrable marble of truth. I’ve already taken four aspirin.
There in my drawer I found my plain white shirt with the small flower embroidered on it. At the party Natasha was dressed like me, remember? “I want to wear something regular,” she said. “But, you know, sarcastic regular. Ironic. You know, for Halloween.” There the shirt was, stark clean, blinking white. If Natasha had been wearing my shirt, why had she burned the dress? It was a mistake, I was sure, that we’d pay for later.
I was already running late but I decided to look for Natasha’s nail file and give it back to her, thinking I should try to set this jigsaw as right as I could and return things to their proper places. My tumor throbbed in my head as I overturned sofa cushions and peered underneath tables but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. You remember the nail file, don’t you? The one with the claw at either end, one claw striking a faint bell in my head and the other stretched out into the ether, invisible and irrevocable. Like–shit!–the bus.
Millie and Jennifer Rose Milton were running late too, Millie applying her makeup in the rearview mirror at the red light where I stood shivering. “Get in, get in,” she called, but Jenn just glared at me.
“I don’t want to interrupt anything,” I said cautiously, as Jenn looked on, her lips taut and tight. That’s right, taut and tight.
“We’ve already been uninterrupted,” Millie said. “I forgot to set my alarm. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Or Jenn-Jenn, for that matter. I found her asleep on the floor of her room, in yesterday’s clothing.”
“Yesterday’s clothing?” I asked, mock shocked. “How passé, Jenn.”
Millie shrieked with laughter; even little Jenn-Jenn snorted and turned to roll her eyes at me. “Oh Flan,” Millie said, capping her lipstick with a brisk click. “No wonder you’re a writer. You always have a line.”
“Yes, well,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Oh, I’ve been trying to ask Jenn-Jenn this, but she’s been so touchy lately.” Millie spoke lightly, but I saw her meet Jennifer Rose Milton’s cold eyes in the mirror. “We need to choose a new opera. Do you have an opinion on Tosca versus Faust? Hard to choose between murder and the Devil, eh?”
Lightning could strike anytime now. Any time at all would be fine.
“Flan?”
“Um–”
“Shit!” Millie said, jamming on the brakes. We all nodded forward, like praying Muslims. Traffic was stalled in front of school. For some reason the student parking lot was blocked and the parking guards were waving people away with useless arm sweeps. “What is this?” she said. “The faculty lot’s full again, and we’re not allowed in the student lot–where are we supposed to park? The union’s going to go crazy.”
We were inching closer and closer to the entrance of the student lot. There was a small crowd of people, mostly students, with a few impatient teachers trying to herd everyone out of the way. But what was going on? The parking guards kept waving away, and cars were trying to inch out of lanes, trying to turn around in driveways. Then suddenly somebody tall moved, and a flashing red light shone in my eye, spinning DANGER and explaining the backup. We inched closer. Policemen waved us through, their eyes squinting in the fog-filtered sun, their jaws set in an official grimace. Occasionally they’d call out something inaudible, but you know what it was. What it always is. Move along, move along. There’s been a problem. The police are here. The culprits will be hung.
Jennifer Rose Milton and I glanced at each other. My stomach dropped like a cartoon anvil. “Maybe we should get out of the car,” she said hesitantly.
“Yes, OK,” Millie said, looking distractedly in her rearview mirror. Yellow police tape was being unwound and wrapped around posts and trees like some big kite had tangled itself up in my high school.
Jennifer Rose Milton opened the door and jammed it into V__’s chest. “Oof,” she said, holding her stomach. “Watch it.”
“Sorry.”
“Well, watch it.”
“She said she was sorry,” I said, still marveling that somebody had actually said “oof” out loud, like we were in a comic strip.
“Fuck you,” V__ said, looking at the cops. I guess it wasn’t a comic strip; I guess it was reality. In a comic strip V__ would have let loose a string of asterisks and exclamation points.
“V__!” Millie said amazedly.
“I was just kidding,” V__ said, halfheartedly remembering herself. “I’m sorry, Millie. My car was stolen and now they found it.”
“It was stolen?” Millie said. “That gorgeous car? That’s awful. Jenn-Jenn, you didn’t tell me V__’s car was stolen.”
“V__’s car was stolen,” Jennifer Rose Milton said stonily.
“But now,” V__ continued, her dark eyes on me, “it’s in the student lot.”
“I’m confused,” Millie said. A car behind us honked. “You all get to homeroom and we’ll talk about it later. I’ve got to find parking, preferably within a five-mile radius. Oh, V__–do you have an opinion about the next opera we do? We were talking about Tosca versus Faust. Hard to choose between murder and the Devil, eh?”
“I don’t know,” V__ said. “It doesn’t matter, I guess.”
Honk. Move along, Millie. “OK,” Millie said, looking at V__ curiously. “I’m glad they found your car, V__.” HONK. Millie moved off and we walked to the sidewalk.
“Flan?” V__ asked with elaborate casualness. “Do you mind telling me what exactly the car is doing in the student parking lot?”
I was trying to remember what Douglas had said. “Douglas and Natasha moved it.”
“Why?” Jennifer Rose Milton said.
“Ask them,” I snapped. Why was everything about me all the time? I opened the door of the school; inside it was pandemonium. Kids were yelling and yelling, while teachers waved their hands above their heads and the loudspeaker squawked something. A locker crashed open and somebody’s life toppled out: books, papers, photographs, all trampled beneath everyone’s expensive shoes. Some people were crying, and others were shouting; suddenly a knotted whirlpool appeared in the crowd as somebody, her hands over her face, became the center of attention. Mokie, his glasses crooked on his face, pushed his way through the crowd violently, actually thrusting people aside like they were clothes of the wrong size, muddling the rack. He reached the person everyone was swarming over, and grabbed her. Her hands slapped him, each one a tiny wicked claw like Natasha’s emory board. Mokie grasped her by the shoulders and began to move her like a shopping cart; she turned around and I saw it was Rachel State. Her eyes were wide open and raccoonishly made up, her face was gummy black with all her Goth makeup melting under her brother’s death. Her mouth was open in a drowned-out howl. Mokie dragged her to his office door, opened it, shut it behind them.
“They must have opened the trunk,” I said, and Jennifer Rose Milton glared at me and put her finger to her lips. With difficulty we made our way up the stairs where the din was quieter and better organized. Clumps of students were seated in circles on the floor, leaning against lockers. A few of the more star-struck freshman and sophomore girls were crying, but mostly everyone was talking very fast, spreading the crumbs of gossip in grating high voices. It was the sort of scene I always pictured going on inside Kate’s brain.
Right on schedule Kate ran up to us, with a wan Douglas scurrying after her.
“There you are,” she said to me. “Douglas was just telling me this whole thing was your idea.”
“What?”
“Moving the car,” she said. “Why didn’t you keep it in the bad neighborhood?”
“Natasha–”
“Yo
u know,” Kate said, “it doesn’t matter. This will speed up everything, anyway.”
“What are you talking about?” Douglas asked. “You’re turning into a basket case, Kate. Just like Flan. We’re all–incredibly fucked.”
What happened, I wondered, to all the intricate and resonant words we always used? Now we were savages. Now we were so savage.
“No we’re not,” Kate said. “You’re forgetting Ron Piper. He saw Adam at that bus stop. California and Styx. No matter how suspicious we look, he can verify our innocence.”
“California and Styx are parallel,” Douglas said.
“No they’re not,” Jennifer Rose Milton said.
“Yes they are,” he said. “Think about it.”
“You think about it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said. “The point is that he’ll back us up. Ron will–”
“I’m not so sure having Ron provide an alibi is going to work.” Jennifer Rose Milton swallowed, her wan face rippling. “Maman said she heard that Ron was the last person to see Adam–the teachers are gossiping about this as much as the kids–but that it doesn’t make him beyond suspicion. It makes him the center of suspicion. Maman asked me if I thought he had anything to do with it. I said of course not, but she went on and on. You know, Ron’s gay, and why was he at a party with teenage boys–”
“That’s absurd,” Kate said. “It wasn’t ‘a party with teenage boys.’ It was more than–”
“She said,” Jennifer Rose Milton plowed on, “that she felt Ron had been a little too close to us over the years anyway, and now it looked like he was really mixed up in something. She said that the school board really took a chance hiring a gay man and that now it looked really–I just think that Ron is not going to be as unimpeachable–is that the word I mean?–he’s not going to be as unapproachable–as effective a witness as we want. Particularly now that V__’s car–”
“Why did you move my car?” V__ cried. “That’s what I want to know. Flan, why did you–”
“It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was–”
“Please,” V__ said in ugly disgust. Kate was shaking her head at V__ and watching me carefully.
“How did you even get the keys to V__’s car?” Jennifer Rose Milton asked.
“Please,” V__ said again. “She got them the same place she got Lily’s glasses and Douglas’s hat and my silk scarf!”
“Shhh,” Kate said. “This isn’t helping, V__.”
“Or Gabriel’s pocketknife,” V__ cried. “Or your sweater, Kate!”
“V__!”
“How did this happen?” V__ asked, suddenly quiet. She was biting her lip and I was so close to her I could see all the bites she’d made on her lip, like little astronaut footprints, tiny foreign dents claiming the moon forever. We’d never be the same again.
“Come on,” Kate said. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“No,” Douglas said. “V__’s right. Flan, I want you, right now, to tell Kate what you told me about why we should move the car.”
I just stood there. Once again I was supposed to say something. Once again the slippery creature I was riding, the neat boxcars of what happened, had submerged quietly under the dark water gurgling in my head, the cancer humming like some appliance in my skull. All the props were moving over, tossing like sleepers: the clean white shirt in my drawer this morning, the missing nail file, all the secret items on my top shelf suddenly in plain view of everyone. In my gurgly dreams an incomplete croquet set was spread out on the lawn in front of me next to a short row of bloody teeth and eight shiny pearls. I had the clues but I didn’t know the mystery. “I don’t know,” I said, finally.
“Come on,” Kate said again, like she hadn’t expected anything to come of this interruption. “We have an all-school assembly, and I think we should be there to hear what they found.”
“We know what they found,” Douglas said, but Kate shook her head again.
“We can do this,” she said.
The auditorium was overcrowded past overcrowded, with harried teachers trying to herd everyone everywhere. I ran into Natasha, literally and hard. “Watch it,” she said to me even when she saw who I was. Kate, Douglas, V__ and Jennifer Rose Milton were right behind me but suddenly those incredibly fat twin boys who always wear hooded sweatshirts got between us and soon it was Natasha and me sitting together. I craned my neck to try to find the other B8ers, but almost immediately the lights dimmed ominously, turning the auditorium hysteria up just one more notch.
Mokie stepped up to the podium. His glasses were still crooked on his face and he was still an idiot, but panic was coming off him like steam rising off Lake Merced in the mornings. “Children,” he began into the mike and a short tantrum of indignation roared back at him. “Students,” he corrected himself hurriedly. “We have called this all-school assembly to correct rumors that have been going around this morning that something terrible has happened. Something terrible has happened. As you all know–” Mokie coughed and looked offstage, then nodded. “As you all know, here is Principal Bodin with an important announcement.”
Bodin waddled on. His light blue blazer was buttoned and his hands were on his hips so the collar was haloing around him like a cobra hood. There was the scattered clatter of a few people clapping, for some reason.
“Hello,” he said. “This is Principal Bodin. Is everyone here? Everyone?”
“No,” Natasha muttered.
“Unfortunately,” Bodin said, “we’ve had what I would call some terrible news. We all would call it that. It is tragic. I regret to inform you of this terrible announcement. That is why we are having an all-school assembly to come together as a community”–he swallowed and held a closed fist to his rib cage–“as we did previously and have always done.”
That’s when everybody knew that what was darting around school was true–somebody was dead. And some people knew who it was. A large teenage wail rose up from the masses; instinctively the bossiest teachers stood up and marched up and down the aisles waving their hands horizontally to shut everybody up. They looked like umpires: Safe! Safe! If they only knew.
“It’s true,” Bodin said, looking down. “Here to talk to you more about it is–we’re very grateful to have–Dr. Eleanor Tert. You know her from her work on the all-school survey, and some of you have had the honor of individual interviews. Without any further–for more on this subject–” Bodin gestured emptily out toward us like he was tossing us crumbs.
The curtains parted slightly like late-night television. I swear the grumble of the auditorium sounded like a timpani roll. Everyone clapped and there she was.
Hello, children. The last time I was here I was here to talk to you about a story.
My story.
I hope that some of you remember the story of my addiction and triumph. If not, you can read the book. But that isn’t important. Today I am here to talk to you about your story.
Today in the student parking lot the body of Adam State was found inside the trunk of a stolen car. He had been missing almost a week, and the police told me he was dead most of that time. I have also been told that Adam was one of the brightest boys here at Roewer and was on the cusp of a brilliant future. Barring any addictive behaviors of his own he could have become an incredible person, and we all mourn him.
His death is not what worries me, however. What worries me is the way he died. Adam State was killed in what looks distinctly like a Satanic ritual. The body was brutally mangled and wounded, and there was a talisman decorated with claws which was found protruding out of Adam’s eye. Although this artifact is normally used as an emory board, I believe–and law enforcement officials believe as well–that it is a Satanic object.
A friend to all of us was found dead this week. Whether he was killed by a Satanic cult here at Roewer or by somebody else at some other place doesn’t matter in the slightest. What is important is that Satan has entered this world of Roewer High School as a phony solution to the pressures y
ou face. I was in high school, so I know the pressure you are feeling, and I’m here to tell you to join me and say no to Satanism and survive! That’s what I’m here to tell you! Cults are not the solution! I am the solution! Listen to me! My name is Eleanor Tert and I am here to help you all! Thank you.
The auditorium was in full evangelistic roar. The floor rumbled with all the stomping feet, shaking loose some of the gum that had stuck there for years. The house lights burst on. The umpires were walking up and down the aisles again but nobody felt safe. With a horror-movie-shower-scene scream Sweater-Vest Shannon stood up and ran toward the stage, where Tert made little shooing motions. “Please!” Shannon said. “Please! He died! Everyone dies! Everyone dies!” Tert walked back through the curtains after floundering for a while to find the opening. One of the guidance counselors was trying to say something into the microphone, but with a loud pop! it shut down and she walked back offstage, wobbling from a broken shoe. “Everyone dies!” Shannon shrieked, alone in the front of the auditorium. Why wasn’t anybody helping her? “Everyone dies!” Some people started laughing, tinny and shrieky like it was being torn from their throats by fishhooks. “Dies! Flies! Lies!” I stood up; it was clearly time to leave. Some geometry teacher–the balding one Gabriel had sophomore year, I think his name is Treadmill–tried to block me from the aisle but I darted past him.
“I’ve been looking for you, Flannery Culp.” I turned around and there was Hattie Lewis, her crazy-quilt dress matching her crazy-quilt eyes. The assembly let out, and I walked toward her, upstream, as everyone else ran to class.
“I’m really sorry about the Myriad lately,” I said. “I know I’ve been a bad literary magazine editor.”
“That isn’t why I’m looking for you,” she said. “I’ve been worried about you. The faculty gossip says that you and the others are somehow involved in this ghastly business with Adam and Mr. Piper.”
The Basic Eight Page 33
