Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe

by Preston Norton

  “Lacey,” I said, “that’s what’s happening.”

  Lacey let go of my wrists, and her arms fell and dangled flimsily at her side.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know it’s insane. There’s basically nothing you could say to make me think this is any crazier than I already think it is.”

  Lacey was a sponge, struggling to soak it all in, but mostly just dripping in WTF.

  “So that fight you guys had with Niko…” said Lacey. “That was something on the…List?”

  “Yeaaaaah, that didn’t exactly go according to plan,” I said. “The original plan involved more talking and peaceful feelings. And less beating each other to death.”

  “And…now you’re friends with Esther because of this List?”

  “Ha!” I said. “No. Esther is to Jesus what ISIS is to Muhammad. She is a terrorist against the human spirit. And she has to be stopped.”

  “Okay…”

  “The List told us to call the JTs to repentance or whatever. So we arranged with Esther to do a Sermon Showdown.”

  “A what?”

  “We’re basically giving sermons to Esther’s congregation, but it’s a face-off. If Esther wins, we publicly renounce ourselves and the List. If we win, she resigns as student body president.”

  Lacey just kept looking at me, waiting for the part where I exclaimed APRIL FOOL’S!

  “And this is supposed to make them…change?” she said, finally.

  “Basically.”

  Lacey went right back to staring at me. She was really good at making me feel like I had something growing on my face—like a wart, or a tumor, or a leprechaun.

  “Aaron has a concussion,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe he saw God.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “Aaron seems pretty serious.”

  “Because he has brain damage! Shit. We need to tell someone. We need to tell a doctor!”

  “Um. I don’t think Aaron will…”

  “Will what? You don’t think Aaron will like us getting him the medical attention that he needs?”

  I shifted uncomfortably.

  “What if there is something wrong with him? What if it gets worse? Are you going to let Aaron ride the crazy train all the way to the psych ward? Or do you consider yourself his friend? Because a real friend would get him the help he needs.”

  “What do you need me for?” I said. My tone was a little too defensive for someone who supposedly didn’t think Aaron was nuts. “If you’re so worried about him, go tell everyone he’s crazy yourself.”

  “You’ve been with him,” said Lacey. “You know all the details of what he’s doing and thinking. Doctors will want to talk to you.”

  I hated every syllable of this conversation. I hated that this was somehow my responsibility now. I hated how much I still questioned Aaron’s sanity.

  But more than anything, I hated hated hated the idea that Aaron was only my friend because he had brain damage.

  It wasn’t until that moment that I realized Aaron and I really were friends. This epiphany was reinforced when Aaron passed a note to me in English. In any other class, this might have been a casual thing. In Mr. Spinelli’s class, however, this was the equivalent of High Treason. But Spinelli was too absorbed in the excerpt of the text he was reading aloud to notice. All that mattered was the Old Man, the Sea, and a Big-Ass Fish that unfortunately didn’t make it into the title.

  “Then the fish came alive,” said Spinelli, “with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty.”

  The note was folded into a tight little mock envelope, labeled in Aaron’s remarkably shitty handwriting:

  For Cliff

  (If you are not Cliff and you open this, you will die)

  Naturally, nobody had a hankering to die. The note passed from hand to hand to hand to me.

  I opened it.

  Aaron wrote: If Mr. Spinelli loved students as much as he loves this shitty book, he would be the best teacher ever.

  I wrote below Aaron’s message: If Mr. Spinelli loved students as much as he loves this shitty book, he would be a pedophile.

  I passed the note. The same chain of hands were waiting for the pass, and it was delivered smoothly. Aaron opened the note and read it.

  You know that snorting/choking/raspberry sound people make when they’re trying not to laugh, yet somehow it becomes just as loud—if not louder—than the laugh itself?

  Aaron did that.

  Spinelli was a falcon. He swooped down the aisle and snatched the note from Aaron’s hands.

  I was hoping and praying that Spinelli refused to read anything less than classic literary works. That student notes need only be intercepted for the little heathens to be sent promptly to the stocks. I would gladly go to the stocks. Just please, Lord God Almighty, do not read that note.

  Spinelli read it.

  His face turned red.

  And then slightly purplish.

  I doubted Aaron would rat me out, but he didn’t need to. The incriminating evidence was written on the back of the note: For Cliff.

  “CLIFF HUBBARD AND AARON ZIMMERMAN,” said Spinelli. “COME WITH ME RIGHT NOW.”

  Now obviously I’m heavier than most things that aren’t measured in tons. But wow did my body and the air and gravity all feel denser than ever as I stood up. Each step was like trying to walk through water. Aaron and I followed Spinelli out of the classroom.

  Aaron shot me a Sorry, dude look. I noticed it, but I didn’t really look at him because I was too busy looking at every inch of Spinelli’s taut body. His arms were straight lines to his fists—curled white balls of fury. There was no question. Every muscle, every follicle, every fiber of his being said that he hated us.

  There was something about being hated that much that made you sort of hate yourself too.

  “Mr. Spinelli—” I said.

  “SHUT,” said Spinelli, his voice a sonic boom, “UP!”

  I think Aaron sort of felt what I was feeling now. He stared at his shoes. So much for point number three on the List. Operation: Remind Mr. Spinelli Why He Chose to Teach had progressed approximately eleven steps backward.

  Spinelli escorted us through the main offices. Directly to Principal McCaffrey’s office. Unlike me, he knocked. But his knock was more like an AK-47 unloading its clip into her door. McCaffrey opened it just as fiercely.

  “What in God’s name—?” she said.

  Spinelli shoved the note in her face. “This is the note Cliff and Aaron were passing in my class.”

  McCaffrey had to pull the note a foot away from her face before she could read anything. Her eyes scrolled, and her mouth pulled into a grim line.

  “I want these two expelled,” said Spinelli.

  Aaron and I both whipped up straight like metal tape measures. The only person who seemed more alarmed than us was McCaffrey.

  “Roger,” said McCaffrey, because apparently Spinelli had a first name. “That’s not how disciplinary action works at this school. This is neither the time nor the place for—”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Joan,” said Spinelli. “I’m tired of you covering for these little assholes. Just the other day, I saw them in a fistfight with Niko Kaleoikaikaokalani.”

  Yes, he actually said Niko’s last name and seemed to pronounce it correctly. English teachers, Jesus!

  “Cliff here turned Niko’s face into pudding,” Spinelli continued. “Has anybody bothered to do anything about this?”

  “You and I both know that Niko isn’t a victim when it comes to fights. Besides, Aaron has a relatively clean record. We can bring this issue up in the next school board meeting, but—”

  “Fine,” said Spinelli. “Just Cliff then. I want Cliff expelled.”

  My stomach bottomed out.

  “Roger, please.”

  “He’s just like his brother. He’s not a student here. He’s not here to learn. He’s a
goddamned anarchist.”

  “Roger!”

  “Shane didn’t belong here. He belonged in a mental hospital.”

  “Roger!” exclaimed McCaffrey. “That is out of line.”

  Everything inside me imploded—sucked into an infinite emptiness. I couldn’t even breathe.

  “But nooooo,” said Spinelli. “We kept treating Shane like he wasn’t a problem.”

  “Roger,” said McCaffrey. “Be rational.”

  “Be rational? I’ll give you rational, Joan. Either you see to it that Cliff gets expelled, or I resign right here and now.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then consider this my official resignation.”

  Spinelli rotated 180 degrees and marched the hell outta there.

  “Roger?” said McCaffrey.

  Spinelli veered into the copy room. And then he popped right back out with a cardboard box in hand. He exited the main offices.

  “Roger!” said McCaffrey. She shoved her way between Aaron and me and chased after him.

  Aaron looked at me, and I looked at him, and we chased after them as well.

  Spinelli was heading back to his classroom. But not to finish his lesson. Not even close.

  Fifth period English had unraveled into its natural order of chaos—students standing, sitting on top of their desks, one kid flinging a crumpled-up paper ball at another kid’s head. Spinelli stormed into class so fast and furious, students tripped over themselves trying to get back into their seats. Silence fell like a shroud. But Spinelli didn’t care. Spinelli didn’t give a microscopic fuck, because he immediately went to work cleaning off his desk and emptying the contents of the drawers into his box.

  “Roger, please don’t do this,” said McCaffrey. “Talk to me. We can work this out.”

  But there was an invisible wall between Spinelli and McCaffrey. Her words bounced off the surface. There was only Spinelli, his box, and the shit that needed to get into said box. Everything else was just white noise.

  It was like Mr. Spinelli had it rehearsed. Like he’d been planning this for weeks. Years, even. He was leaving HVHS, he was leaving with a bang, and he was leaving forever.

  Wasn’t this the sort of thing that teenagers dream of? Their asshole teacher quitting in the middle of class? So why did this feel like a special kind of nightmare?

  In less than a minute, Spinelli had his box filled. Aaron and I barely stepped out of the way as he barreled out the door. McCaffrey followed him all the way to the front entrance of the school asking, begging him, pleading for him to reconsider. They disappeared on the other side of the doors.

  Aaron and I didn’t follow.

  I turned down Aaron’s offer to drive me to school the next morning—something that was becoming a ritual. Not that I didn’t appreciate his company. I just needed time to think. Or not think. I wasn’t sure which I was doing. In the forty-something minutes it took me to walk to school, all I could see was Niko’s pulverized face. Raising the baseball bat above my head. Spinelli cleaning off his desk. McCaffrey chasing desperately after Spinelli.

  Lacey telling me that Aaron had a concussion.

  “Hey, Cliff. You okay?”

  This came from Tegan. Oddly enough, it wasn’t prefaced with “honey” or “sugar-bear” or commentary on my “big, curvy ass.” I must’ve really looked like shit.

  I blinked myself out of my dead-zone haze. Apparently I was running on autopilot, because I had nearly passed Frankie’s corner in completely detached oblivion. I was all but sleepwalking.

  Carlos had pulled out a nudie magazine and garnered Frankie’s and Jed’s attention.

  But Tegan didn’t seem to be feeling it. Her hands were in her pockets, mouth pressed in a straight line.

  My instinct was to keep walking. But I didn’t. I stopped, and I looked at her.

  “Have you ever had the feeling that there’s this”—I struggled for the word—“this thing that you’re supposed to do? This really weird but really important thing? But the harder you try to do that thing, and the more you care about it, the more it feels like you’re moving backward? Like, maybe everything you’re trying to do—your entire purpose—is bullshit?”

  The moment I said it, I realized how stupid it sounded. Especially to Tegan of all people. I thought of attempting some sort of verbal recovery, but that would probably only make things worse. So I turned and kept walking.

  “Sometimes,” said Tegan, pausing almost thoughtfully, “we get so caught up in the things we gotta do…that we forget about the people.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. I turned and looked at Tegan. Like, really looked at her.

  Who knew she could be so…eloquent?

  “Don’t forget about the people,” she said. “And don’t stop caring. Ever. Only assholes stop caring. Stop caring, Neanderthal, and I’ll kick that big, sexy ass of yours. But only ’cause I care.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So after a long, awkward moment, I nodded.

  When I finally turned and left, I felt more confused than miserable—which I guess was an improvement.

  Tegan’s words were etched in my mind, a monolith in my head. There was no room to think anywhere else.

  Sometimes we get so caught up in the things we’ve got to do…

  …that we forget about the people.

  Also, sometimes I get lost so deep in my own thoughts, I’m approximately a gazillion percent oblivious to my surroundings. That was the only way I could have collided with the second-largest human being at HVHS.

  Niko.

  There was a brief moment in which I was convinced that I had just been hit by a Volkswagen. I staggered backward, and by some miracle of God I managed to stay on my feet. Niko seemed to mirror my I just got hit by a Volkswagen reaction. And then we stared at each other for the longest six seconds of my life. Well…I stared. It was hard to tell what Niko was doing since he had two black eyes and his face was so swollen, he could have been either pissed or happy to see me, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

  Once the six seconds ended, Niko walked past me.

  A part of me was relieved. That could have ended sooooo much worse. And by worse, I’m referring to my homicide.

  The other part of me opened my mouth.

  “Niko,” I said.

  Why? Why did I do that?

  Niko turned around.

  “I’m sorry for…” I said.

  And then I struggled to fill in the blank. I’m sorry for turning your face into a real-life Picasso? I’m sorry for nearly busting the candy out of your piñata head?

  “Just,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

  And then I walked away as fast as I could without looking like I was trying to escape.

  Sometimes…

  …we get so caught up in the things we gotta do…

  …that we forget about the people.

  By the time lunch rolled around, I could barely contain myself. Aaron and I met at the table and we exploded verbalization all over each other simultaneously.

  I said, “We’re forgetting about the people!” while Aaron said, “Dude, Tegan totally has a thing for you!”

  “Huh?” we both said.

  “You go first,” said Aaron.

  “No, no, no, you go first,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “Please…say whatever the hell it was that you just said.”

  “That Tegan has a thing for you?”

  “Yes. That. Why would you say that?”

  “Um…other than the fact that it’s super obvious? C’mon, I just saw you two talking. Something about ‘Don’t stop caring’ and your ‘big, sexy ass.’ I would’ve said hi, but then I saw the way she was looking at you. Three’s a crowd—I know the bro code. So I kept walking.”

  “The way she was looking at me?”

  “Cliff,” said Aaron. “It is my professional opinion that when it comes to the opposite sex, you are a dimwit. That girl is nuts for you.”

  �
�No,” I said. I shook my head to emphasize the utter no-ness of the matter. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she’s, like, lesbian or bisexual or something.”

  “Okay, for starters, being lesbian and bisexual are completely different. If she’s lesbian, she wouldn’t have a crush on you. If she’s bisexual, you’re fair game, buddy! If she’s one of the two, I’d put my money on the latter. Because she totally wants you.”

  “But WHY?”

  “Oh, c’mon. You’re a good-looking guy.”

  “Is that a joke? Have you seen how fat I am?”

  “Dude. Shut your doughnut hole. You’re like…what? Six five?”

  “Six…six.”

  “Six six!” Aaron exclaimed. “I’m pretty sure there’s a rule that says it’s impossible to be fat when you’re six six. Chicks dig big guys. And Tegan is super-tough, so she needs a guy who’s built like a refrigerator.”

  I raised my eyebrow.

  “The fact of the matter is that the hottest girl at school likes you, and if you don’t ask her on a date—like ASAP—I will.”

  Lacey was right. Aaron had a concussion.

  “Did you just call Tegan the hottest girl at school?”

  “Hell yes, I did. She’s totally got this badass, slightly emotionally damaged warrior chick thing going on. Sooooo hot.”

  “And you’ll ask her on a date if I don’t.”

  “Hell yes, I will.”

  I paused a long moment, trying to assess whether or not he was being serious. Was this just some clever tactic to get me to ask her on a date?

  Because it was working.

  I mean, she was cute—in her weird, vaguely threatening sort of way.

  “What about Lacey?” I said.

  “What about Lacey?”

  Seriously? Did I really need to explain myself?

  “You guys dated, didn’t you?” I said. “I’m thinking that about one hundred percent of Happy Valley High would agree with me that she is the hottest girl here.”

  “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent,” said Aaron. “Because I think that Tegan is the hottest. Don’t get me wrong; Lacey is pretty. She’s just not my type anymore.”

  “And Tegan is your type.”

  “Good God, Cliff. What’s so difficult to understand about this?”

  I felt like I needed to invite another human being or twelve into this conversation to emphasize that I wasn’t the crazy one here.