“I’m as Christian as anyone else,” Kevin remembers hearing afterward, and “It’s like he’s saying we’re not going to Heaven,” and maybe some people were angry only because they believed they should be angry, they had a responsibility, but others seemed truly indignant.
That same afternoon, waiting in the bleachers for PE to start, Kevin said to Ethan, “You don’t really think that, do you? That all Methodists are going to Hell?”
Saying the word—all those Bible words: hell, damn, Jesus—felt like cussing.
“Nah. The way I look at it is that how God wants you to live is like a point at the center of a circle. You should try to figure out where that point is and live as close to it as possible, but God wants us all in Heaven with Him, and salvation’s a pretty big circle.”
“You’re a pretty big circle.”
It was the obvious joke, and Ethan knuckle-punched him on the shoulder.
“Ow. See, it’s funny ’cause it makes no sense.”
The punch didn’t leave a bruise, just a tiny constellation of scarlet dots that were there when he went to bed but gone by the time he woke up. For the next few days Kevin couldn’t stop thinking about Ethan’s invisible moving circle of sin and forgiveness. He felt as if God was tracing him everywhere he went, sliding His eyes this way and that as he walked to the Superstop or kicked the soccer ball against his fence, ran laps around the school gym or collected his lunch from his locker. And still, occasionally, Kevin imagines he is drifting around inside the big glass ring of God’s grace. With every lie, every favor, every compliment, every dirty joke, every act of meanness or goodness, selfishness or decency, he goes bobbing around before God’s eyes like an animal plunging through the crosshairs of a gun. Someday God will fire, and Kevin will die. If God hits him, he will go to Heaven. If God misses, he will go to Hell.
The van carries them past Grady’s Pizza and the Mole Hole, then past the barbecue joint where the grill smoke flows from an old black cannon in the parking lot, and then under a bridge where a deserted basketball court lies spread out in the lamplight like a scene at the bottom of a pool, a dozen layers of algae straining the sun to a thin green gloss. Little Rock keeps taking him by surprise. Shopping malls and roller rinks erupt from the ground overnight, thrusting up through meadows and plots of trees. Everywhere he looks there is another bookstore, another burger place, an arcade, a playground, a golf course, a hospital, a school, a supermarket, a bank, a church, a bowling alley, a nightclub, a car wash—but the truth is they have all been there for years, and Kevin has simply never noticed them.
Where has he been living all this time?
There are so many blocks, so many neighborhoods.
The van makes a quick series of turns before it stops at a house he has never seen. The street is quiet enough for him to hear the trees clicking, the grass rustling. A stop sign with a missing bolt clanks against its steel post. Only the cars parked along the curb suggest that the party has already started.
Kevin follows Ethan inside. From the TV Huey Lewis sings, “Don’t need money, don’t take fame, don’t need no credit card to ride this train.” A couple of seniors lie arm wrestling on the living room carpet, their torsos propped up on their massive elbows. Kevin’s heart begins to race when he sees Kenneth in the corner, pouring a Pepsi from one of the two-liters on the card table, but it is some other guy, a lanky D&D type with his own striped button-up, his own brown hair, and oh thank God not Kenneth at all.
Ethan knows everyone, and Kevin knows Ethan, so no one asks him why he’s there. And no one will, he figures, as long as the two of them remain where they are, standing against the wall swigging lukewarm Sprite from plastic cups. He feels the way he used to feel at the water fountain after recess, as if he could drink and drink without ever stopping, an open well with a body around it.
Sarah is sitting on the couch watching music videos, absentmindedly toying with a scrunchie, her fingers lazily separating and then coming back together. Man. She is (1) unearthly, (2) unconceited, (3) unequaled, and (4) unattainable.
(5) Unfortunately.
He has liked her since he was six years old—half his life. He lets his eyes skip through the room. Some crazy screwdriver tightens his ribs around his heart. All the girls with their makeup and their hair spray. All the boyfriends with their girlfriends. It’s not that no one loves him. That’s not it at all. He is loved in a hundred little ways by a hundred different people. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? But he can’t stop wishing he was loved in one big way, by one person in particular.
It is terribly late to be in some strange grown-up’s house. Ordinarily Kevin would have brushed his teeth and changed out of his school clothes by now. Gradually the party has developed the pleasant buzzing softness of an episode he is just lying in bed imagining.
At ten, the youth minister situates a folding chair in the middle of the living room and calls everyone together for a game. The rules: a volunteer sits blindfolded with his hands covering his ears while the game master devises three options—for instance a bear hug, a neck massage, and an Indian burn; one, two, and three. Then the volunteer removes his blindfold, picks a number, and selects someone to perform the mystery routine. “Are you ready? Let’s play.” A blond girl with black eyebrows listens to a guy serenade her with Phil Collins. A girl in stonewashed jeans gets her back scratched through her sweater. A tall guy in a letter jacket, with the little white bull’s-eyes of recently removed braces on his teeth, accidentally chooses a noogie, and everyone whistles and claps and talks in a ripple of voices.
Kevin is not expecting the youth minister to say his name, or “Why don’t you come up here and take yourself a turn, buddy?” but he does, so Kevin walks to the chair, slips the blindfold over his eyes, and listens to the stampede sound his palms make when he covers his ears. Then someone taps him on the shoulder, and he can hear again. He removes the blindfold. Through the window he sees the yellow glow of the porch light, reaching barely as far as the hedges.
“All right, Kevin. One, two, or three?”
He always says two.
“Great. And who’s going to help you out with that?”
In his head he urges himself to reply, “I’m no fool. Sarah,” but though he is ninety percent certain it would be a cool thing to say, he just points, says a crackling, “Her,” and tries to prevent himself from smiling because if he smiles she will know everything. The oooh that stretches through the room makes his armpits go clammy. Sarah cuts slowly through the crowd. Then she is inches away, her face diving in to kiss him, and Thad and Kenneth can go to hell, because he is better, he is better, he is better.
The locker room door opens in an aerosol of sweat and shampoo—fwoosh, all at once, a steamy summer day’s worth—and Kevin makes a dash for his duffel bag.
“And he’s off,” Brandon Ostermueller says. “Ándale! Ándale! Arriba!”
No answer from Kevin. He veers past the lockers and skids up to the bench. He is already stretching his shirt off with his elbows. Everyone has a talent, and dressing out is his. The nimbleness of it, the zip—for him, undressing is like sprinting or shooting baskets: a sport. Back in December someone noticed he was always the first one to return to the mats after the whistle blew, and ever since, he has been changing faster and faster, trading his school clothes for his gym clothes like a frog hopping between puddles. Suddenly, mysteriously, he has developed a reputation. It belongs to him now. He feels obliged to maintain it. His shirt and his shoes and his jeans, go, go, go, then his white Mustang T-shirt and purple athletic shorts, go, then his shoes again, laced so loosely he is able to step back into them without jimmying at the heels, and in forty seconds he is out the door, go, leaving behind the white towels slung over the wooden benches, the long dicks hanging from nests of black hair, all the things that make him feel like a little kid.
He beats everyone else by at least a minute, sharing the big empty gym with Coach Dale, who coughs quietly, rattling his wristwatch as if
it might be broken. “Kev my man, you need to slow down and smell the roses. You ever hear that expression?”
“No, Coach.”
“It means you keep running so hard and you’re gonna miss all the good stuff.”
But that’s not right. It’s not right because the world is running as fast as he is. If he slows down he’ll fall behind, and everything will rush away from him. The flowers will disappear in a million paint streaks of color.
Today the class is finishing up its hockey segment. “Let’s go, folks,” Coach says. “Let’s go, let’s go, come on, put some lead in it.” He gives the whistle a shut-up blast, the kind that keeps lengthening out of itself in a single shrill note, then ends without so much as a flutter. He divides the class into teams and distributes the sticks. The grips are wrapped in padded white handlebar tape, and so are the blades, and thank God, because Craig Brooks has spent the past two weeks flailing at the ball from all directions, leaving checkmark-shaped bruises on everyone’s legs. He keeps grunting, body-checking, and heaving his shoulders, punishing anyone who gets in his way. And in fact not a minute goes by before he hits the knob of Kevin’s ankle with a hard downward chop, like a woodcutter splitting a log. Needles of pain rise to Kevin’s knee. Enough, goddamn it, he decides, is enough. He waits for his moment, following the fray from one side of the gym to the other until a gap opens up and he can take aim at Craig’s shin.
“Holy mother!”
Craig holds his fist to his neck and does a quick little hunched-over evangelist’s walk: And the Lord spoke to me, brothers and sisters, and in my darkest hour I heard His voice.
At the end of class, in the locker room, he poses with his leg out behind him and complains, “Man, someone literally smacked the hell out of me back there. It was like wham, and I was like Jesus.”
Kevin hides his smile inside his shirt as he changes. Thirty seconds and he has returned to his polo and his blue jeans. Another ten and he has stamped his feet back into his shoes. The concrete walls repay the slightest sound. Kevin always carries two bags to PE, his duffel bag for his gym clothes and his camera bag for his books. He stands by the exit with a bag on each shoulder, waiting for the 3:30 bell. The guys who shower are showering, and the guys who don’t are spraying angel wings of deodorant under their arms, and Shane Wesson is thrashing the air with his hands, flinging his clothes left and right. “I’m,” he gasps, “in,” he gasps, “training,” he says. “Better watch out, Brockmeier. I’m coming for you.”
There is a part of himself that Kevin dislikes, some guy on a ladder who is constantly testing the rails for vibrations from below. “Give it your best shot.”
“Oh, I will, little man. Trust me, this shit is on!”
“Yeah, sure, whatever, Shane.”
And then, as always, the bell.
It is mid-February, homegoing week, which is like homecoming week on its way out the door—five days of spirit activities leading up to the final basketball game of the season. Thursday is the big one, the fun one, costume day, with a different assignment for every grade. The seniors are supposed to dress like seventh-graders, the seventh-graders like seniors. For more than a week now, Kevin has been putting together his outfit—blue jeans, shaded glasses, and a button-up shirt, along with a wig he has scissored down to a tight black chop and a can of shoe polish for his face, neck, and hands: Darnell Robertson. Darnell is the only black student at CAC, the coolest and most recognizable of all the seniors. People will know who Kevin is right away, no question. But there is a long strand of pep rallies and free-throw competitions to get through before Thursday, so his costume will have to wait.
That night there is spaghetti with garlic bread, and Prince and “Darling Nikki,” and New Edition and “Cool It Now,” and TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes, and a geography chapter and a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and lights out at 10:30. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
On Tuesday, before English, Miss Vincent is in some weird hawk-mood. She sizes everyone up from her seat at the corner of her desk, swiveling her neck to watch them as they cross the room. Before the bell rings she announces that there won’t be any classwork today. Instead they can play a game. “Any ideas?”
Kevin suggests the youth group game, but he has trouble describing the rules. “Okay, so there’s a guy in charge, and there’s a player. You sit in a chair and you cover your ears, and then you pick one, two, or three, and it’s like one someone sings you a song, and two someone rubs your shoulders,” and three Sarah Bell kisses you on the cheek—or no, the lips—a leisurely French kiss—and nobody else is there, and the room is so dark it’s like you’re both dreaming, and she stumbles, landing right on top of you, with her hands on your shoulders and her legs doubled together around your hips, pinning you down so that you can’t move unless she lets you, and why hello there.
“And three maybe someone kicks you on the shin.”
Tania Pickett coughs up a look. “Why would you want to be kicked?”
“It doesn’t have to be a kick. Anything. It could be anything.”
“Let’s play a different game.”
Miss Vincent suggests something called Laps. It’s simple, she says: she’ll ask a question, and if your answer is no, you’ll keep your place, and if your answer is yes, you’ll move to the next chair in line—maybe an empty seat, maybe a lap, maybe a whole stack of laps.
Does your first name start with a vowel? No.
Do you play a musical instrument? No.
Were you born here in Arkansas? No.
Have you studied for tomorrow’s quiz? Yes.
Soon there are scattered chains of abandoned desks everywhere, along with a few stray clumps holding two people or three. By the big glowing courtyard painting of the window—all red bricks, white mortar, and blue sky—sits an isolated chair where the kids are banked five laps deep, like a caterpillar posed upright on a throne, an image so clear Kevin must have seen it in a picture book.
Have you ever flown in an airplane? Yes.
Do you know how to swim? Yes.
Do you know how to water-ski? No.
Have you ever seen Casablanca? No.
Have you ever visited another country? No.
Do you listen to Bruce Springsteen? Yes.
“Today,” Miss Vincent asks, “right now, as we speak, are you wearing white underwear?”
And of course Kevin is, his usual Fruit of the Looms, but he’s confident no one will put him to the test, and if he has to lie about it, then fine, no problem, he’ll lie because Noelle Batch is sitting on his lap. He knows that if he were watching himself from across the room the way he watches the couples at the shopping mall, his limbs would practically tingle with his hunger to trade places. This kind of craving is so familiar that he has almost grown to like it. My God, does that guy know how lucky he is? What Kevin wouldn’t give to be him for a while! Bodies begin shuffling like beads on an abacus, but Noelle doesn’t move, so neither does he. A stillness settles over him as he waits for Miss Vincent to ask the next question.
“What color is your underwear, Kevin?”
Another night and another day and on Wednesday, after school, Bateman comes buzzing into Kevin’s driveway on his moped and punches the horn. It is a sunlit winter afternoon, so peaceful that only the crowns of the trees are stirring. To the dogs across the street the engine noise seems to signal a calamity. Danger! Danger! Warning! they bark. They have never heard anything like it.
Bateman is (1) adventurous, (2) cheerful, (3) freckled, (4) independent, and (5) hilarious. Something about the way his voice rises into a joke and then stops dead, like a mountain climber calling it quits just before he reaches the peak, makes it impossible not to laugh at him. His freckles, he says, are the source of his power. He and Kevin have been friends since the second grade. So many years, so many jokes. Together on his moped they set out through Leawood to Hillcrest, where the new comics have ju
st hit the racks at Gadzooks. Kevin balances himself on the back edge of the bike’s seat pad, the metal frame vibrating beneath him like a washing machine. The sun sparks through the trees, and the wind makes a sputtering noise, and he traces the strands of tar on the road, their slender black lines railroading open and shut. “Feeling steady back there?” Bateman says. “Here, grab hold.”
Kevin clings to his waist as they tilt around the corner. Sometimes people are fat beneath their clothing.
Grant, the Gadzooks guy, has ice-blue eyes, a silver necklace, and a beard that’s mostly mustache. “You two gentlemen,” he says, and he pistol-points at them, sorting through the boxes until he finds their names, then fanning their comics out on the counter like playing cards, “had some monthlies come in this afternoon.” These days the store is reserving X-Men, X-Factor, and West Coast Avengers for Kevin, along with Secret Wars II, which is finishing its run, and the Punisher miniseries, which has just started. His total usually comes to something-ninety-eight or something-seventy-three. He likes to slide the pennies back to Grant with a casual keep-the-change, like a man in a suit at a bar.
Today, after looking over the new releases, Kevin picks his way through the junk chest. The comics there are three for a dollar and you never really know. Once, claims Grant, as an experiment, he tucked a mint-condition Iron Man I in with all the Dazzlers and Mad House Comics to see if anyone would find it. No one did.
You never really know. Lately Kevin has been bothering himself with the idea that nothing is certain, nothing can be proven. Not one thing, not in all the world. The sun will rise tomorrow. Prove it. The sun rose this morning. Prove it. The sun is in the sky. Prove it. There’s a sun at all. Prove it. The world is like a box of Kleenex, every doubt pulling another along behind it. You can always find a new reason to distrust the facts.
Kevin has been wondering if he shouldn’t become a lawyer, but the last time he mentioned the idea, Bateman said, “So you keep telling me. Why’s that again?”
A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade Page 11
