by Gary Paulsen
He included a tie, loose at the neck, dark blue with small white spots. It made the outfit, just made it. Not too loud, not crazy — just right. But a tie, still, a tie tied around his neck.
His neck.
He should have known better.
The dream started at his locker. He would be just turning from his locker, and Maria would be coming down the hall, and she would smile at him and wave, and he would ask her for a date, and she would say, sure, she’d love it, and then it would jump to the evening and they would be parked. But it would start at his locker. That was the plan.
He looked at the clock. Still fifteen minutes to go. Easy. Three minutes to set it up, four more minutes of chit-chat and he’d be in the car with her.
He glazed his eyes and there it was.
The hallway, some kids moving by, Maria coming toward him, her hair bouncing. She waved first (a nice twist). He had one hand on his locker door, which was open. He threw a book in the mess at the bottom, turned casually to return the wave — it was the only courteous thing to do — and as he turned he slammed the locker door.
Unfortunately, as he wheeled the tie flew out a bit, and when he slammed the locker shut the tie got caught in the door. Things blew up fast after that. He reached to pull at the tie, but it was caught tight. He raised one foot to brace it against the locker, but the other foot slipped from beneath him and he went down, wheeling as he went so his back was to the locker and his feet out in front of him, hanging on his tie like a mini-gallows, his eyes starting to bulge.
Two students tripped on his outflung legs, falling loudly. They in turn tripped more students, and soon the hallway was a panic of students going down over each other, falling and sliding.
He had one fleeting picture of Maria with a hand to her mouth, staring at him — then he had to fight for his very life, jerking and wheeling and pulling at the tie, trying to get his legs under him to stand, trying to reach back up over his head and open the door, clawing, fighting, scrabbling for life, everything going red, then black, his life fading….
The bell rang. Shop was over.
He looked in his hands at the letter holder. He’d rubbed so hard he’d broken it.
He started for the hall. No ties. He’d have to remember that in the future.
No daydreams with ties in them.
THE auditorium was a horrifying mass of people running every which way, yelling, pointing. At one side Maria Tresser stood, waiting for instructions, one hand on her hip and the other running through her hair. There were probably three people for every one who would be in the play — Mrs. Hilsak’s plays were always popular and many tried out for them — plus a whole bunch of smaller kids from the elementary school down the block. The littler kids didn’t make any sense until Jacob remembered the movie of The Wizard of Oz — all the little Munchkins and monsters. That must be what they were for, the small ones.
Mrs. Hilsak was in the center of the stage, holding a clipboard, directing the madness.
Jacob was in a strange mood. Normally he would be home now, hiding in the basement, working his way through the refrigerator, or trying to find a way to torment his sister — he thought of it as getting even — and his mind was not in a school frame. For that reason he went too far into the auditorium. He meant to stop in back, up under the balcony where it was partially darkened and he might not be seen. He thought if he could remain out of sight Mrs. Hilsak might not notice him, and he could stay a few moments and then drift out, go home and start digging a pit with sharpened stakes in the front yard to catch his sister — he figured he could bait it with a couple of glamor magazines and she’d walk right in.
But he went too far, got caught in the light, and Mrs. Hilsak saw him.
“Jacob, come up here please.”
And of course he had to go. Down the aisle between the seats, across the front, everybody looking at him, even the Munchkins, to the left of the stage where there were three steps up. He started up them, saw that Maria had turned slightly and was watching him, felt his face go red, forgot to watch the steps, and tripped on the top one.
He arrived on the stage face down, his glasses driven halfway through his head.
Perfect.
He stood, brushed his pants, straightened his glasses, and waited, looking but not looking at Mrs. Hilsak, not even looking but not looking at Maria.
“I want you to be in charge of the fog machine,” Mrs. Hilsak said. “Come with me and I’ll show you what to do. Maria, you come as well, since it concerns you the most.”
She turned and walked off the stage to the left, Maria following and Jacob bringing up the rear.
This is bad, he thought. We’re going to be doing something together. Not even a daydream this time. For real. I’m dead. One sharp object and I’m dead. Thank God I’m not wearing a tie. This is bad. Deadly. What is a fog machine?
I’m going to be doing something with Maria involving a fog machine?
Please Lord, don’t let it be nuclear.
Mrs. Hilsak led them down a small stairway, around a bend and through a dusty hallway, and into a low doorway which required them to crouch.
They were beneath the stage. Overhead they could hear the muffled thud and rumble of people moving. There was not quite room to stand beneath the stringers that held the stage floor up — they had to hunch over as Mrs. Hilsak led them to a point beneath the center of the stage. On a small platform was a gray device, a machine with three lights and a handle like a pump handle on the top. There was a filler cap near that and a bottle of some kind of pale green chemical sitting on the floor next to the machine. A wire ran to a plug over on the wall. Out the front of the machine stuck a funnel-like pipe, and almost straight above the machine was a trapdoor cut into the stage floor. A sliding bolt held the trapdoor in place, with a handle that stuck down so it could be pushed open and the trapdoor allowed to swing open.
This could be from another planet, Jacob thought, watching the machine warily. A cyborg. It could take over the world.
“This is the fog machine,” Mrs. Hilsak said. “It’s really quite simple. You pour this chemical into the filler spout, pump the pressure up with the pump handle, hit this switch, and when the green light comes on you hit the next switch, this one, and the machine will begin to emit fog. Of course you want the trapdoor open when it happens, otherwise the whole place will fill up with fog and you won’t be able to see what you’re doing. I had the janitor grease the bolt on the trapdoor so it will work easily.” She paused. “Any questions so far?”
Jacob said nothing. Maria shook her head.
“Now, timing is everything. You have to work this out together, and it’s critical, the critical part of the whole play. At the point when Dorothy throws the water on the Wicked Witch to melt her, the trapdoor has to open and the fog flow up so that Maria — the Wicked Witch — can lower herself down into the opening and appear to melt.”
Timing, Jacob thought. Critical. Melt. I’m going to melt Maria.
“I’ll leave you two to work out the exact timing of it….” And she turned and left them alone.
Alone, Jacob thought, at last, looking but not looking at Maria — I’m alone with the woman I’m supposed to melt. He licked his lips, which were strangely dry. I should speak, he thought, I should say something. Nothing came. He moved a bit until he was beneath the trapdoor. Took a deep breath. Let it out.
“Well,” Maria said finally. “We’re going to work together.”
Jacob looked but didn’t look at her. Shrugged.
“You know, I see you in the halls and I see you in the classrooms but it’s like I’m not seeing you. Why is that?” She smiled. Even, white teeth, of course.
Because I’m a geek, he thought, and you can’t see geeks.
“I mean the first time I ever got a chance to speak to you is when you ran over me in gym today. How can that be? In one school, how can it be possible to never really see somebody?”
She’s actually talking to me. For part
of a second he looked at her, really looked at her, and froze. She was looking right into his eyes. Seeing him, noticing him, talking to him.
To Jacob.
He turned away, a bit too fast, started to lose his balance and raised a hand to grab at the ceiling to keep from falling. He missed the stringers and accidentally grabbed the bolt that held the trapdoor in place. It slid easily, popped back, and the trapdoor dropped open.
Two Munchkins, boys in the third grade from Grandview Elementary, had been standing on the trapdoor. They were already nervous and frightened with all the activity on the stage, were working very hard at holding their positions and not doing anything wrong, when the bottom suddenly dropped out of their world.
They plummeted down, landing on Jacob, sure they were going to be eaten by the Big Wizard, and immediately started screaming and scratching, trying to get away from him, who wanted nothing more than to get them away.
Jacob had one quick picture of Maria starting to double over, laughing, then the two Munchkins ran across his face and he didn’t see anything.
And it wasn’t even a daydream.
NOW he couldn’t talk to her.
No matter what.
After the disaster beneath the stage when she had laughed and had actually asked him, personally, about why she never saw him — after all that he could not talk to her.
What made it difficult, maybe impossible, was that he still had to run the fog machine and be part of the play or he would flunk English. If he flunked English, or even got an F in English for one report card period but still managed to pass it — just that F meant that he would get noticed the wrong way by his parents.
Normally they worked on his sister and tried to make her even more beautiful and more or less forgot he was there. But if he pulled a bad grade he would get the serious lectures from his parents. That’s when they would sit him down and ask him if he were:
Doing drugs.
Contemplating teen suicide.
Having difficulty with his peers.
Feeling depressed.
Having adjustment problems.
Feeling inadequate.
Feeling unmotivated.
Feeling overmotivated.
Feeling bad about himself.
Not feeling anything — that is, not being in touch with his feelings.
Depending on what his mother had been reading lately and discussing with his father or if he told them the truth, that it was all of the above except drugs, they’d just ignore the answer and go on until they were satisfied they had Straightened Him Up.
So he had to stay and work the fog machine or get an F and go through the serious lectures at home.
But he couldn’t face Maria Tresser again. As long as he lived and maybe a bit longer.
So it was a difficult situation.
Days passed, and he had to be at rehearsal every afternoon. He evolved a plan that seemed to work out. He would hide up in the darkened corner of the auditorium until they were well into rehearsal and just getting to the part in the second act when Maria had to disappear as the Wicked Witch, and at that point he would sneak into the space beneath the stage. Then when it came time to open the trapdoor he would let it drop and move away, so he was out of sight. The first time Maria lowered to her knees and looked down inside.
“Jacob?”
But he was back around a brace, hidden in a corner, and after a moment she shrugged upside down.
“I don’t understand — he was here a minute ago,” she said to someone back on top. “I just wanted to tell him to lower the trapdoor a little sooner, when I start my death scream….”
When rehearsals were over he moved out the back door of the space beneath the stage, out a back exit of the auditorium which opened into an alley, and down the alley toward home.
By the third night the plan was working smoothly. They didn’t expect to see him, and Maria had quit looking or calling to him. He was there but not there, the phantom beneath the stage — he actually heard one of the Munchkins asking somebody what was opening and closing the trapdoor. Not who, but what.
Sometimes he would move around, tripping and bumping his head on the stringers and formers that held the stage up, trying to follow where Maria was on the floor above by her voice, and think, There she is, just there, right above me on this spot, only inches away. He would close his eyes and think of her, her hair falling on her shoulders, her eyes when she had looked at him, straight and clear and direct, when he looked but didn’t look at her.
Right there, above his head.
And he knew then that he loved her, loved her more than anything, loved her more than he hated the idea of baloots, and he also knew that it would never come to anything, that he would always be beneath the stage and she would always be on top, because that’s the way things were. Some people were above-stage people, some people lived beneath the stage.
A terrible sadness took him then and he even forgot to trip on the fog machine and spent nearly a whole rehearsal without tripping or falling or banging his head against the stringers.
The hallways and classrooms were worse.
If Maria had given up trying to speak to him during rehearsals, she had not given up in the halls or classrooms. Twice she cornered him just before English and he would have had to say something, except that he’d suddenly ducked out as if he had to go to the bathroom.
Maximum embarrassment with minimum effort, he thought, staggering to the door rather than speak to the most beautiful girl in school, a girl he loved more than he hated baloots.
But it worked.
The only other class he had with her was gym, and that wasn’t a problem because she played volleyball and Rocco had him doing laps for presumably the rest of his life.
Hallways proved to be more dangerous.
He was moving with a ripple from English to gym, just passing the jock area, when he saw Maria coming toward him. She had seen him and obviously wanted to say something. The only way to escape was to move out of the ripple and into the next wave of students. He looked over his shoulder and made his move, picking up speed to a trot.
But he didn’t look straight ahead and he ran smack into Bee-Bee Wainright. It was like hitting a living wall.
Bee-Bee was the center on the football team and cordially hated anybody who did not play football, including, probably, his mother. It was rumored that his nickname had something to do with brain size and that they were going to start a special class to help him learn to speak human — and while Jacob doubted both of these rumors he knew it was wrong to run into Bee-Bee. Very wrong.
Bee-Bee grabbed him by the neck as if somebody had given him an early Christmas present, and managed to fit Jacob almost completely inside Mary Jo Callis’s locker, though Mary Jo had the bottom filled with books, an old winter coat, her cheerleading pom-poms, and what was apparently an antique peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, judging by smell.
Jacob found his legs, both arms, and his glasses and removed himself from the locker carefully, like untangling spaghetti. He wanted to apologize to Mary Jo for crushing her pom-poms but moved off down the hallway when he saw she was laughing at him.
Love, he thought, watching Maria’s back disappear in the crowd — love can be cruel.
IT was possible that his heart was broken.
He wasn’t sure because he’d never had a broken heart before except for the time when he almost got a puppy and was given a chance to hold it and pet it and then didn’t get it and always thought that might be the same, sort of, as having had a puppy and losing it. He felt bad then. That might have been close to a broken heart, but it had happened when he was young, before he discovered love, and this was different.
It was very possible that he had a broken heart.
He thought of it often. The awful, gray-ugly, right-down, terrible, tearing agony of it stayed with him all the time but seemed to be worse when something else was going wrong. It was like having a bad toothache while somebody put your finger on
a rock and hit it with a hammer. The pain in the finger didn’t really make the toothache worse but it sure didn’t help, either.
In the mornings he came up from his room to get a bowl of cereal and had to face the normal things: his sister sitting at the table looking as if she’d been sculpted, every hair in place, not a freckle or mole or mark, her eyes blank as a bored snake, daintily eating a grapefruit and one piece of dry toast, looking at him with open disgust and turning away while he dumped Froot Loops in a bowl and covered them with milk and crunched himself awake.
Then, right then, it was worse.
Or while resticking all his posters to the walls in the basement, which he did every other day or so when they fell down because of the humidity, and which only helped to remind him that he lived beneath the house the same way he lived beneath the stage that held Maria; beneath the house where his sister had a room, car, couch, stereo, and he had concrete-block walls painted maroon and a throw rug and square boxes for furniture and a small clock-radio, the same way he was beneath the stage where all of what he wanted was above him.
Then, right then, it was even worse.
Or the way it made his judgment wrong and caused him to make mistakes he never would have made otherwise — like coming home from school two blocks over, the wrong way, completely forgetting about the maniac who lived on the corner of Hennessy who had a loose dog that was part pit bull and part alligator. Without thinking, Jacob had walked — not run but actually walked with his head in a gray funk — past the man’s yard. The dog had come over the low fence like a mouth on a cannon shell and nearly got him, and he’d spent the better part of an hour sitting on the low limb of an elm tree watching the dog froth and chew at the bark around the base until a cat crossed the street half a block down. The cat made it to a power pole with two-and-a-half inches to spare but it gave Jacob time to get away.
Then it was worse still.
Or at night when he listened to music on his clock-radio and he would close his eyes and remember how Maria’s hair fell in gentle folds and was soft around her temples or how the line of her neck went curving down to her shoulders just so, lie there thinking about Maria and how he would never be able to really talk to her, never be able to tell her how he felt, because when he saw her, just saw her, his tongue stuck so hard to the roof of his mouth that it would take a crowbar to get it loose, and he couldn’t even look at her without looking at her any longer but now could only not look at her.
