"A hook?" Amber asked as she dug through her bag.
I opened my own bag and slipped my World Lit folder out. "I've got a concept. A postmodern reimagination of Rostand. But it's just an idea at the moment. And an idea does me no good until I have something to hang it on."
Amber nodded. "A hook."
"Ideas are easy," I said. "But a good hook is like a ghost orchid. It blooms when it damn well feels like it."
Amber cocked an eyebrow at me, and the corner of her mouth twitched. I felt a scarlet flush creeping out of my collar, and I tapped my World Lit folder against my palm. I told her, "I have to run these up to the Doc."
She watched me as I turned and wove a path through the clutter of disorganized students toward Dr. Lombardi's desk at the head of the room. I pulled up short a few paces from his desk as he scribbled energetically across the front page of a thick stack of stapled pages. Even upside-down, I made out the title: "The Search for the 7th Character."
"Something I can do for you, Michael?" he said without looking up. He scratched another line onto the cover, and I waited for him to finish before saying, "hopefully."
Doc finished his missive, emphasizing his point with a violent period at the end of his final sentence. He tossed his pen down on top of the essay and sat back, sighing and running his hands through his greying blonde hair as he muttered, "jebany plagiarists." Then he blinked, shook his head, and looked at me. "How can I help you?"
I opened my World Lit folder and slid the three printed pages out. "I know the deadline was yesterday afternoon, but I was really hoping that you'd still consider letting me enter a couple of poems for the Laureate competition."
Doc leaned forward in his seat. "Rules are rules," he said, gesturing for me to hand the pages to him. "Without them, we're nothing but dressed-up barbarians."
"Rules are made for breaking," I said as I passed my entries to him. He smirked at that without looking at me, flipping through the sheets, examining the formatting.
The sharp triple-chime signaled the beginning of first period a few seconds later. I glanced to the door while I waited for Dr. Lombardi's verdict, and spotted Phil in the hallway amid the bustle of tardy students rushing to their classes. He stood with Charlie Carmichael, the two of them huddled close to one another against the far wall, conversing quietly as teenagers hurried past them.
"I feel like you might be trying to take advantage of my charitable personality," Dr. Lombardi said. I turned back to him and saw the tiny grin at the corner of his mouth.
"Just appealing to the better angels of your nature."
He laughed at that. I glanced back toward the door. A moment before Charlie headed away down the hall and Phil crossed the corridor to the classroom, I saw Charlie's fingers lingering on Phil's hand. Then Charlie was gone and Phil was heading for his own desk at the back of the room in front of Amber. He nodded to me as he passed. I nodded back. Then I turned back to Doc and waited.
He stalled me for a couple more seconds, then sighed. "It's a good thing I found these in my desk before I turned in my stack of entries this afternoon," he said, shooting me a pointed look, "or they'd have missed the deadline."
I smiled, laughed. "That's a very good thing. Thank you so much," I said, then added, "for checking one last time before you turned in your stack of entries."
Dr. Lombardi smirked and waved me away. "Go get your book. You're on in five, and you better impress."
I just nodded and headed back to my desk. Phil turned in his seat as I passed, and said, "I assume that went well?"
"You know what happens when you assume," I said.
"You didn't quote Thomas Paine, did you?" he asked.
I rifled through my bookbag, finding a thin hardbound volume with a dark pen-wrought gash across the cover. I opened the book to the marked page near the middle and glanced up to Phil. "Abraham Lincoln," I admitted.
"Hack," Phil said with a laugh. "Shameless hack."
Amber laughed at that as Doc stood up at the head of the class. "Now that everyone is quite settled," he said in the commanding voice that he had developed as an Army Ranger. The room went silent like someone had hit the mute button, and Doc flashed a warm smile.
"We covered scenes one through seven of Act Three last week," he said, "so if our Roxane and our Cristian and our Cyrano could take their places, we might manage to get through Act Three by the end of class today."
Phil stood and headed for the front of the room with his book in hand, and Amber followed suit. I detoured quickly to the bookshelf at the back of the room where I'd left the 99¢ stage prop that I'd bought at the costume store out at the Winslow Graham Mall back in January.
"You know we're breaking the law just reading this," Phil said from the front of the room.
I turned and headed for the front of the class as I heard Dr. Lombardi ask, "How's that?"
"In 1902, a judge granted an injunction against Cyrano de Bergerac ever appearing in the United States," Phil said as I reached the head of the class, "after Sam Gross sued for plagiarism. We all know how you hate plagiarism."
"No one likes a show-off, Mr. Michener," Doc said. But he flashed that warm smile of his again.
"I keep trying to tell him," I said, nodding. "This is why no one lets him play Trivial Pursuit."
"I just want to make it known," Phil said, flipping pages in his book and studiously not looking up at Dr. Lombardi, "that I am performing under the greatest peer pressure."
"Duly noted," Doc agreed. "Ms. Zarenkiewicz, would you record Mr. Michener's objections into the minutes?"
From her seat in the front row, Rose Zarenkiewicz tore a sheet of paper from her notebook and wrote in large blue letters. "Phil...Michener...is...acting...under...duress."
Doc nodded, and turned back to Phil. "Satisfied?"
Phil grinned. "Quite."
"Good." Doc gestured for us to get the production underway. "Then if it please the court: action."
I felt my heartbeat quicken in my throat as I stretched the elastic band on the prop, pulling it over my head and snapping the four-inch plastic nose over my own.
A chorus of light laughter went up at that, and my heartrate settled. That was, after all, the point: to distract my audience with something absurd. Phil tried to recite his first line, but a laugh came out instead, and it took him a few seconds to collect himself. I saw Amber smiling from my right, and focused on the words in my book.
"Oh!" Phil said finally, slipping into his character. "Win that kiss for me."
I scowled. "No!"
"Sooner or later," he pleaded.
"Sooner or later," I conceded. "But sooner than later, I fear, your lips and hers are destined to speak in a common tongue, because she is young and you are easy on the eyes, and even the stars on high have resolved that it must be." I sighed, muttering aloud as if to myself, "And so better that what must be should be only because I make it be."
Amber stepped in closer toward my right, and I gave Phil a shove that pushed him against the blackboard. That earned a small laugh from the class, and set me at ease as Amber stage-whispered, "Are you still there?"
"I am," I said, throwing a finger in front of my mouth to mime a shushing gesture at Phil.
"We spoke of..." Amber started, then paused.
"A kiss," I said. I looked into Amber's caramel eyes then, and grinned broadly. "How very sweet a word."
2.
Four minutes into lunch, I pushed through the heavy door into the newsroom.
The Creek Reader headquarters was all but abandoned. The counters, tables and desks lay bare now that our latest effort had gone to the printer. The assignment board that hung on the wall opposite the door had been wiped clean. With the March issue in the can, there would be nothing to do here today. And that, of course, was why we came.
Because it was something else entirely that drew us here in the silent days after the work was done. I found Helen, Phil, Winnie and Ethan assembled around the pair of worktables at the cente
r of the room, their lunches laid out on in front of them. James Hetfield's somber baritone crooned over Kirk Hammett's sweetly aching guitar riffs from the boombox on the teacher's desk in the corner.
"That's so true," Winnie said to Phil, laughing over the music. I cut around the room to the bay of lockers, pulled my locker door open and heaved my backpack inside.
"Rough day at the office?" Helen said behind me.
I turned and forced a smile. "Just fucking tired."
I grabbed the brown paper bag off the upper shelf and slapped my locker door shut. Then I rounded the pair of upright easels, spun one of the blue plastic chairs around backward, and sidled up to the table next to Helen. She looked to me, her left cheek on her palm with her elbow perched on the table, and asked sweetly, "When did you finally get out of this godforsaken shithole last night?"
I shrugged, and turned to Ethan. A cheesesteak from the Creekside Diner lay on the table in front of him next to a can of Irn-Bru. "What time did the movie let out?"
"Ten-thirty-five?" he ventured. "Thereabouts."
I looked back to Helen, my right cheek on my palm with my elbow perched on the table. My face was a foot from hers as I told her, "Half-an-hour after that."
She shook her head. "You thoroughly mystify me."
I twitched a grin at her. "Thanks." I emptied my bag lunch onto the table. Ethan craned his neck to get a look at my meal. "What's on the menu?"
I sorted through the items, all shelf-stable junk food that I'd bought at the gas-station down the street from the school, and announced the inventory. "Deep-fried cheese curls, hyperbolic paraboloids in a cardboard tube, a meal replacement protein bar." I upended the bag, and a can of Jolt Cola rolled out. "And the nectar of the gods."
"You know all that processed cacadh is going to kill you, right?" Ethan said. "And sooner rather than later."
"Yeah?" I asked, cracking the tab on the black can.
"From what I hear," he answered, grinning.
I drained a mouthful of the supercaffeinated soda, and cringed as the carbonation burned a trail down my throat. "Good," I said, and tore the wrapper off the protein bar.
Ethan laughed, and the door swung inward again. Ben stumbled into the room, an overstuffed Jansport swaying from his right arm and a densely piled cafeteria lunchtray clutched tight in his left hand. He kicked the door closed with his heel. "I'm here, I'm here. The party can start."
Ethan laughed. "What took you so sodding long?"
"Oh, you are not going believe this shit," Ben said, juggling his back-pack and tray in a precarious balancing act. "I'm walking down the hall after Health class, trying to remember how to put on a condom, and I pass this jaw-dropping feminine specimen. If there was ever proof that God is an artist, it was this girl. Absolutely unbelievable craftsmanship: all the right curves in all the right places, legs that ran all the way up to heaven and past Avalon, and the kind of ass that men fight wars over."
He paused, pointed to Ethan. "You know what I mean." Then he glanced to Phil and smirked. "You probably don't, but you can just take my word for it. Well built."
Ben finally heaved his bookbag to the carpet, kicked it under the computer terminal, and slid his lunchtray onto the table. "So naturally I'm drawn to this girl, `cause I've got eyes and a pulse and whatnot, and I start following her completely by accident, and she gets all the way to the cafeteria and realizes I'm following her."
He dropped into the seat beside me and looked around the table. "So I try to play it cool, `cause you have to play it cool with a girl like her, and I say to her, 'I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves'."
"Oh, Jesus," Phil muttered, shaking his head. I laughed at that, and Ben shot me a sidelong glance. I coughed to cover up my laughter, and that made Ethan laugh.
"Long story short," Ben said. Helen barked out a laugh at that, but Ben pressed on. "She slaps me across the face, one cheek to the other. I never even got her name."
He paused. The silence spun out. All five of us stared at him. "I was out cold in the lobby for six minutes."
Awkward silence flooded the room. Then Winnie said, "Do you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?"
Helen laughed again, and Ben shook his head, "Never." He considered; "Well, maybe this one time in 1989, but –"
"Anyone got the game?" Phil said before Ben could launch into another meandering anecdote. Ethan stood and crossed the room to the counter next to the door. He opened the cabinet near the floor and dug out the teal box marked Trivial Pursuit: Genus 3. He returned the game to the table, setting out the board and hand out the pieces.
Ethan always played as brown and I was always blue. Winnie, being the only emerald-eyed member of our little consortium, had adopted the green piece. Ben had taken to the orange piece. Helen always played pink, and Ben sometimes tried to call her that as a nickname.
Phil did not play. He asked the questions, because when he answered them, no one else could win.
Ben examined his gamepiece. "Shotgun rules?"
"Is there any other way to play?" Helen scoffed.
"Very well, very well," Ben said, leaning in over the table to set his orange piece at the center of the board. "Give the reigning Singles Champ some elbow room."
"Save it," I said. "You won on a fuckin technicality."
He picked up his slice of pizza and bit off a chunk, grinning. "It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile; winning's winning. If you catch my meaning."
"I'd guess you're closer to an inch than a mile," I said, drinking from my soda. "If you catch my meaning."
Helen snickered, leaning forward over the table onto her elbows, showing off the pair of freckles just below her collarbone that I still thought of Betelgeuse and Bellatrix. She smirked at Ben, and said, "I'm pretty sure I do."
He turned to her, flashing his widest, toothiest grin. "My offer to let you find out for yourself still stands."
Helen waved him off, leaning back into her seat. "Oh, no, but thank you," she said sweetly. "I'd rather eat cunt."
Ben blinked and the corner of his mouth twitched. He nodded toward Helen. "Now that I would pay to see."
"Wouldn't we all," Phil said tonelessly. He turned to Ben and gave him a bored stare. "Care to roll for turn?"
Ben watched Phil's glare for one silent moment, then scooped the die out of the gamebox. He gave it one hard shake in his fist, and cast it across the board. It spun out near Helen, a lone snake eye staring at the ceiling.
"How about that," Helen said, smiling as she picked up the cube and showed the single pip to Ben. "One."
Ben smirked. "Yes, I see that. Most inauspicious."
"Somebody's been skipping ahead on his Word-a-Day calendar," she told him , and winked. She flicked the die, watching it carom across the table, showing four.
Winnie spun a three. Ethan tossed next, and the cube rolled out again on a four. Finally, I reached for the die, closed my fingers over it, and touched my free fingertips to my forehead, closing my eyes. "Six," I said.
I flicked the die across the board. It clattered to a stop just before spilling off the tabletop onto the floor. Half-a-dozen white pips stared unblinkingly up at the ceiling.
Winnie looked at me. "How do you do that?"
I crossed my arms, leaned back with an amused grin. "You know I'm wrong like 80% of the time, right?"
I saw a grin crease Phil's lips as he pulled one of the teal boxes of question cards from the gamebox. I tossed the die again, rolled a two, and moved my blue piece to the pink spot on the far spoke of the gamewheel. Phil pulled a stack of cards, shuffled them rapidly, and looked up at me. "What film features the lines: ‘Now, you got a corpse in a car minus a head in a garage. Take me to it.'?"
I cocked a finger at him. "That would be Pulp Fiction."
He gave a curt nod. "That would correct."
Phil slid the card into the used end of the box. I fished a pink pie-piece from the box and tucked it into one of the free spaces in m
y gamepiece. Then I rolled a three and slid my piece to the brown space at the bottom of the spoke.
Phil pulled a new card. "What U.S. city's zoo was home to 660-pound M'bongo and 683-pound N'gagi?"
My brow creased as I considered the question. I heard Winnie tell Ethan: "— had us free-write about which living author we would most like to have write our biography."
"No contest," Ethan said. "David Foster Wallace."
Helen considered, nodded. "You definitely strike me as a metamodern maximalist." Then she looked to Winnie, "who did you write about as your ideal biographer?"
"Maya Angelou," Winnie said.
Helen smiled. "Very nice."
"Isn't she a poet?" Ben said.
"Mrs. Kraven didn't say novelist," Winnie explained. "She said author. And a poet is certainly an author."
I grinned at that. "I do appreciate a woman who takes her use of the English language seriously." Then I turned back to Phil, and told him, "I wouldn't know the first thing about M'bongo and N'gagi if they took turns punching me repeatedly in the testicles."
Phil smirked. "Here's a hint: it's in the United States."
I considered, then shook my head. "Toronto."
"Incorrect." Phil tucked the card away. "It's San Diego."
"Dude," Ben laughed. "Toronto's in Canada."
I waved him off. "Canada's just a suburb of Detroit."
"Except Quebec," Helen added. "Fuck Quebec." She picked up the die, gave it a curt shake, and flipped it back onto the board, rolling a one. Ben snickered and Helen ignored him, sliding her pink piece onto a yellow space.
Phil pulled a new card. "What New Yorker headed the Senate Whitewater committee?"
Helen didn't even hesitate. "That's Jack McCoy."
Phil looked over the card at her. "That's incorrect," he said, tucking the card away. "It was Alfonse D'Amato."
Helen shrugged as Winnie asked her, "Who would you have write your biography?"
Helen didn't hesitate. "Ernest Hemingway."
"Mrs. Kraven said living author," Ben said.
Winnie gave her an apologetic nod. "She did."
The Danger of Being Me Page 6
