Fum

by Adam Rapp

  So anyway, Corinthia Bledsoe stormed through the cafeteria’s double doors, and it only took her, like, four steps to reach the Frog table. When she got there, she stood between us and Britney Purina, and she told Britney Purina to go sit down.

  She said, “Sit the fuck down, Britney.”

  And she said it calm, like she was filled with a powerful force; like God was inside her with a secret microphone, telling her to do it, so she could act with tranquility because she knew she was carrying out a master plan of the highest level.

  Her calmness was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, Dave.

  All Britney Purina could do was stare up at Corinthia Bledsoe, and like I already said, she’s really, really, really tall, like seven feet something, and then Corinthia Bledsoe stopped being calm and shouted “GO!” and then “NOW!”

  And then Britney Purina turned and scurried away to the other side of the cafeteria, where she was sitting with her pretty, popular friends, and they had a hard time looking at her when she sat down, because they were so clearly embarrassed for her.

  Then Corinthia Bledsoe took a can of spray paint out of her pocket, because her pockets are huge, Dave, and with hissing black spray paint, she wrote the word FUM across the front of her plain white shirt, and then she shouted in a heraldic manner. And this is what she shouted, Dave. She shouted, “THE GIANT WILL NOT FALL!”

  It was like she was turning herself into a statue of justice.

  What was so cool about it, besides the fact that she defended me, is that since she predicted the tornadoes, all these FUMs have been appearing throughout the school. Someone even painted one on the shed where they keep the track-and-field hurdles. This kid in my homeroom, Willy Binobo, said that there was even a FUM spray-painted on the Lugo water tower. But it was like she took all those FUMs and put them into the one that she spray-painted on her shirt. And it somehow made her more powerful, Dave. I think it made her invincible.

  And, yes, this is also the same extremely tall girl who said that those birds would come when everyone was gathered in the field house for the all-school assembly. And they did come, Dave, like three thousand Canada geese arrived and ate all the grass on the football field, and it’s now in a permanent state of depression. It took this entire group of animal social workers from the ASPCA in Carbondale to come and help get rid of the geese. It was on the news and everything. You should see the football field, Dave. I’ve never seen a bigger field of solid mud, and it smells terrible because the Canada geese defecated thousands of gruesome feces droppings all over it.

  Anyway, after she shouted, Corinthia Bledsoe just continued to stand there. It was almost like she was in church or something, like God was telling her what to do.

  And then she turned and thanked me for returning her desk, because I returned her desk to her because the school was just going to throw it out. I know this because I found it by the Dumpsters, and I knew it was hers because I’d seen her carrying it around the halls. It was one of the most physically demanding things I’ve ever done, even more demanding than the time I hiked multiple miles of the Indiana Dunes with my dad when I was eleven. The desk was really heavy, but I took several breaks and tapped into the man that I will be after I go through puberty and all my hormones start working properly. After dropping the desk off at Corinthia Bledsoe’s house on Stained Glass Drive, when I finally arrived home, I even went into the bathroom and checked to see if I had grown any pubic hair during my journey, but I was still bald.

  Anyway, in the cafeteria, Corinthia Bledsoe said, “Thank you for returning my desk.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  And then she walked out of the cafeteria and disappeared.

  My stomach was gurgling. Keiko Cho and Durdin Royko continued to finish their lunches. No one harassed us for the rest of the lunch period, and I stopped feeling like I was turning into a penny.

  The List continues to grow, Dave.

  I have officially added the following six people:

  4. Troy Aurora

  5. Nate Bluff

  6. Britney Purina

  7. Todd Chicklis

  8. Bronson Kaminski

  9. Ward Newbury

  So, some more stuff happened after the cafeteria incident. I am going to tell you about that now, Dave, but first I have to use the bathroom. Excuse me. . . .

  Okay, I’m back. Sorry about that.

  Anyway, later, in English, we were talking about the lotus-eaters from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, which is about King Odysseus and the survivors of his army’s journey home after the fall of Troy. The lotus-eaters were these people who lived on an undiscovered island that Odysseus’s ship happened upon. Odysseus was headed west to Ithaca, but the mighty north winds blew his vessel off course. So, Dave, the lotus-eaters were the inhabitants of this island and they derived all their nourishment from nutrients found in this special flower called the lotus flower. All these people ate were lotus flowers, which apparently make you really, really, really happy and content and you’ll want nothing more than to stay on the island forever and you won’t ever get sad.

  After eating the lotus flowers, the men in King Odysseus’s army had to be physically forced back to their ship because they were suddenly so happy and satisfied and nothing else mattered.

  I must say I was really enjoying this discussion, Dave. Those lotus flowers are quite fascinating to me. It made me think of how the Native Americans eat peyote and turn themselves into hawks and buffaloes. I wonder what nutrients and chemicals exist in these flowers to give them so many powers. I wonder how one might obtain a lotus flower. I wonder if they sell them at the nursery at Walmart, or if you have to special-order them. I also wonder what one tastes like. Is it like parsley? Or like something in a salad? I plan on investigating this subject more in-depthly on the Internet. I’d like to maybe give one to Mom, who is still very unhappy about my dad being dead.

  Mrs. Kenosha even projected an ancient picture of Odysseus pulling two of his men away from the lotus-eaters by their hair because they had eaten too many flowers and they’d lost their battle helmets and forgotten all their sorrow and pain and the fact that they were trying to get home, where they had wives and children and pets who were waiting for them.

  I was raising my hand, about to contribute to the discussion, when Vice Principal Mejerus interrupted the class and walked over and whispered into Mrs. Kenosha’s ear. And then she nodded and turned to me and said that my presence was being requested at the principal’s office.

  “Why?” I said. “What did I do?”

  “Please come with me, Billy,” Vice Principal Mejerus said.

  I wanted to tell Mrs. Kenosha and the class how great it would be to be able to take everyone’s pain away by giving them a lotus flower to eat, how forgetting sad stuff can be a good thing.

  As I was walking out of class, I tried to ask Mrs. Kenosha where they sold lotus flowers in Lugo, but she looked away.

  “Can you get them at Target?” I asked as Vice Principal Mejerus took my arm like we were maybe going to square-dance. But Mrs. Kenosha kept looking away and wouldn’t say anything.

  As we were walking down the hall, Vice Principal Mejerus hardly said a word to me. And he wouldn’t let go of my arm, which made me feel like I was going to get beaten to death.

  “Are you going to beat me to death?” I asked him.

  “Am I going to do what?” he asked.

  “Beat me to death,” I repeated.

  “Why would I do that?” he replied.

  When we got to the principal’s office, Guidance Counselor Smock was sitting in one of the two chairs across from Principal Ticonderoga, who was behind her desk, tapping a pencil.

  Vice Principal Mejerus released my arm, and Principal Ticonderoga gestured toward the empty chair.

  She said, “Take a seat, William.”

  I asked Guidance Counselor Smock what he was doing there, but he wouldn’t answer me.

  “Please sit,” Vic
e Principal Mejerus said. He was standing behind me now, sort of blocking the door.

  “Are you going to beat me to death?” I asked Principal Ticonderoga.

  She said, “William, now why on earth would you think that?”

  “Because everyone’s throwing so much shade,” I told her.

  “Shade?” she said. “What’s shade?”

  Guidance Counselor Smock explained to her that it was a modern expression that means “a threatening attitude.”

  “Well, we certainly don’t mean to throw any shade at you,” Principal Ticonderoga said. “That’s not our intention. But I think we’d all appreciate it if you’d sit.”

  So then I sat, and nobody said anything, and I started to feel like tin again, and Principal Ticonderoga was tapping her pencil.

  There’s this picture of President Obama on the wall behind Principal Ticonderoga’s desk, and he’s smiling and his teeth are very white and his gums are very chocolaty-looking and he appears to be so kind and helpful, and I wished I could somehow make him come to life and be there with me.

  Come on, Obama, I said with my mind. Help me, Mr. President. Don’t let them beat me to death.

  Then Principal Ticonderoga stopped tapping her pencil, and she leaned forward and said how sorry she was about my dad passing and how she can’t even imagine how hard that must be to deal with and that she’d spoken to my mother after he died and how my mother had expressed her concern over my well-being and how everyone in her office at that very moment was also concerned for my well-being, and I think she might have used the word “well-being” three or four more times, and then she got to the real reason why I was called down to her office, which was that she wanted to see you, Dave! She wanted to see you!

  “I understand you’ve been writing in a diary,” she said. “And that according to Mr. Smock, you may be in the process of creating some kind of a list.”

  Dave, I was so angry, I couldn’t help throwing Mr. Smock some shade. I looked at him and tried to throw him some of the shadiest shade possible, but he wouldn’t look back at me.

  Then Principal Ticonderoga said, “It’s Mr. Smock’s duty as a member of this faculty to alert my office if he feels that the safety of your fellow students is in any way at risk.”

  From behind me, Vice Principal Mejerus said, “He’s just doing his job.”

  I really tried to get Mr. Smock to look at me, Dave, but he wouldn’t.

  Then Principal Ticonderoga said, “We’d like to see this list, William.”

  And before I knew it, I was ribbitting like a frog! I really was, Dave, I was going, “Ribbit! Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit! Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit! Ribbit-ribbit!” And then I stopped, and there was a long silence, and I expelled some gas, and it made a noise like a senior citizen sighing in a basement.

  I told them I was sorry for expelling gas and that I had forgotten to take my simethicone after lunch.

  “It’s okay, Billy,” Vice Principal Mejerus said. “We all have to toot sometimes.”

  I thought it was strange how Vice Principal Mejerus was calling me Billy and Principal Ticonderoga was calling me William. It was like they were playing a game.

  Then I said that if I wasn’t allowed to go to my locker and take my medication, I might wind up expelling so much terrible-smelling gas that they would have no choice but to suspend me the way they suspended Corinthia Bledsoe, and my stomach made some gurgling sounds like ocean monsters from dinosaur times, and then Principal Ticonderoga looked at Guidance Counselor Smock, and I think he communicated with her telepathically that I was indeed telling the truth, so she let me go. She said I could go take my medication but that I had to come right back to her office so we could get to the bottom of this so-called list. And then I thanked her and turned around and took a step toward the door, and Vice Principal Mejerus moved out of the way, and I left.

  But what I did after I left, Dave, what I did was, I went straight to my locker and grabbed my book bag, which has you in it, as well as my simethicone, and I quietly closed my locker and walked very calmly down the hall in a very Native American fashion, meaning I used very quiet feet, so quiet they were like whispers, and I walked through the front doors and across the parking lot and past the new flagpole, and as soon as I was off the school grounds, I ran home as fast as I could.

  Luckily for me Mom was gone, but I had to act fast and not get fatigued and concentrate on my next task, which was to tear all these pages out of you, Dave, meaning the ones I have written so far, which totals fourteen pages. And then in the same notebook, the same one with the green graph paper that Guidance Counselor Smock gave me, I recopied each page as best as I could, with excellent speed and accuracy, but whenever I mentioned anything about The List, I added a bunch of new material that suggested that the people on The List were all the people who I admired, not disliked in any way. And I added a bunch of other people, too, like Corinthia Bledsoe and my English literature teacher, Mrs. Kenosha, and the two other Frogs, Keiko Cho and Durdin Royko. And I even wrote things I liked about them. For instance, beside Keiko Cho’s name I wrote “polite eater,” and beside Mrs. Kenosha’s name I wrote “likes to teach,” and beside Corinthia Bledsoe’s name I wrote “Warrior Prophet.”

  It took me almost two hours to complete this other version of you, Dave, and while I was doing it, the phone rang several times, and I’m quite confident that it was Principal Ticonderoga or Vice Principal Mejerus or Guidance Counselor Smock, or maybe it was all three of them gathered around the phone like some witches around a cauldron.

  So I have no doubt that I will be in serious trouble when I go back to school tomorrow, Dave. I’m sure Vice Principal Mejerus will be waiting for me at my locker and he’ll grab me by the arm in a square-dancing fashion and escort me right to Principal Ticonderoga’s office and Guidance Counselor Smock will be there, and maybe they’ll beat me with belts or make me do push-ups or certain impossible exercises from the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, like they’ll make me do a hundred sit-ups or run in place until I collapse and crack my head open on the floor, but I don’t care, Dave. I don’t care, because now there’s The Real Dave but there’s also The Fake Dave. And The Real List and The Fake List. And after they beat me or torture me with physical fitness tests, I will take The Fake Dave out of my Sitting Bull book bag and I’ll hand it over to them. It won’t be the Dave that I’m writing in now, which is in this completely different notebook, one I used for my eighth-grade American history class. I’ve even crossed off “American History” and below it I’ve written “The Real Dave.”

  And I will continue to add people to The Real List, and no one will ever know what it really is, especially Guidance Counselor Smock and Vice Principal Mejerus and Principal Ticonderoga, who, by the way, are now officially on The Real List.

  10. Guidance Counselor Denton Smock

  11. Vice Principal Mejerus

  12. Principal Ticonderoga

  Later, when Mom came home, things got pretty weird. She entered the house, calling my name, and when I came down to the kitchen, she said that someone from the principal’s office had called her cell phone, wondering if she’d heard from me, and that she told them she hadn’t and was worried sick about me disappearing just like that star football player, and she wanted to know what happened, and I started to tell her, I really did, but I kept getting distracted, and I couldn’t keep my focus because, when I really looked at her, Dave, when I stopped trying to tell her what exactly had happened and looked hard at her face, I could see that there was something very different about her. I didn’t say anything, Dave, I just stored it, but there was something very strange going on with her face, and when she asked me where on earth I had been, I told her that I came straight home and that this is where I’ve been since I left school, and when she asked me why I didn’t go back to Principal Ticonderoga’s office like I’d promised, I told her that I was too embarrassed, that I was expelling terrible gas all the way down the hall, and it was so much gas that my anus and te
sticles were burning with fire, and that I was worried that the simethicone wouldn’t make any difference because my stomach was already gurgling so much, which made me so humiliated and afraid that when I got to my locker and took out my book bag to get my medication, I just left because then I could expel gas in the Lugo community and the terrible sounds and smells wouldn’t offend anyone except maybe an old man picking weeds out of his lawn or the Chinese FedEx woman with the knee brace, and then Mom took her phone out of her purse and called Principal Ticonderoga, and when she came on the phone, Mom explained the situation with a sincere heartfelt voice and told her how I was right there with her now and how embarrassed and ashamed I was, and it must have worked, because when she got off the phone, she said everything was okay and that I wasn’t in any trouble but that I was supposed to report directly to the principal’s office tomorrow morning with my notebook, and that made me feel pretty relieved, Dave — it really did.

  And then, as Mom was looking at me and I was looking at her, it suddenly dawned on me. I could see what was so different about her.

  Mom said, “What? What’s wrong?”