The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

by Josh Berk

  Why did I say that?

  “Do you want me to get out your report cards?” she says, signing while holding a little piece of pizza in her fingers. “Remind you of all the A’s you got in math?” Hmm … Seems Mom’s not in a joking mood. But I point to the little bit of pizza in her hand anyway and say, “You should never talk with your hands full.” The first time I made this joke, she laughed so hard that she shot soda out of her nose. Granted, I was eight years old then, a cute little butterball cutup, but it is still one of our favorite lines. No reaction tonight, though.

  The conversation is clearly going to come around to whether I should really be in mainstream ed this year. Whether I am making progress with the new hearing devices. Whether the headaches have come back.

  So what I say is: “Sure, Mom. I would love nothing more than to sit here and look at my old report cards. Exactly the ideal night for a sixteen-year-old boy.” And then I think about throwing my peas at her, which should produce a fine dramatic effect. But I just get up and storm off to my room. Then I come right back in, grab another piece of pizza, and storm off again.

  Pizza in one hand and my mouse in the other, I don’t feel exactly good about what I said to her. Online I select (not click) a few bookmarked message boards to see if anyone has taken any of my recent bait. Nope.

  The pizza is already gone, and the Internet is letting me down as a source of happiness and renewal. What’s a fat kid to do? Go for a jog? An instant message pops up.

  Smiley_Man3ooo: Hello!

  HamburgerHalpin: hey

  Smiley_Man3ooo: How does the evening find you?

  HamburgerHalpin: sux

  Smiley_Man3000: Why is that?

  HamburgerHalpin: ur school is hella lame

  Smiley_Man3000: Where did you used to go?

  HamburgerHalpin: deaf school

  Smiley_Man3000: Why did you leave, if I may ask?

  HamburgerHalpin: dumb crap mostly

  Smiley_Man3000: Such as?

  HamburgerHalpin: at the deaf school–everything got so serious. you’re either with us or against us. and when people found out i was even thinking about mainstreaming they flipped

  Smiley_Man3000: Why?

  HamburgerHalpin: you’re betraying our community, stuff like that

  Smiley_Man3000: Just because you wanted to change schools?

  HamburgerHalpin: yup

  Smiley_Man3000: Shouldn’t it be your choice?

  HamburgerHalpin: u make it seem so simple smileyman

  Smiley_Man3000: Sometimes it is.

  HamburgerHalpin: well sometimes it isn’t

  Smiley_Man3000: Hang in there, chap! It is past my computer curfew!

  My fingers find their way back to the mouse, then back to the browser icon, then back to another bookmark. They are moving as if on their own toward a page I had been trying to quit like a bad habit. I am in a dysfunctional relationship with someone who doesn’t even know me.

  Leigha’s Web page depresses me, but I still visit it. The first thing about her page that makes me sad: you can’t see any of the good pictures unless you are her friend, and even though I’ve tried under about eight different fake profiles to get her to accept my friend request, she never has.

  According to her profile, “Music is the sound track to my life.” This is not that deep of a thought, because what else is going to be the sound track to your life? Shut up, Will. Do not make fun of lovely Leigha Pennington. She has very particular tastes and expresses a particular disdain for emo, which apparently is a type of rock or something? (I’m not a big music aficionado.)

  Mainly, I just look at her beautiful profile pic. She is wearing jeans and a plain white sleeveless shirt, hair falling down in soft ringlets over her ears. She is smiling a huge smile and hugging a floppy-eared black dog. If you look briefly at the picture, you might think she is happy. But if you look at it for a few minutes (or an hour or two, or maybe a few hundred thousand hours), something else becomes clear. There is a melancholy around her eyes that the world misses, that no one else can see. Except me?

  A lyric quoted underneath the pic says, “No one hears the last note of the song / No one appreciates what you have till you’re gone. / I’m alone even more than most / An empty shell / A shadow of a ghost.” I just know that all she needs is someone to talk to and the weight would be lifted. And since I am the only one who knows it exists, I am the perfect choice. But I can’t talk to her, and so we are both doomed, two parallel planets whose orbits will never cross.

  I move over to the “friends” area, and I find myself face to face with the unsettling gaze of Purple Phimmul. I dive in. Purple’s Web page is a strange experience. At school she’s this fascinating foreign object. Online she turns out to be pretty blunt, sharing her life history and inner thoughts with anyone interested in clicking (uh, selecting). They always teach you about online safety and how you shouldn’t make your location clear, but Purple is posing right in front of her house, a famous old mansion that anybody who’s ever been to town can locate in two seconds.

  On Purple’s page, the Phimmul blog has some interesting tidbits.

  I was born in NYC—don’t you forget it! Represent. My parents moved us to Vanilla PA, the land that time forgot. I miss the city (for shopping, yeah, and for everything). It works for now, I guess. Daddy can still make it to work in NY, and plus we have a bunch of family around here. Mom said the move is supposed to “restore some normalcy” to our family. I don’t see that happening. How can one restore that which one never had?

  There are a bunch of pictures, some in that new dress she got. The caption says something about being a queen at P.C.’s party. She looks happy enough, if a little flabby. Why is she so happy? She’s not skinny or pretty—I guess rich trumps all that. Am I envious of the weirdly confident Purple? I mean, yeah, I’d like to be rich. But it’s more than that. She cruises around the whole world like it’s her living room. I can pretend to fit in (barely), but do I ever belong? Does she even know what it feels like not to belong?

  I stare at the pictures. She’s so fully Purple. You have to give her that. I am too embarrassed to have any pictures online. I even try to get out of family pictures. But there is something very similar about us. And her family is from Pennsylvania too?

  I am curious (aka nerdy) enough to do a search on her mansion. There is a local history Web site about it with pictures of her family. One of her ancestors, named Andy Phimmul, catches my eye because he has a big, fancy mustache and an ancient hearing aid. They were called ear trumpets back then. It looks like a small tuba sticking out of his smiling face.

  OK, it’s getting late. Back to Leigha. Should I send her a message? Maybe I could just reach out to her under a fake name. Just so she knows somebody knows. Or maybe—and here’s a wild thought—I could send her a message as … myself?

  I decide to write it by hand because there is no “save draft” option on this site. I get out my notebook and start composing:

  My dearest Leigha,

  I rip out this page and throw it away. How about … acronyms!

  Hey, L.P.

  I rip this page out too. I can’t even get the first few words out without coming off as totally lame.

  Hey, Leigha! What’s up?

  Better.

  You have probably seen me around. I’m the fat deaf guy in the Phillies shirt who people sometimes throw casseroles at.

  This too is laid to rest in the wastebasket on top of a pizza-smeared napkin. Is this an impossible mountain I can never climb? And then it comes to me in a flash. A friendly but slightly romantic message that will hit all the right notes, if you will. It will just require that rarest of Halpin emotions: honesty. So I write without really thinking. It is like my hand is moving on its own, channeling these cosmic words:

  Hey, Leigha!

  This might seem like a strange message, and maybe I’m a strange guy. I’m also, if you get to know me, pretty funny and nice and even an excellent dancer. (OK, I’m lying a
bout that last one.) I’m Will, the deaf dude in a few of your classes. So, yeah, the school could stand some improvements, but I have noticed that you seem like a cool person. I happened upon your Web page (by “happened upon” I mean “did a search for”), and I get the feelin’ that we should probably hang out. I can teach you sign language; you can get me up to date on the music scene. And maybe you can tell me if I’m right or just crazy (definitely a possibility) that in your profile pic there is something just a bit sad in the way you are smiling. Maybe things suck a little for you too? Maybe you want to chat about it? Let me know. I’m all ears. (Ha-ha.) —Will Halpin

  I sit back and reread the letter a few hundred times. My heart flutters in my chest. It is definitely good. Real good. Next I just have to put my e-mail address (HamburgerHalpin@gmail.com) so she can contact me. But how do I sign off? What do I write before my name? “Yours truly”? Am I eight hundred years old? “Sincerely yours”? What does that even mean anyway?

  I check out the rest of her page while I think on it. I find some of Leigha’s poetry:

  I’ve been on the straight path,

  There’s got to be more.

  There’s tunnels and caves I want to explore.

  I’ve been on the straight path,

  There’s got to be more.

  There’s got to be more.

  There’s got to be more.

  OK, maybe she’s not a great poetess, my future girlfriend. How to end my note to Leigha? I could write:

  Your (future?) friend Will

  But that seems a little desperate, even with that question mark to soften the blow.

  Peace out, yo

  Too weird. Can’t decide. I leave it blank. I put the page in my math binder and decide to sleep on it. Will my dreams feature those eyes, so sad, so beautiful? That killer ass?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It is the middle of the night when my light flicks on. “What is that noise?” Mom signs, wiggling her hand by her ear.

  “You’re asking the wrong guy,” I sign. Trying to keep it light. I know what it is, though. Ace is barking. I can feel it. I hid him in the laundry room off to the side of my basement lair and had set my alarm to wake me in the middle of the night to check on him, but I guess he got bored waiting for me.

  “It sounds like a dog,” Mom signs.

  I shrug. Dad joins her at the foot of my bed. He has sleep in his eyes. He gives me a suspicious look and walks toward the laundry area. What was I thinking? Of course they were going to find out. And now I am about to lose my new best friend. Christ, I’m pathetic.

  Dad is walking back toward my bed. He has Ace by his side. Mom is gasping, covering her mouth with her hand. Dad points to the dog with a question mark on his face. The gesture means “Care to explain?”

  “I have never seen that dog before,” I deadpan. I love the sign for “before.” You pull your hand back toward you, like you’re pressing rewind on life. If only.

  Dad walks over to me and plucks a black hair off my sleeve. Evidence. He holds it up, then compares it to Ace’s back. Ace thinks this means Dad is going to pet him, and he gets so excited that he spins around in a circle. His tail whacks my night-stand, disrupting my messy stack of books. This spooks Ace, and he starts barking at a wobbling Poe anthology. I am having to reconsider the possibility of Ace becoming a service dog. He is afraid of literature, and his only discernible skill seems to be whizzing on stuff. Oh, and now he’s humping my mom’s leg. Nice, Ace. Nice. This audition is not going well at all. I clench my jaw.

  Then Dad starts laughing. “He likes you,” he signs to my mom (an easy sign). Then, to my surprise, Mom starts laughing.

  “Or at least my leg,” she signs.

  “He loves your leg,” I sign. Might as well join in, even if it is a weird thing to say. Ace keeps smiling, like he’s in on the joke. Or maybe he just does love that leg. I know when to strike.

  “Can we keep him?” I sign, gripping my fingers tightly as I make the sign.

  The parents exchange looks, each raising their eyebrows. I look at them and raise my eyebrows. It’s like we’re having an eyebrow-raising contest—and I am determined to win! Ace stops humping and raises his eyebrows too. We all laugh. Mom is ready to break! Then she has a bunch of questions for me. Will I clean up after him? Feed him? Walk him? Bathe him? I nod yes. Yes. Yes! She is annoyingly skeptical.

  “Every day,” I promise.

  They give me a look.

  “What?” I sign. I know what they mean. I’m not the poster boy for daily exercise. They smile. Ace barks. He’s in. He’s in!

  Dad scratches him on the ear, and we all go back to sleep.

  Arf!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “First order of business,” Mr. Arterberry is saying as I try to shake the sleep out of my head and focus on history. “Everyone needs a buddy for the field trip to Happy Memory Coal Mine.” Sheesh.

  I scan the room, watching as pairs of eyes lock in silent agreement like pieces in a puzzle that know instinctively where they belong. Stepcoat and Spark. Chambers and Jonker. Even Escapone and Carlson sign up as buddies, some sort of default twosome in a united front against normalcy. Phimmul and Pennington. Hmm. Interesting. Not Pat and Leigha? Why aren’t they buddies? And why couldn’t her second choice be yours truly, whose pure-ish devotion is hers for the taking? I’ve watched the two of them, the way Pat looks at her, licking his lips. He’s very animalistic. He’s a disgusting beast. Doesn’t she see that?

  So, where else will my puzzle piece click? Where, oh where, but with Devon Smiley? He gives me a serious look and then a nod and then a smile. I do something with my mouth, maybe a grimace. But it is official. We are coal mine field trip buddies. Just not in a romantic way.

  Arterberry is writing out the list of buddies, squinting down his nose at a black binder. Devon walks up and hands me a note. A note? After getting caught chatting the day before, I would have thought he’d be more sensibly paranoid.

  Hello, my good man.

  I forgot to ask on IM last night where you got to yesterday. Did you decide to skip afternoon classes? I wish I had the guts to try that. (I’d skip gym every damn day.) I had a whole story lined up about how you became suddenly and mysteriously transported away from this galaxy. But no one asked. Weird, huh? Anyway, glad to be your buddy!

  Dev

  Me and “Dev” Smiley.

  I try to focus on Arterberry’s lecture. It takes me forever to realize that the one word he keeps saying is “bituminous,” which is a type of coal. I pick up “anthracite,” another type, more easily. But I keep getting lost. So I go back to the text and lose myself in that world: tough guys doing dangerous work amid fires and explosions and cave-ins. Strikes, murders, sabotage, men shot on picket lines, fighting for their rights in our very backyards. Does any of this flow through my own veins? I try to figure out my connection to this world, but, let’s face it, I barely know my place in this classroom. In my own family. In my own self.

  I think of my old school for some reason, of the battle lines drawn in the sand, now washed away by the ocean of time. See, Leigha? I’m a poet too. Shit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lunch is fried ravioli. It is a strange food that does strange things to my normally ironclad gut. As soon as I eat a piece, I feel it expanding like one of those pills that you put in water and watch as it turns into a sponge dinosaur. I go back for seconds.

  Straight ahead in my line of sight is Kevin Planders. Unsurprisingly, he is sitting alone. Possibly because he is a loser, but maybe because he is eating a confusing lunch of ketchup packets and beef jerky.

  Shouldn’t be so harsh. Planders is just another fellow outsider. Maybe he isn’t a bad guy if you get to know him. Sure there is always something unsteady in his large, glassy eyes. And, yeah, there is something not quite right in the way his lips move all the time and his face contorts wildly in response to whatever snuff film is playing in his head. Actually, maybe Kevin Planders is a bad guy if you
get to know him. Some people are just crazy, and although I’d like to be a saint and befriend him, I have my own considerable ass to cover.

  Purple Phimmul is also in full view and wearing some sort of intricately beaded dress. I lock onto her gaze for a second and am met with an angry glare. Geez. Why so pissy, missy? She looks like she’s going to stick her tongue out at me. For some bizarre reason, I find myself winking at her. What the hell was that? She seems to be thinking the same thing because the look on her face is total surprise. Then she starts laughing and turns away.

  OK, must move along. What else is on? There’s a bit of commotion over at Pat’s table. D. JONKER is trying to sit down, and Pat keeps subtly sliding his chair out of reach. He doesn’t even look at Derrick, just slides the chair a little to the left, then a little to the right. D. JONKER is smiling at first but then becomes very frustrated and screams something that would have gotten him suspended for sure if he wasn’t a member of the defensive line squadron or whatever you call it. (I hate football.) Is this about that party? I jot in my notebook: D. JONKER ON THE OUTS WITH P.C.?