Playing With Matches

by Brian Katcher

  A Zummer High riddle: Why do Eskimos wear earmuffs?

  Answer: So they won’t hear Mr. Hamburg up in Alaska.

  Mr. Hamburg, my social studies teacher, didn’t scream. He didn’t yell. It was just that his voice was naturally loud. Really loud. Nobody zoned out in history class; it would have been like trying to nap while the space shuttle was taking off.

  Hamburg was somewhere between forty and seventy. His hair looked like it had been combed with an eggbeater. He somehow managed to constantly maintain a three-day beard. The narrow end of his tie was always a little longer than the wide end. I knew he changed shirts, because the stains were in different places every day.

  “WHEN PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ORDERED THAT AMERICAN CITIZENS OF JAPANESE DESCENT BE ARRESTED AND INTERNED, HE VIOLATED THE CONSTITUTION.” He paused to drain his third cup of black coffee that period. “CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT PART OF THE CONSTITUTION SHOULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS?”

  No one bothered to answer. Mr. Hamburg, without fail, would call on everyone before class was over. Well, almost everyone.

  “MR. STEWARD?”

  Bill Steward looked around nervously, not sure of the question, not even sure if he was the one called on, probably not even sure what class he was in. Poor guy. He was nice enough, but he just didn’t have a lot upstairs.

  Bill did a pretty good impression of an epileptic until Mr. Hamburg called on someone else. People chuckled. I felt sorry for Bill. He had not been able to answer a question the whole year. I wondered why Mr. Hamburg insisted on calling on Bill, while he never called on…

  I turned in my seat and took a sideways glance at Melody. I hadn’t ever noticed we had a class together. Well, I had noticed but never really thought about it. She was like that 10 MPH sign in the parking lot. People knew it was there, but it didn’t affect them.

  Melody sat in the cornermost desk. She was sort of hunched over her notebook and was the only one not laughing at Bill’s spaz attack. I had the urge to make a face at her across the room and crack her up.

  “MR. SANDERS,” bellowed our teacher, rapping my desk with his bony knuckles, “IF YOU ARE THROUGH DAYDREAMING, PERHAPS YOU MIGHT ENLIGHTEN US?” His good eye stared me down, his glass one focused on the wall.

  “Uhhhh…”

  “THANK YOU, MR. SANDERS. AS FOR THE REST OF YOU, THE SEMESTER PROJECT WILL BEGIN TODAY. YOU HAVE A LIST OF POSSIBLE TOPICS. AS I MENTIONED BEFORE, YOU MAY WORK WITH A PARTNER. LET’S TAKE THE LAST FIVE MINUTES TO PAIR UP.”

  Crap. I hated group projects. I always got saddled with some dumb-ass and ended up having to do all the work.

  To my horror, Bill was looking at me and smiling his bucktoothed, moronic grin. That was one person whose grade I did not want to be linked with.

  I looked frantically around the room for anyone else to partner with. Everyone seemed to be pairing up. Everyone except Melody. She hadn’t moved from her desk. From the other side of the room, I noticed her looking at me. It was funny, but at that distance, it looked as if her face was made up only of eyes, as if she had no other features.

  I didn’t know if Melody was smart, but unlike Bill, she’d never accidentally got a binder caught in her hair. I propelled my chair across the newly waxed floor and slammed into Melody’s desk. She hadn’t expected this, and I almost took off two of her fingers.

  “Hey, wanna be partners?”

  “Okay.” Melody was no longer looking at me and was squirming in her seat.

  “Tight.” The bell rang.

  “When should we…”

  I was already moving toward the door. “I like to wait till the last second and then do a really half-assed job. If you want to get together during study hall tomorrow, we can choose a topic.”

  As I left, I noticed that Melody was still sitting in her seat, not moving. I regretted my rash behavior. Maybe she liked working alone and I’d put her on the spot. I’d just kind of assumed she’d enjoy hanging out with me. But why should she be any different? She was a girl, after all. And few girls liked spending time with me. Even outcasts like her.

  The poster proudly declared WINNERS DON’T USE DRUGS. Seven people, evidently winners, stood grinning at the camera: a jock-looking guy, three pretty girls, a guy in a leather jacket (the safe, school-sponsored rebel), a handsome guy with glasses and a biology book, and the token black guy. Across their mugs, someone with a Sharpie had written You wash your walls to erase my pens / But the Poster Poet strikes again!

  I sat in the cafeteria after school, waiting for Rob to get out of the bathroom. Zummer High was big enough that there were always about a hundred kids hanging around after school, practicing sports, meeting with clubs, or just lounging with friends. I hoped they’d all get savage diarrhea.

  Maybe if I had tried harder to be an athlete, girls would notice me. Or if I’d been one of those student council jack-offs; there were always white-bread girls hanging around them. Hell, even the losers who snorted paint had chicks who cleaned up their vomit. But not me.

  “I’m tired of cleaning up my own vomit!” I shouted to Rob as he exited the restroom.

  “Aren’t we all.” We headed out the front doors, into the blistering blandness of a spring afternoon in Missouri.

  I could open my passenger door only from the inside due to age or rust or something. I leaned over to pop the door, and Rob swung his lanky body into the seat next to me.

  “Hey, Rob? You ever get lonely? Feel like you’ll never meet anyone?”

  “Are you asking me out?”

  “Not with that tone of voice.”

  We were stuck in the daily three-thirty-five parking lot gridlock. Rob turned to me.

  “Leon, you’ve been on this ‘poor me, I can’t get a date’ kick for a year now. Face it, if girls don’t like you today, they won’t like you tomorrow.”

  I inched the car forward, then slammed on the brakes when someone cut me off. “Don’t you ever take the bus?”

  “Massa make me sit in da back. Seriously, man, don’t wait for girls to change. They won’t.”

  I saw an opening in the traffic and gunned it, narrowly avoiding the security booth. Parking Lot Pete, the middle-aged school security officer, shouted at me as I tore onto Mexico Road.

  After I dropped Rob off, I thought about what he’d said. Girls won’t change. So what was I supposed to do? Change myself?

  Cleaning out my room was like going on an archaeological expedition: I’d uncovered a lot of dust, many fragments, and several dead things. Already I’d filled three bags for the trash and two boxes for storage.

  As I examined what was either a putrid roll of sweat socks or a fossilized burrito, I was stunned by the flash of a camera.

  “Mom! Knock it off!”

  My mother was standing in my doorway with the camera, a smug smile on her face. Mom was five feet tall and in her forties, but still intimidated me. I felt like she’d caught me downloading pornography (again).

  “My son’s doing housework without being asked. I had to record it.” Mom chucked me on the shoulder and began to help me pick up. Nonchalantly, I dropped some books on top of my stack of swimsuit issues.

  “You’re getting rid of your role-playing books?” Mom asked as I stacked them in a plastic tub.

  “Just packing them up.”

  She shook her head. “I never thought you’d get rid of those. And your Star Wars figurines?”

  “C’mon, Mom, I’m seventeen.” I didn’t mention I’d bought some of them as recently as two years ago.

  Mom sat on my bed, toying with Baxter, my teddy bear. (I didn’t have the heart to shove him into a box.) I removed a model airplane from my bookshelf, dusted it off, and dropped it into the trash.

  “So why are you throwing out all your toys?” asked Mom wistfully. Moms. You’ll always be five years old to them.

  “Just getting rid of some of my old stuff. I’ll be out of high school soon. I don’t think I need to leave my Cub Scouts awards up.”

  Mom frowned and stroked Baxte
r’s bald head. Every time I mentioned I’d be off to college in a couple of years and leaving her and Dad alone, she’d get a little sad. I don’t think she liked the idea of me growing up. Suddenly, she grinned.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Huh?” I was taking down my fifth-grade science fair certificate. It had been on the wall so long it left a faint imprint.

  “This girl you like. You haven’t thrown anything away in seventeen years; I thought there might be a girl involved.”

  I removed a stack of Pokémon cards from my storage box and pointedly dropped them into the trash. “There’s no girl, Mom.”

  “I just meant that maybe you had your eye on someone.”

  “There’s no girl, Mom.” I think Mom liked to believe that I had never gotten over my elementary school fear of girl germs. She never could accept that her smart, handsome, perfect son simply could not land a date. The first time Samantha came over to hang out, Mom asked me about her for weeks.

  “Leon, are you sure there’s not anyone on your mind?”

  No way I was getting into that conversation. If I said yes, she’d hound me; if I said no, she’d worry I was gay.

  I hoisted a sack of trash. “Could you take this out to the curb?”

  She took it, smiled at me, and left.

  I straddled my chair. Okay, I’d gotten rid of my crap. So what? My room was cleaner, but I was no cooler. What did I think would happen? That once I’d cleaned the old Mad magazines off the floor, there’d be room for Amy’s bra? That the only thing keeping the girls’ volleyball team from pouncing on me was my Albert Einstein T-shirt?

  Along with my junk, I’d eradicated a little bit of my personality. What should I replace it with?

  5

  NICO-TEEN

  The next morning I wedged my car into its assigned spot in the student lot. The guy who owned the much nicer Taurus had parked too close to me again, but I made sure I didn’t smack my door into it very hard. I skipped across the parking lot with the joy I usually reserved for the dentist.

  “Hey, you!”

  That voice. That beautiful, husky voice. It could belong to only one person: Amy Green. I turned.

  She was leaning against someone’s battered Saturn. Her arms were crossed, and she had an expression of utter boredom on her perfect face. Not for the first time, I pictured her lying on a couch, being hand-fed grapes by female slaves.

  “Yeah, you,” Amy said when I hesitated. She was addressing me! I came. I heeled. I would have begged or rolled over if she’d asked.

  Amy held out a cigarette. “Got a light?”

  In my entire life, I had never had a more desperate need to produce fire. I would have banged two rocks together if I’d thought it would make a spark. But I didn’t smoke and didn’t carry a lighter. Even the one in my car had long since been tossed so I could hook up a portable CD player.

  Amy, the human goddess, still pointed her cigarette at me. It was my one chance to start a conversation with her, and I was blowing it! Maybe I should offer to run to that convenience store that was only half a mile away.

  “I’m sorry; I don’t—” I froze. We weren’t alone. Parking Lot Pete was wheezing his way toward us. If there was one thing Pete loved, it was catching a student smoking. He was sneaking from behind Amy, so he probably hadn’t seen anything yet, but he suspected.

  I made a frantic gesture with my head, but Amy must have thought I was having a spasm or something. She stepped back a pace. And Pete (his real name was Mr. Jones) was only a few cars away.

  Without thinking, I snatched the butt from her hand. Pete would see if I threw it on the ground, and I wasn’t sure if he had the right to make me turn out my pockets. Desperately, I crammed the cancer stick all the way into my mouth.

  Amy noticed Pete before she had time to comment on my apparent psychotic episode. Pete glared at Amy, then at me, his bald head and white uniform already soaked with sweat. I gave him a toothless smile as the burning nicotine oozed over my tongue.

  “What do you have in your mouth?” asked Pete.

  “Gum.” I gulped and accidentally swallowed some of the dissolving tobacco.

  “Yeah?” He didn’t seem inclined to leave. My eyes were beginning to water as I merrily chewed my nicotine gum.

  “It really is gum, Mr. Jones,” said Amy. “I just gave it to him.”

  Pete stared me down, apparently wondering if maybe he’d made a mistake. But my mouth was producing saliva, and I had to swallow. Mistake. My delicate stomach, which could handle a dozen Twinkies or a six-pack of Dr Pepper, rejected the Camel.

  I managed not to get any vomit on Amy by gallantly catching most of it on my sneakers. The only thing I’d had for breakfast was a Coke, so everything was a lovely brown.

  As I leaned on my knees, retching, I heard Pete snort. “Chewing gum, eh? Come to the office. That’s going to be a week of in-school suspension.”

  Figuring there was no point in trying to impress Amy now, I inhaled deeply and forcibly cleared my nostrils.

  “I wasn’t smoking,” I gasped.

  “What are you talking about? There’s a butt right there.”

  I spit between my feet. “That’s not a butt.”

  “Then what is it, smart guy?”

  Stomach acid was burning my sinuses and I think I had barf on my lips. Still, I managed to straighten up and face Pete.

  “It’s a hunk of food. Feel free to prove me wrong.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought Pete almost smiled. He pulled a yellow pad out of his belt and wrote me a detention slip. It was the most serious punishment he could give; for anything worse, he’d have to go through the principal, as well as a puddle of puke.

  “After school today.” He retreated to his booth.

  Amy wordlessly passed me a bottle of Gatorade, which I chugged.

  “You couldn’t smoke unfiltered?” I wanted to say more, but I had to go change into my gym shoes.

  Samantha didn’t look up when I grabbed her water, rinsed out my mouth, and spit into the bottle.

  “If you’re trying to get me horny, it’s not working.”

  “I’ve been chewing on Amy Green’s cigarettes.” I began eating Samantha’s raisin muffin but decided I’d rather taste the vomit.

  “You know, Leon, there’s such a thing as trying too hard to impress a girl.”

  I wiped my mouth on a napkin and stood as the warning bell rang.

  “I don’t believe that for a minute.”

  I hurried to chemistry in hopes that Amy was waiting for me to thank me for saving her butt (and swallowing it). As it turned out, she didn’t wander in until the final bell rang, and didn’t look in my direction.

  6

  HARD WORK PAYS OFF EVENTUALLY, BUT LAZINESS PAYS OFF RIGHT NOW

  God was kind to me. My study hall was right before lunch, giving me a solid hour with nothing to do. I made my way to the library, wondering if I should spend my time downloading music in the computer lab or napping behind the reference stacks.

  “Hey, Sanders!” Johnny corner checked me into a bank of lockers.

  “Hey, Johnny.” I rubbed my shoulder.

  “I heard you got busted smoking today. Someone said you got sick and threw up on Amy Green.”

  Goddammit! “I wasn’t smoking; she was. I had to eat her cigarette so she wouldn’t get caught…and I puked.”

  I could see the little gears turning in Johnny’s head as he tried to decide why he should be making fun of me. I ducked into the library as he was still thinking of an insult.

  The Zummer library always reminded me of a soundstage. It was like someone had built a school library for show, not for use. It was almost always abandoned, and you got the impression that the books were just cardboard props. I’d read enough of them to know they were real, but whenever I checked out books, I felt like an extra in some movie.

  I grabbed a computer and settled down for thirty minutes’ worth of hard studying. Right when I logged on to an onli
ne video game site, I felt a familiar presence behind me. Melody stood next to my chair, waiting for me to notice her. I quickly stood up.

  “Ah, you probably think I forgot that we were supposed to work on the project. But as you can see”—I grandly gestured at the tanks battling on the computer screen—“I’m already doing research.”

  Melody just stood there, staring me right in the chin, clutching her binder to her chest. She reminded me of a child lost at the shopping mall, too terrified to ask for help. I remembered how I’d railroaded her into partnering with me on the assignment.

  “That was a joke, Melody. So what topic are we supposed to be writing about?” Any schmuck could write a report when he knew what the subject was.

  “We have several options.” Her head continued to tilt downward, until all I could see was the scarf wrapped around her scalp. I was getting a neck cramp trying to maintain eye contact.

  “Okay, Melody, that’s enough.”

  Her head jolted back up. “Wha…?”

  “My eyes are up here!” I crossed my arms over my chest and affected a falsetto. “You know, I’m not just a hunk of meat. You women are all alike!”

  For a second I thought Melody was crying; then I realized she was trying to stifle laughter.

  I grinned at her. “Now, if you’re through with the peep show, let’s get started.” I pointed to an empty table. “And don’t try to pull the chair out for me; I’m not that type of boy.”

  Melody neatly laid out her social studies notes, some blank paper, and the printed instructions for the project. I snatched some mostly clean paper someone had left on another table.

  Melody looked down at our instructions. “We have several topics to choose from.”

  I blindly stabbed at the paper with one of the free golf pencils from the checkout desk.

  “Let’s do this one.” I looked to see what I’d landed on. “Name and date? Hey, that’s easy!”