Echo

by Kate Morgenroth

  Justin looked up just as his mother carelessly tossed the bowl on the table and put down the carton of milk without even looking at him.

  Before the accident his mother had been an overwhelming presence—always telling Justin to clean up his room or get his feet off the couch or do his homework or sit up straight when he ate. Despite working full-time she had always made breakfast in the morning, and they’d always had a sit-down dinner around the dining room table. Dinner was the time when Mark and Justin would be grilled about their day, their grades, their homework, their friends. Behind their mother’s back they’d called it the Inquisition.

  The only custom that remained from that time—Justin thought of it as the time “before”—was that his mother still made him breakfast. But she almost never made dinner anymore. They usually ordered in and ate in front of the TV. His mother would ask him about his day—but with one eye on the television. He knew she wasn’t really interested. Not in the way she had been before. And on top of that she’d stopped nagging him about cleaning his room or doing his homework or improving his grades. He never in a million years would have thought he would miss those things. But he did.

  Yeah, she still gets me breakfast, Justin responded to the voice. She also feeds the cat. And she feeds the cat first. It’s like I’m not even there. She barely talks to me. She only talks to my father.

  At that moment, as if in illustration, Justin’s mother turned to his father. “You’ve got that presentation today, don’t you?” she asked.

  See? Justin said bitterly. Somehow, sitting at the table with his father and mother, Justin was sure he couldn’t have felt more alone—even if he were on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was a piercing aching feeling. It was like being enclosed in a little personal soundproof chamber so that even if you yelled, no one around you would be able to hear.

  Justin’s father didn’t even lower the paper to answer. “Yep,” he said to Justin’s mother. “It’s today.”

  “Did you even ask them to reschedule?”

  “No.”

  Justin took advantage of the distraction. Carefully, so as not to be seen, he spit the pill out into his hand and tucked it into his pocket. Then he picked up the milk and poured some into his bowl of cereal.

  “I would have asked them to reschedule,” his mother said.

  Justin’s father didn’t respond.

  “Do what you want,” his mother said.

  His father rustled the paper and said, “Thank you. I will.”

  Justin’s mother turned away, and her gaze fell on Justin. She said, “What are you…” then trailed off.

  Justin looked up eagerly. “What am I what?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind.” Then, picking up her cup of coffee, she spoke again to Justin’s father. “I’ve got to run. I’ll meet you this afternoon.”

  She started toward the door, then paused and said offhandedly over her shoulder to Justin, “Will you be there?

  Justin said uncertainly, “Um, no, I—”

  His mother cut him off. “Fine,” she said abruptly. “See you later, then.”

  “You’re right. Your mother seems pretty hostile,” the voice said.

  Yeah, just a little, Justin replied sarcastically.

  “What about your father?”

  My father?

  Justin looked at his father, now that they were alone together. All he could see was the newspaper held up like a barrier between them.

  Justin sighed and went back to eating his cereal. He was very aware of the sound of his own chewing. That and the occasional rustle of the newspaper as his father turned the page were the only things that saved them from falling into a deep, bottomless well of silence.

  Justin almost jumped when his father suddenly spoke from behind the paper.

  “I don’t want to hear about you getting into any trouble at school today,” his father said. His voice sounded too loud in the quiet.

  Justin stared at him—or rather at the wall of paper between them.

  “But it’s not me,” he protested.

  At least that got his father to lower the paper—but it was only to glare at him. “I don’t want excuses, Justin. I just don’t want anything happening today. Your mother couldn’t take it. I don’t understand why you’re doing it, and I want you to stop.”

  Justin looked down at his bowl and swirled the spoon, creating a little whirlpool of cereal.

  “Do you hear me?” his father demanded.

  “Yes, I heard you.”

  “And do you promise that nothing’s going to happen today?”

  “Gimme a break, Dad.”

  “I want you to promise,” his father repeated.

  “Jeez. Okay, I promise.”

  “All right,” his father said sternly. Then he raised the paper again and went back to reading.

  Justin looked back down into his cereal, but he couldn’t eat. He had the strangest feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” the voice asked.

  Justin wished that his father had been the one to ask the question instead of the voice.

  It’s not my fault, Justin said sadly.

  “What’s not?”

  What’s going to happen.

  “And what’s going to happen?”

  I don’t know, Justin said, suddenly confused. I don’t know. How can I know what’s going to happen?

  But somehow he did know. The feeling was like déjà vu but stronger…and scarier. It told him that without a doubt something was going to happen. And it was going to be bad.

  3

  Justin had only a three-minute walk to the bus stop. The bus stop was down the street, just outside the guard booth. His house was in one of the private gated communities, but, as Justin’s father liked to point out, it wasn’t much of a community. Everyone was always carefully isolated from everyone else. They went into their garages and got into their cars and drove to work. No one worked in their own yards—they all hired gardening services to come in and cut the lawns and rake the leaves. The residents didn’t walk in the neighborhood; instead they went to the gym and walked on the tread-mills. And, Justin’s father usually added, they hadn’t even put in sidewalks—the one thing that would link one house to the next. Justin’s mother always pointed out that most subdivisions didn’t put in sidewalks anymore. And Justin’s father always said, “Exactly my point.”

  There was a depressing sameness to the houses. They all had neatly manicured aprons of grass—thanks to the gardeners—with a few tastefully landscaped trees and bushes. The gate at the entrance was supposedly to keep other people out, but Justin felt trapped by it—trapped in that nice, clean, orderly version of the world. The image didn’t fit his reality.

  “You don’t like where you live?” the voice asked.

  I’d rather live in the slums, Justin said.

  “Why?”

  Because maybe then there would be more ugliness on the outside than on the inside. It wouldn’t be such a lie.

  Justin reached the front entrance. He waved at the security guard in the booth and passed through to the main road to wait for the bus.

  A few minutes later the yellow school bus trundled up and squealed to a halt. The doors opened with something that Justin thought sounded like a sigh, though it was really just the old hydraulics. Justin heaved a sigh to match. Every day he thought about just turning around and walking away instead of getting on. He wondered what the bus driver would do—probably just close the doors and keep going.

  But, like every other day, Justin climbed the rubber-treaded steps and faced the aisle of packed seats. His stop was almost the last before the school, so the bus was always filled. The kids were all staring at him as he started down the aisle.

  At that moment the bus lurched forward, causing him to stumble. He had to grab on to a seat to keep himself from falling, and there was a burst of laughter.

  Justin felt his face flush with embarrassment, and he
looked around, desperate for somewhere to sit. His eyes fell on a pretty girl. She had long blond hair—silky and smooth, exactly like the hair you see in shampoo commercials—and she was sitting alone, her book bag on the slick green vinyl next to her.

  She glanced up and caught him looking at her. “You wanna sit here?” she said, as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. At the same time, she put her hands on her bag as if to barricade the seat.

  “No,” Justin muttered, moving past her toward the back of the bus.

  “That wasn’t very nice of her,” the voice observed.

  Welcome to high school, Justin said. The kids are all like that.

  “Not a single nice one?”

  Not to me.

  Justin kept walking down the aisle. Finally he found an empty seat and slid in. Wadded paper flew over his head, but the yells of the other kids faded into the background as he pressed his forehead against the glass and stared out the window. It was early October, and the leaves were just starting to change. The green was just beginning to shade to red and yellow. Fall had always been his favorite season. He knew most kids said they liked summer best, but that was usually because of summer vacation. When it came to just the season itself, there was something about the turning leaves and the freshness of the air in the morning—just cold enough to tingle inside his nose—that made him feel happy and somehow melancholy at the same time. But he didn’t feel the same way about fall anymore. It had been fall when Mark died. And now, of the happy-melancholy feeling only the melancholy remained.

  The bus ride was never long enough. Justin always wanted more of a buffer before arriving; too soon the bus pulled up in front of the school. It was a low sprawling building—ugly and institutional—sitting on a slight rise with more dirt than grass, and no trees to soften it.

  The kids pushed and shoved, jostling to get off the bus. Justin wondered what they were in such a hurry to get to. He certainly wasn’t in any rush, so he sat and waited until the last one had clumped down the steps, before he got up and walked to the front of the bus. Then, instead of clattering down like all the other kids, he paused at the top of the steps.

  The bus driver must have sensed Justin’s reluctance because he said suddenly, “I know how you feel, kid. I’d rather go back to prison than have to go back to high school.”

  Justin turned around to look at the driver. The man had only been on the job two weeks. The driver before this one had lasted less than a month—he’d quit because he couldn’t take the constant heckling from the kids. The boys that usually sat in the back had moved to sit up front and had kept up an almost constant stream of taunting. A few of the girls had joined in too, telling him he was a dirty old man and that they were going to report him for looking at them funny. The driver had tried to be stern and reprimand them, but it hadn’t worked. The kids were almost like a pack of wolves; they had seemed to be able to smell his fear.

  When this new driver had started two weeks ago, the kids had tried the same thing with him, but he had been able to put a stop to it within thirty seconds. He’d simply given them a look and said, “Cut it out,” and they’d stopped. They’d sensed instinctively that he wasn’t someone they wanted to tangle with. Now Justin knew why.

  “Prison?” he said. “I didn’t know you could drive a school bus with a criminal record.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone. But personally I think it should be a requirement,” he said.

  Justin smiled.

  “If I was back in school, you know what I’d do different?” the driver added, as Justin stood, still hesitating, on the top step.

  “What?”

  “I’d drop out.”

  4

  Justin made his way down the main hallway of the school. It had a low ceiling, a thick speckled linoleum floor, and metal lockers lining the walls so every sound was magnified, turning kids’ voices and the banging of locker doors into a din that was an assault on the ears. It was before the first bell, so the hall was jammed with students. On both sides there were students getting books out of their lockers, or gathered in little groups talking, and in the center, a narrow corridor of moving traffic.

  Everyone seemed to be able to move easily through the crowd—except for Justin. He was jostled on all sides. A student elbowed him. Another shouldered him roughly. As he tried to get out of the way, he was bumped by someone else.

  “Are they doing that on purpose?” the voice asked him.

  What do you think? Justin said.

  “Why would they do that?”

  Because in high school there’s always got to be an outsider. It’s the only way the “in” people know they’re “in.” They need someone who’s “out.”

  “And you’re that person?”

  I’m one of them. Well…at least now I am, Justin amended.

  At that moment another student knocked into him hard enough to make him drop his bag. It was open, and a couple of books slid out onto the floor of the corridor. He stopped and bent to retrieve them. When he looked up, what he saw made him freeze.

  “What is it?” the voice asked. “What do you see?”

  Billy, Justin answered. I see Billy.

  Billy had been his best friend—but that, like everything else in Justin’s life, had changed after the accident. Justin had soon discovered that you didn’t go from being best friends to being nothing, neutral. It didn’t work that way. If you weren’t best friends anymore, then you had to be enemies.

  “So,” the voice said. “How do you feel about seeing Billy?”

  I see him every day, Justin said.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  I don’t feel anything. I don’t care, Justin responded, with more bravado than truth. Generally Justin was okay when he saw Billy in class or in the cafeteria sitting at his regular table (the table that Justin used to sit at as well)—basically he was okay anytime he was expecting to see Billy. But in the moments when he glanced up and caught sight of Billy unexpectedly, the truth was it still felt like someone had punched him in the pit of his stomach.

  Billy wasn’t alone; he was flanked by his “gang”: Ricky, Tim, Sam, Peter, and Evan. They were all the popular boys, the ones who ruled the school. Billy and the gang were gathered around another boy—an obvious target. Justin thought his name was Daniel. He was what adults would call a “sensitive” kid.

  Billy pushed Daniel back into the lockers, saying, “Why are you such a faggot? Huh?”

  Ricky—a kid that Justin had never liked, even when they were supposedly friends—chimed in, “Yeah. Fairy faggot. I heard you were looking at Billy’s ass in the locker room.”

  Surprisingly Daniel managed to keep his cool. He replied calmly, “That’s not true.”

  Ricky sneered, “I saw you. I saw you staring at his ass.”

  Daniel shrugged. “If I was, it was only ’cuz I couldn’t help staring at his ass pimples.”

  Billy lunged forward at this, grabbing Daniel by the shirt and slamming him against the lockers again.

  “You’re dead,” Billy snarled.

  Justin shoveled his books back into his bag and stood up. Maybe it was the movement that drew Billy’s attention, but at that moment Billy glanced away from Daniel and over at Justin.

  Their eyes locked.

  It was as if time stopped. Everyone else seemed magically frozen, and it felt as though he and Billy were the only two people in the world. It was like a waking dream—or rather, a waking nightmare.

  “Dead,” Billy said again, but his voice sounded strange. And he looked strange too. Justin peered more closely, and he saw that Billy’s eyes were open but he had a greenish gray color to his skin and there was a deep gash on his forehead that was oozing blood.

  Then there was the voice in Justin’s head. “Dead?” it asked, echoing Billy’s words. “Who’s dead?”

  I think…Billy’s dead, Justin said. He’s…he’s messed up. He’s bleeding.

  “What time is it?”


  Justin blinked, and just as suddenly everything was back to normal. Billy was just Billy.

  I…made a mistake. No one’s dead. It’s just something Billy said. He’s picking on this other kid. Justin’s voice in his head was calm, but his heart was pounding.

  The world had returned to normal, but Billy was still staring at him. Even though Billy had tightened his grip on Daniel’s shirt, he had now switched his focus to Justin.

  “What do you think you’re looking at?” Billy demanded.

  Justin approached reluctantly. He stopped a few feet away, glanced at Daniel, then back to Billy, and said, “You. It looks like you’re having a fight with your boyfriend there.”

  Billy abruptly let go of Daniel’s shirt and turned to face Justin.

  “Don’t start with me,” he threatened.

  “Don’t make me start with you,” Justin replied calmly.

  “I mean it,” Billy said.

  “So do I.”

  The other boys around them followed this exchange closely. Now Ricky jumped in.

  “Don’t take his shit, Billy,” Ricky said maliciously.

  “I won’t,” Billy promised. He looked at Justin. “Back off.” But as he said it, he took a step forward.

  Justin took a corresponding step back. “Okay.”

  But Billy just advanced another step, saying, “I mean it.” Then he reached out and shoved Justin.

  Justin retaliated by taking Billy by the shirt and running him back into the wall of lockers. Billy grappled with him, and for a moment they were clinched together.

  The crowd of kids in the hallway immediately began egging them on. There were catcalls and shouts, but even above the noise Justin could hear the words that Billy whispered into his ear.

  He said, “You’ll be sorry.”

  Justin let go and stumbled backward.

  There was a disappointed “Aw” from the crowd. Ricky called out, “Go on. Get him, Billy.”

  But instead of coming after Justin, Billy turned on his friend. “Why don’t you just shut up, Ricky.” Then he shouldered his way through the surrounding crowd and stalked off down the hallway.