We Ride Upon Sticks

by Quan Barry

  Bad things have their own energy, the book continued. When you lie, you let something loose in the world.

  Julie felt the blue strip start to pulse around her arm. She didn’t need a sock to tell her this was it. It was obvious. In catechism class, they were always learning that goodness produces good, that virtue has an energy to it. Julie remembered punching her brother in the shoulder. How she’d felt a dark shiver purr up her spine, her body suddenly filled with a new zest.

  “We just have to do bad things,” she said.

  Heather was still buried in the Malleus Maleficarum. Julie reached over and slammed the book shut right in her friend’s face. Heather let out a small yelp. It was such a rude thing to do. Yet Julie felt ten feet tall. She pushed The Salem Witch Trials across the table. “Read,” she commanded. She said it with such authority that Heather accepted the book and began studying it. This is what Julie liked most about her friend. She was smart, but never so smart that she discounted something right off the bat. Even the dumbest ideas, like making a Roman toga out of tinfoil, were something she would look at from all angles until she’d arrived at a decision.

  “ ‘Light from light, true God from true God,’ ” said Julie. “Why can’t the opposite be true?” Later that afternoon, in the locker room where we all gathered after practice, they’d describe it this way.

  Heather began by handing everyone a blue exam book, the kind we took tests in. “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” she said. “You’ve got homework.” There was groaning all around. “Relax,” she said. “I promise it’ll be fun.”

  And so it was decided. Fridays we’d each pass in at least one journal page detailing the previous week, keeping track of all the dark and nefarious things we’d done as well as the dark and nefarious things we hoped to do, and any instructions for how to replicate past successes. “It’s like when you go to confession,” said Heather. “You tell the priest about the bad stuff you did. Well, we’re doing the same thing, but instead of being forgiven for our trespasses, we’re being credited for them.” Then Heather explained how she’d compile our weekly pages and staple them into Emilio. Emilio would become a record of our offerings, a shadow book documenting our efforts on behalf of the dark.

  “What if other people read our entries?” said Sue Yoon. Her Yabba-Dabba-Doo Berry hair was already fading and she’d just dyed it the night before.

  Mel Boucher thought of the rose stem Jen Fiorenza had glued between two pages in Emilio, how the very next day Jen was elected team captain. “When you pass in your pages, you could just fold them over and glue them shut if you want,” she said.

  “Good idea,” said Heather. “It’s not like you’ll be graded on it.”

  “Then how will we know if everybody wrote something?” said Becca Bjelica.

  “You’re on your honor,” said Heather. “We all want to win, right?”

  We turned to Abby Putnam. She was our leader. If she was game, we were game. She stopped peeling her fourth banana of the day. You could see the wheels spinning in her head. She looked skeptical. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s like suggested summer reading,” said Heather. “Nobody knows if you really did it. It’s just suggested.”

  Abby remembered the night back at Camp Wildcat when she’d signed her name in the book. How Emilio had seemed to smile at her in the shadow of the Willoughby Boulder, his voice rising through the darkness. Sometimes a good leader follows. It was obvious we all wanted to believe. If each week all Abby had to do was just record how much protein she’d eaten, how much potassium, and none of us would be all the wiser, then she could get behind it. Field field field, she silently intoned, then nodded and went back to peeling her banana.

  “What kinds of things are we supposed to do?” asked Boy Cory. Although he was required to change in the boys’ locker room, if we were having a sit-down, once someone gave him the okay, he would sneak into ours when none of the coaches were looking.

  “Just stuff that’s a little mischievous, a little not typically you,” said Heather.

  It was starting to sound fun.

  “This better work,” said Jen Fiorenza. Her Claw looked like a pile of debris the tide had washed ashore.

  “What have we got to lose?” said Julie Kaling. Though we couldn’t see them, the wings on her back were almost completely dry and ready for use.

  * * *

  —

  That night at the Kaling household Julie’s mom had some kind of bee in her bonnet. At the dinner table, the Prophet sat pushing his broccoli around on his plate. When he was still sitting there well after the rest of the family had finished eating, Mrs. Kaling set the oven timer. It was a nightly tradition. The Prophet had ten minutes to finish what was on his plate or there would be no dessert, which that night was a single scoop of spumoni. It didn’t really matter. The Prophet hated pistachio. This made Mr. Kaling all the merrier, as the spumoni lasted longer.

  Tonight there was a PTA meeting at the high school. Though she held no official position with the PTA, Mrs. Kaling always attended. Julie watched as her mother came out of the bathroom, her car keys already in her hand. Something in the way her mother didn’t look at them sitting there at the dining room table, the way she stayed in the shadows. “Make sure you Nix him good,” she said. Mr. Kaling grimaced.

  On her way out the door, Julie caught her mother’s reflection in the microwave oven. It was a subtle difference, but one she noticed immediately.

  Her mother was wearing lipstick.

  She remembered the time her mother had followed Sue Yoon through the stop sign at the intersection into downtown, how her mother had smiled and stepped on the gas without stopping. And now this.

  After her mother left, Julie wandered into the downstairs bathroom. It was right there in the medicine cabinet, plain as day. Covergirl’s Hint of Coral. Julie took off the cover, twirled the lipstick up into the light. It was new, still pointy. Lightly she ran it over her own lips, then smacked them together and studied herself in the mirror. She looked like a different girl, not someone named Julie Minh Kaling. She closed one eye, made a sultry come-hither look. Maybe she looked more like a Jules. No, that was too much. Still, she needed something—“Julie” was the boringest name in existence. She could hear her father upstairs wrangling her brother into the tub. She blew herself a kiss and closed the medicine cabinet door.

  * * *

  —

  Friday at the start of eighth period we all gathered in the locker room. The field house was slowly starting to pack for the pep rally, the bleachers filling at the top first and then moving downward. As was tradition on game days, we’d worn our kilts to school, even Boy Cory, who was used to being razzed about it. Since it was still summery outside, most of us wore our kilts over shorts, but Julie wore hers over a long calico skirt as her parents required. Our first game of the season was a home game against the Swampscott Big Blue and set to start in a few hours. Now we were painting our faces.

  Jen Fiorenza produced a tub of blue paint from the bowels of her crocodile bag. The Claw looked as if someone had driven a silver railroad spike down into her head. “Who’s up?” she said. Julie plopped herself down on the locker-room bench and Jen got to work. When she was finished, Abby Putnam did the other half of Julie’s face with white. Neither Jen nor Abby was looking to re-create the Mona Lisa. It only took about ten minutes for them to do all of us, half our faces an upbeat navy blue, the other half white as bone.

  When we were ready, we wandered out into the field house where the other fall sports teams were starting to gather. Little Smitty was already boasting of the mischievous things she’d write up in her weekly tally. “I dropped Mrs. Lonergan’s grade book in the fish tank,” she said.

  “It’s not like there’s anything in it right now,” pointed out AJ Johnson. “It’s just the third day of school.”

  “It’s
the thought that counts,” said Jen Fiorenza. “Nice work.”

  Sue Yoon said she’d switched the tops to some of the paints in the art room. Mel Boucher said that just before the rally, she’d snuck into the teachers’ lounge and unplugged their fridge. “They won’t notice until Monday,” she laughed. The blotch on her neck seemed to be yukking it up as well. “Au revoir, milk.”

  “What’ve you been up to?” Becca Bjelica asked Julie. Julie just smiled and shrugged.

  “She’s just getting her feet wet,” said Heather protectively. Then Principal Yoff was standing at the microphone trying to get the student body to shut up. When it quieted down, he said a bunch of stuff about Falcon spirit, the trophy case outside the main office, the exceptionalism of Danvers High’s young men and women, blah blah blah. We always wondered if Principal Yoff even liked pep rallies. The guy had a Ph.D. in Education from Wisconsin. Did he feel like a tool standing up there in front of the student body yammering on about winning? We felt embarrassed for him when he concluded his speech with his fist in the air and a weak noise that we gathered from context was supposed to be some sort of rebel yell. Bert and Ernie were standing off to the side in their police uniforms. They nodded approvingly at the strange yodeling emanating out of Principal Yoff. We didn’t even know why they were there—to show school spirit?—but it was probably part of some new initiative to convince us kids that cops were our friends, the thinking being if we viewed them as allies today, tomorrow we’d be more likely to run to them narcing on our friends when something serious went down.

  From there, the rally was pretty unremarkable until the hoop appeared. Karen Burroughs and the cheerleaders had just gotten it positioned in place, a big blue Falcon painted right in the middle of it

  when Jen Fiorenza turned to us and screamed, “Field field field!” “Hockey hockey hockey,” we yelled, and before any of us knew what was happening, we were charging the hoop, a herd of water buffalo stampeding on the African plain, Principal Yoff a casualty of our herd mentality, the guy buffeted every which way as we roared past. Jen was the first through, her Claw a rhino horn, the paper tearing, each of us as if we were being born again only to reemerge in a whole new world, all eleven of us pouring through—Abby Putnam a ray of light, Girl Cory a woman scorned, Mel Boucher with the dark mark on her neck, Boy Cory hoping nobody was looking at him, Becca Bjelica wondering why she hadn’t worn a third bra, Sue Yoon with her hair dyed Kool-Aid Incrediberry, AJ Johnson wondering who among us really had her back, Heather Houston following blindly without her glasses, Julie Kaling like a monarch on its way to Mexico, Little Smitty gnashing madly at the paper with her teeth—Be. Aggressive. B-E AGGRESSIVE—the other fall sports falling in line behind us, football bringing up the rear, the marching band blowing their brains out, the cheerleaders screaming along to the Budweiser theme: WHEN YOU SAY DHS, YOU’VE SAID IT ALL!

  Friday, September 6th

  Dear Darkness,

  Today as I was walking to the bathroom an hour before the pep rally, I saw Coach Mullins and his crazy facial hair heading towards me in the corridor. I don’t know what made me do it (did you?), but I had a sudden urge. I stood just inside the bathroom with the door wide open, waiting for him to walk by. He couldn’t see me until he passed, and right when he did, I lifted my shirt. I flashed him! He didn’t stop walking but he couldn’t look away, his eyes riveted on my bra, even under all that hair his jaw hanging open. Then I let go of the door and let it slowly close on its hinges. Those were the longest five seconds of my life! My heart was pounding! When I came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, thankfully he was long gone. If I had to guess, I’d say he liked it. If he hasn’t said anything by now, he won’t. He’s probably already waiting for the next show. Perv! Plus, who would believe him? Me, little goody two-shoes with the frumpy dresses, showing my sacred boobs to a teacher! (Okay, it was just my sports bra, but still!) Then, to top it all off, this afternoon in our opening game against Swampscott, which we handily won 5-1 (thank you very much!), I scored my first assist ever. Come Monday, I intend to stop meeting Heather in the library and get cracking on my own project.

  It’s gonna be a great season!

  Forever yours,

  Julie Minh

  DANVERS VS. LYNN CLASSICAL

  Thursday morning four weeks into the new school year AJ Johnson plopped herself down at the dining room table between her parents. She’d had to use the heels for her morning plate of cinnamon toast, as the end slices were all that was left. TJ used to eat the heels with gusto. They were his favorite part of the loaf. It was just one more thing she missed about her brother, who was off in his second year at Howard.

  AJ glanced at her father sitting at the head of the table. There was a small vein throbbing up by his left temple, his knuckles bloodless, the Globe shaking in his fists. There was only one denizen of Boston who regularly made Mr. Johnson’s veins pop. “Bird Back After Being Grounded” read the morning headline. AJ sighed. She wondered why her father still bothered to get the paper delivered. Mr. Johnson was born and raised in the Motor City, land of the Free Press and the Detroit Pistons. In his eyes, the Boston Globe was Larry Bird’s own personal Pravda, the sports section perennially filled with Celtics agitprop.

  It was the end of September, six weeks before the first tip-off of the ’89 NBA season. Larry Bird had sat out all of ’88 with bone spurs. Now, as the front page stated, the Celtics’ #33 had just scored a deal for a cool six million a year, making him the first pro athlete to collect that kind of scratch. Our Father who art back in heaven! intoned the city of Boston, genuflecting. Bird, baby, Bird! To Celtics fans everywhere, a healthy Larry Bird meant it was once again morning in post-Reagan America.

  But late ’89 wasn’t morning in America for everyone. Just that past spring saw the arrest of the Central Park Five, crack was ascendant, apartheid still the law of the land in the land of Good Hope, HIV spreading to the inner city, and now Bird was raking in six million.

  “Nobody paying Isaiah that kind of money,” grumbled Mr. Johnson. AJ remembered the heartbreak of the Pistons’ loss to the Celtics in the ’87 Eastern Conference finals. How in game 5, Bird stole the ball, sending radio host Johnny Most into the king of all on-air conniptions, and how after their season ended, the Pistons’ Isaiah Thomas said in a postgame interview that Larry Bird was overrated, that if Bird were black, he’d be considered just another good player. How poor Isaiah had had to backpedal on his comment, but for Mr. Johnson and 12.1% of America, it was just the truth plain and simple.

  From what she could tell, despite the Bird-Thomas rift, it seemed to AJ that her father still believed in the idea of the American dream—white picket fences and 1.82 kids for all—even if its actual execution left much to be desired. On the other hand, Mrs. Johnson had secretly cashed in her chips on America the year before when NBC canceled the detective show Sonny Spoon, featuring the brown-sugar father-and-son dreamboat duo of Mario and Melvin Van Peebles. Mrs. Johnson didn’t care what the Nielsen ratings said. In her eyes, The Cosby Show was no Sonny Spoon. Still, despite deep reservations about the feasibility of the American experiment, Mrs. Johnson continued to phone it in, doing the laundry, shopping and cooking, making appointments for her and her daughter to get their hair done every six weeks, and now tuning in to Miami Vice Friday nights, though light-eyed brother Detective Tubbs weren’t no Sonny Spoon.

  This morning as she watched her younger child eat her sugared heels, Mrs. Johnson felt a wave of resignation course through her. This was America, don’t be fooled. Sooner or later, her daughter would find out for herself what it meant to live in a world that pulled the plug on the Van Peebleses. Maybe that was why her daughter had taken to wearing a blue scrap of ratty fabric around her arm, the way some old folks did back home to ward off the evil eye. She could hardly fault AJ for looking to down-home remedies to cure an acute case of Americitis. For Mrs. Johnson and her husband, Americitis
meant constantly fighting to be referred to as “Dr. Johnson.” It meant countless incidents of having some new staff member at the hospital wave her over to a random spill and tell her to mop it up. She wondered if that ever happened off-screen to Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable.

  AJ sat quietly and ate her toast. She still hadn’t figured out America. Her father had a Ph.D. in applied material science and was an engineer over at GTE on Endicott, her mother a radiologist at Beverly Hospital. They had money, a second house on Martha’s Vineyard in the exclusive black enclave dubbed the Inkwell, winter vacations in a tiny town in Utah called Park City. Across the table was where her brother, TJ, used to sit, TJ for whom they always saved the heels. Earlier that summer out on the Inkwell, she had noticed how much her brother had changed after his first year of college. He no longer crooned the smooth stylings of Billy Ocean or Luther Vandross to himself while cleaning the grill. Now it was all A Tribe Called Quest and Straight Outta Compton and lines from movies like Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Cooley High and talk about divestment and how Jesse Jackson got robbed.

  Sometimes AJ Johnson imagined turning her skin inside out. The way she’d once seen a great-uncle down south turn a possum inside out after shooting it. The animal reversing as easily as a glove. How would the world see her if blackness wasn’t what the world saw first? Fuck Bird, she suddenly thought. True, he was probably a nice guy, but what about Dr. J, Kareem Abdul, or baby-faced Isaiah? Where was their six million? Americitis strikes again!