Crap Kingdom

by D. C. Pierson

  He didn’t want to start lying to Kyle, too, so he said: “Doesn’t matter. Something dumb. Hey, sorry about my mom calling you.”

  “It’s cool. Where did you end up?”

  Tom just shook his head.

  Kyle smiled. “Niiiiice.”

  “No,” Tom said, “it wasn’t like that.”

  Kyle knew Tom had been putting all his romantic efforts toward Lindsy Kopec. Tom’s romantic efforts included talking to Lindsy whenever she talked to him first, trying to make her laugh in these conversations, and furiously analyzing her every word and movement afterward. Kyle was sworn to secrecy about Tom’s feelings, and he was also under strict orders to keep a watchful eye on her interactions with other guys, Tom’s romantic rivals, and report back nonstop for the comparing of notes. So Kyle had to know that Tom wouldn’t have just randomly hooked up with some other girl. Kyle also had to know that if Tom had actually gotten anywhere with Lindsy Kopec, he would not have been silent for most of lunch with his head slumped against a metal bar, he would have been standing at the cafeteria cash register buying sodas and chips and snack cakes for everyone who came through the line, never mind the cost, high fives all around.

  So he could tell Kyle it wasn’t a girl, but he couldn’t tell Kyle what it actually was. He wasn’t sure he knew himself. He didn’t even know what to call it. He wasn’t going to tell anyone, so that saved him from speaking its name aloud. But he still had to think about it. And he couldn’t just make a random noise in his head every time he thought about it, the way they did when they were referring to it: “Gghurrrghhpfp” or “Wrrrrrrrrrrrrt” or whatever. He’d asked his brain to come up with a temporary name for the kingdom so he could use it while thinking about whether or not he wanted to go back there. His brain had answered:

  CRAP KINGDOM.

  It fit. He knew, and frequently used, words way stronger than “crap,” but it wasn’t like this nameless kingdom was so offensive that a stronger word would even apply. It was bad, but no effort had gone into its badness. It was just plain crap. It would have to try harder if it wanted any other swear-word name.

  He didn’t like that he thought of it that way. Every time he thought of it as Crap Kingdom, it seemed crappier. It was like the time an elementary school friend of Tom’s had gotten tagged with the name “Stinky,” and though Tom had never thought of him that way, the more other kids called him that the more Tom started to notice, Hey, you know what? He is kind of stinky. And Tom was never sure if it was just that he’d heard him called that so many times that his mind suddenly tricked him into thinking this kid who had once been his friend really was stinky, and it didn’t really matter, because if you kept hanging out with Stinky you might get tagged with a mean name yourself. “Stinky 2” or something.

  Tom had always felt awful about that and he hoped he was now mature enough not to let a nickname for a thing come to stand in for the thing itself. He was almost an adult. He couldn’t wait to be an adult, in fact, and adults took things as they came. They realized that everything wasn’t always going to be exactly how you wanted it, even fantasy worlds. After all, it was still a magical universe that was a secret to everybody but him. Wasn’t that enough?

  CRAP KINGDOM, his mind answered. CRAP KINGDOM.

  “Do you need to talk about anything?” Kyle said.

  It was a weirdly mature question coming from Kyle, and Tom felt bad for making their friendship, which consisted mostly of penis jokes and quoting The Venture Bros., so momentarily serious.

  “No,” Tom said. “I’m okay.”

  After eating just about nothing at lunch, Tom went to his fifth-period class, American History, and continued staring into space, thinking and worrying. He wasn’t missing much by not paying attention, because his teacher, Mr. Marshall, had turned what was supposed to be a lecture on Patrick Henry into a slide show of pictures of himself and famous basketball players he’d had the pleasure of teaching summer youth sports workshops with. The lights were off, which made it even more jarring when the door opened and the room flooded with light, and standing in the doorway was a police officer.

  Mr. Marshall paused in the middle of a story about one of his famous basketball buddy’s hilarious golf cart antics and nodded to the police officer. The cop nodded at Mr. Marshall, then looked out at the class.

  “Tom Parking?”

  Tom’s stomach, not weighed down by any lunch, jumped all the way into his chest.

  It was the middle of the period, so there weren’t a ton of kids around to stare at Tom as he and the police officer made their way down the hall. But the kids they did pass, all of them swinging oversized cardboard hall passes in one hand, stared at Tom and his police escort hard enough to make up for it.

  Tom wondered what he was accused of. Was it illegal to climb into clothing donation boxes in the Kmart parking lot? Maybe it was one of those wacky laws they printed on kids’ menus at buffet restaurants, strange stuff from cowboy days that was still on the books, like, did you know it’s illegal to hitch your horse up outside of a post office? Did you know it’s illegal to climb into a clothing donation box with a man who’s about to accidentally set himself on fire once his magic spell goes haywire?

  They entered the front office. Secretaries stared at Tom with a mix of fascination and disgust. Principal Scott stood outside of his office, dwarfed by a tall man in a suit standing across from him. The principal looked excited to be in a situation that required him to be serious. The man in the suit was rattling off a list of words that Tom might have thought were exciting if they weren’t being said about him.

  “. . . arson, car theft, possession with intent to distribute. The kid’s a one-man crime factory, moving on a Federal level.” The serious-looking man seemed to be purposely speaking loud enough for everyone in the office to hear.

  There must be some kind of mix-up, Tom thought. Then he realized that’s what guilty people always said. No matter what happened, he needed to remember not to say “There must be some kind of mix-up.”

  “Mr. Parking,” the principal said.

  “Mr. Parking,” the serious-looking man said. “I’m Agent Taylor. Principal Scott, is there an office we can utilize?”

  “Of course,” the principal said. “Right this way.”

  The principal stared at Tom with that same mix of disgust and fascination as he led them down a little hallway to a conference room lined with posters about the importance of good nutrition and exercise and character, all of them featuring either ducks, apples, muscular people rowing boats, or the White House.

  “You may want to wait outside,” Agent Taylor said to the school police officer. “Frankly, we have no idea what this child is capable of.”

  The agent opened the conference room door and nodded for Tom to go inside. The school police officer looped his thumbs in his belt and gave Tom a good final dose of staring.

  Tom walked in. He heard the door shut.

  “Have a seat,” Agent Taylor said.

  Tom sat. Agent Taylor walked slowly up to the table. He leaned on forward on it. He looked at Tom and smiled.

  “Fun, right?”

  Tom was silent.

  “It’s me!”

  “I . . . don’t . . .”

  “Gark!” Agent Taylor said.

  “Oh,” Tom said. So he wasn’t about to go up the river for crimes he did not commit. Tom realized he could relax.

  Then he realized he could not relax.

  “What?” Tom said.

  “Yeah, just coming to see if you’d given any thought to our offer!” Agent Taylor who was Gark said. “Hope you don’t mind if I keep this face on. Figure I’m gonna have to walk out of here, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”

  “You wouldn’t want to embarrass me?” Tom yelled. “That’s why you took me out of class and told everybody in sc
hool that I’m some kind of criminal mastermind?”

  “You’re lucky that sarcasm is our main form of communication, or I don’t think I would know you weren’t being serious right now,” Gark said. He lowered his head like a moping child, which was a really strange thing to see a movie-star-handsome FBI agent do. “You didn’t like me pretending to be your dad, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So I figured why not do something that would justify you being gone from school for a long time, which you probably will be when you’re spending more and more time as our Chosen One,” Gark said. “Plus, I thought you’d think it was cool. I thought you guys thought criminal masterminds were cool.”

  “It’s a cool thing to read about, not a cool thing to be,” Tom said. “I still have to live here. I can’t just disappear. And even if I could just disappear, I don’t think I’d disappear just so I could come with you and eat rat-snot!”

  “You don’t have to eat it,” Gark said. “I was very clear about that! They have these tongs now—”

  “That’s not the point. The point is . . . my phone broke. I got in trouble. I had to lie to my mom. And if stuff like this is gonna keep happening, I don’t know if I want to go back.”

  Now Gark was silent.

  Tom hadn’t wanted to decide anything until he’d at least had a full night’s sleep, but Gark’s coming here now had forced him to pull out a rough draft of his thoughts on the subject and pass them off as the final project.

  “How about this,” Gark said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I pretended to be your dad. I’m sorry I pretended to be this.” He gestured to his face. “Just . . . think it over a little more. And when you come to a decision, just write it down and drop it in the box. I’ll warn the guys on the lake to be on the lookout for it. They’ll do me a favor. They love me.”

  “Okay,” Tom said.

  Tom got up. Gark opened the door for him.

  “Everything go all right?” the school cop said to Gark who he thought was Agent Taylor.

  “Yes, it did,” Gark said.

  Tom looked at Gark.

  “Oh, by the way,” Gark said, addressing the principal and all the staring secretaries. “There’s been a huge misunderstanding. This boy is innocent of all charges. It was . . . another boy.”

  “Oh,” the principal said. “Well, I’m glad that’s sorted out.”

  “I’m just gonna head back to class,” Tom said. He looked at Gark one last time. Gark looked back at him.

  “Well,” said Gark as Agent Taylor. “See you later, Tom.”

  Tom didn’t say anything. He half smiled at Gark. He wasn’t good at smiling even when he was happy, so he was definitely struggling now.

  “Agent Taylor,” said one of the secretaries. “Could you please move your van? It’s blocking the school buses.”

  Tom got called down to another office after school: Tobe’s.

  Tobe was the head of the Drama Department. He directed all the plays and taught all the drama classes, including a class in which older students could direct their own one-act play, so at any time he was overseeing four or five little productions and one big one, in addition to student-run forays into video and comedy and dance. He talked constantly about needing “a life of his own outside of school” and not being able to have it because of all these projects, but then he would turn around and start another new project. Tom and thirty or so other kids loved him for it. He was bald and had a silly-looking mustache, gave no indication of ever having been young, and they would have followed him right into hell.

  On the way down, Tom imagined that the conversation would center around Tom’s brilliant performance in last night’s show, and perhaps the very obvious sparks between him and Lindsy Kopec. Tobe wasn’t generous with praise of any kind, and he certainly had never asked Tom about his love life, but for some reason, that was the image that formed in Tom’s mind of what was going to happen. When he imagined it, a high five was involved. It was natural that he would be called in to Tobe’s office for something good after being called to the principal’s office for something bad. Tom felt that the stuff that happened in the Drama Department after school balanced out any unfortunate stuff that happened to him during the school day. It healed his wounds.

  Whatever it was, he was going to enjoy it.

  “I can’t be in the show at all?”

  “The school policy on extracurricular activities dictates that a student who misses any portion of the school day for a disciplinary reason can’t participate in any activities the following afternoon or evening.”

  “Okay, but I didn’t do anything. The guy told Principal Scott I didn’t do anything.”

  “I understand that.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I believe you. But the policy is the policy. I get an e-mail sent to me at the end of every day that tells me who’s cleared to participate. You weren’t on that list.”

  “But there wasn’t any disciplinary . . . anything, because it was a mistake! It was totally random.”

  “I understand, Tom. But I’m not supposed to concern myself with that. I’m supposed to concern myself with the e-mail.”

  “That’s so unfair!”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t even call the principal? He’ll tell you—”

  “Tom, I don’t think you did anything wrong. It isn’t fair, but this is the policy. I’m sorry. Kyle’s the swing, he’ll fill in tonight and tomorrow.”

  “Wait, tomorrow night too?”

  “Disciplinary issues from a Friday carry over to the weekend. Again, policy. It’s not how I would have it, but it’s how it is, and I can’t make exceptions. We get to do a lot of very neat, very creative stuff here, and the only reason I’m allowed that freedom is because I stick to their rules.”

  Tobe’s office was awkwardly placed, in a room that was really just a hallway between the auditorium and the drama room and the makeup room and the scene shop. For a moment, Tom could not remember which of the many doors lining Tobe’s office he needed to leave through. He knew he needed to leave, though. He thought he might cry, and he didn’t want to cry at all, but he definitely didn’t want to cry in front of Tobe.

  Tobe never would have gotten the e-mail if Gark hadn’t appeared in the guise of an FBI agent. Last night Gark had robbed Tom of his moment with Lindsy, and today he had robbed him of the chance to try to re-create that moment after the two remaining performances.

  Tom remembered what door he needed to go out of. He started to back up, but something tripped him and he fell backward into the door, hitting the bar that triggered the latch. The door swung open and he fell all the way out into the hallway.

  “Oh! Jeez. I’m sorry.” Tobe ran out to help Tom up.

  Tom looked down to see what had tripped him: it was pink and furry and lying on the floor in a heap. A pink bunny suit, complete with a big furry bunny mascot head sitting on top of it.

  “Sorry,” Tobe said, “I let some kids use it for a skit in class this morning. They were supposed to hang it up when they were done with it. Are you okay?”

  Tom was standing now. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m fine.”

  Now he’d lied to Tobe too.

  Tom never knew if something good was going to happen, but he was good at predicting bad things. Not big ones, just little things. As he got on his bike after school, he knew that he would ride home and fall asleep and wake up just when he would have been stepping onstage had he not been banned from the play. He wouldn’t set an alarm or anything. It would just happen.

  He woke up at 8:04 PM. He experienced the momentary disorientation of waking up when it’s dark outside after falling asleep in the afternoon, and then he remembered where he was and who he was and what he’d predicted to himself that day after school, after talking with Tobe.

&n
bsp; He heard his mom’s keys jangling in the front door. She was just getting home from work. He predicted more bad things. She would wonder what he was still doing home: didn’t he have the play tonight? He would tell her what happened. He wouldn’t lie, exactly. He would exclude the parts about the FBI agent who was actually Gark but he would tell her that he’d been called down to the principal’s office but it had turned out to be a misunderstanding and his name had been cleared. Regardless, she would say something like “What is going on with you?” in reference to their talk earlier that week and the phone breaking and the staying out late and then this, missing the play because of disciplinary action. And she would tell him no more plays, no more anything, until he got focused.

  He turned out to be right about everything she would feel and say, except he hadn’t predicted that, after the whole discussion was over, she would tell him to order a pizza. But that was a good thing, and he was only good at predicting bad things.

  Tom spent the weekend in his room, thinking and sleeping.

  He woke up early on Monday morning. He went into his mom’s bedroom and sat on the side of her bed. He was never awake before she was, unless he’d stayed up all night trying to finish some essay for school that he’d put off until the last minute, but on this particular day, he’d actually gotten a good night’s sleep.

  “Mom?”

  She rolled over and opened her eyes.

  “Hey, I was thinking. . . . I’ve been thinking about everything you were saying about my life is happening in the present tense and I have to balance school and after-school stuff, so if I come home right after school and just study and work really hard and bring my grades up, I mean, I can bring you progress reports from my teachers and everything. . . . Auditions for the next show are in three weeks. If I work really hard until then, and I mean, not just until then but in general, but from now on, can I audition? Would that be okay? All the stuff that’s happened this week, I’m never going to let it happen again.”