by Gordon Jack
I bumped into a bike, tree, and flagpole on my way back to my car. After throwing my pile of clothes onto the passenger seat, I stumbled toward the football field and arrived to great fanfare. At least I think it was fanfare. The oversize head amplified and distorted sound so I couldn’t tell if people were cheering my arrival or testing the emergency broadcast system. I did hear the announcer of the game exclaim, “Look who’s returned from the dead! It’s Victor the Viking. Everyone show Victor how happy you are to see him.”
A cluster of JV cheerleaders embraced me like I was a returning war hero. A few tried to peek inside my oversize nostrils to see who I was. “Is that you, Phyllis?” I heard one girl say, striking a blow to my male ego. The dress I wore did nothing for my figure, but my arms weren’t covered. I flexed a bicep to demonstrate my prowess only to hear another voice say, “Megan? Have you been working out?”
I pushed the girls away and stumbled over to where the varsity cheerleaders were doing their routines. Dawn bounced over, bringing with her the smell of honey and lavender. “Hey, Victor!” she said, her voice singing rather than shouting the words. She was the antithesis of Zoe Cosmos; she brought light and life wherever she stepped. Dawn wrapped an arm around me and immediately all my worries and fears vanished. This must be what it felt like to be popular. If I were to walk onto this field in my normal attire, I wouldn’t be noticed, except by administrators in the stands, suspicious that I was at the game to pull a prank or collect bets in some illegal gambling scheme (Note to self: look into starting some illegal gambling scheme for the homecoming game. Spencer can help work the odds in my favor.) But in this costume, I was embraced as one of their own.
Dawn and I danced the Slippery Pup for a bit before she returned to her squad for more cheer routines. I retreated a few steps and found a space where I could perform safely for the crowds. Throughout the first half of the game, I did a medley of dance moves, including the Sprinkle Captain, the Funky Push, and the Ping-Pong. I have to admit, it was pretty fun. Maybe I didn’t have to get high to have a good time. To free the inner Lawrence, all I had to do was disguise the outer Lawrence. It worked for Batman.
The crowd cheered me on, more engaged by my antics than by the lackluster game, which stalled at a meager 7–7 tie by halftime. It took me a while to spot Eddie thanks to my limited vision and the fact that the stands had filled with fans since the JV game. Eddie was sitting in the center of the middle row, his arm covered by his pillowcase sling. He probably picked this location for its high visibility, but it also made it impossible for me to reach him without risking serious injury to myself and others. I decided to forgo our planned lap dance and just hope that enough people noticed him in the stands and me on the field and came to the logical conclusion that, given our current understanding of physics, Eddie couldn’t exist in two places at the same time.
“Is that you, Eddie?” a voice from behind me asked. I spun around and saw Crystal, camera in hand. She probably couldn’t find any photographers to take pictures of the game for the yearbook and came herself to do it. She would snap my photo and attach the caption, Gay Latino performs in drag at halftime, unless I stopped her.
“Come on, show me the Punching Screwdriver,” she said, raising her Canon and pointing it in my direction. I did my best impression, but that move is really hard to pull off without parachute pants. Maybe if our mascot were a genie it would work, but not in clunky Viking boots. But I’m losing track of what’s important here. Crystal thought I was Eddie. I had to convince her otherwise.
I didn’t want to say anything and risk Crystal identifying me as the Viking. Our whole plan would fall apart if she figured out we were working together. Instead, I pointed toward the stands where Eddie was sitting.
“What’s that move?” Crystal asked. “The Fat Travolta?”
I stopped moving.
“The Frozen Statue? I like that one.” She snapped a few pictures just as the whistle blew announcing the start of the third quarter. Crystal’s attention shifted from me to Jerry Tortelli. She trained her telephoto lens on him and followed him as he ran onto the field. Like I said, the acoustics inside the Viking head weren’t good, but I swear I heard her moan with every completed pass.
I figured I had no other choice but to venture into the stands. Reaching Eddie was about as easy as wading through a pack of dogs in a meat costume. Everyone I passed had to push or poke or prod me, hoping to topple my Viking bobblehead into the rows below me. I managed to make it to the center without losing balance and collapsed into Eddie’s lap. “Get Crystal’s attention,” I whispered. “She thinks I’m you.”
“Crystal!” Eddie yelled. “Take our picture!”
Unfortunately, our team had been moving steadily downfield, taking Crystal with them. She was now on the twenty-yard line, completely mesmerized by our team’s surprising passing attack. Eddie screamed a few more times but to no avail.
“I’ll get her,” I groaned, righting myself and heading back through the stands. This time I approached the journey as one might venture into a mosh pit—all swinging arms and rushing sideswipes. I slammed others before they slammed me and knocked a few unsuspecting mothers into the lower rows. Just as I was about to exit the stands, a familiar hand clamped down on my shoulder, stopping me from moving.
“You authorized to wear that costume?” Principal Stone asked.
I gave him two big thumbs up, not wanting to reveal myself. If Stone knew it was me behind this mask, he’d probably haul me in for grand larceny and identity theft.
“Just be careful, Wendy,” he whispered into my left nostril. “The last mascot nearly had her head chopped off.”
Wendy? Really? I had to start working out more.
I looked at the clock on the scoreboard and saw that there were three minutes left in the third quarter. Where did the time go? The costume not only immobilized its wearer physically, but removed them from the time-space continuum.
I stumbled down the bleacher steps and landed with a thud on the track that surrounded the football field. The cheerleaders had just finished assembling their pyramid formation. I paused to stare up at Dawn standing at the top, her dainty feet positioned on the backs of two sweaty and grunting girls. The sun was behind her, and she appeared to glow in triumphant glory. With her tanned and toned arms raised in a V for victory sign and her blond hair blowing gently in the breeze, she looked way more powerful than any of the players on the field.
I was listening as Dawn fired up the crowds with her cries of “Let’s get physical” when I heard a different kind of cry emitted from someplace near my left kneecap. I looked down and saw Susie McGannon’s face contorted in pain. A quick investigation discerned that the source of the girl’s anguish was my heavy boot placed squarely on her right hand. “Get off me, you idiot,” she managed to grunt. I removed my foot and mumbled an apology, which was my second mistake. Without the boot to keep it in place, Susie’s hand shifted from position.
You know how people are always using the butterfly effect to describe the cause-and-effect relationship of distant and seemingly unrelated events? Well, if you ever want to watch the butterfly effect in action, simply stomp on the hand of a person at the base of a cheerleading pyramid and you’ll see a young man’s lovelorn hopes and dreams crushed to dust. That’s the only way I can describe how I felt when I watched the reverberating shock wave travel in slo-mo domino style from Susie’s wobbly arm up to Dawn’s frozen smile. When the entire formation collapsed all around me, I could hear Eddie’s heart breaking in the stands. I had one job to do and I had blown it.
I looked for Dawn on top of the pile of cheerleaders, hoping that the enormous body pillow would have cushioned her fall, but didn’t see her anywhere. Somehow, she had landed on the hard surface of the track, a good three feet away from her squad. When I tried to help her up, she just seethed in anger and pain. “I’m. Going. To. Kill. You,” she said, grabbing the hem of my skirt, a poor substitute for the part of my anatomy she really w
anted to grip and twist.
The remaining squad stood up suddenly, as if rebounding from a rehearsed tumble. They moved toward me and all I could see was them tearing apart the costume with their manicured hands, leaving me naked and defenseless in front of the stands full of bloodthirsty spectators. I turned and ran, but with my lack of peripheral vision, I couldn’t really see where I was going. Before I realized it, I was crossing the football field by the end zone. I knocked over one of our receivers and was hit in the side of the head by either a missile or a football. Given the loud roar I heard erupting from the stands, I figured it was a football. My oversize head must have intercepted a pass meant for the receiver I had knocked down. A pass that, if completed, would have broken the persistent tie in the game. I looked over at the opposing side and saw the lobster mascot, claws raised in some kind of victory dance.
There was only one thing for me to do. Run away. As fast as possible. I left my oversize boots in the end zone and took off under the goalposts, hoping to reach the fence that separated the track from the adjacent soccer fields. From there, it was a short distance to the bushes that outlined the campus, where I could ditch the Viking head and hide until the coast was clear.
I sprinted as fast as I could while trying to keep the polyfoam head from falling off and revealing my identity. All I heard was the blare of a referee’s whistle, and the announcer screaming “Oh the humanity!” over and over again, like some looped sample by a DJ in training. I didn’t hear any cleats pounding the Astroturf behind me. Hopefully, there was enough time in the fourth quarter to keep the players focused on repeating the play I had just interrupted.
I reached the bushes and dove in. Before removing the head, I turned back and saw that I was alone for now. The cheerleaders, football players, parents, and coaches were still focused on scoring. I ditched the head in the bushes, climbed through the other side, and ran as fast as I could away from the school.
About a block into my escape, I realized that without the heavy boots and Viking head, I was now a guy running in what looked like a miniskirt from the Jurassic era. If Stone or Tortelli found me after the game, I would be strung up like a piñata in the quad and hit with a sharp stick until my organs spilled out like candy. I decided the best thing to do was to re-enter the bushes and hide until nightfall. When it was dark, I could make it back to my car and my regular school clothes and return home safely.
TWELVE
I’m secure enough in my masculinity to admit that I wept openly for much of the three hours I lay hidden in the foliage that surrounded the school. One month into my new “healthy choices” lifestyle and I was camping like a cross-dressing homeless person, staging gladiator tournaments with the insects I found in my hovel. If this is what sobriety looked like, I was not a fan.
Stone was probably drawing up the exit papers now. What am I saying? He’d probably had those papers ready to go ever since he kicked Alex out of school. All he needed was Coach Harkness’s testimony that I was the one who borrowed the suit to know who sabotaged the game. My dad wouldn’t even argue when Stone punished me this time. He’d just sign on the dotted line and ship me off to Langdon Military Academy.
The only glimmer of hope I had was the fact that only Eddie knew it was me who performed during the game. If I could come up with a clever alibi to give Coach Harkness, I might stand a chance of staying at Meridian and not having my limbs torn off by every player on the football team.
I brainstormed in the dirt for hours, but the best idea I came up with was that my evil twin, the one we keep locked in our basement, had framed me. This was actually a storyline from Secretos Subterráneos, which I was pretty sure Harkness hadn’t seen. After careful consideration, I decided the plan was unworkable. It would require a whole new wardrobe and a convincing British accent, so I kept thinking.
“Stay hidden,” my squirrel spirit guide advised from a nearby telephone pole. “Burrow deep and emerge in time for the spring harvest.” After dispensing his words of wisdom, the squirrel scrambled up the pole and tightroped along the line, until it was picked off by an owl.
“Don’t listen to the squirrels,” the owl said with his mouth full. “They’re all idiots.”
I hoped that was the end of my spirit guide and/or detox hallucinations. But who was going to help me now? If only I could get in touch with Spencer, but my cell phone was in my pants, and my pants were in my BMW, and the BMW was parked in the student lot, and the student lot was under video surveillance from dusk to dawn. If I wanted to find Spencer, I’d have to go on foot. It was dark now, so I could walk without being seen. Just to be safe, I stayed close to the bushes that lined the campus. If a car or a torch-bearing mob approached from the opposite direction, I was fully prepared to launch myself back into the foliage.
Lunley had told me that Spencer lived two blocks away from school, in an apartment complex near the fire station. Lucky for me, there was only one apartment building near the fire station. Unlucky for me, there were twenty units, most with their curtains closed, making it impossible to peer inside. I walked up to the rows of mailboxes, hoping to see the last name “Knudsen” printed on a label somewhere, but they were all blank. The only way I was going to find him was if I started knocking on doors. But who would open their door to a dirty teenage boy dressed as a barbarian?
Turns out, no one. Apartment after apartment, I had conversations with frightened occupants through locked doors. “I’m looking for Spencer Knudsen,” I’d say, to which they would reply, “We don’t want any!” Judging by the voices, I’d guess the average age in this complex was 110.
It wasn’t until I had worked my way around back that I spotted a tiny figure standing on the back lawn, eye glued to a telescope. “Spencer?” I said.
He looked over, and if he was surprised to see me in his backyard dressed in a tattered Viking garment, he didn’t show it. He fitted his glasses to his face and walked over to where I was standing. “Hello, Lawrence,” he said.
“Hey, Spencer.” I did my best to explain my situation. Perhaps my rendition of a near-death catastrophe lacked the necessary dramatic flourishes to elicit the kind of shock and awe I would expect from a listener. Instead of gasping, Spencer regarded me more like a Boy Scout receiving instructions for how to tie a simple knot. When I finished, he stared at me for a few minutes and said, “The boomerang effect.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a term used by social psychologists to describe how a persuasive message can sometimes have the opposite effect of what’s intended.”
“And this applies to me how?”
“You tried to persuade Dawn that the Viking was a dashing romantic figure, like Cyrano, only to have her despise the mascot for making her fall and ruining her perfect pyramid.”
“Her fall wasn’t that bad,” I said, hoping it were true. “Still, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your concerns.”
“Cyrano’s story does not end happily.”
“It did for Steve Martin,” I said. “Can you help me? I can’t go back to my car wearing this dress.”
“Brynja,” Spencer corrected.
“What?”
“What you’re wearing. It’s called a brynja. And it’s supposed to be made from iron rings, not polyester. During the Viking age, warriors—”
“Spencer, I’m kind of in a panic here.”
A woman from one of the apartment windows yelled something in a foreign language. It sounded like German on a pogo stick. Spencer closed his eyes, sighed, and then responded in the same nonsensical way. I suppose it’s culturally inappropriate for me to say it was nonsensical just because I couldn’t understand it. What I mean to say is that Spencer yammered in Norwegian before speaking normal again.
“It’s my mother,” he said. “She worries about me being outside alone.”
This seemed odd considering he was in his backyard. “Tell her you’re with me.”
“That wouldn’t help.”
“Where’s your dad?”
>
“He works most nights in the lab.”
“Mad scientist?”
“He’s thorough, not deranged.”
I tried to steer the conversation back to my problem. “So, can I borrow some of your dad’s clothes?”
“My father’s clothes won’t fit you. He’s smaller than I am.”
I didn’t see how this was possible unless Spencer’s dad was a gnome. “Then I’m screwed.”
“If you will allow me to make a suggestion.”
“Please.”
“Not only do you need to get back to your car, but you need an alibi for the time of the football game.”
“Right.”
“I would advise you to join the LARPers in Arroyo Park.”
“Is that a term I’m supposed to know?”
“LARP stands for live action role play. A group of people physically act out their characters’ actions in improvisational theater on public grounds.”
“You mean those weirdoes I see jousting in medieval costumes every Friday night?”
“Exactly. As it is currently Friday night, you’ll find them in Arroyo Park. If you can insert yourself among their ranks and convince them to escort you to campus, you’ll have an excuse for why your car was parked so long in the student lot and a cover to hide the fact that you’re wearing what remains of the mascot’s uniform.”
“Spencer, you are brilliant!” I said, happy for any way out of my current predicament. “Can you come with me?”
“Unfortunately, I need to stay here and track a previously unidentified comet.”
“Is that bad? For us, I mean.”
“You’re thinking of a meteor. Comets orbit the sun.”
“Well, that’s good news. Although I’d welcome being vaporized by a crashing meteor at this point.”