Wait Until Twilight

by Sang Pak

  In the office there’s a machine we have to put our previous school identification card in. From that card the machine spits out two more pictures on a piece of glossy paper. Using a little customized ruler, you have to cut it out with a paper cutter. The two pictures are placed on two different forms: one goes to the school, and the other one is supposed to be placed in your locker with the lock after cleaning it out on the last day of school. I tell David we can split the duties and get it done faster. I’ll do the pictures and the cutting, and he can do the forms. He agrees, and my breaking in line becomes official.

  When our turn comes, we go into the office. I ask David to give me the measurements off the pictures. He says sixty by twenty. I start measuring, but the problem is my hand starts shaking. I try to steady it with my right hand, but it doesn’t help, so I put them both in my pocket.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asks.

  “Too much coffee,” I say. “I got shaky hands. David, you do this.”

  We switch roles: I fill out the forms while David measures and cuts. He tells me his birth date and other essentials, which I write down with a shaky old man’s hand on his form. It takes only about five minutes and we’re both out of there.

  Thanks to breaking in line I get to chemistry class early. A few other kids have gotten there before me. I see Melody sitting in the back, and just seeing her makes me feel a little better and my hands feel steady. Instead of sitting up front like I usually do, I sit down beside Melody, who’s busy studying. She looks at me like I’m crazy. I’m sure she’s wondering why I’m sitting beside her like this. I can’t remember the last time we interacted at school. I don’t care. Sitting by her makes me feel better. Normal. Like the shades being lifted at Mrs. Greenan’s house. It makes all the difference in the world.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Now I am. Did you get a good spot?” I ask, like everything in the world is hunky-dory.

  “Yeah, I got a space in the east parking pot.”

  “Nice.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I got one in the west lot, but it’s pretty close. You’re studying the periodic table again, huh?”

  “I mean, what are you doing, sitting beside me talking? You never do that.”

  From the back office Mrs. Lane yells, “Melody, remember to study!” in a very sarcastic voice.

  “Wow, she’s psychic,” I say.

  “Shouldn’t she be encouraging me to study?”

  “You’re fine. What’d you get on that last quiz?”

  “Ninety.”

  “See. I haven’t even cracked my book. Just study the notes and handouts she gives you. All the quiz materials come from that. If you do it that way, you hardly have to even study.” While I’m speaking a little voice comes into my head, saying, Shit! Why the hell are you so confident? But I keep talking.

  “Are you sure?” she says.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Remember what I got on that quiz?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t even open my book.”

  She takes out her notes and examines them. I take out my summer reading list, which Mrs. Bickerson gave us the previous week. The last book on the list had shocked the crap out of me. It’s a poet by the name of Florence Cain, who I’ve read before in one of Jim’s college literature books. Her poems are very short but for some reason I really like them and I don’t even like poetry. But her poems make me think that such things can’t possibly be made up by the human mind. I vaguely remember some lines that go something like:

  The sun ebbed on the blood,

  Buoyancy,

  Fluency, gottlob,

  Try to leave on the noon.

  At least that’s the way I remember it. Chemistry class soon begins. I really don’t like chemistry that much because it includes two extra hours of lab twice a week. But the good thing about the class is that I find it rather easy. Another thing that makes chemistry okay is our teacher, Mrs. Lane. She’s kind of obese, almost two hundred pounds, but it isn’t because she eats a lot. She has glandular problems and whenever she wears short-sleeve shirts I can see all these moles on her arms. Something isn’t right about her physically, but she’s really nice, and all the students get along with her. A lot of it has to do with her age. She’s young, in her mid-twenties, so she can relate to us better than the older teachers. At the end of the day’s class, Mrs. Lane even takes us outside and shows us her new Mazda Miata. It seems funny that such a large lady would get such a small car, but she’s sure happy about it. There’s a fancy bike rack attached to the back bumper. It turns out she did marathon biking. I can’t imagine her riding a bike, but if her obesity is glandular, maybe she’s healthier than she looks. I get the feeling there’s a lot I don’t know about her. As class ends, Melody asks me one more time if I want to talk about something. I tell her no.

  AFTER BIOLOGY I GO TO homeroom. We’re last on the list for lunch that day, so we’ll have to wait. Mrs. Bickerson must have been in a good mood because she takes the entire class outside to the soccer field. The soccer field is this big depression in the ground on the other side of the school from the football field. Concrete bleachers are carved into the embankment of the depression on the side of the field closest to the school. The other side is just a shallow ditch that runs into the woods. Mrs. Bickerson takes attendance, and then we just hang out for twenty minutes on the bleachers. It’s a little hot, but there’s a nice breeze. I ask Katy, who’s sitting up a bleacher from me, what’s for lunch. She says, “Ahhhh…” And then asks Debbie.

  “You don’t need to do that,” I say.

  “Sloppy joes,” Debbie says.

  When it’s finally time for lunch and we all go to get in line, I notice some gum stuck on my pants. Luckily it’s really old gum, so it’s already kind of hardened. I wipe it off with some paper without making a mess of it. I have to run up to get a decent space in line and then get squeezed out as kids from the back push forward. Those of us who get squeezed out call out our spot so we don’t lose our place.

  “I’m behind Debbie!”

  “I’m behind Branden!”

  I yell, “I’m behind Katy!” and try to squeeze back in. I joke, “Wow, if this were the end of the world we’d really get the squeeze!”

  Katy laughs and says, “Yeah. And you could run away and later tell them how they’re not invited to your barbecue.”

  The barbecue is a running joke made up by Will, who one day told everyone I was having a barbecue. If I hadn’t heard about it, there would have been a ton of people showing up at my house on that Sunday afternoon. I had to announce to everyone in our grade that there was no barbecue. Even still to that day occasionally someone asks me how the barbecue went. Mrs. Bickerson is leading us into the cafeteria the back way, through the kitchen. We go through this large storage area, where high shelves are stocked with boxes and gigantic cans of creamed corn and beans. The janitor and a couple of the coaches are having lunch in there on a foldout table. It looks like a good place to eat lunch.

  “Coming in from the back door?” asks Coach Simpson.

  “You got to try something different sometimes,” Mrs. Bickerson says. It sounds almost as if she were joking a little. I’ve never heard her even try to joke. Mrs. Bickerson tells us to hurry up and that lunchtime is practically almost over. “No dillydallying,” is how she puts it. The cafeteria is packed, so I go ahead and get the first empty seat I can find beside Will. I put my backpack on the table before getting back in line behind Katy. I’m served a plate of sloppy joes, fries, and beans and sit down. Will grins at me, his mouth full of food, and the only thing I see for a split second are Daryl’s nasty yellow-brown teeth. I suddenly have this ridiculous urge to brush my own teeth. I turn Will’s head with my hand. “Not today, man.” I try to go ahead and eat but it’s too much, so I run to the restroom and rinse my mouth out with water. When I get back to my seat, Will’s sitting in the seat beside mine and my plate’s gone. “Give me my damn plate,”
I say in an exasperated tone, knowing he has hidden it. He pulls it out from his lap and puts it in front of me, snickering. “I was expecting to have to ask more than that. Are you tired or something?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  REED HAD CALLED AND LEFT a message during the day. I’d forgotten all about meeting him and his cousin Chip at the traveling fair in the Kmart parking lot. He wants me to come by his house and take him up on his offer to play some basketball. I don’t see why not, so I go over. He lives around the country club and the rest of the rich people in town. So I go over to his house and shoot some roundball with him and Chip. There’s a hoop set up over his garage. Beside the hoop there’s a sign that reads MOVE OUT!

  They’re good, better than my friends at Central, but I can keep up. These are guys who go to clinics and basketball camps during the summer, taking their game to the next level. If I want to play varsity, I would have to do the same thing. Not to mention practice until seven or eight every night. It doesn’t seem worth it. We play for a couple of hours and then sit around drinking Gatorade in Reed’s spacious living room. It’s got this vaulted ceiling that goes up about twenty feet.

  “Samuel, you wanna come with us later? We’re gonna have some fun,” says Chip.

  “What’s the plan?” I ask.

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want. I’m not sure if I’m even gonna go,” says Reed.

  “Why the hell not?” asks Chip.

  “I got Christina to think about,” says Reed.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “There’s a girl who’ll do it with all of us.”

  “You mean at the same time?”

  “No, one at a time. That’s why it’s called a train. But I guess if you wanted…”

  “What is she, some kind of hooker?” I ask.

  “No, she just likes it.”

  “Is that normal?” I ask.

  “She’s just a crazy slut,” says Reed.

  “I don’t know about Samuel, but you’re definitely comin’,” Chip says to Reed. “You wouldn’t want Christina finding out about those other times…”

  Reed looks at him like he’s getting angry. “You don’t want to go there, cuz.”

  They both stare at each other for a good minute. “Forget about it then, goddamnit!” says Chip, and starts playing a video game on the plasma television mounted on the wall between two large bookcases full of plates and statues. I tell them I’m heading out, and Chip says, “Yeah,” without even turning from his game. Reed walks me out to the front door.

  “Don’t worry about him, Samuel. He’s just pissed at me because I got a girlfriend and don’t go slumming with him and his skanks. Take it easy.”

  I head home to find Dad already there working on his project. He’s digging deeper into that hole in the backyard.

  “You need any help?” I ask.

  “Naw, son. I got to do this on my own.” He wipes his forehead with a towel and looks up at the late-afternoon sky before digging again. He looks old but strong.

  CHAPTER 11

  MY COUSIN, ANGIE, WANTS TO SEE ME after school the next day. She said she wants to tell me something in person, and no matter how much I try to get her to tell me over the phone she refuses. Angie has just graduated from the West Georgian College and is substitute teaching at Sugweepo City High across town. We used to play together when we were kids, but the age gap caught up with us as she entered high school and then college. I don’t feel like going. I’m all nervous and agitated for some reason. I keep having these little flashbacks with Daryl and that shed mixed in with those babies. It’s like one of those watercolor paintings from the basement of Will’s house. Impressions that bleed in on one another. I’d figure it would make me want to run for the hills, but instead it just makes me want to go to Mrs. Greenan’s house more. Like I could do something to make it all stop, but I don’t know what.

  I call Angie on my cell phone. She tells me to go to the back of her school and park by the weight room, which is easier said than done. With school getting out it takes half an hour to get through the slew of students leaving and the parents coming to pick up their kids. Then when I try to park by the weight room, some coach blows a whistle and tells me to go back around and try to find a spot up front. I have to loop around three times before I find a spot. I walk around looking for room 122, which she said was in the far west side of the school. Angie’s sitting behind a desk in the classroom. She looks like a genuine grown-up with a suit and a perm, but she still has that youngish oval face and round John Lennon glasses. She puts out her arms and grabs me by the shoulders. “There’s something I need you to do for me. A friend of mine is getting married next week, and we’re having a rehearsal and pictures this weekend. She needs a guy to be matched with one of the maids of honor. I need you to be a stand-in.”

  “Why me?” I ask.

  “Because I know you’re sweet, not to mention generous and intelligent…”

  “Come on. You’re saying you can’t find one other guy around you who’s willing to do this? What’s the catch?”

  “Look, I’ll give you fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty dollars to walk down an aisle and have some pictures taken?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the actual wedding?”

  “We have someone lined up for that. Just the rehearsal and the pictures.” She takes out the fifty, and when she sees me hesitate she adds ten more. I take it. Stupid me. Stupid, because when I get home and tell Dad the rehearsal is in Heflin, he tells me Heflin is in Alabama, two hours away. That’s why she wanted to see me in person. What with the bribe and the face-to-face contact, she knew I’d cave in. Dad offers to call Angie and tell her I can’t make it, but I tell him it’s too late. “Greed did me in,” I say. “I said I’ll do it, and I’ll do it.”

  “Give Jim a call while you’re going out in that direction,” says Dad. The West Georgian College is about forty-five minutes west of Sugweepo, on the way toward Alabama.

  “I think he wants to be left alone, Dad,” I say. “I don’t want to bother him.”

  “If he’s bothered, it’s not because of you, so don’t even worry about that. You might even be able to help him out. Sometimes we need help when we don’t even know it.”

  “I don’t know, Dad,” I say.

  “Don’t forget that you two are brothers. All right? Come on, let’s order a pizza,” he says.

  I know I’ll have to go do that favor for Angie that Saturday, so I make sure to go out that Friday night. Will comes by and picks me up to go to the mall, where we just cruise around for a while and then spend some time in the video arcade behind the movie theater. That’s where we run into Joe, a.k.a. “Captain Crazy.” Will knows Joe better than me because Joe used to be on the swim team. Maybe he still is. I’m not sure. There’s a party he wants to go to but he doesn’t want to go alone so he asks us if we want to go with him.

  “Sure,” says Will. I just follow along. We hop in Joe’s red Trans Am and head out to Fairfield Plantation, a wealthy subdivision heading toward Atlanta, thirty miles northeast of Sugweepo. He drives around the hilly wooded suburbs, making phone calls and cursing, “Goddamnit! Where is this place! Shit! That lying piece of shit, giving me shit directions. Fuuuuaaaak!” But he just can’t find it. “You know, I think the principal lives around here,” he says ominously, while still driving around. He keeps punching his thigh with his right hand, which is gripping his cell phone.

  “Oh shit! Is that a cop?” Will asks.

  “Where?” asks Joe.

  “That car keeps following us.”

  Joe slows down the car and starts cruising beside those large well-kept lawns.

  “It doesn’t look like a cop car,” says Joe. “Let’s see.” He pulls into a random driveway, and we watch as a white Charger with blue stripes on the side passes. There’s only one person that could be.

  “Maybe we should just go home,” I say. All the nervousness comes back in a wave of cold
sweat that I feel in my armpits and on my forehead. “Shit. I got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Why? It wasn’t even a cop. Come on,” says Joe.

  Will shrugs at me. “It wasn’t a cop.”

  We back out of the driveway and continue winding around the labyrinthine suburbs searching for some stupid party. I keep looking for the Charger, hoping we’ve lost it.

  “Let’s just go,” I plead. “We’re not going to find it.”

  “Hey, it’s still following us,” says Will.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” We all look back and see a pair of headlights three or four car lengths behind us. Joe starts taking quick random turns.

  “See, I told ya,” says Will.

  “I’ll be damned. Who do you think it is?” asks Joe, peering into the rearview mirror.

  “Does it matter? Let’s just get the hell out of here!” I say.

  “Well, if it ain’t a cop, then it’s got no right.” Joe drives faster and faster. He even starts swerving off the road, into people’s front yards, and back onto the road.

  “What the hell are you doing, Joe?” Will asks. Joe pulls off the road completely and jumps the curb, driving through yards and dodging mailboxes, bushes, and trees without slowing down or turning back on the road. In fact, he’s speeding up. Will and I look at each other. He shakes his head and puts on his seat belt. I do the same. But I have to say, at the moment I’m impressed with Joe’s driving skills. I can’t believe how he manages to avoid all those obstacles: lawn gnomes, trees, shrubs, pine-straw islands, all while maintaining control of a speeding car.

  “He’s still there!” yells Will.

  “Just go!” I say. “Go! Go! Go!”

  We reach a point where the road veers away to the right. It’s Joe’s last chance to get back on the road. He doesn’t take it. Instead, he goes past a small pond, around a brick bird feeder, up this grassy hill, and into someone’s backyard full tilt, and we slam into the side of a house, crashing through all these sliding-glass doors into a living room. Then it’s quiet. Joe looks around and says, “Holy shit. This should be a tradition. We gotta find the principal’s house and do this.” He starts trying to back up, but the car is stuck against something. I can hear the car wheels squealing and smell the rubber burning. Somewhere in the house I hear a woman screaming.