“Nice?” I wonder if she’s going to need me to help her put her jaw back into place, it’s dropped so low. “You think that guy seems nice?”
I want to tell her what my mother always taught me: that you should be nice to everyone until a person gives you reason not to be, and sometimes even then.
Back when I was in preschool, there was this boy that was always getting into trouble, T.J. McAllister. Nearly every day, the head of the school, who could be something of a stickler for rules, would make T.J. sit at a table by himself. When we had music, he’d have to go sit in the other room. When we switched sides for art, he’d have to switch, again to go sit by himself. One time he even got left behind when we went on a field trip. I’ll admit, some of the things T.J. did were bad. But some of the other stuff? It was all so minor, stuff that all the other kids could get away with every day. The thing was, all the kids started withdrawing from T.J., and after a while, I, T.J.’s last friend in the class, finally pulled away too. It was like he was a disease and we didn’t want to catch it.
That’s when my mom gave me a talking-to. This was before she got sick.
“How would you like to be T.J.?” she said. “How would you like to always be getting punished for things, even things that are no big deal? How would you like to get left out of the fun stuff, sometimes just for breathing?”
It was something I’d never thought about before: what it must be like to be T.J. It would be awful. Yes, he was louder than the other kids. Yes, he could be obnoxious too, like the time he spat on me for no good reason. Is there ever a good reason to spit on someone else? But it would be awful to be him, I realized. It would feel sad. It would feel lonely all the time.
“Then don’t you be like the other kids,” Mom said. “I don’t care that the head of the school doesn’t like T.J. I mean, I care, but I can’t do anything about that. And I really can’t do anything about how the other kids act. But I can tell you: you should be nicer to him, no matter what anyone else says or does.”
She was right, I saw, wondering why I hadn’t been able to see it for myself before.
“There are two good reasons,” Mom said, “for being nice to the underdogs in this life. One, because if the underdog grows up to be the kind of person that starts shooting, you’ll have a chance at survival. Two, because it’s the right thing to do.” She paused. “Make it three,” she added, “the third reason being that the wheel of fortune is always spinning, spinning. And just because you’re at the top today doesn’t mean it’ll always be so. When you’re at the bottom, you’ll want someone to be there for you too.”
I see that wheel spinning now, see how it’s just a matter of fortune that has placed me with instant friends on the first day of school while this other new kid is already destined to have none.
But I can’t tell Deanie any of that. Somehow, I don’t think she’d get it.
So I shrug again. “Yes,” I say, hearing the slight note of defiance in my own voice. “I think he seems nice.”
Before my mom died, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with someone like Deanie. It’s so easy to see what she’s about: Deanie isn’t so much a bad person as that she’s the kind of girl who wants to be liked by everybody who’s anybody, and that means following the crowd. So if Steve From The Bus says the new guy is bad news, Deanie will give lip service to that. Again, she’s not bad; she’s just a follower. And me, now that Mom is gone, I guess I’ve become something of a follower too, or at least too much of a leaf on the wind now to more deliberately choose my own friends.
“I don’t know, Aurora.” Deanie looks at me funny. “You sure have an odd definition of nice. It must mean something different where you come from.”
Lucius
Already I feel like I’m suffocating in this school, so when open study comes up on my schedule I head outside to the lounge, which is off the cafeteria.
My parents sometimes talk about when they were in school, how outdoor lounges in high school back then were always referred to as the smokers’ lounge, where all the smokers in school—students, faculty, security guards—would go to puff away.
Hard to fathom it: the picture of these concrete benches and brick posts being surrounded by a cloud of smoke drifting upward to the overhangs that partially cover the area in case of precipitation. Hard to imagine schools where no one hassled anyone else about smoking, even the underage.
But this campus has signs marking it at the entrance as a “Smoke-Free Zone,” and I’ll bet if I tried to light up right now, it’d be a hanging offense almost worse than stealing chemicals from the science lab.
I guess it’s a good thing for me, then, that I don’t smoke.
It’s good to be outside, good to feel the fresh air against my skin. For close to the past year, when at home, I’m almost never outside, unless it’s to go to and from the car. Still, it’s crowded out here, with other kids wanting to take advantage of the sunny weather, and some of those kids are already giving me hard glares as if I’m standing too close to them, as if having no arms might be a catching disease. If this was anything but my first day I might return those glares with one of my best menacing stares, but I just can’t take the conflict right off the bat. Besides, a part of me almost feels like, Who can blame them?
So I slither through the crowd to a shady corner under one of the overhangs where no one else seems to want to be. I may not get to enjoy the natural sunlight here, but at least there is no one to make me feel like I’m spoiling their day.
It is a fine art, being alone in a crowd.
I’m studying my feet as though they might be the two most interesting things in the world when I hear the sound of a throat being cleared, nervously. Before looking up, I see that two shiny black shoes have moved into my space, and when I do look up, I see the security guard who frisked me this morning.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he says, “about this morning. I guess I was just overeager—first day and all.” He clears his throat again. “So, um, I didn’t notice.”
He indicates my hooks with a jut of his chin, his pockmarked cheeks reddening slightly as he does so.
“S’okay,” I say. “People miss these all the time. You know, if I didn’t wave them in people’s faces, I don’t think they’d ever even notice.”
His eyes widen, but then he must see I’m just fooling with him and then he actually laughs, a relieved sound, before turning dead serious again.
“So.” He gives another one of those chin juts at my hooks. “What happened?”
“Explosion,” I say. “Chemicals.”
He takes a moment to think about this, as though my two words have painted a big enough picture, then he asks, “How long ago?”
“Not too long into freshman year,” I say, adding for clarity, “last year.”
He digests this too. He opens his mouth as if to say something else, but no words come out. I understand what he’s feeling. What can he possibly say? “I’m sorry”?
There just is no right thing to say. So I save him the futile search by changing the subject.
“How about you?” I ask. “You said this is your first day too. How’d you end up being a security guard at a high school?”
He could easily take this as rudeness on my part, which I wouldn’t mind so much, since it would deflect any pity he might be feeling, but he doesn’t appear to take it that way.
“Oh, that,” he says. “I was supposed to play in the NFL. I actually made it to the NFL, but then one day during practice I blew out my knee.” His cheeks redden again slightly as he looks down at that offending knee. Then he shrugs. “Game over.”
I almost smile. I almost smile because it amazes me how right I can sometimes be about certain people. But I realize in time, before he catches my expression, that just as his “I’m sorry” would have been inadequate to my situation, my amusement would most definitely be insulting to his.
So I show him the same courtesy he showed me: a moment of silence, his in hono
r of my lost arms, mine in honor of his wrecked knee.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Nick Greek,” he says.
Now I do laugh, a rusty sound.
His eyes narrow. “What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s just a funny name.”
“Oh, yeah? Is yours any better?”
“Lucius Wolfe,” I say.
“No.” He laughs for the first time. He sounds like he’s had more practice at it than I have. “That sure isn’t any better.”
It’s amazing how you can laugh at something silly with another person, but then as soon as the laughter stops, an awkwardness sets in. I remember that happening sometimes . . . before.
“Hey, listen,” Nick Greek says. “I know what high school can be like. I mean, I was in high school myself once. And I know what kids can be like.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his navy blue uniform pants and I hear the jingle of loose change as he starts to back away. “So, um, just let me know if anyone gives you a hard time.” Then he turns on his heel and saunters away.
Wow, I think. That is a lot of guilt that guy is feeling just over that one mistake he made this morning.
He ought to try blowing up his parents’ house sometime.
Aurora
“See?” Deanie Daily leans over to whisper in my ear. “I told you that guy was a loser.”
I am beginning to think that Deanie Daily could be a Greek chorus all on her own.
We’re in the outside lounge, Deanie and I sitting on a brick wall while all around us are a group of other kids I’ve met today.
I look where Deanie points and see the guy from the bus. He’s over in a shady corner by himself—who would choose to stay in the shade on such a sunny day?—with one of the security guards across from him, the guard’s back to us.
It’s been around school all day, how one of the security guards frisked the guy with no hands first thing in the morning.
“Maybe he’s getting in trouble again,” Deanie says. “Maybe he’s about to get frisked again.”
I wish she wouldn’t say such things just to make herself look cooler. I wish, at the very least, she wouldn’t say them to me.
“I don’t think so,” I say, feeling the need to defend the guy. “It looks like they’re just talking to each other.”
In fact, they’re doing more than talking together—it looks like they’re enjoying each other’s company.
“Only losers talk to security guards,” Deanie says, unnecessarily.
It’s an unnecessary addition because everyone knows this. I refuse to use the word loser when talking about another human being, but I do know that in my old school it was only the friendship-challenged kids who ever spent time chatting with the men in blue.
Still, who can blame someone for talking to a security guard—I mean, are security guards lepers or something?—particularly if there’s no one else for a person to talk to.
The security guard’s back is still to me, but I see the new guy laughing as they’re talking. I haven’t seen him laugh before this. The sound of that laugh hits my ears from across the lounge. That laugh, I think, could use some practice.
Then, after a time, the security guard backs away, turns around.
Now the new guy is totally alone over there. With those topaz eyes, it’s almost like he’s a wolf who’s been separated from the pack.
He looks over to where we’re all gathered, his eyes catch mine, and the smile he’s wearing fades, like the last wisp of smoke from a burned-out fire in the fireplace going up the chimney. What is he thinking?
“C’mon, Aurora,” Deanie says. “We’re all going inside. Didn’t you notice?”
And I am pulled along by the crowd.
Lucius
It’s my third day of school, my first gym class.
Actually, I should say it’s my first day in my second gym class.
I was scheduled to have gym yesterday, but when I arrived I discovered I’d been put in a special PE class with the few kids in school who are in wheelchairs, stuff like that. There were therapists and specialists in the class to help, and we were all supposed to go swimming. Nothing against those kids, but I was annoyed. My disabilities aren’t so bad that I can’t do what most other kids can do, so before the class even got under way, I went straight to the vice principal’s office and demanded a course change. At first I met with resistance. But I’ve learned that I can be very persuasive when I want to be. Plus, it’s amazing how flustered administrators get when you use the words “discrimination” and “lawsuit” in the same sentence. Toss in a few “my civil rights are being violated here,” and it’s a walk to getting your own way.
My new gym class is now the first period of the day, which I think is absolutely nuts. Isn’t it wrong somehow to make kids run around when they’re still half asleep?
So here I am getting ready for the first gym class that I intend to see all the way through. I’m down in the locker room, taking off my shoes and socks.
I’ve always thought that communal locker rooms for kids were one of life’s little cruelties. Not that it’s ever been a problem for me before in that particular regard—meaning being ashamed of what I look like, because, believe me, I had other things about locker rooms to fear—but I can remember the reluctant faces in my old school of heavyset guys as they’d pull their regular shirts over their heads, trying to get their gym T-shirts on almost immediately to avoid having other guys say stuff like, “Hey, fatso,” or “Look at lardo!”
Now I know it’s my turn to be scrutinized, so I stand in front of my locker, my back to the room, as I use my hooks to strip my shirt up over my head. I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge what I know is coming my way.
I’m reaching for my gym T-shirt—I made sure to get one with long sleeves—when I hear the voice of Jessup Tristan yell from behind me, “Hey! New guy!”
I ignore him as I take hold of the T-shirt.
“Hey, new guy!” he yells even louder. “I’m talking to you!”
“My name is Lucius Wolfe,” I say, still keeping my back to him.
“Fine,” he says. “Hey, Wolfe!” As he says my name, I feel a rather aggressive towel strike against my exposed back like a terry-cloth whip.
I turn, T-shirt in hand, and see Jessup standing there with a couple of guys I recognize: Gary Addams, who so far hasn’t seemed too bad, and Steve, whose last name I don’t know but who I remember as the guy who first started talking about me that first day on the bus.
Of course, when I turn, they see my chest. They see the skin discolorations, the railroad tracks of scars that meander all over it. My face the doctors did a good job on. My chest, not so much.
Gary and Steve look queasy.
“Whoa!” Jessup says, holding up an arm as though to shield his eyes from a too-bright sun. “Put a shirt on over that thing!”
Then he changes his mind. “Hey!” he says to the room at large. “Get a load of Frankenstein over here!”
Idiot, I think. He doesn’t even know that Frankenstein is just the name of the doctor who created the monster.
“That’s the Frankenstein monster to you,” I say, dropping the T-shirt on the ground and raising my hooks like Boris Karloff trying to scare off a whole village of idiots.
It’s astonishing how satisfying it feels to see Jessup briefly recoil in fear.
But Jessup’s not my little sister, Misty, and he is not the sort to be kept down for long. Worse luck, me.
“Hey,” he says, as I’m pulling on my gym shorts, “how do you jerk off with those things?”
Funny he should ask.
Yes, guys our age—news flash!—jerk off. I suspect guys of all ages do, pretty much from the age they first figure out that the thing they pee with is capable of doing other things right up until the day they get so old they forget what it’s for again. We all do that thing that people used to warn boys not to do, saying it would make them go blind. We
do it, in fact, because we’re hoping to temporarily go blind. In a way, at least.
All I’ll say on the subject?
It does present its challenges.
Life is full of challenges, made more difficult when a person does something stupid, like blowing off his own hands.
Guys our age also fantasize all the time about being with girls. Unless of course we fantasize about being with other boys, but I’m not part of that second we, no offense to anyone who is.
Actually, I’ve been fantasizing about girls for pretty much as long as I can remember. But I always knew it was fantasy, with no basis in reality. I mean, it’s not as if I was ever what you’d call a real popular guy in my old school, not even before I blew my own hands off.
Hell, I’ve never even kissed a girl.
But I have had my crushes and my fantasies. I have had those. And I even used to dream that one day fantasy would become reality. But how is that possible now?
I’ve tried to imagine what that would be like now if it ever did finally happen: being with a girl—you know, really being with her. How would I touch her the way a guy is supposed to?
Even the most basic things are mind-boggling. For example, I know everyone’s supposed to use condoms these days. It’s the thing to do unless you’re—oh, I don’t know—older and trying to make a baby. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was the thing to do even back in my parents’ day—you know, that despite smokers’ lounges, walking to school in the snow, free gas, and people liking you if you “just be yourself,” condoms were the way to go. But how would the logistics of such a thing work?
Believe me, I have given this a lot of thought. And all I can think is, either I’d poke a hole in the condom with my hook or I’d be so nervous and excited and eager, I’d accidentally cut off my own penis with my pincers while trying to roll the condom on.
Yes, for some lucky girl I will be a real prize . . .
I look at Jessup steadily, Jessup with his penchant for asking questions about jerking off. I know, through hard experience, that the steadier you can look at a bully once he’s really decided to go after you, the more likely he is to back down.
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