Changing Michael

by Jeff Schilling

  “Lozenge?” I offered.

  He shook his head, still coughing. Eventually, he decided he wasn’t going to die and started walking.

  “People don’t like you much, huh?” I said, trailing after him.

  He was headed toward the windows at the end of the hallway. He gave me an angry look and cleared his throat.

  “Water?” I asked. “Hot tea? Maybe a little honey?”

  “Why are you following me?” he asked, hoarsely.

  We were coming to a set of stairs at the end of the hall. I slipped in front of Michael. My next class was on the second floor and I wasn’t finished with him yet.

  “I’m concerned, Michael,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’m a concerned peer.”

  He cleared his throat again.

  “Would you like a poultice?”

  Michael shook his head. Although I was in front of him, he somehow managed to fake me out and make it to the stairway. Rather than follow, I stepped over to the railing, watching him go.

  “All right, then. We’ll talk tomorrow!” I called.

  Michael looked up. I smiled and waved.

  He made a frowny face, then disappeared under my feet. The bell rang—a real delight, since it was very close and incredibly loud.

  Time for English, I suppose.

  I started to push away from the railing but saw Jack trudging up the stairs and waited.

  “You’re late for class,” I said.

  “Eat it,” he replied. As we walked down the hall, he asked,“Who were you talking to?”

  “Michael.”

  “Michael? Michael who?”

  I told him.

  “Why?” he asked, sourly.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Whatever,” he said with a shrug.

  We passed a group of girls acting loud and silly going the other way.

  “Hi, Jack!” one called.

  “Fudgepork!” Jack yelled back.

  I looked back. The girls had stopped.

  “What’d he say?” one asked.

  “Fudge-something?”

  “What’s fudgepork, Jack?” I asked, stopping in front of my English classroom.

  He smiled. “I don’t know.”

  I watched him walk around a corner, wondering if he’d actually make it to his next class. Jack has some attendance issues.

  The bell rang again, this time a little farther from my ear. I found my seat and fell into it. Ignoring Mrs. Brattleborough’s request to take out something or other, I put a hand to my chin and stared absently at the front of the room. (I think her name’s Mrs. Brattleborough, but I’m not entirely sure.)

  Anyway, for some reason, I found myself thinking about Michael. Our little conversation in the hall had been brief and unsatisfactory. I’d pulled him out from under Leonard’s smelly forearm and hadn’t even received a “thank you.”

  The more I thought about it, the more it irritated me.

  However, being the helpful, forgiving person I am, I decided to give Michael another opportunity to express his appreciation.

  I decided I’d give him a day or so to realize the error of his ways and make amends. I’d even be open to accepting a small gift as a token of his remorse.

  No sense holding a grudge, right?

  I found the perfect opportunity for Michael to make things right the next morning. Mom was working from home for the day, so I had the car, and I spotted him in the cafeteria on my way in from the parking lot.

  It was early and the chairs were still upside-down, their legs in the air, their backs dangling over the edges of the tables. I noticed Michael huddled at the far end of the room, partially hidden behind the jungle of silver legs.

  He heard me coming and glanced up, startled.

  I grabbed a metal leg and flipped a chair down. I sat, facing him.

  “Morning, Sunshine,” I said.

  No response. I studied him.

  “You don’t use conditioner, do you?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your hair,” I said, pointing.

  “So?” he said, smoothing one side with the palm of his hand.

  “It wouldn’t look so bad if it wasn’t plastered to your head.”

  He dropped his eyes.

  “You do shampoo occasionally, right?”

  “Yes,” he snapped.

  “Don’t get testy with me.”

  “What do you want?”

  I was about to force a little gratitude out of him when it occurred to me that Michael probably wasn’t used to people actually working on his behalf.

  So I explained it: “I’m here to help, Michael.”

  “What are you talking about?” Michael looked perplexed. He opened his book and tried to read, maybe hoping I’d go away. I snatched it from him instead.

  “Lud in the Mist,” I read. “Who’s Lud?”

  “Give me that, please,” he said, as if it was a game he’d played too many times before.

  “Not until you tell me who Lud is.”

  He sighed. “It’s not a person; it’s a place.”

  “Lud? How pretty,” I said.

  “Lud-in-the-Mist,” he said. “It’s a fictional English town.”

  “It’s a ridiculous name.”

  Michael held out a hand.

  I started to pass the book to him but pulled back when his fingers touched the cover. Then I thumped him lightly on the head.

  We stared at each other again.

  “Do you like the way things are?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you like being the school weirdo?” I asked, handing the book back.

  “Yes,” he said, inspecting it for damage.

  “Don’t make me thump you again.”

  He sighed and looked up. “What people think about me isn’t important.”

  “But wouldn’t it be nice to walk to class without getting assaulted?”

  He gave me a blank look.

  I glanced at the parking lot out through the windows. Clumps of kids were drifting in from their cars.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.

  I stood up as voices began to spill down the hall and into the cafeteria.

  “It does matter,” I said.

  “This world is transitory,” he said, studying a blob of dried mustard at his feet.

  “This world is what?”

  Michael shook his head. Getting to his feet, he gently slid Lud-in-the- Mist into his backpack.

  “Where are you going?” I asked as he slung his backpack over his shoulder.

  “Class,” he said.

  “Want me to come?” I said, eager to miss the first few minutes of Astronomy.

  He shook his head. Yet another helpful gesture slapped to the ground. It was becoming a pattern.

  I watched him head for the door.

  “See you soon!” I called.

  He didn’t turn.

  I stood for a moment, considering. I’d now given Michael two opportunities to thank me and had come up empty-handed. There was simply no excuse for such behavior, especially when I had gone out of my way to perform an unsolicited good deed.

  I decided we needed another conversation. And this time I was going to get something out of him, one way or another.

  I ran into Jack on my way out of the cafeteria.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “Nothing. Just talking to my buddy Michael.”

  “Again?” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “Why?” he said.

  “Just curious.”

  We made our way down the hall, a small part of a growing stream.

  “Hey, I talked to Jenny last night,�
� Jack said, suddenly.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yep. That girl wants me.”

  One reason I avoid close friendships is the obligation to listen and respond to personal information that holds no interest whatsoever. One of the reasons I like Jack—he almost never shares. The only exception is “Girls Who Want Him.” Apparently, the school is littered with them.

  It wasn’t hard to tune him out, though. If you’re quiet and nod once in a while, people think you’re listening. Or that you like them. Usually both.

  We made our way around the knots and clusters of students. The halls aren’t wide to begin with, so it doesn’t take many people to go from almost empty to packed.

  “Need to go to your locker?” Jack said.

  I started to say “no” but changed my mind. My locker’s on the second floor, and Jack’s is on the first. I knew I’d see him at lunch, and I also knew I’d probably hear about Jenny again. I decided to pass on a double shot, since I wasn’t interested in the first place.

  “All right,” Jack said. “See you at lunch.”

  “Yep.”

  Maybe I’d skip lunch.

  “Hey, Matt,” someone said once I was in Astronomy.

  I held up a hand. “Got a test,” I said.

  “We don’t have a test today.”

  “Different class.”

  I grabbed a dictionary from the bookshelf. “Transitory,” I determined, means “temporary” or “fleeting.”

  Anyone who thought this world was “transitory” sounded like a jumper to me.

  My interest in Michael grew just a bit.

  Now I wanted both a “thank you” and some additional information on this “transitory” thing. I was fairly certain Michael wouldn’t be very forthcoming, but perhaps he’d feel different outside of the school environment. Should I make a house call?

  I took out a notebook and added a few features to the doodle I’d started earlier. (I’m an accomplished abstract doodler. I’ve toyed with the idea of letting the art teacher have a look, but she’d probably make a fuss and want to set up a showing and I’m not someone who needs that kind of validation.)

  In any case, a house call seemed a bit much, but on the other hand, it was kind of intriguing.

  Boredom is a constant problem for me, and the idea of forcing my way into Michael’s house and making him uncomfortable held a certain appeal.

  No, not forcing. Finessing.

  I smiled.

  Finessing my way in would be fun. Not only fun, but good practice. Michael had been challenging so far. Actually convincing him to let me in would be quite a coup.

  Thinking about Michael’s house and how I’d get past the front door almost kept me awake. However, five minutes of Mrs. Hammerschmidt’s voice was enough to send me and half the class into a coma.

  I tried to fight through it but lost.

  I should probably consider a career in law enforcement. I’m already a gifted detective. I wanted to catch Michael after school but wasn’t sure which exit he’d take. I was pretty sure the student parking lot wasn’t an option—if Michael had a car, it would have been well-known and occasionally vandalized. And as far as I knew, he didn’t have (or ride with) any close friends.

  Hence, my deduction: Michael either walked or took the bus.

  Our school isn’t too far from Washington, D.C. Maybe twenty minutes without traffic (something only absent between 3:30 a.m. and 3:45 a.m.). With traffic, it’s anywhere from one to five hours. The greater Washington, D.C. area has been spreading outwards like an overflowing toilet for many years and will eventually flood all of Maryland and most of Virginia.

  As a result, Alexander High School sits at the epicenter of suburbia, which means it’s surrounded by housing developments.

  These developments connect to other developments, and between each subdivision are strip malls, office buildings, and miles of traffic, on and on, forever and ever, amen.

  But back to Michael.

  I decided to conduct my stake-out in front of the school. I didn’t think it would be too hard to spot him. I’d just look for the floppy hair.

  Anyway, as I’m deep in thought, Michael pops out of the building and immediately scurries down the sidewalk past the waiting buses. He’s already got a decent lead, so I take off running to catch up with him, but then realize I’m jogging by the parked buses and a captive audience, so I slow down to a fast walk instead—that is, until I remember how ridiculous speed walkers look. So, finally, I settle for a brisk but casual pace.

  According to Mom (who is frequently unreliable), there was a small section of woods to one side of our school a long time ago. Now, a thick stand of townhouses has graciously replaced most of the unsightly trees. Once, I knew a few kids who lived in Village Oaks (although most of the oaks appeared to have been executed). On the other side of Alexander, the houses were older, smaller brick ones with a couple of unassuming apartment buildings thrown in for good measure. I knew the area but didn’t know anyone on this side.

  I followed Michael down the sidewalk and into the little brick neighborhood. I hung back a bit, not sure what he’d do if he realized I was following him. I figured his place had to be close. Even though the first few rows of houses seemed small, they were fairly tidy and not too bad.

  But as we got farther away from the school, I knew the houses would get smaller and more dilapidated. Eventually, we hit a main road, and the houses at that end were pretty awful. It was like the builders, when they started working on the houses near the school, had been eager and energetic. But as they kept building, they got more and more tired and started to get a little sloppy, and by the end of the job, they just slapped everything together before lunch, left their trash and tools in the yard, and headed to the nearest bar for a three-day bender.

  But I was pretty sure Michael didn’t live down at that end.

  Michael was a geek. Geeks live in nice, clean houses, with geeky parents who make lots of money programming computers to run the world.

  Any minute now, I expected Michael to turn down a side road or into a front yard, but he just kept going, past the neater houses and past the bad ones, too.

  And it wasn’t just the houses. The yards we passed became more disheveled the farther we got from the school. Most were cluttered with rusting swing sets, or sprinkled with garbage instead of grass. Some had plastic toddler cars that looked as if either the sun or an older brother had set fire to part of the vehicle. One gutter that ran parallel to the sidewalk was an avid collector of crushed beer cans and filthy cigarette butts.

  Back near the school, some of the houses had tight little garages that could accommodate one, maybe two clown cars on a good day. Down at this end, there was only the occasional carport, and the majority of these tilted in one direction or another and probably wouldn’t make it past the next windy day.

  I came around a slight bend in the road I was following; I could see the main road that intersected mine about a hundred yards ahead.

  “What the heck?” I muttered, then wondered, What if he doesn’t live on this road? What if we’ve got another couple miles or something? What if it gets even worse?

  I was slowing a little, thinking perhaps I’d make a home visit some other time, when Michael finally turned down a driveway.

  Not even a driveway really—just a section of broken asphalt. The chain-link fence around the front yard looked like someone had either dropped cinderblocks on it or driven a car into it a couple of times. Michael’s house was a little brick box with small windows, brown grass, and pathetic little bushes near the front door.

  A couple of broken-down cars had passed out across the weed-infested driveway. Their hoods were gone, and most of their engines were scattered beside them as if someone had torn through looking for an Easter egg.

  Definitely not what I had expected.

&nb
sp; It was the perfect house for Leonard, or someone who reeked of cigarettes and pot, but Michael was just a geek—the kind that reads science-fiction, plays Magic, and gets all flushed and out of breath describing a computer game. (I’d never actually seen Michael play Magic but figured it was a given.)

  Michael had disappeared into the house when I got there. I stood near the fence, wondering if there was a mutant dog hiding around the corner, waiting for me to step into the yard. I opened the gate and swung it back and forth. The noise was loud enough to send any dog into hysterics. No barking.

  Eventually, I stepped through and was halfway to the front door when someone popped out of a side door around the corner of the house. It was Michael, slouching down the driveway with a bag of trash. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “Selling knives.”

  It took him a moment to process the remark. I don’t know whether he got it or not because he didn’t bother to smile. Instead, he dropped the trash bag into a beat-up trashcan and took off down the sidewalk. I had a fence to deal with, so it took me a minute to catch up with him.

  “No wonder no one comes to visit you,” I said.

  He turned on me like I’d slapped him.

  “I came all this way just to see you. You’re supposed to invite me in and feed me.”

  He relaxed a little, which meant he fell into his old slouch and walked off with his eyes glued to the street. We were on the sidewalk, moving away from his house and toward Route 30.

  “Where we going?” I asked.

  He glanced at me before answering. “Bookstore.”

  “Adult bookstore?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer. I waited a moment, then said, “So this world is transitory, huh?”

  Michael glanced at me. We were both on the sidewalk, although it was a pretty tight fit. We couldn’t quite walk next to each other, so I was about half a pace behind.

  Having a conversation with Michael was more than a little frustrating. Every time I made a comment, it was like offering food to a stray dog—Michael didn’t seem to know whether I was going to hand him the food or give him a smack.