by Spencer Baum
As Jackie shook hands with Kevin’s dad, Cassandra said, “Would you children like to stay and have something to eat? Craig has made an interesting dish this evening.”
Kevin tried to contain his disdain. He wanted to snap at Cassandra, tell her this wasn’t her house, that offers to stay were the privilege of Kevin and his dad only.
“No, but thank you,” said Jackie. “We only came to drop off Kevin’s bag.”
“Well, Kevin, how did you and your backpack get separated?” Cassandra asked.
“Long story,” Kevin said, and quickly turned to Jackie. “I’ll walk you out.”
As soon as the front door was closed behind them, Joseph began whispering excitedly.
“I was listening to the police band on my short wave radio,” Joseph said. “This afternoon they were talking about getting attendance records of every high school and middle school in the area. They’re going to interview everyone who missed class and doesn’t have a locktight alibi.”
“I’m scared, Kevin,” said Jackie. “If they pull you out for questioning, the men who saw us might recognize you. They’ll think we were responsible for the explosion.”
“But we weren’t,” Kevin said. “Doesn’t the truth count for anything?”
“The truth?” Joseph said. Kevin knew what he was getting at. The truth involved eating sap from a fallen tree and jumping over six-foot fences. The truth didn’t absolve them from the explosion at Turquoise Mountain, and presented a whole new set of problems.
Mrs. Silver honked her horn.
“We need to go,” Jackie said to Joseph.
“But what are we going to do?” Kevin said, knowing the real question was what am I going to do? There were no school attendance records on Jackie and Joseph.
The front door opened. Cassandra stepped out.
“You kids still here?” She looked past them to the minivan parked at the curb, and smiled like a co-conspirator. “How long are you going to make your mother wait?”
Kevin opened his mouth to let Cassandra have it. Who did she think she was speaking to his friends like this? He took in a sharp breath in preparation to speak, but he stopped. Something was in the air, something that irritated his throat and froze him in place.
“We’re just leaving,” said Jackie.
“Well, have a good night,” said Cassandra.
They waited for Cassandra to pass, saying nothing until she reached her truck.
“She drives that Mountain Ranger?” Joseph whispered.
Mrs. Silver honked again.
“Just a second!” Joseph yelled. Cassandra got into her truck and closed the door. “Did you guys--”
“Yes!” said Jackie. “Kevin did you smell it?”
“I did,” said Kevin. “I took in a big breath of it. It was her.”
Kevin hadn’t noticed it before, because, as was always the case, the inside of his house reeked of the espresso Kevin’s dad always made on his Tingley 2000. But when he had inhaled as Cassandra passed, his lungs and his nose took him back to the afternoon’s adventure. Fumes. Light and hidden, masked inside the smells of perfume, soap, and a house of espresso, but present. The same fumes they had found on Turquoise Mountain at the site of the explosion.
“It was her!” said Joseph. “That woman, Cassandra. She was at Turquoise Mountain today!”
“Who is she?” Jackie said.
“A long-time friend of my dad’s,” said Kevin, “and it doesn’t make any sense. She’s just a sad, strange Hearer. The Hearers don’t like to go to Turquoise Mountain.”
“That’s right!” said Joseph. “The Hearers are weird about the mountain, aren’t they? Maybe she cracked and tried to blow it up! She’d be able to get up there with that Mountain Ranger. Those things can climb a tree if you need them to. Did you know there were only fifty ever made?”
“Not now, Joseph,” said Jackie.
Kevin thought about Joyce Medina, sobbing uncontrollably.
“I don’t know,” said Kevin. “They all were pretty torn up about the explosion, actually.”
“Either way, we need to find out more about that woman,” said Joseph. “They’re going to recognize you, Kevin, and if we don’t have any other leads to give them, we’re all in trouble.”
Mrs. Silver rolled down her window.
“My lasagna’s getting cold!” she yelled.
“Okay, Mom!” said Joseph.
“Do you want to come to a party, Kevin?” Jackie asked.
“Yes, that will give us a chance to talk some more,” said Joseph. “You should come.”
“What party?” Kevin asked.
“It’s the first day of the school year,” Jackie said. “Our homeschool group gets together, and, well, we kind of celebrate that we don’t have to go back to school. There’s a bunch of people our age, Kevin. You’ll have fun.”
Kevin considered. It wasn’t often that he was invited to parties. Twenty-four hours ago, this was all he wanted for his first day of high school – new friends, adventures, party invites…
That was before his ears started buzzing.
“It sounds awesome,” Kevin said, “but I really need to talk to my dad tonight.”
“Alright,” said Jackie, clearly disappointed. “Maybe we’ll see you tomorrow?”
“That would be great.”
Mrs. Silver sat on her horn for a good three seconds.
They said goodnight, and Kevin watched them leave. He stood on the front porch for a minute, thinking and listening. He wished they hadn’t gone to the explosion site. Being seen by the cops was the only blight on an otherwise fabulous afternoon.
The front door opened and Jacob, Joyce, and Craig filed out, saying goodnight to Kevin as they left. When he went back inside, he would have his dad all to himself. There would be no excuse not to tell him.
The Letter to Julius Adams
Dear Julius,
I write to report my life and health. Reports of my death are inaccurate. It is true that a scorpion stung me and brought me as near to death as one may safely approach, yet here I remain.
I have completed my study of termites in the Americas, and have a souvenir to show for it. These fascinating creatures will dig deep into the ground in search of water. Sometimes they unearth trace minerals of valuable deposits far beneath the surface. The natives look for diamond mines by looking at termite mounds, because many mounds have small diamonds scattered across their surfaces, diamonds that the termites have brought up from the deep.
I have one such diamond in my pocket. I found it on the side of a very unusual mountain. I look forward to the day when I may show it to you.
I have much work yet to do here, and will write again soon.
Peter Gerrard
Chapter 6
A familiar voice greeted Kevin when he stepped in the house.
Tom, investigators have now closed all of state route 150 up to Turquoise Mountain and are treating this entire area as a crime scene…
“So what do you think about the explosion on the mountain?” his dad asked.
Kevin thought carefully before he answered. At some point, he needed to commit to the same story about his afternoon that would be told to all parties. He hated lying to his dad. Maybe if he told brief, incomplete versions of the truth he wouldn’t end up contradicting himself later.
Kevin sat next to his dad on the couch
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Your mother would have had a strong opinion on this,” said Kevin’s dad. “It’s funny, in the last years of her life, she was the one with strange hangups about Turquoise Mountain. But I doubt you want to hear about all this.”
“No, Dad, I do,” said Kevin. “What would Mom have said?”
“Your mother thought there was a network of caves underneath the whole city,” said Kevin’s dad. “There is no record of underground caves in Turquoise, but all those Peter Gerrard people thought they existed.”
With his voice, Kevin’s dad dismissed the
“Peter Gerrard People” the same way others might dismiss The Hearers.
“I don’t know exactly what she would have said, but I do know that by the end of her life, she was a bona fide expert on Turquoise Mountain. Look at that picture on the TV. That hole in the mountain goes deeper than you or I can see. Maybe someone else thought like your mother, and blasted open the mountain to find Peter Gerrard’s mystery caves. Or whatever. I have my own theories about all this.”
“What are your theories, Dad?”
Kevin’s dad took a deep breath, rolled his head around his shoulders.
“We’re all hearing it,” he said. “Craig, Joyce, Cassandra…we knew exactly when it happened. Even though we didn’t hear the actual explosion, we heard it in the hum.”
“Was it a change? What you heard in the hum?”
Kevin’s dad was clearly surprised at this interest in the topic. On any other day, the mere mention of the hum would have sent Kevin from the room.
“Yes, it changed,” said his dad. “It was like a shockwave ripped through the hum, and the sound hasn’t been quite the same since.”
Kevin nodded his head but said nothing. He was struggling for the words that might open this conversation.
‘Dad, I think I’m hearing it too.’ Or maybe, ‘Dad, what would you say if I told you I might be one of you now?’
It all sounded terrible in his mind. It all led him down a treacherous path with an invisible end; admitting he had been wrong all this time, telling his dad the truth about today, telling him that he had visited Mom’s place.
“I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear about all this,” his dad said.
“No, no, it’s fine--”
“It’s not fine. I don’t need to be wrapping you up in my world. You’ve got your own life to live.”
Authorities are offering a thousand dollar reward for information leading to the capture of anyone responsible for today’s explosion, that is, if anyone is indeed responsible. Geologists from the university are still considering a natural cause…
“Turquoise is full of surprises,” said Kevin’s dad. “But I guess that’s true of anyplace, really. I think I’m ready to turn in. Do you want to see any more of this?”
“No, I think I’ve seen enough.”
His dad turned off the TV and stood up. He stretched his arms and yawned, then he stood and waited for Kevin to say something.
Kevin froze. His mind jumped from the urgency of getting his thoughts out in the open to the discomfort of speaking frankly with his father to the realization that he didn’t have it in him, that he would let this moment pass whether he wanted to or not.
“Have a good night,” said his dad.
“You too.”
His dad rounded the bend in the stairs, and the opportunity was gone.
Kevin squeezed his hands into fists and banged them on his knees. Why hadn’t he spoken up? He had turned down an invite to a party so he could stay home and speak with his dad, and he didn’t have the guts to do it.
“Stupid, stupid,” Kevin hissed to the open air.
For a few minutes, Kevin sat in what should have been silence, but even a quiet living room was full of sounds, and those sounds had other sounds attached to them, sounds that blended on top and inside of each other, and soon enough, an empty living room was a crowded, noisy place.
We knew exactly when it happened…we heard it in the hum.
Kevin wandered backwards through the day in his mind. They chased a butterfly. They lopped up sap like kids at a chocolate fountain. A tree went toppling over. He felt a vibration in its trunk. What was that vibration? How come Jackie and Joseph hadn’t felt it?
He had been so disappointed to see them at the park when he got there, but now he was thrilled to have new friends who’d shared the day’s events. More so than his black eye or his sore stomach, more than the embarrassment of losing a fight in front of everyone, what really hurt Kevin, what drove him to ditch his first day of high school, was loneliness. When the fight was over, and no one stopped to help him, to even acknowledge him…
At some point after his mom’s death, Kevin began a downward slide in the social circles at school, landing at the very bottom of the popularity ranking when he started sixth grade at Turquoise Middle School. It was weird. In fifth grade, he could talk to people like Gabe Penderbom and Ricky Narvaiz; in sixth grade they wanted nothing to do with him. It was as if there was a covert operation to segregate the class into cool and uncool that summer between fifth and sixth grade.
Kevin imagined all the kids who would become popular in sixth grade going to a dark, smoky room for a secret meeting. In that room, the kids open a yearbook and decide who’s in and who’s out. They come to Kevin’s yearbook picture and examine his frizzy hair and pale skin; they make a decision and pronouncement. “Geek” is stamped in red across Kevin’s yearbook glossy and they move on to the next kid. Kevin’s social life is over.
He wasn’t the only one, of course. Maxine Waters and Bill Brannon got it even worse than he did. Hunter Smith didn’t fare well on the playground either. The four of them hung out, not because they liked each other, but because they had no other choice.
He had hoped high school would be different. New faces, older students, new teachers – same old story. Ruben Graves was a year older than Kevin, and while they knew each other’s names (at least Kevin knew Ruben’s name), they didn’t know each other.
Kevin had no idea why Ruben decided to attack him. Kevin was walking through the courtyard, minding his own business, heading to fourth period, just like everyone else, and Ruben threw a rock at him. It collided with the back of Kevin’s skull like a cue ball breaking a billiard rack, making a loud thunk inside his ears that jarred him out of place and nearly knocked him over.
Instant dizziness. Amidst the spinning he heard laughter. It was awful, superior laughter -- something Kevin had heard before. It was the pointed sound of someone laughing at him.
Now, replaying the scene in his memory, he was sure that Vicky Baca was laughing the loudest.
Kevin had tried to walk away, but Ruben threw another rock, this one thumping against his backpack. When he stopped and turned around, Ruben said, “Oh no, Freshman. You just keep on walking.”
“I’m going this way,” Kevin said, pointing in the opposite direction. It was away from the math building, in a direction that made no sense, but it was also away from this disaster in the making. A crowd formed around him. They were all against him. They all wanted to see him get beat up.
If he met Ruben again tomorrow, he would make up for all of this.
“You were going that way, Freshman,” Ruben had said. “You just keep going.”
“No. I’m going this way,” Kevin insisted, and he began walking to one side, thinking he would just have to push his way through the crowd.
Ruben took three running steps to block Kevin’s path. “You’ll do what I tell you to do, Freshman.”
Ruben pushed Kevin in the chest with both hands. It was a light push, meant more to provoke than to cause harm.
What Kevin did next was the one bright spot in this ugly memory. What he did wasn’t planned. Maybe he did it out of instinct. Maybe he did it as a last desperate effort to save his first day of high school. Maybe he did it because he was tired, having been kept up late in the night by the sound of his dad and Cassandra talking downstairs. Maybe he did it because Vicky Baca was laughing at him.
Kevin balled his right hand into a fist and punched Ruben in the face. It was a solid punch that took Ruben by surprise and knocked him back a few steps. If only Kevin could do it over again, this is the point where he would make some changes. Had he taken action at this point, had he followed up his successful punch with another, even if he had turned and run after the punch—
No, I can’t change a thing, or the entire magical afternoon might not have happened.
Instead of attacking or running away, Kevin stood in place, watching Ruben stumble and regain his
feet, practically waiting for the return blow. Ruben righted himself and charged. He leveled Kevin with one knockout punch to the face. Kevin landed in a puddle, and Ruben kicked him in the stomach after he was down.
For a few seconds Kevin couldn’t breathe, and he wondered if he was in trouble. He wondered if the next step was an ambulance, or a coffin. When he was able to take his first cleansing, life-giving breath, more of a gasp but still full of air, he felt a rush. From fear of death to an odd elation at life, all in a few seconds, all of it co-existing with tremendous pain, that time on the ground had all the character of a horrible nightmare.
But it got worse. Worse than the sting of a punch to the face, worse than the shock of a swift kick to the gut, worse than the uncertainty of his health, the fear of permanent damage -- the worst memory of all was when they left him there to rot. Kevin was splayed on the gravel like roadkill, maybe near death for all they knew, and the entire crowd abandoned him. They walked over and around him, some of them hurriedly, some of them as if he wasn’t there, and within twenty seconds, he was alone. The bell rang, signaling the start of fourth period, and Kevin was alone in the courtyard, beaten and bloody.
So he got up and left. Best decision he ever made.
All the events from that point onward were the result of that one act of defiance.
I left. I didn’t go to the nurse’s office. I didn’t tell a teacher. I didn’t go to fourth period, or fifth, or sixth…I just left.
Tomorrow I’ll return, and things will be different.
He let his mind replay the best parts of the afternoon with Jackie and Joseph yet again, and eventually he fell asleep on the couch.
* * * * *
Kevin dreamed about a basketball game. In the dream, Kevin played point guard for Turquoise High School, and was phenomenal. There was a catch: he had to wear a disguise.