It Looks Like This

by Rafi Mittlefehldt

  I didn’t say anything to that. Maybe she was right. But I sort of doubt it, to be honest.

  I’m doing everything Mr. Kilgore says:

  I draw two paddleboats, like they used to have on the Mississippi River.

  I make one big and one small.

  Then I draw lines for the sides of the river, going away from the viewer.

  I draw some more lines to make the current and the wake from the paddles, and make all the lines look like they are converging.

  It is everything Mr. Kilgore says to do.

  If he didn’t have us always follow his rules exactly all the time, I probably would draw something else, but it would still have depth. It would look good.

  Plus paddleboats are harder to draw than converging lines anyway.

  Mr. Kilgore comes by. He bends down to look at my drawing and I can smell his aftershave. It smells like my dad’s.

  He pulls down his glasses to get a better look, letting them rest just on the tip of his nose.

  I can see his big bushy brown mustache through the lenses. The hairs are magnified and look tangled and dense, with gray ones twisted in here and there. I try not to, but I look anyway. He has four lines going across his forehead, which make him look like he’s deep in thought. Above that he’s mostly bald, except for some brown hair along the sides.

  One or two strands stand up on the top of his head, because of static.

  He studies my drawing for a while and says, That’s not bad, Mikey.

  Then he sort of smiles, but not really, and walks off.

  I hate it when anyone calls me Mikey and he knows it, but he still sometimes does it anyway. I keep drawing for a bit, but then I hear this sort of snickering sound.

  I look up and I see Victor and Tristan and Fuller laughing about something.

  Victor and Tristan have been friends for a long time, not like Fuller. I could tell because they were talking like they were friends even on the first day of school. By this time Fuller is sitting with them in Art, so I guess now he’s friends with Tristan too.

  I don’t like Tristan.

  I see them laughing quietly to themselves, and then Victor kind of points in my direction and Tristan looks.

  My ears get hot.

  Then they start laughing again, and they keep glancing at me while they laugh.

  I go back to my drawing and try really hard not to look up. For a while I barely move.

  Then Mr. Kilgore says, Cut it out, Tristan.

  Then they stop laughing. I glance up really quick and see that they still have these smiles on their faces.

  I know Victor and Fuller are telling Tristan about me staring in Biology.

  I look back at my drawing and realize I’d accidentally made this big black spot where I pressed the pencil too hard. I wasn’t paying attention because I was concentrating on not looking at Victor.

  I just look at it for a while wondering if I could erase it, and then I hear, really soft:

  Hey, Mikey.

  It’s Tristan. I bend over my paper and pretend to keep drawing. Then he does it again:

  Heeey, Mikey. You gonna stare at me too?

  I just keep working on my drawing like I don’t hear.

  Then, super quiet this time, so that I almost don’t hear it for real,

  Come on, queer.

  Then Mr. Kilgore says, louder this time,

  Tristan, cut it out. There’s no need to talk.

  Then all three get quiet for good.

  I just keep drawing.

  These are the classes I like: Biology, English, French.

  These are the classes I hate: PE, Art, Geography.

  I don’t care that much about Algebra.

  That’s mostly going by who the teacher is and what other kids are in the class, though. It would be different if I was just talking about the subjects themselves. If it’s just the subjects, I would switch Art and Biology.

  Either way I don’t care that much about Algebra.

  It sucks because I like art a lot, I just don’t like Art class. Sometimes it makes me mad that I have a teacher I don’t like in a class I should like. I don’t think I would mind so much if Mr. Kilgore taught Biology.

  In Art class I just sit quiet and keep my head down and draw what I want to draw. Usually Mr. Kilgore doesn’t care. Usually he leaves me alone, but sometimes he’s in a bad mood.

  Mrs. Ferguson is all right. She’s sarcastic a lot and she acts tired and annoyed about stuff, but you can tell she doesn’t mean it.

  When Mr. Kilgore acts annoyed, he means it.

  A couple weeks after Victor told me to stop staring at him, there’s a new kid in my French class.

  Our French teacher is Madame Girard. She makes us call her Madame instead of Mrs. because that’s how they do it in France.

  When I told my dad that, he sort of chuckled a bit and said, I hope she’s not that kind of madam.

  I didn’t really know what he meant but Mom gave him a look.

  Madame Girard is teaching us about verbs, about the structures of past tense and present tense and future tense. She’s writing it all on the chalkboard, the same kind of sentence three times but with different tenses for the verb on each line.

  Adrien ate the cake.

  Adrien eats the cake.

  Adrien will eat the cake.

  She says it in English and then in French and then repeats it a couple more times: English then French, English then French.

  She makes us say the three verbs in a row so we can hear the difference:

  a mangé — mange — mangera

  She makes us say it again:

  a mangé — mange — mangera

  In the middle of the third time, she stops and lowers her piece of chalk. She is looking at the back of the classroom. Everyone else turns around to see what she’s looking at.

  I stare for a second at the little white dot where her chalk had just been, right below mangera, and then I turn around too.

  There’s a kid standing just inside the classroom. I think he’s been there for a little bit because the door is always open and Madame Girard wouldn’t have heard him. This is what I remember:

  Dark jeans, stress marks on the right pocket in an outline of his phone.

  Navy blue T-shirt, kind of tight.

  Black Converse shoes, white laces. Dirt smudges on the tips.

  Short dark hair, tight curls.

  Light brown skin. Strong jaw around thick lips.

  Green eyes.

  He’s holding a spiral notebook in one hand and a crumpled yellow slip of paper in his other.

  For a second no one says anything, and then I hear Madame Girard’s voice from behind me:

  Oui?

  He raises the hand with the slip in it. I look at Madame Girard. She isn’t really frowning or anything, she just looks expectant. I can see the clear outline of her lipstick, where it ends and the rest of her mouth begins; I can see the plump curls in her hair, mostly bright auburn but gray just at the roots; I can see a tiny, tiny clump of mascara over one set of lashes.

  Her eyes are on the slip. I can tell. I watch her watching it.

  Then she walks over to him in six great strides. The end of the silk shawl that she always wears around her shoulders flutters as she walks by. I feel it tickle my cheek as I turn to watch her go.

  Madame Girard says something to the kid. He nods and then she points to an empty desk a row over from mine and one seat back. He walks over to it.

  Madame Girard turns back to the class and gestures airily at the kid and says,

  Je vous présente Sean.

  After the last bell I walk over to the big circle where the buses are.

  They park there in the horseshoe waiting for all the kids to get on them, mostly freshmen and sophomores who can’t drive. They sit and wait with their big engines turned on, twenty buses idling and growling at each other.

  I walk through them and I can taste the exhaust, invisible but heavy and bitter, carried by warm g
usts blowing in between and under the buses and into my face and through my hair.

  Diesel exhaust tastes different from regular car exhaust. It’s heavier and more powerful and it stings.

  I walk in between the buses and through the horseshoe and onto the lawn on the other side and across a big track field, and then I’m in front of the middle school.

  Toby is waiting for me. She sees me coming and picks up her backpack, swinging it onto her shoulders. It is pink and worn at the edges, and looks huge against her small frame.

  She smiles when I get near, squinting against the sun behind me, and says,

  Let’s go.

  That’s what she always says when I pick her up, every time.

  The middle school lets out half an hour before the high school, but Mom doesn’t want Toby to walk home alone.

  I think it’s dumb because it isn’t ever dangerous. I mean there isn’t any crime or anything. But Mom says there is lots of traffic with all the older kids driving all at once.

  Toby is supposed to wait outside for me, but sometimes she just hangs out in the choir room until just before my school lets out.

  She loves choir. Her teacher is supposed to be really nice. I don’t know, I met her once, and she was really cheerful and everything but kind of too cheerful.

  That day I walked into the choir room because Toby wasn’t outside. I knew where it was because Toby had told me once. I opened the door and poked my head in and looked around. Then I saw Mrs. Deringer by the projector thingy. She had a tissue and was wiping it across a plastic sheet covered in a bunch of color-coded musical notes she had drawn. I watched on the opposite wall as a giant hand appeared and ran across the square of projected light, leaving a clean path through all the color notes and staff lines and clef marks on the sheet.

  I coughed a little and she looked up.

  She said, Hi there! Can I help you?

  I said, Um. Is Toby in here?

  She smiled even bigger and said, You must be Mike!

  I nodded.

  She said, I’ve heard a lot about you.

  I didn’t say anything.

  She said, Toby’s really fond of you!

  I didn’t say anything.

  She said, So, you’re picking her up?

  I nodded.

  She said, Toby just left. She wasn’t outside?

  I said, No. I’ll just wait for her out there.

  She said, Okay, sweetie! Have a good night!

  I thought that was kind of weird since it was only three o’clock.

  I said, Okay,

  and then I closed the door and turned around, and Toby was walking toward me from the hallway. I guess she’d just gone to the bathroom.

  She looked at me for a second, and then giggled and said,

  Let’s go.

  This time Toby is waiting for me outside.

  We turn back toward the high school, and I walk her across the big track field, around the horseshoe of buses this time because they’re already leaving.

  We walk past the entrance to the high school and then alongside the student parking lot.

  There’s a really long line of cars trying to get out of only two exits. We’re walking along the line toward the road that would take us to the bridge, and then I see Sean.

  He is sitting alone in a faded blue jeep that looks pretty old. There are a couple rusted spots along the side and the back chrome bumper is sort of crooked.

  I look at the insignia on the back and it says Ford Bronco. I never heard of that kind of car.

  Sean glances over and sees me. He kind of stares for a second and I can’t tell if he recognizes me from class since it’s his first day, but then he turns back.

  A minute later he gets out of the parking lot and turns left in the direction Toby and I are going, and drives off, picking up speed.

  I watch the Ford Bronco go over the bridge and toward our neighborhood and then disappear as the road curves, the sound of his engine accelerating and chasing him and then disappearing too.

  Toby and I walk on.

  That night it rains.

  There is a little bit of it that starts coming down when Toby and I get home, but it’s just small splatters here and there.

  But overhead it’s deep, deep gray and the sky looks so angry, and I can already smell the dust that gets disturbed and blown around when it rains.

  I stop at the door when we get home and Toby walks in, but I turn back and look at everything outside. The trees are kind of waving already in no real pattern and the light is dim but raw.

  I like how it looks and feels right before a rain.

  Dad is in a bad mood.

  He’s kind of quiet through dinner and scowls most of the time. It isn’t only because of the rain but the rain doesn’t help.

  The first real crack of thunder comes right before dinner.

  Another couple come a few minutes later.

  Charlie runs into the bathroom after the second crack. He always does that during a thunderstorm. He goes into the bathroom, sort of slinking in with his tail down, and crawls into the bathtub and sits there, shivering.

  He’s a beagle. Dad says beagles are really expressive dogs, like they get excited really easily but also get scared pretty easily too. It’s true.

  Plus Charlie’s still young, just under two years old, so he hasn’t grown out of being scared of the thunder yet.

  Before Toby and I get up to clear the plates, we can hear the rain coming down in what seems like one big endless wave, beating against the roof and the door and the windows and just pouring.

  It is almost completely dark even though there should have still been about an hour of sunlight left.

  I always know how much sunlight is left in the day because I check the weather every morning, and then again when I get home.

  Part of the reason is because I’m interested in weather and part is because I’m interested in astronomy. Mom got me a star chart a year ago for my birthday, and it shows me what stars I’ll be able to see each night and when.

  It’s a bit different each night because of the tilt of the earth and how close the earth is to the sun on any given day.

  So that’s how I know there’s still supposed to be an hour left of sunlight.

  Dad is in a bad mood because of work.

  When he got home today, he said that he would have to go to New York in a couple months, to the main office.

  He said, They’re having another goddamn sales conference.

  He wasn’t saying it to anyone, really, just saying it out loud.

  Mom said, Please don’t say that word, Walton.

  She sounded kind of cross and I think that put Dad in an even worse mood.

  Dad really hates sales conferences. They only happen a couple times a year, but he complains about them every time.

  He says he has to sit around in boring meetings all day listening to editors talk about all the new books they’re going to publish a year from now. Except Dad’s company only publishes textbooks, so the presentations are really dull and repetitive.

  But mostly it’s because he hates going to New York City.

  He says the hotels his company finds for him are always damp and musty and the streets are always crowded and the people are always pushy and they smell like fish.

  I don’t really get how an entire city of people can all smell like fish, but he says it’s just a bunch of different bad smells that are always in the air and the people who live there absorb it and in the end it smells like fish.

  I’ve never been to New York City.

  So Dad is already in a bad mood because of the conference and the rain and Mom, so then after dinner he sits down and starts watching a baseball game.

  It’s the Milwaukee Brewers against the St. Louis Cardinals.

  He kept saying after we moved that he was going to have to learn to be a Nationals fan. He started watching their games at first, but then after a couple weeks he went back to the Brewers.

  In
the middle of the game, the TV makes a loud popping noise and then everything goes dark.

  For a second all I can see is the streetlight coming in through the windows and all I can hear is the rain beating against the house.

  Then Dad says, God —

  He cuts himself off, though, either because of Mom or because the lights come back on right then.

  He looks at us, at Mom and me and Toby, and then turns to the TV.

  It’s just a blue screen now.

  He picks up the remote and flips through a few channels, but all the channels are like that, just solid blue.

  Dad sighs and leans back on the couch. He looks at me.

  He says, Mike, you thinking of taking up anything at school?

  I don’t say anything for a second.

  Then I say, Like what?

  Dad says, Like a sport. I dunno, you used to play basketball.

  Toby says, That was in like elementary school.

  I used to play basketball in fourth grade, but I never really liked it. It was just something Dad suggested I do and I thought it would be cool and gave it a try, but I didn’t like it. I wasn’t that good.

  Dad gives Toby a look and then turns back to me.

  He says, Well, do you think you’d want to give it a try again?

  I say, I dunno.

  He says, What about something else? Like swimming or football?

  I say, I dunno. I’m already in Art.

  He says, Yeah, but you need a sport.

  I don’t say anything.

  He says, Mike, I asked you a question.

  I say, I don’t want to do swimming or football.

  He looks at me for a while and then turns back to the TV. He picks up the remote, presses the power button, stands up, and goes to the kitchen.

  I can hear the fridge door opening and then, a second later, the hiss of a bottle cap.

  I get up and walk down the hallway to the back door. I open it and walk out into the garage and sit on a crate.

  I just sit there and watch the rain, watch it come down in sheets, watch it cover everything and blot the sky. It drums against the houses and the mailboxes, bangs against cars parked at the curb. It pours down driveways and into the streets, building into rivers that carry leaves and twigs and bits of trash away, swirling them down the block and into the drains. I watch the rain come down harder and harder, watch it wash the asphalt and the grass, and wonder if it will wash me away too.