Both boys look to the front of the room.
Mrs. O’Connor rubs her index finger and thumb along her cleft, Irish nose. “Can anyone give me a legitimate criticism of the Wynne-Edwards theory of Group Selection as it pertains to mechanisms of evolution? It’s a little old-school, but you should all be thinking and studying outside this meager curriculum I have.”
Nobody raises their hand.
Patrick pretends to relax himself. Slides back in his chair. Breaks eye contact with Jack. Then shoots his hand in the air and calls Jack a “douche bag” while pretending to cough. “Scuse, me. I must be getting sick.”
Mrs. O’Connor groans. “Does anyone other than my son have a legitimate criticism of Group Selection?” She pauses. “No? Seriously?” Sighs. “Jack, since your brain must be in high gear from smoking that cancer stick, I’m going to let you explain it to everyone else. If you can’t, just throw a chunk of lung up here.”
Jack smiles and flips Patrick a concealed middle finger before standing up. Time to grandstand, he thinks. “One has no basis in assuming that the genes each of us carries look out for the tribe, as it were, or anything other than their own survival. Which is precisely what Group Selection assumes: That an individual’s genes actively look out for the group’s survival.
“My genes, having been gained from Irish-Slovak parents, but assembled from two genetically distinct individuals, are not literally marked as ‘Irish-Slovak genes.’ My genetic information doesn’t ‘care’ about other Slovaks or Irishmen, necessarily. But it does ‘care’ about others who might be carrying the same genes, which is where the confusion comes from.”
Jack plays his fingers in the air. “Catholics do not carry a ‘Catholic gene.’ Jews do not carry a ‘Jew gene.’ Muslims do not carry a ‘Muslim gene’—there is no ‘religion gene,’ no ‘liberal gene,’ and no ‘conservative gene.’”
He walks from desk to desk. He looks through the blank faces in the room to find one girl’s eyes in particular. This whole thing is designed to impress one woman. The woman.
Catarina Schrieber.
Jack sits down on Patrick’s desk. He folds his arms and crosses his legs. Makes a show of it.
Patrick grimaces and whispers a protracted, “Dooouche baaaag.”
Jack unfolds his arms then flicks one of Patrick’s pencils away so that it skitters to a stop underneath a nearby girl’s desk: Jessica. Patrick had a messy breakup with Jessica about three days ago. Patrick reaches his hand out to receive the pencil from Jessica. Instead, she throws it and smacks him on the side of the head with it.
Jack struts. Makes his way to the front of the classroom. “Alleles recognize no nationality, no religion. Should a child be born to two ethnically Jewish parents, then that child will be the result of genes chosen from said limited pool. His looks will be determined from a mix that is, to the eye, ‘Jewish.’ That does not actually make the child ‘Jewish’ except in our lame desire to label. The thought that Group Selection is somehow a legitimate theory is the regrettable result of nomenclature. The names we’ve given the physical appearance of peoples have betrayed the true understanding of genetics.”
Catarina smiles at Jack. Her brilliant grey eyes throw him off track. But he sucks it up and continues. As long as she’s paying attention and enjoying it, he’s content.
Jack clears his throat. “A gene’s purpose is to continue. My purpose is to give them that timelessness by having kids to carry those genes. Thinking that genes are interested in creating a Republican base, or a Muslim kingdom, or that they are consciously tribal—or conscious in any capacity—is so ridiculous that the only response to such a suggestion is smug derision.”
Jack folds his arms. Smiles. Such a smug asshole.
Patrick gives Jack the finger from his desk.
Mrs. O’Connor arches her eyebrows. “Do you mind if I lecture my class now?”
Jack mimics her.
She points to herself. “PhD, bucko.”
Jack rolls his eyes and heads back to his seat. He adjusts his shirt. Slumps his shoulders. Everyone else in class keeps their dopey-eyed cow look.
Jack rubs his forehead. Catarina cared. Nobody else did. And while she’s the most important audience member, he’d hoped that more people would get excited. Or angry. Or anything.
Catarina pokes Jack’s shoulder from behind. He doesn’t move. He just lets the poking continue for a minute and exhales into his hands before turning.
Catarina shrugs. “Relax. You can’t expect a class full of teenagers to be thrilled with a lesson from one of their own.” She smirks. “Especially not from you, Mr. The Rules Don’t Apply To Me.”
“Screw em.” Jack sneers. He scratches the side of his head. Starts to say something. Considers asking Catarina to go see a screening of George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead. Looks into her eyes. Then turns back around to face Mrs. O’Connor.
Even contemplating asking Catarina out makes Jack antsy.
Because teenagers are stupid.
Catarina taps Jack on the shoulder again. He turns his ear to her.
She says, “You know they’re showing Night Of The Living Dead this weekend?”
“Saturday at midnight.”
“Flesh eating and overpriced popcorn. What’s better than that?”
“Not much.” Jack smiles. She’s never asked him to go to the movies before. Progress! He kinda wants to pump his fist in the air.
Catarina whispers, “You hear that?”
Jack doesn’t at first. Then, like the sound of the tide coming in, it blankets him. A few of the other students perk up as well. There’s endless rise and fall of sweeping calls outside. “Well, yeah, birds.”
“No shit. What kind of bird, though?” Catarina squints. “I’ve never heard it before.”
Mrs. O’Connor catches Catarina’s gaze. “That’s because we shouldn’t be hearing them at all.” She walks toward the windows and peers out. “Whip-poor-wills are nocturnal, rural birds. And they’re not known to take up residence in cities at all. They’re certainly not active during the day.”
The birds’ ethereal orchestration gives Jack goose bumps. He closes his eyes. Focuses his hearing. He thinks he can discern another noise between the cries. A hum between the notes. Faint, but there. He starts to tear up. Tiny drops force their way between his shut lids.
Mrs. O’Connor’s voice booms likes she’s in a lecture hall. “Some folklore suggests that the whip-poor-will song is a death omen.” She walks over to her desk. Pulls up a photo of a whip-poor-will from Wikipedia on a computer screen next to the blackboard. “Caprimulgus vociferous. I will assume at least half of you know what vociferous means.”
The whip-poor-will is a small, short-billed creature. Its coloring a camouflage mixture of grey and black and dark brown. Perfect for hiding in wooded areas.
Mrs. O’Connor says, “You kids should be able to see them easily in an urban setting. Find me one and photograph it. Extra credit.”
Jack’s eyes snap open. He pinches the bridge of his nose. A headache boils in his brain. The feeling isn’t unusual. He’s battled brutal headaches his entire life.
The bell rings.
Jack jumps from his seat. Mrs. O’Connor shouts something. He ignores her.
He’s the first out the door, followed by Catarina and Patrick. As soon as he and his cadre hit fresh air, Jack lights a cigarette. He looks toward the nearby trees in search of one of the birds. Sounds like there were hundreds. Thousands. He can’t spot any.
Catarina and Patrick look at each other. Then try to follow Jack’s gaze.
Patrick shouts, “Can yah see land yet, captain?”
“Eat a dick. I was looking for those birds,” Jack says.
“Yeah, they creep me out too, dude, but whatever. Nature has weird tricks up its sleeve. Unexplained funky shit happens all the time.”
Catarina shakes her head. “Nope. Shit happens without explanation until someone finds an explanation.”
Patri
ck throws his hands up. “Okay, okay. I’m just saying.” He digs into his book bag for a pack of Camels and pulls a cigarette out.
Catarina glares at Patrick. “You too, huh?”
Patrick shrugs. “Jack just...he looks so cool when he smokes. Gimme a break, will ya? Not like I do anything else.”
Jack bites his lip. “We shared a pint of Jameson over the weekend.” He scans the tree line. “Split it while we were working on the Charger. Before we even got to the beer.”
Patrick puffs on his smoke. “You’re both assholes.”
“I have my moments.”
The whip-poor-will symphony stops.
Jack takes a long drag from his American Spirit. He turns to face Patrick and Catarina. “Well, crap.” He puts a hand to his forehead and rubs his brow.
“Oh, shit—is my mom behind me?” Patrick whips around. “She said she’d kill me if she saw me smoking. Again.” He eyeballs Jack. “You’re lucky, man. Your folks don’t care.”
“They care, dumbass. But they also understand I’ve got a certain amount of stupid I need to get out of my system.” Jack hefts his backpack. Flicks his cigarette. “Let’s go get Caleb. He had a shitty day. Needs cheering up.”
The three walk toward Bay Ridge Prep Middle School.
This part of the day is a tradition. Jack refuses to let his little brother head home alone. His closest friends are more than happy to help with the task. Caleb’s one of their own.
“Thanks for walking with me,” Jack says as they turn onto Third Avenue. “I know it’s stupid that I say it all the time. Just need to.”
“You really don’t,” Patrick says.
Catarina nods. “Yeah. Your mom’s been feeding us for years. Relax.”
Patrick tiptoes around some horrifying, unrecognizable liquid on the sidewalk. “Plus we’ve been best friends for, like, forever. So you really don’t need to say the same ‘thank you’ shit day after day. I mean, you’re welcome, but save it for a good joke.” Patrick takes one last drag of his Camel and flicks it into a gutter.
Patrick dips his head to Catarina. “This load ever tell you about the ‘Play Doh’ incident when we were little?”
Catarina shakes her head.
Jack tries to interrupt. “I don’t think that’s—”
Patrick waves Jack off. “So, it’s the first day of kindergarten. And I’m, what, five years old? And all of this shit’s new and scary to me. I’d been out of the house before on errands or trips with my parents, but this was terrifying because I was all by myself for the first time. So I look around. I’m surrounded by twenty other little butterballs. I dunno what to do with myself, so I grab something I recognize. Squishy awesome Play Doh.”
Jack’s ears turned red.
Patrick feigns holding the squishy toy. “I’m dicking around with this fat glob of orange Play Doh, when, beside me, I see a chubby bastard dicking around with a glob of blue Play Doh. I think he looks like an okay guy, because we’ve got this Play Doh connection, yeah?
“Love at first sight.”
* * *
Little Jack tempted his mouth with a glob of blue Play Doh, which he quite reasonably expected to taste, well, “Blue.” Whatever that was. Next to him, out of pure chance, sat little Patrick, who held a glob of orange Play Doh, which he expected to taste “Orange.”
Jack watched in fascination as his tiny, future best friend licked the stuff, wrinkled his nose, and then went for a big bite. Itsy-bitsy Patrick spat the crap back out onto the carpet and said, “Salt. Echhh, salt.”
Toddler-Jack, not thinking that maybe all Play Doh tasted more or less like a mouthful of salt, bit off a piece of “Blue” and hocked his back out.
“Shit,” little Jack said and pointed to his mouth. “Not good. Echhh.”
Having had identical experiences with the Doh, they nonetheless traded colors and gave it another test.
“Shit,” Patrick said.
“Bad salt shit,” Jack said.
The two laughed for reasons that none of the other kids could be bothered to understand.
* * *
Patrick winks. “Been best friends ever since.”
Chapter 3: You Think You Had a Bad Day? Well, Let Me Tell You Something
Caleb sits outside the school waiting for Zarifa Dajani and her younger brother Akil. The two are both part of “the Tribe,” as Caleb’s dad puts it.
The Tribe consists of parents and children whom the elder Svobodas deem either a good influence or intellectually stimulating. It’s an elite group that consists of the Svobodas, Catarina and her dad, Patrick and his parents, and the Dajanis.
Caleb doesn’t know a whole lot about Zarifa’s family. Only that they fled Afghanistan and have some relatives in the city.
Zarifa walks toward Caleb. “Today sucked. Today really sucked.” She’s got her sweater tied around her waist. “I mean, seriously, today sucked.”
Caleb watches her plaid skirt fight against the wind and her sleek black hair dance on her shoulders. He makes the mistake of getting lost in her brown eyes. But manages to cough up a response. “Oh. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, mine sucked, too. Everybody laughed at me.”
“Was that before or after you got a boner?”
Caleb groans. Puts his head in his hands.
Zarifa says, “Sarah Goldman told me. Sorry.”
Caleb keeps quiet. He sees his meager social life flash before his eyes.
Zarifa pats Caleb on the head. “Relax, relax. Everyone will forget.”
He looks up to Zarifa. Eyebrows arched.
She shrugs. “At some point?”
“Ughhhhh. This sucks.”
“Oh, shut up. I got you beat.”
“How?”
She points to the sweater wrapped around her waist. “Do you know anything about what happens to girls my age? We start bleeding.”
“Bleeding like how? Like you cut yourself?” Caleb doesn’t remember anything about the intricate workings of girl parts from his classes. All he knows is what Jack told him: Girl parts are awesome.
“No. Not at all like I cut myself. Man, you’re dumb. It comes out of where girls have babies. That’s what happens when I get my ‘period.’”
Caleb feels kinda sick thinking about it. He glances at Zarifa’s skirt. Kisses and cuteness are far from his mind. A period? For bleeding? “That’s a crappy name for something so horrible.”
“I didn’t come up with it. I don’t even know why it’s called that.”
Caleb grimaces.
Zarifa says, “And guess what? Go ahead, guess.”
“It hurts?”
“It hurts more than you can possibly imagine.” She shakes her fists. “And it’s all on the inside of me. Like some torture device inside my belly. And guess what else? Give up? It happened in the middle of my last class. I thought maybe my stomach was being yucky. Nope. I felt the blood drip down my leg while I was helping the teacher hand out papers.
“So you can take your little boner and shove it up your butt.”
Both children look at their shoes. Zarifa folds her arms across her chest. Caleb scratches his head. Neither has any idea what to say.
Caleb switches to a new topic. “Did you hear the birds?”
“Of course I did. Everyone did. Super creepy.”
“Do you know what they were?” His own brain feels... He’s not sure how to describe it. “I’ve never even heard of something like that happening before.”
Zarifa shrugs. The birds don’t seem that intriguing when stacked up against getting her period in class.
Caleb says, “Are you going to stop by for dinner?”
“I really need to get home and shower... I’d like to come to dinner, but I’ve got some girl stuff to take care of.” She arches her eyebrows and points to her abdomen. “Girl stuff.”
Caleb nods. Confused and slightly alarmed.
Zarifa’s younger brother, Akil, tears around the corner. He waves at them. There
’s something dark in his hand. He squeals. “Looooooooooooooook. Look. Looklooklook.” He zeroes in on his big sister and Caleb. He chucks the dark thing at their feet.
It’s a dead bird.
Zarifa screams. Long, hi-pitched.
Caleb recoils. He thinks of the diseases the little dead critter might be carrying.
Zarifa maintains her shriek.
Akil appears totally unsure about why the older kids don’t think this lump of once-life is so cool.
Zarifa marches toward Akil. “You little assbutt.” She grabs him by the ear. Almost lifts the child off the ground. “We’re going home right now. Right now.”
Caleb watches them leave. He makes a mental note to never piss Zarifa off. He looks down at the deceased avian. Nudges it with his shoe. Its tiny, stiff body rocks back and forth. He punts the thing so that it lays a few feet away.
He’s had enough weird, gross shit enter his head for today. The back of his brain itches from all of it. It’s not a headache. Not quite. But it makes the little boy want to dig into his grey matter.
Caleb shivers.
He spies Jack, Patrick and, Catarina as they stride toward him.
They look cool, even from far away. Long gaits. Cigarettes hanging from the boys’ mouths. Like cowboys. Jack waves and Caleb responds in kind.
Jack pats his younger brother’s shoulder. “How goes it, little dude?”
“Goes like crap.”
Patrick spots the dead bird. “My mom says we get extra credit if we take a picture of a whip-poor-will. Didn’t say it had to be alive.”
Jack looks to Caleb. “How long’s that been here?”
Caleb says, “Dunno. Akil found it and tossed it at me.”
“That kid’s weird.”
Patrick takes a photo with his phone.
Caleb wants to go home.
Catarina wants some quiet.
Jack wants to figure out why the birds gave him a headache.
“I’ll say we all found it,” Patrick says.
Jack puts his arm around Caleb. Tries to reassure the boy. He knows his little brother doesn’t want to linger. Knows he needs to go home and eat and play video games and be as far away from today as possible.
They walk down Ridge Boulevard. Caleb hops ahead of the group. He turns to the big kids. Spreads his arms. Jack, Patrick, and Catarina stop in their tracks. They wait for Caleb to speak.
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