Play Me Backwards

by Adam Selzer

  And I can only imagine what some of those guys would have thought if they had come into Cornersville Trace High School that Monday, the day of Operation Satanic Youth Gone Wild. People in the shirts were everywhere, particularly in front of the school, where a bunch of people in devil horns were drumming up support for our cause.

  Even Stan was helping out. When I got to the school campus, he was standing just outside of school grounds with the box of  T-shirts, passing them out to anyone bold enough to wear them. Dustin was distributing pentagrams. I was enlisted to hand out pamphlets about Satanism that Stan had printed up (or possibly just had in stock at all times). A couple of guys were loudly singing that Mountain Goats song about the death metal band, the one that goes “Hail Satan,” over and over at the end. People were throwing horns in the air everywhere I looked. It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

  It’s a good thing the guy who shows up now and then to stand right off campus and pass out free Bibles wasn’t there that day. That would have been awkward.

  I flipped through the pamphlet, which explained that Satanism isn’t really about worshipping the devil; it’s about ego, intellect, and moral objectivism. From what I read it all boiled down to one of those “as long as I’m okay, screw the rest of you” philosophies.

  Some if it was at least halfway sensible, really, but I think I liked worshipping Stan a lot better than actual Satanism. Still, Satanists were people too, and as far as I was concerned, they had the same rights as everybody else.

  We were working our way through our supplies, glad-handing and encouraging people like we were lower-tier presidential candidates doing a meet and greet at a pancake breakfast, when Leslie came up to me, looking pissed.

  “What in the fuck are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m standing up,” I said.

  “You’re convincing kids to worship the devil?”

  “Nah,” I said. “This pamphlet just sort of explains their side. It’s mostly crap, really, but you’ve got to let them say their thing, right?”

  She ripped the one I was holding out my hand and tore it up.

  “You could at least read it first,” I said.

  “I don’t have to,” she said.

  “See you at the meeting, then.”

  Most of the yearbook committee seemed to be on Leslie’s side, but not necessarily all of them. Catherine showed up a few minutes later, slipped an I SOLD MY SOUL FOR ROCKY ROAD T-shirt over the white one she’d been wearing, and started clapping her hands and going “Woooo” to draw people over to us, not unlike the way cheerleaders advertised roadside car washes. It worked. When someone came up who wasn’t, like, one of us, she was able to speak in their language. She was like a Satanic liaison to the prep community.

  By the time we all got to class the word was out that there would be a meeting in the yearbook room after school to stand up for the rights of Satanists to have their message in any school yearbook that also let the Christians have their say. By then there was at least one “Satanist” in just about every classroom. I saw some of the pamphlets ripped up and tossed on the floor of the hallway, but that was no worse than what kids did to the free Bibles that people passed out now and then.

  None of the teachers really seemed to take much notice of what was going on, except for Mrs. Mandlebaum, my English teacher. She called me up to her desk while everyone else was filling out a worksheet about The Canterbury Tales.

  “I understand you’re one of the ringleaders of this whole Satan thing,” she said.

  “I’m not really a Satanist,” I said, “but I believe in freedom of religion.”

  “This is not a religion,” she said. “It’s antireligion.”

  “That’s a kind of religion,” I said. “Have any of them hurt anybody today?”

  She glared at me, but admitted they hadn’t.

  “Have they been acting up in class?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, there you are, then,” I said. “There’s no rule in the handbook about what religion you can be.”

  And I went back to my seat.

  Maybe it was just my imagination, but I actually thought that the kids who were wearing the devil shirts, the pentagrams, and the horns were better behaved than they usually were. A lot of them were back-row hooligans and smart-asses who spent most of their time in class mouthing off and throwing paper around. Today they were pretty calm. Maybe they were taking one of the Eleven Satanic Rules, the one that said “When in another’s lair, show him respect,” to heart. The big-haired woman who gave the talk about manners and grace at the debutante ball would have found a lot to agree with in the Satanic Rules.

  I didn’t see Paige much during the day, except for once when we passed in the hall. She blew her hair upwards, then gave me kind of a half smile and a shrug, and I gave her one back.

  Then, when the yearbook meeting came, the tribes assembled. Plenty of people had offered to come back the poem up, and probably an equal number were so offended that they decided to come help argue for a reprint.

  The whole yearbook staff was present, of course, with Leslie and Paige representing the anti-Satan side, along with Mr. Perkins, Mrs. Smollet (of course), and a couple of other teachers. We were up against a lot. They had all the people with any actual power.

  But the room was filled to overflowing with kids wearing pentagrams, Satanic T-shirts, and devil horns.

  “All right,” I said. “Here we are. We’ve come to argue against reprinting.”

  “To be honest,” said Mr. Perkins. “the decision has already been made, but I’ll let you make your speech, Leon. Why do you think we should still let this yearbook go out as is?”

  “As you can see,” I said, “we have a number of people who might be Satanists in the school. If you can put poems in like that Jesus one that was in the yearbook from last year, why not a Satanic one?”

  “I don’t think the person responsible for the poem thought they were representing a religion,” said Leslie. “They were just trying to cause trouble, and they must have somehow slipped it into the pile of poems to be laid out, because I know we never approved it.”

  Paige looked at me, as though she knew exactly what had happened, which she probably did. She didn’t say anything, though.

  “I agree,” said Mrs. Smollet. “It would be one thing if someone would even take responsibility for it.”

  “That’s not how Satanic messages work,” I said. “Hiding messages is a sort of Satanic tradition.”

  “So is hiding your identity, apparently,” said Mrs. Smollet.

  “Then I’m a Satanist, and I wrote it,” I said.

  Then Jenny stood up and said she was a Satanist and she wrote it.

  And pretty soon half the room was taking credit for it. They were all chuckling, so it wasn’t so dramatic that I could really compare it to people saying “I am Spartacus” or anything. But good feelings swelled inside of me. Mrs. Smollet looked like she was going to be sick.

  Mr. Perkins sighed. “Okay,” he said. “If you’re all done, I’ll tell you what we’re doing. It would be way too expensive to recall and reprint the yearbook on short notice, but I still don’t think we can put it out as is. We’re going to go through every copy and put a sticker over the poem.”

  “Why not just put a sticker over the second line so the acrostic says ‘Stan Rules’?” I asked.

  “Because Stan doesn’t rule,” said Paige.

  This was the first thing she’d said to me the whole day.

  “Let’s be totally blunt,” said Mr. Perkins. “The poem is lousy anyway, and if you changed one line, that would wreck the rhyme scheme and make it even worse. No one approved it, anyway. So we’re just going to cover it up and forget about it. Everyone on yearbook, please grab some stickers from the pile on the desk, and let’s get to work. Meeting adjourned.”

  Mrs. Smollet gave me an “I win” kind of smile from the back of the room. I wondered if maybe she could tell that Paige was pregnant
and was already plotting out ways to get the placenta for her next batch of eternal youth potion.

  Either way I didn’t care much. We hadn’t exactly won, but it was close enough for me if they didn’t recall the whole thing and no one got suspended. Any fool could just unpeel the sticker if they felt like it and have themselves a Satanist-friendly yearbook. The message was still there if you looked close enough. It would just be more hidden than ever, which is how Satanic messages are supposed to be, anyway. Maybe it was even better like this, in a way.

  I didn’t stay to help with the stickers. As far as I was concerned, my duties with the yearbook committee were finished. I followed the group of people in devil horns out into the hall. Paige followed me, and we hung around back behind the crowd a bit.

  “Well,” she said, “are you proud of yourself?”

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “You tried, at least,” she said. “I guess I can respect that. But I am really, really mad at you for this. I might have to yell later.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I was just thinking about how, if I’m going to be an adult, I have to stop sitting on my ass and stand up for myself every now and then. You know what I mean?”

  When she didn’t answer, I noticed that she had stopped walking a few steps ago, and I turned back towards her. She had a look on her face that was kind of a mix of shock and fear, like she’d just seen Mrs. Smollet naked or something.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Now.”

  “Puking?”

  She shook her head and ran. I ran after her and stood outside the girls’ room for a couple of minutes until she yelled for me to come inside.

  “It’s a girls’ room,” I said. “I’m not allowed.”

  “There’s no one else in here. Just come in.”

  I stepped inside and she was standing in front of an open stall, buttoning her jeans.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I just got my period,” she said. “I guess something just screwed up my cycle. Maybe it was the flu. Or food poisoning.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I said.

  I started to hug her, but she held up her hands and stopped me.

  “Listen,” she said. “I didn’t stab you for organizing a Satanist rally, but I have some thinking to do about us.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The last few days I’ve had to picture living my whole life with you, and it scared the hell out of me. Because you’re not the perfect guy for me. What you did today just proved it.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “No, but I want the man I spend my life with to come closer. He should be imperfect in ways that complement the way I’m imperfect. And I don’t know if you do. Even if one of my dad’s friends gave you a job, you’d probably show up with your hair dyed green.”

  “My dad had green hair for a while,” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. But it’s just not . . . the kind of person who’s right for me. Plus, we’re graduating, there’s going to be other guys and other girls at college. . . .” She let out a sort of rueful chuckle, then said, “Not to mention that I think there’s a pretty good chance I’ll end up going to Hell when I die if I stick with you.”

  We just stood there for a second, then we both sat down on the tile floor with our backs to the wall, near the sinks. We stared at the stalls and toilets and didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

  “Sometimes I feel like I really love you,” she went on. “We have so much fun sometimes. But sometimes . . . sometimes I just don’t know.”

  I nodded.

  In quieter moments I’d sometimes wondered if she really loved me, or if she was just going through the motions of being in love. And I wondered the same thing about myself and how I felt about her. I cared about her, and I liked being with her, but I never felt like my whole soul was on fire when I was with her. I’d just told myself that wasn’t really what love feels like in real life.

  I didn’t say this out loud, though. I just stared at the toilets.

  “I’ve been single for exactly twenty-seven days since sixth grade,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe I just . . . I don’t know.”

  For a long time we both just sat there and felt like shit together. When she got up and walked out of the bathroom without saying anything, I felt a strange mix of relief and shock. I kept sitting there for quite a bit; it wasn’t until Leslie came into the bathroom and I had to awkwardly creep out that it really hit me that I had basically been dumped. Not officially, but tentatively.

  I was embarrassed, shocked, crushed, and sort of relieved (about the baby part, at least) all at once. In a weird way it even kind of sucked that she wasn’t pregnant after all. I’d spent enough time trying to look at the positive side of things that a part of me was almost looking forward to being a dad. I was just starting to think I’d be okay at it. This was a loss, in a way.

  Going back to a life where all I’d need was a couch to sit on, a six-pack to drink, and a remote control to smite my enemies didn’t totally feel like something to celebrate.

  I went to my car and drove to the Cave, where Stan was sitting on the counter, as though he was waiting for me.

  “Don’t look so down, man,” he said. “You didn’t really think the school would pass out a yearbook with a Satanic message in it, did you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not that,” I said. “The whole thing was actually sort of awesome, and no one got expelled or anything, so we sort of won. But Paige sort of dumped me after the meeeting.”

  Stan hopped off the counter, stood upright, and nodded.

  “Let’s go to the back,” he said.

  We went to the back and he mixed me up a drink—one of his hot toddies or whatever you call them, and I melted into the couch and recounted the whole story of how Paige thought she was pregnant, but now that she knew she wasn’t, she was probably going to take the chance to avoid any further risk of being stuck with me for life.

  I let the drink just sit there in my hand, untouched. The way it was glowing was weirdly hypnotic, and I was focusing on it while I talked, like it was a crystal ball. I wanted something to focus on more than I wanted a drink.

  Stan listened and nodded in the right places while I told the story, but at the end, he was smiling.

  Then, when I finished, the son of a bitch laughed a long, slow, evil laugh.

  “What are you laughing at?” I asked.

  “It all happened because everyone got sick with the Montreal Flu. That’s why the poem got overlooked when the proofs came in.”

  “Right.”

  “And I assume Paige found out she wasn’t pregnant because she got her period, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” I hadn’t been that specific when I told the story, but how else do you find out right after school?

  “And I suppose it happened while you guys were in the hallway, outside the yearbook room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it’s just like I’ve been telling you,” Stan said. “There came a great plague, and the blood of the unbeliever flowed in the high school hallway.”

  I groaned, then I stood up, dropped my drink on the cement floor, grabbed a handful of Reese’s Pieces out of the barrel, and threw them at Stan.

  “Fuck you!” I said. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

  “What the fuck?” he asked, still grinning like a villain who’d just finished testing his doomsday device.

  “Fuck you!”

  I threw a few more handfuls of mix-ins at him, then threw a stack of plastic cups in his general direction as I made my way out of the break room. In the front a bunch of people from the rally were just coming in. I threw a handful of napkins around, and they fluttered to the ground like snow. I guess people thought I was throwing them like confetti, because there was actual cheering. Cheering.

  Stan f
ollowed me as I stormed along.

  “Did you ever finish Moby-Dick?” he asked.

  “Christ!” I said. “We stopped listening after we found the Slushee, but I know how it ends. The whale kills everybody.”

  “That’s the lesson,” he said. “If you try to fight fate, you end up getting eaten by a big fucking whale. Go finish listening to it. Now. Go. Don’t show your face back here until you’ve listened to the end of it. Drive clear the Hell to Mexico if you have to.”

  “Go to Hell,” I said.

  But I decided to do what he told me. I didn’t want to be in the Cave right then. I didn’t want to be anywhere I’d ever been with Paige. Not even in the same city. I was going to drive as far away as I could.

  I walked out the door just as Jenny was coming in. She tried to talk to me, but I walked right past like I didn’t see her, got into my car, and headed for the interstate with the audiobook playing on the speakers.

  30. THE WHALE

  I drove and drove and drove and drove, as though something was chasing me. Like some underachieving supervillain had announced his plans to blow up Des Moines and I wanted to be as far away from the fallout as I could when the bomb went off. I drove past the suburbs and into farm country, the rolling green hills of central Iowa. There were no traces of snow left. The corn had started to grow.

  I tried, off and on, to pay attention to what Ishmael was saying about the ragtag band of scruffy misfits, the half-crazy sailors, going off to get killed, but mostly I hit pause and thought of Paige and everything else. I was probably never going to kiss her again. Never feel her skin against mine.

  I missed the way her hair smelled already. All of a sudden the fact that I’d never smell that same aroma again without thinking of her hit me almost as hard as the pregnancy scare had.

  I was pulling in for gas at a town that happened to be named Atlantic, like the ocean where the sailors were sailing, when she sent a text saying, “Call me.” I knew what that meant, of course. I didn’t call her back right away. I got back in the car and kept heading west.

  I half suspected that she’d at least want me to still go to prom with her, because it was too much trouble to find someone else, and skipping prom just did not fit into her view of the way things ought to be.