by J. C. Geiger
“I think I will,” Lance says. “Only one of us can be right.” He takes a step. A piece of glass slips from the side of the bar, lands with a plink.
“You’re going to jail,” Mason says.
“You’re going to the walk-in.”
He keeps the sword steady, cocked over his shoulder. One step, then another, and Mason is walking backward. A dance down the length of the bar, through the swinging door of the kitchen. Mason twists his feet for a second, like he might run. He doesn’t. He stops in front of the cooler.
Lance steps forward. Mason’s back touches the door.
“Stop walking at me!”
“Open the door,” Lance says. “All the way in.”
Mason opens the door. Condensation curls into the kitchen. The smell of old cabbage.
“I will hunt you down.” Mason steps inside, seething. “I will kill you.”
“I think you’ll stay right here. In this bar.”
Lance steps forward and slams the freezer shut. He grabs a broom and slips it in like a dead bolt. Mason’s full weight comes smashing against the door. The handle shivers, but holds tight. He expects Mason to pound and shout and break jars, but he is quiet. Fifteen seconds later, it’s like he’s not even there.
Lance backs out of the kitchen and is alone in The Float. He could be out the door in ten seconds. Instead, he lays the sword beside the cash register and climbs on top of the bar. It’s higher than it looks. He slips on the puddle of beer and his right foot shoots out, kicking the cash register with a DING. The till pops out. It’s empty. Lance plants his feet, and stares up at the distant shoes. He lifts the sword and gets a swimmy touch of vertigo.
Stone’s black laces are twisted over a bundle of blue and white threads, not yet part of the rafter’s DNA. He nudges the sword’s steel tip into the nest of laces, gives a twist. Not enough. He stretches, standing on the tips of his toes. His legs tremble. Another twist splits the laces, and Stone’s boots drop with a rubbery clap.
There are noises in the kitchen. Mason, tinkering with the door.
Lance leaps down and grabs his duffel bag. He races over to the American flag and jerks the cord. His breath catches. He hears “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” There’s so much here.
He finds his own bill first, right where he remembers it.
lance
That one is easy.
When he blasts out through The Float’s front door, he has the duffel in his left hand, Stone’s boots swinging from his right. He’s ready but Dakota is giving him the wrong kind of look and somehow the car is not running.
Why is the car not running?
“Dakota! C’mon! Start the car!”
“It won’t start, Lance. The car won’t start!”
She twists the key. Twists again. The engine is clicking. Clicking hard.
“Stop! Don’t turn the key again,” he says. “Pop the hood.”
He glances at The Float. That door will burst open. Mason will come running out. He lifts Stone’s boot and smacks the starter with the thick rubber sole.
“What are you doing?”
“Try it now!”
Click. Click.
He whacks the starter so hard he feels it in his shoulder.
“Again!”
The engine fires. Purring. Ready. He drops the hood with a clap. Dakota slides into the passenger seat. Lance jumps in.
“I thought this car was fixed,” Dakota says.
“Cheap starter,” he says. “Made in China.”
He shifts to drive. They make it all the way to the edge of the parking lot, then Dakota turns on the radio. A deafening F-sharp, blaring from the speakers. Lance pounds the player with his fist. And the tape ejects. He gasps, pulls the cassette from the stereo, and throws it in the back. Dakota turns. She is staring at the orange duffel bag.
“I take it you’re not giving your speech tomorrow,” she says.
“Not the speech you read,” he says, lifting his foot from the brake. “I’m learning how to improvise.”
And before anyone can stop them, they’re gone.
Hi, everyone.
There’s a proven formula for giving a valedictorian’s speech. It’s been researched and well documented. I’m going to tell you the secret now.
You start with a question. Then a big metaphor, preferably one that involves nature. Mountains, rivers, and shooting stars are great. I went with outer space. You introduce the metaphor in paragraph one, then tell three to five amusing anecdotes about your classmates. It’s best if you name-drop popular students and teachers. You should tell stories everyone already knows. The more familiar, the better. You conclude with a few words of wisdom, and a piece of advice for today’s graduating seniors.
Most of you know I’ve always been more of a math person. But it turns out words matter. Stories matter. The stories we tell about each other. The stories you end up telling yourself. Since I can remember, my story has always been about becoming valedictorian. About being the first-chair trumpet player. Getting a full-ride scholarship, and going to business school. I’m not sure where that story came from. Maybe from me, before I knew what it meant. Maybe my mom or my teachers.
Your story might be different. Your story might be about being a burnout. Or a nerd. The smart one, the dumb one. The person in your family who is going to succeed, or the person who is going to fail. Maybe you have a nickname, like me. Maybe you feel trapped. Some of my friends do. My dad did.
That’s what happens when you grow up and spend a lot of time in one place. It’s hard to avoid a nickname. It’s hard to avoid becoming a character. And you don’t want to be a character. Even a good one. It can ruin you. Because people are complicated. And people change.
So I’m not going to tell any familiar stories today. I’m going to stick to math.
Most of you are eighteen years old. That’s two hundred and sixteen months of living. Six thousand five hundred and seventy days of people telling you what to study and how often to practice and why you should care. When to wake up and go to sleep. Where to live. Who you are, and who you will be.
And if you’ve survived six thousand five hundred days of that, you’ve finally earned something. You’ve earned independence. At eighteen, for the first time, you can legally own things. You can vote and gamble and get tattoos. You can check into motel rooms and buy a car and drive anywhere there’s a road. Your parents can’t stop you. You can go to any school that will let you in. You can quit your summer job. You can cancel your scholarship. You can love who you want. You can even change your name.
So here’s my advice to today’s graduating seniors.
You should know what it feels like to be a stranger. Leave this place, and go somewhere new. Because someone you’ve known for five minutes might know you better than the people you’ve known your entire life. You can always start over. You’ve made it this far. And if you’re lucky enough to know one person in this world who really sees you, know that’s a rare thing. A precious thing. Grab their hand and run.
Of course, with adulthood comes responsibility. Everyone will remind you of that, all the time. Mr. Leeds wants me to remind you that your first big decision is whether or not you will throw your graduation cap in the air at the end of my speech. As a reminder, you’re expected to keep your cap on. So think about risk and serious life consequences. Consider aerodynamics, and the volatility of foam. Choose wisely.
Everyone’s life is on the line.
A thousand miles from Bend, the town of Telluride, Colorado, is said to have the most beautiful main street in America—a panorama of beautiful mountains, and a road framed by beautiful shops and a seemingly endless supply of beautiful people moving among them. There are high cables strung across Colorado Avenue, anchored to buildings and trees, often adorned with banners and bright lights. Everyone takes pictures. With so many people and so many cameras, not much goes unnoticed in Telluride, and nothing out of place lasts long. Which is what make
s the pair of black boots hanging from the final cable on Colorado Avenue so strange.
Even at the easternmost end of the street, those boots shouldn’t have lasted a day.
But someone within the City of Telluride’s Streets and Sanitation Department must have liked the way they looked there, at the edge of where high-end shops snapped off into wilderness, hanging with a backdrop of snow clinging to the mountains. A bold statement, like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence.
So the boots hung for a day. When no one complained, they hung for a week.
People noticed. They photographed the boots. They sent the pictures to friends and posted them on websites, and within just a few months, the hanging boots became a place people sometimes stopped when they came to visit Telluride.
They hung there, durable boots, through summer, fall, winter, and spring. When they’d hung long enough to be photographed in all seasons, the pictures were assembled in a four-photo frame and sold in one, then many of the shops in town. They were seen and admired by visitors and residents until they were just as much a part of Telluride as the people who lived and worked there.
The pictures were stunning. But nothing like seeing those boots in real life.
It was crisp that night. Only one star they could see. The boots were heavy and the lines on Colorado Avenue were so much higher than the rafters at The Float, but it had to work. When Lance let them fly, Stone’s boots kicked up and pedaled that impossible distance, climbing their way into the sky and landing on the line with a perfect final step. One boot above the other. Like someone had reached up and placed them there.
“Lance.” Dakota grabbed his hand. “I just saw one.”
Lance did not know if he’d seen a ghost, but he’d learned from Dakota the most beautiful moments are the ones you don’t plan for, and the ones you’ll miss if you aren’t paying attention.
So when Lance looked in the rearview mirror for his last glimpse at Telluride, he was watching for the boots. He expected what he saw to be moving. He expected to cry. What he did not account for was the way the road sloped up on the way out of town, and how the cables strung across Colorado Avenue would appear to stack themselves into five perfect parallel lines. How with the treble clef dangling from his mirror, those lines would become a clear stave of music, and the boots would shrink to black dots, like a melody’s first pair of ascending notes. Like Dakota’s hand in his. A riddle, a clue, a gift.
A song, unwritten.
This story would not exist without the life-altering breakdown of my own ’93 Buick and the support of the following people:
First, my love and gratitude to Emily Kemp, who has held my hand and taken the wheel and ridden shotgun on this trip longer than anyone who is not a blood relative. Also, the wonderful blood relatives: Dad, Sarah, and Brett. My mom, who texted I recognize some of myself in Lance’s mother. She seems like a fabulous and loving individual. And Kelsey, who kept her shoes on and made that drive.
Thanks to Matt Brown—my coolest mentor—for introducing me to both Batman and Tobias Wolff. (How cool is that?!) Thanks to Kendra Bradley for telling me I was ready, and Michael Lucker for telling me LA would wait. It did. Thanks to those whose work helped me build my own lens and kaleidoscope: Capote, Cather, Berlin, Wolff, Kafka, Rand, Dahl, Dali, Bradbury, Steinbeck, Stephen Gammell, and Christopher Pike.
Thanks to The Head and the Heart and Blind Pilot for rocking it on the Buick’s tape deck.
Thank you, Tamathy, for knowing when I got it right. Bryan, for slapping some sense into me at the Longbranch. Jacob Boyd, for being my first editor, and the Wordos and No Shame Eugene for making me a better writer.
I want to thank the outstanding, exemplary, spit-and-polish team at Hyperion for believing in me and giving me flowers and defying all reasonable expectations. Thanks to my agent, Sara Crowe, for discovering Wildman, changing my life, and always using her superpowers for the forces of good. And Stephen Barr, for an act of literary altruism that elevated him, his profession, and my view of the world. A shout-from-the-rooftops thanks to Rotem Moscovich, my glorious editor, who saw this book and heard the train whistle and always knew exactly which star to follow.
I want to thank SCBWI for giving me a community and a writing retreat worth driving to.
I want to thank Robert for fixing my car.
I want to thank readers for continuing to think as they travel through the world. And I want to thank the artists who have missed their share of sunlight and parties, and have excused themselves from friends, partners, and children for reasons not commonly understood. The universe depends on you.
J. C. GEIGER (www.jcgeiger.com) has eaten the beating heart of a snake, been deported from a full-moon party, and spent a short time locked in a Bolivian prison. He also writes fiction. His short works have appeared in the pages of Murky Depths and Horror Garage, and onstage at The Second City in Chicago. J. C. now writes, teaches, directs, and performs in the Pacific Northwest, where he can often be spotted behind the wheel of a 1993 Buick Century. It still runs like a dream.