Mysterious Skin

by Scott Heim

  Neil touched his middle and index fingers to Robert P.’s temples. “Breathe deeply.” The fingers rubbed and massaged. I would die, I thought, to be that volunteer. Neil’s voice lowered: “In your mind, begin counting backward. Start at one hundred. One hundred, ninety-nine. Keep going, counting backward, slowly.” Everyone else’s mouths moved in synch. Could he hypnotize an entire crowd?

  “Eighty, seventy-nine, seventy-eight…” His voice softened, nearly a whisper. My eyes darted from Robert P.’s face to the back of Neil’s head. I was so close to him. “Sixty,” pause, “nine…”

  By the time Neil reached sixty-two, Robert P. looked zombieish. His chest moved with each breath, but all else remained motionless. I figured he was faking it, but wondered what Neil would make him do or say. I hoped for something humiliating, like a piss on Miss Timmons’s shoes or a brick demolishing a school window.

  A girl said “Wow,” which Neil seemed to take as a signal. He crawled atop Robert P., straddling his stomach. Belt buckles clicked together. “Fifty,” Neil said. Robert didn’t move. Neil gripped his wrists; pinned his hands above his head. The circle of kids tightened. I could feel fingers against my skin, shoulders brushing mine. I didn’t look at any of them. My gaze fixed on Robert and Neil, locked there as if I were stuck in a theater’s front row, its screen sparkling with some beautiful film.

  Neil’s body flattened. He stretched out on Robert. The buckles clicked again.

  Clouds crawled across the sun. For a few seconds, everything went dark. Another whistle blared. “Recess over,” Miss Timmons screamed, but no one budged. We couldn’t care less about the whistle. The silence grew, blooming like a fleecy gray flower. A little voice inside me kept counting: thirty-three, thirty-two.

  Then it happened. The lower half of Neil’s body began grinding into Robert’s. I watched Neil’s ass move against him. By that time in my life, I’d seen some R-rated movies, so I knew what fucking looked like. Only these were boys, and their clothes were on.

  Neil positioned his face directly over his subject’s. Robert’s eyes opened. They blinked twice, as beady and inquisitive as a hen’s. A thick line of drool spilled from Neil’s mouth. It lingered there, glittered, then trailed between Robert’s lips. Robert coughed, swallowed, coughed again. Neil continued drooling, and as he did, he moved his face closer to Robert’s. At last their mouths touched.

  Vicky screamed, and everyone jumped back. Kids shouted things like “gross” and “sick.” They sprinted for Miss Timmons and the classroom, their sneaker colors blurring together. I stood and stared at the separated pair of boys. Robert P. wriggled on the grass like a rattlesnake smashed by a semi. A chocolatey blob stuck to his chin: dirt, suffused with Neil’s spit.

  One of Robert’s buddies kicked Neil’s ribs, then hustled away with the others. Neil didn’t wince, accepting the kick as he might accept a handshake.

  “Queer,” Robert P. said, plus something in Spanish. He was crying. He kicked Neil, too, his foot connecting with the identical spot his friend had chosen. Then he ran for the school’s glass doors.

  Neil sprawled there a while, smiling, his arms spread as if he’d been crucified to the earth. He struggled to get up. He and I were alone on the playground. I wanted to touch his arm, his shoulder, his face. I offered my hand, and he took it.

  “That was great,” Neil said. He squeezed my fingers and shuffled toward the school.

  Something important had happened, and I had witnessed it. And I had touched Neil McCormick. I waited until he departed earshot. Then I pretended I was a character in a movie. I said, “There’s no turning back now.” A small spit bubble lay on the dirt at my feet like a toad’s gleaming eye. I bent down and popped it. If I could make Neil my friend, I figured I wouldn’t need anyone else.

  The séances vanished. By the end of that week, the kids who’d brought their Ouija boards and magic eight balls had jumped back to four-square and soccer. I watched them and wanted to scream. I longed to approach Neil again, this boy I saw as my doorway from the boredom I wanted to escape.

  That Friday, a team of bullies gathered on the soccer field. They found Neil standing by a tree and cornered him. “You’re one of those queers,” a kid named Alastair yelled. Neil flew at him. A crowd formed, and I joined it. Arms and legs darted and windmilled, and the ivory crescent of Neil’s fingernail sliced Alastair’s chin. There were tears and a few drops of blood, all of which turned out to be Alastair’s. At twelve, I’d seen more tornadoes than blood. Its red looked magnificent and sacred, as if rubies had been shattered.

  When the fight was history, Neil stood beside the same oak. He wore a hot rod T-shirt, a real leather coat with zippers like rows of teeth, and matching boots. Animals had died for those clothes, I thought. He would be perfect holding a switchblade in one hand, and me in the other.

  I took a deep breath, collected the gumption, and tiptoed over. I tilted my head heavenward to look cool. The sun rebounded off the steel plates of Sherman Middle School to reveal the roof’s slant. It had been littered with toilet paper, a yellow ball some vandal had sliced from its tether, and random graffiti. GO STRAIGHT TO HELL was all someone could think to spray paint. I stared at the jagged red letters and kept walking. Around me, brown five-pointed leaves fell like the severed hands of babies. I moved through them. Neil heard the crunch, crunch and glanced up.

  I leaned against another tree, feigning nonchalance. “You are a queer, aren’t you?” I said the Q-word as if it were synonymous with movie star or deity. There was something wonderful about the word, something that set him apart from everyone else, something I wanted to identify with.

  “Yeah,” said Neil.

  I felt as if I were falling in love. Not so much with him, though, as with the aura of him. It didn’t matter that he was a year younger than me. It didn’t matter, all the distaste I detected in teachers’ voices when they called his name during recess. Neil McCormick, they barked, the fence is there for a reason, don’t cross it. Neil McCormick, put down that stick. I had eavesdropped on Miss Timmons in her office, as she whispered to the school nurse how she dreaded getting the McCormick boy in her class next year. “He’s simply evil,” etcetera.

  To me, “evil” didn’t seem all that bad.

  Neil’s long hair frayed in the breeze, as shiny black as the lenses in the spectacles of the creepy blind girl who sat behind me on the morning bus. His eyebrows met ominously in his forehead’s middle. Up close, I could smell him. The odor swelled, like something hot. If I weren’t so eager to touch him again, I would have shrunk from it.

  I breathed again, as if it were something I did once a day. “But you’re a tough queer, right?”

  “Yeah.” He examined the blood smear on the back of his hand. He made certain I was watching, then licked it off.

  In my room, I fantasized miniature movies starring Neil and me. My parents had okayed my staying up to watch Bonnie and Clyde on the late-late, and in my Neil hallucinations I assumed bloodred lipstick and a platinum bob that swirled in the wind, à la Faye Dunaway. I clung to his side. We wielded guns the size of our arms. We blew away bank tellers and other boring innocents, their blood spattering the air in slow-mo. Newspapers tumbleweeded through deserted streets. MCCORMICK AND PETERSON STRIKE AGAIN, their headlines read.

  In these dreams, we never kissed. I was content to stand beside him. Nights, I fell asleep with clenched fists.

  Weeks passed. Neil spent most recesses just standing there, feeling everyone else’s fear. I wasn’t afraid, but I couldn’t approach him again. He was like the electric wire that separated my uncle’s farm from the neighbors’. Touch it, Wendy, my little brother Kurt would say. It won’t hurt. But I couldn’t move toward it. Surely a sliver of blue electricity would jet from the wire and strike me dead. I felt the same way about Neil: I didn’t dare go near him. Not yet.

  Zelda Beringer, a girl who wore a headpiece attached to her braces and who wouldn’t remain my friend much longer, teased me about Neil. “How
in the world can you think a queer is cute? I mean, you can tell he’s a freak. You can just tell.” I advised Zelda that if she didn’t shut up, I’d gouge out her eyes and force her to swallow them. The resulting look on her face wouldn’t leave my mind for days.

  For Columbus Day the cafeteria cooks served the school’s favorite lunch. They fixed potato boats: a bologna slice fried until its edges curled, a scoop of mashed potatoes stuck in its center, watery cheese melted on top. They made home fries, and provided three squirt bottles of ketchup per table. For dessert, banana halves, rolled in a mucousy marriage of powdered gelatin and water.

  Fifth graders sat on the cafeteria’s opposite end, but that day I was blessed with a great view of Neil. He scooped the boat into one hand and devoured it in a single bite. If I’d had binoculars, I could have watched his puffy lips in close-up.

  I remember that day as near perfect, and not just because of potato boats. The yearly sex-ed filmstrips arrived. All afternoon, teachers glanced at clocks and avoided our gazes. We knew what was happening. We’d been through it before. Now we could view those films again, together in the room with the virgin fifth graders. “We’re going to see cartoon tits and ass,” Alastair said, the slightest hint of a scratch still on his chin.

  Grade five lumbered in. Neil stood at the back of the line. For the first half of the process, the principal, Mr. Fili, separated boys from girls. The boys left, and Miss Timmons dimmed the lights. The room felt stifling, as if some killer had snuck in to poison our air with a noxious nerve gas. I rested my elbows on my desk; planted my chin on my fists.

  Miss Timmons hesitated before reading the film’s captions. “Sometimes, at this age, young men will want to touch certain places on a young lady’s body.” She bit her lip like the section of an orange.

  When the filmstrip was over, Miss Timmons handed out free Kotex pads. Most girls popped theirs into purses or the back shadows of desk drawers. I examined mine. It resembled something I would hold over a campfire or take a chomp from.

  After ten minutes, the boys returned. “Find a seat, men, somewhere on the floor,” Mr. Fili told them. “This time, try to keep quiet. If you feel the urge to make some capricious outburst, please hold your breath. And no commentaries. This is serious stuff.” When he said that, he scowled at Neil.

  Neil moved toward me, as if following a dotted line to my desk. I swallowed hard. He sat, his knee touching my calf.

  Part two of the birds-and-bees rigamarole was special: a film instead of filmstrip. Kids oohed and aahed when they heard the projector’s buzzes and clicks. Perhaps this meant we would see real, live sex action.

  Some fool of a filmmaker had dreamed up the idea that humor was the best way to teach sex. Tiny cartoon sperm wriggled and roller coastered toward a bulging, rouged egg. The egg licked its lips, as eager and lewd as an old whore. The music—The 1812 Overture—swelled, and the quickest and most virile sperm punctured the egg. “Bull’s-eye!” the voice-over cackled.

  Some kids clapped and cheered. “Shhh,” said Miss Timmons.

  Neil looked up at me. I swore I could smell bologna on him. A smear of ketchup had dried on his shirt front. He smiled, and I smiled back. He mouthed the words, “This is total bullshit,” moving to lean against my legs. When he shifted, I felt his backbone move. No one was watching us.

  On screen, drawings of a penis and the inside of a vagina flashed on and off. A couple of fifth graders giggled. Penis entered vagina, and white junk gushed forth like mist from a geyser. More giggles. Miss Timmons shhed again.

  “Ridiculous,” Neil whispered. “Not everyone fucks like that.” Some kids heard him, glared and sneered. “Some people take it up the ass.” One girl’s face reddened, as if scratched.

  As the credits rolled, Neil’s hand rested on my sneaker, resulting in a goose bumpy feeling that lasted three tiny seconds. I wiggled my toes. Lights clicked on, and his hand moved away. “Let’s go, fifth grade,” Mr. Fili said.

  “How fucked up,” Neil said to me. He was speaking to no one else now. “Why don’t they teach us something we don’t already know?” Disappointment amended his face.

  Neil waved as they filed out. Kids’ heads turned to stare at me, and I felt as though it were Neil and me versus everyone else. It was a good feeling. I let my classmates gawk awhile, then shook my middle finger at them.

  That evening, I upped the volume on the stereo to drown out the TV my parents and brother were fixed in front of. Even with the bedroom door closed, I could hear televised trumpets blaring “America the Beautiful.” A newscaster said, “Happy Columbus Day.” I lifted the needle from my Blondie album and started side one over again: “Dreaming,” my favorite song.

  My geography book toppled off my bed. I was just beginning to effectively imagine myself as a singer onstage, a cluster of punks bouncing below me, when Mom rapped at the door. “Can you hear in there?” she asked. “You’ll shake the house off its foundation. Anyway, you’ve got a phone call. It’s some boy.”

  I ran to the kitchen’s extension. Mom had just finished drying dishes, and her set of knives lined a black towel on the table. By that time in the fall, it was starting to grow dark by six o’clock, so the room looked like some kind of torture dungeon. I left the light off.

  The music on the phone’s other end sounded cool. I listened for three, four, five seconds. “This is Wendy.”

  Someone stuttered a hello. Then, “You might not know me. My name’s Stephen Zepherelli.”

  My eyes widened. Everyone knew the notorious Stephen Zepherelli. He attended class in the adjoining building at school, one of the Learning Disabilities trio we occasionally saw delivering messages to Mr. Fili or bending over water faucets in the hall. The LDs, we called them. Stephen Zepherelli was the most severe of the three LDs. He wasn’t retarded, but he was close. He drooled, and he smelled like an old pond.

  Then I realized the absurdity of him calling me. I’d heard Zepherelli’s voice before, and this wasn’t it. “Okay,” I said. “Not funny. Someone’s got to have at least half a brain to know how to dial a telephone. Who is this really?”

  A laugh. The new-wave song paused, then began blasting a guitar solo. “Hey Wendy, this is Neil McCormick.” I couldn’t believe it. “I’ve called three Petersons in the phone book already, and I finally found the right one. What are you doing?”

  I forgave Neil for the Zepherelli joke. “Nothing,” I said. “As usual. How about that film today?”

  We chatted for ten minutes about people we despised most at school. While Neil spoke, I handled the knives, arranging them on the table from longest to shortest. “I’d like to stab all those fools,” I said, my back turned from the direction of the den and my parents. “Make it hurt. Stab them in the gut, then twist the knife real slow. I’ve read it really hurts that way. Or I’d cut their heads right off.”

  When I said that, Neil laughed. I pictured him throwing his head back, his mouth open, his teeth gleaming like an animal’s.

  By Halloween I stopped riding the bus home and began walking with Neil. His house was only four blocks from mine. Sometimes we carried each other’s books. We tried alternate ways home. Once we even went the opposite direction, heading toward the prison on Hutchinson’s east side. Neil stood at its gate, his shoelaces clotted with sandburs, breathing in the wistful smells of the rain-soaked hay and mud, the raked piles of leaves. “Kansas State Industrial Reformatory,” he read. “Maybe I’ll end up here someday.” A guard watched us from the stone tower. We waved, but he didn’t wave back.

  Neil lived with his mother, and had no bratty brothers or sisters to deal with. And his father wasn’t a hypnotist at all. He was dead. “Killed in a war,” Neil said. “He’s nothing but a corpse now. I know him from one picture, and one picture only. He looks nothing like me, either. What should I care about the guy?”

  Mrs. McCormick drank gin straight from the bottle. On the label, a bearded man was dressed in a plaid skirt. The first time I visited Neil’s, his mom slid th
e bottle aside and took my hand in hers. “Hello, Wendy,” she said. “It’s not often I see a friend of Neil’s. And such vibrant blond hair.” Her own hair was as black as her son’s. She had pinned it back with green pickle-shaped barrettes.

  A bookshelf in Neil’s house was piled with paperbacks with damaged or missing covers. Neil explained that his mother had a job at a grocery store, and her boss allowed her to keep whatever books the customers vandalized. Many concerned true kidnappings and murders. Mrs. McCormick saw me eyeing them. “You can borrow whatever you like,” she told me. Soon I stopped reading about the tedious exploits of that ignoramus Nancy Drew. Within days I knew all there was to know about Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, two teenage fugitives who blazed a trail of murder and mayhem across the Midwest a few decades ago. They weren’t that much older than Neil and me. They even hailed from Nebraska, our border state. In two grainy mug shots, their grimaces couldn’t have been more severe if their mouths had been clogged with thumbtacks. If I thought hard enough, Neil and I almost resembled them.

  I had decided that ’83 would be my last year as a trick-or-treater, and I wanted to dress as something special. I considered a gypsy, a freshly murdered corpse, an evil nun with a knife beneath her habit. Then I decided Neil and I should go as Charles and Caril. On Halloween night, I stared at the criminals’ pictures and tried to change my looks.

  Neil stretched out on his bed. “It’s not working,” he said. He tossed a baseball into the air, caught it. “No one will get it, so why bother?”

  I wiped the lipstick on a Kleenex and watched him watching me in his bedroom mirror. When I peeled off the fake eyelash, my lid made a popping noise.