by Gordon Jack
“Really? That’s great,” Brian said. He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“You’re surprised,” Julia said.
“No, it’s just . . . after the horrible things that happened today, I would think you hated this place.”
Julia grew silent. “What happened today was awful. But in a weird way, it made me feel safer than I ever felt at my old school. People said casually racist things all the time there, but I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about it.”
“I’m sure you had lots of friends,” Brian said. Julia was always texting people during AP biology. He assumed she was popular.
“All my friends were white. None of them really understood what it’s like to be different.”
“I get that, I think.”
“Really?” Julia said. “Did you grow up in an African village?”
“I grew up fat,” Brian said.
Julia leaned back in her chair and examined Brian as if he were an abstract painting. “I can’t see it.”
“Three years ago, there was a lot more of me to see,” he said. “It didn’t help that my last name is Little. Kids loved calling me ‘Big Little.’ One time in middle school, my English teacher was teaching us about oxymorons and asked students to think of one. Shelly Taylor used me as her example. After that, ‘Oxymoron’ became my nickname for a while.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It sort of became the way I saw myself. Like I was this walking contradiction: a fat kid in a skinny family.”
Julia looked away and followed a young mother as she chased after her tottering daughter, still dressed in her one-piece bathing suit. “Yes,” she said. “I get that.”
“When my appendix burst, it was like a metamorphosis. I became a new person physically, and I wanted a new personality as well. I looked around for the person who seemed the happiest and most confident, and that was Stacey. I followed her lead in just about everything.”
“Interesting that you chose her as your role model.”
“You mean, instead of a guy?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve thought about that too. I think if I played sports, I might have followed someone else. But I was fat, so I never got good at sports. I was always picked last on teams and then got blamed for losing the game because of some stupid error. So instead, I worked harder at school stuff and got smarter, which made it even harder to be friends with the jocks.”
“That’s not fair. Lots of athletes are smart.”
“That’s true. But the ones I know prefer to talk about what’s in the sports section rather than what’s on the front page.”
“Now that you’re a hottie, I bet the girls regret not being nicer to you.”
“I don’t know about that. I think girls still think of me as that fat kid.”
“No, they just assume you’re dating Stacey. You two are always together.”
“We’re just friends,” Brian said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You know, some people think that it’s impossible for men and women to be friends.”
“That’s stupid. Why can’t men and women be friends?”
“Biology.”
“My parents have a great marriage because they’re friends.”
“Friends who have sex with each other.”
“Ew. Gross.”
“Sorry, but sex will always affect male-to-female relationships.”
“Not every guy thinks of girls as a means to an end.”
“That’s sweet,” Julia said. She placed a hand on Brian’s thigh and started caressing it. “It’s wrong, but it’s sweet.”
Brian jerked his leg away from Julia’s touch. If he was to get a boner here and now, it would not only be embarrassing, but it would disprove all his enlightened ideas about platonic relationships. Before his dick knew what he was doing, Brian scooped up the empty containers from the table and went inside the store to throw them away. When he came back, he had everything back in control.
“It’s getting dark,” he said. “We should probably go.”
The two of them biked home in the dusk of evening, talking about easy things like their favorite YouTube videos and Mr. Cohen’s irritating habit of answering his own questions. When they reached Brian’s street, they paused and started circling each other in the intersection.
“Where do you live?” Brian asked.
“About a mile south,” Julia said, pointing.
“I’ll bike home with you.”
“No need. Besides, my aunt is very strict, and I don’t want her hassling me with questions about the handsome boy who kept me out so late.”
Brian blushed. He hoped Julia couldn’t see it in the darkening sky. Why was his body so determined to embarrass him in front of the girl he liked? It was like he was allergic to Julia, only instead of watery eyes and sneezing, he suffered from heart palpitations and sudden speech impediments.
Julia brought her bike close to his and stopped. “I’ve embarrassed you,” she said.
“What? No. The bike ride. It must have winded me.”
Julia leaned in and kissed him on the lips. Brian felt every organ in his body pause in astonishment and wonder.
And before he could really think about what was happening, Julia pulled back, said “Good night,” and pedaled away.
14
KYLE COULD TELL his mom was only pretend reading. He sat next to her in the therapist’s waiting room and watched her eyeballs. They weren’t moving left to right, indicating someone absorbed in a newspaper story; her gaze was locked onto an image on the page and had been for the last five minutes. It was a photo of a suspected terrorist captured by police, just as he was boarding a crowded subway car in New York City with an assault rifle and high-capacity magazines.
After staring at the page for five minutes, his mom finally threw the newspaper onto the empty seat next to her and got up to find something more lighthearted to read. She came back with a Highlights magazine.
“The pickings here are pretty slim,” she said to the other parent in the room, a stout woman with gray hair wound tightly into a bun. The woman smiled in response and went back to reading on her Kindle. Kyle was sure his mom wanted to talk, but the silence in the small space discouraged conversation. Instead, she opened up the magazine to the puzzle page and used her finger to find the right path on a maze to reunite the lost camper with his family.
Kyle shifted in his seat. He didn’t feel comfortable either, being in a room with only one entrance and exit. He supposed if some crazed former patient came in, he could leap across the counter and hide behind the receptionist, who was probably playing a game right now on her computer. Using her body as a shield, he could make his way back to Shirley’s office, where there was a window from which he could escape. The office was on the first floor of the building, so the drop wouldn’t hurt as long as he didn’t land on any glass shards. But that would mean leaving Mom behind, and that just wasn’t acceptable. No, Kyle would have to fight the assailant with whatever makeshift weapon he could get his hands on, like a pen or chair. Kyle got up and stood by the door to the lobby. This would give him the advantage of surprise if someone came in shooting.
Kyle’s secret-service-agent pose made the receptionist nervous, he could tell. She was new and probably still trying to figure out how Kyle, a scabby kid with a blue Mohawk, was related to the woman who looked like everyone’s favorite librarian. Maybe the woman thought he was adopted. She probably saw his mom as some kind lady who rescued this creepy kid from a refugee camp for child soldiers. Did they have those in the Northern Hemisphere? Kyle asked himself. If so, he should look into training there.
“The doctor will see you in just a minute,” the woman said, trying to shoo Kyle away. Kyle wondered if she had some concealed weapon under her desk. He’d arm himself with something given the number of whack jobs Shirley saw on a daily basis.
“She’s not a doctor,” Kyle said. “She’s a
licensed therapist.”
“Kyle,” his mother cautioned from her seat. Mom didn’t like Kyle starting unnecessary arguments, but he couldn’t help himself. When Kyle was bored, arguing was the only thing that kept his mind engaged.
A few minutes later, Shirley opened her door and escorted a young girl into the arms of her waiting mother. The mother put her e-reader away and stood up, assessing her daughter the way one might examine a piece of clothing from the dry cleaner for any evidence of a stain. When the inspection was complete, the two walked out the door without saying anything to each other. Kyle took this opportunity to peek out the open door and felt calmed when he saw the empty hallway.
“Hi, Kyle,” Shirley said. “You ready?”
Kyle nodded. He felt a little shy around his therapist because of her new appearance. She had recently stopped dyeing her hair, and now it was a patchwork of copper and silvery gray. In the span of a month, she seemed to have aged ten years.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” Mom said, making her way to the door. She clearly didn’t want to spend any more time in this barren landscape.
Kyle followed Shirley into her office and took his seat on the couch facing her chair. He watched her lock the door behind them, a request Kyle had made early in their sessions, which she honored in order to help him relax. Our goal is for you to feel comfortable with open doors, she had told him. So far, that goal remained a distant one.
“How are you doing?” Shirley began, settling down into her squeaky vinyl chair and taking out her notepad.
“Great,” Kyle said, staring at his therapist’s scarf. The folds made it hard to tell if the print was made up of cacti or pineapples.
“Your mom told me there was an altercation at a convenience store?”
“It was no big deal.”
“Not according to your mom. She says you’ve been banned from shopping there.”
“I thought these guys were going to jump me, so I jumped them first.”
“What made you think the guys were going to jump you?”
“The way they walked. The way they looked at me. I could tell they wanted to fight.”
“Did you practice any of the breathing exercises we’ve been working on?”
“There wasn’t time.”
“Kyle, the skills we practice here need to be applied to situations outside this office.”
“I know,” Kyle said. “But in here, it’s easy. Out there, it’s hard.”
“I understand that,” Shirley said. “But you have to try. Remember what I told you about your brain.”
“Yes,” Kyle said.
“Tell me,” Shirley said.
“The amygdala controls the fight-or-flight instinct,” Kyle said robotically.
“What else?”
“It makes me see everything as a threat, unless it’s controlled by my prefrontal cortex.”
“And what do we know about the prefrontal cortex?”
“It’s not fully developed until my twenties.”
“Which is why you need to practice the strategies that will help you calm yourself into a less emotional state. What’s our slogan?”
“Feelings are not facts,” Kyle replied.
“Exactly.”
“What you’re asking me to do is to not trust my instincts.”
“I’m asking you to check those instincts against logic and rational thought.”
“You want me to wait until someone puts a gun to my head before I decide to do something. By then it’s too late.”
“You have to stop thinking that every human interaction ends with someone putting a gun to your head.”
“I don’t think every human interaction ends that way.”
“Just the ones that take place in convenience stores,” Shirley said.
“You should have seen these guys,” Kyle said. “They were devious.”
Shirley took a deep breath, clearly using her own techniques to calm her emotional response. “Let’s practice some more, shall we? I’m going to unlock the door, and I want you to regulate your emotional response through the deep breathing we’ve been practicing.”
She stood up and walked over to the door. Kyle heard the click of the doorknob being turned and felt his breathing quicken.
“Deep belly breaths, Kyle,” Shirley reminded him.
Kyle breathed in through his nose until his lungs were fully inflated, then he held the breath for a few seconds before exhaling through his mouth.
“Tell yourself there is no assassin outside the door.”
“There is no assassin outside the door,” he repeated.
“Just because I feel bad, doesn’t mean it is bad.”
“Just because I feel bad, doesn’t mean it is bad,” he said flatly.
“Good,” Shirley said in her most relaxed, comforting voice.
They sat there in silence with Kyle focusing on his breathing rather than the fact that the room was not secured or the fact that even in California it was easy for the mentally ill to purchase a handgun.
“Talk to me about school,” Shirley said.
“We had a code-red drill on Monday,” Kyle said. Deep breathing, he reminded himself. He sucked in another lungful of air, held it, and then let it out. “The school had us hide in place, which is a surefire way to get us all killed, unless, of course, they allow us to carry firearms, which is what—”
“Have you tried getting more involved?” Shirley said, trying to move Kyle on to another subject than his school’s woefully inept methods for handling a crisis. “Looked for clubs to join?”
“I’m sorta involved with student government,” Kyle said.
“That’s great. Tell me about it.”
“I’m the campaign adviser for one of the candidates running for student body president.”
“Campaign adviser? That sounds like a lot of responsibility.”
“It is. I was hoping you could help me, actually.”
“Help you? How?”
“I’d like to run psychological profiles on our opponents. It might help my guy do better if he could mess with their heads. How do I do that?”
“Let’s talk about why you want to mess with their heads, shall we?”
Shit. Kyle had been too honest with his therapist, which was always a mistake. He slumped a little in his chair, trying to think of a way to backtrack. He was really hoping Shirley could help him wage psychological warfare on Stacey and Julia. And his brother. But she wouldn’t help him unless he gave her something first.
“I don’t want to mess with their heads, exactly,” Kyle said. “More like I want to understand my enemy.”
“They’re not your enemies, Kyle. They’re teens interested in public service.”
“We still have to beat them, which means helping people see why my candidate is better.”
“Why is your candidate better?”
“Because he’s my candidate.”
“Okay. But what makes him your candidate? Why support him over these other people?”
Kyle thought about that. There wasn’t anything especially interesting or charismatic about Tony. He was Kyle’s candidate because he did what Kyle wanted him to do, unlike Brian, who fought him on everything. Things had been so much better when his older brother was fat and depressed. With one dig about his weight, Kyle could send his brother crying into his room for hours. He liked having that kind of control over someone.
Then Stacey came around and ruined everything.
She may not have caused Brian’s appendix to burst—although Kyle had his own theories about that—but she helped him learn to stand up for himself. Now Kyle had no power over his older brother. The slave he had so carefully and painstakingly manipulated over the years had found his freedom and become his parents’ golden child. If Kyle was being honest (and this was therapy so he supposed he should be honest, at least to himself), Tony was his candidate because it was through him that he could bring down Stacey and, by extension, Brian.
“I gu
ess I like his stand on childhood obesity,” Kyle finally told his therapist. “That’s a real concern for me.”
“POSTERGATE COVER-UP”
by Lance Haber
To be successful at politics means you’ve got to be a good liar. “I did not collude with the Russians.” “If you like your health care, you can keep your health care.” “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.” “I did not sleep with that woman.” The list goes on and on, and I haven’t even backed up to Iran-Contra or Watergate yet. (Don’t worry if these terms don’t look familiar to you. My US history class stopped at the Vietnam War too.)
So when presidential candidate Stacey Wynn says she did not write a hateful slur on her opponent’s poster, should we believe her?
When criminal prosecutors are trying to prove their case to a jury, they focus on the accused’s means, motive, and opportunity. Let’s apply this standard to our prime suspect.
MEANS
“Means” refers to a suspect’s ability to commit the crime. In this case, the weapon used to deface Julia’s poster was a Sharpie. Let me think . . . Does Stacey have access to a Sharpie? I refer you to exhibit A: the ten campaign banners hanging throughout the school decorated with planet earth cartoons, all drawn in . . . you guessed it: Sharpie.
MOTIVE
It’s pretty obvious that Stacey has the best motive for attacking Julia in such a despicable way; by inciting people’s fears and prejudices against immigrants, she can appear as the safest choice for president. Hey, it worked for President Trump; why wouldn’t it work for her?
OPPORTUNITY
This is the area most critical to proving guilt of a suspect. Did the person have the opportunity to commit the crime, or does she have an ironclad alibi? Stacey claims she was at home when the vandalism took place, but this reporter has confirmed from multiple evening custodians that Stacey was on campus between the hours of nine p.m. and ten p.m.
Stacey has always advocated for a cleaner school. This reporter now wonders if this platform is a result of some kind of “you clean up my trash and I’ll clean up yours” quid pro quo agreement with the powerful custodial union. Is this why they looked the other way when she hung her banners ten hours before it was permissible to do so?