The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

by Josh Berk

  I plop down at the edge of a table with a few open seats and look around furtively. Bodies turn from me as if we are oppositely charged magnets. Chairs scoot. Eyes avert. Chatty people are everywhere. It can be really overwhelming for a lip-reader to be in such a hivelike atmosphere. See, I can’t turn off my ability to read lips, so it is like “hearing” a thousand conversations at once. A million voices, snippets, and fragments overlapping—getting lost, then standing out, then getting lost again. Someone says, “Wasn’t that test terrible?” But I can’t see/hear the response of the person she’s talking to, so I read as response the non sequitur from the guy next to her: “Tim’s the balls on drums!”

  It’s like watching TV while someone else works the remote. No, better yet: imagine yourself sitting in a room with a hundred TVs turned up loud while you whirl around on a Sit& Spin at a dizzying speed, trying to follow the plot. The only way to not totally lose my head is to intently focus on one person and—here’s the trick—not get caught. Most folks aren’t too keen on having a big deaf fatty eyeballing them. I’d love to be wrong about this, but it is unlikely.

  I scan the room for someone interesting. Immediately in front of me is my classmate from math, Dwight Carlson. It is sort of fun watching him try to figure out how to open the milk carton. Is he really that stymied? Noted: DWIGHT CARLSON = OUTWITTED BY BEVERAGE CONTAINERS. Chuck Escapone is also visible, but do I want to know what that guy has to say? What goes on in that mind? Look around … look around. OK, Purple Phimmul it is. Congratulations, Ms. Rich But Not So Pretty.

  My target jams a pair of enormous gold sunglasses onto her face—a dangerous turn of events because now I can’t tell if she sees me staring at her. Still, I press on. I have so many questions. Why is she named Purple? Is there a whole rainbow of Phimmuls at home? Is there an Uncle Aqua? An Aunt Chartreuse?

  Purp is talking on her cell, eating candy bars, and ignoring her Fawning Public. FP will have to make do with whatever crumbs of attention she gives them while she gabs with a mysterious stranger on the other line. I suspect it is her father.

  “Daddy,” she whines (a telling clue, no?), “my balance is low again.”

  Daddy’s response appears to be less than satisfactory.

  “But I need a new dress for the party. I need to go shopping!” she yips. “Shopping, dammit!” She is yelling this consumerist battle cry, this war whoop of the mall. “Shopping, dammit! Shopping, dammit! Shopping, dammit!” She then snaps the phone shut like a queen snapping her fingers at a servant.

  She glares at one of her minions as if it’s her fault the Phimmul account is low. The minion lowers her eyes and scrambles to appease her. How does Purple do this? How does she get these people wrapped around her pudgy finger? And is the dress possibly for that party the people on the bus were talking about? What is this party that has my non-peers so wound up?? For a second I feel one of Purp’s friends staring at me, so I look quickly away.

  But, still, I’m thinking: What is your secret, Purple Phimmul? What is your secret?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gym is bad for any fat kid just on principle. When I found out that at CHS I would have to swim (and that, no, there really was no way out of it), I considered getting one of those old-timey bathing suits with shoulder straps in order to provide adequate man-boob coverage. Maybe I’d grow a handlebar mustache too and pretend it was part of a 1900s revival look I was going for. But it turns out that they don’t sell 1900s-style bathing suits at Wal-Mart, and I couldn’t get my mom to order me one on eBay. Perhaps, I think, I should go to the other extreme and don a Speedo. Might it be awesome to see my classmates’ expressions as I strut out sporting a banana hammock? But I only have the gut, not the guts. So I just wear a regular pair of green swimming trunks, which offer neither fat concealment nor risk-taking pride. As I emerge from the stall, I notice a few pointings and laughings. One or two guys try to slap me on the love handles. Being fat might not be that great of a thing to be, but it sure seems to bring joy to certain others. Glad to oblige. Turd bags.

  Devon Smiley is skinny but in a droopy sort of way. He seems to have no muscles. Pat and his jock buddies, including a rodent-looking football guy whose jersey identifies him as D. JONKER, apparently find his body hilarious. After I finish accepting my hazing, I slink into the corner, fashion my Phillies beach towel into a sarong, and watch the two of them screw with Devon. I’m guessing at the exact wording here, but the spirit of the conversation is clear.

  “Hey, Dev,” Pat says, approaching Devon with a look of mock seriousness on his face. “You been working out?”

  Devon narrows his eyebrows like he is looking down a microscope at a confusing specimen. “How’s that?” he says.

  “He said,” declares D. JONKER, “that you’re looking diesel (something something).”

  I slide around to the other side of the room and focus hard so I can continue to see this fascinating exchange.

  “Hey, are you using the juice?” D. JONKER asks.

  “Come again?” Devon says.

  “How exactly do you get pecs like that?” Pat says, poking Devon’s pale and sunken chest. “Me and Derrick are dying to know your secret.”

  I make a mental note. The D in D. JONKER is for Derrick. I had been thinking Dick.

  “I think he’s (something something) steroids,” D. JONKER says.

  “Only one way to find out!” they yell in unison, pouncing on Devon like a murder of crows on a field mouse.

  After one impressively smooth movement (what, do they practice this stuff?), Pat and D. JONKER are holding Devon’s shorts like a championship trophy while Devon, nude except for flip-flops, scrambles back into the stall.

  “Yep,” D. JONKER says, although I’m sure he didn’t actually see anything. “You don’t get balls that tiny unless you’re juicing. Are those your nads, Smiley, or are you smuggling peas?”

  Devon’s retreating form makes me think of office supplies: two scrawny pencils jammed into eraser-pink trapezoids of butt.

  Mr. Fatzinger (who introduced himself to me earlier, inspiring an addition to my notebook: GYM CLASS COACH = FATZY McFATPANTS) hears the commotion and sticks his head into the locker room and yells something like “Knock it the hell off and get out here for class or I’ll (something something) Principal Kroener.”

  Apparently, this threat holds more water than the pool because everyone shuts up quickly. We all begin filing out, as orderly as soldiers, except for Devon, who is still hiding au naturel in the stall. Pat has Devon’s shorts behind his back. He then passes the shorts to D. JONKER, who pretends to dribble them. He jukes left, jukes right, and throws them into the toilet. And then he flushes. Score: Usual Jock Jerks 1, Usual Hapless Victims 0.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When the day is finally over, I find my bus and crash into the first seat like a wrecking ball. I am shell-shocked and stunned, rattled by the enormity of it all, wondering what the fudge I have gotten myself into. I thought it’d be easier to enter this world, but I am now even more of a watcher, spying on my own life.

  No one has exactly walked up and introduced themselves. Still, my notebook is slowly filling with names and critical information. Thanks to peeking at seating charts, checking out football jerseys, some lipreading, and the weird trend of girls wearing jewelry with their names spelled out in big gold script, I have started to piece together my class roster.

  On the bus ride home, those big rearview mirrors installed so the driver can (in theory) keep an eye on the throng make espionage easy. I watch my fellow passengers’ faces, read their lips, enter their conversations from afar while they unwittingly spill their secrets. They say more about themselves than they mean to, more than they even know. The way one kid leans over the seat in front of him, laughing along with someone else’s joke—it shows how desperately he wants to fit in. The way one guy ignores a girl behind him but puts his arm up on the seat inches from hers shows his true feelings. And the fat deaf kid in the front, craning his neck and st
aring? He’s a pretender. By putting so much effort into paying attention to others, is he trying not to think about himself? Will one more slight make him crumble into a pile of dust? What does he want? Who is he hoping he really is? Let’s table these … for later.

  So what’s happening on this bus? The most interesting stuff is in the back. All the cool kids sit in the back. It is pretty much a directly rising slope of coolness from the front of the bus to the back. From me to a weird skinny guy in a football shirt who clearly isn’t on the team to Marie (whose last name is Stepcoat) to the trio from my morning bus stop: A. J. Fischels, Teresa Lockhart, and Gabby Myers. If you keep going, you’d fly out the back of the bus onto the road itself and land in the cars belonging to the kids far too cool to ever set foot on a bus. I wish I had a damn car, or even a license. I sketch out this equation in my notebook. It all makes sense, but then I look out the window and clearly see Devon Smiley drive by in his car. He has a car? Devon Smiley may be an exception to all the rules that normally apply to humanity. Let’s keep an eye on that one.

  I watch the football fan talk to no one about the upcoming game and then turn around. A.J., Teresa, and Gabby are too far back for me to see in the mirror. I have to subtly turn around in my seat to see what nuggets they are offering. A.J.’s expression is dark, his body language a hunched ball of fury. The change from his cheery baby face is quite startling. Without drawing attention to myself, I smoothly rotate in my seat and watch.

  “Don’t be sad,” Gabby is saying, messing his hair like a grandmother soothing a toddler. “I still think you’re cool.”

  “Gabby,” A.J. says, “I believe it should be (something) clear by now that no one cares what you think. About anything.”

  “Ow,” says Teresa. “Burn.” She then jumps into the seat in front of them and spins around, so I miss the rest of whatever she has to say.

  What A.J. has to say is roughly: “He’s just, he’s just such a (something something something), you know? I never wanted to go to his stupid party anyway.”

  “Yeah, right,” says Gabby, laughing. “You’re telling me that if he gave you a playing card, you wouldn’t accept it?”

  “If he gave me a playing card, I’d throw it back in his … uh, playing face” is A.J.’s witty retort. At least I think that’s what he said. “Playing face”?

  Gabby laughs again. Then Teresa seems to say something, probably laughing too, or so it seems from the way her ball of curly auburn hair shakes. Suddenly A.J. sees me looking at them.

  I try to quickly look out the window, acting interested in a billboard for a rock band on tour. Before I can pull it off, though, there is an instant where our eyes meet and lock hard.

  “What?” A.J. shouts. (Yes, I can tell, even without benefit of volume, when someone’s shouting.) “What the hell are you looking at?”

  He bares his teeth, and foam forms on his lip like a rabid dog. He then gives me the universal sign everybody knows: two upraised middle fingers.

  In my head I call this the GAJBF, for Great A.J. Bus Fiasco. (Did I mention that I like acronyms? Yeah.) A hot flush of embarrassment spreads up my neck and stays there. I keep my eyes down, peering into nothing more interesting than the gouges pocking the green pleather in front of me.

  The mortifying diamond of the DEAF CHILD AREA announces to one and all that my stop is next. This stupid sign haunts my life. As the bus lurches to a halt, I get up, lumber swiftly down the three steps, and head toward home. But I can’t help myself and cast one last glance back. A. J. Fischels’s head is down, his shoulders slumped. He appears to be writing something in a secret notebook of his own. I would love to see that. Who made A.J. so livid? Who’s throwing this big-deal party? And what does he mean by a playing card? Also, what did Mom make for dinner? Hope it’s lasagna.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Next day at school. History class. Farterberry has made a disturbing announcement. Our class, it seems, will soon be taking a trip to something called Happy Memory Coal Mine. Ever-perky Mindy Spark shoots up her hand to say something like “Oh my God! I’ve been there (something something) Girl Scouts! Remember, Leigha? They do this (something something) they shut off all the lights and it’s totally black!” As she speaks, she whips her head around with such excitement that her blond ponytail flops like a dying fish. Leigha Pennington nods ever so slightly in reserved agreement. Oh, Leigha.

  The rest of the class, except for me and Chuck Escapone, seems to share Mindy’s boundless enthusiasm. I’m not afraid of the dark, but when you rely on the sense of sight to speak and hear, being in total darkness with a bunch of mostly strangers is just creepy. Chuck, I am noticing, never responds to anything. His eyelids did, I think, open slightly more than their usual half-shut stupor. Perhaps to Chuck Escapone this is the equivalent of jumping up and dancing with Mindy-like glee.

  Escapone excluded, my classmates’ faces light up, and they all start talking at once, which sucks. While I can’t tell what anyone is specifically saying, I get the basic premise. Most are psyched beyond belief, while I am filled with dread beyond, uh … something dreadful. Only a few minutes into the new day and my stomach is lurching and my throat is closing in on itself.

  “Now, class!” Arterberry says, actually standing where I can see him and enunciating under his big mustache. “Control yourselves, please!” But the class does not control themselves. Can you believe it? Even though he said “please,” they still do not settle down. Shocking!

  He writes “THE COAL-MINING EXPERIENCE” on the board for the benefit of the few paying attention. “Tonight’s assignment: pages 114 to 133 in your text.” I look around the room to see how this assignment will be received. Some students copy it down dutifully; others make no pretense that they are going to do the work. D. JONKER is one of those who write it down. Pat looks over at him like his buddy suddenly smells terrible. He doesn’t say a word, but it is obvious what he means. “You’re not seriously going to do this lame assignment, are you?” But D. JONKER apparently is going to do it. Maybe he comes from a coal-mining family like me? Maybe our ancestors all worked together in the mines. Maybe they were friends? Maybe someday we’ll be … Yeah.

  A lot of people have recently moved to our humble corner of the world from New York (where, apparently, there are no more unfilled apartments). Do any of them care that the little kids who spent fourteen hours a day in the mines could have been their classmates’ grandparents? Do they even get that? I mean, they must have noticed that our football team is called the Coalers, right?

  A few more people appear to be a little interested when Arterberry says, with a twinkle in his eye, “This is an especially interesting passage in your text because there’s a ghost story. …”

  Now, I have always loved ghost stories. Perhaps because people often seem to vaguely sense my own presence while rarely acknowledging it. I’ve been brushed off like a specter, a chill. …

  The sound-discriminatory bell announces the end of history class. Would it kill them to get a strobe light to flash when class ended? Or maybe a beautiful girl who could hold up a sign for me like in boxing matches? I pick up my books and begin my journey to math class. What wonders will The Dolphin have for us today?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When I slink in, Miss Prefontaine has already started her “lesson.” I scamper to my houseplant-seat. Devon Smiley is at the extreme front and far end of the row, making him my closest human contact. It is just a fluke of the seating chart, no more meaningful than the fact that Dwight Carlson sits right next to Pat Chambers, but Devon apparently takes it as cosmic proof we are meant to be best buds. I do not feel precisely the same way. Devon has a dumb ponytail. He smells faintly of nacho cheese. He uses a monogrammed handkerchief to wipe his nose. By insisting on being my friend, he is seriously threatening my incredibly cool status at CHS. (Kidding, of course, but still …)

  Prefontaine is so absorbed in making flirty faces while “teaching” that she forgets to keep her mouth where I can see it. We ar
e supposed to figure out the distance an object will fall if the angle is forty degrees and the height is forty feet (something something) and the rate of a falling body (something something something). Lipreading is exhausting in the best of circumstances, and these are definitely not those circumstances. I try to spy off of Devon’s paper, which makes him really happy. He writes a note to me on the corner of the page. “Hello, William!” I hate when people call me William and really don’t want to get caught passing notes with Devon.

  I sneak my history textbook out of my bag, hoping to pick up where I left off reading about mining. I start flipping through this chapter:

  The year was 1901. Coal miners lived a dangerous life, working long hours many feet below the earth’s surface. Accidents were an inescapable part of a miner’s world. Floods, explosions, and cave-ins were always possibilities.

  I have to say, I get into it. Then something flitters in my peripheral vision. I ignore it. It won’t go away. I hate that. Then it is close—right in front of my face, in fact—too close to ignore. A hand. I know what it signifies before I lift my gaze. Prefontaine is waving, doing that obnoxious gesture that means “Hello! I’m freaking talking here!” I try to pretend that I am actually paying attention, but I am nabbed. My face flushes the hot red of an embarrassed fatty. Of course she would ignore me 99 percent of the time but turn and stare at me just the moment that I’m, of all things, doing homework for another class. Couldn’t it at least have been porn?

  And then she zings me a second time! Again, I have no idea what she says. I just see Miss Prefontaine turn her back on me, and then I watch the class crack up. Was it “Well, well, well, Mr. Big Deaf Fatty thinks he’s too good for us?” Or “Mr. Halpin would rather look at pictures of coal miners than me? What does that say about him, class? Do the math!”