But what about what she showed me in that mirror? He tried to push the thought from his head. She was obviously crazy. Right? But she was also the only one who could really see him. Should he avoid her or should he try again? Sully continued this argument with himself until his head hurt with thinking and he fell asleep.
Sully’s first class passed without incident for a change, but before he rounded the corner to English, his stomach twisted as he heard his name spoken in whispers.
Partway down a side hallway near her classroom, Wippet huddled deep in conversation with her wife, Ms. Hamada, who was also the guidance counselor. Dodging an intervention, he crossed the main hallway to approach the class from the other side, but still felt Ms. Hamada’s eyes on him in response to a nod in his direction from Wippet.
Almost as if she’d been waiting for him, Blossom appeared at his elbow out of nowhere. She hooked her arm in his and marched him into the classroom.
“Stop that.” Sully pulled his arm away and looked around for Dodger.
“Oh, stop being so silly, Bee Boy,” she said. “I don’t have cooties.”
She’d piled more daffodils on her cheekbone, obliterating the smeary purple-green background of yesterday. The red that had outlined her eyes had been replaced with black eyeliner.
“I’m not afraid of cooties,” Sully said. “And stop calling me that.”
“Just sit,” she said. “I’ve taken the liberty of outlining the essay.”
“You’re not sick of shadows today?” he said.
“If that was meant as concern, there’s no need to worry,” she said.
Sully snorted.
“And if it was meant as a jab, you’re wasting your time.”
“Whatever,” he said.
“Well, good then. Moving on. How do you want to divide up the essay?”
“You’re the one with all the answers.”
“Morsixx is right. You’re incredibly ornery.”
“Morty called me ornery?”
“His name is Morsixx, and you know that. And he used a different word, but it amounts to the same thing.”
“What word?”
“Cantankerous?” she said. “Maybe it was hostile. Either way, it means the same thing. But it’s pretty clear what it’s covering up.”
“I’m not covering anything up,” said Sully.
“You’re right there,” said Blossom. “Your victim syndrome is as plain as the nose on your face.”
Sully’s hand shot to his nose, still perched on his right cheek.
“What are you saying?” He narrowed his eyes, which was no small feat, given they were lodged in his ears. He looked in Blossom’s eyes for any clue that she could see what he really looked like.
“Which word are you having trouble with? Syndrome?”
“What?”
“A syndrome is a—”
“I know what a syndrome is.” Sully turned to face the front as Ms. Wippet took her place by the blackboard. “And quit talking,” he whispered. “You’re going to get me in trouble with Wippet again.”
“You are a serious piece of work.” Blossom shook her head. “But never you mind. I’m up to the challenge.”
Sully shifted his chair away from her and opened his book, pretending to be engrossed.
“If you really want to escape Tank’s attention,” Blossom leaned closer to Sully, “you should be embracing your friends, not ostracizing them.”
Startled by the warmth of Blossom’s breath on his neck, Sully whipped his head in the direction of her voice, so they ended up nose-to-nose.
“‘Like the herd animals we are,’” she said. “‘We sniff warily at the strange one among us’. Loren Eiseley.”
“What?”
“Anthropologist. Philosopher. Scientist,” she said. “Not afraid to embrace all the strange and disparate parts of himself, Bee Boy. You could learn from him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Here.” She slid one of her hands under his and pressed something into his palm.
“Eyes front, Sullivan,” said Wippet.
Blossom winked at him as she sat back in her seat.
Sully scrunched his hand over the piece of paper Blossom had deposited and pressed his lips together.
“A thousand pardons, Ms. Wippet.” Blossom stood dramatically and put her palm to her chest. “This is actually my fault. I was just giving him my email address.”
Sully reddened as the class hooted and whistled.
“So we can communicate regarding our essay.” Blossom enunciated the words slowly and loudly over the crowd. “Honestly, what grade are you people in? In any event, please do continue, Ms. Wippet.”
“Why, thank you for your permission, Blossom.” Wippet raised her eyebrows. “Quiet down, class. And you . . . take your seat.”
She directed this last remark at Dodger, who stood by the doorway, smiling at Sully. As Wippet turned her attention back to the lesson, Dodger sauntered back to his seat. He held his phone up to his face and mimed a movie camera in Sully’s direction.
CHAPTER 25
Early mornings, coupled with the exertion of walking and the strain of keeping himself under the radar, were taking their toll. By Friday, Sully found himself jolting awake in classes he didn’t remember falling asleep in. The weekend promised an oasis of sleep, but it also meant he was only two days away from his Sex Ed presentation.
Never mind that now. Blissful sleep carried him far away from all of it as soon as his head hit the pillow after dinner.
Until he woke with a start, not remembering, for the life of him, where he was.
As his brain slowly pawed its way to full consciousness, a dribble of spit slid down Sully’s forehead and under his hairline. He opened his eyes to a deeper darkness, as cold air surfed along his skin and raised goosebumps in places the wind shouldn’t have been able to reach.
His right ear seemed to have slipped off his face altogether, snagged in the knots of his long brown curls and straining for any sound that might be a clue. His ankles burned with the pressure of the rope.
The rope?
Fearing the worst, Sully raised his left hand to his face and flexed his fingertips to tease out the numbness. He shouldn’t have been able to see anything in the inky blackness, but somehow his palm glowed around the edges, emitting enough light for Sully to see it clearly.
The Black Spot!
Panicking, he arched his back, and then jack-knifed forward in a vain attempt to grab his ankles. Which was ridiculous, really. Even if he’d been able to get hold of the rope, he’d never be able to untie it. And if he did, he’d probably break his back in the fall.
As it was, the movement served only to tighten the snare that pinched painfully, as his naked body swung back and forth and upside down from the limb of the tree.
A flash of light flooded the park. Blinded by the sudden glare, Sully first raised his hands to his face again, and then veered them higher to cover his middle, front and back. The shadowed outlines of spectators revealed themselves, blocking out spaces of light. He’d expected Tank, Ox, and Dodger, but apparently the entire school had been invited. It was like looking out at a crowded movie theater, only everyone was standing across the width of what Sully realized was True Street. The crooked frame of Mr. C., silhouetted against the sky, juggled lightning between his upraised canes.
The crowd showed no emotion at first. Some whispered behind cupped hands, others pointed furtive fingers. Tank stood dead center, but it was Dodger who started things rolling.
“Hey, Sally,” he said. “Catch!”
All at once, a series of hard green walnut pods pelted Sully’s naked flesh, as the crowd now roared with unconcealed laughter.
“I thought you were a girl, Bella,” Winston bent down to look in Sully’s face. “But it’s l
ike a little sausage.”
Sully didn’t have enough hands to cover himself up. Blinking away tears, he looked up a second time to find Morsixx standing before him.
“I tried to warn you, Dude. You forgot about your inner Kermit.”
“I am half sick of shadows.” Blossom peered over Morsixx’s shoulder. Tattooed flowers writhed off her face. The vines extended like grasping fingers. They wove themselves into Sully’s hair and crept up the sides of his face.
“I am half sick of shadows,” she repeated. “But there are no shadows here, Bee Boy. You can see that, right?”
“You’re not good at hiding,” Winston shook his head. “Not good at all.”
The vines slithered around the back of Sully’s head, tightening like a noose. As Morsixx and Blossom stepped back into the crowd, the intense pressure released, but something more than the vines seemed to have come undone.
Sully’s right ear teased itself loose from his hair and landed sideways in the leaves beneath him. His nose followed and tumbled with a plop amongst a dozen halved walnut pods that themselves looked like little pigs’ noses.
His mouth spiraled sideways, and his lips detached with a slight sucking sound. His right eye, still lodged in his left ear canal, cartwheeled off his face and into the growing mound of body parts.
“You weren’t looking where you were going,” said the Purse Lady, who shuffled into view. “Look what happened to your face.”
She stooped down to pick up Sully’s eye and held it up to the light, where it glowed like a little rainbow. Smiling, she popped it into her voluminous black purse.
“Hey!” said Sully’s mouth, spitting out leaves. “That belongs to me!”
“I knew you’d help me find it,” said the lady.
The top of her purse yawned open, as she laid it on the ground and shoveled the other pieces of Sully’s face inside. Shouldering her purse and snapping it shut, she trundled off into the crowd.
The single eye remaining on Sully’s face succumbed to gravity. It dropped to the earth in front of him and stared up at his face, which was now entirely devoid of features. A breeze shifted leaves to cover the eye, plunging Sully into darkness again, but not before he saw himself for what he was.
He was nobody.
CHAPTER 26
Sully jolted awake, this time for real. Soaked with sweat, he pawed his face and panted in relief to feel his nose, his mouth, his ear-ensconced eyes. Still in the wrong place, but at least they were there.
Afraid to go back to sleep, he decided to finish the rest of his Sex Ed presentation. While he had the story more or less down, he needed some visuals to go along with it. With remnants of the nightmare nipping at him, he cobbled some images together over the next hour and then slept the rest of the weekend.
But he needed more than sleep to prepare him for Monday morning.
Just be funny, he coached himself as he walked toward class. And confident, he thought as he darted a look at Tank. So it looks like I respect myself.
I do respect myself. I can do this.
He stood in front of the class as the bell rang. Despite his manufactured bravado, his knees knocked together with such force, they were in danger of dislocating each other. His tongue felt like an old sock, while his nose gyrated in frantic circles.
“What is white and has wings but cannot fly?” he began.
No hands shot up in answer to his riddle, but Sully had expected this. Starting with a joke was a good ploy, though, he thought. It would loosen them up and set the right tone.
He saw he was going to have to work at it a bit, though. Some of his classmates sat with their arms crossed, their heads on a slight angle, their eyes narrowed. His mother often struck that pose when she suspected him of lying. Others lounged back in their chairs, resting their heads against upraised arms. There was a hint of amusement in the eyes of these students, but not the kind that laughs at a lame joke about feminine protection. More like a spider watching an oblivious fly circle in for a landing. Still others made no pretense of paying attention at all. Sully noticed, with relief, that Tank was one of these.
“Okay,” said Sully. “We’ll come back to that one. What do Moses and Kotex have in common? Anyone?”
A kid in the back row snorted awake, eliciting laughter from the rest.
“We’ll come back to that one, too, then,” Sully said. “Okay. Well. My topic is menstruation, which should really be called womenstruation, because men don’t get it.”
Sully’s lips had taken on a life of their own. They wavered in opposite directions to push his memorized narrative into a vacuum of silence. And his last joke proved prophetic, because it appeared that none of the guys got it.
“So, you’ve all heard about Noah’s flood, right? Well, it’s kind of like that. Only the flood was forty days, and what we’re talking about is only twenty-eight. And another difference is that Noah’s flood only came once, but what we’re talking about comes every month. So, they’re kind of the same and kind of different at the same time. And what we’re talking about doesn’t have all those animals, either, so there’s a difference there, too.”
This wasn’t coming out exactly as Sully had rehearsed it, but it seemed to be getting his classmates’ attention. He noticed that most of them had shifted forward in their seats and were watching him intently.
“When Noah’s flood is over, he sends out a white dove to look for dry land,” Sully continued. “And that’s a clue to the riddle I started with about the white thing with wings. Because what we’re talking about also ends with the help of that white winged thing. So, it’s kind of like the white-winged dove. But let’s get back to Moses.”
Sully clicked on his PowerPoint presentation. The first image on the screen was of baby Moses floating on the river in a basket.
“When women get what we’re talking about,” he said, “they don’t have to worry about a little baby like this coming along.”
Click.
On screen now was a large chicken egg with the picture of baby Moses pasted in the middle. A big red x was layered on top of both images.
“So, when a woman’s egg doesn’t get fertilized,” Sully said, “what we’re talking about . . . well, it happens.”
“Explain the fertilization part, Rooster,” someone shouted from the back.
“Uh,” Sully said. “Uh . . . that’s not part of my presentation.”
“More like not part of your life, Brewster,” someone quipped.
“So, you’re saying girls lay eggs?” someone asked.
“Not exactly,” said Sully. “It’s more like Blake’s Mob allegory. I’ll just get to the next part and it should be clearer.”
At least, Sully hoped it would be clearer. More and more it was feeling like someone had hijacked his mouth, as the words that came out made less and less sense, even to him.
Sully’s next slide was an image of Moses with his arms raised and the sea parting before him. A two-headed arrow was superimposed, pointing at the divided water with a label that said, “The Red Sea (aka Menstruation).” Surrounding Moses was a flock of white birds, their wings spread, diving at the water.
“So, what we’re talking about . . . aka menstruation . . . is kind of like the tides of a sea. If there’s no baby, the tide comes in and then something has to be done about it. That’s where the winged things come in.”
What in the world was he talking about? How could he ever have convinced himself any of this made any sense at all?
“Hey, tk!” yelled someone from the back of the class. “What if the girl doesn’t like white birds and prefers little white sausages instead.”
Now the class was laughing openly. A couple of the guys started flapping their arms in the back of the class, while others made vulgar motions with their fingers.
“All right, all right, Gentlemen,” said Green. “Set
tle down. We’re not in kindergarten here.”
Slipping on the sweat that dripped from his hairline, Sully’s eyes popped out of his ears and rolled around the sides of his head. It felt strange, but it enabled him to stand sideways with one eye on his PowerPoint and one eye on the class.
“This is more than a little obscure, Brewster,” said Green. “Are you going to get to the point?”
In answer, Sully pressed the remote again, but instead of his next slide appearing, the computer screen died.
“Brewster?” said Green.
Sully fumbled with the remote, but the computer was unresponsive.
“I’ve got it, Sir.” Dodger vaulted to the front of the classroom and took the remote from Sully’s hand.
“Are you even in my class, young man?” Green squinted at Dodger, whose features were mostly hidden under his ball cap, which he had turned to the front.
“Ah, here’s the problem.” Dodger ignored the question. “Just a disconnected cord, Sir.”
The computer sparked to life under Dodger’s flying fingers, and, as he pressed the icon to reopen the presentation, he handed the remote back to Sully.
“She’s all yours, Sally.”
“Get on with it, Brewster,” said Green. “And try to get back on topic.”
Flustered, Sully looked at his feet as he pressed the remote, so it was only after the class erupted with laughter that he looked at the screen himself.
Staring back at him was a shot of himself, shoveling handfuls of tampons into his backpack. A caption along the bottom read: Always carry extra in case of emergency.
Turning to face the screen, Sully put one hand up to block the image while pressing the off button with his other. Unresponsive to Sully’s efforts, the image broke up into little confetti pieces that flew off the screen, only to be replaced by another and then another picture of Sully, tripping down the school stairs with dozens of tampons trailing behind him.
Sully pointed the remote right at the screen and jabbed at the buttons until the screen went black. The laughter cut off abruptly as if it, too, were controled by the remote.
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