by Kate Gray
All the other Second Formers had Charlie Brown kites, now pieces. All the others went back in the building of stone blocks this way and stone blocks that way. Kyle never came in. He didn’t come to the meeting at the headmaster’s office at the warning bell for dinner. I checked the table he was assigned for dinner, and he wasn’t there.
The next day, Kyle’s kite, caught in the maple limbs reaching into the sky, made a flapping sound. Without leaves any more, the maples made no sound. With a kite torn and caught in the limbs, the maples beat the blue sky.
Song / Study Hall
Besides lab books to grade during study hall, I have to prepare. Big time. Mr. Forward-Thinking White wants me to prepare the students to see The Day After, some hyped-up Cold War movie about the day after nuclear holocaust. Made for TV. Great timing after accusations of meddling in air space, after a Korean jetliner was obliterated in a test of nerves. I’m supposed to teach the physics of nuclear energy and weaponry and, as the headmaster puts it, “nuclear survival.”
“As if,” Carla would say.
At least White wants discussion. The plan is not to foist the horror upon the innocents, but to expose them and to help them understand. Tomorrow night the whole school is watching the TV movie together. Even Kyle, with the nuclear mushroom cloud on his notebook. The students excited to get out of chapel are Children of Inertia. Others with real fear of real possibilities are Children of the Cold War. Like Kyle.
But tonight Kyle is Mr. Chuckles. I’ve never seen him so smiley. His hair is slicked down and parted, not sticking in every direction. He has his Tim-Tim’s blazer on, and his tie is tied evenly. Brochure Cover Boy. His books are stacked in front of him, instead of scattered around his feet. His notebook, with the nuclear epicenter on the cover, is spread flat across the desk, and he’s bent over some white-lined paper. If I’m not mistaken, his fingers are clean. He’s digging his pencil into the paper and writing something. Every few words he looks up, laughs like a kid who’s discovered snow.
Maybe he’s writing a comic strip for Ms. Alta’s class. Probably not a Geography assignment. Maybe English. Maybe he’s writing a love letter to Carla. Maybe not.
One time reading Bloom County to Kim, I got her laughing so hard her IV almost popped out. The comic strip was the one where Opus has amnesia until he finds out that Diane Sawyer married Eddie Murphy.
The nurse who Kim and I called Ms. Weasel came through the curtain to check Kim’s temperature, like clockwork, and she said, “Sir, Ms. Song is not to be agitated.”
And I said, “Laughter does not agitate. That requires an entirely different motion.”
“Mr. Song,” Nurse Weasel said. “Try to behave.” And she spun on her thick white shoes, slapped the curtain aside, and vanished, although that takes an entirely different motion as well.
We only laughed harder, me in my metal chair next to her bed, Kim holding her stomach and falling back into the stack of pillows on the hospital bed.
Kyle is laughing hard, too. The other students near his desk turn their heads to look at him, but they’re used to his noises. One person throws a wad of paper. Kyle knocks it away with one hand. Laughs again. He’s all smiles. Mr. Happy-to-Be-Here.
The door hinge to the study hall squeaks even if opened slowly. There’s Alta sticking her head in.
“Mr. Song,” Alta says. Her neck is long like the rest of her. “May I speak with you?”
I nod.
Without causing friction between my chair and the wood floor, I leave my stack of lab books and make it out the door. She’s still in her chapel clothes, skirt, blazer, penny loafers.
“Is Kyle in there?” She crosses her arms.
“As usual.”
She smiles a half smile into her cheek. “That’s funny,” she says, “he missed half my class, an appointment, and dinner.” She looks down at her feet. Her body is so muscled she has to tip forward to see over her crossed arms.
“Who knows the mind of a Second Former.”
“That’s for sure,” she says. “But Donny Zurkus is on the war path.”
“What for?”
“I’m not sure. Both of them were to meet me at White’s before dinner. Only Donny showed up.” The fingers of one hand stroke her forehead.
“I can tell you that Mr. Zurkus is asleep in study hall, and Kyle is quite ebullient this evening.”
“Kyle?”
“Mr. Smiles. He’s writing something and laughing.”
“Well,” she says, “this Donny thing can wait, I guess. I’ll find out when White’s free tomorrow morning, and leave you a note tonight for Kyle.” Her hand drops from her face. Laws of gravity work for falling objects. There’s no law for concern falling away. Alta’s face no longer has the emotion it did when she walked in.
“Fine idea.”
What I don’t say is that I saw Kyle meet Carla in the cornfield before dinner. What I don’t say is that Donny could sneak into Kyle’s cubby tonight. But it’s late in the evening, the lab books are not grading themselves, and what I could say is unscientific.
Rower-Dyke Alta, her skirt and blazer, turns the hall into a cave with her tall walk, her shoulders rotating each step. Optical illusion. But since the beginning of the year, since the faculty cocktail party on the lawn of the main building, she’s shorter. A friend’s death by river makes any body shrink. No object resists that much gravity.
Back through the squeaky door, I return to my pile of lab books in time for the bell to ring. Study hall turns into racetrack. Masters and Mistresses of Underachievement spring from their desks, grab their books, and sprint out the door. Donny Zurkus stretches one arm high in the air, looks over at Kyle, drops his arm, grabs the book he slobbered on, and takes off.
Not Kyle.
Cover-Boy Kyle has two hands on his desk. Between them is his open notebook, his white lined paper, and the letter or whatever, written in pencil. I swear, he’s smiling. His elbows straighten out, his palms press flat on the desk, and he grins at the paper. King of the Contented. No box or bat or bluebird to fold.
“Mr. Harney,” I say, “time to go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, sir.” He’s still looking at his paper, not turning around to look at me.
“Let’s go, young man.”
“Yes, sir.”
He slides the paper off the edge of the desk with one hand and picks it up with the other, careful not to wrinkle it. Out of his notebook he pulls an envelope. Then, he folds the paper, makes the creases with the pad of his hand, slides the paper in, licks the envelope, and seals it by patting it down. While I am Mr. Patient, he addresses the envelope, goes back to the notebook, takes stamps out of the inside flap, and puts one on. He presses the stamp in place and pats it and carries the letter like a feather in his hand. The letter is all he looks at as he walks.
He passes by me without looking up.
He doesn’t see the door open in front of him, and Donny Zurkus standing there with his minions. Mr. Menace.
“Well, Zippy hasn’t left, yet,” Donny says.
Kyle looks up, looks at each of the five boys, and his right hand, with the envelope, tries to find his jacket pocket to tuck the letter in. The envelope bobs up and down until it slips into his pocket.
“Mr. Zurkus, get out of the way,” I say. Now I know Ms. Alta should’ve taken Kyle to see White.
“Mr. Song, we’re just escorting Kyle back to the dorm. We’re his bodyguards, aren’t we, Kyle?” Donny’s face is a bad commercial, all smiles and cutesy wink. Mr. Ingenuous.
Inside a ring of Fifth Formers, Kyle is small, a ball in a pinball machine. The bigger boys start to pat him, push him, pretend to be a pal. He bounces between the hands. But he’s smiling. His smile is soft and big, and his body is loose, swaying between the hands pushing him.
“Enough,” I say, “leave him alone.”
“Hey, Mikey! He likes it,” Donny says, like Kyle is on a box of Life cereal. Even
Donny appears a little surprised at the way Kyle’s neck sways as his body moves between the boys’ hands. Donny looks at me with something small in his eyes. If his eyes were someone else’s, the look would be a question, asking for approval. In this moment, Donny shows how young he is.
But five big boys are bouncing one small one between them. My throat opens up, the right space for the right amount of air, and my voice comes out loud. “Donny Zurkus, cut it out.”
All the boys step back from Kyle. Kyle’s body makes a pendulum motion even though the boys aren’t pushing him any more.
“And we thought Zippy was just Alta’s pet.”
Donny’s henchmen smile.
“Mr. Zurkus, you will report to Mr. White in the morning. You will return to your dorm right now. You will remain in your room for the entire evening.”
As if I can make Donny stay in his room.
The other boys, lemmings all, turn away. Donny takes a few steps back from Kyle, and he raises one arm, points at Kyle, keeps pointing as he walks backwards. He tilts his head and sights down the length of his arm. He keeps Kyle in his sights until he is about to run into the wall and drops his hand, spins around. With so much show, Mr. Bad Apple acts more middle school than applying to colleges.
Kyle doesn’t say anything. Stands there. He sticks his hand in the pocket of his jacket.
“Got to go, Mr. Song. Off to off myself,” Kyle says. Study hall often ends this way with Kyle making a joke about his demise. A body in motion. His hand in the air, he waves it like a royal wave down the hall. As if he is king for a moment. The hall is bigger with Kyle walking down, the brown linoleum floor more shiny. Like a hospital ward, but shiny.
Taylor / Plato’s Face
Strange details stuck with me. Time: 11:40 p.m. A knock at the door like a stick on a trash can. Jack Song stood there with Terence. Jack Song was jeans and a T-shirt in the cold, and Terence was plaid bathrobe and matching slippers. Jack’s big hand, white on Terence’s dark neck.
Jack’s sentences were words like “Excuse me,” “terrible,” and “asked to speak with you.”
Something in me was ringing, like that tin can hit by a stick.
“Come in,” I said. My robe thin in the cold of them passing, and Jack Song’s hand on Terence.
They bent down at the same rate, both the same way, to sit.
Terence looked straight ahead, not at me, at nothing. His eyes were wide open, like windows without curtains.
“We didn’t know. My friend. Flies. How we knew. Dead. We ran.” Each word was flat like he had to discover each word before he said it, and what he discovered was the shell of the word. The ringing in me had a hole in the center; the sound was circular and echoed.
Jack Song kept his hand on Terence. Jack Song affectionate.
“And Tommy, he froze. On the corner, went stiff, slammed the wall. We kept running.” Terence looked up into Jack’s eyes, then turned to look at mine. Terence’s eyes were windows with no light getting through.
Next to Terence, Jack was gone. His face was the image of a face, not the thing itself. The ringing in me turned to clicking, the stick on the can, now a clapper on a broken bell, the sound dry.
11:50 p.m.: Jack Song left Terence with me. Terence quit talking altogether. His eyes were windows with no light.
12:10 a.m.: The headmaster called.
“Is it true?” I said to Mr. White.
“Regrettably. Alex Jeffers went with Kyle in the ambulance. The family’s on the way.” White’s voice sounded like a radio announcer at a sporting event. His voice was wrong.
“Is Kyle okay?”
“Don’t know. In the meantime, please keep Terence with you.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, you must watch for contagion.”
Bumps on skin? Quarantines? I had no idea.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
12:15 a.m.: A glass of milk. Terence swallowed hard, looked down after each gulp. He moved off the couch long enough for me to unfold it into a bed, put sheets and blankets on. The covers up to his neck made his head small, and his fingers curled around the ends. He looked up at the ceiling. The tight curls on his forehead were soft.
Terence staring at the ceiling, me sitting on the edge of the fold-out couch, the world was my refrigerator turning off, the click of the clock flipping numbers, and a Canada goose flying over. A lone goose, one cry, two tones, one breaking into the other, over and over, long and raw in the night quiet.
Song / Vacuum
There is no science for this.
Taylor / Contagion
12:30 a.m. Carla is curls and wool sweater and push. With the door open a little, she walks past me and lets out loud words.
“I don’t fucking believe it.”
“Quiet. Terence is asleep.”
She keeps walking until she sees the pull-out couch, then turns her stiff way and walks straight back to me, doesn’t stop. Her arms inside my arms, her face turns into my neck, her body presses flat against mine.
“What’re we going to do?” she asks into my neck, like we do things together.
Her arms around me. My arms wrap around her back. I pull her into me. Sarah gone and now Kyle. I am sinking.
We are standing there, in the middle of my hall, and Carla’s arms tight, her head on my shoulder, her breath, and the walls are wavy, the floor soft. We rock back and forth, and the goose overhead in the night sky is loud. It cracks the sky open.
“What about lights-out?” I say. My head backs away from her, and my hands go to her upper arms. Her eyes move from one of my eyes to the other, and we are still too close. The floor is still soft.
“Whatever,” she says and bends her head down. My arms straighten out, hold her away. “Nobody’ll know I’m not in the dorm. Screw it.” She bends from her waist and leans her forehead on my sternum.
She says, “He’s gone, Taylor, he’s gone.” Since when does she call me Taylor?
“Maybe not.”
“He’s dead.”
“Says who?” The question feels young in my mouth.
“Mr. Song and Mr. Jeffers. They tried to save him.”
The only room where we can talk and not wake up Terence is my bedroom. “In here,” I say.
There’s no place to sit but on the bed. “Have a seat.” I point to it, the covers pulled back from the first time I answered the door. The light on the bedside table makes everything in the room half light. I sit on the floor, my back against the wall.
Carla sits on the edge of the bed, her boots dark on the beige carpet. She tucks her arms around her middle, and her back and shoulders curl around her arms.
“Tell me,” I say.
She rocks forward. Maybe Carla is the wrong person to tell me. And it is the curl of Carla’s body around something sore, some hole in her, that makes me think I don’t want to know. Maybe I don’t want to hear.
After a little while, after the wind clicks branches together on the maple outside, Carla says, “There’s no way. No fucking way. I just saw him. He was just there, in the cornfield. We talked. He can’t. No way.” She says it like she can change what happened.
Maybe this is White’s warning. Maybe the way things spread is the bad thing. Maybe what I hear isn’t true. Kyle. Zippy. Zippo, the students called him.
Carla says, “Around eleven, maybe, Rambo crashes through my door. Her eyes are totally popping out of her head. She says, ‘Kyle’s dead.’
“‘Shut up.’ But I know Rambo’s no drama queen.
“‘Serious,’ Rambo says, totally serious. Standing in front of me, she’s panting, big time, with her eyes all bug-eyed. She says, ‘Donny Zurkus killed him. Somebody said so.’ And I don’t believe her. So, I tell her somebody’s wrong. Kids don’t kill kids here.
“Rambo stops pacing around the room, and her arms go up on her hips.
“I say, ‘What the fuck?’
“And Rambo says, ‘The Second Formers were playing in the little common area by th
e cubbies, and they’re wrestling, all of them, like Tommy and Terence and the other little guys, and they see Kyle hanging from the rafters, but he always pretends, so they didn’t, they don’t, you know, think.’
“‘So, a couple of them fell through his curtain, and bumped him, and he was all stiff and blue. They thought he was still kidding until they saw flies, like, around his eyes. They thought Donny Zurkus made Kyle jump off a chair, or something.’
“Kids don’t kill kids at St. Tim’s. ‘Donny didn’t,’ I say, ‘kill him.’
“‘How do you know?’ Rambo says.
“‘No way Donny Zurkus did it,’ I say, and Rambo gets tired of me saying the same thing. And inside I feel this molten thing happen. In my throat and going up. My throat fills and the back of my mouth, and pretty soon my eyes rip open. Tears shoot out.
“And Rambo says, ‘I’m sorry, Carla.’ And I almost slug her.”
Carla looks at me like I’m a life ring. But I am way off shore in an ocean with winds rising, and there are peaks of dark waves between us. Carla tells me everyone thinks Donny Zurkus killed Kyle.
“Murder at Prep School” in three-inch letters will top the papers in the morning. Tomorrow the media will drive the black driveway through maples, and there will be TV trucks and lights and reporters with fake concern.
In my bedroom there is only half light and half sound and two people across a room. In a room with no words, I keep seeing Kyle. Kyle at the back of the classroom. Kyle raising a mallet to smash his city at the epicenter of a nuclear blast. Kyle running with Terence to launch his kite.
Carla looks up and shakes her head. “You know what’s weird?”