By the next morning, the school is mostly itself again, with only a trace of yesterday’s weird agreeability. Even that disappears when Ethan shows Kevin the book he found: Another Fine Myth, with Skeeve the magician, Aahz the demon, Gleep the dragon, and the ivy-haired assassin Tananda, her short dress spray-painted onto her curves. The four of them march along a cobblestone path between hillsides studded with castles and houses and evergreens.
Kevin can’t believe it. “Where did you unearth that?”
“Lucky find. The B. Dalton in Park Plaza. They had the other three, too. Tananda is hot, isn’t she? Way hotter than I pictured her.”
“Wait. There are three others?”
“Yeah, mine and yours and Myth Conceptions, plus a new one called Hit or Myth, with Skeeve and Gleep and that same absentee unicorn on the cover. Except I bought this one, and it was their only copy. I’m waiting for my dad to give me my allowance, then I’m going to snag the others.”
The bell sounds, and a couple of latecomers slip into their desks. The door stutters closed on its hinged brass doorstop. As Mr. Garland takes roll, Ethan tucks the novel into his backpack, trading it for his notebook, which he opens to a new page and headlines with the date and the name of the class. That handwriting! So well scrubbed, so meticulous. One time, in sixth grade, Thad said that it reminded him of a penis. It was such a strange remark to make, and yet so unexplainably true, that Kevin has never forgotten it. He wonders if he can convince his mom to drive him to Park Plaza tonight. It’s important, he’ll say. Mom, I have something I need to do. It’s important. It’s really important, Mom. I have someplace I need to go. I cannot get there fast enough.
They are crossing the wooded side of the building, Thad and Kenneth and Kevin, carving their way down the narrow belt of grass-stitched dirt. To the left of them are the red bricks, to the right the bare brown trees. Before them is the path, running along the slenderest of threads before it empties into the yellowing schoolyard. There is no door for Kevin to step through, no clearing where he can turn around. There is only this roofless natural corridor he cuts shorter with every stride, a rift between the bricks and the trees where their voices turn sharp and echo.
Bateman was with them when it started, standing at the light box of the Coke machine, but he peeled away before they left the lunchroom.
Now it is just the three of them. No one else.
Thad. Kenneth. Kevin.
Except that Kevin is out in front, and Thad and Kenneth are baying along behind him. So Kevin, then Thad and Kenneth, and between them a terrible howling few steps of space, which keeps diminishing and expanding, so that he never knows how close their voices will be when they come, or if he will feel their breath whisking across the back of his neck.
“Hey, Kevin, is it snack time yet?”
“By now it must be snack time.”
“Yeah, isn’t it snack time, Kevin?”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I think I’m ready for a snack.”
“For snack time let’s share some M&M’s.”
“M&M’s make friends.”
It’s as if they are tied to him with elastic cords. Each time they start to fall behind, he accidentally yanks them closer.
Maybe, Kevin thinks, if he doesn’t say anything, if he just carries on walking with his coat wrapped around his body, holding his face to the smoke-gray sky, they will wear themselves out, the day will take some unimaginable hairpin turn, and they will change back into his friends. Yesterday they were his friends.
“Let’s get some M&M’s at the gas station,” Thad says. “The gas station is where I like to get my M&M’s. Where do you get your M&M’s, Kenneth?”
“Same as everyone. Duh. The gas station.”
“Me, too. The Superstop.”
“It’s super! The Superstop is super!”
“Super-buh.”
“Superb,” Kenneth agrees. “The perfect place for chips and candy. Today, for snack time, I don’t know about you guys, but I recommend we walk to the gas station.”
“Hey, Kevin, have you ever made a super stop?”
“Will you be our pal—our supe—our super pal, Kevin?”
“Can we spend the night with you and eat Steak-umms for dinner?”
“Super Steak-umms.”
“Steak-umms at dinnertime! And before bedtime, at our pre-bedtime snack time, can we eat some Crystal Light powder with a spoon, Kevin?”
“We love Steak-umms and Crystal Light powder.”
“And M&M’s.”
“Yeah, M&M’s.”
“What do you say, Kevin?”
“Kevin.”
“Kevin.”
“Hey, Kevin.”
“Super Kevin.”
They are conducting an experiment. How many times can they say his name before it will become meaningless, like the pulsing of crickets, an empty, ugly music? What are the softest tools they can use to hurt him? The food he likes. The words he uses. What else?
“Hey, Kevin, when we spend the night, should we go to the mall or to the zoo?”
“Will you buy us some M&M’s at the mall?”
“Or the zoo.”
“Yeah, or the zoo.”
“Some M&M’s and shoe stickers?”
“And then will you lose the comic books you bought and start crying?”
“Is the giraffe your favorite animal at the zoo, Kevin?”
“Yeah, what’s your favorite animal at the zoo, Kevin?”
“The giraffe? Is the giraffe your favorite animal?”
“Everybody has a favorite animal.”
“It’s favorites time! Time for favorites!”
They have turned the corner. Before them stretches the real world, where kids stand on the patio of the school eating chips and sandwiches and the clouds cascade over the parking lot, their reflections floating along on a great curved river of windshields. He sees Chuck and Alex in their letter jackets, and some ninth-graders massed by the hallway’s glass doors, and girls, too, at least a dozen girls, with their white Keds and purses, earrings and cosmetics mirrors, and the sight of all those people whose lives are theirs, completely theirs, their lives and not his, people who have spent the last few minutes mingling in front of the school with no one looking for ways to hurt them, makes him feel unusually bold.
So far the ordeal—and that’s what it is: an ordeal—has been private, a secret. Kevin senses that if he can take the next moment in his hands and bend it with just the right demonstration of relaxed confidence, like a strongman flexing a metal pipe, Thad and Kenneth will slip back into the habit of liking him. They’ll do it. They will. They won’t think twice.
As disinterestedly as he can, then, he pivots around and tells them, “Cut it out, guys.”
But he has miscalculated.
They transform the words into a chant: “Cut it out, cut it out, cut it out, cut it out, guys.” They stalk him across the grass as they recite it—just Kenneth at first, but then, quickly, both of them together. BOOM boom-boom. BOOM boom-boom. BOOM boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom BOOM. How do they agree so easily on the melody, without even rehearsing? It is a marvel. Cut the record and ship it to the stores and it will sell a million copies, filling the Camelots and Sam Goodys of the world. You’ll hear it playing long after the needle has lifted from the platter. It’s your heart, that’s why, and it won’t stop beating the time. And when the record wins a Grammy, they’ll accept the trophy with an air of dumfounded good fortune. Where did it come from, such a beautiful song? They honestly couldn’t say. Call it a gift from God.
They are following Kevin along the rim of the bluff, and nearby someone is laughing about something, and Carina DeCiccio slings her heavy black hair out of her eyes, and he has always been so nice to her, he’s such a sweetheart, such a cutie, and maybe everyone is watching him, or maybe no one is, but don’t ask him, because damn it if he’s going to look.
Then the three of them are in the parking lot, Thad and Kenneth and Kevin, clip
ping through the aisles of cars. Thad interrupts the chant with, “Hey, Kevin. Hey, guy. Will you be our pal?”
“Yeah, our favorite pal?”
“Hey, little pal. Hey, little buddy.”
“Our favorite little super pal guy?”
“Do you think Dolly Parton is super?”
“Dolly Parton!” Kenneth can’t believe he didn’t think of it first. “That’s good—Dolly Parton.”
“Do you think boobs are super?”
“Yeah, Kevin, don’t you wish you had big boobs?”
“Are big boobs your favorites?”
“Big protruding boobs, like Dolly Parton’s?”
“Protrusions.”
“Protrusions are super.”
“Is that why you wore that dress on Halloween, Kevin?”
“What are your favorite protrusions?”
Kevin knows better than to answer, but “I mean it,” he hears himself saying. “Cut it out,” and the trigger proves irresistible. They forget about Dolly Parton and take up the chant again. CUT it-out. CUT it-out. CUT it-out. Cut-it-out GUYS.
HERE he-is. AT the-school. WITH his-friends. Pun-ish-ing HIM. ALL he-wants. THEM to-tell. HIM is-why. What-did-he DO?
Thad tugs at the handle of a pickup, and it springs out of his fingers and chomps at the door. The sound is like a hole in the air.
“So, Kevin, could you fit your dick in this lock?”
“Hey, guy,” Kenneth says to Thad, “cut it out.”
“I’m sorry, guy.”
“That’s okay, guy.”
“Don’t mention it, guy.”
Then Kenneth wonders, “Now which is it? I forget, so you’ll have to remind me, Kevin. Is your dick wide enough but not long enough, or is it long enough but not wide enough?”
“My dick is my own business.”
“Hey, hey, Jesus, Kevin. Whoa there. Why all the dick talk?”
“Yeah, guy. Why so much dick?”
“I think the guy has dick on the brain.”
Once, in fourth grade, during recess, a bad kick of his sent the soccer ball leapfrogging over the yard into the street, where it burst beneath the tires of an eighteen-wheeler. A startling double explosion—Bang! Bang!—and then “Oh, man,” the kids groaned, and “Great! Now what?” and Kevin crawled under a car in the visitors’ lot. He lay there staring into the otherworld of springs and axles, thinking how funny it was of him, how clever, to persuade his classmates that he was hiding in embarrassment, when look at him, just look, resting happily on the cool asphalt, faking everyone out. He remembers it all so clearly.
The engine was painted with sprays of orange dirt. They looked like goldfish tails. The sun fell at a slant, making hunchbacks out of the shadows of the tires.
“I’m not paying any attention to you guy—to either one of you,” he says.
“La la la” is Thad’s answer, the tune of some daydreamy little kid tracing butterflies through a meadow. “La la la. La la la,” and Kenneth follows along with him. “La la la la la.”
Their tongues add a strange thrust to each syllable, as if something wholly beyond their control is happening. The sound is an egg, and they can’t keep it from hatching.
“Is it snack time yet, Kevin? You still haven’t told us if it’s snack time.”
“Yeah, can you point us to the nearest Superstop?”
“La la la.”
“La la la la.”
“La Kevin la snack la la.”
“La Steak-umms la la.”
“Hey, Kevin, are you still going with that hot girl from Eight Wheels?”
“Yeah, is that hot girl still your girlfriend? Why haven’t you introduced us to her yet?”
Hard to believe he has heard the same voices coming from two ragged old sleeping bags on the floor of his bedroom—Kenneth and Thad, the best of his best friends, mimicking Coach Dale, or warbling that Freddie Krueger song, or arguing over pinup girls: Heather Locklear or Heather Thomas?
Kenneth says Kevin’s name again, and Thad asks him what’s wrong, is something wrong, pal, he sure hopes nothing is wrong. They pursue him past the cars at the end of the lot, and then over the crooked line of pavement that vanishes into the dirt, and then around back of the building, where the PE class has been playing horseshoes in the afternoon, flinging U’s of steel at the two notched stakes of rebar in the soil. If they reach the first stake, Kevin says to himself, he will stop walking. He will face them and demand they leave him alone, because it’s not going to work, Thad, he won’t let you bait him, Kenneth, he’s one hundred percent totally fucking serious.
His voice will not break. He will keep himself from flinching.
Okay, if they reach the second.
“You didn’t answer us, Kevin. What’s wrong?”
“ ’Cause we’re only trying to help. How can we help if you won’t talk to us?”
“I have an idea. Why don’t we share some M&M’s?”
“M&M’s make friends.”
Kevin whirls around and says, “Why are you doing this? Leave me alone. I’m dead serious.”
Kenneth makes scare-hands. “Deadly!” he says. “I’m deadly! Total deadliness!”
Thad starts blinking with a queer sunburnt expression. It looks as if he’s waking from a poolside nap, becoming aware little by little of the sting in his senses. Kenneth says, “Perfect. That’s perfect,” and duplicates the expression.
There they are, their eyes glimmering with imaginary tears, their mouths open just wide enough to show that their teeth don’t meet, and the awkwardness, the fretfulness, the amazement in their faces—Kevin realizes that it is their imitation of him. They must have practiced it, and carefully, when he wasn’t around.
This is the big premiere: Kevin About to Cry. Lights. Music. Curtains.
“Is it crying time?” Thad says.
“It’s time to cry,” Kenneth says. “Time to cry, guy.”
“Go the fuck to hell,” Kevin says. “I mean it.”
Then the bell for fifth period rings, and they shadow him inside, repeating, “Go the fuck to hell, go the fuck to hell, go the fuck to hell,” the most hilarious joke they have ever heard in a long lifetime of hilarious jokes.
He can’t believe he still has half a day of school to survive—math and SRA, then PE and the locker room, then the slow parade of parents in their vans and Broncos and station wagons, with Thad and Kenneth waiting beside him on the sidewalk for their rides. For all he knows, they might decide to start the whole routine over again. Kevin’s mind won’t stop replaying the details. Snack time gas station Crystal Light Dolly Parton la la la Eight Wheels is something wrong, guy? Worse, he keeps confronting the sight of himself on their faces. He’s not vain or conceited or anything. It’s not like he stands at the mirror every day brimming with tears to examine what it does to his reflection. And the truth is that unless you count that age-old photo of him on the toddler train at the amusement park, sobbing in his white shirt and red denims, today marks the first time he has seen how he looks teetering on the verge of crying. So that’s him, he thinks—a little kid blinking at the unfairness of it all.
Lately he has been seeing the kind of person he is more and more clearly. He could never be anyone but himself. Who would have guessed, though, how much of himself he did not yet know?
IN-the-halls. EV-ery-one. SEEMS-to-be. Staring-at-HIM.
ALL-right-boys. TIME-to-start. BOM-bard-ment. Go-get-dressed-OUT.
SOME-thing-wrong. MIS-ter-B? DO-you-need—? No-Coach-I’m-FINE.
And the most humiliating thing of all is how long the two of them must have been storing up their material. Kevin imagines a thousand conversations about him, stretching back through Thanksgiving and Halloween, homecoming and Mazzio’s, the countless arcade trips and sleepovers of the summer, back as far as Mississippi, as far as sixth grade. He can practically hear their voices: Have you seen the way negro looks when he’s trying not to cry? I know, and he has to have a favorite everything. A favorite state cap
ital. A favorite monster. “It’s gotta be the werewolf.” The werewolf! “Oh, yeah, it’s gotta be the werewolf.” And Holy Christ, what’s with that “la la la” crap?
That night, in bed, though he stays as quiet as he can, he can’t help producing a funny faint animal noise, like the rickety breaths the footballers make in the weight room, which is okay, he supposes, as long as his mom doesn’t hear him. Finally, some membrane or fiber in his throat seems to snap like a piece of chalk and he falls silent. He didn’t realize his body could make such a sound. What the hell was it?
The next morning Kenneth’s mom is on carpool duty. Kevin can’t explain why, but something about the way Kenneth slouches in the passenger seat, fast-forwarding through the sucky songs on a Night Ranger tape, makes Kevin guess that the lesson, or experiment, or punishment, or initiation—he doesn’t know what to call it—the ordeal. He guesses that it’s over. Bateman says something about Mrs. Bissard, and Kevin makes the usual joke, “Mrs. Bizarre,” and Kenneth cracks out a quick note of laughter.
And that’s when Kevin is sure of it: it’s finished, exhausted. He’s officially out of danger.
At lunch, though, when he approaches their table, Kenneth and Thad begin their interrogation again—“What’s up, guy?” “How ya doing, guy?”—and Oh God, he thinks, where is he supposed to sit?
They get up and follow him as he tries to leave. This time he stakes out a deserted patch of wall beside the lockers.
“So what about that girl from Eight Wheels, Kevin? You two still going together?”
“Damn, man, that chick was fine. What did you say her name was?”
“Yeah, Kevin, you told us her name, now didn’t you? What was it again?”
“Cheryl?”
“Wanda?”
“Priscilla?”
The first two are obviously fictitious. The third is the name Thad uses for his fat-lady jokes.
“It’s Sonya,” Kevin tells them, and maybe it even sounds plausible, but in reality he made it up last year when he decided to trick everyone into believing he had a girlfriend. Sonya liked to call him every night at 8:45—8:45 on the dot. Sonya told him about all the films she recorded off HBO, Showtime, and the Movie Channel, mainly musicals—Grease 2 and Eddie and the Cruisers, Annie and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, plus her favorite, The Pirate Movie. Sonya liked him because he was smart and funny. She was one of the older girls who had colonized the pinball machines at the skating rink, the same machines Kevin and the others adopted on dares to deliver battery-shocks to themselves, standing deep back between them and bridging the current with their fingers. She is real, but he has never actually spoken to her. “And like I said, we broke up.”