Changing Michael (3 page)

I should probably consider a career in law enforcement. I'm already a gifted detective. I wanted to catch Michael after school but wasn't sure which exit he'd take. I was pretty sure the student parking lot wasn't an option—if Michael had a car, it would have been well-known and occasionally vandalized. And as far as I knew, he didn't have (or ride with) any close friends.

Hence, my deduction: Michael either walked or took the bus.

Our school isn't too far from Washington, D.C. Maybe twenty minutes without traffic (something only absent between 3:30 a.m. and 3:45 a.m.). With traffic, it's anywhere from one to five hours. The greater Washington, D.C. area has been spreading outwards like an overflowing toilet for many years and will eventually flood all of Maryland and most of Virginia.

As a result, Alexander High School sits at the epicenter of suburbia, which means it's surrounded by housing developments.

These developments connect to other developments, and between each subdivision are strip malls, office buildings, and miles of traffic, on and on, forever and ever, amen.

But back to Michael.

I decided to conduct my stake-out in front of the school. I didn't think it would be too hard to spot him. I'd just look for the floppy hair.

Anyway, as I'm deep in thought, Michael pops out of the building and immediately scurries down the sidewalk past the waiting buses. He's already got a decent lead, so I take off running to catch up with him, but then realize I'm jogging by the parked buses and a captive audience, so I slow down to a fast walk instead—that is, until I remember how ridiculous speed walkers look. So, finally, I settle for a brisk but casual pace.

According to Mom (who is frequently unreliable), there was a small section of woods to one side of our school a long time ago. Now, a thick stand of townhouses has graciously replaced most of the unsightly trees. Once, I knew a few kids who lived in Village Oaks (although most of the oaks appeared to have been executed). On the other side of Alexander, the houses were older, smaller brick ones with a couple of unassuming apartment buildings thrown in for good measure. I knew the area but didn't know anyone on this side.

I followed Michael down the sidewalk and into the little brick neighborhood. I hung back a bit, not sure what he'd do if he realized I was following him. I figured his place had to be close. Even though the first few rows of houses seemed small, they were fairly tidy and not too bad.

But as we got farther away from the school, I knew the houses would get smaller and more dilapidated. Eventually, we hit a main road, and the houses at that end were pretty awful. It was like the builders, when they started working on the houses near the school, had been eager and energetic. But as they kept building, they got more and more tired and started to get a little sloppy, and by the end of the job, they just slapped everything together before lunch, left their trash and tools in the yard, and headed to the nearest bar for a three-day bender.

But I was pretty sure Michael didn't live down at that end.

Michael was a geek. Geeks live in nice, clean houses, with geeky parents who make lots of money programming computers to run the world.

Any minute now, I expected Michael to turn down a side road or into a front yard, but he just kept going, past the neater houses and past the bad ones, too.

And it wasn't just the houses. The yards we passed became more disheveled the farther we got from the school. Most were cluttered with rusting swing sets, or sprinkled with garbage instead of grass. Some had plastic toddler cars that looked as if either the sun or an older brother had set fire to part of the vehicle. One gutter that ran parallel to the sidewalk was an avid collector of crushed beer cans and filthy cigarette butts.

Back near the school, some of the houses had tight little garages that could accommodate one, maybe two clown cars on a good day. Down at this end, there was only the occasional carport, and the majority of these tilted in one direction or another and probably wouldn't make it past the next windy day.

I came around a slight bend in the road I was following; I could see the main road that intersected mine about a hundred yards ahead.

“What the heck?” I muttered, then wondered,
What if he doesn't live on this road? What if we've got another couple miles or something? What if it gets even worse?

I was slowing a little, thinking perhaps I'd make a home visit some other time, when Michael
finally
turned down a driveway.

Not even a driveway really—just a section of broken asphalt. The chain-link fence around the front yard looked like someone had either dropped cinderblocks on it or driven a car into it a couple of times. Michael's house was a little brick box with small windows, brown grass, and pathetic little bushes near the front door.

A couple of broken-down cars had passed out across the weed-infested driveway. Their hoods were gone, and most of their engines were scattered beside them as if someone had torn through looking for an Easter egg.

Definitely not what I had expected.

It was the perfect house for Leonard, or someone who reeked of cigarettes and pot, but Michael was just a geek—the kind that reads science-fiction, plays
Magic
, and gets all flushed and out of breath describing a computer game. (I'd never actually seen Michael play
Magic
but figured it was a given.)

Michael had disappeared into the house when I got there. I stood near the fence, wondering if there was a mutant dog hiding around the corner, waiting for me to step into the yard. I opened the gate and swung it back and forth. The noise was loud enough to send any dog into hysterics. No barking.

Eventually, I stepped through and was halfway to the front door when someone popped out of a side door around the corner of the house. It was Michael, slouching down the driveway with a bag of trash. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“Selling knives.”

It took him a moment to process the remark. I don't know whether he got it or not because he didn't bother to smile. Instead, he dropped the trash bag into a beat-up trashcan and took off down the sidewalk. I had a fence to deal with, so it took me a minute to catch up with him.

“No wonder no one comes to visit you,” I said.

He turned on me like I'd slapped him.

“I came all this way just to see you. You're supposed to invite me in and feed me.”

He relaxed a little, which meant he fell into his old slouch and walked off with his eyes glued to the street. We were on the sidewalk, moving away from his house and toward Route 30.

“Where we going?” I asked.

He glanced at me before answering. “Bookstore.”

“Adult bookstore?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He didn't answer. I waited a moment, then said, “So this world is transitory, huh?”

Michael glanced at me. We were both on the sidewalk, although it was a pretty tight fit. We couldn't quite walk next to each other, so I was about half a pace behind.

Having a conversation with Michael was more than a little frustrating. Every time I made a comment, it was like offering food to a stray dog—Michael didn't seem to know whether I was going to hand him the food or give him a smack.

“Yes,” he said.

“
Fleeting
?”

“Yes.”

We came to the end of his street. Route 30 was clogged with traffic. Along this artery, strip malls and small office buildings elbowed each other for the best view. I was somewhat familiar with the area, but not enough to feel comfortable finding my way back to school if the bookstore was another half hour of side streets and shortcuts away.

Michael took a left, walking against the rushing traffic.

“Why's that?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Why is this world fleeting? It doesn't seem so fleeting to me,” I said.

“So you're going to live forever?”

“Yes, Michael, I am.”

We walked in silence for a while.

“You're not going to kill yourself, are you, Michael?” I asked.

Nothing.

“You're a troubled youth, aren't you?” I said.

“Why are you following me?”

“You're not a very good listener. I told you: ‘I'm here to help.'”

Actually, I was there to see if I could convince Michael to let me in his house, but somehow we were getting farther and farther from it.

“I don't need help,” said Michael, turning left and away from the noise of the road.

I stopped to watch.

“You can't run away from the people who care about you!” I yelled. “I know where you live!”

Michael stopped and stared.

“The bookstore's this way,” he said.

“Oh.”

“And could you please stop yelling?” he said as I caught up to him.

“Maybe.”

The side street took us past a few more brick houses, although these were bigger than Michael's and more like the ones near school. Someone had converted one of the houses into a second-hand bookstore. The sign outside was hand-painted—a woman's face, with hair that grew and flowered like a vine:
“Hole in the Wall Books.”

“I'll bet she's magic,” I said. “I wonder if she gets bees in her hair.”

Michael ignored me. He bounded up the three stairs to the front stoop and barged through the door. Little bells rang as he disappeared inside.

I lingered at the bottom, watching the door as it shuddered to a close.

Do I really want to follow Michael into a used bookstore?

I hadn't been in many, but the handful I'd visited seemed to have a few things in common:

1) They smelled.

2) The people who worked inside were always very eager to help.

It would mean yet another sacrifice, and still more discomfort, but I'd come this far and felt I had to see things through.

I reluctantly turned the doorknob, sounded the little bells, and stepped in. As I imagined, the air inside was musty. Tall, mismatched bookcases formed a maze of tight passageways. No sign of Michael, but that didn't bother me. If I needed him, I'd just make a scene.

Here and there, little cardboard arrows pointed the way to “German Philosophers” and “Tolkien Lore.” Not exactly “Fiction” versus “Nonfiction.” I picked through a section devoted to elves and elf culture that eventually merged with dwarves and dwarf history. It was kind of cool, in a geeky sort of way.

I squatted down to look at the section on “Elf Culture.”

I had to admit: Some of the covers were pretty interesting.

A city suspended in a giant tree. A dragon peering from behind a half-opened door in the middle of an overgrown field.

I started to feel like a little kid again. For a minute, I almost started to think like one—as if maybe, if I read these books, I'd know where to find the places on the covers.

Anyway, I could see why Michael was so into them. And I guessed it wouldn't take much to convince him that a bathroom door was actually a portal to an alternate universe.

And if my life was like Michael's, I'd probably take the first portal I found.

Speaking of Michael, where is he, anyway?

I stood up and almost had a heart attack.

Some dork in a stained green t-shirt was smiling at me from around a bookshelf. He had little round glasses and a chin beard that looked like a miniature mud flap.

“You like Eager?” Mud Flap asked.

It sounded like some kind of pick-up line.

“What?”

“You into Eager?” he repeated, nodding at the book in my hand.

“Oh,” I said, noticing the name on the cover. “Not really.”

“You should check it out,” he said. “I think you'd like it.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, putting it back.

He kept smiling at me, so I opened my eyes real wide and stared. He got the message and pulled his fat head back around the bookcase.

I stood up, deciding I'd done enough research for one day. I headed down the aisle, took a few turns, and ended up right back with the elves and dwarves. I tried another direction, but then found myself in a corner surrounded by graphic novels, manga, and whatever else they call comic books.

There was a small, rectangular table in the middle of the alcove. Lidless white boxes were packed tight across every inch of surface space. In fact, the lucky boxes on the outside, stuffed with comics, actually hung over the edge of the table, a few inches too long. I decided to conduct a little physics experiment, wondering how many comics I could remove from the back of a box before it tipped forward and “accidentally” plummeted to the ground. It took some muscle, but I managed to wrestle a few free.

Each was encased in its own sterile sandwich bag. I paused, glancing at the covers. Apparently, I'd struck a set of
Silver Surfer
s.