Crossing (10 page)

I
was lackluster, and Mr. Matthewman sensed it right from the get-go. He bore it as long as he could, then he tapped his fingers impatiently on his thigh.

“What’s the matter today, Kris?” he asked. “You seem a little out of sorts. Distracted.”

“Nothing. Just a little tired, I guess.”

He nodded as if to himself. “I had a conversation with some of the teachers yesterday. They wanted to know when you were going to sing with the chorus. They’ve been getting nervous with so much riding on this musical, so much money being poured in, extra media coverage now.” He pushed down a few stray strands of hair that had risen up antenna-like. “So I’ve arranged for you to meet with the rest of the chorus at tonight’s rehearsal. It’s time, Kris. The show’s only five days away, after all.”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” I stammered. “I need to practice more—”

Mr. Matthewman interrupted. “I thought about it. But there’s only so much, you know what I’m talking about? After a while, you just got to do it. Stand up. Sing. In front of them.”

I stood very quietly, very still. It was sinking in. “How many people will there be?”

“For tonight, just the chorus. Forty of them. The orchestra. Plus all the teachers involved. The principal.”

“So about eighty people?”

“Yes.”

Eighty. The number seemed astronomical. A whole clan, a tribe, a whole town. Eighty people, all their eyes trained on me. “That’s a lot of people.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never formally performed before. Not before a single person.”

“I’m a person.”

“You don’t count.”

“I’ve been told that before,” he said wryly.

“You know what I mean.” I fidgeted with my wristwatch. “I just think I need more time.”

“Confidence. You need more confidence, not time. I guarantee you, you get more confidence, and you’ll bust through the stratosphere. And the only way to get more confidence is to perform in front of people.”

I shuffled a little on my feet, then made my way to my backpack sitting in the corner. I placed my music sheets carefully inside.

“Have you heard anything new about Anthony?” I asked, trying to change the topic. I thought he might know something, being a teacher and all.

He shook his head. “Nothing. With all the media coverage, usually something turns up. But nothing in this case at all.”

“I suppose zilch on Barnes, too?”

He nodded, sighing heavily. “Gone without a trace. It’s eerie.” He coughed into his hand. “It’s been on all our minds. I know you’ve been concerned. Listen,” he said, piling the music sheets atop the piano, “I’ve already kept you over. I’ve been pushing you too much lately. Let’s end here.” He winked at me, a cavalier attitude he rarely displayed. “We’ve been going at it for weeks. Rest up for tonight.”

I hoisted my backpack on. “What time?” I asked.

“Five.”

“Eighty people?”

He nodded. “Just remember you don’t have to prove yourself. You’ve already done that time and again. Just be yourself.”

I didn’t want to tell him this, but nothing was less reassuring to me than when someone told me to just be myself. “OK,” I replied, “five it is.”

On account of my longer practice with Mr. Matthewman that morning, I missed homeroom, but I made it to my first period class, math. I almost stumbled into Jan Blair’s desk.

Since the day Jan Blair kissed me, I’d been bedeviled by the thought that she might start treating me like a boyfriend. All kinds of scenarios played themselves out during sleepless nights: she’d sit waiting at my seat, scrawling
I luv Kris
all over her hand, or she’d follow me around school like a sick puppy. But for the most part I found her to be her usual drab self, much like this morning, sitting at her desk, a faraway look in her eyes.

Naomi was at her desk, too, writing furiously. I took my seat next to her.

“Maybe we should…” she muttered as if to herself.

“What?”

“Maybe we should have dinner together at the food court tonight.” She said this while still writing in her journal, not looking at me. “It’s been, like, forever since we’ve hung out. My parents are trying out a new eggplant dish. I’ve told them that white folks don’t like eggplant, but they’re very insistent.”

“Tonight may not be good. I have a rehearsal. Mr. Matthewman just told me.”

She stopped writing and looked at me finally. “We haven’t been able to talk, hardly, anymore. In the morning you no longer take the bus. After school you’re off doing some singing lessons again. We’re kind of losing touch.”

“It’s not just my fault. I’m free on the weekends, but you’re off doing your own stuff.”

“It’s church stuff. And it’s important to me.”

“Well, so is singing to me. This musical. There’s all this pressure on me—I hardly have time to myself. And the performance is only five days away, and—” I stopped. I could see she wasn’t in the mood for an argument.

“I have stuff going on in my life,” she said.

Don’t we all?
I wanted to say.

“How about after your rehearsal? If you get let out early enough?”

“I can’t. It’s with the chorus, for the first time. It’ll run late.”

“OK. Whatever.” She went back to her writing.

And then something terrible happened.

Jan Blair turned to Naomi and gave her a folded piece of paper. Naomi frowned at it, perplexed, then she quickly unfolded it and started to read.

“Pass it to Kris!” Jan Blair hissed. “It’s a note for
him
, not you.”

Naomi handed it to me with a quizzical expression.

I’m not one to turn red, but at that moment I could feel the flush of heat hit my cheeks. I wanted to duck my head into my turtleneck and never come out again. I grabbed the note and rammed it unread into my pocket like used tissue.

Thankfully, Mr. Jefferson walked in at that moment. He looked even more tired than usual. Rumor had it he was going through an ugly divorce and was losing custody of his kids, all of which was taking a toll on him. He was also a lousy teacher, never interacting with students, giving out only multiple-choice homework and tests. He sat with a weary groan and smoothed out some papers on his desk.

From outside the classroom, far down the hallway, a girl started to laugh.

“All right,” Mr. Jefferson said, “I have just a few announcements to make before we begin class.” He looked up to the back of the classroom and glared for a second before clearing his throat a little too demonstrably. “Do you mind? Can I have some quiet, please?”

And in that drawn-out moment when the classroom quieted to a murmur, the girl’s laughter rang out even more clearly. It was one of those hysterical, out-of-control laughs.

All Mr. Jefferson did was shake his head. “All right,” he said, leafing through a pile of announcements, “first off, we have an announcement about
The Man from Jerusalem
. The school is asking for more volunteers to serve as car parking attendees. Apparently we need to open up the soccer field to accommodate yet even more guests. It will—” He stopped right there, turning to the door. The girl’s laughter was getting louder. He scratched his bald head with his pinkie finger, brushing aside wispy strands of hair. “As I was saying,” he continued, but then the laughter broke an octave higher. “As I was saying,” he said again, but then he stopped again. The laughter was even louder now. His face suddenly turned scarlet, all the way up to the top of his head. “For cryin’ out loud!” he crackled, livid, raising his fist to slam it down on the desktop. But then he froze.

The laughter outside suddenly screeched into a scream. We all realized it, together, at that moment: it had never been laughter. The whole time, it had been one long, hysterical scream.

Mr. Jefferson looked at us as if for reassurance, or at least some direction. Then, coming to his senses, he bolted out of his chair and into the hallway. A few students tried to follow him, but he pointed them back in with a ferocious finger. Out in the corridor already, a few teachers were glancing nervously out of their classrooms, many with one foot in the door, one hand still fastened on the doorknob. The scream emanated from down the hallway in the east wing. From the girls’ bathroom there.

For a long time, the screaming did not stop. Instead, it only seemed to get louder, shriller, to break into different pitches and amplitudes until it became apparent that there was more than one person screaming now. Loud shouts jostled with one another, masculine voices doddering in panic.

Inside my homeroom, a few of my classmates were already on their cell phones, frantically calling their parents. It was a classroom suddenly filled with trembling hands and the trilling of jumpy, panicky voices. A student sitting by the front wanted to place furniture against the door, to barricade us in.

“Somebody call the police,” said Alexander Bonds from the front of the classroom with his baritone voice. “Somebody freakin’ call the damn police.” But by then, police cars with wailing sirens were already rushing towards school.

There would be no rehearsal that night.

The school went into lockdown for a few hours. Nobody was allowed to leave the classrooms, not even to go to the restroom. SWAT teams came trooping in—we could hear the sound of their boots ricocheting along the hallways, the static of their walkie-talkies hissing in the relative quiet. We learned of what happened only in bits and pieces, mostly by text-messaging people on the outside. A severed hand had been found in one of the restrooms. No body. Yet. There was quite a bit of sobbing, some hugging. Naomi ignored me the whole time.

Then we watched as class after class was released. We’d all seen it before—Columbine, Virginia Tech—lines of students running out in single file, hands raised above their heads, expressions caught somewhere between fear and panic. What you don’t see are the photographers, scores of them clicking away, their bulbs flashing, turning the whole spectacle into a weird catwalk of fear. Another thing you don’t see is students falling, even though I witnessed at least five trip. I guess the media outlets have concluded it’s bad form to show panicking, fear-stricken kids falling ungracefully on their rumps.

Then came our turn. Five SWAT officers came in, all with guns drawn. We were told to stand at our desks with our bags in front of us. They were going to search our bags and pat us down, just as a precaution.

Some years ago—was it in fifth or in sixth grade?—my teacher’s wallet had gone missing. My teacher was an old pixie of a woman who spoke too fast, whose wiry white hair was never combed, and whose pinched, determined lips sat atop a pointed chin. The wallet had been placed carelessly on her desk; in the afternoon it disappeared. She’d gone ballistic and ordered us to put our backpacks in front of us.

She spent the longest time on my bag. I should have known. She went through other bags before getting to me, but she’d rifled through them almost perfunctorily. Mere pat-downs, really. But when she’d gotten to mine, her fingers seemed to develop dirty talons.

She went through my things.

Suddenly every pocket seemed important to her; every zipper had to be unzipped. She spent roughly five seconds on each of the other bags; with mine, however, she’d spent at least a good minute. I sat reddening as if angry or embarrassed. But I was neither. I was stung.

I hadn’t stolen her wallet. Nobody had so much as touched her wallet. I alone observed her later that day as she was putting on her coat. As her hand brushed by the coat pocket, she froze. I could see her fingers pressing against a bulging rectangular shape in her pocket. She’d pursed her lips. And never said a thing.

When the SWAT officer got to my desk, he asked me to turn and face the window. I complied. His gloved hands frisked me with efficiency; he was done before I knew it. Then he asked me to open my bag.

This, too, he went through with efficiency. He was about to move on to the next student, was really giving my bag just one last perfunctory squeeze…when he paused. Somehow his team members sensed something was off because within moments they were all surrounding the bag, surrounding me. He unzipped a side pocket.

“What do you have here, son?” he asked.

I said nothing.

He pulled out a gravity knife from the side pocket. “This yours, correct?”

I blinked. I’d never seen that knife before in my life. Never.

“Do you speak English?” He was opening the blade, examining it closely. The other officers closed in on me. The officer with the knife turned to Mr. Jefferson. “Does he speak—?”

“Of course he does,” Naomi suddenly interjected. She was standing at the front of the classroom, in line with most of the other students, ready to run out. “What’s the problem?”

“Are you his sister?”

“Of course not.”

“Does he speak English?” he asked, pointing at me.

She turned to me, her eyes piercing me with anger and fear. “Kris, just say something.”

And quite suddenly, every student lined up at the door was staring at me with a curious look. Some of them were frowning at me.

The officer turned to Mr. Jefferson. “Does he speak English?”

Mr. Jefferson paused. He was looking at me carefully now, as if seeing me for the first time. “I don’t know,” he said, and he turned to Naomi. “Does he?”

“I do,” I finally said in a low whisper. “What’s the problem?”

The officer’s eyes were blue and cold, unsettling. “No problem,” he said, and his voice had a quiet authority. He ordered the officers to finish up with the other students. They kept me standing as he went through my bag again, checking the lining, even the arm straps. Then they dismissed the line of students.

I watched as they ran across the yard. Nobody tripped.

“What’s with the knife?” the officer asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“You’ve never seen it before.”

“No. I haven’t.”

“How did it get into your backpack?”

“Listen, I don’t know. Honest to God, I’ve never seen it before. I’m just as surprised as you are.”