Flannery (2 page)

2

The morning buzzer for my first class, Introduction to Entrepreneurship, rips through the school. Allie Jones sees me beating it down the hall and at the last second tries to slam the door in my face. I stomp my foot between the door and the frame and try to squeeze my body in while she leans against the door on the other side, trying to squash me.

Then Allie steps away from the door and I almost fall into the classroom.

Sorry, Allie says. I didn't see you.

Mr. Payne is looking out the window and digging around in his shirt pocket with two fingers. He doesn't notice me sneaking in late. I slide into my desk behind Amber Mackey. Amber is my best friend and has big beautiful swimmer's shoulders.

All the better to hide behind, my dear.

Mr. Payne draws a silver laser pen out of his shirt pocket. This is a new teaching aid for him. He loves gadgets. Mr. Payne clicks the tip of the laser pen and a sharp purple line slices through the air over our heads, and at the back of the class, a frenetic violet dot jiggles over the wall.

Now then, he says. Everybody, quiet please.

Everybody grudgingly turns it down to a low murmur.

I have a few announcements about the Youth Entrepreneurial Fair, Mr. Payne says. We have secured several booths at the Glacier in Mount Pearl. As you know, every high school in the province will be competing. Traditionally, Holy Heart takes the gold. I know it seems like the school year has just started, but Christmas will be upon us before you know it. The Entrepreneurial Fair is the crowning achievement in your graduating year. The media always attends.

The murmuring ratchets up several notches until people are talking and laughing. Allie Jones is taking a selfie while she puts on lipstick. Elaine Power is scribbling notes. Chad Yates-O'Neill is rolling a basketball over the length of his outstretched arm, onto his shoulder, behind his head and down the other arm. Then he bounces it off the back of Allie's head.

Mr. Payne, Allie whines.

There will be lights, there will be cameras, there will be action, says Mr. Payne. Chad, the ball, please. Businesses near and far pay close attention to the winners, people.

Chad unslouches himself out of the desk and dribbles the ball to the front of the class. He passes it a few times under each knee and then he rolls it to the corner of the room and returns to his desk.

In the past, our winners have been offered top-paying summer jobs the day they graduate, says Mr. Payne. He strolls down the aisle and confiscates Allie's phone.

But sir, she says.

After class, Miss Jones. We've even had interest from Toronto. This brings me to my next point. I've noticed some of you people dragging your heels, deciding on what to make for your units. So I have decided to put you into pairs. Business partners.

Everybody goes instantly silent.

He waves the tip of the laser pen in little circles. And then he points it directly at Mark Galway.

An angry violet dot vibrates like a mad hornet over Mark Galway's right eyebrow. Mark's eyebrow twitches.

Mark is the grandson of one of the richest people in Newfoundland, and maybe even Canada and quite possibly all of North America — Mr. Fred Galway, the communications mogul.

Mr. Galway owns all the radio frequency bandwidth available in Newfoundland. He started one of the first television stations here, back in the seventies. It's rumored that he himself was Captain Newfoundland, the superhero who appeared after midnight on NTV back in the nineties, dressed in a hooded cape and a face mask with the map of Newfoundland drawn on it. His cape fluttered into a background of zooming comets and blasts of disco-funk. A deep voice intoned that the captain was
the Spirit of Newfoundland who lives in the hearts of all of us.
You can still see it on YouTube.

This means that Mark is the spawn of Captain Newfoundland, and of course he's planning to make some kind of radio thing for his unit at the Glacier.

The laser dot is jiggling all over Mark's face.

Mr. Payne says, You.

Mark Galway looks quickly over one shoulder, and then the other. The violet dot zips over to his ear, and then it reappears on his cheek. It finally settles on the tip of his nose.

Me, sir? For a split second Mark Galway's eyes cross.

Yes, you, Mr. Payne says. Galway.

I prefer to work alone.

No man is an island, Galway, except maybe Captain Newfoundland. You're not Captain Newfoundland, are you, Galway?

I don't want a partner, Mr. Payne, sir.

Nevertheless, a partner you shall have, Mr. Galway. You are going to be partners with . . .

Mr. Payne wiggles the laser pen around. The sharp beam of light slices through several necks in the front row. The tiny dot zips up to the ceiling and down again and zings from one end of the room to the other.

Where's Tyrone? I whisper to Amber. His desk is empty.

Il n'est pas ici
, Amber says.
Quelle surprise!

Amber and I took French last semester.

Mr. Payne is gently prodding the air with the laser pen, sort of in my direction. I duck down behind Amber. The laser beam skims over us and lands on Elaine Power's giant dangling dragon earring. The tiny violet dot hits the teensy chip of red glass in the dragon's eye and I swear the thing winks.

Mr. Payne says, And you, Miss Power, will be Mark Galway's business partner.

But Mr. Payne, why can't I choose my own partner? Elaine asks. Elaine Power despises Mark Galway.

Elaine has a nose ring and wears the same black T-shirt, held together with safety pins, every single day. Her nails are long and black and her lipstick is black and her eyeliner is black and she often has a little sprinkle of blue-black glitter on her cheekbones.

She wears black evening gloves up to her elbows with the fingers cut out. Sometimes, over her T-shirt, she has a lace-up black thing that has been spray-painted gold and has big plastic jewels all over it. It sort of looks like a corset, with a ruffled black lace collar like Henry VIII. On her legs, black fishnet stockings with holes and red-and-black-striped leg warmers. One red Converse sneaker, one black. She has shaved half her head and dyed the other half very black and wears it teased up and stiff with hairspray (though she is always ranting about how Holy Heart should be a scent-free environment!).

Elaine is a mathlete and consults with professors at the university at lunchtime. Or, to be more precise, they consult with her. In her younger years she won an international spelling bee. But then she announced over the PA that spelling is a form of imperialism. She had seen the ugly face of spelling up close, she said, and it was a shackle she had chosen to throw off.

None of us understood a word but we applauded like crazy and the secretary took over the mike with a hiss of static and crackle and announced something about the bus schedule.

All we know is that Elaine is the smartest student in the entire history of the school. That's why she's allowed to wear whatever she likes. The rest of us have to adhere to dress codes. No baseball caps for the boys; no bra straps or midriffs showing for the girls. Elaine has shown the rest of us how to rebel by wearing her bra outside her shirt.

And she's already developed her project and taken it out for a test drive. An app that disseminates electronic petitions around the world in a matter of seconds. The petitions are designed to save a different endangered butterfly every month. Elaine has contacts in twenty-seven countries who translate the petitions simultaneously into twenty-seven different languages, and, as a test, last week she organized a protest to save British farmland butterflies, focusing on the common blue butterfly, which has been endangered but is now projected to make a comeback, partly because of Elaine.

Never mind that Elaine's app isn't really a product you can sell, which is the main requirement of the assignment. Mr. Payne suggested Elaine think of ways to
monetize
her product. Elaine just raised one of her very black drawn-on eyebrows at him.

I wouldn't think of trying to make money off the endangered, she told him.

And I won't think of giving you a passing grade, Mr. Payne said. Elaine slitted her eyes at him.

Mark Galway, on the other hand, would monetize his own grandmother if he could and comes to school in his granddad's Hummer.

I do not need a partner, says Elaine.

It's no good being smart if you can't cooperate with your fellow students, Mr. Payne says.

Would you say that to a boy? Elaine asks. I want to do this alone.

That's too bad, Miss Power. You are now partners with Mark Galway.

Please, Mr. Payne, sir, Elaine says.

But Mr. Payne has moved on. The laser dot is flying all over the place.

You, Mr. Payne says. He has pointed to Gary Bowen.

Uh-oh, whispers Amber. She sits up as tall as she can.

Okay, wait. Let me explain Amber, because this is not her best moment. Amber has puffy black circles around her eyes from her swimming goggles getting suctioned onto her eye sockets, and she smells like chlorine and has to be nudged awake every five minutes or she'll be snoring her head off.

But there's a clip on YouTube from a swim meet in the UK last year.

Amber comes out of a dressing room onto the white poolside and stops to glance around at the crowd. The walls of the pool deck are draped with flags from all over the world. She is dressed in red and white sweats with a big maple leaf on the back of her jacket. She's wearing her goggles and red cap. For the briefest moment, her fingers flutter all over her swimming cap. Fingers flapping fast over her ears like hummingbird wings.

It's just for a brief moment, but if you're her best friend, you know what it means, this finger-flapping thing. Nerves. She has been working toward this race for her whole life.

She raises one arm high over her head. Reaching up on her tiptoes. She waves at the crowd. You can see a lot of little Canadian flags waving back from a big patch of the crowd in the bleachers. I know she's looking for her father, Sean.

Sean is the one who drives her to all those practices at five in the morning. He's the one who paces the side of the pool day after day with the stopwatch. He's the one shouting, Move, go, keep going, yes, yes, Amber, yes!

Amber's mom is an alcoholic. Actually, her father is an alcoholic too, but he's been dry for sixteen years.

In the video, the camera pans over all the swimmers as they slip out of their sweats. The American girl scratches her chin. The Japanese girl holds her arms down at her sides and shakes her hands out. Amber's fingers flutter over her swimming cap once more.

They step up onto the blocks.
On your mark
. The buzzer. They fly off the blocks. I mean they really fly. Then they are underwater. They don't look human. They are too fast for humans. They aren't machines either. What are they?

They are silver arrows they are eels they are licorice they are Lycra they are muscle they are will and will not and want to be and winning, for the first few seconds they are all winning and winning and winning and they are can't and must and will never and don't.

Amber watches the video over and over, looking for a lost second. Somewhere she lost a beat. A measure of time tiny as the head of a pin. She makes me watch it too.

The video has 120,000 views and I swear most of them are Amber and me.

She placed second. Amber did not win as she had promised her father she would. She did not win as she had promised her school she would. She did not win as she had promised her country she would. She did not win as she had planned to do ever since she was a baby and her father took her to a pond and let her kick and splash and eventually put her face in the water to rely on those instincts from the Triassic Period when we gave up our gills for feet and swam out of the ocean up onto land, those instincts that tell you when to hold your breath.

The Japanese girl won. The Japanese girl beat Amber by less than a second.

You should see that Japanese girl's smile. It's worth watching the video 120,000 times, just for that smile. But there's a better moment coming.

Wait for it, wait.

There's Amber. She explodes up out of the water, a big splash of bubbles and froth around her waist. It is my belief that in that moment she still thinks she has won. There's a roaring crowd and clapping and the coaches pouring out onto the pool deck and reporters with cameras and flashes, and the digital boards with the times.

She sees from the boards that she is less than a second behind the Japanese girl. She turns toward the Japanese girl.

And here it is.

Amber reaching over the lane divider to hug the Japanese girl. Amber's face in the camera and it's sincere.

A sincere smile.

That's Amber.

She's goes straight back at the training. In the pool at five every morning except Sunday. They're allowed to sleep in until seven a.m. on Sundays.

Then she comes to school and conks out at her desk.

If a teacher says her name, her head jerks up, and she snorts like a horse and rattles out one of the maybe ten answers she has memorized for just such an occasion.

Answers like: Photosynthesis, sir.

Or: The area equals half the base times the height, miss.

Or: A character trait that brings sorrow or ruin to the protagonist.

Or: The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Or: An imaginary line drawn around the earth equally distant from both poles.

By using this technique she averages a correct answer about one-third of the time. She rattles it out and her head droops again and she's gently snoring.

Swimming is all she's ever wanted or thought about.

Until Gary Bowen.

Suddenly, Amber is all, Swimming? Who cares!

Okay, I'm exaggerating. She still cares about swimming, but boy, is she distracted.

It was spin-the-bottle at Jordan Murphy's, just after the first week of school. We were in Jordan Murphy's rec room with the pool table and the velvet paint-by-numbers of a rearing stallion that Jordan's mom had done (also a crying clown and a frozen river with a stone bridge and a laminated 1,000-piece puzzle of the Mona Lisa).