Narc (12 page)

He always writes three rows of notes on the board.

Three. Separate. Rows.

When he runs out of room, he just squishes it together, writing more useless crap with that ugly green marker. It hurts, just staring at it.

We are reading about the Trojan Horse (1000x better than The Odyssey). This morning, he’s making us watch a stupid DVD: “The Crucible of Civilization.” It wouldn’t suck so bad if he didn’t keep stopping and starting it, just to “enlighten” us with his brilliant commentary. He won’t even turn the lights off so I can sleep.

OMFG. A girl just asked Pitstick if he believes in the Lost City of Atlantis.

“That’s a good question,” he said.

When teachers say, “That’s a good question,” it means they don’t know the answer.

I’m pressing the “save” button in my head. I need to remember this so we can talk about it later. You are, like, the smartest person I know. We’ll probably have another one of our epic conversations … if you ever talk to me again.

You said that your family tree was rotten. I’m still trying to figure that out. I don’t want to psychoanalyze you about it. But when you mentioned that your stepmom calls you fat, I couldn’t believe it. Shit. I just think that’s so wrong. And so untrue.

I want to know everything about you.

I want to kiss your branches and your leaves.

I am so sorry about what happened at Skully’s party. Things got out of control. We were all pretty wasted, I guess. For the record, I didn’t send that picture.

And you’re not fat. Trust me. You’re perfect. Well, nobody’s perfect.

Especially not me.

—A.

After class the following Friday, I was hanging out at the Tombstone. As usual, Nolan Struth was there, taking up space. This time, he was by himself. When he saw me, he got this bugged-out look on his face, like he was scared.

“Did you find the plutonium? For your time machine or whatever,” I said, lighting up a bidi.

Nolan leaned back in his wheelchair. He squeezed his eyes shut, like that could make me disappear. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“Why the hell not?” I was kind of surprised. And a little hurt. “You’re talking to me now.”

He didn’t even crack a smile. Not that he smiled much, anyway. “They told me not to.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The whole school.”

Okay. That narrowed it down.

“What exactly did the whole school tell you?” Sometimes it took a little sentence mapping to get through to Nolan.

“They said you’re acting different, and it’s really weird.”

“Do you buy that?” I asked carefully.

Nolan looked down at the pavement, where the Spirit Club had left one of their support messages for the football team:

.50 WINS!!!

The chalk letters were smeared with sneakerprints. Somebody had added a dot in front of the five, making it seem like half a win.

“I think you’ve changed,” he said.

It was my senior year. Why couldn’t I change? Or was everybody so caught up in the social chess game, we weren’t allowed to rearrange the pieces? Sometimes I wanted to flip the board upside-down. Let gravity decide the rest.

“People have been saying stuff about you,” Nolan said.

“What kind of stuff?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he said something totally bizarre, in true Nolan style:

“You can’t just go hanging out with girls.”

“Yeah?” I said.

The bidi had shriveled down to nothing. All I had left were used matches. Real used ones, not the magic-markered kind. I flicked the bidi on the concrete. It landed in the pile of cigarette butts—some half-smoked, some rimmed with lipstick.

“Maybe I like it,” I told him. “Did you ever think of that? Besides. It’s my personal right to hang with whoever I want.”

“Not those girls,” he said.

Out of everyone I’d met at Palm Hammock, Nolan Struth was the last guy I expected to go around judging people. God knows he put up with enough judgment on his own time.

“Well, good luck with the plutonium,” I muttered, turning back toward the classrooms. I didn’t mean to sound harsh, but that’s the way it came out. Nolan cringed, as if I’d punched him in the stomach.

Maybe it was true, what he said.

I had changed.

I called Morgan and apologized in a voicemail. For what, I wasn’t really sure.

At first, she wouldn’t pick up. I probably called, like, five times. It was sort of stalkerish, I admit. When she finally answered, I held the phone to my stereo. Played her a few tracks by her favorite bands. She listened to every song. Then she listened to me.

“That picture was on my phone, okay? That doesn’t mean I sent it.”

“I know,” Morgan said quietly.

“When I find out who did it, trust me, I will destroy them in so many ways.”

“My hero.”

I imagined her rolling her eyes. Yeah, it was official. I wasn’t anybody’s hero. That’s for damn sure.

“So … we’re friends, right?” she asked.

Friends
.

I’d never hated a word so much in my life.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re friends.”

“Good. Because this enemy stuff is getting old.”

It was kind of weird, talking like that again. Weird in a good way. No awkward silences, where you wonder if the other person put the phone down to take a leak. With Morgan, I could blab about anything from Bigfoot to weapons of mass destruction.

I still couldn’t believe we’d made out. Blame it on the booze. Now I started to realize that all the guys at Palm Hammock ignored Morgan, who usually left the cafeteria at lunch to sit by herself, under a tree with a book. She was one of those weird popular girls, who everybody knows but nobody really is close to. Lots of “friends” but no
real
friends, it seemed. I secretly thought she was the hottest girl in school. They just didn’t get it. For some strange reason, neither did she.

Morgan said she’d meet me later at the gallery in the Design District, which wasn’t far from my apartment. I could ride my bike, which was probably a smart idea.

Outside, I heard Mama Pigeon fluttering around. Dad used to call pigeons “sky rats.” I yanked back the curtain. The chicks had finally hatched. They sat there, alone. Their beaks opened wide, like singers in a silent choir.

“What’s up?” I whispered, as if they could actually talk back.

In this building, people passed in the hall without talking. On the rare occasions I waved hello, they looked the other way. It totally creeped me out. We were living under one roof, yet I knew more about the pigeons than my next door neighbors.

To be totally honest, I was kind of lonely. My little sister had more of a social life than me. During the past few weeks, I’d seen less and less of Mom. She left Post-It notes all over the apartment in her jittery handwriting:

Toilet is on the fritz. Jiggle chain in tank. Make sure everything goes down.

Keep air conditioner on 75. Call me if it freezes up.

Her latest:

We need to talk about your grades.

I crumpled it up and threw it away.

Nothing left to do except practice my magic. I tried the levitation trick, but my feet wouldn’t stay balanced. I ended up falling on my ass over and over again. After a while, I gave up. I really needed to get a life.

I jogged downstairs and threw my dirty laundry in the machine. Someone had already taken my jeans out of the dryer and tossed them in a wrinkled pile. Nice. I scooped up my faded Levis and smoothed them out, but they’d shrunk beyond recognition, the hole and worn part enlarged and clearly visible. This is what my world had become: shrunken laundry. How sad is that?

The machine thumped like a metronome, putting me into a trance. After a while, I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I climbed the stairs and stumbled over the chewed-up carpet. I hadn’t explored this part of the building yet.

At the top of the stairway, beside a fuse box with a mess of wires snaking out of it, a door dangled on its hinges. The other side was draped with Christmas lights. I stepped onto the roof. Airplanes roared overhead. Pigeons clustered against the railings, tucking themselves in for the night. I searched for my favorite pigeon, Wendy, in the flock, but I couldn’t find her black-and-white cookie pattern.

This place was kind of chill. Somebody had even set up a little table and a deck chair. I sank into it. There was a six-pack of Presidente nearby. What the hell? Since I didn’t see anybody around, I cracked open a can. Then I saw something that blew me away. Mom’s earrings, the ones shaped like teddy bears to match her wacked-out scrubs. Had she been sneaking beers on the roof? The idea was so freaking weird, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Guess I wasn’t the only one with a secret.

I closed my eyes and listened to the surf sounds of traffic. I hadn’t been sleeping well, for obvious reasons. Now my internal clock was totally screwed up. Just as I started to drift off, my cell phone vibrated against my skin.

“It’s starting. Where are you?” Morgan asked, her voice buried in a swirl of cackling laughter and car horns.

“On my way,” I told her.

I glanced across the roof, which was littered with empty beer cans. The Christmas lights blinked on and off. As I headed toward the door, I spotted something crumpled in the corner. A rag. Peering closer, I realized it was a pigeon. The wings were splayed above its head, and the feathers, dappled with blood, were black and white.

12 :
The Ringmaster

Maybe gulping down a warm Dominican beer and hopping on a ten-speed wasn’t a smart idea. As I squinted into the bleary distance, I tried to concentrate on the buildings ahead of me, the cartoony, hand-painted signs advertising everything from car parts to human hair.

I pedaled faster.

Morgan’s directions made no sense. She said to meet at a place on northwest Twenty-third Street, but all I saw were junkyards. Something hard and sharp bounced off my shoulder. I winced. On the corner, a pack of kids on low-riding bikes took turns chucking rocks at me. None of them looked bigger than my little sister.

“Hey, man,” said a boy with a Marlins cap. “You got a flat.” He grinned, showing the spaces between his teeth.

“Thanks,” I said as another rock sailed over.

I ducked and lost control of the bike. Then I tumbled onto the pavement, scraping my knees and elbows. The kids clapped and laughed. They were still laughing when I twisted my handlebars back in place, hopped on, and veered down a side street just to get away.

I had shredded a hole in my jeans, but for once I was in luck, because this looked like the spot. A crowd had gathered in front of a wall decorated with a mural: gigantic meat cleavers and steak knives. I chained my bike in front of a power station across the street, listened to the buzz of electricity, and started looking for Morgan.

She wasn’t at the table near the gallery entrance, where hipster chicks in motorcycle boots and neon tights waited in line for booze. I asked if they’d seen Morgan. Nobody paid attention to me. Could I blame them?

“Who’s asking?”

I recognized that twangy Southern accent. Finch, the guy from Skully’s party. He never stopped smiling. His stupid mustache would put Dali to shame.

“A friend,” I told him.

Finch’s smile tightened.

We marched through the gallery’s cavelike entrance, which was draped with strips of plastic. Inside, I found Morgan talking to her unstable ex-boyfriend, Brent.

“Do you think anyone would notice if I smoked a joint?” he asked.

Morgan giggled. “You crackhead.”

“What if I smoked a cigarette at the same time?” he said. When he spotted me coming, he scowled. I kept looking at the studs in his chin. If only I had a crowbar.

“Aaron. You made it,” Morgan said.

Normally, I’d be getting a little freaked out. I couldn’t handle parties, and these people made me feel stupid, like I could never say the right thing. But as long as Morgan was around, I’d be okay.

“Yeah. Well, I almost got assaulted by a gang of ten-year-olds on bikes,” I said.

Finch barged between us. He kissed Morgan on the cheek. “You know this guy?”

“Doesn’t everybody?” she said. “He’s my hero.”

“Is that so?” Finch stared.

“She’s kind of exaggerating,” I said.

“Finch,” the guy said, sticking out his hand. Was that his first name or his last?

“Yeah. I remember. You were at Skully’s party.”

Finch took off his hat and bowed. His hair was a tangle of reddish-brown snarls. He was older than us. Maybe in his midtwenties. He had a few crinkly wrinkles around the eyes, as well as freckles.