The Basic Eight (28 page)

I took a sip; this time it was water. “It’s not even ten yet,” I said. “A little early for lunch.”

“So we’ll buy shoes or something,” Natasha said. “Sky’s the limit.”

I looked up and saw she was right. We were crossing the street to the lake and above me the sky was enormous and bright, like a bunch of presents you haven’t unwrapped yet and you just
know
are going to be great. Bright bright blue with bright bright clouds streaked across it, it was a truly glorious sky. Birds were chirping, if you can believe it. Flora was there waiting and when she waved and smiled the scene was so perfect even she looked good.

The bubble only burst when the three of us stood at the side of the lake watching some ducks fight over

something. Whatever it was–food, or maybe another duck–it suddenly sank deep and fast, and the other ducks were first confused, then bored and sheepish. They gave a few more half- hearted pecks at one another and then just began gazing into the water like always. I could almost feel myself falling. I could almost see what it would be like to be staring up at the surface of the water, with the ducks silhouetted against the sunlight streaming in. I realized no one would rescue me if I started sinking. Everyone would just gaze into the water like always, waiting for whatever was next. I felt smaller and smaller, and then I saw something eerie. I don’t know if it was the angle of the water or the sun’s rays creating some sort of a blind spot or whatever–I’ve cut too many science classes in my day to know–but when I looked down at our reflections in the water there were only two figures stand- ing there. I quickly looked around me, but Natasha and Flora were both still right there on land, but in the water there were only two people. Because the water was still rippling from whatever had sunk, I couldn’t tell who was missing in the reflec- tion, but somebody wasn’t there. Somebody was missing, Flora or Natasha maybe, or maybe me.

Wednesday October 20th

Lawrence Dodd was suitably somber this morning, considering he was wearing a tie with hula dancers on it, when he announced that we should all proceed “directly and quietly” from homeroom to a memorial assembly for Jim Carr. It seemed a little premature to me to have a memorial assembly for someone who wasn’t dead, but when I got there it was much worse.

Jean Bodin got up and began talking into the microphone, but we had to wait a good thirty seconds

before the whine of feedback had run its full course. He looked around, wincing, and continued. That’s right, he
continued
even though no one had heard the first thirty seconds. Natasha, sitting next to me, got out her flask. Kate, on the other side, got out a book.

“I’m sure even those of you who didn’t see it happen are shocked,” he said. “But Vice Principal Mokie can confirm it.” Vice Principal Mokie stood up from the front row and waved inexplic- ably. The principal and the vice principal looked at each other for a moment, and then both of them coughed in perfect unison. “Well, without further ado–” Bodin said, and out of nowhere an impeccably dressed woman came out from behind the auditorium curtain and approached the microphone. Bodin gave a little bow–a little
bow
, what was going on?–and she began to talk. And talk. As follows:

Hello, children. I’m here to talk to you today about a story.

My
story.

“Hello, children,” Natasha said to me, waving and making a goofy face. I snorted and got glared at by some fat Latin teacher. “Is it grammatically right to say, ‘I’m here to talk to you about

a story’?” Kate whispered to me.

“Grammatically
correct
,” I corrected her. It got quiet, and when I looked around me everybody was staring at us. I wondered why, until I looked at the stage and saw that woman staring at us hardest of all. Staring at
me
. That’s how it felt, later: metaphor- ically. I thought I was just hanging out with my friends but it turned out everyone was staring at us, and that woman–can you guess who it was?–was staring the hardest. Staring at
me
. I stared right back at her and smiled; the best defense

is a good offense or vice versa or however that goes. She looked down, looked up and started again. She had the ugliest hairdo you can imagine. Go ahead, imagine one–that’s what it looked like.

Hello, children. I’m here to talk to you today about a story.
My
story. When I was your age, I thought I was on top of the world. I had participated in some beauty contests, and although I hadn’t won any trophies, I was offered a job as a female flight attendant after graduation. I didn’t have to go to college! I was on top of the world.

“She’s really speaking to me,” Natasha murmured.

“What?” Kate whispered in mock horror. “No trophies? Were those judges blind?”

Before too long I was promoted to first class. It was hard but rewarding work. On one flight, though, I was really ex- hausted. I could barely get on with my work.

“Executives must have gone pillow-less,” Natasha said, and took a sip.

One of my fellow flight attendants noticed how low I was, and gave me something he said would perk me up. He was right: it was cocaine. I had heard a few bad things about co- caine, sure, but my fellow flight attendant told me it was perfectly safe. It felt great. I felt like I was flying.

“You were flying,” Kate and Natasha and I said in unison.

Of course, before too long I was taking cocaine regularly, just to perk me up, I thought. I was in deep denial, and I’m not talking about a river in Egypt. I said I’m not talking about a river in Egypt. Well, you probably haven’t learned about it yet, but the Nile is a river in Egypt, and when I said “denial” it sounded like–well, never mind. Sometimes I’d get too wired to work and would help myself to the compli- mentary champagne to calm me down, so I became an alco- holic as well. My alcoholism enabled me to continue my co- caine addiction, and vice versa. Do you understand that ex- pression? I mean my alcoholism enabled me to continue my cocaine addiction, and my cocaine addiction enabled me to continue my alcoholism. I was under a lot of pressure–

“Cabin pressure,” Natasha muttered. I can’t resist adding these jokes.

–to perform well in my job, and ironically–that means, well, tinged with irony–my drug and alcohol problem prevented me from doing so. The method I was choosing to deescalate my pressures was escalating them instead, which is always what happens in addictive situations. I know that now. Now, I’m a survivor. That’s why I’m here to talk to you today. One of your teachers received an overdose of drugs. Whether he took them on purpose or was given them doesn’t matter in the slightest. What is important is that drugs have entered this world of Roewer High School as phony solutions to the pressures you face. That’s what I’m here to tell you! Drugs are not the solution! I am

the solution! Listen to me! My name is Eleanor Tert and I am here to help you all!

Thursday October 21st

Ten days. It seems like a good idea to add a sort of countdown to the proceedings here. Normally I wouldn’t do anything so crass–I’m a writer, so I value narrative structure above all else–but I think the murder is something of a surprise.

I’m in homeroom now, and Bodin is over the loudspeaker with an update on Carr’s condition, which remains unconscious. An enviable condition on boring days like this one. He told us that Carr is on the seventh floor of the Rebecca Boone Memorial Hospital if we wanted to send cards or flowers. Cards or flowers to an unconscious person?

There was a television show on when I was little, the premise of which was as follows: It is the future. We live in a space station on the moon. One day a comet breaks the presumed-permanent contact between the moon and the Earth and the moon breaks out of orbit. We are totally screwed and must spend several net- work seasons trying to get home. Strangely enough, I was exper- iencing a first-episode feeling as I left school, right in the middle of lunch: the sun hitting my bare arms as I opened the door like a singeing comet, the Roewer gravity clinging to me like some drippy friend, some love interest in an episode who doesn’t bring in the ratings and so is never heard from again, like, I don’t know, Gabriel, say.

The bus driver gave me a why-the-hell-aren’t-you-at-school look and I gave him a shut-up-you’re-a-bus-driver-so-bus-drive look right back. The suspicion that the idea I had was a bad one began to gurgle inside my head as I watched the sights go by: Chinese restaurants, video

stores, doughnut shops, a hospital, shit. Had to walk three blocks the way I had just come, bought overpriced flowers in the lobby and before I knew it I was asking a bitter-looking seventh-floor nurse what room he was in.

This is one of those scenes that is going to be dreadfully over- played in
Basic Eight, Basic Hate
, I’m afraid. Can’t you just see it? Carr in a gossamer bed, with some romanticized token hospital equipment near him–maybe a little gauzy bag of IV equipment or a screen with green heartbeat lasers moving across it like ocean waves. The camera moves around me as I speak, occasionally focusing on Carr’s unseeing eyes, provided by contact lenses so the hunky actor can blink unnoticed behind fake plastic comatose- ness. “I’m so sorry,” she weeps, tears perfect like crystal. Nothing red or splotchy. “I’m getting therapy now from Dr. Eleanor Tert, so with the help I need, and with your forgiveness, I can go on with my life.” More after this.

The real hospital room wasn’t blinding white but an irritating shade of pink that made everyone’s clothing look awful. Appar- ently someone had dropped a box of plastic tubing on Carr and it had slithered into any available orifice in an effort to hide. His face looked like something that under no circumstances whatso- ever you should eat. Yellow bruises splotched him like cheap discolored blush, and little larvae of what I knew was dried blood lurked around his nose, though it looked more like those plastic scars gross fourteen-year-old boys buy for Halloween. There were a few bunches of wan flowers and some cards propped open on a table that could swivel into position over Carr’s bed, if he ever woke up, if he ever ate. I could see the insides of the cards, some of them signed by thirty or forty people. Whole classrooms were grieving for the person who lay there, I guess. There was nobody in the room.

The urge to leave school and come here was so impulsive I expected some emotional supernova when I finally saw him, but I just stood there thinking about nothing–thinking about fourteen- year-old boys’ Halloween costumes, for God’s sake. I looked over at Carr expecting some rush, but he just looked like a lump of nothing. There was nowhere to put the flowers, so I filled the little pink trash can with water from the empty clean bath- room–shower but no shower curtain–and stuck my cheap carna- tions in it. There was no room for them on the swivel table so I put them on the floor where they really looked like trash. Carr’s eyes were closed. Outside somebody was paging a doctor over and over, and the squeaky wheels of something were making their rounds. Maybe the lunch cart, or maybe somebody in pain on a gurney. I was so seized with self-consciousness I felt like I had to say something, but neither triumph nor remorse washed through me. My hand itched.

“You deserve it,” I said, finally, but I didn’t think that either.

Friday October 22nd

If Adam had only nine days to live, how would he live his life differently? Believe it or not, Hattie Lewis is making us do dic- tionary exercises because somebody didn’t know what
corpulent
meant. (Of course I do.) It’s amazing how one person’s mistake can wreck it for everyone. But the point is, I have tons of time to write down Adam’s activities for the day. Of course, it’s only second period, but he started early.

“I don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Natasha said grumpily. We were rattling along two cars behind Adam. I had bribed Natasha into following Adam with a

double latte plus a blueberry muffin with a crunchy glazed sugar topping that I could never eat if I wanted to keep fitting into my jeans. “I’ve never driven this slowly before in my entire life. Even this crunchy sugar topping isn’t worth
this
.”

I nibbled my thumb, my only breakfast this morning. Ahead of us, Adam was taking advantage of some red-light time to stare in the sideview mirror and brush his hair back from his head. His other hand was dangling loosely out the window, so limp it might have been severed, his skin beautiful even against the smoke of exhaust streaming from the bus ahead of us. We weren’t driving to school. We were getting closer and closer to Kate’s house, but I wasn’t quite ready to accept
that
. He could have been going anywhere. Anywhere near Kate’s house.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Natasha said, gunning the motor. The car sounded strained from being kept at such a low speed. “He’s going to pick Kate up. Why is this so surprising to you?”

Adam’s fingers were tapping in time to something I couldn’t hear. “I love him, I just love him, I can’t help it,” I said.

“You know, love means a lot of things,” she said. “The first definition is ‘intense affection,’ followed by ‘a feeling of attraction resulting from sexual desire,’ ‘enthusiasm or fondness,’ and then there’s ‘a beloved person.’ But the last one is important, too. Last but not least. ‘A score of zero.’” Sorry. Every so often I’m opening the dictionary and pretending to be working on these stupid ex- ercises.

Kate’s street, Kate’s block, Kate’s house. “Pull over behind the parked car,” I said.

“Oh Jesus,” Natasha said, but she did it. “I need a drink. Open the glove compartment.”

“You drink too much,” I said, handing her the flask.

“You follow boys too much,” she said. “Flan, what do you want from him?”

“I want him to be my
boyfriend
!” I shouted and then realized immediately how ridiculous that sounded. Because–listen to me, Eleanor, Peter, Moprah–it was more than that. All the words in this dictionary couldn’t describe what it was. Large.

“I don’t suppose it’s at all relevant to point out you
have
a boyfriend,” Natasha said.

Kate’s stairs, Kate’s door, Kate. Natasha and I ducked down low and Natasha took another swig. I was afraid to peer out and watch them so we just waited until we heard his car start.