The Calling (33 page)

The top of the gym was a circular cement track bordered by white four-foot high steel rails. The floor itself was a wooden basketball court. Besides the usual painted lines for the key and three-point arc, there were other thinner lines used for volleyball and badminton and whatever other sports were played during P.E. Wooden bleachers were pulled out and faced each other on both sides of the court. Nearly every space was filled, except for this section which would no doubt soon start filling up fast.
 

Wires raised both basketball backboards so that they were out of the way. A stage was set up beneath the one backboard, with chairs and a podium and a lectern and a long table with diplomas on top. Above this stage was a long blue banner with the words

CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2003

in bulky white letters. The school’s band all sat clustered off to the left of the stage, and above the murmuring din of people talking an occasional trombone or clarinet or cymbal could be heard. Rows of chairs were lined up facing front, down the entire court with a walkway in between. The first twenty rows were empty, while the rest were filled with whoever had been fortunate enough to acquire tickets.
 

It took me a while to spot Sarah and her father. They were near the back, a few seats in. Sarah sat reading her program (or
Billy Budd
) while Henry Porter chatted with someone behind them.
 

Directly across from the stage, down the walkway toward the other end of the gym, were two opened exit doors. Sunlight streamed in onto the court. Though I didn’t have the best position, I could see that was where all the graduating students waited. A sea of blue-robed teenagers stood talking outside.
 

There were only three uniformed officers spread throughout the gymnasium, at least from what I could see—two on the floor, one walking the track.
 

Moses didn’t look up when I sat down beside him. He had his program open, seeming to read while his eyes scanned the crowd.
 

“Everything okay?” he asked, not looking at me.
 

I didn’t answer.
 

He sighed. “Christopher, I know you’re upset with me, but right now you can’t let your emotions overtake you.”
 

“Thank you for the insight, Dr. Phil. I sincerely appreciate it.”
 

Minutes later the band started playing. The crowd quieted as they found their seats. Parents got their cameras ready. Four rows down, the one kid in black who wasn’t wearing headphones nudged his two friends, who took theirs off. I glanced at Moses and saw his eyes were closed. I knew he was praying, and for the first time in a long while I felt like praying too.
 

Graduation had begun.

Chapter 30

N
ew York’s former governor Mike Boyd never got a chance to make his keynote speech. Jeffery Snyder was halfway through his salutatorian address a half hour into the ceremony when there was a scream. More screams followed. Commotion began on the floor and moments later someone shouted, “
Stop, drop your weapons!
” and then there were three consecutive gunshots followed by silence.
 

It all happened within the space of two minutes.
 

And in those two minutes, a familiar feeling passed through me and I saw and felt everything. How this happened, even now I can’t explain, but I saw and felt everything because, somehow, I was there.

•
 
•
 
•

I’
M
SITTING
NEXT
to Moses in the bleachers, watching the crowd, and when that cold pang slices through my soul I close my eyes—

BLINK
 

—and when I open them again I’m no longer next to Moses, I’m no longer even in the bleachers. Instead I’m standing on stage, in front of everyone. A mass of students in blue robes sits in the seats before me, their parents and grandparents and other relatives sitting in the seats behind them. Many of their eyes are trained on the student standing at the lectern to my left, not seven feet away. It’s Jeffery Snyder, the second in his graduating class of two hundred and fifty one, and right now he’s in the middle of his speech. His voice is low and monotone, and he keeps clearing his throat and looking down at the note cards scattered in front of him.
 

I look around, at the teachers and principals and administrators and even Mike Boyd in the chairs on the stage behind the lectern, at the band on the platform, at the people in the bleachers. None seem to notice me. Even one of the police officers, standing near the stage, hasn’t looked my way. I’m here but I’m not here, I realize, as I take a step forward and glance toward where I found Moses sitting earlier. Yes, I can just see Moses, I can see him sitting there, slowly looking around the gym for anything suspicious. And there, beside him, is a white kid whose parents were murdered less than two weeks ago. His eyes are closed, his mouth slightly opened.
 

What’s happening to me? I ask myself, but it’s not like in a dream, where I have no control over what happens, and internal questions like this one go unanswered. I understand immediately what’s happening to me—or at least I have a sense—and when I look around once more at everyone in the gym I realize that everything is gray, everything is colorless, except Jeffery Snyder. He’s the only one with color, the only one I can sense. I know his birthday, his America Online password, his old locker combination, and as I take a step closer to him I know that, as he’s speaking, he’s thinking not about his words but about how he’ll die a virgin.
 

He’s never had a girlfriend, he’s never even had the nerve to ask anyone out, even though some girls have expressed interest in him in the past. One girl in particular is Sarah Porter, who, though he was not aware of it, once had a crush on him. But Jeffery was intimated by her older brother, thinking that if John Porter found out Jeffery asked his little sister on a date then bad things would happen. So he chickened out, just like with all the other girls he once had crushes on, and in the last three years he has become addicted to looking at porn on the Internet.
 

I pause, seeing all of this in my mind. I can hear Jeffery speaking, continuing his speech, but his words are lost to me. All that I hear are his internal thoughts, about how his parents have just recently gotten a cable modem and how he has been spending more and more time on the computer, liking how the images and videos load faster than with the old dial-up. I see everything that Jeffery has seen, all the websites he’s been to, all the pictures of big-breasted women with their legs spread open wide and long hard cocks pushed up their asses.
 

I take a step back, breaking the montage of pornographic images, and somehow manage to look even deeper. I see how Jeffery thinks he’ll never find a girl who likes him for who he is, and that’s why he’ll die a virgin. He’s going to Syracuse in the fall and hopes to find a girl there who will put out but figures he will, in the end, have to pay some prostitute to have sex with him. Some high-priced prostitute too, not one with diseases, he doesn’t want to get sick.
 

I take another step back, reminding myself of what I’d done to my grandmother and her friends back at Alice’s. Here is almost the same thing, only I have no control over these memories, no power at all over these deviant urges. Without thinking I ball my hands into fists—and how I’m actually able to feel them even though I’m not really here is beyond me—and take three steps forward.
 

A scene materializes in my mind, a party Jeffery invited himself to over the winter and which he had felt totally out of place. He ended up snorting cocaine. He didn’t know what to expect and wasn’t even sure the crack worked right, so he tried it two more times. Everyone else just laughed and cheered him on. Then later he was upstairs and walked in on Tommy Wertham having sex with Reece Davis ... except Tommy was the only one really having sex. Reece was passed out on the bed. Tommy looked back grunting. A huge grin spread across his face. He said
Hey Jeff, you want the sloppy seconds?
and Jeffery had stood there for just a moment, before bolting out of the room and into the bathroom down the hall, the one that reeked of bleach. He threw up before he even made it to the toilet.
 

As Jeffery speaks I realize that, as he looks up from his note cards, he’s searching the faces of his graduating peers. He has already spotted Reece and Tommy, and the thought of outing Tommy as the one who raped Reece has crossed his mind more than once. Just stopping mid-sentence and pointing out into the crowd, telling everyone here that Tommy raped her like she was nothing and then offered him the sloppy seconds. But Jeffery, though the thought does sound righteous, will do no such thing. He doubts Reece even knows what happened that night, and even if she does she probably has forced herself to forget. It’s her dark secret of shame, unlike Tommy who has probably told all his friends, who then went and told their friends. Has it gotten back to Reece that it was Tommy who violated her?
 

Probably, Jeffery thinks, though she will never do anything about it. But what Jeffery finds most unsettling is the reason he became sick that night. It wasn’t from the cocaine or the fast food he had earlier or the scene he just witnessed. No, rather than all of those things it was for a split second he had almost taken Tommy up on his offer. He couldn’t believe he considered doing to Reece what he saw done on the countless porn sites he’s visited over the past three years. A primal, prurient urge caused blood to surge into his penis, hardening it more than ever, and for an instant he almost nodded and said that yes, he would like the sloppy seconds.
 

But he couldn’t do that. He’d known Reece since the fifth grade—she had even given him a Valentine’s Day card that year, shaped like a boat—and for some reason it felt wrong. And, Jeffery realized, it felt even more wrong that maybe he would have gone along with it had it been anyone else but her.
 

This all flashes through me for the space of a couple of seconds, though really for me time has stopped. I’m in a gray world, standing next to the only person with color, the only person with life. He’s a scared young man, addicted to sex even though he has never had it and thinks he never will. And why I’m looking into his life makes no sense to me, but an idea comes to mind, an idea that wants to command whatever metaphysical body I possess to continue walking forward.
 

But before I can do this, a girl in the chairs in front of the stage cries out. Jeffery pauses, looking up once again from his note cards, and now I’m seeing the girl through his eyes. Her name is Joyce Parsons, she was one of the cheerleaders during football season, and now she’s standing up from her seat. Her arms are held out at her sides as she stares down at the floor. She screams again and tries to jump up on her seat, but her heel slips and she starts to fall. Others close by begin screaming. Jeffery just stands there, staring out at the crowd, out at Joyce. For the final instant I’m near him, before I’m blinked someplace else, I sense his thoughts. He can’t help but wonder what he would do to Joyce Parsons if he ever found her unconscious.

•
 
•
 
•

S
TANDING
IN
THE
bleachers, now on the left side of the stage, I stare across the gym and again spot Moses and myself. Moses is still looking around the crowd for anything suspicious, and the kid next to him still has his eyes closed, his mouth opened. Jeffery Snyder is still speaking on stage, and when I glance at the rows and rows of students sitting before him, I realize Joyce Parsons has yet to stand up. A few words of Jeffery Snyder’s speech catch my attention and I understand that it’ll be another minute or so before the girl screams. Right now he’s standing there, reciting the speech he’s spent hours and hours writing and rewriting, while unconsciously thinking about how he’ll die a virgin. Unlike before, he’s now gray, just like everyone else in the gymnasium is gray.
 

Everyone except the woman sitting in front of me.
 

Her name is Cynthia Parker and she’s with her husband Ben and nine-year-old son Ricky. She should be down in the seats along with the rest of the proud parents, but her daughter Michelle gave her tickets away to a friend who had an oversized family of eleven and needed extras. Cynthia, though she claimed she was not upset, has not yet forgiven Michelle for doing such a stupid and inconsiderate thing.
 

Like up on stage, I look around me. Cynthia and her family are actually in the middle of this section of bleachers, so the space behind them is not empty. There is another family there, an uncle and aunt and three cousins who came all the way from Nebraska to see someone named Jimmy Guernsey get his diploma, and where I find myself standing I’m actually straddling the uncle’s one knee. I want to step away to someplace where I’ll have more room but it will be next to impossible to attempt without touching someone ... and here, I wonder, what will happen if I were to touch one of these people? Would they shiver, feeling a chill race through their body? Would they somehow see or sense me?
 

Before I can do anything though, I glance once more at Cynthia Parker. Her back is to me, so I can’t see her face, but I know what she looks like. The curve of her jaw, the definition of her cheekbones, the slope of her nose. She has always considered herself an attractive woman, and even now, at forty-two, she is debating whether or not to start an affair. She’s been working as an RN at St. Joseph’s for nearly a decade, and has recently become infatuated with a young man named Juan. He just began working as an orderly on her floor two months ago, but she knew from the moment they first talked that there was something between them. He’s over ten years her junior but still there’s an intriguing look in his dark Spanish eyes every time he talks to her, something that makes her remember her college days when she went out with her sorority sisters every weekend. And his accent—good Lord, it reminds her of Antonio Banderas in that Zorro movie. Some of the girls at work have joked with her about when she’s going to go after him but she merely laughs it off, saying she wishes. She knows the flirting between them is completely innocent, just as he knows she’s married with children. Yet every time they are together she feels something there, some magnetic pull that is almost too strong to ignore.