When I went to school the next morning, my new friend was no longer there, and the telecam was back up. Our teacher is beamed here from India. His face slowly faded onto the screen from black, like he was emerging slowly up through dark water. And every time he emerged onto the screen like this, his eyes widened for just a second or two, as though he'd actually been transported, and is surprised to find himself in America, face to face with about thirty disaffected American teenagers. I hear they pay him six dollars an hour. His skin is a nice burnt orange, and his lids are heavy and relaxed looking once he starts the lesson. I wonder if he is a Buddhist.
How did we look to him? Probably pretty skanky. This is a nowhere kind of school, in the bad part of town. Most of the kids are poor and black. If the kid is white, they're usually goth. Art class was nothing but cutting up magazine pictures and pasting them onto things. There were lots of music and celebrity gossip magazines. Everyone likes the old rappers like Wu Tang Clan and Lil Jeezy. The rappers that were big when we were born are all popular again. The kids cut out pictures of Wu Tang Clan and make Christmas cards. Have a Wu Tang Christmas.
There's not even a graduation ceremony here. When you graduate, they announce your name on the intercom, and put a Polaroid of you on the office wall.
Here they called me Fishboy. I used to think it was because I'm so white, I look like I live under water. But I think it's also because of the way I moved through the halls, quiet and aloof, leaving little ripples of unease everywhere I went. I wore a black trench coat. I'm here, but I'm not. No one knows what I'm thinking.
"Yo Fishboy!" yelled this kid Tyrone in my art class. "I heard them Pharmies took your mama. That's fucked up! That's craxploitation, man!" Tyrone had his head shaved except for the very top, which sprouted short frizzy dreads. His had silver teeth. With his round, innocent, chocolate brown eyes, he looked like a friendly cartoon space creature.
"She's not a crackhead." I was cutting out pictures of the president's face. I found a stack of newspapers with him on the front page, and I was cutting out all the president heads and gluing them into a spirograph type pattern. It was pretty cool.
Wendy, this goth chick, came over too. "So where's your dad?" She was wearing a promotional malt liquor T-shirt and black fetish pants. Her hair was a maroon bowl cut and she had big black painted eyes. "What's he got to say?"
I was not used to anyone noticing me like this. I kept gluing and pasting. The president had a frowny look on his face, making him look put-upon and defensive. Who knows, I thought, maybe this collage sucks. My mom said I used to be gifted, but that chemical pollution damaged me. True, there's lots of traffic in our neighborhood. Grime from auto exhaust coats our windows, you can write your name in it....maybe it did make me stupid.
"I don't know what my dad would say. He moved to Boulder." My father is an engineer. He used to have a high paying industry job when he lived with us. Now he's a hippie who helps build alternative living spaces out of rammed earth and old tires. That was his dream.
Tyrone swatted my head. "Fishboy, you a freak. And yo mama was a chickenhead, everybody know it. Them Pharmies taking all the welfare people. How come you on welfare if your pop an engineer?"
"He's an environmentalist."
"Pffft."
Then the intercom buzzed. They wanted me in the office.
The office secretary was a little Asian woman who always wore plastic gloves. Her eyes rolled up to me from behind thick glasses. There was a poster above her of a silhouetted tank, the sun rising behind it, and it said in big letters, COALITION OF THE WILLING. There was a fist sized hole in the wall next to it. She pointed me to the guidance office.
My guidance counselor was Mrs. Priddy. She had a wide, mushroom shaped hairstyle. She was dressed all in kelly green, with cork soled sandals. She smiled at me gummily.
"Bobby! Congratulations! Personal life going OK?"
"Yeah."
"How are you, on a scale of one to ten?"
"Oh....five."
"Adjustment period, sure. Any feeling of anger, resentment? Antisocial feelings?"
"No."
"Well I have some people here to see you."
The door opened and men with cameras came in and start snapping photos of me. They all looked kind of bored, actually. Except for one of them, this English guy. He was big, red faced, thick necked. Lots of faded tattoos.
"Hey, you! Billy No-mates. Cheek to the left!"
"What?" I couldn't understand him, he was gumming his words. Most of his teeth were missing.
"Heard your mum gone for a burton?"
"Listen, you can take my picture, but I just want this to be over with. I'm not really famous. I'm a nobody. I'm just going along with it because I'm contractually obligated to."
"Bobby!" cried Mrs. Priddy, "That's a very negative attitude!"
"Three days of fame? What bullshit. I'd rather have three days of power."
I was looking at the Englishman as I said this. He leaned in close to me. He smelled of sweat and baloney. He smelled like poor people.
"Boy-o, some people like the fame. They think it is power! Me, I think you got the dog's breakfast. You know what I say to a boy in your position?"
"What."
"Run. Go like the clappers. Out of here, boy!" He's whispering now. Mrs. Priddy was smiling tightly, getting nervous.
I walked out of that room, because I was starting to feel dizzy and sick. A shower of sparks was falling across my vision. I get ocular migraines, where I see flashing lights, dots and zig zags, when my eyes are closed. And when my eyes are open, I have a blind spot. I could only see half of this hall of lockers, and my vision was flickering, giving everything a strobe light effect. A nightmare. This is a nightmare. That man with the camera had looked at me like a hungry dog. He had a tattoo on his arm. It was a saw. I only registered it after I left the room. An after-image burned behind my lids, those zig-zag blades. Sawing through my skull.
Instead of going back to class, I headed to my locker. I had to go home. But when I opened my locker, I saw that it was empty. They had taken all my stuff, cleaned it out. Why? I was scared now. It was a fear that didn't have a name. Go like the clappers!
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen. I counted backwards to calm myself as I ran home. Seventeen, sixteen. I passed the strip malls, the gas stations, liquor stores. With a sick shock I saw my picture up on a billboard, that same billboard that had the family on it before. I don't know where they got that black and white portrait, but it looked nothing like me. It was hard to focus with my eyes flashing away, and anyway, I didn't have time to think about it.
Thirteen, twelve, eleven. I should blow my house up and fake my own death.
Explosives. Propane, gunpowder...I could run off to the woods. Fishboy, back to nature. I'd build a lean-to out, build fires, spear animals and eat them...
Eight, seven six. I could take a bus to Boulder and find my dad. He visited me last year. I offered my hand for a handshake, but he hugged me, making me feel all still and cold. He offered to let me live with him for a while. He wanted to make things up to me.
He can send me to live with the monks. I'll cook their food! I'll carry their money! And they will teach me how to be pure.
Five, four...but right now I just want to go home. I'll figure it out later.
Three, two, one.
I thought it was a trick of vision at first, but it was no blind spot. My house was gone. Not like it was torn down, demolished...it just disappeared as though it never existed.
All that was left was a hole in the ground. My mother's rainbow painted trees stood around it, looking bald and vulnerable without their leaves. The traffic still rumbled by like normal. A plane was streaking the sky overhead. Oh, the impermanence of things.
I knew I should have expected this, really. But it hurt me. It wasn't much of a life we had, she and I, but it was ours.
My parents let this happen. I wanted to freeze this moment now, and imagine that they could see it. Every parent's nightmare, right? Your son is alone, he's sick, he's staring at the hole that was his house. This is the future that you didn't prepare me for, a future of limited resources, and too many sick, angry people. There's not enough of anything to go around, and I lost. We all lost. NOW LOOK AT ME!
A hand touched my shoulder, I whirled around.
"Dude, I came back to talk to you!"
The blonde boy. He was not wearing his jumpsuit, but khakis and a button down oxford over a t-shirt. I was as surprised as he was when I punched him in the face. He lost his balance and stumbled. My eyes saw him in fragments, a blue eye under a colorless brow, pink scalp under shorn hair. He wasn't expecting this. I pounded him again.
"Stop it! I'm Jake! Your friend! From elementary school! We lived next to each other! I'm Jake!"
Jake. There was a Jake, from long ago. He was my friend, a year older, from when my family was living the good life. We lived side by side in big white colonials with wide green lawns. We would spend summer days digging trenches together, riding bikes. We shared a paper route. My best friend. Jake? Now I felt confused, but my body wouldn't stop. I pinned him down.
"Why are you working for those people! You're a shit!"
"It's a work study program!" I whacked him in the mouth. A couple of Mexican guys were cheering us on from the Pizza Hut parking lot. I got distracted for a minute, then he rolled over and held me down.
"Calm down! I'm sitting on you 'til you calm down. I didn't recognize you when we were at your house. And I sure didn't recognize your mom. What happened to her? She's totally changed from when our moms were in the Garden Club together!"
Garden Club, Book Club. Tennis. She was a joiner. And I was in soccer, scouts, all kinds of stuff, too, before it all fell apart. "My mom was always a little that way. You just never knew."
He got off me, helped me up. We caught our breath.
"It wasn't until later that I figured out that it was you. I feel bad that we took her away. Listen. I talked to my parents, and they said it was OK for you to stay with us."
"......"
"I don't know how this happened to you...but it's not your fault. You're better than this."
"Than what?"
He gestured around us, at my neighborhood. "You're not like these people. You just got a bad break. Come stay with me."
I remembered Josh's house. I can see it now. His house is huge, cathedral ceilings with skylights. There are speakers in those ceilings, music on the patio, too, if you touch a button. The sofa is long and low, the leather is butter soft. Everything is new new new, the TV, the stainless steel appliances. And so clean, it makes you feel calm in your own skin. I have to admit, I wanted it bad right then, just like anyone else would.
We weren't looking at each other, but at the car lot, the dumpsters, the SUVs driving by with thumping speakers. Trash blowing in the wind.
"Will they bring my mother back?"
"Yes. But you won't know her. And she won't know you."
Josh's flannel shirt reminded me of childhood. It looked soft. I bet his mom washed it for him, she's a good kind woman who would welcome me, and wash my clothes, too. I bet his shirt smells like fabric softener. I wanted to bury my face in it and block the world out. And I bet he would have let me, too. But I kept my arms folded and my jaw tight. I was afraid that much kindness might kill me.
In the end, though, I left. That very night, on a Greyhound bus.
People on a bus tend to let you be. Everyone's got a magazine, a headset. And this bus had TVs. It was like a waiting room on wheels.
My dad didn't know that I was coming. Jake took me to the station, loaned me some money and everything. Now the bus was pulling away. When I saw my dad I was going to tell him my plan. About the monastery. I would tell him a friend of mine had lived with the monks, and I wanted to do it, too. Everyone needs their own story to tell.
I had the window seat. It was dark, and my reflection was superimposed over the streets outside.
We're passing my billboard now. It's not lit up, so it's hard to see my face. But I'm finding that I really want to see it. It's not me, but someone like me. I actually find that I don't mind it so much. I've got that juvenile delinquent look from the silver screen days. Like a young Brando. Before the age of irony. My expression is keen, assessing, looking over and past what used to be my neighborhood.
Leah Erickson has been published most recently in Indigenous Fiction, Pennsylvania English, and The Saint Ann's Review, where "Chickenhead and Fishboy" was first published. She has work forthcoming in SUB-LIT.com. She lives in Rhode Island.