contemptible, and present it to him with all the edges sharpened. The hurt of it will hit him sudden and hard. His life will become real again. It always happens the same way. There are days when he is lucky enough to evade them, but not many.
One lunchtime midway through December, when the sky is spitting just enough rain to keep everyone inside, he spots them craning their necks for him in the hallway, and he retreats upstairs to the quiet row of classrooms where the senior high kids are working. It is Miss Vincent’s free period, and she is eating a sandwich at her desk. He knocks on her open door and asks, “Do you mind if I hang out here until the bell rings?” She has just taken a bite, and she beckons him inside with a feint of her chin.
Kevin heads for his regular seat beneath the wall of comic strips, a paling rainbow of
Marvin
s and
Momma
s and
Hi and Lois
es, their corners creased over rectangles of Scotch tape.
Miss Vincent gives him a probing look and asks, “Kevin, is everything all right?”
The sound of his name. That’s all it takes. From someone who doesn’t mean it as an insult.
“Oh dear,” Miss Vincent says, and “Take your time,” and “Would you like me to close the door? Here, let me close the door.”
Haltingly, because it is not a story, he tells her what hashappened. The rain taps like grains of rice against the glass. A laugh filters through the wall. When he has finished, Miss Vincent gets up and walks to her desk, tugs out a handful of Kleenex, and hands them to him in a lily. In elementary school, on the first day of class, everyone was required to contribute a box of Kleenex to the supply cabinet. They never lasted until Christmas.
“How long has all of this been going on?” Miss Vincent asks.
“Two weeks. More like three.”
And that’s when the intercom goes off, and the building fills with noise, and her tenth-graders begin to arrive. She escorts Kevin to the landing at the top of the back staircase. “I need you to wait here a few minutes. Can you do that? I’m going to page Mr. McCallum. He’ll want to talk to you.”
“But I’ve got math.”
“Don’t worry about math. I’ll write you a pass.”
“But—”
The fire door sighs closed on its metal cylinder. He sinks down the wall to the floor. There is no silence like a school’s after the halls have drained and the bell has rung and the doors have clapped shut like a string of firecrackers. Kevin rubs his eyes. For a moment, his body seems to swim with light. He hears Miss Vincent call his name from the corridor, but he is sitting directly beneath the grated window, and she can’t see him. “Kevin?” she repeats, and a wild guilt goes sprawling through him. He wishes that he understood where it came from. Often he has a dream—he could be inside it now—that he is carrying something fragile, something precious, and he has dropped it. Sometimes he relives the accident a hundredtimes before he wakes up. He can never prevent it. That’s how he feels listening to Miss Vincent say, “I don’t know what to tell you. He was right here. I don’t know where he went”—as if something irreplaceable has bobbled from his fingers. It is falling, it is broken, and maybe it will always be broken. A week might pass, a year, and who can say?
There is no silence like a school’s after the halls have drained and the bell has rung and the doors have clapped shut like a string of firecrackers. Kevin rubs his eyes. For a moment, his body seems to swim with light. By the time his vision has cleared, a man is standing over him on the landing, a skinny guy with the look of a guidance counselor on his day off, untucked but still buttoned up. The man holds himself with the same slight hunch Kevin wears when he wants to remain invisible—except stiffer, old-mannier. Here, Kevin thinks, is someone who has been trying to go unnoticed for so long that the posture has become irremovable. He is welded into
One lunchtime midway through December, when the sky is spitting just enough rain to keep everyone inside, he spots them craning their necks for him in the hallway, and he retreats upstairs to the quiet row of classrooms where the senior high kids are working. It is Miss Vincent’s free period, and she is eating a sandwich at her desk. He knocks on her open door and asks, “Do you mind if I hang out here until the bell rings?” She has just taken a bite, and she beckons him inside with a feint of her chin.
Kevin heads for his regular seat beneath the wall of comic strips, a paling rainbow of
Marvin
s and
Momma
s and
Hi and Lois
es, their corners creased over rectangles of Scotch tape.
Miss Vincent gives him a probing look and asks, “Kevin, is everything all right?”
The sound of his name. That’s all it takes. From someone who doesn’t mean it as an insult.
“Oh dear,” Miss Vincent says, and “Take your time,” and “Would you like me to close the door? Here, let me close the door.”
Haltingly, because it is not a story, he tells her what hashappened. The rain taps like grains of rice against the glass. A laugh filters through the wall. When he has finished, Miss Vincent gets up and walks to her desk, tugs out a handful of Kleenex, and hands them to him in a lily. In elementary school, on the first day of class, everyone was required to contribute a box of Kleenex to the supply cabinet. They never lasted until Christmas.
“How long has all of this been going on?” Miss Vincent asks.
“Two weeks. More like three.”
And that’s when the intercom goes off, and the building fills with noise, and her tenth-graders begin to arrive. She escorts Kevin to the landing at the top of the back staircase. “I need you to wait here a few minutes. Can you do that? I’m going to page Mr. McCallum. He’ll want to talk to you.”
“But I’ve got math.”
“Don’t worry about math. I’ll write you a pass.”
“But—”
The fire door sighs closed on its metal cylinder. He sinks down the wall to the floor. There is no silence like a school’s after the halls have drained and the bell has rung and the doors have clapped shut like a string of firecrackers. Kevin rubs his eyes. For a moment, his body seems to swim with light. He hears Miss Vincent call his name from the corridor, but he is sitting directly beneath the grated window, and she can’t see him. “Kevin?” she repeats, and a wild guilt goes sprawling through him. He wishes that he understood where it came from. Often he has a dream—he could be inside it now—that he is carrying something fragile, something precious, and he has dropped it. Sometimes he relives the accident a hundredtimes before he wakes up. He can never prevent it. That’s how he feels listening to Miss Vincent say, “I don’t know what to tell you. He was right here. I don’t know where he went”—as if something irreplaceable has bobbled from his fingers. It is falling, it is broken, and maybe it will always be broken. A week might pass, a year, and who can say?
There is no silence like a school’s after the halls have drained and the bell has rung and the doors have clapped shut like a string of firecrackers. Kevin rubs his eyes. For a moment, his body seems to swim with light. By the time his vision has cleared, a man is standing over him on the landing, a skinny guy with the look of a guidance counselor on his day off, untucked but still buttoned up. The man holds himself with the same slight hunch Kevin wears when he wants to remain invisible—except stiffer, old-mannier. Here, Kevin thinks, is someone who has been trying to go unnoticed for so long that the posture has become irremovable. He is welded into
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