Californium by R. Dean Johnson Page A

I saw this on an album—maybe it was MickJagger—but it looked kind of cool. “So, punk is about saying, ‘Fuck the Man’?”
    Treat folds his arms, which only makes them bulge out bigger, and gets this little grin on his face.
    Keith nods. “How about Fuck Knuckle?”
    â€œAlmost,” Treat says. He counts bands off on his fingers: “The Sex Pistols, Black Flag, the Clash, the Dead Boys, Buzzcocks.” He waves Keith up for the next box. “Think like that.”
    It takes a few more boxes for us to get our rhythm back; then the names start coming: the Convicts, Screaming Mimes, Second Thoughts, and Kurfew with a backward
K.
Treat says the names sound better, but he just isn’t seeing them on album covers. We take a break and Treat brings out a Dead Kennedys sticker to show us how the initials
DK
look like a tomahawk the way they’re pushed together with the stem of the
K
extra long like a handle.
    â€œMy dad loves Richard Nixon,” Keith says. “How about him?”
    Treat looks at the rafters. “Dead Nixons?”
    â€œTricky Dick?” Keith says. “That’s his nickname.”
    Treat shakes this off. “Sounds too much like Soft Cell, and that’s just one step above disco.”
    All week in Science, Mr. Krueger’s been talking about how combining two things doesn’t make them half of one and half of the other; it makes a third, totally new thing. “Dick Nixon,” I say. “We leave out the
c
and push it all together, d-i-k-n-i-x-o-n.”
    â€œDiknixon,” Treat says. “But with the
N
capitalized right in the middle.”
    I can see the name coming out of his mouth as he says it. The Mohawk starts moving up and down, Treat smiling andsaying faster, all one word, and angrier: “Dik-Nixon. DikNixon. DikNixon!”
    A smile creeps across Keith’s face. “It’s good,” he says. “It’s got the word
dick
in it.”
    .
    As me and Keith walk home, we feel good about being DikNixon. All those guys playing soccer in the park, who knows they’re soccer players when they’re not in their uniforms? Who can tell if you’re in Math Club or Spanish Club when you aren’t at the meetings? But when you’re in a band, people know. They know it exists because of you, and if you quit, it goes away. That’s huge.
    At home, all I want to do is talk about DikNixon, but I can’t. My parents don’t need to know, Colleen’s too young to understand, and Brendan couldn’t care less if it doesn’t have anything to do with football. So here I am, geeked up in my room and just writing the name in different ways on notebook paper until I’ve got the word
Dik
angular with the
D
and the
K
shaped like two arrows, the
I
in between them:
>I<.
Then I stack it on top of
Nixon
with all those letters the same height and it looks right. I draw it careful and slow on the notebook I use for letters to Uncle Ryan, right next to the
NY
of a Yankees logo I drew, only bigger. Now it’s official. I draw it on my English folder, then Spanish, and then I see Edie’s number, swirly and blue across the top of my Algebra folder.
    My heart’s pounding—full-count, bases-loaded, bottom-of-the-ninth pounding—and in a second I’m downstairs in the kitchen, dialing. The phone hums and crackles and hums and crackles and then, in mid-hum, clicks. This tired-sounding “Ha-lo” comesthrough the line. With my best church voice I say, “Hello, ma’am, this is Reece Houghton from Edie’s Algebra class. Is she home?” There’s a mishmash of talking and the only word I can make out is “Edie!”
    The phone crackles and thumps a little, there’s this shuffle of footsteps, and did Edie just say something in Japanese? Then I hear, “Reece?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhat’s going on?”
    It’s weird how clear she sounds,