Adam Selzer (13 page)

On the other hand, maybe Dr. Guff was wrong. Maybe I was a bit crazy. Scientifically, I certainly had genetics working against me, what with my parents and all. But the guys who made
Un Chien Andalou
had been out of their minds, so I’d at least be in good company.

Toward the end of the day, Coach Wilkins showed up in the room, with a coffee cup in his hand.

“Hi, Leon,” he said, smiling and flashing me a peace sign. It was a pretty lame thing to do, but I took it as a sign that he was on my side.

“Hi, Coach Wilkins,” I said.

“I understand that you’re a political prisoner,” he said, smiling like the whole thing was somehow funny.

“Something like that,” I said. “I’m being censored.”

“Well,” he said, “I just wanted to sneak in here and let you know that we watched your tape in the teachers’ lounge, and more than a couple of the teachers are on your side here. The whole thing reminds me of when I was in school.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Sure. We were your age once, you know. When I was in college, I was part of a free-speech group called Freedom Under Charles Kerr. Think about the initials.”

“That’s pretty clever,” I said. I was sort of surprised that he felt like he could tell me something like that without worrying about getting fired. I was going to ask who Charles Kerr was, but the day was almost over, and I knew that if I really got Wilkins started on something, I might never be able to leave. I could always find out for myself.

“Anyway, just hang in there,” he said. “A lot of great art is censored when it first comes out, and that almost never stops it from being a hit. When I was in school, they tried to ban
Forever
by Judy Blume at my school, and I think every kid in town ended up reading it. They probably never would have touched it if the school board hadn’t made such a big thing about it. And anyway, it’s not like this will go on your permanent record or anything. So keep your chin up!”

I hate middle school. Even the teachers who are on your side don’t take you that seriously. Keep my chin up?

“And Leon?” he said as he walked out the door. I turned my head to him. “Don’t be surprised if everyone in school knows about this by the time classes end. I’m doing my part.”

The day dragged on for what seemed like years before the bell finally rang. On my way out, Dr. Brown told me I was to report right back to the office the next day, and I said I would. If it was honorable to serve time for a noble cause, then I would serve my time.

I wanted to hang around outside the school afterward, to see what everyone had heard, but Dr. Brown insisted on escorting me out of the building and walking with me until I was off school property. I didn’t say a word to him the whole time; we just slowly walked away from the building until we got to this little drainage ditch that ran under the street, which was known as the Pee Tunnel because, well, younger kids on their way back from grade school often peed in it. The tunnel marked the official edge of school property. When we got there, Dr. Brown said, “I’ll see you in the morning, same time, same channel,” which I guess was supposed to be funny, then turned and left me there. I just kept walking home. When I got there, my parents were waiting in the living room.

“Well, Leon,” said my mother, “we got the call. I told you this would happen.”

“But,” said my father, “we want to make sure that we hear your side of what happened.”

“Well,” I said, “Mrs. Smollet saw my movie, thought it was horribly inappropriate for kids to be told that, uh”—I wasn’t about to talk about masturbation in front of my parents, so I went for a nicer way of putting things—“that thinking about sex is normal.”

“Well, your movie isn’t explicit, is it?” asked my dad. “It wouldn’t be rated R or anything, right?”

“Who knows?” I said. “You never know what they’re going to decide about movies. But all the nudity in mine is just old paintings and a CPR dummy that doesn’t even have a crotch.”

“She told me about the dummy,” said my father, half frowning. “But she didn’t tell me that it didn’t have a crotch.”

“Mrs. Smollet called you?” I asked.

“Yes, she did,” he said.

“Don’t listen to her. She thinks she’s the morality police.”

To my great surprise, Dad chuckled. “Don’t worry about me, Leon,” he said. “I told you how I used to do lighting for my roommate’s avant-garde stuff, right?” I nodded. “Well, there were plenty of people like her who used to show up to complain. I know how to deal with that sort of people. Of course, his show had actual nudity in it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He used to go onstage naked and painted green every now and then. Some people in town thought that was absolutely unacceptable.”

“It was, if you ask me,” said my mother.

“But this is different!” I said. “My movie really has a point!”

“I’m sure it does,” said my father. “I’ll tell you what: I’ll go into the school in the morning and talk to Dr. Brown to see if we can work something out.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was in the most trouble I’d ever been in, and my dad was offering to help bail me out.

For once in my life, I was awfully glad that I’d never actually pushed anyone in my family down the stairs.

“What does Max Streich think of all this?” Dad asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I didn’t get to talk to him yet.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be ready to fight for you,” he said. “I’ll give him a call later on. You’ll probably have to serve out the day tomorrow regardless, but I think we can keep all this off your permanent record, at least.”

About five minutes later, Anna called. “Is it true?” she asked.

“That depends,” I said. “What are people saying?”

“That Mrs. Smollet suspended you over the movie.”

“Yep,” I said. “A day and a half in-school for being an alleged smut peddler. She thought the dummy was jerking off.”

“What the green hell?” Anna asked. “Why would she think that? The dummy doesn’t even have anything
to
jerk off!”

“I know!” I said. “And they aren’t going to show the movie to the kids, and I’m not allowed to talk to anyone tomorrow.” I was sure Dr. Brown would escort me on and off the premises again.

“This isn’t over,” she said. “We can finish this movie. All you need is the kissing scene, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And the explosion and the audio. We can still tape Edie and Brian doing the kissing scene any time. And I kept the master tape.” Mrs. Smollet probably didn’t know this; she probably thought that the rough cut she had
was
the master tape. As I have mentioned, she wasn’t that gifted herself.

“Right,” Anna said. “Don’t worry, we’ve all got your back. Let’s meet up at Fat Johnny’s tomorrow night and we’ll figure out what we’re doing. They don’t know how many people are involved in this thing, do they?”

“Nope,” I said. “Mrs. Smollet knows you helped, I guess, but she doesn’t know anything about Dustin or Brian or Edie being involved. But be warned—I know she wants to kick me out of the gifted pool.”

“How do you know?”

“Dr. Guff told me.”

“You got to talk to him?” She sounded terribly jealous.

I told her the whole story—on any other day, that would have been the first thing I’d told everyone. But this day was different—our spots in the gifted pool were at stake. Art was at stake. Freedom itself was at stake, if you got right down to it.

“Well, do you think she can kick us out?” I asked, when I was done with the story about Dr. Guff.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Just hang tight, we’ll get you out of this. Everyone in school is going to know what’s going on.”

I hoped she was right.

Two hours later, there was a knock on the door and I went to answer it. To what I guess should not have been my surprise but actually was, there stood Anna and her father.

“Hi, Leon,” she said.

“Hi, Anna,” I said. “Hi, Warren.” I reached out and shook her father’s hand. “You guys wanna come inside?”

“Sure,” he said. They stepped inside, and my dad, who had been in the kitchen with my mother, saw them coming.

Please, God,
I thought,
don’t let them be working on a food disaster.
I scanned the kitchen but didn’t see anything more unusual than a box of noodles and a jar of spaghetti sauce.

“Hello there,” he said, waving. “I’m Nick Harris.”

“Warren Brandenburg,” said Anna’s dad, waving back. “And this is Anna.”

Our dads shook hands, and I began to silently pray to whoever was listening that my father didn’t act like a complete dork in front of Anna and her dad.

We all walked into the kitchen and sat down. My mother waved and introduced herself but stayed at the stove.

“So, Leon,” said Anna’s father, “I hear they’re cracking down on you, huh?”

“You might say that,” I said. “I should have shown up with rocks in my pockets.”

“So you know about the project?” Dad asked.

“Of course. Anna’s been working on it with him,” said Mr. Brandenburg.

“Oh!” said my dad, as if he’d just discovered the Unified Theory of Everything. “You must be the one he borrowed the art books from.”

“Right.”

Dad sort of fixed me with a goofy grin, and I knew right away that the grin meant “You didn’t tell me your friend was a girl!” I wanted to crawl into the nearest cave, but I didn’t know of any caves in town, unless you counted the drainage ditch.

“Anyway,” her dad continued, “I’ve had some run-ins with Mrs. Smollet before, and this is just the sort of thing I expect out of her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was looking for some way to suspend Anna, too. She’s tried before.”

“Really?” my dad asked.

“Yeah,” Warren said. “We get calls from her now and then about some dumb thing or another. She usually warns that someone could sue. I thought if you and I, as parents, went in tomorrow, we could straighten this whole thing out and maybe get Leon off the hook before things get any worse.”

“I was certainly planning on going in,” said my father. “I think that this is clearly just the woman pushing her own agenda.”

“I can guarantee it,” said Mr. Brandenburg.

“Either that or she’s just waiting for a good reason to sue them and get rich,” I said.

“Probably both,” said Mr. Brandenburg. “Or it might be a religious thing. This school has always been known to sort of skirt the boundary between church and state. Last year Anna’s math teacher was always telling kids that they should buy some ‘extreme teens’ version of the New Testament.”

“And no one would stop him,” she said. “And the school team is named the Monks, after all. That’s religious, too.”

“And just plain stupid,” I said.

“Well,” said Anna’s dad, “the story I’ve always heard was that it was supposed to be like Thelonious Monk, the piano player, but people thought it would be inappropriate to name the team after a jazz musician.”

“Especially a black jazz musician,” Anna added.

Her dad chuckled. “Probably that, too. It was back in the fifties, after all. But for one reason or another, they just had the mascot be a guy in robes to cover up the origin of the name.”

“That sounds like a suburban myth,” my dad said.

“I don’t believe it, either,” said Anna’s dad. “It’s probably just a dumb name all around, and that’s that. But that’s sort of what we’re up against. Still, I think we can get this taken care of.”

My father got up to make coffee, and Mr. Brandenburg followed him over to the counter so they could make basic “nice to meet you, what kind of work do you do” small talk. I couldn’t bear to listen to it; Anna’s dad was probably the coolest parent in all of Cornersville, and my dad was probably going to come off as a doofus. However, their conversation left Anna and me alone at the table.

“Well,” she said, almost whispering, “I told everyone.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I called everyone I know and told them to call everyone they know. Half the school is going to know about this by morning,” she said.

“Coach Wilkins said he was telling people in his class,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard he was,” said Anna. “Some kid said he was calling you a political prisoner!”

“That’s Wilkins for you,” I said. “It’s just like him to get all excited about something like this.”

“Hell,” she said, “it might work out well if he can get the kids excited about it.”

“But half of them don’t even like me very much,” I said. “You’ll get the gifted pool and maybe some of the head-bangers rallied, but that’s maybe twenty, thirty people. Most kids have never even met Smollet.”

“Maybe we’ll get more,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether they like you. Even if they hate you, they probably still want to fight with Dr. Brown over this.”

“We’ll see, I guess,” I said.

Meanwhile, our dads were still talking, and now my mother was talking with them, too; they all seemed to be getting along pretty well. Dad was talking about sound reception and flammable properties, so I guessed he was talking about his new invention, not the accounting job, which was probably good, as long as he never let anyone catch on that he wasn’t a very good inventor.

Anyway, I was grateful that they had to leave before dinner was ready, since it turned out that the pasta and sauce were just the first two ingredients in a recipe that mixed tomato sauce with a sauce made out of zucchini that had been put in the blender. It actually didn’t taste bad at all, but it was hard for me to want to eat something for which the recipe came out of a book called
Add Some Zucchini to Your Life!

That, I said at the table, was not the title of a cookbook. It was a bad pickup line.

The next day I walked to school a hardened criminal. The original plan was for Dad to drop me off, but he decided he ought to pop into the Boredom Factory first, just to let them know he had some things to do and was taking a personal day. He and Anna’s dad would be going into the school together later that morning.

So I walked. It wasn’t a long walk; if I took the screen off my bedroom window and leaned out far enough, I could actually see the school on a clear day, though this was not the sort of thing I liked to do. When I was in my room, I generally preferred to think I was a safer distance away.

I arrived early and found Dr. Brown already waiting outside by the drainage ditch to escort me onto campus, but once we got past the parking lot I saw that the whole flagpole was surrounded by students—way more than there normally were. Brian was there, and so was Dustin, and a whole bunch of kids I didn’t even know. As soon as they saw me, a bunch of people started shouting in my direction.

“Take ’em out, Leon!” someone shouted.

“Free Leon Harris!” shouted another.

Dr. Brown looked more than just a little annoyed; as soon as he saw me, he whisked me away and started leading me toward the front door, but just before he pulled me inside, I was able turn around and flash them a peace sign. Everyone—get this—cheered, like I was some sort of hero or something. A second later, through the door, I could hear a whole bunch of kids outside singing that Pink Floyd song that goes, “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control.”

“You’ve got quite a following today, Mr. Harris,” said Dr. Brown as he hustled me down the hall.

“I told you everyone in school would know about this,” I said, trying my hardest not to laugh at him. “My father is coming in to talk to you later.”

“The one who hates Thomas Edison?”

“Gee,” I said, figuring he’d heard that from Dr. Guff. “Some doctor-patient confidentiality you have around here.”

“Interviews with students serving punishments aren’t typically covered by that,” said Dr. Brown. “But your father is welcome to come in. We have nothing to hide, and I’ll be happy to speak to him.”

I thought about asking why, if he had nothing to hide, he kept covering up his bald head with the cheap toupee, but I didn’t. Honestly, I think the very fact that he had a cheap rug at all indicated that he probably wasn’t principal material. When you’re dealing with a bunch of middle school kids, appearance is everything. A nicer rug would have been worth the investment.

He led me straight to the in-school suspension room and shut the door, which annoyed me a bit, because school was still a few minutes from officially starting. Two minutes later, I heard a group of students in the hall chanting, “We are normal! We are normal!” I guessed Dustin had started that one.

I might have been an alleged smut peddler, but I felt invincible. Back in third grade, James Cole and I had somehow gotten the idea that no one ever died while people were clapping for them. We even got this idea that we could get some other people involved and arrange it so we were clapping for each other all the time when we got older, and hence, we’d never die. Of course, that was all nonsense. Plenty of people have been shot and killed while people were clapping for them. Still, the fact that people had cheered for me still made me feel somehow untouchable.

I had never considered myself particularly well liked at school. I didn’t play sports. I didn’t make out with anyone in the halls. Hell, the fact that I knew my heavy metal and knew enough not to go snitching on kids who were acting up were just about the only things that kept me from being a regular target for beat-downs. I knew that news about my being suspended would travel fast, but I never imagined that anyone would chant anything in the halls.

Suddenly, I had become popular.

And from what I had seen of the kids outside, it wasn’t just the nerds and seminerds who liked me; even the dumbass kids who spent most of their classes chasing each other around and calling people fags were shouting and chanting. I guess no one could resist the idea of a movie with nudity in it.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about being popular among those guys; I didn’t really think I
wanted
them to like me. But that was what avant-garde art was all about. It was supposed to wake people up, make them look at things differently and stop acting like idiots, even if it was just for about five seconds. This may have been the first time in history, however, that it had actually worked.

After about twenty minutes, the door opened and Mr. Streich walked in.

“Hi, Leon,” he said cheerfully. He raised a fist, like he was saying “right on.” Normally I would have thought it was sort of patronizing, but the way Mr. Streich was grinning, I could see that he was on my side, not just teasing me. My dad had been right about him.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Did they send you in here to interview me?”

“No,” he said. “I just wanted to talk about your movie a bit. Your dad called me last night and told me that he’ll be coming in to talk to Dr. Brown later, and I’m going to be there with him. I think your movie was really very creative, even if it was a little inappropriate.”

“It wasn’t inappropriate at all!” I said, for about the millionth time.

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion,” he said. “I don’t really see the harm in it, but a lot of parents would. People get really touchy about that kind of thing, you know. But anyway, I’m giving you an A on it, even if you never finish it and they don’t show it to a single kid.”

“That’s good,” I said. “I was wondering about that.” I had resigned myself to getting an F on the project, honestly, and even felt like it would be another badge of honor, but one less bad grade to worry about was nothing to whine over.

Just then, I heard someone outside the office shouting, “Free Leon!”

“Hear that?” He grinned. “You’re a celebrity now.”

“I noticed,” I said. “I’m not sure what to think of it.”

“Well, just don’t let it go to your head,” he warned. “Half of these kids’ll forget all about it next week.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But if they spend one day acting less like idiots, my work here is done.”

He smiled again and said, “That’s one way to look at it.”

“This is all just Mrs. Smollet’s fault,” I said. “Her and Joe Griffin.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t agree with Mrs. Smollet all the time, either, but her opinions are valid, too, and it’s important to remember that. Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to let her run the world.”

“I’ll say,” I said.

He patted my shoulder.

“It’s gonna be quite a scene after school, I think,” he said. “Coach Wilkins has been telling all the kids in his class that you’re a political prisoner and that they should all show up to support you after school. But you didn’t hear it from me.” And he walked out of the room.

A few minutes later, I started to hear the sound of his voice, and the sound of my father’s voice, and the sound of Mr. Brandenburg’s voice, all talking to Dr. Brown, but I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. Then I heard the sound of Mrs. Smollet talking, sounding all defensive.

Then they all stopped for a minute, and I saw a blue light under the door, which I guess meant that there was a TV showing the movie. I could just barely hear the narration being read out loud by Dr. Brown. After a few minutes, Mrs. Smollet spoke again. Then everyone spoke all at once, and then, in the middle of it, some kid in the hall shouted, “Free Leon Harris!” loudly enough that everyone could hear it in the office. I would have just about killed to be able to tell what was going on in that room. I moved up to the door and pressed my ear against it, but I still couldn’t make out more than a word or two. Mrs. Smollet said “moral fiber” once, but she was the only one shouting loudly enough that I could hear anything she said. Everyone else was being a bit calmer.

It was only at this point that I realized that if I put my ear down on the floor, by the crack under the door, I could probably hear a lot better—some gifted kid I turned out to be. Hoping that no one would swing the door open and bash my head in, I got down on my knees to listen.

“Oh, heck,” said my father’s voice. “I probably go to church more often than you do.”

“This is all like some sort of conspiracy,” said Mrs. Smollet. “The two of you are raising a couple of little heathens, and I’m the one being persecuted! And just for trying to be religious!”

This was probably the first time I’d actually heard Mrs. Smollet claim to be religious herself—normally she just talked about being really moral. I guess she thought they were automatically the same thing.

“Now, let’s calm down for a moment,” said Dr. Brown, trying to play the peacekeeper. “No one’s running any conspiracies here. I think we all need to take a deep breath. I’m not calling anyone’s parenting skills into question.”

“I am,” said Mrs. Smollet.

If I hadn’t known better than to do so, I would have charged in there and slugged her myself. Sure, I may complain about my dad—it’s natural to complain when your parents are a few chicken tenders short of a sampler platter. But there was only one person who was going to call my dad a bad parent and get away with it—me.

“Muriel, please!” said Dr. Brown. I hadn’t known that her first name was Muriel. I didn’t know
anyone
was still called Muriel. “This project wasn’t even a part of your class. Now, if you’ll excuse us, the conference is between Mr. Harris, Mr. Brandenburg, and myself.”

“And the devil makes four,” she huffed. And I heard her get up and walk out, slamming the door behind her. I had to give her credit—that was a pretty good closing line.

No one said anything for a second or so. Then there was some muttering, so low that I couldn’t even make it out with my ear practically in the room, and a couple of nervous chuckles. Then I heard everyone get up, and some doors open and shut, and I decided to get back in my seat before someone opened the door and took my head off.

Where the hell did Smollet get off? First, from what I gathered of the talk, she’d been telling my dad he didn’t go to church enough; then she turned right around and said she was being persecuted for
her
religious beliefs? My dad probably
did
go to church more than she did. It would explain a lot if Mrs. Smollet was really a devil worshipper in disguise, and when we’d been pretending to be Satanists, she’d just been irritated that we weren’t taking her dark lord seriously enough. At least Dr. Brown had had the good sense to kick her out of the room before I charged through the door and threw her out myself. Why had she taken a job as the gifted-pool director when all she wanted to do was play morality police?

I sat for a while, trying to get my mind off how pissed I was by scribbling down a list of what I still had to do to finish the movie in the notebook I had in my backpack. The list really just amounted to filming the kiss scene and explosion, recording the narration and music, and editing it all together.

The day went by a little bit faster than the day before had, partly because about every fifteen minutes I would hear some other kid walk up and shout, “Free Leon!” Waiting for that gave me something to do besides just eating my lunch.

It was early in the afternoon when the door opened and Mrs. Smollet walked in. She looked even more upset than she normally did, and was carrying a whole stack of papers.

“I hope you’re happy, Leon,” she said. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused?”

“Well, I hear people shouting that you should let me go now and then,” I said, not even bothering to keep myself from smiling.

“Did you put them up to that, Leon?” she asked, looking furious. “Are you behind all this?”

“Nope,” I said. “If I’d asked them to, they never would have done it. Most of these kids probably hate me.”

“Well, obviously they don’t hate you that much.”

It was right then that I realized what was happening. The jerks might have hated me, but they hated school even more. They weren’t protesting for me, they were protesting against school. That was good enough for me.

“Maybe they don’t, maybe they do,” I said. “But it looks like they certainly hate you.”

“This whole town is going to hell in a handbasket!” she muttered.

And she walked out, slamming the door behind her with a satisfying bang.

Ha.

I ended up in in-school suspension for the whole day after all, but Dr. Brown said he wouldn’t have to escort me out. “I probably should,” he said, “but your sentence is over, and it’s probably better that I not go out there. It’s you they’re going to want.”

“I’m sure there won’t be a riot or anything,” I said, though I wasn’t really.

“I hope not,” he said, shaking his head sternly, as if to warn me not to try to stir one up myself. “But there’ve been a lot of teachers saying that kids are shouting ‘Free Leon’ and stuff like that in their classes. Coach Wilkins was trying to rally the teachers for you in the teachers’ lounge. He made quite a scene, in fact.”

“That sounds like him, all right,” I said.

“For the record, I’d just like to say that I’m sorry all this happened. After talking to your dad and Mrs. Smollet today, it’s fairly clear that she was overreacting. I always trust teachers’ judgement when they want a student suspended, but I should have tried to calm her down first. There’s a fine line between monitoring students’ behavior and pushing your own agenda, and sometimes it gets a little blurry.”