Crossing (4 page)

Y
ou’re not joking?” she asked.

It was a couple days later on a late Friday afternoon. Naomi and I sat in the mostly vacant food court, in that gap of time after housewives had left but before the hoards of Friday night revelers arrived. I’d been biding my time to tell her about the audition. I wanted to do it where it was quiet, and with all the pandemonium at school over the last few days, this was my first opportunity.

“You are. You are joking, right?” she said.

“No,” I said for the second time, this time barely able to conceal my annoyance.

“I can’t believe,” she said, pulling her eyebrows together in a soft, irritating arch, “that Mr. Matthewman thinks you can take the lead role. I mean, I’ve heard you sing, Xing. I know what you sound like.” She sent me a smile that I knew wasn’t meant to be unkind.

“You’ve never heard me sing.”

“My point exactly. In music class way back when, you just stood silent, you
hmm hmm hmm
-ed your way through class.”

“But you’ve never really heard me sing. Mr. Matthewman thinks I’m good enough.”

Her fingers drummed against the table. A few seconds lapsed. Then she took a deep breath. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, OK, Xing? I’m sure you did really well at the audition and everything, but…”

I leaned back in my seat. “What? Just say it, will you?”

“It’s no secret that Matthewman hates Anthony Hasbourd. Hates the fact that the school makes him coach Hasbourd every year for the school production. Hates the way Hasbourd’s parents think their son is too good for him.”

“I know. So what are you saying?”

“It’s just that…” She looked at me. “Do you think he might be using you to get back at Hasbourd?”

I reached down and stuffed a spring roll into my mouth. I chewed slowly. “I’m not replacing Hasbourd. I’m only going to be his understudy. I just wanted you to know of the audition, that it went well.”

“I’m sorry, Xing,” she said, leaning forward towards me sincerely. “I didn’t mean to say anything hurtful.”

“You weren’t there. How do you know what I sounded like?”

“I’ve known you my whole life, practically. I know what you sound like.”

“But you weren’t there when I auditioned. You have no idea what I can sound like.” I took the last spring roll, the one I had been planning on leaving for her, and rammed it in. I chewed hard, vigorously. “It doesn’t matter in any case,” I said through a mouthful. “Hasbourd’s still got the lead.”

She looked at me and didn’t say anything.

I chewed harder, swallowed. Sometimes I could just about kill her.

“What exactly did Matthewman say?”

“He thought I was amazing and told me so.” I could still hear the words resonating in my ears. “He said I was raw but had real talent.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t see it.”

I picked up my cup and sipped through the straw, sucking up pockets of empty air. “He said he wants me to come in early every morning to practice. I don’t know if I should or not. Probably not. I don’t know.”

The truth: I was confused. The thought that maybe it
was
just an aberrational fluke had crossed my mind a thousand times. Maybe it was just the acoustics of the bathroom or a once-in-a-billion, never-to-be-repeated freakish moment.

I wanted to switch topics, and quickly. I knew exactly what to do. Deep down, past the nice-girl act, Naomi believed the world revolved around her. Talk about her, and her eyes would illuminate, her head would become just that little more animated.

“Anyway, I was really nervous at the audition,” I said.

“What do you usually do to calm yourself down before singing? I mean, you’re doing a duet at church tonight, right?”

“Well,” she said, perking up. I had her. “It’s important to keep yourself warm; drink a lot of warm fluids. Look,” she said, pointing at her cup of Lipton tea, “see?” She swiped a few strands of hair that had come loose behind her ear. Two strands sashayed before her prominent cheekbones. “And the worst thing you can do is worry too much about it. Do something fun. Hang out with friends. Get your mind off it for a while. Look.” She pointed at the two of us, her index finger swiveling around like a door opening and closing between us. “See?” And she smiled in that incandescent, winning way of hers.

I tried not to stare at her as she spoke. Her hair was fuller now, a lush fall of silkiness. And her baby fat had burned off to reveal soft cheekbones and a chin that was elegantly pointed. Dimples once hidden by her baby fat were now punctures of sweetness: when she smiled, I wanted to embed my fingertips in them. And her arms and legs had grown longer and leaner, too; what a marvel to watch her during gym class as she rose up in the air to spike the volleyball, her arms twirling in a menagerie in tandem with one another, working in unison with her springing legs, the rich upper thighs glimmering with the reflection of the fluorescent lamps above.

Her intelligence had already been noticed at school, that sprightly, coquettish mind. Her steely concentration was impressive, her luminescent eyes absorbing, digesting. She grabbed facts, pulled in concepts, owned them. She was already light-years ahead of teachers whose idea of intelligence was scoring a perfect ten on a spelling test composed of words like
bereavement
,
pedestrian
, and
monotonous
. She was meant for the stars, and they were measuring her with their plastic white Wal-Mart rulers.

Very soon boys at school would start taking notice. Attention was slow in the coming at a school where boys thought that
Charlie’s Angels
starred Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and some Asian chick. But a girl the likes of Naomi did not go unnoticed for long.

So when she asked me if I wanted to go to church with her that night, a place I resented with every fiber of my being, my answer was a foregone conclusion.

Redeemer Church of Ashland was where all the successful in Ashland showed off their wares: their cars, their clothes, and most of all their children. Adolescents came decked out in their Limited, Banana Republic, and Abercrombie & Fitch designer clothes. They had their laptops, their digital cameras, and their iPhones. And incredible teeth. Pearly white, perfectly aligned. In the winter they all loved to wear black turtlenecks, and their teeth glimmered brilliantly above the black like a halo.

They spoke of things I never felt at ease with, GPAs and honor societies and Princeton Reviews and summer school at Phillips Exeter or Andover and spring break mission trips to Paris or Vienna. On rare occasions when I visited—really just to be with Naomi, though I never told her so—I steered clear of them as much as possible. I watched them during youth worship, playing on their pricey guitars and flutes and violins and cellos, some with their own cars sitting in the church parking lot, others with doting parents waiting to take them home to their five-bedroom cul-de-sac McMansions. During Bible study, they crinkled the pages of their leather-bound King James Version Bibles. They spoke of their sufferings and travails, all trivial. God was in the details of their suburban self-esteem.

They were the sumptuous feast of life. Me, the stingy, cold leftover.

It wasn’t long before worship began. I seated myself in the back pew of the swank sanctuary, removed from the others. Naomi made her way to the stage.

She stood alone at first, waiting for her duet partner to make his way to the stage. For a few moments, every eye was upon her, glowing and vulnerable in that soft light; yet, in her stillness, she was assured and certain. Something in me began to unravel. I wanted to lay my hand on her neck in the soft crevice just under her jawline.

Then somebody stood up and started to make his way to the stage. Anthony Hasbourd. I should have known. Of course it would be Hasbourd, that pretentious snob.

I closed my eyes.

At first, it was only Naomi’s voice. Tender, as if she were right next to me, her mouth whispering to me. Gentle. Breathy. This was what it must be like, then, to sit in a dark car with her head resting on my shoulder. This was what it must be like for her to lean towards me in a dark movie theater and whisper something in my ear, what it must be like to feel her wrap her arms around me on a hammock under a blue summer sky, sighing with contentment.

And then Anthony Hasbourd’s voice trumpeted in, brazen and obnoxious. He was strident in a discordant way; his showmanship was full of pretentious pomp and circumstance. They clapped for him anyway, long and hard. Midway through the song, he took Naomi’s hand. I saw her flinch in surprise, then blush. They sang like that, hand in hand. At the end of the song, they embraced.

And that was what did me in. I cut my eyes away. And just like that, it was decided. No matter what it took, I would get the lead role at school. It didn’t make a difference that I was just the understudy. I would land it somehow. Because I had something. Something that would stun Naomi. Astound her. I could sing. Sing lights-out brilliant. I would show the school. I’d show the world. I’d show all the pretenders out there. Most of all, I’d show Naomi.

F
or the next few months, before my mother awoke, I biked to school in the near dark. Cold and twilight darkness were my constant companions. The roads were always desolate and bitingly frigid; it always took me at least twenty minutes to thaw myself once at school. I would stand in the restroom and run my hands under the hot tap water, legs pressed hard against the radiator until I felt the heat begin to singe through my jeans. Then I’d walk into the music room warmed and ready. Mr. Matthewman would glance at me and fold his newspaper away. He never knew I biked to school. He would not have allowed it, given the Justin Dorsey incident.

We would go through scales at first, loosening up the—in his words—windpipes of melody. My voice box would be stiff and cramped at first, but he started me easy. C major scale over and over until I felt my voice box melting and moistening into readiness. Every so often he would stop and push his hand hard against my back. “Posture,” he would say. “Gotta have good posture, Kris. Align that spine, and you’ll be able to lift your chest easy, get a full breath of air in there. Remember the marionette.”

The marionette was his illustration, something he’d taught to hundreds of students while at Julliard. The idea was to imagine two strings holding me up like a marionette, one attached to the top of my head and the other to my sternum. I was to maintain a posture that would keep the strings taut, especially on the exhale. It took a while to get used to.

He tutored me for about thirty minutes in the beginning. “Easy does it,” he’d say. “Don’t need to push you too hard for now.” The time always flew by. I would look up from the notes, my eyes rising above the plane of the piano for the first time, and be astonished to see the parking lot outside filling up. Over time, I started staying longer, another fifteen, twenty minutes, until I found myself staying for a whole hour.

“I’ll make you a singer yet,” he would say enthusiastically. “I guarantee you. You watch.”

No matter how late it was, we ended the lessons in the same way. He would sigh, glance my way, and say, “You know you’re not going to get the role, Kris. It’s beyond my power. The decision’s not mine to make.” I would nod at that, but I wonder if he ever sensed the quickening beat of my heart, the thinning of my lips. For I had my own plan. I would become so spectacular, prove myself to be such a prodigy, that my singing would expose Anthony Hasbourd for the charlatan he was. Then they would simply
have
to replace him with me. Then they would want to. The thought made me giddy, drunk with excitement: that I would one day supplant him by “popular demand.” Popular. Demand. These two words were alien and foreign and had never applied to me, but they were words that thrilled me, nonetheless, to death.

W
inston Barnes was the next student murdered. I didn’t really know him even though he’d sat next to me for weeks now. He was a shy boy, kept mostly to himself. During class he usually sat hunched over his desk, rarely looking up from his books. But he was always listening, his skinny elbows jutting outwards like white ears. He still let his mom cut his hair, and it showed. But he was a smart kid. Some said that come graduation in three years, he’d be giving Naomi a run for her money for class valedictorian. I didn’t think so. She was Harvard quality, and he was merely a Cornell or Columbia. They got along well enough with each other, and I’d catch them in conversation every so often, discussing homework and whatnot. When he was with Naomi, he was like a different person. Positively chatty, as a matter of fact. Once, he bumped into us in the food court at the mall. I had to go somewhere, but when I returned half an hour later, he was still there talking to Naomi. Jeez.

I saw arrogance in him once, though. He was ribbing the new girl, Jan Blair, about a D-she’d received on a test, waving his A+ in her face. It seemed so out of character. Other than that, he was the kind of guy whose niceness made you want to throw up in your mouth a little.

Which was why his behavior that Wednesday afternoon was so inexplicable.

It was during yet another interminable, mind-numbingly boring class with Miss Winters, and half the class was drifting to sleep.

I was the first to notice. It started with my desk vibrating, humming ever so slightly. I glanced over at Winston; he was bobbing his leg up and down in agitation.

I grabbed the corners of my desk, steadying it, and turned to look at Winston again. His kneecap jerked against the desk harder, faster; an eraser fell off his desk, jostled by the constant shaking. He turned his head towards the window, but it was a slow, laborious act as if a giant elastic band restricted his movement. Something outside must have caught his attention; even from behind, I could see his body stiffen suddenly. I craned my neck past him and scanned the scenery outside. There was nothing but the wide-open spaces of the snow-laden baseball diamond. A few branches swayed ever so slightly. The sun shone unabashedly. The school flag lay limp against the pole, lifeless.

He began to tremble now, his arms gripping the top of his desk as if he were capsizing. The whites of his knuckles blended with the glare of snow outside. A whimper escaped his mouth.

The room seemed to turn prickly with anticipation, as if an electric charge were building. The colors of the room drained to gray; the contours of the furniture around me tightened. It was as if—

“Miss Winters!” shouted Winston. His voice exploded out like a cannon, startling the class. “Miss Winters!”

“Winston?” Miss Winters asked, jolted pale. She glanced outside the window. “What is it?”

“Miss Winters! Miss Winters!”

“What? Whatever is the matter, Winston?” There was genuine panic in her voice; her right hand dabbed her O-shaped mouth as with a napkin.

He stood up at that, gesturing wildly with his spindly arms, pointing outside. He was deathly pale now and sweating profusely. “Lock the door. Oh, please lock the door, Miss Winters!”

“Why?” She took a nervous step towards him. “What’s the matter?”

For a few seconds, he said nothing. He sank down into his chair as if it were all over, taking a few furtive looks outside. Students were now half sitting, half standing in their chairs.

“Winston, tell me what’s the matter!”

What I remember most about the next moment was the surreal aura. Miss Winters making her way towards Winston, nervous step by nervous step. Winston shaking as if the temperature had just plummeted twenty degrees. Motes of dust floating in midair, specks caught in the beams of sunlight. Miss Winters walking through those beams like a blue whale about to surface. Winston pointing outdoors with his skinny index finger, the beak of a chicken pecking away. The clock ticking ever so slowly. Winston’s arm unintentionally sideswiping a book off the table. The heavy thud as it hit the floor. Miss Winters beseeching Winston again to tell her what was wrong, what was the matter. Winston pointing with exaggerated force at the empty fields outside. And, finally, opening his mouth to speak.

“Tell him to stop staring at me!”

And his pointing, gesturing, out towards the desolate fields, pointing, pointing to barren grounds of emptiness.

“Tell him to stop following me!”

“Who, Winston? Who are you talking about?” she sputtered in growing fear, spittle dotting her chin.

“The boy! Tell him to stop! Go out and tell him to stop!”

“I don’t know…I don’t see any—”

“The boy!”

I looked outside again. No one.

“The boy!” His voice was getting louder.

Miss Winters looked outside, then back at Winston, then back outside, her double chin swaying pendulum-like.

“The boy! With the red jacket! The red jacket!”

“Winston!”

“The red jacket! The red jacket!”

Miss Winters moved in on him then, her own fear suddenly rearing up on her. Her hefty fingers wrapped themselves tightly around his skinny arm. Not until she reached the principal’s office did she release him.

There was a stunned silence when the classroom door slammed behind them. I kept waiting for a snide comment, for someone to call Winston a wuss or a weirdo. For someone to start laughing or to crack a joke. But no one said a thing.

Outside, a single bird etched its lonely flight across the sky. Otherwise it was absolutely still. Across the fields, beyond the far fence, stood the forest, dark and dormant. A few clouds drifted feebly as if unsure of where to go next. Then more clouds arrived. These were darker, denser, filled with determination. And the classroom darkened ever so slightly, as if it were a boat sinking away from the surface of the ocean and into its depths.

My fingers were shaking. I took a look around the classroom. Strange. Jan Blair was sitting taut in her seat, face turned down, ashen and pale. Like she was guilty of something. As if she had a dirty little secret. Her hands cupped her elbows. She was shaking slightly, her lower lip trembling, caving in on itself. And her fingers looked snapped, like the broken neck of a white swan. I turned to look outside again.

Miniscule flakes of snow were drifting downwards. There was no one out there.

The clouds gathered over the next hour. A state emergency weather notice was sent to all local schools warning of a powerful snowstorm front that had suddenly turned southeast. At 1:56 p.m., all schools were ordered closed for the day. A terrific yell echoed around the school when the announcement was made over the PA system. Teachers cautioned students to return home immediately and not linger. Their warnings were unnecessary; there was a near stampede as students slammed lockers and ran out of school.

I stood around Naomi’s locker trying to appear as if I wasn’t waiting for anyone in particular. But the minutes passed, and the flow of students thinned. There was no sign of her anywhere.

With the library closed, the only other place I could think she might be was the restroom. The corridor was empty now, and I could feel my feet gathering speed under me. In the quiet I could hear my boots squeaking a little. Outside the girls’ bathroom I hesitated, then I opened the door a crack. “Naomi?” Not a sound in return. “Naomi!” I said, this time louder. My own echo came back at me, jolting me.

I’d never been in a girls’ restroom before; it was a lot more spacious than the boys’. Facing the north side, there was a large window, something the boys’ restroom lacked. It was snowing more heavily now, sheets of snow plummeting down in panicky droves. It startled me to see how desolate it had become outside. All the school buses, gone. Almost every car, gone. Only one lone figure walking across the fields, bent over against the gusting snow.

But there were footsteps outside, getting louder. The crisp sound of heels hitting the marbled floor. A woman’s brisk steps. Clutching my book bag tight against my shoulder, I ducked into the nearest stall, closing the door behind me. I put the seat down and stood up on it, wobbling slightly. The restroom door swung opened.

The clicking sound of heels approached me, then stopped. Silence.
Click, click
. Then the sound of water running, hands being washed. The faucet turned off; more silence. I closed my eyes, the tension almost unbearable.

A cell phone rang.

“Hello?” It was the voice of Ms. Oliverson, a ninth grade history teacher. She spoke in loud, jarring tones, and her words echoed off the tiled walls.

“Yes…yes. Uh-huh. Should be home in about an hour. Uh-huh.” I could hear her shoes tapping impatiently. “Uh-huh. Need to finish up a few things first. Uh-huh.” She suddenly breathed in loudly, impatiently. “Look,” she said, “I understand that the kids need to be picked up, but I have things I need to finish up here.” Her voice was edgy, strained. “Something happened here today with a kid, you know, and—” She stopped suddenly, and for a span of five, six seconds, there was silence. “It’s pretty serious,” she continued, her voice calmer but shaky. “We think it’s a bullying case. Uh-huh. No, no, someone from outside, an out-of-towner, we think. Don’t know. He was saying something about a short man or a kid following him home last night, watching him through his bedroom window all night, stalking him to school this morning. Uh-huh. Really weird stuff. No. He wasn’t really coherent; we don’t know what to think. No, he’s a good kid, really. Uh-huh. Look, I need to go…Can you?” She sniffed once, twice. “Bye.”

Ms. Oliverson didn’t leave the bathroom after that. She walked to the window directly in front of the stall I was in. From where I stood I could see the top of her head just clearing the top of the door. I crouched down a little more, carefully. There was a pert metallic click, the sound of a flare, then the trails of smoke meandering up towards the ceiling. I felt a tingling along the insides of my nostrils. A sneeze coming on. I stayed in that half-crouched position until my legs began to throb in pain. I tensed them, willing them to stop vibrating; any sound would have been magnified tenfold in that stall. She turned suddenly, her heels rapping concisely against the marble-tiled floor. She was right outside, facing the door of the stall, her arm probably reaching out to push it open. I closed my eyes and hunkered down lower, the words,
I’m sorry, Ms. Oliverson
, forming on my tongue.

Except she never came in. The click-clock of her heels moved past the stall and out the restroom. It was quiet again after that. I lowered myself and sat down. My back was slick with a cold dampness.

Winston Barnes was escorted home by his blustery mother. He’d been initially inconsolable in the principal’s office, and he refused to speak. Even back at home, all he wanted to do was go to his room and sleep. With the lights on. In the morning, after having slept for fourteen hours, he got up fresh and rejuvenated. He was nothing if not bright and cheerful. He was even willing to laugh off the previous day’s episode. His mother gave him an extra slice of bacon. She was glad he was back to normal; now that she thought about it, he had seemed tired and lackluster of late. Nothing that a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix. Winston Barnes picked up his school backpack, his lunch bag, and his gym shoes, kissed his mother on the cheek, and walked out the door into the semidarkness of early dawn. He was never seen alive again.