The Calling (34 page)

Again, just like with Jeffery Snyder, I begin to wonder what any of this has to do with what’s happening now, why Moses and I are here, when I realize something. Cynthia was one of the nurses on duty the day I was brought to the hospital, when I rode up to the third floor and walked down the hallway to Joey’s room. She had been one of the many on that floor who got a glimpse of me and had wondered just what was going on. The police hadn’t explained much, and all that any of them knew was that the boy had been assaulted to the point where he was very close to death. Then, when the heart monitor at the nurse’s station went off, she had been one of the three nurses that rushed into the room. She had been the first nurse to grab me and try to pull me away. But she hadn’t kept her mind completely on task. Not that it would have changed anything in the end, but she had been thinking about Juan, about what he might do to her if and when he took her panties off. Would he be gentle, she wondered, or would he be rough? Would he bite her nipples, would he squeeze them hard? Would he take her from behind like that one boy had that night her sophomore year at school when she’d had too much vodka and had gotten really horny?
 

These were the thoughts that went through Cynthia Parker’s mind in the last few moments of Joey Cunningham’s life. She never faltered in her work, however, though she would wonder later, after the rush had left her, if maybe things would have turned out differently had she been concentrating more on saving the boy. She couldn’t help that her thoughts kept returning to Juan, just like she couldn’t help that she was falling more and more out of love with her husband every day. She didn’t want to hurt him though, just as she didn’t want to hurt her children. But she had needs, she had wants, and she didn’t think it was fair that she needed to be chained down in a loveless marriage just because it was convenient for everyone else.
 

She glances down at her program to remind herself who’s speaking. Jeffery Snyder, in her opinion, is the most boring person in the world. She wants to yawn but manages to suppress the urge. Instead she glances out over the crowd on the gymnasium floor, the place where she should be sitting right now. She spots Michelle at once, sitting between Daniel Paolangeli, one of the school’s football stars, and Joyce Parsons, one of the school’s many sluts—at least, this is the gossip Cynthia’s heard from other school parents. Right now it looks like Michelle’s whispering to Joyce, just as many of the other students are doing right this moment. Cynthia can’t blame them. If Juan was here right now, she has no doubt she would be whispering with him as much as possible, probably place her hand on his leg, move her finger up and down the inside of his thigh.
 

A hand touches her knee, startling her enough that she actually jumps. She looks over, sees Ben staring back at her. He gives her a curious look, as if to ask if she’s okay, and then smiles. He mouths
I love you
and she smiles back, takes his hand and holds onto it. And as she does she imagines that the hand belongs to Juan, and that if she were naked in her bath right now, she would guide the middle finger of his hand inside her.
 

She looks up then, back at where Michelle’s sitting and whispering with Joyce. A few of the students, she notices with amusement, have made messages on the tops of their mortarboards with masking tape. She can barely read them from where she sits—and again, the fact that she’s way up here in the bleachers makes her angry at her daughter—but one of the boys sitting one row in front of Michelle looks like his mortarboard says CLASS COCK, though that can’t possibly be right, one of the administrators would surely have yanked him from his seat if that was the case.
 

Then, all at once, she notices Michelle’s head jerk suddenly to the left. Beside her, Joyce has begun shaking and waving her hands around like her feet are on fire. She cries out and stands, tries to jump up onto her seat but slips and falls into the row in front of her. More screams erupt from the students and Cynthia realizes the boring Jeffery Snyder has stopped his speech.
 

I take a mental step back, watching the ensuing chaos from this new vantage point. I focus in on Moses. He’s half-standing now, trying to get a better look at what’s happening, and isn’t even aware that beside him my body is still motionless, my eyes closed.
 

Something in Cynthia’s mind brings me back to her, and I realize that movement has caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She looks over at where all the graduating students have entered. Sunlight pours in and she sees the shadows of two figures from outside heading toward the entrance. She can’t be certain, but it looks like they’re carrying something in their hands.
 

A split second before she realizes what it is they’re carrying she squeezes Ben’s hand very tightly and—

BLINK
 

—I’m standing in the middle aisle, between the chairs set up on the gym floor. Up on stage, Jeffery Snyder is repeating the words of his speech I’ve heard two times already. I look around quickly, just like I did up on stage, seeing only gray bodies and gray faces and then, at once, I spot the one person here full of color and life. And I can’t help but begin to smile, even with everything that’s happening—and everything, I realize, that will.
 

It’s Melvin Dumstorf,
the
best goddamned white free style rapper in Chemung County, the one with the dope ninja skills, and he’s sitting near the middle of his row, between Markus Duncan and Sandra Dull. His arms are crossed and he’s staring up at Jeff on stage like this all bores him, like he doesn’t have a single care in the world, when in reality that’s very much not true. Just yesterday his grandparents flew in from Massachusetts, a surprise visit as his grand-pop called it, and while it’s nice having them here, their arrival has certainly complicated things.
 

There are five people between me and Melvin, so I’m not able to get as close as I’d like. The idea that came to me up on stage with Jeffrey Snyder—and here I glance up there, for some reason expecting to see a ghost of myself standing beside him—keeps gnawing at me, wanting me to give it a try. But here the only way it might work is walking over five people, and I still don’t want to touch others if I can help it. So I just stand here, staring intently at Melvin, trying to look deep inside his mind, deep inside his soul, to understand why now, out of everyone else, I’m focused on him.
 

The free styling, I now see, is something that does not come naturally to Melvin, though it might seem that way to dozens of drunk and high teenagers. Ever since he became a freshman, he knew he would need something to help set him apart from everyone else, something that would make him cool, and so he chose rapping. He looked up websites, he read books, and he practiced continuously in his room with the door closed. His parents knew about his hobby but never said anything to him, though he knew he disappointed his dad. Even the juggling disappointed his dad. But, he felt, his free styling and ninja skills didn’t even come close to disappointing his old man as much as his true secret would. Because ever since he turned fifteen, Melvin had begun questioning his sexual preference. He was even planning to finally come out to his parents this weekend, but now, with his grandparents here, he knows he will have to wait.
 

No one at school knows about him, because he hasn’t told anyone. There are a few students who expressed their homosexuality over the course of the year and while some were accepted, a few were not. Melvin was uncertain how it would be for him and so, instead of expressing himself freely like he seems to do constantly in his raps, he decided to lay low. He knew, after nearly two years of worrying about it, that he was gay, but he wasn’t sure what the next step was. Coming out to his parents was the biggest step, in his opinion, but he still wasn’t ready yet. His mom would understand and accept him—he was almost one hundred percent certain on this point—but his dad was a whole different story. The news, he knew, might literally give his old man a heart attack.
 

He’s dated girls of course, has even had sex with two of them, at parties where everyone was drunk and horny and he was the center of attention, having performed his free styling that he’s practiced again and again. He hates it when people think he rehearses, even when it’s true, so at Denise’s party the other night, when Chad Eason said he was rehearsing, it really pissed him off and he had, after getting that citation from the cops and finally making it home, cried himself to sleep.
 

It isn’t that he wants to be gay, and that, he tells himself, is how he knows he is. He just doesn’t feel the way toward girls that he does toward guys, though he’s never even kissed one before ... though, late at night, while lying in bed, he has wondered what it would feel like. Lips are lips, a tongue is a tongue, so there should really be no difference between kissing a girl and a guy—but Melvin, after much thought, has decided this isn’t true. There
is
a difference, and he very much wants to experience it.
 

This is what I sense Melvin Dumstorf thinking while he sits there, staring up at Jeffrey Snyder. On the outside appearing cool and relaxed and in control of the world, while on the inside falling apart. So when the first mouse skitters from under his chair and between his feet, he doesn’t notice until another one follows.
 

Someone whispers behind him, suppresses a laugh.
 

Melvin glances back.
 

And speak of the devil, Chad Eason—my old beer-pong partner from Thursday night—is sitting there behind Melvin. He’s whispering to Neil Eakins. All Melvin hears, behind Jeff’s low voice booming from the speakers set up around the gym and his own worried thoughts, are the words
best prank ever
before Neil stifles a laugh. Then Chad notices Melvin looking at him and lifts his chin, says, “Yo Eminem, the show’s up there.”
 

Melvin just shakes his head. He turns his attention back up front, to where Jeff continues his speech. He’s hardly been listening the entire time, only knows that the speech is the usual we-as-graduates-must-now-face-the-real-world theme because that’s what all these speeches are always about. The mice he saw are now gone, and he begins to wonder if he really even saw them at all.
 

I wonder the same thing, standing where I am, I wonder why I’m here in the middle of the gymnasium like this, when Joyce screams. I glance back, right at where Joyce is trying to stand up on her seat, then past her at the open entrance at the back of the gym. The two shadows aren’t there yet; they still have another couple of seconds or so before they appear. And when they do, will they be carrying what Cynthia Parker was certain they were? Staring toward the opened gym doors, I can’t quite see from where I am,
everything
is gray (sound, taste, touch), and as Joyce begins falling into the row of students in front of her I connect with Melvin Dumstorf’s mind one last time. Right before there’s another blink and I’m gone from this spot, he thinks
What kind of prank is this?
 

Only more screams answer him.

Chapter 31

I
’m still in the aisle between rows, only this time I’m back a couple yards from where I was standing earlier. Of course, earlier doesn’t exist on whatever plane I’m on, because up on stage, Jeffery Snyder is continuing his speech like he has this entire time, and Joyce Parsons has yet to scramble up from her seat and begin crying out. The person who’s not gray like everyone else this time around is named Frank Olson, sitting three people in on his side of the row.
 

Frank Olson, who arrived just in time to witness Jeremy and his friends finishing up as they desecrated John Porter’s car Thursday night. Frank Olson, who John told to go ahead with whatever it was they had planned. Frank Olson, who is ninety-nine percent certain it was Chad’s idea to pull their last great prank during graduation.
 

I step forward, wanting to look deeper into Frank’s mind, and after a short moment of mental digging I manage to see how this started two weeks ago.
 

They are all in John Porter’s garage, sitting around the Firebird John has been restoring for the past couple years. John’s old man has gone up to Ithaca for something and nobody else is home except John’s sister, who’s gotten herself knocked up but has a cute enough face that sometimes Frank thinks he’d still have relations with her, even if she is pregnant. Tyler has brought the weed and Chad has brought the beer. It’s Pabst Blue Ribbon, some pretty shitty beer if there ever was any, but they’re only eighteen and can’t complain. How the fuck Chad manages to always get the beer is beyond Frank, but he doesn’t mind putting in the cash when the time comes. So as they’re all smoking and drinking and having a good time (System of a Down is playing some hardcore stuff on the stereo), someone mentions how they need to pull one final prank, something that will set them apart from all the rest of the wannabes and make them legends. Frank will never remember completely who says this, but he’ll always think it was Chad.
 

“All right,” John says. He takes a hit off the roach and passes it to Sean. “So what the fuck’s your idea?”
 

“Graduation,” says the person who is most likely Chad but might not be.
 

“What about graduation?”
 

“That’s where we should do our prank. Think about it. The place will be packed. Even that old shithead governor’s gonna be there. We’ll have a huge audience. Whatever happens there nobody’s ever gonna forget.”
 

“Okay,” John says. “So what do you suggest we do?”
 

They come up with a bunch of ideas, but all of them are stoned and hardly any of them remember any of the suggestions. The thought never occurs to write them down but the only one that sticks out later in their minds is getting snakes. Small non-poisonous snakes that they can sneak into the ceremony and then let loose at the same time. Frank even looks into it, calling around to pet stores. He finds that the snakes they want are simple milk snakes, which, the woman at the store tells him, are a part of the Colubridae family. “
Lampropeltis triangulum
,” she says, her voice snotty and smug, but the price for the number of milk snakes they need is way too much for any of them to spend, and they decide to scrap the idea.