The World of Normal Boys Read online

  On the second ring, he gets Mrs. Spicer’s surprised voice.

  “It’s Robin MacKenzie. Is Victoria up still?” he says quickly.

  “I usually don’t let her take calls this late, Robin. Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, you know. Could be better.” He taps his bare toes on the stairs.

  “Is there some news on your brother?”

  “Maybe he’s getting better. They’re thinking about physical therapy.” He cringes as he hears himself making Uncle Stan’s plan sound like a solution.

  “Tell your family our prayers are with him. We’re all very concern—”

  “Mrs. Spicer, would you mind getting Victoria? I really need to talk to her.”

  “Oh, all right. But don’t keep her on long.”

  Nana Rena steps into the kitchen doorway. Her footfalls are slow and heavy. She isn’t wearing a wig, and her scalp shines pink under the few wiry tendrils that shoot off in every direction. Her nightdress is an enormous swatch of plaid—something Robin vaguely remembers Dorothy giving her for Christmas.

  “I thought we put you to bed hours ago,” she says.

  “I forgot I had to call Victoria.”

  “But it’s past eleven!”

  “Did you come down for a cup of tea?” he asks.

  “Why should I be able to sleep any better than the rest of this clan?” she asks, balancing herself against a chair and studying him. “I can hardly believe the state of the lot of you. You off like a hooligan two days running. Your sister scared witless. Your father”—she shakes her head as if confronting the greatest tragedy of all—“well, he was fit to be tied. And isn’t Dottie just worked into a tizzy, keeping me up for hours, telling me this is all my fault.”

  “Robin?” Victoria’s breathy voice.

  “Yeah, hold on,” he says. “Don’t hang up.” He puts his hand over the receiver. “Nana, this is private.” He closes himself in behind the basement door before she can register a protest.

  “Hi, Victoria. Sorry. My Nana’s talking my ear off,” he whispers.

  “I’m really glad you called,” she says.

  “You are?”

  “I’ve just been bumming out all night. I was even crying, I swear. After school I was thinking about your brother and how this morning I was such a jerk in the car.”

  “That’s OK,” he says. He had nearly forgotten about the ride to school. It already seems days old.

  Victoria keeps on. “It’s just that Todd makes me crazy. I can’t help it. He’s so weird—”

  “Look, Victoria,” he interrupts. “I had a really big day. I have to talk to you about it. I just got in a big fight with my mother. I think she has a drinking problem.”

  “At first I just thought I shouldn’t even talk to you. You walked away from me this morning without even saying good-bye. I mean, that’s just rude. But then I thought it over, you know? I thought about it all day, and you and I have been friends for so long and you’re really special and I don’t ever want you to change.”

  He sighs, frustrated that she’s doing all the talking. “I know,” he says, trying to be patient. “We have been friends for so long.” But he wants to ask why it feels so strained lately. High school has stolen the ease from their friendship. When the Spicers moved to the neighborhood seven years ago, he took Victoria in. He introduced her to other kids in their neighborhood and at Crossroads, made it easy for her to be the new girl; she rewarded him with her free time, her enthusiasm for his stories of the city, her willingness to participate, along with Ruby, in his after-school basement dramas.

  It wasn’t only shared interests, like Grease and gossip, that kept them glued together over the years. Sometimes they just hung out, doing homework, watching TV, listening to 45s in her bedroom. Before she went to her cousins’ this summer, Victoria would join him on his lawn mowing jobs, sitting on a stoop as he crisscrossed the grass or, if he needed the help, trimming the edges with clippers. They’d spend the money on pizza and video games at Jerry’s in town. The neighborhood ladies sometimes referred to them as going steady, but they’d just roll their eyes, understanding, without needing to say it, how stupid adults could be.

  “I think we should stay friends,” she says in a rush, “even if we make other friends.”

  He pictures the pout on her face as she twists the phone cord around her wrist like a bracelet. He knows the best way to reassure her is to launch into his story, to bring her back into his confidence. “OK,” he says. “Listen—today was major. I cut school from fourth period on.”

  “You ditched?”

  “Yeah, me and this kid Scott Schatz.”

  “Scott Schatz?” she gasps.

  “You know him?”

  “Yes,” she snaps as if this should be obvious. Now he sees her hopping up on the counter next to the draining board, where she sits for hours on the phone every night. “Robin,” she says with a dramatic pause, “he’s such a scum.”

  “I know he’s a burnout,” he says defensively. “But he’s really nice. He really listened to me.”

  “No, I mean he’s a major scum. He used to be friends with Todd.”

  “He used to be friends with Todd?” he repeats, his voice cracking in shock.

  “Like, like two years ago, when Todd was a sophomore and Scott was in eighth grade. They were hanging out together all the time.”

  “How come I never saw him?”

  “I don’t know. He was at our house a lot.”

  “He didn’t tell me he knew Todd,” Robin says, more to himself than to her. He thinks of what Scott said: how he’d hung out in his neighborhood, how he knew about the two cars in his driveway.

  “Well, they stopped being friends. I mean, Todd was older and going to high school and Scott was bugging him. He used to call up all the time and want to talk to Todd, and then he wouldn’t say anything when Todd got on the phone.”

  “He doesn’t talk much,” Robin says. He can’t quite absorb this, feels himself sinking under the notion that he is somehow the target of a conspiracy. “I can’t believe he knows Todd.”

  “I can’t believe you ditched school with him.”

  “That was only the beginning. We hitched a ride with this crazy girl who works at New Sounds. Then we hung out at The Bird and we smoked cigarettes and smoked pot.”

  “Robin, he’ll turn you into a scum, too,” Victoria says very seriously. He hears a sudden mechanical buzz from her end of the phone. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m making a yogurt shake. Diane showed me how. Diane Jernigan? It’s with this new frozen yogurt.”

  He’s suddenly feeling like this call was a terrible idea. “I gotta go.”

  “Wait! You can’t just start something—”

  He sighs heavily. “We just got pizza and stuff and then when I got home my mother freaked out.” He realizes he has been holding his breath, as if in suspense of what he might allow himself to say. It’s a relief now not to tell her everything. “I might get detention. Maybe Scott will get it, too.”

  “Scums never get detention.” She punctuates this pronouncement with a slurpy suck on her straw. “They always figure out how to talk their way out of it. Or they sign in and then don’t stay, and the teachers never tell, or even if they tell the principal, what else can he do? Give you more detention?”

  “They could suspend you.”

  “They tried that with Todd, but my father just went in there and said”—she deepens her voice—“‘If you keep this boy out of school he’ll be on the streets even more. We can’t keep him at home.’ And the principal was like”—she changes to another adult male voice—“OK, but then it will be your responsibility to make him stop ditching.’ ” She takes another slurp and resumes with her own perfectly satisfied voice. “And then my father just beat the shit out of Todd and he stopped cutting for a while and went to detention like he was supposed to.”

  “I remember that, when he was in detention for a month.” A memory forms of those months: Todd’s increas
ing presence in the yard, smoking cigarettes, fixing up motors. Robin peeks his head out the door to see if Nana is still there. Seeing no sign of her, he walks to the window. The light is on in Todd’s room. Todd is probably sitting on his bed listening to rock music with no idea that Victoria is downstairs telling Robin things about him. I am a spy, he tells himself, figuring out secrets. “I can’t believe Scott didn’t mention Todd.”

  Victoria bangs something down on the counter—the sound might be her spoon or glass or maybe the blender itself. “Todd, Scott. Are you trying to turn into a scum, too?”

  “I’m just having fun, Victoria. I’m taking risks.”

  “Hey!”

  Robin jumps and spins around. Uncle Stan gives him a long, authoritative gaze, nodding his head as if computing information. “What are you still doing on the phone?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You got sixty seconds before I hang up for you,” Stan says before strutting back to the TV.

  Robin squeezes his fingers around the receiver. “Shit, I have to go,” he says. “I’ll see you in school.”

  “Wait,” Victoria says, almost desperately. “I mean it, Robin. You’re really special. Don’t hang around Scott Schatz.”

  “God, Victoria, don’t make a big deal of it. Good-bye.” He hangs up before she can respond.

  In the living room Robin kisses his grandmother good night and does his best to ignore Stan. He is halfway up the stairs when Stan calls out, “Anything you want to tell me, Robin?”

  Robin spins around. It’s almost surreal—Stan has spent so much time here that now he’s trying to keep Robin in line. It’s like having a third parent who is far worse than the first two. He answers sarcastically, “I was just telling Victoria how lucky I am to have an uncle who is so concerned about me.”

  “You better watch your mouth, kid,” Stan growls, but a moment later he’s fixating on the TV set, guffawing along with the studio audience. As he carries himself up the stairs, Robin is almost glad Stan is here. Stan is the one person in this house he can hate without feeling any guilt.

  Chapter Seven

  “I understand things are pretty touchy at home,” Mr. Cortez is saying. He’s sitting on the edge of his desk, working a loop of string into a cat’s cradle. Robin watches his hands scissoring, transforming the geometry of the taut string. He thinks his guidance counselor might be trying to hypnotize him. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Everything’s messed up since my brother got hurt,” Robin says.

  “The hardest part is usually trying to make sense of it.”

  “My mother says it’s just something that doesn’t make sense. It was an accident.”

  “Well, she’s right about that. But the thing to remember is that you’ll still be affected by it.” He pauses. Robin feels him trying to make every word sink in. He knows Mr. Cortez is a nice guy and is probably trying to be nice to him now, but he’s suspicious. Cortez already told him he has detention for a week. Why should he trust him? Besides, he’s been pulled out of gym to have this lecture, which means he won’t get to see Scott, who is all he can think about.

  “Why don’t you tell me how it’s affecting you?” Cortez prods.

  “I don’t know. It makes me confused, I guess.”

  “Confusion is a natural reaction. Is that why you ditched yesterday? Were you confused being back at school?”

  “I hate gym. What’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to be an athlete. I don’t even like sports, except maybe gymnastics. In seventh grade I took this gymnastics class after school.” A dim memory surfaces: the terror of learning to backflip, the blindness, the risk.

  “Unfortunately the government says you have to take phys. ed. So try not to get hung up on that one, Robin. I’m more interested in why you chose to cut the rest of the day.”

  “I’m sorry. I know better,” Robin says, thinking he might get out of this if he just says the right thing. He studies the wall where Mr. Cortez has hung a couple of framed diplomas and a day-glo poster from some peace rally in 1969. He was definitely a flower child in the ’60s, Robin thinks, which seems like something Cortez would be embarrassed to advertise. It’s funny to think about—a guy who was once a hippie is now responsible for keeping him from acting up.

  “Look, look,” Cortez says, letting the string fall from his fingers into a snarled pile on his cluttered desk. “Let’s not bullshit each other, OK?”

  Adults cursing always seem ridiculous to Robin—like his father saying fuck at the hospital the other day. It doesn’t come natural or something. He feels his smile breaking through, but he doesn’t want to seem obnoxious, so he lowers his head contritely and murmurs, “OK.”

  “Tell me what’s on your mind. From your gut.” Cortez leans forward, resting his hand against his belly for emphasis. A silver ring on his wedding finger catches Robin’s eye, its turquoise stone an otherworldly miniature egg. He looks at the desk, at a framed photo of a smiling young woman in a loose paisley-print dress, the colors vaguely faded. Her hair is sandy blond and ironed straight. She wears Indian jewelry but no makeup. Mrs. Cortez.

  Robin asks him, “Don’t you ever feel that talking to kids like me is just a waste of your time?”

  “How would you characterize kids like you?”

  “Kids who cut class, who should know better. All that stuff.”

  “Do you feel like you’re wasting my time?”

  It’s confounding—Mr. Cortez has a question for every one of his. Robin runs his fingertips back and forth along the notebook in his lap, pressing a trace of friction onto his skin. “I think you’re probably not enjoying this.”

  “It’s part of the job, isn’t it?”

  Robin figures his own expression must show how little he believes Mr. Cortez’s answer because Mr. Cortez lets out a chuckle. “OK, I said we wouldn’t bullshit each other. The truth is, helping out kids like you is, for me, pretty spiritual. ”

  Robin wrinkles up his nose. “My grandmother is really religious. I should introduce you to her.”

  Mr. Cortez smiles knowingly—his smiles are starting to irritate Robin; the guy really does seem to be getting some little kick out of this. “I’ll spare you the whole discussion of Eastern religion, which is important to me but which I know will sound pretty kooky to you. Let’s just say that, in another life, I was someone very selfish who never took the time to do anything for anyone.” He pauses, looks directly into Robin’s eyes. “Do you catch my drift?”

  “Are you talking about reincarnation?” Robin asks. It’s something he read about in Time—people meditating and doing yoga and believing in past lives. His mother said it all started with the Beatles traveling to India.

  “Sure, sure,” Cortez says happily. “See, the thing is, if you load yourself up on good karma—good deeds—maybe next time around you won’t have so much to account for.”

  “Next time around I hope I’m not in Greenlawn High.”

  “Everyone’s got their own bag,” Mr. Cortez says. “The point is, talking to you isn’t a waste of time.”

  Robin looks out the window where Mr. Pintack, his gym teacher, is leading a single-file line of student joggers around the school perimeter. He can hear a muted whistle, which makes him wince. The sound of bogus authority. He cranes his neck, hoping Scott might slide into view, but there’s no sign of him.

  “I think it might be a waste of time to try and get through to me. I think I might be in my own world too much.”

  Mr. Cortez sits very still, his face frozen in concern. “Why don’t you tell me about your world, Robin?”

  His stomach glugs, a signal warning him he is about to be trapped in a revelation. He hugs his notebook defensively, wishing he hadn’t said anything at all. Ever since he left Scott outside The Bird, he has felt consumed by what happened between them. In every conversation since—with his mother, Victoria, now Mr. Cortez—he finds himself wanting to explain what happened so that he might get a better explanation from someon
e else. But then he remembers that Scott said not to make a big deal about it, which seems to be the best way to handle it—though if it wasn’t a big deal, Robin concludes, Scott wouldn’t have said that.

  “I have this way of seeing everything,” he blurts out. Mr. Cortez is waiting, his eyes questioning. “I don’t mean seeing like thinking about something, you know: I see it this way. I mean seeing like actually looking at the part of things that maybe other people don’t see.” He pauses; his own words make little sense to him; they exist on a separate parallel plane with his thoughts: thinking one thing, saying something else. He feels almost crazed with nervousness. “Like in gym class I don’t see the ball when they’re pitching it to me—I always strike out, and everyone thinks it’s because I’m a wimp. Maybe I am a wimp. No, I mean, I just don’t like sports, but that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It’s just that I don’t look at the ball when they pitch to me. I, like, look at the way the air slices open when the ball moves through it, like in The Ten Commandments when the sea splits open, which is freaky. How can you hit a ball when you’re looking at the place where the ball just was?”

  Mr. Cortez shifts his position, inching himself a fraction closer to the edge of the desk. “Is that a scary feeling?”

  “What?” His ears are burning hot.

  “Not seeing what you need to see in order to participate in the game you’re playing.” Robin scrunches up his face. Mr. Cortez asks, “You follow?”

  Robin can tell Mr. Cortez is not following him. “Who cares about the game? Of course I hate it when I get picked on for striking out, but the worst thing isn’t even that they’re picking on me—it’s that I’m getting picked on for something so stupid.” He leans back and slaps the notebook with his palms. “Softball. As if that has anything to do with my life.”

  Mr. Cortez raises his eyebrows; Robin wonders if he has impressed him or increased his skepticism. Cortez bows his head, holding his hand over his mouth. Robin can see the crown of his scalp, where the curls are thinner. “OK, let me see if I get this,” Mr. Cortez says, which Robin immediately takes as a sign that he has more explaining to do. He checks the clock. This has been going on for twenty minutes. It could go on for quite a while.