Alpha House

by J.R. Angelella

chapter one: dick

According to my father, there are three types of necktie knots: the Windsor, the Half-Windsor and the Limp Dick.

“Jeremy, I’d bet my hand,” he says, adjusting his seatbelt, “that every swinging dick at Byron Hall wears the Windsor.”

“Could you not talk about dicks first thing in the morning?”

“The ladies love masculine things,” he says, pinching his silver tie at the base of its fat Windsor knot. 

“Dad, it’s an all guy high school.”

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

“What is?”

“The size of a man’s knot.  It’s his bastion of strength.”

“Don’t say ‘bastion of strength.’  Gross,” I say, shivering.

“It’s true,” he says.  “Fact.  Proven.  Have you ever seen my knots?  Yeah.”  He bounces his thick black and white eyebrows that match his wavy head of hair.

Welcome to Necktie 101.  I will be your Professor today.

According to Ballentine Barker, in order to make a Windsor, you must cross the long, fat end over the short, skinny one; double loop through the cross-over; make a tunnel over the loops and funnel it through.  With a Windsor you usually get a short ass length, which makes you look like a fuckwad.  Not to mention that it swallows you like a stumpy bitch.

What is that Bible story about the whale and Jonna?  Or is his name Jonnas?  And Jonna(s) is swallowed whole by some gigantic whale for whatever reason—I don’t know—and Jonna(s) lives inside the whale?  And then the whale spits him out.  Or is it that he swims out?  Or is it that he gets blown out through the blowhole?  Or does he die inside the whale?  Am I thinking of Moby Dick? 

We pass a sign on the side of the road that reads Baltimore: The Greatest City in America.  Get in on it.

“When they say that—get in on it—what do they mean?” I ask.

“That Baltimore is a secret not many people know about,” Dad says. 

“A secret?”

“Get in on it.  Be one of the people in the know.  Be in on the secret.  A part of the club.”

“What secret?  What club?”

“It’s like referring to Baltimore as Charm City.  The City is creating buzz where no buzz is buzzing.”

“Buzzing?” I ask.

“Just forget you ever saw the damn sign,” Dad says.

My older brother Jackson used to call Baltimore by a bunch of different names.  Like slang.  B-town.  Charm City.  Crabtown.  The City of Firsts.  Monument City.  Mob Town.  Murderland.  He’d say them to his friends.  Mainly to impress girls.  They’d stop by the house in the evenings.  Groups of them.  Ask if he was home.  They would travel from far away.  Randallstown.  Ellicott City.  Columbia.  Westminster.  Cockeysville.  Perry Hall.  Take 81 South to Cold Spring Lane or I95 to Russell Street past M&T Bank Stadium.  Travel in to Baltimore where we live.  Just to see him.  They’d stink of perfume, wearing short skirts, tight tops, big hair, lipstick red lips.  Jackson would stumble from his room and down the stairs.  “Welcome,” he’d say, “to the City of Firsts.”  What an ooze.

We drive past a middle-aged woman speed-walking in pink Spandex shorts and a black tank top.  Dad taps his horn.  “Ballentine likes what he sees,” he says, referring to himself in third person.  I am constantly reminded of where Jackson gets his ooziness from. 

The woman has medium boobs, her butt shifting back and forth with each powerful step of her muscular legs.  The Spandex curves and cups along her butt and hips such that she might as well be wearing underwear.  I immediately feel guilty, like I just lied to a priest.

“A little beep-beep now and again keeps them feeling young, son.  Lets them know they still got it.” 

“Do you think she has kids?” I ask.

“Why?”

“Just curious, I guess.”

“Not all mothers are your mother,” he says.

I’m surprised Dad mentioned Mom on my first day of school as it was always her favorite day of the year next to Christmas.  She would get up early, make a big breakfast of pancakes and eggs and strawberry milk.  After, she’d pose me like a model on the front steps of our house for the yearly first day of school photo.  She kept the photos framed in a collage on the wall, reaching all the way back to my first day of pre-school. 

This morning there was no breakfast.  There was no strawberry milk.  No picture on the front steps.  Only Dad standing over me in my bedroom, telling me that if I didn’t get up soon that I was going to make him late for work. 

I wonder where the framed photos are now.  If they’re hung on the wall of her new boyfriend’s apartment.

Our car drifts into the other lane, weaving briefly over the double yellow lines before crossing back. 

“But why are Windsors so important?” I ask.  “It’s just a stupid knot.”

“The size of the knot indicates your massiveness.”

“Massiveness?  Oh, Jesus.”

“Language.”

“Dad, seriously.”

“Listen.  You need to hear this: Windsor equals monster.  Half-Windsor equals babyshit.”

“Babyshit?”

“Babyshit.”

Allow me to Professor your asses with some Half-Windsor knowledge.

Reluctantly also referenced by Ballentine Barker, the second kind of knot—the Half-Windsor—folds like a paper football, easy with perfect angles.  Personally, I think it’s the best knot.  It’s easier than the Windsor because you only make one loop over the crossover instead of two.  But getting the length right takes skill, practice, and a sense of pride.  Where the Windsor, more often than not, gives you a stumpy bitch length, the Half-Windsor—if you get it right—hangs sexy and perfect right to the tip of your belt.  That triangular tip of the tie skimming a silver belt buckle.

We pass an empty football field with metal bleachers and two yellow wishbone goalposts.  Dad pulls in behind a long line of cars, waiting to turn into the entrance of the school.  The sign out front reads: Byron Hall Catholic High School for Boys.  The sign makes me think of a carwash.  A dirty car enters and gets scrubbed, washed, hosed, and wiped clean.              

“Where does the Windsor come from?” I ask.

“Where does it come from?  Jesus, you ask a lot of questions.”

“I don’t like to not know.”

“England,” he says.  “It’s an English name.”  

Dad only knows things that make him seem smart. 

The car jerks to a stop at the top of the circle in front of my school where two Christian Brothers greet students as they enter.  A douchebag kid dressed up like an angry fighting Cardinal bird, the Byron Hall bird mascot, stands with the Brothers waving his red feathered wings at people passing by.  The Brothers wear long black tunics down to their shiny black shoes.  They look like priests, but less stylish.  The red bird is equal parts terrifying and gay.

“Well, here we are, my son,” Dad says, palming the back of my head. 

I knock his arm away with my elbow.  “You’re messing up my hair.” 

He pulls his hand back, looks at it, then wipes it on a handkerchief.  “It’s like a grease pit up there.”

“Hair gel.”  I lower the overhead visor to see the mirror, to fix the brown curls he ruffled out of place, the curls I spent all morning setting in place.  I comb a few strands of hair back into a part and adjust my thin black tie.  I aim my shoulders to the door, so he won’t see my knot. 

“Look at you,” he says, poking me in the back.  He drapes his arm over the wheel.  “Barely a freshman and already primping like a Revlon girl.”

“Quit,” I say, slamming the car visor up.  I grab my book bag and push open the door when his hand grabs me by my navy blue sports coat.

“I’ll quit.  Sure.  If you turn around.”

“I’m late.”

“I’m your father.”

“I’m really going to be late for homeroom.  You’re going to make me late.”  Dad’s words spill from my lips.  When Dad stood over me in bed this morning, he smelled like aftershave and coffee.  Now all I can smell is car exhaust.

“I asked you to turn around.”

“You want me to miss first period?”

“I want you to obey your father.  It’s in the Bible.  Now turn around.” 

I’d been hiding the knot with my sports coat.  I know what he’s going to say, but there’s no avoiding it, so I turn around. 

“Limp Dick?” he asks, slapping his forehead.  “Fuck me.”

Oh, shit!  Prof Knot in the house and it looks to be that time.  Can you say Limp Dick?  It’s off the heazy.  Let’s get in on it!

There is no formal reference for this bad boy.  The final knot—the Limp Dick—is self-explanatory.  The Limp Dick has no loop, but instead folds in an impulsive movement from the crossover to the tunnel and funnels through, dangling down limp-like.  Self-explanatory.  Limp Dick.  Generally, it looks like shit and makes your head look like a microwaved marshmallow stuck on the tip of a No. 2 pencil. 

Ballentine Barker only says one thing about the Limp Dick—that you can tell when a guy is an Olympic, world class jerk off because he wears the Limp Dick knot.  He says guys wear it because the Limp Dick is all their monkeyback hands are capable of tying after all the personal attention they’ve given their junk.

“Dad.”

“What did I tell you about the Windsor?”  He lowers his voice, looking around like he is trading secrets with me.  “Have I taught you nothing?”

“Dad.”

“You want people to make fun of you?”

“Because of my tie?”  I can’t help but think Dad is losing his mind, focusing this much on the meaning of a knot’s width and girth.

“People will make fun of you and your tie.”

“I like this knot.”

“People will make fun of you for a lot less.”

“So?”

Dad rests his elbow on the bottom of the steering wheel, holding his temples, rubbing tiny circles for relief.  “This is hard to hear.”  He lifts his head, looking at the car in front of us, his hand out in frustration.  “A father has the right, you know?  Have my necktie lessons had no effect on you?”

I focus on the dent in the dashboard where Dad punched his fist after finding out about Mom’s extramarital activities.

“People judge you based on what kind of knot you’re wearing,” he says.

“Dad,” I say, “do you judge people based on their knot?”

“Absolutely.  All the time.  I’m doing it right now and I don’t feel bad about it.”

“Dad.” 

“I judge.  It’s what I do.”

“Mom wouldn’t care about my knot.”  My gaze drops to my lap.  Shit.  “I’m sorry.”     

Dad slips the car into drive, his foot still on the brake.  “After school.  You and me.  Necktie refresher course.”

“You’re such a loser,” I say.

“I’m not the one rocking a Limp Dick,” he says, smiling again.  Then, raising his hands, says, “Have a good day, son.”

I raise mine too as our hands turn into fists and we bang them together like boxers tapping gloves before a fight.

˜ 

The Byron Hall Catholic High School for Boys—nickname: The Hall—is made up of five hallways.  There is no second floor.  The school has not changed a lick since Jackson graduated four years ago.

On an aerial sketch of the school, like an architect’s layout, like the kind Mom used to spread out on the dining room table, The Hall would look like the number eight on a solar-powered calculator.  Three mini hallways, horizontally—one at the top, one in the middle and one at the bottom of the school.  Two long hallways on the sides, vertically—one with even classroom numbers, one with odd.  Each lined with lockers for 1300 students, lockers so skinny and tight they would barely hold a broom.

The cafeteria or cafe—pronounced like calf—sits past the mini hallway at the top of the school.  Dad says the cafe looks like the Marine chow halls he ate in at Fort Drum in New York before he was deployed to Vietnam—tiled walls, long boring brown tables spread out across an L-shaped space.  A sign on the wall reads: Fire Occupancy 585.  I wonder what would happen if all 1300 kids had a free period at the same time.

The same two Christian Brothers and fat furry bird roam the halls now, making their way from the front entrance toward the cafe.

A group of guys dressed in plaid move past—six guys, bulked up and aggressive, punching and slapping each other in the arm and neck.  The other kids in the hall instinctively move out of their way, clearing a path so as not to draw any unnecessary attention.  I expect to be picked up and slammed into a locker—collared shirt, necktie, sport coat, khakis, fancy shoes—and just reduced to a pile of dust.  I’ve seen what they do to underclassman, but they pass by like they don’t even see me.

So far I have been able to avoid the brothers and mascot like I’ve been able to avoid the plaid monkey assholes, the one group of jocks Jackson told me to stay the fuck away from.  He said two things: that these dudes wear a lot of plaid; and to stay the fuck out of their way.

A white kid with one gigantic pimple in the middle of his forehead, like a Muslin or Hindu or whoever wears the religious red dots on their foreheads, approaches me at my locker and tries to sell me an elevator pass. 

“You don’t have one?” he asks, worried for my well-being.  Dick.

“Nope.  No elevator pass.”

“My God.  It’s a good thing you ran into me.” 

“I didn’t run into you.  You ran into me.”

“Right.  Well, I have one left.  Twenty bucks and it’s all yours.”  He dangles a piece of ripped paper in front of my face with the words elevator pass printed on it in red ink.  The word elevator is spelled wrong.

“No cash.  Sorry.”  I avoid eye contact with him, like he is a cop who has caught me shoplifting.

“Fucking freshman.”  He lowers his sad piece of paper and waits, scanning the crowd, before approaching some other unsuspecting kid.  Poor bastards.  Both of them.

I dump the contents of my book bag into my locker near the cafe and pick out my books for the day.  Western Civilization.  Algebra.  Christian Awareness.  And English Literature.  My locker rattles shut with a good kick.  I snap a black lock on the door, twisting the numbers a couple of times to scramble it.

When I got my course schedule and locker assignment a few weeks ago, Jackson brought me to Byron Hall to locate and practice handling the locker and lock combination.  He told me to always make sure my lock snapped nice and tight because of the upperclassmen.  One of the things they like to do is find someone’s lock undone and put it on backwards.  I tug on my lock a few times just to be sure.

The hallway is crammed with teenagers, pushing each other against lockers, sliding arms through wrinkled sports coats, combing their freshly gelled hair, tying last-minute knots before class.  Kids shake their lockers loose and greet each other with arm punches and big, aggressive hugs.  Kids roam in packs of plaid shirts with striped ties, plaid sports coats with solid ties.  One guy jogs past me.  His corduroys make a zwip-zwip sound as he passes. 

I overhear summer vacation stories: 

• Someone fucked some local girl in Costa Rica while on vacation with his parents. 
• Some other guy lost his virginity to a college chick tour guide at Princeton. 
• Another guy got wasted visiting his brother in Chicago and ended up taking a dump on second base at Wrigley Field. 
• Another guy did his first line of coke at a movie premiere party in Los Angeles. 
• Another says he knows the password to get into this sick underground club where they do fucked-up shit, so that if anyone wants to go, to let him know by Wednesday. 
• One says he, his girlfriend, and her sister all got drunk off cherry-grape Jell-O shots and ended up fucking in their parents’ bed. 
• Another swears that he saw the English Literature teacher, Mr. Rembrandt, making out with this other dude at the two-dollar movie theater.

My summer? 

• Consisted of cutting the grass of all the houses on my father’s realtor list.  He says that “the lawn of a home tells a story.”  He sold more houses this summer than any other year. 

Other than cutting pantloads of grass, I:

• Saw my neighbor, Tricia, naked.

Welcome to Perverts-ville.  Professor Perv’s in the house.  Whip out your pens and a piece of paper as I school you on How to Be a Pervert 101. 

Tricia was home from Harvard University for the summer. 

One night, I was sitting in my room in the dark, when a light turned on across the street.  I watched as she undressed down to her bra and panties, down to nothing.  She walked around all sexy and naked before turning off the light and climbing into bed. 

After that, I found myself sitting in front of my bedroom window for the rest of the summer, waiting to see if lightning would strike twice.

The two Christian Brothers flank me in the hallway.  The kid in a giant Cardinal costume steps out from behind the Brothers, its humongous head bobbling around like a fucktard.  Kids punch the Cardinal’s tail as they pass him in the hallway.

“Good morning, young man, and welcome.  I’m Brother Bill.  This is Brother Jack.” 

“Welcome to Byron Hall,” Brother Jack says.  “How has your first day been so far?”

“Solid,” I say, using a word from their generation, a word Dad says sometimes.  I debate telling them about the one pimple-foreheaded freak selling elevator passes, but never get the chance.

“And this is our school mascot—Byron the Cardinal,” Brother Bill says.

The Cardinal raises a red wing and waves it at me, but I don’t wave back.

“How did you know I was a freshman?” I ask.

“The look,” Brother Jack says.

“We see it every year,” Brother Bill says.  “Right, Byron?”  He looks at the cardinal who covers his beak with its wing, laughing.  The fuck.

I wish I was in a kungfu movie with subtitles.  I would smash his fat, furry Cardinal head in with my book bag full of summer reading I didn’t bother to read because it all sucked.  I’d ride on its back, punching him in his head and kungfu kick and chop at it with my fist and feet.  I’d say things in Chinese or Japanese or Korean or whatever the fuck kungfu people speak and my subtitles would be in yellow beneath me for all to see.  I would wear a tight shirt and my muscles would ripple across my body.  I’d make those sounds too—high-ya and aye-cha and oye-oh.  I’d be a motherfucking kungfu blackbelt badass, bitches.  For sure.

“What’s your name?” Brother Bill asks.

“Jeremy Barker.”

Brother Bill shakes my hand, his tunic swaying over his shoes like a skirt.          

“Are you Jackson Barker’s little brother?” Brother Jack asks.

“My word,” Brother Bill says.  “Can’t be.”

“Brother Bill, how long has it been since Jackson went to school here?”

“I don’t know.  That’s really dating me,” says Brother Bill. 

The Brothers laugh together.

“Getting used to having to wear a sport coat and tie?” Brother Bill asks.

“Matching all of those plaids,” Brother Jack says.

Both Brothers laugh.

“I don’t know how they do it,” Brother Bill says.

“And all of those knots,” Brother Jack says.

Both Brothers laugh again.

“I bet you are really excited to be following in your brother’s footsteps.  I mean, having spent some time here already, you must know this place like the back of your hand?” Brother Jack says, his hands clasped behind his back. 

“What’s Jackson doing now?” Brother Bill asks.

“I bet he has graduated from college and is working some fancy job.  Good for him,” Brother Jack says, his chest puffed out a bit, proud to be have been a part of a success story, of a solid tradition of excellence that is The Hall.

“We won’t keep you,” Brother Bill says.

The Brothers latch onto another kid in the crowd, asking him questions, following him down the hallway and around the corner out of sight.  The furry fat bitch of a Cardinal right behind them. 

Sometimes being silent is the easiest thing in the world.

Then, just as the Brothers disappear, I feel it—a violent tug on my shoulder, like someone’s trying to rip my arm from its socket.  Someone grabs my book bag and forces it to the ground.  It yanks me down as my knees buckle.  I drop to the floor, landing on my back, my head cushioned by the air in my book bag. 

It’s them—six plaid fuckers stand over me.  One of them clears phlegm from his throat, sucking it back first, then pursing it out of his mouth over top of me.  I watch as it forms, icicle like, from his lips, slowly stretching down before snapping loose and landing on my chest.  The plaids laugh and hit each other in the shoulders and arms like a family of mongoloid monkeys.  They systematically and symmetrically attack:

• One of them grabs my arm. 
• Another grabs my other arm. 
• One guy grabs my leg. 
• Another grabs my other leg. 

They lift me into the air, hover me above the hard floor like a coffin being carried out to the hearse.  It feels like they are going to pull me apart limb-by-limb.  I twist to break free, but their hands tighten around my wrists and ankles.  I can’t see their faces, but know everyone around me must be laughing their asses off at the freshman getting fucked up. 

I choke on the sickening stench of cologne wafting off them, rubbed into their faces and shirts and hands and arms.  I know that I should be afraid or surprised, but somehow I knew this would happen.  It was just a matter of time, before the plaid douchebags caught up with me.  I am more embarrassed, I think, than anything else, knowing that everyone around me is watching. The more I think about being the centerpiece of dorkdom, the more my throat burns and I become angry and can taste what can only be bile rising up inside me.

The fifth guy jerks my head up to face my crotch.

The sixth guy, this beefy bitch with buzzed blonde hair, whose neck is thicker than his goddamn head, steps between my legs, which are spread apart like a wishbone.  He leans over me, closing his eyes, almost sweetly, like some Casanova would do before sexing a girl, and inhales.  He waves his hand over my junk, smelling my dick, bringing the scent to his nose, the way you do with burning chemicals in a science lab.

“God, I love that smell.  Smells like,” he says, staring into the distance, like a general surveying a battlefield.  He says, “smells like Freshman.”

“Pussy,” another bitch says.

“Beaver,” another bitch says.

“Twat,” another bitch says.

“Cunt,” another bitch says.

“Snatch,” another bitch says.

Wow.  What original motherfuckers.  They can use a thesaurus when it comes to slang.

The five plaid monkeys drop me to the floor.  The sixth watches.

I land on my side, my head hitting the inside of my arm.  I expect it to hurt, but it doesn’t.  I lay still, enjoying the stillness and quiet of my position on the floor, which feels sticky and cold.  Feet shuffle around me.  Khakied and corduroyed legs swing past.

The plaid monkeys walk down the hall, jumping up on each other’s backs, slamming each other into lockers.  Their striped ties, each knotted in a Windsor, hang like a gaggle of stumpy bitches.  The blonde fuck turns around, walking backwards.  He points at me.  He smiles as another plaid monkey smashes into him, knocking him down the middle hallway and out of sight. 

No one says a word, like it didn’t even happen.  Eye-witness amnesia. 

A quivering, stupid sadness bubbles up into my face.  I fight it, pinching my eyes together, suppressing it.

“Shake it off,” someone says.  He is short, my height, with buzzed black hair.  His face looks like a mountain—craggy nose, sharp chin, bulging eyes, big floppy ears.  His thin black tie falls short to the middle of his chest, tied in a Limp Dick.  “Don’t take it personally.”

“Hard to take it any other way,” I say.

“They pick on everybody.  Not just freshman.  Not just you.”

“Oh.”

“My name’s Ryan, but people call me Zink,” he says.

“Zink?”

“Last name’s Zinkle and, honestly, not many kids around here know that.  One guy calls you Zink as a nickname and soon everyone is calling you Zink.  It’s this whole thing.”

“Jeremy Barker,” I say.

“Cool,” he says, slapping my shoulder like I scored a touchdown.  Zink reminds me of a warm blanket, which is a gay thing to think, but I mean it more as a straight thing than a gay thing.  Because I like girls.

“You a freshman too?” I ask.

“Junior.”

“Who were those guys?”

“Cam Dillard and his Plaid Lackeys.  They are the sad benchmark by which success is measured here at The Hall.”

“The fucks.”

“You should see them dance.  Like retarded robots.”  He does a retarded robot dance.

“I’d like to see that,” I say.

Professorial slap time. 

I need to stop here for a minute and be a little clearer because this story is making me sound really gay, which, again, I am not.  I like girls.  So when I say things like, “I’d like to see that” in response to Zink telling me about dudes dancing, I am being sarcastic.  I am not being serious.  I do not like to hear about dudes dancing.  Now let’s continue, so long as we are on the same page in a very non-gay kind of way.

“The first Hall mixer is in a couple of weeks,” Zink says.  “They’ll be there in all their plaid glory.  You should come.”

“Are they football players or something?”

“Something like that.  Soccer.”

“Have they ever tried to snap you like a wishbone?”

“Everyday at practice.”

Classroom doors slam shut in a staggered crescendo down the hallway.  Bodies disappearing.  Lockers rest in their tiny frames.

“You play?” I ask, surprised.

“Varsity goalie.  A human sieve,” he says, nodding to an acquaintance across the hall.  Zink looks at his watch and walks backwards away from me. 

“You heading to class?”

“Calculus waits for no man.” 

“See you around.”

“Smile, Barks.  It can only go uphill from here.”

I adjust my Limp Dick and dust off the elbows of my sports coat.  My hand touches the glob of spit on my chest.  More kids pass by, knocking shoulders with me, flowing in both directions, late to class, moving along a long, hard, high school hallway. 

˜ 

The bathroom by the gym is quiet and empty, a perfect place to skip class.  Not even a leaky spigot.  The stall walls crack unfunny mother jokes back at me.  Swear words angle and curve around diagrams of drug use and bodily references.  Stick figure illustrations of sexual positions fill the space between.  According to my stall, my mother sucks semen through a straw.  This particular message is accompanied by an interesting illustration that looks less like the image and more like a walrus wearing a party hat.

When Mom left, she had her mail forwarded to her new address.  But the magazines kept coming.  First was a magazine called In-Style.  Dad plucked it from the mail and threw it into the trashcan. 

“Women’s magazines,” he muttered under his breath as he clipped the leash on our black Labrador named Dog, leading her outside for a walk.

There was nothing more important to me in that moment than retrieving that magazine.  I ripped off the cover and left it in the trash in case he went looking for it and saw it missing.  I skipped steps on the stairs to my bedroom and sat inside my closet, flipping through, reading every printed word on every perfect page.  When I finished, I tucked it inside the box of the board game Monopoly.  The next day another one came.  House and Garden.  The next day Oprah.  I saved them all the same way, until they stopped coming all together.  I have a lot of board games that I never play, each filled with magazines I should never read.

I steal them now from doctor’s offices, libraries, newsstands, sidewalks, people’s porches, gas stations, coffee shops.

Cosmopolitan, stolen from my neighbor Tricia, lays open in my lap.  I turn to a tampon advertisement where women hold hands as they jump off a cliff.  They are barefoot and wear bikinis.  No one I know would willingly jump off a cliff.  There is no way this many women would jump off a cliff together at the same time to kill themselves.  The ad, obviously, glorifies suicide.

I turn the page and read a personal essay on cutting, a disorder where people cut their skin in order to feel.  The article cites the disorder as a serious form of depression.  I flip back to the picture of the women holding hands, jumping off the cliff.  The tag at the bottom of the tampon ad reads: No Fear.  I turn back-and-forth, looking at the women jumping off the cliff and the article on cutters.  I wish I had packed a different magazine today.  Maybe Oprah or Good Housekeeping.  Something more feel-good.

I flip to the last page and see six actresses wearing the same dress.  They all look pretty, but according to the magazine only one is worthy of wearing it.        

The bathroom door squeaks open as feet shuffle across the tile, too cautious to make a sound.  Whispers spit softly from lips, eager and immediate.  I lift my feet from the floor to the toilet seat and hug my knees to my chest. 

“Check the stalls,” a guy says.

“No one’s here, Paul,” the other guy says in a deeper voice.

“Please.”

The first stall door slams opens.  Whether the door was pushed or kicked, I can’t tell, but judging by the force, the heavy sound, I’d say kicked.  With aggression.  The second door slams open.  Followed by the third.

“See,” the other guy says.  “Nothing.”

“Don’t forget to check the last stall.”

Class, please note, the following will be on the final exam.  This situation is not only theoretically, but also technically referred to as being fucked.  This is not to be confused with getting fucked.  That will be covered in a later chapter.

A hand grips the top of my stall and pushes it open, but not all the way and the guy never looks in. He walks back across the bathroom.

“Paul?” he says.

Paul shushes him.

“Paul?” he says softer.

“What?”

“How was your summer?”

“Not long enough,” Paul says.

“Go on any trips?”

“The beach.  Twice.”

“With?”

“My parents,” Paul says.  “Some friends.”

“Which beach?”

“Ocean City.  You?”

“I worked for my father all summer.”

“Doing what?” Paul asks.

“Landscaping.”

They go silent and I focus on keeping my breathing as quiet as possible, keeping my magazine still and my feet from squeaking on the toilet seat.  The more I listen to the silence, the more I can hear myself think and know I am going to do something to give myself away when all I want to do is be invisible.  I close my eyes and think please go away, please go away, please go away, but they don’t go away and are no longer silent. 

They crash into the stall next to me.  They grab and grunt and go at each other.  Their stall door closes and locks and Paul says, in a way that I know he is smiling, “Zink, let me show you what I learned on my summer vacation.”