Glancing Blows (original)
Those of you who have had me friended a long time will probably recognize this, but I am touching this up for school lit mags and things, and I thought I'd put it out there for anyone who wants to give crit. Any feedback is appreciated!
One day, he goes missing.
Most people wouldn't call that the beginning of a story, but you're not most people, and anyway, there's no history to recount, not between you and him. You aren't friends, not even superficially; there is no sordid teenage drama, no longstanding grudge that might spark a continued interest in his existence. You are not among his worshipers, nor do you feel resentment at his three-year-long ownership of the front page of the school paper and the crackled garble that is the morning announcements. He was just a presence; more noticeable than most, to be sure, but not enough to explain the effect his absence has had on you..
He doesn't really go missing, of course--that would be rather too interesting. No, his parents have quietly arranged for him to be transferred, mid-semester, into an international school in Munich. No word on when--or whether--he'll return. He sends regular postcards to friends, superficial and not; the recipients display theirs on the front of their binders, like badges of honor, or show them off in the mornings before class starts.
Rumors about him stalk the halls along with the students, but that's the same as always; only their clothes have changed. Some among you gleefully speculate about mental breakdowns and instability; others whisper about exclusive academies, study abroad programs, and awards. But it's all just idle speculation in the end. No one makes more than a cursory attempt to find out what happened to him--their curiosity, too, is superficial.
Not yours. When you want something--you don't just want something. You obsess.
This is what you do: nothing, really.
After all, you are busy. You spend your afternoons studying and reading Plath and writing articles about Knitting Club because, according to your parents and your Journalism teacher with the fake fingernails, you are going places. You repeat this line to your friends with appropriately flat affect, and it is understood that you are playing a joke on the world. You have not written an essay since elementary school without smirking all the way through, a fact that does not escape the view of Mrs. Winthrop, your sophomore English teacher, even if your face is semi-permanently hidden by your bangs. One Wednesday five weeks into term, she holds you after class and slams your summer reading paper onto the desk roughly, not caring that the clip comes undone and the pages scatter everywhere.
"This," she says, punctuating every word with a stab of her red pen, "is an unmitigated, flowery, over-processed piece of crap which communicates nothing to the reader except your pure condescension--which, while fascinating, was not nearly the object of this exercise. And I am sure that if you told me a quarter of the things you were thinking when you wrote it, I could have you suspended for insubordination."
"Yes, ma'am," you say with a straight face.
She just sighs, like she already knows you are a lost cause. "Cut out the verbiage, and I think you have the beginnings of a decent paper. Dismissed."
She believes in you, or the potential of you--elaborate epithets, pseudo-philosophical ramblings, and all--which is why you leave that class with piles of essays covered in red-pen invective and one B minus, the sole blemish on an otherwise spotless transcript. It was the best she could do. State mandates dictate that grades of C and below are reserved for students who have not mastered the comma or compound sentences, however worthless the work of the grammatically proficient, however much they know it, however much they don't try anyway.
On the other hand:
You spend your afternoons leafing through back issues of the Voice. You read every word to provide yourself cover, but especially linger over his stories--there are many. You study the blurry, grainy photographs of him, his golden-boy smile, trying to read something in it. You keep your ears pricked to the conversations of the superficial friends. No one notices that you are eavesdropping on them; you have always been good at appearing invisible.
In your head, you formulate a series of possible scenarios, A through J, ranging from neutral to moderately depressing in tone.
When you take breaks from your reading, to eat or to work on your next story, you make sure to leave the newspaper face-up on the table, so that his image is visible. It's a good conversation starter. For example:
"Oh, gosh, can you believe it's already been three months since he left?" Blonde Girl One (you don't believe in differentiating between them, that would be undemocratic and a waste of your time) bites into her vegan, low-carb, condimentless mockery of what it means to be a sandwich. "I miss him so much--I mean, we still talk all the time on the phone and email and stuff, but it's not the same, you know?"
That's interesting--it's the first you've heard of actual contact between him and the rest of the world. Thankfully you are saved the necessity of having to inquire further by Blandly Charming Guy Number Three, who swallows his inauthentic microwaved rice and beans to say, "Yeah? What's he been saying?"
"Oh, all kinds of things!" Blonde Girl One brightens abruptly; it's clear that this is her very favorite topic. "His new school is so cool--they have all this stuff we could never afford here--but Germany is like, totally weird. Did you know that they eat sheep stomachs over there? I was like, ew, but he just laughed and told me that was pretty normal."
Only trivialities, then. Nothing important--not that Blonde Girl One would be able to process anything that was. Blandly Charming Three nods; you can't tell whether he's taking her seriously or not, and that's scary. "I was wondering how he was doing." A shadow crosses his face. "He left us all behind, you know? I don't know if he thought he was too good for us or he just burned out or whatever--"
There's a snap as Blonde Girl Two sets down her Tupperware. "Entitled, much? Since when is it any of your business what he does or doesn't do? You don't know shit about him, so don't talk shit about him."
Silence for seven and a half seconds (you count), the duration of which you spend staring at her bad highlights in abject surprise. It's not often that something manages to render you speechless. "Hey, Anise," you say finally, "so how's that Environmental Club story been going?"
She sighs, not ungratefully, and as she launches into a story you can feel the tension dissipate from the room. But in your head you're still memorizing the set of her mouth; tweaks to scenarios G and I are in order, you think. Divisions into subscenarios? Maybe.
That spring you're asked to the prom by a friend of a friend. "It's all bullshit," he says, rolling his eyes. "It's not about who you're attracted to or whose company you actually enjoy, it's about the dynasty of the popular judging how much you're worth by the most socially acceptable person you can manage to con into being seen on your arm for a night."
"Total BS," you agree, your arm stretched over the side of the bench disaffectedly.
He smirks. "So I have two tickets. Wanna go?"
You reason that it's not playing their game if you're making it a giant cosmic joke--the two of you go, and complain about the punch and the DJ's taste in music, and it's not such a bad time, you guess.
That's the spring you have to present your science fair project to God's parody of a judging panel (because oh, you are going places) and you shake and your hands sweat the whole time, even though your data is all made up and no one will notice or care if they do, that's the nature of this place. It's the spring you turn sixteen, and your dad teaches you to drive in his old stick--it builds character, he says. You resolve never to live anywhere without a public transportation system; your hands have begun to ache, you clench the steering wheel so hard. Turning is the worst: four lanes of cars all around, you hanging on for dear life, sure that this time--this will be the time that you crash.
As it turns out, you are the one to find him--after a fashion, at least.
It's the middle of July, suffocatingly hot, and your baby brother, against all odds, has gotten pneumonia. From where, you don't know, but you're the one tasked with getting his medicine from the nearest pharmacy. You walk the two blocks there even though you're sweating enough to fill a small bathtub, because you really do hate driving.
You go to the counter to pay, and that's when you see him. He looks out of place in his own clothes--a rumpled t-shirt, athletic shorts, and a baseball cap, not even close to the amount of polish you're used to seeing on him--but that same golden-boy smile lights up his face when he sees you. He raises one hand in a wave. "Hey!"
"Hey." You look him up and down--you're surprised he even recognizes you--and you can't think of anything better to say than, "So how was Germany?"
More smiling. "Oh, it was great. It was nice to have a change of pace for a while, you know? I think I kind of needed it. But I'm ready to come back now, so." He shrugs. "I missed this place so much, you have no idea."
Spoken like a true golden boy. "Cool." You shift from one leg to the other. In the next aisle, a baby wails and a woman sighs; you think you even hear the ticking of someone's wristwatch. "So, uh, I'll see you around, I guess?"
"Yeah, definitely. See you!"
It's probably the longest conversation you've had with him.
After school starts up, you'll see him in the hallways often, and he'll wave and you'll wave back, but nothing more than that. You aren't about to start talking to him. You were never good with intersections, after all: even the near misses, the glancing blows, leave you anxious and unsettled.
(You see the glare of the headlights in your mind's eye, tragedies of glass and blood and steel--)
When you get home that afternoon, the first thing you do is sit down and write. Fifteen lines of poetry, free verse, no trace of irony in any of them.
One day, he goes missing.
Most people wouldn't call that the beginning of a story, but you're not most people, and anyway, there's no history to recount, not between you and him. You aren't friends, not even superficially; there is no sordid teenage drama, no longstanding grudge that might spark a continued interest in his existence. You are not among his worshipers, nor do you feel resentment at his three-year-long ownership of the front page of the school paper and the crackled garble that is the morning announcements. He was just a presence; more noticeable than most, to be sure, but not enough to explain the effect his absence has had on you..
He doesn't really go missing, of course--that would be rather too interesting. No, his parents have quietly arranged for him to be transferred, mid-semester, into an international school in Munich. No word on when--or whether--he'll return. He sends regular postcards to friends, superficial and not; the recipients display theirs on the front of their binders, like badges of honor, or show them off in the mornings before class starts.
Rumors about him stalk the halls along with the students, but that's the same as always; only their clothes have changed. Some among you gleefully speculate about mental breakdowns and instability; others whisper about exclusive academies, study abroad programs, and awards. But it's all just idle speculation in the end. No one makes more than a cursory attempt to find out what happened to him--their curiosity, too, is superficial.
Not yours. When you want something--you don't just want something. You obsess.
This is what you do: nothing, really.
After all, you are busy. You spend your afternoons studying and reading Plath and writing articles about Knitting Club because, according to your parents and your Journalism teacher with the fake fingernails, you are going places. You repeat this line to your friends with appropriately flat affect, and it is understood that you are playing a joke on the world. You have not written an essay since elementary school without smirking all the way through, a fact that does not escape the view of Mrs. Winthrop, your sophomore English teacher, even if your face is semi-permanently hidden by your bangs. One Wednesday five weeks into term, she holds you after class and slams your summer reading paper onto the desk roughly, not caring that the clip comes undone and the pages scatter everywhere.
"This," she says, punctuating every word with a stab of her red pen, "is an unmitigated, flowery, over-processed piece of crap which communicates nothing to the reader except your pure condescension--which, while fascinating, was not nearly the object of this exercise. And I am sure that if you told me a quarter of the things you were thinking when you wrote it, I could have you suspended for insubordination."
"Yes, ma'am," you say with a straight face.
She just sighs, like she already knows you are a lost cause. "Cut out the verbiage, and I think you have the beginnings of a decent paper. Dismissed."
She believes in you, or the potential of you--elaborate epithets, pseudo-philosophical ramblings, and all--which is why you leave that class with piles of essays covered in red-pen invective and one B minus, the sole blemish on an otherwise spotless transcript. It was the best she could do. State mandates dictate that grades of C and below are reserved for students who have not mastered the comma or compound sentences, however worthless the work of the grammatically proficient, however much they know it, however much they don't try anyway.
On the other hand:
You spend your afternoons leafing through back issues of the Voice. You read every word to provide yourself cover, but especially linger over his stories--there are many. You study the blurry, grainy photographs of him, his golden-boy smile, trying to read something in it. You keep your ears pricked to the conversations of the superficial friends. No one notices that you are eavesdropping on them; you have always been good at appearing invisible.
In your head, you formulate a series of possible scenarios, A through J, ranging from neutral to moderately depressing in tone.
When you take breaks from your reading, to eat or to work on your next story, you make sure to leave the newspaper face-up on the table, so that his image is visible. It's a good conversation starter. For example:
"Oh, gosh, can you believe it's already been three months since he left?" Blonde Girl One (you don't believe in differentiating between them, that would be undemocratic and a waste of your time) bites into her vegan, low-carb, condimentless mockery of what it means to be a sandwich. "I miss him so much--I mean, we still talk all the time on the phone and email and stuff, but it's not the same, you know?"
That's interesting--it's the first you've heard of actual contact between him and the rest of the world. Thankfully you are saved the necessity of having to inquire further by Blandly Charming Guy Number Three, who swallows his inauthentic microwaved rice and beans to say, "Yeah? What's he been saying?"
"Oh, all kinds of things!" Blonde Girl One brightens abruptly; it's clear that this is her very favorite topic. "His new school is so cool--they have all this stuff we could never afford here--but Germany is like, totally weird. Did you know that they eat sheep stomachs over there? I was like, ew, but he just laughed and told me that was pretty normal."
Only trivialities, then. Nothing important--not that Blonde Girl One would be able to process anything that was. Blandly Charming Three nods; you can't tell whether he's taking her seriously or not, and that's scary. "I was wondering how he was doing." A shadow crosses his face. "He left us all behind, you know? I don't know if he thought he was too good for us or he just burned out or whatever--"
There's a snap as Blonde Girl Two sets down her Tupperware. "Entitled, much? Since when is it any of your business what he does or doesn't do? You don't know shit about him, so don't talk shit about him."
Silence for seven and a half seconds (you count), the duration of which you spend staring at her bad highlights in abject surprise. It's not often that something manages to render you speechless. "Hey, Anise," you say finally, "so how's that Environmental Club story been going?"
She sighs, not ungratefully, and as she launches into a story you can feel the tension dissipate from the room. But in your head you're still memorizing the set of her mouth; tweaks to scenarios G and I are in order, you think. Divisions into subscenarios? Maybe.
That spring you're asked to the prom by a friend of a friend. "It's all bullshit," he says, rolling his eyes. "It's not about who you're attracted to or whose company you actually enjoy, it's about the dynasty of the popular judging how much you're worth by the most socially acceptable person you can manage to con into being seen on your arm for a night."
"Total BS," you agree, your arm stretched over the side of the bench disaffectedly.
He smirks. "So I have two tickets. Wanna go?"
You reason that it's not playing their game if you're making it a giant cosmic joke--the two of you go, and complain about the punch and the DJ's taste in music, and it's not such a bad time, you guess.
That's the spring you have to present your science fair project to God's parody of a judging panel (because oh, you are going places) and you shake and your hands sweat the whole time, even though your data is all made up and no one will notice or care if they do, that's the nature of this place. It's the spring you turn sixteen, and your dad teaches you to drive in his old stick--it builds character, he says. You resolve never to live anywhere without a public transportation system; your hands have begun to ache, you clench the steering wheel so hard. Turning is the worst: four lanes of cars all around, you hanging on for dear life, sure that this time--this will be the time that you crash.
As it turns out, you are the one to find him--after a fashion, at least.
It's the middle of July, suffocatingly hot, and your baby brother, against all odds, has gotten pneumonia. From where, you don't know, but you're the one tasked with getting his medicine from the nearest pharmacy. You walk the two blocks there even though you're sweating enough to fill a small bathtub, because you really do hate driving.
You go to the counter to pay, and that's when you see him. He looks out of place in his own clothes--a rumpled t-shirt, athletic shorts, and a baseball cap, not even close to the amount of polish you're used to seeing on him--but that same golden-boy smile lights up his face when he sees you. He raises one hand in a wave. "Hey!"
"Hey." You look him up and down--you're surprised he even recognizes you--and you can't think of anything better to say than, "So how was Germany?"
More smiling. "Oh, it was great. It was nice to have a change of pace for a while, you know? I think I kind of needed it. But I'm ready to come back now, so." He shrugs. "I missed this place so much, you have no idea."
Spoken like a true golden boy. "Cool." You shift from one leg to the other. In the next aisle, a baby wails and a woman sighs; you think you even hear the ticking of someone's wristwatch. "So, uh, I'll see you around, I guess?"
"Yeah, definitely. See you!"
It's probably the longest conversation you've had with him.
After school starts up, you'll see him in the hallways often, and he'll wave and you'll wave back, but nothing more than that. You aren't about to start talking to him. You were never good with intersections, after all: even the near misses, the glancing blows, leave you anxious and unsettled.
(You see the glare of the headlights in your mind's eye, tragedies of glass and blood and steel--)
When you get home that afternoon, the first thing you do is sit down and write. Fifteen lines of poetry, free verse, no trace of irony in any of them.