Nicholson Baker - The Everlasting Story of Nory

Nory thought that it was really nothing to be proud of, this type of behavior, nothing that should allow the Aztecs to have elaborate costumes and solid, proud faces. Of course it was a picture that was painted many years after the sacrifices happened, but still — they weren’t smiling, so they didn’t look totally wicked, neither did they look very very upset. And what they were doing was unspeakable. It was not just unspeakable. It was unsingable, it was unchattable, it was unsignlanguageable. It was way, way past the limit. However, maybe it was good to learn about at school because kids love gory things, especially boys and certain girls, like Bernice, and it wasn’t something especially made up to scare your living dits off, like Tales of the Crypt or Goosebumps , it was something that was a part of real-life history, which was why it was being taught in Mr. Blithrenner’s class. And, really, being sacrificed on a wooden block was not the worst way to die, if you had to die in some fancy way other than old age. There were three worst ways to die in this world. One was to be on one of those posts with a fire under you that trickles up your legs. The second was to be smuggled by surprise with a hand over your mouth. And the third was to drown.

At break Nory discussed this with Kira, who pretty much agreed, except that she said that the absolute worst-of-all-worsts way was: being buried alive. Pamela came over and said there were some fresh conkers under the tree, and this time, quite amazingly, when Nory said, ‘Come on!’ to Kira, Kira came along. She didn’t play with Pamela, exactly, but Pamela and Kira both played with Nory, in a sort of separate way. Pamela said that she thought the worst way to die was probably to fall off a cliff onto needle-sharp rocks, and both Kira and Nory had to admit that, yes indeed, that was a pretty unattractive way to die, as well. So there was a tiny spark of Kira and Pamela maybe starting to get along. But meanwhile a few other kids came over for the conkers and Kira went over to them. So obviously she was still embarrassed to be with Pamela. And then, on the way to lunch, Kira asked Nory out of the clear blue sky if maybe Nory could come over to her house the next day and play, and Nory said she would check with her parents, because it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Just before Nory left she had a horribly nervous moment of talking to Mrs. Thirm. She told her that there was a girl, a friend, who was having one bad experience after another with bullying. Not physically bullying so much as mental bullying. She told her about the time with the jacket and the time that day with the boys, and the girls not talking to Pamela and laughing at her, and a few other times, like the time one of the boys kept throwing Pamela’s duffel coat down and hanging his duffel coat on her peg. ‘This friend doesn’t want me to say her name,’ said Nory, ‘but she is quite, quite bothered that this is going on day and day out, and I was just wondering if you might have a recommendation on what to do about it.’

‘I suppose you mean Pamela,’ said Mrs. Thirm.

‘Well, I can’t exactly — I mean — she’s a friend,’ said Nory.

‘Thank you for mentioning it, Nory,’ said Mrs. Thirm. ‘We’ll keep an eye on it.’

‘Thank you, because it does really bother her,’ said Nory. She breathed the hugest blast of a sigh of relief because she had been worried all day about saying something to Mrs. Thirm about Pamela, and lo and behold it turned out that the teachers already knew about the situation. And fortunately Nory hadn’t had to give out Pamela’s name, although it was a close call.

Her mother picked her up from school at twelve-thirty, and Nory asked right on the spot if she could go over to Kira’s house the next day. Nory’s mother and father discussed it. The difficulty was that they were going to drive to Wimpole, which was a Stately Home, the next day. ‘Couldn’t Kira come with us?’ Nory asked. Nory’s mother and father looked at each other and made their ‘I don’t see why not’ expressions. So Nory scrummaged around in her backpack and found Kira’s phone number on a little folded piece of paper in her pencil case. She called the number: ‘Hello, this is Eleanor, could I please speak to Kira?’ Then Kira came to the phone and Nory invited her to come with them to Wimpole. Nory heard Kira shout, ‘Can I go to Wimpole tomorrow afternoon?’ Then she heard, ‘Wimpole!’ Then, ‘WIMPOLE!’ Then, ‘With Nory.’ Then she heard, ‘A girl from school. Yes.’ Then after a second Kira came back on and said, ‘Yes, I can go, but my mother would like to talk to your mother to sort out the logistics.’ So it was all settled that Kira was coming over an hour before they left so they could play a little, as well. And Wimpole was a good place to go because Nory’s mother said it had a farm with a number of endangered species of cows and pigs and goats, which made it good for kids of all age groups. Nory was so happy to hear the good news that she cleaned up her room for Kira from the northeast corner to the southeast corner, like a hot butterknife. And what usually happened happened again as usual, which was that as she cleaned she began rearranging her dolls, and thinking of little events that could happen in their adventurous everlasting lives. So while Littleguy took a nap in a little clump on the couch she came down with two dolls and sat next to him and started to tell herself a story of Mariana. But she kept getting distracted by the idea that Kira was coming over, so she put it on the back of the stove.

Kira’s mother dropped Kira off and Nory felt the surprise of ‘Wow, this is very strange to have Kira in my house,’ because of course she was used to seeing her at school. They were a tad-bit shy with each other for a few minutes, but then everything turned pleasantly chatty as can be, except for one very big hitch. Kira was being brought up, through her whole childhood, without any TV allowed in her house, so of course as soon as she came over to Nory’s house she was desperately craving a long juicy watch of TV. She knew precisely what was on, and she knew what she wanted to see. It was an American cartoon called Space KeBob 7.

Space KeBob 7 was about a fifteen-year-old named Space KeBob with a huge skull that was built up using bone grafts. Six extra brains were stored inside his skull, which had little partitions in it sort of like the chambered nautilus, and he was able to connect up to each of the brains by unplugging a wire and connecting to the next brain, so that if he wanted to think like, for example, a wise old Native American man, he plugged into that plug and connected up to that brain, and if he wanted to think like a falcon, he connected up to a tiny little falcon brain. The six extra brains plus the boy’s personal brain he was born with equals seven, which was why ‘Space KeBob 7’ was the most logical name for the show. Nory wasn’t wild on seeing it, because she had seen plenty of the episodes and they usually had some sort of enormous space-dragon with a gargling voice. Also it didn’t make sense because if you were the bad guy it would be quite easy to take a little dab of modeling clay and press it into a couple of the boy’s brain plugs and Space KeBob 7 would immediately be Space KeBob 5, and a little more clay stuffed in a few more sockets, he’d be Space KeBob 3, then Space KeBob 2, and then he would be right back down to his own brain, with nothing else to rely on, and it wouldn’t be a popular show anymore and would just be a shy little slip of a cartoon about an average kid in space.

But Kira was passionately interested in seeing it, since she almost never had an opportunity to, so they watched it from start to finish. Nory got very sleepy. She had woken up early that morning, and again gone right to the Art Room with Littleguy. Littleguy had seen some styrophone packing chips in a box and said, ‘They look like tato chips.’ So Nory stapled together a bag of pretend potato chips out of them that said: