Zsuzsi Gartner - Better Living Through Plastic Explosives

Towards the end of our first month, Elyon had a particularly bad day at school. When Ms. W. asked Stephan about Hamlet’s indecisiveness, Elyon quoted the famous soliloquy almost in its entirety. Stephan was set upon on the way home by some future captains of industry regurgitating their bastardized brand of poetry. “Slings and arrows of outrageous faggotyness!” “To be a fucking geek or not to be a fucking geek!” and, perhaps the worst, “To sleep, perchance to wet my bed!”

“Ms. W. cut me off at ‘conscience doth make cowards of us all,’” Elyon told us later behind the Wadsworths’ carport as we took turns holding Jason’s gym shirt to Stephan’s nose and forehead to stanch the flow of blood and tears and tried to concoct a story for Stephan to tell his parents. Plain clumsiness wasn’t going to help with this one. Zachriel gently cautioned that no one likes a show-off, while Barman couldn’t resist dispensing some advice: “The cool answer would’ve been: ‘What is existential angst, Alex?” Like his avatar Leo Jr. Barman was a fan of Jeopardy!

Although none of us was having as hard a time as Elyon in the guise of the hapless Stephan, Arcadia Court was not exactly living up to its name. Yes, from the ravine behind our houses we could hear fern song, the endlessly unfurling fronds in the ceaseless rain. But beyond that, the equally ceaseless whine of power tools as farther up the mountainside residents sought to improve the value of their lots. From the Wadsworths’ came a constant muted stench, the distinct whiff of unhappiness, and next door, from the Costellos’, often the smell of scorched fish sticks and Leo Jr.’s mother singing, off-key, something about sistahs doin’ it for themselves .

Barman, as Leo Jr., had adjusted most easily to life as a suburban teenager. Skateboard under one arm, fingers casually pinching a “spliff,” revelling in the role of free spirit. “The Dude abides with me,” Barman liked saying-quoting from a Hollywood movie that had recently achieved cult status- amusing us all with the double entendre. “Nice guy, that Leo Jr.” was what everyone invariably said.

Jason was a nice guy now, too, thanks to Yabbashael, but this only gave people more cause for suspicion. “Why isn’t The Wad acting like a wad?” students asked, and gave him wider berth than usual, while the teachers continued to watch him out of the corners of their eyes.

Jessica’s formerly papery skin shone, and curves appeared in places where before there had been alarming concavity. The boys were paying attention in the cafeteria and around her locker, although some kept their distance on account of her being The Wad’s sister. The girls were a different matter. A tiny curly-haired warlord named Montana puffed out her cheeks and told her posse: “If she doesn’t stop stuffing her face she’ll end up like that blimp in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire .”

“Well, you know how girls can be,” Zachriel said.

“In fact,” said Rachmiel, uncharacteristically snappy, “I don’t.”

It turned out that Bash, who had a fine tenor and could dance, had been cast as Judas Iscariot in the school’s spring production of Jesus Christ Superstar before we’d appeared on the scene. His role made the rest of us nervous, but Zachriel had begun to admire Tim Rice and Sir Andrew’s sympathetic view of the betrayer. “Besides,” said Zachriel, “he gets all the best songs.”

During the day we did our best to avoid each other as our social hierarchies dictated, but at night we lay in our beds in welcome darkness and communicated again without the boundaries of language. Speaking in tongues without need of tongues, bodiless once more.

On the ceiling of Stephan’s bedroom was a glow-in-the-dark solar system, the North Star peeling away. On the wall of Leo Jr.’s room, posters from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest . Beside Jason’s pillow, a plush dolphin and an oversized neon-pink hedgehog won at the previous summer’s PNE and hidden away under the bed each morning.

“How is this really different from texting?” Zachriel asked one night. Zachriel was the only one of us who’d taken to social media.

“It’s different in spirit,” Barman said, “and, besides, there’s no need for opposable thumbs.”

For some of us, high school was shaping up to be a regular pit of Acheron. (“The hue of dungeons and the scowl of night,” quoth Elyon, who was finding solace in Shakespeare despite the earlier classroom misadventure.) Only ten more days to go before spring break. We began to think in terms of miracles.

How much easier it had been for Mohammed and Siddhartha, not to mention the Christ, who did not have to wander the earth incognito. “If only we could smite just a little to blow off some steam,” Elyon said.

“I love that word, smite ,” Yabbashael said.

“You guys ,” Rachmiel told them, “go to sleep.”

It’s true we could have materialized as ravens or, in the spirit of humility, earthworms. But then how could we have partaken of all that was available to the human senses? In times past our kind have appeared as griffins or lightning or even in the form we’ve been represented in over the ages, luxuriously robed, or nude with dimpled flesh, wings either terrible or elegant- Masaccio’s sword-wielding avenger, Bloch’s pallid ectomorph, Melozzo’s curly-haired candy-box creatures. But there is something too attention-getting about those guises. Something altogether beside the point.

Soon after we left Arcadia Court a giant sea tortoise, purportedly thousands of years old, appeared several blocks over on another cul-de-sac, carrying on his back a lost schoolgirl from Japan. A miracle that was quickly covered up, as it seemed it wasn’t miracles these people wanted.

And while we inhabited their bodies, Bashaar, Stephan, Leo Jr., Jason, and Jessica, the children of Arcadia Court, partook of a heaven-sent dreamless sleep. There were times, we admit, that we envied them.

Stephan didn’t leave the house the whole week of spring break, and when he finally emerged we almost didn’t recognize him. Gone were the too-short sweatpants and checked shirts and white socks; gone were the duct-taped glasses. In their place, oversized jeans, black hoodie, and red-framed Soulja Boy sunglasses. (Gone too was approximately $500 from the university savings his superstitious parents kept hidden in a jade Fortune Vase in the pantry behind tins of water chestnuts.) When we converged on him, Stephan simply raised a hand and said, “Word.”

He failed a math test that week, the first of many, and when called on in English or Socials he’d say things like, “Existential angst, man,” ignoring meaningful pokes from Leo Jr. (“Stephan’s so random ,” his male classmates said approvingly, so we could only conclude this was a good thing, this doing poorly in school and waxing random.)

Stephan spent much of this time on multiplayer role-playing games online. By all accounts he was a master at World of Warcraft: Realm of Cocytus , “smiting the enemy,” who consisted of a new kind of Wyrm and Nephilim-a.k.a. “those douche-bags,” according to the faux-hawk kid. (Barman scoffed at how the game developers stole so readily from ur-biblical sources. “ Nephilim . They have no idea what they’re dealing with. No wonder Elyon has their number.”)

We soon heard reports that Stephan was hacking for his classmates. His new admirers were his old adversaries, pimply boys with too much pocket money who took to intoning “S’mite” to each other in greeting.

Yabbashael and Barman tried to talk sense into Elyon one afternoon in the Choo family’s backyard. “You two should talk,” Elyon said, eyes non-existent behind those disconcerting lenses, avoiding directly addressing Barman. “ His guy was already cool, and your guy is an armoured vehicle.” Barman asked if this was all some kind of twisted revenge scenario, but Elyon only said, “By the time we leave, Stephan will be made .”