Andrew Sullivan - Waste

Melissa Hurley knocked on the tenth-grade heads to test if they sounded as hollow as the Condom kid’s did. She laughed and poked at Connor’s body and then ran up and down the bus aisle, rapping skulls with her thick costume jewelry. Brock played the bongos on his own head. No one, they agreed, sounded as hollow as that fucking Condom kid. Jamie sat back in the seat and kicked at Connor’s back. The boy slumped forward and whacked his head on the seat in front of him. Nobody ever sat beside the Condom kid, even when the bus was crowded.

After the bus got to school, even Jamie and Brock ran when they heard the high-pitched wail of Marlene the bus driver, her tongue piercing somehow enhancing the cry that burst from the yellow tunnel of the bus. She stumbled out carrying the boy’s limp form. The Kmart bag was still plastered to Connor’s face.

There was no suspension, but only after hours of interrogation in the vice principal’s office with the blinds drawn. Mr. Georgopo lous, with his hairy arms and shining comb-over, slammed his fists on the desk again and again, a fat finger pricking Jamie in the chest every time he asked a question. What had that kid ever done to him, this Connor Condon? What did he do to deserve this? Who else was involved? Why did no one report this until now? Why, in fact, was it the bus driver who had to find the body almost buried under one of the backseats?

Jamie sat still and closed his eyes against the spittle gathering on his cheeks. Mr. Wilkinson, the actual principal, stood against the door with his hands behind his back. Graves Memorial Collegiate and Vocational did not need another visit from local law enforcement. They agreed this would be handled internally.

The questions continued. Jamie had answers for them all but kept his mouth shut. He knew they had no interest in the way the Condom kid always spread out his homemade lunch across an entire table in the cafeteria; the way he raised his hand, always twisting his palm in the air like he was the Queen in a parade.

They didn’t notice the smell of his armpits when he pulled himself up the steps onto the bus, the small black hairs that dotted his nose when you got nice and close to his face before you spat on him. All one hundred and fifty ways that hatred festered through Garrison’s thoughts and found its expression through drive-by eggings and violent free-for-alls behind the Zellers on Friday nights. Don’t forget the cadence of that kid’s voice, as if the vocal cords in his throat couldn’t commit to one sound before the other, causing them to trip and fall out of his mouth in a bloody, phlegmy mess. Make that one hundred and fifty-one ways Jamie Garrison had learned to hate the Condom kid.

The blinds stayed closed and eventually Georgopolous left in a flurry of damp paper and dandruff. His mistress was waiting for him down at the Pillaros Hotel. That was the word in the halls. Mr. Wilkinson took over. He sat across from Jamie in the vice principal’s chair and placed his feet on the table. The room was hot and sweaty. Mr. Wilkinson didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I know what happened with you.”

Jamie didn’t look up from the floor.

“Saw it in the paper a couple weeks ago, you know. Very surprising,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “Something about a fire, right? That you? Tell me if I am getting close here.”

Jamie began to rock back and forth in the chair. He tried to stop himself, but his legs wouldn’t listen. This room was too hot. Sweat gathered in the hollow of his throat.

“Now, when we brought up your file, I noticed you lived on— what was it? Olive Avenue, down by a lot of the factory lots, am I right? Not the community housing, but pretty close? Around that neighborhood. Unless you disagree, I’m going to assume we have the facts right.”

Jamie nodded but kept his eyes closed. He began to regulate his breathing, pulling air in his nose and pushing it out his mouth. The parking lot outside the window sounded quiet. There weren’t any clocks in the room. The low, level tick of Mr. Wilkinson’s watch helped keep track of the seconds. It took eighty ticks for Mr. Wilkinson to speak again.

“I’m sorry. I had to arrange my thoughts. Always better to speak when one has something to say, rather than saying…well, you’ve probably heard that old rotten chestnut before, haven’t you, Garrison?” Wilkinson said. “What I wanted to talk to you about was the fire. It was your house, right? I know a number of the townhomes went up together, but the origin apparently was yours, on Thanksgiving, right?”

That was the night when the whole place had gone up while everyone was asleep. Smoke filled the hallway, his mother pushing the boys down the stairs, his brother coughing and crying, the windows bursting from the inside due to the heat. Their father stood outside amongst the dead leaves smoking a cigarette and watching the house burn. The bullet hole in his palm was still wrapped in a bandage from a few months before at the abattoir. He didn’t say anything as his wife made the boys stop, drop, and roll on the dead grass. The frost melted underneath their backs, freezing again as they waited for the first ambulance to arrive. A burn bubbled around Jamie’s mother’s neck, fusing the nightgown to her pale flesh.

“Now I know you’ve had a rough time lately, and your brother, what’s he in now, ninth grade?” Wilkinson said. “I know he hasn’t been to school in a couple days, so you obviously have some problems at home. Or wherever you’re staying at the moment. And of course, that is your own private business. I don’t mean to probe.”

Silence for five minutes. No tears. Jamie grunted. Mr. Wilkinson just sat with his feet up on the table and watched. A dull, low moan eventually began to spurt from his chest like a dehumidifier. It didn’t sound like him. It didn’t sound like anything human.

Eventually, in that hot room, a two-week suspension was handed down from one sweaty palm to another. Nothing proven, nothing gained. Jamie walked home to the rambling motel in the cold and told his mother he stayed late after school for homework — a group project on native rights in the aftermath of World War II. She laughed in his face and asked him to change the dressing on her burn. Big yellow bubbles popped every time pressure was applied.

Jamie didn’t say anything to his father, sitting on the balcony of their motel room, smoking and dropping the ashes down onto the patio furniture below. The insurance company was still waiting for the arson judgment. Initial reports suggested an electrical fire. It was too cold for anyone to use the motel pool. The remains of a crow circled its clogged filter, the chlorine slowly dissolving its feathers down to the quick. One of the hotel staff kept trying to fish it out with a pole, cursing at the dead bird in Polish. The motel smelled like cheap champagne and old cigars. They called it the Dynasty. They were only there for two weeks before a city councilor’s girlfriend popped the waterbed in the room above theirs with her stiletto and the water shorted out the television.

Jamie spent those two weeks walking around town, carving his initials into fence posts and doorframes. He walked past the pawnshops on the downtown strip lined up like children’s blocks. Sharkee’s Pawn Palace. Jameson Pawn and Loan. The Loan Arranger. Each one packed with festering potential. Someone who thought they’d get married. Someone who thought they’d play guitar. Each dream propped up in the window. Jamie started spending each morning watching crumpled people trickle into the pawnshops, handing over the old dreams they’d decided to surrender, the ones gathering dust like diplomas dangling from bathroom walls. Sometimes he thought to buy them a cup of coffee, but he had no money — only the change he found in the candy machines at the arenas.