Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“Parini!” shouts the prepubescent voice again from the other side of the bathroom stall door. “Come out already! I know you're in there! This time you're really in for it!” There is a moment of silence, perhaps to give Valentina Parini the chance to answer. Or perhaps the voice outside is considering how far it can go with its threats. “They're saying the principal's going to make the janitor come bust the door down with an ax!”

Valentina Parini readjusts her green glasses on her nose that's barely big enough to hold them up and sighs. She came down to the first-floor bathrooms at school a little more than half an hour ago, and she knew they would come looking for her. But she didn't imagine that everything was going to happen so quickly. Things must really be bad out there, she tells herself. She goes down to the bathrooms to read every time she gets a chance to slip away, often during basketball practice. Sometimes she can spend two hours locked in a stall before someone comes looking for her. But this time, it's obvious something's different. She's been hearing shouting and commotion in the hallway outside for a while now. On a couple of occasions she's heard her name mentioned in a frantic tone. And finally someone came looking for her. It's Adelfi, the retard. And all this has to happen just on the day that she got the Publisher's Advance Excerpt in the mail. With the first four chapters of Stephen King's new novel.

“Pariniiii!” screams the voice from the other side of the door. Drawing out the last vowel with exasperation.

When Adelfi, the retard, came into the bathroom about ten minutes ago, her voice already sounded pretty agitated. After insisting for a while, Adelfi had started to sound frustrated and finally worn out. Maybe she'd get tired of bugging her soon and go back to wherever she came from.

The Publisher's Advance Excerpt arrived at Valentina Parini's house that morning, in a brown envelope with the publishing house's logo on it. She had taken it out of the mailbox using a long serrated bread knife. It took her almost five minutes to get it out of the mailbox because her hands were trembling with excitement. Then she had only had time to tear open the envelope and admire the barely fifty-page booklet before her mother came down the stairs. Forcing her to hide the Excerpt and the bread knife in her school backpack as fast as she could, before adopting an innocent smile that her mother had looked at suspiciously before deactivating the car doors' locks with the remote control on her key ring.

The four chapters, which she is now almost done reading in a bathroom stall on the first floor of the Italian Academy of Barcelona, have not disappointed her at all. The story, or at least what the excerpt allowed her to guess at, is reminiscent of The Stand, but with touches of Tommyknockers and even Dreamcatcher. The main character, named Chuck Kimball, is a journalist in Portland, Maine, the author's hometown. Like so many of Stephen King's heroes, he's middle-aged, divorced and has a son. He is also in recovery after a drug and alcohol crisis. One day Kimball arrives at work at the news desk of his local paper and discovers that everyone has started to change. His coworkers and even his boss, whom he's given the nickname “Cosmic Bitch,” are suddenly friendly and filled with team spirit and comradeship. Kimball doesn't know what to do. The same thing happens in the bar he goes to after work, where he is about to relapse and have a drink, and later with his neighbors. No one seems alarmed by the transformation. The truth starts to come out the next morning, when Kimball discovers that his best friend at the newspaper, Gary Revkin, has disappeared. Everyone on the newspaper staff works as a team to hide his disappearance. They even get mad when he asks about it. Finally Kimball finds Revkin dead inside a garbage Dumpster. His colleagues on the paper seem to have killed him in some sort of collective ritual. There are insinuations of mind control and a race of psychic beings that are like angels.

A door slamming is heard from outside. Valentina Parini furrows her brow and listens. For a moment she thinks that Adelfi the retard might have left, but she soon hears the sound of more steps and several prepubescent voices talking.

“Did you find her?” says one of the voices.

“She's hiding in there,” says Adelfi.

Valentina Parini feels the sudden attention of several stares, almost like a physical force that pushes the door inward and tries to destroy her.

“Hey, freak!” shouts the first voice. “You don't have to hide! It's all over! This time they say they're finally gonna put you in the loony bin!”

“There you can hang out with other freaks like you,” says Adelfi. And she laughs one of those typically teenage laughs. One of those laughs that aren't about happiness or hilarity, but are simply invocations of group complicity. “You'll finally have friends.”

Valentina Parini snorts, irritated.

“I'm not hiding!” she shouts.

The insinuations by her school psychologist that Valentina hides in the school bathroom always manage to infuriate her. Valentina isn't afraid of anyone at school, and she has nothing to hide from. It's just that the bathroom stalls are the only place she can lock herself in from the inside and not have to see anyone. Making them considerably more pleasant than any other place at school.

More laughter devoid of happiness is heard. More invocations of group complicity that make you think of gregarious carrion eaters in the hyena family. Then an abrupt door slam and a deep silence. Too deep to mean anything but the arrival of an adult to the bathroom.

“Signora direttora!” shouts Adelfi the retard with renewed enthusiasm. “The freak is in here! I mean Parini! And I'm the one who found her!”

The soft, dry echo of a slap resounds throughout the entire bathroom.

Ten minutes later, Valentina Parini is in her homeroom teacher's office, sitting in a chair for adults that makes the tips of her feet hang an inch off the floor. The school psychologist is staring at her with one of her classic severe expressions she saves for those moments when Valentina has committed a serious offense or has exhibited behavior that goes against the spirit of their therapy. To one side of where Valentina is sitting, her homeroom teacher is passing tissues to Marcia Parini and stroking her back comfortingly. Marcia Parini is crying uncontrollably. On a couple of occasions during the last few minutes she's suffered hyperventilation fits, which the psychologist had to help her get through using controlled breathing exercises.

Valentina frowns behind her green frames, the way you frown when you've just realized that something is going wrong. How did her mother get to school so quickly? It occurs to her that maybe it really has been more than a half hour since she left class to go read in the bathroom. Now that she thinks about it, she is vaguely aware of having read the four chapters of the Publisher's Advance Excerpt more than once. Maybe a few times in a row. Sometimes that happens to her. She has misleading perceptions of time. Especially when she's locked in peaceful, pleasant places like the bathroom.

“Valentina,” says the school psychologist. Still staring at her, like she's trying to hypnotize her or something like that. “Do you understand why you're here? Do you understand why we had to call your mother?”

Valentina hates the slow, deliberate way the woman says it. As if Valentina had problems understanding the language she was speaking. Then she gestures with her head to two objects on top of the homeroom teacher's desk. They are the manuscript of Blood on the Basketball Court and the bread knife she used that very morning to get her package out of the mailbox at home. Both from her school backpack.