The Senior Prank committee at Maine South High School convened in Jerry’s mini-man cave a week before graduation Saturday. Timing had to be precise: in-and-out on anything before the dean could hammer them and void their walk across the stage. Stefanie asserted that it shouldn’t be their concern: “the memory exceeds the moment”, which met with puffs of varied smoke. The Scorpions were pounding low upon the turntable with ‘the job is done and I go out, another boring day… I leave it all behind me now, so many worlds away.’
“Dee-dant,” Kevin riffed, “dee-dant, dee-dant-dant-dant-dant-DAHHH.“
Jerry clapped his hands like a huddling dad. “Okay. We know last year’s will be hard to beat—”
“Remin’ me again?” Ralph muttered, “cause I—”
“can’t remember, yeah. Doesn’t matter, really, but someone had to sit overnight in the porta-potty they floated into the pond, so when a security guard rowed out to retrieve it, bang!” Jerry crashed his hands again, “plastic door flies open, scaring the bejesus outta him. Then more security an’ teachers an’ shit had to jump in and save the flailing arms and… How could you forget that, dude?”
“Not everybody was around the pond so early in the morning,” Kim reminded, “it happened before first period. And most of us aren’t coming to school around that front entrance.”
“Anyway, we don’t wanna be confined to campus cameras or other constraints. What I was thinkin’,” Jerry leaned in, “is that we do something like the Blues Brothers did to the gas petal of the Good Ol’ Boys.” He flicked his hand at Ralph’s emerging huh? and went on. “Except with a school bus. We superglue it to the floor and driver’s shoe and—”
This was bound to fail. Or succeed—hard to know by whose criteria. Stef worked out that a bus carrying the track & field team to a Thursday night meet would be optimal: the chatter on Friday would be tangible and Saturday’s graduation would proceed without a conclusion of whodunnit?
“But wait,.. the bus is gonna crash!” Kevin demurred. “It’s mass murder more than a fuckin’ senior prank.”
“Yada yada. The driver is a pro,” Jerry reassured. “If he kept his head, he’d put the vehicle in neutral—”
“And barring that? Or what if his gears jam?”
“I dunno, probably do some donuts round the parking lot and aim for a soft landing… in the pond, f’r instance. Not our problem.”
“Plus,” Stef figured, “to some extent, the brakes would counteract. And it would be unethical to mess with them.”
Details were delegated: Kim to ascertain which bus was reserved for this event, Ralph to crowbar into it during Thursday’s lunch and Jerry to apply the foolproof adhesive—both sides of the accelerator and a wedge to stick it to the floor. Kevin staked out an oak tree across Devon Avenue to cam-cord the moment of truth. And Stef (go figure) was going to file on with the team, because “I hurdled during my sophomore year, and could say I’m going down memory lane. I’d duck the coaches and… Who’d stop me?”
Well, Kevin would, if he had the guts: she was his not-so-secret crush, and the Clark Kent in him wished he could swoop in like Superman at whatever stage of threat. The legend of any senior prank is less the plan than the improvisation, beyond the gamble of accountability. The five of them were not a cross-section of the school—not The Breakfast Club cast that took theatres by storm this spring of ’85. Arguably, they were unknowns among most of their 660 fellow graduates, never having ‘served’ any committee or club or sport before. “Go out with a bang,” Ralph goobered, bothering Kevin all the more.
“Would be boss if we could draw a crowd,” Jerry mused, “but we gotta keep a lid on it. Promise, yeah?” They tapped palms and toked the evening through.
~~~~~~~~~
Monday had a perfunctory slate of classes, mostly to review final exams and sign yearbooks. During a break from AP Calculus, Stefanie decided to talk to Mr Drennen, who doubled as the track coach, about showing up for Thursday’s meet; the season was virtually over, with only the Regionals remaining to send the elite athletes to the state championship. Thursday evening would be a ‘friendly’ tune-up for them and an au revoir for the mediocre majority, hosted at Maine West, where Stefanie hurdled into a 10th grade record for the Hawks. Mr Drennen, caught off-guard, was frown-smiling at her request: “you’re coming back now, after we could’ve used your talent the last two years?” She shrugged. “This won’t be a qualifier, by the way—the roster is already locked for Regionals.”
“No, I don’t have any design on anything after Thursday. Just heard about it and, y’know, want to have a final run. Old time’s sake an’ all.”
The coach scratched his fine-cut beard and reached for a pad of hall passes, tearing one off its gummy spine and X-ing out the front to scribble a note on the back. “So, take this to Bucky, the equipment manager—you remember where he resides? Yes?—and he’ll dig up a uniform for you. Won’t have spiked shoes, though.”
“I’m sure I still have my Nikes.”
“But what about your technique? You probably forgot which leg you lead with, or strides between…”
“It will all come back, guaranteed, with some reps after school…”
Coach adjusted his wire rims and nodded. “Keep it modest and feel out the other runners to see what they think. Never had such a late returner before, and—”
Stef took the hall pass and beamed, “I won’t disappoint! And yeah, I’ll read the faces to see if this suits them alright.”
~~~~~~~~~
Concurrently, Kevin was in English Lit, drawing a jungle around his returned essay comparing Heart of Darknessand The Tempest, arguing that humans aren’t fit for the world they attempt to commandeer. He got a C+, as always, and various renditions of ‘try harder with’… foil characters. Symbolism. Double entendres. Dramatic irony. Life.
Ralph was slumped over his desk, a big red ‘F’ as the largest mark of feedback sunny-side-up on the floor. Kevin bumped him awake to surreptitiously ask him to talk to Ms Johnson about how he could improve, to which Ralph curled his brow and reminded him, “don’t matter anyhow—got enough credits to graduate.”
“My point is that you can distract her so I can slip out. You got reasons down there for a consultation.”
He snorted, pointing to his crotch. “Damn straight. But—” Ralph was exceeding the decibels this interchange required, so Kevin cued him to whisper. “But where are you goin’? Coppin’ a joint?”
Kevin pointed his pen to his doodled trees. “There,” he mouthed, “into the heart of darkness. Scoping out the catbird seat.” Ralph had no recognition of this short story title they had read last November, and it frankly wasn’t necessary for Kevin to clarify any further. He waited a couple minutes while Ralph pulled himself together, finger-combed his mane, and trudged to Ms Johnson’s desk, positioning himself toward the window. As she had a loose policy with the hall pass routine anyway, no one raised an eye to Kevin’s departure.
A half an hour later, he was fifty feet high, looking north to the campus he never cared for, if the buzz of its hive made for harmonies in his head. He scanned for where Stef’s body would be—AP Calculus just finishing, and now she’s heading to Latin, lawyer she might want to be. Jerry would be at his locker, peddling nickel bags. Kim hadn’t come to school today, as was typically the case; “rough shit at home,” she’d suggest, never wanting to get into the weeds of said shit. Why, then, wouldn’t she see school as reprieve? Dramatic irony? Kevin quizzed himself, or situational? Paradox, or… he thought of his own convolutions of the concept of ‘home’, shifting his feet to a slightly higher branch. Stands to reason.
~~~~~~~~~
Bucky wasn’t nicknamed for his teeth, resemblance to a Little Rascal, any backstory he’d shake his head to reveal; he had a ubiquitous smile that pushed against his bottom eyelids, seemingly in pain, perhaps like a guy who’d been bucked off a bronco machine a thousand times too many. His gait, also, was strained when traipsing from his chain-link door between the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms to the unlit rows of inventory only he could navigate. He did come out of that zoo-like enclosure every once in a while, mostly to gather towels and school-issued clothes to launder. “Anyone in there?” he’d rasp, then, “Ragman comin’ through,” if no one responded. And if a kid was in there, he’d get plenty irritated. “This isn’t a hang out zone! Now git yourself home.”
He thought it odd that this girl he vaguely remembered came to his cage to ask for a track & field uniform, when his mind was on taking back such items for end-of-year checkout. “Is this really for an upcoming meet?” he quizzed her, “like when?”
“Thursday,” she replied, “at Maine West. You went with us two years ago, Bucky, don’t you remember?”
“Why would I remember that?”
“Because I, for one, was a star that day.”
Bucky’s old gears needed more to go by. “In what event?”
“Hurdles, 110. And the 4-by-200. And… oh, yeah—long jump. I kicked ass.”
“Shouldn’t say that. I would’ve only been there with the throwers. But yes, I do recall you now. Why did you give it up?”
“Oh,” Stefanie pulled at a braid while searching the ceiling, “y’know.”
In fact, he didn’t know, and waited a half minute for her to say what she either couldn’t or didn’t want to. When her upturned eyes started to mist over, he left the cage window to fetch the top and shorts that would be her size, then reiterated what Drennan said about the shoes. “We have quarter-inch spikes, though.”
“Are you gonna be on the bus Thursday?” Stef ventured to ask. “Because…”
“I’ll bring fresh spikes then, yes.”
“Thanks, Bucky,” and she left him. He hadn’t really intended to go to this nonessential meet—the equipment that he’d manage was minimal at this point in the season (throwers carried their own shots and discs; sprinters, their own spikes; pole-vaulters,... well, they were a different breed) and rather focused his energies into baseball. But something about this ‘star’ with her head in the clouds reminded him of a granddaughter, maybe, or a fellow athlete in the late 1930s, when he would have been in high school. He never talked about those days, and frankly no one at this massive suburban school tended to ask. He was a trusted ragman, but not much else in anybody’s eyes. At least that’s how he thought of himself being thought about.
Or how Stefanie was thinking of him getting on that bus.
~~~~~~~~~
Also getting on that bus in seventy-five hours would be Ms Johnson’s daughter, as Ralph informed Jerry at lunch, who was confused about the context. “Oh, I thought you were Kev for a second.” Ralph tried to recalibrate: “y’see, Kevin pushed me to the front of Ms Johnson’s room to distract her—”
“Who? What the fuck you talkin’ about, Rastaman?”
“Ms Johnson. You know, the Playmate.”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s your business an’ all, but sounds like you’re mixing up the mom and daughter. Now who’s getting on that track & field bus?”
“Yeah, her daughter. In 9th grade, she said. I was, uh, askin’ about my final essay, which I fuckin’ flagged, and—”
Jerry swung his eyes around and hissed: “Ralph, you shithead! We’re not talking about Thursday to anyone, least of all to teachers.”
The shithead put his palms up. “Nah, I didn’t say jack about the P-R-N-K. She jus’ brought up her daughter as an example for… what was it? Discipline, she said. Running long-distance and pacing her first laps to leave energy for the rest. That’s what she told me I should do.”
“Run a race this Thursday?”
“Hah! Maybe so. She might like me more as a result.”
“Ms Johnson?”
“Or her daughter—I don’t care.”
The lunchroom had its constant scrapes of chairs and clinks of silverware to mask the banter and the benisons of teen transitions. Holding a population of about 800 at a time, the shifts were quick from 11:30 to 1pm, students not often knowing who’d be at a table during any particular time. Ralph and Jerry were finishing up when Kevin ambled in, having skipped his Chemistry class to muse a little longer from his oaken catbird seat. “It’s a great view,” he told them, “the whole parking lot will fit my camcorder without my needing to move it much.”
“Bitchin’,” Jerry approved. “And as we discussed, you’re gonna handle the cassette with rubber gloves, yeah? Leave no fingerprints on that mofo.”
Kevin nodded. “No problem there.” He wasn’t sure where this cassette would go, like in some mailbox to the nightly news or buried in a jar as a time capsule. He nodded at the ambiguity and repeated, “no problem there. Though I noticed,” he leaned in for quiet emphasis, “some of the buses are nose-out and some are butt-out.”
“And?” Ralph couldn’t compute.
“We gotta have a nose-out, obviously,” Jerry smacked his forehead in this realization, “’cuz a driver isn’t going to gas it in reverse. Most it’d do is smash slow motion into cars behind it. Like a geriatric bull in a china shop.”
“But that’d be funny, too,” Kevin was also imagining. “And safer.”
“Nah,” Jerry waved away such common sense. “We gotta do it like the Blues Brothers. Make that bus into a Tasmanian devil trying to bust out of pet store. I’ll tell Kim tonight to find out which vehicle will be our Plan A. We need a Plan B, anyway.”
“Kev,” Ralph decided to repeat, “Ms Johnson’s daughter is going to the track meet, I found out.”
“Who?”
“Her daughter. In 9th grade.”
Kevin stuffed half a piece of pizza into his mouth in order not to talk. He hadn’t thought of anyone on the fated bus before Stef pulled that surprise, let alone an unknown child of a teacher he quite liked. He hadn’t thought of a Plan A being more optimal than a Plan B, or whether a geriatric bull would be preferred over a Tasmanian devil. He hadn’t thought of any viewer of the recording, whether to celebrate its hijinks or adjudicate its culpability. As he masticated his pizza, his buddies saw his far-away look and gestured to exit for a smoke break outside the eastern gate. Kevin rewound the Scorpions in his head: ‘I meet my girl, she’s dressed to kill… and all we gonna do… is walk around to catch the thrill on streets we call the zoo.’
~~~~~~~~~
8pm, and instead of calling another meeting to his man cave (which he had hoped would lure his friends without the need to telephone), Jerry decided to walk the fifteen diagonal blocks to Kim’s house, unannounced. Plan A he didn’t have to rehearse, but Plan B… like, would we have to know the destination and departure time? I mean, the point is that the bus… the driver would be…. God, he didn’t want to troubleshoot the logistics. It’s just a stupid senior prank. Keep it loose—shouldn’t matter if it’s nose or butt.
Shouldn’t matter. He crept up to the little rock garden that added more definition to her front yard than the countless postage stamps of grass he passed, each mown to a responsible middle-upper-middle class standard. For that matter, the rocks looked and felt like concrete detritus semi-shaped like ostrich eggs, bought at a ‘welcome to your neighborhood’ sale at The Home Depot. Jerry lingered there a minute, spun out of ideas how to knock on Kim’s door and… goddamn Plan B!
Dusk was not set enough to have him loiter there, amidst the dinosaur pebbles and crocus sprigs. He swiveled his head and, coast clear, snuck between the narrow strip that separated houses. All the windows were lit up, both sides, so he factored how much (or little, really) anyone inside would see of anyone outside—night reflection kinda crazy that way. He didn’t have to search too many rooms to find Kim and her great-grandma watching TV. The latter had her socks off as Kim was on the floor, kneading each for a minute or two, back and forth. ‘Scarecrow and Mrs. King’ was evidently coming to a close, and… maybe she’d put the old lady to sleep? Help her into her nightly Depends? Is this the shit she was hinting at?
Jerry enclosed himself into a hedgehog and wished he hadn’t ventured here. But having done so, he’d stick it out. Whatever ‘it’ could possibly mean.
~~~~~~~~~
Something didn’t sit right with Bucky, Tuesday morning and tired of being teased by ninth-graders in mandatory P.E., thinking they were entitled upper classmen already. You turds should jus’ feel lucky you weren’t squashed this year like the bugs thatcha are, he felt like blurting, and he could do so with no recriminations, but… What would that accomplish? They’d respect him when they needed equipment, even advice on taping ankles and such, as his experience knew. But ninth-graders don’t know anything.
He locked up his cage and strolled to the southwest wing of the school—almost a quarter mile away, which made the 4-minute passing time between periods all the more absurd. Bucky avoided this traffic jam, however, choosing the quiet break he knew his lifelong friend John Drennan would have in his math lab, decked with huge protractors for the chalkboard and loads of tangrams, polyhedrons, Greek letter glossaries of formulae posted on every wall.
“Hey, John,” Bucky announced from the open door, “mind…?”
“Don’t mind at all,” the coke-bottle glasses lifted to see his diminutive buddy. “It’s the irony of an open-door policy: few come this far to see me during these ‘office hours’. Seems like everyone has already checked out for summer vacation, yeah?”
“I wouldn’t know. Haven’t had one of those for… God knows how long.” Bucky smiled to make his eyes disappear. “But who needs freedom, after all?”
“Well,” Drennan demurred, “you’ll be the first I’ll invite to my retirement party, whenever the hell that will be.”
“Not next year, I hope.”
“No, I’m only sixty-three. Need, what, three more years? According to stupid Springfield legislation. Well, what about you, Buckster? You’re already past sixty-six.”
“Sixty-seven. And hopin’ nobody takes notice. I’d have nothin’ to do if I couldn’t be the ragman for these spoiled rats.”
“They love you. I have no doubts about that.” John reached to a lower drawer of his file cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Jim Beam. “Toast to that, will you, with me?”
Bucky blushed, coming further into the room and pushing his frame upon a student desk, legs dangling well above the linoleum. “’S early in the day, but… why not!” He watched his friend pull two coffee mugs from the same drawer, pour a shot or so into each, screw back the cap and return the liquor discreetly for another such occasion, whatever indeed compelled today’s. Both knew each other’s habits and their respect for ‘spirit of the law’; neither challenged the ‘letter’ significantly, and no one would care if they did. Still, the coffee cups made for a nice touch. “Cheers,” Bucky whispered back to John’s click, and both tilted with no rush to this uncalled meeting. “I, uh, came to ask somethin’.”
“Sure, Bucky. What can I do you for?”
The older man rubbed his bald spot as if to spur his memory. “That girl you sent to see me yesterday…”
“Stefanie? She was the only one wearing Hawks colors at yesterday’s practice—thanks for setting her up.”
“No, of course. I promised her some fresh spikes, too, for… y’know.”
“For Thursday’s meet. Thanks for doing that, Bucky. She asked me out of the blue and, I figured, what harm could be done? I hope it gives her a good memory.” John widened his smile and pointed to a long banner of computer paper tucked below the ceiling in the back of the room, with fire-engine red numerals the size of teenage heads. “Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine-two-six-five-three-five-eight-nine-seven-nine-three-two-three-eight-four-six-two-six-four-three-three-eight-three-two-seven-nine-five-o-two-eight-eight-four-one-nine-seven-one,” almost to prove the shot hadn’t slurred his speech, as each came out crystal clear and with fond familiarity.
“Wha’s that,” Bucky blushed some more.
“It’s Stefanie’s record, so far to the fortieth decimal point. Pi,” he clarified, to Bucky’s polite nod, “which for years I’ve only had students be able to recite to, say, the twentieth decimal point. Stefanie’s doing it like Sergey Bubka: raising that pole-vault bar an inch at a time, or another digit into the infinite. She loves memorization, and the rule is that to add another, she can’t look at what she’s been able to recite so far.”
“She’s gotta do it eyes closed, then, is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Like a soothsayer. Closer and closer to the perfection of a circle. Pride of process, probably more than any ultimate product. I’m guessing that’s why she wants this final run at Maine West.”
“Hmm. Makes sense.” Bucky took another swig and John did likewise. The former hadn’t forgotten what motivated him to this room, but now wondered if it were worth broaching. “She was rather nostalgic yesterday,” he ventured, “without saying too much. I… just thought you should know that.”
“Like, in a worrisome way?”
“Can’t say. Just that, well… I wouldn’t want her to be disappointed.”
“I’d be more concerned about her pulling a muscle. But, yeah,” John tapped his left temple, “I’ll keep an eye on her. Good kid.”
Bucky looked satisfied, whether or not he was. He tacitly thanked his friend for the drink and headed back to his domain. Drennan, for all that, decided a thimble more alone wouldn’t hurt him. He had breath mints in that same drawer, after all.
~~~~~~~~~
Nobody was checking hall passes by this time of year, if teachers still ripped them (reluctantly or otherwise) from their pads to let the Ralphs and other dunderheads out of class. He didn’t have one as Bucky passed him at his locker area, pretending to look for some assignment that his dog didn’t eat. He was a little pissed that Jerry hadn’t shown up today, forgetting who his back-up provider of pot would be. A school this big would have, what, a couple dozen dealers? And Chicago as its endless backyard—begging bored suburbanites to walk this way…
That was the Aerosmith song on Jerry’s turntable when Ralph pounded on his door. “Wha’ the fuck, dude, you skipped school on me? Like, we got a prank to undertake.”
Jerry was groggy on his sofa. “You mean,… ‘orchestrate’?”
“Whatever. Jus’ tell us when you’re cuttin’ out, ’kay? Cuz it’s like, almost Thursday.”
“Ah, you remembered that much.”
“Hell yeah. And did you remember to get Kimmy to find the right bus? Like which one am I s’posed to bust into? And did you get the superglue?”
“Relax, Fido. Got the glue—had it weeks ago, in fact.” He pushed himself to a sitting position and motioned Ralph to take his traditional place in the ‘armchair of oblivion’, as at least one of them liked to call it. “As for Kim, I haven’t talked to her yet. But I say, ‘fuck it—glue every accelerator in the fleet! There’s only like, five busses anyway.”
Ralph’s mind was trying to keep track. “Why didn’t you talk to her yet? I mean, she’s like,… I don’ know.”
“Sounds like you wanna talk to her. Go for it! Pull her outta her goddam house. Be her Prince Charming—”
“Fuck you, man. I wasn’t thinkin’ of her that way. I don’t even know where she lives.”
Jerry reached for his rolling paper. “Me neither,” he mumbled, then busied himself silently as Steven Tyler segued into his cover of ‘Big Ten Inch’. “I always hated this song,” he admitted a minute in, then went over to flip the vinyl to ‘Sweet Emotion’ as an easy fix. “There,” he rustled his friend’s hair, “much better tune to get high to.”
“Damn straight,” Ralph wallowed, not able to remember the lyrics that Jerry sang by heart:
You talk about things that nobody cares
You’re wearing out things that nobody wears
You’re calling my name but I gotta make clear
I can’t say baby where I’ll be in a year…
~~~~~~~~~
The starts and stops of a track & field practice are like an aviary of little birds, even though these were actually the Hawks fine-tuning for their final hunt. From her steady trot around the outermost lane, Savanah Johnson kept a shy eye on this new hurdler making a pleasant stir with the older girls, some of whom had taken this ninth-grade distance runner under their wing. Savanah heard on one pass someone exude, “So stoked for Thursday, Steffie!” The glitter of the afternoon sun seemed to approve, though this newcomer also appeared wistful in Savanah’s mind, to use a fancy adjective her mom had taught her recently.
She was more invested in cross-country, the 3-mile race terrain more interesting than endless laps around this newly rubberized oval. She was building an admirable reputation, having broken the sophomore record for the steeplechase as a freshman, and it occurred to her that she had seen a ‘Stefanie’ Somebody on the same list painted on the trophy-case wall for… hurdles, was it? And long jump. Conventional wisdom says it feels good to be memorialized. Like you don’t have to prove anything ever again. But there’s always something more to prove, another reason to run. Or, as a Hawk, to fly.
~~~~~~~~~
“Kimmy!” Ralph exclaimed, rubbing Wednesday morning life into his bloodshot eyes. She looked, as usual, like a soft magenta cloud to filter some horizon Ralph could only dream about. Like Stevie Nicks, he mused, having seen her ‘Gypsy’ dance on MTV. “Long time…”
She waited with a pencil smile for him to finish, which didn’t seem probable. “No see?”
“Yeah,” he blushed. “That. I mean,… our plan at Jerry’s was, y’know, not so long ago. But here in school—”
“I sorta bailed a couple months ago,” Kim shrugged away a hint of guilt. “Was thinking of dropping out, to be honest, because…”
Ralph wasn’t processing a reason, but loved that he could look into her irises to listen to whatever he could or couldn’t hear. “I understand,” he said, to mutual satisfaction. Shuffling a bit at their locker area, he pushed the heel of his hand against his forehead to remember: “hey, Kimmy, I’m s’posed to, um—” and though nobody else was paying attention to them, he leaned dangerously close to whisper, “to bust into a bus, like… the plan we have, and—”
She nodded with her eyebrows first and matched his whisper. “And you wanna know which one, right?”
Ralph was a puppy dog with a sudden boner, hoping no one would notice. “Yeah, right!”
“I’m on it,” she said, “the reason I showed up, in fact.”
“Bitchin’!” Ralph uttered, blushing further. “I mean,… thanks for, ah, like… tellin’ me which one when—”
“When I know?” she calculated whether to kiss him, and where. But not now, with business still to do. “You’ll be the first informed. See me at lunch, yeah?”
“Hell, yeah—Jerry, too?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just nobody but us planners.” She wondered if he needed reminding who that entailed beyond Jerry, if Kevin and Stefanie had vanished from his brain cells. Everyone would vanish, eventually.
~~~~~~~~~
On the other hand, Kevin had come to school for a record 450 days or so—present since the middle of sophomore year—until, go figure, today. And probably absent for the same reasons as back then: a case of butterflies in the belly. Stefanie had called him last night to borrow another camera for inside the bus that she could press the trigger for, and… Kevin went quietly berserk. He didn’t argue with her or quit the prank, but clearly (as far as Stef imagined on the phone), he wished this wouldn’t be happening.
Yet it is, they both expressed in hems and haws, the same way college entrance exams exist and must be taken, like lumps in a slingshot fight. They’d done that, Stef and Kevin and others beyond the Senior Prank committee at Maine South High School: summer evenings near Axehead Lake, using green grapes for ammo and the wrist-rocket brace sold at places like Toys “Я” Us. They’d be a little high, of course, and resort to midnight swims to salve the swellings of their youthfulness. Kevin would sometimes film these as a curiosity—no design on splicing anything or adding narrative beyond the voiceovers he (or anybody on the other end of the aperture) might provide. Could he be a psycho, stitching scenes together as a prelude to an Illinois chainsaw massacre? Would he produce the evidence if such a psycho sprang from the woods?
He was dying to ask Stefanie out—he had lost that chance for prom, an unofficial dent in his attendance record. Stef had gone to prom with Jerry, just as friends (or so they said). Wednesday night at Pickwick Theatre had Harrison Ford’s newest film, Witness, set in Amish territory like he had seen in Indiana on visits to his grandparents. They weren’t Amish, but… he wondered what made anyone what they were. Stef would enjoy this movie, he thought, and they could both relieve their minds of the senior prank or, if needed, plan it further. But those fuckin’ butterflies had other ideas.
~~~~~~~~~
“Kim!” John Drennen delivered an unknowing echo of her surprise appearance at school. “Have you come back to rejoin the living?” She shrugged and wended her way to his desk. They weren’t alone, as other twelfth-graders were nominally in class, signing yearbooks in the lack of something mathematical to do. Nobody was memorizing decimal details of pi, for instance, and Stefanie wasn’t in this section, anyway. “What can I do you for,” Drennen asked, guessing she wasn’t here to boost her barely passing grade.
“Permission,” she replied, “to decorate your track and field bus before tomorrow’s meet. Spirit Club heard you were scheduled for that and, well…”
“Spirit Club? We have that?”
“We do now. I got involved, sorta a last hurrah for my high school resumé.”
“I see.” He adjusted his glasses self-consciously. “You’d like to be a community organizer then? At university, or—”
“Maybe a nursing home, actually. Haven’t decided. But,… for now your bus could use a touch of school pride. You know—balloons and ‘go team’ glitter signs and stuff. With your permission, of course.”
“Of course, thanks for that.” He looked out the window to give it some thought. “Pride, you’d say, would be enhanced with… balloons? I mean, not to nay-say, but what exactly would they do to boost our focus? Might even distract.”
“Wouldn’t have to be balloons. Could be a song, like… ‘Shout’ maybe.”
“Shout?”
“Don’t you know Tears for Fears, Mr Drennan? Or something from your, um…”
“My era? The stone age?” He put the tips of his fingers together, hinting that the permission was getting warmer. “What about the overture from Chariots of Fire? That would inspire, I’d think.”
Kim bopped her head, not like she was humming it. “Ok. We could get that and blast it as you drive. We’d need to know which bus, though.”
“Well, a boombox could go on any bus. Or did you have other things in mind….”
“Those balloons, for instance. And—oh yeah, almost forgot—we’d put a little hawk in each seat.”
“A little hawk?”
“Yeah, like a sock puppet. With wings. Spirit Club is making ’em.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep. And it would be a surprise waiting for them. Secret,” she added, sotto voce, not that anyone in the class was remotely listening. “Just need to give them a home. We’d be ready with the, um, puppet hawks by lunchtime tomorrow.”
“And would you like me to bring a boom box? My Chariots of Fire cassette?”
“That’d be sweet. Which bus?”
“I’d have to ask Bucky, who’s in charge of those details. Or you can, if you know where he resides?”
“Bucky? Not really. Is he… that guy in the cage?”
“We call it an equipment room. But yes—Mr Mason, more formally.” He picked up his pad of hall passes and, by habit, ripped one free and wrote a note on the back. “He may think I’m pranking him,” John chuckled, “but why not give him this and he’ll probably set you up. The Spirit Club, huh?”
“That’s what we are. All five of us. Spreading joy like ripples on a pond.”
“Sounds rather modest. Don’t you want to make a bigger wave?”
“We’ll see,” Kim backed up with the note in hand. “Thanks very much, Mr Drennan. And for the math you taught us, too.”
He chuckled again. “Oh, that! Glad to have made a lasting effect.”
~~~~~~~~~
Driving home with Savanah in the shotgun seat, Deb Johnson could sense the year of a nineth-grader was heavier than what most of her older students were going through. The pressures of, say, GPAs and exams, university acceptances, prom dates, working the McDonald’s drive-thru, pimples, STDs, auto insurance at a premium—none compared to the question marks of early pubescence. Savanah’s advantage of being a dedicated student and athlete might have helped the transition from a goofy middle school to the meat market of Maine South, but… it was hard to discern.
“Would you like me to come to your meet tomorrow, honey?”
Savanah sighed to the passing houses on her right. She didn’t know. “Sure, if you want.”
“Are you looking forward to it? Last one of the year…”
“A little. There’s a new senior on the team. Probably gonna be wistful for her.”
“A new senior? How did that happen.”
“Don’t know. She’s a hurdler, so… we haven’t really met.”
Deb had no advice and let the driving substitute for another thing to say. Her eleventh-grade students were wrapping up The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, with their general inability to transfer the microcosm from Salem, three centuries ago, to modern milieux. They could roleplay Abigail and Proctor and Tituba and Hale but hardly regard them as relevant.
“I’ll be there,” Deb decided, “and afterwards you can tell me if you want to take the team bus back or ride home with me. Ok?”
~~~~~~~~~
Somewhat surprised they all showed up, Jerry clanked an unopened can of Hamm’s like a gavel on the knuckle of the ‘armchair of oblivion’. Ralph, who had gotten up from there to use the bathroom, saw a spot on the couch next to Kim, who patted it invitingly. Stefanie was on her other side and Kevin (as usual) sat on the floor near the substantial rack of records. He decided The Final Cut would suit the purposes of this night before the senior prank. ‘Your Possible Pasts’ was coming to a close with the question, “Don’t you think we should be closer?” While Kevin knew it would be too on the nose to sing it aloud, he turned up the volume to let it echo; the dulcet tones of ‘One of the Few’ merited the extra decibels, anyway.
“Grab a beer, everybody,” Jerry directed, “we gotta toast this thing into reality.” He pop-topped his can to a predictable gush and jammed it to his face, as if his carpet needed much protection. Others—even Ralph—took the more sophisticated route of tapping the carbonation down before triggering its release. The track on the turntable became soft distortion:
Jesus, Jesus, what’s it all about?
Trying to clout these ingrates into shape
When I was their age, all the lights went out—
There was no time to whine or mope about.
“Damn straight,” Ralph agreed with Roger Waters: “we got, what, twenty-four hours and counting—”
“Nineteen, technically,” Stef corrected, “if we’re counting on when the bus pulls out.”
“Yeah,” he blushed. “no time for pulling out now… I mean—”
“We get what you mean, Ralphie.” Jerry laughed over the lyrics Kevin most wanted to waft:
Sweetheart, sweetheart, are you fast asleep?
That’s the only time that I can really speak to you
And there is something that I’ve locked away—
A memory that is too painful to withstand the light of day.
He looked at Stefanie to gauge if she was listening. Jerry’s itemization of the plan was nothing that needed reinforcing, but it was the imagining that everyone (but Kevin) wanted at this moment: Kim would come to Bucky’s cage around noon with a box of unblown balloons and bunting and socks—“no,” she sniggered, “they won’t turn magically into little stuffed hawks overnight!”; Bucky would walk her to the bus to open it up and, Ralph, to give him something to do, would show up to ask him the best way to decorate the outside—“I don’t know,” Kim shrugged, “a banner through the windows? Anything to distract him—”
“So that I can get in,” Jerry relished, “and do my best Elwood Blues!”
“If Bucky’s gonna stay there,” Stefanie wondered, “you gotta have decorations for real. Do you have enough?”
“Could use more. What do you have in mind?”
“Haven’t thought about it. Maybe Mr Drennen’s decimal train of pi.”
“What? That thing in his classroom? Why would—”
“I dunno. Just brainstorming.”
Jerry nodded his head. “Everyone bring something in the morning—Stef’s right, we have to look convincing as a, what d’ya call it, Kimmy? ‘Booster Group’?”
“Spirit Club.”
Kevin decided to say something. “Like to honor the dead?”
Kim stared at him a few seconds to figure him out. “Exactly,” she smiled.
~~~~~~~~~
The fog of old age is not the “second childishness” that Shakespeare’s melancholic philosopher proposed in As You Like It—the comedy Deb Johnson liked to stagger with The Tempest from year to year. She didn’t want to deprive anyone of the seven stages of humanity, however, so she had the ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech laminated in fancy lettering on her classroom wall. Kim hadn’t read the fullness of anything Ms Johnson assigned (didn’t like the dark showdown between Prospero and Caliban) but memorized this poster, intrigued with the aging process.
Her great-grandma awaited her arrival tonight. It’s not that Kim was the only one to take care of her, or that the most elderly in the house was most in need. Dad was a workaholic, almost never present but making sure the bills were paid; Mom was another kind of ‘holic’, hiding whatever made for her fog; preteen siblings were raising themselves about as adequately as could be expected. Their great-grandma had lived on the other side of Chicago with her son, their grandpa, until he up and died, so the house had become a learning curve with no pedagogical guide.
The glow of David Letterman kept her awake as Kim tipsied in, leaning on her ruddy-faced friend. “Grams,” Kim said, “this is Ralph. He’s… gonna stay to—wha’ again?”
“I… don’t have—I mean,” he held out his hand to shake the great-grandmother’s, reaching amiably. “Nice to meet you,… Grams.”
Her wizened eyes reflected likewise. “You two,” she rasped, “are in school together?”
“Could say so, Grams. We jus’ got one more project ’fore gratchuation. Y’know—wha’ we talked about…”
She nodded, maybe not remembering. Ralph darted Kim a look of concern and whispered, “I thought no one but us—”
“Whole town’s gonna know! Might make it on Letterman,” Kim pointed at the gap-toothed comedy geek. “But no way is Grams gonna rat us out, right? Got each other’s back is what we got.”
They watched Robert Plant promote his new band, The Honey Drippers, without actually playing any tunes. “C’mon, Dave,” Ralph teased the tv, “let the man sing!” Grams seemed to agree, compelling Ralph to soft-scream the start of ‘The Immigrant Song’, which Kim shushed with a sloppy kiss. The fog of the room was descending to a stupor, but not that “second childishness” on Ms Johnson’s wall.
“I mean, how full o’ shit is that?” Kim asked to no one’s understanding. Still, Grams nodded and let herself be led to the bedroom to be tucked in. Ralph fell asleep in the tv room despite all efforts not to, but was blissful waking up before dawn, Kimmy clothed and slightly snoring in his arms.
~~~~~~~~~
The sky was overcast the morning of their prank, and Stefanie (restless all night) decided to go for a run along the Des Plaines River as she sometimes felt that need. Her Walkman had the well-worn cassette that began, ‘I looked out this morning and the sun was gone,’ and, as if she were Brad Delp, ‘I closed my eyes and I slipped away….’ Running blind for ten yards or so was actually a hurdler exercise she had developed herself back in the day, against the wishes of Coach Drennan. “It helps me visualize the next hurdle without just aiming for it,” she reasoned, “to keep my steps in stride.”
“Aiye-ai,” Drennan moaned two years ago, “just don’t do this during an actual race. You gotta see what you’re getting into—make or miss.” He didn’t have to remind her of the horror stories attached to this discipline, like spikes piercing a hand reaching out to break a fall. Stefanie already had a couple scars to show for her freshmen and sophomore efforts.
Now, as a senior, she wished an update of that rough & tumble. The race was meant to finish, to be sure, not simply survive. But a little running blind to start this day felt good, like literally going down memory lane.
Before she exited the path at Oakton Avenue, Stefanie spotted a robin’s nest below an oak that might have been successful in the delivery of fledglings—just a hint of turquoise shell was caught between the twigs, and no skeletons to suggest foul play. She cradled it like a priest would a chalice and looked up to see if replacing would be possible. On the other hand, she needed something for the bus (the prank committee’s homework, for goodness’ sake), and why not be the Maine South Robins for a change? Being a Hawk was fine and good, but that identity was never going to last forever.
~~~~~~~~~
Of all mornings for Jerry to oversleep, today would have been his chance to shine as leader of the Senior Prank committee and de facto deputy of Spirit Club. Kim and Ralph were outside Bucky’s cage with several bedsheets ripped for purpose—'Maine South Hawks Track and Feild’ [sic] smudged in markers red and black, with ‘V’ silhouettes of the creature in flight. Stefanie brought her nest and Kevin, with her prodding, gathered boxelder branches that could be duct-taped to the sides of the bus to look like Hermes’ wings. Bucky volunteered to help with Kim’s balloons, puffing his cheeks like Louis Armstrong to blow them up and string the ends together—moribund without helium, but “that’s okay” he grinned, burying the glimmer of his eyes.
Coach Drennan happened by to fetch a few spare uniforms. “Goodness, what’s all this?”
“Oh, yeah!” Stefanie jumped up. “Can we bring with us today three-point-one-four-one-five-nine-two-six-five-three-five-eight-nine-seven-nine-three-two-three-eight-four-six-two-six-four-three-three-eight-three-two-seven-nine-five-o-two-eight-eight-four-one-nine-seven-one? Please? Pretty please?”
He didn’t know what to say. “Come by the room, and we can talk about it.”
~~~~~~~~~
(t.b.c., Daniel Lamken)
