Chapter 6: The Preacher (James Weaver)

 I used to be a churchgoer way back when I was a kid. My family was Presbyterian, and they were the kind of churchgoers that took the roaming reverends into the guest rooms of their houses. In a town with a largely Christian population, it was a very big deal to be the family that was hosting the preacher. The neighborhood treated you like saints and commented on your goodwill and generosity for the entire duration of the preacher's stay.
    I'm not a churchgoer anymore. I haven't been since I was sixteen years old, and I haven't hosted a preacher since long before that. In Tanager, the role of hosting the preachers was reserved for those dedicated Good Christians that show up every Sunday and spend the rest of the week attending all of the functions and running the charity drives; people like my parents. These were the same Good Christians who considered anyone who chose not to set foot in a church to be a lost cause. These same Good Christians shook their heads at me and my friends and called us RiffRaff, and every so often some particularly condescending soul would come up to one of us and say, “I'll be praying for you.” For what, existing? For being us?
    In Tanager, church is considered a duty rather than an option, and to deny a roving reverend a place to stay while he was oh-so-generously spreading the good word is to open up a place in hell with your name on it. That's all right; I already know I'm going to hell, and I'll meet my buddy Arthur there.
    Arthur is the only person in the world who regularly hears my voice, because he's the only person in the world worth talking to. The guy's wild even by RiffRaff standards, and wears the judgement of Others and fellow RiffRaff alike on his sleeve. He's the most interesting guy I know because you never know what the hell he's going to do next; one day he decided it was much better on the roof than it was on the ground, and spent the entire day up there without a shirt on. He got bored and started flinging chunks of slushie at the feet of everybody who passed by, until somebody threatened to call the cops. Another day, he shot off an entire canister of fireworks at ten PM in the middle of September. When I asked him what the occasion was, he said he just felt like blowing things up. He used to walk around with a black Zorro mask on, until a cop pulled him over and told him he had to take it off. “It isn't Halloween, man,” the cop had told him. Now he wears a hood pulled just over his eyes, even in the summer heat.
    Arthur is an enigma because he was Arthur, and I’m an enigma because I won’t talk. In Tanager, refusal to speak meant that you thought yourself too good to speak. In reality, I've never really talked except when I couldn't get along without it. The world, I figured, was already full of more than enough mindless noise. It didn't need me adding any more to it. Arthur talked enough for both of us and four additional people. He wouldn't shut up, and when it became apparent that I could let him do the talking for both of us while I absorbed the rest of the world's sound, I knew I had a friend for life.

    Reverend Taylor Applegate is this season's roving preacher. He'll stay till the second week in August, then go off into the horizon, his purpose in educating the lost souls of Tanager fulfilled. He's a tall, lofty dude (Arthur bet me a steak at McEvoy's that they chose a tall one because he was “closer to heaven”), with corn-yellow hair cropped close around his head, because longer hair is “sinful” and “tempting” or something like that. He's got blue eyes like ninety-five percent of the people in this area, and he wears the ugliest grey and brown suits because color is “worldly” and black is “morose.” Outside of church, he wears t-shirts and button-downs like a normal person, but pairs them with neatly-pressed khaki pants even in ninety-degree heat. This town treats him like he's the Angel Gabriel himself. Arthur and I hate the guy.
    My first encounter with the preacher was at the cultural festival where he made his grand debut. I'd only even gone to the fest because Arthur would be there with his fire batons (Arthur just loves fire; last year he did ground pyrotechnics and nearly set the stage ablaze). I was walking around in search of a decent food truck. Ramona Reinhart and Paige Maurino were hosting foot races in the grass. To their right, Reverend Taylor Applegate of the Tanager Community Chapel was handing out pamphlets and preaching the good word. He was a young and good-looking guy, and must have been quite flustered by the sight of women in shorts tumbling in the grass beside him. I passed by on my way, and he shouted, “You! Yes, you! God bless you, my good man!”
    Good man? Nobody who regularly hung out with Arthur Ratliff was considered a “good man.” I glanced at him, and his smile was so stupid-bright I had to look away before I was blinded. “May the rest of your day be filled with the blessings of the Lord!” he called out as I made a beeline for a barbecue stand. My silence was a shield against people like this.
    A few weeks later, I was horrified to learn that he was one of those door-to-door preachers. They were the worst; the ones who thought they had every right to walk up to your door and interrupt you at your own house because their spiel is so much more important than whatever it is you're doing right now. Usually, these guys didn’t take no for an answer, and in Tanager there's very few who would ever say no to a preacher, lest they lose their well-earned Good Christian points. They not only expected you to listen, but came to your door under the hard assumption that you would.
    It was nearly five PM on a Saturday. Arthur and I were killing people on Black Ops 4, using the queue times to take bites out of the loaded nachos I had made. Every so often, our hapless opponents were treated to a nacho-crumb-laden stream of obscenities courtesy of my good friend. When he loudly declared that his most recent sniper victim had “Just got F'd in the A by his big, hard D, mothafucka',” I had to bite down on my lip to keep from losing it. Once the game was over and we were out of voice chat, I let it all go. Once I start laughing, it goes out of control, so only Arthur heard the doorbell ring. He continued chanting “F'd in the A by my big, hard D” as he got up to answer it.
    I didn't see who it was that Arthur slammed the door on, but whoever it was rang the bell a second time. This time, I got up to answer.
    “Don't open it,” Arthur said, but it was too late. There was the preacher, the exalted Reverend Taylor Applegate, standing at my door in one of his ugly grey suits.
    “Hey there, my man!” the preacher said, as if we were just the best of friends. “I think I remember you...didn't I see you at the cultural fest not too long ago?”
    There was silence except for the game's BGM and Arthur crunching on more nachos.
    “I think I did,” Reverend Taylor said. “I remember your face.” This is why Arthur would rather hide his. “Do you mind if I come in for just a moment?”
    Arthur started up again: “Y'all got F'd in the A by my big, hard D! My big, hard D in her big, wet V!”
    Oh dear god. I think I actually seized in my attempt to suppress that laugh. The preacher took a step back, like I had morphed into a mad dog poised and ready to strike. His eyes darted back and forth like he didn't know what to do with himself. “Yes, well...” He looked up at the awning as if a suitable response was written up there. “I see you're...preoccupied.” He took another step back, off of my porch step. “God bless you, good men.” He turned to leave, and then it happened.
    The guy ripped the loudest, wettest fart I had ever heard in my entire life.
    The sound sent Arthur running to the door, to verify if it had really happened and the preacher had really, truly let out a legendary fart like that. In that moment, I would've given anything to see what his eyes looked like under that hood. The preacher visibly quickened his pace as he made his way towards the Bagarozzas' place. I closed the door slowly and returned to my spot on the sofa.
    And then the two of us laughed until we choked on our own breath.

    Sundays in Tanager were socially-enforced “quiet days.”
    Only the stores and the restaurants remained open, and the two with liquor licenses would never sell booze on Sunday. Nobody went out anywhere or left town on Sunday, and to do so opened you up to an entire can of scrutiny and speculation. Of course, people still went to visit friends and neighbors, stopped at the deli for a ham and cheese sub, and occassionally went out of town to visit a sister or a mother or something. Only RiffRaff like us could be found running all over town on a Sunday afternoon, chasing eachother and running around the hills and getting up to some mischief as only RiffRaff do.
    Early Sunday mornings were the best because nobody was around—everybody was out at eight AM service at the Tanager Community Church, including many of our fellow RiffRaff. In the summer months, some members of the clergy decided that the good word was better received in God's outdoors, and moved services out to the park underneath the circle of dogwood trees.
    At seven in the morning, Arthur showed up at the door with his old hoverboard and said, “Let's go.” He and I were the only ones I knew over the age of thirteen who had hoverboards, and I only had mine because of him. I fished it out of the back of the closet and we hovered down to the park, the world completely silent except for the birds that didn't care it was Sunday. It was a dreamland.
    We made our way around the central fountain, where Arthur and his buddy Talia often filched tossed “wish” pennies. We passed by the drinking fountains and the curbside where the hot dog and ice cream trucks set up on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We hovered down one length of the walking trail and back the other way. Arthur chattered the whole way, first telling me about Franz Fawke's new barbecue grill “which he planned to take advantage of at every opportunity,” then switching over to the subject of Talia's upcoming birthday, and how she told him if he gets her yet another knife she will surely cut his throat with it. She had enough knives to build a Game of Thrones style throne out of them all. When he wasn't talking, he sang: “Little Sally Walker, walkin' down the street. She didn't know what to do so she jumped in front of me...”
    After a while we detoured to the corner deli and bought breakfast sandwiches. We sat down on the edge of the fountain to eat them, and then took off our shoes and waded right in. No one was around to tell us not to; after all, it was just about time for eight AM service.
    I expected Arthur wanted to clear out before the park got populated at eight AM, but oddly enough, he hopped back on his board and made his way to the dogwood trees. I followed after him, figuring he was planning to meet with Craig or Aaron, who would be at the service.
    At eight AM service in the park, you brought your own chair or you sat on the grass. Arthur did the latter, taking a seat right up in the front and propping his hoverboard up beside him. I couldn't believe my eyes! I sat down next to him and asked, “What are you doing, man?”
    “You'll see,” Arthur said. Of course he was up to something! Now I was dying to see what it was.
    To say that it was shocking to see Arthur at a church service was an understatement. The Good Christians and RiffRaff alike who filed in with their lawn chairs seemed in equal parts alarmed and fascinated by his presence. Mara Tushud said, “Hey, Arthur, you're the last person I'd expect to see here,” while her father, Kane, gave him a look that indicated he'd better be on his best behavior or he'd know the reason why. His pal Aaron said, “I never knew you had it in you, Arthur!” His other buddy, Craig, walked right up to him and asked, “What are you doing here?”
    His only response was, “I dunno, what are you doing here?”
    The sight of me at a church service was just as rare, but nobody really paid attention to me, and that was how I liked it. My silence allowed me to fade into the background, and going around with someone like Arthur meant that he bore the scrutiny of Others so I didn't have to. People said, “Hi, James,” and “'Sup, James,” and “Never thought I'd see you here, James,” but that was all. Until the reverend stepped up to the pulpit, Arthur had the floor.
    Reverend Taylor greeted everyone with one of his characteristic angelic smiles, and then led the opening prayer. Even though I wasn't a Christian man anymore, I hoped Arthur would save his antics for after that; getting up to mischief during a self-indulgent church service was one thing, but I drew the line at interrupting prayer with antics. Thankfully, Arthur remained silent for once in his life. He didn't bow his head to pray, but stayed perfectly still and quiet as the Good Christian prayers commenced all around him.
    Reverend Taylor opened up his Bible and began his spiel with a reading from the Book of Leviticus. I had been hoping for Revelations; it had always been my favorite due to the apocalyptic imagery and the sense of urgency in the reading. There was nothing special about Leviticus and my mind went elsewhere. I could have sworn I saw Ramona Reinhart flash a little smile at the reverend. I felt like gagging. She was a real pretty girl, but much too good to be making doll eyes at this clown. Besides, wasn't it a colossal sin to flirt with a preacher during a sermon?
    I thought I was going to fall asleep, and I was about to nudge Arthur and ask him if we could go back to my place for Black Ops 4. I poked him, and he turned to me and held up one finger. While the preacher was going on about the many things that made a person unclean, Arthur pursed his lips, cupped both hands over his mouth...
    “Pffffffffffffffffffffffffh!”
    The entire world stopped what it was doing. It was as if time and space had compressed into a singularity at this very moment, right here in the park under the dogwoods, where Arthur Ratliff was making pooting sounds in the middle of a preacher's passionate speech on the unclean. “Pfffffhpffffhpfffffhpfffffffffffh!” Eagle-eyed Kane gave us both the coldest, sternest old-man look I had ever seen in my life. Sophia Burisov covered her mouth with both hands and looked as if she longed to sink right through the ground. The Others looked at us with some of the most prominent disgust I had ever before seen on human faces. Up on the pulpit, the preacher's awkward attempt to smile it all off was betrayed by his visible discomfort; he shuffled his feet and fiddled with his cuffs, and his eyes were darting around like they had that Saturday at my doorstep. I caught Craig, Paige, and Aaron trying their damnedest not to laugh, and when I felt the laughter brimming up inside of me I bit down so hard on my lip that I tasted blood. But it was no use.
    I erupted.
    “James!” Ramona cried when the first bellow escaped me. It was followed by another, and another and another, until I was screaming, shaking, and gasping for breath. I slumped all the way down to the ground and wrapped my arms around myself in a desperate attempt to keep the rest of it from coming out, but there was just no stopping me once I started. Tears stung my eyes and my sides were in agony. Beside me, Arthur suffered largely the same afflictions. We screamed, choked on air, and snorted like pigs. I'm pretty sure I farted a few times myself, but between my hysteria and Arthur's, there was no way anybody heard anything.
    We kept on laughing as the Others around us slung the words “disgraceful,” “shameful,” and “absolute scene” around. We kept on laughing as an angry old lady confronted us, standing over us with both hands on her hips and looking at us like we were two unruly boys in her fifth grade class. “Both of you need to get your nasty selves up,” she barked, “and get out of here right now!” We kept on laughing as we picked up our hoverboards and stumbled to our feet, rushing down the trail as the Others apologized for our disgusting behavior and assured the preacher that “Those two are nothing good.” I knew our fellow RiffRaff would get them back for it later; they may have been ashamed of us now, but RiffRaff look out for one-another.
    It wasn't until we reached the safety of the fountain that we could finally breathe again. When we got there, Talia was wading around in the water and picking up handfuls of coins.
    “Where the hell were you two just at?” she asked, flicking pennies at our heads just to show us that she could.
    “Church,” Arthur said, but it was only partly true. He neglected to mention that we had just come back from the darkest depths of Hysteria, where twenty-six years of unused sound had escaped all at once, likely never to return again.
    On the way back to my place, Arthur snuck up behind me, pursed his lips, and cupped both hands over his mouth. “Pffffffffffffffh!”
    I punched him in the face.

Chapter 5: Hecklers (Franz Fawke)

 The RiffRaff keep to themselves, and the Others (you know, the not-Riffraff) do the same. The paths don't cross, and there's no need for our worlds to overlap. They don't want a damn thing to do with us, that's why they call us RiffRaff in the first place. What they don't know is that we wear that title like a medal of honor.
    For the most part, they don't really bother with us. They watch us from the lofty heights of their front porches, backyards, and curbsides and judge us only silently. But then there are the ones that aren't silent about it. There are the Hecklers.
    The Hecklers are usually teenagers, typically boys but sometimes girls. Some are older, some are younger, and none of them know how to keep their bloody mouths shut. They throw their heads back, cackling like chickens in a coop, crowing loud enough to be heard across town.            

    Unlike the regular Others that are just confused by us, these guys have a profound dislike for anything they consider out of the ordinary. How very dare we not conform to their idea of what the world is like? Don't we understand that the whole world revolves around them?
    These nasty little bastards don't have a single care in the world. They say what they want, do what they want, and to hell with you if you don't like it. Once, I caught them mocking Vera Sherwood while her brother was away. “Derrrr...” they said, riffing on her muscle spasms and the way her head rolls side-to-side. They were standing close enough for her to hear them, but far enough away to feign innocence when she turned her head and hollered, “You talking 'bout me, you turds?” They act as though one bad fall or one unfortunate accident on the bikes they love so much couldn't leave them in her condition or worse. When I found Leon and the two of us chased them off, they only let out their chicken-cackles and went off to find someone else to harass.
    The Hecklers don't care who yells at them. They don't care who tells them off. They don't care that they're the most rancid pieces of garbage that ever walked the Earth, and that their fathers should've pulled out before they ever got a chance to exist. If you holler at them, they just laugh. Try to use reason with them, and they just plug their ears and make you look like the crazy one. Charmain Dekker, one of the sweetest RiffRaff ladies you ever could meet, has tried to be nice to them. She's offered them leftover cookies from her barbecue and volunteered to buy them ice cream from the truck when they didn't have any money. They gladly accepted the gifts, but still hollered, “Hey, hooknose!” when they passed by her house on their bikes. There's no stopping them.
    Even ignoring them has no effect. “Hecklers,” my wife, Emery, once said, “get bored real fast if they don't have anything to heckle.” Well, that may be true for your ordinary run-of-the-mill hecklers. These Hecklers, however, are demons. Anna Ming ignored their cries of, “If your eyes are so squinty, then how do you see?” until they followed her out to her car, squinting their own eyes and yelling, “Ching-chong, ching-chong!” the whole way. She turned on them and told them that if they were going to follow her out to her car, she was going to call the police on them for harassment. They all scattered then, hollering “ching-chong” as they ran off. Sophia Burisov stood her ground when a few of their girls commented on how her makeup makes her look like a whore, but when she reached the safety of her car, she cried where they couldn't heckle her for that too. The one thing you never want to do is let them have any sort of effect on you—after all, they're only kids and you're the grown-up—but poor Sophia's just too tender-hearted for that.
    It makes one wonder how and why we're considered the RiffRaff, yet wastes of life like this are simply “the neighborhood kids.” When Arthur Ratliff turned the hose on them when they refused to get away from his fence, the Others had plenty of choice words to say about him: “That man is a nasty piece of work.” “That guy is a brute. Just stay away from him.” “There are some sick people in this world. That guy is one of them.” Arthur wore it as a badge of pride, but it made me furious. They could act like brutes all they wanted and nobody bat an eye, but when they get their asses handed to them by an even bigger brute, only he's the bad guy. Screw that, Arthur had taught them the most valuable lesson that their parents and their schools refused to teach: don't fuck with others if you don't want them to fuck with you.

    My worst incident with the Hecklers involved my beautiful wife.
    Emery is the pride and the star of my world, but the two of us are as different as day and night. While I'm a loud-mouthed and profane little shit, Emery is as sweet as the banana cream pie she can bake like a pro. Take one look at her, and you can tell she's just as good at downing pies as she is at baking them. But for all her tendency to overindulge, the woman is built like a tank from weightlifting and rock-climbing and hauling tools and heavy auto parts back and forth. She's an absolute unit, and she could crush you just as easily as squashing a bug. But the most beautiful thing about Emery, to me, is that she would never hurt a soul. She'll pound sheet metal into submission until it begs for mercy, but she would never even think of hurting another person, no matter how much they deserved to be crushed like scraps in a junkyard.
    Usually, when the Hecklers came around our neck of the woods, they never got a chance to get as far as our house; Talia Santiago took them out with a few well-aimed stones before they even reached our corner of the street. If our neighbor's methods proved unsuccessful, the sound of Emery's sledgehammer against a sheet of metal would send them scattering. But this time, there was no Talia and no sledgehammer. There was only Emery, outside tending to her flower garden, and me, inside watching reruns of Shark Tank from the comfort of our recliner. I turned the volume down a bit so I could hear Em singing to the flowers. “They like it when you sing to them,” she swears. “They grow taller so they can be closer to the sound of your voice.” This time, she was singing our song:

    Emmy Lane
    is in my ears and in my eyes
    There beneath
    the blue surburban skies

    Even after we married and Emery had taken my last name, Fawke, I still called her “Emmy Lane” and sang her the modified Beatles song. We'd both sung it at our wedding, even though I can't sing for shit.
    I took a sip from my beer. On Shark Tank, someone was presenting some strange alternative to tape. Emery stopped singing, but I heard something else, an unmistakable chicken-cackle that sent me running for the window.
    “That ain't how she walks,” a red-shirted Heckler was saying to his friends. “It's like this.” He puffed out his gut as far as it would go, inflated his cheeks like a chipmunk, spread out his arms, and waddled from side-to-side. “Oh, look,” the little bastard said, “a Snickers bar! Everybody out of my way!” He picked up the imaginary Snickers bar from the ground and pretended to down it in two ugly bites, messily licking up the imaginary chocolate from his fingers, smacking his lips all the while. Get the sledgehammer, Emmy.
    But she didn't get the sledgehammer. Instead, she laughed, tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and said, “Careful you don't bite off your fingers. Y'know, that happened once, in a particularly grisly incident with a devil dog.” She held up her right index finger. “It was covered in the cream filling and I couldn't resist! This one's just a fake.”
    What the hell was this?! The boys' eyes got real wide, like they believed every word she said. “Is it really?” They moved in closer to the fence to get a closer look. Bloody morons!
    Emery wiggled her finger at them. “You tell me,” she said with a smirk, before returning to her verbenas and singing “Emmy Lane” under her breath.
    I tried to remember where Emery had left the sledgehammer—was it in the garage or in the shed? I could go look for it, but I didn't want to leave my wife alone, at the mercy of these bastards. They had decided they weren't done having their fun with her. While she sang our song, they walked around in circles outside the fence, chanting, “I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass, no treble.”
    To my utter horror, Emery sang right along with them! In fact, they had quite the little song-and-dance party going on after a while! My face burned with fury, at them and at her. What the hell was wrong with her? How could she encourage this? Didn't she know that's all she was doing, encouraging it? They didn't give a damn if she made light of it all. They didn't give a damn if she turned it into one big game. They were gonna keep on going anyway, and they'd do it again the next time they saw her, and again, and again, and again. Didn't she know that? Of course she knew that! She should be bending them out of shape like the metal at our shop! She should be crushing them under her heels like the rancid little roaches they were! She should be smashing them up like the pile of bricks in the backyard! Why wasn't she?!
    All I had was my beer can, and I was a piss-poor throw, but it would have to do. I grabbed it and poured the rest of the beer into the dirt patch outside the window. I hated that I had to waste good beer on these little shits, but they weren't gonna stand there and mock my girl and not expect to get anything back. I mentally prepared my best possible insults: “Hey, you walking condom commercials!” “You miserable little wastes of life!” “Get the hell away from my wife, you future shit-shovelers of America!”
    But when I flung the front door open with my can and my mouth at the ready, they had already taken off down the road. “Bye-bye, kiddos!” Emery called after them as if she was their friendly, pie-baking auntie. “Y'all stay safe and take care of yourselves, all right?”
    It was too much. I crushed the can in my fist and chucked it on the ground at my feet. I tried to swallow my tears and I failed. Emery set her watering can down and laid her hand on top of my head. She towered over me.
    “How could you?” I asked. I couldn’t look into her beautiful eyes, or else my tears would run out of control. “How could you stand there and let them treat you like that?”
    She just gave me a kiss and said, “It's okay, Franz.”
    “No it ain't!” I hollered. I had nowhere else to throw my anger except at her. “It's not fucking okay! They don't get to treat you like that, Emery! They don't have the right!” I had to get inside before I completely lost it and somebody saw me going off. I darted into the house and flung myself down on the recliner. I was breaking the number one rule: don’t let the Hecklers have any effect on you. I was too messed up to care.
    Emery followed after me. She put her hand on my back, gave me another kiss, and went to the kitchen to get me another beer. She was singing “Emmy Lane” again, and her hips were swinging back and forth. She was smiling like an angel. 

Chapter 4: Vergil (Tracy Kwan)

    Vergil isn't my brother, but we don't go around correcting people who think that. We grew up together. We tackled our ABCs and 123s as a team. We spent Halloweens trick-or-treating together and Christmases waiting for Santa together. We sent valentines to eachother long after our classmates tried to drill into us that best friends don't send valentines to eachother unless they're going out. I suppose Vergil and I could've gone out, but we figured that it would've felt way too much like going out with your sibling. Besides, as close as we are, Vergil is so far out of my league that he may as well be on another planet. While I'm not the easiest on the eyes, Vergil is a picture of Asian perfection. He could pass for a member of EXO. He's tall, clean, with deep black eyes that take up most of his face, and black hair in a neat crew cut that he slicks back with gel. My hair looks like a bundle of sticks, and it never lets me do anything but clap a beanie on it and let it do what it wants. My eyes are too tiny for my face, which is why I wear glasses even though I don't actually need them. The bitch girls in my classes always had something to say about my pointy nose and my puffy eyebrows, and called me “stumpy” because I was so short. I never understood how Vergil could stand to be seen with me, but it helps that he's known me since we were both in pre-K.
    As we got older, Vergil became painfully aware of how others perceived me, and so he developed a protective streak. All brothers, even unrelated brothers, have a desire to look after their sisters. I guess some part of Vergil understood that I had a disadvantage in all of the social departments that he hit high marks in: looks, charisma, style, and confidence. He'd lock his arm through mine and say “Stick with me, Tracy,” as we made our way through the treacherous high school hallways. When the boys would jeer at me, he'd run at them, throwing rocks and swinging his fists until they hauled ass. The bitch girls meant absolutely nothing to him, and his refusal to acknowledge their existence hurt them more than anything else he could've done to them, because my pretty Vergil was the envy of them all.
    In spite of all his good qualities, Vergil was never very popular. He was quiet for the most part, simply because he chose not to talk to anyone but me and just a few others. He didn't play sports, wasn't in the band, didn't go to parties, and essentially exiled himself from the typical high school social life. His few friends were other socially awkward nerds like me. We played videogames and watched superhero movies and stayed up late playing Cards Against Humanity. We didn't do much else. Vergil never spoke unless I was around, and then suddenly he burst into life as if I had switched off his invisible silencer. He went to the senior prom only because I insisted that he couldn't miss it, taking me instead of a date, and instead of dancing we chased eachother around the gardens pretending to be Godzilla vs Mothra. It just about killed everybody that one of the best-looking guys in school would rather play kids' games with an ugly nerd than have anything to do with them.
    After high school, Vergil and I went to the same community college, but pursued different degrees. “If we're together all the time,” he reasoned, “we won't have anything interesting to tell eachother after class.” In reality, Vergil just wasn't interested in my degree program and I wasn't interested in his, and he was just trying to reassure himself that I'd be just fine without him and him without me. For the very first time, I detected some anxiety in Vergil. For all of his stoicism, he was scared to death of being alone in a sea full of people, and all the time he spent “protecting” me was really a way of protecting himself.
    “Don't worry, Verg,” I told him, giving him a hug. “We're gonna do this just fine!”
    We did. The time apart gave us the opportunity to experiment with who we were as separate people. I discovered that even in college, when most people put aside the pettiness of high school, I wasn't going to be anything popular, and it was okay because my classes were filled to the brim with nothing-populars. I wasn't alone. Vergil learned that no matter how good you look or how well you talk when you talk at all, you can still go completely unnoticed by the rest of the world. Adults have more complex reasons for noticing you than being handsome. The experience was liberating and made us both closer than we had ever been. It was us against the world.
  
     Vergil graduated a year before I did, and I used that extra year to show him just how much I could make it on my own. Afterward, the two of us moved to a rental in Tanager. We didn't care what anyone had to say about an unmarried man and woman living together. I would've married him, except that it would've felt like marrying my brother. It wouldn't feel right.
        Tanager was a new experience entirely. In Mayfield, where we'd lived for all of our lives, people kept to themselves and let you keep to yourself too. Everyone was always in such a bustle of their own business that they didn't have the time or energy to mind yours. The population of Tanager, in contrast, couldn't have gone over two-thousand, if even that. Those two-thousand people grouped together in little clusters and decided for themselves whether or not their cluster would accept yours. The social atmosphere was enough to scare the crap out of an introvert like Vergil, who never had any desire to know anybody other than me. Now he was in a world where everybody knew everybody, and we quickly found out that there was no way to remain unknown in a place like this.
    Vergil grew more protective of me than ever.
    Our first few weeks in Tanager, he made it clear that he didn't want to be seen in public without me. When he snagged a job working IT at the Tanager Public Library, he tried to convince me to apply at the library too. “It's a good job for you, Trace,” he insisted. “You love reading, you know all of the classics and just about everything about Shakespeare, and...”
    He didn't finish the rest of it, so I finished it for him. “And I'll be with you all day long. We'll never go a day without seeing eachother’s faces. You'll be right there and you can look after me.”
    He became very interested in the floor.
    “Vergil,” I said, “you don't have to look after me all the time. And honestly, as much as I love books, I'd rather not spend my entire day inside surrounded by them. I want to spend my days out in the sun, Vergil.”
    “You won't like that when winter comes around,” Vergil said.
    “Well, it isn't winter now,” I told him. “It's summer. We'll figure winter out when winter comes.”
    There was nothing he could say that would change my mind. I applied to be a recreation assistant at the civic center, and I was enthralled with my days spent playing kids' games in the summer, and organizing holiday crafts and movie nights in the winter. I even taught the kids the games that Vergil and I had invented, like Territory Ball and Godzilla vs Mothra. I was released from work two hours before Vergil, and those two hours became my extremely valuable uninterrupted Tracy Time. When Vergil got off work, we'd crack eachother up with wacky stories from our work days and use Smash Bros to determine whose turn it was to cook or order dinner. There was no work on weekends; those days belonged only to us, and eventually to the nice little cluster of friends we had amassed for ourselves, the other “RiffRaff” of the town of Tanager.
    “RiffRaff” was what the Others called us. They would turn to their neighbors and say, “There’s the local RiffRaff,” as they watched us play Manhunt or make chalk drawings in the streets. “That's RiffRaff, all right,” a straw-hatted man would say with an air of authority on the subject, as we made our way down the back road and cut through the woods to get away from them and their judgy eyes. Mothers would hold their toddlers by the hand and point and whisper, “RiffRaff,” as we walked by. If we got too close, they'd freeze up and lock eyes with us as if we were about to eat them right up. They were the Others, and they were afraid of us because we weren't like them.
    In Tanager, “RiffRaff” was anyone that didn't fit into the cute little mold they had established for us. If you went against their expectations for what a person was supposed to be, you were RiffRaff. You could lose the title of RiffRaff just as easily as you had gained it, if you simply fell into line and kept your head down and acted like a good little example of countryfied small-town existence. But who wanted to do that?
    Vergil and I became RiffRaff fairly quickly. Vergil's silent nature and refusal to interact with his neighbors was just too much for the Others to handle. When it became apparent that I was the only person he really cared too much about, and that we were neither married nor related by any kind of blood, the neighborhood tongues started flapping and wouldn't stop. When Vergil rejected every advance from even such beauties as Greta Slokov and Heidi Margrave, it only added fuel to the fire. People wondered what he saw in a frumpy, bespectacled Korean girl, and they started to regard us in the same way they regarded fellow RiffRaff like crazy Arthur Ratliff and terrifying Talia Santiago. Vergil got a reputation for being standoffish and proud—two things he was certainly not—and one day he came home from work cracking up because he'd overheard someone describe him as “uppity.” “That's the exact word they used,” he told me through his laughter. “They called me uppity!” The sound of the word rolling off of his deep baritone made me lose it, too. Uppity?! That was a word for Southern grandmas!
    The Others had spicier words about me. Word on the street was that I was runty, “rachet,” and very, very unfortunate looking. On top of that, I was childish and my brain “must not be wired the right way.” Coming back from an afternoon laser tag game over in Stonesville, in which I had won by three points, Vergil and I caught the tail end of a conversation about us. “Honestly, I don't know what someone like Vergil Cho could see in that little wreck,” a muscle-tee-clad douchebag was saying to a group gathered on the curb. “A guy like that, and he hangs around with that ugly little thing.”
    The man was a fool. Calmly, Vergil headed over there and asserted his presence with his right hand propped up on his hip. “Yo.”
    “Yeah?” The guy blew another cig puff into the air.
    Vergil nodded slightly to the woman he was with, a curly-haired blonde straight out of a Sandals commercial. “Is this your wife? Girlfriend? Sister?”
    “She's my girlfriend,” Muscle Tee said. “Why do you care?”
    “Just wanted to know what someone who opens her legs for giant cockroaches looks like,” Vergil said. “May your future be filled with many little garbage-eating grubs.”
    We both took off, laughing over the sounds of Muscle Tee and Sandals' hollers, till I was sure we were both going to piss ourselves. We kept on running until we reached the front porch, then we fell to our knees and kept on laughing until I thought we were going to die.
    
    Vergil and I both know everything about Shakespeare. The two of us fell in love with him at the same time, in seventh grade English lit class. Like everyone else, we started with Romeo and Juliet. We loved the language and the dramatic flair of every scene much more than we liked the plot, which we didn't really care for. King Lear and Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra were much more satisfying. The two of us had read and re-enacted Act III, Scene I of Hamlet so many times I was sure we could recite it in our sleep. In ninth grade, Vergil and I went as Hamlet and Ophelia for Halloween. In our senior year, we won first prize in the school costume contest as Oberon and Titania.
    When we signed up to perform at the cultural festival two weeks ago, I was sure everyone expected us to sing K-Pop or dance to BTS. But we recited Act I, Scene III of Antony and Cleopatra. We got honorable mention.

Chapter 3: Hair (Kali Muburu)

        When I was a kid, I had long hair, and I liked to play with it just like any other girl. I combed it, brushed it, styled it, and went to the hairdresser twice a year to have it done. I looked through the magazines and the style catalogs and tried out the different styles to varying degrees of success. I've had cornrows, dreads, single braids, highlights, waves, and weaves. My hair was long and black and somehow managed to be free of the kinkiness that affected the rest of my family. My mother's hair was puffy, my brother's was frizzy, and I couldn't tell what my father's was because he kept it buzzed off. But mine was an anomaly, and it disappointed the hell out of my mother that I never wore it loose. She would say, “Your hair's a blessing, Kaliwanara. You should show more of it.” I think this was the reason that I didn't show more of it; no teenager wants to do what their mother says. The other more sensible reason was that it was always in the damn way. I was a runner, and the stuff weighed me down. It whipped out behind me like a banner strapped to my head and bounced against the back of my neck while I ran. It got caught in necklaces, scarves, and zippers. It snagged on fences and even doorknobs I was passing by. I ran around in the woods and the hills and came back with who-the-hell-knows-what in it. It seemed like my hair was only a blessing to somebody like my mother, a conservative Ghanan woman who worked at a law firm and cooked and didn't do much else.
        I began to admire the women on my father's side of the family. These were Kenyan women, with burnt cinnamon skin and long arms and legs like sycamore branches. Most of them had no more hair than my father, if any at all, and the heads of the bald ones gleamed like golden coins in the sun. They could probably run like bullets, and never had to worry about their hair being yanked in a fight or pulled by some idiot boy who sat behind them.
        I decided that this look was something to work up to, to get a feel for. In my sophomore year, I got my hair cut short so that it fell just above my ears. I had inherited my father's ears that stuck out like wings, and the idiot kids called me “Dumbo the Elephant.” But they would've called me anything; in ninth grade I was “Siren-Mouth” because I was loud, and in eighth grade I was “Skeletor” for my long, skinny legs. I'd been made fun of enough to stop giving a damn about being made fun of. All I cared about was that I was free from the shackles of long hair. I ran like a bolt with nothing weighing me down, and Dumbo-like or not, my ears were glad to be free. At the beginning of my junior year, I got gauge piercings and nobody called me Dumbo anymore. By then they had moved on to calling me “Riot” for mouthing off and getting into fights. I still don't see how that was supposed to be an insult.
        They say that changing your hair marks a change in who you are, that it's the first outward sign that you're an entirely different person than who you were before. When I finally had my hair buzzed off completely, just after I had gone away to college, I looked in the mirror and saw a different Kali looking back at me. This Kali had a hard face and fiery, eager eyes, ready to see the whole world that existed beyond her little West Virginia town. She was strong, built like a tree from years of running. She pursed her lips and looked angry, fierce. She smiled, and her teeth shone stark-white against a dark chocolate complexion. I loved this fierce-looking, bald-headed Kenyan-Ghanan girl, and I wanted her to love me back.
        That Christmas, I came back home without a single hair on my head. My brother, who was still a little shit when he wanted to be, cried out, “Ha ha! Kali's a cueball!” My father smiled and told me it was a good look for me. “Now you look like a true Muburu,” he said, comparing me to all the aunts and cousins with shaved heads on his side of the family. I thought about how they'd all react the next time they saw me.
But then there was my mother. My mother would never have stopped me from expressing myself in any way I wanted—of course, she drew the line at a tramp stamp or a nipple piercing, but she believed that my body was my own to do what I wanted with it within reason. She let me have the gauge piercings and did not object to the coiled snake tattoos around my right arm for my eighteenth birthday. I'd gone around with my hair in neon yarn falls or dyed the color of red velvet cake, and she didn't protest. If I wanted to buzz off my hair, that was my decision to make. She knew that and she respected it.
        But she couldn't hide the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. My hair, my “blessing,” the kind of hair that she herself had longed for but never got to have, was gone.

        Nine years later, I still don’t have any hair. I've contemplated letting it grow out again, and got as far as letting a bit of fuzz accumulate before deciding to buzz it all off again. Bald is freedom. It's the summer sun warming the top of my head and it's looking good in every hat when winter comes around. Bald is saving money on shampoo, brushes, and combs and having a shorter morning routine, free of wrestling with tangles and mats. Most of all, bald is driving the neighborhood men crazy.
        They hate it. With my bald head and boyish clothes, but womanly figure and particularly visible assets, they can't tell what the hell I'm supposed to be. While most of the hair-topped ladies I know—the pretty Anna Ming, the tall Bex Driver, the small and quirky Vera Sherwood—have been catcalled or flirted with at some point, the guys that I pass by don't seem to know what to do with me.
        “Man, what do you think that is?” one of the men across the bar asked, his eyes and his seedy friend's eyes fixed right on me. He wasn't even pretending or trying to be subtle about it; I and the other “RiffRaff” around here can never tell if it's worse when people try to be subtle and judge you silently, or when they come right out with it.
        I stood up and propped one elbow against the bar. “Now, I'm not an expert on such things,” I said, pinning them to the bar with my left eye, “but I think that she might be a human being, and therefore not to be referred to as that. Am I right?”
        The guys immediately turned their heads away and pretended they were never looking and had never said a word. Who's this crazy bitch? What's she going on about?
        “Am I right?” I asked again. “Go on, tell me if I'm right. Is there ever a moment when it's appropriate to refer to a person as 'that?' Well, is there?”
        They didn't answer. They just got up and moved away, taking their beers with them.
        When you're grown up, no one calls you Dumbo for your big ears anymore. They don't point at your bald head and call you Cueball, or comment on your Siren-Mouth. Nobody really pays any attention to you at all, until they can't decide whether or not they want to fuck you.

        “Hey, you look like a monk.”
        I open my eyes and behold Rickie Johnson, standing there looking at me like I'm an interesting specimen under a microscope. “A monk, huh.” I sit up and fold my legs into the traditional “zen monk” position, with my hands resting on my kneecaps and three fingers curled into the air. I doubt that very many monks wear long black t-shirts with “STONESVILLE ROCKATHON 2016” printed on them.
        “Yeah,” he says, “a monk. Very calm, very zen.”
        I close my eyes. “Ohhhhhmmmm.” Taking advantage of the situation, Rickie starts flicking the top of my head.
        “Ohhhhm-if-you-don't-cut-that-out-I'mma-snap-that-finger-clean-offffffff....”
        I open my eyes. Rickie's way too close to my face. I sock him on the nose, but it's all in jest, and we crack up. Rickie's probably the closest thing to a more-than-best-friend I have, but there's no commitment involved; Rickie has made it clear time and time again that I'm not his type when it comes to that. His “type” includes Greta Slokov, a raven-haired, red-lipped cookiecutter beauty who walks around the grocery store in uber-tight crop tops that land just under her boobs. My personal opinion is that if you're going to be showing that much navel, you had better have a barbel piercing to show for it. Her personal opinion is that the appearance of a man and the appearance of a woman should not overlap, and if you're going to walk around in button-downs and shorts you should at least have the decency to have a full head of hair, or if you're going to be a bald-headed woman you should at least put on some dresses and some skirts because it's your god-given duty to keep from confusing people. To sum it up, she finds me disgusting and the feeling is mutual. Rickie is way too good for that bitch.
        I haul ass down the paved trails while Rickie chases me. I run to the jungle gym and jump up onto the ladder, scrambling up there in about two seconds using my runner's legs. Rickie crawls up the slide to come after me, and I throw myself down the opposite side and take off like a bolt. The mothers with their strollers shoot glances in our direction, but what the hell are they going to say? I'm laughing too hard to breathe. Rickie catches up to me and fires a few finger guns, and I block them with an imaginary bulletproof shield.
        We're crazy.
        Would we be less of a spectacle if I had hair and looked like a woman? Probably not. But in a hick town like Tanager, where absolutely nothing happens, a bald woman and some blonde guy running around the park like two kids is probably the most interesting thing they've seen all day.
        But I've got something even more interesting.
        “C'mere,” I tell Rickie. I grab his hand and he doesn't object. I may not be “his type,” but he's never actually passed up an opportunity to get close to me. I don't know if it means anything, or if he's just so desperate for the touch of a woman that he's willing to take it even from a bald one. Either way, he lets me lead him far away from the playground and out to a private little cluster of trees where guys usually take their ladies for a quickie. It's broad daylight and nobody's really doing anything, but there's one or two couples here and there, holding hands in the grass and making out the picnic tables. Otherwise there's just people passing through.
        I tug at Rickie's hand. “Let's give 'em a show.”
        He's all for it. “How?”
        I sit myself down right in front of the Latina woman locking lips with a guy with a guitar on his back, folding my legs into the “zen monk” position. “I'm Buddha,” I tell Rickie. “Rub my bald head for a hundred years of good fortune.”
        “Only a hundred?” Rickie asks. “I don't know, I plan on living longer than that.”
        “Then kiss it,” I tell him. “Kiss it and you will live for a thousand years.”
        Rickie kneels down. “A thousand, huh? Well, I don't think I can rightly pass that up.”
        He puts his lips right where the sun warms the top of my head. There's something raw and just so right about the feeling of lips against a bare head. Hair acts like a shield; it blocks out the soft feeling of the two lips and suppresses the pressure of them pressing against you. He holds them there for fifty full seconds counted in my head, then he pulls away. “Was that worth a thousand years?” he asks me.
        I grab him by the collar and pull him down. He's so close to me that his moustache stubble scratches against my bare head. I move his hand on top of my head and hold it there, and there's no hair to block out just how warm it feels. I hear the Latina girl go “ugh,” and she and her guitar guy take off for elsewhere.
        “It was worth eternity.”

Chapter 2: Little Sister (Vera Sherwood)

My brother Leon knows me more than anyone else in the world. He knows that I'm Vera, his little baby sister, and that even though I turned twenty-six last month, I'm still his little baby sister. I think sometimes he looks at me and still sees the awkward-looking little freckled girl from the old pictures, holding a teddy bear and smiling too big for my face. But Leon also knows that he respects me. If he didn't respect me, he wouldn't have patted me on my shoulder and said, “You hold your own just fine, Vera.” I never loved him more than I did when he said those words. 

Leon knows that I have cerebral palsy, and he knows how it happened. When we were kids, he just loved to tell the story of how I came out with my cord all wrapped around my neck, gasping for air in my very first moments in the world. “But you lived, Vera,” he would say with big wide eyes. “You didn't have any air, and you lived.” The way he said it, he thought I was some kind of superhero for surviving so long with no air. Even if it crippled me, I lived. 
Most of all, Leon knows that he's my big brother and that he has to take care of me. When he finished college and was ready to move out, our parents told him that he had to take care of me now. Leon didn't ask to, and they didn't ask if he wanted to. They just pulled him aside, talked to him for a long time, and told him, “You take care of your sister now.” When Leon moved to this small rental house in Tanager, I went with him. Since then, he's been taking care of me even though he knows that I can hold my own just fine.
Leon knows me more than most brothers know about their sisters. He helps me dress and bathe because I can't reach my arms far enough to do it all on my own, and because my muscles seize and my body spasms and I can't stand up for a shower. All my life, Leon's been right there while my mother ran the warm soapy water over my back and down my neck and shoulders. He watched as she washed my hair and scrubbed my feet, under my arms, and the back of my legs. When we got older, she started sending him out of the room because “Vera needs her privacy right now.” She'd hand me the sponge and say, “You need to wash your under-theres on your own.” Then she'd leave the room. I knew that my “under-theres” meant private parts. 
When I was ten and Leon was thirteen, he started combing my hair instead of my mother doing it. Back then, I had long hair that went all the way down my back. But after a while, I felt too bad that Leon had to comb out all that hair, which could get very tangled when it wanted to. When I was fourteen, I asked for a short cut, and I've worn it ever since. 
Going to the bathroom is the worst, because of the nasty looks we get. He stands outside the bathroom door to wait for me, but then he has to go in to carry me back to my chair after I'm done. Security cops have gone up to Leon before and asked him why he's going with me to the ladies' bathroom. They see me in my chair, they see that my arms seize and my head lolls to the side, and yet they still have to ask! Because I can't go by myself, that's why! Do you want to know what I do in there, too?! Instead of yelling that out, I just show them my medical bracelet, and Leon shows them his own bracelet that says he is my brother and legal caregiver. They let us go, but it doesn't stop the looks. I wondered if I should just start wearing diapers to spare us both the humiliation.
“You don't think shitting in a diaper will be even more humiliating?” Leon asked me. “And I bet you think I'd just love to change a grown woman's diaper.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, “I see your point.” We both laughed, because if you don't laugh, you cry. 

There's still so much about me that Leon doesn't know. He doesn't know how bad I feel for him—not for me, but for him—because he didn't get to choose whether or not he wanted to take care of me. I wonder if he wanted to get married or have children, and if my parents did give him the choice, would he have said no? I've never asked him because I'm scared of the answer. If I had the choice, I wouldn't want to take a grown woman to the bathroom, or button her jeans, or drop everything and run to her when she has a seizure. Leon doesn't know that I cry because I wish he had a different sister.

Out in the world, people look at us with sad eyes. Oh, you poor crippled girl, their eyes say, and you poor man, taking care of her for the rest of your life! When they don't say that, they say that Leon must be a creep for being so close to a crippled woman that they have no idea is his sister. Somehow, in their messed-up heads, he's the creep for doing what he's supposed to do, and they're not the creeps for minding our businesses and watching after us as we go down the street. They're not the creeps for going up to me when I'm alone and asking, “Miss, do you know that man?” 

“No,” I say. “He just popped outta nowhere. I think he may be an alien and he's trying to abduct me for his experiments...of course I know him, he's my brother.” They walk away without asking anymore nosy questions, looking at me like I'm the crazy one. Leon doesn't know how much I wish I could pluck their all-seeing eyeballs out and crush them under my wheels. He doesn't know how much I wish their watching eyes would bug so far out that they pop off and go rolling down the street. He has no idea about all the tears that I swallow every time things like this happen, because I want to be his little sister who holds her own just fine. 

It's things like this that made me decide one day that I'd had enough. I wasn't going to be crippled anymore. Why did it matter that I was born with no air? What difference should that make now? 

Leon had to run out to get pizza; Kali and Zatch were coming over and we were playing Red Dead Redemption 2. “If they come by,” Leon had told me, “just let 'em in and tell ‘em I'll be right back.”

“You got it, dude,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up and imitating Michelle Tanner from Full House. He gave me a thumbs-up back. You hold your own just fine, Vera, his eyes said. 

“Buzz me if you need me,” he said just before he grabbed his keys and left. “Buzz” meant to hit the button on my chair that told him if I was in trouble. I've had to use it when I felt a seizure coming on, and the one time I pitched forward and fell out of my chair. Please, I pleaded, don't let me need that button today. It would ruin everything that I had planned. 

My walking cane was leaning up against the wall. I used it during PT and when I had to walk for exercise. Usually, Leon held my other arm when I used it. I wheeled over there and reached for it. My hands shook and my heart pounded wildly; what would Leon do when he came back and saw that his sister wasn't crippled anymore. What would he say? He might cry, and I'd take a picture with my phone and save it to my Insta-story. I tapped the cane around on the floor for a few minutes. Then the doorbell rang. I knew that it was time. 

I pressed down hard on the cane, as if I was pushing away a mountain. With my other hand, I pressed down hard on my left armrest. You can do it, I told myself. You can stand. You've done it before. I'd done it plenty of times with Leon, a friend, or a nurse at my side. Billions of people in the world stand every day, and I was one of those billions of people. I pretended to be a phoenix, rising from the ashes. My body rose from the chair. The doorbell rang again, longer and louder. 

“Coming!” I hollered. I tapped the floor with my cane again, refusing to think about falling forward or backward no matter how much my whole body shook. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot; I sang myself the little song that my parents had taught Leon to sing me when we were kids and he took me out walking. Now I only sang it when I wanted to annoy him. I wouldn't think about what would happen if I put down a right foot instead of a left foot, or a left foot instead of a right foot...

The doorknob was right there. My hand shook and I ignored it. I turned the knob and chucked my cane against the wall. Quickly, I held on to the knob with both hands and pulled the door open, still holding on when I faced Kali and Zatch.

“Hey, Zatch,” I said. “Hey, Kali.” 

“Vera, you're...” Kali's mouth was half-open. She didn't know what to say. She looked at me like I was flying instead of just standing.

“Hi, Kali,” I said again. “Come on in. Leon's picking up some pizza.”

They came inside. Kali couldn't take her eyes off of me. Zatch looked over at my cane lying on the ground, like he wasn't sure if he should go pick it up or not. So when Leon came back with the pizzas, he saw me standing there against the doorframe, my whole body pitching and wobbling but really standing, talking about Red Dead Redemption 2 with Kali and Zatch. 

“Vera!” Leon sounded like he did the day I fell out of my chair and he found me face-down on the floor. I looked at him. “Hi, Leon.” My smile was too big for my face. 

It didn't last. My body finally gave out and I reached out for my chair. Leon almost threw the pizzas down before he took me in both of his hands and guided me into the seat. But he looked right at me, and his eyes told me that he had never been more proud to have me for a little sister. 

Chapter 1: The Art of War (Rickie Johnson)

“The art of war is of vital importance to the state...”
This first line of my recitation for the Tanager Cultural Festival repeats itself over and over in my head. Twenty-five pairs of eyes staring back at me—maybe more, maybe less—and all I can think about is, “The art of war is of vital importance to the state.” The first stupid line of the whole monologue, that’s all. Just that first stupid line.
What a load of bull this is. When I signed up to recite at this festival, I had envisioned myself reciting with the soul of a lyricist, sprinkling my spoken word with bold, powerful flourishes, maybe with a tear or two in my eyes to show just how deeply affected I was by the meaning of the piece. I had imagined every pair of eyes in Tanager widening as their owners took in the true power of my recitation. I'd imagined Greta Slokov, who was somewhere between an 8.5 and a 10, wrapping her long arms around me and looking right into my eyes. “Rickie Johnson,” she would tell me, “a passion for literature is a lovely thing to have.” I'd tell her, “Not as lovely as you, cherie.” But my imagination ended there.
But now here I am, and all I can think of is, “The art of war is of vital importance to the state.” That and “uhhh,” with a sprinkling of “ummmm.”
The twenty-five-or-so pairs of eyes staring back at me are the very picture of the word “blank” in the dictionary. Most of them are on their phones. Somebody's kids wander off. My eyes fall on Greta Slokov, furiously tapping away on a touchscreen. “The art of war,” I say, raising my voice and drawing out my words just for her, “is of vital im-por-tance to the state...” For just a second, she glances at me, before returning her attention to her phone. “Uhhhh…” Dammit!
I just need to remember the words, those magic words that will make her look at me and stay that way. “The art of war...” I begin, and I become increasingly aware that I have to piss.
Bex saves me, or at least she tries to. “It is a matter of life and death,” she whispers over the dead silence, “a road to safety or to ruin.” I inhale. “It..is a matter of life and death,” I stammer, “aroadtosafetyortoruin.” I've lost control. My bladder's screaming at me. “I gotta go,” I say, “like..really go.” Bex looks at me with “sorry” in her eyes, and the silence is broken by uncomfortable laughter that can basically sum up my entire life. I refuse to look at Greta as I make my way past all the folding chairs. It's fine, she's probably not looking at me either. Or maybe she is looking at me, and she feels sorry for me like Bex does. Man, that hurts. Forgetting the piece, fucking up in front of twenty-five-some-odd people, and becoming the laughingstock of the Tanager Cultural Festival are all small potatoes compared to the possibility that Greta Slokov deems me pathetic. Now I've got to see if she's looking at me…
My cheek connects with something cold and metallic, and I fall backwards. More laughter from the crowd. I look up at a metal sign that mocks me in big orange letters reading “5TH ANNUAL TANAGER CULTURAL FESTIVAL.” “Son of a bitch,” I mutter, rubbing where my cheek hit the sign.
Suddenly Bex is there. “Aw man,” she says, shaking her head and holding out her hand for me. Her smile is full of sympathy rather than pity. She knows how things like this are gonna happen to people like us, and if you're people like us, you just gotta smile and laugh. It’s that, or you'll spend your entire life crying.
“I'm fine, Bex,” I say, getting up on my own. “I just gotta piss something awful.” I want to run for the safety of the civic center's open doors and its men's room, but I know that if I run it's all gonna come out right there, and I've endured enough today.
In a surprisingly apt metaphor for my life as a whole, I manage to make it there just in the nick of time.