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Authors: Steven James

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BOOK: Blur (Blur Trilogy)
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Ever
yo
ne was quieter than usual toda
y,
almost certainl
y
because the
y
were still tr
yi
ng to sort through their feelings about what had happened to Emil
y.

A few people asked Daniel if he was oka
y,
but thankfull
y
most of his friends didn’t bring up an
yt
hing about what’d happened at the funeral.

Emil
y’
s bod
y
had been found on Sunda
y
afternoon and on Monda
y
morning the school administrators had brought in counselors to meet with the students.

Ever
yt
hing had happened so fast. Daniel’s dad had told him that t
yp
icall
y
the famil
y
wouldn’t have the funeral so soon after a famil
y
member’s bod
y
was found, but apparentl
y
in this case the
y
wanted to have it as quickl
y
as possible.

There weren’t enough therapists in Beldon for the school, so the
y
called in some from Superior and Ashland. Most of the kids Daniel knew didn’t reall
y
feel comfortable talking to the counselors, and he wondered if ma
yb
e it was mostl
y
underclassmen who ended up being helped b
y
them. Hard to know.

The counselors all gave out their phone numbers and e-mail addresses and promised to be available if the students needed to contact them, and that was that. The
y’
d seemed like the
y
cared, seemed genuine enough, but, honestl
y,
Daniel didn’t know how much good an
y
of it was going to do.

Time might heal some wounds, but from dealing with his mom moving out, he knew that sometimes it just makes the pain fester even more, like an infected wound in
yo
ur heart that refuses to heal.

Their English teacher, Miss Fl
yn
n, glanced at the wall clock and then shuffled through the m
yr
iad of papers spread across her desk. She was single, mid-twenties, and wore skirts that none of the other teachers at the school would have ever been able to get awa
y
with.

She wasn’t into the classics, but had an unsettling interest in stories about death, gothic horror, and the macabre. Although the students thought it was a little weird, admittedl
y,
it did keep class interesting.

On the first da
y
of the school
ye
ar she’d told them that if the
y
called their coaches “Coach,” the
y
should call her “Teach,” which the
y’
d done ever since.

K
yl
e leaned across the aisle and said to Daniel, “How much
yo
u wanna bet she assigns us a stor
y
about overcoming grief? Something like that?”

“I’m with
yo
u there.”

For a moment he glanced at Nicole as she got out her books, then he averted his gaze before she could notice he’d been watching her.

The rest of the kids took their seats, the bell rang, and Miss Fl
yn
n stood up to begin class.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

“Toda
y
we’re going to take a look at a stor
y
from Richard Brautigan, a beatnik poet and essa
yi
st from the 1960s.”

Oka
y,
that was out of nowhere. A hippie poet from fift
y ye
ars ag
o—n
ot exactl
y
Teach’s t
yp
ical fare.

She took a seat on her desk, crossing her legs in a manner that might well have been calculated to keep the attention of the gu
ys
in the class focused intentl
y
on the front of the room.

“The stor
y
is called ‘Gre
yh
ound Traged
y.
’ It’s found in his book
Revenge of the Lawn
. Here’s how it begins: ‘She wanted her life to be a movie magazine traged
y
like the death of a
yo
ung star with long lines of people weeping and a corpse more beautiful than a great painting, but she was never able to leave the small Oregon town that she was born and raised in and go to Holl
yw
ood and die.

 ”

Long lines of people weeping at a funeral.

A corpse of a
yo
ung woman.

That sounded uncomfortabl
y
familiar.

Suddenl
y,
it didn’t seem so strange that Miss Fl
yn
n had chosen this stor
y
for toda
y’
s class.

She paused as if to let the image of the funeral sink in, then continued reading about the
yo
ung woman who wanted to become a Holl
yw
ood starlet. In her hometown she was on a path toward a safe, generic marriage she didn’t want to a car salesman. At the climax, there was this reall
y
sad scene where she was at a bus station tr
yi
ng to get up the nerve to follow her dream, but couldn’t do it and ended up leaving without the ticket.

Miss Fl
yn
n read:

‘She cried all the wa
y
home through the warm, gentle Oregon night, wanting to die ever
y
time her feet touched the ground.” In the end, the woman married that Ford salesman and tried to forget about her dream,

‘but now,

” Miss Fl
yn
n finished,

‘thirt
y-
one
ye
ars later, she still blushes when she passes the bus station.

 ”

No one spoke. Hardl
y
an
yo
ne moved.

She still blushes when she passes the bus station.

Thirt
y-
one
ye
ars later.

“Dreams and death come to us all,” Miss Fl
yn
n told them quietl
y.
“What we do with the first before we experience the second makes all the difference. For Frida
y’
s class
yo
u’re all going to write two blog entrie
s—
y
o
u don’t need to post them online or an
yt
hing like tha
t—b
ut I want
yo
u to write about what
yo
u’d like to accomplish before
yo
u die so that
yo
u won’t have to blush when
yo
u pass the unopened portal to
yo
ur dreams three decades from now.”

Death and dreams.

And final regrets.

For a moment, Daniel wondered what Emil
y
had dreamt of.

Ma
yb
e being accepted for who she was.

Ma
yb
e—

One of the girls in the front row flagged her hand in the air. “Teach, are we seriousl
y
gonna be graded on our dreams?”

“I’m not going to grade this assignment.”

A few sighs of relief throughout the room. Someone behind Daniel whispered, “Then wh
y
do we even have to do it?”

“What was that, Mr. Talbot?”

He cleared his throat. “I was just wondering wh
y
we need to do it if we’re not gonna get graded on it.”

“I’ll give
yo
u a completion grade if I feel
yo
u’ve put forth an adequate effort. And as far as length, I’ll leave that up to
yo
u. I’d rather
yo
u express
yo
urself succinctl
y
than write something meandering and unfocused just to meet a certain word count. This unit is on creative writing, so keep that in mind. Oh, and I will be asking
yo
u to share one of
yo
ur blog entries with the class on Frida
y.

Oh, perfect.

Daniel didn’t mind a thousand people watching him when he was on a football field or basketball court, but for some reason reading his work in front of his class alwa
ys
made him feel like he wanted to climb into a hole.

Nicole glanced at him knowingl
y,
as if she could read his mind and knew how apprehensive the assignment made him.

Miss Fl
yn
n handed out a photocop
y
of another stor
y.
“Now, let’s take a look at ‘The World War I Los Angeles Airplane,’ the last stor
y
in Mr. Brautigan’s book.”

As it turned out, that one was about death too, or about life, depending on how
yo
u looked at the ending.

The rest of the morning went prett
y
much like normal. For the most part ever
yo
ne left the topic of Emil
y
alone, but there were occasional hushed conversations about it, a few tears here and there. Rumors swirled around about how at Wind
y
Point there’d been other deaths in the past, that it might be haunted or something, that if
yo
u got too close to the edge, someon
e—o
r somethin
g—w
ould pull
yo
u over to
yo
ur death.

Wind
y
Point was the highest bluff in the area. Not a mountain b
y
an
y
means, but it did rise nearl
y
a hundred feet above Lake Algonquin.

Daniel reassured himself that those were onl
y
the kinds of stories kids tell to tr
y
to make sense of something as senseless as all this.

It was just an accident that happened to Emil
y.

That’s all it was.

Ma
yb
e. But it was no accident what happened to
yo
ur arm.

After lunch, he and K
yl
e were on their wa
y
to class when the
y
saw a cluster of students forming near the doors to the g
ym
. From the looks of it, a tall husk
y
bo
y
stood in the center of the group.

Daniel recognized him.

T
y
Bell didn’t laugh much, and when he did, he didn’t laugh at the things other people thought were funn
y.
It was more this distant, detached kind of laughter that seemed to drain humor out of the moment rather than add an
yt
hing positive to i
t—a
lmost like he was laughing simpl
y
because life had run out of humor and nothing was reall
y
funn
y
an
ym
ore.

He was a senior, but had started late and been held back one
ye
ar, so now he was a hardened, tough nineteen-
ye
ar-old. He’d had a few run-ins with Daniel before, and also with Daniel’s dad.

According to what people said, T
y
carried a switchblade to school, and ever
yo
ne prett
y
much steered clear of him and his three friend
s—i
f
yo
u could call them “friends.” The
y
were the three gu
ys
he made carr
y
his books for him, open the doors for him, bu
y
his cigarettes for him.

Daniel had alwa
ys
gotten the sense that the
y
hung out with him because it made them feel more dangerous than the
y
would’ve ever felt on their ow
n—o
r ma
yb
e the
y
somehow felt safer. He didn’t know them well enough to be sure.

The
y
weren’t a threat b
y
themselves, but T
y
was a time bomb. Even the teachers seemed uneas
y
around him, as if the
y
knew he was the kind of kid who might lose it at an
y
time and show up the next da
y
with a shotgun, read
y
to start picking people off, laughing that wild laugh.

A circle of students had gathered around him, and in mob mentalit
y,
some of them were egging him on. A couple of girls were telling him and his friends to “let the kid go,” but no one was taking an
y
steps to stop them. Four against one were bad odds, especiall
y
when one of them was T
y
Bell, and if he was in the middle of this pack, it could onl
y
mean trouble.

Daniel shouldered his wa
y
through the crowd.

B
y
the time he made it to the center, he could see that T
y
and his buddies had just shoved someone into a hall locker. One of the bo
ys
was sticking a pencil through the padlock hole to keep him inside.

Daniel could hear the trapped bo
y
tr
yi
ng to jimm
y
the lock open, but with the pencil in there, that wasn’t going to happen.

T
y
grinned and shook a can of soda to spra
y
through the ventilation holes at the top of the locker.

“Put it down, T
y.

He gazed at Daniel flatl
y
with his slate gra
y
e
ye
s. “Oh, look, it’s Johnn
y
Football Hero, here to save the da
y.
” His buddies seemed to think that was funn
y.

“You’re not going to spra
y
that into the locker.”

He gave it another shake and held it closer to the vents. “What? Are
yo
u gonna stop me?”

“Yes.”

A pause as T
y
considered that. His friends closed in around him but Daniel just e
ye
d T
y
cooll
y.
He felt K
yl
e slide in beside him.

T
y
sneered. “And here comes our local rock star. I heard all about
yo
u and Emil
y.

“Nice,” K
yl
e said. “Two complete sentences in a row. I’m proud of
yo
u. The remedial classes must be pa
yi
ng off.”

T
y
set his jaw.

Daniel said to him, “Back awa
y
from the locker.”

Oka
y,
what was with the comment about K
yl
e and Emil
y?
What on earth did T
y
mean, he’d heard about them?

T
y
shook the can again, then suddenl
y
aimed it at Daniel and flicked back the pull tab. The soda exploded out and spra
ye
d across Daniel’s shirt, face, and neck.

Smiling, T
y
turned toward the crowd of students as if he were looking for affirmation, but the onl
y
people snickering were his three buddies. The crowd might’ve laughed, at least a little, if he had done it to someone else, but the
y
didn’t laugh at all when he messed with their all-conference quarterback.

Daniel brushed gentl
y
at his shirt to rub the drops of soda off. “I told
yo
u that
yo
u weren’t going to spra
y
that into the locker.”

T
y’
s gaze hardened once again. “You get into a fight,
yo
u can’t pla
y
on Frida
y
night, am I right? Miss the big homecoming game? How’d
yo
u like that, Dann
y
bo
y?

Daniel hadn’t been in a fight since middle school. That summer he and his famil
y
had gone to the East Coast, and he’d been down b
y
the ocean one night when three bo
ys
cornered him.

He’d warned them to leave him alone, but the
y’
d rushed him. He came awa
y
from that fight with a black e
ye
and two bruised and bloodied knuckles. The other bo
ys
hadn’t fared quite so well.

But toda
y
T
y
was right about him missing Frida
y
night’s game if he got into a fight, and that was not something he was about to do unless he absolutel
y
had to.

However, T
y
had made up his mind and took a swing at Daniel, who ducked and evaded the punch. T
y
lurched forward, off balance, and Daniel had a clear shot at an uppercut to his abdomen, but he held back. Instead, he grabbed T
y’
s arm and twisted it around behind him to hold him secure. When T
y
tried to pull awa
y,
he put more pressure on his wrist to stop him.

BOOK: Blur (Blur Trilogy)
8.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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