Turtle Boy: Part Two

I continue listening to the hypnotic rhythm of the words:
Ba-ba-dum, b’dada-bum, b’dada-bum, b’dada-bum.
Ba-ba-dum, b’dada-bum, b’dada-bum, b’dada-bum.

I try it, but it makes me gag again. My stomach convulses and my head is spinning and tears are flowing out of my eyes and the orthodontist starts counting down.

How am I supposed to go to school tomorrow in this condition? I start wondering if I could leverage this to stay home.

I shake my head vigorously, feeling the motion in my teeth and gums.

I’m buffeted from side to side, and it feels like I’m falling down the side of a mountain—I hit the floor hard and close my eyes and cover the back of my head with my hands.

They are gnarled and pitted like my pencils when I chew on them, and one of the sticks is shorter because the tip split off.

I ignore him and return my attention to my conundrum.

I’ve grabbed the remnants of my lunch in both hands, and I pick up speed as I push through the cafeteria double doors, finally peeling down the hallway.

He laughs and looks at the sticks even closer, and I realize he hasn’t been inspecting the sticks or the writing: he’s admiring the sticks. He looks kind of ecstatic.

RJ swings his feet off the bed, and Roxanne stands nearby, holding his IV stand in place as he grips the chrome with one hand and rises to his feet. He takes a few tentative steps, then nods to her, and we all head out into the hallway.

"You’re being naive, Mike,” Ms. Kuper says. “The school wouldn’t see one cent from that. The county would use the money to buy new parking meters.”

The back of his shirt is snagged on a section of the bleacher frame.

For a while, I stopped thinking of this as a hospital. It’s just where RJ lives. But with all this sterile equipment and with RJ asleep in front of me, I know exactly where I am.

I break into the rock rhythm I’ve been working on, something I copied from one of the bands he made me listen to. It comes out naturally, and I embellish with b’dips and b’daps here and there.

She pulls a chair next to her trademark upholstered stool and offers me my choice of seats.

As we approach the front gate of the fair, the smell of fried food wafts toward us.

“See! Novice rider! I’ve never been on a coaster, but I designed a track with a four-point-nine-star rating on the ACE website, and it’s been ridden about maybe five hundred times!”

Finally, we’re close enough to the ride that we’re being corralled like cows through a series of ropes.

It’s a painted cutout of a pirate, and it’s holding a cutlass, on which is written in red letters: Ye must be this tall to ride, matey.
Mikey runs and stands under the cutlass—there’s at least a handsbreadth gap between the top of his head and the sword.

I asked him to send me the video he made on the roller coaster, and once I told him who it was for and why, he was adamant: showing a movie of a roller coaster on a laptop won’t cut it.

I can hear tinny voices chattering through RJ’s headphones.

He’s completely transfixed, in the car, riding the roller coaster.

After school, I’m heading for the bus when Max comes running after me, his arms gyrating like propellers.

“So, we could just...take the bus?” he asks.
A month ago, that would have seemed like an impossible ordeal.

Serve after serve either hits the floor or, when a player digs for it, careens crazily out of bounds.

Shirah is in the front row; she and the tall girl face off, but Shirah is an impenetrable wall.

“You’re gushing blood. I think you need a tourniquet.”

I feel a surge of inexplicable energy inside me.

“Why did you bring him?” I can hear the contempt in her voice.

The final flowers of autumn, waving like stubborn flags, and the droning chirrup of crickets in the thicket are signs of life all around.

“Will!” she shouts, one hand raised, as if to block a punch, eyes squinted and brows furrowed.

I move around my room, knocking the mallet against random objects: boxes full of books and a Tupperware bin full of terrarium parts. They sound dead—no resonance, no vibration, no thump.

I look around for somewhere to dump the contents. There’s an old wicker laundry hamper.

I place the drum pedal in front of the suitcase, propping it in place with a plastic box that once contained frozen feed grubs for my turtles.

I begin wearing the mask so I can get accustomed to playing without glasses.

I cry for just a second, scared and choking on my anger, my loathing.

“I told you, no parents.” I don’t specify that this is my own rule. I can’t have her up there in the bleachers, watching me. It’s too much. Too much Mom. She takes a breath, like she’s deciding to play along with my little fabrication.

About six rows up, Shirah’s volleyball friends wave to her, coaxing her to join them.

Tracey and Tina go onstage, unroll a small carpet, and stand together in robes and turbans. They squeak through a song. Everyone applauds except me. “Looks like cultural appropriation to me,” says Shirah, but I can’t reply.

Now I’m riding the elevator alone, and with every successive floor, and as I walk the hall to RJ’s room, dread descends farther on me.