Us Kids Know

Not listening to pops of frying grease or a country tune, breathing air cloudy with smoke, from cooking and cigarettes, two boys sit across from each other in a booth of a squalid diner, one biting his nails and one picking at his plate. They had already eaten.

“So, Thomas. Are you ready?”

“Oh yeah, man. This is gonna be so epic. Like, ah, I can’t even say, man. I’m just pumped.” Thomas uses two fingers to put a hole in a couple slices of uneaten toast. To Simon’s questioning eyes he says, “If you don’t, they’ll just serve it to the next guy,” then catches Chris coming back from the bathroom.

Chris sat on the same side of the booth as Simon, who says after a few seconds, after a few thoughts, “Let’s get outta here.”

He told their waitress to put it all on one check. Each pulled his wallet, placed a tip, and agreed he was ready to go. They left their booth and walked to separate cars. No exchange of goodbyes, just smiles and shining eyes. The waitress was pleased when she found there was a tip of, “at least two hundred percent, Martha.” That’s what she said, right in front of Martha’s customers, who felt embarrassed or doomed because their fifteen or twenty percent could never compare to what those three kids gave.

The three boys left the restaurant like they were following each other, Chris the Conductor, Thomas the Caboose. Simon was in the middle. Like cargo or passengers. This whole thing was his idea. They drove up the ramp to the interstate, heading south, the sun on their left. No other cars broke the procession.

The headliner of Simon’s car was waving in the wind, saggy with bubbles from driving with the windows down. He wanted a motorcycle, but his parents thought them unsafe. “I just don’t want to be inside when I’m driving. I mean, I’m inside all day, and then when I go from indoor place to indoor place, I have to be inside a car?” They wouldn’t listen.

Chris saw the Z. Glass Bridge, he put his left blinker on. He moved over one lane, and Simon moved two. The road was theirs. They reached the span, made sure their doors were lined up, and began to brake slowly. Simon and Thomas both glided a little out of their lanes to block the emergency parts of the roadway.

No cars go.

Chris, Simon, and Thomas wait, their engines off.

It’s 8:30 AM. The people, the real ones behind their windshields who cannot see what is causing the stoppage, dial numbers of the traffic hotline into cell phones or their radio stations into a channel that may give them information. Vehicles make their normal sounds, honking in irritation. The ones who see the inexplicable pause in traffic do not discern it, or stay seated. These boys could be dangerous.

Chris, sweating out his nerves; Thomas, doubting his friend; Simon, nearing disillusion.

A motorist’s report reached the Highway Patrol in five minutes, where a dispatcher did his work, sending the closest three units to the bridge.

The boys sit, mentally rehearsing what they wanted to say, what Simon wanted them to say.

An officer meanders up to Simon’s stopped car. Thomas found his gait to be unthreatening in its pretense. Unbridled bravado. “’Scuse me, son. I don’t know what—” At the sight, the sound of the man, Simon withdraws: Disbelief. You are why I’m here, this is why we’re here. “…Traffic, son, is no game.” The man uses the top of the car to support himself and leans over the boy. “You hear me?”

Simon looks at himself in the man’s glasses, at the man’s mustache, and out his passenger window, to his friends. Is this real? His surprise has less to do with the hovering lawman anymore than with the reaction of the line of traffic stretching down his rearview mirror.

“I’m…sorry, sir. We didn’t mean to.”

“Just move on and don’t do anything like ‘is again. The roadway ain’t a playground.”

“Yes, sir.”

Simon finds Chris and Thomas again, starts his car, puts it into drive, checks his mirrors, and presses the gas. He wants an exit; he wants something else. The plan, his plan, produced little more than procedure. He feels failure, thinking about what he told the officer, how he crumbled. But we did mean to; we’d meant to for a week. People were going to see. We were going to make them. Simon drives home, followed by his confused friends.

#

Simon locks his legs in strength, sliding one foot back further than the other for balance. He concentrates. Unassuming, unobtrusive in his yellow shirt and bedroom slippers, he’s more of a loner than an outcast, if one must choose between the two. In the morning, his locker in the hall closest to the student lot opens to the busiest space in school. If he were to stand there, with no base, he would be pushed and shoved around by louder, bigger kids—maybe end up with another bruise on his arm. Simon grabs his book, holds it, but doesn’t go anywhere for a moment. He waits, knowing he need only drop into the moving mass, stride with it for about ten feet to be where he needs for first period: English with Mr. Bennett.

Mr. Bennett is still considered new to the school; only a few months ago, he filled the space left by Mrs. Rourke, who had gotten sick around Christmas break. No one knew what was wrong with Mrs. Rourke precisely. And no one knew Mr. Bennett precisely. The students knew he wore his hair tied up behind his head, a sports jacket, and wedding ring, though never mentioning his family. They mostly liked him, called him “the best,” some “awesome.”

The warning bell rings. Five minutes left before class starts.

A kid, who Simon doesn’t know very well despite being in class with him all year, walks up and starts telling Simon about his three day weekend, “My friends came up from Everglenn—” Simon is looking at the boy but does not listen, his face twisted in disbelief (mistook by the kid for interest): he does not understand what pushed the kid to come up to him, somehow assured that Simon wanted to know of his weekend, of his friends—how egotistical—then self-awareness bites, how am I any better? Judging, not listening, fighting, hating, angered. Egotistical. Simon is stuck; the kid doesn’t see it.“…And it was just so sick, man. You got to go to the zoo and—”

The bell rings; students sit.

Mr. Bennett addresses his students from his podium after waiting for the collective body to settle: “Good morning, class. I know you only have a week and a half left until you are through here.” He waits for the stir to settle. “But I have one last assignment for you. Don’t worry. It will be an easy one and in the same vein as the last few. You know the drill. You get a quote; I get an essay.” He rocks the podium, his fingers tapping on its sides. “After the papers on leadership and individuality and all that other important stuff, I feel this is a good direction in which to move. Practical application. The quote is by Mahatma Gandhi, a man that I hope you may consider doing some research on before starting. God knows they don’t teach you anything that didn’t happen in America.” He sighed. “But I digress. Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you wish to see in this world.’ And your essays are due next Tuesday.” No one groaned.

Ideas blow about Simon’s thoughts through every class, even after them.

Simon is at the lake with two friends, where they go everyday, disconnected from the extracurricular activities the school offers; at school, none of the boys are too friendly, none too unfriendly. Talking with their fishing poles in their laps or in PVC piping speared into the dirt, waiting for the little red-and-white ball to submerge itself, to be pulled under by the force of an unseen fish, the boys lived.

Through treetop alleys across the lake, the sun fights to reach them in their chairs on the water’s edge. The water mirrors the world, and Simon contemplates a book he’d read upon an in-class mention by Mr. Bennett, about an Indian who found the secret, god, the meaning of life, in water. Simon supposes that he is discovering something with his own eyes: piercing light, moving people, waving flora, calm water. What about the life in the water, the spring that feeds it, the fish we’ll catch? Here above we move and move, for the sake of moving, for the sake of ourselves. That kid, his name? My world enveloped by school, by schoolmates, I’ve wasted time, removed myself from my situation. We all do. We all move, according to our own desire. Fulfill a desire, find a new one. We all move. From place to place, concerned more with the places than the moving. Wasted time. It can change, be fixed. Bennett. He’s been moving me this way. Ghandi. He said it could happen. This does happen.

Simon shared his thoughts, his words a waving hand on smoke.

#

After pulling into his driveway, Simon tells the other two what the policeman said, their confusion unmitigated, and that he wanted to go fishing with them all day Wednesday, the first day of summer, but needed to write a paper for Mr. Bennett, for Mr. Gandhi.

Music did not help like normal; it seemed like all the singers understood something that he hadn’t. He felt it though. Their songs were different now, like they hadn’t been coming but from one speaker. He swam around in his bed—the pillows people, his body love. Disenchantment. He gave it up, thinking he had tried that.

Simon pulled out a piece of notebook paper and hand-wrote his name, date, class and teacher’s name. He titled it Ghandi. Then: “You can’t change a thing.”