Read Online A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip by Kevin Brockmeier - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kevin Brockmeier
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Then he propels himself forward again. The bag is like a sack of cement, so heavy that its strap creaks to the rhythm of his footsteps. He sees older kids, and lots of them, strolling along with only a single book in their hands. They veer casually off toward their lockers as if school is just some temporary mix-up they’ve decided to tolerate for a while. They must exist in a totally different sort of time. Kevin wonders if they notice him at all, the skinny seventh-grader in the striped shirt slicing past them outside the lunchroom, counting his books to make sure he hasn’t forgotten any.
Today, in English, they finish talking about subjects and begin talking about verbs. There are two kinds, Miss Vincent says,
linking
and
action
, and she gives them a handout with instructions to underline each verb and label it with either an
L
or an
A
. The worksheets are fresh from the ditto machine, and the paper bites at the air with its chemicals, each purple letter shedding a narrow outline of ink. Kevin ticks through the sentences one by one, then hands the assignment in alongwith the story he wrote. He is nervous—he can’t help it. He feels the way he used to feel passing love notes to girls in elementary school.
Do you like me?
the notes always read.
Check yes or no
. But he is older now and his question is older, too, not
Do you like me?
but
Shouldn’t someone?
Check yes
.
Check yes
.
Check yes
.
He pretends to study for science. Secretly, though, he watches Miss Vincent’s expression as she flips through the pages of the story, the way her lips tighten at one corner but not the other, a smile with a limp to it.
What does it mean?
After the bell, she summons him to her desk and asks, “Is this for me to keep?”
“Well, no. But I can copy it out for you. Do you like it?”
“Kevin, it’s great. So fun, and inventive, and cunning. It’s like I’m watching a play, with actors and everything. I’m serious. You could stage this, and it would get a standing ovation.”
“What about the Diet Coke part? Did you like that?”
“That part especially.”
The usual slowpokes are jamming the stairs. It is against the rules to slide down the banister.
And all those love notes, he thinks. Dozens of them, one after another, daring somebody to say yes. In the fifth grade, in a fever of recklessness, he wrote to a different girl every few weeks, folding each letter into its own small packet, not one of those masterly arrangements with the pouches and the crisscrossing corners but the basic clumsy square that boys alwaysmade, delivering it to the cabinet where the kids filed their school supplies.
Do you like me? Do you?
Now and then he wanted a day where the something that happened was him. He remembers the exhilaration he felt waiting for the gossip to spread. In February, just before Valentine’s Day, when everyone was always going with everyone else, he decided to make a play for Tara Watson. He biked with Bateman to the Balloonacy in Colony West and used his Christmas money to buy the store’s largest balloon, a two-and-a-half-foot-wide Mylar heart, arranging to have it delivered to her at school. But the secret was too momentous for Bateman to keep. On Valentine’s Day, by the time the knock came at the door midway through the afternoon, the whole class knew what to expect. They leaned forward to watch Miss Judy, the school secretary, steering the balloon sideways with her palm, guiding it awkwardly through the door like a zookeeper trying to coax an elephant into a cage, and a big thundering laugh ripped through the seats. Tara hid behind her lank blond hair, then fled the room crying. For the rest of the day, the valentine swayed in the currents above her desk, turning slowly on its crimped pink ribbon to display one side and then the other: the bright red face, the swollen silver mirror. Miss Taylor told Kevin that he was incorrigible. She had him look the word up in the dictionary.
Nearly two years have
Today, in English, they finish talking about subjects and begin talking about verbs. There are two kinds, Miss Vincent says,
linking
and
action
, and she gives them a handout with instructions to underline each verb and label it with either an
L
or an
A
. The worksheets are fresh from the ditto machine, and the paper bites at the air with its chemicals, each purple letter shedding a narrow outline of ink. Kevin ticks through the sentences one by one, then hands the assignment in alongwith the story he wrote. He is nervous—he can’t help it. He feels the way he used to feel passing love notes to girls in elementary school.
Do you like me?
the notes always read.
Check yes or no
. But he is older now and his question is older, too, not
Do you like me?
but
Shouldn’t someone?
Check yes
.
Check yes
.
Check yes
.
He pretends to study for science. Secretly, though, he watches Miss Vincent’s expression as she flips through the pages of the story, the way her lips tighten at one corner but not the other, a smile with a limp to it.
What does it mean?
After the bell, she summons him to her desk and asks, “Is this for me to keep?”
“Well, no. But I can copy it out for you. Do you like it?”
“Kevin, it’s great. So fun, and inventive, and cunning. It’s like I’m watching a play, with actors and everything. I’m serious. You could stage this, and it would get a standing ovation.”
“What about the Diet Coke part? Did you like that?”
“That part especially.”
The usual slowpokes are jamming the stairs. It is against the rules to slide down the banister.
And all those love notes, he thinks. Dozens of them, one after another, daring somebody to say yes. In the fifth grade, in a fever of recklessness, he wrote to a different girl every few weeks, folding each letter into its own small packet, not one of those masterly arrangements with the pouches and the crisscrossing corners but the basic clumsy square that boys alwaysmade, delivering it to the cabinet where the kids filed their school supplies.
Do you like me? Do you?
Now and then he wanted a day where the something that happened was him. He remembers the exhilaration he felt waiting for the gossip to spread. In February, just before Valentine’s Day, when everyone was always going with everyone else, he decided to make a play for Tara Watson. He biked with Bateman to the Balloonacy in Colony West and used his Christmas money to buy the store’s largest balloon, a two-and-a-half-foot-wide Mylar heart, arranging to have it delivered to her at school. But the secret was too momentous for Bateman to keep. On Valentine’s Day, by the time the knock came at the door midway through the afternoon, the whole class knew what to expect. They leaned forward to watch Miss Judy, the school secretary, steering the balloon sideways with her palm, guiding it awkwardly through the door like a zookeeper trying to coax an elephant into a cage, and a big thundering laugh ripped through the seats. Tara hid behind her lank blond hair, then fled the room crying. For the rest of the day, the valentine swayed in the currents above her desk, turning slowly on its crimped pink ribbon to display one side and then the other: the bright red face, the swollen silver mirror. Miss Taylor told Kevin that he was incorrigible. She had him look the word up in the dictionary.
Nearly two years have
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