Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread Read online

  He says he doesn’t remember anything. Boris Declan grins this sloppy, dopey smile. He taps a dirty fingertip to the burn mark on one side of his face. He points this same butt-stained finger to make me look across the way. On the wall where he’s pointing is this guidance counselor poster that shows white birds flapping their wings against a blue sky. Under that are the words “Actual Happiness Only Happens by Accident” printed in dreamy writing. The school hung that poster to hide the shadow of where another defibrillator used to hang.

  It’s clear that wherever Boris Declan ends up in life it’s going to be the right place. He’s already living in Brain Trauma Nirvana. The school district was right about copycats.

  No offense to Jesus, but the meek won’t inherit the earth. To judge from reality TV the loudmouths will get their hands on everything. And I say, Let Them. The Kardashians and the Baldwins are like some invasive species. Like kudzu or zebra mussels. Let them battle over the control of the crappy real world.

  For a long time I listened to my uncle and didn’t jump. Anymore, I don’t know. The newspaper warns us about terrorist anthrax bombs and virulent new strains of meningitis, and the only comfort newspapers can offer is a coupon for twenty cents off on underarm deodorant.

  To have no worries, no regrets, it’s pretty appealing. So many of the cool kids at my school have elected to self-fry that, anymore, only the losers are left. The losers and the naturally occurring pinheads. The situation is so dire that I’m a shoo-in to be valedictorian. That’s how come my uncle Henry is shipping me off. He thinks that by relocating me to Twin Falls he can postpone the inevitable.

  So we’re sitting at the airport, waiting by the gate for our flight to board, and I ask to go to the bathroom. In the men’s room I pretend to wash my hands so I can look in the mirror. My uncle asked me, one time, why I looked in mirrors so much, and I told him it wasn’t vanity so much as it was nostalgia. Every mirror shows me what little is left of my parents.

  I’m practicing my mom’s smile. People don’t practice their smiles nearly enough so when they most need to look happy they’re not fooling anyone. I’m rehearsing my smile when—there it is: my ticket to a gloriously happy future working in fast food. That’s opposed to a miserable life as a world-famous architect or heart surgeon.

  Hovering over my shoulder and a smidgen behind me, it’s reflected in the mirror. Like the bubble containing my thoughts in a comic strip panel, there’s a cardiac defibrillator. It’s mounted on the wall in back of me, shut inside a metal case with a glass door you could open to set off alarm bells and a red strobe light. A sign above the box says “AED” and shows a lightning bolt striking a Valentine’s heart. The metal case is like the hands-off showcase holding some crown jewels in a Hollywood heist movie.

  Opening the case, automatically I set off the alarm and flashing red light. Quick, before any heroes come running, I dash into a handicapped stall with the defibrillator. Sitting on the toilet, I pry it open. The instructions are printed on the lid in English, Spanish, French, and comic book pictures. Making it foolproof, more or less. If I wait too long I won’t have this option. Defibrillators will be under lock and key, soon, and once defibrillators are illegal only paramedics will have defibrillators.

  In my grasp, here’s my permanent childhood. My very own Bliss Machine.

  My hands are smarter than the rest of me. My fingers know to just peel the electrodes and paste them to my temples. My ears know to listen for the loud beep that means the thing is fully charged.

  My thumbs know what’s best. They hover over the big red button. Like this is a video game. Like the button the president gets to press to trigger the launch of nuclear war. One push and the world as I know it comes to an end. A new reality begins.

  To be or not to be. God’s greatest gift to animals is they don’t get a choice.

  Every time I open the newspaper I want to throw up. In another ten seconds I won’t know how to read. Better yet, I won’t have to. I won’t know about global climate change. I won’t know about cancer or genocide or SARS or environmental degradation or religious conflict.

  The public address system is paging my name. I won’t even know my name.

  Before I can blast off, I picture my uncle Henry at the gate, holding his boarding pass. He deserves better than this. He needs to know this is not his fault.

  With the electrodes stuck to my forehead, I carry the defibrillator out of the bathroom and walk down the concourse toward the gate. The coiling electric wires trail down the sides of my face like thin, white pigtails. My hands carry the battery pack in front of me like a suicide bomber who’s only going to blow up all my IQ points.

  When they catch sight of me, businesspeople abandon their roller bags. People on family vacations, they flap their arms, wide, and herd their little kids in the other direction. Some guy thinks he’s a hero. He shouts, “Everything is going to be all right.” He tells me, “You have everything to live for.”

  We both know he’s a liar.

  My face is sweating so hard the electrodes might slip off. Here’s my last chance to say everything that’s on my mind so with everyone watching I’ll confess: I don’t know what’s a happy ending. And I don’t know how to fix anything. Doors open in the concourse and Homeland Security soldiers storm out, and I feel like one of those Buddha monks in Tibet or wherever who splash on gasoline before they check to make sure their cigarette lighter actually works. How embarrassing that would be, to be soaking in gasoline and have to bum a match off some stranger, especially since so few people smoke anymore. Me, in the middle of the airport concourse, I’m dripping with sweat instead of gasoline, but this is how out of control my thoughts are spinning.

  From out of nowhere my uncle grabs my arm, and he says, “If you hurt yourself, Trevor, you hurt me.”

  He’s gripping my arm, and I’m gripping the red button. I tell him this isn’t so tragic. I say, “I’ll keep loving you, Uncle Henry…I just won’t know who you are.”

  Inside my head, my last thoughts are prayers. I’m praying that this battery is fully charged. There’s got to be enough voltage to erase the fact that I’ve just said the word “love” in front of several hundred strangers. Even worse, I’ve said it to my own uncle. I’ll never be able to live that down.

  Most people, instead of saving me, they pull out their telephones and start shooting video. Everyone’s jockeying for the best full-on angle. It reminds me of something. It reminds me of birthday parties and Christmas. A thousand memories crash over me for the last time, and that’s something else I hadn’t anticipated. I don’t mind losing my education. I don’t mind forgetting my name. But I will miss the little bit I can remember about my parents.

  My mother’s eyes and my father’s nose and forehead, they’re dead except for in my face. And the idea pains me to know that I won’t recognize them anymore. Once I punch out, I’ll think my reflection is nothing except me.

  My uncle Henry repeats, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me, too.”

  I say, “I’ll still be your nephew, but I just won’t know it.”

  For no reason, some lady steps up and grabs my uncle Henry’s other arm. This new person, she says, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me, as well…” Somebody else grabs that lady, and somebody grabs the last somebody, saying, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.” Strangers reach out and grab hold of strangers in chains and branches, until we’re all connected together. Like we’re molecules crystallizing in solution in Organic Chem. Everyone’s holding on to someone, and everyone’s holding on to everyone, and their voices repeat the same sentence: “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me…if you hurt yourself, you hurt me…”

  These words form a slow wave. Like a slow-motion echo, they move away from me, going up and down the concourse in both directions. Each person steps up to grab a person who’s grabbing a person who’s grabbing a person who’s grabbing my uncle who’s grabbing me. This really happens. It sounds trite, but only because words make everythin
g true sound trite. Because words always screw up whatever you’re trying to say.

  Voices from other people in other places, total strangers say by telephone, watching by video cams, their long-distance voices say, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me…” And some kid steps out from behind the cash register at Der Wiener Schnitzel, all the way down at the food court, he grabs hold of somebody and shouts, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.” And the kids making Taco Bell and the kids frothing milk at the Starbucks, they stop, and they all hold hands with someone connected to me across this vast crowd, and they say it, too. And just when I think it’s got to end and everyone’s got to let go and fly away, because everything’s stopped and people are holding hands even going through the metal detectors they’re holding hands, even then the talking news anchor on CNN, on the televisions mounted up high by the ceiling, the announcer puts a finger to his ear, like to hear better, and even he says, “Breaking News.” He looks confused, obviously reading something off cue cards, and he says, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.” And overlapping his voice are the voices of political pundits on Fox News and color commentators on ESPN, and they’re all saying it.

  The televisions show people outside in parking lots and in tow-away zones, all holding hands. Bonds forming. Everyone’s uploading video of everyone, people standing miles away but still connected back to me.

  And crackling with static, voices come over the walkie-talkies of the Homeland Security guards, saying, “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me—do you copy?”

  By that point there’s not a big enough defibrillator in the universe to scramble all our brains. And, yeah, eventually we’ll all have to let go, but for another moment everyone’s holding tight, trying to make this connection last forever. And if this impossible thing can happen then who knows what else is possible? And a girl at Burger King shouts, “I’m scared, too.” And a boy at Jack in the Box shouts, “I am scared all the time.” And everyone else is nodding, Me Too.

  To top things off, a huge voice announces, “Attention!” From overhead it says, “May I have your attention, please?” It’s a lady. It’s the lady voice who pages people and tells them to pick up the white paging telephone. With everyone listening, the entire airport is reduced to silence.

  “Whoever you are, you need to know…,” says the lady voice of the white paging telephone. Everyone listens because everything thinks she’s only talking to them. From a thousand speakers she begins to sing. With that voice, she’s singing the way a bird sings. Not like a parrot or an Edgar Allan Poe bird that speaks English. The sound is trills and scales the way a canary sings, notes too impossible for a mouth to conjugate into nouns and verbs. We can enjoy it without understanding it. And we can love it without knowing what it means. Connected by telephone and television, it’s synchronizing everyone, worldwide. That voice so perfect, it’s just singing down on us.

  Best of all…her voice fills everywhere, leaving no room for being scared. Her song makes all our ears into one ear.

  This isn’t exactly the end. On every TV is me, sweating so hard an electrode slowly slides down one side of my face.

  This certainly isn’t the happy ending I had in mind, but compared to where this story began—with Griffin Wilson in the nurse’s office putting his wallet between his teeth like a gun—well, maybe this is not such a bad place to start.

  LOSER

  The show still looks exactly like when you were sick with a really high fever and you stayed home to watch TV all day. It’s not Let’s Make a Deal. It’s not Wheel of Fortune. It’s not Monty Hall, or the show with Pat Sajak. It’s that other show where the big, loud voice calls your name in the audience, says to “Come on down, you’re the next contestant,” and if you guess the cost of Rice-A-Roni then you fly round-trip to live for a week in Paris.

  It’s that show. The prize is never anything useful, like okay clothes or music or beer. The prize is always some vacuum cleaner or a washing machine, something you might maybe get excited to win if you were, like, somebody’s wife.

  It’s Rush Week, and the tradition is everybody pledging Zeta Delt all take this big chartered school bus and need to go to some TV studio and watch them tape this game show. Rules say, all the Zeta Delts wear the same red T-shirt with printed on it the Greek Zeta Delta Omega deals, silk-screened in black. First, you need to take a little stamp of Hello Kitty, maybe half a stamp and wait for the flash. It’s like this little paper stamp printed with Hello Kitty you suck on and swallow, except it’s really blotter acid.

  All you do is, the Zeta Delts sit together to make this red patch in the middle of the studio audience and scream and yell to get on TV. These are not the Gamma Grab’a Thighs. They’re not the Lambda Rape’a Dates. The Zeta Delts, they’re who everybody wants to be.

  How the acid will affect you—if you’re going to freak out and kill yourself or eat somebody alive—they don’t even tell you.

  It’s traditional.

  Ever since you were a little kid with a fever, the contestants they call down to play this game show, the big voice always calls for one guy who’s a United States Marine wearing some band uniform with brass buttons. There’s always somebody’s old grandma wearing a sweatshirt. There’s an immigrant from some place where you can’t understand half of what he says. There’s always some rocket scientist with a big belly and his shirt pocket stuck full of pens.

  It’s just how you remember it, growing up, only now—all the Zeta Delts start yelling at you. Yelling so hard it scrunches their eyes shut. Everybody’s just these red shirts and big-open mouths. All their hands are pushing you out from your seat, shoving you into the aisle. The big voice is saying your name, telling you to come on down. You’re the next contestant.

  In your mouth, the Hello Kitty tastes like pink bubblegum. It’s the Hello Kitty, the popular kind, not the strawberry flavor or the chocolate flavor somebody’s brother cooks at night in the General Sciences building where he works as a janitor. The paper stamp feels caught partway down your throat, except you don’t want to gag on TV, not on recorded video with strangers watching, forever.

  All the studio audience is turned around to see you stumble down the aisle in your red T-shirt. All the TV cameras, zoomed in. Everybody clapping exactly how you remember it. Those Las Vegas lights, flashing, outlining everything onstage. It’s something new, but you’ve watched it done a million-zillion times before, and just by automatic you take the empty desk next to where the United States Marine is standing.

  The game show host, who’s not Alex Trebek, he waves one arm, and a whole part of the stage starts to move. It’s not an earthquake, but one whole wall rolls on invisible wheels, all the lights everywhere flashing on and off, only fast, just blink, blink, blink, except faster than a human mouth could say. This whole big back wall of the stage slides to one side, and from behind it steps out a giant fashion model blazing with about a million-billion sparkles on her tight dress, waving one long, skinny arm to show you a table with eight chairs like you’d see in somebody’s dining room on Thanksgiving with a big cooked turkey and yams and everything. Her fashion model waist, about as big around as somebody’s neck. Each of her tits, the size of your head. Those flashing Las Vegas–kind of lights blinking all around. The big voice saying who made this table, out of what kind of wood. Saying the suggested retail price it’s worth.

  To win, the host lifts up this little box. Like a magician, he shows everybody what’s underneath—Just this whole thing of bread in its naturally occurring state, the way bread comes before it’s made into anything you can eat like a sandwich or French toast. Just this bread, the whole way your mom might find it at the farm or wherever bread grows.

  The table and chairs are totally, easy yours, except you have to guess the price of this big bread.

  Behind you, all the Zeta Delts crowd really close together in their T-shirts, making what looks like one giant, red pucker in the middle of the studio audience. Not even looking at you, all their haircuts are just
huddled up, making a big, hairy center. It’s like forever later when your phone rings, and a Zeta Delt voice says what to bid.

  That bread just sitting there the whole time. Covered in a brown crust. The big voice says it’s loaded with ten essential vitamins and minerals.

  The old game show host, he’s looking at you like maybe he’s never, ever seen a telephone before. He goes, “And what do you bid?”

  And you go, “Eight bucks?”

  From the look on the old grandma’s face, it’s like maybe they should call some paramedics for her heart attack. Dangling out one sweatshirt cuff, this crumpled scrap of Kleenex looks like leaked-out stuffing, flapping white, like she’s some trashed teddy bear somebody loved too hard.

  To cut you off using some brilliant strategy, the United States Marine, the bastard, he says, “Nine dollars.”

  Then to cut him off, the rocket science guy says, “Ten. Ten dollars.”

  It must be some trick question, because the old grandma says, “One dollar and ninety-nine cents,” and all the music starts, loud, and the lights flash on and off. The host hauls the granny up onto the stage, and she’s crying and plays a game where she throws a tennis ball to win a sofa and a pool table. Her grandma face looks just as smashed and wrinkled as that Kleenex she pulls out from her sweatshirt cuff. The big voice calls another granny to take her place, and everything keeps rushing forward.

  The next round, you need to guess the price of some potatoes, but like a whole big thing of real, alive potatoes, from before they become food, the way they come from the miners or whoever that dig potatoes in Ireland or Idaho or some other place starting with an “I.” Not even made into potato chips or French fries.

  If you guess right, you get some big clock inside a wood box like a Dracula coffin standing on one end, except with these church bells inside the box that ding-ding whatever time it is. Over your phone, your mom calls it a grandfather clock. You show it to her on video, and she says it looks cheap.