We’ve found an oasis in their ruins. We really have.
You want to see it, so just hold on, okay?
With much hope for the future (and from a man who knows for certain!),
Commander E
SEVEN
My school is shaped like an empty box with no lid.
There’s this very beautiful courtyard in the center, with four squares of grass, benches, cobblestone sidewalks that make a huge +, with White House–looking columns at the far end, and a cupola tower that overlooks the whole thing.
Before school or during lunch periods it’s crawling with students—like an awful cockroach infestation of teenagers. But during classes it’s serene, and I can never resist sitting down on a bench and watching clouds and birds fly by overhead.
I like to pretend I’m a prisoner kept in a dark, dank cell who’s only allowed fifteen minutes a day in the yard, so that I remember to really enjoy looking up. And that’s what I’m doing when Vice Principal Torres taps me on the shoulder and says, “I hate to interrupt the nice moment you’re having, but shouldn’t you be in class, Mr. Peacock?”
I start to laugh because he’s acting all superior like he always does. He has no idea that I have the P-38 on me, that I could shoot him in the heart and end his life right now just by pulling a trigger, and therefore he has no power over me at all.
He says, “What’s so funny?”
And I feel so fucking mighty knowing that the P-38 is loaded in my backpack, so I say, “Nothing at all. Care to sit down? Beautiful day. Beautiful. You look stressed. Maybe you should take a rest with me. Looking up at the sky is really healthy. I learned that by watching afternoon television aimed at women. Let’s chat. Let’s try to understand each other. What do you say?”
He just looks at me for a second and then says, “What’s with the hat?”
I say, “Been watching Bogie films with my neighbor. I’ve become quite a fan.”
When he doesn’t answer, I say, “You know—Humphrey Bogart? Here’s looking at you, kid?”
He says, “I know who Humphrey Bogart is. Now back to class.”
I cross my legs to let him know that I’m not afraid of him, and then say, “I missed homeroom and haven’t checked in yet at the office, so technically I’m on my own time. Haven’t punched in, so to speak, boss. Not yet under your jurisdiction. Right now, I’m just an everyman in a park.”
Vice Principal Torres’s face starts to turn eggplant purple as he says, “I don’t have time for double talk this morning, Leonard.”
So I say, “I’m talking pretty effectively, I think. I’ve answered all of your questions honestly and accurately. I’m always straight with you. But you don’t listen. No one listens. Why don’t you just sit down? It’ll make you feel better. It could really—”
“Leonard,” he says. “Enough.”
I say, “Jeez,” because I was really trying to make a connection. I would have talked with him openly and honestly—no double talk at all—if he would have just sat down, taken a few minutes to be human.
What’s so important that he couldn’t take five minutes to look up at the sky with me?
Then Vice Principal Torres does this really lame, unoriginal thing, which depresses me. He probably does this bit with his son, Nathan, whose elementary school picture17 is on VP Torres’s desk. Vice Principal Torres says, “Mr. Peacock, I’m going to count to three and if you’re not on your way to class by the time I say three, you’re going to have a big problem.”
“What type of problem am I going to have?”
He raises his index finger and says, “One.”
“Don’t you think we should discuss the consequence of my possible inaction so I can decide whether or not doing what you have requested is truly in my best interest? I want to make an informed decision. I want to think. This is school after all. Aren’t you supposed to encourage us to think? Help me out here.”
He makes a peace sign, and says, “Two.”
I look up at the sky, smile, and then stand just before he says three, only because I need to shoot Asher Beal. That’s the only reason. I swear to god. I don’t want to make this day any harder than it will already be. I’m not afraid of Vice Principal Torres, his fingers, or his lame-ass counting. I assure you.
I start to walk to the office, but then I spin around and say, “I’m worried about you, Vice Principal Torres. You seem stressed. And it’s affecting your work.”
He says, “I’ve got a full slate today. Cut me a break, okay? Will you just go to class, Mr. Peacock? Please.”
I nod once and as I walk toward the main office, I hear Vice Principal Torres sigh loudly. I don’t think his sigh is directed at me so much as it’s directed at his life—the fact that he’s so stressed and busy.
It’s like all the adults I know absolutely hate their jobs and their lives too. I don’t think I know anyone over eighteen who wouldn’t be better off dead, besides Walt18 and Herr Silverman, and knowing that makes me feel confident about what I’m about to do later on today.
EIGHT
I do this thing sometimes where I put on this black suit I have for formal occasions such as funerals. And I carry this crazy empty briefcase I got at the thrift store. Only I don’t go to school.
I practice being an adult, like I pretend I’m going to a job.
I walk toward the train station, and about two blocks away from it I always fall in line with other suits swinging briefcases.
I’ve studied their dead expressions enough to blend in.
I walk soldierlike, copying their steps, swinging my empty briefcase just so—almost goose-stepping.
I insert the coins into the bins outside the station and grab an old-fashioned paper newspaper, which I tuck under my arm, just to blend in.
I pay for my ticket at the machine.
I descend using the escalator.
And then I stand around all zombie-faced waiting for the train to come.
I know this will sound wrong, but whenever I wear my funeral suit, go to the train station, and pretend I have a job in the city, it always makes me think about the Nazi trains that took the World War II Jews to the death camps. What Herr Silverman taught us about. I know that’s a horrible and maybe even offensive comparison, but waiting there on the platform, among the suits, I feel like I’m just waiting to go to some horrible place where everything good ends and then misery ensues forever and ever and ever—which reminds me of the awful stories we learned in Holocaust class, whether it’s offensive or not.
I mean we won World War II, right?
And yet all of these adults—the sons and daughters and grandchildren of our World War II heroes—get on metaphorical death trains anyway, even though we beat the Nazi fascists a long time ago and, therefore, every American is free to do anything at all here in this supposedly great free country. Why don’t they use their freedom and liberty to pursue happiness?
When the train comes, the herd jump on really quickly—like they’ve all been underwater forever and there’s oxygen inside.
No one talks.
It’s always quiet.
No music or anything like that.
No one says, “How was your night?” or, “What are your dreams and aspirations?” Or tells jokes or whistles or does anything at all to lighten the mood and make the morning commute more bearable.
I think about how I strongly dislike all the kids at my school, but at least they’d seem alive if they were on the train. They’d be cracking jokes and laughing and feeling each other up and planning parties and talking about the stupid shit they watched on TV last night and texting each other and singing pop songs and doodling maybe and a million other things.
But these adults in suits just sit there or stand and sometimes grimly read the paper, angrily poke smart-phone screens, sip tongue-scorching coffee from disposable cups, and barely even blink.
Observing them gets me so down; it makes me feel like I never want to be an adult. That my decision to use the P-38 is for the best. That I’m escaping some horrible fate and I’m like the Jews that killed their sons and daughters before the Nazi soldiers could take them away to the experimentation torture camps.
Herr Silverman once had us write an essay in first person from the point of view of a Jewish person during the Holocaust. I wrote about a Jewish father who killed his wife and kids and then himself to avoid being taken to the concentration camps, which was a pretty bleak exercise, but an easy essay for me to write actually. The Jewish father I wrote about was a good man who loved his family—he loved them so much he wouldn’t allow them to experience the Nazi horrors. My essay was mostly an apology letter. My anonymous narrator wrote it as a prayer, asking his god’s forgiveness for what he had to do. That essay turned out exceptionally authentic. Herr Silverman even read parts aloud to the class and said I was “empathetic” beyond my years.
I heard other kids in my class whisper all sorts of things about me afterward, saying that I had justified killing children and suicide, but my classmates just didn’t get it, because they are spoiled teenagers living here in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They’ve never had to make any real decisions at all. Their lives are easy and unremarkable. They’re not awake.
Herr Silverman is always asking us if we realize how much of our lives are dictated by the fact that we were born in America eighteen years ago, and what would we really have done if we were German kids during World War II when Hitler Youth was all the rage?
Me—I’m honest enough to admit I don’t know.
My idiot classmates all say they would have defied the Nazis, assassinated Hitler with their bare hands even, when they don’t even have the balls or brains to defy our lame-ass flunky teachers and robotic parents.
Sheep.
Example: Herr Silverman does this mind-fuck thing where he says to the class, “You are all more or less wearing the same types of clothes—look around the room and you will see it’s true. Now imagine you’re the only one not wearing a cool symbol. How would that make you feel? The Nike swoop, the three Adidas stripes, the little Polo player on a horse, the Hollister seagull, the symbols of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams, even our high school mascot that you athletes wear to battle other schools—some of you wear our Mustang to class even when there is no sporting event scheduled. These are your symbols, what you wear to prove that your identity matches the identity of others. Much like the Nazis had their swastika. We have a very loose dress code here and yet most of you pretty much dress the same. Why? Perhaps you feel it’s important not to stray too far from the norm. Would you not also wear a government symbol if it became important and normal to do so? If it were marketed the right way? If it was stitched on the most expensive brand at the mall? Worn by movie stars? The President of the United States?”
It’s this type of revolutionary shit Herr Silverman says that always gets the stupid kids in my class angry, red-faced, even ready to fistfight him sometimes, because they don’t realize that our teacher is just trying to get them to think. He’s not really saying that wearing name-brand clothing is evil. Or that buying Polo clothes makes you a Nazi. Or that wearing a Phillies cap is one step away from fascism.