Disappearing Act (Chapter One)
The boy strikes the match and holds it before his face. It’s his first time; the flame hypnotizes him, takes him away for a time.
A shout rings in his ear; he doesn’t register any words, but they break his trance. He turns his head toward the big shouting mouth. Spit flies from thick, cracked lips. Yellow teeth, laced with white plaque, chew out inaudible words. He stares at the oversized canine tooth, protruding as if it belonged to some prehistoric sea creature. Snaggletooth, he thinks. He turns his gaze from the mouth, looks down and drops the match.
~
The halls of Arthur A. Prescott Middle School were empty, quiet. The only sounds were the quick, heavy falls of the boy’s oxfords.
Jake Lemieux hurried back to 24B, one hand wrapped around the base of his throbbing head, the other around the bowling pin which served as his class’s restroom pass. His eyes were wide and roving, wary of spectators. The thumping in his head and chest grew more violent with each step and as his sweaty palm grasped the brass handle of 24B’s door he wondered, could a kid have a heart attack? He gave one last look behind him and turned the knob, terrified of what came next.
As children will do, every student in Ms. Burke’s eight grade art turned their head toward the squeal of the door’s hinges. Standing there, half as tall as the open doorway, Jake felt the prick of each stare thrown at him, like one hundred darts on a dartboard. Every shot a bull’s-eye that screamed, it was him! He nearly turned to run, to flee for China perhaps, but Ms. Burke swiftly foiled his escape. “Jake, please take your seat. Class…up here.” Their stares returned forward, offering Jake a small reprieve.
He stepped inside, the door closed behind him. He set the pin on its shelf and began the walk to his front row seat, which now seemed miles away. Ever since his first day of school he’d elected to sit front-and-center, far from distraction and his less zealous schoolmates – a decision he greatly regretted at the moment.
“Trouble finding you’re tiny pecker, loser?” Jake was only mildly aware of what Sam Kilgore, a career back-row-sitter, had whispered. Sam’s best (and only) pal, David Williams, was tickled pink and added, “Frenchy’s got a micropenis.” Both boys laughed inaudibly, and discreetly slipped each other a fist bump. Micropenis was a new one for the duo and this their first attempt using it real-time. For them, it could not have gone better, though Sam wished he had been the one to say it.
Jake returned to his seat and as Ms. Burke went on explaining complimentary colors, he wondered if he’d somehow escaped the trouble he felt sure was coming. It went out. It had to. This respite would not last.
When the alarm sounded, the children buzzed, thrilled for the interruption in their lesson. Some students chimed along with the high-pitched whine, waaaaaaahhh! Ms. Burke quickly scanned the school’s calendar of events in her mind – the next drill was weeks away, what the hell are they doing in that front office? Her students shuffled in their plastic seats; papers and pencils fell, desk legs squealed out of true. Peter Foals ran to the wall of windows at the rear of the class. Ms. Burke called for the children to settle down but beneath this expression of authority Jake saw that she was as curious as the rest. For a moment he saw the little girl she had once been; that she was not so far removed from their side of the classroom. The children ignored her remonstrations.
Mr. Perry, Prescott’s campus monitor and custodian, sprinted past the classroom as if his ass was on...
“FIRE!” Peter Foals yelled.
Now, every student in the class bolted from their seat and joined him at the dusty row of windows, leaving their desks a scattered mess – every student but one.
Jake didn’t even turn around. He could not. Terror had frozen him in place. His eyes followed Ms. Burke who was desperately dialing the front office from the corded phone next to the white board. Her eyes caught his and all the world (along with his heart) stopped. Their exchange seemed to be the only movement in the entire universe; the alarm and the yelling children had paused and the only truth was those stony eyes staring into his.
She knows.
He dared not look away. He would watch her lips declare the truth, tell the office that it was him. Jake Lemieux is the culprit.
The intercom broke their stare and returned the universe back to motion. Their eyes turned to the small circular speaker in the room’s ceiling, as if looking at it helped with the hearing of it.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…PLEASE REMAIN CALM.” Ms. Burke returned the phone to its cradle; his secret safe – for now. “THERE IS A SMALL FIRE ON CAMPUS AND WE ARE WORKING TO EXTINGUISH IT PROMPTLY. FACULTY, PLEASE ESCORT YOUR STUDENTS, IN AN ORDERLY FASHION, TO YOUR DESIGNATED SAFETY ZONES. THIS IS NOT A DRILL…”
Jake had never said a swear in his life, but he’d thought them many times. He thought of them all now, each one screaming inside his head. Panic settled and he began to cry. He tried to fight the coming tears but as often happens in childhood, his body didn’t seem to give a damn about what he wanted. What he really wanted was to disappear –whatever was coming, he didn’t want be around for it.
Was it even possible for a person to disappear? Like really? He believed it was.
Some of Jake’s favorite moments with his father were spent watching a magic-man named David Blaine on TV – a man who could hold his breath for eighteen minutes, levitate from the ground below him, and disappear before a live audience. Twice, Jake had asked Jerry Lemieux if he could learn magic, to which the reply had matter-of-factly been, “it’s all bullshit, kid.” Jake did not believe it was that, but knew better than to ask a third time. He’d determined to learn regardless, and when the book fair rolled into Prescott’s cafeteria last fall, his small savings procured him a book far more valuable than its $10.95 sticker. He’d only made it through the first chapter of The Beginner Magician’s Handbook (which dealt with disappearing smaller items and card tricks – kid stuff) before his father found him reading it one night and took it away, drunk. “Do your homework! Learn somethin’ wortha damn!” Jake never got to the chapter on disappearing oneself. Damnit shit!
Thinking of his father now made him cry harder.
He watched as Ms. Burke ran past him, and through his lens of surging tears she became five or six Ms. Burkes – and each one knew what he’d done.
She stopped behind his desk and began her best shepherding routine. “Hey! You all know how this goes! Line-leader in front, Rear-holder in back. Now!” That name never failed to get the children going, and even now, when this was clearly not a drill, ‘Rear-holder’ rallied many giggles. “Quickly. And stop that!”
She turned to Jake, whom she noticed (with mounting interest) had not shared the others’ curiosity. “Jake, honey. Let’s go.” Is he crying? He slid from his seat and into the gap before the Rear-holder, the spot in line no child ever wanted. He did not much care this day.
Katrina Blevens, in a fishtail braid, led the class out of 24B as Ms. Burke made sure all students were accounted for. Like snakes slithering out of burrows, long, zigzagged rows of children meandered out of classrooms and into the halls of Prescott Middle. Every eyeball, young and old alike, strained to find the root of the uproar and those fortunate enough to be in buildings B and C would later tell those who weren’t how large the flames were. The accounts varied wildly, from ten feet to over thirty. Once again, Jake Lemieux did not look.
From Safety Zone 1, under the flagpole in front of Prescott Middle, Jake’s crying ceased and, even amid the chaos, calm was returning. Sitting in his classroom he’d wanted to disappear, and now, outside, amidst this sea of students dressed in the Prescott blue and white, he finally had. Just one sheep among many, he thought.
He tried to recount the afternoon’s events, but the harder he thought, the harder the pounding in his head became, and the farther away the memory seemed to get. His only recollections were the beauty of that flame, and that hideous snaggletooth chomping up, down. He reached behind his head and felt the growing goose egg at his occipital; it was painful to the touch, but did not seem mortal.
When each class reached its designated Safety Zone, and the halls were once again empty, the alarm ceased. Moments later, it was replaced by the long bellows of approaching fire engines and when those two trucks thundered onto 58th Street, the children cheered. For most, the unfolding events were the most exhilarating of their young lives. They all watched in awe as these heroes in heavy suits dismounted their engines and disappeared into the school. That’ll be me someday, thought most of the boys. I wish they would rescue me, thought most of the girls.
I hope this ends soon, thought Jake Lemieux.
It would not.
An ambulance arrived.
The men of the Freeport FD had the fire extinguished in a mere fifteen minutes. Normally, the fire would have been easily dowsed by the overhead sprinkler, but the often hung-over and always indolent custodian, Mr. Perry, had ignored the growing mound of paper towel wads that the young men of Prescott Middle had covered it with over the last two quarters (a fresh and very wet coat just this morning). By the time the fire had broken through the mound of paper and shattered the sprinkler’s glass trigger, Building C’s men’s room was already eighty percent in flames and had spread to the adjacent classroom. Later, investigators would conclude that the fire had been started in the restroom’s waste basket, which had stood overflowing since lunch period, directly beneath the restroom’s three paper towel dispensers. Scattered notebook paper, eight rolls of single ply, three reams of toilet seat covers, and the antiquated wooden stall dividers provided the rest of the fuel needed to produce the day’s inferno.
When the firemen reemerged, the children applauded their success.
Jake did not applaud; these men were in no mood for applause. He only observed with ardent awareness…
The fireman with the mustache takes off his helmet and approaches Dr. Wheeler, the principal. The other men continue to their trucks, two others speak to the men at the ambulance. Dr. Wheeler listens as the fireman whispers. He doesn’t like what he’s hearing. He slams his hand to his mouth and stumbles back, like an invisible man has shoved him. He looks down, away from the fireman. He seems sad, scared. In his other hand he holds a walkie-talkie, he stares at it. He looks back at the man with the mustache. He removes the hand from his mouth and speaks into the little radio. The man with the mustache puts a hand on Dr. Wheeler’s shoulder and the two walk side-by-side into the school. Two paramedics in dark blue follow, pushing a metal bed on wheels.
What is that for?
~
An hour passed. Some children stood while others sat. Some had been dismissed to their parents, some waited for their buses. Of those that remained, some were excited and some were agitated, but in that moment, all of the above were unaware that as of 1:17 this afternoon, the population of Arthur A. Prescott Middle School had declined by one.