Stations and Callings

Once a guy, not knowing what to do, sat and did sit-ups and looked at the ceiling all day until he thought it was time to do homework. He got out a red Sharpie and, now looking for a pad, emptied his bag and scowled at its sandy bottom, frustrated by this early delay.

---

Andy watched the TV above him, hawking the cafeteria's lunch specials that no one bought anyway, looking at it instead of the two people walking towards him. His right hand, the one facing the wall, clasped at the edge of his beveled pocket as his thumb crashed through an empty belt loop. When those two came along beside him, the guy shoved the girl into Andy. She blew her hair back and pressed the boy back into the other wall.

He walked into the cafeteria and waited in line until the scarry-faced doorman, happy, high-spirited, and pleased with himself and his station, moved his arm to let Andy in.

He got a litre brown cow. He reached into his pocket to assemble his money. He looked down onto his studded palm but wasn't able to count it all until, out of necessity, he was jostled into the queue. The coins had been rearranged after he closed his fist, so he counted them again. And again. He was off by fifteen cents. He looked up and saw the cashier. He pretended to count the coins again, and the guy behind him, the one who had forced him into queue, wrapped between Andy and the counter and pushed on ahead. Business as usual, world without end.

Andy replaced his money in his pocket and weaved back among the students and the gluey greasey heat from the warmers. He went to the rear cool drink freezer and resized his chocolate milk. Half a litre this time, though a good deal more than half the price. He brought it back, purchased it, and grabbed the scratch-and-win milk ticket the woman behind the counter handed him.

He made his way over to a table across the floor, around circular tables wrapped around columns sheathed in the school colours. A few people he knew, like Danny, wearing a white beret with seams gray with wear, and Will, leaning on the same table as Danny, looking at the bottom of Andy's jeans. Following Will's eyes, Andy looked down at them, too. Wide and sagging with a flap tucked under the lip of his shoe.

His table was at the far-end of the cafeteria, with the girls wearing winter coats even in the summer, and guys with infected beards and desiccated lips, wearing J'NCO brand jeans, some with cape-like plaid jackets. Aside from the ones he actually knew by name, they usually did random things like take turns punching each other, or trying to run up walls. Andy sat down at the far end, beside Calen, his friend, and across from Liam. He whipped out a long white box with an oily brownie stain at one end, opened it, and took out a red plastic brick that fell apart into individual slips as he fumbled to put it down, revealing it to be a deck of cards encased in thick red protective sleeves.

He reached under his chair and pulled the right pant leg out from the tongue of his shoe.

"Give me your soul!" said Calen, a fat half-native.

"Screw you," said Andy and smiled. He began to shuffle his red deck. "Anyone want a game of Magic?"

"No," said a kid who had just sat beside him.

"Yeah," said Calen coolly.

Soon after they had started, a few turns into their game, with most of the girls rubbing and throwing drinks down at the other end of the table, one definitely said "Andy" near where they sat. He looked around. Behind him.

"Oh, yay," said a girl with hair dyed and strawy. "I remembered your name."

"Heh," responded Andy.

"Don't fraternize with her, they'll suck you in. You'll never escape!" said Calen.

The same girl had been happy over remembering Andy's name for the past week now. Nice girl. Loser.

The kid to his right was reading a book, only about a millimeter into it. He looked childish without any sideburns and pasted-down hair. He had headphones covering his ears, and was staring intensely down and close to his book. Andy tried to read what was written but the kid noticed, slid his headphones down around his neck and smacked his lips. He looked out at Andy from under bushy eyebrows like awnings, bringing to his glance an expression of weary mockery.

"Sorry."

"Hey Liam," said Calen, "what're you reading?"

"'I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X.'" Calen shrugged. Liam lifted a fry from a red-white checkered Styrofoam container, drenched in ketchup and vinegar, and popped it in his mouth.

A kid around Andy's age, with a belly that spilled out from under his shirt, cackled humorously from across the table. He looked over at Calen's hand and examined the game.

"Like the man in Diablo said, 'not enough mana.'"

"Hey," Liam said, "it was, 'need more mana.'"

The fat kid turned to Liam, who was chewing on the top of a plastic bottle.

"Shut up."

"No."

Calen looked over at Andy.

Andy looked back at the game, at his signets and land.

"What the fuck?" the kid across the table was saying. Andy looked back. He was tugging at his shirt. Liam was grinning, showing his yellow Stonehenge teeth.

"What?" Calen asked.

"This faggot wiped his hands on my shirt!"

"What'd you wipe on him?" that girl asked, the keen one about Andy's name.

"Grease from his fingers."

Liam chuckled.

Calen wiped his face.

"You do know that I'm stuck in this shirt all weekend?"

"Yup."

"Where did he wipe it?" Andy asked.

"Here!" the kid said, pulling at his collar, curling it over his fingers and heaving it over the table. Andy couldn't see anything, or maybe just a small shadow.

"Man, you can't see anything."

"What?" he snapped. "You can't see anything? Fuck you." He let go of his shirt, threw up his arm and shot up a limitless middle-finger.

Andy tried to shrug it off, with a simper, but his cheek trembled and he had to place it under his palm.

The kid stuck out his bottom lip, clutching his gray shirt, and looked furiously at Liam. You really couldn't see anything. There was a long pause, and then the fat kid said:

"Aw, I can't stay mad at a homosexual." The girl laughed at this. Liam chuckled shame-facedly. "But," and the fat kid grabbed a plastic bottle and beat Liam over the head with it, repeatedly, and Liam just took it, awkwardly smiling and beat-red. Andy turned back to his game with Calen and won, quickly, although Calen almost managed to make a comeback despite his poor starting hand.

The bell rang. Lunch was over.

Liam gathered his book and tossed out the smeared Styrofoam tray. The girls finished bumming money and cigarettes and throwing drinks, and the fat kid with the invisible stain sauntered away. Andy noticed he hadn't drunk any of his brown cow.

Andy left the cafeteria with Calen.

"Yesterday I downloaded the leak of the new Flaming Lips album," said Calen.

They turned a corner.

"I got this thing in the mail," Andy said, removing a brown envelope from his bag, "for some summer programme. It expects me to pay four-thousand to go to it."

"What is it?"

"Some politics thing."

"Do you want to go?"

"Maybe, but I don't want to pay that."

"Did the school send it to you?"

"No, but it might as well be," said Andy. "Some people who monitor the standardized test scores. I scored high on one of them apparently so they sent it."

They jogged up some steps, Calen's arms zipping back and forth wildly within the snarl of his bag's straps.

"How's advanced calculus?" Andy asked when they had reached the top of the stairs.

"Oh man, it's so fucking nuts. So fucking nuts. But I'm going to drop it."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, I don't know."

Calen had construction while Andy had drama. "See ya man." Calen's voice trailed off as the corridor split and he descended down some stairs.

Another one of those unnecessary televisions loomed overhead and ran a dissolving string of images showing various angles of the school. The first few shots Andy saw were of municipal shrubs circling the slab parking lot, packed with trucks coated in dust, and then a summer image, a clean, symmetrical photograph of the front of the building right after renovation, looking oddly more perpendicular, with shinier, narrower windows.

The bell rang. A flanged voice switched onto the speaker system and read a list of names.

His drama class hadn't begun yet. All of the students were sitting down, led in by their peer tutor, but their teacher hadn't showed up. They sat around and waited, played stella ella olla and name games even though it was well into the semester. Andy shuffled his red deck. Finally, their teacher showed up.

Mr. Foster stood in the doorway wearing one boot and one sneaker. He looked at the class, holding a few sheets under his arm, and said "Today we're going to listen to some tapes." He walked over to the audio totem, took a tape and slotted it in the beat-up aluminum lips of the class stereo. "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." He switched off the lights. "Lie down everyone and listen."

Andy fell back and laid his hands down by his sides. Mr. Foster lay down near him. The drama room smelled faintly musty, faintly perfumed, like a church. The tape played, and the fat kid's middle-finger settled through him like a tower of glass. And as the minutes rolled by, scrunched between Mr. Foster and some people he didn't want to touch in the dark, a muscle in his thigh began to jump.

---

It was Friday, and after school a few from his table gathered at the home of an older graduate, Mitch, still living with his parents, and did things mysterious to Andy. Play magic and D&D campaigns planned during spare, maybe. He didn't really know. Mitch was a few years his senior, ahead of Andy's time.

His was the last house on the road, last in a line terminating at a railing made of finger-thick iron stalks. The driveway sloped just enough to stress his calves, and he unlocked the front door with the key looped round his neck with a nylon ribbon. He jogged up the stairs. Max came running, but Andy shut the door quickly in the dog's face. His new bunk-bed overcrowded three-fourths of his room, with bits and pieces of its construction littering the floor. Andy stripped the bag from his shoulders and threw it among the things on the floor, moving his shoes and pants away beside his crammed dresser. The room shook as he moved. He boosted himself off the wall, climbed onto the top mattress, and went to sleep.

He woke up sometime in the evening. He placed his hands flat on the ceiling and pushed. It must be past dinner, and his parents would be home.

Someone knocked on his door.

"Who is it?" he called.

Calen squeezed into his room, holding a bag of chips in one hand.

Then he remembered. He was supposed to meet Calen after school. He climbed out of bed and changed shirts, flicked on some deodorant and the two of them moved across to hall to the junk-clogged rec room.

---

Andy and Calen sat sharing the same blanket, their lower halves draped in elephantine folds of dark wool. They sat in separate chairs, with a popped bag of Ruffles stuffed between their arm rests. Calen had the controller, pressing buttons absent-mindedly, picking at the loose stitching of his chair. Andy regarded him blandly through the collage of grease covering his glasses.

"What time is it?" asked Calen.

"Late."

"Go check the time," said Calen.

Andy got up and moved over to the computer.

"Two oh five," he said while sliding his feet out of their warm sockets, gluey from being in slippers for so long. Once outside they froze, but putting them back into the moist cave of sweat felt like dipping into sponge. He hesitated.

It was quiet in the room. He could smell his sister's rabbit's old cedar bedding. He listened, closed his eyes and imagined the physical mechanisms that kept him alive, blood, internal organs, squat, oily, sweating, and shivered in the chill of the evening air and his uncomfortable emotion.

"Are you tired?" Andy asked.

"No. You?" said Calen.

"No."

He sat back down with the wool blanket and listened some more. His breath wheezed. The edges of his fingernails itched; a hangnail and frayed skin a finger stung. In a glitch, Calen shot the ninja through the sky and the screen silverflamed. He had apparently died, and the load screen appeared. Andy's stomach rattled.

"I'm going downstairs to get something to eat."

Calen shook the Ruffles bag.

"Nah. Ruffles are dirt. I'll be up in a sec. You want anything?"

"A glass of water. Thanks."

Andy opened the door to the hall. Across was his room, and then to the left of it was his sister's, and then his parents, and then around the corner was the washroom, a rainy yellow nightlight shining out from it.

He tiptoed downstairs, the old hardwood crunching under his feet. He went along carefully, switched on the kitchen lights and opened the fridge bit by bit. He took a look. Lettuce, cheese wrapped in crinkly brown paper, a crumpled tray of collapsed and picked-at soy and seaweed. Andy slowly shut the refrigerator door. He opened the breadbox and took out a loaf and brought it to the cutting board. The counter was covered in little bits and spikes of rosemary, with everything pushed to the middle so Max couldn't jump up and pull something down. Andy buttered a thick slice, brought it to his lips, and then Calen said:

"Hey Andy."

Andy moved to the foot of the stairs, whispered to upstairs, "Calen, go back. I'll be up in a minute."

"But Andy," he said, coming down the stairs. Andy watched as Calen used each bad step, so unsuccessful at being quiet it might have been deliberate. He tried to support his heaviness by using the banister, but that creaked all up through the house.

"Shhh," hissed Andy grindingly.

Calen hopped the last few steps, his kangaroo pocket bouncing up to his chest.

Andy stood leadenly while the low ceiling could be heard to creak. Calen had a sad shy grin on his face and tried to say something but Andy shut him up.

Calen watched him take a bite of his bread.

After some time, Andy spoke.

"Let's go outside," he said.

"Why?"

"You want to see Mitch's house?"

"Think they're up this late?"

"Oh, sure."

"Have you ever been?" From the tone of Calen's voice they might've been discussing a bordello.

"No, but doesn't Liam hang out there occassionally, and what's her face?"

"Yeah, I think."

They went out the back door, much quieter than the front, and went around the yard, through the perennial garden and then along a path that was directed by a fence standing up in spears. They walked silently, efficiently. The city was high up, like on top of a hill, and the horizon of the street seemed to glow a delicate cool blue.

Mitch's parent's house was a just like every other house on this side of the road except for an addition made against it, a brick vestibule with perfectly symmetrical windows, a dim light on in one of them. Andy and Calen went into a dark patch on the sidewalk, trying to see into the window, and sure enough, people were inside, lying around a table with trays and papers and empty cans resting on it.

Andy stepped into the bushes, moving around the size of the house. He came out in the yard, facing lights on the deck. The door slid open and Mitch and the girl who remembers Andy's name came out. Andy saw inside the house, saw a few others inside, half in sight, looking into rooms. Calen came up beside him.

From a pathway winding under low trees came the fat kid, the one with the stain on his shirt, with Liam hurrying along behind him. They wandered into the yard, saw Andy and Calen looking into the house.

A silence descended, with the conversations from inside the house all simultaneously arriving at the same pause. The man of the house just stood there. He opened his mouth.

"Hey guys." It was a friendly greeting. The whole table from the cafeteria was here; they all flooded out to see who had arrived. There were some with very serious, even stern expressions, other with constrained smiles, and all of them feeling very awkward.

Andy had romanticized a style of oration. It was like the culmination of a lifetime's observation of Hollywood conclusions, of Atticus Finch speeches, with his words ringing out with decisiveness and verve. He made up very intricate rebuttals in his head, and thought, if only he could speak them.

But it wasn't just a question of vocalizing these truths. There was also the question of his place, to assert through his actions and being rather than rely on objective truth to prove his claims or legitimize his words, and there was also a question of the weakness of his own voice when set against the shout of certain more powerful elements of the group.

Then at last he heard his physical voice fail him, something about being doomed to the type of girl at the bottom of the table, those now with the strange smiles inside the house. That, when each man will find a wife for himself, and each beast will have his mate, he couldn't be left out. No; he would have to settle for this, and he gave himself up to them.

Calen walked alongside Andy all the way up to the house. Mitch closed the screen door once Liam and the fat kid were inside.