If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie

Author:Michael Christie [Christie, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804140812
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-19T23:00:00+00:00

14

September arrived the following week and demanded their begrudging return to school. The boys claimed the rearmost desks, where they whispered about the map they’d yet to decipher and the byzantine skateboard tricks they would someday master. Their new teacher, Mrs. Gustavson, wore a beach-worth of shell jewelry, smiled emptily, and spouted in a sugary voice lots of his mother’s words, like creativity, gifted, and self-esteem. Will trusted her about as far as his mother could go for a jog.

In the first week, when Will was picking up an exercise he’d narrowly passed from her desk, he said, “Thanks Mom,” instantly scorching himself with embarrassment.

At recess, Mrs. Gustavson asked him to stay behind. “I couldn’t help but notice what you said there,” she said.

“Yeah, sorry,” said Will. “Old habit.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. In fact, I’m quite flattered,” she said, pausing as if something was sinking in other than the death knell of boredom and the senseless squander of recess time.

“You know, Will,” she continued, “I must confess something to you. I’m a great admirer of your mother’s work. And your father’s, of course. But I saw The Sky in Here when I was in university, and it made an indelible impression on me,” she said, as though they were sharing some great secret.

“I’ve never seen it.”

“Really?” she said, shocked. “But you must be very close?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, she’s modest, I’m sure. But I know some people who will be very pleased to hear Diane Cardiel is safe and sound and back living in Thunder Bay. She must love having a bright, creative fellow like you around the house,” she said, smiling falsely, and Will bristled. Jonah had more creativity in his right leg than all the students at his school combined, and though she was brand new, Mrs. Gustavson already acted as if he wasn’t there.

“Is this over yet?” Will said, wounding her visibly, before racing outside to find Jonah.

Now that they were in the seventh grade, their classmates talked of group trips to the roller rink and declared doomed loves in bubble-lettered notes and three-party phone calls. None mentioned how last year’s grade eights had disappeared like planes into the clouds of high school, an ascendancy death-like in its impenetrability. Happily, the mysteries of what to wear and say and when to put your arm around a girl and how to properly manage a vagina were of zero relevance to Will and Jonah, who were content with the mystery of Marcus and how, exactly, one could possibly ollie over a fire hydrant.

To endure the flavorless hours, the boys reacquired the necessary talent of kill-switching their minds, slowing their pulses, holing up in private mental dens. They perfected a communication exclusive to their eyebrows, while lazily doodling skateboard graphics and complex ramp arrangements on their velcro-flapped binders. In class they were cheetahs napping, borderline catatonic, preparing for the bell’s merciful peal.

At lunch they shunned the cafeteria to go skateboarding off school property. These days Will could manage the occasional weak ollie—the trick’s true alchemy still outpacing his understanding.

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