Falter Kingdom. Michael J. Seidlinger

you see—Blaire’s my eyes and ears. She’s got the stuff finished and all I have to do is not fuck up the pop quizzes. I fucked up today’s pop quiz.

      But what are you gonna do, you know?

      Calculus. Everyone, even the A students, are over it.

      Miss Canaan needs a life. I want to just walk up to her desk and tell her what everyone’s been telling me: It’s almost over. You’ll never see us again. Why not cut us some slack? Some of us are fun people. If you’d stop stressing the curriculum so much you’d have a better time.

      But that takes balls. Well, more than that, it takes effort.

      And I’m low on that lately.

      I bump into Blaire before fourth period to exchange homework.

      “You look like shit,” Blaire tells me.

      Yeah, I haven’t been able to shake the exhaustion. I yawn it off, make appearances. “Insomnia,” I say with a shrug. “What else is new?”

      Blaire’s hands are all over the homework, checking it like I didn’t actually do a good job. I’ve got this stuff. I’m not an idiot.

      English class, that’s my forte.

      She won’t look me in the eye. “You’d tell me, right?”

      But I don’t hear her until she seems to answer for me—“Yeah, you’d tell me”—and runs off. We don’t have any classes together, which is why trading homework works. I know what she’s talking about. She was there. But, um, I know she wouldn’t tell anyone. At least not until she was sure about it.

      During lunch, the student body president, Chris something—I can’t remember his name, but really most people just know him as “Chris the Student President” (you know how everyone’s labeled something)—he makes a few announcements. It’s blah, blah, blah until he finishes with a heads-up stating that yearbook deadlines are in a week.

      One fucking week.

      It’s a wake-up call for most. It is for me. I don’t know what to write. This is more than making the most of the rest of the semester; the bio you write is what people remember you by. Every word counts. Some people pay extra to fit in another fifty words over the three-hundred-word blurb limit.

      Being memorable.

      People talk so much about being remembered and “the one thing you’ll be remembered for.”

      I think about the prompt while standing in line for food. My mom packs me lunch but it’s embarrassing. I leave it in the trunk of my car and toss it on the way home. Been doing that since the middle of freshman year.

      So it’s this junk they serve us, but it works.

      The one thing people will remember me for.

      I’m not sure I want to settle for just one thing like everyone else. I’m not sure about what I’d write, so I do what I typically do—I put it off for later.

      Brad’s late to lunch. I end up at our table, sitting with a few others I never really talk to. They’re almost finished with their bios.

      This guy, Mark, reads his bio aloud. He’s really thought it out.

      Brad gets there and steals the page from Mark’s hands, ’cause he’s an asshole and you know he’ll never let you down. Brad reads some of it aloud for the entire cafeteria: “Mark Banes excelled at contemporary literature, earning himself an A- average—”

      “Come on, Brad, lay off.” That’s me saying that. I’m the one who usually tries to keep things cool. Do you ever really question the guy who’s trying to keep things civil? Yeah, everyone likes that guy, even if they don’t really know him. It’s how I keep this from getting back to me. And today, I know Brad and a bunch of people are suspicious about what happened in that tunnel.

      They have something on me. I’m an interesting topic, you know?

      And I just want to make it to fifth period so I can take a nap in my car, get away from all this stuff. Lately, everything’s been, I don’t know, just too much. It’s not just graduation; it’s everything. I feel like the pressure is increasing and I’m worried that it might never release.

      Kind of melodramatic, yeah.

      But I guess it’s mostly the fact that I know what’s going to happen next.

      Brad sits across from me, steals one of my chicken fingers, and starts people-watching. That’s how it always starts.

      Brad leans in, whispering, “Bro, you see Jess today? Jesus.”

      Testosterone-fueled annoyance, that’s Brad’s yearbook bio. He’ll be remembered as the dude with so much testosterone he drowned in it, meaning we all ganged up on him and drowned him for being such an asshole.

      I don’t know why I hang around this guy.

      But yeah, I do. I know. I’ve talked about this already.

      “Yo,” Brad says.

      “Yeah, what is it?” I’m acting like these chicken fingers are awesome, like they taste like more than salt.

      “You hit up JJ yet?”

      Shit. That’s right. I can’t leave the guy hanging. He’s my source for booze, blunts, and anything else I want. For cheap.

      “Not yet, after I finish eating.”

      “Bro, he’ll be pissed.”

      I’m going, I’m going.

      Push the food away and Brad takes it, always hungry.

      I always leave via the back entrance of the cafeteria so that I don’t have to make eye contact with anyone. But I’m not always that successful, you see.

      On the way out, I cross paths with Nikki. She’s got this guy, Luke, with her, and he’s handing over her purse. As she looks back at the door, I happen to be the one walking out. We exchange glances. That smile, one I’ve seen before. Strand of red hair brushed with her hand back over her ear. Blue eyes on me. This is where I’d trip and fall if I let it get to me, but I don’t. But so what, she smiled at me? So what? She says hello. She says my name. She slows down and waits until I’ve gone.

      So what?

      It’s not a big deal.

      But Brad makes it a big deal.

      Goes on and on: “Bro, there’s no way you didn’t see that...!”

      I play it off the way I know how things should be played: “Yeah, I saw.”

      “You know you have to talk to her now,” Brad says.

      I’m thinking, “What makes anything mandatory if I don’t want to?” Yeah, I want to talk to her, and yeah, I like her—so what? But just because we looked at each other doesn’t mean now I’m supposed to let go of my own problems.

      What problems?

      No, I’m pushing that aside. Not thinking about that.

      “Don’t be stupid,” Brad’s saying, as we walk around back, where the theater kids smoke because it’s near the auditorium stage.

      Jon-Jon and a few others hang here.

      You can hear barking from far away. That’s Jetson, his corgi. He always brings the dog to school. It’d be a problem if he went to class, but he’s got all that covered. Rumor has it he pays off the principal. Halverson gets a cut from sales. It’s just a rumor. Gossip.

      But that’s like all things at Meadows.

      Everything’s gossip until it’s naked truth.

      Brad tells Jon-Jon. Of course he tells Jon-Jon. “Dude, Nikki Dillon’s got a thing for our bro here!”

      Some days I can almost see it happening: