Grand & Humble (2 page)

E
VERYTHING WAS OUT OF FOCUS
. Manny had to squint to see what was going on in the theater in front of him. Problem was, he wasn’t in a movie theater. He was in a stage theater—or “thea-
tuh
”, as the actors liked to quip—with rehearsals of the school play taking place before him. So the problem wasn’t an out-of-focus movie projector. No, the problem was him—a pounding headache that was affecting his eyesight. He squeezed his temples and that helped with his headache, but it didn’t put anything back into focus.

“You okay?” said Keith, his assistant in the lighting booth.

“Huh?” Manny said. “Oh, yeah. Just tired.” He was quick to change the subject. “We’re still going to need those forest gobos for the fairy scenes. Did you ever track them down?”

“Backstage, I think.”

Manny stared at Keith, oily-faced and gangly, too tall for his folding chair.

“Maybe I should go get ’em, huh?” Keith said.

“Thanks,” Manny said, and in a second he was thankfully, blissfully, alone again. He looked down at the control panel in front of him. He loved the thought that from this seat he could control every single one of the sixty-two lights suspended from the ceiling of the theater in front of him—each lantern painstakingly plotted, gelled (or not), hung, and focused by Manny, and Manny alone. As a result, he controlled the look and feel of everything that happened down on that stage. Did that make him a control freak? Maybe not, but it definitely made him a geek. Let’s face it, to the rest of the school, lighting design was just a notch above Chess Club—and even that was probably an overly optimistic assessment.

Okay, so Manny Tucker was a geek. He knew it, and he was okay with it. No, really. It didn’t bother him. Not at all. Yes, he did lighting design, but he was damn good at it—a Barbizon Award regional finalist two years running (with an excellent shot at being named national winner this year!). What was the deal with being popular, anyway? Why would anyone want to have to spend two hundred dollars
for the “right” pair of pants? It was just so much easier to wear black all the time like the other backstage geeks.

He looked up at the stage where Amber Hodges—Guinevere in the school’s production of
Camelot
—was running through the dance steps to the “Lusty Month of May” number. She was the perfect example of how crazy it was to be popular. Why would anyone want to be in the spotlight like that? Why would she want the pressure of all those eyes on her? Though, Manny had to admit, she was kind of hot.

Okay, more than kind of hot. Gorgeous. She almost sparkled, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with Selma’s costumes or Manny’s lighting. The rest of the stage might be out of focus, but Amber couldn’t ever be.

“Hey, Moonbeam,” said a voice from behind. “Better get a Kleenex for that drool.”

“Huh?” Manny jumped; he’d always been jumpy, and he hated himself for it. Jerry Blain was suddenly alongside him in the lighting booth. Amber’s boyfriend? No, she hung with a different jock—same model, slightly different exterior. But what was Jerry Blain doing in the school theater—much less in Manny’s lighting booth?

“Sorry?” Manny said to him.

Jerry laughed. “I see you starin’! Too bad you don’t got a pair of X-ray specs, huh?”

“I’m the lighting designer. It’s my job to stare at Amber Hodges.”

“Not like that, it isn’t!”

“What’s it to you, anyway?” Manny said.

“Just don’t get any ideas, Moonbeam. She’s
way
out of your league.”

Wait a minute, Manny thought. The lighting booth was
his
territory! Jerry wasn’t even supposed to be
in
here! So why didn’t Manny say something?

Because he was a geek, that’s why. And while that meant he didn’t have to worry about spending two hundred dollars on a pair of pants, the result was he had no power whatsoever. It also meant he wasn’t allowed to talk to—or, apparently, even
look
at—Amber Hodges.

“What do you want, anyway?” Manny asked him.

“Just out in the hallway waiting for my buds,” Jerry said. “Thought I’d come and see what’s happening back in loserville.”

“Well, I’m busy, okay?”

“O-kay!” Jerry said, enunciating like a kindergarten teacher. “But keep your eyes on the control board, Moonbeam, otherwise you’ll need a Kleenex
for more than just drool.”

And with that he turned to go, laughing as he went.

Manny still had a headache, and the caffeine in his double shot of espresso was only making things worse. He’d come to this coffee shop to talk with his friend Elsa about the video they were making together. The movie was called
Momster
, and it was about how terrifying a mother could look from the point of view of a small child. But right now their video was the last thing on his mind.

Elsa had a face like the moon—soft and pleasing, with an actual glow (and an admittedly pockmarked surface). She was also deaf, which meant that she used ASL—American Sign Language.

It’s all about perspective
, she said, motioning with her hands.
We need to force the perspective to make the mother look really, really scary.

That shouldn’t be too hard.
Manny answered in ASL too. His signing was more than decent, which made sense given all the time they’d spent together.

Part of me wishes we could cast a real child,
Elsa went on.
But it’d be such a hassle to work with him. Besides, I guess it’s funnier if we just dress an older actor in baby clothes
.

Manny nodded. An adult actor playing the child. It was a good idea—like most of Elsa’s ideas. She had this great sense of the visual, of pattern and design. Was it because she was deaf, or was that a stereotype? All Manny knew was that he loved doing creative projects with her. It had been strange when they’d first met back in the fourth grade, her deafness. But it was immediately clear that they were kindred spirits; he’d never met anyone else so into the arts. So they hadn’t let the language barrier come in the way of their becoming best friends. (It helped that Manny hadn’t
had
any other friends!) Soon they’d collaborated on a whole string of creative projects: movies, websites, even an annual haunted house in her garage. Manny had never felt more alive than on the warm summer nights he spent over at Elsa’s house, planning their latest project. Or waking up on a Saturday morning, knowing he had a full day to spend with his friend—and at least two days before he had to drag himself back to the dreariness of school again.

Which was why it was so frustrating that he hadn’t been able to concentrate on any of their projects lately. He couldn’t go on like this. Somehow he needed to get back in control. And maybe he could start by laying off the double shots of espresso and
finding some aspirin for his headache.

Out of the corner of his eye, Manny saw Elsa making waving motions at him. He looked up at her.

What’s wrong?
she signed.

So she’d noticed he’d zoned out on her. It’s rude to look away from anyone while she’s talking, but it was doubly rude to do it to Elsa; looking away from a deaf person who signed made it impossible for her
to
talk.

Nothing
, Manny signed.
Just tired. I’m sorry.

Another nightmare?

He wished he’d never told Elsa about the nightmares. He’d been having them for weeks now. It hadn’t been every night at first, but it was now. It was bad enough that he had to dream them; he didn’t want to also have to
talk
about them.

Manny nodded glumly.

The same thing happen?
Elsa signed.

He stood up from his chair.
Do you want a biscotti? I want a biscotti.

You hate biscotti
, Elsa said.
Everyone hates biscotti. Don’t change the subject.

He sank back down into his chair.
The dreams are nothing. It’s no big deal.

Elsa just stared at him. She didn’t need to make motions with her hands for him to know what she
was thinking; it was all written right there on her face.
If they’re nothing
, she signed at last,
why do you keep having them?

They’ll go away
, he said.

Eventually. But what are you going to do in the meantime?

Elsa was right. It wasn’t just his eyes that were out of focus; it was his whole life. And he just knew that he would keep having these nightmares until he somehow got his life back into focus. The nightmares were
about
the fact that his life was out of focus. But how did a person go about putting his
life
back into focus?

We can make an oversized papier-mâché baby rattle!
Manny suddenly signed, changing the subject again.
So it’ll make our actor look like a real baby. And maybe a great big rocking chair?

This time, Elsa took the bait. Her face broke into a smile and she was off and running, building on his idea with another one of her own.

It was after eleven o’clock, and Manny was exhausted.

Exhausted, yes, but also frightened—by his bed, of all things. Who ever heard of a person being afraid of his
bed?

It looked perfectly comfortable—
was
perfectly
comfortable. His dad was embarrassed that he wasn’t able to afford new sheets for Manny to replace his
Lord of the Rings
ones from a few years back. But Manny loved those sheets, even at age seventeen. And there was a thick layer of blankets, just the way he liked it. He loved the cozy feel of all that material pressing down against his body.

Of course, Manny’s fear wasn’t really about the bed itself; it was about his dreams. He couldn’t bear the thought of another nightmare.

He looked over at his computer. As much as the bed repelled him, the computer seemed to be enticing him, calling to him, drawing him close. He’d already updated his blog for the day—twice—but he couldn’t go to bed without checking his e-mail one more time.

He did, and found nothing. Not even any spam.

As long as he was online, he decided to surf over to a couple of his “favorites.” But there weren’t any new postings on any of his online friends’ blogs, and there wasn’t anything going on in any of his usual chat rooms.

He glanced at the backpack lying next to his desk.

Homework! He still had homework to do!

Okay, so maybe he didn’t have any homework
per se
. But he could always review his notes.

Review his notes? Manny had never “reviewed his notes” in his entire life. What was he thinking?

He looked back at the computer screen, but now it was blurry too. He rubbed his eyes, but that just made his headache worse.

Manny needed to go to sleep.

He turned to the bed again. The way the blankets were askew, it looked like the bed was grinning at him. Ironically, he couldn’t even count on lying awake, tossing and turning. He knew he’d fall asleep just moments after his head hit the pillow. It wasn’t until he woke up in the middle of the night, pulse pounding and sheets drenched in sweat, that he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again.

He sighed. There was no point in trying to delay the inevitable. He stood up, stripped down to his Jockey shorts, and climbed into bed. With that, he braced himself for the worst, and closed his eyes.

Harlan opened his eyes to a flood of sunlight. He was lying in bed under a single sheet—he hated blankets, even in winter, so at some point during the night he’d kicked the bedspread off. But he’d fallen asleep with his curtains open, and now the clear morning light filled his room like a liquid, cleansing and clarifying every surface.

It was Saturday, he realized. No school.

He looked around. He couldn’t get over how different everything looked, how the world almost glowed. It was like he’d woken up in a commercial for laundry detergent.

He started laughing.

He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the darkness that the daylight had washed away; it was everything—the gloom, the anxiety, the fear. This morn
ing, he actually felt giddy. He couldn’t remember feeling this good in weeks. Oh, he remembered feeling lousy in the days before, and he remembered why: his premonitions of disaster. His last premonition had been the one in the swimming pool, where he’d imagined he would be hit by a van. That had been one situation he could definitely not avoid; after all, it’s not like he could never get into a car again. And so, after the workout, he had—slowly and cautiously—driven home.

Nothing had happened. He hadn’t even
seen
a van, much less come close to being hit by one.

And in the light of this brand-new day, the whole incident just seemed so utterly ridiculous. No one could predict the future. He saw that now. How could he have been so stupid?

There was an urgent knock on the door. “Harlan? What’s wrong?” His mom.

“Nothing,” he said.

The door swung open. “What was that I heard?”

“Me,” Harlan said. “I was laughing.”

“Oh.” She stared at him. “Why?” His mom thought something was wrong because he’d burst into spontaneous laughter. Somehow, every problem with their relationship could be found right there in that one little exchange.

“Because I felt like it,” Harlan said. “Because I felt good.”

She kept staring at him. The first thing people always said about his mother was that she was beautiful. Harlan supposed that was true. She certainly had the “look”—the hair, the clothes, the makeup (
especially
the makeup; it had been so long since he’d seen her without it that he honestly couldn’t remember what she looked like). She definitely didn’t appear to be an ordinary mom; she didn’t
feel
like an ordinary mom either. To Harlan, she was more like the
idea
of a mom than a real person. The words and actions had all been there—the unqualified praise for his sixth-grade dried-leaf collection, the obligatory attendance at the most important of his swim meets. But they felt hollow somehow, a little too deliberate, too perfect—like the motions of the animatronic robots inside a ride at Disney World. Especially lately.

“You should get moving,” she said.

Moving? he thought. But even as he thought this, he remembered. He had a morning swim workout, then SAT Prep at the community college, a practice session of French Debate, and finally his volunteer work with deaf kids at the YMCA.

Suddenly he didn’t feel so giddy anymore.

“Oh, and your father’s invited you to a banquet tonight,” his mom went on. “The Bittle Society.”

His father: United States Senator Lawrence M. Chesterton, Very Big Cheese. Was it his imagination, or did the morning sunlight just dim? As for the Bittle Society, that was a local organization that—well, Harlan wasn’t exactly sure
what
they did. As far as he could tell, it was a group of filthy-rich people who sat around congratulating themselves for being so rich—and for being smart enough to elect a politician like his dad, who did everything in his power to keep them rich.

“But Ricky and Amber and I are going to a party tonight,” Harlan began, “and I said—”

“A party?” his mom interrupted. “Will there be drinking?”

Harlan rolled his eyes. “Mom.” She was always going on about her fear of his drinking or taking drugs—mostly, he was sure, because of how it would make his dad look if it ever got out to the press.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” his mother said, “because your father’s getting an award tonight, and you need to be there. Besides, this is one of the few weekends he gets to spend at home. He wants to spend it with you. Don’t you want to spend it with him?”

This was typical of his mom—a precise combination of obligation and guilt. It was all spin, of course. His father got some kind of award every weekend he was home—usually from organizations like the Bittle Society. And if the Senator had really wanted to spend time with Harlan, he would have taken him to a baseball game. No, what he and Harlan’s mom really wanted was to use their son in the latest of an endless series of photo ops. He wasn’t sure why he had even bothered raising an objection. Harlan had learned long ago that there were some battles you just couldn’t win.

He started to slide out of bed, but stopped. “Do you mind?” If his mom wasn’t going to let him see her without makeup, he wasn’t going to let her see him in his boxers.

Harlan stared at the wall—why would anyone put carpeting on a wall?—and wondered how many banquets like this one he’d gone to in his life. Five hundred? A thousand? He had to have been to at least fifty in this very hall. He thought, Maybe I should start scratching hatch marks in one of the bathroom stalls.

Since the evening had started, Harlan’s father had spoken to him a grand total of three sentences, and
they had all been in the car on the ride over. So much for his father’s wanting to spend time with him.

“You look like you want to be here even less than I do,” said a voice from one side. For cocktails, everyone was still standing.

“What?” Harlan said. It was a woman—in her mid-thirties, nice-looking but not beautiful. Somehow Harlan knew in a glance that a Bittle Society dinner was not her natural habitat. Her outfit, for example. White blouse, purple skirt, silver jewelry—not inexpensive, but nothing remotely high-fashion, everything chosen to last. In fact, now that Harlan looked at her, he could swear the woman looked familiar. “No,” he told her, maybe a little too firmly. “Not at all.”

The woman smiled. “Relax. It’s not that obvious.”

“I know you,” Harlan said suddenly. “You’re Beth Farrell. The novelist.” Always address people by their names, Harlan’s mother said. Studies show that the sound people most like to hear is their own name spoken out loud.

“That’s me,” said the woman. “Ever read any of my books?”

“I—” He hadn’t, but he wondered if he should lie. He knew his mother would want him to. On the other hand, it seemed like such an obvious lie, so
easy to expose. “No,” he said at last. “But now I will.”

“Don’t bother. I just like asking people that. I can always tell when they’re lying. And you’d be shocked how often that is.”

Now Harlan smiled. He liked her.

“I’m Harlan—”

“Chesterton,” she finished. “The senator’s son. I know who you are.” Harlan wasn’t surprised. Everyone always knew who he was.

“So, Ms. Farrell—”

“Beth.”

“You’re a member of the Bittle Society?”

“Um, no.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Bunch of right-wing bluenoses, but don’t quote me on that.” Her hair smelled like a forest of cedar and pine, as if she’d been out hiking in the woods that very afternoon. “Still,” Beth went on, “just because they’re Republican, that doesn’t mean I won’t take their money. I’m here to get an award, just like your dad.”

As if by reflex, they both turned to look at Harlan’s father, holding court over by the hors d’oeuvres—close, but not too close, to the bar. His dad adjusted his glasses. He looked mild-mannered because he was; Harlan’s mom was the power behind that throne.

“Must be tough,” Beth said.

“What?” Harlan said.

“Having a father like that.”

He knew he should be nervous, talking to someone unfamiliar about something as personal as this—especially given that she was a writer. He knew what his mother would say about a situation like this: smile politely and change the subject.

“It’s not that bad,” Harlan said.

“Uh-huh.” She obviously didn’t believe him. “So are you planning on following him into politics?”

“Probably,” Harlan said. In some families, it went without saying that the children would go to college. In his family, it went without saying that Harlan would go into politics (
and
go to college!). He’d been groomed for it his whole life. And he already knew he would be very good at it.

“So is that what you really want to do?” Beth asked.

“What?” Harlan said. He’d been asked a lot of questions at functions like this, but he’d never been asked that one before.

But suddenly there was his mom, appearing out of thin air. “Beth!” she said, all popcorn and pinwheels on the surface, but Harlan could hear the creaking of very thin ice under her breath.

“Victoria,” Beth said to his mother. The feeling was obviously mutual.

“Excuse us, please,” his mother said to the novelist. “There’s someone I want Harlan to meet.”

Harlan knew there wasn’t really anyone his mom wanted him to meet. She just didn’t want him talking to Beth Farrell.

“It was very nice to meet you, Harlan,” Beth said, but his mother was already ushering him away, like a Secret Service agent whisking the president away from a would-be assassin.

“So,” Harlan said to his mother when they were away from Beth and the crowd. “It’s been an hour, and I talked to twenty-five people. Twenty-six, if you count Beth Farrell. I’m leaving, okay?”

“Leaving?” His mother was predictably horrified. “We haven’t even had dinner! And what about the award?”

“I told you this morning: Ricky and Amber and I are going to a party. I can call him, and he’ll come pick me up.”

But as they talked, Harlan sensed that Bruce, his father’s chief of staff, had pricked up his ears, even several clusters of people away. His mom noticed too.

In a second, Bruce was at their side, all pomaded and twitchy. “You’re leaving?” he said to Harlan.

Harlan nodded hesitantly.

“What?” his mom said to Bruce.

“It’s just that you know how the senator’s numbers are down among Asian-Americans,” Bruce said.

Harlan just listened. The scary part was, he already knew exactly where this was headed.

“What are you saying?” his mom asked Bruce.

“I’m saying that a family visit to that Thousand Cranes League banquet later tonight might make one hell of a Christmas card.”

Bruce and Harlan’s mother both turned to look, full-bore, at Harlan.

“Mom—” he started to say.

“Not here, Harlan,” she said. That was the rule: absolutely no dissension in public. But apparently it only counted as dissension when he disagreed with his mother, not when she disagreed with him.

Bruce smiled at him; whenever he smiled, he reminded Harlan of a child molester. “Just an hour, Sport. That okay?”

Harlan shrugged. “I guess.” Then he turned to go.

“Where are you going?” his mom asked.

“Outside for a smoke.”

“Harlan! Not where people can see!”

“Smoking?” Bruce said to Harlan’s mom, concerned. “Since when did he start smoking?”

“It’s a joke,” Harlan said. “I don’t really smoke.”

“Thank God,” Bruce said. Then he added, with another pathetic smile, “That stuff’ll kill you, Sport.”

“Harlan, you know better than to make jokes like that,” his mother said, already turning away. “Someone might overhear.”

The fog was thick in the streets outside the convention center. If it hadn’t been for the sidewalks, he’d probably have been wandering in circles.

Harlan wasn’t an idiot. He knew what Beth Farrell had been insinuating back in the convention hall.
So is that what you really want to do?
She’d been saying he was just doing what his parents wanted him to do. Well, no duh! Harlan knew he didn’t have control over his life. He never had. Oh, sure, he had control at school—almost complete control, even over the teachers, which was kind of ironic when you thought about it. But that was all small stuff. The big stuff, the story line of his life, he was powerless to change. It was a little like the premonitions themselves, really: he could watch his life, like on a viewscreen, but he couldn’t direct it.

It was so much easier this way. Beth Farrell had no idea of the kinds of forces his parents could bring to bear on a person in order to get their way. His mom
ran their family life like she ran his dad’s reelection campaigns—namely, to win. That meant she had no problem playing hardball when she had to. Once, when he was in the seventh grade, Harlan had been acting slightly rebellious at home. Then his Boy Scout troop, which had been about to hold its annual fund-raiser, found that the restaurant that was donating the food suddenly had “problems” with the Health Department inspectors. Word quickly leaked that it was all Harlan’s fault; everyone—from the other scouts, to the troop leaders, to the owners of the restaurant—had been furious with him. Needless to say, Harlan had quickly fallen back in line with his parents, just as he had done so many times since then.

The fog surrounded Harlan now, so thick he could barely make anything out. It was like being in an alien world, some planet without substance, a place of steam and gas. Or maybe it was a passageway between worlds, a shifting corridor through the swirling mists of time. The fog smelled musty, like frayed furniture in a long-abandoned house.

Is that what you really want to do?
That’s what Beth Farrell had asked. But Harlan wasn’t sure
what
he wanted to do with his life. He was seventeen years old—how
could
he know? And until he figured that out, he might as well do what his parents said.
Someday, he’d figure out what
he
wanted. Then he’d stand up to his parents.

Someday. Just not now. Now he had to get back to the convention hall before his mom called out the FBI.

But which was the way back? He turned himself around, looking for a sign or landmark. Suddenly Harlan realized he was lost in the fog. It flowed around him like paint being swirled in a can, pressing in on him, confusing him. It made him dizzy. The fog even seemed to muffle sound.