THE TALK | Chapter 6
The day he discovers himself in the basement...
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This is the sixth section of an excerpt from one of my pipeline novels, THE TALK, sometimes described (by me) as “Coraline meets Interior Chinatown.” THE TALK explores the implications of willful blindness—to color, to history, to many things—through a kid in a mysterious suburb who notices the seams in his off-kilter world, gradually coming to realize just how carefully they’ve controlled his perception of it, and how carefully they’ve controlled his perception of himself.
The excerpt starts here.
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SIX
The day the colorless boy discovers himself in the basement, he wakes before his alarm, turns on the light, and stares at all the white books on his shelf. They are off-white, or cream, or beige. They are written by men or by women, by American authors, or British, or Russian, or French. He has always thought of them as incredibly diverse, portals to different regions and eras of the world, or to other worlds entirely, each one a unique act of imagination. But for the first time he can see that what he thought were different colors were only shades. The rainbow on his shelf collapses to a monochrome smear. For the first time he realizes that despite the different titles and authors and covers, they are all the same.
His mom is looking at him over breakfast and he is looking back. What’s the deal with her big unblinking black eyes anyway? What’s up with her perpetual smile? Her face has been frozen for as long as he can remember. When he realized that everyone’s mom doesn’t look like that, he chalked it up to her superiority. After all, what is there not to smile at in this perfect little Everywhere-Nowhere? And wouldn’t you want to soak in every lovely and innocent moment of life in this town, without once closing your eyes? But maybe she doesn’t embody the ideal citizen after all. Maybe her smile is cover. Maybe her eyes are vigilantly watching for something in particular.
All day his skin is distracting him. It itches and burns and clamors for attention. “Would you like to show your work?” The uptight teacher calls on him in math class.
“Uh, sure.”
At the whiteboard, he can feel his classmates’ eyes on his back. The marker trembles in his hand. What if they all see him the way relatively rich dad or thug-life’s dad sees him, and they just never let on? It is all he can do not to look down at himself.
“OK then,” the uptight teacher says as he returns to his desk, “assuming you can read that chicken scratch, can anyone correct the several mistakes?” Everyone giggles.
In History, questions occur to him that no one asks in Everywhere-Nowhere. Like, How exactly did we get from there to here? How old is Everywhere-Nowhere, and how did it become the way it is? Who lives in the next neighborhood over, and are they having a nice day? Is there even a next neighborhood over at all? Crazy stuff! And even as they pop into his head he knows he shouldn’t ask them aloud. Not that he wants to.
After practice he desperately needs someone to talk to. But as he approaches Thug-life at the pickup area outside the track, his friend seems to know exactly what he’s thinking.
“I don’t wanna talk to you right now.”
“But I just-”
“Shut up.”
Thug-life (the colorless boy has stopped calling him that, but to stop thinking of him that way will take time) goes so far as to turn his back and walk away. He walks down the length of the track until he is over 100 meters away, on a strip of grass between the track and the street that borders the school, which would make for kind of an awkward pickup. That’s dedication.
Just as the colorless boy is debating whether to chase down his friend, he sees a police car pull up alongside Thug-life. Must be Officer Wilson stopping to say hi. The car gives a quick bloop-bloop which is loud even from where the colorless boy stands, and frankly a little over the top, but he must be pretty excited to see Thug-life. Then Thug-life is raising his arms to wave back, which is equally over the top to use both arms to wave at someone a few feet away, definitely not Thug-life’s MO. But he doesn’t even finish his two-handed wave, cause both hands meet behind his head and stay there. Then Officer Wilson gets out of the car and… what is going on here?!
Before he knows what he’s doing the colorless boy is sprinting toward this misunderstanding like a try-hard getting in some extra intervals. When he arrives Officer Wilson has his friend bent over the hood of the car, pinned there with one jacked police arm while patting him down with the other. “What are you doing?” he shouts. “That’s not a bad guy! You know him! He doesn’t have any weapons!”
Officer Wilson turns toward the colorless boy with the most frightening expression he has ever seen. He places his free hand on his gun and speaks rapidly into the walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder. “Suspect apprehended. And it looks like he’s got reinforcements. Requesting backup.” The colorless boy barely hears the words. He is too disturbed by the look, which is cold and calculating, like a veteran soldier appraising a new threat. Officer Parker looks right at his face and doesn’t recognize him. So what is he seeing instead?
“No, Officer Wilson, it’s me.”
“Oh.” The officer blinks, and when he opens his eyes it’s like he’s filled back in the colorless boy’s normal face over whatever he had replaced it with. “Hey bud. Hope you had a good track practice. You should go back to the pickup area now, for your own safety.”
“But he’s not dangerous!”
“He fits the profile of someone we’re looking for.”
“What profile?”
“Suspicious character. Young ----- male in streetwear.”
“Huh?”
“Young B---- male in streetwear. He was loitering here, suspiciously. We’re just trying to keep you kids safe.” He still has Thug-life pinned to the hood, and the boy is very still.
“But he’s a kid!”
“These gangbangers get younger every year. You can never be too careful.”
Just then his mom pulls up. She waves to the officer, beckons her son to get in the SUV, ignores the boy pinned to the car.
“Mom, look!”
“Officer Wilson is just doing his job, Sport,” she flashes her perpetual smile at the policeman. “We need to stay out of his way.”
“No!”
“Get your BL--- ass in the car!” his mom says in a voice he has never heard, her smile completely evaporated.
“Huh?”
“I said getchyo BLA-- ass in the goddamn car!”
Officer Wilson finds this very amusing. “Yeah! Put that boy in his place. Don’t let him become like this one.”
The colorless boy runs into the backseat of the SUV. He curls up there for a sullen, silent ride home, hot tears flowing onto the upholstery. As they pull into the garage his mom is smiling like normal. She trains her perfect-circle black eyes on him through the rearview mirror. “You okay, Sport?” She asks like nothing happened. “Wanna talk?”
“No,” he sniffles, “I’m exhausted. I’m going to sleep.” And no one protests as he heads straight to his room.