I would fly
Graduation was an endurance test. Kids got diplomas, shook hands with the superintendent and handed him a lollipop secretly as a joke. His pockets bulged after forty of them. We had a class of 343. He had to start emptying into the podium every few rows. I did not grab a lollipop when I was leaving the cafeteria. I was not going to play a joke on the superintendent.
Gerald Faust, our resident reality TV star, accepted his diploma with Native American war paint on his face. He pushed a girl I never saw before in a wheelchair up a makeshift plywood ramp on the left side. She gave the superintendent a lollipop.
At one point during the endless wait to get past the M names, I met eyes with a kid standing in the aisle waiting to go to the stage. I’d never seen him before. He had the most beautiful brown eyes.
Beautiful Brown Eyes’s transmission: His grandfather escaped Cuba in the 1960s and lived long enough to see this day. His grandfather’s grandfather was killed in the Partido Independiente de Color in 1912, fighting for the rights of Afro-Cubans. His grandson will also die fighting for rights in the Second Civil War.
I smiled shyly at the beautiful brown-eyed kid and then looked down at my program. I paged through the list of 343 graduates. Some had asterisks behind their names. Some didn’t. If I let my eyes go lazy, all the type blurred into one big block of blue ink.
I am no one special. You are no one special. Can you handle that? Most people can’t handle it.
I am tortured by the mundane. You are mundane. I am tortured by you.
I looked down at my Doc Martens shoes. I’d shined them and bought new white bobby socks. No one could see my dress under the gown, but I felt it there, a size too big, making me smaller, shrinking me into the size of a bat.
When it was finally time for our row to go up, I stood and smoothed out my gown and took a deep breath. I thought of Darla. I pictured Bill, the man with no head. I pictured the headless naked body from the previous page in Darla’s book. Why would anyone do this?
I thought of Letter N Day. I thought about how my formal education started there, on that day, and how it was going to end today. From now on, I wasn’t going to keep my life a secret. I was going to be a natural human being, if there was such a thing. I was going to be free. Life, liberty and don’t tread on me. I would fly.
Maybe this is what Free yourself. Have the courage meant. After this stupid ceremony, I would talk about it. Darla. Suicide. Whatever would help me move forward. Whatever made me stop thinking I was doomed. I was not doomed. Was I? I was not another apple who would fall too close to the tree. Was I?
I said this in my head, but underneath it all were chemistry and genes and questions that had never been answered. Questions I had never asked.
We were fed onto the stage like machine parts. We were a conveyor belt of future. We were an assembly line of tomorrow. We were handed our diplomas and stood to face the audience and they were asked not to clap until the end, but some did anyway.
I heard Dad yell. “Cupcake!”
I heard Ellie, from somewhere. “Hell yeah!”
I smiled and looked at the superintendent. His distant descendant will die in the twenty-fourth century’s World War IV, because his brothers will close the shelter door and leave him out. True story: Radiation poisoning decreases the faster you get into a shelter. Even if you lock out your own brother.
I stood and faced the crowd and heard a static of epic proportions. Chatter of a thousand infinities all at once. I saw cavemen and space stations. I saw wars fought on horseback and wars fought with photon torpedoes. I looked back down, exited via the steps to the right and took my place on the assembly line. We filed back to our row and shimmied into our places and sat down on cue.
Like well-trained dogs.
We were halfway through the W names when I saw Ellie walking behind the away bleachers. The away bleachers were empty because they were behind the stage. She found a place in the shade under the middle of the bleachers and sat down. Then she stood up and drew something on the bottom side of the bleacher seats, one after the other.
I watched her all the way through to Deanna Zwicky and then the Class of 2014 was instructed to stand and move our tassels from one side to the other and we were reminded for the tenth time not to throw our caps because our mortarboards could take an eye out.
Max Black the bat showed me how we were obedient monkeys. He told me to guess what Ellie was writing under the bleachers.
Free yourself. Have the courage.
Which was a fine thing to do if you were no one special.
I looked at the backs of three-hundred-plus heads and thought: What a perfect day to figure this out.
If Max Black the bat had had full control, I’d have stood on my folding chair right then and screamed it. I’d have rushed the stage and chanted it into the microphone. I’d have outdone all those bullshit speeches I heard that day.
My speech would have been about the nature of us.
Human beings.
How we’re a pack of self-centered animals.
I’d have named my speech: You are mundane.