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Not even two blocks from the school, Quincy winces at what could be the smell of detriment.
Children will be in the nurse’s office, no doubt. Everyone will have their mouths and noses covered. Why did parents bother sending their kids to school today in the first place? The general public is stupid as hell. No way around it.
About a block from the school, his imagination locks on Trinity. What will she sound like? Will she believe it’s him? Maybe she won’t care. There’s a good chance she won’t remember him, or even worse, shun him. But he knows he looks the same. He’s done what he meant to do.
The street in front of the school is quiet, mostly uninteresting.
Parents think it’s better to raise children in boring areas. They can build from boredom easier than accept moments of diversity and conflict that might add to their child’s character.
The concrete staircase leading to the large front doors of the school sparkle with glitter. A white stripe leads from the top of the steps all the way down to the sidewalk. He could be a child here, soon. A child for the third time.
A secretary, a heavy-set woman with layers of flowing brown hair and deep brown eyes greets him at the front counter.
“I’m here to visit Mrs. Logan.”
The secretary, with a blank face and then a blank smile, peels a sticker away from a booklet. She hands the sticker and a marker to him.
“Fill in your name,” she says. “You’ll need to keep it on. Sign in on the clipboard. Let me call down there, make sure she’s expecting you. Go ahead, sign in.”
As he signs the clipboard, the secretary picks up the phone, pushes a bunch of buttons on it. “Mrs. Logan? Uh huh. A, uh,” she reads Quincy’s name tag, “Langston is here to see you.” Her eyes focus on the ceiling. “Okay.” The secretary hangs up, beaming. “Who are you, again?”
“You got it right, what you told her.”
“I mean how are you related? She sounded happy. I’ve never actually seen her happy. I’m just like, wow, who’s this guy?”
“Can I go or...”
“Um, would you like a piece of gum?”
Alcohol on his breath. “Shit, I need gum?”
“Yes, definitely, gum.”
“If you got some then bring it.”
She digs around in her desk drawer, pulls out a stick of gum, and hands it to him, like she’s holding out a message that might save his life. “A teacher smells alcohol on your breath and the cops’ll come.”
“Thank you. Shit. How good do you know her?” he asks.
“She’s amazing. Bitter but amazing. Don’t tell her I said that. You’d have to be drunk to want to hang with her. I’m kidding. You seem safe to me, as happy as you seem to make her. You’re not a problem, right? I’m not going to lose my job?”
“I’m not even a problem.”
“How ‘bout I walk you down there. Keep us both out of trouble. Chew hard and fast.”
Quincy nods, follows her into the hall.
She walks close to him, awkwardly so.
“It’s down the hall, through the double doors. After that you veer right to the bungalows, room 39.”
Quincy finds his stride slowing.
“Something wrong?” the secretary asks.
“I’ll know in a minute.”
“How do you know her?”
“I hope we were almost lovers, way back in the day. Going to make this happen.”
The secretary stops. “I’ll leave you to it.”
He leaves her behind, strolls down the hallway. Lime green walls nicely decorated with book reports, and child art made with cereal and glue. Lame propaganda in black and pink bubble lettering prompting good citizens to use their ‘nice words for nice results’. Room numbers next to doors indicate where learning is supposed happen.
It’s baffling at how similar the setting is to when he was younger several lifetimes ago, despite the changes in the world. Peeking into one room, he notices Lincoln Logs. The teacher still uses a chalkboard. The kids still sit on a rug, labor to stay in their skin while the teacher politely chastises and placates them. After nearly two and a half lifetimes, school refuses to wholeheartedly change. Always a new twist on the same shit. If school is about freeing yourself, then to be free you must first be subordinate, drop any ideas that might free a motherfucker.
He follows the secretary’s instructions to get to Trinna’s classroom.
The sun meets him outside the hallway. He trickles down the steps, follows the sun to the bungalow area where he finds himself, again, preparing to be a child, to be subordinate again, to fight himself and the world again.
Room 39 pops up on the left. The door is open. He follows the zig-zagging handrail up the ramp until he reaches the door. A rare sense of fear creeps into his bones, slows his pace.
The bell rings. The pitter patter of kids lining up at the door jars him. So many small people so close to him. Trinity calls kids’ names, excuses them individually. Her voice, a muddied distortion of yesteryear. Not lacking beauty; however, diluted by symptoms of time, is all.
“Okay, walk,” he hears her say. “Walk.”
With their hands behind their backs, the students march single file past him, towards a marker up ahead. The last one out of the classroom is Trinity. She pauses when she sees him, purses her lips, waves the kids on, and begins to weep. The kids don’t move forward, despite her signal. Some of them point, and one girl gets out of line to get her teacher’s attention.
“No,” Trinity says. “My line leader, single file line to the cafeteria. Straight line in 3,2,1...” She claps her hands twice. As the kids file around the corner and out of sight, she cries. One hand on Quincy’s shoulder, the other grips the door handle.
“Trinity,” he says.
“Langston.” She gathers herself, stands straight up and makes eye contact.
“Ya damned right.” His chuckle is nervous. He inhales, deeply, acknowledges his absolute terror at standing before her.
“Oh, that would have been embarrassing. If it wasn’t you. You’re so, young.” Again, she purses her lips.
“I’m very old, right here.” He rests his hand on his chest, as if preparing for the pledge of allegiance. “You still smell like your same perfume, like roses.”
“I look so different. I thought if you returned, if you didn’t recognize my face, you would recognize my scent. And you did return.”
“What I recognize is that we need to get inside the classroom.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” She strolls to her worktable in the classroom, leans on it.
“Why are you surprised to see me, if you’ve been ready for me?”
Statuesque, she stares at him. “What happens next?”
He smiles. “A new life. You’ll be introduced to the world as an orphan, like me, never admitting you ever had parents. At our age, deep down, we’re really orphans, anyway. You can change your name, have to, really. You know me as Langston. This entire lifetime calls me Quincy.”
The smile on her face stretches every wrinkle near her mouth and cheeks. “You’re absolutely going to make me young again.”
“How young?”
“I have a husband. I don’t know what he’s going to do? He’s very ill. Could you do the same for him?”
He chomps harder and faster on his gum. “Why you messing with other niggas if you knew I was coming? I could see a little bit, but you have a husband?”
“Is that a problem?” She meanders away from him, towards her desk.
“You want something from me. You have nothing for me though.”
She clasps her hands. “Things have changed since last time I saw you.”
“Look at me. Look at me. Very little has changed for me. Know what I mean?”
“You said yourself, you’re young, physically, not in here.” She taps her chest. “Do I owe you something?”
“You want something from me, but you’re not offering anything. Do you owe me something? Just know your husband stays.”
“You found me. All I’d be is grateful.” Her nose flares. “I’m not offering you any more than that.”
He wipes his mouth, makes clicking sounds with his tongue. He takes a step towards her, and then another. He lifts his head, so he’s staring at the small holes in the particle board, tile ceiling.
He says, “I’m going to come out and say it. I’ve carried the weight of you in my heart for this whole life, picturing a mother for my son. A family for my son. A family I’ve never had. I stayed away, thinking I had to come back at only the right time so that you recognized me, because you had to remember that, Trinity, girl, it’s me. It’s me. I knew you were my queen right when I saw you on that playground with my son. I knew it. And all you can be is grateful?”
“You’re not going to own me.”
“The only thing is your husband isn’t your husband anymore. Go ahead and remember him as your husband. Go ahead and think about him. I don’t care. But he can’t be your husband.”
“I’m not going to be your wife?”
He grinds on the gum, like a cow chews cud. “I only want to be with the beautiful rose I met back then. If I’m delusional and need to step out of here, then I’ll go. My bad, my mistake.” He shrugs. “Don’t tell me that’s what’s happening.”
“I can’t accept what you’re offering. Like you said, I can only be grateful. That’s not enough, apparently. I’ll be lying if I do anything else.”
“I don’t think you’ll be lying. You’ll be lying more by staying with this dude you call a husband.”
A smell, like molded chicken, circles them.
Trinity Kimbrel covers her nose with her hand. “It’s so bad. Off and on, you never know when.”
“You can’t let it be true? In a matter of time?” he said.
“I’d do anything to have my youth back. All I could be is grateful for that. I can’t leave my husband.”
“I can give you an out.”
“An out?” she says.
“You have to know people are dying out there, getting sick.”
“And.”
“I bet hubby is dead before we make it to him.”
“Tell me that was not a threat.”
“Not a threat. We can go see about him. If he’s alive, him too. A deal for you. Compromise for me.”
“Are you implying you know something about the stench?”
“Nothing you don’t know. You see it happening all around. If kids are having a hard time, then your so-called husband is. I guess, yeah, I might know something.”
“What else? What else do you know?”
“To be real, I might know something extra. It’s too late for that.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s not a where or what it’s coming from. It’s who it’s come from.”
***
Trinna, listen to me.
At first this might be hard to understand: the stench comes from Arthur.
I could have helped him stop it. He died, so everything is all mucked the hell up. My son is dead, so it’s all screwed up. Nothing to do now.
Let me explain it better.
My dad—from lifetimes ago—would always say a person has to ask for what they take from the world. Or, as I see it now, you have to ask for what you accomplish, or you wind up doing something else with your gift. That’s anybody, not just me or him. Arthur could add life to things. Accidentally, he unleashed it on motherfuckers.
When you have what me and Arthur have, you’re a big filter. The world enters you in some way. Me and Arthur can send it back out there, filtered through us, so we need to be aware of what we’re putting back out there. When I make us young again, I’ll feel the world moving through me, then it can come into you. From there it will do what my abilities say it can, which is make things young. That’s what I can do. I can do that for you. Can’t make things older. Only younger, so once we’re there, we’re there.
Arthur, because his dumb ass didn’t know what he was doing, the world moved through him and spit out his nasty shit. He accidentally poisons things when he uses his ability. He might as well be the lead dumped in your drinking water for years at a time.
The reek we smell, it’s what Arthur’s depression smells like. It’s what anger and frustration smell like, what people treating you like shit since being a kid smells like, like what watching the person you love commit suicide smells like. That’s Arthur we smell in the air.
Arthur is a statistic, thanks to me. Thanks to me leaving him, he’s that poor, Black, inner-city kid who got raised by a single parent. He’s the kid who never had a real relationship with an adult, who never had someone consistent who he could identify with. I don’t think he had anyone to love. This kid made it through school, through the bullshit of growing up alone and by himself. How do I know that? I know because I wasn’t there. His mom wasn’t there. No adult was there, and when I got the chance, how can I say that I chose you over him? I’ll say it like that. I chose somebody else over him, convinced I had all kinds of time. I mean, I can create time. I wanted that family, but what family? There wasn’t one. I sacrificed him for that idea.
Nobody ever taught Arthur to be Arthur. A bunch of motherfuckers only taught Arthur to be nobody specific. They thought he could be anybody. People can’t be anybody or anything they put their mind to, all that bullshit. People are themselves first, let’s say it like it is. He’s sure not like me. I guess he’s dead now, so this stench is on me. In a roundabout way, I did it. I’ll own it. I’ll take that. Nothing I can do, but I’ll own it.
I first saw signs of his condition in high school. I told his ass even then. ‘You have to know what you’re doing,’ I told him. The last time I saw him since not too many hours ago was at a little house party back in high school. What I saw scared the hell out of me. I had no idea he had been doing what he had been doing, till then. I thought it was too late. So, like an idiot, I got out of there.
***
Arthur and Sandra were already at the party when I arrived.
A crowded, small apartment, smelling like spilled beer and liquor. A thin haze of cigarette smoke. A hint of vomit and urine. This was and is the youth, standing around either doing nothing or doing dumb shit. Youth is a term given to the youth, not by the youth. The youth have never had a representative of their own stand up for them. The only heroes in high school are fiction characters, not real people.
All these hero-less wastes of time crammed themselves into such a small place that they spilled out the front and back doors, down the walkway. Kids were loitering on street corners.
I walk in and people are pointing at me with their eyes. Some girls reach out and touch me. I used to get that from girls. They wanted to have their hands on me in some way. I’ll admit it, I left a lot of them wanting more. Left a few of them pissed off as all get out. None of them my ex. I only wanted you.
Sandra greeted me with a kiss on the cheek like she always did. She said something to me. I don’t remember what. Arthur greeted me with an embrace and a smile. We had become good friends, although I excused myself from his clique. Too old for that, from the beginning.
The music was so damned loud we yelled back and forth, smiling. Arthur with his beer. Sandra with a water. Might have been vodka. I still don’t care.
“We’re going to graduate,” he said. “That’s crazy. After everything that’s happened.”
He went on and on, from subject to subject. He talked about how his mom left him, talked about how he discovered his abilities, how he landed Sandra, and now got laid all the time. He talked about how me and him were both orphans and special.
“You’re like a brother to me, you have to know that,” he said.
“We’re good. Nothing to talk about.”
He took a huge chug from his can of beer. “It’s not good. I’m not good.”
I looked at Sandra. “What the hell is he talking about?”
She shook her head. She had a horribly sad friggin look on her face. It was worse because of how pretty she was.
By the time of that party, Sandra basically had no friends. Her time would always, always be with Arthur. Like plenty of close couples, she became an extension of his laugh, of his moods. She didn’t see her people anymore.
Charles came into the living room via the hallway, his hands wrapped around Justin’s girlfriend, Tania’s, waist. He kissed the back of her neck. A huge spectacle. Coming from that hallway could only mean one thing. They were banging in the apartment’s only bedroom. They would have to have been in there before the party started, hours ago, for nobody to know they were in there. Anybody in the know was like ‘ooooohhhhh’. I, myself, was like, holy shit, what’s this?
Arthur turned to see what got so much of everyone’s attention and yelled “fuck”.
Charles saw him, flipped his hair behind his ears, smiled, and came at us. He didn’t dare bring the broad with him.
“What are you doing?” Arthur said, a kind of gloom sat on him. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Charles said, “Chill. He’s not around.”
“Justin’s right outside dumb-ass,” Sandra said.
Charles rotated his head back and forth, looked around like a bird. “Where?”
On cue Justin walked through the front door, exhaled the last puff of his cigarette. The dude had changed a bunch since earlier days. He had on a hoodie sweater. Converse. He kept his hair short and neat, only wanted to fit in.
We watched the whole thing unfold from the far end of the living room. Justin saw Tania, his girlfriend, who he had no idea was at the party till that moment. Instead of welcoming him, she had a wall up. He was like what the hell, and they argued for a while. Numerous people cleared away from them. Justin took her ass by the elbow and ripped her from the damned place.
Charles, who at most times was all smiles, stood in front of us, speechless.
“I don’t know what you’re still doing here,” Arthur said, pounding the rest of his beer. “You screwed up.”
“We’re in love, bro,” is the silly shit Charles said.
I’m like, “She’s not the only one you’re screwing.”
“I know,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do. I love her. She’s hot.”
“What if Justin loves her?” I said.
“You’re one to talk,” he said.
“What keeps you from screwing my girlfriend?” Arthur said to him.
“She’s not in love with me,” Charles responded.
Arthur stepped into Charles’s personal space. “But if you thought she did, you would. Maybe we break up for a day. She gives you a look you like.”
“You guys aren’t breaking up,” Charles answered.
Arthur looked Sandra dead in the eye and asked, “Would you screw him?”
A snarl formed around her lips. “Yeah, I’d bone Charles.”
Charles’ face morphed into complete confusion. I should have seen right then that whatever emotional junk Arthur had going on with him, Sandra had going on with her too, only on another level. No more than a moment before that she was as stupefied as any of us at Charles’ decision to bang Justin’s girl. A moment later, although upset, she said she’d bone Charles. She said it because Arthur thought it.
Then, basically on cue, here comes Justin, like an emotional knife, slicing through people to get to us, to get to Charles. When he gets to us, he doesn’t say what’s up or hello or anything like that. He punches Charles in the side of the head. Charles made a girl-like sound before pushing himself away, tossing himself into me. I shoved him off me and cursed at him.
Arthur grabbed Justin by the shirt. “Whoaaa, whoaaa, hang back, hang back.”
Justin wasn’t listening to that mess. He jumped at Charles and shoved him hard enough to send Charles flying against the wall. The whole party was aware of the situation. Some people got out of there but most gathered and yelled, did some distinctly unhero-like shit, chanting, egging the fight on.
Justin dived on top of Charles. I stepped back and let it happen. I couldn’t be a hypocrite. If I was in Justin’s boots, I would have kicked Charles in the mouth.
Someone dived on top of Justin to get him off Charles. Someone else jumped in, some other dude, I don’t know who. All these girls were screaming. The whole thing was a mess. Someone decided to dump beer on everyone. The entire living room of people was moving, shoving, and pulling. There were some good intentions, but none of them stopped Justin from pounding on Charles’s face.
Did Justin’s girl come back inside to stop him? Hell no. Did she know this would happen? Hell, yes.
That’s the moment I noticed it. I saw Arthur, with one hand, trying to rip people off Charles. His other hand was aimed at Sandra, who stood by herself on the wall. He had one hand in the pile of kids, the other grabbing for something. I’m looking at his hand, and then at Sandra, his hand, and then at Sandra. You know what I saw. She was off the ground. Without touching her, he was pinning her against the wall, holding her there, at least five feet away. She looked uncomfortable. Not shocked, merely uncomfortable. It’s when it occurred to me that he didn’t know he was doing it, but maybe it happened all the time. He was using his ability accidentally; he was controlling Sandra, while not controlling himself. To have her in the air like that, off that ground, it’s thorough control.
How long had he been doing that?
I panicked. Not because of his abilities, but because I didn’t want to be around when the consequences happened.
Here is the unwritten rule, what my dad said. You can do whatever you want, but if you do, it had better be intentional, and on a special occasion. It’s not something you do all the time. If you do, you wind up poisoning the well.
Arthur was enabled by me to poison the well. I was being a friend of his instead of a father. He’s still poisoning the well, so much so that you can friggin smell it. It’s all him.
The next day was the first in grad week. That day at school was the first time I smelled the shit we all smell now. It’s been building up since even before that, for who knows how long.
Should I have left him? Hell no. I thought it was tough love, leaving him alone like that. Never thought these many lives would be at risk. Not this many.
***
“I don’t believe I’m hearing you say such a thing,” Ms. Kimbrel says.
“Life is full of shit that’s straight unbelievable and absolutely completely true.”
“A person doesn’t smell emotions.”
“I do. I can guarantee you that.”
“Because you failed him?”
“I’m pretty damned sure when parents fear their kids, and it doesn’t matter the reason, at that point, they stop being parents.”
“And that’s you.”
Quincy lifts his chin. “That’s me. That’s a way to look at it. Listen, I’ve got nothing against your husband. Let him finish his life out. Let him be most people. You and me be special. Say, yes, so we can leave all this. Start new with our own thing.”
“I’ll be lonely,” she says.
“You’ll have me. You can have your looks back. You can have what everybody, including myself wants—time. You can be more than grateful. You can be happy.”
She gives one nod, like a genie. “I want to have a kid. That’s what I want.”
Quincy smiles. “Our child can be as special as Arthur. You know what my dad could do? He could change elements. The dude could turn water into wine. I’m not even kidding. Plastic into glass.”
Ms. Kimbrel gazes up at the ceiling, closes her eyes, and nods, again, like a genie. “Okay, then.”
“You don’t even have to love me,” he says. “As long as I can be with you, we’ll figure it out, won’t we.”
The bell rings to end lunch.
Quincy heads to the door. “Finish your day. I’ll come back for you after I get Arthur, figure out what to do with his body.” He looks around the room. “I thought he could take care of himself. We’ll see about your so-called husband.”
“Come back.”
He opens the door, takes a step outside onto the ramp. “Shit.”
“What is it?”
He waves her in his direction, suggests for her to step forward and see what he sees.
She hurries to the door to see what’s grabbed his attention so suddenly.
Over a dozen kids lie around the bungalow gasping for air, gripping their throats. A few of them look dead.
“Shit.” Quincy rushes and kneels beside a little girl near the wall. He grabs her small hands, pulls them away from her throat. He looks her in the eyes which are circling in her face. She wheezes, and then stops breathing.
Ms. Kimbrel rushes past Quincy to a male child only a few feet away. “Derrick.”
She doesn’t bother to get any closer to him, instead desperately searches around, and then runs towards the main hallway.
Giving up on the young girl, Quincy runs towards the large, concrete field, leaps over and around dead kids on his way there. On the field, kids are strewn about like litter, some motionless, some writhing like worms. He finds himself shaking his head in shock at how fast it all happened. A generation of kids, not anymore. He briefly sifts his thoughts for a solution.
He runs back to Ms. Kimbrel’s class. She’s not there so he yells for her.
In the main building, Ms. Kimbrel checks inside several classrooms. Nobody is in there.
In the staff lounge several teachers hunch over on the long table. Others lie on the floor, their throats swollen. She’s never seen swollen throats. She coughs involuntarily, to expel something from her throat. Can’t stop coughing.
Grabbing her throat, she makes her way to the Principals office, staggers against doorways. The Principal lies partly under a desk, in the administration office. The dead secretary is in a doorway on the way out the back door. She must have tried to escape. Ms. Kimbrel steps over the secretary, whispers for the will of something higher to intervene.
She’s outside again, in the quad.
She sees through open classroom doors, and windows, fellow teachers consoling children, children crying. Staff bewildered, lost and lame.
She jogs back to her classroom, looks for Quincy. He stands with his hands in his pockets. He’s been waiting for her.
It feels as if her throat is closing, like her chest might explode.
Quincy rushes to her, hands flailing.
She falls to her knees.
He catches her, then lays her flat on the ground. He puts his mouth to hers, and then blows.