“Correction, buddy. They’ll know somebody was here. They won’t know who. They’ll just figure that some, uh, citizens came upon this unhappy scene and decided not to call it in. You know, the old don’t-get-involved thing. Very common these days.”
Lee’s double pointed his gun at the center of Lee’s chest. Helen Trenam took two more steps to the side. She had seen something like this before.
Lee said, “But I can’t just... disappear.”
“You won’t,” his double said. “You’ll be me.”
Lee’s eyes caught the beginning of a flash, and his mind had only the time to say to him, Extraordinary, but you’ll never tell this story.
Local Waters
by Luis Castillo
Indian Rocks Beach
Abel Rivera had just printed his name on the dry-erase board and was midway through the date when he heard, “Friggin’ homo.”
The marker’s felt tip squeaked to a halt. His back was to the class so he couldn’t say with absolute certainty that he’d been the intended target, but a chorus of “oohs” left little doubt.
He narrowed his eyes and turned to face second-period Intensive Reading. A small class, perhaps a dozen or so students, and every one of them seemed to enjoy the sight of anger on his face. He lingered on a blond, stocky kid with cigar-shaped dreadlocks who was fist-bumping a boy next to him.
Abel picked up the attendance sheet. Right now figuring out who some of these kids were seemed to be a more pressing need than the assignment. Cody Kimball was the kid with the blond dreads. Abel pegged him as a surfer-stoner type and the guy who delivered the homo-blast. An Indian Rocks Beach local himself, he usually fared better with that crowd.
He thought he’d be subbing for Advanced Placement English, but when he showed up this morning at Gulf Beaches High he was informed of a change in plans. Instead, the school secretary assigned him to be today’s floater and sent him off with a class-coverage schedule plus a thin stack of report cards and instructions to pass them out at the end of second period.
He’d been a floater here before. It was an awful assignment, crisscrossing campus after each period only to arrive at the next class moments before the bell, short of breath while searching for anything resembling a lesson plan.
After taking roll he returned to the board and finished writing out the date and assignment. As he hyphenated Section Review 2–2, an object cut through the air. It was a paper ball weighted with a penny inside. He’d been on the receiving end of one of these before. Judging from the force of the throw, the kid who nailed him had an arm.
His eyes raced around the room to get an AP down here pronto, but he’d only stepped inside a few minutes ago and he didn’t know where the call button was. As he scanned for the intercom, he once again locked eyes with Cody Kimball.
The kid met Abel’s gaze and held it long enough to make his point: Prove it.
Abel wanted to respond that this would be countered with a swift, harsh measure.
“Okay, class, let’s not throw things.” He raised the paper ball, shook the penny inside. “Technically, this is battery...”
“Nah, dude. A battery hurts way worse.” Cody’s timing triggered another burst of laughter. A couple of kids really put their lungs into it.
Abel’s toes curled. He marched over to Cody. A bored expression spread across the teen’s face. He played with the fluorescent-orange golf tee he’d fashioned into an ear gauge. Abel got to within arm’s reach.
“Look, Cody,” a mild shrill weakened his tone, “I’m going to need a little more respect and cooperation from you if you’re going to be allowed to stay in here. So Cody, this is a yes-or-no question. Are you going to cooperate and not interrupt when I’m trying to explain something?”
“Listen, dude. Let me explain something to you. I don’t like you getting up in my grill. You smell like some bad burrito and I kind of freak when people I don’t know stand close to me.” He sprang from his desk and headed for the door. Near it, he raised both arms and flashed double-V victory signs. “Peace, my brothers. I’m out.”
Abel could have sworn he heard epic, owned, how’d that taste, under Cody’s classmates’ breaths.
“Okay. Moving right along,” was his reply. He tried to make this sound light-hearted, but knew it landed like a brick.
A few minutes later he found the intercom, but no referral forms. If he buzzed the office now to inform them that Cody had just dressed him down and walked out of class, they would simply tell him to write the kid up, and he wasn’t about to announce that he didn’t have anything to do that with in front of this bunch.
Cody was out of the class, not a half-bad consolation prize, but Abel was still seething. He slouched behind a computer monitor flanked by file trays and stacks of paper on the teacher’s desk.
Despite his attempts not to, he kept staring at a couple of pictures near the American flag. A brightly colored poster read: Our Kids Are Worth Whatever It Takes. Taped next to that was a piece of notebook paper with a student’s drawing of a dog dropping. It also featured flies with motion-depicting lines and came with an assumed laudatory caption — Mr. Angelo Is the Shit.
He substituted Abel for Angelo and omitted the the when he thought of Saturday and the spring luau at his daughter Emma’s new school.
He’d bought tickets for the event and thought that gesture alone would be enough, but she later explained that they had to sit at the tables near the stage. The dinner was sponsored by the school’s Tongan society, and the entertainment would be dance performances. Because of the way the hall was laid out, it was tough to see from anywhere but up front. That was where her two new friends, Lita and Elena, would be sitting.
Not wanting to disappoint his third grader, he said he’d get the VIP seating but discovered that you had to make a donation to get the upgrade. The news at the car line was that Lita’s parents had paid for a suckling pig. Elena’s had donated Hawaiian punch and the rum supply for the cash bar. Abel had just paid this month’s bills and didn’t have the funds for a suitable gift or donation. The bottom line was that he’d have to tell his wife and daughter they weren’t sitting up front with Lita and Elena.
A bell rang and the students told him it was time for morning announcements. Dolphin Daybreak played from a mounted television set. Through the din came details about “a troubling development at GBH.” Someone had broken into the Dolphin Store and stolen donated prom dresses for the upcoming spring dance. A fifty-dollar gift card would be awarded to anyone providing information on the theft.
His ears perked up, but fifty bucks still seemed a little light for the seat upgrade.
“Care less, bitch,” a skinny surfer called out to a plus-sized girl. “They wouldn’t have your size anyway.”
The two looked as if they were about to come to blows, but the dismissal bell seemed to break it up before Abel had to.
He realized as he left that he’d failed to pass out the report cards. They were in a folder he’d set near the computer monitor. The kids didn’t exactly strike him as the types to be excited about bringing them home. There wasn’t much he could do about it now. Angelo could pass them out tomorrow, he guessed.
Maybe that’s what set Cody off. Report card day could be a bitch for the likes of him. Abel went back inside and snuck a peek. Below Cody’s address, 1489 Sea Breeze Lane, the grade column confirmed his hunch.