“Let’s all copy down the names of the stories and poems and how many pages they are, and then mark the ones we think we should leave out,” Virginia says.
“Okay, fine, do it.” Dick hands the list to Virginia, who begins reading the titles aloud. You are so frozen with resentment that you put a mark beside your own story. Then the worst of the three poems, for a total of eight pages. But when Virginia tallies the votes, your story has survived. Missing are the two next-longest stories and one of the poems. That leaves two stories and two poems, and Dick’s introduction. It will be a sad little issue, just what everybody expects of The Draconian, but you are feeling a curious mixture of elation and guilt. Now your story will be part of the permanent record, where any scholar can dig it up and quote it indulgently when he writes his biography of you. Forty years ahead, when Dick Mayfield is still in jail for wife-beating and mopery.
At noon you take your lunch box out the back way to the slope above the bleachers, where if you lie flat in the grass you can’t be seen from the school above or the bleachers below. Through your mucosa I smell the cut grass, and I sample the sandwich while you eat it: white bread not quite stale, greasy margarine, lettuce, spiced baloney almost overripe.
For the hard-boiled egg you have salt and pepper shakers borrowed from the kitchen; Father would not approve if he knew, but he doesn’t, because you always put them back. The egg yolk is blue-green outside, and you’re thinking of a story you will never write, about a scientist who takes his vat-grown superchildren to another world, an empty blue-green world where they grow up wise and strong, but so godlike in intelligence that they can no longer be bothered talking to their creator. The title you are thinking of is “Promised Land.”
Then half a pickle, the emerald of vegetables.
IN THE AFTERNOON you get out of class again to work on the school paper. The Guide is put to bed on Tuesday, folded and mimeographed on Wednesday, distributed on Thursday. You type a stencil from a layout pasted up by Margaret. The stencil is a sandwich of backing sheet, cushion sheet (like angels’ toilet paper), and the blue waxy stencil itself on top. The type bar striking the stencil pushes the wax aside, leaving an impression through which the ink can ooze. When you type the wrong letter, you paint over it with correction fluid, wait for the fluid to dry, then type the right letter.
Fred Furlong, the editor, takes no part in these work sessions and is rarely seen in the Guide office, but today he looks in. “Miriam here?” Miriam Arnesen, the girls’ sports editor, a bovine blonde, is Fred’s girlfriend.
“Haven’t seen her.”
Fred comes farther into the room, smiling. He is a good-looking boy, dark-haired, wearing a beige cashmere sweater. “Matt, I hear you’ve got a good story coming up in the Draconian. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“We ought to talk sometime. You want to come over after school today?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Here’s the address.” He hands you a card. “See you later.” He waves and is gone.
You have a feeling something is happening that you don’t understand. Fred is out of your class in two senses: he is a senior, two years ahead of you, and his family is one of the richest in Dog River. You have a box Brownie; Fred has a movie camera.
You go back to your typing, make two errors side by side, correct them badly. The center pops out of an o; the stencil is mined. You start another.
Miriam Arnesen comes in and deposits something in the wire basket. She is large and pink, with Valkyrie braids and pale eyelashes. “Have you seen Fred?” she asks.
“Yes, about half an hour ago. He was looking for you.”
Her smile is slow and placid. “Oh, well, he’ll find me.”
Suddenly you wonder: what if Fred gave you a false address, so that he and all his friends can laugh at you tomorrow? Your heart is thudding. “Miriam, do you know where Fred lives?”
“Sure.”
“What’s the address?”
“One ten Churchill. Why?”
“He asked me over there after school.”
“Mm.” The slow smile again. “He must really like you.”
“I don’t know why — what he wants.”
She shakes her head. The braids swing. “I don’t either. Why don’t you ask him? Bye-bye.”
When she is gone, you find Churchill Street in the Dog River map. It is on the ridge at the northwest end of town, about a mile from here.
At four o’clock you’re standing in front of your open locker, dithering about the lunch box. If you show up carrying it, you may look ridiculous, but if you leave it, there will be complicated adjustments to make. You take the lunch box with the feeling of a decision postponed.
At noon the sky was clear, but now the sun is only a yellow stain on a high blanket of cloud. The long parade of students thins out as it passes the Heights business section with its sandwich shops and candy stores. Presently you are walking alone.
Ahead of you the street rises gently to a ridge of low houses. You hide your lunch box in a culvert; you can pick it up on your way back.
One ten Churchill is at the top of the rise, a big gray one-story house, with white trim and black carriage lamps. Nowhere is there any sign of age or wear. Geraniums in green wooden planters are on the porch, azaleas in mulched beds in the lawn. A young maple has shed a few premature leaves. Two cars and a lawnmower are visible through the open garage doors. You step up on the porch, lift the brass door knocker and tap. Fred opens the door smiling. “You made it,” he says. “Come on in.” The living room has a waxed wooden floor, rag rugs, a beige davenport and armchair. Fred waves you to the chair, then drops on the davenport with his arms behind his head. He looks at you with a secret smile.
“You’re a loner, pretty much, aren’t you, Matt?”
“I guess.”
“No friends in school?”
“One or two. Not like your gang.”
Fred’s smile widens. “Those kind of friends. They hang around because I can take them on my father’s boat in Yachats. Or I buy them little things. It’s easy to make friends when you’ve got money.”
“I guess.”
Fred shifts on the davenport. “What will you do when you get out of school?”
“Go to New York. Be a cartoonist.”
“Seriously?”
“Maybe art school first.”
“I envy you. It’s college for me, then I go into Dad’s business. You know, anybody can add up numbers, but art is a gift, isn’t it? Suppose I offered you a whole lot of money, would you trade me your gift?”
You shake your head. “Money would be nice to have, but.”
“Too bad.” He stands up. “Like to see the house?”
You follow him through a house that is empty and silent. Dining room with a long polished table, sideboard, candles in a silver holder. Kitchen, yellow walls, black floor.
“Where is everybody?”
“Dad and Mom are in Seattle. Mandy’s home sick. She’s the cook. I’m on my own. Come on, I’ll show you something else.”
You go out through a recreation room — ping-pong table, dart board. Behind the house is a wide flagstone patio, then a little strip of lawn. Other houses, other back yards, are spread out below in descending tiers.
Fred reaches up to curl his fingers around a limb of the young oak near the edge of the lawn. A falling leaf hangs in midair. “Look,” he says.
Below, a silver skin of light covers the rooftops, the empty streets. You can see all the way to the horizon and beyond. Not a creature is stirring. The world has stopped, and it is empty. You think about the novel The Purple Cloud — what it would be like to be the last man on Earth.