“Sandstorm” (fiction)

The room had more people crying at one time than anywhere he had been before. All girls. And him. John kept expecting them to give some indication that they recognized him, but they didn’t.Their red and swollen faces were blank, hideous. Their crying, high pitched and violent, seemed to blend into a single sound as though they had been coached to do it together. He hadn’t been prepared for this when Principal Bogdanski had made the announcement that anyone who had known the kids could go to Room 115.

**********************

It had been hot that morning, and by what John would have guessed to have been 10 a.m., he’d already sweat enough for his oversized Deftones shirt to stick to him. He hated the Deftones now, but he’d liked them last year when he got it. Picking at his shirt made flaky white things float to the ground. A splotch of toothpaste next to the shirt’s image of a screaming cat reminded him of the warped tube of Crest he’d found on Christianson’s bathroom floor that morning. John had brushed with his finger before he and Ian had left.

They’d woken hungry and exhausted, their mouths dry, their adolescent skin broken out from having not washed. Since he’d graduated last year, days at the shop started early for Christianson, so he was gone by the time they’d gotten up. They hadn’t bothered to check who else was still sleeping it off from last night’s party before leaving. There was never anything to eat at Christianson’s place, so they had stopped in Gottimart to swipe breakfast on their way to school.

As they passed through the door to Gottimart, Ian adjusted his Yankees hat by taking hold of it from the back where he had written something in whiteout. This made their entrance feel formal, as though Ian had thought to doff his cap upon entering the building.

Gottimart’s few short rows of items were lit by an old lamp plugged into the wall next to the cash register. The rest of the store was dark. Bob, the owner, used it for storage. Things were piled around: a ladder, old cigarette advertisements, stacks of shipping containers for soda bottles, a flat tire. Stopping at the counter, John put his hand on one of the store’s three bottles of oil. The plastic was hot. The bottle felt like it would cave in if he pressed too hard.

“I just threw up,” Nick Gulatti, who everyone called John Gotti, said from behind the counter. Gotti, the reason everyone called it Gottimart even though he only worked there, had graduated last year with Christianson. An odd guy, he didn’t come around much; his nickname came more from similarities in name than temperament with the mafia don, though he did have the bulging stomach of a Mafioso. He looked like a mechanic. Once John found Gotti’s entry in Christianson’s yearbook. The paragraph below his picture, where everyone else had friends’ initials and allusions to inside jokes, was one sentence: “My favorite Person: Whoever Gives Me My Paycheck.”

“You threw up? Just now?” Ian said with what John thought was exaggerated incredulity.

“Out there,” Gotti said, gesturing with his head toward the staff door behind him. He stood a few feet back from the counter with its ancient cash register and lamp. It made him seem hesitant to be there.  

They looked to where he had pointed, but no vomit was visible. “Everywhere,” Gotti said as if saying that it had happened even if they couldn’t see it.

“So, this is just something you do?” Ian said, looking at the racks of candy. John followed his gaze. Not much to choose from. By the time he got to school he would be able to steal lunch from the cafeteria anyway.

Gotti looked at him like he was crazy. “It’s because of what I heard.”

“What’d you hear?” Ian asked as he stepped toward the counter and swiped some Skittles.

Gotti got a funny look on his face.

***************

They traded the bag of Skittles back and forth as they walked. Gotti wouldn’t say what he’d heard or why he’d vomited, which John attributed to him being histrionically loyal to someone who’d asked him to keep quiet about something no one cared about. People with no friends made a big deal about things like that.

The walk to school was a couple of miles. As they went, John picked out the places where he had partied. Partying had sealed off everything behind it. Getting drunk spoke to him as a person. The absurdity of being drunk matched the absurdity of how everything else felt.  

The heat made it feel like the school year was about to end, but they still had a month to go. He’d probably have Ms. Morin’s class when he got to school. She’d said something weird the other day. Seeming bored while waiting for the class to line up, she’d asked what Ian’s plans were now that he was going to graduate. “Waste of a brain,” she’d said when he told her Ian wanted to go into the army. “Waste of a brain,” she’d repeated, but before he could ask her what she meant, she’d gotten distracted and started yelling at some kid in the hall.  

Waste of a brain.

“Everyone is saying you got a ‘A’ on some big test, or something,” he said.

“Test?” Ian said and then burped. “Oh, the SAT. Don’t worry about that, John, you’ll get something sort of high. It’s real simple: answer what you know, don’t answer what you don’t,” Ian said.

“Nothing to it. Nothing to anything.”

************

Ordinarily, Room 115 must have been a teachers’ lounge. A sink was in back with a green-streaked bottle of dish soap next to it. In the center of the room, smaller rectangular tables had been arranged to make one big rectangle that they all sat around. The teachers must have panicked trying to figure out what to do with so many crying kids.

He stared at the floor. At first, to have something to do, he’d rubbed Krystal’s shoulder, who’d ended up sitting next to him, but he’d stopped after she gave no sign that she knew he was there, which made it seem awkward and almost sexually indecent to keep touching her.

His hands felt sweaty and swollen. He moved his fingers around in his lap before then switching to tugging his hair, which was already thinning. It was greasy, and the top felt matted down. When that started to hurt, he put his hands back in his lap again, before making the change to pulling on the uneven patches of his facial hair. The hair on his chin had grown in nicely, but his sideburns were still just a few wiry black hairs. He could kind of taste the Skittles from Gottimart that he’d had for breakfast. He hadn’t ended up having time to go to the cafeteria and was hungry.

He wondered what Ian was doing up at the high school. He’d probably gotten a ride with Wayne, who could buy beer because he looked old. A few nights before, Wayne had thrown up in Christianson’s room and then used an empty thirty-pack box to catch the vomit. Trying to help, someone had brought him water that he’d poured all over his face, which got the thirty-pack box wet and made it start to leak. Christianson told him to go outside, but Wayne kept giving him the finger and saying, “Don’t dictate terms to me.”

Don’t dictate terms to me. John smiled.

“So, who did you know?” Mrs. Lowry asked, interrupting him. He didn’t know Mrs. Lowry. Bogdanski had probably asked her to watch the kids because she was the guidance counselor. He looked at her and then at the ground. He thought about his answer for a long time. He could have said any of them.

“Dave,” he said finally.

“Oh! But Dave’s okay,” she exclaimed.                            

He shrugged and gave what felt like a watery smile. “I guess I….” He looked down. He wished he hadn’t come. Somehow it had seemed like this would be better than going to science.

Mrs. Lowry turned from him. This helped because not having her watch made it easier for him to get up from the table.

**************

He ended up at the payphone by the front office. The hall felt quiet and peaceful. It seemed insane now that he had put himself through the experience of sitting in that room. A secretary laughed and it sounded like someone was using a photocopy machine. Through the window, he could see a few cars driving down Main Street.

Dave answered the phone after the first ring. It was crazy to think that amidst all of this he was just sitting at home.

The conversation was short. Dave asked if people seemed upset and if anyone had asked about him. He asked if any girls had seemed upset. He suggested they meet at the bridge near the school. Dave said Ian was already on his way down from the high school and if John waited outside, they could walk to the bridge together.

He left the payphone and walked toward the exit on the other side of the building. Justin, a kid from science, came out of the bathroom when John passed it. John nodded. Justin smirked when he saw the direction John was walking and gave him a knowing look. John kept his face flat.

He exited through the door by the music room. Inside he heard Mrs. Root saying that she didn’t expect them to get up and dance naked, just sing. That was always her line: you don’t have to dance around naked, just sing. Sometimes in music when she said that, he would say, “No one wants to see youdance naked” under his breath and everyone would laugh. The door next to her room opened to Tuttle Road, which was the one Ian would take coming from the high school. He could hide in the bushes until Ian came.  

But, then, he didn’t wait in the bushes. He flung open the door and continued down Tuttle alone before taking a left onto Main Street.

Walking, he thought of a book he’d read in school a few years ago, maybe fourth or fifth grade, about a kid who’d made himself photosynthetic doing his science homework. Being outside reminded him of the part when the kid described the feeling of first going into the sun and realizing he was being nourished by it.

He was the first one to get to the bridge. He dragged his hand along its thick cement edge. He peered over the side. Someone had put their cigarette out in a pool of spit on the ledge and his Deftones shirt got in it when he leaned over the side to get a better look.

Below the bridge, a thin black snake sunned itself on a chunk of brick that jutted up out of the water. He used to go down there with his little kid friends and wade through the stream to play; more recently he would go down there with the guys to smoke.

He watched the snake. Reaching down, he picked up a handful of the soft, fine sand that was on the sides of the bridge. Other than its odd golden color, it kind of reminded him of the sand they put in ashtrays at the mall. He wondered how it had gotten there.

He caressed it. Soft. He held his hand out over the side of the bridge and opened it. Sand rained down on the snake, which lazily slithered off the brick and into the water. It darted left and then right before swimming downstream.

The sand left a yellow coating on his hand that made him think of how gold looks in cartoons. It sparkled. He reached down for another handful, but with the snake now gone he instead threw it in the air. He tossed another handful a little higher. A mild wind scattered it as it fell. He tossed a little more, and then more, first with one hand and then with both. The wind picked up. Its force was strong, and it blew the sand back on him as he threw it. Sand hit his face and got in his eyes.

He threw more, higher, and pictured waves of it coating his body and getting into his mouth. He kept going. His mouth felt full and started to overflow with sand. It got so packed that the sand hit against it before falling to the ground, where it started to pile up and cover his shoes. As he kept tossing it up, it piled higher and higher. He gagged, choked. Trying to keep pace, he inhaled lungfuls of it, devouring it as if each lung were a separate stomach with its own mouth.

Unable to breathe, he made circles with his arms as he tossed more and more in the air. It whipped around him, burying everything: the bridge, 115, Mrs. Lowry, Gottimart, the whole town. The accident got wrapped up in it, too, and of course so did he.

He kept trying to flail his arms long after he couldn’t move them anymore.