December Park(81)

There was concern from the mayor’s office about the rising waters of the Chesapeake. Sewers backed up, bubbling out into the streets. Boats were demolished in the channels and along the Shallows; weeks after the storm passed, pieces of these boats were found scattered as far inland as the Palisades. One kid from Stanton School claimed to have discovered a wooden steering wheel from a pirate ship up in a tree in his front yard.

On the fourth day, the world finally began to dry up. My friends, agitated at being cooped up inside for half a week, skipped out after lunch period to enjoy the weather.

I wanted to join them, but I had to give an oral presentation in Mr. Mattingly’s English class. My report was on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which, in my ignorance, I had chosen based strictly on the title that I had apparently interpreted too literally. The book was not about an actual invisible man, like Claude Rains in that old black-and-white movie, but it was a commentary on racism and society. Nonetheless, I had surprised myself by enjoying the book, and I thought my presentation went pretty well. Mr. Mattingly seemed pleased.

When the bell rang, I was the first one out of the classroom, though, in my haste, I’d forgotten to zip my backpack, and my textbooks spilled out across C Hall like a fan of playing cards. I dropped to my knees and gathered up my books.

Rachel appeared beside me. “Hey.”

“Oh. Hey.” I suddenly felt like an imbecile.

As the rest of the classes let out, C Hall exploded with students eager to evacuate into a brightening day. Some * kicked my math book down the hall, and I chased after it like a dog. When I returned, Rachel was there holding my backpack. She had piled all my books into it.

“Shoot. Thanks, Rachel.”

“Sure.” She handed over my backpack.

I stuffed my math book into it, zipped it up, then slung the strap over one shoulder.

“I brought you some of those poems I wrote,” she said. “You know, if you still want to read them.”

“Yeah, I’d really like that.”

“You’re sure? Because you don’t have to. I’ll let you off the hook.”

“I want to.” And I meant it. I didn’t know anyone else who enjoyed writing. My friends complained if they had to write anything more substantial than a two-page book report.

“Okay. Here.” She gave me a few folded sheets of lined notebook paper. “Just promise not to laugh.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Some lummox knocked into me with his shoulder, and I nearly crashed into the lockers. C Hall was ripe with *s this afternoon.

Rachel laughed.

“Glad I could amuse you,” I said, stuffing her folded pieces of paper into the rear pocket of my blue jeans.

“So, I gotta run,” she said, backing down the hall. Her smile shook something inside me. “Have a good weekend, Angelo.”

“You, too,” I said and inadvertently took another shoulder to the chest.





Cutting across December Park, I surveyed the debris the storm had left in its wake—felled trees, lawns strewn with garbage, soil so saturated that it squelched with every footstep. It was like traversing a field of quicksand.

I kicked a Taco Bell cup until I reached the fence that separated the park grounds from the woods. The storm had ravaged the fence, plucking pickets out at random intervals and launching them like spears into the nearby trees. A glance at the mud revealed such random items as a license plate, a lone red rubber boot, busted terra-cotta pottery, a few cushions from someone’s outdoor furniture, and a deflated basketball that appeared to be frowning at me. I hopped the fence, my backpack thumping against my back and straining on my shoulders, and dashed into the trees.

Peter, Scott, and Adrian were in the clearing. The dynamo—powered radio was tuned to a classic rock station, and the air was haunted by recently smoked cigarettes. I could smell the stink from the sewers’ backwash, too; it hung in the air like a wet and fetid cloud.

Scott shouted my name from a perch in a tree. Below him, seated on one of the headless statues, Peter curled over a sketch pad. Inspired by Adrian’s artistic talent, Peter had taken to drawing his own doodles lately—mostly trucks with heavy artillery guns mounted on them.

Adrian sat in his usual spot—the opening in the bole of the tree—and scribbled furiously in his notebook. I saw that he still wore Courtney Cole’s heart-shaped locket around his neck on a length of shoelace. He barely looked up as I approached.

“Where’s Michael?”

“Detention,” Peter said. “He won’t be gracing us with his presence anytime soon.”

“What’d he do?”

“Got caught wiping boogers in Kiki Sullivan’s history book.”

I crossed the muddy clearing and sat down next to Peter on the headless statue. All around us was the sound of water dripping from the trees. The foliage looked overly green and heavy after the storm, the leaves bright and shiny, the boughs sagging from the force of the past days’ unrelenting rain. There was trash everywhere, washed down from the streets above and snared among the bushes and weeds. I spied a pair of boxer shorts flapping like a battlefield flag in one of the high branches of an oak tree.

Some of the trash couldn’t be attributed to the storm, however: five plastic shopping bags, filled with the random junk we had collected that day we trekked through the tunnel under the highway, sat in a mound between two of the headless statues. We had gone through the items, but we couldn’t discern any significance from them. In hindsight, traveling through the tunnel hadn’t been about finding clues; it had been about realizing someone could actually go from one side of the highway to the other while completely hidden underground.