The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(8)
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One foggy morning in June, five weeks after he wrote the note to Calista Broderick and one week before the end of eighth grade, Tristan Bloch woke early, at 6:00 a.m.
His bedroom lay at the end of a narrow hall. The small room was painted little-boy blue. Against one wall was pushed a twin bed with a Pokémon blanket and red metal frame. Stickers splotched the bars of the headboard, the top layer of each pried off over years by a plump, patient hand, so that only the white underlayers remained, the shapes of rockets and robots and snakes indelible, reminding the boy of his boyness every day, reminding him that he was still a child, in a child’s bed.
He pushed off the covers and set his feet on the carpet. He wiped his eyes with the belly of his T-shirt. The shirt was warm and retained the sour smell of sleep.
Yawning, he went to the trio of wooden shelves beside the window. He cracked the blinds; lasers of white light hit the objects on the shelves. The Revell Wright Flyer model airplane, carefully constructed of balsa wood and glue. A four-by-six birchwood board with Boy Scout knots of thick white rope, each neatly labeled in his fifth-grade print: Cat’s Paw, Figure Eight, Square Knot, Bowline. A tiny samurai with tiny sword, a thumb-sized bald patch worn on the crown of its black plastic head. A stack of books with brightly colored spines: Harry Potter, The Hobbit, The Lightning Thief, The Boy Scout Handbook (three years out of date), The Official NASA Guide to Rockets. A cherrywood box of origami folding papers, given to him by his father before his father disappeared. A broad, beige clamshell that cradled gleaming pennies. A wallet-sized school photo from first grade, his white-blond hair shaped into a shining bowl. A Matchbox car. A calcified branch.
Tristan blew dust from the lid of the cherrywood box, thumbed the head of the tiny samurai. If he could live just in this room, he’d be okay. But he could not.
Tristan undressed quickly, threw his T-shirt and sweatpants and briefs in the hamper and selected new ones from his drawers. He dressed and stepped into the hall. For a moment he allowed himself to pause, to press his ear against the cool painted surface of his mother’s hollow door. An almost imperceptible sifting of sheets.
He crept downstairs and into the kitchen. He was hungry. There was a carton of organic orange juice in the refrigerator door. He tipped its mashed cardboard spout to his lips and was braced by its coolness, its tart, bright taste. Licking the last drops from the corners of his mouth, he set the empty carton on the counter. He found a Pop-Tart in the bread bin and ate it over the sink in four quick, crumbling bites.
The one-car garage was a cool, gray cave just off the kitchen. The car sat outside, while boxes and bins cluttered the dim space, plastic toys and scooters that Tristan had never much liked. Dust tickled his throat, making him cough. When he stopped, he listened for footsteps; none came.
Tristan found his bicycle and rolled it to a strip of empty floor. Kneeling beside the red metal frame, he examined it. The chain had fallen off the gear. He looped his finger under the chain and fit it onto the circle of metal teeth, rotated the pedals and watched it whir.
He stood. Grease stained his fingers. He couldn’t risk going in the house again, so he swiped his thighs, leaving dark stripes like war paint on the yellow. Dutifully he picked up his helmet, which seemed to scream at him with its glossy neon plastic, and squeezed it over his head, taking the usual moment to tuck the tips of his ears uncomfortably inside, and snapped the nylon strap under his chin. Then he remembered. He didn’t have to wear it.
He unstrapped the helmet and tossed it aside. Leaving the automatic door closed, he wheeled his bike out the side door and along a narrow, graveled alley to the street.
He pedaled under the wide arms of sycamore and maple trees, their leaves shaggy and bright against gray fog, their broad trunks draped with moss. He turned and rode along the empty street to the entrance of Valley Middle School. The large, modular building—its windows blackout, its siding painted penitentiary gray—sat on an ancient landfill at the edge of the Pickleweed Inlet and Bothin Marsh.
He kept riding: beyond the school’s front entrance was Bayfront Park, where they ran the mile in PE, although Tristan himself had been spared this particular horror by virtue of weak knees and an indomitable mother. He’d spent hours on the splintered park bench, filling out worksheets on the rules of basketball or the tenets of weightlifting as he watched Calista Broderick cheat the course, disappearing into the willow trees with Ryan Harbinger. Ryan, who had made it his mission to prove that Tristan was unfit for this world. Calista, the girl with the magical name, an alien-princess name, and a distant look that sometimes crossed her imperfectly pretty face; Calista, the girl who he had sensed, or hoped, was like himself—with that Ryan-Abigail group but not of them—although he now saw how absurd that hope had been.
The air grew colder and damp as Tristan drew nearer the water. With no helmet, he felt the moist breezes whip over his scalp. He liked it. He steered onto the bike path that cut through Bothin Marsh. Before him stretched an expanse of green brush that turned to reddish reeds, and the water shone like mirrored glass. There were the echoing shrieks of gulls, the honks of pelicans. White egrets balanced on thin black legs among the reeds, stretched serpentine necks to watch him as he passed. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the teal rise of Mount Tamalpais, its profile the body of the mythic Sleeping Lady, its shoulders shrouded in gently shifting fog, and the valley nestled beneath it. He could appreciate the beauty of this place now, without a hint of pain or sadness, because in his mind he had already done it: he had already made the decision. This was why he’d slept so soundly the night before, why he’d woken determined and hopeful. For the first time in a long time, he’d felt power in his muscles and focus in his mind, had felt compelled to climb onto that bike and ride.