The Serpent King(20)
“So what if it’s easy for me to say? Am I not supposed to say important stuff because it’s easy to say? Counterintuitive much?”
“I can’t. I just can’t. And all you’re doing is making me feel worse about my life. You’re telling someone in a wheelchair ‘Walking is awesome. You should get up and walk.’ It’s not that easy.”
“I’m telling someone in a wheelchair to walk who’s in the wheelchair because his dad and mom were in wheelchairs and he thinks he doesn’t deserve to walk, or he’s not walking so he won’t hurt their feelings.”
“What gives you such access to my deepest thoughts and feelings? I never told you I wanted to leave Forrestville.”
Lydia’s voice began to rise again. “Oh, give me a break. Ask any gay person in the world”—more reproachful looks from the youth group table—“if not voicing a desire makes it any less real. How can I tell you want out? Because you’ve laughed your head off during every Wes Anderson movie we’ve ever watched together. Because you’ve loved every music mix I’ve ever made for you. You’ve read every book I’ve ever recommended to you. And because I am your best friend and I want out of here. You are curious and hungry for experience, and it couldn’t be more obvious.” Her eyes blazed.
“I have to work on my homework.”
They sat and eyed each other.
Lydia’s face softened. “Please think about it.”
Dill took a sip of his coffee. “This has been the worst first day of school I’ve ever had. And that’s saying something.”
The nagging dread that had accompanied Dill to Nashville rematerialized. Now not only would he lose Lydia at the end of this year, but he would also disappoint her. And worse, somewhere, circling and flitting around that dread, was another awful feeling: nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed.
She’s in ninth grade, sitting up a row and a few seats over from Dillard Early in English class. He rarely talks. He’s frequently absent. She’s heard her dad mention that Dillard’s dad got himself into trouble for having some pretty creepy porno on his computer and maybe that wasn’t all. This confluence of perverse sexuality and strange religion is titillating stuff in a small town. Well, it is anywhere, really. It’s made national news. It’s the hot topic for hacky late-night comedians who can’t resist the low-hanging fruit of snakehandling jokes. There are rumors that the porn was Dillard’s, which would be somewhat less creepy, since at least Dillard is a minor himself. Still, people steer clear of him—even the couple of friends he had from church.
But it’s not as if she’s burning down the house in any popularity contests herself. For the most part, she’d always preferred books to people her own age. Her one close friend, Heidi, moved to Memphis the year before.
They’re reading Lord of the Flies and the teacher is asking the students about their understanding of the book, and generally teachers don’t call on Dillard because either they figure he won’t have an answer or they don’t want to put him on the spot. But Ms. Lambert, bless her heart, she goes for it.
“Dillard, what do you think this book is trying to say?” she asks.
He raises his head from his desk. He falls asleep in class a lot. He fixes the teacher with those intense, unnerving, Pentecostal eyes, which so often have dark circles under them lately. He waits several seconds to speak. Not like he’s gathering his thoughts, but instead considering whether the teacher is prepared to hear what he thinks.
“I think it’s saying that we’re all born with seeds in us. And if we let them see sunlight and air, they’ll grow through us and break us. Like a tree growing up through a sidewalk.”
Tittering from the class, but mostly awkward silence.
Ms. Lambert speaks quietly. “Yes, Dillard. I think that’s very much what this book is about.”
Logan Walker raises his hand and doesn’t wait to be called on. “My mom told me that if you eat watermelon seeds, a watermelon will grow in your stomach.” The class snickers. Dillard puts his head down on his desk again.
“That’s enough,” Ms. Lambert snaps.
But Lydia isn’t paying attention to this exchange because Dillard has earned himself an instacrush. Not that kind. Within Lydia’s taxonomy of crushes are innumerable subspecies, most of which contain no romantic element whatsoever. She once listed as many of them as she could in a post on her new blog. West-Coast-clean-hippie-girl-wearing-headband crush. Witchy-goth-British-female-singer-wearing-torn-dresses-and-going-barefoot crush. Sardonic-young-male-Jewish-comedian-who-is-only-handsome-from-one-angle-and-with-whom-she-wants-to-have-brunch-but-not-kiss crush. Et cetera and so forth.
And who’d have guessed that she had a slot for weird-outcast-rural-snakehandler-boy-given-to-apocalyptic-existential-pronouncements-in-class crush. But she did. She suspects there’s a fair chance she’ll end up regretting it and instead of being full of beautiful sorrow and loneliness and brilliance as she imagines, Dillard really is a complete Jesus/porn freak weirdo. But if that turns out to be the case, she can always drop him with no social repercussions.
She finds him in the cafeteria later, where he eats his free lunches alone, or sometimes with Travis Bohannon, another thoroughly odd duck with a sad story of his own. Today Dillard’s alone, writing in a notebook. She asks if she can sit down across from him. He eyes her with suspicion, as if he’s wondering how she intends to hurt him.