Читать книгу The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train and Three American Heroes - Anthony Sadler, Anthony Sadler - Страница 19

“I WANNA GO TO THE PROM,” Anthony said.

Spencer laughed. “You mean like with me?”

“No, man! I mean just in general, we don’t have it here. That’s my point, there’s no prom here, or homecoming, no—I don’t know. No public school stuff.” Anthony was already preparing to leave. He had a better chance to make something of himself in sports at a public school, and find a girlfriend too. Spencer couldn’t argue. You weren’t even supposed to talk to girls here. If he’d had a chance to escape, he would have taken it too.

So Anthony moved on, but the bond between them was set. They stayed in touch, Anthony still came over to play with guns and watch World War II movies. But school wasn’t the same without him there. He’d brought something new and exciting to their lives, and now that he was gone this place was even harder to tolerate.

A new school year started. Again, it was a community of two. Spencer and Alek, a bunch of people they didn’t understand, a bunch of people who didn’t understand them.

It was then, that first year after Anthony left, that the school finally went too far.

To Spencer, it was clear. Alek was singled out; he was quiet and didn’t complain, but like Spencer, everyone knew Alek didn’t buy in to the whole code. The ritualistic trips to the principal’s office were no longer enough; pressure mounted. A teacher nosing around the students’ backpacks took out Alek’s iPod, scrolled through the songs, and found one with a bad word. Another claimed to have overheard Alek talking about an argument with a classmate, and that was enough. Alek was labeled a problem child.

He was only in eighth grade, but Spencer watched him patted down every day before school like he was some kind of ex-con, and they went a step further. The school believed he needed to live with his father, and presented the new arrangement as a fait accompli to Heidi. She felt blindsided. It was dizzying; it didn’t make sense, the very school that had asked her again and again to help them, to coach soccer, volunteer in the lunchroom, volunteer in the nursery, suddenly deciding someone else’s home would be better for her child. She’d hardly had the chance to make sense of the absurd idea that Alek—Alek!—was being called a problem child, or the chance to speak her mind, before he was gone, first to his father’s house just across town, then even farther.

Spencer thought the whole thing was bullshit. He hated the place even more for separating him from his best friend. The notion that Alek, of all people, was some kind of threat was so ridiculous it was almost funny. Spencer worried about him, although when he went to visit Alek at his dad’s house, Alek seemed to be doing just fine.

“Wow,” Spencer said, running a hand over a speaker box, part of an elaborate intercom system Alek’s father had installed. “You’re pretty spoiled now.”

“Dude, I’m not spoiled.” Just then, the intercom crackled to life and a woman’s voice came over it. “Alek? Honey? Would you like chocolate sauce on your brownie?”

Spencer looked at Alek. “Okay,” Alek said, “maybe like a little spoiled.”

JOYCE WATCHED WHAT Heidi was going through with sadness. Spencer didn’t think his friend was deserving of so much attention, but was happy his mother was finally getting her blood pressure up about the school. Now Spencer had a powerful ally, and it wasn’t a moment too soon. Alek said his dad was going to let him go to the Del Campo school, the bigger, more normal public school, which was good for Alek, but it meant Spencer was going to be stuck here, all alone.

The truth was, Joyce by then didn’t need much convincing. As much as she wanted to believe the private school was a good thing for the kids, the school community had started to rub her the wrong way. They’d have Sunday fellowship meetings, which already she didn’t love because after church she liked a little time to just be with her children, but fine, she went, and hosted parties when it was her turn to host parties in the spirit of open-mindedness, or fellowship, or whatever. But the people were just—she just couldn’t connect with them. They didn’t mingle; they kept to themselves. They didn’t seem capable of relating to anyone who wasn’t part of their church. They treated anyone else with scrutiny, even mistrust, and when the school intervened in Heidi’s life, as far as Joyce was concerned, that was it. She made up her mind.

“Spencer, hon, I need to talk to you.”

“Okay …”

She came into Spencer’s room with a serious look on her face and shut the door; Spencer worried that some tragedy had befallen the family. “So, listen.” She sat on the bed, and considered him. “Do you want to switch schools?” He couldn’t believe it. Was this a joke? Was she actually going to let him leave? The clouds parted, the future brightened; he wouldn’t be left behind, all alone, while Anthony and Alek moved on to exciting new lives. Now there was just the matter of reentry into the wild, finding excuses to leave school early so they could sneak over to Del Campo for football tryouts.

Spencer and Alek had won a huge victory. The battle felt no less than existential. To an adolescent boy few things could be more devastating than the prospect of missing out on high school life. Sports, girls, parties, dances—their confinement to the tiny school was stunting an impulse that was no less than biological. Even their hormones were telling them they had to get out.

Both had been given an important two-year lesson by Anthony, who’d descended on their lives like an oracle of cool, reminding them what they were missing out on. Prom, homecoming, football, the high calling of high school jockdom. Spencer was excited for public school; for Alek it was mostly just the escape that seemed to appeal. The school had beaten him down. He didn’t really care where he went afterward.

Together, they arrived at Del Campo like two orphans fleeing, with little besides Anthony’s advice to tell them how to behave or what kind of clothes were okay to wear. They found a bench no one sat on, and the two of them, Spencer smiley but overweight, Alek quiet and brooding, both profoundly uncool, both happy but uncomfortable in their new surroundings, sat and ate their lunch, just the two of them, like a couple of old-timers at a neighborhood park.

They watched the other kids mingle, kids who’d established their cliques and clubs and groups and study partners, but Spencer and Alek ate their wax paper–wrapped sandwiches with just each other. Spencer didn’t know precisely how to engage with normal kids, but he had a feeling that sitting just with Alek wasn’t healthy. They both needed new friends. As hard as it would be to try and mingle, as much as he stood to be ridiculed, he had to branch out. So one day at lunch he decided, Let’s go. It’s now or never. He got up, and looked down at Alek. “You coming?”

Alek shook his head. So Spencer ran the gauntlet alone. Alone, to bounce around from group to group until he found a place where he could fit, for a while, and Alek remained, content, still on that bench, keeping to himself, watching teenage life pass him by while Spencer tried to mingle without a wingman. They’d both wanted to be here, but now that they had what they wanted, this was when their separation began. Spencer couldn’t help but feel he was, in a way, leaving Alek behind.

He just didn’t know how permanent it was going to be.

Still, as hard as Spencer tried to blend in, there were a few people who made it impossible. He himself for one; he still never knew what to wear. The small Christian school had stunted his fashion sense and he always felt off. He stuck out in the crowd. Alek didn’t know anything about fashion either, but didn’t seem to care that they were always dressed noticeably different from the kids who’d gone to normal schools. And at football practice, one of the coaches liked to pair Spencer and Alek for the “heads” drill, lining them up, fingers down, and then, lest anyone forget the two had come from the small Christian school, he’d yell, “Watch out, it’s a holy war!” as Spencer and Alek charged each other.

And then one day Alek was gone. Off to Oregon with his dad. Spencer had to keep it a secret; Heidi didn’t even know until she called Alek one day to find out if he wanted to come over for dinner, and Alek said he couldn’t because he was in Oregon. Just like that. And though it felt cruel and sudden to have his friend gone so quickly, and Spencer missed him, he thought, Oregon, yeah. It’s probably better for him out there. Something about nature, open fields. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but that’s how Spencer pictured Oregon, and that’s what he pictured his best friend needing.