Who Killed Mike Ross?

Part One of A Thing
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           A fist slammed down upon Marissa’s desk, which made sense, because it was a Monday and Marissa had a bad track record with Mondays.

            She sighed and kept writing in her planner.

            “Marissa,” Parker said. Then: “Marissa, don’t ignore me.” And then: “Marissa, you are doomed.”

            Slowly, Marissa put down her blue ballpoint pen and let her eyes move – first across the desk, then over the clenched fist which held a crumpled poster, and then up Parker’s skinny, freckled arm before reaching his bright brown glare.

            “Doomed?” Marissa said finally.

            “Yes, unless your dream is to end up voted Most Likely To Eat Alone At Lunch.”

            “I take it you didn’t like the poster.”

            “Marissa, please.” Parker began uncrumpling the poster, smoothing it across the Formica face of the desk. “I mock you ruthlessly because I love you.”

            “Parker, you mock everything ruthlessly.”

            “Can’t help it. I’m the voice of a generation.”

            “You’re an ass.”

            “Have you seen our generation?”

            “Fair point.” For the first time since the conversation started, Marissa looked down at the poster. There she was, perfectly postured in her best skirt and classiest sweater, shaking hands with a beaming Phuc Sinh, Westwood High School’s most beloved and least comprehensible Vietnamese custodian. Under the happy scene, in glossy Impact font, was the slogan:

                                         MINIMUM WAGE IS A SINH!
                   A vote for Marissa Schlemley is a vote for economic justice!

            “I don’t see the problem,” Marissa said. “I worked hard on these.”

            “Yes, of course you did.” Parker sighed and perched sideways on the edge of the desk, the room containing no other furniture to sit on. “Because you work hard on everything, because you’re you. And that’s the problem with the poster, Marissa. With the campaign. It’s too…you.”

            “‘Too me?’” Marissa folded her hands in that thirty-year-old way she’d been doing since she was seven. “Please, explain. Who is me?” A pause, then: “Yes, I heard that too. Move on.”

            “Right. Okay. You. You are…” Parker looked around. “You are this office.”

            The ‘office’ in question was actually a practice room behind the performing arts wing of Westwood High. Two years ago, someone had gutted the piano and attempted to use it as a terrarium in which to cultivate ganja. After this poorly-conceived and even-more-poorly-concealed plan was exposed, Marissa – already, as a sophomore, president of three honor societies and founder of a nonprofit organization for children with lupus - had asked if she could use the now-defunct room as an office from which to conduct her affairs. The principal, weary, confused, and a little intimidated, had agreed.

            Now the room was as sparsely decorated as it was small. Most days, the office only contained a handful of things: one desk, one chair, one framed picture (Parker and Marissa as crossing guards in fifth grade – Marissa beaming at the camera, Parker attempting to poke a first-grader with his flag), one motivational poster (Marissa was not the type of girl who enjoyed motivational posters, but she feared that one day she would become one, and was trying to ease herself into it slowly), and one Parker and Marissa.

            “No other high schooler would create this office,” Parker continued, “and no other high schooler would try to become school body president so they could redistribute wages for staff. No kid will vote for that, Marissa. They will all vote for Kelli Kapowski, and you will be sad, and I will be annoyed by your sadness, because I am a good friend or something.”

            “I believe voters want a solid platform,” Marissa sniffed.

            “Wrong. You are so wrong. They want Kelli’s platform, which is not solid. Kelli’s platform is squishy, because Kelli’s platform is her boobs.” Parker reached into his pocket and pulled out some more crumpled paper. “See this? It’s her poster.”

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Read Part One Here (It’s short!)
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            “So what’s your image of yourself?” Ben Fritz asked.

            “Well, see, the idea is we’re not supposed to have-”

            “Not the fake self-image thing,” Ben cut in. “Your real one.”

            “Oh.”

            I paused.

            “Um.”

            He waited silently.

            “I’m…tall?” I tried.

            I snap back to the present.

            “I, uh…I’m here because I have a friend who lives near here,” I lie. Well, maybe it’s not a lie, assuming Ben lives near here. And assuming we’re friends. Does it count as projecting a fake self-image if you’re not sure what’s fake and what’s real?

            “Oh, cool,” he says. Then we do that awkward laugh-mumble-separation thing you do when you meet an acquaintance at the mall or wherever, and he’s gone again, disappearing over a hill. I wait for the sound of his shoes hitting gravel to fade away, and then I look around.

            I’m on a long stretch of wooded path, with that darn running water trickling away to my left. No one is coming towards me, and as Ben Fritz has so helpfully proved, I’d be able to hear it if anyone was approaching from behind me.

            And my bladder is seriously full.

            I move towards the edge of the path, near the running water. Stuffing my mittens into my pocket, I unzip my jeans.

            Then I look both ways before crossing the streams.

            By the time the path has wound its way out of the woods, I’ve recognized where I am. The soccer field sprawling before me rings a bell, as does the wooden playground in the distance - but what really tips me off is the giant, honking water tower that rises above me like the Leaning Tower of Pisa’s far less quirky suburban cousin.

            I was driven past this park countless times as a child on my way to swimming lessons, and every time I would look out the window at the playground, noting the tire swing and climbing wall and something that looked suspiciously like a puppet theater. Mentally, I would compare it to the small plastic blue-and-red models that were scattered across Apple Valley like a recreational equivalent of Kwik Trip. What, I would wonder, would it be like to live here?

            Perhaps I was angsty from an early age. Perhaps, alternately, swimming lessons just put me in a really bad mood. I used to be scared of changing rooms.

            In any case, now I approach the playground and wrap my legs around a tire swing. It’s even warmer outside now than it was before, and I yank my left mitten off with my teeth before fumbling my jacket open one button at a time, like the world’s most inefficient playground flasher.

            I examine the scene from close-up, and it’s official: those lucky little bastards did grow up with a puppet theater in the middle of their playground. Would that have improved my childhood? Does my childhood really need improving?

            I suppose I’m fascinated by the idea of being someone else because I’m not yet sure what being me entails. I like the life I’m leading - I just haven’t figured out who the guy is that’s leading it.

            After I think this, there’s a warmth in my chest, and it’s not due to climate change. I’ve taken the first step on a long path.

            And come to think of it, it’s a long walk back to my car.

            I kick absentmindedly at the wood chips, and then I get up to go. Over by the water tower, the wind makes a flagpole clank in three-four time. Without thinking about it, my left foot locks in to the downbeat.

            I follow my path.

  

          It is December 23^rd, and there is running water outside. I resent this.

            “Let me tell you,” the woman says to her walking partner, “I am not going to spend another Christmas in the emergency room.” Her voice dopplers as she walks by, and I am left with a tantalizing glimpse into a story I would have loved to hear, from a life I would have loved to know, spent in a town I would have loved to grow up in.

            Which is to say, Lakeville.

            Last week, it was Burnsville; the week before that, Eagan. I have a suburban wanderlust, a restless gas pedal syndrome, and recently its symptoms have included my driving to any unexplored park I can find and wandering around in it. I am here on a backwoods Lakeville walking path so I can breathe, so I can imagine life in another town, so I can see faces I’ve never seen before.

            Also so I can pee.

            Then I turn a corner and almost run into Ben Fritz, captain of the Lakeville Speech Team, which pretty much throws those last two goals right out the window.

            “Mike?” he puffs. He is clearly out for a midday jog. Am I the only person who secretly suspects that anyone who maintains their physical fitness is doing so just to spite me?

            “What are you doing here?” he asks, his breath spiraling around us.

            “I’m here so I can breathe,” I say, “so I can imagine life in another town-”

            No, haha, just kidding.

            “I have to pee,” I say. He laughs. I am relieved.

            “Okay,” Ben Fritz says, “but why here?”

            Good question.

            It’s a question I might be better equipped to answer if I actually knew where here was. I mean, sure, I’m in Lakeville, but at this point I’ve been walking for so long that I don’t know what part of Lakeville this is, or where this path is going, or where the nearest road is. I can hear cars in the distance, but if there is a place in Dakota County where you can not hear cars in the distance, I have not been able to find it.

            I search for an answer for Ben, trying to figure out what lie will weird him out the least, and my mind scrambles through a quick replay of every conversation we’ve ever shared. We met almost a year ago in Boston, in a hotel overrun by high school speechies. The Lakeville and Eastview delegations sat down across from each other in a Holiday Inn hallway coated in the shoe-slush residue that is February’s calling card. Conversation topics were….predictable.

            “So what’s your Oratory about?” I asked him.

            “The importance of reaching out and touching other people,” he said. “And you?”

            “Personal marketing,” I said. “Like, it’s this idea that we sell people these images of ourselves that aren’t necessarily true, and in order to fit that image we cut out ‘undesirable’ parts of our personality until we don’t really know who we are anymore.”

            “And you’re against that?”

            “Right.”

            He bent his legs into a weird X. For no discernible reason, he was wearing gym shorts.

            “So what’s your image of yourself?” he asked.

            Come to think of it, Ben Fritz had a history of good questions.
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Second half tomorrow.

            You are a part.

            You are a recurring role, you are a recurring dream, you are a remake and a reboot and part of an overarching theme. You are tied down and typecast. You are a leitmotif, you are all too brief, you are a symbol for the author and you will be on the test.

            You don’t have to rhyme, but it’d be cool if you did.

            You are your mother, and your mother is her mother, but you are not your grandmother because she died too early for that. You are your father, and everyone you’ve ever loved is your father, but don’t think too hard about it.

            You have been done before. You’re nothing new. You are barely you. You aren’t really a lie, but you’re only partly true.

            You’re committing this to memory, right?

            You are a fad. You are a trend. You are the means to someone’s end. You are not deep - though you could be, if you weren’t born white, rich, or free.

            You are a complication. You are an unforeseen circumstance. You are two people in Africa who got bored waiting for the continents to move. You are a small spark of nothing that decided it wanted to be everything. You are made of stardust, but that’s really never going to have any effect on your life, and can probably be ignored. You can probably be ignored.

            You will not be ignored.

            Good for you.

            He was young, he was bright, and he was in love with Mr. Hawking.

            There were problems in the way, of course. Statutory stuff. A wedding ring. Incompatible horoscope signs, according to his best friend Felicia.

            But Bobby McKearney had been raised to believe that if you worked for something and put your heart into something, by God, you could get it.

            And as long as Mr. Hawking kept wearing those thick-rimmed glasses and that slightly-too-small sweater, Bobby’s heart would be one hundred percent committed.

            “You can’t turn in that essay. I mean, I swear I’m all for your love,” Felicia said, standing over Bobby’s shoulder as he printed off the essay he’d be handing in two minutes from now. “Or the idea of your love. There’s this thing called the sex-positive movement, I’m really into it lately-”

            “I thought you were really into occupying Wall Street lately?” Bobby logged out, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and stood up in one fluid motion.

            “Yeah, but then I got hired by Half-Price Books and it all felt kind of empty. So anyway, you know the age thing, the wife thing, none of that bothers me. What bothers me is your compatibility.” The one-minute bell rang, and she hurried after him down the hall. “Like, what do you two even have in common?”

            “We both like Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Bobby said, un-reversing the newly printed pages of his essay.

            “No, that’s the lyrical content of Deep Blue Something’s one-hit wonder, not real life.”

            “Well, he once said Audrey Hepburn was his dream woman, so…”

            “You realize the inherent problem with that sentence, right? You’re - ooh, hey, a penny!” Felicia bent down to grab it- and by the time she had straightened up again, Bobby was almost at the door to Mr. Hawking’s classroom.

            “Bobby, stop! Think about what you’re doing!” she yelled, beginning to run after him before remembering that no teenager should ever, ever, attempt to run in public while wearing a backpack.

            “I have thought about what I’m doing,” Bobby said over his shoulder. “It’s all I ever think about. You should know this by now.”

            “Bobby-”

            “Hey, you two! Got your essays all ready for me?”

            There was something in Mr. Hawking’s voice that somehow conveyed to the listener that it was emanating from a square, masculine jaw, chiseled by a god with a lot of time on their hands and a few daddy issues to work out.

            To his credit, Bobby McKearney was not one of those boys who stammered and blushed when presented with the object of his affection. He simply chuckled politely and said, “Sure thing! Let me just get out my binder.”

            As he pulled out a professional-looking portfolio with a laminated cover, Felicia fumbled through her backpack and yanked out some slightly crinkled pages in a manila folder. Both of them had stapled the grading rubric to the front, so you could see the essay prompt in bold black letters: What are you passionate about?

            “And what can I expect to be reading about?” Mr. Hawking smiled warmly.

            “Economic equality, police brutality, and, uh, whales,” said Felicia. “Things got away from me a bit.”

            “A shock, I’m sure.” Mr. Hawking turned back to Bobby, giving him a full on view of that salt-and-pepper hair and those infamous glasses. “And you, Mr. McKearney?”

            Bobby just smiled as he handed his binder in.

            “It’s something I’m really putting my heart into,” he said.

            And Felicia said nothing at all.

            Insanity, Einstein reportedly said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

            Tomorrow I start my thirteenth year of public school.

            It’s oddly comforting to know we’re all nuts.

            Not that you need to be Einstein to figure that out.

            To be fair, it’s not that I expect different results every year. I expect the same results. And I get the same results. They just happen to be different from the ones I expect. Fantasized 4.0’s become factual three-point-whatevers, and a hamster-in-wheel sense of motivation becomes a cat-on-windowsill sense of well, this works too. Each school year envelops us, pummels us, kicks us in the nuts, and then lifts us higher than we were, so we can look back down at where we were at the start of the year and say, “Thank God I’m not that guy.”

            But looking back, I realize, thank God I was those guys. High school and I have been at each other’s throats for three years. In that time I have acquired something I’d always sort of assumed I’d never have: A healthy social life. I have also proved, time and time again, that I have no idea what to do with a healthy social life once obtained.

             I’ve had the privilege of playing in at least thirteen bands, many of those for three years over.

             I have been to Dublin, Barcelona, Avignon, and (in what inexplicably proved to be my favorite trip), Iowa City.

             I have kissed three girls and one guy, a ratio that, for obvious reasons, never ceases to weird me out.

             I’ve learned that, for better or for worse, the writing style of the new century condones starting as many sentences as possible with the word ‘I,’ because to get ahead, someone always has to be talking about you, even if it’s yourself.

             I’ve gotten ahead.

             I’ve tripped, fallen behind, and enjoyed the silence, if not the skinned knees (both metaphorical and literal. I have not, for all my experiences, learned anything about coordination).

             I’ve overcome any and all fears of dancing in public, singing in public, having my pants pulled off in front of the cutest girl in school (in public) (this happened), and, perhaps most excitingly, I’ve overcome my fear of boiling water (making macaroni and cheese was an ordeal). I’ve participated in every non-athletic extracurricular I could get my hands on. I’ve ingested every type of food placed in front of me, except tomatoes, because hell no. I’ve gained approximately 2 inches, ??? pounds, and 2 visible bones in my rib cage.

            I’ve learned to love my body because my body loves me (backne doesn’t count).

            I’ve learned embarrassing yourself in public makes you stronger, nicer, and ultimately funnier (again, displays of backne are not included in this umbrella, although shockingly candid mentions of it in conversation are).

            Over and over again, since I was 5, I’ve packed up on Labor Day and gone to school.

            I’ve done the same thing.

            I’ve gotten the same results.

            I’ve learned.

            Here we go again.