The Book of Adam: Autobiography of the First Human Clone, Page 4
Robert M. Hopper
I shook my head. When was mom coming back?
“You don’t remember the lilies?” she asked, shaking my hands in hers.
I paused, trying to think of something to put her mind at ease and get out of this highly uncomfortable interrogation.
“Did I give you lilies?”
Such a bright and ecstatic smile I’m not sure I’d ever seen. Lily was a young-looking granny anyway. As I would discover years later by looking at photos, she went to surgical lengths to look younger soon after my birth. But at that moment she looked like a schoolgirl. Like the young girl who had first fallen in love with my c-father. I guess I’d said what she wanted to hear. Or, more accurately, she’d heard what she wanted me to say.
“You do remember!”
I shrugged. “Maybe?”
It was, indeed, a question. I didn’t think I remembered. I was just trying to guess where she was going with the whole thing. And although I could picture in my head some things from Adam-1’s life, I was pretty sure the pictures had been formed by the photos and the stories I’d heard growing up. I knew that Adam-1’s parents had sung The Rainbow Connection to him as a lullaby. When Mom sang it for me, I’d imagine my c-father at about my age in a different bed being sung to by my great-grandparents Michael and Sarah Elwell, pictures of whom hung not far from the dining table that had belonged to them. And there was the photo Mom loved of Sarah, Michael, and Adam-1 performing a home skit from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I could imagine myself performing in it with Great-Grandma Sarah dressed in a white terrycloth robe and sunbonnet as the White Witch, Great-Grandpa Michael acting as her minion dwarf (wearing a San Francisco Giants cap for irony), and myself instead of Adam-1 as Edmund clutching our family’s own version of Turkish Delight – a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. So were they memories, or mere images I’d pasted together from photos I’d seen and stories I’d heard? Maybe I’ll never know for sure.
“How wonderful!” Lily continued. “Well don’t worry. Everything’s going to be the same again soon.”
“The same?” I echoed.
“Yes, the same – just like before. We’ll be together again. I’m coming, Adam!”
She’s coming where?
When was mom coming back!
*
Late that night the phone rang. Later than it ever rings. Mom began crying and saying things I couldn’t make out. There were footsteps, a light went on in the kitchen, and she came into my room, surprised to find me awake.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, raising myself up in bed.
“Sweetie,” she said, sitting next to me and giving me a hug, “I’m afraid your Grandma Lily has died.”
“So what’s wrong?” I thought to myself.
There was no mystery in the cause of Lily’s death. She holotaped her suicide for posterity. Or more specifically, for her clone. It was a gunshot wound to the temple as the song Delta Dawn played in endless loop.
Her suicide tape made it clear she wanted to be cloned. Great-Grandpa Lyle oversaw that himself, and a little more than nine months after her death, Lily-2 was removed from an artificial womb.
We all went down to the USCS lab to see the newborn. While Mom went to the restroom, Lyle stiffly held Lily away from his body and up close to me. I touched her nose and little fingers. I felt sure this would be an improvement over the last Lily.
Lyle introduced us.
“Lily-2, this is Adam-2.” He made her little hand go up and down as if waving. “Adam-2, this is Lily-2.”
I waved my hand playfully.
“She’s going to be your wife.”
I stopped waving.
Table of Contents
8
By 2041, when I advanced to my second grade studies, human cloning was well on its way to the mainstream. More than 200,000 people had been cloned in America alone, with Europe catching up. U.S. Cloning Systems technology had a hand in almost all of it, leasing their technology to partner companies. About one third of the clones were for couples who couldn’t reproduce naturally, including those in the gay community and those with other biological barriers. Most of the rest were for people who had died, usually upon request made while they’d been alive, although there were exceptions.
There were also plenty of problems, and even more critics. The infant mortality rate was seven times higher than for non-clones, and significant birth defects that debilitated nearly four percent of the surviving clones were enough for many to cry for a renewed ban. The rates were declining a little each year, but not nearly fast enough.
Then there were the brewing legal battles. State and federal lawmakers struggled to adapt to this new reality, and one of the biggest legal issues revolved around probate. In 2039, a very wealthy man left his entire fortune to his unborn clone, entirely cutting out his children and grandchildren. The children sued. They also refused to make arrangements for their father’s cloning, making his selfishness all the more foolish as you could only be cloned if an immediate family member or pre-secured legal guardian agreed to raise your clone. Why would the people you snubbed in life be willing to take on the tremendous time and expense of raising your clone – especially when you didn’t even leave them the money to care for you?
He never was cloned, and eventually the children were able to divvy up his estate among themselves. But the case led Congress to pass federal guidelines for cloners. To be cloned after your death, you needed to have someone agree to raise you and leave him or her at least $320,000 to take care of your expenses, a figure tied to cost-of-living increases. If you didn’t have the funds, your clone’s guardian could agree to waive that requirement. If you had more than the minimum amount, you were allowed to save one-third of the excess for your clone. The rest had to be gifted out.
There was also the issue of discrimination against clones. A few churches initially discouraged clones and their parents from attending, and a handful of private schools rejected clones in 2041 when the first clones beside myself began enrolling. Scattered restaurants gained notoriety by putting up “No Clones” signs, but that kind of mean-spirited bigotry was so reminiscent of the civil rights movement of the 1960s that it tended to work against itself. Polls showed that by 2041 a slim majority of the population supported the current cloning laws, and more than eighty percent considered clones to be as human as non-clones. Most people by then had met a clone child, and their repulsion to the idea was ebbing.
Of course, those were adult polls. My classmates at Hill Creek Junior Academy were another population altogether.
Being a loner as a child was nothing new to my bloodline. A year after his mother’s death, and days after his father’s suicide, my c-father was driven by his Uncle Charles and Aunt Mary down to San Diego from the home he’d known and loved in San Francisco. His new guardians were aloof. Their children had long since left for college, and Charles and Mary weren’t interested in doing all the kid stuff again. They provided Adam with food, clothing, and transportation, but they seemed to dislike him almost as much as he detested them.
Uncle Charles was a biologist whose idea of a good story was the latest cytology textbook and who hadn’t been to a play since his parents had to remove their complaining child from a production of Peter Pan. He did not believe in fairies. Except for going to Jack Murphy Stadium to watch the Padres win the 1984 pennant against the Cubs, Adam-1 couldn’t remember ever having a good time with his new guardians. His uncle gave him a high-five during the heat of the game. It might have been the first and only time they unnecessarily touched each other.
My clone-father trudged through elementary school and entered junior high mostly friendless. Not because he was a biological oddity like myself, but because his mind had become fixated on one goal, and nothing else was relevant or worth noting. At school he’d spend recess with his Sony Walkman, listening to Kansas tapes over the headphones, endlessly replaying Dust in the Wind and Carry On My Wayward Son. At home he’d shut his bedroom door and read books like Augustine’s City o
f God, Plato’s Republic, the Vedas, Kabbalistic texts, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The loss of his parents and his subsequent obsession with death, his fear of it, drowned out all else.
When I started school, my fear of death was more abstract. But my fear of strangers was tangible, and was not at all alleviated by my classmates who saw me as a freak. I had a couple friends in kindergarten and first grade who would respond to me if I talked to them, but generally I was avoided once the other kids heard I was the first human clone. Which was always by lunch on the first day of school.
Mom chose the school because it was nearby and, partially, because it was where Reverend Lewis’s son was enrolled. Despite the fact that Jack Lewis had never been more than polite to me at church, I’m sure mom hoped he would help me fit in with the other kids. I don’t think she realized how uncomfortable Jack felt around me.
Jack knew better than we did what a dangerous position we’d put his family in. Reverend Lewis never mentioned the death threats they’d received, let alone that one of those calls had been answered by Jack when he was four years old. Jack was well aware, from his youngest days, that I was a danger. At the time I didn’t understand this, but in retrospect I don’t know how he could have felt otherwise.
Meanwhile, closer to home, my former grandma and purportedly future wife Lily-2 had grown into a toddler who seemed especially drawn to playing with me. She was cute, and I liked her in spite of myself, but I always felt a nagging nervousness about becoming too chummy. Lyle had privately made it clear that she would be my bride, but I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to settle down just yet. I mean, you never know whom you might meet in second grade.
Her name was Evelyn Green.
Table of Contents
9
We met on the first day of second grade in Mrs. Slater’s class where we went after lunch recess – a class geared to English-related subjects like reading, writing, and the dramatic arts. It was my favorite class at Hill Creek. Perhaps a lot of that sentiment was because I ended up sitting at the same group table as Evelyn.
It all started that first day when, after introducing herself and having us say our names out loud, Mrs. Slater allowed us to talk among each other at our round tables, six students to a table. I’d never had a class with Evelyn, though I’d seen her at lunch during first grade and was excited that she was sitting at my table. But I was disappointed to see at our table Jimmy Preston, a bully who had tormented me for two years. And he wasn’t wasting any time.
“Hey, we’ve got the first human clone here!”
Everyone at our table, and most of the kids at the tables nearby, turned to stare at me. I purposely avoided looking at Evelyn. I’d been preparing to say something nice to her, and already I was blown out of the water. I focused my attention on a fly crawling along the edge of the table. I was ashamed at being goggled at like an exhibit and not having the courage or cleverness to shoot Jimmy down.
“Isn’t that weird being a clone?” he prodded, as he always did when introducing me to someone new.
I felt tears welling up and prayed that something would prevent them from spilling over. I considered jumping up and running out of the classroom. Better that than let them see me cry like a baby over such a ridiculous question.
And then I heard her voice. The words I least expected to hear.
“But I like weird.”
I stole a quick glance up from the fly to see if she was teasing or being sincere. She seemed to be waiting for my sad blue eyes to meet her deep brown ones that curled up when she smiled, which she was now doing. I went back to the fly, but the tears were gone, replaced by tummy-dwelling butterflies.
“Why?” Jimmy asked. That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting, and he was at a loss for words. Except that one.
“Being weird takes special people,” she said. “Anyone can be normal.”
“Then you’re weird, too.”
“I hope so,” she responded, and smiled at me again when I glanced up. I smiled back.
After that she was my hero, and as the weeks went by I could scarcely take my eyes off her. Her maturity and intelligence dwarfed mine, despite me being nine days her senior – an age difference for which she’d find ample opportunities to razz me. And she was beautiful to boot. My heart fluttered whenever stray strands of her long, dark hair ran across her creamy olive complexion, which was dotted with a handful of freckles that seemed randomly but perfectly placed.
I had no experience liking a girl who liked me back, but I began following what I understood to be standard courtship rituals. I teased her incessantly and pestered her at lunch nearly every day, sometimes chasing her around the playground until she would suddenly turn and challenge me. She claimed she had a green belt in karate, and I always backed down, but with a grin. Sometimes she’d grin back.
Her friends thought I was obnoxious. And I guess I sort of was.
“Why do you like him?” her best friend Christie asked once as I was walking away following the most recent karate threat. I slowed down, straining my ear closest to her, but couldn’t make out her answer. Still, I was glad her friends thought she liked me.
Our relationship wasn’t all about me pestering her. We talked both seriously and kindly in the classroom. I think I annoyed her a bit with the pestering at lunch, but she liked me anyway, especially when others were mean to me. Oddballs like me were like friendship beacons to people like Evelyn, people who know normal is boring.
*
Near the end of October our relationship reached a new level. We had to write a story for Halloween. Drawing on inspiration from my past, I began spewing out words as quickly as I could write them. Stuff about haunted castles, witches with long fingernails, a silver knife, and a phantom father who saves our entire class from a bubbly end in an enormous black cauldron. Only one page was required, but I churned out three pages and found myself frothing at the mouth for more.
Mrs. Slater was impressed. So much so, that she passed around copies of my story to all my classmates – an act that had several of my peers glancing at me in disgust, but also earned me a couple of compliments from people who had never spoken to me.
But my biggest fear was Evelyn’s reaction. Never imagining that anyone but Mrs. Slater would read it, I had named some roles after people in the class. Jimmy Preston was the guy who stupidly got us caught by the witch, Jack Lewis slipped away to find help, and Evelyn joined me and my c-father’s hologram in laying a trap for the witch.
The next day I overheard Jimmy making fun of me louder than usual, I saw Jack flash me a quick smile as he passed by me after school, and Evelyn walked up to me on the playground, her friends in tow. I held my breath.
She was working on a lollipop, but took it out to say, “I liked your story.”
“Really?” I asked. Still not breathing.
She nodded. And after a few moments, when it was clear that I could think of nothing else to say, she smiled, popped her lollipop back in her mouth, gave a little laugh, and led her friends to the tetherball poles.
Someone had just flirted with me. No, not just someone. Evelyn Green.
I didn’t have a ready response when it happened, but only a couple days went by before an opportunity arose. The last Friday of every month was movie day, and Mrs. Slater walked the class to a small, dark classroom at the end of the hallway that was used for that purpose. It was the Friday before Halloween, and Mrs. Slater had us watch Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. My mom had raised me on the movie, but it was Evelyn’s first time seeing it. I managed to sit on the floor next to her.
Already familiar with each moment of the film, I spent most of it taking in Evelyn’s reactions from the side of my vision. I knew if I paid too much attention to the movie, I’d end up embarrassing myself by tearing up. Which is what Evelyn did when Scout saved her father and Tom Robinson by talking friendly-like with would-be lyncher Mr. Cunningham. I handed her a tissue from my pocket, and she gratefully took it and dabbed her
eyes. She used it again when Tom Robinson died.
Despite my best efforts, I still got caught up in Scout and Jem’s longest journey together on Halloween night. I had to wipe my eyes when Jem tried but failed to save his sister from the bigoted Mr. Ewell (a name spelled far too similarly to my own, but an opportunity for Mom to explain that there was really nothing in a name). Evelyn handed the tissue back to me. Was she watching my reactions too? I reverently took it from her and touched my own eyes, marveling that our tears were now joined. I returned the increasingly damp Kleenex to her for the final scene.
Before we got up, Mrs. Slater explained our assignment – we were to write our thoughts on what Scout’s father Atticus meant when he said that you can’t really know a person until you try to see things from their perspective.
She was careful not to focus too long on me while she said it, but several kids did. It was the one time I didn’t mind being the center of attention.
“Thank you, Adam,” Evelyn said, holding out the tear-filled tissue with a broad smile. I carefully took it from her and put it back in my pocket. She made a face like that was kind of gross, but kept smiling anyway. I was glad Mom made sure I always had a Kleenex on me.
*
“Did ya have fun today?” Mom asked as I climbed into her Honda.
I nodded. “We watched To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“I know,” she said, and then laughed at my stunned expression.
“How did you know that?”
“Moms know everything,” she answered mysteriously.
“Yeah, okay,” I said in disbelief, wondering if it was true. “Do you also know where we’re going?” I asked as we passed the street we took home.
“To buy some Halloween candy so we don’t get egged.”
“Reese’s?”
Mom didn’t answer, and then I saw why. We were passing Standley Memorial where Gabrielle Burns was locked up. Mom was always quiet when we drove by it. I noticed the extra lines that now sprouted from the side of her forty-one-year-old eyes, and the gray hairs intermixed with blond. She looked older and tired, but I still thought she was beautiful. I didn’t want her to be scared by the hospital. I wanted to say something that would reassure her, as she always did for me. But I couldn’t think of anything.
“You don’t remember the lilies?” she asked, shaking my hands in hers.
I paused, trying to think of something to put her mind at ease and get out of this highly uncomfortable interrogation.
“Did I give you lilies?”
Such a bright and ecstatic smile I’m not sure I’d ever seen. Lily was a young-looking granny anyway. As I would discover years later by looking at photos, she went to surgical lengths to look younger soon after my birth. But at that moment she looked like a schoolgirl. Like the young girl who had first fallen in love with my c-father. I guess I’d said what she wanted to hear. Or, more accurately, she’d heard what she wanted me to say.
“You do remember!”
I shrugged. “Maybe?”
It was, indeed, a question. I didn’t think I remembered. I was just trying to guess where she was going with the whole thing. And although I could picture in my head some things from Adam-1’s life, I was pretty sure the pictures had been formed by the photos and the stories I’d heard growing up. I knew that Adam-1’s parents had sung The Rainbow Connection to him as a lullaby. When Mom sang it for me, I’d imagine my c-father at about my age in a different bed being sung to by my great-grandparents Michael and Sarah Elwell, pictures of whom hung not far from the dining table that had belonged to them. And there was the photo Mom loved of Sarah, Michael, and Adam-1 performing a home skit from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I could imagine myself performing in it with Great-Grandma Sarah dressed in a white terrycloth robe and sunbonnet as the White Witch, Great-Grandpa Michael acting as her minion dwarf (wearing a San Francisco Giants cap for irony), and myself instead of Adam-1 as Edmund clutching our family’s own version of Turkish Delight – a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. So were they memories, or mere images I’d pasted together from photos I’d seen and stories I’d heard? Maybe I’ll never know for sure.
“How wonderful!” Lily continued. “Well don’t worry. Everything’s going to be the same again soon.”
“The same?” I echoed.
“Yes, the same – just like before. We’ll be together again. I’m coming, Adam!”
She’s coming where?
When was mom coming back!
*
Late that night the phone rang. Later than it ever rings. Mom began crying and saying things I couldn’t make out. There were footsteps, a light went on in the kitchen, and she came into my room, surprised to find me awake.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, raising myself up in bed.
“Sweetie,” she said, sitting next to me and giving me a hug, “I’m afraid your Grandma Lily has died.”
“So what’s wrong?” I thought to myself.
There was no mystery in the cause of Lily’s death. She holotaped her suicide for posterity. Or more specifically, for her clone. It was a gunshot wound to the temple as the song Delta Dawn played in endless loop.
Her suicide tape made it clear she wanted to be cloned. Great-Grandpa Lyle oversaw that himself, and a little more than nine months after her death, Lily-2 was removed from an artificial womb.
We all went down to the USCS lab to see the newborn. While Mom went to the restroom, Lyle stiffly held Lily away from his body and up close to me. I touched her nose and little fingers. I felt sure this would be an improvement over the last Lily.
Lyle introduced us.
“Lily-2, this is Adam-2.” He made her little hand go up and down as if waving. “Adam-2, this is Lily-2.”
I waved my hand playfully.
“She’s going to be your wife.”
I stopped waving.
Table of Contents
8
By 2041, when I advanced to my second grade studies, human cloning was well on its way to the mainstream. More than 200,000 people had been cloned in America alone, with Europe catching up. U.S. Cloning Systems technology had a hand in almost all of it, leasing their technology to partner companies. About one third of the clones were for couples who couldn’t reproduce naturally, including those in the gay community and those with other biological barriers. Most of the rest were for people who had died, usually upon request made while they’d been alive, although there were exceptions.
There were also plenty of problems, and even more critics. The infant mortality rate was seven times higher than for non-clones, and significant birth defects that debilitated nearly four percent of the surviving clones were enough for many to cry for a renewed ban. The rates were declining a little each year, but not nearly fast enough.
Then there were the brewing legal battles. State and federal lawmakers struggled to adapt to this new reality, and one of the biggest legal issues revolved around probate. In 2039, a very wealthy man left his entire fortune to his unborn clone, entirely cutting out his children and grandchildren. The children sued. They also refused to make arrangements for their father’s cloning, making his selfishness all the more foolish as you could only be cloned if an immediate family member or pre-secured legal guardian agreed to raise your clone. Why would the people you snubbed in life be willing to take on the tremendous time and expense of raising your clone – especially when you didn’t even leave them the money to care for you?
He never was cloned, and eventually the children were able to divvy up his estate among themselves. But the case led Congress to pass federal guidelines for cloners. To be cloned after your death, you needed to have someone agree to raise you and leave him or her at least $320,000 to take care of your expenses, a figure tied to cost-of-living increases. If you didn’t have the funds, your clone’s guardian could agree to waive that requirement. If you had more than the minimum amount, you were allowed to save one-third of the excess for your clone. The rest had to be gifted out.
There was also the issue of discrimination against clones. A few churches initially discouraged clones and their parents from attending, and a handful of private schools rejected clones in 2041 when the first clones beside myself began enrolling. Scattered restaurants gained notoriety by putting up “No Clones” signs, but that kind of mean-spirited bigotry was so reminiscent of the civil rights movement of the 1960s that it tended to work against itself. Polls showed that by 2041 a slim majority of the population supported the current cloning laws, and more than eighty percent considered clones to be as human as non-clones. Most people by then had met a clone child, and their repulsion to the idea was ebbing.
Of course, those were adult polls. My classmates at Hill Creek Junior Academy were another population altogether.
Being a loner as a child was nothing new to my bloodline. A year after his mother’s death, and days after his father’s suicide, my c-father was driven by his Uncle Charles and Aunt Mary down to San Diego from the home he’d known and loved in San Francisco. His new guardians were aloof. Their children had long since left for college, and Charles and Mary weren’t interested in doing all the kid stuff again. They provided Adam with food, clothing, and transportation, but they seemed to dislike him almost as much as he detested them.
Uncle Charles was a biologist whose idea of a good story was the latest cytology textbook and who hadn’t been to a play since his parents had to remove their complaining child from a production of Peter Pan. He did not believe in fairies. Except for going to Jack Murphy Stadium to watch the Padres win the 1984 pennant against the Cubs, Adam-1 couldn’t remember ever having a good time with his new guardians. His uncle gave him a high-five during the heat of the game. It might have been the first and only time they unnecessarily touched each other.
My clone-father trudged through elementary school and entered junior high mostly friendless. Not because he was a biological oddity like myself, but because his mind had become fixated on one goal, and nothing else was relevant or worth noting. At school he’d spend recess with his Sony Walkman, listening to Kansas tapes over the headphones, endlessly replaying Dust in the Wind and Carry On My Wayward Son. At home he’d shut his bedroom door and read books like Augustine’s City o
f God, Plato’s Republic, the Vedas, Kabbalistic texts, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The loss of his parents and his subsequent obsession with death, his fear of it, drowned out all else.
When I started school, my fear of death was more abstract. But my fear of strangers was tangible, and was not at all alleviated by my classmates who saw me as a freak. I had a couple friends in kindergarten and first grade who would respond to me if I talked to them, but generally I was avoided once the other kids heard I was the first human clone. Which was always by lunch on the first day of school.
Mom chose the school because it was nearby and, partially, because it was where Reverend Lewis’s son was enrolled. Despite the fact that Jack Lewis had never been more than polite to me at church, I’m sure mom hoped he would help me fit in with the other kids. I don’t think she realized how uncomfortable Jack felt around me.
Jack knew better than we did what a dangerous position we’d put his family in. Reverend Lewis never mentioned the death threats they’d received, let alone that one of those calls had been answered by Jack when he was four years old. Jack was well aware, from his youngest days, that I was a danger. At the time I didn’t understand this, but in retrospect I don’t know how he could have felt otherwise.
Meanwhile, closer to home, my former grandma and purportedly future wife Lily-2 had grown into a toddler who seemed especially drawn to playing with me. She was cute, and I liked her in spite of myself, but I always felt a nagging nervousness about becoming too chummy. Lyle had privately made it clear that she would be my bride, but I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to settle down just yet. I mean, you never know whom you might meet in second grade.
Her name was Evelyn Green.
Table of Contents
9
We met on the first day of second grade in Mrs. Slater’s class where we went after lunch recess – a class geared to English-related subjects like reading, writing, and the dramatic arts. It was my favorite class at Hill Creek. Perhaps a lot of that sentiment was because I ended up sitting at the same group table as Evelyn.
It all started that first day when, after introducing herself and having us say our names out loud, Mrs. Slater allowed us to talk among each other at our round tables, six students to a table. I’d never had a class with Evelyn, though I’d seen her at lunch during first grade and was excited that she was sitting at my table. But I was disappointed to see at our table Jimmy Preston, a bully who had tormented me for two years. And he wasn’t wasting any time.
“Hey, we’ve got the first human clone here!”
Everyone at our table, and most of the kids at the tables nearby, turned to stare at me. I purposely avoided looking at Evelyn. I’d been preparing to say something nice to her, and already I was blown out of the water. I focused my attention on a fly crawling along the edge of the table. I was ashamed at being goggled at like an exhibit and not having the courage or cleverness to shoot Jimmy down.
“Isn’t that weird being a clone?” he prodded, as he always did when introducing me to someone new.
I felt tears welling up and prayed that something would prevent them from spilling over. I considered jumping up and running out of the classroom. Better that than let them see me cry like a baby over such a ridiculous question.
And then I heard her voice. The words I least expected to hear.
“But I like weird.”
I stole a quick glance up from the fly to see if she was teasing or being sincere. She seemed to be waiting for my sad blue eyes to meet her deep brown ones that curled up when she smiled, which she was now doing. I went back to the fly, but the tears were gone, replaced by tummy-dwelling butterflies.
“Why?” Jimmy asked. That wasn’t the response he’d been expecting, and he was at a loss for words. Except that one.
“Being weird takes special people,” she said. “Anyone can be normal.”
“Then you’re weird, too.”
“I hope so,” she responded, and smiled at me again when I glanced up. I smiled back.
After that she was my hero, and as the weeks went by I could scarcely take my eyes off her. Her maturity and intelligence dwarfed mine, despite me being nine days her senior – an age difference for which she’d find ample opportunities to razz me. And she was beautiful to boot. My heart fluttered whenever stray strands of her long, dark hair ran across her creamy olive complexion, which was dotted with a handful of freckles that seemed randomly but perfectly placed.
I had no experience liking a girl who liked me back, but I began following what I understood to be standard courtship rituals. I teased her incessantly and pestered her at lunch nearly every day, sometimes chasing her around the playground until she would suddenly turn and challenge me. She claimed she had a green belt in karate, and I always backed down, but with a grin. Sometimes she’d grin back.
Her friends thought I was obnoxious. And I guess I sort of was.
“Why do you like him?” her best friend Christie asked once as I was walking away following the most recent karate threat. I slowed down, straining my ear closest to her, but couldn’t make out her answer. Still, I was glad her friends thought she liked me.
Our relationship wasn’t all about me pestering her. We talked both seriously and kindly in the classroom. I think I annoyed her a bit with the pestering at lunch, but she liked me anyway, especially when others were mean to me. Oddballs like me were like friendship beacons to people like Evelyn, people who know normal is boring.
*
Near the end of October our relationship reached a new level. We had to write a story for Halloween. Drawing on inspiration from my past, I began spewing out words as quickly as I could write them. Stuff about haunted castles, witches with long fingernails, a silver knife, and a phantom father who saves our entire class from a bubbly end in an enormous black cauldron. Only one page was required, but I churned out three pages and found myself frothing at the mouth for more.
Mrs. Slater was impressed. So much so, that she passed around copies of my story to all my classmates – an act that had several of my peers glancing at me in disgust, but also earned me a couple of compliments from people who had never spoken to me.
But my biggest fear was Evelyn’s reaction. Never imagining that anyone but Mrs. Slater would read it, I had named some roles after people in the class. Jimmy Preston was the guy who stupidly got us caught by the witch, Jack Lewis slipped away to find help, and Evelyn joined me and my c-father’s hologram in laying a trap for the witch.
The next day I overheard Jimmy making fun of me louder than usual, I saw Jack flash me a quick smile as he passed by me after school, and Evelyn walked up to me on the playground, her friends in tow. I held my breath.
She was working on a lollipop, but took it out to say, “I liked your story.”
“Really?” I asked. Still not breathing.
She nodded. And after a few moments, when it was clear that I could think of nothing else to say, she smiled, popped her lollipop back in her mouth, gave a little laugh, and led her friends to the tetherball poles.
Someone had just flirted with me. No, not just someone. Evelyn Green.
I didn’t have a ready response when it happened, but only a couple days went by before an opportunity arose. The last Friday of every month was movie day, and Mrs. Slater walked the class to a small, dark classroom at the end of the hallway that was used for that purpose. It was the Friday before Halloween, and Mrs. Slater had us watch Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. My mom had raised me on the movie, but it was Evelyn’s first time seeing it. I managed to sit on the floor next to her.
Already familiar with each moment of the film, I spent most of it taking in Evelyn’s reactions from the side of my vision. I knew if I paid too much attention to the movie, I’d end up embarrassing myself by tearing up. Which is what Evelyn did when Scout saved her father and Tom Robinson by talking friendly-like with would-be lyncher Mr. Cunningham. I handed her a tissue from my pocket, and she gratefully took it and dabbed her
eyes. She used it again when Tom Robinson died.
Despite my best efforts, I still got caught up in Scout and Jem’s longest journey together on Halloween night. I had to wipe my eyes when Jem tried but failed to save his sister from the bigoted Mr. Ewell (a name spelled far too similarly to my own, but an opportunity for Mom to explain that there was really nothing in a name). Evelyn handed the tissue back to me. Was she watching my reactions too? I reverently took it from her and touched my own eyes, marveling that our tears were now joined. I returned the increasingly damp Kleenex to her for the final scene.
Before we got up, Mrs. Slater explained our assignment – we were to write our thoughts on what Scout’s father Atticus meant when he said that you can’t really know a person until you try to see things from their perspective.
She was careful not to focus too long on me while she said it, but several kids did. It was the one time I didn’t mind being the center of attention.
“Thank you, Adam,” Evelyn said, holding out the tear-filled tissue with a broad smile. I carefully took it from her and put it back in my pocket. She made a face like that was kind of gross, but kept smiling anyway. I was glad Mom made sure I always had a Kleenex on me.
*
“Did ya have fun today?” Mom asked as I climbed into her Honda.
I nodded. “We watched To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“I know,” she said, and then laughed at my stunned expression.
“How did you know that?”
“Moms know everything,” she answered mysteriously.
“Yeah, okay,” I said in disbelief, wondering if it was true. “Do you also know where we’re going?” I asked as we passed the street we took home.
“To buy some Halloween candy so we don’t get egged.”
“Reese’s?”
Mom didn’t answer, and then I saw why. We were passing Standley Memorial where Gabrielle Burns was locked up. Mom was always quiet when we drove by it. I noticed the extra lines that now sprouted from the side of her forty-one-year-old eyes, and the gray hairs intermixed with blond. She looked older and tired, but I still thought she was beautiful. I didn’t want her to be scared by the hospital. I wanted to say something that would reassure her, as she always did for me. But I couldn’t think of anything.
