A Plague Year

prays.

Then we have dinner—just the four of us—because our only other relatives are Aunt Robin and her crew from Caldera, and Mom doesn’t want them in the house.

It’s a tradition, I guess, but it’s a tradition that nobody seems to like, so why do we keep doing it?

I sure don’t want to do it this year. I have a better idea.

I want to go to Florida.

I was hoping to plant the idea of the Florida trip at dinner—to plant it with Mom, at least, since Dad couldn’t get away from the store. But before I even had a chance to speak, dinner took an awkward turn.

Mom suddenly asked Lilly, “So, are you and this Uno boy a serious couple?”

Lilly did not explode, as she normally would have. Instead, she answered calmly, even maturely, “He’s going by his real name now—John.”

“Good. Uno makes him sound like a Puerto Rican.”

Then Lilly exploded. “Mom!”

“What?”

“What is the matter with you?”

Mom held out her hands. “What?”

“That’s a racist thing to say.”

“No it isn’t. Ooh-no is Spanish. That’s a fact. There’s nothing racist about a fact.”

Lilly stopped talking.

After a few minutes, Mom tried another line of conversation, as if the first one had never happened. “You know, your uncle Robby and your aunt Robin met when they were very young.”

Lilly clenched her jaw.

“Robin snagged him when he was seventeen, and she was only sixteen. Some girls think they have to snag their men fast, because the bloom is quickly off the rose. Personally, I don’t agree with that. I think a girl should take her time.”

Lilly just stared at her food glumly.

Thankfully, the phone rang in the kitchen. I was relieved to get up and answer it. I leaned against the refrigerator and said, “Hello.”

I heard a familiar perky voice. “Tom?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Wendy.” She started in chattily, like nothing was wrong. “Did you hear Ben Gibbons on the ride home today?”

“No.”

“He described eating a chair—a whole wooden chair—when he was two years old. It took him, like, six months, but he did it.”

“No. I didn’t hear him. I was listening to Arthur.”

“Catherine says Ben is a classic example of a designated patient.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a disorder. Not as weird as pica, though. It’s when a whole family—parents, siblings, everybody—has serious issues but won’t admit it. Instead, they pick one family member to be the designated patient. They pretend that only that one family member has a problem, so the rest of them can pretend to be okay.”

All I could think of to say was a generic “That sucks.”

After a few seconds of dead air, Wendy finally got down to business. “Hey, I talked to Joel about that website. He was really embarrassed and, like, really sorry. He said he must have been wasted when he put me on there, because he didn’t even remember doing it, and he didn’t mean any of it.”

I interrupted. “Joel? That’s his name?”

“Yeah. He’s one of Dad’s top students. Really brilliant but, like, really immature.”

“And he lives across the street?”

“Yeah, in one of the frats. Anyway, Joel promised he’d take the whole website down. Like, permanently.”

I didn’t respond, so she went on. “But, you know, none of that stuff about me was true. I don’t even know what some of that stuff means. Okay? I am not like that. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So will you stop being mad at me all the time? And start talking to me again? Because now you know that none of this is true?”

I thought to myself, I have no idea if this is true or not. But I finally repeated that everything was okay.

After a pause, she answered, “Okay. We’re good, then?”

“Yeah. We’re good.”

“Good. Well, see you at school.”

“Yeah. Bye.” I leaned against the refrigerator for one more minute. I let myself fantasize one more time about a kiss from Wendy Lyle. A beautiful piece of candy corn rising up toward me. The feel of her tongue in my mouth. Then I thought about that same piece of corn lying on the ground, in front of the railing. It’s just not the same after it’s been thrown up.

The Wendy thing was over.

But the Joel thing was not.

He had called me a “little townie.” Then he’d made out with Wendy right in front of me, like I didn’t exist. He would have to answer for those things. And for the website.

You don’t do that kind of stuff around here and get away with it. Maybe in California, and Florida, but not here.

Saturday, November 10, 2001

I went in to work with Dad at 7:00 a.m. and stocked shelves for five hours.

Arthur picked me up in the parking lot a little after noon. The first thing he said was, “You ready to go up there and kick some ass, Tom?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Uh, yeah? What kind of answer is that? You ready or not?”

“I’m ready.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do?”

“Not exactly. I’ll figure that out when I get there.”

Arthur sounded doubtful. “Okay. So, we are gonna go to the campus and look for a yellow Corvette.”

“Right. Wendy told me the guy lives in a frat house across the street from her, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”

“We just have to find the right frat boy and let the mayhem begin. Let the wrath of God befall him.”

I gulped. “Yeah.” Then I asked him, “Do you think we’ll get in trouble?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. This is a matter of honor, right?”

“Right.”

“Then you got to do it. End of story.”

“Yeah. I know.”

We retraced the route we’d taken on Halloween—up the main road leading to Blackwater University, around the big quadrangle, then onto Wendy’s street. This time, in the light of day, I could see that many of the brick houses were frats. They had banners with big Greek letters hanging over their front doors.

We passed the Lyles’ house, with its three-sided porch, its white railing, and the dirt below it. I wondered if they’d cleaned up that candy corn.

Up on the left, just as Wendy had implied, was a frat house with a yellow Corvette in the driveway. Arthur