Hero–Type (8 page)

"Happy now?" I say once I'm back inside.

But Dad's nowhere near happy. If happy was the earth, Dad would be out there orbiting Pluto.

"How could you drive around with those things on?"

"Chill out, Dad. Everyone has them."

"That's exactly my point," he says. "People think ... Do you know what people
think?"
And here he goes again: "People, they, you know..."

"Yeah, Dad."

"Let me tell you something: When I was in the army, those things didn't mean anything at all. You think they helped me over there? You think they helped any of us?"

It's the most he's talked about the army in, like,
forever.
I just stand there, stunned. He glares at me and then he shakes his head. He looks like he's about to say something else, but he just goes off to his bedroom and closes the door and I'm able to eat my dinner in peace.

In the morning, I drive to school for the first time, which is great. Tell the truth, I'm starting to get used to this "hero" thing. People treating me well in school, Leah inviting me to parties, the mayor bending over backwards to get me some wheels ... There are worse ways to live a life.

And at school, I experience one of them.

I don't get it. All of a sudden, no one's talking to me. or high-fiving me. As I walk through the halls to my locker, I just get stares and glares. What the hell?

Oh, God, wait. Did someone find out? Did someone find out the truth, about what
really
happened at the library that day?

No. No, that's impossible...

And then I get to my locker.

Someone has taped a sheet of paper to the front of it. It's a printout from the school newspaper's Web page. There's a picture of me taking one of the ribbons off the car and then another picture right next to it of me tossing both ribbons in the trash can.

And a headline:

L
OCAL
"H
ERO
"
TO
T
ROOPS
: D
ROP
D
EAD
!

Oh, boy.

T
HE REPORTER
. That pain-in-the-butt school reporter. He hadn't left yet. From the angle and the size of the shots, he must have been just across the street, getting back into
his
car when he saw me and ...

Crap.

I keep my head down in homeroom, moving only to rise and then sit for the Pledge of Allegience. I try to imagine there's a bubble around me and no one can see through it, but I don't have that great an imagination.

Like a junkie looking for a needle, I look for Leah in the halls between homeroom and first period. Which is stupid because I know her schedule by heart and she's never in my path this time of day.

I do catch Fam, though. Actually, she catches me, grabbing my backpack and pulling me off against the wall before I even realize it's her.

"Hail, Fool," I tell her.

"Kross, please be careful," she says, skipping the "Hail, Fool" nonsense. "People are pissed."

"Yeah, I know."

She pats my hand sympathetically and gives me a look like I'm a dog going to the vet for the last time. I get this weird vibe that, if we weren't both carrying armloads of books, she would give me a hug. Which, like, I totally don't want.

All day, I get the stink-eye from everyone around me. It's like I chopped up a baby and deep-fried it for lunch.

That whole hero thing was annoying, but it was better than the villain thing, let me tell you.

I finally spot Leah in the hall between classes—she's on her way to trig and I'm headed to bio, just like every Wednesday. She's not giving me the Death Glare for unpatriots like everyone else, but she's not giving me the hero-worship look, either.

I guess at this point most guys would just go ahead and tell everyone "My dad made me do it!" and that would be that, but come on! Is there anything in the world more pathetic than blaming your parents for your problems? That's so whiny. And it would just make me look like even more of a wuss. So, no.

I decide I can't handle a lunchtime of everyone watching, so I ditch lunch and head to the janitor's office. My hand actually shakes as I try to unlock the door with my copied key. I guess I'm more worked up than I thought.

Fam opens the door from the inside. I want to kiss her for it and then I'm grossed out by the idea.

"Hey, make up your mind, Kross." It's Flip, lounging at the desk. God, when did
he
learn to read my mind?

"What do you mean?" I ask, all fake innocent.

He holds up a copy of the Web printout. "Hero or villain? Which is it?"

Fam goes ahead and hugs me quickly, then moves to Flip's side. "Leave him alone, Joey. He's having a bad day. Can't you tell?"

Flip grimaces at the use of his real name. "He should have thought of that before he decided to piss all over the troops." But then he shrugs. "Not that I care. There might be something to this..." And he leans back on the desk and goes off into Flip-space, where he can think about such things.

I shake my head. Fam gives me that dog-to-the-vet pity look again, and I can't handle it. But I guess it's better to be here and getting the pity look from her than to be in the lunchroom and getting pelted by flying utensils, right?

Tit shows up and that's it—Speedo and Jedi must not have been able to slip away. "You're having an interesting day," Tit says, because Tit has a black belt in understatement.

"Tell me about it. What the
hell,
man? Why are people so pissed? It's not like I
did
anything."

"Beats me. What are you gonna do about it?"

I throw my hands up in the air. "How can I do something about it when I don't know what the big deal is in the first place?" My voice goes all high and cracky, which I hate, but I can't help it. "I can't believe people actually care about this!"

Fam pipes up. "Maybe you could—"

"Hey!" Flip sits up. "Some quiet, please! Genius at work. Heavy thinking going on here!"

"Sorry."

I enjoy my respite from the halls of South Brook as long as I can, but eventually I have to leave.

The rest of the day is just hellish. No one confronts me directly, but I hear mumblings and mutterings everywhere I go. And no one is giving me the worshipful hero look anymore. I don't get it. I can't believe people are so worked up!

The burnouts and the band geeks and the goth kids are the only ones not ganging up on me, which doesn't help at all because I don't fit in with any of those people.

This doesn't make sense. None of it makes any sense. They're
magnets,
for God's sake!

"Not everyone hates you, Kross," Speedo tells me at one point during the day. "It's just that the people who
do
hate you are really loud and the people who
don't
hate you just don't give a crap at all, so they're not gonna rush to defend you."

"Thanks for the good news."

Speedo doesn't catch the sarcasm. "No problem, buddy." He punches my shoulder. "See ya."

I try reading the story from the school paper, but it's just a mishmash of stupid. Stuff about how everyone thought I was a hero, but can one good deed wipe out what is clearly a deep character flaw and stuff like that and let me tell you: I
know
I've got deep character flaws. I mean, I've got character flaws like the Grand Canyon, but what's the big deal about tossing those magnets?

It's funny, because if they knew the
truth
about me ... I guess if they knew the truth, they'd hate me for the right reason, not the wrong one.

At the end of the day, when I get to the parking lot, there are about a million freakin' magnetic ribbons on my car. Poetic justice or general cluelessness? Who knows?

When I get home, voice mail is jam-packed with reporters. Real reporters, not idiots from school. There's a guy from the
Lowe County Times—the
same guy who interviewed me after the thing with the Surgeon—and he's all freaky on the message. And then there's the
Baltimore Sun,
and I start to think,
What the hell? Did nothing else happen in the world today?

Everyone wants a piece of me again. They want to "discuss your political beliefs" and "get inside your head" and find out "why you've chosen now to expound on your leftist ideology" and stuff like that.

I didn't know I
had
a leftist ideology. All of this over some strips of magnetic ... stuff. Whatever those ribbons are made of.

"Is this some kind of joke?" Dad asks. He's looking out the window at my car, which is still brown, but not that you can tell with that swarm of yellow, red, white, and blue all over it. "Didn't I tell you to get rid of those things?"

"Dad, do you even
listen
to voice mail?"

"Don't change the topic."

"I'm not! Everyone in the whole world thinks I hate America!"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Dad, they want to interview me about it."

Dad blinks at me, like it's a totally alien concept. "You're in high school, Kevin. Trust me—nothing terrible is going to happen."

"Dad!"

"Did you do anything wrong?"

"No."

"Is anyone shooting at you? Trying to blow you up?"

Jeez! When you put it
that
way..."No, Dad, but—"

"Then don't worry. It'll pass. Just deal with it."

I can't believe it! I can't believe he's that clueless! I mean, yeah, I understand that when he was a little bit older than me, he had people shooting at
him
and trying to blow
him
up, but still.

"Compared to that," he goes on, "you're just—"

The phone interrupts him and Dad picks it up. "Hello? What? No. He has no comment. I don't care. Uh-huh. Lose this number." And hangs up.

"Who was
that?"

He shrugs. "The
Washington Post."

"
Washington Post!
" Holy crap, this has gone national!

"Or
Washington Times.
one or the other. There are bigger things to worry about than this, Kevin. The war. The economy. The environment. College."

I get the feeling he could go on all day listing things for me to stress about, but then he actually
yawns,
as if his son being assaulted by the media happens every single day and he's bored with it all.

"I have to go to bed. Now get rid of those things. I want you to think for yourself, not like the rest of the sheep."

"You don't want me to support the troops?"

He pauses halfway to the bedroom door. I can almost see the conflict in the set of his shoulders. He turns back to me. "You think putting a stupid
magnet
on your car supports the troops? Do you? Because I thought you were smarter than that. Putting a magnet on your car does
nothing
for the troops. They're still over there, still dying."

"Well, what am
I
supposed to do about it?"

Which, hey, shuts him up for a second. Now, if it was anyone else's dad, I would think that maybe I'd scored a point or two, but it's my dad, so he's probably shut up just long enough to actually figure out what I'm supposed to do about it.

He looks like he's going to say something, but then he shakes his head. "Just ... Just get rid of those magnets, Kevin."

Which is a total cop-out as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not an adult, so I don't get a vote.

M
Y CAR SITS THERE IN THE DRIVEWAY
, covered with those magnets.

So, like, I wonder who gets all the money for those things? And do they do anything good with it, like give it to a veterans' charity, or do they just pocket it? And I never really thought about it before Dad brought it up, but...

How stupid is it to pin all your patriotic fervor on a
magnet?
On something temporary that can be removed and replaced at will. Even an actual bumper sticker is kinda cheesy, when you think about it. Want to brag about going to a theme park or that your kid's a stud athlete? Sure, a bumper sticker's the way to go. Kind of weak for matters of life and death, though.

It seems like someone got the magnet idea and they just went to town and everyone else followed along like sheep, like sheep following
more
sheep, everyone putting those things on because everyone
else
is putting them on and that's supposed to, I don't know, supposed to ease their consciences or something.

Man, I hate it when Dad's right. It messes with my world.

So I start to pull the magnets off. First I look around to make sure there aren't any school reporters lurking in the bushes or ready to pop up from the sewer or anything. Not that it matters anymore. The damage has been done, and it's not like I'm not used to being in the paper at this point. People can't hate me any more than they already do.