Everybody Sees the Ants

236 Pages·2011·1.3 MB·English

by  King A S

New York Boston
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Copyright Page
For everybody
who sees the ants.
PART ONE

Who can stop the tears?
—Robert Nesta Marley

OPERATION DON’T SMILE EVER—FRESHMAN
YEAR

All
I did was ask a stupid question.
Six months ago I was assigned the standard second-semester freshman social
studies project at Freddy High: Create a survey, evaluate data, graph data,
express conclusion in a two-hundred-word paper. This was an easy A. I thought
up my question and printed out 120 copies.
The question was: If you were going to commit suicide, what method would
you choose?
This was a common conversation topic between Nader (shotgun in the
mouth), Danny (jump in front of a speeding truck) and me (inhaling car fumes),
and we’d been joking about it for months during seventh-period study hall. I
never saw anything bad in it. That kind of stuff made Nader laugh. And Nader
laughing at my jokes meant maybe I could get through high school with less
shrapnel.
When I told the principal that day that it was a joke between Danny, Nader
and me, he rolled his eyes and told me that Danny and Nader were not having
“social problems” at Freddy High.
“But you, Mr. Linderman, are.”
Apparently, Evelyn Schwartz went blabbing to the guidance counselor about
my questionnaire. She said it was “morbid” and “creepy.” (Evelyn Schwartz has
a T-shirt that says HE DIED FOR ME with a picture of a dead guy nailed to a cross
on it. Oh, the irony.) I really don’t think it’s that morbid of a thing to ask. I’m
pretty sure everybody has thought about it at one time or another. My whole plan
was to make a few cool pie charts or bar graphs, you know—to show off my
Microsoft Excel skills with labels such as SLIT WRISTS, OVERDOSE and FIREARMS.
Anyway, just because a person talks about suicide does not make it a “cry for
help.” Even if the kid’s a little bit short or unpopular compared to his so-called
friends.
Three hours after my meeting with the principal, I was sitting in the guidance
office. Six days later, I was in the conference room with my parents, surrounded
by the school district’s “experts” who watched my every move and scribbled
notes about my behavior. In the end they recommended family therapy,
suggested medications and further professional testing for disorders like
depression, ADHD and Asperger’s syndrome. Professional testing! For asking a
dumb question about how you’d off yourself if you were going to off yourself.
It’s as if they’d never known one single teenager in their whole lives.
My parents were worse. They just sat there acting as if the “experts” knew
me better than they did. The more I watched Mom jiggle her leg and Dad check
his watch, the more I realized maybe that was true. Maybe complete strangers
did know me better than they did.
And seriously—if one more person explained to me how “precious” my life
was, I was going to puke. This was Evelyn’s word, straight from her mega-hard-
core church group: Precious. Precious life.
I said, “Why didn’t anyone think my life was precious when I told them
Nader McMillan was pushing me around? That was… what? Second grade?
Fifth grade? Seventh grade? Every freaking year of my life?” I didn’t mention
the day before in the locker room, but I was thinking about it.
“There’s no need to get hostile, Lucky,” one of them said. “We’re just trying
to make sure you’re okay.”
“Do I look okay to you?”
“There’s no need for sarcasm either,” Jerk-off #2 said. “Sometimes it’s hard
to grasp just how precious life is at your age.”
I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do.
Jerk-off #1 asked me, “Do you think this is funny? Joking about killing
yourself?”
And I said yes. Of course, none of us knew then that the suicide
questionnaires were going to come back completed. And when they did, I
wouldn’t be telling any of these people, that’s for sure. I mean, there they were,
asking me if I was okay when they’re letting people like Nader run around and
calling him normal. Just because he seems okay and because he can pin a guy’s
shoulders to the mat in under a minute doesn’t mean he’s not cornering kids in
the locker room and doing things to them you don’t want to think about. Because
he did. I saw him do it and I saw him laughing.
They asked me to wait in the guidance lobby, and I sat in the tweed chair
closest to the door, where I could hear them talking to my leg-jiggling, watch-
checking parents. Apparently, smiling and joking was an additional sign that I
needed “real help.”
And so I initiated Operation Don’t Smile Ever. It’s been a very successful
operation. We have perplexed many an enemy.

THE FIRST THING YOU NEED TO KNOW—THE
SQUID

My
mother is addicted to swimming. I don’t mean this in a cute, doing-
handstands-in-the-shallow-end sort of way. I mean she’s addicted—more than
two hundred laps a day, no matter what. So I’m spending this summer vacation,
like pretty much every summer vacation I can remember, at the Frederickstown
Community Swimming Pool. Operation Don’t Smile Ever is still in full effect. I
haven’t smiled in six months.
Mom told me once she thinks she’s a reincarnated squid. Maybe she thinks
being a squid means she won’t be swallowed by the hole in our family. Maybe
being submerged in 250,000 gallons of water all the time makes the hole more
comfortable. I heard her yelling at Dad again last night.
“You call this trying?”
“See? Nothing’s ever good enough,” Dad said.
“I dare you to come home and actually see us every damn day in one damn
week.”
“I can do that.”
“Starting when?”
After a brief silence he said, “You know, maybe if you weren’t such a nag,
I’d want to be around more often.”
The door slammed soon after that, and I was happy he’d left. I don’t like
hearing him call her a nag when anyone can see she does what he tells her to do
all the time. Don’t talk to him about that Nader kid, Lori. It’ll just make him
embarrassed. And whatever you do, don’t call the principal. That’ll get him beat
up worse.
The Freddy pool isn’t so bad—at least when Nader McMillan isn’t around. Even
when he is around, working his one or two lifeguarding shifts a week, he’s
usually too distracted by his hot lifeguard girlfriend to pay attention to me. So,
for the most part, it’s a quiet, friendly neighborhood pool experience.
Mom and I leave home at ten, eat a packed lunch in the shade at one and get