Everyday Psychokillers Read Free Page A

contained the energy of history, as our bodies are containers for our minds. He talked about the regal nature and privilege of knowledge, how we were like electronic jewels. We imagined our brains in our skulls, vibrating with color.
    In the half-circle of kids that gathered around Mrs. Freedman in the parking lot under the palm in its planter with its trunk like a batik dress and the moon rising behind it, Julie and her best friend—I was her best friend, already not new anymore—sat next to each other with their legs stretched out in front of them and leaned on each other’s shoulders, still fuzzy and happy because they’d sneaked into the storage room and sniffed white-out among the white plastic jars of chemicals, microscopes, and beakers. They’d crouched between the metal shelving units in the fluorescent light, clapping their hands over their mouths, and then they’d sneaked back through the flap-doors into the dark classroom where the slides flashed blueprint-style drawings of a pyramid surrounded by biplanes. They’d looked at each other in the dark, in the deep blue and gold glow of Tutankhamun’s treasures, and then later, in the parking lot, leaning against each other’s shoulders and gazing up at Mrs. Freedman’s gigantic glasses, with the early evening stars spitting through her palm frond crown, the cement still warm from daylight and thousands of children’s feet, the girls clasped hands meaningfully when Mrs. Freedman told them that Mr. Freedman’s research was revolutionary and therefore unpopular, and that they should be gadflies like Galileo and Socrates, because that is where greatness comes from.
    It comes from the stars, from science and from history. Julie and her best friend could feel it, could feel the pull of greatness. They felt it like gravity, like the pull of the earth.
    Because of her leather skirts, Julie was on the edge of getting kicked out of special classes even though she’d tested in. She’d told the assistant principal, “If you don’t like it don’t look.” A bruise the shape of a peanut shell faded along her cheekbone, and Julie thought, fuzzily, about what it would be like to get on a motorcycle and ride to California. Mrs. Freedman’s words sounded like they were coming through water. The air itself felt tingly and particulate, and Mrs. Freedman’s words swam toward her, easing like a fleet of tiny spaceships through millions of tiny asteroids. She could feel how tiny her friend’s fingers were. Like a little bird, she thought. I could snap it like a bird, but I won’t, because I love her.
    That evening the girls spent the night at Julie’s house. Julie’s father dropped them off and then went somewhere else. They ate ham and cheese sandwiches at the kitchen table. Then they listened to music in Julie’s room, on Julie’s boom box, and then after a while they turned the patio lights on and sat in the lawn furniture between the house and the hedge, where they could still kind of hear the music as long as they kept the sliding doors open with only the screens shut for bugs. A shaft of air-conditioned air pushed through the screen, and occasionally they could feel it brush by on the edge of a breeze. A boy from next door came over, shaggy, aching, trying hard to seem mysterious, skinny and keeping his weight low in his hips when he walked. Everyone knew he had a thing for Julie but Julie wouldn’t have him even though he went to high school. He emptied a baggie of pot onto the glass table and the three of them poked around in it and separated the seeds.
    The boy rolled a joint and gave it to Julie. Julie said, “Thanks, you can go now,” and he did. The girls went back inside and Julie put the joint in her jewelry box and then they lay on their stomachs on Julie’s bed and watched TV with the sound off so they could keep listening to music. They worked on Julie’s