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The Wrong Twin
Spencer Williams IV
1
“Sherman!”
Although the seventh period bell would not ring for another
three minutes, Sherman and Dalton had made significant progress
down the hall and were about an average Jaramillo High School stu-
dent’s height from the door to the outside. Although it was custom
for them to jet out of Biology a little early, Ms. Hinder’s shrill cry
from their prison, Room A141, made Sherman slow his pace. The
pale light from their classroom faded as the heavy door squeaked to
a close behind them. He knew his hesitation placed him in danger
if his teacher decided to be proactive and drag his insubordinate ass
back in to hear her customary farewell to her students for the week-
end. They were not going to stick around just to sing her little Coo-
lio-parody goodbye song: “One, two, three, four: Get your booties
out the door!” The whole intended mood of mirth would be ruined,
for one.
For two, by the time the screech tickled his eardrums in places
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he could only scratch with a Q-tip, and where Johnson & Johnson
warning labels would dissuade him from trying to reach, there was
probably just a minute or less left and apprehending two kids who
always slipped out at this time anyway would just be a waste of ev-
eryone’s time.
“Let’s move!” shouted Sherman. He grabbed his friend by the
humerus and yanked him out the front entrance as the electronic
bell sounded from flat intercoms throughout the building.
They were greeted by a sea of students who appeared to stand
in color coordinated groups. Immediately in front of him were loud
obnoxious jocks wearing clothes so bright and clean they were glow-
ing, advertising the abbreviations and acronyms of popular brand
insignia, the infinite customizations of which emblazoned the can-
vas of their garb. Their pristine apparel looked as though it had only
that morning been removed from off-white shelves of perfect inset
cubes that smelled of vanilla and synthetic fabric. Their immaculate
dress was like a testament of their intemerate character. This was
America’s real life blood—Bull-headed braying testosterone reposi-
tories whose every head-first plunge into a locker door and sponta-
3
neous rallying cry was encouraged by their flock of floozies and their
parents, who sacrificed much to re-experience young adulthood’s
bliss.
To his immediate right were the goths, or at least people who,
like Dalton, always dressed in black. Today, although it was 70 de-
grees out, Dalton was wearing an all-black shiny pleather jumpsuit,
with a solid column of small buckles going down the side of each
leg. Sherman’s friend sat down on the walkway along the school, set
his back against the brick wall, and kicked out his shiny Gestapo
boots. His face was caked with white powder. His lips and eyes were
bleeding black goo. He looked like a propped up dead man, staring
straight ahead at shifting and dancing rows of capris and cargo pants
with his head slightly cocked to the side, while his boots postmor-
tally spasmed.
Sherman reached out his hand to wave it in front of Dalton’s
face, to see if he really was still alive. Just as he did so, his thumb
hooked into the belt loop of a girl who walked in between them
at just that moment. His hand was still moving forward to make a
playful gesture with his acquaintance while it was accidentally at-
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tached and he only realized his mistake when his victim was sud-
denly jerked back by the brisk force with which he extended his
arm. By the time his outstretched arm acted as an effective fulcrum
on the back of the now falling girl, he saw thin fluttering strands
of black hair fly up symmetrically beside her face that curled and
pointed like fingers. An array of necklaces also went flying, suspend-
ing marijuana leaf, peace sign, and Grateful Dead bear pendants in
front of him like constellations. Her right leg went up in the air to
counterbalance as she fell back over his arm which in this split sec-
ond he attempted to keep straight and rigid so as to somehow re-
verse her fall by allowing her top weight to see-saw back up. On her
leg he saw hippie flowers of different colors and sizes sewn into bell-
bottom jeans. Tiny transparent beads outlined each leaf and sun-
center. This was Katie.
Katie and Karen were sisters and Sherman had first met them
in middle school. They, nor anyone he knew (including himself),
were not the same now as they were back then. He knew Katie but
only knew of Karen from seeing the two of them walk together down
hallways, usually in very loud conversation. They looked almost ex-
actly the same. Katie’s wardrobe tended to consist of brighter tones.
5
When he first asked Katie if Karen was her sister, she answered affir-
matively.
He and Katie talked all the time whenever they had classes to-
gether, but three years later he could not recall the subject of a sin-
gle conversation, except their last one before they found each other
again here, at Jaramillo. Although the general subject still eluded
him, he distinctly recalled her saying the word “crap” and he being
utterly repulsed by it. Did she not know that Jesus said not to swear
at all and that doing so put her in hot water salvation-wise?
He was quite sure of this at the time, anyway. When he first ran
into Katie again after sophomore orientation, he could not say what
his views of salvation entailed. The day they re-met, he was inadver-
tently leading a mob of students down the hallway in the opposite
direction that Katie, who was also inadvertently in front of a mass of
students, was coming towards him. Members of their mobs slowly
trickled from behind to in front to escape an accidental organization
of movement. As their parties approached, the two saw each other
and Sherman knew exactly who she was.
“Hey!” she exclaimed.
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“Hey!” he responded.
“Nice shirt…”
“Oh… thanks!”
They kept moving and it would be days before they’d find each
other again. Sherman glanced down at his shirt and saw a scorpion
with huge googly eyes and jagged lightning bolt red lips that ap-
peared to be skewering a down-and-out rag doll of sorts. Classic The
Wall artwork.
They next met in oddly similar circumstances. The classes of
the first week of the year were more lax kinds of getting-to-know-
each-other sessions than serious lectures, where they were essen-
tially allowed to do anything they wanted. The teachers gave them
an overview of what to expect when things really got started, but
the last half hour of each class usually descended into people just
talking. Near the end, he would begin leading the procession that
emerged from their classroom by way of carrying on a conversa-
tion with a friend while they got up and left, consciously inspiring
his classmates to follow suit. He was once again the first in the hall
on his side of the school and as he walked and talked, several stu-
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dents finally left their classes and started coming out from behind
him. He was still in conversation when he again saw an opposite
oncoming wall of students and Katie in front chatting with a small
and thin girl with black hair and black-rimmed glasses. Katie wore
a dull and faded tie-dye shirt under acid washed jean overalls with
leg cuffs that were frayed to shreds. She clanked as she walked with
at least five necklaces, at least as many bracelets on each arm (some
of which were also necklaces), and an ankle bracelet on each ankle.
Rubber-soled straw sandals snapped and flopped as they kicked low
hanging strands of white husk.
As they passed, Sherman once again said hello. This time, Katie
shoved a folded piece of notebook paper into his hand. They contin-
ued past each other.
Back at home, once he found a spare moment, he read the let-
ter:
Sherman,
Hey there! What’s up? It’s been forever!!! What’s been going on
with you?
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You know, I was having a really shitty day yesterday until you
were so kind as to say hello. I know it may not sound like very much.
But for me, it just made my day. It’s great to know you’re still so
sweet.
I’m not sure what my schedule’s gonna be yet, but we should
hang out! I’m always waiting outside the C wing for the bus. Wow, I
thought this year was gonna suck! I’m really happy to run into you
again.
Peace,
Katie
Sherman reread the note several times, flipped it over and back
to make sure this was definitely what Katie handed him. There was
her name right at the end. This was obviously her note addressed
to him. He became very warm. When he stood up, he thought he
could see the steam that the swamp in his netherparts released,
from which streams of sweat rolled down his legs. Perhaps he was
overacting, although he was not sure what kind of reaction he was
having. Was this some kind of invitation? To what?
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He would inquire with Katie’s other half to get a sense if his
instincts were right. He rarely talked to Karen and wasn’t sure what
she thought of him, but assumed there were positive feelings. Back
at school, he found Katie’s sister standing next to a wall of fudge-
colored lockers with black combination dials, chatting audibly with
an assortment of variously physiqued women. She and Katie had the
exact same kinds of inflections in their speech. They had the exact
same way of expressing exasperation, by expelling air in a guttural
push that almost sounded like they were growling, and they both
did it a lot.
He approached her from behind and was about to tap her
shoulder when the broad and tall girl Karen was facing noticed
Sherman and pointed to him. Karen immediately turned around.
She looked almost nothing like her sister. Her hair was dyed dark
maroon and tied back in a bun. Her face was completely white with
powder (an odd trend among people he knew at the time). They
may have had the exact same countenance, in that they seemed to
always carry a facial expression of concern, or impatience, or per-
haps exasperation. Her ears looked painfully perforated and were
half metal rings. She also donned a large amount of jewelry, all of
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which was skeletal and Wicca-themed and clinked when she moved.
Instead of cannabis insignia, a pentagram lied under her neck.
“You, come with me,” she said. She placed an open palm on his
shoulder to guide him to one of the small rooms that divided the
outside from the inside, which worked remarkably well for private
moments, despite students frequently zipping through. Sherman
reached into his pocket for the note.
“Hey, so… I wanted to—”
“Yeah, so May wants to ask you out but she’s really nervous but
she doesn’t mind you knowing, so… yeah.” She shrugged. “Do what-
ever.”
Sherman took his hand out of his pants. He had only once
caught a glimpse of this May she was speaking of at the C-wing spot
and at no point picked up on any kind of romantic vibe. She had
very dark red lipstick but no other makeup. He recalled her curly
and wet hair and the thin jacket wrapped around her shoulders that
flapped like a sail in the moderately strong wind of that day. He did
not gather that either one found the other particularly appealing.
11
Perhaps this answered his question about Katie, since he as-
sumed that she would have been the subject of their private conver-
sation if there was something to pursue there. It was safe to assume
a purely platonic message, then.
Well, he would find out what this was all about. To his dismay,
the class schedules were starting to normalize, but he successfully
disappeared from Language Arts to seek out his new interest. It
was still the second week and he remembered one time seeing the
blonde-haired May eating lunch alone in one of the anterooms to
outside. Sure enough, he found her in the same place.
She was sitting on a mud-striped doormat speckled with red
pebbles from the gravel paths with a neon blue lunch bag beside
her, studiously eating a cup of ramen when Sherman knocked on
the glass part of the door. He saw her suddenly sit up and throw her
hands out as though from an electric jolt, spilling the entire con-
tents of her noodles and tiny peas and carrots onto the floor. Sher-
man’s heart sank, and he slid down the door while his fingers made a
streaking sound against it.
“Sorry!” he shouted. No response.
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He looked through one of the side panels and saw that the girl’s
expression was definitely not of anger. It was really more of a smile
than a look of annoyance, although it had elements of both.
Sherman stood up and carefully slipped into the small room.
He stood on his toes to avoid a slowly spreading puddle. He held his
hand over his mouth and had wide eyes while he moved like this.
His pants legs brushed against the red brick wall of the small room
with regular mechanical strokes. He knelt down before the now def-
initely smiling girl.
“I am… I can’t even…”
“Hey, that’s why you always pack a spare.” She then took out a
microwaveable container of what looked to Sherman like stroganoff
noodles and continued eating.
“Wow… That’s… I mean, that’s impressive. Or maybe… I don’t
know. Maybe you were expecting me…?”
She shook her head. “No, certainly wasn’t expecting you.” She
was not looking at him and still eating.
“I see…” Sherman stood up again and then decided to sit back
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down cross-legged. “I guess, I thought you may have because… Well,
I was talking to Karen… And… you know…”
“Carter?” she tossed her head back and laughed. “Ha-ha. Ah,
that girl…”
Sherman chuckled. “Yeah, that one… Yeah, she—”
There was a loud banging on the door behind him which made
the whole room rattle and he shrieked while he turned his head to
see Karen herself looking very displeased, or maybe content.
“You crazy bitch!” the girl on the ground yelled through the
glass.
“Hey, sorry” the multiply-pierced girl said in a raised voice
through the glass, muffled. “I gotta speak with this dude.”
“No, you can’t have him!”
Karen opened the door and pulled Sherman up by the shirt col-
lar, forcing him to leap adeptly over the ramen pond. They started
walking back to the main hallway until Karen pushed Sherman up
against the wall.
“You idiot! That’s not May!”
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Katie, the hippie, eschewed makeup. She rejected feminine
norms that dictated how she appear and carry herself. She explained
to him that she consciously declined to move her hips when she
walked, that you would only see her dead carcass in an open cof-
fin dressed up in stockings or heels, that she had seen a good many
former friends one by one lay victim to infusing imposed views of
“womanhood” into their own personalities, always by giving way to
one practice, just some eye shadow to accent the eyes, just some lip-
stick for a little fuller appearance, just some shorter pants because
it’s sweltering, and then another, and then another.
She did not believe she had any true friends, in the truest sense
of the word. The people he saw flanking her during calmer passing
periods were simply people who were always there, and they were
maybe all going to the same destination or they had merely auto-
matically coalesced into that part of the school after a class or some-
thing.
There was no one she could say she actually trusted, with the
exception of Helena, the diminutive girl with glasses he had seen
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with Katie on numerous occasions in an almost sidekick kind of
fashion. Helena was the closest thing to a friend she had because she
too had the grave misfortune of growing up in a household where
she more and more found herself at odds with her parents’ reason-
ing. Katie explained that she well understood the rebellious streak
that kids are going to have against their parents growing up, but that
Helena’s biological mentors would go through elaborate lengths to
prove some trivial point so as to embarrass her and make life miser-
able.
For instance, Helena, for no really good reason, Katie admit-
ted—but for nothing that warranted abuse, despised onions and was
known to vomit when subjected to vivid oral descriptions of a meal
that featured them. At age 14, during the beginning of her freshman
year, her parents forbade her from purchasing school meals and in-
sisted on packing her lunch in an attempt to wean her off her hatred
of what was clearly an abundant source of vitamin C, potassium and
calcium, and to dissuade her, by force or deception if necessary, to
end this childish phase, they reasoned, Katie told him. And it didn’t
matter to them that whenever they snuck onions into her food, she
would be purging in the bathroom for the next few hours. But the
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experience that caused her distrust of her parents to peak would oc-
cur a year later when she was presented with what she was told was a
white chocolate birthday cake with coconut shavings. One large and
unguarded bite into a slice carefully carved out by her mom, Hel-
ena would later recount, would result in a sea green stream of liq-
uid spurting from her mouth and shaving a section of icing off and
staining the white plaster under their kitchen stove forever, culmi-
nating in a scene Helena described to Katie as “psychotic shrieking”
by all parties involved.
As a result, Katie told Sherman, she identified with Helena,
who to Sherman always looked very fragile.
Katie loved hippie music and classic rock and roll. She reiter-
ated that it must have been some kind of destiny to see that not
only was Sherman at this school with her, but that he was into Pink
Floyd. He was hesitant to tell her that he had purchased his The
Wall shirt on a whim, as he noticed one day that he was about to en-
ter the second phase of high school and had no apparel promoting
music. He was not all that familiar with any music group before the
90s. His ignorance of the classics was not lost on Katie, who one day
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approached him with Led Zeppelin IV and asked him to find time to
listen to it from beginning to end.
Katie and Sherman talked a lot, but by the time teachers got
serious and tried to start working through a curriculum, he found it
more difficult to steal time to roam. But Karen and Sherman shared
an Advanced Algebra II class and sat at the same two person table
and would often talk on paper. The following conversation took
place on college-ruled sheets they slid back and forth in room B200
at 11:29AM, October 15, 2000:
¡Hóla! ¿Como estás? Hoy, soy escribiendo con mi bolígrafo fa-
vorito.
Bonjour. Eh bien, c’est beau ...
Um…
Er…
Hey, let’s start over: Hey there, lady!
Hey there, cowboy!
Don’t feel like a cowboy today. Just feel… I don’t know. I’m not
sure what to think. Tell me… what is love?
18
Baby don’t hurt me!
Don’t hurt me…
No more!
Well, let me put it to you this way: So, I have this friend…
Ah, I see. We’ll just call him “Sherman Alexie”.
Hehe. Yeah. So, my buddy, the good Mr. Alexie (brilliant writer,
by the way), he tells me that it’s confusing how the whole… dynamic
works…
The dynamic, huh?
Yes, the very dynamism that defines the eponymously named
Duo.
What are you talking about?
Or actually, I don’t think I’m talking about that kind of dyna-
mism. All I mean is I’m not sure what the best thing to do is…
Regarding what?
Well, I mean, haven’t you been able to tell there’s some kind of…
chemistry, I dare say. That she and I are… that we’re so remarkably…
19
I mean, maybe it’s silly for me to say any of this if it really is so obvi-
ous.
Dude, I have no idea what you are talking about. I think I
understood your Spanish more.
Say, have you ever been infatuated with anyone?
Um, do you listen to like anything I’ve ever said? I talk
about Ben pretty much all the time. You won’t believe it, but
this morning I saw him walking to school and on the bridge
where all those wildflowers are growing out of the sidewalk,
I saw him step on some by accident. And what does he do? He
goes back to straighten them out! Is that incredible or what?
Whoa. Are you sure this dude isn’t a girl?
And did you know he likes Iced Earth? And The Beatles?
Where’d this guy come from?
I don’t think that second one is so rare…. But hey… to some he’s
quite a catch, I’m sure. So, have you been, you know, coming on to
him and all that?
What? No! I can’t talk to him!
20
Yeah, that galoot…
Oh my God, he’s like this huge teddy bear I just want to
hug forever! He’s simply everything that’s perfect…
Well then, you should just go melt into his arms, or whatever. A
pretty girl like you is sure to create a fissure or two in that iceberg-
like behemoth.
Argh. You’re so mean. He’d never talk to me.
Though I don’t share your reasoning, I share your sentiment.
Sometimes the signs aren’t too clear. Although sometimes, they are
all too clear.
Yeah, I really don’t see much happening there.
Hmm… well, tell me. Might you see something happening… here?
Where?
Right here?
Ohh… I see… Sigh… You know… you’re a good bloke.
So my epitaph will read.
You know, sure. Why not?
21
The year was concluding and every sophomore student
crammed into the dark auditorium. Bright lights shined from sil-
ver lamps hanging off the edges of the black painted catwalk. Their
light rays made strands of solid dust clouds visible, and to Sherman
it looked as though that was the entire atmosphere, that they were
only breathing in hair and dead skin. Nevertheless, he took a deep
breath and saw everyone he had every really known all in the same
room. Not quite everyone he ever knew, but the only people at this
point that he could say he was really aware of and personally knew.
He sat in the center seat of the second row in the middle sec-
tion. To his right was Serendipity (the broad tall girl who had
pointed him out to Karen), Mary “Full of” Grace, Dædra, Karl Marx
(so nicknamed solely due to his usually scruffy appearance which
was a symptom of his lightning fast hormone growth, the teasings
of which left the good natured Marx unscathed and his peers im-
pressed), Joane Incognita, and Dalton. To his left sat Katie Carter,
Helena, Karen Carter, Tina “George (of the Jungle)” Xi (a nickname
Tina gave herself for no reason she could ever recall when asked),
Amanda “There is Definitely No Logic to Human Behaviour” Bynes
22
(whose actual name was Amanda Beinhart, having been bestowed
with a joke last name simply due to the prominence of a like-named
celebrity and a more elaborate common nickname, of disputed
commonality, as a parallel mark of her frequently advertised music
interests), and April (who Sherman had mistakenly identified as
May, marking an epoch in his relation to Karen and Katie’s group,
as it were, a period which Sherman insisted on commemorating by
hereinafter referring to her as “June”, so that he might “eternalize the
mistake”, a notion whose farce April assured him she found amus-
ing).
On the stage was a large white projector screen. Slowly, the
whooping and yelling of his colleagues simmered down and the pre-
sentation began. It was a slideshow set to late 20th century California
beach boy guitar music (Jack Johnson and the like) and the crowd
moaned as though on cue. Very high quality still pictures of random
students clinging to each other and generally caught in surprise pro-
gressed and the first few slides elicited light tittering, graduating to
heartier chuckling.
One of the slides was Dalton staring out beyond the camera in
23
his quintessential dead man gaze. The picture was outside and taken
at an angle with a glare that reduced the quality. His eye shadow was
so heavy he appeared to have empty eye sockets and he very much
looked like Hollywood’s take on a zombie, which inspired much
chortling among their classmates.
The pictures seemed to get more entertaining as the slideshow
went on. Not all of them were sophomores, but he recognized al-
most everyone captured. One was of Serendipity standing very up-
right and cross-armed in front of one of the side entrances. A young
boy, whose face you couldn’t see, angled his head up at her in a way
that looked pleading, as though she was silently admonishing him,
or otherwise refusing passage. This made the entire room laugh,
but Sherman couldn’t help but to feel some embarrassment and
guilt, as the picture convincingly made it look like she was an ogre
figure exacting a toll or something like that. Few people in his class
were spared the embarrassment of candid moments on the screen.
The penultimate feature was a photo of the, in Sherman’s opinion,
hilariously photogenic Karl Marx with bushy whiskers, eyebrows
and mustache, dressed in a true flannel suit jacket fumbling with a
hot dog on a bright white plate right on his crotch, although he was
24
standing and quickly attempting to balance it, it appeared, frozen
in a quick desperate combat stance, at some school function where
his soul was suddenly snatched so that it might be broadcast in front
of roaring high-schoolers where no matter how the professorial-
looking Marx was to appear trying to catch a hot dog falling out of
the bun right over what would have to be his gonad and with wide
bent legs not unlike that of someone who had recently stepped off a
horse, it would bring great tears of joy and laughter to them without
fail— that picture froze in view for five solid seconds before the final
feature.
The screen faded to a 50x magnification of a dark young man,
none other than Sherman, leaning over to deliver what was clearly
meant to be a kiss to a dark-auraed girl, indisputably Karen, who
had brought up her hand the instant the photo was taken to block
his advance. This moment of everyday cliché was here immortalized
in the school memoriam and blown up to beyond life-size propor-
tions for the great delight of the audience who laughed the loudest
at that sight. A few seconds later, the second part of the photo scene
appeared where Sherman was again leaning in to kiss the girl but
this time she submits and they are clearly lip-locked and in a state of
25
passion, however brief, to the great consternation of the auditorium
which was promptly immersed in a deafening cacophony of laughter
and jeering.
Everyone gets up and most appear to be giving a standing ova-
tion. Sherman sinks down in his seat but receives an endless barrage
of ruffles of the hair, shoulder massages, and hard pats on the back.
He sees some people wringing their hands in the air in what looks
to him like congratulatory gestures, and a few others wiping away
fake tears. All quite silly, yet flattering. Although he wasn’t sure what
they’d think to learn that he and Karen didn’t last too long, and that
the Kodak moment before them was rather fleeting in reality.
“God damn the paparazzi, eh babe?” Sherman said right before
looking to the left, anticipating having to shout his comment to a
twin a second time.
The sisters’ seats were empty and he saw Helena sitting with
arms and legs crossed, the knee pointing out and her foot shaking.
She wasn’t looking at him or the screen, nor any particular show-
boating teen.
“Hey, where’s um…. where’s uh…”
26
Helena very slowly turned her head towards him. Her look was
blank, as best as Sherman could describe it. She looked the opposite
of pleased. There was nothing she had for him.
“Where are the girls?”
“You really are an ass.”
“We’ll… be talking later. Count on it. But I should mend this
whole… It really is not what it seems. This isn’t the best place… or
you may not be the best person—”
“She probably went to our spot.” Helena kept looking out be-
tween and beyond people. “I’m not going to tell you what to say or
what to do. I really don’t know what all has been going on with you…
three… but yes. Go talk to Katie… or…” She rested her forehead in
one hand and waved him off with the other. “Just go!” she shouted,
still waving him off.
Sherman got out of his seat to leave and was tackled by a stu-
dent whom he, in retrospect, did not believe he had ever actually
met. Before hitting the ground, he saw the young man’s backwards
red cap that placed an MLB logo right above his forehead. He
27
brought him to the floor and planted a big sloppy wet one on his
cheek.
“It was… good cheer.”
Katie said nothing.
“If you regard nothing else—“
“Which is just the kind of regard you show.”
Sherman put his fist to his mouth as he sharply inhaled then
exhaled. He walked over to the large glass panels and the sun was
setting behind the mountains, making the grass, concrete, and the
entire gray and brown interior appear orange. He leaned against one
of these large clear glass sheets.
“Everyone was laughing because it was totally unexpected. And
downright hilarious. I mean, a guy kissing a girl, I mean a black guy
kissing a white girl and initially rebuffed, only to break the barriers
of stigma so that true primal beauty could finally call you to answer
that fire—”
“She’s my sister!”
28
“And so all the more to assume you to be an advocate of such
groundbreaking… Or… now wait… First of all, Karen and I never
really… We were like ‘Hey, let’s go out’, but nothing, you know,
changed. Nothing was actually different between us. And that damn
kiss was simply a joke.”
“A joke kiss?”
“First, who’s to know it’s best to scan the immediate premises
for some school memento paparazzo before play acting an intimate
motion in jest? Secondly, when we actually kissed it completely took
me off guard. But again, there was nothing that ever… I don’t know
what she may have told you, but nothing ever continued—”
“Just stop… please.”
Katie was leaning against the lockers in the farthest corner from
Sherman, who was still up against the glass. She leaned back against
the lockers and started bouncing herself off the wall with her hands
behind her. She continued this while talking.
“Here’s the thing. Admit it. You’re really popular. I mean, did
you see how everyone got up and came over to you? The way people
29
worship you like that and fawn over you is just… it’s disgusting. And
you top it all off by hooking up with my sister and then I have to
watch you… I do not know where you’re coming from, brother.” Ka-
tie stopped bouncing. She stood in silence for about a minute before
springing off the wall of lockers. “Peace, yo. Don’t expect me to talk
to you.”
“When is a conversation ever expected?”
He heard her clanking around the corner and then saw her
through the glass walking down the gravel path. Her head bent
down every so often as though she were shielding the wind of such a
rapid stroll. She was clearly trying to get somewhere very quickly but
dealt with her natural obstacles with a stoic patience.
While Sherman remained frozen in a kneeling jab punch posi-
tion, Katie regained her balance and continued west.