On Labor Day weekend, Marty wanted to go on a hike instead of just hanging around the house. It was so gloomy lately, with Marge in self-imposed exile and Mike recovering in their bedroom (with Annie at his side), he actually looked forward to working at the pet store, just to do something bright and cheerful like cleaning out rabbit cages. The news about Otter’s passing depressed him terribly. He felt as if the old Inuit had said goodbye, and he had missed the moment; thinking only of himself. Now, all Marty wanted to do was get out of the dark and into the light so he could sort out his feelings. A solo hike in the beautiful forested hills was just the sort of therapy he needed.
Up on the ridge, Marty reflected on all the things Otter had taught him since they moved to the Rusty Bucket Ranch. Sure, he was drunk most of the time, but there was an earthy sort of wisdom Marty gained from their friendship nonetheless. People like him were more real than a dozen cheerleaders or party people, he mused respectfully. Otter had a connection to the essential wilderness that most people have forgotten in their sheltered lives. Unreasonably, Marty wished he could call or see him once more, but Rabbit said his spirit had departed. She was unusually calm about losing her close relationship with him, but explained it was all right: he had been released back into the wild for his final vision quest.
Returning back down the switchback fire road, Marty’s left foot rolled suddenly on a rock and turned his ankle. All in an instant, he knew exactly what to do. He collapsed his legs and took the fall. It was a necessary maneuver he knew all too well. Because he was born too early with underdeveloped legs, one of the annoying side effects was the tendency of his joints to give out unexpectedly; like a flat tire. This occurred with irritating frequency, and usually on an inconsequential scale… similar to a minor earthquake. By necessity, he had developed the reflex of immediately relieving pressure on his legs by going limp, and falling down. He had learned that the injuries were more severe when he resisted. One moment he was enjoying the beautiful light through the foliage, saying goodbye to Otter’s spirit, and the next he was lying in the dirt; conducting a mental damage report. His ankle was loose and numb, and when he tried to get up, a streak of pain shot up to his knee. He tried putting as little weight as possible on his left leg, but it was so excruciating he had to hop over to a tree and brace himself.
Breathing deeply, and taking stock of his predicament, Marty realized that he wasn’t likely to receive help from anyone. Even though it was a holiday weekend, few hikers came up that particular fire road (which was why he had chosen it). He looked around for a stick he could use as a crutch. There was a dead alder down the slope, but that meant he’d have to crawl back up. He decided to carefully hop down the fire road on his right leg, until he found a more accessible stick. To keep his mind from panicking about his predicament, he mentally counted his hops, and rested after each twenty. Around the bend, he spotted a young bay laurel that had fallen over, and pulled a six-foot section from it, stripping the leaves with a sharp rock. The fresh citrus smell was stimulating, and he poled himself slowly down the trail to the road. It took 2,653 hops to reach the paved road more than a half mile away. Marty ignored the shiny yuppie cars going by on their way back from the beach, because he knew they’d never stop to help a wild hippie kid with a stick. He waited for a late model car or battered pickup, and flagged down a rancher to take him home. His name was Roberto, and he had an enormous belly upon which he propped his elbows while he drove. The vaquero quickly offered to take him all the way over the hill, but first Marty wanted to let someone know he was hurt. So Roberto drove him over the hungry road in his dusty Ford, and helped him down to the cabin. Everyone was still asleep when he hobbled in the door with his stick. The kind rancher wished Marty well, and left him to sulk in the early morning gloom. He hoped that applying ice would reduce the pain, so he propped his leg up on the couch and watched football on TV, but the awkward position only made it feel worse. By now, his ankle was swollen as big as a softball, and throbbing, and he knew he needed to see a doctor. There was no way he could drive a clutch with one leg, so he woke up Annie and asked her to drive him into Fairfax.
Dr. Z. never made a comment like, “Oh, it’s you again?” He was no fool. He knew Marty’s family had many challenges. They didn’t have insurance or extra money, and going directly to the emergency room was very expensive. Finding a doctor who was sympathetic to the poor was easier on the wallet. He asked how Mike was doing, as he taped Marty’s ankle for the trip to the hospital to get x-rays. Marty wondered, with an unexpected upwelling of bitterness, why is it always about Mike?! What about me – the stiff you’re taping up right now? How do you think I feel? He was in the midst of some very intense feelings about everything in his life, and wanted to talk to somebody, but was too embarrassed about what they would think. He had so much empathy for others that he had none for himself!
Marty finally cut his hair for senior year, but few people even noticed. If they had asked, he would have told them he was tired of having long hair in sympathy for the downtrodden. It was time to show some solidarity for his own cause. He could sense a breaking away from all that was counter-culture and familiar, and hoped it would turn out to be a good thing. On the first day of school, he arrived on crutches, but more people asked about Mike than how he’d hurt his leg. Mike wouldn’t be able to come to school for another week, his doctor said. Some lesser acquaintances assumed Marty was in his car when he’d hit the tree, but he just changed the subject to keep them guessing. The news about Randy’s untimely death was all over campus. He was only buried a couple of weeks ago, and school was the first chance for those who never knew him to gossip about it. Students congregated in furtive clusters as Marty gimped by, trying not to look like they were talking about him and failing.
In journalism class, Mrs. Hess was the first one to notice him as a person. “You look a little beat up there, Marty,” she gestured at the crutches, “But I see you cut your hair. It looks nice!” He told her he wanted to have a photo taken for his column (his ulterior motive was to get free advertising for his ‘new look’). She thought that was very professional, but Marty assumed she knew his sense of humor better than that! He gathered Will, Nick, and Mike together, and told them his plan. The first White Pages photo showed him at the typewriter, behind his desk, in the middle of the football field. His cohorts had to carry all the props, including his briefcase, in/out boxes, and a full wastebasket. Darren, the photographer who was Mr. McIntosh’s son and knew all about him, just shook his head with a grin as he snapped the whole roll of film Marty had given him. Yes, he stole the idea from Monty Python’s And Now for Something Completely Different, but it was still very original to emulate the masters in a school newspaper!
Marty was eager to see Michelle again, to display his new look. Her eyes lit up when she walked into class and saw his haircut, and then the crutches made her frown. She was wearing a halter top tied at the navel, and tight, high-waisted pants that curved in all the right places. “What happened?” she asked.
“I got a haircut,” Marty offered, mentally straining to close his mouth and look only at her eyes.
She smiled, knowing he was being sarcastic, “No, I mean your leg.”
He launched into a prepared narrative about his cathartic hike, and heroic rescue of himself, and waited to see if she would ask about Mike. She didn’t.
“So I guess you’re not going to the Homecoming Dance, then.” Well, he didn’t see that one coming! Michelle was a very intelligent girl, and she had to be aware of the effect that question would have on him. It was tantamount to asking him to the dance! Marty’s heart was pounding in his ears, and he stopped breathing, which was most unfortunate, because he really needed oxygen at the moment.
“Well, there’s always the Turnabout Dance.” He gasped feebly, and wished immediately he’d asked her to go out with him anyway. A million romantic notions crashed like a tidal wave on the beach of his cerebral cortex, and turned his frontal lobe into foam rubber, which paralyzed his lingual nerve and rendered his tongue completely useless. Sometimes he wished he didn’t know so much about biology. He blinked his eyelids rapidly in Morse code to no avail.
Michelle looked somewhat disappointed, or more likely, Marty was projecting his hopeful emotions on her. She turned and sashayed away, saying over her shoulder, “I hope so.” Trembling, he watched the moment disappear, like the sun setting softly behind a ridge. Damn! Why does my brain always react that way around her, he puzzled – probably because she’s such a vision, and my optic nerves short out with sensory overload! His brain slowly recovered enough to whir and click in the background of his mind as it analyzed the data. Wait… she said ‘I hope so’! Did she actually like me? His ego issued a proclamation that he should think of nothing else all day but the princess Michelle. At lunch, he was acutely aware of her radiant presence at precisely 8:00 over his left shoulder, as the entire senior class was assembled on the football bleachers for a class photo. He posed in his custom-made “Problem Child” t-shirt, with his bandaged foot propped up on his briefcase, surrounded by all his party friends except for Mike, who wasn’t very interested in school photos or having his picture taken for any reason.
Photography was becoming a new hobby for Marty. He enrolled in the class so he could get the experience of developing his own photos. He anticipated that might possibly stir some interest from Good Ol’ Dad (if he even bothered to call for his birthday). Marty hadn’t heard from his dad since spring, but he lived just 20 miles away. He would have appreciated the nice Olympus camera Marty bought with cash, unless he found out it was funded by selling joints. The camera even had a timer on it, but he couldn’t move fast enough in his present condition to set up and take his own White Pages photos. The next one was staged in the parking lot, with all the same props and stage hands.
Melody, one of his journalism buddies, was a big fan of his new photos, saying simply, “Genius,” in her minimalist style, as if you had to know what she was talking about, or you weren’t worth her time. She was very pretty, and loyal too, because she’d had the same boyfriend since she was a freshman. She and Marty shared the same acerbic goofiness, and had many laughs together. She especially appreciated his satire writing. She joked that the paper had to expand from four to eight pages just so the other kids would have a chance to get their work printed! She saw him mooning one day, waving his eyelashes in the general direction of Michelle, and asked him frankly, “Do you like her?”
She was a good friend and Marty could trust her. She was not an airhead or gossipy girl, which was one reason he appreciated her so much. “I think Michelle asked me out to the dance,” he said, and explained to her the details of their brief conversation.
Melody looked over at the golden goddess Michelle, who was flirting with Mark the basketball star, and nodded carefully. “Well, maybe. I wouldn’t get your hopes up. She’s pretty popular.” She looked at his leg, “Besides, you don’t look like you can dance too well.”
Marty sighed dramatically. “I guess we’ll just have to make out in my truck.” She swatted him with a rolled up newspaper and walked away, shaking her head.
Michelle was practically ignoring him now, and Marty wondered anxiously if he had dissuaded her about the dance. He recalled what Mike said, that if you didn’t give girls what they wanted it made them want it more, and was puzzled about the logic. To Marty’s way of thinking, it was much better to let a girl know how you felt about her. He wanted to go up to her and say, “You know, Michelle, I’d love to go to the dance with you,” but his stupid leg ruined everything!
After school, he made it even worse by slipping as he picked his way down the rocky dirt path that led to his house. Why can’t we have stairs like normal people, he agonized, with more mental pain than physical as he struggled back to his feet, angry for what was surely a setback. Sure enough, his ankle swelled up again, and he promptly drove himself back to Dr. Z.’s despite the pain. The gentle doctor made sympathetic noises, and said he wanted to put a cast on it after the swelling went down. Great, there goes the next dance, too, Marty grumbled inwardly. There had to be some other viable excuse he could use to ask Michelle on a date! That was the proper sequence, he reasoned. Ask the pretty girl out on a date, charm her into maybe getting a first kiss, and see where it went from there. He skipped entirely the part about actually talking to her, the way he could talk with Melody. When he thought about it, he dismissed it as a major risk. How could he expect to have a conversation with a beautiful girl, if he couldn’t even breathe when she was around? Oxygen is important for proper speech and brain function! He despised the handicap of his shyness, and wished he could be suave and confident like Mike; not willing and disabled. He just couldn’t compete with all the fluffy jocks and self-assured ladies’ men at school. He felt like a turd floating in the gene pool.
Speaking of his brother, Mike was ready to make an appearance in public for the first time since the accident. Marty suggested they go to the mall first, or hang out at the pet store, so he could get used to people looking at him (as he knew they would, with his prominent facial scar). But stubborn Mike insisted on making a dramatic arrival at Drake, like MacArthur returning to the Philippines. Marge drove them both to school on Monday morning, where Annie met them at the Fern Lane gate. Marge had rebounded somewhat from her self-flagellation, and resumed her role as the ‘cool mom’ who would do anything for her kids. Except now she hid behind a veil of caution, as though she feared people were judging her.
Annie tried to help Mike out of the truck, but he was perfectly capable of doing that himself, and brushed her off, not wanting to appear the invalid. (By the way, Marty and his crutches had to clamber out with no assistance.) Marty wanted to see the reaction Mike would get, but he and Annie stayed behind arguing, so he hobbled to the bleachers to put his ankle up before class. The party girls were all abuzz, because word had already reached them that Mike had returned! Great, Marty winced, now even the gossip was faster than me! He could make out snatches of their conversations in low, sympathetic tones of eagerness to see what Mike looked like, and then: omigod, here he comes!
He ambled up to the bleachers arm in arm with Annie, who was clinging to him defiantly, daring anyone to stare at his face. Marty didn’t think he looked all that bad, now that he was used to his scar, but he remembered the shock of seeing it for the first time, and he turned to check the faces in the bleachers. Black and white circles of mascara and false eyelashes opened wide, and some of the girls had their hands over their mouths despite themselves. Mike tried to play it cool, as if nothing was wrong, and made feeble jokes about his ruined Stanger, but there was only one thing on everybody’s minds: The Scar. Marty could tell the attention was making Mike extremely uncomfortable, and pretended to fall off his bench just to provide a distraction. Nobody cared.
“Don’t mind me, I’ll get up by myself,” he announced, while Boobers and Dave helped him regain his crutches. However, all female eyes remained riveted on Mike, with a mixture of horror, sympathy, and dismay. He and Annie went off to their first classes, and as soon as they were out of earshot, the wagging tongues clattered like teletype machines, echoing in Marty’s ears as he hobbled away to the art room. He wondered if Mike’s ego could take much more of this. During lunch The Scar and Annie stayed in her Bronco and didn’t come out. Marty could see them parked on Fern Lane, but didn’t want to gimp all the way out there; they had to come back anyway when the bell rang. His armpits were getting sore from the crutches, and his right leg was tired from doing all the work. Abruptly they drove off, and Marty figured the drama was too much for him on his first day back.
High school kids could be so cruel.