Part 13 (1/2)

”Wouldn't matter,” the writer said, and I wondered what kind of books he wrote. Probably not travel guides. My dad never even said ”s.h.i.+t,” let alone wrote it. ”Angry has nothing to do with it. Friends, enemies, acquaintances. They're all-”

”Um,” Lisa Aden said, then faltered.

”What about girls? Women?” Kayla wanted to know.

”Just men. If you say it of a woman it means the same thing it means here. So you don't. Unless you're really angry.”

Zach looked fascinated.

”So, um, that word doesn't mean the same thing here that it does where you're from?” Aaron Ling asked.

”That's right.”

”Like the way English people don't use 'erasers'?” Aaron Ling asked. ”Or say 'lift' instead of 'elevator' or 'flat' for 'apartment'?”

The writer nodded.

”Can you tell us a little about how you came to write a book about taboo words?” Lisa Aden asked.

The writer laughed. ”Well, you could say it was a lifelong interest.”

Half the cla.s.s laughed, too.

”This is my first book about language. Before that I mostly wrote true crime, which grew out of covering the crime beat in Glasgow. The kind of people I write about, they're not clergymen, you know? Not even close. Rough as guts, more like. I got interested in the words they used so often, and so, er, colorfully. Then I started looking stuff up and before I knew it I was writing a book about so-called bad language.”

”So what's the worst swear word where you come from?” Zach asked.

”You know, that's a hard question to answer. The more research I've done on this, the more it seems to be that it's not the words so much as the force behind them. I think people get too caught up in whether a word is or isn't offensive and lose sight of what's actually being said. I mean, is it more offensive for someone to advocate the killing of Arabs or the killing of 'f.u.c.king Arabs'? Either way, that's racism, pure and simple.”

There was a moment of quiet.

”Do your books ever get banned?” Kayla wanted to know.

”Not that I know of. I don't think books about language or true crime attract the book banners. Not sure why. Isn't it mostly books for teenagers and children that get banned? Like that one about the two boy penguins who fall in love?”

The cla.s.s laughed again. I wondered if that was a real book or if he was making it up.

”What do you think?” Lisa interjected, addressing the cla.s.s. ”What is it about writing for teenagers that leads to so much censors.h.i.+p?”

I knew the answer to that one but I didn't raise my hand. It's because grown-ups don't remember what it was like when they were teenagers. Not really. They remember something out of a Disney movie and that's where they want to keep us. They don't like the idea of our hormones, or that we can smell s.e.x on one another. That we walk down halls thick with a million different pheromones. We see each other, catch a glance, the faintest edge of one, that sends a s.h.i.+ver through our bodies all the way to the parts of us our parents wish didn't exist.

Like the glance me and Zach exchanged just then. I s.h.i.+fted in my seat. All nerve endings buzzing. Making me itch. Making me have to run. Run far and fast and wide. With Zach beside me, matching me stride for stride.

Not long after the cla.s.s ended that's what we did. Ran and ran and ran.

But after that night I never saw him again.

FAMILY HISTORY.

When Mom and Dad told me I was going to have a baby sister or brother I wasn't upset. I wasn't happy either. I didn't really think about it much, to be honest. I had other problems: dealing with doctors, school.

I was seven years old and covered in hair. There were lots and lots of doctors. I was pulled in and out of different schools. Each one worse than the one before. When the medication wasn't working I wore pants and long-sleeved s.h.i.+rts. (We'd tried waxing, electrolysis, laser. The hair always came back within a day or two.) Sometimes I had to wear scarves and gloves as well. Even when it was ninety degrees. The other kids thought I was weirdo religious or covered in a dreaded skin disease. They weren't far off. They didn't want to go near me.

The growing b.u.mp in my mom's stomach wasn't much on my radar.

I was shocked when Jordan was born. Us racing to the hospital. Dad yelling at the taxi driver. Then hours and hours waiting with Mom's friend Liz, who insisted that she hold my hand, before I was finally led in to see my dad tired and sweaty and beaming, and Mom, even tireder, holding a tiny blue bundle.

”Hallo, my darling,” Mom said. ”You must meet with your brother.”

I looked up at Liz, who smiled at me. Dad nodded. ”Check him out, Micah. Your brother, Jordan.”

”Do I have to?”

Mom laughed. A tiny laugh. She looked ready to sleep for a month.

Liz gave me a little push and I took a step closer to the bed.

I took another step and put my hands on the edge of it, standing on tiptoe to peer at the baby.

It was hate at first sight.

Jordan was grayish blue and uglier than sin. His hair pointed in all the wrong directions, but at least it was only on his head. No family illness for this Wilkins child. His eyes were puffy little slits. ”Why's he that weird color?” I asked.

Dad reached down and took the bundle from Mom. ”You want to hold him, Micah?”

I shook my head.

”You won't drop him. See?” he said, demonstrating.

”It's easy. You make sure you have one hand under his head and one under his body. Isn't he tiny?” Dad pa.s.sed the bundle into my arms. I got a whiff of something not right that made the hair on my arms stand on end. Not p.o.o.p or anything like that. A wrongness. The blue baby didn't smell right.

I held him, making sure my hands were where Dad said, though now I wish I'd dropped him. He opened his little beady eyes to look at me. I don't like you, I could almost hear him thinking. I didn't like him either. Right away he started screaming.

It's been like that ever since.

AFTER.

The funeral goes on forever. I'm uncomfortable and irritable and not just because it's so hot. Nothing anyone says about Zach bears much resemblance to the Zach I knew.

Everyone is lying.

Everyone is creating an ideal Zach with their words.

A Zach in their own image.

It's a Catholic church. I've never been in one before. Light comes in colored by the stained gla.s.s windows.

At first I stand at the back, not sure where to sit. I watch people filing in. Most of them people I've never seen before. Do they know who Zach is? Was?

There's organ music. Heavy and somber like an old horror movie. It hurts my head. There's incense, too, as heavy and dense as the music. It doesn't do much for my head either.