She says, “Seymour, are you waiting for a specially engraved invitation?”
She says, “Seymour, if you don’t sit—”
On the principal’s desk, a mug says, SMILING IS MY FAVORITE. Cartoon roadrunners jog across his belt. Bunny is wearing her brand-new Wagon Wheel Custodial Services polo, cost to be deducted from her first paycheck. She says, “He’s pretty sensitive,” and Principal Jenkins says, “Is there a father figure?” and glances for a third time at her breasts, and later, in the car, Bunny pulls onto the shoulder of Mission Street and dry-swallows three Excedrin.
“Possum, are you listening? Touch your ears if you’re listening.”
Four trucks whizz past: two blue, two black. He touches his ears.
“What are we?”
“A team.”
“And what does a team do?”
“Helps each other.”
A red car passes. Then a white truck.
“Can you look at me?”
He looks. The magnetized name-tag clipped to her shirt says, HOUSEKEEPING ATTENDANT BUNNY. Her name is smaller than her job. Two more trucks rock the Grand Am as they pass but he cannot hear what color they are.
“I can’t leave work in the middle of a shift because you don’t like your desk. They’ll fire me. And I can’t get fired. I need you to try. Will you try?”
* * *
He tries. When Carmen Hormaechea touches him with her poison ivy arm, he tries not to scream. When Tony Molinari’s Aerobie hits him in the side of the head, he tries not to cry. But nine days into September, a wildfire in the Seven Devils chokes the whole valley with smoke, and Mrs. Onegin says the air quality is too low for outside recess, and they’ll need to keep the windows closed because of Rodrigo’s asthma, and within minutes the portable reeks like Pawpaw’s microwave when Bunny defrosts a freezer fajita.
Seymour makes it through Group Math, through Lunch, through Fluency Tubs. But by Reflection Time, his endurance is fracturing. Mrs. Onegin sends everyone to their desks to color their North Americas, and Seymour tries to draw faint green circles in the Gulf of Mexico, tries to move only his hand and wrist, not shifting so the desk frame doesn’t go screek screek, not breathing so he doesn’t smell any smells, but sweat is trickling down his ribs, and Wesley Ohman keeps opening and closing the Velcro on his left shoe, and Tony Molinari’s lips are going poppoppop, and Mrs. Onegin is writing a huge, terrible A-M-E-R-I-C- on the whiteboard, the marker tip rasping and squeaking, the classroom clock ticktickticking, and all these sounds race into his head like hornets into a nest.
The roar: all his life it has rumbled in the distance. Now it rises. It obliterates the mountains, the lake, downtown Lakeport; it smashes across the school parking lot, tossing cars everywhere; it growls outside the portable and rattles the door. Black pinholes open in his vision. He clamps his hands over his ears but the roar eats the light.
* * *
Miss Slattery the school counselor says it could be sensory processing disorder or attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity disorder or some combination thereof. The boy is too young for her to know for sure. And she’s not a diagnostician. But his screaming frightened the other children and Principal Jenkins has suspended Seymour for Friday and Bunny should make an appointment with an occupational therapist as soon as possible.
Bunny pinches the bridge of her nose. “Is that, like, included?”
* * *
Manager Steve at the Wagon Wheel says, you bet, Bunny, bring your kid to work, so long as you want to get fired, so on Friday morning she plucks the knobs off the stove burners, sets a box of Cheerios on the counter, and puts the Starboy DVD on repeat.
“Possum?”
On the Magnavox Starboy drops from the night in his bright-shining suit.
“Touch your ears if you’re listening.”
Starboy finds a family of armadillos trapped in a net. Seymour touches his ears.
“When the microwave timer says zero zero zero, I’ll be home to check on you. All right?”
Starboy needs help. Time to call Trustyfriend.
“You’ll sit tight?”
He nods; the Pontiac rattles down Arcady Lane. Trustyfriend the Owl soars out of the cartoon night. Starboy lights the way while Trustyfriend tears through the net with his bill. The armadillos squirm free; Trustyfriend announces that friends who help friends are the best friends of all. Then something that sounds like a giant scorpion starts scratching on the roof of the double-wide.
Seymour listens in his room. He listens at the front door. At the sliding door off the kitchen. The sound goes: tap scratch scratch.