A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip Read Online Free PDF

the light that strains through the leaves meets the light that dances off the water, playing over his skin in hundreds of greenish gold threads. Beyond the docks is a chain of boathouses where gray squirrels sprint
tik-tik-tik
over the tin roofs. They bound across the gaps without a second’s pause, sailing in a frozen stretch, like runners leaping hurdles, before they land and unlock and keep running.
    Kevin’s mind won’t stop replaying the incident in the bathroom. If you ask him, the whole thing wasn’t half as funny as those other guys thought it was. What was the punch line supposed to be? Big things come in small packages? Hilarity.
    He wishes he had been quick enough to produce a comeback, some sterling silver one-liner he could have dropped at their feet like a coin.
    Blank
—that’s what he should have said.
    This
.
    Whatever it was, it would have been perfect.
    The more he thinks about it, the more embarrassed he becomes. All the same, when he passes the picnic table where the older kids are sitting with their buddies and hears, “There he is. That’s him. The Source,” he experiences a queer proud sensation of minor fame. They have given him a name. The hair on the back of his neck prickles. He hopes they haven’t told that Rory guy.
    Eventually he catches the rhythm of Bateman repeating his favorite baby story, the one about the time he scraped his knee playing in front of his house. Kevin can recognize it by the beats alone:
    “I fall down.”
    Where did you fall down?
    “In the street.”
    WHAT were you doing in the street?
    “Falling down.”
    He cuts around the wall of a pavilion and finds the usual gang standing in a patch of grass-stitched dirt. He hiked past the spot not five minutes ago, and it was completely deserted. “Jeez, bros,” he says. “I’ve been to Conway and back practically. Where did you all migrate in from?”
    “We’ve been around.”
    “Here and there.”
    “Mass murdering.”
    This from Shane Wesson, who never says something true if he can say something ridiculous. But Shane begins stamping the ground, planting his foot flat and firm like elephants do,and Kevin realizes that he is referring to what Mr. Garland told them one day in science class—how with every step you take, thousands of minuscule creatures are crushed beneath your weight. “To the grave! Die, foul microorganisms!”
    Kenneth says, “All right already, Shane. It’s getting lame. Ell-ay-
ame
.” Then Bateman says, “It’s way past lame, it’s mame,” and Clint Fulkerson, a tall kid with white jeans and straight bangs and a weirdly handsome science fiction face, like a
Tiger Beat
Spock, says, “Yeah, dude, enough with the microorganisms,” and Bateman dives back in with, “By now it’s nearly name,” and Kevin seals his palms over his ears and says, “La la la.”
    Something happens in Thad’s expression, like a knife sharpening against a stone. “La la
la
? What the fuck is la la
la
?”
    “It’s like, cut it out. You know, like, I don’t want to hear it.”
    Thad parrots him syllable for syllable, replacing all the words he used with
la
’s. “La
la
, la la la. La la, la, la
la
la la
la
la.”
    Kenneth and Bateman, Joseph and Clint, Shane Roper and Shane Wesson—for a while it is a concert of
la
’s, all of them talking at once. There is a problem with Kevin’s eyes again. He reddens and blinks, looking away so that no one will notice. By his shoe lies a bottle cap—the prying kind, not the twisting kind—with a flat clot of dirt inside it. It could be a pie tin for Smurfs or Littles. He kicks it and watches it slide off toward the trees. He wishes some distraction would come along and conceal him from everyone. A bomb. A tornado. And soon enough a cute eighth-grader, Dana Treadway, strolls by with her friends. Thad and Kenneth shoutout “Dana Banana” until she reaches the door of the snack bar, where she wheels around and gives them a big bracey escape-smile. Then