Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash
Not so long ago, he’d been an ordinary boy and being an ordinary boy had been a wonderful thing and in his humble opinion and short life, Mike Fleming had done some extraordinary things.
Just a year ago Jenny Diller had had a party while her parents were away in the Poconos. No grownups, two kegs and Robert Plant meant a whole lotta love, enough for thirty-nine drunk horny juveniles to generously count the odd man in.
Five minutes after he’d walked through the door Jenny had him by the hand leading him around like he was her pet. “You guys having a good time? Awesome, watch the carpet.” Ten minutes later they were in a dark room.
Two weeks ago he’d known how to move, what went where.
Light petting and heavy kissing aside Jenny’s get-together had been a bash. With one pull of the hand Jenny had made him the lead singer parading past ogling eyes and rubbernecks, tapping his ego and siphoning his inner Geddy Lee.
Pre-Lisa he’d never even thought of trying to steal second but he knew behind closed doors he still had a chance at becoming a Monday morning legend.
He used to keep a pocketful of pennies and a drawer full of change, the silver stuff. That was the way he’d kept it, pennies in his pocket for the candy man and quarters and dimes in his top drawer for lunch and milk. No nickels, he hated nickels. George Washington’s ponytail freaked him out. At any time he could go into his room and collect silver or he could dig into his pocket and come up with copper.
Eighteen dollars and seventy-nine cents ago life was good.
Sixty-two quarters, thirty-one dimes, nineteen pennies, and two keggers. Four failed tests, two detentions and a skipped class ago he’d kicked ass.
Seven days, two hours, ten minutes and three seconds ago, he had done ordinary as extraordinary punk.
The doctor said, “You won’t walk again, Michael,” and poof Jenny Diller appeared looking exactly the same, curly hair parted in the middle with pouted lips concealing gapped teeth. She had enthusiastic eyes that hung above a weak smile, a face that said she was in it for the show, it was all a game.
But the memory had been edited. Instead of the two of them strolling hand-in-hand through Envyland she was dragging an invalid by the feet through a maze of gawkers while his head bumped spectators in the legs and his chin hit every stair of her split-level.
Lucky, his Uncle Pete’s two-legged mutt came running into the room. The only dog ever known to walk on its hind legs was standing in the room leaning against the window.
He didn’t know if his uncle did it for the glory or the company but he walked the dog along his Northern Virginia main road regularly where passersbys became stop’n stares. They pointed and shook their heads sucking the insides of their cheeks and singing, “What a shame.”
Last Friday he was magnificently ordinary.
“I’m not some two-legged dog, you know.”
“You’re not. You’re an extraordinary young man and I hope you never forget that.”
Cime Bruce is a first place winner of The Kay Snow Award for Fiction and a finalist for the BlueCat Screenplay Competition Fellini Award. She is the writer-producer of a fictional podcast The Stacey Diaries, which just launched in November. She is also a Docs-in-Progress Fellow and currently in post-production for my first feature-length documentary State Champions.