Or Not Read online

  For my mother, Claudia W. Mandabach

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  Copyright Information

  Or Not © 2007 by Brian Mandabach.

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  First e-book edition © 2011

  E-book ISBN: 9780738725734

  Book design by Steffani Sawyer

  Cover design by Ellen Dahl

  Cover image © 2007 Kris Timken/Blend Images/Punchstock

  Editing by Rhiannon Ross

  Summer’s Almost Gone

  Words and Music by The Doors

  ©1968 Doors Music Co.

  Copyright Renewed

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  Journal One

  20 August

  In my attic room, the heat surrounds me even as my fan blows in the cool evening air. I’m holding a small hunk of granite, shot with milky quartz, and I place it next to a dried Amanita, deep cherry, and a northern goshawk feather, smooth and barred with gray. These are my tokens of the mountains, my antidotes against toxicity, my quiet space amid layers of noise.

  And this is my new “Sketch Diary”—seventy plain sheets of acid-free paper bound with a wire. It is to be my canvas, my confidant, my Big Chief tablet. It is my testimony, my not going out with a short rope and swinging from a tall pine tree. It is my not ending, my beginning.

  I’ve had the journal for ten days—a gift from a friend I miss too much to tell about—but I haven’t written until now. I have only looked at the drawings of the two of us in the front, and re-read her admonition to write. And now, I have begun.

  At dinner tonight, Mom and Dad wanted to know all about my first day of school. So I told them it was brutal—moronic kids, teachers offering, what? Rules and procedures? Couldn’t I just go back to the cabin and live by myself?

  “How about the walk, Cassie?” said Dad. “Did you have a nice walk to school and back home?”

  My father is very smart, and he likes to ask penetrating questions.

  “The walks were okay,” I said.

  I wanted to add “hot and smoggy and noisy,” but I was getting tired of complaining. And since I suppose that’s what journals are for, among other things—complaining—here’s my portrait of day one, grade eight:

  Everybody’s early, thronging around under the big blue spruces and the Chinese elms on the over-watered but still splotchy grass. Many of the boys are suddenly as tall as I am, and all the eighth-graders are somehow swollen. Girls show off their summer swellings with their fresh, tight Abercrummy T-shirts and low-rise jeans. For two long years we have waited to rule the school, looking up to the tall, the bosomy, the rude. They were our inspiration, our role models—and now, we’ll become them.

  Classes are the first-day same as ever. In our seats well ahead of the almighty bell, everybody listens to the teachers, which is a shame because they all say exactly the same thing.

  The one difference this year lies in our new responsibilities. First, we must conduct ourselves like good role models. Surely, we remember how we looked up to our older peers. So we must rise to this occasion. And we will, usually by setting the standard of rudeness and cruelty. The second responsibility is preparing for high school. High school will be different. High school will be hard. High school is practically the real world, and it will be a lot easier for us to “slip through the cracks.”

  Several kids perk up at this—they like the idea of unnoticed failure and wish it could begin right now. But they don’t like the next part about having to earn credits by actually passing classes.

  So, with this small difference, it’s the same as it ever was. Kids fresh and clean and listening to their teachers’ rules and suggestions for success. Kids optimistic about having a good year. Kids having high hopes about friends and grades and girlfriends and boyfriends and sports.

  Don’t they know that everything will be the same?

  The smart kids will stay smart. The dummies will goof off. And the popular people will chirp in their little flocks, have their little pecking parties, and then run crying to the counselor.

  The school year spreads before me like an endless pool of thick, green Jell-O, through which I am going to have to swim.

  I should try to sleep.

  Sleep and try don’t work together, as I should know. I’m going to put on a record—headphones so I don’t keep anyone up—and tell how I got into records.

  One Saturday in May, just before the end of fourth grade, we stopped at a garage sale. My brother Sean had seen a bundle of fishing poles sticking up out of a barrel with baseball bats and hockey sticks, and he and Dad are always on the lookout for old fly rods.

  This time they didn’t see anything good, but just as we were about to leave, a few crates of records and a turntable caught my eye.

  “Bet you’ve never heard an LP record, young lady,” said the man.

  “Oh, I allow as she has,” said my dad, who has a few favorite records and a turntable on top of the CD player. “But she is a child of the digital age.”

  For some reason, I didn’t like that “child of the digital age,” and I didn’t think it was true. I liked the look and feel of Dad’s old records, and the sound of them too, so for fifty dollars—a good chunk of my life savings—I bought the record player, two big old speakers, and all the records.

  21 August

  Homework finished: math and a language worksheet. I read ahead in the history book, American history this year, which is cool, though the teacher is a flag-waver with a whole “Proud to be an American” wall. I consider myself patriotic, but I doubt he would. And why should I be proud just because I happened to be born in the USA?

  But I am a privileged American child with a super-cool room. I have the third floor attic and even my own bathroom. The walls have a steep slope and there are lots of cool angles. Two windows and a skylight give me light and air, but on summer days, the heat builds up ’til it’s sweltering. A big fan in my
north window makes it just bearable, and I can always go out onto my little iron-railed balcony outside the east window. There’s just enough room to lie down and look at the stars, and the giant spruce trees at the end of our yard screen me from the alley and the old mansion across the way.

  I must have dozed off there, because a moment ago I woke up all freaked out by Mom kissing my head. Why is it that when you get to a certain age your mother’s kisses are like needles sticking in your spine?

  “I just came up to wake you for dinner, sweetie. Fifteen minutes,” she said.

  Are you sure it wasn’t to prick my flesh with stingy nettles?

  “Okay, Mom, sorry. Can you leave me alone now?” Trying hard to be nice, I still sounded like a brat.

  She creaked across the floor and down the stairs. Our house is one hundred and ten years old and sounds like it’s auditioning for a role in a ghost story. I love it, though—it’s old and wooden and real, with high ceilings and old windowpanes that give the view a slight distortion. Mom says it’s like her vintage cello, the wood supple, mellow, and resonant with age.

  Even though our family seems small since Sean went off to college last year, we still have a family dinner unless Dad is in trial or Mom is in rehearsals with the symphony. I have to give my parents credit for not bugging me too much, but I don’t like being the only child. Too much pressure.

  Tonight I said school was fine—using the old monosyllabic teen routine. It killed me when Sean went through that—I was just a little kid when he started acting freaky. Dad called him Mr. Monosyllable and challenged Sean to actually pronounce it himself. According to Dad, it meant that Sean wanted to be alone and was as good as alone even when he was in the same room. Dad would say this right in front of him, which, of course, made him sulk off.

  So I said my day was okay, school was fine, homework was easy and done. Was I tired? A little. Did I want to watch a DVD with them? Not really, I’d just go upstairs.

  So here I am, listening to a scratchy Todd Rundgren record, using the cover—featuring a rainbow-haired Todd—as a surface to write on.

  The summer I got the record player was the last time I was really close to my former friend and soccer teammate Jenny. I quit soccer after that season because I would rather be in the mountains than driving all over the state for tournaments. Jenny, on the other hand, joined a more competitive league.

  Mom and I were close that summer, too, because she drove us to practice and games, and we didn’t get up to the cabin with Sean and Dad very much.

  Sometimes Jenny came to the mountains with us, but she tended to get bored. And at home, I tried to interest her in my new record collection, but she was obsessed with boy bands and had no interest in obscure classical LPs, jazz-fusion, and the endless synthesizer solos of the seventies. She thought the seventies were cool, of course, but not real seventies stuff—just the TV seventies.

  So maybe the end was already in sight, but we still had some good times: summer days at her country club pool, sleepovers, and early morning practices. I remember how we’d sit on my balcony under the stars until way past midnight, whispering, giggling, and discovering infinity. We could just cram the both of us out there, lying back on pillows under sleeping bags, each with the legs of the other along one side.

  “Have you seen the stars in the mountains, Jenny, how bright they are? Just think how many we can’t even see. And past them, more, and past them, more, and past them, more … ”

  “Where do you think they end?”

  “They don’t.”

  “But that’s impossible … ”

  “That’s the fun part,” I said. “Trying to imagine infinity—what’s beyond the beyond.”

  It seemed that we were the first kids to play with these thoughts, that we were onto something special and profound.

  But then Jenny decided that it made her feel small to imagine the enormity of the infinite universe. She spoiled it by claiming that God knew the number of the stars, God had created them all, and beyond them was God, who was also within them and within us—Him and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

  Jenny’s mother had told her this, but what made it worse was that Jenny had asked. To me, these were our private thoughts, and I felt betrayed.

  “Then God is infinity,” I said, trying to preserve the mystery.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ll ask my mom.”

  22 August

  Today was wonderful—the first and hopefully the last time I open my big mouth in a class “discussion.” Dad says I “don’t suffer fools gladly,” but suffering them silently is a lot easier than trying to reason with them. Especially since I seem to have only two modes: mute and rant.

  Here’s what happened:

  In my reading class, we were supposed to be talking about an article from Natural History magazine. Mr. Sinclair asked us to read the article, one page titled “What Is a Species?” Then, he said, we would have a different kind of discussion. He would start us with a topic—the main idea—and let us take it from there. This sounded interesting for a change, but I had no idea how interesting it would get, especially since the topic was so dull. Come on—didn’t he know that the seventh-grade teachers had rammed main ideas down our throats and made us puke them out on about seven hundred standardized practice tests?

  Anyway, the main idea was that scientists were having a hard time defining species, and the article outlined the various definitions and the problems with each. It wasn’t easy, but I spent the summers in the mountains with my dad’s collection of natural history books. Call me a freak—I like that stuff.

  But I wasn’t about to raise my hand.

  “I don’t believe in evolution,” was the very first comment, courtesy of Stephanie Seabrook.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Sinclair. “Matthew.”

  “I think Darwin was wrong.”

  “Anyone want to respond to that?” He was looking puzzled, maybe because his question had been about the main idea. He matched a raised hand with a name on his seating chart.

  “Kallie.”

  “I agree with Matthew.”

  “Because … ”

  “I just don’t think it’s possible for life to evolve. It’s not like we see life evolving now.”

  “We’re supposed to be discussing the main idea or ideas of the article,” said Sinclair. “And one way to get there is to ask yourself what it’s about. I’ll stop talking now and turn it back to you. What is this article about?”

  Half the kids in the room had been sticking their arms in the air, and now there wasn’t one hand up.

  “Well, I think this shows that maybe things go better when the teacher keeps out of it. You have a lot to say, then I tell you what I want you to talk about, and you all clam up. I still think we should start with what the article is about. We need someone to be brave and tell us.”

  He searched his chart again, to find me, shrugging off cowardice with a hand in the air.

  “Cassandra.”

  “Cassie.”

  “Sorry, Cassie. What’s the article about?”

  “The definition of species, not evolution.”

  “Matthew.”

  “I disagree with Cassie because the article quotes Darwin.”

  “Christine.”

  “Darwin’s dead and God isn’t.”

  “Okay … Shelly.”

  “You go, girl!” Shelly said, and she and Christine did a high-five.

  Several others in the room flashed righteous smiles.

  “Interesting,” said Sinclair. “Rae?”

  “I thought fossils prove that life evolved.”

  “Matthew.”

  “Then how come monkeys aren’t evolving and becoming people today?” And then he started making chimp noises. “Ooo-ooh! Oo
o-oo-oo-oooh.”

  A bunch of other people started making ape noises and scratching themselves. Monkey see, monkey do. They didn’t realize it, but they were doing a pretty good job of proving their primate status.

  “Okay, wait a minute,” said Sinclair. “Hush, everybody. Attention.” He waited for quiet. “Let’s let Rae respond.”

  “It takes millions of years.”

  “Christine?”

  “I just don’t believe that the earth is a million years old.”

  “What about the fossil record, carbon dating, basic geology?” I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Wasn’t that you I saw in science today?”

  “Please raise your hand, Cassie. Jenny?”

  “Actually, the earth is six thousand years old, Cassie. All the fossils came from the time of the great flood, and most of the animals from the Ark are still alive today.”

  “What about dinosaurs?” I said. “How the heck did Noah get those guys on his boat? I would have loved to see that—ol’ T-Rex chompin’ down the breeding stock.”

  “What about dragons, Cassie? They were sighted at least until the Middle Ages.”

  “Okay, hold on a minute, girls—”

  “You’re kidding right? Dragons? We’re talking about dragons?”

  “Cassie—”

  “Holy mother of the living God, you guys are a bunch of—”

  “Cassie! Class!” Sinclair tried to gain control, but I couldn’t shut up.

  “—freakin’ morons. I cannot believe we are talking about dragons. And how do you figure six thousand years old? The Bible?”

  “Cassie, you can take a time-out in the hall.”

  “Seriously—dragons?”

  “Out!”

  “Okay, okay—I’m sorry—I’m going.”

  So I got to stand around in the hall like your average dummy. Beautiful.

  Eventually, the bell rang. Rae was the first one out the door and she passed by me without looking at me. And do you suppose my other classmates were warm and jovial?

  Done with my homework now, and I don’t feel like writing. If I were up at the cabin, I would hike up to the rocks to watch the sunset. But the thought occurs, what’s to stop me from walking now?