CHAPTER ONE
TRIBES
“Want to see how this works?” asks Ramon, holding a bright yellow contraption.
“Sure.”
“Step back,” he tells me and then pulls back the elastic bands and points the air gun at me.
It feels as though someone has just sneezed in my face, except there’s no liquid residue.
“How does it work?” I ask him.
“Don’t ask. This isn’t school,” he reminds me.
“Let’s take it to the pool,” I suggest.
“Won’t it be too obvious?”
“Just hide it each time you shoot it.”
So, we aim it at everyone in the pool. First, we start out with safer targets. Just aim it at the kids and see them laugh. After awhile, though, we get a little braver. Ramon aims it at the man who always walks the tiny dog and turns red when he has to stand around the apartment with a plastic bag filled with steamy dog crap.
Every time the air hits his head, he looks around in confusion, searches through his wet hair and then mutters something to himself. We’re not out for revenge. It’s just that we’re bored and we’re not interested in watching another daytime show asking “Who’s your daddy?” to guests who shout and cry and spit out insults on national television.
“I dare you to aim it at her bikini,” I point out.
Ramon smiles.
He shrugs his shoulders; too hot and tired to conjure up a response. My cousin Jesse arrives with the Otter Pops.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if Otter Pops really had otters’ blood in them?” Ramon asks.
“And all these little kids would be drinking blood and not even realizing it,” Jesse adds.
“I used to believe Otter Pops were made from otters. True story. I did. I wouldn’t eat them until a few years ago,” Ramon says.
“Have you ever tasted blood before?” Jesse asks.
We both look at him with disgust.
“Seriously. Don’t knock it ‘till you try it. It’s good stuff, blood is. Just add some lemon and maybe some hot sauce.” Jesse’s always been like that, saying random things that hardly make sense.
“What if everything you believed as a kid turned out to be true? What if, like Santa Claus was real but no one knew it and Otter Pops were really made with otter’s blood and they really had panda meat at Panda Express?” I ask.
“Yeah, except that would mean the Llorona was real, too. That crazy lady scares me,” Jesse adds.
“Or the Easter Bunny. A huge rabbit breaking into homes.” Ramon points out.
“What if superheroes were real?” I ask.
“What would your superpower be?” Jesse asks. It’s the closest thing we ever get to a deeper conversation. Jesse tends to be geeky-smart, loaded up on pop culture and random memorized facts and my sister Perla is human-smart, but only when it’s a really big deal.
But the one rule we follow is to pretend we aren’t smart. We go through the whole summer and we never say anything deep. None of us. It’s like an unspoken rule.
“I’d have time travel powers,” Ramon says. “I’d go back to that day, you know.” We know. We just don’t say it, but we know and we won’t talk about it, because of the rules. Nothing deep. That’s the rule. But sometimes we break it. We talk about life in ways that we never would at school and we feel like rebels, like we’re the only ones our age who are really talking about what’s going on.
It’s quiet for a few minutes until Jesse adds, “I’d have x-ray vision, just to get a peek at that,” he says as he stares at Maria from Room 213 as she pulls off her towel and slips into the pool.
Something about that strikes a nerve, when I notice her two kids punching each other’s bright orange floaties. Sometimes I forget that a woman is a daughter and a mom and that when we stare, it turns a woman from a who into a what.
“I wonder what it’s like to be treated like an object. I mean, I wonder how much that has to hurt to know that you’re only noticed for your body,” I add.
Awkward silence. I have a way of creating awkward silence. It’s a gift of mine. Or a curse. I’m not really sure yet. The truth is that during the school year we wouldn’t be talking at all. See, we’re from different tribes that wage a silent war against the others.
But it doesn’t matter today. It’s a reverse hibernation effect. As the kids go to the pool or chase down the ice cream man, it’s as if the whole rulebook has been buried in the playground and we’re simply comrades on the concrete, suffering through the same blazingly hot Phoenix summers together.
On the first day back, though, the tribes reassemble. The boys that can throw well ensure a slot in the Us Tribe along with the girls that can spread gossip the fastest. Sure, the Us Tribe has its little colonies: the Jocks and the Dumb Jocks and the Student Council and the Skaters Who Are Okay to Hang With and the Preppy Pack, but really the differences aren’t that big.
No one knows who gives the Us Tribe its power, but it’s the same way every year and those of us who question it never venture out publically. Ramon is part of the Us Tribe. He’s a basketball star with real talent. He has dreams of playing for the Suns and sometimes it makes me really sad when he talks about it, because unlike all the rest of the kids at our school who say they want to play in the NBA, he’s actually really good, but being really good just gets you a lottery ticket that’s almost guaranteed to be a bust.
The Them Tribe consists of the boys who trade anime-themed cards and each of them has a moment in their childhood where they peed their pants in the primary grades or cried in front of their classmates or asked too many questions or worse still answered too many questions when the other students simply wanted to get through the lesson as quickly as possible.
Female Them Tribe members can be more difficult to spot, because sometimes the Us Tribe will include a token Them Girl because they feel pity for the girl who wears the sweatshirt with the unicorn on it.
Perla always ends up in the Us Tribe and I’m not entirely sure why. She isn’t all that attractive. I mean, she’s not really ugly, but she’s not a knock-out. Then again, she’s my twin sister, so I’m not the best to judge. My only guess is that she is able to interact in just about every social situation without feeling out of place.
Perla’s placement on the Us Tribe guarantees that I inhabit the Middle Zone Tribe. We’re the silent tribe, the invisible kids who fade into the background like an extra on a Hollywood set. We go by the names of “hey you” and “hey kid” and occasionally “that boy” or “that girl.” We have our own subgroups in the Middle Zone, including the Skaters and the Stoners and the Wannabe Gangsters and the very occasional Real Gangsters (who usually miss school most of the time), but most of us are just the Regulars without a subgroup as a label.
* * *
Today is our last tribe-free day, so we decide to head out to the park before the Realignment begins. Jesse and Ramon play jokes on the teenagers making out in the darkest areas of the playground. Ramon borrowed a bullhorn from his uncle who’s a cop who thinks that teenagers should simply “kiss dating goodbye” and go into a medieval style of courtship.
I kick the sand below me and twist the swing chains. Yes, I’m too old for the swings, but it’s become a ritual of mourning for the death of summer.
A masked man in monastic robes meanders toward me. I keep telling myself that he’s wandering toward something else, but he stops abruptly in front of my swing.
“Are you Gabriel Icarus Dunn?” he asks calmly.
“How did you know?”
“I have an urgent message for you.”
“What’s that?”
“A message? It’s when you tell someone something important. Often, they are captured on machines but some of the more romantic of our species go exotic with it and send messages out in bottles.”
“Can you just give me the message?” I ask.
He recites the following:
The craftsman devises a gilded wing
One sturdy contraption fit for a king
While solemn warning’s rebellion will spring
The flaming tragic closure it will bring
From your father’s hands, a son in flight
Heads toward the stars in sheer delight
Flying higher still when losing sight
The melting wings at such great height
‘Till Freedom’s clutch dost strangle one
Who yearns to fly beyond the sun
The father mourns when all is done
Now seeing how he’s lost his son
“I don’t understand. Who are you?”
“I am the Oracle,” he says. “I’ll let you keep the parchment,” he says and hands me a scroll written with calligraphy. He then shakes my hand and slowly walks away. I unwrap the scroll, look up and notice that the man has disappeared. Wondering if he was a mere illusion, I see him again, trying to get his old Taurus to start.
Must be an art student from Arizona State. He’s probably getting into character for some Greek tragedy. Still, I’m left feeling uneasy about this. I know, I know, it’s absurd that I would listen to some stranger in robes who wants to tell me my story.
* * *
A day later, I carefully pick out my shirt. The jeans are easy. Not too loose, so I won’t seem gangster, but not too tight, so I don’t look nerdy. The shirt, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult. I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard, like I care too much about how I look. However, I don’t want to look like a total slob. The science fiction shirt is out and so is the fake name brand t-shirt that I bought at the swap meet. Looks like it will be a solid gray polo shirt with jeans.
I starch and iron the shirt, even though I know I’ll be invisible. Then I pinch my chubby flab and sigh.
“Whatcha doing?” Perla calls out from out of nowhere, leading me to shriek.
“Ouch!” she shouts.
“I’m sorry. You came from out of nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” she asks cautiously. “Maybe I’m just invisible.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” I answer.
“That’s the fourth time in a week that you’ve shocked me,” she mentions.
“I don’t know why that keeps happening.”
“Well, maybe there’s something whacky with your electromagnetic field. I bet Mr. Williams can explain it,” she says and then shows her voodoo hands and raises her eyebrows.
“Yeah, I bet he could pull out some incense and pull out a magnetic reader and tell me all about my aura.”
Members of the Us Tribe hate Mr. Williams, because he takes delight in benching athletes for their grades and he gives homework that can’t be copied and he invites members from the Them Tribe to be part of the Graphic Novel Club that meets in his room every day at lunch. The Us Tribe knows that he’s creating a safe refuge and nothing more, but they still make up rumors of just how “graphic” the Graphic Novel Club can be. I think if Mr. Williams knew the rumors people spread, he wouldn’t be able to believe in the goodness of humanity that he always talks about.
Jesse will sometimes invite me to the lunchtime crew, but I turn him down, letting him know that it isn’t him, but the “weird kids” that ruin it. Not that the kids are all that weird. I know a few of them from the Gifted Cluster classes that I attend twice a week and honestly they seem normal and funny and intelligent. Still, I’m not about to accept the passage into the Them Tribe so easily. No, the Us Tribe will have to catch me doing something really socially awkward – enough so that even Perla would have to deny her association with me.
“You ready for this year?” she asks.
“I’m dreading it,” I answer.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be just like every other.”
“That’s the problem,” I add.
Perla’s not upset about any of it. She likes school. Don’t get me wrong. She hates learning, but she loves school. She loves Student Council and basketball and earning the highest grade possible for the least effort. I like learning, but I hate school. She manipulates teachers to get what she wants. I befriend teachers, not to be a teacher’s pet, because I get bored of talking about television or quoting lines from movies.
It’s not as if there is a “good twin” and “bad twin” situation between us. It’s just that we both choose opposite paths, hoping to define ourselves by not being like the other one. After spending our first decade being called “the twins” (as if we were a baseball team) we’re now drifting apart purposely for our own sanity and survival.
* * *
I arrive to math class and try to predict which “ice breaker” Coach Jordan will choose. Everyone calls her Coach Jordan, except for Jesse, who simply calls her Ms. Jordan, because he refuses to acknowledge a sport whose chief goal is to bring encouragement to real athletes through the use of spirit fingers. Jesse doesn’t believe in the power of pep, because our school seems to lose most games in every sport except cross country and besides if pep worked out so well then why do the administrators feel the need to rally the pep together every quarter?
I’m thinking maybe she’ll choose the Human Knot. Then again, she’s real skittish about potential parent complaints and the knot can get inappropriate with the sheer amount of moving flesh and raging hormones.
Besides, she almost lost her job last year when the pyramid collapsed right there in front of the whole school after Philip failed to catch Rebecca on the throw. By the time the ambulances arrived it seemed that we not only couldn’t rally any pep, but we were in fact experiencing a pep deficit. For a brief moment, I saw the cheerleaders as human and I almost cried, because I had a hunch that even a bully in the Us Tribe has a heart and doesn’t deserve tragedy and like everyone else in that room, I thought she would die. But she didn’t die and she wasn’t even paralyzed and the Us and Them Tribes reassembled as if nothing had happened.
I’m guessing Coach Jordan will go for a rousing game of People Bingo, while she quietly analyzes the group interaction. She’s wildly popular among the Us Tribe and as the cheerleading coach she’s managed to use the school hierarchy to keep intellectual wanderers in check. I’m an easy target in her class. Still, I know that she hasn’t changed lesson plans in the four years she’s been teaching, so I’ll borrow notes from my next door neighbor Ezekiel in return for writing an expository essay for his Freshmen English class and I’ll pass, much to her chagrin, but at least she can write something about “not working up to potential” in the teacher comments on the report cards.
I walk to my assigned seat and instantly spot the People Bingo squares. I suddenly feel the urge to pee, right there in the middle of math class. Okay, that didn’t come out right. I have no desire to actually pee on our classroom’s industrial carpet. But my own internal desire to leave actually forces the physical urge to pee.
So, I run off to the stalls while kids shatter the ice with signatures of who met the president and who owns a small dog and who visited Disneyland this summer and who is an only child (pretty rare in our little urban barrio).
I move toward the bathroom. Perhaps that’s not the best term for it – nobody is taking a bubble bath and holding a loufa. Instead, it’s a gigantic horse trough that smells like death and stalls without locks. Rumor has it that if someone walks in on you in the stalls, you become impotent for life.
As I reach for the door, I hear a familiar voice. It’s Ramon’s younger sister. I can hardly understand her, but something about this feels wrong. It’s as if the Universe itself is shouting, “Let your urine wait, kid. Ramon’s sister is in trouble.”
I round the corner and hear Ramon’s sister singing to herself on the way to the drinking fountain. Three of the Us Tribe members gather around for an attack. I'm not sure why. Perhaps boredom. Not from the first day of school, but from the whole school system itself. Maybe it's rebellion from all the teachers who sat them down and offered energetic lectures about the importance of setting a good example and being a campus leader and could they offer some encouragement to the classmates who are talking because it's ruining the learning of others. Or maybe it's just that power corrupts people.
Whatever their motives, they capture her attention with, “There's Pooh on your shirt.” They point to the “silly ol' bear,” and she misses it entirely. She looks confused.
“What?” she asks.
“Pooh girl. Looks like Pooh is all over your shirt."
“Oh, I see it. I bet it's stinky,” Zach says.
She still misses the point, and becomes perplexed in the barrage of comments and laughter from the other five students who now gather around in the hallway. Finally, she attempts a smile. Does she understand that she's the punch line?
Punch line.
I line up a punch, an unsuspected uppercut for Mike. They both stand stunned. “Is she your girlfriend? Do you like the retards?” Zach asks.
Then it blurs. I try and reconstruct the story, filling in the gaps with scenes that will make me look more heroic, but a bona fide fight is nothing like a movie. No posturing. No dancing. Very few words at all. When a fist smacks a jaw, the blood doesn't spray in slow motion. In fact, the crimson saliva doesn't show up until later, when you assess the carnage and try to figure out which lumps will turn into bruises and whether you'll have cauliflower ear in the morning.
It's chaos in motion with a soundtrack of screams from kids who need a break from the monotony of worksheets and lectures; a short vacation to our pure animal instincts. I pile on the punches, one after another. Mike’s eyes are closed and he’s motionless. Zach pulls me by the neck and as I grasp his arm, I feel the release of his body. Except it’s more than that. Something else leaves me, but I can’t define it. Zach starts shaking and convulsing and doubling over until a teacher pulls me away.
What was I thinking? Nothing. A rare escape from the internal conversation about life. I am solid energy. In fact, I fail to recognize the electricity leave my hands. But as I'm watching him continuing his convulsions, his burn marks, his eyes rolling back and head hitting the ground, I am horrified by my own capacity.
The crowd is silent.
Awkward silence.
In the comic books, the “superpower” is always some esoteric, Zen-like experience. It's always in solitude. Always provided with a chance for gentle introspection where you give your spider web a whirl or test out your strength on some balcony. Mine is public and followed-up with a lecture about Zero Tolerance (which I find ironic, given the framed poster of a rainbow and the word “tolerance” in big block letters) and an overly calm explanation that it was clearly a misunderstanding and that Zach was simply complimenting her shirt and swears he never used the “r word” but if he did, he might lose a day of school (though not on a Friday, since it would mean he would miss the inaugural game).
“I want you to write an apology letter,” the principal instructs me. “And it needs to be heartfelt.”
“I can’t,” I explain. “I'm sorry. I am. I'm just not sure if it's aimed at Zach.”
“Have you seen the burn marks?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“And you’re really not sorry yet?”
“I’m sorry this whole thing happened. I’m sorry for the incident, maybe even for my actions, but I’m not sorry for my motive, if that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t,” he adds. “A behavior is a behavior.”
I'm sorry.
I black out at this point and when I wake up I’m in a conference room surrounded by a jungle of silk plants and a mini-fridge filled with bottled water and a sign reminding folks to recycle their bottles, because that's the best way to love the planet, though it seems to me that maybe an energy-guzzling fridge might not be the best way to take care of Mother Earth.
My eyelids begin to shut, but I manage to stay awake by analyzing the various framed pictures, each one imploring me to have courage or fortitude or achievement and each one adorned by stock photography of oceans or runners or animals (honorable ones, like eagles. No roaches or bacteria, which is a bum rap, because bacteria are precisely why we stay alive) and all the while I’m trying to make sense out of it all.
A man with a chiseled face walks in and says, “I need to know if you had a weapon.” He’s wearing those sunglasses that look like mirrors and I can see how terrified I look.
“No sir,” I add.
Awkward silence.
“Are they okay?” I ask.
“Mike and Zach are fine. A little stunned, but fine. Did you have a stun gun?” he asks.
“No, I swear I didn't,” I respond.
“Did you have a stun gun?" he asks again with the same calm tone.
“No, I really didn't.”
He asks me this question another five, ten times and each time I grow more animated. Finally he calls in another man. “He looks clean. The video confirms it, too. I think this is in your department.”
An older man with a gray cardigan steps up and offers an explanation, “We reviewed the tapes and believe you me, it looks like it was just a nasty, nasty fight. But . . . we believe you. Sometimes this happens to people. Have you ever lost electricity?”
“No, I . . . I don't know,” I stammer.
“You've never shocked someone on accident?” he asks.
“Well, that happens to everyone, right? I mean, you reach for a door and it shocks you,” I explain.
“Has it ever been worse for you?”
“I guess there have been moments when I shocked people a little harder. They got a jolt of electricity, but it was never on purpose."
“Has it happened more lately?”
“I guess so. I’ve shocked my twin sister, I don’t know, three or four times in the last couple of days. But it’s always on accident. You can even ask her. Her name’s Perla.”
“That’s fabulous. Great news. Did you feel like you could control it?” he asks.
“No, I couldn't,” I respond.
“Could you reproduce it here?”
“Like, make it happen again?”
He shakes his head.
“Nope.”
“Not a problem,” he adds and then hands me a cold soda can.
“You want me to shock that?” I ask him.
“No, I’d like you to drink it. You’re tired and probably confused. I thought you might like a jolt of caffeine. Ha ha, jolt. I shouldn’t say that word, should I?” he smiles.
He starts talking about my condition and how it happens sometimes with people and, no, it’s not treatable, but that it can be used for good if I’m at least up for the challenge. Then we both geek out and talk comic books. He asks me who could beat whom until finally I add, “You know what bothers me about comic books?”
“What’s that?” he asks.
“It’s like they can control their powers all the time. I just can’t believe anyone is that disciplined. I mean, I get it with Superman. He’s an alien or whatever, but everyone else. How in the world do they control it?” I explain.
“Yes, like they’re a little too perfect sometimes,” he responds.
“Uh huh,” I add. I’m relaxed now. I’m not entirely sure why this man is talking to me and what room I’m in, but at least I’m calm.
“Your dad's suicide? Were you ever angry with him about it?”
“He didn't kill himself. Didn't you read the papers?” I ask.
“Right. Yes, the papers got it all correct. I’m so sorry that I mistook what happened. What happened is totally normal, right? Not even a remote chance that it was a suicide.” he says with a calm voice.
“No, that wasn’t it,” I tell him.
“Gabe, it was a suicide. You know it. You keep it buried inside. You don't tell anyone, because you feel like you'll betray him. But you're mad, real mad, because he was a coward and people still think he's a hero.”
I hold my hands out again and this time I can see the electric pulse move into the cardigan. The flash lasts for about thirty seconds, changing colors of blue and white and green.
When it ends, he stands up and smiles. “I'm so sorry. I hate doing that. I'm not a mean man. I just have to provoke you in order to find out if your power is real. Look, here, it's on my instructions.”
He hands me a laminated paper with the words SUPERHERO RECRUITER AND AUTHENTICATOR in all caps. Apparently his job is meant to be screamed!
“Remember, Outsiders don’t usually believe in us at this age,” Stoned Face Man explains.
“Oh, right. I get my ages wrong,” he tells Stone Faced Man. Meanwhile I stare at the laminated sheet.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“Sorry we had to do that to you, but it's part of the job. We’re going to let you see your mom now, if that's okay. It's been a long day and you're probably confused by all of this,” Cardigan Man explains.
“You did fine,” Stone Faced Man adds with a smile.
When my mom arrives, I bury my head into her shoulder. I can’t cry. I don’t have one of those mom’s who says, “pobrecito, mijo,” but still I need her familiarity. I need her strength. She’s not one to talk through all her problems, but she knows when an embrace is vital to life.
The car is silent on the drive home, until she slips in a tape deck (they still exist in our neighborhood) of her favorite corridos. The music is her comfort blanket. “Mijo, violence isn’t the answer. But I’m proud of you. Those boys got what they deserved,” she adds.
“Thanks,” I tell her and stare out the window.
“Gabriel, eye contact. Try and keep eye contact. It’s a good habit. It’s a respect thing.”
“Right,” I say and stare out the window again.
