Whirligig: List 1

He focused again on the computer’s screen and careened through the video game’s dark passages, firing at everything speeding toward him, borne along by the never-ending music.

He reconnoitered his father’s long, handsome face and studied the wrinkles, fine as if scratched in with a burin, feeding into his eyes.

The caustic complaints about work had begun again.

He returned to his room and flipped on the radio. Discerning what stations were considered cool was another of his moving-in tasks.

No spell-chanting shaman knew better the importance of precise adherence to tradition.

No spell-chanting shaman knew better the importance of precise adherence to tradition.

Below them, in the tennis court and on the grass and inside the gazebo, lounged the cream of the junior class. Brent felt he’d gained a glimpse of Olympus.

He’d been a headbanger as a toddler and still threw tantrums when he didn’t get his way. He knew he couldn’t afford a tirade here.

Without Jonathan next to him, Brent felt conspicuous.

“Bishop, like the chess piece,” Chaz mused. “Let’s see if he moves back and forth diagonally, the way a bishop should.”

He stood behind Brent, put both hands on his shoulders, and guided him toward the left. Brent resisted at first, then complied, allowing himself to be treated like a toy, hating his helplessness.

Brent felt like slugging Chaz, but knew his tormentor was taller, more muscled, and the de facto ruler of their class besides.

Discreetly, he scouted the territory.

The talk was of the Cubs. Brent marveled that people could publicly root for such perennial losers.

She was drinking a beer and had a sullen look, her wavy blond hair reaching down her black dress like a hanging garden.

His knowledge of her was sketchy.

He pictured them all repeating the scene to their friends, replaying it like the sports highlights, guffawing over it at the twenty-year reunion.

He was a leper now. No one would go near him.

Long hair is mesmerizing to male humans.

“Of course, since I’m not slinky or shapely, and in fact am puny in every department, with freckles and oily, drab, brown hair, ‘Steph’ seems like the perfect name for me.”

It was as big as a box kite and mounted on a pole, gesticulating wildly with moving arms, vanes, wheels, and propellers large and small.

“There are visualizations here to make you resistant to illness. To overcome stress. To build confidence.”

Despite her seven Nobel Prizes, the eighty-eight-year-old spinster was in contact with neither friends nor relations.

"...But it’s too much like those men on TV who bend spoons with their thoughts.”
“That’s quackery. This isn’t.”

But you wouldn’t want me to skimp on details, would you? I mean, we’re deciding your future here.

You feel the balmy air on your skin as you complete your pleasant morning’s sail and tack into Portland’s harbor.

Your hand is on the tiller of the sixteen-foot, all-wood, gaff-rigged sailboat your parents have bought you.

She paused, deliberating.

He’s handsome, young, and speaks to you in French. You instantly detect his faulty pronunciation of the French r. Then an incorrect participle.

He’s a coffeehouse cad, a pickup artist.

You finish your drink, walk to a bookstore, and wander over to the magazines. You pick up the latest Crab and Clam. Reading it while sauntering down the sidewalk, you feel a nudge.

“You walk back to your boat and examine more closely the strange eel you netted on the way down. You suspect you’ve discovered a new species and wonder who you’ll name it for, immortalizing the person you choose. You raise the sails, cast off, and head out.”

Past Princes Point you spot something to starboard. A lobster buoy? No—a human head. Then a hand comes up, waving for help. You tack, come alongside, heave to, and help the unfortunate aboard.

He’s unable to get warm. You spot the symptoms of hypothermia.

Twitched alert by the light, he craned his neck to get a better view, pressed his head to the tinted glass, and raptly observed the sun’s rising.