Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet: Chapters 1–5

Another thing—so I don’t go mental calling him Todd, he’s been Fang since first grade when his adult incisors arrived extra-early and extra-large, leaving the baby teeth up front cowering like mini-marshmallows between two he-man tusks.

It was a look that caused Fang a fair amount of grief during his formative years.

And he still has a pretty lacerating smile, so the nickname has some staying power even if he doesn’t.

Fang was all lips and teeth and long hair, all muscle and sinew and bone.

When he’d given everyone a chance to mull it over, he laid out his theory.

That definitely wasn’t cool, but to him I was the kicker, the twist, the hype, but I’m telling you, Stan was the real deal.

They’d been tooling through Michigan, headed for New York City, got off the turnpike for gas, got lost on their way back to the highway and had headed into the 7-Eleven for directions.

As if a little thing like being dead was going to stop Stan from making sure that anyone who’d been in the basement the night before and was staring down at his body just then would never forget my prophetic little tale.

In the hush, even the ambulance guys paused to check out the blasted kid up front, the one everyone was gawking at.

Everyone took a neat step back, line dancers in retreat, and I sashayed up the lane they cleared for me and hopped on my board and I split, a thousand pairs of eyes pressing on my back.

After a while of filming my front door—brown, wooden, three rectangular windows at the top, nothing special, really—they went and did their spiel on the sidewalk.

One of the neighbors probably figured I’d finally committed the grisly felony they’d always known I was capable of, and they must have called my mom at the Michigan Savings and Loan where she works as a teller, because she pulled into the driveway about ten minutes later.

She covered her face and her chest started heaving and I realized she’d driven all the way home thinking I was dead.

Last summer my mom and I spruced up the old cupboards with a coat of high-gloss white and threw down some chunky black and white checked linoleum.

My dad is fairly detail oriented, being the head honcho supply chain guy at the Kalbro plant where, like, everybody in Stokum works if they aren’t employed by CME, Central Michigan Electric, the big coal-burning power plant south of town.

(At Kalbro my dad makes sure things are lined up so that Ford and GM always get the auto fabrics of their dreams, just-in-time. You know that slick blue nubbly crap you drive around on? The tawny faux Naugahyde? The burgundy velveteen? That’s Stokum, man.)

Unfortunately, this American didn’t find the news as comforting as Ashcroft had probably hoped, and I was definitely still in an orange funk when the roving-eye guy came on with the real news at the end of the hour.

Then, catch this, my buddy Fang climbs out of the “soundproof” van where he’d been waiting like some cloistered game show contestant.

I was shaking my head at the lame antics when they cut over to my place and gave what little background they could on me.

He was tugging at this ratty blue bathrobe, trying to cover his gut, but I was so revved up I just started rambling.

I know we probably watched TV and played Hot Wheels and Lego, probably battled over Pokemon cards, but the purple elephant escapade wasn’t a one-time deal.

I did my best not to look too much like a hunchback; still, I was definitely moving slowly, and my mom and dad, confusing pain for dread or despair, flanked me up the stairs, which I thought was a bit much.

There were only two windows topping each sidewall, narrow rectangles of pebbled blue plastic that gave a bit of a death-glow pallor to the faces around me.

I tried to remain calm, but every time we passed a pew there’d be a ripple of noise, a barely subdued wave of gawker excitement.

Behind the pulpit a big man in black robes gave the signal and everyone rose to sing “Amazing Grace,” which had apparently been one of Stan’s favorites.

I was starting to wonder if the janitor or some loyal churchgoer wasn’t playing God with the old fuse box, when the big bastard lifted his eyes from his bible and shouted, “Yes, it was Jesus and only Jesus who tasted death for every man, so that we might know eternal life, as our Lord himself confirmed in that most blessed of benedictions revealed to us in chapter 11, verses 25 and 26 of the Gospel According to John..."

It went without saying that we had no plans to venture out to the graveyard.

When the hearse went left at the end of Highland, we hung a discreet right.

There was a general brouhaha as a couple dozen cars tried to back up or U-turn their way in the proper direction.

It was a hazy and distant sort of knowing that settled into me, one part freaky premonition, one part doomed daydream.

Still, given that a) Stan had died, and b) it seemed I’d known about it beforehand, my mother thought it might be c) prudent to talk to someone with a couple of university degrees, so d) she hooked me up with Dr. Cramp (dig the name).

Cramp himself was an okay guy, if you’re into the golden-haired, completely mainstream, totally successful type.

He was acting so astounded, I was pretty certain the Ebola rumors had to be false, and I didn’t see how the leg calisthenics were helping, so I finally yanked off my socks and stuck a foot in his face so he’d take a look at the actual wound.

He knelt on the floor and cleaned the cuts before numbing the soles of my feet with some sort of anesthetic.

Whenever my mom talked about the guy, I could just tell that, despite everything that had happened, she still loved her delinquent brother, or at least her memories of him.

My mother’s arm was thrown over the seat, and her hand bit into the fake leather upholstery behind my father’s head.

It was the second year in a row I’d had her for English, so we were pretty used to each other and she treated me with easy indifference, the way she treated everyone until they did something exceptional—good, bad or otherwise.

For my oral presentation I didn’t want to torture the class with the lifeless details of what I’d actually read, so instead I gave a snappy little intro to Horton Hears a Who!, highlighting the Gaudíesque influence apparent in Seuss’s zany artwork.

I gagged down a sandwich and some pills at my locker, then headed for the library, the safe haven of freaks, geeks and small-town prophets.

“Like what?” I dared to raise an emboldened eyebrow at her...