Crying Wolf

One should not avoid one's tests, although they are perhaps the most dangerous game one could play and are in the end tests which are taken before ourselves and before no other judge. (Beyond Good and Evil, section 41) --Introduction to the syllabus for Philosophy 322, Superman and Man: Nietzsche and Cobain (Professor Uzig) A rolled-up newspaper spun through the air, defining place. What kind of place? The kind of place often described as leafy or even idyllic, where a boy on a bicycle still tossed the paper onto lawns and porches, sometimes over actual picket fences, where the newspaper still brought news. "Nat," called a voice inside one of the houses, a simple 1950s roofed box, much like all the others. "What is it, Mom?" "Come quick." "This couldn't be happening to a better boy," said Mrs. Smith, the guidance counselor at Clear Creek High. "Or should I say young man?" She raised her hand, pink and stubby. Was Mrs. Smith going to pinch his cheek? Nat tried not to flinch; he owed her a lot. At the last second, her hand veered away and settled for an upper-arm squeeze instead. "What a question!" said Miss Brown, the school principal, regarding Mrs. Smith with annoyance. "Young man, of course, as should be perfectly obvious to anyone." Mrs. Smith and Miss Brown were identical twin sisters, although easily distinguished: Miss Brown had hair the color of shiny pennies, Mrs. Smith's was gray; Mrs. Smith shook when she laughed, Miss Brown didn't shake, seldom laughed. Hiss and pop: fatty juices dripped on open flames. Miss Brown turned to Nat's mom, who was laying another row of patties on the grill. "And of all the young men I've encountered in my thirty-two years of education, some of them very fine young men indeed, this one is the--well, I won't say it, comparisons--" "--being odious," said Mrs. Smith. "I'll finish my own sentences, if it's all the same to you," said Miss Brown in a low voice, but not so low that Nat didn't hear. Even though the comparison hadn't been made, to Nat's relief, and even though he suspected that the adage they'd used might be obscure to his mom, her face, already pink from the heat of midday and the glowing coals, went pinker still. "Thank you," she said, wiping aside a damp wisp of hair--almost as gray now as Mrs. Smith's, as Nat could see in the bright sunlight, despite her being so much younger--with the back of her wrist. Then she blinked, that single slow blink she always made when she was feeling shy but believed something was required from her anyway; at least, that was Nat's interpretation. People didn't understand how brave she was. "I'm obliged to the both of you," she said, "for getting him into such a place." "Don't thank us," said Miss Brown. "He earned it," said Mrs. Smith. "This golden opportunity," said Miss Brown. "And everything that's going to come from it," said Mrs. Smith. "His own doing, from A to Z." For proof, she held up the County Register--the Fourth of July special edition, with the red-white-and-blue banner at the top of page one and the winning essay in the DAR's $2,000 "What I Owe America" contest, open to graduating high-school seniors across the state, printed beneath it in fourteen-point letters. Old Glory, the prize essay, and a picture of the winner: Nat, in his yearbook photo, wearing a blazer borrowed from Mr. Beaman, his mom's boss, tight across the shoulders. Mrs. Smith brandished the paper against the sky--like a weapon, Nat thought, as though defying an enemy. But what enemy? There were no enemies here in this tiny backyard on the western edge of their little town, with the land stretching flat into the distance. The distance: where on somAbrahams, Peter is the author of 'Crying Wolf' with ISBN 9780345423856 and ISBN 0345423852.