With gloved hands, Alexander Carlson took the certificate offered to him. “Congratulations, son,” said the principal. Alexander gave the man credit – he didn’t turn up his nose at his smell, though most of the kids who were behind him did. Yvonne Castille, who sat next to him had passed out, the poor girl, and would never walk across the stage to get her certificate.
He had not passed the pre-college graduation test that was given to every student in the school. In fact, three-quarters of the students hadn’t passed, and of those, half didn’t stick around their last year. Why bother, when you didn’t get a high-school diploma anymore? They took off, went to find dead-end jobs as Wal-Mart stock clerks or burger-flippers at McDonald’s. Or they tried to get in that mecca of work places in Florida: Disneyland.
Alexander walked across the stage because he knew the spirit of his parents were watching. Or at least he felt it. His sister, the only one wearing a veil, saw him and waved. He didn’t wave back, but kept his eyes on the other side of the stage, even as they were calling out Yvonne’s name.
He walked around the back of the auditorium, found himself crunched near the door as people were standing there. However, as soon as he came into the picture, the people moved a lot faster, as his smell and reputation preceded him. The sightless eyes, the chalk-white skin under the black graduation gown made him look like a grim reaper with a square hat.
He finally got back to his seat. Gary Bruno sat next to him on his left, and didn’t seem too disturbed by him or his smell. He waited patiently for the rest of the ceremony to be over and done with. Then, hopefully, he would go home and burn this worthless certificate and start getting on with his life – such as it was.
At the end, he got up with the rest of the students but didn’t toss his hat in the air. Instead he fought his way out of the row – everyone let him go by – into the aisle. He looked for the red-veiled woman.
She always wore a red veil because it hid her face better than simple white ones. She also got out of the row, but was pushed out by other people wanting to get out to see their kids, their phones in their hands ready for pictures. Alex went up to her and guided her gently out of the fray, out through the doors and into the warm June air. He gasped for air himself.
“That was wonderful. Mom and Dad would be proud.”
“I didn’t graduate, Lexi.” His mother and father, in a pique, called both of them Alexander and Alexandra. He went by his full name; she chose all assorted types of nicknames. This year it was Lexi.
“I don’t care.” She looked around, and lifted her veil.
Her face looked like it had been melted to the left of her skull, which it had. Her mouth was where her chin should be, her lips pared back away from her teeth – her chin was elongated and touched her collarbone. Her eyes were sideways, one in its proper place, the other half-way down her face. Her nose was elongated as well, but flat, with only flat nostrils and flaps of skin surrounding them. She could only focus one eye at a time on him. Her skin was dark red, as if a blush had overrun her face. He had caused it, just as he had caused the death of his parents.
He took her head in both of his hands and kissed the wide upper lip very gently. Then he brought the veil down.
“What are you going to do, Alexander?” she asked. “Where are you going to go?”
“Home. And then, I don’t know.”
Home was their parents’ house. Chairs were twisted, couches had holes in them. He took off the graduation gown and burned it in the back yard in the smoker, just as he did with all his clothes after he wore them. Water couldn’t get the toxin out of them, and no matter what industrial soap he used. They would rot in his drawers, possibly infecting all his other clothes. He couldn’t afford and didn’t like the special plastic clothes that his parents got him when he was younger.
Once his parents died, he’d given up looking for a cure. The last doctors at the Cancer Center satellite office in Miami said that he was more of a mutant than a chemical accident. The chemicals he swam in when he was thirteen should have killed him.
Instead, they killed and maimed everyone else.
His sister, without her veil, puttered around the house. He sat on the couch with holes and watched TV. Maybe he should go to the Cancer Center and donate his body to science. Maybe he and his sister should move out of this horribly moody home and go somewhere else.
Being a hero was the last thing on his mind.