The Boy in the Tunnel

Fall 1997, Chapter 25: Kenya

They looked like golf balls. A whole field of them. She told her dad that these must be the lost balls of golfing giants, shanking their shots from tees hundreds of miles away. Her dad laughed and told her she should write the story of the giant golfers, and she did. The Sahara was a sand trap. The Mediterranean was a water hazard. They used the trunks of redwoods as their clubs. She read the story in class, and her trim, bespectacled teacher pronounced it "wunderbar." Her dad took her to the fancy club at Maxlrain, a special treat, but he spent the entire time talking with his friends – she thought they were his friends then, but they weren't, they were just his coworkers – and she wondered why he laughed so much around these white men, with their thick forearms and squared-off faces that looked young and healthy from a distance but older and older the closer she got to them. They ignored her until she hit a 210-yard drive off the first tee. They weren't interested in what she had to say, only in what her body could do.

Her dad played worse that day than she had ever seen him play. Deliberately bad. She didn't play golf much after that. A year later their move to California coincided with her growth spurt, and she found volleyball.

In California she learned what the giant golf balls actually were. Radomes. They weren't golf balls. They were eyeballs, pupil-less and lifeless, peering into the lives of millions of people. A field of unblinking eyes, watching.

Marvin Cassidy taught his daughter many things, but the one thing he didn't teach her was the thing he was best at. He didn't teach her how he made a living. He didn't teach her how to look at other people as packets of information from which data could be extracted. Kenya had never wanted him to teach her how to do that – it was a side of her dad's life that he did his best to keep from her – but she now wished he had taken the time.

Joanie sat on the bed watching South Park, completely blank, revealing nothing. Not even laughing. Not that South Park was all that funny, really; it was just slightly-more-clever variations on the same shit all the guys at her high school used to say to make each other laugh. White humor. Even when it was smart, it was white, coming from a place of ease and entitlement – or at least from the mindset that such a place was a birthright.

Still – Cartman, though. And Joanie didn't even chuckle.

Joanie had barely talked to her since the incident – the incident that Kenya refused to refer to as an overdose – except to offer platitudes about their unshakeable friendship, and professions of gratitude that rang more hollow every time. And then Tuesday, when Joanie disappeared after her English class, Kenya decided she'd had enough. Audrey was freaking out, so Kenya let her freak out. She washed her hands of it and went downtown for a burrito.

Joanie didn't need a babysitter. But she did need to tell Kenya what, if anything, she saw while she was communing. Then she could bring all this bullshit to Charlie and actually deal with it.

"Joanie," said Kenya, when the show was over. "Want to go downtown? I could use some coffee."

Joanie turned her head toward Kenya. The rest of her body remained perfectly still. It was the first time Joanie had looked Kenya in the eye in what felt like two days. "Coffee," she said. Flat. No inflection.

"Yeah, I mean, neither one of has class till eleven. Come on, I haven't even been to Hallowed Grounds yet this year. We need to reclaim the couch before some punk-ass freshmen try to take it."

Joanie just stared at her. Under that withering gaze Kenya felt tiny, insignificant. She was worried about a couch, when there was so much else to worry about.

Joanie rolled on her side, turning her broad back to Kenya, and pulled her comforter over her head.

"I guess not, then," said Kenya. She turned off the TV. She considered going downtown anyway, but she didn't really want to go out. She just wanted Joanie to talk to her.