It was interesting, you know. Being the one on the other side of the principal’s office.
It was the end of my senior year, and just as we were leaving to go to Dairy Queen, our principal ambushed our parents. Our principal, Mr. Hatchersack, was a very stern man. He used to be a principal at the middle school, where he’d always tell me how much potential I had. After he sat on one too many thumbtacks, he left for a different district, but returned just in time to see how much my life had fallen apart.
He was a different man, now. He only ever said one thing to me, my entire senior year. When he saw me handing out flyers for my girlfriend, Anna Blumm’s, anti-war protest¹, he snatched them from my hands, wadding them up in the process, and with a mix of frustration and tiredness, he asked me: “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
He pulled my mother, my father, and Adam into his office. Not even looking me in the face, he asked my parents if I can sit outside. Neither of them protested… why would they?
From the other side of the wall, I could make out bits and pieces of the conversation…
“You have two sons, Mister and Missus Rostenkowski. One is a brilliant, extraordinary young man, bound to make it out of this town… and the other is sitting outside of this office, and is named Vincent. Adam here is a genius. He’s wowed his teachers, with- with his brainwave scanner whatchamacallits, his research into the human psyche, all that. All of it.”
“What are you saying?” My mother asked.
“What I’m saying is,” Mr. Hatchersack said, “Is that your kid is too good for this school. And he’s certainly too good to get shipped off to war. We had some scouts come by, from a school way out in Minnesota. The United States University for Scientific Achievement! Now, now, I- To be very frank with you, which I’m sure is how a men and women of your stature like it, I’ve never heard the place. I hear they’re up and coming. But… They’re good. Real good. They can put you, this school, your- your son on the map!”
There was a silence for a while. I tried to picture what Adam was going to say, but I couldn’t. The moment we all left, I decided to play dumb. Acted like I hadn't heard a thing. I sat through dinner, I ate my food, and I tried to act like I hadn't even heard a thing.
Do you ever do that? Pretend to not know something, just so you can make everyone else happy. Because it's easier that way. I hope you don't, because you'd also feel how badly it makes you just want to scream and curse the world and throw everything away.
I didn't want my brother to go away. I knew how stupid that was, but any time I thought about it, I pictured myself putting bandages on his scrapes, or me third wheeling his first date, or the two of us sneaking into our first R-Rated movie together. I thought about our failed punk band, I thought about when mom could afford just enough to take the two of us to the fair and not herself. I thought about our shared bar mitzvah, how the two of us carried our drunken father back into the house, and how he'd get our names mixed up. How everyone besides our mother got our names mixed up. Because we were just that close.
"Hey... Adam. Are you awake?" I asked him, late that night.
"Yeah." He said. He sounded guilty. Like he knew what I was going to ask him.
"Are you really going to that school?"
He was silent. Just like he was in the principal's office. But now I could see his face. And I knew his answer.
"I want to, Vincent. I really do."
And then I was silent. And I could tell that he hated my silence just as much as I hated his.
"And where will that leave me?"
It was selfish. I knew it was selfish when I said it, but I couldn't help myself.
"I- I don't know, Vin. That's- That's for you to figure out."
"I thought we'd figure it out together."
I don't remember a lot about the argument. It's been half a century since then, give or take. Anytime I thought about it, I remembered just how angry I was, but now, I can only remember how scared I was. How small I felt. How powerless. I'd either get shipped off to war and get my powers found out, or I'd take over the family business. I'd die as just another Rostenkowski.
"I want to change the world." He said. "With this- With this school, maybe I can! Maybe I can make a world that's better for you, better for everyone, Vincent."
"Without me, right!?" I said. I think I was a bit drunk. But that wouldn't have made it better. "Because I'm holding you back! Because I'm some screwup, some lowlife who can't even keep a girlfriend, and whose only friend is his lousy brother, eh?"
"Vin, you know that's not true, I-"
"Do you want to know what you told me, Adam? When we were kids? You told me you'd build some power suit, you told me that you'd be just like me. You told me we'd be heroes together. And I clung to that, Adam. I clung to every scrap of attention you gave me, because it was all I had, but it was enough for me."
"Adam, I-"
"Forget it. You can go to your stupid school. You can get out of this stupid town, like you always wanted. And you can leave me for dead, because you know that's what you're doing. I- I'm going for a drive."
I had a bit of a drinking problem when I was younger. For about six days, I stayed out of the house. Most nights, I slept in my car. Some nights, I'd crash on the sofa of a party I hadn't been invited to. Anything to stay out of the house.
No one really looked for me.
One night, I had just about had it. I stopped my girlfriend, Anna, from getting her stuffing kicked in by some anti-semites. A story I'm sure you've heard. And I was hanging around at the school a bit past dark, they left it unlocked for the kids who had clubs to go to, and I roamed around the building. There were a couple of bands geeks playing their instruments, the sound of a tuba being the only noise among the empty school.
I made my way into the gymnasium, where all the science fair projects were spread about. And I saw Adam's. The contraption was small. Delicate. He'd explained it to me dozens of times, though it never did quite make sense to me. It had a large metal box at its base, with a small adjustable tray at its center, meant for animal blood. Atop the metal base, there were two probes that extended outwards, each with small containers at either end, the containers meant to be filled with liquid Calphecite. In its liquid state, Adam told me, Calphecite had properties that seemed to warp reality to it-- or, more accurately, its controller's will. He went on to explain that the fact that my being born on a planet entirely made entirely of the anomaly could be a reasoning for my strange cababilities.
I'd always detested this notion. When Calphecite was a solid, it would make me maddeningly ill. Why would the source of my power make me so ill?²
When activated, the device would first heat the animal blood to the point of evaporation, before releasing it into the air. The two arms would rapidly rotate in a circular motion, a rotating whirr that felt particularly memorable to me. A frequency would be omitted from a speaker, one specifically designed to shatter the glass around it. The spinning cauldron of vapors would create a small tornado within the air, before ultimately sucking it up into a vial within it. It was there that the vapors would be cooled into a liquid that could be injected into a syringe.
"It would change the world," Adam said. "Humans, while the superior species, have yearned for abilities only the animals had. The impossibly long lives of turtles, the webs of the spider, hell, we could even FLY!"
And there I was. Staring at the future. Staring at the machine that would be the death of me. What would send my brother, my entire world, off to a college on the other side of the country. At what was an imitation of my abilities.
I wanted to hit something. I wanted to hit it hard.
So I smashed it.
I pulverized the device, I tore its wires out from its heart. For the first time, I destroyed, and in that moment, it felt amazing. I twisted the circuitry, the shattered glass, the turbines, the motors, ALL OF IT, into one long spindly chord. Like a snake. And I left it there.
The next morning, the day of the science fair, was stressful.
Though I was still living on my own, I chose to show up to the fair.
I greeted my mother and father, who seemed less worried than disappointed, and made polite small talk with them, the school gymnasium rife with tension as I recalled the events of the night prior.
I prayed that when my brother pulled away the red sheet that covered the abomination I'd made of his crown jewel, it'd be good as new. That I'd had dreamed the whole thing. But I knew that wasn't true. My brother raced around, checking out every last project like a school child at recess.
The USUSA representative wasn't what I expected. It wasn't a stuffy old, probably balding man, but a remarkably charismatic young man, not much older than myself and Adam. He was needle thin, with glasses and curly hair, wearing a white button up with the sleeves rolled up, his button undone just enough for his chest hair to peak through. He approached Adam first, the two approaching us, still chattering.
"Ah, this must be your family!" He said. He had a thick Italian accent. Adam nodded. He introduced us each, hesitating for a moment at my name. He flashed our family a smile that was sharp and agile, offering me and my father rather firm handshakes. In the moments after he pulled away, I caught an expression on his face I could tell he hoped I wouldn't see. One that made it clear him and my brother had talked about our last talk.
My mother, a worry-wart, and my father, ever the capitalist, bombarded Enzo with questions about the school. Enzo reassured them. He told them that the school took in boys whose minds were too good to die in war, that it offered them a second chance. He spoke to their stories as Holocaust survivors, explaining that anti-Semitic laws would decrease Adam's chances of getting into a good college, that he'd end up shipped off to Vietnam, and how he was too pure of a soul to die in a war.
And he told them his story. About how his parents were very bad people, how his father Augustus operated some of the most horrible experiments imaginable on our people. On how they died, probably the CIA (Can he say that?), and left him the fortunes they'd made on blood.
On how this project, the USUSA, was about moving past that. About not letting his father's mistakes define his entire being.
And you can say what you want. You can call me an idiot. You can say my heart is too pure for this world. But to this day, even knowing the man he would become, I think Enzo meant every word.
When the red curtain was pulled away, and the serpentine abomination of my brother's ticket out of this town laid before us, I felt like my breakfast would find itself on my shoes. Adam froze up in the moment. Enzo looked crushed. No one knew what to do.
Eventually, though sympathetic, Enzo hugged Adam, told him that they'll be in touch, and then left. I wouldn't see him for another thirty years.
On the way home, I confessed to him. My father slammed on the breaks.
It all slipped out of me. I didn't just confess to destroying my brother's machine. I confessed to all of it. How trapped I felt. How unsure of my future I was.
My father had only two words to offer me: "Get out."
Though Anna Blumm’s protest is often regarded as a rather mundane-somewhat unsuccessful-protest, recently resurfaced photographs seem to depict a number of individuals, scattered amongst the crowd, wearing clothing that matches that of the sensibilities of 2024. One man even appears to be made up entirely of machines.
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