capitalize their name and include the trademarked exclamation point. That their lawyers were so ferocious they’d even battled off a lawsuit brought by Scientology that claimed Next had stolen much of their theology and most of their biggest adherents. And that “the church” christened the ultraelite converts like Martin, who’d surrendered all their worldly possessions and enlisted for “ninety-nine lifetimes,” with names that combined their mother’s maiden name with their favorite meteorological phenomenon. Hence Stokely Blizzard. It was like figuring out what your porn-star name would be except with weather instead of pets.
As I’d told Dori, the fact that Next bordered on the farcical actually made losing Martin to it harder. So, no, Next would be getting no exclamation points from me.
At first the “stars” that Martin counseled and was photographed with were has-beens—pinwheel-eyed drug burnouts; sex addicts trying to look ashamed; duckbilled, eternally surprised plastic-surgery casualties. All of them caught in the act of rebuilding their careers with steel beams forged in the Next crucible.
After a few years of counseling and guarding has-beens and never-weres, Martin moved up to shielding the faces of currently working, B-minus-list actors on the make looking to move up. Or solid B-listers, maybe even a few A-minuses who were slipping off the list after a string of bombs. Actors appeared to be the ideal candidates for Next. These were people who dreamed of the chance to be whoever someone told them they needed to be. Hopefully the person doing the telling would be a director with a closetful of Oscars. But if Spielberg or Scorsese didn’t materialize, Next was always there, ready to tell the world’s most insecure humans precisely who they needed to be. And what Next told them all to be was a Nextarian.
Gradually the hidden faces behind Martin’s palm came to belong to celebrities who were seriously worth protecting: solid box-office earners, leads in popular television series, musicians with platinum albums. Finally, he and his palm protected the faces of some of the hottest stars in the world.
As if association with celebrities that blistering could ignite any chunk of matter they came into contact with, Martin himself eventually became a paparazzi target. I knew he had arrived the day I saw someone else’s palm, some other Next underling, shielding his face. Apparently Martin had risen high enough in Next that he required his own Swiss Guard stiff-arming the press and hiding him from view. It had been years since I’d come across a clear shot of his face.
So I collected the photos and made the Book of Palms for Aubrey, hoping that the fact that she shared genes with a father who could sell tabloids would register on some level. But mostly the palm photos confused her. By middle school, her only comment when a new one appeared was, “Weird.”
By that time, she had cut her ties with the fairy-winged Twyla and told everyone that I was “a pediatric nurse.” Like Dori said, Aubrey wanted to fit in, so I just stopped adding photos. Then she stopped mentioning him altogether, and, taking my cue from her, I did the same.
SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
My mom thinks I am insane for working in the attendance office for a fourth year. But attendance is like band. It is a place to be. Also, I like what you find out when you’re an aide. Such as who has an appointment every week with the orthodontist or the speech therapist. Also who has to go to AA meetings or check in with their probation officer. And, since I work fifth period, right after “B” lunch, and hand out tardy slips, I know who spends lunch getting high or having sex. It is a closed campus except for seniors with permission, so theoretically nothing like that can happen. But, as Twyla used to say, “That’s why God invented bathrooms.” And, in her case, Dumpsters, and prop rooms, and cars with tinted windshields. But then, Twyla was not ever what you’d call discreet.
Thinking about Twyla makes my heart hurt. I remember this one time in seventh grade when she called me up late Friday and asked if I would help her TP her house. Her own house. Twyla had gotten too weird for me by that time. She’d started cutting herself, and talked not about the tattoos she was planning to get, but the sleeves of tattoos she was planning to get. But even if we had still been friends, I wouldn’t have helped her. It made me too