29

NAME: HUGH WINKLEMAN

In the great encyclopedia of history, if you look up mass stupidity, this was the picture you'd see: twenty-six hundred kids dressed as hippies, crammed belly to belly in a high school parking lot, having a candlelight memorial for someone who I knew was just fine.

The idea to dress as Cap hadn't been part of Zach's original plan. Maybe it was the Halloween spirit, but the word had started spreading almost as soon as Zach and I had begun sticking up the flyers around the school. Picture it: the entire student body, both divisions, decked out in Day-Glo and beads—all except for one brain-dead pair wearing Mickey Mouse masks.

The candles had been Zach's idea. "We'll need the light," he'd told me on the way to the Dollar Store, but their effect was more than either of us could have imagined. Thousands of tiny flames glowing orange in the dark just screamed mourning. Dull flickering shadows reflected off somber faces. Eerie.

Zach. I'd spent most of my life either afraid of him, jealous of him, or just hanging there while he stretched the waistband of my underwear over a parking meter. We were never going to be best friends, but I had to admire the man. He was a genius! Not book-smart, but a master when it came to crafting his public image. Somehow, he had positioned himself as head mourner of the Anderson tragedy. Not bad, considering that just yesterday he was the villain of the school—him and me.

Okay, we deserved that. Setting Cap up at the pep rally was an awful thing to do, and I felt terrible about my part in it. Being angry at Cap was no excuse. I knew better than anyone what it was like to be a target for the Zachs of the world. A lot more than just my conscience was suffering. I was kicked out of the chess club for good. I had a month of detentions and a black mark on my permanent record.

And how's this for ironic: the only way to avoid being branded Cap's backstabber was to get myself embroiled in yet another scheme with the same Zach Powers.

Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life on this planet.

I approached Zach. "So now what? We're not just going to stand around all night, are we?"

"Chill," he said serenely, jiggling his Dixie cup to keep his candle from going out. "We're basking in our sorrow."

I was uneasy. "I don't know. A third of these kids are positive Cap's dead, a third have him in intensive care, and the rest are just here because everyone else is. The last thing we want to do is give people too much time to think."

"Good point," Zach agreed. He hoisted himself onto the payload of the school district's flatbed truck and stopped the tape on the boombox, which was playing "Here Comes the Sun." He took the karaoke mike and flipped the switch.

"Attention, everybody! Can I have your attention up here?"

Considering the size of the crowd, we were a quiet group, gathered in clusters, speaking in hushed tones—almost like this really was a funeral. It only took a few seconds before all eyes were on Zach.

"Thanks for coming. I know if Cap could be here, he'd thank you too. Cap Anderson was our eighth-grade president for just two months—two wild, fantastic months. Now he's gone, and the best way to celebrate his life is to talk about the way he touched our lives."

Then, before my amazed eyes, people began to push forward through the crowd and mount the flatbed, awaiting their turn at the microphone.

Naomi got there first. "I wasn't a nice person," she announced. "I was mean to Cap because I thought it would get me what I wanted. Then I started watching him. He showed me a whole different way to be. How to be sensitive and generous—and not just so people will say thank you, but because it's right." She drew in a tremulous breath, seemingly genuinely saddened that Cap would never return to our school. "I never even had a chance to tell him there's no Lorelei Lumley!"

Overcome, she gave up the mike to the seventh grader beside her. "I used to be really shy. I didn't have any friends," he confessed. "Then Cap let me work on the Halloween dance…"

I was blown away. One after another, these kids took center stage and poured their hearts out about how Cap had changed their lives.

"His tai chi class helped me lose eleven pounds…"

"I stopped picking on my little brother…"

"I started giving some of my cashier job money to charity…"

"Learning about the sixties helped me get along better with my grandparents…"

My mind was in a whirl. The kids at C Average wouldn't share their innermost feelings if you held a machete to their throats. We lived in constant terror of letting slip some personal or embarrassing detail. We went to incredible lengths to avoid looking vulnerable or uncool.

Yet here they were, lined up to spill their guts like this was an episode of Dr. Phil. Because Cap had made everything A-OK.

Well, I was the number-one victim around here. And suddenly, right in front of me was a golden opportunity to paint myself with the Cap Anderson brush that would make me A-OK too. I just had to get up there in front of the entire student body and join the fan club.

As I climbed onto the flatbed, I got my first sense of just how big this event had become. I knew the whole school was here, but now mature adults were starting to gather around the perimeter. The neighbors, probably. And passersby. Oh, no—it was Mr. Kasigi! I had to say my piece before our division's assistant principal shut the whole thing down.

I grabbed the microphone from a ninth-grade girl who insisted that tai chi had made her unbeatable at gymnastics.

"My name is Hugh Winkleman, and I was Cap's first friend at school." I experienced a brief moment of panic. I'd been so intent on getting the floor that I hadn't given a thought to what I should say. Eleven hundred faces peered earnestly up at me. This was no time to be timid.

If I was going to do this, I had to let it all hang out.

I bit down hard on the side of my mouth until I felt two giant tears well out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks.

"Cap Anderson was the greatest man it's ever been my honor to know. How are we ever going to get along without our eighth-grade president?"

I could see Mr. Kasigi pushing through the crowd. It was time to give this a big finish. This was my shining hour. Hugh Winkleman would be the school joke no longer!

I dropped the mike to the flatbed, raised both arms to the heavens, and howled, "Cap! You were too young to die!"

I could hear sobs breaking out all around me. And then a muffled but strangely familiar voice called, "Hugh—don't cry!"

I goggled. One of the kids in Mickey Mouse masks waded through the crush to reach the truck. He stopped just below me and pulled off the mouse head.

"See?" announced Cap Anderson. "Everything's okay! I'm not dead!"