The reasons are varied: Sometimes he seems simply jealous, envious that a brother has come around in his lifetime who is — how can I put it? — superbadder than he will ever be. But my uncle, who works in Springfield, Ill., believes that Obama is just another politician with questionable ethics. He claims if the walls could talk about the real goings-on behind closed doors, Barack Obama would be in jail, and not in the White House.

I must admit that I see most of the mysterious alliances or inconsistencies that pundits, scholars and my uncle cite as Obama’s failures as signs that Obama decided to go to Washington to get things done. I have no delusions about American politics. I need Obama to be a complex freedom fighter, not a saint.

That said, black folks everywhere are still figuring out what to make of this new era. In the midst of all this, I set out to compile a musical State of the Union address for the 2010 Believer music issue that embodies the spirit of these times we’re living in. We’re huddled around the TV, watching “The Boondocks” and wondering what to make of a song (from Season 3) called “Dick Riding Obama.” Some of us certainly laugh, and afterward we talk. Some of us really do feel that gross sections of the black community, and black artists in particular, are ill-informed and exploiting Obama’s platform — they are, in essence, dick-riding Obama — while others in the community are pissed-off, wondering what white folks think, and imagine they’re happily whistling that little ditty. Perhaps, most important, some of us find it totally irresponsible for a black artist to make art that insinuates anything bad, dark or untoward about Obama and his legacy, while others feel it’s the black artist’s role to share his true feelings, to tell the truth to the world — right now! — precisely as he sees it, politics and niceties be damned.

What this new era means to the black artist is a particularly complex and powerful question. But suffice it to say that in the black fine arts there’s a lot of joy and optimism, good ol’ sex and love, as well as pain and anger, along with bickering and confusion. Post-racial joy versus black nationalist aggression? Check! “Hip-hop is dead!” diatribes? Claims that “hip-hop is alive and well and in the White House”? Check and check! Post-black scholarship? The dismal reality of the “State of the Dream” report? Check and check again! Which all takes us back to one of the age-old debates of any artistic community: art for art’s sake verus Art as Propaganda. Check!

The good news is that blacks are upbeat about racial progress in America for the first time in 25 years, even though Obama’s presidency hasn’t made it easier for black people to catch a cab in New York, and it has not yet in any demonstrable fashion changed our salaries, our employment opportunities, or the ability of trigger-happy police officers to end our lives for such unjust reasons as reaching for our wallets. Nevertheless, according to a recent Pew survey, in the past two years, 54 percent of blacks have suddenly decided that race relations have improved for the better. Black optimism about race relations? We are certainly living in magical times.

And that’s what I’ve set out to capture on this CD. The title alludes to a revelatory moment in my life when, as a 17-year-old, I first encountered “The People Who Could Fly,” by Virginia Hamilton, a retelling of an old African folktale, in which several African slaves fly up from the cotton fields and back to Africa. That story served as the foundation for Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” — and to this day that tale and Morrison’s novel have inspired me to believe that, despite adversity, or perhaps because of it, black people — Africans everywhere — have the magic and the superpowers they need not only to survive, not only to escape, but also to succeed and create more goodness in the world around them.

And that is the charge I believe all black artists need to be taking up right now. We need to be complex freedom fighters. There is serious work to be done, real discussion to be had in terms of art, culture, entertainment, technology and politics in America.

We need some soul scientists. Here at Wondaland we call ourselves thrivals, and we write manifestos — rebel yells and drum circles — disguised as dance songs.

Perhaps, more than anything, Obama’s historic success has finally given progressive artists the right to believe that imagination can inspire nations, and that even if the radio doesn’t broadcast it, and the television doesn’t televise it, the revolution is real — for the masses are arming themselves with headphones: dancing and paying attention.

—Chuck Lightning

1. “SELF!” DEEP COTTON

Deep Cotton consists of Nate “Rocket” Wonder and myself — the creative and production duo behind the celebrated “hardest-working android in show business,” Janelle Monáe. At Wondaland Studios, our home base in Atlanta, we’re currently working on a musical suite called “Runaway Radio.” We’re also finishing our first “emotion picture,” “I Have a Scream.” “Self!” was recorded in the Musiquarium at the Palace of the Dogs, and its existential lyrics about “medicine,” “maggots,” and “memories for sale” typify recordings of this period.

2. “HYDRA FANCIES,” OF MONTREAL

Kevin Barnes sent me the demo of “Hydra Fancies” about a year ago, and it turned my world upside down. It’s a quiet storm of “Camille”-era Prince mixed with the tender, pastoral quality of the Beatles circa “Revolver.” Then Barnes went out to L.A., hooked up with Jon Brion, and the song was reborn as a funk-soul masterpiece. Wherever you are in the world, please stop what you’re doing, turn in the direction of Los Angeles, and bow in gratitude to Jon Brion for the beautiful symphonic roar of stacked Yamaha CS-80 synths at the end of this track.

3. “DEPRAVED VALET,” ROMAN GIANARTHUR (FEAT. KEVIN BARNES)

The days at Wondaland start when Roman GianArthur sits down at the grand piano and plays his morning selection. Sometimes it’s Debussy, sometimes it’s Stevie Wonder. Other mornings, he plays songs like this one. Georgie Fruit (aka Kevin Barnes) might join him. How can one piano take so much funk?

4. “COME BACK LIKE SPRING,” CODY CHESNUTT

When Cody ChesnuTT arrived at Wondaland last fall, he got out of the car wearing a cape, a fishing hat and some soccer flip-flops, carrying a guitar. These days he’s working on transcendental soul songs: imagine the sort of compositions Marvin Gaye would write if he were living in the Florida foothills, tending to his wife and family, sitting next to a pond with his guitar, wondering what to make of what’s left of the world. This will surely be the vibe on Cody’s forthcoming album, “Landing on 100.”

5. “B.S. IN A TAMPON,” SAUL WILLIAMS

When Saul first came to Wondaland, in 2003, he had a great batch of songs that he had produced himself — the epic, brutal, truth-telling dancepunk songs that would become the masterpiece of an LP called, simply, “Saul Williams.” We were amazed. This demo is a holdover from that era — just an acoustic guitar and Saul, once again demanding that we think. Like Uncle Jam said: “It ain’t illegal yet.”

6. “COLD WAR (WONDAMIX),” JANELLE MONÁE

Strange things happen when you’re on the road. We were in Pennsylvania, getting ready to play a Janelle Monáe show at a private college. On the way to the gymnasium, someone in the van started playing “Songs in the Key of Life.” Instantly inspired, Nate Wonder pulled out his iPhone and started humming some new arrangements — and that’s how it happened: Under Stevie’s watchful eye, “Cold War” was reborn as a slow, simmering, funky soul anthem.

7. “IIETYS,” BLK JKS

With the World Cup in South Africa this year, it seems altogether fitting that we would take this opportunity to celebrate one of South Africa’s biggest musical success stories: Blk Jks. Hailing from Johannesburg, Blk Jks represents a new Africa — one that includes genres such as prog-rock, ska, punk and psychedelia among its many influences. (This particular song comes from their new EP, called “¡Zol!.”)

8. “CHAOS,” SPREE WILSON

Most of the innovative rappers I know have put down their microphones and rhyme books and picked up guitars and an affection for the Beach Boys’ melodies — and Spree Wilson is no exception. The genius of this song is the way it juxtaposes its heartfelt lyrics, folksy melody and acoustic guitars against the boom of an 808 — a songwriting innovation first perfected by Atlanta production houses such as Organized Noize and Earthtone III.

9. “REWIND,” SCAR

Scar is an underground Atlanta superstar: the kind of songwriter who can write a polished, immortal song in the course of a single day. As a vocalist, too, he can hold his own against the major artists he sells his songs to — a list that includes Usher, Jamie Foxx and John Legend. Scar’s forthcoming album is full of songs that sound like Phil Collins loitering in a seedy, outer-space strip club, telling the scantily clad girl across from him all about his broken heart.

10. “VELVET ROPE BLUE,” ROB ROY

“Velvet Rope Blue” is named in the tradition of old blues songs that contained either the word “blue” or “blues” in the song title, e.g., “Dead Man Blues,” “Black and Blue,” “Mood Indigo.” I wrote it as a summation of my Hollywood experience — hence the “velvet rope.” It’s not exactly a sad or happy song; rather, it’s a sorting-through of the tension that exists between the physical and the spiritual.

Among my primary influences are Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Lucian Freud, Vincent van Gogh, Carl Jung, Paul Gauguin, Mahatma Gandhi, André 3000, Francis Bacon, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, Nikola Tesla, Stevie Wonder, Francisco Goya, Michael Jackson, Gustav Klimt, Jodeci, Joseph Campbell, Pablo Picasso, Bootsy Collins, and Marcel Duchamp.

—Rob Roy

11. “HAVE YOU EVER MADE LOVE TO A WEIRDO?” HOLLYWEERD

Being from the ATL, I’m a big lover of alien love-anthems — songs like Goodie Mob’s “Beautiful Skin” and Outkast’s “Stanklove.” This underground Atlanta hit continues that powerful tradition. It will make you want to jump into a convertible, pick up the finest available specimen, and head to the most deserted spot you can find. Guaranteed.

12. “OFF THE GRID,” FEAR & FANCY

When they perform, Fear & Fancy wear masks or facepaint and sing songs about ancient queens, pointless dreams and solar-paneled Cadillacs. Based in the Bay Area, the group consists of the son of a Native American chief, the son of a minister, and the son of a revolutionary. The group’s main strength is that they’ve realized that great party music can also stimulate thought (see Fela Kuti, Funkadelic, et al.).

13. “TURN OFF THE TV,” GEORGE 2.0

“Turn Off the TV” suggests that every person is capable of doing the things they see folks doing on television — provided they’re actually able to turn the machine off. The music was developed and recorded with various improvised audio devices (note George 2.0’s use of the vocal “fauxguitar” in the place of an actual guitar soloist) and produced via remote control across several regions of the country as an answer to those who would defend their lack of productivity by bemoaning their lack of resources.

14. “BORN FREE,” M.I.A.

“Born Free” is less worldly than many another M.I.A. offering, or at least less third-worldly: Built around a Suicide sample, it’s the kind of straight-up breakneck hardcore that doesn’t inspire exoticism in white people so much as easy familiarity. But this feeling has a threat level pushed into the red: soundscape buffeted by echo and menacing enunciations, hostility turned toward the listener (“I throw this shit in your face when I see you”).

This unfamiliar familiarity dovetails with the murderous irony of the Romain Gavras video, which dramatizes the arbitrary racism of the supposedly antiterrorist regime via a police pogrom against “gingers,” i.e., very redheaded and very white people. The video is itself familiar to anyone who has seen Peter Watkins’s “Punishment Park.”

It is a way of acknowledging her growing hipster audience, and trying as best she can to confront them, I mean us, with the recollection that however badass we feel, we are indeed born free compared to most of the world — that any familiarity we have is a kind of privilege. It is a mean song, in short. Or it wants to be. If it fails, if it seems another kind of cynical stance-taking within the star-maker machinery, that is a sign of the machinery’s power to grind all our imagined resistance into the fine powder of the biz. And that is perhaps the most punishing fact of all.

—Joshua Clover

15. “ONE,” HOT HEAVY & BAD (JOI)

Joi Gilliam is the godmother of all Atlanta’s ATLiens. She’s our Isis, our Athena, our spaced-out Sphinx. She’s sung on every Outkast album, and on the missed-calls list on her cell phone you’d probably find names like Betty Davis, Sun Ra, and Eddie Hazel. We originally set out to include on this compilation a song from “The Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome,” her classic underground album, but then we found out she has a new band, a new sound, and some great new songs. This is one of them.

16. “COLD BOY,” TENDABERRY

This tune was originally a slow-burning soul number, but then Shane said to speed it up, so we did. Shout out to our current drummer, Thomas — the gentleman who drums on “Cold Boy” plays for Ruben Studdard from time to time. This is from our EP “Am I Still Illmatic?” We’ve got a new EP coming out soon called “Hit It!” Watch out for it on the streets…

—Tendaberry

17. “CLOSER 9½,” MOTHER NOVELLA

When I met Kellindo Parker, I discovered that he’s an incredible guitarist. Then I found out that his uncle is Maceo Parker (best known as James Brown’s saxophonist). It took me longer to learn that Kellindo also had a side project called Mother Novella, named after his maternal grandmother. His father was Kellis Parker Sr., the black scholar, lawyer, musician and freedom fighter, and the first black law professor at Columbia University. When his father passed away, in 2000, Kellindo composed this electric eulogy. Unlike the demo version, which dripped with anguish and loss, this finished studio version is almost celebratory — proof that over the years, Kellindo has moved to a different spiritual and emotional space.

18. “I NEVER CRY,” NINA SIMONE

The precise details of this recording are unknown, but it’s a cover of the 1976 hit by Alice Cooper and appears to be a rehearsal for a studio version that Simone cut in Montreux, Switzerland, in the spring of 1977. Simone’s longtime guitar player, Al Schackman, recorded the final version for an album that was to be produced by George Barrie, the onetime chairman of Fabergé fragrance company and creator of Brut cologne. Neither the song nor the record ever appeared, but Schackman believes this is a rough cut of Simone developing her rendition.

—Joe Hagan

“Could I have a word, Ms. Florida?” he said.

Ms. Florida stepped out to the hall. The students started to shout the way they would if they were riding a roller coaster. Brian Sullivan’s Sunfire honked and flashed its lights so as not to be left out of the hullabaloo.

“How long has there been a car parked in your classroom?” Mr. Dillard asked.

“Just this period,” Ms. Florida replied. “But I heard from Mademoiselle Jeanne that it sat in during French class as well.”

“Her Intro to French?” he asked.

“No,” Ms. Florida replied. “Advanced French.”

“Funny,” Mr. Dillard said. “That car doesn’t seem older than a ’98.”

“No,” Mrs. Florida said. “It’s a ’95. My brother had one just like it, in pearl blue.”

Mr. Dillard walked back to his office and rechecked the attendance sheets for the day. Sure enough, in each of Brian Sullivan’s classes, the teacher had crossed out his name and written in ’95 Pontiac Sunfire, white with red trim.

Mr. Dillard thought about calling the Sullivan home, but there had been a surprise locker check that afternoon, and three students had been arrested for felony narcotics. A fourth had been caught with a firearm on school grounds. One of the drug-sniffing dogs had left a trail of runny shit down the halls. The Pontiac Sunfire, Mr. Dillard thought, was a stable vehicle. He recalled a commercial featuring a cherry-red two-door convertible with a buxom brunette behind the wheel, a woman not unlike Ms. Florida. The commercial’s slogan had been We build excitement. Ms. Florida’s face glowed in his mind. Some things, he thought, were better left as they were. 

That first semester, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire struggled in the academic arena. Its French accent was a bit throaty, and without the ability to grip a pen properly it had a hard time finishing most of its composition assignments. On the sports field, though, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire dominated. In November the football team fitted it with a blue and gold bra, the colors of the Brookhaven Bearcats, and spray-painted a number on each door. Coach Tibbets found himself singling out the car during two-a-day practices for its effort in tackling drills. The greatest insult he could lob at his players became “You run like a goddamned Corolla.”

Against their rival, East High, Coach Tibbets strapped chains onto the Sunfire’s tires and gave the team a ferocious pep talk that had to be cut short due to the fumes from the car’s exhaust. That night, under the klieg lights of Welcome Stadium and the Steadicam of the local NBC affiliate, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire set a new record for touchdowns in a half (seventeen). It seemed to know exactly where to be to make a play. The senior girls painted its number on their lithe bellies in black shoe polish. A few college scouts were there as well, watching as the Pontiac literally drove circles around East High’s elite Tiger defense.

“Do you think it can learn the option?” a scout from Bowling Green State asked.

“Forget it,” the man from Ohio State said. He pointed to a smoldering puddle of darkness in the end zone. “We want three yards and a cloud of dust, not ten miles and an oil leak.”

But their critical gaze did not inhibit Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire’s good time. At the homecoming dance in the gym later that night, it deejayed a blistering set of trance music, opening its doors and blasting its radio until its battery wore down. Coach Tibbets popped the Sunfire’s hood to jump it alive again with his Ford Bronco, and all the girls gathered around to watch. Even Ms. Florida stopped making eyes at Mr. Dillard to sneak a glimpse at its greasy block. After two jolts, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire sent an arc of light sparking from its battery and set a wall of crepe-paper flowers aflame. The girls swooned.

At the after-party, Marty Greyerson, the captain of the team and leading receiver, shotgunned beers with the Sunfire in the garage while the rest of the team cheered. They had set the head of the Bearcat mascot on the Sunfire’s hood like a grotesque ornament. A few girls rested on the bumper as it revved its engine. The good times rolled.

As the night wore on, though, the crowd thinned. The other kids roamed the upstairs bedrooms of Marty’s house, raiding the liquor cabinet and stealing CDs. They pawed and sucked face. Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire tried to drive inside the house, too, but Marty’s mother had white carpet, and the Sunfire was still dripping green and black blots from the game. Plus someone had jammed a Doors cassette into its deck, and Marty could hear Jim Morrison’s mad voice grow louder when the Sunfire rolled closer.

By three, the garage had grown colder. The somber timbre of Jim Morrison echoed off the walls. The Sunfire was deciding whether it felt safe to drive when Betty Heller walked in.

Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire waited as she walked a slow circle around the edge of the garage. Betty Heller was a nice girl, but with the guys on the team she had a reputation. When she came to the headlights she laid a hand across its hood.

“I feel like…” she said, and paused. “If I could just drive you a bit, maybe. Your paint is so soft.” She pressed her left breast against the windshield.

Eventually Betty stroked the wiper until Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire turned on its emergency flashers and squirted a bit of blue washer fluid on Betty’s hand.

“It’s okay,” Betty said, caressing a dent on its hood. “Leave it there.” 

There were few corners of Brookhaven High where Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire did not leave an impression. In Mr. Janney’s Physics class, the Sunfire often volunteered for demonstrations, and once let Mr. Janney shoot a potato out of its tailpipe. It tutored Freshman Math in the courtyard before football practice, though most of its pupils struggled to decipher the elaborate system of honks and dings Mr. Ritzenfelter, the enrichment teacher, had laboriously cataloged into a kind of car alphabet. After gym, weaklings without pubic hair took refuge in the Sunfire’s trunk when it came time to shower. During Mr. Cappello’s Civics course, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire led a moment of silence for the victims of an earthquake in Malaysia.

But the sporting arena was its true stage. In the spring, it ran track and threw the shot put. At the district meet, over the protests of the other teams, it took first prize in the hundred-yard dash and ran the mile in just over three minutes. The hurdles proved a bigger challenge, but it placed a respectable fifth, and the Columbus Dispatch named it to the All-District team.

So it was no surprise that when votes were counted for the class valedictory speech, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire was the overwhelming favorite. Even Betty Heller, who had held a grudge when the Sunfire had stopped returning her calls, could see the logic.

“He’s touched so many lives,” she told her best friend Carol.

Still, it faced its fair share of detractors. One day, driving to Woodshop, the Pontiac overheard Brookhaven High’s guidance counselor, Jerry Whalen, speaking in his office with Principal Dillard. They had just received the results from the Pontiac’s employment-aptitude test.

“It says here it should look for a job in the engineering sector,” Principal Dillard said. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“It leaked a few dots on a Scantron,” Mr. Whalen said. “Now we’re supposed to believe it’s college material? Maybe a Grand Am — but a Sunfire? Its Kelley Blue Book isn’t even $2,400, and that’s not going anywhere but south. I mean, look, Harry — I’m not in the dream-dashing business, but come on. We’d be better off selling it to East High and buying that new couch for the guidance room.”

“It did show promise in Mr. Schneider’s art class,” Mr. Dillard offered, pointing to the mural of tire tracks on the wall outside. But Mr. Whalen rolled his eyes.

“You’ll be the fool of the Principals’ Ball, letting it speak at graduation,” Mr. Whalen said. “And then who will you come crying to, stinking drunk? You’re the one who let this car into everyone’s life. Face it, Harry: some cars have it and some don’t. Don’t build up its hopes that it could be something other than a Pontiac Sunfire.” 

In the end Mr. Dillard brushed this talk off. During commencement, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire walked with the other kids, its tassel secured tightly to its rearview, next to its pine-cone-shaped air freshener. It gave a rousing valedictory, according to Mr. Ritzenfelter, who translated it afterward and emailed it to the entire district under the subject heading THE GLORY OF KEYS. Principal Dillard taped a Certificate of Attendance onto the Pontiac’s back window, and all the teachers signed their names in soap.

Two weeks later, at the Principals’ Ball, Mr. Dillard danced with his wife while Ms. Florida blinked in his mind like an electric sequin swirling on the disco ball. The other principals called him “VTec” and made childish vrooms behind him when he walked to get punch. That night he sat hunched over the telephone in his dark kitchen, speaking in hushed tones to Ms. Florida about how it was her soft shoulders he’d wanted to rest his cheek against. But she had other worries on her mind. She had gotten a flat coming out of the teachers’ lot that afternoon and had sat there crying for hours. Instead of changing the tire she had written a note to Principal Dillard’s wife. Whenever she felt guilty she did this, he knew; she used it as a way to level them both. The notes were never mailed. With the confession written, she always said, there was no reason to lie anymore.

“I just sat there with grease on me and felt like I would never come clean, Harold,” she said.

“About the affair?”

“No,” she said. “That car. What kind of world have we sent him out into?”

“The car?” Principal Dillard said. “I don’t know. You’re just upset. You always get depressed after graduation. But come August it’ll be just the same. The excitement will build again. We’ll build the excitement together, Jan.”

“Stop with the fucking commercials,” Ms. Florida said. 

In the fall, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire enrolled at Ohio State and tried to walk onto the football team, but the campus was enormous and not at all impressed with the fantastic abilities of cars. It wasn’t strange to see a microwave cart doing shuttle runs on the lacrosse fields by Lincoln Tower, or to catch the tail end of a juggling performance by the Manda, a double-jointed half-man, half-panda who entertained all comers on the corner of High and 15th. Before the Saturday-morning tailgate at Triangle House, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire watched its roommate Charlie and his pledge brothers construct a metallic Holstein that shit stadium mustard and suckled actives with Coors Light from its teats. The Sunfire did a few doughnuts on the front lawn, but the brothers tired of those antics quickly. When it came time to go to the game, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire couldn’t fit through the turnstiles at the Horseshoe and ended up giving its ticket away to a scalper. 

The Sunfire never really felt comfortable among the Buckeyes. It was hard to move around most of the hallways on campus, which had been remodeled in the late sixties based on a narrow, labyrinthine floor plan designed purposely to discourage sit-ins. After a month of frustration, the Pontiac stopped getting its oil changed. One morning it awoke in a pool of its own transmission fluid and Charlie reported it to the RA.

“That leak ruined my DVD player,” Charlie testified at the dorm hearing. “And I think it’s wearing my best polo shirt without asking.” He held a tartan plaid shirt up for the jury to see. “That’s oil on the collar. I can smell it.”

Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire didn’t wait to hear the verdict. After the fall break, it parked in front of the Sullivans’ house back in suburban Columbus and didn’t return to campus. But Brian Sullivan, who had spent the past year studying to be a peripatetic, had long ago stopped thinking of it as his car. He left its keys on a hook in the kitchen cupboard near the oatmeal and went east to study under a Sufi mystic in Vermont.

Sometimes the Sunfire took rides past the high school. Once, when it tried to enter the front door, two security guards it didn’t recognize demanded to see a visitor’s pass. The Sunfire honked for Principal Dillard, but Principal Dillard was no longer there to greet it. It was only Mr. Ritzenfelter, who was passing by on his way to lunch, who averted a greater misunderstanding by explaining that Mr. Dillard had shamed himself and the school by cheating on his wife, and had resigned. Since then there had been several bomb threats, and now no one could enter the building without a guest pass. The Sunfire backed down the stairs and sat humming in neutral until the security men finally threatened to tow it off school property. 

In the spring, a reckless cousin of Brian’s borrowed the Sunfire one night and drove it to HempFest ’02, somewhere near the Buckeye Lake amphitheater, where a huckster convinced him to trade the battery for a bag of low-grade marijuana. The huckster spent the rest of the day selling electrical shocks from the battery to stoners, who jerked and moaned against a background of seamless guitar arpeggios echoing off the smoky hillside. Powerless and distraught, Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire managed to roll down into the woods near a meth shack. A drifter or two used it as a bathroom, or a place to get high for while. One night a mutt with pups burrowed under the driver’s seat and shook through the cold dark hours. Sparrow shit painted the Sunfire’s windshield white. The junkies sold the springs from its seats and used the foam to start fires in the rain.

A year passed, and the police raided the meth shack. The city towed the Pontiac back to Columbus and left it in the impound lot under the 315 overpass. The car sat parked next to an old Dodge Dart for two months, until it was auctioned to a retired nun who drove it a hundred miles a year, all in the same circuit: from her home to the Kroger to Saint Agatha’s and back home again. After one trip she left a carton of milk in the trunk for several weeks and the kids in the neighborhood started calling Brian Sullivan’s Pontiac Sunfire the “Vomit Comet” because of the musty smell. When they notice it now, it’s only to toss rocks at its side or grind their skateboards on its bumper, unaware of that year at Brookhaven when it was king. Such is the fate of cars.

Mr. Hibma knew he could teach for all eternity and it still wouldn’t feel natural. He was a geography teacher but he didn’t teach the subject of geography. He lectured about whatever he felt like and left the memorizing of topographical terms and state capitals to the kids. They had books. They had exercise manuals. If they were smart and curious they’d end up knowing a lot, and if they were dumb they wouldn’t.

“Semifinal round,” the kiss-ass announced.

Mr. Hibma listened as a boy named Vince who was known for giving out bubble gum tried to differentiate Asian countries.

“There are a lot of people crammed together,” Vince said. “Short people?” He drummed his fingers, searching. “Not the one with the hanging ducks.”

The kiss-ass called time up. Today’s game was something akin to “The $10,000 Pyramid.” It was new to the kids. They’d never heard of “The $10,000 Pyramid. “

Mr. Hibma said, “Let me help. This is a country full of off-white folks who smile funny, eat raw fish, and wear the hippest shoes.”

All the kids stared blankly except Shelby Register, who said, “Japan.”

“Correct. I wouldn’t trade you kids for all the tea in… Shelby?”

“China,” she said.

Mr. Hibma sometimes viewed himself as a character in a novel. At the age of twenty-nine, he’d already experienced three things that mostly only happened in books. (1) As an infant, he’d been stolen from the hospital by a nurse. The duration of the abduction had been six hours and he’d been unharmed, but still. (2) He had unexpectedly inherited money. It was only $190,000 and he’d blown it in two years traveling around Europe, but still. (3) He had chosen his permanent residence by throwing a dart at a map. There hadn’t been a town where the dart had stuck, but there weren’t many towns in Citrus County, Florida. Citrus County was a couple hours north of St. Petersburg, on what people called the Nature Coast, which Mr. Hibma had gathered was a title of default; there was nature because there were no beaches and no amusement parks and no hotels and no money. There were rednecks and manatees and sinkholes. There were insects, not gentle crickets but creatures with stingers and pincers and scorn in their hearts. There was the smell of vegetation, every plant blooming outrageously or rotting by the minute. There was a swampy lake and a complex of aging villas surrounding that lake, and one of these villas was now Mr. Hibma’s home.

Teaching had been the only job available to him, and for a while it was amusing, another lark, but now he’d been doing it a year and a half. It was February. It was Thursday. It was fourth period. Mr. Hibma was sick of skinny, smelly, hormone-dazed kids staring at him and lying to him and asking him questions. He was sick of their clothes, their faces. And the teachers were worse. Mr. Hibma did his best to keep to himself–ate in his classroom, avoided heading clubs or committees, kept all his discipline in-house instead of dealing with the office, and kept away from “7th hour,” which was what the younger teachers called meeting at a Mexican restaurant Friday afternoon and getting drunk.

Despite failing to name their semifinal nation, Vince and his partner had advanced. Their opponents had broken a rule by using hand gestures and had been disqualified. It was Vince’s team against Shelby and Toby. Shelby was the smartest student Mr. Hibma had, and Toby, well, smart wasn’t the word. Cunning. Maybe he was cunning.

Shelby knew a lot about stand-up comedians. She had memorized the acts of Bill Hicks, Dom Irrera, Richard Belzer–nobody new, just stand-ups from years ago. She knew where these guys had gotten their starts and what jokes they were known for. She knew a lot about a lot of different things–literature, illnesses. Also, Mr. Hibma had noticed, Shelby seemed to want to be a Jew. She used words like meshugana and mensch and had brought matzo ball soup for ethnic food week and the days she missed school with a cold or stomachache were always Jewish holidays. Shelby lived with her father and maybe a sister in a little ranch house a stone’s throw from the school. Her mother had died a couple years ago.

And Toby, denizen of detention, breaking rules in a way that seemed meant to reach a quota. There was no joy in his misbehavior, no rage. He didn’t have friends but didn’t get picked on. Neither of his parents were around. He lived on a big piece of property with his uncle.

Vince and his partner identified Morocco in seven seconds. Shelby and Toby had to beat that. Shelby trained her eyes coolly on the card. When the kiss-ass gave the signal, she said, “Where Bjork is from.”

“I’ve heard of Bjork,” said Toby.

“You’re not allowed to talk,” said the kiss-ass.

“Then how am I supposed to answer?”

“It was named to make people think it wasn’t an inviting place to settle,” said Shelby.

“You’re allowed to guess countries,” the kiss-ass told Toby. “You’re not allowed to make comments.”

“Shitland?” Toby offered. “That doesn’t sound inviting.”

“Time,” blurted the kiss-ass.

Mr. Hibma informed the class that he’d gone to a flea market that past weekend and found a man selling movie posters for a dime each. He’d purchased three hundred. From here on out, these would serve as prizes. He presented Vince with “Midnight Run” and handed Shelby “The Milagro Beanfield War.”

“Let me get this straight,” Vince said. “First place is a poster and second place is a poster?”

Mr. Hibma picked up a few stubs of chalk and shook them in his hand. “If Vince and Toby were gentlemen, they’d let the ladies keep the prizes.”

“I’m not a gentleman,” Toby said. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a gentleman.”

The lunch bell rang, ending the discussion and prompting a swift and sweeping exodus from the room.

“By the way, Toby,” Mr. Hibma said. “You’ve got detention tomorrow afternoon for cursing.”

Toby looked toward the ceiling a moment and then gave a dispassionate nod. Detention was a part of his life he’d come to terms with.

The gas station. Scant light scarring the sky. Toby planted his feet and took a full breath, the air tart with petroleum. He saw the pay phone over near the air and vacuum. He was as weak as ever. Anything could make him weak–the wrong smell, the wrong tint in the sky, thinking about all the dragging afternoons he’d endured in his lifetime and all the afternoons to come. He was addicted to petty hoodlumism. He rested what was left of his soda on the metal sill, picked up the phone, dropped in coins, and dialed a number at random. A man with a Northern accent answered and Toby asked him if he believed his life was worth a damn, if he honestly believed anyone liked him.

“Who is this?” the man said, eager, like he got prank calls all the time.

“Nobody you’d understand,” Toby told him.

“Pay phone,” the guy said, apparently reading his caller ID.

“At the Citgo,” Toby said.

“The Citgo? Tell you what, smart guy. I’m coming up there and I’m going to bash your brains in with a softball bat. How does that sound for a prank?”

“That would kill me, or at least do me grievous harm. That’s what my uncle used to say, that he was going to do me grievous harm.”

“I wish he had. It might’ve helped.”

“A softball bat?”

“I use it for softball. I guess it’s the same as a baseball bat.”

“You’re just saying you’d do that,” Toby said. “You really wouldn’t. You wouldn’t murder a fourteen-year-old kid.”

“I don’t know,” the guy said. “I think I might this time.”

“Trust me, you’d think better of it. You’re not like me. An idea strikes me, I’m helpless against it.”

“The Citgo on Route 50?”

“That’s the one.”

The guy hung up. Toby looked at the phone in his hand then let it dangle by its cord. He slurped his soda until it was only ice and left the cup on the ground and walked the woods’ edge. He found a spot to enter the tangled trees, angling toward Uncle Neal’s property. He was taking the long way, out by the hardwoods, so he could check on the bunker. He wasn’t going in. He only went in when he wanted to stay down for a long time. He liked to walk by, to see that the bunker was undisturbed. He didn’t know whose property it was on. He’d been through that part of the woods a hundred times before he’d found it, a hundred times walking right past the bunker as he tromped through that hard-duned no-man’s-land jumbled kittycorner to Uncle Neal’s property. The bunker, with its ancient boards pushed in and cracked by tree roots, with its stench of hands and tarnish, with its muddy, mushroomed hatch door which had opened with a moist whiff and then a deafening silence. The bunker was from some terrible time, maybe not so very long ago but a different terrible time than the one Toby was in, a terrible time that had come to an end, one way or another.

Toby had a folding chair down there that he’d dragged from another part of the woods, and matches and candles and water. When he went down, he did nothing. Toby believed the bunker had a specific purpose for him, and he wasn’t going to make a move until he parsed out what that purpose was. He wasn’t going to hoard dirty magazines or fireworks or pretend he was camping. He didn’t do a thing but sit in the chair and smell the smells. Sometimes he smelled vinegar. Sometimes the scales of fish. And each time he left, each time he finally climbed out, he felt that the bunker was sad to see him go. He felt he was leaving the bunker lonesome. Maybe nothing terrible had happened in Toby’s bunker. It was one room, tidy in its way, plain. It could’ve been used for simple food storage and nothing else, back before refrigerators, back when the Indians were running around. Maybe this was a place for old-timey rednecks to keep their alligator meat away from vultures.

Another week of school had passed, more quizzes and study halls and, in the case of Mr. Hibma’s class, more games. Shelby wasn’t the new kid anymore, and she was grateful for that. She’d settled in and was more or less slipping through the days. People had their own problems. Shelby had been fooled about Florida, but that was okay. She wasn’t the first. She’d imagined a place that was warm and inviting and she’d gotten a place that was without seasons and sickeningly hot. She’d wanted palm trees and she’d gotten grizzly, low oaks. She’d wanted surfers instead of rednecks. She’d thought Florida would make her feel glamorous or something, and there was a region of Florida that might’ve done just that, but it wasn’t this part. It was okay, though. It was something different. It wasn’t the Midwest. It wasn’t a place where you could look around and plainly see, for miles, that nothing worthwhile was going on. Shelby would travel to better places when she was older, when she could chart her own course. She’d go to India and France. Shelby could see the mornings of her future, the foreign pink sunrises.

The sunrise this morning, in Citrus County, had been the color of lima beans. It had been a color you might see under peeled-off paint. Shelby had stuffed one pocket of her army pants with bagels, and into the other pocket she’d slid a shallow, lidded bowl full of lox. Once she and her father and her little sister had boarded the boat and snapped the straps of their lifejackets, Shelby spread her brunch feast, complete with sliced tomato and capers and cream cheese. They’d rented a pontoon boat and planned to cruise the spring system of Citrus County until they saw a manatee. They’d been told they could swim with the manatees if they liked. Manatees had no natural defense other than size, and that very size got them stuck in canals at low tide and cut up by boat propellers. The man who rented the boats had explained all this from beneath the brim of a blue ball cap adorned with the words IDLE SPEED, ASSHOLE! The man said Citrus County never got hit directly by a hurricane and, in his personal opinion, that’s why the manatees had chosen this spot.

Shelby’s father, a man with limp hair that parted and re-parted as the wind blew, a former boxer who spoke with an accent that could’ve come from anywhere, was always trying to expose his daughters to new things–new foods, new terrain, new ideas. He felt he had to be twice the parent, Shelby figured. And he was. Shelby did not feel deprived.

Shelby’s sister Kaley had brought along her book about Manny the Manatee. Immediately after breakfast, Kaley stowed the book under a seat, along with her precious watch that always read 3:12 and the rest of the orange juice. Kaley would soon turn four. She looked up at Shelby, displeased that Shelby had seen her stash spot. This was something Kaley did lately–hoarded. She wore, as always, socks but no shoes.

After Shelby had cleaned up the remains of the bagels and lox, her father puttering them out into the deep water, she took out her vocab words. She had the definitions memorized. This week the theme was bureaucracy. She wanted to go through the whole semester without missing one word of one definition.

“You’d like my word from yesterday,” her father said. “On my calendar at work: poshlust. It means bad art. It’s Russian, I think.”

Shelby folded the paper in her hands and slipped it into her pocket. “Mr. Hibma told us about that. Poshlost. We had that for a word. It means more than bad art. Means bad art that most smart people don’t know is bad.”

“Like what?”

“Mr. Hibma doesn’t give examples.”

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t feel he needs to prove his statements. He feels that examples are petty.”

“Well, his poshlost sounds like elitism to me.”

“Mr. Hibma wishes elitism would come back into style.”

“I met that guy,” Shelby’s father said. “He’s one of those cool pessimists.”

“Dad,” Kaley broke in. “Will the manatee bite me?”

“No, the manatee loves you.”

“Is he sleeping?”

“He might be.”

“Where are we going?” Shelby asked.

“Not a clue.”

Shelby’s father had steered them down a river which had rapidly tapered into a house-lined canal. They approached a cul-de-sac. Shelby’s father put the boat in reverse to avoid hitting a dock, then began to execute a three-point turn. The boat was unwieldy. An old man came out into his backyard in order to stare at Shelby’s father as his three-point turn became a five-point turn, a seven.

“Thanks for your concern,” Shelby’s father shouted.

The man wagged his head. “There’s a sign,” he squawked. “At the mouth of the canal.”

Shelby’s father righted the boat and they headed back out to the main confluence of springs, past moss-laden oaks and palm trees that grew out of the ground sideways. They rounded a bend. The sun was out, warming the aluminum frame of the pontoon boat and the damp turf that covered the deck. Kaley, socks soaked, padded over and leaned on Shelby’s leg.

Shelby closed her eyes and let the breeze tumble over her. She knew her family was getting by in the way people like them got by. They were making it. They did things on the weekends. Their moods went with the weather. In Indiana there were proven methods for dealing with misfortune–certain types of foods and certain types of get-togethers and certain expressions. Here Shelby’s family was on its own, and that had been the whole point of coming here. There were things to do and they had to go find them and do them.

Shelby breathed the mild stink of the weedy water and soon her mind wandered again to Toby, a boy in her geography class. He’d been her trivia partner this past week. Shelby felt tingly, thinking of him. Or maybe it was the sun. She understood that her attraction to Toby was clichéd. She was considered a good girl and he a bad boy. There was a reason why it was clichéd, a reason why girls like Shelby, through the years, had become infatuated with boys like Toby. Regular boys were boring. There wasn’t a way the regular boys could make her feel that she couldn’t feel on her own. And Toby had calves like little coconuts and long fingers and his hair and eyes were the flattest brown. He wasn’t in a clique. It seemed there was something about him you couldn’t know right away. Shelby wanted his hands on her. She wanted to smell his hair. She wanted him to give her goose bumps. There were a lot of things Shelby wanted to do and she was pretty sure she wanted to do them with Toby.

The movement of the boat jostled Shelby. The waterway was opening up, ripples turning to waves, saltwater fishing boats speeding this way and that. The pontoon boat rocked. A pelican flew low over their canopy, its wings bellowing against the air, its crusty pink eyes narrowed, and Kaley squeezed Shelby’s leg.

“That’s a channel marker,” Shelby’s father said. “We’re going out to the Gulf.”

He waited for a break in the traffic and pulled a struggling U-turn, the waves clapping against the bottom of the boat. The engine was doing everything it could.

Shelby heard familiar voices and turned to see a couple of popular girls from her school wearing bikinis, sprawled on the front of a gleaming white boat. The boat was anchored. They waved as Shelby passed. They were eating pineapple.

“I can’t thank you enough for not being slutty,” Shelby’s father told her. “Not that I’m counting my chickens. There’s time yet.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You’ve got character. You don’t try and impress people.”

“I’ll say ‘you’re welcome’ again and we can leave it at that.”

“Maybe I’m doing something right,” he said.

Shelby’s father drove the boat and patted Kaley’s head, guiding them past birdbathed back yards, past mangrove stands full of cranes. They ended up back near where they’d rented the boat and started off in yet another direction, down a wild-looking river shaded by vines. Kaley retrieved her book from under the seat and studied it.

Shelby was still thinking about the girls on the boat. She had chosen not to be one of them. In October her family had moved to Citrus County from Indiana and Shelby had immediately, halfway through her first day of school, been granted membership in the popular gaggle of girls. She was subjected to an onslaught of sleepovers, pool parties, and laps around the outlet mall. This lasted a month, at which time these girls could no longer deny that Shelby was uninterested in makeup, basketball players, the marital intrigues of celebrities, who would take whom to the dance. She didn’t like the same magazines they did, didn’t care to diet. She sometimes read books for pleasure.

After detention on Monday, Toby headed for the track-and-field tryouts. A bunch of other kids were going too. This was the kind of thing kids did. Toby walked past the faculty parking lot, the garbage bins. He rounded the trailers. There was Shelby Register, sitting on a bench at the little playground, reading a newspaper. The middle school had once been an elementary school, so it still had this kiddie playground and low water fountains you almost had to get on your knees to drink from.

Toby took a moment to watch Shelby. She wasn’t as transparent as the other kids at Toby’s school. He sort of hated her because everything was easy for her, but somehow she felt like an ally. She had misery in her and she didn’t give it away. She kept it and believed in it. She was like Toby; she was fine with whatever people thought she might be, fine with being underestimated. She was pretty without looking like all the other pretty girls. She wasn’t ashamed of being smart.

A toddler with red hair was on the swing, kicking her feet and tucking them. Toby walked up beside Shelby and for a moment she didn’t notice him. He wasn’t sure why he was stopping, wasn’t sure what he wanted to happen. Shelby had crisp tan shorts on instead of her old army pants. Her legs were ghastly white. She had wisps of hair falling over her ears. Shelby thought she was better than everyone else, and maybe she was right. She wasn’t better than Toby, though, because Toby wasn’t playing the same game.

She lowered her paper. “You can sit if you want.”

Toby’s face was to the sun. The sky was still, empty except for one immovable cloud that looked like a boulder. Toby stepped in front of the bench and lowered himself onto it.

“They’re going to eliminate pennies.” Shelby folded the paper and tucked it under her leg.

“How?” Toby said.

“Just pennies, for now.”

“So no more of those little trays: leave a penny, take a penny.”

“Those will go to museums.”

Toby grunted. He looked at the little girl on the swing.

“That’s my sister,” Shelby said. “We live through there. You can almost see our house.”

Toby looked at Shelby, then back at her sister.

“How was detention?”

“Same as always,” Toby said. “I won.”

Shelby’s sister was swinging higher and higher, getting the chains parallel to the ground. This didn’t seem to make Shelby nervous.

“Do you watch Comedy Central?” she asked.

“I don’t have cable.”

“Is your uncle a hippie?”

“How do you know I live with my uncle?”

“Everyone knows that.”

Toby squinted. The sun seemed aimed at him. “His income is up and down,” he said.

“They had this guy doing this stellar bit about Hot Pockets.”

“I eat those,” Toby said.

An active old couple peddled by on mountain bikes. They waved to Toby and Shelby, who watched them until they rounded a thicket.

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Kaley.”

Kaley held a big toy watch. She wasn’t wearing shoes.

“Are you going to be late to tryouts?” Shelby said.

“I’ll make the team. Nobody else wants to pole vault. It’s not even supposed to be a middle school sport.”

“Then why is it?”

“The superintendent. He instated it after he married this lady from Finland.” Toby couldn’t keep his eyes off Kaley. Her hair was glinting like a fishing lure.

“He did it for love,” Shelby said. “He made pole vault a sport for love.”

The cloud wasn’t like a boulder anymore. It was like a scoop of something. It slid in front of the sun and Toby could see. There was nothing to look at but Shelby and her sister, her sister’s filthy feet.

“Would you recommend that island with all the monkeys on it?” Shelby said. “I have to find outings for my family. What’s left of it.”

“What island with monkeys on it?”

Shelby tipped her chin. “Down by Homosassa Springs. Monkey Island?”

“I don’t go on outings.”

“You’ve never even heard of it?”

“Not till now.”

“Well, it’s there. They filmed a Tarzan movie and left the monkeys.”

Toby shrugged. He didn’t care about movies or monkeys. He watched Shelby adjust herself on the bench, then push the newspaper farther under her.

“If you ever want to kiss me,” she said, “not that you currently want to or anything, I would be okay with that.”

Toby felt panic wash through him. He tried to nod.

“I wasn’t telling you to kiss me. In fact, don’t. It would be too weird now. I said that for future reference is all. Just so you know.”

Toby stood up from the bench, finding his balance. “Future reference,” he said. He stumbled getting back to the sidewalk.

Mr. Hibma managed to stretch genealogy presentations into a three-day affair, giving him a break from lecturing and from compiling trivia fodder. There were only a few kids left who hadn’t dispensed the uneventful lives of their recent ancestors. Mr. Hibma was seated low behind his desk, his dusty computer looming near. He’d prohibited the use of the Internet in his class. The students were not allowed to research any presentations online. He was sick of it, the Internet.

Mr. Hibma looked up and called on Shelby. She never volunteered for anything because she didn’t want to be a kiss-ass, but she was always prepared. She got up and spoke about her mother’s family. Her great-grandparents had owned a cane shop, back in Belgium. Their daughter, Shelby’s grandmother, had come to visit the States, fallen in love with a history teacher, and never returned to Europe. She and the history teacher had hosted a series of foster children before finally conceiving Shelby’s mother. One of the foster children had become famous in art circles, a woman named Janet Stubblefield who had dropped out of high school to become a hippie. She became expert at constructing mobiles out of old boots, and against her will she developed a following. People from all over began making art out of shoes. The whole business put Aunt Janet off. She moved to rural Tennessee and became a hermit and died in middle age. She had told everyone to stay away, that it was important to her to die alone.

Shelby dropped her note cards in the trash and sat down, light applause playing about the room. She hadn’t mentioned her mother. She’d chosen her mother’s side, but she’d cut the history short. A kid could really get sick of having a dead parent, Mr. Hibma imagined. These kids were all sad or crazy, and most of them had reason to be.

Mr. Hibma asked for the next presenter and a girl named Irene, who’d worn a sweater set and heavy makeup, got up and said some things and retook her seat. Toby was next, the only one who hadn’t gone. He’d chosen his father’s family, the family whose name he bore: McNurse. They’d moved from Ireland to Canada at the turn of the century, a well-off family who’d chosen to immigrate to Canada instead of the United States because it was harder to get into Canada. Most of them had died in the forties in an accident. An avalanche.

Mr. Hibma was sure Toby was lying. Toby was testing Mr. Hibma, seeing if he would call him on his fake history, but there was also a chance Toby didn’t know a thing about his father’s family. Toby may never have met the man. Or maybe Toby’s history was nothing anyone would want to know. Maybe making a history up was the wisest option. Well, Mr. Hibma would give Toby an A+.

“My father was a snake researcher who drove a big Cadillac,” Toby said. “He met my mother while driving across the country. He only slept with her because he’d promised himself he’d sleep with a woman every night of his road trip, and she was the only woman not spoken for in Farmington, New Mexico.”

Toby sat and Mr. Hibma replaced him in front of the class. He told the kids to give themselves a hand, then to line up and receive a poster.

“I’ve got ‘Mermaids,’” he said. “‘Fletch II.’ Except you, Thomas.”

Thomas, a kid with a widow’s peak whose parents farmed fancy tomatoes, gaped at Mr. Hibma.

“In your notes you had pages printed from the internet. I could see the site info at the top and bottom. You’ll be getting a C. Everyone else gets an A-. Toby, you get an A+. Best presentation of the year.”

On the way out of Mr. Hibma’s class, Shelby had whispered to Toby that she was going to find the old lost tennis court after school, that Toby should meet her there and keep her company, so once the final bell had sounded he headed out through the pastures behind the football bleachers. The tennis court couldn’t have been more than a mile away, but there was no trail. You had to walk through the pastures and then over a high spot in the swamp and then it was in among a bunch of spindly pine trees. It was in the middle of nowhere, a full tennis court.

When Toby arrived, the court was empty. He walked up to the fence. The surface of the court was cracked with weeds. The net was sagging. There was an aluminum bench with algae or something growing on it. Toby started as a ball flew over the fence and bounced into the corner. He turned and saw Shelby coming out of some high grass.

“I can tell you by the way you walk,” Shelby said. “Even with your hair short, I could tell it was you.”

Shelby was wearing sunglasses. They made it look like she had a hangover.

“What do I walk like?” Toby asked her.

“You have a hitch. You leave room in every step to change direction, to change your mind.”

“I hardly ever change my mind,” Toby said.

The sun was hitting Shelby. Her arms and legs were bony. It seemed strange that she could walk around and throw things, as bony as she was. Toby felt he was betraying himself, being out at this tennis court. Shelby seemed dangerous, like a trap.

“Help me,” she said.

She waded back into the tall grass and Toby followed. They dragged their feet and shook the underbrush and whenever Toby found a ball he handed it to Shelby and she threw it back over the fence. She seemed charmed that people used this court. Someone had dragged racquets and dozens of balls through a half-hour of Florida wilderness in order to play on a dilapidated court with a rotting net.

“People get really bored,” Toby said.

The two of them worked their way through the grass and then around some cypress knees. They found eight or nine balls, all new, bright in color and rubbery in smell. They looked absolutely fluorescent against the dingy court.

“A while back a millionaire lived in Citrus County,” Shelby said. “His mistress loved tennis, so he had this court built out in the woods so they could play in secret.”

“Wow,” Toby said. He knew this story was false. This tennis court, along with a half-built golf course Toby sometimes walked through, were remnants of an unfinished development. Nothing romantic. And he wasn’t going to tell Shelby but her mysterious new tennis balls were probably the work of drunken teenagers. Most mild mysteries in Citrus County boiled down to drunk teenagers.

They made it around to the opposite side of the court, where the pines were. Toby had no idea why they were doing this. They found a couple more balls and then when it seemed there were no more Toby spotted something down under some thick brush, down in a little ravine that must’ve been formed by a sinkhole.

Toby held onto a vine and lowered himself. He mashed a bush over with his foot and reached down and grasped the ball. He cleaned it of clumps of dirt and an insect or two, put it in his pocket, and climbed up to flat ground.

He presented the pale, bounceless orb to Shelby, and she didn’t hurl it over the fence. She held it in one hand and with the other she drew Toby in by the elbow. She was kissing him. Shelby’s mouth was moist and assertive and Toby could feel the world’s vastness. He knew there were oceans out there that made the Gulf look like a puddle. There were places covered in snow, places where people ate snakes for dinner, places where people believed that every single thing that happened in their lives was determined by ill-willed spirits. Shelby tasted like nothing. She smelled like freckles and she was making sounds, but she didn’t taste like anything. Toby didn’t know whether his eyes were open. His feet were planted and he was keeping his balance as Shelby leaned against him.

When Toby thought of his hands, he began to panic. The point of the kissing had been reached where Toby was supposed to do more, something with his hands. Shelby’s fingers were up under Toby’s shirt in the back. He could feel the old bare tennis ball rubbing his skin. Toby took a step backward and Shelby almost fell. He said he had to go. Shelby looked at him like he was a silly child.

That evening Toby skipped dinner and went to the bunker. He listened to his breathing and to busy drones that seemed to come from beyond the bunker walls but that also could have been coming from his mind. For a while, a tint of light came in from above, through a small vent, but once the sun set Toby couldn’t see anything. He had candles but he didn’t light one. And so he couldn’t see the big railroad ties that stood in each corner for support. He couldn’t see the spider webs or the pale roots that hung limply from the earthen walls. There was nothing down here but what you brought. Toby thought about the way some of the other kids had looked at him when he showed up for the track tryout. He thought about his hunger, which he could ignore until it went away. He thought about Shelby Register and her little sister, and about their dad who probably patted their heads all the time and watched them sleep and gave them five dollars for each good report card grade.

When Toby was in the bunker, he never knew how much time was passing. He heard voices sometimes, nothing he could understand. He heard whimpering. He heard static. It was all in his imagination. It took hours in the bunker for him to clear away all the chatter from school–blabbing teachers and gossiping classmates and orders from coaches and stupid announcements over the PA.

His back was stiff when he stood up from the folding chair. His sweat had dried on him. He wanted to know who else had been down in this bunker and who had built it. Toby had been meant to find it. Toby wasn’t another hard-luck case. He wasn’t another marauding punk. He’d been acting like one, thus far, but he was destined for higher evil and he could feel that destiny close at hand. He was more terrible inside than every juvenile delinquent in the whole county put together.

A couple of years ago, when I chanced upon a copy of Burt Britton’s “Self-portrait” — a priceless book of doodles that Britton, a former bookseller, had solicited in the early 1970s from Norman Mailer, Jorge Luis Borges, Margaret Atwood, John Updike and more than 500 other writers — I fondly recalled Ames’ booger doodles, and asked him to help me kick off a contemporary collection of self-portraits by talented creative people who may not be known for their drawing skills. Once again, Ames was game. Following are 20 self-portraits from a book we’re putting together at McSweeney’s.

– Brian McMullen

View the slide show

A brief interview with the director

McSweeney’s: You shot this on location at the South Pole. What in the world brought you there?

Chris Sheehy: The South Pole is the best site on earth for microwave astronomy. We were down there installing a telescope we built in the United States for looking at the early universe. Everyone in the video is a Ph.D. student in either physics or astrophysics, myself included. There are three different microwave telescopes represented by myself and the people in the video.

Tell us about the 300 Degree Club run.

I have never participated in the 300 Degree run, and this film documents a less extreme version of it. But usually in winter, the first day that the weather gets below -100 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s traditional to crank the sauna up to 200 degrees, stay in there for as long as you possibly can, and then run naked from the sauna, out around the Pole, for a total drop in temperature of 300 degrees. Thus the 300 Degree Club. For the last few years, it hasn’t dropped below -100, which is kind of unprecedented.

Which pole do you run around — ceremonial or geographic?

In the video they ran around both of them. But in the 300 Degree Club, almost no one makes it around the pole and back. It’s too cold. Although, one of the guys in the video — Justus Brevik — he wintered over at the Pole four or five years ago, and he’s a certified 300 Degree Club member.

Why would you ever do this?

It’s actually amazing how much there is to do at the South Pole, considering how remote it is. But when you’re there for three months, playing foosball every night, you have to start manufacturing your own fun.