The Troop

EVIDENCE LOG, CASE 518C

PIECE T-11 (Personal Effects)

Counseling Diary of Newton Thornton

Recovered from SITE T (34 Skylark Road, North Point, Prince Edward Island) by Officer Brian Skelly, badge #908

Dear Dr. Harley,

I’ll compose this like a letter, because I write a lot—I’ve got pen pals in Australia, England, and Dubuque, Iowa. Who doesn’t like opening the mailbox and finding a letter from a friend, even one you’ve never met in person?

So… a confession, huh? You think I keep things bottled up, and confession’s good for the soul. Right? I’d talk more if people—I mean the other kids at school—gave two cruds what I have to say. Most times they’ll just laugh, call me a nerd, a geek, call me fat, call me a nerdy fatty-fat geek (which is overkill, right? Nerds and geeks are pretty much the same…). So I don’t talk much, except to my teachers and my mom. And now you.

The thing is, you can be a different person in letters. On the Internet, too. Because there, you’re not YOU. Okay so yes, you are, but not the physical you. So not fat (it’s glandular), sweaty (it’s also glandular), weird (for North Point, anyway. I don’t like bow hunting or spearfishing or killing things, I’m too clumsy for stickball and I actually LIKE Anne of Green Gables… so yeah, weird!) and awkward and gawky and according to Ephraim Elliot sometimes I smell like rotten corn, like when you shuck an ear and it’s all black inside? (By the way, I hear you’re counseling Eef, too; you’re doing a good job—he hasn’t given me a Wet Willy, a Rooster Peck, or a Titty Twister in like a month.)

But online I’m not that person. I can be my very best self. According to Mom I’m a sensitive boy. Also, I’m a polymath, which means I know a little bit about everything (which, okay, IS nerdy). Online I can be my brain without my body.

So… the confession. Forgive me, Father… hah! Anyway, you won’t tell anyone. Patient-doctor confidentiality. I read about it.

A year ago my cousin Sherwood died. He lived in Manitoba. He fell asleep in a field and a combine ran him over. He tried to run but those combines are like forty feet of whirring blades. At his funeral the coffin stayed closed.

I loved Sherwood. We hardly got to see each other—we don’t have a lot of money (I don’t even know how Mom affords you) and Sherwood’s parents are farmers. But every summer they came for a visit. I’d take Sher to the ocean. No ocean in Manitoba, right? We got along great. When I told him a little nugget of info, Sher was genuinely interested.

We stuck to the out-of-the-way places, the ones only I knew. I didn’t want to run across any kids from school—they’d call me lardbucket or tub-a-guts. I was scared that if Sher saw that he wouldn’t like me anymore. Which wasn’t really fair to him. Sher would’ve helped me, because blood is thicker than water, right?

Sher was tall with wide shoulders and lots of muscle—farmboy muscles, he called them, laughing and telling me everyone had them back home, he wasn’t so special. But Sher WAS special. Handsome (I can say that about another boy, it’s not weird) and people just… they gravitated to him, is I think the word. Like a magnet drawing iron filings. Everyone wanted to be around Sher.

Then he died, a stupid unlucky accident, and everyone was so sad. The world had lost a great light—everyone said so. I wondered what they’d have said if it was me who died? I didn’t really want to guess.

After the funeral I dug out my box of photos. My mom bought me a Polaroid for my birthday and it got a lot of use. Mainly they were of Sher—I was the one snapping the photos, plus I don’t like how I look on camera.

I was going to put up a memorial wall. On Facebook, right? Something to remember Sher by. My idea, sincerely. But somewhere along the line it changed.

I scanned the photos, put them in a file on my computer. But instead of a memorial wall I… well, I created a person. I guess that’s what I did, yeah.

Alex Markson. The boy’s name. I don’t know where I got it from, but it seemed a strong name—it fit well with the photos. Alex Markson had Sherwood’s face and body. Alex Markson had my words, my interests. Alex was me and Sherwood, combined.

I put up the profile. I knew it was wrong. My heart hammered like a drum when Sher’s face went POP! up on the screen. It was… sacrilegious? I almost deleted it. Almost.

I started posting stuff. Nothing much at first. Just things that interested me—the stuff kids around here pick on me for. My words pasted to Sher’s body.

The super-weird thing is… Alex started to get friend requests. I mean, a LOT. People neither of us had met. Not weirdos either. Normal, cool people. Boys (and girls!) my age.

At first I was scared to accept them—I saw Sher up in Heaven, shaking his head—but after a while I did. People posted on my wall and I’d post on theirs, as Alex. Sher’s face bloomed like a flower on strangers’ Facebook pages.

But the thing is, Alex’s interests were mine. And people thought he was smart and funny and, well, COOL. Isn’t that weird? When I say those exact same things it’s nerdy, because people think I’m a nerd. Like, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So then—and this is really embarrassing—I sent some requests. To Max Kirkwood and Ephraim Elliot and Kent Jenks. I even sent one to Trudy Dennison, who sits in front of me in homeroom and is the most beautiful, funniest, and just all-around best girl in the whole entire world. Not that I’ve ever really talked to her, except for that time she borrowed a pencil in social studies… which she never gave back, come to think of it. Maybe she thinks “borrow” means “keep,” same as Kent does… probably she just forgot.

Anyway, guess what? They accepted, even though they never met Alex. How could they, right? They just thought he was handsome, and loose, and cool.

I thought: This is how it COULD be. If I wasn’t ME. If I existed in a different body, an acceptable body, a body everyone loved. If I didn’t live in North Point, where I’m like this train on rails: I know where I’m going, hate it, but can’t change course. This was who I could’ve been if the ball had bounced just a bit differently, you know?

My own Facebook page has ten friends. My mom, a few uncles and aunts, my grandmother—“I bought you a new pair of jeans from the Husky department at Simpson’s Sears in Charlottetown, Newtie!”—and a few pen pals… my pal from Dubuque de-friended me.

Now here’s the big confession, Dr. Harley, the solid gold bonanza, the secret that says just about everything, I guess:

Alex Markson isn’t friends with Newton Thornton. Not on Facebook. Not anywhere on earth or in this life.

Sincerely,

Newton Thornton