Here is an original short story that author and screenwriterJames Grady wrote for students at McKinley Technology High School in the District. During a visit to the school as part of thePEN/Faulkner Foundation’s Writers in Schools program, a student asked him to write a story about the kids in the book club there — and he did. You can read a story about how this story came about in the post above.
The Giggler
by
James Hock
(“Copyright James Grady”)
Nobody knew the truth about the first dead kid that Thursday noon as uniform-shirted 11th and 12th graders straggled into McKinley Tech High School’s third floor library for book club. The sun shone through the library’s tall windows of blue sky with a linear purity uncommon there in Washington, D.C., where all light normally bounces off white marble monuments to America’s hopes and history.
As he entered the library and saw only their group, Marcus who’d never said anything to that gone guy now said to everyone: “Did you hear Bleu’s dead?”
“Not Liss Gardens Bleu!” said Jasmine who insisted you call her Jazz.
“No, fool,” said Tango: “The other Bleu.”
“I didn’t even know there was another one,” said Jazz.
Tango hooked his backpack over a chair, said: “Maybe that’s why he done it.”
“Who done what?” said almost old enough to vote Brandon, nailing the heart of every day even as he prayed no one knew his own done what’s included engineering elaborate structures out of the hidden-under-his-bed box of childhood Legos.
“The other Bleu,” said Tango who never talked about his Mom. “Killed himself.”
“No he didn’t,” said Rasheda with a glaze in her brown eyes. She had long mirror black hair, fake gold hoop earrings, a soft smile that soared her parents’ hearts and scared them sleepless — and suddenly that noon, she knew: “The Giggler got him.”
The body count for book club totaled 22 teenagers. Rasheda, Briana, Jazz, Marcus, Juana, Brandon, Tango and Malik. Shakwia, Fayo and another Brandon. Leslie, Arnasha, Victoria, Kyra, Jennifer and Jhoana. And Jamal, who didn’t know about thesame name jazz genius born the same year as his great grandfather, when lynching Black people seemed easy and they didn’t dare dream of being president like the man this high school was named for, a stalwart stern white face from Ohio who Wall Street spent $3 million to elect in 1896 and who never knew his crazed assassin. Mercedes, Shaniqua, and Chidinma were in the library for book club, too. So was Tshala.
But not the librarian/faculty sponsor for their club, Mrs. Ariana Jones.
‘Having her baby, thought glaze eyed Rasheda. And how can I know that? Smell new baby? I’m the last damn virgin in the whole wide world!
The library’s solid door waited beyond the club’s meeting place rectangle made from blond wood tables, all the way past the librarian’s deserted curved desk and beyond shelves holding books full of what grown-ups say we should read.
None of those high schoolers heard the library door close.
None of them heard the door lock.
Or noticed the steel doorknob quiver as outside in the empty hall, Mrs. Jones tried but couldn’t open that portal. A contraction hit her — 22 minutes apart. Odd: 22 kids, 22 minutes. But still time to tell her kids she’d cancelled the author scheduled to talk today. Tell them she’s going to have her baby two weeks early, but no need to worry. Alarm anyone. Excite the gun-toting cops downstairs at the front door metal detectors. School Emergency vibrations inhibit learning. Besides, there was time, lots of time.
But the locked door wouldn’t let her into the library.
Where 22 kids chose chairs around the rectangle of pushed-together tables. The rectangle’s hollow heart made the high school students all face each other.
“Who’s the Giggler?” said Malik who hated that everyone abbreviated his name to ‘Likand who with every breath fell further into the eternal gravity of Rasheda. Why can’t she just see me, really see me, and why are her eyes glazed?
“The Giggler’s who did Bleu.” His own words made Marcus blink: Say what?
“That Bleu didn’t run with people.” Jazz fronted that she knew crews but secretly knew she didn’t. “Sure not anybody who’d shoot him.”
“He shot himself,” said Briana. Like I doomed myself by my own secret.
“He didn’t shoot himself,” said Tango. “The Giggler got him.”
Rasheda nodded. Jazz caught that as a signal from her best friend: Why is inside my head laughing that we’re best friends? Just like she thought Rasheda signaled, Jazz left a seat empty between them so…YES! ‘Lik grabbed that chair, telling himself that sitting next to Rasheda meant something because everything means something, so cosmically, if he’s sitting beside her…Sure, he heard snickering in his head, so what? He didn’t know that Rasheda’s smile meant she was happy that now Jazz had another chance to hook ‘Lik who Rasheda treasured as the best ever guy friend.
Everyone else tried to obey life’s invisible rules of who sits where with whom as they claimed chairs around the tables’ hollow rectangle.
“That Giggler,” said Brandon. “He’ some gangster?”
“No,” said Rasheda. “He’s…..”
‘Lik caught knowing like a virus: “The Giggler’s what this is all about.”
“This is crazy!” Juana yelled past her fear that everyone kept judging her. “The Giggler is a just character in the story we had to read by that writer who’s coming today!”
Briana’s head shook. “I know about the Giggler. And I didn’t read that story.”
‘Lik blinked. “The Giggler isn’t in that story. Not in words. That story is about people who work the Capital dome. They wear suits for uniforms instead of maroon or white or gray shirts like us. They think they know what’s going on, that they’re making it all happen, but they’re just like us.”
Juana, who didn’t dare admit that she wanted to be a lawyer because this was the best D.C. public high school she’d ever test into but everyone else in the school was a math or science star, said: “So every place is just like here?”
“Quick before we get made to forget!” said ‘Lik. “Who knows the Giggler?”
Some fast, some slow, everyone nervous, 22 high school teenagers in the capital city of an atom bomb superpower all raised a hand that said I do.
“What’s going on?” said Tango. Now they’re all staring at me!
Outside in the hall, contractions now came every18 minutes. A wave of oh-oh surfed Mrs. Jones. Her quivering legs demanded all her energy to not fall on her baby belly. My cell phone. In my purse. In my purse locked in my desk in the library.
The locked-her-out library.
“What happens in the story where the Giggler ain’t?” said Tango. I never say `ain’t’ and now I can’t stop them from ragging on me for that, too, plus my mother!
“Some political guy and a woman who’s doing wrong fall in love and they both get nailed when he tries to make everything right,” answered Marcus.
Thinking: I should have talked to Bleu. Not my fault. Is it my fault? My fault!
“And there’s no Giggler in that story,” said Brandon. “Not even the word giggle.”
Tango’s head throbbed. Stop! Gotta make it…them…stop!
“Being giggled at sets you on fire,” whispered Juana.
Tango burned: Show them.
Outside in the hall, suddenly it was 17 minutes between contractions.
“That’s how he got Bleu,” said Rasheda. “The Giggler kept coming at him, all day, all night, nothing else Bleu could hear or see or believe and The Giggler….”
“Put the gun in his hand and pulled the trigger,” said ‘Lik.
“How do we know that?” said Juana, who wore a bracelet for her church.
“That’s not the big question,” said Brandon.
Tango saw blue sky filling a nearby tall window three stories above city cement.
The coolest sound is busting glass.
Your name will live forever! screamed inside Tango’s skull.
Brandon said: “The big question is, what’s the Giggler going to do now that we know about him?”
“Nobody sees the Giggler,” said Briana. Please please please nobody see me!
“Not even in the mirror,” said Marcus. “That’s where he hides.”
Did I see me showing in the mirror? Briana couldn’t be sure. Only five weeks since she crossed that street because of a them, not a him. Not like Jazz who everyone –
With a blink, Briana realized: Everyone only knows what they think they know.
Like she thought she knew his eyes, how they saw you as someone special. Those eyes pulled her heart. Made her mouth dry. But only after she’d crossed that street did she realize he saw her eyes as only mirrors for himself, not reflectors of the two of them together. But she’d already crossed that street to here, now, doomed to where her brain like a computer monitor screen gone mad kept flashing LATE!
A+ student Briana whose idea on how to cure cancer held valid even after days of internet surfing medical journals tried to picture raising a child while raising herself.
Couldn’t as she heard ‘Lik say: “None of us would have believed about the Giggler if we hadn’t talked about him.”
“When people know your game, you gotta protect your flame.” Brandon shook his head. “When did I start talking fake Go-Go?”
“It’s not you,” said Jazz. “It’s him.”
“He can’t let us out of here,” said Marcus.
Tango’s pounding heart roared: Do it! Do it now! Get out of here!
“No!” said Briana. “He wants us to go out there!”
“And be alone,” said ‘Lik. “All alone.”
“Ahhh!” Tango lunged toward the tall window.
Busting glass and a vision of breaking out free into blue sky –
Marcus grabbed the leaping boy’s maroon shirt.
Tango crashed to the library’s tiled floor, pulled Marcus with him. Classmates swarmed them. Grabbed Tango, lifted that limp 17-year-old back onto his chair.
“What was that!” yelled Briana. “What were you doing?”
“He was gonna let me fly,” muttered Tango.
“He was making you like Bleu,” countered ‘Lik. “Forever gone.”
Instinct or inertia or inevitability settled them all back in their chairs facing each other around the hollow rectangle of tables.
“But we beat him!” said Juana.
“This time,” said Rasheda.
“Why is he doing this to us?” said Tango and they knew he was back with them.
“Because we’ll tell people about him, “ said ‘Lik. “We’ll tell them even if they’ll think we’re crazy, playing some kind of high school nonsense, that Bleu and Tango’s suicides drove us nuts or that we came in here and smoked weed.”
Marcus said: “We’re trapped.”
“If we stay here,” said Rasheda, “we know who the Giggler is, but he’ll work on us to do something that will wreck our lives, something so people won’t believe us. Start us fighting or…I don’t know, he doesn’t know yet. He’s a nimble _________.”
“If we bust out,” said ‘Lik, “he’ll come after us one at a time when we’re alone.
“We all end up alone,” said Rasheda. “Even if we get married.”
Get married! thought ‘Lik. She thinks about getting married, too!
Outside in the hall a vision of her husband flashed through Mrs. Jones as a contraction hit and her eyes hit her watch: No! They’re coming faster! She pressed her spine against blue lockers that framed the locked library door.
Inside the library of trapped teenagers, Briana said: “How come the Giggler can’t let anybody know he’s real?”
“Because then maybe people will figure their own way to deal with him,” said Tango. “Then maybe he…Poof, like smoke. Gone.”
“There’ll always be a Giggler,” said ‘Lik.
“But if he’s smoke instead of fire,” said Rasheda, “he’s not that much.”
“Whatever that’d mean,” said Marcus, “it scares the Giggler.”
“And he can’t let us put him at risk,” said Juana. “So he’s gotta do us.”
“Or we gotta do him,” said ‘Lik.
Silence rolled through the library.
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