The Most Memorable Day in U.S. History

Kevin spent nights alone in his bedroom working on his moves. He went so far as to spend a good chunk of savings on identical equipment. Set everything to the exact height he’d be working with. Figured where to position his body to block prying eyes. He memorized the controls until he could find them without looking, without thinking. He got to class early every day, monitored when everyone arrived, their habits. The hardest part was the tape. That took longest to master. It had to be perfect. Time was of the essence. One slip could jeopardize the piece and Cerbo would send him to the gallows. Then there was the matter of finding the perfect scene to set everything off. There were just too many options. But once ready, all Kevin had to do was wait for an opportunity. It wouldn’t take long.

Frederico Cerbo, obese and apathetic, preferred a book of crosswords to molding young minds. They watched a lot of documentaries in Cerbo’s U.S. History class. Long boring ones that would take a week or more to get through. Kevin regularly tormented Cerbo by surreptitiously squirting toothpaste on his chair, smearing the drawer handles of his desk with Vaseline, or planting accumulated confetti from the hole-puncher into a pull-down map. Dumb shit. It was Cerbo’s reaction that made the work pop. Sometimes all Kevin had to do was pronounce the man’s name wrong (Sir-bo) to get a rise. “Chairbo, CHAIR-BO!” Cerbo corrected with an affected Italian accent, tongue curling under R, face turning deeper shades of asystole. Kevin didn’t wonder why he felt the need to antagonize the man. Never question your muse.

When they started a movie toward the end of the fourth quarter, Kevin saw his chance. He went to the school library, looked up the tape they were watching, checked the runtime to see what he had to work with. On the final day of viewing, Kevin arrived for class exactly ninety seconds before it started. Everyone milling by the door or talking in the aisles as they waited for the bell. Cerbo’s face in a book of crosswords. Kevin slipped through like an oily shadow and casually walked past the AV cart. With deft sleight-of-hand, he swapped the VCR tape for one held behind his back. Only when he sat at his desk did he look around. No one had noticed.

The bell rang. Attendance was taken. Cerbo resettled behind his desk, folded back a new page in his crosswords and clicked on his tiny lamp. He nodded at Arlene Ryan to hit the lights and start the movie. Goodie-two-shoes rose from her seat, did as she was asked. But instead of the industrial revolution, warring soldiers, the civil rights movement or whatever it was they’d been plodding through, a demonic girl appeared on screen. She was stabbing herself in the pussy with a crucifix, screaming “Let Jesus fuck you” then shoved her mother’s face in the bloody mess, telling her to “Lick me!” The volume was all the way up.

Laughs cut through the dark. “Mr. Cerbo teachin’ us The Exorcist!” someone said.

Cerbo stopped short of an f-bomb. “Arlene, shut it off!”

But Arlene just stood frozen as the VCR tracked for the clearest image, clutched her crucifix necklace, a mixture of terror and disbelief on her pale, innocent face. She backed away from the TV, like a cat seeing a vacuum cleaner enter a room, then turned and ran out the door, hands over her mouth.

The tv cut to another scene. The one where the priest is attempting to exorcise the demon. “I cast you out, unclean spirit, in the name of our lord, Jesus Christ!”

“Shove it up your ass, you faggot!” Demon Regan growled.

Eruptions of laughter. Kevin hadn’t been sure editing scenes one after the other would land, but he was pleased with the result. A crazy, shit-eating grin of self-satisfaction broke his face. Like an artist observing a gallery of people admiring a painting he’d made. His masterpiece. Then his smile slackened. How would he top it?

“Goddammit!” Cerbo struggled to free himself from the chair.

“. . . in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! It is he who commands you! He who flung you from the heights of Heaven to the depths of–”

“Fuck him!”

“Be gone!”

“Fuck him, Karras! Fuck him!

Wayward students in the hall craned heads around the door jamb. Cerbo made it to the VCR, but in his panic he was mashing the wrong buttons, too worked up to think to pull the plug.

Just as Demon Regan’s head completed the 360, Cerbo found the right button, ejected Kevin’s opus, and smashed it on the corner of his desk in a spectacular finale of raining black plastic even Kevin hadn’t foreseen. He waved what was left of the VHS. A shiny ribbon of tape unspooled from the one remaining reel. He was sweating and panting. “Who did this?!”

Silence.

“Come forward, or I’ll report the whole class.”

Voices protested. Kevin patiently raised his hand. “Mr. Sir-bo–

CHAIR-BO, CHAIR-BO, CHAIR-BO!”

“Mr. Chair-bo, why would anyone in this class risk gettin’ everyone in trouble, including theyself? Maybe it was someone last period.”

The voices jumped on that. “Yeah, you prejudiced” . . . “Burden of proof.”

Unable to ferret out the culprit, or, most likely, not wanting to explain to a superior how he’d allowed such a thing to happen, Cerbo let the matter drop. He would never play movies in his class again. Some were annoyed to lose the free time, but Kevin knew of all the movies they watched in Cerbo’s class, his was the only one they’d remember.

A week or so passed. Still stumped on what to do next, Kevin fell back on working with toothpaste and confetti. But the old tricks no longer held the same magic. Even Cerbo was unmoved. Inspiration could be a stingy bitch.