Words Prevail Not

King of the Mountain 

(Excerpt)

Izzy followed Amy unwillingly down the creaky staircase, each step dropping onto the next with a plodding thud. Tai had called a general house meeting, the nature of which happened to be important enough to merit an emailed invitation—which didn’t make sense. He, Tai, Amy, Sora, Matt, Mimi, Joe, and Hana all lived in the same house, rented from Mimi’s father. If Tai wanted a meeting, all he had to do was yodel, “Asses in the living room! Now!”

“You know that was probably Hana’s idea,” remarked Amy, seemingly able to peer into his thoughts. Izzy glanced up from his feet and looked at her as they reached the first floor.

“The email invitation?” he asked, wondering if he had, in fact, been muttering his musings aloud.

“Tai is not a planner, Izzy.” She passed him into the living room. “It was definitely Hana.”

Her lack of suspicion over the meeting had Izzy pursuing her with a wrinkling brow. True, Tai was the innovative one, chockfull of ideas—crazy and some, surprisingly, astute—but Hana was the orchestrator, the executor, the (perhaps less endearingly) conniver. She was the Loki to Tai’s Thor. Izzy would never admit fear, but the two of them together did present a certain force majeure.

Everyone else was already in the room, situated in various (or favorite) spots. Izzy was surprised to find Ken and Davis sitting on the floor, in front of the couch Matt, Sora, Joe, and Mimi occupied. Kari and TK were also, oddly, present. They shared half of a mismatched loveseat, the latter sitting on the armrest rather than on the cushions. Kari must have spotted them both. She gestured at the empty spot beside her.

Amy sat, and Izzy, mimicking TK, parked his bony rump on the opposing arm rest. He crossed his arms.

Hana sat in a folding chair by the front of the room, adjacent to the TV. Her laptop rested flat on her thighs, Tai leaning over behind her, pointing at the screen at things the rest of them couldn’t see. Despite sending the invitation, the appointed start time was not respected.

Izzy rolled his eyes, annoyed with the needless tax on his time.

“So, guys…” TK pitched his body towards them, nearly falling over Kari before she extended a hand and corrected his balance. Stable, TK continued, his voice dropping low. “What do you think’s going on? I thought this was a house meeting, but we don’t even live here and we got invited. Davis and Ken, too.”

“You seem to have ideas already, comrade,” Amy replied, supplying the prompt TK didn’t need to share his theories. “Let’s hear them.”

The smile he cracked split open too readily, white teeth gleaming, blue eyes shining with light.

“You don’t think they are going to announce they’re getting married, right?” he conjectured. Izzy sputtered an unpleasant sound, as if he were being throttled, rudely depleted of oxygen.

Amy set a hand on his shoulder and patted, gently. She gave TK a knowing look.

“You did that on purpose.”

The freshman did nothing to conceal his shame. He grinned widely.

“Sorry. Had to do something to wake up the senses. Everyone’s been complaining when they enter the room. That’s no fun.”

Amy tipped her head, unknowingly (or knowingly) leaning into Izzy as she considered the observation.

“Have they?” she asked.

“Yeah,” TK reaffirmed. “No one is even contemplating the possibilities of such a meeting. I mean, what if they are planning a trip?”

“In the middle of the school year?” questioned Izzy, insulted by the sheer inconsideration of such a proposal. “That smacks of massive irresponsibility. And even if they were, it doesn’t merit a scheduled, one-hour meeting on a Sunday.” He continued to rant. “Any trip information could be shared and coordinated via email. That is why cloud-based share drives exist.”

A testy silence followed. Izzy returned his glance to the others in the room, how they were preoccupied with side conversations with their neighbors, apparently not as concerned about the now late meeting the two people at the front of the room had arranged. He felt Amy shift behind him, her body peeling away, and he peeked over his shoulder to see what had caught her attentions.

She faced TK, who had tipped forward himself, the edge of his hand pressed to his cheek.

“Did you give him his vitamins this morning?” he heard him ask. “Because yikes.”  

Izzy snorted.

Both Kari and Amy admonished TK in their flippant, doting way. Amy shook a finger at him and Kari poked a dimple.

As tempted (or provoked) as Izzy was to rebut, he never received the opportunity. Tai clapped his hands, once and loudly, and the room quieted.

“You’re probably wondering why I’ve called this meeting…”

Izzy tried to soften his glare to a stare of mild disgruntlement, going so far as to rub his forehead to smooth away any furrows—if only for politeness. If Tai could read on anyone’s faces a hint of displeasure or a roll of the eyes, his enthusiasm was no less incandescent. His hands were fused at the palms, suggesting he’d start rubbing them together maniacally like Dr. Frankenstein’s mad lab assistant.

“I’ll get right to it.”

He turned sharply and volleyed finger guns at Hana, who, playing along, saluted him with a wink. Laptop keys were pressed, and in a second, the blank TV screen behind Tai lit up to show the black and orange vector graphic of what looked like the silhouettes of a man and a craggy, forested horizon.

Tai stepped aside and gestured at the image like a magician completing his trick—proudly, and with a dash of flair.

“Anyone know what this is the logo of?” he asked.

Izzy’s poor posture worsened. He slumped, planting elbow on knee and chin on raised fist like an emaciated version of Rodin’s The Thinker. Tai’s prompt had all about it the beginnings of an infomercial. He was the smooth-talking spokesperson and marketeer, shouting questions at an audience cued to reply monosyllabic answers in loud and spiritless unison.

True to his metaphor, his group of friends began offering their thoughts.

“The Bionic Man?”

“Daniel Boone.”

“Forrest Gump?”

“Sasquatch.”

With the quality of educated guesses deteriorating (if any were educated to begin with), Tai closed the call for suggestions.

“What the hell, TK?” he yipped. He didn’t so much point at the screen as he poked it. “You think that’s fucking Bigfoot?”

“Brawny guy in the woods, my dude,” TK replied, calmly. “It practically wrote itself.”

With a snort, Tai again tapped the screen with his finger.

“This,” he explained, “is the logo for the race ‘King of the Mountain.’”

Despite the regal name, it inspired no immediate curiosity or interest. The room simmered in silence, all of them collectively trying to find the significance in Tai’s words. No one even asked the obvious. “What is ‘King of the Mountain,’ Tai?” Instead, Mimi used the time to express her displeasure with the gendered name.

“Why not ‘Queen’? Better yet—royalty.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tai muttered. “It’s a name. Girls can be kings and vice versa. Anyway, it’s a race, all right? Held on a local and national level.”

“Oh, like a marathon?” piped Davis.

“Yeah!” Tai jumped, perhaps overjoyed someone had finally shown intrigue. “Well… sort of. Marathons are 26.2 miles, Davis. King of the Mountain—max—doesn’t even reach half.”

Davis scratched his collarbone, prompting a slight puff of the chest.

“Walk in the park if you ask me,” he boasted, glimpsing at Ken.

“Dude, you didn’t let me finish. King of the Mountain goes anywhere from ten to twelve miles, but along those miles will be a series of up to twenty-five obstacles you’ll need to get through to reach the finish line.”

“Obstacles?”

“Twenty-five?”

Tai looked at Hana, and the screen blipped to its next slide, which listed all twenty-five potential obstacles. In skimming the list, Izzy found events colorfully and deceptively named “Ice fishing,” “The Matterhorn,” “Lightning Rod,” “Mudskipper,” and “Krakatoa!” Whoever named the events might as well have been captioning images in a history textbook.

“And there you have them,” said Tai. “Next slide.”

It surprised Izzy little that Tai forewent any explanation whatsoever into the particulars of the dubiously named events. Luckily, hands rose and interjections voiced the instant the slides changed.

“What in God’s name is the Executioner?”

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

“Or life threatening.”

“The hell kind of race is this?”

Exasperated, Tai shut the disturbed and muttering public with a sharp “Just hold it! Jesus!”

Outburst released, he turned, more calmly, to his girlfriend. “Han, can you go back to the previous slide?”

“Firstly,” Tai resumed, “the race, as I’ve said, is only a maximum of twelve miles.”

Only? Izzy retorted. He could barely run a mile, let alone eleven more, with God knows what booby traps lie in wait. Did he also really intend for Amy to run the same race?

“Secondly, the race isn’t tomorrow, or next week, or in three weeks. It’s in three months. We have plenty of time to train and prepare. Speaking of—Han, skip ahead a bit, please.”

Izzy’s brain still buzzed from Tai’s unexpected foresight. He shared Amy’s opinion that Tai rarely planned for anything, but to plan for something three months ahead of schedule qualified as a miracle. Though, all it took was for Izzy to peek in Hana’s direction, and there was his answer. She regarded her boyfriend with an affectionate, engaged attention, nodding subtly in agreement with his points, one crossed leg swinging idly in his direction.

“Now, there’s a prize for the team that completes the race first—along with individual winners—but I thought this would be a great thing to do as a group.”

Never one to avoid publicly contesting Tai’s harebrained schemes, Matt raised a hand, though he was already speaking before Tai acknowledged him.

“Tai, not all of us are athletes.”

About half of the heads in the room nodded, encouraged by the challenge. Izzy nodded so vehemently his chin nearly hit his clavicle.

“The hell did I just say, guys?” Tai answered, exasperated. “This is three months away. If you aren’t an athlete now, you will be by then.”

Izzy raised his eyebrows, momentarily distracted by the mechanics Tai hoped to employ to reach such an end. But the curiosity was short lived when he realized he would be subject to those designs.

TK raised a hand, pointing a pen at Tai like a reporter at a press conference.

“I noticed you are using the general, pluralized ‘you,’” he began, “is it your intention to involve all persons present in this athletic endeavor?”

Tai shrugged, crossing his arms.

“Well, not all,” he admitted, a tad too readily, a natural at the hypothetical pulpit.

“What do you mean?” Matt demanded.

“Could you elaborate?”

TK’s softer, more professional question was overwhelmed by Matt’s complaint, and Tai answered the former.

“It means not everyone will participate in the race.”

“So, what?” Matt countered. Sora laid a hand on his shoulder, ever sensitive to her beau’s warning signs. “You going to run a lottery to see which of us has to do this with you?”

As acidly as the question was given, Tai was impervious to its sting, as if he were forcefielded against negative feedback—or cobra spit. Their fearless leader even smirked.

“If you’re not up to task, Matt,” he said. “Just admit it. No shame.”

The instant Matt stood, Hana rose as well, all five or so feet of her. Carefully, she set down her laptop and stepped in front of her boyfriend, though not without shooting him a pointed look.

She opened her twiggy arms the way actresses on stage performing Shakespeare did, like they were swans unfurling their wings, placating the tense air.

“Everyone can calm the fuck down,” she said, in contrast to her soothing movements. “This isn’t the Hunger Games, okay? We understand that not everybody here is an athlete, but we have arranged a regimen that includes diet and training, each generally accommodated to everyone’s schedules. We also looked at everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and took that into consideration, too.”

Matt sat back down, but his anger was replaced with indigestion.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “You’re not giving us the option to say no, are you?”

“It’s called the power of preparation, Matt,” replied Hana, all smiles, evidently pleased with herself.  

“Yeah, and anyway,” Tai interjected, with a shrug, “I already bought us the tickets and ordered team shirts, so… it’s a done deal.”

The blond musician’s well-coiffed head sprang up.