I was seven or eight, the first time I spun out.

Second grade, at any rate, so... yeah. It happened before my birthday I guess, because I remember Mom was still pissed at me at the party, so I must have been seven. Anyway.

Spinning out is just what I call it; it's that thing you see in movies and tv and stuff, where the car goes around and around in a circle and its wheels are a wobbly blur and throwing all sorts of stuff out away from the car -- bits of gravel and dirt and trash flying out and hitting whatever's nearby. I've thought about it a lot, and that's pretty much what happens.

Except I'm the car.

It's different every time. I mean it's not like anyone can look and see a pattern or know it's coming -- I can't even do that, really. That first time when I was seven, I got mad at something -- I don't remember what -- and I got on top of Mom's car and jumped up and down on the hood until it was all dented in, then I climbed up on the roof and did it again until my foot went through on one side. I was barefoot when I did it -- couldn't walk right for months because I broke some bones in both feet and had to use crutches. Crutches look cool, kinda, but they really just hurt like hell and rub under your arms.

When I was thirteen I put my fist through the patio door in the house while everyone was over for Thanksgiving. No one was even looking at me when I did it, and for a second afterward, it was really quiet, which was kind of good. Breaking glass doesn't work like you see in movies; you see guys jump through big windows and all the glass breaks into little tiny pieces and they're fine. The glass in the patio door split into huge, long triangles like big swords and fell out of the frame. Two of them didn't even break, they just stuck right into the floor through the carpet and then snapped off. In the movies, sometimes a guy that punches through a window gets bloody knuckles, like you do if you hit a wall a bunch of times. The glass in the patio door cut big deep gashes along my fingers; the cuts healed into thin white scars that looked like ghosts of my bones. A bigger piece fell past my wrist and cut two tendons all the way though -- really, it just about cut my hand off. Some of the broken pieces got scattered and we didn't find them for weeks. My sister got her foot cut up on one lost piece pretty bad.

I don't remember why I punched the window, but it wasn't to cut my sister's feet. That kinda sucked.

--

The thing was, it didn't happen at anybody. Sometimes it seemed like it was because of someone, but when it happened, it was always me and something that wasn't a person; mom's car, or the patio door, or a phone booth, or the coffee table, or all those little lawn gnomes in Mrs. Grobetsky's front yard. Sometimes someone would get hurt; usually me, or something like what happened with my sister's foot, and a couple times my Dad tried to grab me to stop me and I socked him, but normally it was just me.

There was a Halloween party, when I was about twenty-three, where it didn't work that way. I got invited at the last minute by a buddy I knew who'd been invited first and told me I should come along -- I didn't know the girl who was having the party at all. I didn't know if I should go, but he kind of talked me into it, and my sister came up with a pretty good costume, so I went.

The costume was easy; just a kind of hobo circus clown. My sister went and got one of my dad's old suits from when we were little -- it was kind of a really light blue and the fabric was really slippery but rough-feeling at the same time. It didn't fit me at all, because my dad is a lot bigger than me -- taller and fatter, both. She got one of the big wide striped ties that went with the suit (kind of), and I looked pretty crazy already. I got a big orange wig with really curly fake hair in it that stuck out, and she painted a clown face on me, and we found a really big flower to pin on the pocket, and it looked funny. It got to where I was looking forward to going.

I spent about a half an hour looking for my buddy when I got outside the address; I figured he'd be wearing a costume, plus I didn't really have a good idea of what he looked like. I'm not really good with faces anyway, partly because I just didn't like looking at people straight on. Mom said I was shy, but it's mostly because if I look too long, I find something I don't like. People's faces are stupid. I don't look in the mirror much, because my face is stupid too.

Anyway, I couldn't find him, and I thought about going home, but I had all the clown stuff on, and my sister had helped, so I went in anyway, and it was pretty okay. A lot of people had crazy face-paint type makeup on, like me, so it didn't bother me, looking at them, and some wore masks, and when they talked to me, they all said "cool, sad clown," so I know my sister did me up right, except I didn't know she painted the face sad. That was weird.

The guy who was the boyfriend of the girl who was having the party had bought all the beer, I guess, because he kept walking around, slapping people on the shoulder and saying "how's my beer taste?" really loud. He was kind of a jerk, and it seemed like he kept coming over around me more and more the longer we were there, and it bugged me.

I walked out into the back yard, kinda thinking about leaving, and was going along the fence and punching the boards as I went. Not hard -- I wasn't spinning out or anything, just kind of tapping them, like a bored kid with a stick.

Then this girl said Hi. I didn't see her come up, because she was wearing mostly black; black feathers, like a bird. Her face wasn't painted, because she was wearing a white and black mask, where you could see her chin and her mouth, and they were kind of pretty.

I said Hi back to her and that I was a friend of Bobby's, and she asked if I didn't like the party or didn't like the fence, but she was joking and wasn't saying it mean -- it was like it was a secret joke we knew. I told her I liked the party okay (because I don't like saying when I don't like someone). She said I did a good job on my costume and I told her my sister had helped with it and that I liked her costume better, because of the mask. I said the mask because I didn't want to say her face was pretty; it was embarrassing.

She asked me if I wanted to try on the mask and I said no but she was already taking it off. I looked down at the ground, but took the mask when she held it out for awhile. I sort of just held it. She asked me if I was going to try it on and I didn't know how I'd explain that it wasn't really the mask I liked, so I put it on.

It was like armor.

With the mask on, I wasn't anyone. No one could see me looking at them, and with my face covered, I was Invisible. No one could see what I thought of them and that meant I could look at anyone.

ANYone.

I looked at the girl and her whole face was really pretty too. I looked for a long time, and I didn't see anything stupid in it and that was pretty amazing. She smiled at me and I remembered I was still looking and turned to look at the rest of the people. I think maybe I thought the mask made it so no one looked stupid to me, but it didn't work like that -- everyone else still did. I saw the boyfriend walking around on the patio and saying the same thing to everyone and he was the worst of all. It was so... he was the worst of everything.

How do you like it? she asked, and I told her I'd be right back, and I went over to the boyfriend.

It was the first time I spun out on purpose, and the first time I did it at someone, and the first time I remembered the whole thing. All that was because of the mask, I'm pretty sure. People were screaming and stepping way back from me and the boyfriend, who was lying on the ground and pretty much just trying to get me to stop by talking through a stupid broken mouth. I stopped once he stopped asking me to. Someone was crying into the phone, and giving the address and no one else knew what to do.

I walked into the back yard again, where it was dark, and the girl was there. She didn't look like the rest -- not scared or anything. I looked at her a little bit, and took the mask off and handed it to her.

Thanks, I told her, and she smiled and said no problem.

Then I jumped up and pulled myself over the fence and ran. I threw away the wig a couple blocks away, and washed off the face paint at a gas station about a mile after that, and got on a bus and went home.

My sister asked me how the party was the next day, and I said it was fun because no one knew me.

I met a nice girl, I said, and my sister grinned at me.

-- Doyce Testerman

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