Biology by Kevin Wilson, 2020
The magic trick:
A really good idea at the core of the plot
This is a sad, but lovely story in the “dead teacher” tradition of “Love” by William Maxwell and that really sad episode of The Wonder Years when Kevin’s math teacher stops showing up to school.
There are a lot of good things structurally about this story that allow it to succeed. But sometimes it just comes down to a really smart idea. The narrator here talks a lot about his Death Cards. It’s a game he made up as a kid, drawing different life events on notecards – some good (you win a spelling bee), some very bad (you’re poisoned by a business rival). It’s the kind of idea that is so good and so specific you assume the writer probably really did this as a kid. I don’t know. Either way, it’s a brilliant touch for this story – so completely about how two different people (the narrator and his middle school biology teacher) withstand a variety of life events along their paths.
And that’s quite a trick on Wilson’s part.
The selection:
“What happens if you make it all the way through the game without getting a death card?” he asked. I couldn’t believe he was taking it seriously. I was shaking
a little.
“You still die, but you die in your sleep,” I told him. “Peacefully.”
He seemed to like this possibility. And so we played. Mr. Reynolds won a spelling bee, and escaped from a kidnapper, and rescued a puppy, and got a dirt bike for Christmas, an amazing childhood. He made it all the way to his second card of Adulthood before a business rival poisoned him. This seemed to please him.
“This is a good game,” he said.
“I play it all the time,” I told him.
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