The Blueprint of Your Brain

Excerpt

A month ago, Jimmy Presko accidentally burned down his parents’ new garage. He was twelve years old. A pile of charred debris now sat in their driveway, and you could smell what had burned and melted from several blocks away. His mother sat across from him, snipping an article from the newspaper with her toenail scissors. All the articles she saved looked like doilies because of the scissors’ curved blades. Jimmy’s father appeared every few minutes out the living room’s bay window, pushing the lawnmower and smoking. He hadn’t spoken much to Jimmy since the fire episode. Jimmy didn’t blame him, really.

“Look at this,” Jimmy’s mother said, handing over one of her scalloped-edged newspaper clippings. The story was about a new program for latchkey kids. If a girl or boy came home from school and started feeling lonely or frightened or sad, all she or he had to do was pick up the phone, dial zero, and say to the operator, “Grandma, please!” to speak to an elderly woman or “Grandpa, please!” to speak to an elderly man. A moment later, the child would be connected. According to the mayor, who spearheaded the program, it served two goals: it provided a sense of comfort for the rudderless kids in town, and it gave meaning to the lives of forgotten retirees, who were lonely themselves and felt that their connection to society was slipping through their fingers. “It’s a win-win,” the mayor was quoted as saying.

John McNally

John McNally is the author of three novels: After the Workshop, The Book of Ralph and America’s Report Card; two story collections, Troublemakers and Ghosts of Chicago; and two nonfiction books: The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist and Vivid and Continuous: Essays and Exercises for Writing Fiction. His young adult novel Lord of the Ralphs will be published by Lacewing Books in the fall of 2015. A screenplay he co-wrote is in development with the producer of Winter’s Bone. A native of Burbank, Illinois, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, John is Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Patrick Ryan on “The Blueprint of Your Brain”

“Don’t talk to strangers.” We’ve all heard that before, right? Probably from a very young age, you heard someone—a parent, or a grandparent, or a teacher—say this to you. It’s one of the most no-brainer pieces of advice a guardian can bestow upon a younger person.

Meet Jimmy Presko. Jimmy’s a lone wolf, some might even say he’s a bit of an oddball. He’s a teen who’s obsessed with the music, clothes, and mannerisms of an era decades earlier than the one he’s living in. Recently—and accidentally—he burned down his parents’ garage. And now, in John McNally’s new story, “The Blueprint of Your Brain,” Jimmy is ripping the lid off the old “don’t talk to strangers” advice by embarking on a series of roaming adventures dictated over the phone by someone he’s never met.

If that sounds wildly irresponsible—well, all I can tell you is that reading this story is so much fun, you’ll be glad Jimmy’s the quirky and feckless teen that he is. You might cringe, in parts, but it’s more likely you’ll laugh and lean forward in your chair, eager to find out what happens next. Mark Twain would have admired McNally’s mysterious stranger on the other end of the phone, and he most certainly would have admired Jimmy Presko for being so adventurous.

Please join me for the wild, irresponsible journey that is “The Blueprint of Your Brain.”