Prodigal

by Melanie Tem

  Rae and Dad were on the side steps together. Lucy looked twice, and they really were there. The yard light had come on, making them both a sick pink.

  The snow was pink, too. She could see Dad right through Rae, all wrinkled and funny-shaped, as if her sister were made of wax and melting, or lava hardening into rock you could sort of see through (translucent, she remembered) trapping Dad inside forever, making him into a fossil.

  Rae’s arms were around Dad’s neck. He was bent over her. Lucy thought: Everything’s going to be all right. Then: She’s too old for him to hold her like that. Then: I wish it was me.

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  Then she realized that Dad and Rae weren’t hugging. Rae was attacking him. He was trying to protect himself from her. Her fists were swinging. Her nails glittered like little red knife blades. Her arms were around his neck not because she loved him but because she hated him. She wasn’t kissing him; she was biting and sucking. She was trying to hurt him.

  Rae’s legs went up around Dad’s waist like a little kid’s. Dad staggered and cried out.

  “Rae!” Lucy yelled, and ran toward them, as if to warn them, to stop something from happening. But when she got there, Rae was gone, and it was only Dad, shivering, waiting for her at the top of the steps.

  He put his arm around her and they went into the house together. Lucy didn’t know what she’d say if he started asking questions about Stacey; Dad could be a real detective when he thought you were trying to get away with something.

  But he didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t tighten his arm around her in a hug. He didn’t kiss the top of her head or wish her Merry Christmas. When they got inside, he just stopped and she just kept on walking, so that they moved apart without either of them really meaning to.

  Lucy went upstairs. From Pris and Molly’s room came the little beeping of Pris’s new Donkey Kong Junior game. From Mom and Dad’s room came jazz, the tape Dad had given Mom for Christmas; Lucy paused to listen. She didn’t like old people’s music, but it was the first time her mother had listened to music since Ethan had died.

  Her diary was on her bed. She didn’t think she’d left it there. Rae, she thought giddily. Rae had left her a Christmas message.

  She flipped to the last stuff she’d written, suddenly afraid that she’d put in there that she was really taking food to Jerry today. But she hadn’t been that stupid. The last entry was about Jerry, but all it said was: I love Jerry Johnston. I love Jerry Johnston. I love his eyes. I love how we make him fuller and stronger and healthier. I love his hands. I love how he says FEEL IT CELEBRATE IT FEEL BAD MAD SCARED AS HARD AND HOT AS YOU

  CAN THEN GIVE IT TO ME I love Jerry Johnston I love Jerry Johnston.

  It excited her just to read it. Maybe Rae’d read it, too. Maybe Rae’s fingerprints were on the diary but they were invisible unless you had that special stuff, that dust. Lucy tried to be careful where she touched her diary.

  She turned the page. Mom had written a long message, filled up the whole two pages. Irritated, Lucy didn’t read all of it; it was like being lec-tured, only in writing. She did see that Mom had written, “Don’t give those 120

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  feelings away. They belong to you,” and “You’ll love other boys and other men,” but that last just proved what Lucy already knew, what Jerry had taught her: Mom didn’t understand.

  Quickly she turned the page, wondering if she could just tear out the pages Mom had ruined without hurting anything else. On the back of Mom’s second page was a message from Rae, the writing fainter and shakier but the same words as before:

  BE CAREFUL

  LOVE, YOUR SISTER

  RAE

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  19

  Lucy wrote DARLING into her diary as many ways as she could think of.

  Catty-corner, with giant letters and spaces so that it filled up almost the entire page. When you broke a word up into its pieces like that, any one of them could fall right off the page and then the word wouldn’t make sense anymore. She wrote it twice catty-corner, because the first time she didn’t have room for the G.

  Tiny, with a really sharp pencil, and all squished together. It took up only about half an inch in the exact center of the page; she measured. From an arm’s length away, it looked like a solid line. Or a mashed bug, except that she couldn’t wipe it away with the side of her hand, and there wasn’t any blood.

  In her best looping cursive, the D s and G s connected like paper dolls.

  He’d called her darling.

  She didn’t know what that meant.

  It wasn’t like the gorgeous guys on the soaps or in the romance books Rae used to read. It wasn’t like when Grandma gave you a little box of raisins for the ride home, or when the lady at Target called everybody darling, even Dad.

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  Darling she wrote, stretching out the connections between the letters and twisting the diary so that that one word went around all four edges of the page. Then she started on the next square inside it: darling.

  “Lucy, you’re not paying attention,” Mr. Michaelson said. “Again.”

  Hastily she closed the diary and put her hand over the word DIARY on its cover. She should have known better than to bring it to school.

  Everybody in the class was laughing at her. Even Stacey, turning around in her seat. Stacey had on lots of purple eye shadow today, and a really short skirt. Lucy wasn’t allowed to wear makeup till next year. She was so sick of being treated like a baby. Jeremy Martinez said, “Uh-oh, Lucy’s in trouble again!” and made a noise like a siren. He was so immature.

  “Give it to me,” Mr. Michaelson said.

  Stunned, she looked up at him. He was holding out his hand. She stared at his face, which all of a sudden was the face of an enemy, and at his hand, close in front of her face.

  “Give me the diary.”

  She was so embarrassed that her whole body was hot. The thought of Mr.

  Michaelson reading her innermost thoughts—about Jerry Johnston, about Ethan and Mom, about Rae and Dad—made her shiver. It was always either too hot or too cold in this dumb school. She’d heard Mom say a million times that that was one reason why kids got sick, especially in the winter. Lucy thought sure she was getting sick now. She managed to whisper, “It’s—private.”

  He just took it from her. She knew she couldn’t stop him, so she didn’t even try. He just reached down with his bigger, stronger hands and took it away from her and carried it to the front of the room. She’d never see it again.

  All the stuff she’d written in there was gone forever. In her mind she tried to make it not matter, tried to make herself not here.

  Jeremy and Justin were yelling, “Read it! Read it out loud!” If he did, she’d fall apart, or she’d squish together till she looked like a mashed bug, or a line so solid that nobody would ever get inside her again.

  “No,” Mr. Michaelson told them. “I’m not interested in embarrassing anybody. I’m just trying to get Lucy—and the rest of you—to pay attention. I’ll lock it up in my desk until after school, Lucy. You can come and pick it up then.”

  I can’t. I have group. I have to see Jerry. But she didn’t say anything. She’d already said too much.

  Mr. Michaelson went on teaching the class then, as if history was the most important thing in the world, and even though she didn’t want to, Lucy actually heard some of what he said. About the explorers with weird names that didn’t even sound like names: Vasco da Gama. Amerigo Vespucci. Ponce de León, who kept looking for the Fountain of Youth. What a dummy. Just because you stayed young forever didn’t mean you wouldn’t die.

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In science they were studying forces. Gravity and centrifugal force and centripetal force and magnetism. In gym she saw Rae, standing in the doorway by the hall, shimmering in the weird light that came down from the high windows and up from the shiny floor. Lucy left the volleyball game and ran toward her, fully expecting her to vanish and not knowing what she’d say to her anyway.

  But Rae stayed there and stayed there and stayed there, shimmering, until Lucy was almost to her, and she was just going to say hi over the echoing noise of the game when Ms. Holcomb caught up to her, grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her around, and snarled, her shiny face and sweaty body right up close to Lucy’s, “What do you think you’re doing, young lady? You think you can just walk out of my class whenever you feel like it? Your teammates are depending on you. Who’s supposed to take your position now? Who do you think you are?”

  Lucy would have said, “There’s my sister,” but she had other sisters, and she understood by now that most people didn’t see Rae. And anyway by the time Ms. Holcomb had finished yelling at her and giving her a week’s detention of shooting baskets after school for half an hour every day, Lucy glanced over her shoulder and of course her sister wasn’t there.

  They met as usual in the hot little room behind the cafeteria, but they were going to Jerry’s house today. He’d said last week that the exercises they’d be doing from now on were easier to do at his house because they’d have more privacy. Lucy couldn’t wait to see where he lived. She’d missed her chance on Christmas; she’d chickened out.

  Actually, she couldn’t imagine him living anywhere. Did he do all the things she did in her house? Did he sleep? Did he go to the bathroom? Did he take showers and get dressed and undressed? Did he cry and laugh and get scared and love people and hate people? She couldn’t imagine it.

  Besides Jerry, she was the first one there. Suddenly shy, she didn’t sit down. She walked around the outside of the waiting circle of folding chairs.

  Circumference. She made a straight path from one side to the other. Diame-ter. She stood in the center and paced out to the edge, then back to the center and out to another spot on the edge. Radius.

  No matter what she did, there was still a circle. But if you took away any of the chairs it wasn’t a circle anymore, so it must not have been real in the first place.

  Lucy moved one of the chairs, collapsed it, laid it flat on the floor. “So, how are you, Lucy?”

  Even though it was a circle so they’d all be equal, the minute Jerry sat down there was a head to it. His big head kept turning to watch her. When she was right behind him, she knew he couldn’t see her, and so first she hur-124

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  ried through the blind spot to get into his line of vision again and then she stayed there for a long time but he didn’t turn his body in the chair to look at her. His hips on both sides drooped over the metal seat. His gigantic knees were spread a little, like wings, or like a crab’s claws.

  “Lucy. I asked you a question. How are you?”

  He was mad at her. She could tell by his voice. “Fine,” she said at once, and sat down next to him.

  “No, you’re not. In this group we’re honest with each other, remember?

  How are you really?”

  “I’m scared,” she whispered, knowing the words he wanted, not knowing whether they really had anything to do with how she felt.

  “Of course you are.”

  “I’m mad.”

  “You don’t have to whisper. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Say it out loud. Say it proudly.”

  “I’m scared,” she said out loud, and it did sound different. “I’m mad.”

  He would have made her say it louder and louder till she was yelling it, but Mike and Billy came in then and some of his attention turned to them.

  Mike did drugs. Cocaine and crack. At least, he said he did; she didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She didn’t know whether to believe anybody in the group when they talked about their problems.

  Then she started to remember stuff about Billy. He had a brother, older than Ethan, who’d been sent to Nubie, too. That’s how Jerry knew him; back then, kids didn’t get to know Jerry Johnston unless they got in big trouble.

  She couldn’t remember Billy’s brother’s name. Back then, she hadn’t known you should pay attention to stuff like that.

  Staring at Billy, she kept on remembering. Before he’d run the last time, Billy’s brother had hurt their mother. Beat her up or something. Lucy’d been shocked that anybody would want to hurt their parents. She still wouldn’t ever actually do it, of course, but now she could see why some kids might want to.

  Billy’s brother was in jail now. Or in a mental hospital. Or maybe they didn’t know where he was. She wasn’t sure if she really remembered all this or if she was making it up. Naturally, Billy didn’t talk about stuff like that in group. None of them did.

  Suddenly she did remember: Billy’s brother was in a nursing home. He couldn’t feed himself or anything. He couldn’t talk. He pooped and peed in his bed. He’d been in an accident, she thought, or he had some disease. Jerry visited him. That was nice of him. Lucy didn’t think she could ever stand to visit somebody like that.

  “How are you?” Jerry asked each one of them, and he really listened to the answer. “How are you, Mike? How are you, Billy? How are you, Julia?”

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  He made them all say the same things, like a password, like a secret code:

  “I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m mad.”

  When everybody was there, Jerry said, “The group will meet at my house from now on.”

  Mike, who complained about everything, complained. “Shit. It’s fuckin’

  cold out there.”

  “The exercises we’ll be doing from now on can get rather noisy,” Jerry explained, “and we’ll need more privacy than this.”

  “What are they?” Stephanie asked. Lucy suddenly remembered that Stephanie’s mom was dying. She remembered that every week. Something wrong with her liver or something. Was your liver the thing that made you live, like a driver was somebody who drove and a printer was a machine that printed? Words were weird. Dying was weird. She didn’t like being around Stephanie, once she’d remembered again about her mom.

  “They’re about trust,” was all Jerry would say. “About us trusting each other.”

  “Well, I ain’t walking’ halfway across town for some stupid meeting,” Mike declared, and stretched out his legs and folded his arms across his chest.

  “It’s not very far. You’ll come with us,” Jerry told him quietly, and Lucy knew he would.

  Jerry took a deep breath and tried to stand up. Sitting so close beside him, Lucy felt his muscles tense. It was hard to believe they were under somebody else’s skin and not her own. Julia, on the other side of him, must be feeling them, too. That made Lucy a little jealous. Julia was a nerd, a schoolgirl. She did all her homework and even extra-credit projects, got straight As , never got in trouble. Maybe that was why she was in this group. But Lucy didn’t think even Jerry could help with a problem that big.

  Jerry’s chair swayed and creaked. He leaned way forward with his white hands around his huge knees and tried again. When he still didn’t make it and sat back down hard, Lucy was sure his chair was going to break and he’d collapse on the floor in the middle of them and then she’d have to figure out some way to pick him up.

  But finally he was on his feet, panting and towering over them. “Let’s go.”

  His house was only about six blocks from the school, past Stacey’s house, toward the lake. It bothered Lucy that he’d been living right there and she hadn’t known it. As they went by other houses, she looked into their doors and windows and yards, wishing she could tell who lived there, what they were going to mean in her life someday.

  Jerry’s house was a lot smaller than the Brills
’ house, because there was only one of him. Lucy wondered what it would be like to live alone. And whether, if more people got lost out of their family, they’d have to move out of their house.

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  Jerry’s house sat back away from the sidewalk, behind a row of bushes.

  Probably that was a hedge. Probably in the summertime all those bushes grew close together to make a wall. But now they didn’t have any leaves on them, and you could see all the branches and twigs and the little feathery tips, like split ends, that were too tiny to be called twigs but she didn’t know what their name was. In the summer Jerry’s house could hide behind the hedge, but now you could see right through, and it was just a plain little white house with a green roof and a green porch.

  There was a step up from the main sidewalk to the skinny one that led to the house, and then five steps up to the porch. The kids all waited for Jerry to go first, except Mike, who made Lucy laugh even when she knew she shouldn’t. Mike ran ahead, crashed through the leafless hedge, jumped over the porch railing, and sprang at them like Freddy Krueger, fingers like claws.

  Everybody laughed except Jerry.

  Jerry was having to concentrate to get up the steps. Once when Lucy had had the flu real bad she’d had to concentrate like that, had to think about how to eat and walk and turn over in bed. He was watching his feet, as if he wasn’t sure they’d do what they were supposed to, and he was gripping the railing on both sides; both his hands and his feet looked awfully small for such a big body, and Lucy had the sudden fantasy that they’d been cut off of somebody else’s body and stuck on his.

  Twice his foot slipped off the edge of the steps. Without thinking, Lucy held out her arms to catch him, and she saw Billy and Stephanie doing the same thing. He’d be like a fortune cookie if he fell into them—hollow, just a thin shell around a giant hole, with a message inside.