Orbiting Jupiter

by Gary D. Schmidt

  When Manny Toole came in, he said Joseph looked like he needed something bad and he could have these if he wanted them, and he held out his hand and there were two yellow pills. Joseph took them both and splashed water into his mouth and the whole world exploded and he staggered into one of the stalls and shattered there until one of the teachers found him.

  Later, his hands bound behind him, they told Joseph he tried to kill the teacher.

  That’s when Joseph went to Stone Mountain.

  He stayed one day and one night, and then he tried to leave.

  At the top of the fence, his foot caught in a roll of razor wire. When he pulled it free, the razor ripped over the top of his foot, and as he fell, the razor sliced open his side, starting from under his right arm and cutting all along to almost his knee.

  The doctor said he had never put so many stitches into one boy’s body before.

  When Mrs. Stroud came to see him, she said Madeleine was gone, so where did he think he was going?

  Joseph didn’t say anything.

  Mrs. Stroud said she couldn’t help him if he wouldn’t talk to her. So Joseph looked at her and said, “Where do you think I was going?”

  “Joseph,” said Mrs. Stroud, “you can’t be a father when you’re only fourteen.”

  “I am a father,” said Joseph.

  “No,” said Mrs. Stroud, “you signed away—”

  “I’m Jupiter’s father,” said Joseph. “I will always be Jupiter’s father.”

  After that, he wouldn’t talk with Mrs. Stroud.

  He wouldn’t talk with anyone.

  He lived at Stone Mountain for a month. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not even when he got beat up. Not the first time, not the second time, not the third time. Not even when they held him down and . . .

  He wouldn’t talk to anyone.

  After the third time, Mrs. Stroud said she was going to speak with the best foster parents she knew. She couldn’t promise anything. They hadn’t taken in any boys for almost twelve years. They lived on an organic farm. Would he like that, living on a farm? They didn’t have much technology, but they had a pond, and acres of land, and animals. What did he think?

  A week later, Joseph came to Eastham. He began to milk cows.

  That night, after skating on the pond under the silver moon and Jupiter, Joseph talked more than he had ever talked before altogether. It was like he had finally figured out who he wanted to tell, and once he started, he couldn’t stop until he was done. It took a long time. My father and mother and I didn’t say anything. We hardly moved, except my father, who had to add all the wood I had brought out to the fire. And when Joseph finished, he went up to the Big Barn, and we could hear Rosie mooing. I think he didn’t want us to see him . . . you know. But it was okay if Rosie saw. It was okay for Rosie to tell Joseph that she loved him.

  My father kicked out the fire. My mother held me. I said, “Why can’t he see Jupiter?” And they said I had to try to understand. Joseph was only fourteen. He couldn’t be a father. Seeing Jupiter would only hurt him even more. And Jupiter might be upset, maybe even frightened.

  “Suppose you’re wrong?” I said. “Suppose Jupiter wants to find Joseph?”

  My mother held me even closer. My father put his hand on my back.

  JOSEPH CAME IN late that night. He got ready for bed, then stood by the window, even though the room was really cold. He looked out the panes that were already a little frosted over, and the moonlight flooded him, and his scar was a bright ragged line along his side. He leaned into the glass until his forehead touched the pane. He stood there perfectly still, the moonlight flooding him as if it would drown him. But he didn’t move.

  “Joseph,” I finally said, “it’s freezing.”

  He didn’t turn around.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “I can’t see Jupiter,” he said. “The moon’s too bright. And I don’t know where she is.”

  “It’s where it always is,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  He wrapped his arms around himself. When he finally turned, I could see his breath in the moonlight.

  “I’m going to find her,” he said. “I’m not going to stay alone.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m alone,” he said.

  “You’ve got me,” I said.

  He laughed, but not a happy laugh. “Jackie, I’m a whole lifetime ahead of you,” he said. He left the window and climbed up onto the bunk.

  The moonlight kept flooding into the dark.

  “It’s Jack,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “And no, you’re not,” I said.

  He settled into the bed. “Okay,” he said.

  I woke up again and again that night, but I didn’t hear Joseph moving or breathing or dreaming. If it hadn’t been for the dent his body made above me, I would have thought he was gone. Downstairs, the chimney clock chimed the quarter hours—and I heard a lot of them—until once I woke and the dent was gone and I jerked up and looked across the room.

  Joseph was standing by the window again. The moon was down.

  He was looking for Jupiter in the cold and the dark.

  BY MORNING IT was snowing.

  Not a lot, but enough to pile up on the branches, and the cupola on the barn, and the woodpile, and if we wanted to skate again we’d have to shovel off the ice on the pond—again. The bus was a little late, and Mr. Haskell skidded the back tires in the new snow when he stopped for us.

  I guess Mr. Haskell didn’t like the way Joseph looked at him when he got on.

  “Hey, you think you could drive a bus better, go ahead.” He leaned back and pointed to the steering wheel. “Go ahead.”

  Joseph walked past him on the way to the back.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Mr. Haskell, and he levered the door closed and gunned the engine so the bus swayed sharply.

  Joseph walked down the aisle like he was walking on a sidewalk.

  I fell into Danny Nations.

  “You want to try finding your own seat?” he said.

  I slid behind him, next to Ernie Hupfer, who was looking out the window like it was the most important thing in the whole wide world.

  “It’s snow, Ernie,” I said. “White flakes. They come down every winter. You’ve seen them before.”

  We passed old First Congregational, Mr. Haskell skidding the back tires around for the left turn so that the Alliance Bridge came into view and then whirled out of view, like a movie camera going berserk.

  We all held on.

  Ernie turned to me and his face was tight.

  “Listen, Jack.”

  “Relax, Ernie. He’s not going into the river. You won’t die.”

  “Just listen. Don’t hang around with Psycho back there, okay?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just don’t hang around with him.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  “Ernie—”

  “I said, no reason.”

  Danny Nations leaned over his seat, twisting one of his ear buds. “What’s so serious back here?”

  “Nothing,” said Ernie.

  “I think someone’s tightie-whities got a little too tightie,” said Danny.

  “Shut up,” Ernie said, and went back to looking out the window.

  five

  I FIGURED out what Ernie meant a couple of days later.

  In gym class.

  A Friday. When Coach Swieteck was gone to some stupid PE conference. And we had a substitute who knew as much about running a gym class as a gerbil would.

  I knew when Ernie told me we had to roll up the mats at the end of class and I went to do it with him and Coach Substitute hollered, “Hey, thanks for doing that without my asking” and I looked at Ernie and then I looked around the gym and some of the other eighth graders were still shooting baskets
but Joseph had already gone into the locker room.

  Nick Porter and Brian Boss and Jay Perkins were gone too.

  Ernie said, “Jack.”

  I dropped my side of the mat.

  Ernie said, “Don’t,” but I did.

  The way into the eighth-grade side of the locker room was blocked by stupid eighth graders standing like cows at a gate they can’t get through.

  I ran down the center aisle to the other end of the locker room. Someone was slamming against the lockers and slamming again, and I heard Joseph yell something and someone else yell something, and then I got to the end of the aisle and turned in to the eighth-grade side.

  Jay Perkins was on the floor, bent over and holding his nose because of all the blood coming out of it. He was hollering, but the words were sort of snotty and hard to make out.

  Past him, Brian Boss and Nick Porter were both holding Joseph and slamming him again and again against the lockers.

  I figured they’d worn their cups.

  Beyond them, the stupid stupid stupid eighth graders stood watching. Watching as Joseph got slammed again and again.

  Joseph didn’t have much of his shirt left on him, and you could imagine the welts the lockers were leaving on his back. Some blood, too, but that might have been from Jay Perkins.

  The look on his face? What do you think?

  Until he saw me. He couldn’t say anything, because Nick Porter suddenly had his hand across Joseph’s jaw and he was strangling him and shoving him back into the lockers. But even so, when Joseph saw me, he shook his head.

  He wanted me out of there.

  Then Jay Perkins stood up.

  Someone called out, “Jay, enough,” but I don’t think Jay Perkins even heard him. And if he did, he wasn’t thinking it was enough.

  He stood in front of Joseph. He was still hollering, but he was snarling, too. He pulled his arm back and Nick Porter took his hand away from Joseph’s face and Joseph closed his eyes.

  Everything stopped.

  The stupid herd of eighth graders. Nick Porter and Brian Boss. Joseph. Jay Perkins with blood on his fist.

  Everything stopped, and I thought I heard some of the words Joseph cried in his dreams—the words I didn’t even know. I think they were coming from me.

  I pushed off from the lockers, took three quick steps, and slammed into Jay Perkins’s back.

  His face plowed into the wire mesh of the lockers, and he fell to his knees again.

  Then the words were coming out of Jay Perkins.

  And he didn’t just say them. He screeched them loud enough to be heard in whole different wings of Eastham Middle School.

  And while he said what he was saying, Brian Boss turned to look at me, and Joseph brought his right knee up as hard as he could.

  It turned out, Brian Boss wasn’t wearing a cup after all.

  He threw up all over Jay Perkins.

  Then he screeched too.

  And, his right arm now free, Joseph smashed his own fist into Nick Porter’s face.

  Again, and again, and again.

  He was crying. Like at night.

  He stopped only when the stupid herd of eighth graders scattered and Coach Substitute ran in to find out what all the screeching was about.

  IT WOULD HAVE to be Mr. Canton.

  I sat in his office. Still in gym stuff. With some blood on me—not mine.

  Two offices down, Joseph and Brian Boss and Nick Porter and Jay Perkins were in Principal Tuchman’s office. You could tell that Jay Perkins was there by the smell, since he had Brian Boss’s throw-up all over him.

  But I was in Mr. Canton’s office.

  And Mr. Canton was standing behind his desk, probably so he wouldn’t scuff up his shoes. His arms were crossed.

  “So you want to tell me what a sixth grader was doing in the eighth-grade side of the locker room, in an eighth-grade fight?” he said.

  “Winning,” I said.

  “Don’t be smart, Jackson. We’ve talked before about what happens when you’re around Joseph Brook.”

  “It was three guys on one. Three against one. What was I supposed to do?”

  “For starters, go get a teacher.”

  I looked at him.

  “Would you have left a guy being beat up to go find a teacher?”

  Mr. Canton looked at me, then sat down.

  “This is what I meant, Jackson.”

  “Jack.”

  Mr. Canton nodded. “This wasn’t your fight. This wasn’t about you. But look what happened. You might get suspended for fighting. All because you were hanging around Joseph Brook. I’m telling you, I know his type. Trouble follows him like a yellow dog.”

  “I’ve seen what happens to yellow dogs,” I said. “It was three against one.”

  Mr. Canton sighed. “Yes, it was. I’m not saying you didn’t think it was the right thing to do. And I’m not saying it was and I’m not saying it wasn’t. The point is, you’re a different kid around Joseph Brook, and not a better kid. You need to be careful around him. Maybe put some distance between you two.”

  “I did think it was the right thing,” I said, “and you still didn’t answer my question. Would you have left a guy being beat up to go find a teacher?”

  Mr. Canton sighed again. “Go get clean,” he said. “Bell rings in ten minutes.”

  I did. Meanwhile, Mr. Canton called my parents.

  THE TALK I had with Mr. Canton was pretty much the talk I had with my mother and father. I needed to not get pulled into the trouble that followed Joseph, they said. I needed to remember I was in sixth grade and not in eighth grade, and I was not the hero who was supposed to be going to the rescue all the time. I needed to remember that—

  “Would you have left a guy being beat up to go find a teacher?” I asked.

  My father, he wiped his hand across his face, and what was left behind was a smile.

  Really, a smile.

  “Not in a million years,” he said.

  “John!” said my mother.

  “Well, he asked,” said my father. “Just be careful, Jack. Be careful.”

  My mother took my hands. “Jack,” she said, “you do understand that Joseph is not your—”

  “I know,” I said.

  My mother stood and held me. Then my father sent me out to start the milking.

  They talked with Joseph next.

  That night, before he turned the light out, Joseph sat on the desk. He had a few bruises darkening both his sides and some cuts on his back from the wire lockers. And his left cheek was a kind of zombie blue.

  “Jackie,” he said.

  “Jack.”

  “Yeah. Listen, you should have stayed out of it.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “You should have.”

  He jumped off the desk and turned the light out. Against the starlight coming in the window, I saw him turn to watch for Jupiter.

  “But you know what?” he said.

  “What?”

  “No one’s ever had my back before. Except Maddie. Thanks.”

  I got up and stood next to him in the dark. He pointed to Jupiter, lit up, brighter than anything else in the sky.

  The air was so cold, it was chiming like a struck tuning fork. I was shivering and my feet were freezing. But I guess I was about as happy as I’d ever been.

  JOSEPH AND BRIAN BOSS and Nick Porter and Jay Perkins all got four days of suspension for fighting—the last four days before Christmas vacation. The letter Mr. Tuchman sent said they would be expelled if there were further incidents. And they would have to make up all their missed work once they got back to school in January. Including the PE periods.

  Except Joseph didn’t have to wait until January to make up all his classes.

  When I got home the first Monday of Joseph’s suspension, Mr. D’Ulney and Mrs. Halloway were just getting out of a car. You know how strange it is to see teachers at your house? You instantly feel like you must have done something you’d rather not have
your parents hear about.

  But they weren’t there for me. They were there for Joseph.

  So Mrs. Halloway graded papers while Mr. D’Ulney went over some proofs with Joseph and assigned his homework, and when he was done, Mr. D’Ulney graded papers while Mrs. Halloway went over poetic scansion, which no one really cares about, and she made me identify stressed and unstressed syllables and name their rhythms with Joseph, even though I was going to have to do it again in class the next day. But she said it would be good preparation so I should stop fussing, sit down, and get busy. And when she was done and they were getting ready to leave—she left Joseph a bunch of homework for the next day too—Coach Swieteck was pulling up in his van. Joseph and I went out, and he said, “Show me your barn” and we went into the Big Barn and he said, “This’ll do. Go get the weights in the back of the van,” and he threw Joseph the keys. So we brought the weights into the Big Barn—four trips—and Joseph said, “Isn’t it going to be cold out here?” and Coach Swieteck said, “It’s a tough world, kiddo,” and that was that. PE for Joseph was lifting weights in the barn. For an hour. And me, too, since Coach Swieteck said it wouldn’t hurt.

  They came all four days of Joseph’s suspension.

  All four days, so he wouldn’t have to make up those classes in January.

  At the beginning of Christmas vacation, we saw Brian Boss and Nick Porter and Jay Perkins at the Eastham Library—not that they were in the library, but we were, since Joseph needed the second volume of Octavian Nothing. It had snowed pretty hard and the streets were white with packed snow. When we came out, they were driving by, Jay Perkins on his snowmobile with a face that looked like it had been smacked up against a locker—which it had—and Brian Boss behind Nick Porter on his snowmobile. They drove by slowly, watching. Joseph handed me the second volume of Octavian Nothing and he stood with his hands at his sides, watching back.

  On the way back home, they passed us again on the road.

  “You’re dead, kid,” Jay Perkins hollered from his snowmobile.

  Joseph handed me the second volume of Octavian Nothing again and we watched them until they turned out of sight. Then he looked at me. “Don’t let them get behind you, ever,” he said.