by Ash Parsons
Clay waved back and crossed the scrub. I stood stiffly and shook his hand. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He studied me.
I held his gaze and took out the cigarette again to give my hands something to do. Put it back in the box. “You want to come inside?” I gestured at the door.
“Okay.”
Clay sat in the sprung recliner. I collapsed on the sofa.
“How many more days you gonna be out?” he asked.
“One more, I think. I’m sleeping a lot, is all.”
He gave me that wise-eyed once-over twice. “That’s probably because you have a concussion or something.”
I shrugged.
A short burst of air pushed past Clay’s teeth. Staccato, making a faint click, like he didn’t intend to do it, but was moved by anger or disgust.
My eyes jumped to his face.
Clay’s head was shaking slightly. His eyes, narrow and sharp. And shining. “You should have told me you were headed here. Hell, you should have told Janie. Or better yet, you shouldn’t have come home at all.”
“No point putting it off. Either way, it would have happened. Waiting would have only made it worse.”
“Maybe. But you still should have told us.”
“Right. Then you wouldn’t have worried.”
“Screw you.”
“Get in line.”
But there was no venom in my voice, and none in Clay’s, either. Just stress, and fatigue, and the sparks that are thrown off when you care about someone. The way a real family interacts around hurt feelings or disappointment. Like how me and Janie do. Or Clay and his mom.
Just expression and clearing the air, like brothers.
I sat up, pushing hair off my face.
“Sorry.” I met his eyes. “I guess I thought I’d call you when it was over.”
Clay smiled, a social cue of forgiveness, not humor. “Well, I know you didn’t want Janie to find you.”
“I didn’t want to be KO’d.” A real smile tugged at my face.
“See how all that violence-preparedness doesn’t work?” Clay asked.
“You’re right. Pacifism would work so much better.”
“Say what you want. Gandhi was badass.”
I flexed a hand and then squeezed it into a fist. “I could take him.”
Clay laughed and fell back in the chair. I sketched a short jab. “A quick pop on the nose.” I punched the air again. “How’s that for passive resistance, bitch?” I brought my elbow up slowly. “I call this one the No-More-Hunger Strike.” Pretended to grab a head, brought it in slow motion onto the elbow. Hissing a cheesy martial arts yell as I did.
Clay laughed so hard he started coughing. I was laughing too as I continued to pretend-beat-up Gandhi, adding more and more ridiculous moves and combinations, just to see Clay laughing like that.
After a while we were both laughing hard enough to gasp. Clay was holding his stomach, and I was holding my ribs. I had to dry my eyes.
I stood and went into the kitchen. Came back with sodas and held one out to Clay.
“Thanks. But I should probably get going.” Clay stood.
I followed him out onto the stoop. Handed him the soda again. “We’ll have it out here.”
We sat on the top step. Clay shoved me, hard. “What kind of dillweed beats up Gandhi?”
I held up my can in a mock toast to myself.
“Well, answer this burning question, Charm School,” Clay said, smiling. “Did Cyndra take you home or not? Because today she was hovering around your locker like she could make you appear by just standing there.”
My heart gave a stupid jump. “Yeah?”
“True.”
I couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at my mouth at the thought. I told Clay about it—about going to Michael’s house and being with her. How I wasn’t sure how she felt about me, but I sure as hell knew how she made me feel.
And I told him about Michael coming home. Confronting me, and the things he said about Cyndra. Then the parking lot and his obsession with me showing him my scar, paying me all that money. About Michael wanting to kill my dad.
And Clay, being Clay, saw something I didn’t. Put his finger on it and pressed, like a doctor diagnosing a dislocation. Or a break.
“He wanted you to go home. Michael did that to get you pissed off. To get you to that place where you would go home and face your dad.”
It fit. Like a jigsaw piece but where you can’t see the final image. The way Michael liked to pull people’s strings. LaShonda getting my file, Dwight and the bet and the fight. Cyndra . . .
“Okay,” I said, to show that I agreed with the idea. “But why?”
Clay shook his head. “Who knows? To get you to agree to kill your dad? Or something with Cesare? So Michael can tell some story about how you and Michael fought together somewhere. Or just because. To mess with you.”
“He does that, but that’s not what this is.” Calling it on instinct, not knowledge.
Down the street, Janie walked toward us. Walking with a boy. They play-shoved each other. The way he was turning toward her, carrying her bags, like he was performing for her. Wheedling. Like he was saying Baby, please with every move.
Janie was smiling. And she looked her age, for once. Not younger, like I usually see her. Not older, like she acted around me lately.
“Something else,” I said to Clay. “I think Michael wants everyone to think I’m dealing.” I explained about Nico and Spud and the realization of how my new clothes made me look.
“Maybe he’s trying to get this Cesare guy to come after you,” Clay said.
I shrugged. We fell quiet as Janie and her friend crossed the yard.
“This is Hunter,” Janie explained. “From school.” A little breathless and not quite looking at me.
“Hunter,” I said.
“Hey. I’m Clay, that’s Jason.” Trying to hide his smile at the way I was glaring at the kid.
“Hey.” Hunter nodded at us and had the good sense not to stare at my face or into my eyes. “Want me to take these inside for you, Jane?” He gave her that all-teeth grin.
“Okay,” Janie said, smiling and, honest to God, batting her eyelashes.
They eased past us on the steps.
“Stay downstairs,” I cautioned as the screen door creaked open.
Janie rolled her eyes at me before they disappeared inside.
Clay smiled. “Leave them alone, man. You’ve got enough to deal with.”
“My thoughts exactly. Which is why I’m not leaving them alone.”
Clay laughed and went down the steps. The fading sun was stealing its light from the sky.
I followed Clay to the edge of the scrub.
“Thanks for coming by,” I said. Threw a one-armed hug on him quick, before he could react or squeeze me back.
“One more day, then I’m expecting you on the walk to school. I was late yesterday,” he said, doing a good job of pretending nonchalance at my gesture.
“Get a clock, genius.”
“You’re my clock.”
I laughed as he walked away. Inside the unit, I interrupted Janie and Hunter saying good-bye by the back door. I pretended not to see them as I got another muffin.
Janie came back into the front room smiling a little, and she looked so happy I made myself smile back and not say anything I was thinking. Except for “Be careful.”
“I like him,” she said, shining like a spotlight.
We went upstairs. She told me about Hunter, and how he’d been flirting with her at school. And I told her a little about Cyndra, and about everything that had happened with Michael after the party. Why I had come home.
She frowned and said it was time to quit the job. I told her the same thing I told Clay, that I could ride it out a little lon
ger.
She nodded, and I could feel it—how she knew I was trying to treat her like an adult about Hunter, so she was trying not to worry about what I said I could handle. I lay back on my bed and went to sleep as Janie messed around on the laptop.
The next morning, after Janie left, I went around the partition and turned on the light on her dresser. In the mirror, my face glared out. Janie’s treatment had worked wonders, yet the eye still looked bad. But not the worst. Not undoable.
Around noon, I heard the phone ring downstairs. Heavy feet made the stairs creak. My dad didn’t knock, just pushed the door open.
“You’re going to school tomorrow, or we’ll be reported to the truant officer or that bitch social worker.” His frozen eyes surveyed my face. “Write a note. Tell them you fell out of a pickup truck. I’ll sign it.”
I didn’t say anything. He walked into the room, kicked my bed. “Hear me?”
“Yes.” I tried to sink into the mattress.
He grunted and started tossing the room. My teeth clenched as he opened drawers, turned out the pockets of clothes, flipped pillows, and shook out books.
He found the twenty I kept stashed in the room as a decoy, and pocketed it. But he didn’t find the coffee can, and he didn’t find the laptop, either.
He left.
I started to think—to worry about the money I’d left in the old gym, and also worry that one day our luck would run out and he’d find the coffee can.
Eventually I sat up. Tore a page out of a notebook and wrote the note. “To Whom it May Concern: Jason Roberts was absent because he fell out of the back of a pickup.” I carried the note downstairs. Handed a pencil to my father.
He took it and slashed his signature at the bottom. Shoved it back at me.
I went back upstairs. Lay down and felt my stomach grumble. Started thinking again—wondering if Cyndra was still missing me or thinking about me at all. The image of her, standing against the rising sun by Michael’s pool, her hair a red-gold. Or waiting for me by my locker, like Clay had said. A dream, a fantasy.
Sitting downstairs in Michael’s house a week ago. Talking to Michael, who wanted to know about the rumors—which ones were true. What I’d really done. But he’d known. Known Trent. Known about Celia. Told LaShonda to copy my file.
His week was almost up. But now he had the gun and had met with Trent about something else. What did they have in common and what were they planning?
The use he had for me. Offering to kill my father or help me do it. Everyone thinking I was dealing drugs.
Cyndra’s stepfather. Was it what Michael said it was?
Questions knotted like tangled coils of razor wire.
Janie got home. “Cyndra was waiting for me at the bus stop after school. She sure looks like trouble.”
I sighed. “Trouble looks pretty good, then.”
Janie held out a note.
I was reaching for it before I could think, wondering if it would smell like her perfume.
It contained only one sentence:
Jason, I can explain myself.—C.
A lipstick print was underneath.
One of Cyndra’s unconsciously deep pronouncements: I can explain myself.
Like she actually could. Like there was anything she could say that would explain sleeping with me in her boyfriend’s bed, and then pretending like it hadn’t happened after telling me he wouldn’t care.
I crumpled the note and tossed it at the trash. Janie picked it up and smoothed it out.
What had I expected? Concern? “Are you all right?” or “When are you coming back to school?” or “I miss you.” Little love heart doodles and gushy pronouncements.
I silently cursed myself for the fool I was.
Janie studied the lipstick print like it was an artist’s brushstrokes. She pursed her lips before stopping and gnawing on a finger instead.
I faced the wall and closed my eyes.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the morning, I got up early and showered. There’s not much you can do for a cracked or broken rib, but I have a back brace from the supply store that straps around my side, and so I tried it on. It actually helped, so I left it on.
Back in the room I put on my own, old clothes. I didn’t have the ones Cyndra had bought, and the ones I’d worn home were bloody and stank of smoke and stale sweat. Besides, all I had to do was get through the day and get home again. I felt like my nerves were lying exposed on the top of my skin.
Janie and I walked to the bus.
“What happened to you?” a kid blurted out.
I cocked a fist. “Wanna find out?”
He shut up and scooted onto the other side of the street.
I shook my hair over my face and turned up the collar of my army jacket.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Janie whispered.
In the bathroom that morning the steam-fogged mirror reflected bruises like rotting fruit.
Like I said before, my dad may be crazy but he’s not stupid—so I don’t usually have to wear it on my face for everyone to see.
And the note was supposed to cover it.
Janie got on the bus, and I walked to Clay’s house. The tightness in my chest unwound slightly as we walked into school together. Since I hadn’t heard anything from Michael after that first text, I figured nothing was urgent and so I’d take the day off.
We went into the cafeteria through the field-side entrance, keeping the building between us and the parking lot.
Just get through the day.
I ate breakfast and listened to Clay ramble on about the zombie book “that was also art.” When the bell rang, we parted. Him to class and me to the office to turn in the note.
The lady behind the counter read the note and frowned at my face.
“That was stupid,” she said. And I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the excuse or my supposed ride in the back of a truck. I shrugged.
She made a copy of the note and put it in a stack. Was it for my file? Suddenly I felt like a bug in a jar—everyone tapping on it and turning it around, squinting and trying to get a closer look.
She gave me the original note, stapled to a slip.
I skipped the courtyard at break. Found Clay instead. During lunch I waited awhile before going to the cafeteria. I was one of the last ones to get my tray. I took it and sat with Clay, Nico, and Spud.
Nico and Spud didn’t say anything about my face or the fact that just last week I’d been sitting outside with the royalty of the school. Instead they did all the talking while I ate. They were still trying to find whoever was dealing at Mercer. They usually bought from another kid they knew, but had taken my favor as a sacred quest.
When the bell rang, I stayed seated and watched the crew parade in from outside. None of them even spared a glance for the burnout corner. Maybe they didn’t realize I was sitting there.
It was more likely they didn’t care.
Dwight was riding Beast like a jockey—whooping, knees high on his sides. His eye was still black, almost as much as mine. The sight made a dark satisfaction spike in my chest. Michael had a hand tucked into the back of Cyndra’s waistband.
They crossed the cafeteria. Michael kept Cyndra close to his side, maneuvering her where she couldn’t glance at my table across the room, even if she thought of it. His own black eye was faded, almost a smudge.
Cesare couldn’t punch worth a damn.
“Don’t worry, she’ll find you,” Clay said, even though I hadn’t said anything about her not seeing me.
“Maybe.” I tried to keep the hope out of my voice.
They walked out. I waited before I went to AP History. If I timed it right, I’d get to my desk before Mr. Stewart walked in, but not be in there long enough to have to talk to anyone—especially Michael.
I got to my
desk before Mr. Stewart, as planned. Michael was talking to the person on the next aisle as I sat down in front of him.
“Holy crap, Jason,” he said in a voice that carried over the pre-class conversation hum. “What’d you do? Stop a fist with your face?”
The room went so quiet I could hear the blood in my ears.
“Mind your own damn business.” The venom in my voice would etch glass.
Michael clapped my shoulder like we were the best of friends and I’d just ranked him.
Something stopped me from knocking his hand away. Maybe because if it looked like we were playing, then my face wasn’t a big deal and they would stop noticing.
Or at least stop talking about it.
Mr. Stewart walked in sipping a soda. He went behind his podium and squinted out at us. “You’re all being quiet today.” He smiled. Then his eyes snagged on me. “Okay, everyone, your work is on the board. Get going.”
Papers shuffled as people began writing their answers.
I closed my eyes.
“Jason. Good to see you back. Do you have an excuse?”
He was the first teacher to ask.
I walked up to the podium, pretending I didn’t feel the eyes of every damn person following me. I handed over the note, stapled to the office slip. Went back to my desk and watched him through my hair.
He made a few marks in his attendance book and then read the note. He sighed, squinting back at me.
I looked out the window. A custodian was slapping a dripping paintbrush over a shoddy, spray-painted anatomy lesson.
After the bell work was done, Mr. Stewart began lecturing. I probably would have been interested, might have even listened, except a headache started and my eyes were so sandy dry I could strike matches off them. I wished I’d taken another migraine pill at lunch, like Janie had told me to.
I let my eyes close, but I couldn’t drift off. Michael’s presence behind me, poised like a scalpel, kept me awake.
The bell finally rang. Kids shoved their things in bags and headed out to last period. I stood up. Grabbed my notebook.
Michael slid up beside me like a friend. “Don’t worry.” His voice was soft. “I’ll think of a way to take care of your problem, too.”
