by Kim Zarins
End of story puts me in mind of all the stories I’ve heard today. It’s a bitter ending. And I helped write it.
“How can you be sure it all worked out that way? How can you do that to someone?”
“Sorry, okay? I needed the money.”
“You needed a phone. How much money could a few teachers give you anyhow?” And then I realize it’s not just teachers. He keylogs lab computers used by college students. People barely older than he is. “You do this to college students?”
“Rich college students. Their proud parents gleefully pay all their bills.”
“And that makes it okay?”
“Shit, Jeff . . .”
We drive in silence.
And I thought helping Franklin’s grades was bad enough. This is much, much worse.
We make our way back. The Washington Monument spikes above the intersection. Cannon parks, and I just sit there.
Hands on the wheel, he looks over the dashboard as if he were still driving. “I know this looks bad. It is bad. I needed the money.”
“What, to cater Franklin’s parties?”
“No. Just . . . I needed the money.”
“Look, I don’t care why; I just want to know who. Have you done this to people at Southwark? I mean, one of us?”
I think of everyone he’s had access to and blurt the first thing that pops into my mind.
“Like me?”
His mouth opens and closes like a fish, a sign of weakness I’ve never seen from him. And I hate him for it. He stole from me. I have no idea how much. I just know I’ve been used.
“Fuck you, Cannon.” I fumble the latch and stagger out like a drunk.
I don’t know whether to care that he races after me. I swing around to face him.
He looks terrible.
This is the guy who taught me how to go to a party. How not to be a quivering mass of fear. And now we’re both afraid.
“Jeff, I know you’re mad. That’s fair. Look. You don’t know how bad things have gotten this year. Real life stuff.”
“I have a real life too. And you fucked with it. What did you take from me? What did you buy?”
He twitches like the conversation’s crawling up his arm. “It was barely anything,” he mumbles. “I just modified your gym membership to include me. Like, a family membership.”
“You screwed me over because you needed nicer abs?”
“I screwed you over because I needed a place to shower.” He opens his mouth and closes it again. I hate how it makes him look. Weak. Stupid.
He’s not making any sense.
He sighs. “I had to get out of my apartment situation. One of my roommates started hanging out with some bad people . . . like, worse than I am. Where do you go when that happens, right? You go to your mom’s. You hate each other, but she’d take you back. Only, the key doesn’t turn the lock. And you look at the number on the door, and you’re in the right place, but the key won’t go in, and then some random guy inside opens the door and scares the shit out of you. She moved out. She left, Jeff, and I never knew. So, yeah. I needed a place to shower.”
My mind goes blank like it does in Calc. The xy graph makes no sense, how your mom becomes an x and you can’t figure out y.
I shift from angry to numb so fast that I’m dazed, like I’m standing at the apartment door, opening to someone I don’t know. “Where’ve you been sleeping?”
He glances at the souped-up little WRX. “There. Other places.”
“You’re homeless?”
He looks pissed. “Homeless people don’t have cars. But I’m not going to be homeless. Ever. I’m practically back on my feet right now.”
He’s homeless. I’ve never met a homeless person before.
A gust of wind picks up, and our bodies brace for it. His hands in his pockets make his arms look like restless, half-folded wings. Faded cherry blossoms fairy-dance their way into gutters.
“Look. I’ll cancel the membership. Or fix it back to what it was.”
I shake my head, still stunned. “I just . . . I didn’t know. You never said. I’d have helped you.”
“Yeah. I know. I know you, Jeff. You’d be fucked to trust me, but I trust you. Maybe I should’ve spoken. I just . . . I needed the money.”
“Do you have a place to stay tonight?”
Cannon has alpha-male posture, like he’s too cool for that question, insulted, even. “I’ll crash at that frat house. Party, remember?” His mouth starts a smile he doesn’t bother to finish. I wonder how much fun it is to party hard when you’re banking on finding a couch or a room or somewhere, anywhere, to shelter you.
He doesn’t look at me when he asks, “Will you come? I can still set you up with a network of friends. I can give you that. Make college easier. You’re not the best at meeting people, you know?”
A new thought hits me. “Where are you really going to college?”
He looks pissed at me for asking but takes a breath. “Not going to happen. But you are, and you’re going to have a shitload of fun. I can promise that.”
It makes me sad, hearing that promise, because someone should have made it to him. “But why? You’re trying to help my social life because of the gym thing?”
“Dude, I’ve been helping your social life eons before the gym thing. I help you because I like to. You get so wound up with the tiniest risks, you know? I like showing you it’s okay. And then making things work out, safe and sound.”
I shiver in the wind. Safe and sound. That’s everything Cannon isn’t.
“Anyhow,” he adds, “you should come to the party.”
I take a deep breath. “I can make my own friends from now on.”
He nods, his face a little tight, his eyes fall from my face.
“I’m still . . . processing all this,” I tell him. “Call me next week if you want.”
Cannon nods, then he shrugs his shoulders loose, walks to his car. I wonder if he’s still sleeping in it.
I wonder how safe and sound he is these days.
“Cannon.”
He half turns.
“Call me next week, yeah?”
He meets my eyes like he’ll ask a question, but instead he simply says, “Okay.”
I know it’s corny, but I watch him drive off. I want him to know I’m not turning my back on him, even if I’ve told him where I stand.
THE MONUMENT
The flags around the Washington Monument suddenly snap in the wind, and everyone lounges around in clumps at the Reflecting Pool. Mr. Bailey just noticed Bryce and Saga wandering off, and he rushes after them in pursuit. Meanwhile, Rooster and Alison dip their bare toes into the pool, and by some sudden inspiration, Alison strides right into the shallow water. Her joking smile is replaced with this radiant, almost determined look on her face as she turns to face the Washington Monument. She stands tall as a Valkyrie with her fist high above her head, posed in a warrior’s salute, and she unfurls her red stockings, which stream behind her flowing hair.
There’s a certain unflinching core I’ve never seen in Alison before as she looks up at the monument towering over her, but not leaving her in shadow.
As a kid I watched the opening to a movie—I don’t remember which one—with the Columbia woman standing there in all her glory. Seeing her for the first time, hearing the orchestra, and feeling a hum of energy, I thought This. Is. It. Like, the ideal person is that Columbia woman, standing as a symbol, both flesh and monument, for all time. It’s like that now. Alison’s so perfect. So complete. The way she’s most herself by confronting things head-on. In her face-off with the Washington Monument, she’s finishing something she started when she was twelve years old, when she stared down the Liberty Bell without her underwear or her virginity.
The moment ends as quickly as it began. Alison throws the red stockings over her head, and the wind picks them up, and Rooster hoots and races to capture them. She laughs, running after Rooster on the grass, and the moment is gone like it never even h
appened. I don’t know what it all means, but I need to write it down before it’s gone forever.
“Jeff!” Mr. Bailey waves at me frantically, and he jogs over to catch me.
“Sorry I’m late. I lost track of time.”
Evidently, that’s not going to cut it. “You’re over twenty minutes late. Where were you? Where’s Mace?”
He gives me an almost desperate look when he asks this last question, and I feel bad for him. I realize I’m going to have to tell him where Mace is, or he’ll have a panic attack. “There was this girl . . .”
He groans. “Oh shit.”
And I explain the relevant details, leaving out Cannon, and give him Mace’s cell, which I still have in my phone.
He strides off to call Mace, and I hear incoherent yelling punctuated by get your ass over here and you are so suspended right now.
And then . . . it’s like I’d never left. The popular people stay in their groups. The loner types stay on the edges. No one except Mr. Bailey missed me at all.
Only Pard notices, but he’s not waving me over to his little loner spot away from everyone else. Instead, he’s glaring, the picture of white Balrog fury sitting on a patch of grass.
Walking up to him—uninvited—is terrifying. I’m sweating already.
I manage a wimpy “Hey” and wither under his Slytherin-grade sneer.
“I saw you leave with him. In his car,” he adds, like the automotive aspect clinched his decision to hate me forever.
I’m puzzled why he cares what I do with Cannon. I mean, I’ve done worse things today. To him. But I still grovel. “I came right back.”
He murders some grass with an angry tug. “In a hurry to win your story contest, no doubt.”
Oh, so we’re in that mode. I’m stuck standing there while he plucks at the grass and plots the next vitriolic thing to say. He gets like this a lot at our anti-PE table. He always comes out ahead.
“I’m not winning that.”
“Not for lack of quantity.”
I almost tell him he sounds like Reeve, saying that, but I have no fight left in me. None. I just want him to let me come clean. “Please don’t be that way.”
Sitting there furiously downcast, he acts like he can’t hear the longing in my voice. “What way is that?”
“I don’t want to argue anymore. You were right about me not listening. I was a jerk when you told me you were . . . about your condition. I’m sorry. And I’m so, so sorry that someone hurt you at your old school. If you ever want to talk about it—”
He whips up a hand to stop me, and it hurts to be cut off mid-apology, even if I deserve it. “We’re not discussing that. Ever. I told you too much, and I regret it, all right? Just forget it. Just forget today ever happened.”
“I can’t,” I croak, flooding him with stares he won’t return. “I don’t want to forget. After today, talking and hearing all the stories—”
“Yes, about vampires. That was swell.”
“Shit, you are a crabby vampire.”
I’m rewarded with a sneer from his downcast, closed face. “Stooping there, are you? Figures. But there’s no need. I already handed you the goddamn Book of Mythic Creatures bookmarked with the page I’m featured on. And besides.” His voice drops to a simmer, a hint of real pain. “Isn’t one mythical affliction enough?”
I draw my arms to my chest because he’s sitting two feet and forever away. “It’s not an affliction, what you have. You’re . . . you’re very special.”
His eyes snap up, glaring. “Ah. Now I’m special.”
“To me, I mean.”
He considers me still standing there like a loser, hugging myself and wilting. He says, regally, “Now I’m curious. Do you like vampires?”
I can’t botch this, but I know I’m going to botch this.
“You mean, do I like vampires in stories? Or are we talking in code?”
He flicks my leg, and it’s like a gong vibrates all the way up my body. “We always talk in code.” His face is tipped up, looking defiant and cynical. Yet I have his absolute attention.
“I like . . .” My voice drops to a whisper. “ . . . one in particular.”
That sudden smile. His face turns sharply so I don’t get it head-on, which is good because that smile would probably slay me. Not a bad way to die though.
“Everyone,” Mr. Bailey calls from far off, “gather around for a minute.”
Next I know, Pard jumps to his feet and takes me by the arm. I can’t feel my own hands, my legs, just his fingers on my elbow. My elbow is in heaven. My elbow is in eros. And it takes a moment to figure out he’s not doing something technically erotic but merely guiding me where we can sit near Mr. Bailey.
Everyone’s forming some sort of circle, but I’m mesmerized by what’s happening in my immediate space. One of his little gray Vans is ever so slightly touching my sneaker. It’s not full-scale footsie, but it is definitely foot touching. I tell myself it’s nothing but, then again, if he has a foot fetish, then we are practically having sex right here in the National Mall. I don’t look up to see if the world is staring at our feet, because I’m too busy staring at them myself. They’re mesmerizing.
Mr. Bailey rests his hands on his hips like a coach. “Good news: I got in touch with Mace. He’s safe. He’s with his sister, and I have his address. I’ll be coordinating a cab to get him back. In the meantime we have a lot to do. To those of you who missed the Washington Monument tour”—and he flicks me a malevolent stare I can’t seem to get worked up about—“it was a gorgeous view. Right, guys?”
Rooster shouts out, “Phallic fantabulousness!”
“Enough,” Mr. Bailey warns, as if they’d covered this ground already. “Okay. Next stop, right across the water.”
He gestures, and we look past the length of the pool to the less phallic Lincoln Memorial.
“We don’t have much time, just fifteen minutes, but we’ll check it out. Our bus is already there, ready to zip us over to the Museum of Natural History until closing, and then we’re off to dinner and checking into our hotel. And may I remind you all that after you check in, you stay in your assigned rooms all night long.”
There are some mock groans from frisky people eager to play the musical beds game, but when Pard taps my foot, I can’t tune in to anyone else. “Lights out early,” he teases, eyes half closed with a come-hither look.
And I thought his shoe was mesmerizing.
Mr. Bailey keeps talking, and I’m wondering if Mace will come back by tonight, or whether it will just be Pard and me in that room. If he’d let me lie next to him and hold him. There’s nothing I want more, but it’s also something I don’t deserve.
Mr. Bailey drones on, when Mari cuts in. “But who won?”
He gives us one of those sly let’s have a learning moment smiles. “Ah, we come to the question.”
Everyone shifts, a little uncomfortable. Now that we’re at the impromptu awards ceremony, the whole day of storytelling feels a little cheapened somehow, because it was more than a contest.
“Everyone deserves some credit,” Parson chirps. “Everyone should win.”
Reeve snorts. “Wait one second here. Why do you deserve credit? You told a sermon, not a proper story. And what about Cookie getting all spaced-out and then falling asleep during his own story? Even worse, Franklin cheated! And furthermore, it staggers the mind that Jeff told three stories. Three! They should all be automatically disqualified.”
Everyone speaks up at once, and Mr. Bailey has to shout to calm people down and let the accused have their say.
I simmer with words. Stories. Cheating. Winning.
I think I have an idea. . . .
“I spoke from my deepest soul,” Cookie murmurs when Mr. Bailey gives him the floor.
“So did I,” Parson adds.
Franklin shrugs when Mr. Bailey calls on him. “Look, I’m not into this competition thing. I don’t care. Studying for one more final won’t kill me.”
Al
ison cuts in. “Come on, guys. So what if Cookie slept or Franklin fudged? God knows we all sleep and fudge. But not one person refused to tell a story. Not even Mace.”
“Oh, Jeff did the opposite of refusing: He told three stories! That prize would be mine if everything were fair,” Reeve whines, to eye rolls all around.
Mr. Bailey looks at me. I have nothing to say. I’m too busy thinking about Pard right there and also about this story idea blossoming all around me.
Parson smiles at Reeve and then includes us all. “It’s not about winning. It’s about giving people a chance to be heard. Everyone got their chance to share, and we all listened. What a gift. It’s like magic.”
Magic. It really is.
“Jeff?” Mr. Bailey looks at me like I’d better speak up this time. “Your head looks like it’s going to explode.”
“It’s magic,” I parrot. I sound like Cookie.
Cheating. Playing. Making stories. Stories that flow into one larger story. The story.
Yes.
Everyone’s looking at me like I’m a total oddball, and I don’t even care. Pard’s looking too, but I can’t explain this right now. This amazing idea.
“So who won?” Rooster asks. “Because I’m kinda hoping . . .”
“Let’s just vote and be done with it,” Briony says, eye rolling like this is taking too long, and I notice she’s not the only restless one.
Reeve goes ballistic. “That’s a popularity contest!”
“Quiet down,” Mr. Bailey says.
Parson beams at us like we’re all precious children of God. “I think in the spirit of unconditional love it would be wrong to select one winner. Everyone wins.”
Mr. Bailey nods. “I’ve thought of that, but I can’t give the entire class A’s.”
I could, however, with the cloud. But, no . . . I won’t. I’m going to tell Cannon I’m not messing with other people’s numbers ever again, not even grades. If I don’t get into my top schools, I’ll just have to deal with it.
“Look,” Mari says. “Not to dis the agape or whatever, but patting everyone on the back doesn’t mean anything. There should be a winner. And it should be Sophie.”
People’s eyes kind of pop, and then they nod in agreement, even Cece, and I have to agree that Sophie’s story was excellent. Romantic yet lonely, my favorite kind, and it elevated the theme of demons from the stories told before her. I’m totally on board with her winning. Even if I’m partial to Pard’s story about prom, or the merciless story that followed. Or Pard’s revision of Briony’s story. Actually, Pard just sitting right here is a really nice poem in itself. I’m not sure I can be objective when it comes to Pard.
