Wildflower

by Anne Schraff

  “Yeah,” Athena agreed, opening her cheese and tomato sandwich, “I was really stupid. I thought the stuff in the bottle was just soda.”

  “Athena, what exactly did the boy look like—the one who gave you the liquor?” Chelsea pressed.

  “Uh . . . he was like tall, and cute. He was really nice. He said he played football,” Athena picked the tomato slice from her sandwich and threw the rest of it away. “I’m getting fat,” she announced.

  “No, you’re not. You’re too skinny,” Chelsea protested.

  “You know, Chel,” Athena said, “I don’t think that boy meant to hurt me. I don’t think he knew there was liquor in that bottle.”

  “Yeah, but when you passed out, it was bad that he left you,” Chelsea replied.

  “You know,” Athena explained, “it’s all kinda fuzzy in my mind. I don’t think he was even there anymore when I fainted. I think I took the drink from the sports bottle. Then we said goodbye, and he was gone before I got sick. I think that’s what really happened. I don’t think he had any idea what happened to me.”

  “Girl,” Chelsea asserted, “I think you’re making excuses for the guy ’cause he was cute and stuff. You don’t want to believe anything bad about him.”

  “No way,” Athena objected. “It’s just I can’t remember seeing him there just before I got sick.”

  “I think you’re lying,” Chelsea insisted. “I’m your best friend and you’re lying to me.”

  Athena sighed. She looked sad and worried. Then finally she said, “Promise it stays between us if I tell you, Chel?”

  “Yeah, promise,” Chelsea assured her.

  “I knew who the guy was,” Athena confessed. “It’s somebody you know, Chelsea. I didn’t want to tell you who it was ’cause you used to like him a lot. And I thought it’d make you feel bad if he and I sorta liked each other now.”

  “Oh-my-gosh!” Chelsea gasped. “It’s not Brandon Yates, is it? Please tell me it’s not him!”

  Brandon Yates was a freshman at Tubman whom Chelsea really liked. He had urged her to come to a party he was having, and Chelsea lied to her parents and went. It turned out to be a drug party, and Jaris dragged her home.

  “Do you still like him, Chel?” Athena asked.

  “No, I think he’s a creep, Athena,” Chelsea responded. “He used dope and stuff. And when I hung out with him I was in way over my head. We’re just middle schoolers and it’s dumb to hang with a guy from Tubman.”

  “He doesn’t use dope anymore,” Athena explained. “He’s cleaned up his act, Chel. You’ll keep your promise won’t you? You won’t tell anybody it was Brandon who gave me the liquor, will you? ’Cause he didn’t know there was booze in that bottle. Somebody else must have poured the stuff in the bottle as a joke or something.”

  “I won’t tell anybody,” Chelsea pledged. “A promise is a promise. Have you talked to Brandon since that night?”

  “Yeah, I texted him and told him what happened,” Athena told her. “And he was all surprised and stuff. That’s why I’m sure he wasn’t there when I passed out. He was really sorry about there being liquor in the bottle, Chel.”

  “I think you’re fooling yourself, girl, “Chelsea insisted. “I know he’s cute and he can be real nice, but I bet he knew darn well what was in that bottle. And I bet when he saw you go down, he bailed. He’s a liar, Athena. When he asked me to go to that party, he said it’d all be kids our age and stuff. When I got there, there were guys in their twenties. And B.J. Brady, that drug dealer, was passing stuff around. Brandon knew what he was getting me into. I just wish you weren’t mixed up with him.”

  As she went home that day, Chelsea was sorry she had promised to keep Brandon’s name a secret. She wasn’t sure she should even keep that promise.

  That night, when Pop came home, he had an announcement. “Old Jackson is selling the garage. He sprung it on me this afternoon. He’s dumping the place.”

  “Selling the garage?” Mom repeated. “What does that mean for you, Lorenzo?”

  Pop made an excellent salary working for Jackson. He had just gotten a big raise. He hated being a mechanic, but he was very good at it. Most of the customers came in because of Lorenzo Spain. He could fix just about any car and make it better than new. Pop answered, “Depends on who buys the place, Monie. If a dude with three mechanic sons comes along to buy the place, then I’m out of a job.”

  Pop sat down at the kitchen table. He looked at his wife and at Jaris, who had just come home from school. “Old Jackson asked me if I’d like to buy the place,” he said.

  “Lorenzo,” Mom cried, “where would we get the money?”

  “It’s a gold mine down there, Monie,” Pop said, deflecting the question. “With me in charge, it’d be even better. Jackson is a poor manager. He gets parts from the highest-priced guys and turns down chances to get parts that are cheaper and better quality. He keeps lousy books. We’d need to take out a loan on the house, Monie, but we’d get it paid off in no time,”

  “A loan on the house?” Mom gasped. “We already have a mortgage. Lorenzo, that would be so dangerous. We could end up losing everything.”

  “That how much faith you got in your old man, girl?” Pop asked scornfully. “I’m telling you, I could pay back the money we’d need to borrow in a couple years. Heck, I could pay up the mortgage on the whole darn house in maybe three years. Monie, I want to do this. I know it’s the right thing to do. If I let this chance pass, girl, I’m on the bottom rung of the ladder for keeps. This ain’t my dream of going to college and being a scientist or something. That dream is dead and buried. But this is my chance to be more than a grease monkey doing the boss’s bidding. This is my chance to be somebody, babe, to put my name out there on the garage—Spain’s Auto Care, in big, bold letters.”

  Jaris’s heart pounded with both fear and excitement. This could finally be his father’s big chance. Maybe this was the only chance he’d ever get to be more than he was, to escape from the darkness, not to see himself as a loser anymore. “Pop, I think it’d be good,” Jaris told him.

  “See,” Pop said. “My boy has faith in me. He’s sixteen years old, and he has faith in his old man. I been married to you for almost eighteen years, Monie. And you’re standing there shaking like I’m asking you to do a high wire act without a net. What’s the matter with you, girl?”

  “But Lorenzo, we could lose everything,” Mom repeated. She wanted to believe in her husband. She loved him with all her heart. But he wanted to risk their home, their security, everything.

  “Don’t take this chance away from me, baby,” Pop pleaded. “I’m pushing forty. The train is comin’ to the end of the tracks. Before I know it, the curtain comes down and I’m an old man who failed. Stand by me, girl. Life don’t give a man many chances. I never thought I’d get a second one. But it’s coming at me and I gotta grab it.”

  Chelsea had come home in the middle of the conversation. She grinned and said, “I want you to have the garage, Pop. It would be so exciting to see your name on it.”

  “See Monie, the little girl is on my side too,” Pop declared. “Don’t drag us all down.” A hardness had come into the man’s eyes. “And don’t be running to the phone to whine to your mother that your husband wants to bring the family to ruin and pretty soon you’ll be dumpster diving. Don’t go whining to your mother like a child. This is not just my dream. It’s for you and the kids too.”

  But late that night, Jaris heard his mother on the phone. Pop had gone to bed, and she was on her cell in the living room. “Oh Ma, I’m just sick. I don’t know what to do. He has his heart set on it. I’m terrified that he’ll fail. He’s never run a business before. It’s a whole other thing. He’s a good mechanic, but can he run a business? . . . That’s how I feel too, yes. Maybe overnight he’ll give it more thought and come to his senses before it’s too late. Maybe he’ll get cold feet. Oh Mom, I’m so afraid we’ll lose everything we’ve worked for, the house, the kids’ college money. I m
ake good money but I can’t carry the whole thing, especially with a bigger mortgage. . . . Yes. . . . Okay Mom.. . . Thanks.” She hung up.

  Jaris came into the living room then.

  “Grandma says not to do it, right?” Jaris asked.

  “Jaris, are you spying on me now? Haven’t I enough to deal with without you spying on me?” Mom complained.

  “Mom,” Jaris persisted, “don’t fight Pop on this. He has to do it.”

  Anger leaked into Mom’s eyes. “You’ve always been on his side, Jaris,” she accused him. “You have this crazy belief that he’s right in everything, but he isn’t. I have to protect my family. I can’t let this scatterbrained idea send us all into ruin.”

  “Grandma Jessie, she’s all for throwing a monkey wrench into Pop’s dream, right?” Jaris asked.

  “My mother is an excellent business woman,” Mom told Jaris in a cold voice. “When my father died, she took over everything and did much better than he ever did. She made a lot of money in real estate. She knows what she’s talking about. She thinks Lorenzo’ll run the garage into bankruptcy within a year, and I agree with her.”

  “Mom,” Jaris insisted, “she’s not our family. Our family is you and Pop and me and Chelsea. Your mom has no right to try to run our lives.”

  “Jaris, don’t be lecturing me,” Mom scolded. “You’re just a boy. You’re sixteen years old. You have this silly, romantic notion of your father charging into the business world and coming up a big winner. But that’s not him. He’s always been a loser.” Mom’s voice trailed off, and a stricken look came over her face. She seemed to desperately regret what she had just said, what she had said to her son, to Lorenzo’s son. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out, Jaris. I swear I didn’t.”

  Jaris didn’t say anything, but he thought, “Yeah, you did mean it, Mom. You did mean it. Because that’s how you see Pop, and he knows it. That’s part of the reason he sees himself as such a failure. His wife didn’t have all that much faith in him, in his abilities, in his opinions, in his leadership of the family.”

  “Mom,” Jaris responded, “give Pop a chance. Just give him a chance.” Jaris turned then and went down the hall to bed. He didn’t sleep very well. Mom had to cosign the application giving Pop the loan money he needed to buy the garage. If she stuck to her guns and didn’t sign, then the dream was dead. Jaris wanted his father to have this chance. More than that, he knew what Mom’s lack of support would do to the marriage. Jaris knew his parents loved each other, but a marriage needed more. It needed trust. Mom had to trust Pop. She had to be willing to go out on a limb with him. What if she killed his dream and he spent the rest of his life working as a grease monkey for another boss? How long would the love survive? Jaris was afraid to think about that.

  At breakfast, Jaris asked Chelsea how Athena was doing.

  “She’s doing okay,” Chelsea replied.

  “She still can’t remember more about the guy who gave her the liquor, huh?” Jaris asked.

  “Uh, she said no,” Chelsea lied, pouring milk on her oat cereal. She cut up some peaches and added them too. Then Chelsea spilled some milk on the table. She felt Jaris staring at her, as if he knew she wasn’t telling the whole story. Chelsea was not a very good liar.

  As Chelsea was leaving for school, Jaris followed her. “Chili pepper, Athena knows the boy, doesn’t she?” he asked.

  “She says he, uh . . . looked familiar. . .,” Chelsea replied, “but she thinks he made a mistake, that he didn’t know the liquor was there in the bottle and stuff.” Chelsea spotted Inessa who had come to walk to school with her. Chelsea smiled at Jaris and hurried out of the house to join Inessa.

  “Hi Jaris,” Inessa called out.

  “Hi Inessa,” Jaris answered, drawing closer. “You know Athena Edson, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Inessa responded, “but I don’t like her boyfriend. He’s super icky.” Chelsea gave Inessa a nudge but it was too late. The damage was already done.

  “Who’s her boyfriend?” Jaris asked.

  Inessa knew she had said too much. “Uh, some guy who goes to Tubman,” she said. Chelsea was glaring at her. “Come on, Inessa, we’ll be late!” Chelsea said.

  “What’s his name, Inessa?” Jaris persisted.

  “I just know his first name—Brandon something,” Inessa replied. “He drives but he doesn’t have a license.”

  Chelsea was dragging Inessa down the sidewalk now.

  “Brandon Yates?” Jaris asked.

  Inessa looked back, shrugged, and hurried along with Chelsea to Anderson Middle School.

  As Jaris watched the girls go down the street, he could tell from Chelsea’s body language that she was scolding Inessa for spilling too much. The hair on the back of Jaris’s neck stood up. That little creep Brandon Yates was at it again, preying on middle schoolers. Brandon had chased Chelsea until Jaris ran him off. Now he was after Athena who didn’t have a big brother to protect her. Jaris figured Brandon would be just the kind of creep who would get a girl drunk for the fun of it. Then he would bail when she passed out in the alley.

  Jaris headed out for Tubman High. He planned to go over to the freshman lunch area and find Brandon Yates. He had confronted him once before, and Brandon seemed to scare easily. Maybe Jaris could scare him again.

  During the lunch period that day, Jaris saw Brandon sitting alone on a bench and he called out, “Hey Yates, can I have a word with you, man?”

  Brandon stood up, fear coming into his eyes. “Hey dude,” he protested, “I got nothing to do with your sister. I ain’t talked to her in a long time.”

  “I know,” Jaris said. “Good thing too. But I’m talking about something else now. How come you gave a middle schooler liquor out of a sports bottle? Then when she passed out, you ran? Why’d you do that, man?” Jaris’s voice was harsh as he came closer to the younger boy. Jaris was not one hundred percent sure Brandon was the culprit. He figured he would know for sure by Brandon’s reaction to the accusation.

  “I didn’t!” Brandon insisted, turning ashen. “Anybody told you that is a liar. We were sharing the sports drink, me and a couple other guys. I didn’t know what was in it. One of the other dudes musta spiked it. She was there, that chick, Athena. She goes, ‘Lemme have a taste of that,’ and she drinks it. She looked weird, and I didn’t know what to do. So I cut out. I never saw her fall down, I swear.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s a good story, Yates,” Jaris snarled. “But lissen up, man. You stop hanging with girls from Marian Anderson Middle School. You hear me? You stop driving around there when you don’t even have a license. You got no sense and you got no smarts, fool. You lissen to me, or I might just change your face in a way you won’t like. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” Brandon answered. He turned and joined a group of freshmen under the pepper trees. He kept looking back to see if Jaris was still standing there, staring at him. For a long time, Jaris was doing just that, just to put the fear in him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jaris turned and went back to the junior lunch area under the eucalyptus trees. Sereeta and Alonee Lennox were there. Oliver Randall had just walked up.

  “I was going to come hunting for you, Jaris,” Sereeta told him.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jaris said to her. “I had to go over and give a freshman punk a hard time. He’d been chasing Chelsea, and now he’s hanging around another kid. He gave this girl some liquor the other night, and she passed out behind a store. If a poor homeless guy hadn’t found her, she might’ve been in big trouble. I told him I’d bust his face if he didn’t stay away from the Anderson school kids.”

  “Good for you,” Oliver said.

  Trevor Jenkins joined the group as they were talking. “Parents shouldn’t let their little thirteen-year-old girls hang out at the convenience store at night,” he declared. “The girl I used to date, Vanessa Allen, that’s what messed her up. She started hanging with guys when she was still a little girl, and she drop
ped outta school. Now her life is going downhill fast.” There was a sad look on Trevor’s face.

  “Anybody know the Yates family?” Jaris asked. “I’d like to connect with them. This Brandon Yates needs to be reined in.”

  “There’s a family by that name on my street,” Sereeta offered. “Grandma sometimes mentions them. I’ll find out tonight if Brandon lives there.”

  “Thanks, Sereeta,” Jaris said, opening his lunch. He didn’t have much appetite since Pop introduced the idea of buying the Jackson garage and Mom went ballistic. Pop wasn’t going to let that idea go, and Mom was stubborn too. Jaris honestly didn’t know how it all would end.

  That afternoon, as Jaris came jogging from school up to his home, he groaned. Grandma’s red convertible was in the driveway. Usually she didn’t come over during the week unless something important was going on. She knew Pop wouldn’t be home for a while, but Mom was home from school. Jaris could guess what this visit was all about. Mom was complaining again about what she thought was Pop’s harebrained idea to buy the garage. Grandma Jessie was here to back her up.

  When Jaris came into the front room, he saw his mother and grandmother in animated conversation around the coffee table.

  “Hi Jaris,” Grandma Jessie said. “Did you have a nice day at school?”

  “Wonderful,” Jaris replied. “Couldn’t be better.” He knew he sounded sarcastic and he didn’t care. He deeply resented his grandmother’s efforts to manipulate his family. Why didn’t she just stand back like other grandparents who let their sons and daughters handle their own problems? Mom was thirty-eight years old. And here was Grandma Jessie advising her as if she were eighteen.

  “So,” Grandma continued, as if Jaris weren’t there, “you must stand firm, Monica. He will argue and try to bully you, but you cannot bend. Too much is at stake. This is not a clever man, your husband. When he tries to run a business, it will be a disaster. He will sink like a stone and take you and the children down with him.”