by Jonah Black
“Well, good,” Luna said. “I guess things didn’t work out in Pennsylvania.” She said it, but it was more like a question.
“Not exactly.”
“And you’re . . .” She was trying to say something but whatever it was she couldn’t say it. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay. I heard these stories, you know.”
“What kind of stories?” I said.
“I don’t know.” She looked up at the front of the room where our homeroom teacher, Mr. Bond, was reading a thin book called Howl. Then she turned back to me. “Well, you look great, Jonah,” she said. “Better than I expected.”
Gee, thanks, Luna. I mean, it’s not like I think I’m hot or anything. I’m tall. In good shape from swimming. My hair is kind of wavy and brown and looks decent, usually. My skin is okay. My eyes are just plain brown, kind of big. I’m all right, I guess. At least I hope so. Anyway, I don’t know what Luna was expecting me to look like, but what she said didn’t sound like much of a compliment.
“Listen. I’ll be sitting over there,” Luna said, and then she waved at me like I was somebody driving away in a car.
I turned to look out the classroom window and there was the Atlantic Ocean, twinkling and green in the warm Florida sun. There were speedboats zooming around, and yachts, and way out, a lone sailboat sailed into the horizon.
Sophie turns to me and says in the softest whisper in the world, “I want this moment to last forever.”
She leans over and we start to kiss and while we’re kissing it begins to rain softly. The forest is humming with the sound of the rain.
“Jonah,” Sophie says in that same whisper so soft that I wonder if I’m even hearing it, or maybe I can hear her talking inside my head. “Let’s lie down in the moss.”
We tie up the horses and sit down on the ground and the moss is softer than velvet; it’s like fur. We wrap our arms around each other and lie back and grasshoppers fly out of the moss and up into the air.
“So are you going to remember me, Jonah?” Sophie says, looking into my eyes. She is trembling again, and I hold her tight.
“Yes,” I say. “Of course I’ll remember you.”
“Oh, Jonah. I don’t know how I’m going to go on with my normal life after this. It’s like, nothing can be put back the way it was.”
“But is that what you want? Do you really want everything back the way it was?” I ask her.
“No,” Sophie says. She’s lying on her back now, looking up at the sky. Tiny raindrops are collecting on her cheeks. “I just wish it wasn’t so complicated. I’m going to miss you so much. I miss you now, even. It’s like you’re already gone.”
“I’m here.”
“I know. But I can’t imagine living through next year, with you back in Florida and me stuck at Masthead without you.”
“You’ll be all right,” I say, although I kind of like that she’s so upset about me leaving.
“I won’t be all right,” Sophie says. Her throat catches and there’s that note in her voice that makes me wonder about her sometimes. Like, if she’s all there, and if she’s going to be okay without someone looking out for her. She starts to cry a little, and she turns her head and smiles at me as if she’s afraid I think she’s stupid for crying. Her tears are made of watery blue ink, staining the collar of her shirt.
“You’ll be okay,” I say, stroking her hair.
“It’s all my fault,” she says. “You getting kicked out. Having to go back to Florida. Is the school you’re going to anything like Masthead?”
“No, it’s just a public high school.”
“And what’s the town called again?”
“Pompano Beach.”
“And what’s the point of Pompano Beach again? Like, what’s there?”
I think about Pompano. About Mom and my sister, Honey, and Don Shula High, and my best friends, Thorne Wood and Posie Hoff, and the Intercoastal Waterway, and the beach, and the mall, and I don’t know how to explain it. It seems so far away.
“It’s the home of the Goodyear Blimp,” I say.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” I describe the hangar that they keep the blimp in, and Sophie listens, and as she listens the wind blows a pale strand of hair in her eyes. I reach over and fix it, tucking it behind her ear. She wears diamond studs in her ears every day.
For a while we are quiet, listening to the sound of the rain in the tree branches above our heads.
“So what makes it float?” Sophie asks.
“What?” I say.
“The blimp. Is it helium? Or hot air? What is it?” She looks worried. “If it’s so easy to get things to float then why aren’t there more things up in the air, floating?”
I can tell it isn’t really the blimp Sophie’s worried about. She looks so distant and troubled, it’s like she’s the one floating away.
“Sophie,” I say. “I will always be
This guy just came over to me and said, “Hey, Jonah.” I couldn’t believe it. It was Thorne! And he goes, “What are you writing?” and I said, “Nothing,” and then I closed the journal. I just sat there staring up at him for a second, and then Thorne whooped and yelled and gave me this big bear hug. I can’t believe how much Thorne has changed in two years. He has this little goatee now and he’s grown like eight feet. And he acts so different, too. I mean, Thorne was always this gangly geek with braces who couldn’t get his zipper to stay up. But now he has this whole aura of coolness and sophistication.
“Jonah, dude,” Thorne said, checking me out. “It’s like you haven’t changed at all!”
This was the second time someone had said this. It was getting annoying.
“You haven’t changed, either,” I told him, and he just smiled like he knew I was lying.
“You look like you’re in good shape, though,” Thorne said, smacking my stomach.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was on the diving team back at Masthead. I’m going to dive for Don Shula, too, I guess.”
“Whoa,” Thorne said, “You’re like, Mr. Team Spirit!”
I rolled my eyes. “Piss off,” I said.
“So what do you think?” Thorne asked, looking around the room like some kind of czar surveying his domain.
I looked around the Zoo, which is what everybody at Don Shula High School calls the senior homeroom. Mr. Bond was sitting at his teacher desk, going through his papers. The rest of the seniors were talking to each other, catching up on the summer. I saw a couple of guys I used to know, including Smacky Platte. Smacky used to be addicted to orange-flavored Tic Tacs and he would sit in the corner chewing on them and playing his Game Boy. Now he has bloodshot eyes and a very stoned-looking perma-grin. It looks like Smacky has some new hobbies.
It was weird, though. The girls had changed even more than the guys. A lot of them I didn’t even recognize, and I couldn’t tell if it was because they were new or if their bodies and faces had morphed so much that I just couldn’t place them. I wish I’d moved back to Pompano in June so I could have caught up with everybody this summer, instead of just dive-bombing in the week school started.
“So what have you heard about Mr. Bond?” I asked Thorne.
Mr. Bond looked kind of retro, with a starched white shirt and a narrow black tie and these thick, black-framed glasses. His black hair was all slicked back and gelled.
“Major tight-ass,” Thorne whispered back.
I kept looking around for Posie, but I didn’t see her anywhere. “Where’s Posie?” I said. “I haven’t seen her since I got back.”
Thorne shrugged. “Posie doesn’t do homeroom. She has special permission to come to school an hour late so she can catch the morning waves.”
“She’s surfing?”
“She’s amazing,” Thorne said. “A total wahine.”
I laughed because I’d forgotten about that word. It wasn’t a word I’d heard a lot in Pennsylvania. I guess I’ve forgotten a lot of things.
“Jesus, Jonah,” Thorne said. “It’s so completely
excellent to have you back. I’m telling you, man, we are going to party this year. Seriously!”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“So what happened up in Pennsylvania? You got kicked out or something, right?” Thorne asked me.
“Something like that.” I really didn’t feel like getting into it. “I’ll tell you about it later,” I said.
This girl with amazing red hair was coming toward us, and suddenly I recognized her. It was Rosemary Mahoney, who I’d known since second grade. Rosemary always got teased for looking like a boy because her mother kept her hair cut short. Now her hair has grown past her shoulders and it’s the kind of red that looks natural but it definitely isn’t. Rosemary also has the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Maybe they’re fake, too.
When she saw me looking at her she said, “Jonah Black! Is that you?” She leaned her head to one side, and her red hair fell like a curtain over one shoulder. “I heard you killed somebody in Pennsylvania. You didn’t, did you?”
Right about then Mr. Bond stood up and made a horrible sound writing his name on the blackboard. Rosemary covered her ears with her hands like someone had hit her and then she sat down at a desk right next to me. Then Mr. Bond raised his hands to his face like he was going to shout, but instead he said in this loud, creepy whisper, “Please take your seats, ladies and gentlemen.”
We all sat down.
“I am Mr. Bond,” he said. We kind of guessed this, because he’d already written his name on the board. “And it is my responsibility to be your homeroom teacher for this, your senior year at Don Shula High. It is a responsibility I take seriously. I hope you will value my respect as much as I value yours and we can behave decently toward one another.”
Next to me, Thorne leaned back in his chair and pretended to sneeze, saying the word tight-ass into his hand.
“Now then,” Mr. Bond said. “Ackerman, Dirk?”
This giant mountain of tan muscle, like a two-hundred-pound porterhouse steak, said, “Here.” I couldn’t believe it. When I left Pompano two years ago, Dirk Ackerman looked like a praying mantis. Steroids. It had to be.
“Ambrasino, Kate?” Mr. Bond said.
“Vanilla,” Thorne whispered.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Ambrasino’s vanilla. On the Thorne Wood Ice Cream Scale.”
“Vanilla? Is that good?” I said.
Thorne nodded, smiling happily. “Vanilla’s good.”
“Arnold, Christopher?”
Rosemary glances at me sideways and shakes out her red hair. She leans over to whisper to me and I can smell cinnamon and she says, “I don’t care if you killed someone. I know it wasn’t your fault.”
And I say, “I didn’t kill anyone, I was just unlucky.”
Rosemary looks sad. She pulls a violin out of her backpack and starts to play. It’s Chopin, the same piece the guy down the hall from me at Masthead was always practicing. Sophie and I lie on the roof, just looking up at the stars and listening to the sad, faraway music.
“Morrison, Sally?”
“Here.”
“Rocky Road,” said Thorne.
“Rocky Road?” I said. “Is that better than vanilla?”
“Depends on how you feel about marshmallows,” Thorne said.
The music stops, and we lie still. From my roof we can see the moon rising out on the ocean and it’s huge and red, like a ball of molten lava. Sophie’s skin glows pink in its light, but when I touch her cheek her skin is cold.
“Mint Chocolate Chip,” Thorne said about someone, but I didn’t catch who.
“Now then,” Mr. Bond said, clearing his throat. “Today I would very much like—”
“Hey, Mr. Bond,” Thorne yelled out. “You forgot Jonah!”
“Who?” Mr. Bond said, looking startled. I think he was shocked that he had made a mistake. He seemed pretty anal.
I didn’t say anything because I was kind of embarrassed. I mean, he’d gotten all the way through the roll and I hadn’t even noticed that my name wasn’t called.
“Jonah,” Thorne said like I was famous or something. “Jonah Black!”
“Who’s Jonah Black?” Mr. Bond said impatiently.
A voice said, “I am.” And it was me speaking. Everyone stared at me.
“Jonah Black? There’s no Jonah Black in this class. Is that really your name?” Mr. Bond said, acting all suspicious.
“Yes,” I said. It was really weird, but for a second I wondered if that really was my name. Like, maybe I’m somebody else and I don’t even know it. It would be kind of a relief if that were true. But I’m me all right.
“Jonah wasn’t here last year,” Thorne said, still trying to run interference for me. He sounded like he had everything under control and this would be cleared up in no time. “He was up in Pennsylvania.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Bond. Suddenly something clicked in his brain, as if he was thinking, Oh, he’s the one. Then he looked at me, almost sympathetically. “Mr. Black,” he said. “I think you’d better talk to Mrs. Perella.”
The class groaned. Mrs. Perella, the assistant principal, has a reputation for being a hardass. But Mr. Bond cleared his throat, and the room got quiet again.
“I’d like you to go and speak with Mrs. Perella right now, Jonah,” Mr. Bond said.
“Okay,” I said. I stood up.
“Take your things with you.”
“My things?” All of a sudden I got nervous. I couldn’t figure out why I should take all my stuff with me if I was just going to sort out some glitch in the system. I’d be right back.
“Yes. Take your things with you,” Mr. Bond repeated.
So I picked up my backpack. The room was completely quiet as everyone watched me leave.
The next thing I knew I was in the empty hallway. It smelled like pencil shavings and floor wax and I could hear all the teachers giving their first-day-of-school spiel to their classes.
As I walked down the hall toward the stairwell I heard the pay phone ringing, and I stopped and looked at it. I remember calling Mom on that same phone in the beginning of ninth grade when I’d thrown up right after lunch. The phone is ringing, and nobody is answering it. So I go over and pick it up.
“Hello, Jonah?” she says.
“Sophie?”
“It’s me. Listen. I’m naked.”
“I can’t talk now, Sophie,” I tell her. “I think I’m in trouble.”
I hung up the phone and walked downstairs, down the long hallway on the second floor to the last office on the left. There was Mrs. Otto, the eight-hundred-year-old secretary to Mrs. Perella and Dr. Chamberlin, the school principal. I think she mostly works for Mrs. Perella, though, because Dr. Chamberlin is never around. I don’t even know what he looks like.
Mrs. Otto looked up and said, “Jonah Black,” which was really creepy. I mean, was she expecting me, or did she just remember me from ninth grade?
“Mr. Bond said I should talk to Mrs. Perella,” I told her.
“Indeed,” Mrs. Otto said. “Have a seat.”
I sat down, feeling even more nervous. Indeed is never a good word to hear. So I’m writing this while I’m waiting. Mrs. Perella is in her office taking phone calls, mostly from the parents of kids on Bus 13, which is this school bus where fights always break out. Right now, I can hear her saying, “Yes, if you promise to talk to your son. No, we’ve never had to hire security for any of our other bus routes. All right. Good.” Now she’s hanging up and
(About twenty minutes later.)
Remain calm, that’s the important thing. Freaking out is not going to fix anything.
Too late.
I’m writing this in the cafeteria. There’s no one else in here except the lunch ladies frying up burgers for lunch, which isn’t for another few hours.
So I finally talked to Mrs. Perella.
She is wearing a green military uniform and she glares at me with her hands in fists and says, “Vee have vays of making you talk!”
&n
bsp; And I say, “No. You can torture me, you can kill me, but I don’t have to tell you anything!”
She unzips her uniform and pulls a whip out of her leather bustier, which is studded with metal bolts and screws. Then she cracks the whip against her palm and says, “Oh, I zink you vill talk, Jonah. I zink you vill talk very much!”
Mrs. Perella looked up at me as I came into her office and let her Benjamin Franklin glasses slide off of her nose and hang from the gold chain around her neck. There were two red marks on her nose where the nose pads of the glasses had been. She pinched the red places with her thumb and forefinger and closed her eyes, and while her eyes were closed she said, “Jonah.”
“Hello, Mrs. Perella,” I said. “Mr. Bond said I should talk to you. I wasn’t on his attendance sheet.”
“Mr. Bond?” she said. “What were you doing in Mr. Bond’s class? You’re not in Mr. Bond’s class, you’re in Miss von Esse’s class.”
“Miss von Esse?” This didn’t make any sense because the seniors were all in the Zoo, and there wasn’t any place else for me to go, unless they’d put me in the genius section. For that one tiny second I was thinking, Excellent. If I’m in the genius section I get to sleep an extra half hour in the morning, and ride to school with my sister in her Jeep, and all the colleges are going to love me. Things were looking up!
“Jonah, you’re not in the twelfth grade. You’re in eleventh grade. I explained this all to your father,” Mrs. Perella said.
I sat there for a moment feeling as if I’d fallen out of an airplane. “Eleventh grade? You’re telling me I’m a junior?”
Mrs. Perella took a sip of coffee out of a mug that had a picture of Garfield on the side. “I discussed this matter with your father in some depth. Surely he explained the situation to you?”
“He didn’t say anything,” I said. Good old Dad. He must have forgotten to mention it. “I’m a junior?”
“I’m afraid so, Jonah. There was a problem with your credits from Masthead Academy.”
“But how can I still be a junior?”
Words seemed to fail her for a moment. Then she took a deep breath, gathering her patience. “Jonah, Don Shula is a magnet school. You know that, don’t you?” she asked.
