by Alex Flinn
“People say I’m pretty smart.”
“So smart you represent clients for no money?”
She doesn’t answer that, and I know she’s waiting.
“I’ve been traveling with the carnival,” I say. “I started working there about a week before … before Walker died. And now the carnival’s back in Miami, and so am I.” I give her a look, like that’s it.
“Right. Why did you leave home?”
“I had to get out of there,” I say. “Every day I thought he was going to kill her, maybe both of us. It was like playing Hot Potato with a hand grenade. You never knew when he might explode. And she wouldn’t leave. I tried to get her to ditch him, but she wouldn’t go. I felt…”
Weak. The weight of the word is inside me. Like I have to make her, this stranger, understand or I can’t go on. But I don’t want to admit how weak I felt either. I mean, the problem should be that Mom was getting hurt, not how it made me feel, not how much I hated her for how it made me feel.
I glance at the door again. When I look back, Angela’s looking at it too.
“Do you want to stay here?” she asks.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I guess… I want to know if there’s anything I can do. If not, I should probably leave town before anyone catches me.”
“And go where? Do you plan to stay with the carnival, just keep running away forever?”
“I can’t think of a better alternative.”
“I can think of several, including that group home you’re so afraid of.” She looked me in the eye. “Julian says you were a good student. Don’t you want to finish school?”
“I wasn’t that good a student. And I don’t know what I want.”
She glances out the window at Biscayne Bay. I think about how it’s the first time I’ve seen the bay since I left last year.
When Angela looks back, she says, “It’s all right not to know. It’s okay to be afraid, too. But at some point you need to take a chance, let someone help you.”
“I don’t know if I can do that either.”
She turns to the computer on her desk and pulls up a calendar program. “Is nine o’clock good for you?”
“Huh? Nine o’clock when?”
“Same time, Thursday. Does that work for you?”
“Yeah, but....”
She takes her hand off the mouse and looks at me. “I want to help you, Michael. But I don’t have time to sit here and not talk to you. It seems to me you need to do some thinking. Come back Thursday?”
Today is Tuesday. I nod.
“Same time?”
I nod again. She picks up one of her business cards, writes down the appointment, and hands it to me.
“Sometimes you need to have the guts to trust someone, Michael.”
I take the card from her.
“I used to trust a lot of people,” I say.
LAST YEAR
So the next day, after my attempted assault on Dutton, I was back in the cafeteria. It was St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that must have been invented by Bennigan’s. The place was awash in every shade in the puke spectrum (worn by guys with Irish names like Jose), and the lunch ladies were serving corned beef and cabbage.
Irish eyes: Not smiling.
I should have worn green. Lately my efforts had been concentrated on blending with the crowd. Usually that meant jeans and some kind of T-shirt. But today, in my blue jeans and blue shirt, I stuck out like a buoy in a sea of green.
I was eating pb&j again. I’d brought three sandwiches to have something to do. I remembered this Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown says lonely people eat peanut butter, and if you’re really lonely, the peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth.
I swirled it off with my tongue.
“You’ve got the right idea.” Julian put his tray down across from mine. “I should bring my lunch instead of eating the stuff they sell here.” He gestured toward his Styrofoam tray full of corned beef and cabbage. “What is this anyway?”
I ignored him. That was, after all, the reason I sat in the cafeteria instead of outside: No explanations required here. Guys like Tris, they got mad if you didn’t answer their questions. Someone like Karpe was so used to being blown off, he probably didn’t even notice.
“Does your mom make your sandwiches?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
Karpe didn’t react to my annoyance. That would have destroyed his credibility as a wannabe. “I think she did, lucky guy. At my house, it’s just me and my dad. We eat manly meals in manly ways—we’re lucky if we take the lids all the way off the cans of baked beans before we ingest them.”
He laughed at his own joke. I’d never met Karpe’s dad. When we were friends, he’d lived with his mom, a working mother like mine. I wondered now why he’d moved, but I didn’t ask. Probably it was because of that “male influence” people always worry about.
In Karpe’s case, it hadn’t worked.
I considered enlightening Karpe that bringing a sandwich wasn’t exactly my choice. Walker kept a tight leash on Mom, letting her buy groceries once a week with his ATM card, but policing her other spending so even a buck-twenty-five cafeteria lunch would be noticed. That’s why I brought my lunch.
The weird thing was, I actually considered telling Karpe that—even if it was just for a second. Tris, or any of my other, more recent, friends, I wouldn’t have told in a quadrillion years. I told myself it was because I didn’t care what Karpe thought. But was it that?
I said, “Why are you sitting with me?” Karpe wasn’t wearing green either.
“Hey, this was my table. I always sit here.”
“Oh.” I felt oddly disappointed, then wondered why. Was I so pathetic I actually worried whether Julian Karpe liked me? “Sorry. I could sit with my friends or something.”
What friends?
“You can sit here. You’re sort of … less of a jerk than your friends.”
I laughed. “Oh, thanks. What makes you say that?”
“You make eye contact, for one thing. Guys like Ted Dutton act like they’d turn to stone if they looked at the wrong person.”
“Okay, I’m superior to Tedder Dutton. Check.”
“And, I don’t know,” he said. “You always picked me for your team in P.E., even after we stopped hanging together. If you weren’t captain, I got picked last, except maybe a couple of really slow girls. But you’d pick me fourth or fifth.”
More like sixth or seventh, but, yeah. I’d felt guilty about not being friends with Karpe anymore, so I’d picked him sometimes. And he always, always rewarded me for my generosity by striking out or fumbling or kicking the ball toward the wrong goal.
“That’s so lame,” I said. “Can’t believe you told me that. It’s humiliating, really.”
“Yeah, I know.” He played with his cabbage. “Doesn’t matter, though.”
“Don’t you care what people think of you?”
Karpe shook his head. “People mostly think the same, whether you care or not.” He took a bite of cabbage.
“So that’s also why you don’t care if that crap makes you…”
“Flatulate?” Karpe grinned. “It doesn’t. I have excellent self-control—probably from eating all those canned beans with my dad.” He took another bite of the gray slime and finished it before saying, “Why don’t you sit with your friends anymore?”
“I just don’t feel like it, okay? God, do you always ask questions like that?”
“You were the one who asked first.”
I changed the subject. “Want a sandwich? That looks like toxic waste.” I realized too late I sounded like Dutton. “I mean, I have an extra one.”
Karpe nodded. I fished the third sandwich from my bag and handed it to him. Of course, that had to be the precise moment Tristan walked into the cafeteria. That sound you heard was planets colliding. Tristan hesitated, then came over. He looked first at me, then at Karpe. Then at the empty seat beside me.
“Hey,” he sai
d.
“Hey,” I said.
Karpe opened the pb&j and rearranged the pieces of bread so one half was all peanut butter, the other half all jelly, oblivious or pretending to be. Tristan sat down, trying to ignore Karpe but not completely succeeding. He wore a mostly green University of Miami National Champions T-shirt.
“Missed you outside,” he said, uncertain, like a dog on his fifth day at the pound.
I said, “Right. Like I could go back there again.”
“You could. Dutton’s used to people busting on him. He’d get over it.”
“If he’s such an asshole, why do you want to hang with him?”
“Well, it’s… I mean, we have football together.”
“Right. Football.”
“You used to like football. You used to be okay with sitting with us too.”
“It’s not that. It’s…”
I stopped. Why was I arguing with him? He was inviting me back. All I had to do was nothing, and I’d have a place to sit at lunch, people to talk to, parties on weekends. I wouldn’t have to sit around worrying about whether Julian Karpe—Julian Karpe, for crying out loud, who couldn’t even eat a sandwich correctly—liked me. It would be so easy. I might even be able to beg Coach to let me play football again. Maybe not first string. Maybe not even varsity. But play. Get my life back.
Easy.
Except it wasn’t. Nothing was or ever would be easy again.
“It’s what?” Tris said. “What is your problem?”
“Could you just…?”
Go. Leave. But I couldn’t get the words I wanted, and I was just so tired of saying what I didn’t want. I was just so tired of all of it.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I can see from your face.”
“What can you see? That you’ve turned into this loser who hangs with guys like Tedder Dutton like it makes you someone? Are you really this pathetic?” I knew I was being cruel. Still, I kept going. It was that same exploded Coke bottle feeling. Soon they’d hang a sign around my neck that said contents under pressure. “You should carry his books, Tris. Or do his laundry.” I was gesturing wildly with my sandwich. “That’s it. You’ve already got your nose up his ass. Why not sniff his jock, too?”
“Okay,” he said. “I get it. At least now I know where I stand with you.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you do.”
“Fine.” He stood and started to leave. But just then, three cheerleaders showed up. Vanessa—my luck—with two friends, Katie Gonzalez and Kiffani Stringer. They carried green-dyed carnations they were delivering for the cheerleaders’ carnation sale.
I’d forgotten about the carnation sale. They were two dollars each, and I’d always sent them to potential girlfriends and just friends. This was the first time I hadn’t bothered. It would suck if someone sent me some and I hadn’t sent any to them.
“Special delivery for Tristan Kaboleusky.” Kiffani held out an armful of green carnations and pushed out her chest, showing off her new cheerleader uniform.
“What’s this?” Tris laughed. Tris had never gotten many carnations. He griped that girls told him he was “nice” or “a great friend” (“which means too ugly to consider,” he said).
“We take care of our guys,” Kiffani said.
“We’re working on a cheer for you,” Katie added. “Except we can’t think of anything to rhyme with Tristan or Kaboleusky.”
“Try Grab a brewski,” he said.
“Time for class!” Karpe picked up his tray and my trash and took them to the conveyor belt.
I left in the opposite direction. When I looked back, Tris was still talking to Kiffani. She had her hand on his shoulder.
I was glad, I told myself. Tristan was a good guy. I’d just grown past our friendship, while he hadn’t.
Except part of me wanted to run back to the cafeteria and stand on the table and yell and yell until someone caught me and held me and took me away.
THIS YEAR
“Karpe?”
I make sure I call right after school, even though it means getting someone to cover for me and calling from a pay phone by the livestock tent. I want to get Karpe alone.
“Is that you, Michael?”
“Yeah. Listen … about Angela.”
I stop. I want to ask if he’s sure I can trust her. After visiting her office, I started thinking about what that meant, putting myself out there. She tried to persuade me to turn myself in, go into a foster home, for God’s sake. And, even with attorney-client privilege, you hear about lawyers selling their stories all the time. I wasn’t sure how that happened, but I knew it did.
“Yeah. You going to call her ever?”
“I wanted to know…” I stop. “She didn’t tell you I came to see her?”
“No. You did?”
“Yesterday.”
“She didn’t say a word.”
Something moos in the background, and I think about what Karpe said.
“You mean you just didn’t see her last night or something?” I ask after a minute.
“Actually we all had dinner together. Since Angela and Dad got married, we do that a couple days a week, take turns cooking, that type of thing.”
“No more baked bean cans?”
“Well, sometimes. Not as much. I actually sort of like baked beans.”
“So you all sat down and had dinner, and she didn’t mention she saw me?”
“Not a word. I guess she thought you wouldn’t want her talking about your case. What did you want to ask me about?”
“Um, I … You know what? Nothing. I mean, you answered it.”
LAST YEAR
I went to the fair with Karpe for one reason. It beat going home. Why I went back, that’s a different story.
It sounds crazy to say that—that I went to avoid going home. After all, I’d done everything in my power, quitting football, ditching all my friends, all to stay home. But that day, a Thursday, was my sixteenth birthday. I could not spend it with Walker.
I was standing by my locker, feeling sorry for myself, when Karpe showed up.
“Hey, Michael Michael Unicycle! Want to go to the fair?”
I considered letting Karpe know people would like him better if he didn’t call them stupid nicknames. But first off, I wasn’t sure people would. And second, who was I to judge?
So I said, “Don’t think so.”
“Why not? It’s opening night.”
“No flow.”
“I’ve got passes.” Karpe flashed two blue tickets. “I’ll pay.”
“It’s not just admission. Once you get there, it’s like a giant vacuum, sucking out money—food, games, rides....” I stopped. I sounded like Walker.
“I said I’d pay. I’ll drive, too.” Karpe looked suddenly desperate. “Come on, Mike, I’ve got no one else to go with.”
It wasn’t because I felt sorry for him. I didn’t. But I started thinking about how it was my birthday. How pathetic was it, to go home and watch television like it was just a normal day. I slammed my locker door. “How do we get there?”
“I’ve got a brand-new Miata, just looking for passengers.”
He expected me to react, an ooh, or maybe an ah. I said, “Got any change?”
“I told you, I’ll pay.”
“For the phone.”
Karpe flipped me a cell with a Spiderman cover and headed for the door. I shoved the lock onto my locker, then dialed. I sort of stared at the keypad before hitting Send.
One ring. Two. No answer. We reached the parking lot. Dutton and Tristan were there with some girls. They leaned against Tristan’s pickup. When Tris saw me, he raised an eyebrow.
I hung up and waited a moment. We passed them. The girl Dutton was with was Vanessa. She’d told everyone in school I was an asshole. I hadn’t defended myself.
“Looky there—Daye’s got a new friend.” Dutton made Loser Ls on his forehead.
“Aw. leave him alone,” Tristan said.
I dialed again.
Mo
m answered on the first ring after my redial. “Michael, is that you?”
She knew it was. Walker didn’t let her answer the phone when he wasn’t home unless it was his number on caller ID. Sometimes, he tested her. So we had a code. Two rings, hang up, then ring back.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said.
“Sorry. I was outside. I couldn’t get to the phone.”
Like I didn’t know the truth. “Yeah, I know. Look…” I moved Karpe’s phone to the other ear, away from him. “Look, I’ll be late tonight. Tell him I have something for school.”
“Oh, please, Michael. No. You know how he gets. I can’t lie to him anymore.”
No mention of my birthday, of course. Just Walker. And then, in the background, a door slamming. Walker was home early. “Lisa, who you talking to?”
“No one, honey.” And the sound of the telephone being replaced, soft but quickly, in its cradle.
We reached the famous convertible, and I tossed the Spidey phone at Karpe. “Thanks.”
He was looking at Dutton and those guys, but he turned to me. “Say, Mikey Boy, why are you always so broke? Thought your mom married some rich guy.”
And I said, “None of your damn business.”
But I still went with Karpe. It was better than the alternatives.
When I was a kid, the fair was like magic. Sometimes I’d go with Mom and whatever guy was trying to impress us. Other times it was just us. Those were the best, even though we couldn’t afford wristbands that let you on all the rides, and we had to smuggle in our own sandwiches and soda. But with Mom. I could watch the shows and hear the music and not have to worry about owing someone.
Owing someone was a big part of the problem, going with Karpe.
“It says here there’s a circus at three thirty.” Karpe pointed at our complimentary program. “And every hour on the half hour after that.”
“Negative.” I kicked a half-empty cup of cherry slush in my way. “It’s not a real circus. Just poodles, walking on hind legs and stuff.” Though, even as I said it, I remembered how I’d loved it when I was younger.
“Oh.” Karpe looked at the program again. “How about rides? The Doppel Looping goes upside-down twice.”
