Jerk, California

by Jonathan Friesen

  She reaches out her hand, but when I don’t shake it, she brushes soaked hair off my forehead. My eyes close, and when I open them she’s looking at her smeary brown fingers. She smiles and leans forward. Her breath is warm against my ear.

  “You’re muddy.”

  She straightens and takes off running.

  I turn to watch. She stops and looks back over her shoulder. “Are you going to make it home?”

  I nod my mud-caked head and point toward the ground. “I live here.”

  Again, she smiles.

  I look down where my finger points at the mud puddle. I live here? What kind of stupid line is that? And get up off your knees, Carrier!

  I grab a nearby limb and haul myself to my feet. “I meant that I live near here.”

  She’s gone.

  I glance around. My muscles don’t jerk, and I close my eyes. I breathe deep, and like the third runner who finally catches up, the disease overtakes me. Slowly at first—a hard eyeblink. But that’s not enough; there’s more that has to work its way out, and my teeth grind. Movement spreads to my shoulder, and soon my whole body springs to twitchy life.

  Good thing she ran off when she did.

  I run through our imagined conversation start to finish.

  “Hi, my name’s Sam. What school do you run for? What’s your name? Do you like muddy guys who talk to you from their knees?” I exhale long and hard. Shouldn’t have bolted out of that small-talk lesson.

  I stare one last time down the path where the most beautiful girl in the world had run. Then I take off my number, turn, and trudge back the way I came.

  chapter three

  THE NEXT MORNING, BABY LANE’S CRY REACHES upstairs and wakes me from a hard sleep. I dress, slap on strips of reflective tape, and tiptoe out of the house. The sky is dark as tar, and in the blackness I breathe deep.

  I stretch and fall into an easy pace on my regular route. Ten minutes in, my skin tingles, and I U-turn. Breaking into a run, I turn off the road and slop into the wildlife refuge.

  My shoes crunch fallen sticks and slop over the washed-out trail until I reach the spot. Her spot.

  I stop and catch my breath and try it over—try to say the words I should have said yesterday. In my mind, she smiles and takes my hand and we walk home together. But not to my home, another one—where I speak well and act normal and nothing jerks unless I tell it to.

  My shoulder leaps and I open my eyes, stare at the root that sent me to my knees. The tingle is gone.

  “Give it up, Carrier.” I sigh and jog out of the woods. Each step brings me closer to the stares and whispers of Mitrista High, and though I’m not tired, my legs turn leaden.

  Forty minutes later, I drag into town. I duck inside the school and scamper to the locker room, where I shower and change. The bell sounds.

  It’s Friday. You can put up with homeroom for one more day.

  Muffled voices fill the halls outside the locker room.

  On second thought—

  I join the crowd, slip back out the front door, and skip homeroom. It’s only fifteen minutes long, but the room is gray and cinderblock and feels clean like a mental hospital. Ms. Espe sets chairs in a circle so that we can share. I don’t want to share.

  Ms. Espe loves to place me in the center of her “circle of humanity.” She loves giving the other kids a chance to be human; to watch me jump and twitch while they shower me with kind words.

  She loves turning me into a freak.

  My muscles will not dance for her this morning. I don’t feel freakish. I haven’t since my rainy run with a beautiful girl who touched me.

  Instead, I stand outside the school and watch headlamps zip by on Highway 23. Tires moan and leaves dance in their wake. I shiver and smile.

  Fifteen minutes pass, and I turn and reenter. I will go to English, chemistry, and geometry before lunch. I’ll eat and sit through Spanish. I’ll walk back out this door without having heard anyone say my name. But it’ll be the weekend, and I’ll be out of this school, and I won’t care.

  By the time I reach geometry, I’m a twitchy mess. I step late into class, scan the back row, and curse. Row four is filled, too. I plop down in the center seat in the center of the room and my neck jerks violently. From the desk behind mine, Heather Tailor chuckles. She’s new. Doesn’t yet know the rules. Stare, roll your eyes, shake your head; it’s all fine. I’ll pretend not to see.

  But please, don’t ask. Don’t make me say what it is, or I’ll shrivel into nothing.

  “Snap quiz.” Mr. Doe’s nasal voice slices through student chatter. “Happy Friday. Clear your desks.”

  The class groans, Heather swears, and my shoulder jumps. My elbow knocks my textbook to the floor with a thump.

  “What’s with you?” Heather asks.

  “Samuel.” Doe adjusts his glasses and peers up from his desk. “Come up here, please. Bring your things.”

  I don’t move. I feel the stares. “You heard him,” Heather whispers. “Move.” I take a deep breath, reach down for my book, and rise. I close my eyes.

  Please, let me be still this one time.

  I walk toward the teacher’s desk, aware of every muscle. Four more steps. Three. My right shoulder flies upward at the same moment my head cocks down. The shoulder smacks the ear so hard it rings. Not loudly enough. I hear murmurs.

  “Yeah?” I whisper, and lean forward, my gaze fixed down on Doe’s desk.

  “You’re too distracting today.” Doe smiles one of Leslie’s funeral smiles, the sympathetic one, as if he’s doing me a favor and putting me out of my misery. “Take your quiz in the hall.”

  “Damn!” I blurt. My hands shake—they want to grab Doe’s stupid yellow-and-green necktie and yank and yank until he takes it back, until he grabs his eraser and wipes what he said out of everyone’s memory.

  My fingers tense; they have to do something, and I drop my text on the floor, grab the quizzes off his desk, rip the pile in two.

  What am I doing?

  I turn and glance at the class, silent except for a voice from the back. “Freak.”

  I want to crumple onto the floor and cry. I’m so tired of the words, the looks. My knees buckle. Not here.

  I make it to the door and push outside into the hall.

  Somewhere alone. The auditorium.

  I stumble through the hallway. Steps quicken to a jog, and a sprint. I pound into the foyer and throw open auditorium doors. They bang against doorstops. I spread my arms, hold them open, and stare. Inside it’s dark and lonely and perfect. I swallow hard, let my arms drop. My breath eases as I step into coolness. I walk up the aisle toward the stage.

  One chair rests on it, and I climb the steps and plop down.

  Silent and out of sight, my muscles still.

  “Why’d he have to announce it to the class?” I whisper.

  I lean forward, rest my head in my hands. My gaze jumps to each of three auditorium doors. I wish I could lock them and stay here forever. Out there, my act will be the talk of the school, again.

  The side door rattles.

  “Crap.” I’m not ready for a heart-to-heart with Leslie. Not yet. My gaze scans the floor, catches on the handle of the stage’s trapdoor.

  I reach for it and slip down beneath the stage. The crawl space reeks of cigarettes and dead things. I feel around my head for the pull chain that hangs from a solitary lightbulb. I find it and yank. Light flickers, and then steadies. I glance around my feet and wince. A dead rat.

  The bell rings, but I make no move toward the lunchroom. Hallway shouts mute and disappear. I breathe deep. It’s just me, my jumping muscles, and the rodent.

  Minutes pass, and doors rattle again. Girls’ laughter fills the auditorium. Sounds like two. I crawl forward through thick layers of fabric toward the black curtain that separates the underground stage from the orchestra pit.

  I’d hate to mess up and poke my head out. I stop and lean backward against a support post.

  “How about Jane an
d Donovan?”

  Heather.

  “The Velcro couple? They’re still together, always. It’s enough to make me sick.”

  “I miss Minnetonka so much.” Heather groans. “Tell me more news. About anybody.”

  “I think I covered everyone in the whole school last night. Sorry I crashed on you. That off-road race wore me out.”

  Their footsteps get louder, until it sounds like they’re right in front of me. Probably sitting in the front row. Only a curtain between us.

  “Why’d you want to talk to the shop teacher?” Heather smacks her gum.

  “He’s your cross-country coach. After I ran your track this morning, I thought I’d check your roster.”

  “Whatever,” Heather says. “Wait. You were looking for this Mr. Mitrista guy, weren’t you?” She laughs. “I still can’t believe you called someone that! You have to tell me the whole story. Start right after I dropped you off at the race.”

  A beautiful laugh fills the auditorium.

  “I was running and he jumped out of the woods. The guy ran beside me for five minutes. He was really strong.”

  “Oh my gosh, Nae. He was probably waiting for you the whole time.”

  “No. He was a runner. He wore number seventy-eight, I think. But it was hard to read. He fell in mud and leaves.”

  I smile. It’s her.

  “Anyway, I must have gotten it wrong, because your coach just showed me the listing. Seventy-eight was a guy from Monticello.”

  “You’re in the wrong town,” Heather says.

  “He said he went here.”

  “That’s more proof he’s a wacko. I’ve checked out the guys on our team. Definitely nobody worth looking at. Except maybe Ryan. He’s cute, in a short and skinny kind of way.”

  The girl who touched me laughs again. “This guy’s strong. Brown, wavy hair. He’s tall, too, at least he would have been if he would have gotten off his knees.”

  “He sounds like a nutcase. Maybe he is from here, because this school’s full of them. While you were talking to the shop teacher, a kid in my geometry class flipped out. My teacher said it’s some brain disease.”

  The girl doesn’t answer.

  My heartbeat pounds in my ears. I have to see her.

  I crawl back to the lightbulb, ease to my feet, and place my head against the trapdoor. From my crouch, I push upward. An inch, then two. My eyes peek over the lip of the stage.

  Nothing. Must be looking right over their heads.

  I lower and head back toward the orchestra curtain. I can’t see the seam.

  “I can’t believe it!” Heather says. I hear claps, and lots of chair squeaks. “How’d it end?”

  “I finished my run. I waited around the finishing area, and walked to your place. And you know the rest.”

  “He didn’t come after you?” “No,”

  “No.”

  “Did you want him to?”

  It’s quiet for a time.

  Then I hear Heather again.“You have Coach Andrew, who’s gorgeous, calling you. You have Harvard and their track team and that medicine program—”

  “Sports medicine.”

  “Whatever. Your life’s all lined up. You’re set to get out of here. Let this thing go,” Heather says. “This guy’s probably already with someone, right?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  I grab the fold of the curtain that separates us and squeeze.

  He’s not, he’s not.

  A chair seat flips into place, and then another.

  “Where you going, Nae? I have gym and homeroom left. That freak from geometry will be in there.”

  “No, he won’t,” I whisper.

  I crawl out from beneath the curtain and peer over the chairs. In the dark and from a distance, my girl is still beautiful.

  “Nae.” Is that ReNae or LyNae? I lean forward, my arms resting on the back of a front-row seat. Maybe her front-row seat.

  “Me? Mr. Mitrista? My name’s Sam. Sam Carrier.”

  chapter four

  “I SURVIVED.”

  I flip off the safety on my pellet gun and fill the last smiley sheet with holes. “You know, Leslie. I can’t tell you how reformed I feel. And I owe it all to you.” I check my watch. It’s been eight hours since I walked out of Mitrista High and into Christmas break and freedom from the Sunshine Club.

  I store the gun and jog out of the barn. It’s a cold night, and the December wind cuts my face, howls on by. I run to the house in blackness, but inside I’m light and free for two weeks.

  When I return to school, I’ll be watched for signs of maladaptive behavior. I’ll be “observed” and documented. But they won’t see anything unusual—I won’t let them—because if I’m sent back to Room 14, I’ll die.

  Not that Old Bill would care. I flop into bed and stare at the ceiling. The thought stays with me for several hours, but at 3 A.M. I screw up—again. I let her into my brain. I lie in bed and think of auditorium girl.

  Lot of good this night is doing. Might as well work her out of my system.

  I get up and dressed, light-foot it down the stairs, and grab sandwiches. I push outside into a howling snowstorm. Ankle-deep snow covers the yard, and I run to the machine shed, fire up the space heater.

  More than twelve hours later, my hands are stiff and oily and covered with blood. I pull a shred of green jacket from the rag barrel, soak a corner in mineral spirits, and scrub. Rough skin appears, sliced and gouged and scratched.

  “That’s what I get for a day with screwdrivers.”

  I walk back to Old Bill’s truck, to the newly rebuilt engine. I scoop up my tools and haul them toward the workbench. Carefully, each finds its spot on the wall.

  Never, ever, mess up my tools again, you hear, boy?

  I still hear.

  I flick off the heat and the lights and lean in to the metal door. Nothing doin’. It takes three hard shoulder rams to force my way outside into a thigh-high drift.

  Lungs fill with icicles. A shiver works through me, and my shoulder jumps four times. I blink hard. Haven’t seen a snowstorm this bad in years.

  I can’t see our farmhouse—can’t see anything—except for a faint glow from the center of the yard. I tramp toward the yard light, and the wind whips around me. Within the clearing formed by the barns, the shed, the listing silo, and the farmhouse, snow whirls like the white stuff in glass Christmas balls.

  “Alberta clipper.” I wince and cover my ears. “Guess we’re due.” Seems once a year Canada opens the hatch and shoves winter down our throats. I reach the light and grasp the post. Raw skin burns.

  “Sam Carrier, get those lazy feet moving! I’m waitin’ on that tree.”

  I squint toward the farmhouse where Old Bill fills the doorway.

  I turn away, blink hard, and scowl. Since when does he give a rip about trees? About anything but his big, fat self. My hand fists, and I gently punch the light post. I want to smack it, dent it, take a sledgehammer and swing and swing until it lies in twisted pieces on the ground. But I can’t. Don’t know why but I can’t, and my shoulder jerks again.

  The wind blows harder, and I’m in the eye of a snowy cyclone. It whisks the blanket of white off our barn and sucks it back into the sky. I hear a creak and a pop. Ten paces off, an ice chunk thuds to the ground. I turn toward it and the windmill.

  “Missed me.”

  I scan the tower and glare at the fins as if my eyes can set them spinning. But its gears are frozen, and unlike me, it doesn’t move. I twitch again, and I’m jealous—jealous of a stupid windmill. Ice will melt, a breeze will blow, blades will turn. But not now.

  Now they’re still.

  Old Bill hollers some more, but his words garble. I focus again on our windmill tower and begin to count. I’m aiming for ten motionless seconds.

  . . . Seven. Eight. Crap.

  “Hey, jumpy!” Old Bill roars, “You deaf, too?”

  I’m not deaf. Or weak or mute or retarded. Just like he’s not a counting lunati
c, not really. His obsessive-compulsive brain never gives normal a chance. My muscles don’t give me one either. Being like him sucks.

  I leave the pole and notice how numb I am, how content I am being numb. I reach the porch and step inside. Snow coats my hair and flannel shirt. I brush it off, stomp the flakes from my jeans, and shiver. Inside our farmhouse it’s cold. Cold and stupid and Christmas Eve.

  Old Bill sits by the fireplace and stares at the smallest jacket I’ve ever seen. He holds it up with a satisfied smile. From where I stand, I see the side with the cement mixer.

  He notices me, lowers the jacket, and nods toward the door I’ve just entered.

  “Tree.” Old Bill uses his nice voice—the one that still sneaks out when my muscles don’t move. If he wouldn’t stare so hard, he could use it all the time and we could talk or fish like we did when my tics weren’t so bad. But these days, Old Bill glares until I flinch. Then the nice voice leaves, and I know he hates what he sees. And I think maybe who he sees.

  “It’s freezing out there. Let’s just wait.” I peek at the peg-board where the snowmobile key dangles. “Didn’t get any sleep last night, and I worked on your truck engine all day. I’ll head into the backwoods first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Mom sneaks out from her bedroom. She looks from me to Old Bill and drops her gaze, exhales long and slow. She says nothing.

  “You should hear your slacker, Lydia.” Old Bill huffs and hauls his belly off our moth-eaten couch. The threadbare cover snags on one of the thirty keys looped around his belt and pulls up with him. Mustard fabric stretches from the couch cushion to his rear.

  Fisting his precious keys in one hand, he rips free and begins a frantic count of them. If he comes up short, Old Bill will have a coronary.

  “Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine.”

  What a gift that would be.

  “Thirty.” He sweeps blond wisps off his forehead, folds his meaty arms, and faces me square. “I saw what you were eyeing. You ain’t takin’ no snowmobile out in this weather. Some twitch of yours liable to wrap it ’round a stump.” He glances down at the Portacrib where Lane sleeps and lays the tiny green coat over its edge. “Now, my son is goin’ to wake to a tree his first Christmas. Clear? Start walkin’!”