SUSY Asylum

by Michael Pierce

  “You told me that Kafka’s death changes less than I realize. He’s not really gone, is he?”

  Mr. Gordon didn’t answer, but the somber look in his eyes said all I needed to know.

  

  I recognized Jillian from the yearbook I’d looked through in the library. She was standing across the blacktop from me, talking with two other cute girls, while we all waited for gym to start. I really wanted to talk to her, but approaching all three of them made me feel sick. When I was about to force myself to walk over, Coach Andrews called for our class to fall into formation.

  We played soccer on the field surrounded by the track. Jillian’s class also came down the hill to where we were and ran the mile.

  While I covered defense, I continually looked around to find Jillian on the track. She started out running with her two friends, but after a lap they both fell behind. Jillian kept up her pace on her own as she began her second lap.

  Our team was doing a great job of keeping the ball on the other half of the field, leaving the goalie, the other defender, and myself to stand around kicking clumps of weed-filled grass.

  Jillian jogged past on my side of the field and I felt this was my best chance to make contact. What was she going to do, run away? She was probably already tired, so I would be in a good position to keep up with her.

  I glanced over at Coach Andrews—who was focused on the other side of the field where all the action was—and sprinted off the field to catch up to Jillian.

  “Hey, Jillian, can I ask you something?” I said, pulling alongside her.

  “You’re the guy who ran out of the locker room crying a few months ago,” she said, keeping her pace. She didn’t seem to be put off by the fact that I knew her name.

  “I wasn’t crying,” I said while still trying to remember what she was talking about. And then it hit me. She was one of the girls walking by when I escaped the locker room from Sasha and the screwdriver. “That’s not what I want to talk about.”

  She continued to look ahead, focused on her run.

  “I’m the guy who moved into TJ Taylor’s house at the beginning of the year. You were with him, Desiree, and Blaine on prom night two years ago. I know you don’t know me or anything, but I’m trying to get a better picture of what happened.”

  Jillian slowed to a walk, then to a stop, and turned to face me.

  “I hope you weren’t going for a record time,” I said.

  “I guess now we’ll never know, will we?” she said, placing her hands on her hips and pacing before me as other runners passed us by. “Why me?”

  “He left a journal, but there are things missing. You were there and I’m trying to fit the pieces together. I know that’s the night his and Desiree’s relationship fell apart—”

  “It was the night mine and Blaine’s did, too. Not that night exactly, but everything thereafter stemmed from it.”

  “Grain! What the hell are you doing!?” Coach Andrews yelled from across the field.

  I just ignored him. “Is there anything you can tell me?”

  “Blaine and I left prom at about midnight, I think. We wanted to let TJ and Desiree use the room. They were all over each other. We were all having so much fun. But Blaine never talked about what happened afterward—after we left. He drove TJ home the following morning. He’s really the one you should be talking to.”

  “Grain! Get your butt back in the game!” Coach Andrews yelled again. The soccer game was still in progress, but all of his attention was now on me.

  “One second!” I responded and turned back to Jillian. “Blaine’s not really talkative about the subject.”

  “Then I don’t know what to say. The only one who truly knows everything firsthand is Desiree.”

  “Yeah, but they pretty much parted ways at that point.”

  “I don’t know. Sorry,” Jillian said and began jogging again.

  “Do you believe it was all his fault?”

  She stopped again a few feet away. “When is it ever just one person’s fault? Desiree was my friend, too. All of our relationships were destroyed that night,” she said and took off down the track.

  The two friends I saw earlier with Jillian walked by, quiet as they glanced over, and picked up their conversation again once I was in their leisurely kicked-up dust.

  “Mr. Grain! If you want to be on the track so bad, why don’t you give me four laps?” Coach Andrews was turning red from my insubordination.

  Instead of answering, I just broke into a jog. It didn’t take long to pass Jillian’s friends, but I never caught up to Jillian.

  Coach Andrews kept me after class to discuss my behavior and I took it. I didn’t make up any excuses or explanations. I simply apologized and asked to leave.

  By the time I made it into the locker room, half the guys were already gone to lunch. My row cleared out quickly and I noticed a locker at the far end had been left ajar. I didn’t think too much of it and continued to change back into my regular clothes.

  By the time I was dressed and ready to go, I became more curious about the open locker. When I walked over, I peered inside and saw a computer tablet propped inside. It had to be Logan’s. Standing at the corner between the aisle, I couldn’t see him anywhere around. I walked up the aisle and glanced down each row. There were a few guys left in the locker room, but no sign of Logan. I ventured into the bathroom, looking around and under the stall doors—and nothing.

  I returned to Logan’s locker and again peered inside. The tablet was the only thing left in the locker. No gym clothes. No regular clothes. No books for class. Now was my chance to look at the mysterious computer more closely, so I removed it and took a seat on the wooden bench. The shapes and symbols around the edges still intrigued me. I flipped it over, but the back was blank. No brand name. Nothing. The tablet still looked strange, reminding me of Darius’s, but I couldn’t place my finger on why.

  “Mr. Grain, what are you still doing here?” Coach Andrews appeared at the far end of the row, by my locker.

  “I was just leaving,” I said, startled, and jumped to my feet. “You really are quiet walking through here, sir.”

  “I was a hunter in my younger years. It’s important to be quiet unless you want to scare away the game,” Coach Andrews said. “Let’s get a move on.”

  I closed the locker door and walked down the row to where Coach Andrews was impatiently waiting.

  He followed me out of the locker room. “Tomorrow—let’s not have a repeat of today.”

  I nodded and made my way for the quad. Looking down, I realized I was still carrying Logan’s tablet. It was so light it felt like I was only holding air. I stopped, staring at the stolen object in my hands, and swung around.

  Coach Andrews rounded the corner of the locker rooms, walking toward me.

  I turned again, not looking at all suspicious, and continued in my original direction—toward the quad. Who was I, Anna? I laughed at the thought that she was the person I had made plans to have lunch with today.

  16

  Lunch with Anna

  Anna and I had agreed to meet at the edge of the school next to the freshman pick-up curb. I waited for her until she was able to break away from Eli.

  I sat by the curb and ate my lunch, and carefully looked over the computer tablet I had accidently stolen. By the time I’d reached the quad, Coach Andrews had turned to enter the cafeteria. I couldn’t bring myself to go back at that point. And if I did—what then? Leave it on the bench with the hope that no one else took it? I had shut Logan’s locker when Coach Andrews found me loitering in the locker room—shut the locker out of reflex like it was my own.

  I would hold onto it for safe keeping and return it to Logan the next time I saw him in gym. He would understand; I was only trying to help.

  I wolfed down my sandwich so I could fully focus on the tablet for the short alone time I had left. No matter how I touched the screen, I couldn’t get it to light up or do anything. I would have been happy just
to get to a password screen, but nothing. The thing didn’t seem to be on—and there seemed to be no on switch.

  “Whatcha got there?”

  I looked up to Anna’s smiling face. It had been a while since I had seen her up close. She wore some non-cutoff Dickies, a tight button-down plaid shirt, and aviator sunglasses. She was still letting her hair grow out, which was now past her shoulders.

  “Oh, it’s nothing—I got an iPad, but I think it’s broken. I’ll have to exchange it this weekend,” I said and stuffed the mysterious tablet in my backpack.

  “I’ve got an iPad; let me take a look at it.”

  “I know how they work. This one clearly isn’t,” I said, trying not to sound rude, so I changed the subject fast. “It’s good to see you. Are you gonna sit down?”

  Anna took a seat beside me on the curb, leaning forward on her knees and positioned diagonally toward me. “Your face is looking a lot better.” She reached out to touch my cheek, and quickly pulled away when I snapped my head back a few inches.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “No, it’s okay—still just a little sore, that’s all,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. You deserved it though.”

  “I know; I had it coming. It was just bad timing. I was trying to talk to you.”

  “You had admitted to kissing another girl. What girlfriend wants to sit there and listen to that—especially in the moment?”

  Her describing us as boyfriend and girlfriend hit me in the pit of my stomach. She was so sure of me, so much more sure than I was of myself. It was so not like my relationship with Desiree where I wasn’t sure of anything. But here I was with Anna, thinking about Desiree again.

  “I know. I don’t blame you for storming off. And I don’t blame Eli for punching me. I just wish I could have had the opportunity to explain things myself before all that happened. But what can I do or say—we’ve already talked about this—”

  “Are you in love with her?” Anna asked pointblank.

  “She’s my best friend. I don’t want to mess that up,” I said, intentionally dodging the question.

  “Your girlfriend should be your best friend.”

  “It’s a different kind of best friend.” I paused. We were sitting about as close to each other as possible without touching. And I wanted to touch her—somewhere, anywhere. My body tingled like I was being magnetically pulled to her and it was a struggle to keep us separated. “What about you and Desiree?”

  “We’ve talked. We’ve been friends for so long; I don’t want this to end our friendship forever. But it’s hard. I don’t want to think about you guys together—not while I still think about you the way that I do. I’ve always gone for the wrong guys, guys who treat me like shit. And you come along all innocent and nice to me—you were different, or at least I thought you were. I’m tired of being cheated on and I’m tired of being taken for granted.”

  “I am different—I mean, I am one of the nice guys,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. It would never happen again? It already had—though Anna and I weren’t together, so I didn’t think it counted. But I didn’t want to lie to her; I was tired of lying to everyone. I was still drawn to her and to the way she still looked at me. But Desiree kept popping into the back of my mind.

  “I know. It’s just bad luck, I guess,” she said softly. “I’ve missed you, Oliver.”

  Anna and I parted ways with a hug when the bell rang, and I headed for Mr. Gordon’s classroom. The hug was nice; it felt good to hold her again, even if it was only for a few moments. She felt familiar and comfortable.

  For once, I wasn’t the first one waiting outside the classroom door. Desiree was already there with a few other students, standing quietly against the wall and staring blankly at the closed door.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked when I claimed some wall-space beside her. “I got here early because I thought you’d be here.”

  I took a novel approach to answering her question, going with the truth right off the bat. “I was talking with Anna.”

  She didn’t seem surprised—in fact, she barely reacted at all. “Oh, that’s cool.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been talking on the phone a bit recently. She said you two have been talking, too.”

  “A little. It sucks having her mad at me. We’ll work things out; we always do.”

  “And one day we’ll all be able to look back on this time and laugh,” I said.

  “Yeah, with you and Anna back together, and me and Eli back together, we’ll be like a big ol’ happy family again.”

  That wasn’t where I was going with my comment, and with her dry sense of humor, it was hard to tell if she was serious—if that was what she was actually hoping for. But I smiled and nodded and hoped for the best.

  We marched into the classroom with the rest of the waiting zombies when Mr. Gordon opened the door with a warm greeting.

  As the lecture started, my mind wandered from my meeting with Anna, to Desiree, to Provex City, to Darius, to my missing father, to Kafka and the thought that the body we saw fall and bleed out on the top of Lorne Tower was not the end of my bogeyman.

  I leaned back in my chair, head resting against the back wall, when suddenly the books spread out on my desk went flying into the aisle with a crash!

  Everyone in the classroom swung around in a single movement toward the echoing thud. All eyes were on me and my brightening cheeks. Mr. Gordon’s lecture screeched to a halt with the loss of attention.

  Students sitting ahead of me gathered my scattered belongings and handed them back to me. And then the lecture continued.

  After finishing reorganizing my materials, I looked over at Desiree for an explanation. She simply shrugged with a goofy expression spreading across her face. I kept a protective hand on my textbook for the remainder of the class.

  Mr. Gordon stopped us on the way out of class. “Keep practicing,” he said without worry of other students hearing. “Unless the disruption was your intention.”

  Desiree shook her head. “I meant to close Oliver’s book, not throw everything off his desk.”

  “Practice control, Miss Behring.”

  “Thanks again,” I said to Desiree, elbowing her in the arm.

  “I’m trying,” she said. “I’m getting pretty great at knocking stuff over.”

  “I can see that,” Mr. Gordon chuckled.

  Desiree and I exited the humanities building and made our way down the winding paths through the quad. Halfway to art class, I stopped at a bench and set my backpack down. Desiree continued a few steps before realizing I was no longer beside her. As she backtracked to the bench, I handed her Logan’s tablet.

  “What do you make of this?” I asked.

  She examined it closely and poked at the dark screen. Still, no activity came from the tablet.

  “It kind of looks like Darius’s computer,” she said after giving up trying to turn it on.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed. “That’s what I thought.” I put the tablet back into my backpack.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “From one of the guys in my gym class—one of the guys who was bullying me at the beginning of the year, the only guy left. He forgot it in the locker room.”

  “So you took it?”

  “I’ll give it back, but first I want to find out where it came from. It doesn’t look like a tablet you can just get at Best Buy.”

  “No,” Desiree agreed. “It looks like something you’d get from Provex City or something.”

  “Exactly,” I said as I slung my backpack over my shoulder and started up the path again. “And I want to find out. Do you think Darius will still talk to us after what happened last time?”

  “We can certainly try and find out.”

  “No more tattoos,” I said.

  “Agreed,” Desiree said, glancing down at the fading design on my wrist. “Back to traveling as peasants.”

  We continued to class. I opened the
door to art and let Desiree walk in first.

  “Did Darius ever tell you his friend’s name?” I asked.

  Desiree thought for a moment. “Morgan? Does that sound right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember him actually saying his name.”

  Sara was the only one sitting at our table when we arrived, and she was back on her regular stool.

  Blaine arrived last. After talking with Jillian, I wanted to try and get back into his good graces. He was the key to filling in the space between TJ’s journal entries. He was my last chance.

  “I’m sorry about what I said the other day,” I said. “It wasn’t cool.”

  He looked at me for a long moment before saying anything. “It’s all right—all in the past.”

  I breathed out a sigh of relief from his acceptance of my apology. My first step was a success.

  Focus on what you want.

  I got to work on my Elliott Smith album cover, moving beyond sketching and finally beginning to paint. I had to work on mixing the colors right, but I was enjoying the experimentation process.

  At the end of class, I left with Desiree, but stopped before we got too far. I looked back and saw Blaine exiting the classroom and turning the opposite direction from us.

  “I’ve got to go do something,” I told her.

  “That’s fine. I’ll come with you.”

  “I’m going to talk to Blaine,” I said and searched her face for her real response before she answered.

  She looked crestfallen. “Are you asking more questions? Are you reading the journal?”

  I looked back at Blaine who was getting farther away. Soon he’d turn a corner and disappear.

  “I have to go,” I said again, with obvious urgency in my voice, urging Desiree to give me an answer.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she finally said and gave me a sad half-smile.

  I ran through the chaotic crowd of students to catch up to Blaine and reached him just as he was opening his locker.

  “I wanted to apologize again,” I said.