The Goddess Quest

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "I'll take him," said her dad.

  "No. I'll drive him."

  "You're sure?"

  "You've been doing almost all the driving for the last few months. I miss being behind the wheel."

  It did feel good steering her Honda down the open road. Lately, she'd been dreaming about driving, among other things that had slipped beyond her reach.

  "I was sick last night," Kevin spoke up a few minutes into the drive. "It seemed like a bad cold. My sinuses were blocked up and I kept sneezing. I assumed you infected me with whatever you had."

  "I thought I was just having an allergic reaction to something."

  "It could've been environmental. Sometimes they change their disinfectants."

  Karen Clarkson greeted them at the front door with a tight smile and worried eyes. Kevin slipped past her and disappeared into the house without a word.

  "Do you, um, have a moment?" she asked, looking after her son.

  "Okay. Sure."

  Jamie backed away from the front steps as Karen Clarkson closed the door and stepped out into the yard after them.

  "Thank you for bringing Kevin home," she said. "Mrs. Shepherd, I wanted to tell you that Kevin spoke very highly of you. That was when he was still speaking to us." She bit back a frown. "You were his favorite teacher."

  "He was a joy to have in class. I still remember his creative solutions to certain calculus problems."

  Karen Clarkson nodded in a distracted way. "Yes. He was so talented – such a promising future."

  "But something changed? I only heard rumors about him, nothing very definite."

  "It started toward the end of his sophomore year. It was gradual, subtle at first. He just seemed to lose interest in what he was doing at times. His grades slipped the next year, and he barely made it to graduation. His grade average had slipped enough to make any of the better colleges out of reach. He started at a community college, seemed to be finding his way again, but then started flunking his classes. We didn't know about it for the first year. He left the house every morning for school and would claim he was doing 'okay' if we pressed him, but he wasn't going to classes. We didn’t know anything was wrong until one of his teachers called and asked about him. We still don't know where he went or what he was doing for most of that first year."

  Jamie listened with a sympathetic face even while thinking about Kylee and how much potential she'd had. Such a smart young girl. In a few years Jamie could have been greeting her child coming home from college and pestering her about her grades or boyfriends.

  "I'm telling you all this mainly so you'll understand my concerns about his mental welfare. He has a very fragile mental state, Mrs. Shepherd. And while I do appreciate you befriending him in the" – she compressed her lips – "the hospital, I hope you'll understand that dealing with suicidal ideation wouldn't be an ideal influence for him."

  "I thought I was dying from cancer." Anger flared in Jamie, which she tamped down with some effort. She could only imagine the stresses Kevin's parents had to deal with. "I'm not suicidal."

  "Jumping out of a plane without a parachute isn't suicidal?" Karen Clarkson regarded her with sad eyes as Jamie clamped her mouth shut. "Of course I understand your choice. I'm not judging. It's just that Kevin isn't well-equipped to handle these kinds of emotional pressures."

  "Mrs. Clarkson, it's not like I'm planning to be your son's new best friend. This was a one-time thing – at least in my mind."

  "But perhaps not in his. In many ways he's a child, but in other ways he's, well, a fully functioning grown-up man." Karen turned away, staring at the empty clothesline in the yard, a hint of color invading her cheeks. "He had quite a crush on you back in the day. He wouldn't appreciate me telling you this, but I found a photo of you in his desk drawer that first year in high school."

  Jamie felt a blush coming on herself. Kevin had been friendly but unfailingly polite, unlike a few of the other boys. Or even their fathers, when they'd showed up for parent-teacher meetings and their eyes strayed to her legs or lingered a beat too long on her chest. She'd had that effect on some men before death and disease had wilted her. Jamie hadn't realized until that moment that she now missed what she'd thought of as unwanted attention back then.

  "Does Kevin have any friends?" she asked. "Anyone besides you he can talk to?"

  "He has one friend, a paraplegic who is also a high-functioning Asperger."

  "Terry Mayes?"

  "Did you have him as a student?"

  "No. I just saw him rolling through the halls. I heard he was quite bright."

  "He is. He and Kevin have a lot in common." She said that as though it weren't a good thing.

  Jamie remembered that while the kids had mostly admired Kevin's intellectual feats and accepted his standoffish ways, things hadn't gone so easily for Terry. He'd had the triple-strike of being black, autistic, and confined to a wheelchair. Unlike Kevin's handsome face and tall, well-shaped form - which he'd seemed clueless about, oblivious to the looks and giggles girls tossed his way – Terry's face and body were deformed, warped by a bizarre and rare joint-bone disease. She'd heard kids refer to him as a "The Ghoul" or "Pterodactyl" because his sides projected like bony wings. She generally liked the students, but sometimes, even if unintentionally, they could be such unfeeling little monsters.

  "I'm glad he has someone," said Jamie. "Glad for them both."

  "Yes. But Terry probably doesn't have much longer to live, sad to say."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "And of course, we were very sorry to hear about your...situation." She eyed Jamie with sudden puzzlement. "How are you doing with that? I'm surprised you're up and about, especially after that terrible fall. You don't even look..."

  "Sick?"

  Karen nodded. "You've lost weight, but you're kind of...glowing?"

  Jamie smiled. "Thanks. Turns out I'm cancer-free at the moment."

  "Oh, that's great news! You're in remission?"

  "The doctors don't know. So far they haven't found any trace of cancer, and I feel pretty normal."

  "Well, anyway, I'm very happy for you. And what I said about you and Kevin...please disregard it. If you did want to be friends with Kevin or whatever, I'm fine with that."

  Whatever? Jamie forged a smile.

  "I guess we'll see," she said.