Among Friends (21 page)

It’s my parents’ fault! If Daddy hadn’t given me a credit card I wouldn’t have been able to buy these tickets. If they hadn’t pushed me and pushed me, I wouldn’t have been so super. I would have been ordinary and people would have liked me. Well, I’m ordinary now.

This is the real me. Your basic, no-frills Jennie.

And who is she?

She’s a plain, brown-haired teenager nobody has noticed. Nobody has spoken to. Nobody has questioned.

She’s a jerk.

She did a dumb, dumb, dumb thing. Anybody else would just have heaved a big sigh and failed the math section. But no, Jennie Quint, who has to do everything too much, too much—Jennie Quint left the state.

Why didn’t I just sit there and fail? Why did I run out of the test room, and out of the building, and down the street? Why did the bus station have to be so close? Why did I have to see the sign? Why did that fat lady standing in line have to buy a ticket to Pittsburgh? Why did I buy a ticket, too?

It’s Emily’s fault. And Hillary’s. They didn’t have to be so mean to me! If I had friends this year, I wouldn’t have done these dumb things! I wouldn’t be sitting on this bus, with other people’s radios playing, and other people’s smelly bag lunches, and other people’s laughter, and other people’s destinations!

Classified.

I used to love that nickname. Made it so much easier to hide.

Now I think I was dumb.

You keep secrets from everybody else, you end up keeping them from yourself, too. A person can’t be classified. And you need help one day, you don’t know how to get it, because you’ve never done any talking. I’m not crazy about Jared. But his father and mother are pretty terrific.

Phys. ed. coach talked to me again about sports.

I might.

Not this year, can’t be after school for practice this year. But I might next year. He’s all tense. Seniors can’t be on junior varsity, he says, you’ve got to be good enough for varsity, you’ve got to start this year.

I might.

I just might.

There’s no news on Jennie. I was over at her house this afternoon with Mrs. Lowe, who brought a casserole over to the Quints. She said she felt very dumb, taking broccoli and cheese instead of their daughter, but it would show that she cared. What an unbelievable house. It is truly perfect, like a glossy magazine, and afterward I said to Mrs. Lowe, “Were they training Jennie to be a prop?”

Mrs. Lowe said, “Oh, you children! You’re so cruel! They were doing the best they could. They love Jennie.”

I didn’t quite do it.

At least I can write that down, and it’s true, it’s not a lie.

I didn’t actually cheat.

I only wanted to.

I thought of cheating as this wonderful, splendid, beautiful solution! It was waiting for me—crying,
You too can cheat and be a winner still!

I set my pencil down very carefully.

Waited for the examination hour to end.

It was the longest and the shortest hour of my life.

Like waiting for my execution.

Failure.

It was there, in my hands: I had finally achieved failure.

Go home now?

Face my mother and father?

Say to them: I failed, do you still love me? Am I still a good enough trophy?

Right now there’s only one thing to be proud of.

I didn’t cheat.

Come to your senses.

I think about that all day now.

Because what are the senses Jennie’s supposed to come to?

Does it make sense to try so hard? To do so much? To be so shiny?

Does it make sense to lose your friends and your family?

But does it make sense just to hang around and not use your brain and your music?

Nothing makes sense. All of us being jealous doesn’t make sense and Jennie’s running away doesn’t make sense. Sometimes now I think maybe something happened to her—she was kidnapped or killed or something—because it does not make sense, and everything Jennie did added up to a success, and this doesn’t.

Jennie, Jennie, I’m sorry.

I’ve come to my senses, at least.

Please come to yours.

I got off the bus all of a sudden, thinking of Jared following Paul, thinking of police following me, thinking of being caught, like an animal, being caged, being yelled at, being bad, being wrong, being worthless.

I don’t even know where it was, but it was a dark and horrible town.

I stood alone on the sidewalk and the bus pulled away. I ate a cheese sandwich from a vending machine and it was dry and I choked on it. I had a soda and when I used the bathroom behind the magazine counter, it was dirty and there were no paper towels.

I bought a magazine but I couldn’t seem to read.

The music from the sonnet to snow blurred in my head and little bits of it played over and over and over and over again until I wanted to scream and rip my hair out and never hear the notes again.

I ran outside and ran down the street and I didn’t stop until I had a pain in my side.

Leaves whipped by the winter wind rushed around my ankles, like little sheep wanting a shepherd. As if they wanted to be raked up and put in a cozy pile somewhere. If I had a match I would do it for them. I would set fire to them and they would be happy.

I walked through the icy dark past a bar where no commuter to New York would ever hang out. Garbage
filled the gutters. A little girl came out of a side street, carrying a cardboard bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pepsi. Her thin windbreaker was unzipped, and she had no hat, no scarf, and no mittens. The jacket was unzipped because the zipper was half torn off, hanging by its thin ribbon and waving in the wind. The only warm thing about her was the bucket, which steamed slightly around the edges.

I unzipped my thick luxurious ski jacket, took off my mittens, stuffed my scarf into the bookbag that swung from my bare fingers. Ye season, it was winter. Thirteen degrees, in a harsh wind. My fingers turned blue.

A car pulled up next to me.

A man leaned over the passenger side, from the driver’s seat, and said something. His greasy hair was tied back under a bandanna that circled his forehead; a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, and filth rimmed the fingernails that gripped the opened window—a window that was always open: it was broken. His voice came through little shards of glass that poked up out of the opening.

I began running.

He simply drove alongside.

I ran faster.

He laughed, and stayed with me.

We came to an intersection and the cross street was one way: I raced the wrong direction up it so he could not follow. His laughter followed. Sick and depraved, it rang in my ears.

I found the bus station again, running the whole time, praying the car would not find me. I spent the night sitting on a wooden bench watching the minute hand on the wall clock go around. There wasn’t much heat. A bus came around four in the morning and I got on.

Came “home” today before Jared—he’s in the drama production and had a rehearsal. I felt so strange walking in the front door of the Lowes’ house. Mrs. Lowe was home, and we sat watching a soap opera. She loves the same soap opera Mom did, and has the same favorite character she worries about.

Mrs. Lowe said, “Shall I go with you to visit your mother?”

The visit was easy. Mrs. Lowe made it like a tea party, or something, so that we actually laughed. I didn’t know Mom would ever laugh again. I didn’t know I would ever laugh again. Coming home, Mrs. Lowe said, “Your biggest problem isn’t going to be your mother, Paul.”

I did laugh then. “Mrs. Lowe, if I have a larger problem out there than her, I don’t even want to think about it.”

She smiled. She said, “Forgiving Candy is going to be harder. Candy left without a backward look. Candy doesn’t even notice what she did. Candy is genuinely happy with her biological mother. The eleven years your Mom spent bringing Candy up are gone as if they had never been, and Candy doesn’t care. She’s still your sister, she will always be your sister, and you hate her. That’s what you have to get over, Paul. That’s what’s classified inside you.”

I can’t use my charge any more. They called my number in to the computer and I’ve reached my limit. Oh, how true, how true! I’m on my last ticket right now. I don’t even know where this bus is going to end up. All I know is, I will have to get off.