Breakaway (29 page)

“I haven't seen him,” Jordie said, and I took a moment to check my gut for anger with Jordie about that. But there wasn't any anger. I understood it. He was completely absorbed with Cheryl now, his social life and what he had going on with her. I was the same with Raine.

It bothered me sometimes, that I forgot to think about Chick and Mario in my preoccupation with Raine and trying to spend every free moment I had with her, but unlike Jordie, I would never forgive myself for it completely.

“I don't think he's doing so hot,” I said. “We should go by and see him.”

Jordie didn't say anything and kept his gaze fixed on his shoes. He didn't want to go looking after Chick, but didn't feel comfortable saying it. “I came by because I wanted to talk to you about what happened the other night at the cotillion,” Jordie said, deciding it was easier to talk about the rift that already existed between us than open a new one by saying he didn't really have an interest in going to look after Chick.

“Go on then. Talk,” I said as I turned my back to him and started rinsing plates before setting them in the hard rubber rack. “I have nothing to say about it.”

There was a long pause while he decided what to say, the way sometimes even if you've already rehearsed in your mind what you plan to say, you can't really figure out a good way to start. “I didn't know Brian and his buddies were going to take you down like that,” Jordie said, his words coming out in a rush. “I mean, I knew Brian had it out for you, knew he was going to talk to you about staying away from Raine, but I didn't think they would jump you like that.”

“Really?” I asked. “You'd think if Brian just wanted to talk to me, he would have pulled me aside, one-on-one. Wouldn't need to bring five of his buddies just to talk to me.”

Jordie grimaced slightly as his eyes searched the water-stained ceiling tiles. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “But you have a reputation. It just made sense that he would want some backup. Just in case.”

“So, why are you here?” I asked.

“To apologize, I guess,” Jordie said. “To say I'm sorry I didn't have your back.”

“You guess? Or you're actually apologizing?” I asked.

“Stop being a dick,” he said, narrowing his eyes and cutting a glance in my direction. “I'm apologizing. I'm sorry. I should have stepped in or warned you or something.”

“I knew what I was getting into when I showed up at that damn place,” I said. “I willingly went outside and got my ass kicked. I didn't expect you, expect anyone, to have my back.”

“Yeah,” Jordie said with a sigh. “Yeah. Maybe that's the problem.”

There was nothing I could say to that, so I kept my mouth shut. When Jordie left, it was on good terms, but somehow I felt more uncertain than ever about what, if anything, still bound us together as friends. As I made my way through the never-ending pile of dishes, I tried to find the part inside me that had ever felt anything about my closest friends.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It was a Wednesday when I was pulled out of class during first period by a bored-looking student aide who came with a yellow hall pass from the office. Later I would remember thinking that Wednesday was a strange day for everything to go down. A Friday, or even a Monday, would have seemed more appropriate, but there it was, right in the middle of the week. It wasn't an exceptional week in any way—the weather was bad, but not bad enough to get us out of school for a day and so not really noteworthy.

Jordie and Mario were already in the office along with Jordie's dad and Mario's mom. It was never made clear if they didn't bother to call my mom or if she couldn't come. I never asked.

Jordie looked uncomfortable, Mario indifferent. Most likely Mario was stoned but I didn't bother studying his condition. Mr. Clemons, the guidance counselor, offered me a chair, but I just leaned against the wall and retreated into the background.

Mr. Clemons kept clearing his throat and stumbling over his speech, obviously out of his depth when it came to providing any actual guidance or counseling. “I … uh … hate to … well, that is … you see…” He went on like this for an almost incomprehensible amount of time. I shifted my stance against the wall, ready to shout at him or give him a good slap across the face to knock it out of him. My movement seemed to shock him out of his stammer and he delivered the news bluntly, without censoring for the impact.

“Walter Gunderson is dead,” he said, followed by a loud gulp as he swallowed his own saliva.

“Who's Walter Gunderson?” the Colonel asked, his brow wrinkled in a frown.

“It's Chick, Dad,” Jordan said quietly, his head down, eyes on his lap.

Probably texting his girlfriend about it, was the thought that ran through my head as I studied Jordie's reaction.

“Madre de Dios,”
Mario's mother said as she crossed herself and covered her mouth with her hand.

“What happened?” the Colonel asked.

“He … uh…,” Mr. Clemons was back to fumbling. “It was suicide apparently.”

“Well, the kid was a little off, right?” the Colonel asked as he glanced around at the rest of us for agreement. “I mean, it's tragic, but it's not like he came from a stable family. And they were poor, right?”

Jesus wept. Here was the Colonel, looking to all of us to agree that no one had been expecting Chick's life to amount to anything anyway. Suicide, prison, drug overdose, whatever—the kid had it coming.

“Where?” I asked.

“What?” Mr. Clemons asked stupidly, still processing the Colonel's reaction.

“Where did he do it?” I asked. “How did he kill himself?”

“I don't really think it's best for you boys to know all the details,” Mr. Clemons said, his eyes on his desk blotter.

“I didn't ask you what you think,” I said quietly. “I asked you what you know.”

Mr. Clemons sighed and fidgeted with the folded glasses on his desk. “I guess I won't be telling you anything you can't hear on the news or learn on the Internet,” Mr. Clemons said. “He hung himself from a tree in the park. A jogger found him early this morning.”

I left then. Just walked out and didn't wait to see if anyone cared.

Poor Chick. Poor dumb, stupid Chick.

 

 

I stayed down at the park for almost an hour, sitting along the bank just upstream from the rocks where we had spent many nights drinking cheap beer or making out with the girls we brought to the park with us. Of course, Chick never got lucky. Before that moment it had never occurred to me to wonder what he did with himself when the three of us paired off with girls at the park.

A jogger. Always goddamn joggers discovering dead bodies.

It was bitterly cold and I thought about Chick down here alone in the dark, freezing in his inadequate winter coat as he climbed a tree to hang himself. As I sat there I knew why Chick had come to this place for his last moments. He came here to be at a place where he could remember what it felt like to be loved, to be part of something.

After a while I was near frozen, would end up being the second dead boy they found in two days' time if I didn't get up and move. My cheeks and ears ached from the cold as I walked to Bad Habits—stumbled there is more like it. Chris was at the bar, grinning and talking shit to a few guys there for an early happy hour when I blew in through the front door on a frigid blast of air.

When he saw my face his smile faded, and he came around from behind the bar to meet me. “What is it?” he asked, his voice sounding almost angry, but I knew he wasn't angry with me.

“I killed him,” I said through chattering teeth as Chris put his arms around me to hold me up.

“Jesus, kid, you're freezing,” he said, his own voice trembling now.

“I killed him,” I said again, this time coming out as a cry that broke on a sob.

 

 

When I woke on the battered leather couch in Chris's office I couldn't remember anything that had happened after I left the park. I was covered in a thin blanket that was scratchy against the bare skin of my arm, and my head rested on my balled-up jacket. For a disorienting moment I couldn't remember where I was, but then I saw the neat rows of liquor bottles along the wall.

“Hey, kid,” Chris said as I sat up and rubbed the back of my neck, which had knotted while I slept in an awkward position.

“Hey,” I said quietly, my voice still thick with sleep. Chris sat behind his desk, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. He looked suddenly like an old man, though I usually thought of him as being not much older than I was.

“Man, you about scared the shit out of me,” Chris said with a chuckle as he removed the glasses and tossed them on the desk. He rubbed at the hair on the back of his head, almost a parody of my own gesture. It was the first time I ever noticed that he and I had very similar mannerisms, looked an awful lot alike, in fact.

“You were going on about somebody you killed. Shit, I thought I was going to have to hide you from the cops,” he said with a shake of his head. “Thought you had really killed someone.”

“How do you know I didn't?” I asked.

“Because you're not half as tough as you think you are.” He paused to let that sink in. Then he said, “And because Jordan stopped by, looking for you. He told me about Chick.”

“Yeah?” I asked, and sat back on the couch as my gut started its familiar ache. “What did you tell Jordie?”

“Told him I hadn't seen you in a few days,” Chris said.

I nodded but didn't thank him.

“You gonna tell me what the hell is going on?” he asked when it became obvious I wasn't going to volunteer anything else.

“Chick killed himself. Jordan told you.”

“Yeah. He told me. You think it's somehow your fault?” he asked. “You said
you
killed him.”

“Not just
my
fault,” I mumbled, feeling self-conscious now that the initial tidal wave of emotion had passed. “Jordan and Mario's too. But yeah, we killed him, just as sure as if we had tied the rope and thrown it over the branch for him ourselves.”

“Jaz, people don't do something like that unless they're sick. Sick in a way that there's nothing you could have done to help. Sick in a way maybe nobody can fix. It may seem like something you did, made Chick really unhappy, but that's just a symptom.” He paused but shifted uncomfortably in his seat, so I knew he had more to say. “I've been thinking, you know, about some of the things you said. About how things are between us. I'm lucky. Lucky that your mom stepped up to be a good parent to you while I was still fucking up in general. Your mom is a good person, but … well, she and I were already on the outs when she found out she was pregnant with you. I think maybe we both thought it would change things—having a baby, I mean. That it would somehow make us love each other. But it never did.”

I couldn't escape his gaze as I looked around the room, refusing to meet his eye.

“So, I was thinking,” he went on, looking more uncomfortable than I had ever seen him. “Maybe you'd … uh … want to come and stay with me for a while. I'm not promising anything,” he said as he held up one hand, “but you can have my extra bedroom. I'm too old to change anything about my lifestyle so if you're expecting anything resembling a responsible male role model, you'll be shit out of luck.”

“Wow,” I said. “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds really appealing.”

“Yeah, well,” he said with a shrug but smiled.

“I'll think about it,” I said. “I'm not sure I can leave Mom right now. Anyway, she's better now.”

“The devil you know…,” Chris said with a nod as he fidgeted with his reading glasses, folding and turning them this way and that on the scarred wooden desk, cast off from some respectable office years ago.

“If I really had killed someone, is that what you would have done—hidden me from the cops?” I asked curiously.

“Yeah, sure,” he said with another laugh. “See what I mean? Role model.”

“Is it dinnertime?” I asked.

Chris shook his head. “Long past. Why don't you rest a little while longer? I'll get Carmen to fix us a couple of burgers.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said as I lay back on the jacket again, shoving it up under my head and shoulders to form a better pillow.

Chris stopped in the open doorway and turned back to me to say, “When you were crying earlier, you called me Dad, you know that? First time you called me Dad since you were a little bitty thing.”

“Huh,” I said as I stared at the exposed pipes in the ceiling.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Chris drove me to Chick's wake at the funeral home. He hadn't come to Sylvia's funeral, because Mom would have freaked out if he had tried, but I was glad to have him with me, glad that I wouldn't have to face Chick's dad alone.

The service was held in a room with no chairs, no decoration other than a wooden cross on the wall, and Chick's casket, which was draped with his soccer jersey and seemed only big enough to hold a child.

Chris wore a sport coat with slacks and a tie and repeatedly ran his fingers inside the collar of his shirt, as if it choked him. It was the first time I had seen him in anything other than jeans and a T-shirt. I wore the funeral/cotillion suit again, deciding to myself as I stood there that I would burn it at the first opportunity.

Raine showed up at the funeral home in a simple black wool dress with pearls, her hair pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck. A tendril of hair strayed from the bun and curled against the side of her neck and I found myself feeling turned on as I looked at that lock of hair while she stood talking to Jordan and his mom. It was a strange sensation, being slightly aroused as I stood in the funeral home with Chick's corpse only a few feet from us. Maybe death had that effect on the living—somehow made you feel more alive.