Josie and Jack (9 page)

By the time I caught up, Kevin was deep in conversation with a boy wearing a Miles Davis T-shirt. The shirt was about three sizes too big. I heard the boy say, “Hey, it’s the invisible girlfriend.”

“What do you know? You do exist,” a girl said, grinning cheerfully at me. She was wearing a pair of work boots that didn’t look like they’d ever seen a day’s work.

I said, “In the flesh,” and tried to smile back, wishing that I really was invisible—or at least that I hadn’t pissed Kevin off. Then at least I’d have one friend in that teeming crowd. But he took my hand to help me up into the back of the red pickup truck as he told me their names, which slid through my brain like water.

Work Boots said, “I’ve seen you around town with your brother. You really don’t go to school?”

“I really don’t.” I was still grinning like an idiot.

“Isn’t the school board up your dad’s ass about it?” T-shirt said.

“We’re home-schooled. It’s all legal.”

“I wish my parents would do that,” Work Boots said. “I hate school. It’s so pointless. The teachers are dumber than we are."

Kevin leaned in. “You know Josie was studying Greek when she was six?”

“No kidding! Our school doesn’t even have Greek,” Work Boots said. The three of them examined me as though I were a specimen under glass.

Finally T-shirt said, “Not having to go to school would totally rock. Kevin says you guys have a hell of a time up there with your brother.”

Kevin’s smile vanished.

“Well,” I said. “Things get a little intense sometimes.

” “Insane, huh? Right, Kevster?”

He mumbled, “Shut up,” and looked away from me.

“Your brother’s cute,” Work Boots said.

“I guess so. He’s my brother; it’s hard to tell.”

Kevin forced a laugh. “I think you’re a little young for him, Amy.”

She tossed her head and said, “You’re as old as you feel.”

An image came unbidden to my mind: Amy’s immaculate work boots lying among the overflowing ashtrays and crumpled clothes that always covered the floor next to Jack’s bed while above them, his lean body moved over her compact round one and she moaned softly—

My stomach lurched. I said, “Well, get Kevin to bring you up sometime,” knowing that he would never do it. Just then, the marching band, which had been standing idly in a rough circle a few feet away, broke into something strident and loud, and a pack of cheerleaders tumbled and handsprung their way into the clearing, and I learned that the Tigers—or maybe it was the Titans, I couldn’t quite make it out—were going to go, fight, win, killing the Lions and going all the way, that’s right, all the way. The cheerleaders barked out questions like drill sergeants. Kevin and his friends seemed to know all the correct responses.

“Assembly-line idiot factories,” Raeburn said in my head, “producing assembly-line idiots capable of assembly-line thought. You two are better than that.”

Someone in a tiger suit bounced into the midst of the cheerleaders, eliciting a massive burst of enthusiasm from the crowd. Around me, a sea of entranced faces eagerly watched each sharp, martial movement. Fists punched the air. Feet stomped loudly in time with the music. Kevin put his arm around me, pulling me close. I tried to smile.

There was a commotion on the side of the clearing closest to the parking lot. The crowd parted and an old car, rusted and covered in primer, was pushed into the center of the crowd by a group of huge boys wearing football jerseys over faded jeans or sweatpants. More boys sat on top of the car, waving their arms in the air and shouting “Yeah!” and “Oh, yeah!” and occasionally
“Fuck
yeah!”

“What’s going on?” I asked Kevin.

“The car smash. They do it every year.”

Work Boots—Amy—leaned over and said, “It’s mostly an excuse for the seniors to show off what big, tough men they are.”

“My dad says whoever donates the car gets a tax writeoff,” T-shirt said.

As if by magic, a sledgehammer appeared in the hands of each of the riding, shouting boys. Someone blew a whistle and they started to smash, blows raining down on the already dead car. Glass shattered. Metal buckled. It was like bumper cars on the autobahn, like a war, like someone being killed, and still there were fenders to be hammered flat and bumpers to be ripped off and held aloft like trophies. Something shiny flew through the air. It was one of the side mirrors, thrown clear of the carnage.

I tapped Kevin on the shoulder. “Doesn’t anyone ever get hurt doing this?”

He smirked. “A few years ago some kid got hit in the kidneys. If they’re stupid enough to do it they deserve what they get.”

The band played and the fire roared, and somewhere out of reach of its flickering red light, my brother sat in a room with my father and they drank brandy by the light of a smaller, more private flame.

The pep rally ended when the car was reduced to naked, twisted metal. The cheerleaders closed things up with a few more rounds of “Go! Fight! Win!” but the kids were already leaving by then, trickling off in ones and twos toward the parking lot. Kevin’s friends wanted to go to a coffee shop in Janesville, so we all piled into the red truck, which belonged to T-shirt—or, more likely, to his father. Kevin sat in the back and Amy and I squeezed together in the cab. Amy was sitting in the middle and she and T-shirt were laughing about something, some story about Kevin that I think was being told for my benefit.

My face ached from smiling and I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with my arms. They seemed too long and I moved them restlessly from the open window, which was too high, to the armrest, which was too low, to my lap, which felt too timid. The air outside, which made my hair lash at my face as it blew in the open window, smelled of smoke and cold weather and carried with it the clear tang of water. I envied Kevin sitting by himself in the truck bed.

I moved Jack’s jacket around me. His scent surrounded me like an aura.

Amy said, “So we’re all of thirteen years old, Lisa’s parents are right upstairs, and Mr. Smooth Moves in the back, there, decides that it’s time for his first makeout session and pulls her into the bathroom.”

T-shirt said, “This is so classic.”

“Like you’re any better, Mr. Back-Seat-of-the-Bus—during a band trip with six sets of parents in the front and everyone we know watching.”

“All I’m saying is, I didn’t get caught.”

Amy shook her head dismissively and turned back to me. “Anyway, so naturally Lisa’s mom comes downstairs to see if we want more chips or something like that. And she’s like, ‘Where’s Lisa?’ and we’re like, ‘Uh, we don’t know, Mrs. Nath.’ And Lisa’s in the bathroom with Kevin, listening to all this, so of course she opens the door and comes out, like, ‘I’m right here, Mom,’ like nothing’s going on. And Kevin follows her.”

The two of them burst into laughter. I wondered who was watching the road.

“What?” Kevin called through the sliding panel in the back window. “What’s going on?”

They only laughed harder. They were still laughing when T-shirt pulled into a parking place in front of the coffee shop and turned the engine off. “Caught!” he said, too loudly in the sudden silence. “So caught! ”

“I guess that pretty much did it for the party, huh?” I asked.

“That party and every other party from now until we’re all dead,” Amy said as she climbed out of the truck after me. “Lisa still has to swear in blood, practically, just to get out of the house, and it’s three years later, for God’s sake.”

Kevin jumped down from the tailgate. “What are you guys telling her?”

“Oh, nothing,” T-shirt said. “Only the legend of the Bathroom Bandito.”

Kevin blushed. “Yeah, well, I was thirteen.”

“You were a dork,” Amy said.

“You still are,” I said. Kevin’s eyes darted toward me, and Amy crowed with delight.

“See,” Amy said. “She’s a smart one. She knows the score.” She threw her arm around my shoulder. “They’re all dorks, aren’t they, Josie?”

“Not my brother.” I reached up to adjust the collar of Jack’s jacket and make Amy move her arm.

“Jack’s cool enough,” Kevin said carefully.

“My older sister used to see him down at Eide’s all the time,” she said. “She says he’s the coolest guy she’s ever met. Smart and funny and just
awesome
.”

“Jack worked at Eide’s?” Kevin asked me as we entered the warm coffee shop.

“For about fifteen minutes.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It was literally about a week.”

“What happened?”

They had asked for a social security card and a driver’s license, and Jack had neither. “He didn’t like it,” I said shortly. T-shirt and Amy were ahead of us, following the waitress. I moved quickly to catch up.

“Ask him if he remembers my sister,” Amy said as we slid into the booth. “Beth Furlough. She had a huge crush on him.” Amy’s words were authoritative, as if she were repeating Delphic prophecy. “She used to say that she wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be someone special, like a rock star or a secret agent. Something.”

“Okay, we get it.” Kevin looked disgusted. “Jack Raeburn is good-looking. So is his sister. Can we drop it?”

“I was just saying.”

“And saying, and saying, and saying,” T-shirt said, rolling his eyes.

She sniffed. “Not my fault if he’s the only interesting thing in town.”

I hugged his jacket closer as the waitress came to take our order. The others ordered coffee and French fries and hot fudge sundaes. I got coffee.

They were capable of amazing amounts of talk, those three. On and on and on they went: about Amy’s boyfriends, about T-shirt’s girlfriends, about what a drag living with your parents was, and how cool college would be. Amy said she wanted a car for her birthday, she didn’t care what kind, and they talked about that. T-shirt said he was thinking about joining the soccer team and they talked about that. I sat and looked at the veins on the backs of my hands. At one point Kevin turned to me and asked, “You okay?” I nodded and he didn’t ask again.

They weren’t unusually dumb, or unusually superficial, or any other kind of unusual. They were normal, nice kids from normal, nice families. Jack and Raeburn were right; we weren’t like them. I had nothing to say to them. I wanted my coffee to have whiskey in it and I wanted my brother, and nothing else was all that interesting.

T-shirt and Amy dropped us off at the high school around eleven-thirty. There were two cars in the empty, moonlit parking lot. One of them was Kevin’s station wagon. The other was a battered blue truck.

Kevin dropped my hand. Together, we stared across the dark lawn at the parking lot in silence.

I heard him swallow. “Did I keep you out too late?” he said.

“Violating the strict Raeburn curfew, you mean?”

“Well, your dad’s home...”

“And by now he’s passed out in the study. Let’s go the other way.”

We walked toward the clearing, where the bonfire had been. The scent of the night air was still good.

“Shit, Josie,” Kevin said. “What’s he doing here?”

We had reached the soggy black scar where the fire had been. The moonlight glinted off Kevin’s glasses. He was scared. He kept running his hands through his hair, turning his head nervously.

I took a deep breath. Now I smelled char and Jack’s coat and the coffee on my own breath. I looked at Kevin, who was a nice boy who liked to wear army pants and rock star T-shirts, and an eerie calm slid over me.

“I’m going to go back alone,” I said. My voice was steady. “Stay here. Give us a chance to leave.”

“Wait a minute,” Kevin said.

I turned to go.

Jack was standing there watching us, with his hands in his pockets. He was blocking the way to the parking lot. His face was turned toward the sky.

“Hey, little sister,” he said, staring into the cloudless sky.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.” He looked at me. “Nice jacket.”

“Thanks.”

Then he looked at Kevin.

Kevin made a strangled noise in his throat and bolted forward. I’m not sure what he was doing. Maybe he was hoping to get in the first punch. Maybe he was trying to run.

Anyway, Jack caught him.

The last time I saw Kevin McNerny, he was lying where Jack had thrown him, face-down in the ashes of the dead bonfire. I could hear him drawing long, sobbing breaths through his broken nose. He was trying, weakly, to get up, or at least to get his face out of the soot.

Jack’s T-shirt was stained with blood and there were a few splattered drops on his cheek. We drove home in silence.

I went straight up to my room and closed the door behind me. Turned the light off and lay face-down on my bed.

The leather jacket was in a heap on the floor, where I’d dropped it.

A few minutes later, my bedroom door opened and shut again. I heard the flick of a lighter. My thin mattress dipped slightly as Jack sat down on the edge of my bed.

“So,” he said, finally. “How was the sock hop, kitten?”

I rolled over and pulled myself up to sit against the headboard. By candlelight, I saw that Jack had changed his shirt and washed the blood from his face. He was staring at me, his expression calm, and rubbing his raw knuckles.

“Leave me alone.”

He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “Let me guess. All the girls giggled about boys and all the boys punched each other in the arm and slapped each other on the ass and talked sports. You sat there and didn’t say a word the entire night.”

“I talked.”

“Yeah? What did you say?”

I didn’t answer.

“Because, by nature, we’re great conversationalists, aren’t we? Let’s see. What subjects does one find in the incomparable Raeburn repertoire? You could tell them all about Kepler’s theory of planetary motion; I’m sure Kevin’s furry little forest friends would have been into that. Or you could break the ice with a few good jokes, maybe some wacky anecdotes? I know, you could tell them about the time at that faculty dinner when the dean of studies puked all over his shoes. They would have liked that one. High school kids like puking.”

“Stop it.”

He moved in closer, staring intently at me. “Or you could tell them about the time you broke Raeburn’s Italian barometer. That’s a good one. Particularly the end.”