The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (26 page)

Already, the kitten was
gone, hiding, waiting, stalking.

“
I should find the catnip
toy I bought for him. He’s getting a little out of control,”
surmised Jason as he glanced about his room, looking for the
life-sized mouse he had purchased to keep the kitten
occupied.

“
I don’t
care what you do, just do something, that cat is freakin’ out of
its’ gourd,” mumbled Joaquin. “He’s the damned Ted Bundy of the cat
world, the
Hannibal Lector
of the animal kingdom, the cursed Rasputin of the
–.”

“
Dude, I get it!” burst
out Jason. He saw the toy in the middle of his bed, putting Joaquin
out of his mind for the time being. He got up to go fetch
it.

“
Ok,
man, I’m just saying, the little fart is as wild as a
mofo
! I mean he’s wild
like National Geographic, uncharted like the Goby desert, untamed
like -.”

“…
Your mom’s bush,”
finished Jason for the other teenager, laughing as he called for
the kitten and threw the toy toward his bedroom door.

Joaquin was muttered under
his breath.

Too low for Jason to hear,
but he wasn’t listening. He didn’t sit back down next to his friend
until he was sure the kitten was going to go after the toy and
leave them alone.

“
You
leave my mom’s bush out if this, dude,” said Joaquin, his brow
knotted above the bridge of his nose, making Jason lean back a
little unsure if he had gone too far, “Because there is nothing as
untamed as that
thang!
” His hard expression melted. He laughed loudly, clapping
Jason on the back, who staggered under the blow. He was a little
surprised when the pain usually following one of Joaquin’s “taps”
on the back didn’t come. Maybe all the weight lifting was beginning
to pay off?

Back toward the door of
the room, the kitten was savaging the silken mouse, the profuse
douse of catnip doing the trick for the time being.

“
You still going out
tonight with Clarisse?” asked Jason. He began to gather up the
controllers and turn off the game console they’d been
using.

The subject change made
Joaquin raise his brow in the classic “where-did-that-come-from”
expression.

Jason tried to ignore it,
feeling the sudden self-consciousness he was trying to mask boil up
and flush his face.
Damn it, why did I
come out with it all obvious like that and shit?
Jason changed the input channel on the AUX to
cable, and picked up another remote to turn on the cable box, at a
loss for blurting out the question in the first place.

“
Yeah, man, we’re going
out later on tonight. Why?” Joaquin wondered.

“
Oh, I
was just curious that’s all,” he replied, not looking at Joaquin,
instead began to click through the menu to see what was on, hoping
his friend wouldn’t recognize the blush filling his face. “You
gonna take your mom’s car, give her the whole nine yards, the
complete package?”
What the hell is
freakin’ wrong with me!
How come every
time I open my mouth, everything goes wrong?

At his side, Joaquin
frowned anew, a crooked smile etched on his face. “Yeah… why the
sudden interest in how and what I do with Clarisse?”

Jason shrugged his
shoulders nonchalantly. His eyes still locked on the television
guide as he scrolled down the numerous channels available. He had
to stop digging this hole he was widening by the second. Soon, he’d
have to lie down and bury himself. He’d have little
choice.

“
Come on, Jason, what’s
the deal?” pushed Joaquin, more than curious by his friends change
in mood.

“
Nothing
major, just wondering why the big change with Clarisse. I mean,
last month, before you got your driver’s license and the car, you
wouldn’t give that a girl a second look and now… the red carpet and
all.” He clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth and settled
for a local channel currently broadcasting the news, but would be
showing the
Lakers
in less than forty-five minutes. He decided he’d just wait
for them to come on, desperately trying to think of a way out of
the emotional quagmire he had just landed himself, and headlong at
that!

“
Red
carpet
, what the heck are you talking
about? I’m picking her up, we’re going to dinner and a movie, have
her home by 10:00 pm, nothing else – a simple boom-boom date,
what’s the big deal?” queried Joaquin, his palms splayed to either
side of him as he turned, sitting on the very edge of the bean bag,
so he could face Jason directly.

Both of them ignored the
reporter on the TV screen.

“…
do not know for certain
what happened in this sleepy suburb of Los Angeles late last night.
Authorities say they do not know why young James Henley was in
possession of the strange paraphernalia when he was killed. They’re
not certain if it was planted on his person later, after his arm
was savagely torn off and his body stuffed into a
mattress…”

Jason finally looked at
his friend.

Joaquin met his
gaze.

The two friends stared at
each other for a few seconds, until Joaquin’s face changed all of a
sudden, registering with understanding.

Again, Jason felt
foolishly embarrassed, as if he’d shown too much of the part of
himself he liked to keep private. Sometimes knowing a person for
more than a decade had its downside - this was one of them. Joaquin
could read him as easy as a story about Curious George.

“
Dude,
still
, seventh grade was a long, long time ago,” bleated Joaquin a
trickle of astonishment in his voice.

“
Yeah, I know,” whispered
Jason, though he knew his friend had heard him.

Time to come
clean…

It had indeed been a long
time since he’d dated Clarisse McIntyre. It was also, equally true,
he’d barely held hands with her, let alone kiss the girl, but
still, to him, she had been one of the first girls he’d experienced
anything remotely like a girlfriend. Those first feelings were
sometimes hard to let go. It didn’t matter they merely waved at
each other on the school grounds nowadays. Sometimes they smiled
briefly at one another in the hallways. Though, he still had her
number, he hadn’t called her in years and neither had
she.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault.
After four months of going out, things in Jason’s life had
deteriorated to the point he’d become too distracted. He’d lost
interest in the concept of having a girlfriend. His parents had
divorced. His mother had moved back to China in shame, leaving him
with his father, not really explaining why she had done so in the
first place. She hadn’t said so much as a single word to him,
detailing why she hadn’t taken him with her as so many other
mothers would’ve done in similar situations. For some unknown,
unexplainable reason, Jason’s mother hadn’t. Instead, she’d left
him behind to share a life with a perplexed and emotionally drained
shell of his former father. She had left him to fend for himself,
while she jetted back to Beijing, to the largest portion of her
family, to a new life.

It had been such a
confusing time for him, so heart rending and mind consuming, when
he looked back on it from time to time, he realized he’d forgotten
about everything and everyone else around him. He had crawled in a
hole that spring and summer. He’d been content to shield himself
from a world that had become too painful to be a willing
participant.

Though, he hadn’t wallowed
in self-pity or self-loathing in any form. He’d not asked the
proverbial “why me?” questions or cry himself to sleep night after
night. There was no wallowing in despair. Rather, he just pulled
back from everything around him, secluded himself and sequestered
his mind and thoughts from all of those around him. He hid within
himself. He became a withdrawn, unfeeling boy, going through
the
act
of
living, but not tasting a single morsel of what it meant to be
alive.

Of course, the inevitable
had come to pass. Clarisse had sent him an e-mail one day. A
message he ignored for a week before he opened it, only to find she
was intent upon breaking up with him, or had done so apparently a
week earlier. Even then, he had no real reaction, no true emotional
response to her message. She had written she was sorry for what had
happened to him and she understood his reaction to it. She went so
far as to say, she felt it prudent that he not be in a
relationship, as he plainly needed time to himself, to heal and
regroup. She had wished him well and had asked him to keep in
touch.

It was sort of mature for
a seventh grader when he thought about it…

Maybe she’d had
help?

An awkward silence had
settled about the room.

Although, it was
periodically broken by the tiny squeals and growls of the kitten.
It was still trying to disembowel its’ toy near the door, rolling
about, slashing with its forepaws, kicking with its
rear.

“
I can break it off with
her if you want me too… There’s still a little time,” offered
Joaquin.

Jason felt like a brick of
hot lead just dropped in the pit of his stomach, leaving a metallic
aftertaste in his mouth. He was embarrassed and feeling like a
retard for harboring such meaningless feelings. He should’ve never
even bothered to bring it up.

“
Do you want me too?”
asked Joaquin a second time.

Jason looked up at his
friend, the only other person, other than his father, who had stood
beside him through those horrible first days when his mother has
destroyed his old life for a new one of her own.

The selfish
bitch!

“
Naw, man, just be nice to
her, ok? Don’t get all horny on her on the first date or go all
Chris Brown on her during your first argument, and shit. None of
that stuff, because she really is a nice girl,” he said softly, not
sure why setting the basic ground rules between them would serve as
a quality method of getting over feeling stupid.

I should’ve just kept my
stupid mouth shut!

Joaquin smiled broadly.
“You know me, man, I’m a perfect gentleman with the ladies, that’s
why they always come back for more. They love the wining and the
dining, the entertainment, the whole… what the hell did you call
it?”

“
The red carpet, you
wank-job,” supplied Jason, suddenly glad at being able to laugh,
thankful Joaquin was one of the coolest dudes he had ever
known.

“
Yeah,
that’s it,
the red carpet
treatment
. It kinda grows on
you”

That was when the kitten
suddenly attacked Jason’s shoe and began meowing at the top of its
lungs, staring up at him with eyes almost too big for his skull. “I
think he’s hungry,” he managed through the high-pitch peals for
food.

Joaquin just sat back and
gesturing he didn’t care one way or the other. “You should feed
him, so he’ll shut the hell up,” his friend added, looking at the
kitten with an unsure expression written across his
face.

“
Yeah, I should,” Jason
muttered, scooping up the cat and making his way out of the room,
toward the kitchen where he had the little cat’s food.

Meanwhile, Joaquin turned
his attention back to the TV, not quite sure what he was
watching.

“…
I am here now with a
neighbor of the Henley family who lives just a few houses down from
where James Henley, Jr. lived with his parents and his younger
sister. Hello, sir, and you are?”

“
Ah, I’m
uh -. Dan. Dan Mckenna,”
responded a
portly middle-aged man in jeans and a flannel shirt, clearly some
sort of construction worker.

“
So, um, Mr. Mckenna, how
well do you know the Henley’s and would you ever expect such a
gruesome event to occur here in your own neighborhood…?”

Joaquin cupped his chin
with both hands, his elbows on his knees, thinking.
Why does that name sound familiar?

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