Intentions (11 page)

I have classes with Jake this morning. I will make him talk to me. And then I will talk to Alexis at lunch. Ask her why she
dissed me. Again. I can’t believe I waited all night and neither one called me.

But it’s OK. I’ve got this.

Or not. English class, Jake is surrounded by a whole throng of guys. To say this is unusual is an understatement. Jake is a loner. Everyone likes him, but he’s not a guy-friend kind of a guy. I like that about him. He’s self-sufficient. But today he’s got these guys in his thrall, telling them a story. Mrs. Thomas isn’t here yet.

I walk over to Jake (Action, Action, I want Action …), but he says something and manages to pull the gang closer.

It’s like he’s using the other kids as a security wall against me. I listen in. He’s telling them about the swim meet: “And then, in the last five seconds, I push really hard and—”

“Class, to your seats!” Mrs. Thomas says.

The scene repeats itself in study hall. Security wall intact, Jake. Way to go.

Aside from the sloppy-joe fiasco, it probably looks to everyone else like Alexis and I are fine. We still eat lunch together every day with Marissa and Kendra and some other kids. She doesn’t talk to me much, but she doesn’t talk to the others, either. Texts with her boyfriend. At least, I think that’s who she texts with. And she usually leaves early to go outside with Adam or some other guy. I’m not sure what they do out there. Don’t really want to know.

Today she’s at our table before I am. I squeeze between her and Marissa, taking a chair from another table. When the rest of the kids are all distracted, I silently repeat my mantra, then turn to her, upbeat. “Hey, what happened yesterday?”

“What do you mean?”

“You called me to go shopping and”—trying to say this without whining, painfully aware that I am definitely whining—“and then you said you were going to call back, but you didn’t. I felt bad.”

“Oh, Rachel. It’s not always all about you.” She runs her fingers through her even shorter, even blonder hair. When did she do
that
?

“So what was it about?” I try to keep my voice level.

“A friend was in a car accident. Friend of the Boyfriend’s. Hurt bad. I knew the kid from last summer. We used to”—pause, pause—“hang out.” Get high?

“Oh boy, I’m sorry. Not that it was my fault. I mean—I mean—” (Oh, get ahold of yourself, Rachel.) “I’m sorry he was hurt. Is he going to be OK? Did he have a head injury?”

“Nah. A lot of broken bones. Legs and stuff.”

“Oh, good.”

She looks at me. “It’s not good. He might lose a leg.”

“Oh no! That’s horrible, Lex. Is Mitch—Mustache—uh, your boyfriend—really upset?”

Alexis shrugs, looks upset in a different way.

“What is it?” I ask kindly.

“He isn’t really talking to me about it.”

“Is everything OK with you guys?”

She shrugs again.

“Is that a no?” I ask.

She nods slightly.

I’m sorry that she’s upset, but I’m also happy she’s confiding in me.

“Alexis, do you wanna talk about this? We could walk home—”

“Adam!” she yells, and jumps up and runs over to him. They talk for a few minutes, heads together, his arm lightly around her shoulder, and then together they leave the cafeteria.

Yeah, that went well.

Gym class is next. “There is a yearbook emergency,” I tell the teacher. She looks at me, trying to figure out who the hell I am.

“I’m Rachel Greenberg. I’m on the yearbook staff, and …”

She nods, says, “Go, go, it’s fine.”

It’s Jake’s lunch period. I go to his locker. He’s closing it when I tap him on the shoulder.

He spins around, sees me, and looks like a criminal caught in the act.

“You’re going to have to talk to me eventually,” I say in my best assertive yet flirty voice.

“Rachel,” he says. “Hello.” He’s looking at me so impersonally, he might as well be saying, Will that be for here or to go?

“OK, what did I do wrong? Why are you ignoring me? Did you decide you don’t like the way I kiss?”

“Shhh …,” he says.

“Why are you shutting me out?” I don’t mean to sound angry, but I do.

“You were in my kitchen,” he says.

This is not what I was expecting him to say.

“Yeah …”

I look at him closely, and I see sadness, fear, hope, all mixed together.

What is going on? And then I know.

Duh.

I am so stupid.

I put my hand on his arm. “Tell me about him,” I say.

“Who? What?” he says angrily.

“Jake,” I say softly, as warmly as I can. “Tell me about your brother.”

“Did my mom tell you?”

So I’m right. “What?”

“That the boy in the pictures was my brother?”

“No. I guessed.”

“Did she tell you anything?”

“No. We didn’t talk about him at all.”

“That’s what she said. I didn’t believe her.”

I’m not completely getting this. “Can we talk, please?”

He shakes his head, seems like he’s about to cry, and looks down at the floor.

Action, action, I say to myself, with a little less certainty. But when I look up at Jake again, he is looking at me, not at the floor.

“Come on, let’s go sit outside.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Come on.”

Finally he nods, but I have to practically drag him down the hall.

We sit on the steps, off to one side, next to each other—not touching, but very close.

I sigh.

He sighs.

I take his hand. He doesn’t let go.

We sit there for a while, just like that, looking at the street. His hand feels so good. He smells good, too. Lemony shampoo and a faint smell of chlorine.

After a few minutes, I look up at him. He’s still staring off into space. I kiss him, very lightly, on the cheek.

He turns toward me and takes his other hand, the one not holding mine, and strokes my hair, kisses me lightly on the mouth. His lips feel chapped. He starts to kiss me harder, with his tongue exploring … I like it, I love it … but I pull away.

“Let’s talk first,” I say. “Then …”

He looks at me. Shakes his head, turns away.

I nod my head, firmly, and face him. We are still holding hands.

“I want to hear,” I say. “Please.”

His eyes well up, and then he starts talking.

“If we take
x
and assign it a value of 4.356 …,” Math Teacher drones.

We stayed outside for the whole period, and he told me what is behind his intense, sad eyes.

“The graph this shows us is …”

I can’t believe what he has been through. And he didn’t tell me everything, couldn’t, just skimmed the surface, I’m sure. Why didn’t I ever hear about this? Do my parents know?

All those years ago, after our kindergarten kiss, he and his parents moved south because his dad got assigned a residency
down there. His mom was pregnant. They were happy, of course, and Jake was thrilled when he found out it was going to be a little brother. I always wanted a little sister, so I understand. I wonder why my parents never had another kid.

So Dr. Schmidt was out of town at a conference when Jake’s mom went into labor, and he couldn’t get back in time. Not that that would have made a difference, Jake told me emphatically. The baby’s cord was wrapped around his neck and the doctor did an emergency C-section, but it was too late. Baby Jason was deprived of oxygen for so long that he came out severely mentally retarded.

Who even knew that stuff still happened?

Jake told me that his brother was adorable, and had he been who he was supposed to be, he would have been, Jake swears, a genius. “I could see it behind his clouded eyes every once in a while,” Jake told me, “the glimmer of superintelligence.” I don’t know how he could tell, but I trust him.

Jake’s parents were devastated, of course. Jake’s mom wanted to move back here, but his dad felt it would be bad to leave, like a statement that it was the hospital’s fault. So they stayed, and Mrs. Schmidt devoted herself to taking care of Jason. And Jake. Jake says that he barely remembers life before Jason, except our kiss, of course—

“How many people did the homework?” Math Teacher asks.

I do not raise my hand. I quickly look down so Math Teacher does not catch my eyes.

Jake told me his parents did their best to give him as much attention as Jason, though, of course, they couldn’t possibly. His
brother couldn’t do anything at all. He had to have everything done for him. God, what kind of life did that leave for the rest of them? Poor Jake.

Two years ago Jason got meningitis. Jake’s parents had already decided they wouldn’t do “heroic” measures if Jason got sick, like you say you won’t for old people. But when the time came and he was near death, they ignored all their plans and did everything they could to save him. He died anyway.

“I always thought it would be a relief,” Jake told me. “But it wasn’t. It was so horrible, so horribly sad. Our house was crazily
empty
without him.”

After the funeral and
shivah
, they realized they couldn’t stay there, in the house where Jason had lived, or in the community where they were known as Jason’s family. So they moved back here.

“So that’s it,” he told me. “Now you know it all.”

“I doubt it,” I said. I reached up, ran my hand down his cheek, up through his hair, and down his back, his wonderful, strong back. And I gave him a good kiss.

“Rachel,” he said. “Rachel, Rachel—”

“Rachel! Are you there?”

Oh no. That’s not Jake. It’s Math Teacher.

“Could you please repeat the question?” I say in my most polite Good Girl voice.

“I asked you which of these integers”—he is tapping the blackboard with his pointer—“would fill in this sequence properly?”

First I have to remember what an integer is. I think it’s a number, and yeah, there are some numbers in a row on the left, with a space, and four other numbers on the right.

With a gut-wrenching epiphany I know what it feels like for Randy to look at a page filled with letters that seem like undecipherable scribbles. Not a single thing makes sense to him. From what Mrs. Glick said, he can recognize an
a
and an
n
, a
g, s
, and
t
, just as I can recognize those scribbles as numbers, but he can’t put them together to read
angst
. Not that he’d know what that word means. Shit, he can’t even put together
d
and
o
and
g
to make
dog
or
god
. As far as I can tell,
car
is the only word he recognizes besides his own name. I have got to help that poor guy learn to read. When I look up at the math board I see:

total gibberish.

I feel stupendously stupid. The tears start to well up in my eyes. I shake my head.

“Please come up to the board,” Math Teacher says.

I walk up to the front of the room on shaky legs, as slowly as possible. Willing something to happen.

All of a sudden I hear noise in the hall.

“Action, action, we want action!” Is that in my head? No! The cheerleading squad is out there!

“Surprise pep rally!” someone yells, opening the door. I am a witch. “Everyone to the gym!” The whole class charges out.

Except for me and Math Teacher, both of us standing at the board. We look at each other.

“This sure is your lucky day,” he says to me.

“Action, action, we want action,” I say, rushing out into the hall to join the crowd.

CHAPTER 16

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Every day this week, I talk to Alexis a little more at lunch. I’ve broken through her shell some. Now when I sit down she actually smiles and says hi. And on Thursday she sort of talks to me about this and that—nothing big, but she talks.

Maybe that’s because at confirmation class on Wednesday night I sat in the back with her and Adam, doodling the whole time. We ignored the rabbi completely, creating the most gorgeous illicit drawings together. I don’t know what I would have done if Jake had been there. But he’s going to be missing a lot of confirmation class because of swim stuff. Said the rabbi was cool about it. “He is such a great guy.”

I kept my mouth shut when he said that.

Trying to keep my mouth shut and my mind shut. If I don’t think about His Holiness, I feel pretty good. Better. More like my old self.

And I’ve been thinking about Randy this whole week, looking forward to going back to Union, figuring out how I can reach him. Last night Mom said she was going to the mall. I asked her if I could come. I had an idea, as well as twenty dollars of
saved-up money, and I hoped it would work. Luckily, the kids’ store there was having a sale, and when I told Mom my idea, she gave me ten more dollars.

When I walk into the reading lab, Randy is sitting on the car pillow, of course. He’s got a book in his lap, waiting for me. And I’m not even a second late!

“Hi, Randy.” I wave. He jumps up, runs over, and gives me a hug. He’s wearing the same bar mitzvah T-shirt.

“What’s in that bag?” he asks me, pointing to the shopping bag from Kids’ Korner. “Is it for me?”

Really? Can he read what it says? That little rascal.

“Why do you think it’s for you?”

He looks at me shyly, shrugs. Now I feel bad. It’s probably not that he can read the words. He sees the picture of the kids on the bag, and he’s just hoping.…

“I’m not allowed to give you a present,” I say, “but …” Now I’m worried that I won’t be able to do what I want to do.

“What do you have there?” Mrs. Glick asks, walking toward us. Uh-oh.

“I hope this is OK,” I say, talking really fast. “I was at the mall last night and I saw that the kids’ store was having a sale so I got some T-shirts to have in the box for when, you know, kids spill or something on them-um-selves and I thought it would be a good idea and I—” Bluddity, bluddity, bluddity. Stop talking, Rachel.

I take the T-shirts out of the bag and show her. Each has at least one car on it. My favorite is covered with all different kinds of cars.