Jasper Jones (9 page)

“He doesn’t
need
superpowers. That’s my
point
. You’re an
idiot
. He can hold his own. He has an alter ego. He has a costume. He fights for Truth and Justice. He has arch-enemies. And he does all this without any weird mutations. He’s just really
determined
. That’s what makes him interesting. The fact that with enough dedication and desire, we could all be Batman. Bat
men
. Bat
people
. And that’s what makes him the best.”

Jeffrey closes his eyes and puffs his cheeks.

“You know I’m right, Jeffrey. It’s just like Lex Luthor doesn’t need superpowers to be a supervillain. It’s called
con
text. Look it up. It’s a goddamned comic. I win. You’re wrong. Doug Walters is a hero. Muhammad Ali is a hero. Batman is a
super
hero. Simple. And the thing that makes him the
best
superhero is exactly your stupid, ignorant assertion: that he’s just a guy. He is fallible. And unlike Superman, he requires courage.”

“Charles, what the
fuck
are you flapping on about? Superman is
clearly
the bravest superhero. You’ve lost your
mind
. Superman invented courage. He steps in front of bullets. He doesn’t consider risk. He delves into danger without a moment of thought.”

I spread my arms.

“Of course he does! He’s Superman, you idiot! Jeffrey, he’s invulnerable.”

“So what?” Jeffrey scrunches his face.

“So that isn’t
courage
. He’s a man of
steel
, you retard. He’s invincible. He doesn’t need to be brave. If a bullet can’t possibly hurt you, how is it brave to stand in front of one?”

Jeffrey frowns doubtfully and stays silent.

“See, Batman is different. He’s mortal. He’s got a real life to risk. Superman just has to avoid Kryptonite. Big deal. Superman fears nothing because outside a few very specific circumstances where he might encounter some stupid rock, nothing can possibly do him in. Batman has the same vulnerabilities as the rest of us, so he has the same fears as us. That’s why he is the most courageous: because he can put those aside and fight on regardless. My point is this: the more you have to lose, the braver you are for standing up. That’s why Batman is superior to Superman, and that’s why I am infinitely smarter than you.”

I am a genius. I have won.

“
Pffft
! Whatever. I’ll bet Batman won’t be too loud about his superiority when Superman is belting seven shades of shit out of him.”

Jeffrey executes a number of weird kung fu thrusts, then shrugs and pulls a face. He drags his feet as we reach the eastern end of town. Suddenly he grins, slyly.

“I hope
you’re
feeling brave.” He points.

It is Eliza Wishart.

The brick in my belly sinks a notch.

She’s wearing a plain sleeveless cream dress with a lime stripe. Her hair looks thinned out. Maybe it’s the heat. Her skin is blushed pink. Usually it’s lily-white. And she’s outside the bookstore in the shade of a jacaranda, examining the cheaper secondhand paperbacks stacked on trestle tables. She has one open in her palm. I wish I could see what it is.

Nobody knows about Laura. That’s what this means. Except me and Jasper. But I wonder how Eliza Wishart can be here when her sister is clearly missing. How can she be browsing books as she is? Looking, as she always does, so distant and sedate?

Eliza’s manner has always intrigued me. She seems troubled, yet infinitely untroubled. Sometimes at school her heart beats too fast and she has to sit down. She goes quiet and pale and tells everybody she’s fine, even though she’s breathless and sweaty. And I just want to hold her hand and slow her pulse and calm her down.

I wonder how it is she’s not panicking today. How is she not belting on the glass door of the police station? How is she not yelling her sister’s name down side streets, banging pans, corralling locals?

I prod my glasses and tug my ear. We’re getting closer to her. The urge to blurt everything out is at me again. To spill this illness. It sounds stupid, but I want to take her hand and lead her to the leaf-littered bank of the Corrigan River. Someplace cooler and quiet. To tell her what I saw, what I did, what I suspect. I want to tell her, assure her, that Jasper Jones didn’t do it. I want to ask her not to listen to what people say. With air in my chest, I’ll tell her that I know him. That he’s a friend and I know what he’s like. That he
can’t
have done it. That it makes no sense. That I think he loved Laura. And I want to tell her that I feel horrible. I want to apologize. I want to tell her how her sister’s face looked last night. That before we moved her, she looked strangely peaceful. I want to ask her if she knows who would do this. If it was just shit luck or something more sinister. I want to
look her in the eyes when I tell her. I want to hold her tight when she cries. I’ll wait until she’s calm. And then make her promises. Say all the right things.

I watch her as we move closer. Wary. As though she might detonate. Jeffrey, because he is a dickhead, does a lot of throat-clearing and foot-scuffing as we approach. I want to clap his head from both sides and squeeze until it bursts.

She looks up from her book. My body knots.

“Afternoon, Miss Eliza,” Jeffrey sings, and doffs an invisible cap. I will kill him for this.

Eliza’s eyebrows leap slightly. Her nose is specked with barely visible freckles. And her lips just look perfect. Red and varnished. But I can’t shake her resemblance to her sister. She has those same eyes, and the same dark moons beneath them. It panics me. My fingers quake, so much more than when I usually encounter her.

“Hello, Jeffrey,” she says chirpily; then she looks at me. She tilts her head and leans on one leg. “Hello, Charlie,” she says.

My mouth is dry, and so my response is a mute whisper followed by a single nod and a tight smile. I am an idiot. I consider trying again, once more with feeling, but in the time it takes me to decide, we’ve already walked straight past her. Should I turn around? I should. I should probably turn around. I’m going to turn around.

But I don’t. I look down. So much for taking her hand. So much for leading her to the riverbank.

Jeffrey is grinning. When we’re out of earshot, he says: “Saving all your words for Scrabble?”

“Piss off.”

He tilts his head back and laughs.

“You
love
her, Chuck.”

“I’m going to kill you, Jeffrey. One day, honestly, I will end your life with my bare hands. That’s my promise to you. You’re the most irritating little man in history.”

We are nearing the oval. I want to go back and try again with Eliza
Wishart. No awkwardness this time. Strong and forthright. I want to look at her face, see if I can detect anything out of the ordinary. Anything amiss. Anything suspicious. I want to know what she’s reading. Maybe her book will have answers. She smelled good, though. Real good. Better than good. She always does. The thought of it makes my blood thinner and my head lighter.

We arrive at the oval. It’s a lush, pristine vista, the one part of Corrigan that is maintained with care. An old man in khaki is in the center, watering the turf wicket.

The nets are occupied by the Corrigan Country Week side. I’m intimidated and disappointed. I can hear the cracks and thuds issuing from those two lanes. From afar, the squad looks like some kind of piston-pressed engine. I stop and half motion to turn around and go.

“Shit luck, eh?” I say.

“It’s okay, Chuck. We’ll still get a bowl in.”

“You’re joking, right? Jeffrey, they won’t let you! They never do. Come on, let’s just go back. We’ll go play in the street.”

“Yeah they will, Chuck. C’mon.”

Jeffrey scuds down the grassy embankment toward the nets.

“What planet do you bloody live on?” I call after him and shake my head, but he’s smiling lazily and pressing on with infinite optimism, kitbag in tow. I stand my ground, but I’m teetering. He’s insane. Or he has no memory.

I decide to follow him, but at a distance.

As I approach, I’m not surprised to notice the team is littered with my nemeses. The arch of these, Warwick Trent, stands at the back, slowly rubbing one side of the ball against his nuts. He has the broadest shoulders and the longest run-up among them. He’s one of those kids who’s always been two years bigger and broader than anyone else his age. He was probably born with a beard and chest hair; wailing and stinking like the enormous, fetid shit that he is.

Warwick Trent holds the record for the most peaches stolen from the tree of Mad Jack Lionel. He’s got four pits in his pocket from four
separate excursions. He’s had real, actual sex. More than once. He’s been in more fights than anyone, and won most of them, including one with a middle-aged miner outside the Sovereign. He is feared and revered, and he knows it. He has a tattoo. He is surly and volatile. I hate him like poison.

And, probably due to the fact that most of his bodily resources are diverted directly to his pituitary gland, he’s also an affront to academia. Seldom is this boasted about, but he also holds the record for most grades repeated (two). It’s a little fact that renders me smug, but also sore, because his stupidity has placed him in my grade.

See, in class, if I use a word that he believes is too clever, or isn’t one of the half-dozen monosyllabic commands that he readily understands, he and his henchmen will seek me out, either at lunch or after school, and will repeat the offending word like a mantra, each time punching me on either shoulder.

“Monosyllabic.”
Ow
. “Monosyllabic.”
Ah
. “Monosyllabic.”
Uh
.

If I run, I’m caught and floored and nailed. If I try to fight back, I risk complete annihilation. If I insult them, the same. If I tell someone about it, it’s a suspended death sentence. If I well up and take my beating like a girl, I am killed on the spot.

So I stand there and mutely accept the punishment that is meted out at their discretion. Mostly it’s quick and painful. But if I’ve been particularly clever, or if I’ve especially pleased our teacher, I’ll have my glasses slapped off my face and my thighs corked, with some other public humiliation.

Their message is simple:
Don’t be too clever
.

All this has done, really, is firmed my resolve to get smarter. And not without a measure of spite. It’s made me thirsty for new words. Every time I encounter one for the first time, I look it up and bank it. Every new word is like getting a punch back. No matter how obscure or archaic, I eat them up and let them settle. And I vow not to forget them. I collect words and lock them away, stored like a hoard of gems.

Every night I use them. Every night I pick the lock. I have black
pens and yellow notebooks. And every night I write stories and poems. I polish my jewels. Sometimes I imagine spitting my poems at these boys, though I know it would be like thrashing them with a feather. I know they’d just laugh. And, of course, I know they’d thrash me back with something significantly harder. But there is a grim satisfaction in knowing something they don’t know, in having something they don’t have. That’s what I think about when I’m silently accepting their punches.

I position myself at the top end of the nets. I’m far enough away to remain reasonably inconspicuous. I’ll stay here and collect the balls that get straight driven or lofted out of the nets, and I’ll roll them back with my head down. I don’t expect grateful waves, but I hope it might save Jeffrey some grief.

I’m still nervous, though. I look at Jeffrey, casually laying his gear bag down among theirs. So laconically bounding in and meshing with the pack of bowlers, as though he’s part of the side. He looks tiny. It’s like watching a puppy crossing a busy street. Jeffrey stamps and scrapes his bowling mark, but he is shoved, hard, out of his chosen net. I hear someone say, “Fuck off, gook,” and my gut knots.

I don’t understand, because Jeffrey has tried this before and it never ends without some kind of humiliation. I watch Jeffrey hover around the crease on the inside net, not taking his mark, waiting for a chance to cut in and bowl.

But the same thing will happen, I know it. Jeffrey bowls slow spinners, and so whoever is batting just invariably tries to hit the ball as far as they can. If they miss, which they often do against Jeffrey’s bowling, the batsman will retrieve the ball, loft it, and crack it out of the nets. And Jeffrey will genially jog after it and come straight back, fizzing the ball in his fingers.

Sometimes Jeffrey mistimes his run and is more or less shirtfronted by one of the fast bowlers running in. For this, of course, he’s angrily pushed and rebuked: sometimes by all the bowlers, who shove him around like a pinball, trip him up, kick his ball away.

Very rarely, Jeffrey will be allowed to pad up. Right at the end, when it is near dark. It’s never a lenient act, though. They take bets on body hits, bowling short and over the crease, as fast as they can. Jeffrey, of course, is resilient and impressive, but occasionally he’ll be hit in the chest or the shoulder, and there will be a thrilled roar and an exchange of money or something valuable. Jeffrey stays down there, though, on the back foot, right until they tire and walk off.

I watch Jeffrey bowl his first ball, and it’s right on the spot. In fact, it dips and turns sharply, clipping the off stump of Jacob Irving, who planted his foot and took a ridiculous swipe. Jeers and laughter erupt from the bowlers. As I expect, Irving bends and plucks the ball from the back of the net, and belts it hard and square. He spits toward Jeffrey, then claps his gloved hands together and sneers, “Ah, me so
solly
!”

Everyone laughs, watching Jeffrey jog out to fetch his ball in his pressed whites. He is jostled and bumped around the pack. He’s so small. Someone kicks his ankle and says, “Fuck
off
, Cong.” Jeffrey stumbles, but keeps going, head high. I am so ashamed. It hurts me to see. I want to run over to Jeffrey, tell him we should go. But I don’t. Even the coach is cackling. A red, ruddy man with a clipboard and a cigarette. He has an oily film of sweat across his brow. When he laughs, it sounds like he’s coughing.