Jesus Jackson (4 page)

Five

Tuesday was the first day of classes; a dark day, to say the least.

My mother woke me at six a.m. with a sun-dried tomato and smoked salmon frittata, fresh squeezed orange juice, and home fries, brought to me on an oak serving tray before I even had a chance to silence my alarm clock.

“Jon-Jon?” she said, knocking politely at the door. “Jon-Jon, are you awake?”

“No,” I groaned.

She giggled. She always giggles at my humor, no matter how lame it is. “You're such a goof,” she said. “You've always been such a goof, since you were two feet high.”

That's another thing she always does—refers everything in my life back to when I was “two feet high.” I rubbed my eyes and squinted at her. “What did you make?”

“Nothing special, nothing special at all. Just a little breakfast, if you're in the mood, and I don't want you to feel as if you have to eat it all, because you don't.” She set down the tray beside my alarm clock, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her smile stretched her face like a drum skin. She was wearing a bright yellow sweater and her hair was held back with a glaring pink headband. Everything about her screamed HAPPY-HAPPY-HAPPY…but her eyes gave her away. There was something manic and crazed in them. She said, “You don't have to eat anything at all if you don't want to. You don't have to go to school if you don't want to, you don't even have to get out of bed if you don't want to.”

I checked out the frittata. It was beautiful, of course. Everything she makes is always beautiful, and almost half of it is edible, too. She'd been on this insane caretaking kick since I got back from the police station. She was a terminally over-involved mother to begin with, but the combination of my brother's death, and the fact that she had so completely broken down in the hours succeeding it, had heightened her motherliness to near explosive proportions. She'd been absolutely attached to me for the past twenty-four hours—helping me off with my coat, making my bed, getting me water and Advil, and cooking cooking cooking—and frankly, I'd had enough.

“I don't know,” I groaned. “School will be rough. Everyone will be talking about Ryan, and—”

“Well,” she said, cutting me off. She jumped to her feet in a burst of energy. “If you do stay home we can just sit on the sofa and watch TV all day! Or better yet: movies. Just download whatever you want and I'll pay for it. Anything at all. And I'll make you some brownies and a nice lunch and we'll make a fire in the fireplace and just do whatever it is you want all day.”

“Um, great. But I kind of feel that Ryan would want me—”

“Or,” she cut me off again, “we could go to the
mall
. Would you like that? We could go shopping…for…video games? Isn't there a new X-Station or something that just came out? I can buy you that. Or a new phone! Yes, that phone of yours is just
ancient—
you were just telling me that last week, weren't you? It doesn't have enough memory or doesn't do some kind of app or something? How about that? We'll get you the latest and greatest. Whatever you want.”

Now I'd be lying if I said that I didn't consider (at least for a few seconds) how much I could benefit from my mom's current state of mind. I'm fairly certain that I would have wound up with a new phone, laptop, and half the stock of the game store (not to mention her brownies, which are always amazing). But the thought of spending the next eight hours on the receiving end of my grieving mother's mania was just more than I could bear.

I sat up in my bed. “I think I'll go to school,” I said. “It's what Ryan would want.”

She was clearly upset, and her frenzied excitement seemed to fade almost instantly, with the realization that she would be spending the day alone. But in her usual style, she swallowed her disappointment, pulled her smile even tighter and said, “Just like I told you: whatever you want!”

Thankfully, I was spared the torture of taking the bus on that morning. My parents had planned on making my brother drive me most days, and I think they decided that the bus would be too much of a reminder of what I'd lost. So my father came to drive me, honking twice as he pulled up in front of the house. My dad's car—a jet-black 2011 Porsche Boxster convertible—was like everything else about him: loud, fast, and slightly uncomfortable. I don't think I can recall a single moment with the man, and certainly not in his car, when I'd felt completely at ease. He's short, like me (Ryan got the tall genes from my mother) with a bald spot and a thick black beard, and he just has this way about him—a kind of frenetic nervousness, as if he's eternally late for some imperative appointment, but can't quite remember why—that infects everyone around him. My mother, of course, just says that he's crazy.

She also says that he's a heretic—or heathen, blasphemer, infidel, idolater, etc.—all of which, honestly, are fairly accurate descriptions…and also the main reasons why I usually enjoy his company.

I closed the door and settled into the hard leather without so much as a hug or a hello. He hit the gas and the car screeched out of the driveway, leaving my mother's worried face worrying in the window.

After a minute, he said, “You know she hates that you're going to school today.”

I nodded, silently.

“She just thinks it's like, some sort of abomination, or catastrophe, like a big middle finger in the face of the holy fucking spirit or something, you know?” He lit a cigarette and puffed at it furiously. He rarely smokes anymore, so when he noticed my look of disapproval (I can't stand the smell), he took one last long drag, and threw it out the window. “Sorry, sorry! You kids these days…you're so healthy, so damned good! You probably spend all of your time drinking mineral water and watching yoga videos on the Internet or something. When I was your age, we—well never mind. Forget it. Forget I said anything. And don't tell your mom I was smoking. She always says I'm corrupting her perfect boys.”

“Sure,” I said, as an image of Ryan, stumbling through the bush, dazed and high, flashed across my mind. “No problem.”

“Anyway, I told her, you know, of course, after all, that if you want to go school, you should go to school! However you wanted to mourn, you should mourn, and there isn't a damn thing she can do about it. I mean, your brother just died like forty-eight hours ago and she's going to try to tell you how you should feel about it?” He glanced at me sideways, a hint of concern shooting across his face. “I'm sorry, that was insensitive, wasn't it? I know it was, you don't have to answer that. I'm sorry, but this has just been…this has just been…” He choked up, coughed miserably, and jerked the car to a sudden halt on the side of the road. “Where do you think Ryan is right now?” he asked, almost pleadingly.

“Dad,” I said, not really getting what he was asking. “He's dead.”

“I know that. I mean, of course. I mean, where do you think he is
now that he's dead?
”

“Oh.”

“And I want to know where
you
think he is. You, you, you—not your mother or your damn Catholic school or whatever. Where do
you
think he is?”

I had no idea what to say to him. Ever since Ryan died, I'd either been thinking obsessively about that very question, or else I'd been completely and utterly numb—and the numbness would set in right when I started to imagine some kind of an answer.

And my reaction right then, right there on the side of the road, in my father's flashy little sports car, was exactly like that. I felt this great wave of—I don't know; grief, I guess—that just began to crest and overtake me, and then: nothing. Pure numb.

In my numbness, I turned to my father and said, “He's just dead. He's nowhere. He's just dead.”

“Okay,” he said. “I mean, good. I mean, if that's what you feel then that's great. Or, it's not great, of course, it's very very sad, and miserable, but at least it's yours. I mean, at least you're not one of them.” Then he wiped his eyes on the lapel of his blazer and tore back into traffic.

Six

All of the numbness in the world could never have prepared me for what I found when we pulled into the parking lot at St. Soren's. The normally imposing front steps of the school—a fifteen by thirty-foot mass of solid concrete—had been transformed into a multimedia, rainbow-colored shrine to Ryan: purple chalk hearts encircled the letters, “RIP RJS” written in bright baby blue; construction paper tears flowed out of papier-mâché crosses and real flowers sat next to plastic flowers that sat next to homemade pink tissue flowers that stood beside poster-sized pictures of my brother on the baseball field, or the basketball court, or the football field or the golf course. Ryan's likeness was created a thousand times over in oil on canvas and acrylics on plywood and crayon on poster-board, and on and on and on, and all around all of this were hundreds upon hundreds of three-by-five note cards, taped to the steps and tacked to the posters and stuck in the cracks and the crevices in the granite—and on each of these cards were little letters and messages and poems for Ryan about missing him and mourning him and praying for him and about not being able to believe that he was dead.

I stepped out of my father's car and wandered, zombie-like, right into the middle of everything. I began reading some of the notes and messages and prayers—each one more personal than the last—growing more and more confused with every second. You see, none of these people were Ryan's friends; at least, they weren't friends that I'd ever heard of. Since he was a little kid Ryan only had three friends that I ever knew—Bryce Michaels and the twins, Derek and Clay Hodge. There was also his girlfriend, Tristan, but I didn't see a note from her anywhere. Was he really this popular? Was there really this much that I didn't know about him?

Apparently there was quite lot I didn't known about Ryan. You see, within moments of my wandering up those massive concrete steps, I was surrounded by a cacophony of whispers, which quickly swelled into a chorus of murmurs and mumbles, until a frail little, red-haired, blood-shot-eyed girl, wearing neon green earrings and red leather boots (an odd combination for mourning, but there it was), walked up and put a hand on my shoulder.

She said, “You're Jonathan, right?”

I nodded, unsure of whether admitting my identity was a good idea, or the worst one.

The girl smiled a bit, as tears welled in her eyes. “Your hair,” she said, tousling the top of my head. “It's just like Ryan's.” And then she hugged me, sobbing into my shoulder.

I nearly panicked. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Do I hug her back? This stranger? Do I gently push her away? Do I just stand there and let her cry? What?

Before I could make a decision, though, I was promptly robbed of all options, when no less than ten or twenty more students—male, female, upper and lowerclassmen alike—joined in, surrounding me with a huge, sobbing, wailing group hug.

It occurred to me at that moment that it was perhaps a little strange that I had yet to shed a single tear since Ryan's death. For a second I considered this, in an oddly rational way. If there were ever going to be a good time to cry, this was certainly it—surrounded by Ryan's friends and acquaintances, all mourning, literally standing on a memorial to his death.

But in the end, no tears came; no sobs swelled within my chest. I just stood there, feeling awkward and out of place, still shocked by the scale of Ryan's popularity, until the majority of the kids slowly slipped away, leaving only me and the red-haired girl standing amid the shrine.

She looked at me with an overly earnest, grossly empathetic face. “I'm Carrie. We've met before. Ryan took me to a dance freshman year. I came over your house in a purple dress afterwards, with some other people. Do you remember?”

“A little,” I lied, hoping to shorten the conversation.

“I also had Theology with Ryan last year.” Again, she started tearing up. “At least we know he's with God now. At least we know he's home….” Her tears turned into sobs, which let forth a torrent of wails.

I took the opportunity to run—as fast as I could and with my eyes on the ground—all the way to my locker.

Inside, the whole school was awash with more posters, pictures, and collages of my brother. Many of them were splayed with the most horrifying and absurd of religious propaganda: “Save me a seat in Heaven, Ryan!” or “You are now our guardian angel!” and “Rest with God, Stiles” and perhaps the worst, “Say Hi to Jesus, Rye!”

All this, for a kid who rejected Christianity when he was twelve; the very person who told me that the Bible was a work of fiction.

The hypocrisy of it was nauseating. Ryan hated their religion (he had proved that to me in more ways than one) and yet here, St. Soren's Fucking Academy had beatified him in construction paper and glitter less than two days after he died.

When I finally got to my locker, Henry was standing right beside it, staring at the black dial of his padlock in deep confusion. I mumbled a “Hi, Henry,” as I fumbled through my own combination and opened the door. My locker was empty, but I still felt like I had to stare at it, like I was searching for something important. It was almost like if I could stare in there hard enough, I could pretend to be inside, where no one would see me.

I was not able, however, to ignore Henry for very long. He was right there, at the corner of my eye, staring at me. His lips were pursed as if to speak, but nothing was coming out. After a few unbearable moments of this, I couldn't take it anymore. I said, “What is it?”

“I just…,” he stammered. “I just…”

“You just what?”

“I just…I just wanted to say how sorry I am, um…about your brother.”

“Oh,” I murmured, staring back into my locker. “Thanks.”

“Okay,” he replied. Then he began to walk away.

I called after him. “Hey, Henry.”

“Yeah?”

I didn't quite know how to phrase what I was about to ask him. We'd only known each other about six hours, and most of that in the silent boredom of orientation. But what I needed from him was too important to let go, so I just said it, as plainly as I could: “Could you, like, hang around me today? I don't know anyone here, and they all know me, and I just can't handle having everyone come up to introduce themselves. I figure, if I'm talking to you, maybe they'll stay back a bit more.”

A look of sincere honor came over Henry right then. He said, “Yeah, okay. Okay, sure. You mean, all day?”

“Well, I don't want you to miss class, but…as much as you can.”

“Okay,” he repeated. “Okay, sure.”

And with that, Henry and I were inseparable. It was a little strange at first; I'd never had a “best friend” before. In grade school and junior high I was always a loner; I would talk to people, sure, and play kickball with the kids on my block, but I never really hung out with any one person so consistently. My mother used to beg me to make more friends, even wondering aloud sometimes if there was something psychologically wrong with me. I don't think there was, though—I just never liked anyone's company enough to want to bother with it every day. And besides, before he started high school, Ryan and I were so close that it didn't feel like I needed any other friends.

Anyway, it actually turned out to be kind of nice, just hanging out with Henry. We had five out of seven classes together and, being that our names were Stiles and Sun, we almost always got placed next to each other. And by the end of the day I was sure I knew Henry better then I'd known almost anyone in my life (which, admittedly, is not saying much).

Here's the thing about Henry: he's a really smart kid, but he has the social skills of a rock. Seriously, it's like his parents kept him locked in his room looking up quadratic equations on the Internet from birth until two weeks before orientation. Almost every time a teacher asked the class a question, he'd know the answer, write it down in his notebook, but never raise his hand. On the rare occasion when a teacher called on him by chance, he'd stumble over his words so badly that the right answer on his page came out sounding like a wrong answer, spoken in a foreign language. The teacher would sigh and Henry would wince and someone else would get it right, while Henry silently berated himself beneath his breath.

And, maybe worst of all, he was the only person in the whole school, besides the eighty-year-old third-floor janitor, who wore the official St. Soren's cardigan (I had thankfully learned from Ryan that next to streaking through the cafeteria, there was nothing more embarrassing you could do at St. Soren's than wear that awful sweater).

At any rate, throughout the better part of that day, Henry did a pretty good job of keeping me away from the constant stares of the curious minions, all hoping for a thrilling peek at the tragic Dead Kid's Brother. For the most part, he would just get real close to me, frowning with grave seriousness, while whispering nonsense until the intruders turned away. This worked great in class, moderately well in the halls (I still had a few people coming up to say they were sorry, though only briefly), but it all fell to pieces right after homeroom, when we ran into Alistair outside the library.

Henry was talking about something or other—blabbering on in his mumbly, almost incoherent way—when he suddenly stopped short, in the middle of a sentence. His face melted into dread.

“What is it?” I asked.

His terrified stare was all I needed to see. I snapped my head around and sure enough, there was Alistair St. Claire, striding straight toward us. He came across a little less menacing than he had on Friday (the absence of hard drugs and football padding helped), but still dangerous-looking enough to scare me nearly breathless.

I thought about running. I thought about cowering inside the nearest locker, or garbage can, or even behind little Henry. After all, without Ryan to protect me, what was to stop him from picking up right where he left off?

Obviously, though, that's not how it went down at all. Alistair approached quickly and stopped with a stomp. He had these narrow blue eyes and piss yellow hair that made him look, in that moment, like some sort of an evil surfer ghost. One of the dickweeds who had been in the woods with them on Friday was a few feet behind him, hands in his pockets, staring at Henry.

I braced myself for danger, for peril, or least some kind of menacing threat, but instead—and I swear this is true—he took a deep, trembling breath, and quietly began to cry. His broad shoulders heaved and his little eyes teared and he let out a loud “Haw—uh-HAW” in a high-pitched squeal. I felt like I'd start laughing if I wasn't still so terrified.

I turned back to Henry. He shrugged, squinting suspiciously.

Alistair said, “I'm so sorry, man. So, so sorry.”

Not knowing what else to do, I placed an awkward palm on his shoulder. But I didn't quite have the will, courage, or the intestinal fortitude to offer any condolences.

Then out of nowhere, Alistair pulled me into a great big, sobbing bear hug. I almost screamed, but he was squeezing me too tight to breathe. I wanted to push away, to make a break for the door, but then he whispered something in my ear—four sentences;
the
four sentences that set everything in motion.

He said, in as clear, eloquent, and unremorseful a voice as I have ever heard from anyone, “Whatever you
think
you saw, it didn't happen. It won't bring him back. It won't change a thing. Ryan's a hero in this school, and you do not want to destroy that.” Then he pulled back a bit, met my eyes. “Do you?”

What else could I say? I mumbled, “No,” and looked away.

And with that, he pushed himself off of me, waved to his shithead friends, and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “At least he's home now, with Jesus.”

Then Alistair took off strutting down the hall. After a few steps, though, he stopped. He turned back around. “Oh yeah,” he said. “The first game is on Saturday, so Friday night we're having the pre-game party up at the radio tower. You should really come…and bring your little friend.”

I stood frozen, unsure how to respond, until Alistair turned again and strode lazily away.

“Wow,” said Henry, once they were all out of sight. “It looks like things might be okay with him now.”

“I don't know about that,” I said, still trying to make sense of it all. “I really don't know.”