Jesus Jackson (8 page)

Thirteen

If you had told me three weeks before any of this started that I was going to be the most recognizable kid in the whole freshmen class, or worse, the whole high school, I would have laughed, probably scoffed, and said something like, “Let's hope not.” But inside (I must admit) I would have probably been excited—or at least hopeful, assuming that such popularity would be due to my heretofore-overlooked wit and sarcastic charm. I think I would have enjoyed the high-fives in the hallways, the inside jokes with every clique in school, the love.

And of course, in a way, I did achieve a good degree of local celebrity, though for the worst of all possible reasons. Everywhere I went—every square foot of every hallway, every classroom, and every seat at every table in the cafeteria—people knew who I was. They knew my name, they knew my face, my life story, and they all just stared at me with the same nauseating look of sympathy and discomfort.

And really, I don't think it would have been nearly as bad if it weren't for all the goddamned God crap that seemed to multiply exponentially by the hour. At least if I were in a public school, the assistant principal wouldn't be able to add, at the end of every announcement, “And let us not forget to pray for the healing of Ryan Stiles' family, especially Jonathan Stiles, a new member of the St. Soren's family, who is particularly in need of our prayers and support.”

It was all I could do to keep myself from running straight out of the school.

Then there was Mr. Finger. Clearly unsatisfied with our first meeting, he sent a pass to my homeroom on Wednesday requesting my presence immediately. I ignored the pass, along with the ones he sent to my third and fifth period classes as well. I made it all the way until Friday, actually, before Ms. LaRochelle finally showed up at Math to escort me there in person. I knew what she wanted the minute she came in the door and began whispering conspiratorially with Mr. McKenzie.

So I relented. I got up from my desk, left the class, and followed her silently through the halls, down the back staircase, and to the end of that awful basement corridor.

Mr. Finger was right where I left him, that blindingly idiotic smile still resting on his stupid face. And just like before, he said, “So, Jonathan. Would you like to start with prayer?”

“No,” I replied. “No, I would not like to start with prayer. At all. Ever.”

“I see. Uh…” He rifled through some papers on his desk. “Not everyone does…um…are you Jewish?”

“Excuse me?”

He stared at some hand-written notes on my file. “Is that why you don't want to pray? I don't remember reading that, but…”

“Jewish people pray too. You know that, don't you?”

“Of course,” he said quickly, now looking seriously concerned, as if I were definitely Jewish and he had deeply offended me. “I didn't mean to say that you don't. Jewish prayers are…great! It's just that some Jewish students don't like to participate in…”

I sighed. “I'm not Jewish.”

“Oh,” he looked relieved.

“I'm an atheist.”

“Excuse me?”

“An atheist.”

“Oh no.” He leaned back, away from me, curling his lips over his teeth. He looked shocked, uncomfortable, confused. I imagine he'd have had a similar reaction if I told him I was an arsonist, or had AIDS. “But why?”

His shock just annoyed me. Didn't this guy deal with kids all the time? I couldn't have been the only atheist in the school, or at least not the only one he'd met. “That's kind of a big question.”

“Well being an atheist is a big decision.”

“It's more of a realization than a decision. You just realize there's no God, and then you're an atheist.”

He leaned forward in his chair. I noticed a speck of what looked like poppy seed bagel in his silky yellow beard. “You really believe that there is no God?”

I thought about what Jesus Jackson had said: how I didn't really have enough faith to be an atheist. How, rather than actually believing in nothing, I just didn't believe in anything. “Sure,” I said. “I really don't believe in any god.”

“Wow, that must be really hard for you.”

“Not really,” I said, feeling a little like a hypocrite or at least a liar. Because of course it was hard—it was worse than hard; it was impossible. I was paying a goddamned “spiritual contractor” to build me some faith because I could barely keep my shit together without any. And it was all so absurd, when you think about it. I mean, what the hell was I going to do? Just shut my brain off and swallow whatever bullshit Jesus Jackson came up with for me? What if he tried to give me faith in this same old, tired-out Christian God? Or something equally absurd? But then again, wouldn't anything he gave me faith in be just as ludicrous as Christianity? Did I really think that there was one fairy tale out there that was magically going to ring “truer” than the rest, no matter how obviously false?

These questions kept swirling around in my brain, until I heard Mr. Finger whisper, his voice softening to its most affected, sympathetic-social-worker tone. “I would just think it would be especially difficult, you know, for someone in your position.”

“And what position is that?”

His voice became even more saccharine than before. “Your brother, of course. If you don't believe in God, then what do you believe happened to him when he—”

I didn't bother to wait for him to finish the question. I hopped out of my seat, picked up my bag, and spent the rest of the period in the last stall of the first-floor bathroom, cursing Mr. Finger and Alistair and Jesus Jackson and everyone.

By the time I made it home after school I was exhausted—emotionally and physically. Each day that week there had been more religious posters, more sympathetic smiles, more strangers hugging me and crying and regaling me with their vast exaggerations of their deep connections with my brother. Honestly, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was to go to a party with all of those same goddamned people.

But then again, I couldn't bring myself to call it off. I just kept thinking about Alistair, and his smug face, thinking he'd gotten away with it. Thinking that I'd be too scared, or too stupid, to make him pay for what he did.

***

There was nothing about my house to suggest, even in the slightest of ways, that it was a place of such fresh death, of such ongoing mourning. There were no drawn curtains, no low lights, no lying around of the expected mess or disarray. There was no black. None. Well, except for my room, of course, but that had been black since long before Ryan's death.

No, my house, as always, had the gloss and sterile perfection of a model home in a real estate ad—everything impossibly aligned and dust-free. Every window thrown open, every light brightly burning, every color combined in a perfect tonal harmony, as if you were wearing some special glasses colored in pleasing blends of beige and powder blue. Not only that, but my mother had barely stopped cooking and cleaning long enough to sleep since Ryan's death, so everything smelled intensely of Pine-Sol and cookies. Add to this the Christmas music (yes, that's right: Christmas music…in September) blaring cheerily from the kitchen stereo, and you had a setting that would have seemed eerily festive under any circumstances…much less in the aftermath of a seventeen-year-old's death.

I think it absolutely floored Henry when he walked through the door.

And as if the house itself wasn't enough to overwhelm poor Henry, out came my mother, just as he arrived. She was dressed, as she had been all week, in head-to-toe pastel (all designer, all awful) with her up-coiffed brown hair and her flawless face, painfully gritting a too-bright smile. Personally, I thought she looked like a Ralph Lauren mannequin that had taken a bit too much Ritalin. I couldn't even imagine what Henry must have thought.

“You must be Henry,” she said. “It's very nice to meet you.”

Henry seemed to be staring at my mom's high-heeled feet. “Nice to meet you too,” he mumbled.

“I'm just so glad my Jon as made a friend at his new
Catholic
school. He didn't make any real friends at his public middle school, which is no surprise, really, because of course his father made him go there.”

She paused for some kind of a response from Henry, but his eyes never left her shoes. This was probably for the best. If he had responded, she just would've launched into all of the reasons why, had I gone to the public high school (as I had been begging her to for years) I would certainly wind up a criminal, a drug addict, or worse.

But she didn't. Instead, she just gave Henry a haughty turn of her disapproving chin and said, “Well, you boys have fun,” and then click-clacked her heels straight back to the kitchen.

“Sorry about that,” I said, as soon as she was out of earshot. “That's just kind of how she is.”

Henry shrugged it off. “Mine's no better.” Then he swung around his gigantic backpack and laid it on the ground. “So I've got all of the supplies we need for the night: plastic bags, rubber gloves, two magnifying glasses, headlamps, extra batteries, energy bars—”

I cringed. “Henry,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “We can't bring all this stuff.”

“Why not?” He looked genuinely confused.

“We're going to a party. A keg party, in the woods.”

“I know,” he said after a moment. “That's why I brought bug spray.”

I reached into his backpack and pulled out a handful of plastic bags. “Stuff these into your pocket, they may come in handy. If you bring any of this other stuff, we're going to look like we're on our way to a Sherlock Holmes convention.”

“But how are we going to investigate without our magnifying—?”

“Think about this as an undercover job, Henry. Deep cover. You wouldn't bring a magnifying glass on an undercover job, would you?”

A great wave of realization seemed to wash over my little friend. He slapped his palm to his forehead. “Of course!” he said, breaking into fits of spastic laughter. “What was I thinking? We're going undercover with the suspects, we have to be incognito, we have to
blend in!
”

“Exactly.”

Henry skipped over to the floor-to-ceiling mirror right by the entrance to the living room, and began to inspect himself carefully. “Well, my outfit won't really do at all, then. Will it?”

Now that was funny. He was right, of course—he actually didn't look that much different than he did in his school uniform. Instead of a navy blue button-down tucked into light khaki pants, he had on a light blue button-down tucked into dark khaki pants. “Well, you're right about that. Come on, I probably have some old clothes up in my room that will fit you.”

So we went up to my room, where I managed to hook Henry up with a pair of acceptably worn jeans, an old vintage-looking t-shirt and a plain black hoodie. I stepped back to take a look at him. “Well, it's definitely an improvement.”

He looked at himself in the mirror, and giggled. “I feel so emu.”

I had to swallow back my laughter. “I think you mean emo, Henry. An emu is a large, flightless bird. Like an ostrich.”

“Yeah, emo. I like it.”

Just then I heard a car pull up to the house. I looked out my window; it was Tristan's Jeep, idling in the driveway.

“Our ride's here,” I said. “Let's go.”

Fourteen

Henry was visibly nervous as we descended the stairs, and went out into the night. I whispered, “Just relax. It's going to be fine,” as I climbed into the front seat and he got in the back. “Hey Tris,” I began, closing the door behind me. “This is Hen—” but I stopped short when I saw her. She looked up from the steering wheel, her eyes red and filled with tears, her face flush.

“I don't know if I can do this,” she said, breaking down into a torrent of shivering sobs.

Now what was I supposed to do? I mean, this poor girl was obviously distraught—devastated, even—and all I could do was hope that she wouldn't totally lose it before we made it to the party. But I had to do
something
. So I reached over, touched her shoulder. I said, “It's okay, Tris. We don't have to go you don't want to.”

She turned to me, then, with a sort of desperate heaviness in her eyes. She said, “You just sounded so much like your brother right then.” She let out an abbreviated chuckle. “You're even starting to look a bit like him, too, as you get older.”

I could feel myself blushing—to hear somebody (and, of course, not just somebody—Ryan's girlfriend) tell me that I was becoming more and more like him, well, let's just say it felt pretty huge. I said, “Thanks, Tris. But really, if you're not feeling up to this, we can get up there on our own.”

This made her laugh. “Oh really, how? You're going to skateboard up a three-mile hill?” And with that she shifted the car into drive and pulled onto the street.

***

It wasn't until we pulled into the field next to the radio tower that I turned around to see how Henry was doing in the back. And he was not doing well.

To say the kid looked scared would be an understatement of enormous proportions. He looked horrified. Panic-stricken, even. He was pale, wide-eyed, and almost totally unresponsive. His little wire glasses were about to chatter off the end of his nose. Whether it was the car ride up with such a wreck of a girl, the apprehension of the party, or the fact that he was about to be face-to-face with Alistair, I can't honestly say. But whatever it was, it had Henry thoroughly spooked.

Lucky for us, Tristan needed a minute to compose herself, so I got a chance to shake some sense into Henry before we ventured into the wilds of the party. As soon as we were out of earshot, I grabbed him by the shoulders. “What's the matter with you? You look like you're about to have a heart attack.”

Henry didn't move a muscle; he just stared at me.

“Okay, Henry. Take a few deep breaths, and tell me what's going on.”

He did as he was told (reluctantly), breathing in deeply though his nose, and out through his mouth. Then, barely whispering, he said, “It's just that…at the party…I know that there'll be…”

“What, beer? It's a keg party, Henry.”

He shook his head.

“Drugs? Are you worried about drugs. Because no one's going to make you do—”

“No,” he whispered.

“Is it Alistair and those guys? You know they'd never do anything here, with all these people, right?”

Again, he shook his head, “No, there'll be…”

“What?”'

“Girls.”

Okay, so I know that laughing hysterically was probably not the most sympathetic or kind response I could have had to Henry's statement. But it was the one that came to me first, so I went with it. Practically choking, I said, “Girls? You're this freaked out about
girls
?”

“That's what they have at parties,” he shot back, almost angrily. “They have girls that will want to talk or flirt or make out or who knows what, and I don't know how to do any of it!”

I let out one final chuckle and then I started to feel bad for the kid. “Listen Henry,” I said. “Yes, there will be girls up there, and yes, one or two may even attempt to talk to you. But I assure you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, with one-thousand percent confidence, that none of them will try to flirt or make out with you.”

Now I know that sounds a bit harsh, but I think it was just what he wanted to hear. “Really?” he said with a smile. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. And besides, we're here to work. We're here as detectives, not pick-up artists. We need to get something on Alistair that we can bring to the police. Just one piece of evidence, or proof, or whatever. You have to keep your eye on the ball, okay? Can you do that?”

“Okay,” Henry said, looking very serious. “I can do that.”

Our plan was simple:

Step 1: Walk up the hill to the party, mingle (inconspicuously).

Step 2: Figure out if Alistair or any of his asshat friends were missing a piece of a number on any of their jerseys.

Step 3: Measure their feet (also, inconspicuously).

Step 4: Catalog which of them did (or did not) wear a class ring.

Just like everything else, though, it didn't quite work out how we planned.

First, let me set the scene of the party: you walk up a dark wooded hill smelling faintly of gasoline and garbage, and just at the halfway point you begin to hear a low roar coming from the top, but you're still too far away to see anything. So you climb and climb until you finally reach the crest and see, not the crowded gathering you'd expect, but nothing. Just trees and darkness and noise—lots of noise. It sounds like a thousand people screaming at once, but you can't see any of them, so you walk straight into the darkness until you find yourself in a clearing, roughly the size of a tennis court, with maybe a hundred teenagers packed shoulder-to-shoulder beside a hundred-foot tall steel tower, just standing around with their red keg cups, yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs.

But here's the thing—there is almost no light whatsoever. Really, it's practically pitch black, with just a faint red glare coming from the top of the tower, and the occasional flicker of a phone screen or a camera flash.

“Shit,” I said to Henry. “This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.”

Henry nodded his agreement. “I know. How are we going to see anything?”

Just then, as if in response to our complaint, a great beast of a pickup truck came roaring up the access road, shining its headlights over everything, and stopping a few feet from the edge of the crowd. A few kids shifted and whispered nervously, ready to make a break for it, but most just stood there, waiting.

The doors opened, and like a politician at a funeral, out popped Alistair St. Claire with a wave and a solemn nod, followed by one of his usual shitforbrains friends. The whole party turned to face him as he climbed on the hood of his truck, Budweiser tall boy in hand. He hushed the murmuring crowd with a sweep of his arm.

“I know it's fitting, on the night before the year's first game, for the captain to get up here and give a little speech.” He paused for a practiced tear. “But our real captain couldn't make it.”

Again Alistair paused, but this time for a bit longer. I looked around at the crowd and saw a few real tears shimmering in the headlights, which just made his little show all the more despicable to behold.

He continued, “Ryan was our leader. He was our inspiration. He was the best damn quarterback in this whole county.” Again, more fake tears. “And he was my best friend.”

Now this was just too fucking much. Was he kidding? There's no way Alistair was ever Ryan's best friend. I knew Ryan's best friends—Jake and the twins. I looked around for one of them to speak up and refute Alistair's bullshit claim, but then I remembered what Tristan told me, and of course they weren't there.

So Alistair went on with his speech, wiping his eyes for effect. “But the best way we can honor Ryan is keep him in our minds, keep him in our hearts, and beat the living hell out of Portsmouth!!”

And with that, a great roar of support rose from the crowd.

Alistair began to chant: “Go Soren! Go Soren! Go Soren!”

My dinner began to rise in my throat.

“Go Soren!” the crowd chanted with him.

“Flip one for Ryan!” Alistair yelled, turning over his tall boy and spilling its contents to the soil.

“For Ryan!” the crowd yelled back, spilling their beers in an idiotic chorus.

Then, as if all of this wasn't disgusting enough, Alistair spotted me.

“Hold on a second,” he said, waving his hand over the cheering, yelling, crying crowd; hushing them all. “There's someone here I want you to meet.”

No
, I thought.
No no no no no no no!

“This is his first year at Soren, and though I know you've all heard his name by now, I think we should all welcome him with open arms.”

Shit
, I thought
. Shit shit shit shit shit!

Alistair pointed over the heads of the crowd, directly at me and Henry. And like a sea of penguins, two hundred heads turned and stared at us with sad and curious eyes. “So much for incognito,” I whispered.

Henry did not reply; He didn't even seem to be breathing.

“That there is little Jonathan Stiles. Ryan's younger brother.” The crowd became instantly silent. “And I just want you all to welcome him, make him feel at home here and at school.” Then he met my eyes. I looked straight through his drunkenness and his bullshit, and all I saw was a heart of the purest evil. “You're so brave, Jonny. To come up here. So soon…You're so brave.”

I whispered to Henry, out of the corner of my mouth, “What the hell do you think he means by that?” But Henry, I think, was far too terrified to hear me.

Alistair raised his tall boy one more time. “To Jonny Stiles!” he yelled.

The crowd erupted into applause, and cheers, and whistles. Junior and senior guys raised their keg cups to me in reverence, as if I were some kind of celebrity, and more than one girl in the crowd had a tear in her eye and a shy smile on her lips. Honestly, I couldn't stand it. It was all bullshit; they didn't know me. Hell, they didn't even know Ryan…at least not the
real
Ryan. And what the hell did Alistair mean, anyway? What was so brave about me going up there? What kind of danger did he think I was facing?

After about a minute of applause (which, believe me, felt a lot longer) everyone turned their attention back to Alistair, who changed the subject of his speech (thankfully) back to how the Soren Seagulls were going to absolutely annihilate the Portsmouth Pirates (or whatever) in Saturday's big game.

Seeing that no one was staring at us anymore, I whispered to Henry, “I think now would be a good time to try to blend in a bit.”

“Blend in?” he whispered fiercely. “Don't you think it's a bit late for that? We're now the most recognizable people at the party. The dead kid's brother and his little Asian sidekick!”

That stung a bit, and I shot Henry a look to let him know it.

He stared down at his shoes. “Sorry. I didn't mean it that way. I just—”

“It's alright. Anyway, you're only half right. Everyone's going to be looking at me, but I think you can still slip in under the radar.”

“How?”

“We're going to have to split up.”

Prior to speaking these words, I wouldn't have thought there was anything I could've said to make Henry more scared or uncomfortable than he already was. Clearly, I would have been wrong.

“What?” he screamed. “Split up?! No! I mean, that's not smart, or reasonable, or even really possible, when you think about it. What are we going to do, just wander around aimlessly? We'll look ridiculous, just walking around staring at football players' footprints and fingers. We'll stand out even more than we do now!”

I put my hand on Henry's shoulder. Again, I felt sort of bad for him. “No, Henry. You're going to have to mingle, a little.”

“Mingle?” he questioned, as if it were some strange word in a foreign language.

“Yes, mingle. Talk to people. Get a beer and just hold it, if you don't want to drink. The point is that you need to blend in.”

Henry paused for a moment, collecting himself. Finally, he nodded, slowly and carefully, as if he were a soldier who'd been ordered to throw himself on a grenade.

“Think of yourself like James Bond. Do you like James Bond?”

“No. His whole character is too implausible.”

“Well, then…Whatever. Just imagine you're like a better James Bond, and you've snuck into some fancy party, and you have to be all suave and cool so that nobody will notice that you're planting the secret homing device, or whatever.”

Henry swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said at last, forcing a smile. Then he took one more breath, turned on his heels, and slunk—slumped shoulders and hung head—into the center of the party.

For my part, I did what seemed to be the most natural thing upon arriving at a keg party: I went to get myself a beer, and tried to attract as little attention as possible.