Pass/Fail (2012) (8 page)

“It’s not the end of the world,” Cody replied. “You can fail two more times before—”

“Before they kill me. I know. Only two more times. What if they give me another test like this one? What if all the tests from now on are this hard? I can’t do it, Cody. I have to find a way out of this. I have to break their system.”

“How, though? We already know you can’t leave town. We know that no one in authority is ever going to take you seriously.”

“I could get some evidence somehow. Some proof of what’s going on.”

Cody sighed. “Jake, I gotta tell you. We went to the cops once. If you come to them with the same story, they’re not going to look at anything you bring them. You need to focus, man. You need to pass the rest of the tests, whatever that takes.”

“If I had to do another test right now I couldn’t—I would just fail. I couldn’t even try, I would just tell them I fail and leave it at that. I feel like I’m going to die right now.”

“You’re not. You’re over-reacting to this because it’s never happened before. And anyway, it’ll be like a week before the next test. You’ll have time to recover. Try to take your mind off this. When’s your date with Megan?”

Jake looked at his alarm clock. “In about three hours. But I don’t know if—”

“It’s tonight?” Cody laughed. “Are you so sure you’re feeling like this because you failed a test? It sounds more like you’re nervous about the date.”

Jake hadn’t thought much about the date since that morning, but now that he did the leadenness in his stomach grew and his palms started to sweat again. Could Cody be right? Maybe his subconscious had just been nagging at him, reminding him of what was to come. He thought about calling Megan and breaking the date, which would at least alleviate some of his nerves. It was a risk, a distraction. He kept thinking of everything that could go wrong, all the ways he could offend her, and wouldn’t it be better to not take the chance? If she rejected him now he would truly want to die. If he put her off, he could focus more on the tests, on surviving—but no.

No.

This… thing with Megan, this nascent relationship was the only thing in his life that felt pure, and right, and untouched. When Mr. Zuraw had even mentioned Megan’s name Jake had felt rage build up inside of him at the very thought of him knowing who she was. He had to take the chance, had to see where things went with her. Otherwise, what was he living for? What was the point of going on at all?

To his seventeen year-old brain there was nothing else. No future, no college, no job prospects. Everything had shrunk down to two irreducible points: passing the tests, and kissing Megan again.

“What if my feet smell?” he asked Cody. “What if I say something stupid because I’m so distracted I can’t think? What if I get so excited I try to grab her and she freaks out and thinks I’m molesting her?”

“She’s making it as easy on you as she can,” Cody said. “I think she’ll give you a real chance. I think maybe she actually likes you. Did you think about that?”

It had occurred to him. Some of the things she’d said certainly suggested it. It had seemed so impossible good though, such an amazing, beautiful, desirable thing, that he had immediately doubted it. The tests had gotten him so worked up and paranoid he was doubting anything that looked easy or good.

“Do your best. Don’t molest her. Tell her she looks nice, girls love that,” Cody said.

“I have to start getting ready,” Jake told him, and they ended the call.

An hour later he came down the stairs and found his Mom waiting for him in the hall. “Very impressive,” she said, looking him up and down. She was smiling very brightly. She’d been smiling like that since he told her he had a date—his first ever. “Only…” she went on, scratching her chin.

“What?” he asked. He had showered and shaved and put on more deodorant than he normally wore. He had brushed and combed his hair. He looked down at his clothes. “She said I should dress up. Is there a stain somewhere?”

“It’s just—is that the suit you wore to grandma’s funeral?”

“It’s the only one I have,” he told her.

“Mm-hmm. And… lilies, huh?”

He raised the bouquet to his nose and sniffed them. “I got them at the supermarket on my way home from school. Are they the wrong color?”

“They’re not… traditional… for a first date. Maybe you can take her flowers next time.” Jake’s Mom took his arm and led him back up the stairs. “That tie is a little too formal, as well.” She went into his closet and took out a blazer and a clean pair of bluejeans. “I think this might work better,” she told him. “Now. As for etiquette. Just try to be a gentleman, and don’t talk all the time, listen to what she has to say. That’s all a girl really wants on a first date. Don’t try to kiss her when you bring her home. It just makes you look desperate.”

Oh my God, Jake thought. This date means everything to me, and look at me. I need my mother to dress me. And I already look desperate before it’s even started.

As he drove toward Megan’s house in his Dad’s station wagon, he could only think: this is going to be a disaster.

Chapter Seventeen

Megan was wearing a print dress and knee high boots. She had completely changed her hair, cutting it much shorter so that her neck was exposed. She was wearing makeup, too—not much, just a little lipstick and eyeliner—but the effect was dramatic. She was standing on the brick path that led from her house down to the street, and she came straight over to the station wagon when he pulled up at the curb.

He rolled down the window. “You look great,” Jake said. “I mean—”

“Open my door for me, Jake,” she told him. She had a patient little smile on her face.

He nearly knocked her over getting his own door open. Then he had to remember to take off his seatbelt. “Yeah, of course—what did you—what did you do to your hair?”

“I had them cut out the scorched bits. Then they had to even everything out. Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” he said.

They stood there looking at each other for a while.

Finally she said, “You look pretty good yourself. You dress up well. Shall we go? The movie’s at seven.”

“Um, sure,” Jake said. “Don’t you want me to come in first, though, and meet your parents or something?” His Mom had been very clear on how he should address Megan’s parents. He was supposed to try to call her father Sir, which showed respect.

“Why? They would only embarrass us both, and that’s not what I want tonight.” She opened the passenger side door of the station wagon and climbed inside. Too late he remembered that he was supposed to open her door for her. He jumped back into the driver’s seat and got the car moving.

The township of Fulton wasn’t much more than the high school and a large residential neighborhood, but it had a few shops on the main highway, including a two screen movie theater. He pulled into the wide parking lot and then escorted Megan up to the box office to buy their tickets. Megan had chosen some kind of light romantic comedy—not Jake’s kind of thing, normally, but he wasn’t there for the entertainment value. He bought her some popcorn and then found them a pair of seats near the back of the theater. “I wasn’t sure if you would want to go eat, first,” he said.

“I already had dinner. Didn’t you?”

He hadn’t but he pretended he had. He couldn’t have even said why he lied about it—there was no clear reason—but for some reason he felt like he had to agree with everything she said or chose.

Jake didn’t know why this was so hard. Clearly Megan liked him and wanted to be on this date. She’d never said a truly mean thing to him, or given him any kind of impression that he was in danger of scaring her off. Yet every moment he spent with her—as exciting as it might be, as warm and desirable—was an agony of torture.

He was seventeen years old and he expected more of himself. He’d heard other boys his age talking about their dates—their conquests. He’d heard them discussing what they’d “gotten”, about how far various girls had “let them go”, often in graphic detail. He was smart enough to know that most of that had to be bragging, but he knew for a fact that most of the boys in his class went on dates all the time and that none of them had died of a heart attack in the process. Yet Jake had never so much as touched a girl’s hand before he pulled Megan out of the burning car, had never, really, even thought about sex as far as he could remember.

Now it seemed like the only thing he could think about. He would have been better off, he imagined, focusing just on the tests. On passing the tests. Yet when Megan was near him, when he smelled her skin, when their arms brushed against each other, all that went away for a while.

Maybe he was just a late bloomer, he thought. Maybe he was perfectly normal, and that his hormones just hadn’t been jumpstarted at age twelve like most boys, but that from now on he would be just like them. It was a comforting idea.

In the darkened theater she took his hands and twined her fingers through her own, then let their hands rest on her thigh. After a few minutes Jake’s arm started to fall asleep but he knew he would never voluntarily move it from that position.

The movie was pretty bad—a very slow story about a reporter who was only dating a millionaire to gather information for the story she was writing on his shady business dealings, only to find out that she really loved him after all. Jake couldn’t follow the plot very well, and after the first few minutes he didn’t try. Occasionally Megan would laugh and look over at him and he would smile back. Their eyes would meet for a very enjoyable second and then she would go back to watching the screen.

He spent a lot of the movie studying the curve of her neck. He wondered if it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen or if it just felt that way.

Eventually the movie ended and they got up to head back to the parking lot. Jake offered to drive her straight home but she said she wanted to walk a little. Of course he agreed. They walked along a covered sidewalk along a row of shops that were closed for the evening, talking about the movie—Jake, feeling almost comfortable for a change, took a chance and admitted he hadn’t seen much of it, that he was much more interested in the curving shape of her ear.

She stopped and froze in place. He watched as a shiver went through her and suddenly alarm bells went off in his head, clanging out a million different warnings.

“My ear?” She stared at him with wide eyes.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, not knowing how else to explain. “I’ve been thinking that for the last hour. You have a beautiful ear.”

“You’re unbelievably weird, do you know that?”

“Yes,” he said, sighing. He turned away from her. “I do. I’ve never been like anybody else.” This was it, he decided. His heart sank in his chest. This was the part where he had to face up to the fact he wasn’t cut out for dating, or at least not for dating someone incredible and well-adjusted like her. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asked.

He still couldn’t face her. “I wanted this to be a normal date. I wanted us to be boyfriend and girlfriend. You have to believe me. But I can’t change who I am. I’m weird.” He threw up his hands in resignation. “I’m a nerd. A geek. I’m so sorry. I can’t get through one date without creeping you out. I’ll take you home.”

She grabbed his chin in her hand and he went rigid as she pulled his face around so she could stare into it.

“I said you were weird, Jake. I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

She grabbed at his hands and pulled him down a narrow alley between two stores. They came out on the side away from the parking lot, a narrow strip of asphalt full of dumpsters and lost shopping carts.

“Nobody’s ever said anything about my ear before,” she told him, with a laugh. “It makes me feel special, do you understand? Do you know how rare that is?” She didn’t let him answer. She was too busy pushing him back against a rough wall and kissing him deeply.

He went into shock, a little. He closed his eyes. He opened them again. She was still kissing him. Her tongue was in his mouth. Her hands were on his chest, her short fingernails digging through his shirt.

It was exactly the wrong time for him to notice that someone had tagged the dumpster behind her. It was the last thing he should have paid attention to. Yet what he saw made his blood run cold, even as other parts of him were starting to warm up. Written in red spray paint were the words:

DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER 17

Chapter Eighteen

DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER 17

Jake read it again, and again.

He was seventeen. So was Megan, and Cody. Everyone over that age—Mr. Zuraw, the Principal, the police—had turned against him. The message on the dumpster could have just been crude adolescent paranoia, the passing whim of a teenager unable to accept or understand the adult world. Except Jake didn’t think that was it at all.

Maybe he was reading too much into what was, honestly, a very simple message. Except that—well—he couldn’t be sure. But he thought it was written in exactly the same shade of red spray paint as the string of Ps and Fs he’d found in the ruins behind the school. Which meant that maybe the same person had left both messages.

Messages meant for him, and him alone.

DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER 17

“Megan,” he said, “when’s your birthday?”

Megan stopped kissing his neck and took a step backwards. “Not until March,” she said. She looked confused.

“So you’re still seventeen.”

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” she told him. “It’s not illegal to kiss me. And that’s as far as I planned on going tonight.”

“Wait—what?”

The start of a rage was smoldering behind her eyes. What he said next could fan the flames into a conflagration, if he wasn’t careful. “I didn’t mean… what you think I meant,” he said. “I was looking at that.” He pointed at the graffiti on the dumpster.

She turned to look at it. Her face was a mask of suspicion. “You were reading graffiti while I was trying to make out with you.”

He could only nod. She was going to be pissed. She had a right to be pissed. He wanted very, very much to rewind his life about thirty seconds but that wasn’t an option. “That message means something to me. Something… I can’t explain.”