Sons of the 613 (12 page)

So now here we are, Josh furious at
me
for being inside.

“You're going back out.”

“No!”

“I could go sleep in the tent,” suggests Patrick.

“You're not sleeping in the fucking tent, Patrick. Isaac is. And
do not frigging touch those.
”

Patrick quickly pulls his hand back from the shelf with our mother's prize collection of Chinese snuff bottles.

“Sorry.”

“What is going on?”

Lisa is standing in the doorway.

“Nothing. Go to sleep.”

“Who is that?”

“This is Patrick.”

“Hey,” says Patrick, waving at Lisa.

She looks at him, expressionless.

“Go back to bed,” says Josh.

“What's he doing here?” asks Lisa.

“He's staying here for a few days.”

“A few
days?
” I say.

“Why is Isaac naked?”

“Go to bed!”

“You said ‘fucking.'”

“Lisa . . .”

There's a meth dealer with the Grim Reaper tattooed on his chest sleeping in my bed, and Lisa is upset that Josh is swearing.

“Lisa, please go to bed,” says Josh. Please, he says, which he's never once said to me in his life. She goes.

“All right,” he says to me, “put some pants on and let's go.”

“No.”

“Put some pants on, and let's go.”

“No.”

Patrick is doing the tennis-match thing, head twisting back and forth as we have our standoff.

“Isaac . . .”

I can see what's going to happen next. He's going to grab me, pick me up, stuff my clothes on, toss me out the door, and humiliate me. Patrick's presence makes him even less likely to budge. I feel helpless and angry, and I'm still shaking from the shock, but I also feel half crazy, like it being two in the morning and having Patrick there makes anything possible, and I don't want to back down. I want to win somehow.

“You want me to go?” I say. “I'll go.”

I toss the pillow to him and march past him, out of the living room, and through the house to the kitchen and the sliding doors.

“Isaac,” I hear Josh say from somewhere behind me, but I keep going. I slide the door open violently enough that it bounces a third of the way closed again, and I turn sideways to step out onto the porch. The security light blinks on, and I can see my own naked shadow as I accelerate down the steps to the lawn.

“Isaac!” Josh is calling to me in a strained half shout, the kind of voice you use when you want to be loud but can't. I'm halfway across the lawn, and I turn and walk backwards, seeing Josh and Patrick crowded at the kitchen doorway.

“Isaac!” says Josh again, and I salute and turn back to face the tent at the edge of the yard.

“Damn!” I hear Patrick say—two syllables: “DAY-um!”—and he starts laughing. Josh says something to him but I don't catch it, and then I can hear the door closing roughly and the click of the lock.

Naked on the lawn under the moonlight. Two fists up over my head in triumph.

 

M
ERIT
B
ADGE
: J
OURNEY TO THE
G
REAT
U
NKNOWN

Climbing out of the bathroom window is harder than I thought it would be, especially in my tight new jeans and with my new belt buckle scraping against and almost getting caught on the window frame. I make it, though, and drop to the ground without hearing any seams give.

If I time it right, it should all work out—Josh should be making breakfast for Lisa right now, giving me enough time to get to the garage, retrieve my bike, and be on my way. After a while Josh will start wondering why it's taking me so long to shower and change after our morning exercise session. Maybe he'll even be concerned. He'll knock and say,
Isaac? Are you in there? Are you okay? Isaac?
I can picture his face now as he realizes that something's wrong, that maybe he's pushed me too far and I've collapsed, and he'll open the door and rush into the bathroom to find me—but I'm gone. And then he'll see the note on the mirror, written in my mom's lipstick:
I'M GOING TO SCHOOL
.

I was hoping for a brighter, bolder red, but the brownish color was the only one I could find in my mom's makeup drawer. Either way, it should get my point across: any surprises today are coming from me, not from him.

I'm pedaling now toward Tracy Avenue. There's a surprise for Josh right there, in case he decides to come tearing after me and kidnap me for another one of his stupid plans: he's not going to find me on the road to school, because I'm not actually going to school. At least, not yet.

Patrick didn't stir when I went into my room this morning to get my clothes. He looked very comfortable on my bed, especially the way he was facing the wrong direction and had his feet mushed onto my pillow.

I check my watch. Plenty of time. I figure it will take maybe twenty minutes or so to get where I'm going. I'll get there, just stay for about ten minutes, and then ride back to school. Worse comes to worst I'll be a few minutes late for homeroom. And my brother's right: What are they going to do? Expel me?

In the end it takes me twenty-seven minutes to get where I want to go, not counting the three minutes I need to lock my bike, and then the other three minutes I take fanning myself and wiping my face before I accept that I'm not going to stop sweating and I should just go in.

 

I fidget by the brown sign that says
PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED
until the hostess notices me, glancing over at me from behind the long counter with a quizzical expression on her face. She's about fifty, I'm guessing, and fattish and unfriendly.

“Can I help you?” she says.

“Um, I just wanted to . . . I wanted some breakfast.”

She looks at me just long enough for it to get uncomfortable, then says, “You're alone?”

“Yes. It's just me.”

She's still eyeing me suspiciously as if she's trying to decide whether to give me a table or call the authorities.

“You're going to be eating?”

“Yes,” I say. “I have money,” I add, in case that's the sticking point.

“You want to sit at the counter?” she asks grudgingly.

“I got this one, Jenny,” says a voice from my left, and it's like the sun has just come out.

Lesley doesn't say a word to me, just gives me a sly grin when she turns her back to Jenny to grab a menu, a look that says,
You and I are a team in this conspiracy.

She leads me across the restaurant to a booth in the back corner. She glances over at me as we walk, taking in the clothes that she selected for me.

“I dig your outfit,” she says.

I look at the pink striped shirt that's part of her uniform. “Yours, too,” I say.

We arrive at the table and I sit. “Here you go, sir,” she says, handing me the menu.

“I think I know what I want.”

“Oh, good. I like a man who knows what he wants.”

“Can I get French toast?”

“Of course. Coffee?”

“Uh . . . yes, please.”

She raises her eyebrows and smiles, but doesn't say anything as she writes on her little waitress pad. “I'll be right back.”

I watch her walk away and I look around the restaurant. I think it's a chain, a step or two above a Denny's and a step below a real restaurant. There are just a few customers sitting in some of the booths. I'm the youngest one by at least fifty years.

“I know what you're thinking,” says Lesley as she places a coffee in front of me. “How did I get such an awesome job?”

Then she puts a second cup on the table and slides into the booth opposite me. “Cheers,” she says, and knocks her cup against mine and takes a sip.

She watches as I try mine, then wordlessly slides the cream and sugar toward me. I add some cream and a packet of sugar, wanting to add another but deciding against it. I take my time stirring, thankful for something to focus on, because I didn't expect that we'd have this much time face to face, and I suddenly can't remember what it was I had rehearsed saying. Everything seems very quiet. When I figure I've done about as much stirring as I can get away with, I take another sip and put the coffee down hurriedly. Lesley, again without a word, picks up another packet of sugar, tears it open, and dumps it in my coffee.

“Someday I'll take you to a place where they make actual coffee,” she says.

“Thanks,” I mumble, because I'm not sure what else to say.

She sits leaning forward with her elbows on the table, both hands holding her coffee cup. I expect her to say,
So, to what do I owe the pleasure?
Or,
Shouldn't you be in school right now?

Instead she says, “Tell me everything.”

So I do.

I start drinking my coffee and tell her about Josh and the Quest. She listens silently, getting up a few times to give people their checks or refill their waters and to get my French toast, but after each interruption she sits down and nods at me to continue. I tell her about my parents and Lisa and school and the Assholes and Patrick and my bar mitzvah and worrying about crapping in my pants during my haphtarah. I even tell her about Patricia Morrison. There's a point when I'm talking about Josh and what a turd he is to me that I get a little teary but don't want to wipe my eyes because that would draw attention to it, and she pulls out a napkin from the dispenser and hands it to me in one smooth move, all the while nodding and listening, just like she did with the sugar, and I talk and drink coffee and talk and drink coffee and by the time I've told her about pretty much every experience in my entire life I realize that I'm speaking very quickly and gesturing emphatically and fighting an urge to get up and run laps around the dining room.

Finally, I fall silent.

“Maybe we do decaf next time?” she says.

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, maybe.”

Tap tap tap tap tap
on the table with my fingers.

“Am I a freak?”

“Only enough to make you interesting.”

She smiles and gets up to help some customers, resting a hand briefly on my shoulder as she passes. My heart, which is already redlining, goes a bit faster.

When she comes back and sits again, I ask, “What happened yesterday?”

“Your brother and I,” she says, “have a very complicated relationship.”

“Did you ever go out?”

She laughs. “No.”

“Did you ever want to?”

She sips her coffee and looks at me.

“One of us did,” she says.

“What happened?”

She smiles.

“You're sure nosy.”

“Sorry.”

“Your brother has bad taste in women,” she says.

Well, clearly, if he never went out with you,
I think of saying. Cool and clever, or like I'm
trying
to be cool and clever?
Well, clearly, if he never went out with you.
I could say it with a shrug or looking off into the distance or looking right at her over my coffee. No, casual, while bringing my coffee up to my mouth, right now.
Well, clearly, if he never
. . .

“Well, that would, well, clearly, if you, if he, clearly—”

“You know,” she says, interrupting me and saving my life, “I think in some ways he might be one of the closest friends I have. And I'd say I'm the closest friend he has.”

I put my coffee back down. There's an inch of liquid at the bottom, a distorted white oval reflecting on the glossy surface from one of the lights. I can't quite identify what it is I'm feeling, and then I realize it's jealousy—and I'm not sure if it's because I'm jealous of his attention or hers or both.

“I think he hates me,” I say after a bit, still peering into the depths of my coffee, jiggling it so that the reflection shimmers.

When she speaks it's more of a breath, so quiet I can barely hear it. What I think she says is, “Not as much as he hates himself.”

“What?”

She smiles again and shakes her head. “Nothing.”

More customers are coming in now, bunching up by the entranceway. I can see her attention sliding away and want to hold on to it.

“Why did he leave school?”

“Lesley,” says Jenny from behind the counter.

“I'm coming,” she says. I'm not sure she heard me.

“Do you know why—”

“Why don't you ask him?”

“You said he was doing something you didn't like. You said—”

“Lesley,”
repeats Jenny.

“Sorry.” She's standing up. “I'll be right back.”

I wait for a while, watching her seat customers, take orders, bring water. It's getting more crowded. She passes me several times, twice saying sorry or smiling apologetically, and then starts brushing by, too busy and focused to say anything. I should leave—I know it—but I'm hoping she'll sit down with me and talk some more, and so I linger until it feels like I've suddenly crossed the Awkward barrier, and then when I stand up she's disappeared into the kitchen.

I wait a bit longer by the table for some more awkwardness, then walk slowly to the front register.

“Where's your check?” says Jenny.

“Uh . . .” That's what people do, they get the check from the waitress, and that's how you know what to pay. I don't have a check.

“I got it,” Lesley says, and swoops in once again, shouldering Jenny aside to punch numbers into the register. My hero. I make feeble protesting noises but she won't have it.

“My treat. Sorry I got so busy.” She's waving to a table as she says it, letting the people know she sees them. I'm embarrassed that I stayed so long, that she basically had to kick me out.