The Mostly True Story of Jack (8 page)

Jack stood up, brushed the dirt off his pants and out of his hair. The boy on the other side of the swing stayed as still and solid as a hunk of rock. Jack waited. In the silence, the whine of cicadas in the nearby trees seemed deafening. Neither boy spoke. Finally, Jack couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Hi,” he said, offering his hand for a shake. “I’m Jack.”

The boy stared at Jack’s hand as though it were a bizarre animal species that had just crawled out from under a rock. Slowly, Jack lowered his hand and shoved it into his pocket.

“I don’t remember giving you permission to speak, Wart-face.”

“No, actually it’s
Jack—
wait, are you…
oh
,” Jack said, suddenly understanding exactly where this conversation was heading. Being the only kid in his class without any friends, Jack was no stranger to the occasional run-in with a bully. Not
often
, of course, as most kids didn’t notice him for long enough to hassle him. Still, there had been a small handful of bullies—hasslers, insulters, punchers.

This boy, Jack could tell, was a puncher.
Rule one
, he thought,
Don’t Make Eye Contact.

“Well,” Jack said, keeping his gaze firmly to the left of the kid’s shoulder, “it was nice meeting you.” He
turned and began walking away slowly, head down, feet barely making a sound on the dirt and ragged crab grass.

“Hey, Pig-snot,” the boy said. Jack kept walking. He felt his ears redden and grow hotter by the moment. “What’s it like in that ugly house? My mom says they’re into witches and hoodoo.”

Rule two, he knew, was Don’t Talk Back, but Jack couldn’t stop himself. “They couldn’t possibly be into either,” he said. “They’re Methodists.”

The boy took a step back, clearly flustered. He also knew the rules and script in the bully/bullied performance and was taken aback that Jack had suddenly decided to improvise. The boy frowned. “So?”

“Well, they’re different religions, aren’t they? You can’t be Hindu and Jewish at the same time. Or Muslim and Zen Buddhist. They’re way too different. It’s like trying to be tall and short, or fat and thin, or human and—”

“What?” the boy asked, clearly even more confused.

“Never mind,” Jack said, feeling stunned at himself.

The boy removed his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, staring hard at Jack. “You getting smart with me, dork?” He took a step forward, curled his fingers into a fist, and looked eager to throw a good punch.

“Smart?” Jack asked, buying time. He paused, drew a long slow breath. “No, no…”
Obviously not
, he thought. His eyes slid across the ragged field, where Baxter’s old
skateboard lay in the grass. In his head, he tried to calculate how fast he would have to run if he grabbed it on his way back to Clive and Mabel’s house. He certainly couldn’t ride it back. But if he left it there, what were the odds that he could come back for it? He shook his head. Not good, he decided.
My brother gave it to me
, Jack thought.
And there is no way I’m leaving it behind.

The boy advanced and Jack stumbled backward, his eyes darting between the boy and the skateboard.

“Listen, Worm-turds, I’m thinking I should teach you a lesson.”

But Jack wasn’t listening. With a burst of speed that, frankly, he didn’t know was in him, he darted around the boy, grabbed the skateboard, and ran for the road.

He didn’t make it far.

A pair of thick hands grabbed him from behind while simultaneously swiping a booted foot across Jack’s calves. With a grunt, the boy launched Jack into the air. Jack kept his eyes open, regarding the patterns of thick green and sandy brown. He hit the ground suddenly, smashing his fingers between the wheels and the hard dirt, a fall made worse by the force of his body behind it.

“Hey!”
A voice cracked the space above Jack’s head. Jack rolled over onto his back, shaking his hands a bit, hoping that he hadn’t broken a finger or two. Nothing creaked, cracked, or popped. Jack decided that this was good news.

A girl stood two feet from him, her feet planted firmly
on the ground, her hands pulled into tight fists that she swung at her sides. Jack tried to make out her face, but her body blocked out the morning sun, which licked around the edges of her silhouette as though she were on fire.

“Is it just me, Clayton, or do you get dumber every year?”

Clayton stopped, wrinkled his brow in concentration, and stuck out his chin. “No, I don’t.” He shoved his fists into his back pockets and hunched his shoulders. “
You
get dumber every year.”

“Honestly,” she said, reaching down and helping Jack to his feet.

“He really does get dumber every year,” she muttered to Jack. “Seriously. There’ve been tests.”

“Shut
up
,” Clayton said. “And you.” He pointed at Jack. “Gotta get rescued by a
girl
? That’s how they do things in Sissy Francisco?” Clayton smirked while the girl sighed loudly, resting her forehead in her hand and shaking her head.

Jack said nothing. He didn’t mind who rescued him, but what’s more, he didn’t mind the fact that he needed help in the first place. You have to care about a person, even just a little, in order to beat him up. It’s when they leave you alone entirely—that’s when you might as well not exist, and if you disappeared forever, no one would really notice.

The girl stepped away from Jack. “I’m not rescuing
anybody. I’m just telling you off. And maybe I didn’t do a good-enough job last time.”

Clayton instinctively brought his hand to his blackened eyes in a defensive gesture. “Shut
up
,” he said again. But before he could say anything else, the girl took two giant leaps toward Clayton, grabbed the neck of his T-shirt, and yanked his face close to her own. Jack’s mouth dropped open. Despite being bigger and heavier, the other boy was clearly scared of this wiry, sharp-jawed girl.

“Listen,” she said. “You stay away from me. You stay away from my brother. And stay away from the new kid. The last thing we want is for him to think this town is filled with a bunch of—oh.” She stopped. “I forgot.” She released Clayton, turned to Jack, and extended her hand. “Hi. Wendy Schumacher.”

Jack stared at her. Her hair was long and snaked down from her white scalp all the way to the middle of her back in a shiny, copper-colored braid. Her pink lips spread into a wide smile, revealing a small gap between her front teeth. Her yellow sundress flapped around her body, which was all angles and edges, and Jack noticed that the knuckles of her right hand were scraped up and scabbed.

“Um,” Jack said, suddenly realizing that she was shaking his hand and that he should probably shake back. No kid had ever shaken his hand before. “Hi.” He stopped, but realized that she was still staring at him, expecting him to continue. “I’m Jack.”

Wendy nodded. “I expected you’d look different. Thought you’d be—” She pulled her lips into a downward curve, trying to find the right word. “I don’t know. I thought you’d look different.”

Jack wasn’t sure how to take that comment, so he started brushing the dirt and dead grass off his shorts and shirt.

“Don’t mind him anyway,” Wendy continued, jerking her head in the direction of Clayton, who had taken this opportunity to start slinking away. Clayton turned back and shot a poisonous scowl at Wendy, who closed her eyes and shook her head.

“I’m so
telling
,” Clayton yelled.

“
No one cares!
” she shouted back. “Seriously,” she said in a lowered tone. “He’s not worth minding.”

She picked up Jack’s skateboard. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

T
HERE WERE TWO BOYS SITTING ON THE PORCH
. O
NE WORE
a seed cap. It was green. The other wore a parrot. It was Lancelot.

“Why,” Jack asked Wendy, “is my uncle’s parrot sitting on that kid’s shoulder?”

“That’s my brother,” Wendy said, and while she didn’t answer the question, her voice had an oddly dangerous edge to it. Jack decided it was answer enough.

The boy with the seed cap stood up. It was the same boy, he noticed, who was sneaking around the yard the
other day. Jack looked at the ground. For as long as he could remember, he’d wanted friends. He’d wanted people to see him. And
here
, apparently everyone could see him. And Jack wanted to hide.

It’s just because I don’t like it here
, Jack told himself.

It’s just because I wish I’d never left
, another voice whispered in his head. Jack batted at his ear and shook the voice away.

“It’s you,” Jack said. “Anders.”

“Yeah,” the blond boy said. “I’m glad to see you’re doing all right.” His smile was wide, even wider than Wendy’s, and like Wendy, he was taller than Jack. A lot taller, in fact. And what he meant by
all right
, Jack wasn’t sure.

The other boy stayed seated and did not look up, but cocked his head slightly to the left and stared intently at the space right next to Jack’s hand. Jack looked at him questioningly, but glanced quickly away. Half of the boy’s face was a mess—all tangled and bumpy, like some sort of strange fruit that Jack would see in the open-air markets at home. He raised his hand for a quick hello and tried to fix his eyes elsewhere.

“Nice to see you again,” Jack said to Anders, and not to the boy on the ground. As if to protest, Lancelot flew upward from his perch on Frankie’s shoulder, flapped his wings in Jack’s face with an indignant squawk, and flew back into the house.

“Frankie’s my twin brother. He doesn’t say very much.”

“Oh,” Jack said.

“He doesn’t—” Wendy paused, turned to Jack, and looked very hard into his face. Jack winced. “He doesn’t… well, you’ve never, um,
seen
him before, have you?”

Jack frowned. He peered into Frankie’s unresponsive face. The left side bulged and rippled—a complicated network of red, rough, irritated scars. Jack wondered whether it was painful. Without realizing he was doing it, Jack reached up and rubbed his own cheek before forcing his hand back into his pocket. Frankie did not make eye contact, nor did he seem to notice that Jack was staring at him. “No,” he said, surprised.

In truth, he could have
sworn
he had seen that kid before. But he couldn’t have, could he? As far as he knew, he had never met a deformed person before. Or a mute. Or, for that matter, until ten days ago, an Iowan.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, hesitating. “It just looked like he knew you. Or, well, you know. I just thought—maybe on a trip or something…” Her voice trailed off, and the blond boy rolled his eyes.

“Nice try anyway,” Anders said, patting Wendy on the shoulder. She scowled at her friend.

Just what, exactly, Wendy was trying, Jack didn’t know, but before he could ask, he was interrupted by the blare of a police siren. The sound was loud and high and punched Jack’s ear so hard he yelped. Frankie stood, and though he didn’t look at the police car, or anyone else
for that matter, he put his body between the squad car and Jack. With a scratch of gravel and a squeal of brakes, the car stopped and two police officers stepped out.

“Schumacher,” the first one said, taking out a notebook and writing something down. “We thought we might find you here. Been hassling old man Avery’s boy again, have you?” He shook his head and tutted. “Smarter girls than you would’ve learned their lesson by now.”

Jack peered over Frankie’s slumped shoulders. Anders had taken Wendy’s hand, and Jack noticed the boy’s fingers were white, tense, and immobile—and no matter how much she tried to wriggle free, Wendy couldn’t twist her fingers out of his grasp. Instead, she jutted out her chin, threw back her shoulders, and laughed.

“As if,” she said. “I suppose you haven’t noticed—again—that kid outweighs me by, like, a hundred pounds or something.”

The other officer leaned against the squad car and peered up at the house. “You’re getting quite a record there, Miss Schumacher.” Wendy hissed and made another jerk of her arm to free herself. Anders hung tight. “Your parents have been notified and the social worker—she’ll probably stop by again. So nice of her to do so. Trouble is, once a file gets heavy enough, people start talking about removal.” Jack noticed Frankie’s shoulders hunch tight and heard the boy gasp. He leaned over and saw a tear leaking out of Frankie’s left eye.

“I thought—” Jack began, but before he could ask anything, Frankie stepped hard on his toe. No one else seemed to notice.

“No one’s removing me anywhere,” Wendy said, but her voice had a tiny waver in it that seemed to delight the second officer.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “Seems to me that your parents just may have had enough of a delinquent kid who goes around beating up—”

“But that’s not true.” Jack stepped around Frankie. The officers looked around for a moment to see who had spoken, before finally focusing on Jack. It took them a minute.

“Wendy didn’t beat up anyone. That—Avery, or whatever his name is—that kid attacked me.” He looked up at the officers, who regarded him with wide-eyed fascination. Anders dropped Wendy’s hand, and both let their arms dangle at their sides. “And,” Jack puffed up his chest a little, feeling suddenly emboldened, “it was for
no reason
.” Jack let that sink in.

“Who are you, kid?” the first officer said.

Jack shrugged. “Me?” he said. “I’m no one. I’m staying with my aunt and uncle.”

The second officer looked from Jack to the house and back to Jack again. “So, you’re
that
kid.”

Wendy and Anders grabbed Jack by both arms. He stiffened, but acquiesced as they walked backward
toward the house. “He doesn’t have to tell you anything,” Wendy said.

“He hasn’t done anything wrong,” Anders said. “None of us have.” They pushed Jack toward the wooden stairs, and he fell with a thud on the bottom step. He gripped the edge of the wood. It felt warm under his hands, but it trembled. Or perhaps it was Jack who trembled. He couldn’t be sure.

“Of course he hasn’t,” the first officer said. Despite his rounded belly, the first officer’s face was thin and gaunt, with a scattering of sharp stubble across the chin. He leaned in, reached into his pocket, and took out a small camera. “Lots of folks are interested in you, son. You know that?” Jack looked at the camera and winced at the flash. “Very, very interested.” And with a laugh, they both slid into the car and drove away.