Chapter Fourteen

I opened the door to Gumby’s truck for her and she climbed in, looking down at me worriedly, her cheeks still rosy from Red’s comments. I smiled up at her, and she smiled back weakly. I shut the door and jumped into the pick-up part of the truck, setting up against the small, rectangular window at the back of the cab and bracing myself against the walls as the car lurched into life and rumbled down the road.

As we pulled away, I saw Red burst violently through the doors and throw something at the truck, face a flaming red, almost matching his hair. It exploded against the pavement in an awesome spray of white, and I assumed it was a shake.

“You bastard!” he yelled, shaking all over. His figure grew smaller and smaller as we drove farther and farther away from him, and I felt like as we grew farther apart, his importance to me was withering away.

I rattled back and forth as the truck hurtled down the road, rusty colors blending with dull greens as we were hurled past the rolling Arizona landscape. Dust blew into my eyes and stuck to my hair, coating my neat clothes in a film of red. The sun was warming the metal of the truck, and it heated through my dusty clothes and soaked into my skin. I squinted up at the azure sky through a haze of red, and everything seemed to be beside itself with a clean-cut, clear giddiness that made me smile. I closed my eyes to better soak in the sun as it pelted me with its dancing rays of warmth. Inside the cab of the truck, I could hear music flicking through stations as Gumby fiddled with his radio, and then he settled on a station and a song filled the truck. I watched the landscape flicker by, and Anna’s house came into view.

As we pulled into the driveway, Delia poked her head out of the kitchen window.

“Where did ya’ll go in such a hurry? Seemed mighty important!”

Gumby turned off the ignition and jumped out of the truck. I vaulted myself to the ground and opened the door for Anna. She carefully stepped out of the cab and looked at me, smiling so grateful that tears were in her eyes. I wasn’t sure how to comfort her, so I awkwardly reached over and patted her shoulder. She sniffled, still smiling, and I stared at her pink lips for a long time before she hurried into the house. I wondered if she was going to tell her parents about what happened with Red. I heard the driver’s door slam and Gumby came over to me, grinning from ear to ear. I looked at him, incredulous. He laughed and thumped me on the back.

“Oh, man, that kid was so riled up! I swear, he could have killed something right there! Man, that was boss! That was real fine, Jess!”

I shrugged and walked into the house after Anna, hurrying to catch up with her. I heard Gumby whistle at me from behind and I turned to glare at him, but he grinned at me and started walking backwards to the stables with his hands jammed into his pockets, his messy straw hair flopping over his sweaty brow and partially covering his shining blue eyes. I turned into the house and opened the door, seeing Anna talking to her mother, who was setting in a chair at the dining room table. Her frown lines deepened and her hands clasped in her lap as she stared at her daughter, sniffing and explaining what had happened. I immediately felt right uncomfortable, and I turned to leave the room, but Anna caught me in her gaze and hurried over to grab my hand. She dragged me over to her mother, and I glanced down at my feet as I fell under a pair of staring eyes.

“But Jess saved me. Again. He’s my hero, Mama.”

My insides did excited little flips at the word “hero”. I ain’t ever been some body’s hero before. I ain’t known some body long enough to be one. But here was a girl, a rich one, too, no doubt, that said I was her hero because I had saved her from an asshole. But wasn’t the world full of ‘em? I couldn’t save her from all the assholes in the world, even though I suddenly had a burning urge to that boiled in my stomach and made my heart race and my palms sweat.

I glanced up at her and she was smiling at me again, that gracious little smile on her face like I was God and I had just saved her from Mr. Death. I looked at Mrs. Burwell and she was smiling at me too, but I felt like there was more to her grateful smile than there was to Anna’s. I had a feeling this was more to do with losing another kid, maybe not the same way, but still lose the way her only child used to be, and that’s just like losing a kid to death.

“It was really nothing,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I just don’t want her getting hurt. The kid she was with was a real …” I paused when Anna looked at me with her eyebrows raised slightly. “He was a real jerk, Mrs. Burwell.” Anna sighed as if my language was still too rough, but it must have been enough for her because she didn’t say anything more.

So life went on. Finals came and I studied my brains out every night in a pointless attempt to re-learn everything that I had been taught for this semester. Anna would come in and we would quiz each other, and I felt a sort of warm fuzzy feeling whenever she told me that I got an answer right and smiled at me. I don’t think it was because I got the answer right.

I cherished those quiet nights with her, studying at our own pace and not worrying too much about it. Just pointing out things on notes, sitting side by side—it made me feel so much happier. I couldn’t imagine how much better studying with someone else could be. I actually felt more confident when I went into my first final, Geometry. I don’t think I passed, but I did better than I would have without any help.

Mr. Kollins’ test was killer. I couldn’t concentrate on doing my work because every time I looked up to give myself a break from staring at white papers with masses of tiny black print, Mr. K would be staring at me, his face twisted into an ugly sneer that was a lot like Red’s. By the time I got through about three quarters of it, there was only half an hour left, and I had to write an essay on a protist, three of its structures, and explain their relationship of structure to function. At least I knew one of them. I wanted to pound my head on the desk. It was throbbing, the light hurt my eyes, and my mind was numb from thinking for two hours straight. So I scribbled out a few sentences on each of the structures, trying to make sure they related to their function, and started to flip backwards through the packet to get the answers I had missed done. But apparently I had paused for five minutes between each of my sentences, even though I was almost positive I had rushed through it, because not five minutes later he told us to put our pencils down, the test was over. Thank God.

My English Exam was easy as pie, and I was glad that we didn’t have an exam for home economics, that way I could get a chance to rest my throbbing head. I walked home alone, but as I noticed earlier on, after my third encounter with Red, that she was no longer sitting with him. He drove his Thunderbird and left us well enough alone, which I can say pleased me mighty good. I watched the bus drive away every day, spewing a cloud of black exhaust and polluting the beautiful sapphire sky.

When I got home, Anna was waiting on the porch, smiling at me. I looked up from my shoes, now starting to get worn from walking every day. I was dreadful tired, my head was beating out a pain in my head like a woman beats out a rug, and I just wanted to sit back and take a good long nap. I smiled back at her, very weary, and trudged up the steps and flung open the door. Delia was already standing by, waiting with lemonade and a tray of cookies, but I waved her off and walked to my room. Anna flitted by my side, all the more pixie-like, and followed me into my room as I dropped my knapsack to the floor. I was lugging all the extra truck that I had left lying around in my locker. I turned to look at Anna and set down on my bed, yanking off my recently new sneakers and dropping them, rubbing my sore toes. She was beaming at me for no good reason—at least, none that I could see. I frowned at her and fell back onto the bed, closing my eyes. She set down on the bed next to me and I opened my eyes and looked up at her. She was still beaming.

“What’re you so happy about?” I mumbled, shutting my eyes again.

She giggled and sighed, and I opened my eyes when her hands suddenly grabbed my shoulders and pulled me upright. She hugged me tightly and rocked me back and forth in her arms, and I just set in bewilderment, wondering what it was she was so happy about. She looked at me and laughed at my confused face.

“What’s making you so happy?” I prodded, and she smiled at me, her hands back in her lap. I heaved a loud sigh.

“You’re done with Mr. Kollins. You don’t have to worry about him anymore, and he won’t put you in any more trouble. He won’t upset you anymore!”

“That’s all?” I asked. All of that seemed miles behind me. I hardly even thought about him after the test. When she mentioned it, though, I realized just how nice it would be to not see him again, to not have to deal with his bullshit every day of my life. Not having to see his ugly face every morning … it filled me with a joyful, tingly feeling that made me shiver. I sat up and grinned. She looked at me, her face somewhat bruised by my lack of enthusiasm, but that quickly changed when she saw me beaming. She beamed back at me and pulled me to my bare feet, tugging me through the door.

“C’mon, then, let’s go celebrate!”

“Celebrate how? I have work, and I’m real fagged—”

She ignored me and pulled me into the kitchen, where Delia was standing by the counter, shelling peas and peeling potatoes. She turned at the sound of our footsteps and smiled at us. I noticed that her full lips seemed to stretch a little less than they should have, that some of the sparkle that used to glitter in those dark, intelligent eyes didn’t come. All of those things that come to a person feeling sad for a lost something—or someone. I looked at her with as much sympathy that I could muster, being so wiped.

She seemed to catch this, because she brightened a little bit, or at least tried to. Her smile broadened and she turned completely to look at us.

“Why, what’re ya doin’ in here?” she asked, cocking her wide hips and planting her fists on them. Anna smiled at her.

“We were hoping to celebrate Jess’s last day with Mr. Kollins. He hates him, and Mr. Kollins hates him, too. So now that his class is over, we can celebrate!”

Delia looked at me with a sad expression. I blinked at her in confusion. What kind of face was that supposed to be, if this was a happy occasion? She shook her head, hands falling limply from her sides, and took up her peeler again.

“I don’t know how a body could come to hate a chil’ like ya, Jess. Ya just one of the nicest boys I ever met.”

I smiled and came over to her, putting my arm around her soft, wide shoulders and looking at her. The sun from the window fell like a curtain over her face, making it such a beautiful color, like the way maple syrup changes into amber glass when the light hits it. She glanced at me with those shining dark eyes.

“Delia?” I asked, grinning. She looked at me full in the face, probably wondering why my voice was so giddy. “Wanna make fritters?”

She was silent for a full minute as she surveyed the look on my face: the innocent smile and my shining eyes. Then she busted out laughing, clapping me on the shoulder, which almost made me collapse. Her laughter was a high, musical sound that made me think of bottles clinking together or a glass singing as it collided with a fork. Anna started to giggle behind one hand as I clapped Delia on the shoulder and laughed with her, grinning so hard I thought my face would split in half. We held each other up as we lapsed into fits of giggles, and once we stopped, Delia had to start in on chuckling again, and we would bust out all over again. Tears of mirth ran down our cheeks, and Anna had started to catch the contagious laughter. She laughed because we laughed, and we laughed at each other, and ourselves, and all the bad things that had ever happened to us, because they couldn’t touch us from the high place we were standing. And all the myths and old wives tales became wrong in that instant, because laughter really is the best medicine, the thing that would cure the world if only we gave them something to laugh about.

We made fritters together, the three of us. We used bananas, and I couldn’t help but smile the whole time we were cooking because I had never laughed so hard in my whole damn life, and there wasn’t a damn thing that could bring me down from this cloud I was drifting in.

Anna’s fingers touched mine when I went to dip a banana in the batter. My fingers were tingling from the brush of warmth, and I apologized a little too late when I had finished marveling at how soft her skin was. But I couldn’t help stare at the flour coating her fingers, white on white, and looking down at my own hands, white on brown, the color of the fritters I was lifting out of the skillet, golden and crisp.

I felt different when I was looking at her hands and mine, though. I felt like I wasn’t inferior to her anymore. No longer was I a simple, poor hick, one with brown skin from spending all day outside, and not worth a glance from a girl like her, but I was an equal. I felt free, a human among other humans, and I realized that we really weren’t so different to begin with. We’re all people among people; it doesn’t matter who we are or what we look like, because we’re still people, every single one of us. And what should I care who I am, or how much I have, if I was among friends, among other people who care about me, among others who have flaws just like I do? I shouldn’t, because in the end, none of that should matter. I immediately knew I was ready to go back now.

So as we finished eating our fritters, I turned to Anna and asked her if I could hold her hand. The look on her face was so surprised that I felt confused, and for a split second I was brought down from my spot high up in the clouds and began to wonder if she didn’t want to hold my hand. I turned red and slumped in my seat, wishing I hadn’t said anything and felt outright embarrassed. What a stupid thing to ask, totally catching her off-guard, and it was completely out of line as it was—then I stopped, because she was clasping my hand over the table and smiling at me so kindly that I might have cried.

“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” she told me, and I looked at her as she spoke, watching the way her lips curved, staring at the soft gray-blue color of her eyes in their kindly gaze, the way her eyebrows arched over them, and couldn’t look away. “You just caught me be surprise, that’s all. I didn’t expect it.”

“I didn’t either,” I found myself saying. She laughed and I laughed too, wondering briefly if I was going too fast. My head seemed to be spinning off my shoulders, and the air suddenly seemed a lot hotter than it should be. I smiled at her and stood up, pulling her with me. “I gotta get working soon. Then we oughta study for history.”

She smiled and nodded, swinging my hand in hers. We stepped out the door together and started across the yard to the stables. Gumby looked up from his work and raised an eyebrow at us. I immediately let go of her hand and smiled at her apologetically, turning and sprinting to the stables. Gumby stood up and I grinned in him.

“You’re in an awfully good mood,” he commented. “What happened?”

“I came to a fantastic realization,” I said proudly. He cocked an eyebrow at me and I grinned even wider at his skeptical expression, and started laughing. He stood up and put his hands on his hips, squinting at me through the dim haze of sunlight that was cast over us through the rafters, and I couldn’t help but think how much he looked like Bobby. I threw myself at him, and he jerked back in surprise as I hugged him tightly, shaking with laughter. “I’m ready,” I smiled. “I’m ready now.”

Gumby pulled back to look at me, considering through hooded eyes. I squinted up into his face, straw hair falling into his common blue eyes, and waited for him to say something. At first, his face did not change from that cool look of consideration, as if he were trying to gauge how truthful I was being. I smiled up at him hopefully, waiting for him to realize I wasn’t lying. Then a small smile pulled up one corner of his mouth, one of his funny crooked smiles.

“When?”

I grinned and hugged myself into his lanky body, feeling his lean arms squeezing me tighter than I thought he could, and the shake of his chest as he laughed softly. He was warm, and his T-shirt was soft against my cheek, smelling faintly of sweat and sweet hay and leather and tobacco. I wondered at his question for the longest time, trying to stage my reappearance in my head. When would be the best time for me to come back, like a miracle from God?

“Christmas.” It sounded perfect. What better Christmas gift than to get your brother back? Gumby just smiled at me and let me go. “I’ll go on Christmas.”

I went back inside and we studied together. I won’t go into long detail about the whole deal, but it was hard to concentrate with the sound of her soft voice went over the facts of the colonists and such. And every time she leaned over across me to check something in the books, I would try not to sniff that intriguing orange blossom smell that lingered on her hair. And she kept having to stop and ask me if I was listening while I stared at her lips while she was talking, admiring the shape of them, how they pursed on O’s and stretched on A’s. Finally I told her I couldn’t study anymore and got up from the table, telling her goodnight and going to my bedroom. I looked around the room that had become my own in the past months.

Papers littered the desk, the covers were pushed back as I had left them this morning, the window was open to let the cool nighttime air into the house, and books were stacked at the foot of my bed, which I had to hand in after final exams were done. It looked inhabited, but it no longer felt like mine. I set down on the edge of the mattress, fingering the woolen Corn Man blanket. It reminded me of my room, Bobby’s old room at the Shack. I shut my eyes and tried to recall everything in it. The old, chipped desk by my bed, the buzzing alarm clock on my nightstand that woke me every morning, the scratchy woolen blanket that covered my sheets, the spring that poked into the middle of my back through the sheets and the sound it made as I turned, the shrill squeal …

I could picture it all in my head, but it was almost like looking through a soaped-up window—foggy and distant. I felt like every second, I was moving farther away from my previous life and entering a new one. But I wanted to go back to my old life. I wanted to be with my brother again. I leaned back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, wondering if the crack in the corner was still there at the Shack in my old bedroom.

I went to the exam, and then it was over. The torture of school was over. I stepped out into the crowded hallway, buzzing with screams of laughter and cheers, and papers flooded from open lockers in cascades of white, swirling and slipping around and under my feet as I walked, crackling like flames. I felt dazed, like I was stepping through a dream. The heat that flooded through the open doors was dry, sizzling the moisture right out of your mouth as you opened it to speak. I looked up at the blazing sun, white puffy clouds sailing across the blue sky, and whispered the word that was dancing on my parched tongue to the wind that caught the papers in its fragile fingers and threw them around me in a whirlwind of sound, papers rustling, wind singing, my voice calling an unforgotten cry: Freedom.

My sneakers slapped the pavement as I stretched my legs, running hard and fast, the hot wind blowing into my face and drying my watering eyes before the tears could get much farther than my eyelashes. The sound of clothing snapping as the wind blew my trousers around my ankles was satisfying, and I ran faster, delighted by the tingling sensation that was collecting in my thighs. I couldn’t remember the last time I had run just for the feel of the pavement beneath my feet, the muscles in my legs working for me on my time. The bus roared past me, a loud, orange monster, and people howled out the open windows at me, pressing up against them to watch me run down the road. The wind whipped by me, and danced at my sides like a playful dog, singing the cry that rang from my throat and tearing it from my lips, scattering the letters across the red dust my heels cast into the air: Freedom.

Freedom was the definition of my soul. I could run for miles, because my soul, my spirit, and my being were free. My feet made a rhythm against the dirt, a fast-paced tattoo that matched the rhythm of my heart as I rounded a bend, legs flying. I couldn’t feel them anymore, but I kept running, straight for her house. I reached up and undid the buttons of my shirt, ripping it off and clutching the smooth cloth in my fist. Sweat ran down my back and dripped into the hot air, soaking the waistband of my trousers, and my hair flopped into my eyes, plastered down by my ears, and the air rushed around my bare chest and cooled me down as I hurtled around another bend. I thrust my hands into the air, white shirt flying from my hand like a flag and slapping the air smartly, and threw my head back so I could feel the air rushing over my face and into my nose and into my lungs and filling my life. A wordless noise rose up from my spirit and trailed past the flag, surrendering to the feeling; this feeling of inexplicable, uncontainable joy.

Her house came into view and I stumbled down the drive, slowing enough to realize that my legs were burning beyond feeling. Sweat was running in rivers down my back and into my eyes, and my face was burning with heat and my breath was running in and out of me so fast my throat was raw and dry. I stooped and braced my hands against my knees, coughing and spitting the tasteless foam from my mouth. The door slammed shut and I looked up through my sticky strands of hair, seeing her feet crossing the dirt towards me. I straightened up, still panting, and smiled at her weakly. She smiled back at me.

“School’s out,” I told her, grinning. She nodded and took my hand, pulling me inside. I followed and she pulled open the fridge and poured out a glass of lemonade for me. I gulped it down without taking a breath and held it out with a smile, and she laughed and poured me some more. I drank that too, taking the time to savor the tangy taste of the lemon and the icy feeling as it washed down my parched throat. I set down the glass with a loud clink on the counter and wiped my mouth off, sighing in relief. Lemonade. The taste of it was no longer forbiddingly delicious, just average, common lemon taste.

Summer passed by in its glorious heat. I spent most of my days working and spending time with Anna and her family, and talked to Gumby and planned my reappearance. They went by quick here, the days. At the Shack, everything seemed to go at its own pace, taking its time to smell the flowers. I missed the slowness. It seemed liked you could accomplish the world in a single day there, but only got a few things done here, because there was so much more to do. Every morning when I got up I would check on my little bean plant that Anna gave me and look to see if it sprouted yet, and water it with a little cup I refilled every night before I went to bed. Around the second week of July, I woke up and saw a spot of emerald green bursting from the soil, its heavy little head sagging into the dirt as its green spine arched up like an angry cat. A single leaf curled into the air like a proud flag. I set up and stared at it, watching the early sun pass through the leaf and make it burn a bright green, and awe passed through me as I marveled at the difference some sun and water could do to a little pot of dirt.

I helped Delia cook every evening, and she would tell me stories from her childhood, often mentioning her old friend, and I would stay quiet during those parts, trying to be courteous. She would try not to get teary, but I always saw her wipe at her eyes and turn away to stir this or prod at that, avoiding my eyes even though I looked the other way. After dinner I helped with the dishes and then walked out with Anna to shut up the chickens and say goodbye to Gumby, who since our conversation had always been in a happy mood. I would ask him how Bobby was doing, and he would always answer the same way: “Good, but not great.”

I played with Rex, the dog that I had thought was a coyote, and he was as nice and friendly as a puppy that had been treated well his whole life. The dog was a great pal, and it was a real shocker to me that he didn’t have a mean bone in him. He hated nobody, and learned quickly enough when strangers came to the door and his family greeted them as friends, so there was hardly a person he didn’t like. I didn’t have no experience with dogs, but he taught me everything I needed to know—where to scratch, how to play fetch and tell me when he was hungry or had to do his business or when he wanted to walk. I couldn’t believe the intelligence this dog had—even if he was only an animal, I swore that when I talked to him, his eyes would look on me, glittering like he could understand every word.

So as I think I said sometime before, a long time ago, where one thing ends, another begins. Summer ended, autumn began, and the air got cooler. School started again in September. The elf owls stayed snug and warm in their burrows in the cold nights, and the howls of coyotes seemed to get more distant. I was almost excited to start school again, see if the teachers wouldn’t all hate me. It was, after all, a new beginning to another chapter in the story of my life.

But I was wrong, again, and it wasn’t much surprising. I had changed by sheer will power, but everybody else seemed to be too weak to do anything about the way they acted. When I boarded the bus, hair freshly combed and greased, clothes newly pressed and not a speck of dirt on them, people stared and snickered and whispered in ears, just the same. Pizza Face was even sitting next to a girl and whispering to her about me, his mouth twisted into a smirk. His skin had started to clear up, and he looked like a normal teenager now, instead of being slapped in the face with a pepperoni pizza. The girl didn’t look disgusted by his mean words—no doubt they were mean, since everyone hated me—but giggled and smiled at him. I could hear Anna’s footsteps as we walked down the aisle. There were new kids. Freshman, and the older kids that were forced to sit with them were filling them in about me. They listened, real attentive, while they told dirty things to them about my family, and me. Even the new ones would hate me, and they didn’t even know me.

Some of my new teachers wouldn’t even acknowledge me. When calling over attendance, a teacher skipped over my name, and when I pointed it out she didn’t believe me. It was like I wasn’t even worth noticing. Others seemed to take a page out of Mr. K’s book and would harass me with indirect but entirely hurtful comments. I thought maybe one of my teachers, at least one of them, would be kind, would have a heart and treat me like an equal. Like my English teacher last year. But there weren’t any, not a single one. It hurt, and I said so to Anna on the way home to her house. It hurt, but I didn’t hate them anymore for it. I didn’t care anymore; it wasn’t my fault that they couldn’t get over themselves. It wasn’t my fault that they were too weak to see how stupid they were being.

And Red was no different. Well, that’s a lie, actually. He was worse. He wouldn’t so much look at Anna as glare at me. I swear, he would want to kill me for what I did, taking his girlfriend away from him like that. When she wasn’t there, he took out all his frustration on me, whenever he could. She asked me what had happened on the first day home from school, when I was holding a tissue under my nose and my hand was covered in blood, and I told her that Red had given me hell. She wouldn’t say anything but I knew that she felt bad. She reached over to help me wipe at the blood trickling from my nostril and over my lips, and I automatically licked them and tasted it on my tongue, fluid and slightly salty and warm, the flavor thick and disgusting, and it almost made me gag. The tissue dabbed above my lip and wiped under my nose, and I felt stupidly childish, like a little kid that has to have his nose wiped. I took it back and pressed it under my nose, tilting my head back slightly.

“I can do it myself, thanks.”

I said it with a tone that she caught and looked out the window dutifully, but I could still see her smile, and I smiled a little myself. We had a new bus driver this year and he let me on the bus. No one had told him that I wasn’t allowed on the bus, thank God. I didn’t like walking miles to get to school. He didn’t call me mean names. He didn’t let the other kids beat me up—at least, not on the bus. He treated me like a human being. The first time I got on the bus sporting my signature beat-up look, he regarded me with a gaze that I think might have been concern and asked me what had happened. I was real take aback by it—no one who wasn’t my family or my friends ever had the decency to ask, let alone care. I gave him such a weird look that he stopped asking when I boarded with a black eye or bruised knuckles. But he still cared, and he was the only thing that made my day remotely tolerable, between the beatings, mean teachers and the growing longing to see Bobby.

This was my favorite chapter to write—at least, my favorite so far. I love the liberating feeling you get when the end of the school comes, and I wanted to illustrate this feeling in Jess’s perspective, especially when his school life is more like torture than anything else. Please review, dear readers. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work.