Compulsion (18 page)

The games are over.

They don’t need my numbers anymore.

The magic.

They’ve got it, so I need to stay with them. Maybe with them I won’t need the numbers either. Maybe with them I can be
normal
.

B’Sghetti’s has a huge Carson Soccer banner hanging in the window. I sit facing Carson Street with the clock to my left. I can just see it out of my peripheral vision so I have to turn my back a little more; it’s gone. Behind me. The numbers are gone.

Tonight I’m partying.

Bowls of salad are brought to us with steaming plates piled high with pasta and sauce. Luc passes the food to me so I can serve myself first. His eyes flash something—something different.

Pity?

No way. There’s
no fucking way
Luc feels sorry for me. When I look back at him, though, the look is gone. He’s just Luc.

I’m paranoid.

The restaurant is packed with half the school. We devour the food. I have three helpings, then sit back to wait for dessert. The scouts sit at a table in the corner.

Coach calls them over and introduces them to me. They both say they’ll be calling the following week when things settle down.

“Great game, Jacob,” says the one with acne scars and bright red hair. His shirt fits tight across his chest. I can almost hear the buttons screaming,
Hold on! Hold on!

But buttons don’t scream.

I rub my eyes and nod. “Thanks,” I say, and pretend to not notice Luc bristling beside me.

There is absolutely nothing remarkable about the other scout except for the Maryland pin on his tie. That’s enough to make any soccer player in the country pay attention. He holds out his hand. “Good game, Mr. Martin. We’ll be talking next week.”

“Sure,” I say, and turn back to my pie.

Pie.

I love pie. A triangular piece of happiness. Three sides. Symmetrical. Everything works, eating a piece of pie.

I take my last bite and chew three times on my left, two on my right, then swallow, taking my napkin from my lap and placing it on the plate dead center. I put my silverware on top, starting with my knife, then fork, then spoon, and push the plate away from me two inches.

The table explodes in applause. “It’s about time, man,” Luc says. “We thought you’d never be done.”

I didn’t even notice that everybody else’s plates had been cleared away and Coach was sipping a cup of coffee. The players pound the table and start to chant, “Speech! Speech! Speech! Coach Sanchez has the floor! Speech! Speech!”

Coach stands amidst the thunder of applause and smiles, trying to keep his lip from quivering. “I’m proud of you,” he says. “All of you.” Then he sits down and crosses his arms in front of him.

Great speech.

Then Luc talks about what it’s meant to be on the team and be the team’s captain. His voice swells with pride when he says, “Third championship in a row. Good luck next year without me.”

The team pounds the table, silverware jingling across. I reorganize my plate and silverware more times than I want to count.

It’s over. Time to go. So I pile into Luc’s car, this time with Amy and Tanya along for the ride. Luc turns the radio up fourteen notches.

I dig my fingernails into my legs and work the numbers to be okay.

Fourteen. Four plus one is five. OK. Four minus one is three. OK.

But it’s still fourteen.

Not OK.

“Where to?” Luc asks, his hand working its way up Amy’s thigh at lightning speed.

“Mario’s,” both Tanya and Amy say at the same time. “Like, where else?” Amy says.

Luc looks at me in the rearview window and raises his eyebrow.

“Mario’s,” I choke out and turn away from the radio, trying to ignore the pain that’s creeping up my neck.

I tap the cell phone in my pants pocket. I’ll just call Kase later—just to check on her.

Because today I’m normal.

One Hundred Seven Comfort Zone

Saturday, 9:17 p.m.

Nine seventeen.

I stare at the watch face and twirl it around my wrist so I can’t see it. Habit. Just a habit.

We can hear the thrum of the bass about a mile away. Luc says, “Yeah. This isn’t gonna last long. Mario’s such a dumbass.”

I flip open my cell phone.

“What’s up,
guevón
?”

“Just got to check on Kase,” I say.

“That’s so sweet.” Tanya swoons.

Kase answers all giggly. There’s lots of noise in the background. “Where are you?” I ask.

“Watching movies at Marcy’s, okay, Jake?” Kasey slurs her words.

“Are you drunk?”

“No, Jake.”

“K, what’s going on?”

“I’m perfect, big bro.”

“‘Big bro?’ What?” I try to not sound too much like Dad and not too much like the psycho me that’s ready to ooze out all over the place. I say, “Okay, tell me about your day.” I need to hear something,
anything
. I need to get things back to normal,
my
normal, just for a second.

“Call you later,” she says. The line goes dead.

Call you later.

Before I have a chance to call her back, Tanya’s dragging me out of the car. We park a couple blocks away and walk with the forming crowd toward Mario’s. He’s sitting outside on the porch on a lounge chair wearing swimming trunks and a Hawaiian lei. “Get lei’d, guys,” he says.

So original.

A couple of football players man the door. “Nice job, gentlemen,” they say when we walk in, draping flowers around our necks.

“You rocked, Martin,” says Filpatrick. He’s easily the biggest guy in school and could be a total jerk—football player, homecoming king, student-Body president, advanced classes, way too perfect, so he’s gotta be the school asshole who steals lunch money from the science club. But he’s not. He’s a great guy.

We shake hands and he steps away from the front door, doing a little bow. “VIPs tonight, guys. Live it up. No cover for you.”

“Thanks,” I say.

He and Luc embrace—two captains, two great guys. “Ladies first,” Luc says, and steps aside for Amy and Tanya to go ahead.

Amy glares at me and clears her throat. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” I move away from the front door.

Luc rolls his eyes. “Nice,
caballero
, real nice.”

I shrug and walk into a fog of pure stench: fermented
something
, sickly sweet perfume, and the musty smell of hormones. The smoke coming from the basement is definitely not burning oregano. And all of a sudden I don’t want to touch anything. Everything seems filthy, seedy.

Like everything here will infect me with some kind of flesh-eating bacteria.

My stomach churns. I shove my hands into my pockets to avoid looking at the time.

I don’t need it.

Mario’s mom’s dishes chatter in the china closet in time to the music. Luc pushes me forward and we move to where everyone’s dancing, stopping at the bathroom to get a cup full of red fruity shit from the tub.

I squat down and stare at the tub.

People are drinking stuff that comes from a bathtub.

Bathtub uses: cleaning disgusting filth off sweaty bodies, pubic hair catchers, sex, and now red passion juice.

Luc shoves a cup in my hands, the sticky liquid sloshing over the sides.
“Salud!”
he says, and steers me toward what looks like the heart of mayhem. Lindsay Jones is passed out on the coffee table where a group of kids are playing poker, littering her body with the chips. Every now and again somebody leans down and says, “Yep. Still breathing.”

We weave around tangled couples and step over some kid’s underwear. The only thing I can think about is premature ejaculation.

Premature ejaculation. Stained pants and underwear.

Will I do that?

No.

I can do this. This is what normal does. Normal goes to parties and makes out and gets a hand job. Normal.

And the pain returns to the back of my neck, the webs are being woven, and I begin to feel the fog.

I glance at my watch. Just curious. Nothing more.

9:49

Nine forty-nine. Nine minus four is five plus nine is fourteen minus four is ten minus nine is one. Fuck.

I rub my eyes, sure I see Kasey with a group of friends heading upstairs. “Kasey!” I holler, pushing through the crowd to get to her. “What are you doing here?”

Kasey giggles.

“Fuck, Kase. I told you
not
to come here.” The guy who was holding her elbow disappears into the bobbing dancers. I crane my neck to get a good look at him, but everybody looks the same. “Goddamnit.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” Kasey says in a half-drunken stupor.

I grab the red cup out of her hand and dump the contents into a planter.

“Jake,” Luc says, “lighten up. We’re all here to look out for her.”

“I don’t need
anybody
to look out for me.” She says this while stumbling backward into Marcy and her gaggle of friends.

“You,” I say, “sit here. In this corner. You don’t move. And when I say it’s time to go, we go.”

Luc waves Kalleres and Grundy over.

“Babysitting? Fuck no, Luc,” Grundy says.

“You’re juniors. I’m a senior. You take care of Kasey. Got it?”

Some guy with them smirks.

I grab his collar and slam him against the wall. “Don’t even
think
about it, or I’ll kill you. Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

“Lighten up, man,” Grundy says. “We’ve got her, okay? Go have fun for once, already.”

Kasey’s friends do a synchronized “Oooh-ahhh-oooh” sound.

“Yeah. And you wonder why nobody asks me out. I’m Crazy Jake Martin’s little sister.”

They all sit in a corner near the staircase. Kalleres and Grundy pull up folding chairs and sit in front of the girls. Luc pushes me back into the party and the wall of dancers.

Crazy Jake Martin.

The webs spin faster, wrapping around my nerve cells.

No. Nononononononono.

I look around. I’m not screaming. But this isn’t supposed to be. Today I was magic. Today I gave it all up for them—to make things right.

Fuck.

Thick webs coil around my temple arteries, strangling them with poison—covering my brain. I’ve gotta work out the numbers before I see the auras. I look around and push between people, trying to make my way to a free beanbag in the corner near an open window.

And there she is: Mera Hartman.

At a party.

She’s wearing tight jeans, just-right-tight, and a soft green sweater. She comes and sits next to me on the beanbag, and I feel a gush of relief. The pain recedes.

“Who’re you here with?” I ask.

She looks around. “From the looks of it, half the high school, all inebriated and ready to do things they hope to God won’t get put in the yearbook.”

I laugh. “You came alone?”

“Technically, yes. But I’m not alone now.”

“Wow. Aren’t you breaking some kind of major social code that dictates that one should not go to a gathering of drunk people alone?”

She laughs. “If you haven’t caught on, I’m not big on social codes.”

That’s what makes Mera an offense to nine-tenths of the student body: She’s fearless. Nobody in high school should be so confident—so real. No masks. No hiding behind anything. It’s unsettling.

“Good game,” she says, interrupting my thoughts.

“Perfect,” I say.

“Well, I wouldn’t go
that
far.”

That bothers me. It
was
perfect. That’s why I’m normal.

“Almost perfect,” she says.

Almost won’t work.

Fuck
.

I try to focus on
now
. My mind begins to reel back, though, through the tape of the day, back to the game.
Where was it not perfect?

Mera raises her glass. “Cheers.”

“You drinking that stuff?” I ask.

“Are you kidding? But if you carry a half-empty cup around in your hand, nobody will ask you about it.”

“Good tip. You come to lots of these things?”

“Obviously more than you.”

“Well, that’s not too hard to do. This is my second party.” I scream to her over the noise of the party, and a couple of people look our way. I can feel my face get warm.

“No way,” Mera says.

“Way,” I say.

“I’m glad you’re here, then,” Mera says. “I’m glad I came.”

“Me too,” I say.

“Me too, as in you’re glad
you’re
here or you’re glad
I
came?”

“Both, I guess.” A giggling sophomore falls on top of us. Mera and I push her up on her feet, back into the mob of dancers. She’s got about five to ten minutes before she begins puking or totally passes out.

Mera turns to me. “You guess?”

“Honestly? I really don’t want to be here. I’m just trying to do the normal thing. Maintenance.” That’s what Kase would say.

I look over and see Kasey’s friends consoling her. Her shoulders shake with sobs. Tonight we’re breaking all sorts of “rules for normal.”

Mera laughs. “Normal? Maintenance? I read this quote on a napkin once. It said: ‘Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.’”

“Wise napkin, huh?”

“Definitely.”

But she doesn’t know what being me is. And I think about Coach’s speech about truth, looking people in the eye. I turn away.

“Jake, you’re not like them. That’s a good thing, you know,” Mera says.

“How do you know that? That I’m not like them?” I ask.

“Because I’ve known you since I was old enough to know things. A friend once said that to me—a friend I’d forgotten I had.”

I feel like a phony. Because she doesn’t know. Not
really
. Truth is, sometimes all I want is normal. What’s so bad about being like them anyway? They have fun. They party. They live in the world they created; they have control.

I scoot the beanbag closer to the window, thankful for the icy breeze coming through, and start to count red plastic cups, wondering how long I’ll have to be here before I can leave. Mera sits closer and we watch the party like we’d watch a movie in our outside-looking-in, two-dimensional existence.