Compulsion (8 page)

Amy laughs. Then Tanya laughs. Hollow. Mean.

I try to blow it off, but it bugs me. Why do chicks have to do that? I look at Tanya again and all I see is ugly. Plus the whole idea of being voted Most Forgettable makes somebody unforgettable, undermining the entire insult. But I don’t say anything.

Maybe Mera’s right and she doesn’t have enough calories to keep her brain functioning. Her collarbone juts out like a shelf with a ripple of ribs that fan like a grooved shell below it. I don’t think you’re supposed to see somebody’s ribs from the front. Suddenly all I want to do is fill her up with protein smoothies from Comma Coffee.

My sympathy doesn’t linger, because now Amy and Tanya are talking about how weird Mera smells.

“Enough,” I say. “Jusst. Enough.”

Tanya and Amy stop laughing and do that oh-my-God gaping-mouth stare chicks are really good at. I guess I broke some kind of code or something.

Mera’s cheeks are blotchy red in the cold wind. “Mera!” I holler out to her.

“What?” She turns to me, throwing her backpack in the passenger seat of her dad’s old meat van. She has a bumper sticker that says I
’
VE
CHAFED
IN
PLACES
THAT
YOU
’
VE
NEVER
HEARD
OF with a picture of a worn-out pair of running shoes on it.

We’ve had lots of laughs about the bumper sticker. Now I feel pretty bad about that.

“Enjoy Bourdain!” I wave.

She smiles. “You too,” she says.

She opens the door and scoots in, rolling down the window. When she drives by us, she waves at me. I feel like I have a little piece of me back—something I’ve been missing.

“Like, are you guys
friends
?” Amy asks.

Before I can answer, Luc says, “We all grew up together.” He runs his fingers through his damp hair.

Amy says, “Sorry. I didn’t know she was your friend.”

“Should it make a difference?” I say.

Tanya and Amy look away. Tanya scuffs her shoe across the pavement.

“Shit, are we gonna stand here all day doing the After-School Special thing and staring at the asphalt or get some juice? I’m freezing.” Luc flashes his Colgate smile and rolls his eyes at me. “Chicks are like that,” he’d say. He’d know. He’s hitting a different one every other weekend.

I clear my throat. “Let’s go,” I say, forcing myself to smile at Tanya, trying to look past her words even though they’re still hanging out there in the cold air.

She says them. We all think them. Maybe she’s okay and we’re all hypocrites. Christ, I don’t know.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Amy says. We pile into Luc’s car and head to Comma Coffee.

I open my wallet. “Ah, Christ. I don’t have cash.”

Luc shrugs. “It’s on me.” Amy titters and does some kind of swoony thing she probably saw in a chick flick. Admittedly, it looks pretty hot. I glance at Tanya and she’s smiling at me.

Luc looks in the rearview mirror and says, “I’ve got you covered too, Tanya.”

She smiles and blushes.

Shit. He’s doing that Latin gentleman thing. Tomorrow, though, he’ll hit me up for my drink, Tanya’s, and probably make me chip in for gas. Cheap-ass. He looks at me through the rearview mirror and grins, mouthing,
“Guevón.”

Comma Coffee is packed. We find a table in the back corner. Tanya orders black coffee. Amy, too. Luc and I each have extra-large caramel-pump caffeine-blasters. I try to coax Tanya into eating a bagel. Anything. She smiles, bats her eyes like Amy did earlier, but they’re so fucking big I swear I feel a breeze coming from her lashes and hear a weird, winglike whooshing sound. She sips on the bitter black coffee.

Luc, Amy, and Tanya talk about the game, school, pep rallies, winter dances. About nothing. I nod. It’s like I’m on autopilot, just needing to get to my room, someplace safe where I won’t have to listen to anybody anymore. The pain in my head is constant, and I don’t even try to keep the spiders away anymore. Sometimes the dull throbbing feels better when I let it happen.

Talk, talk, talk until they bore themselves into silence. Plus Luc has to be home by dinner, leaving him limited hookup time with Amy. He kicks me under the table, and I guzzle my drink. I can literally feel the blood vessels expanding in my head, the stabbing pain of electrified nerves. I grip my head between my hands. “Brain freeze. Brain freeze. Jesus Christ!”

Everybody laughs. I do too, because it feels great to have a headache like this—one that will go away without numbers or time or counting. It feels so
normal
.

“You can take the caffeine-blasters to go, you know,” Luc says. “Geez. I can’t take you
anywhere
.” But he’s laughing. This is something he can relate to.

“Yeah. And have Dad see me with this. No thanks.”

Luc drives me home first. I avoid making eye contact with Tanya, which is pretty hard considering her eyes take up half her face. Luc clears his throat. I’m cutting into his feel-up time.

Tick-tock.

“See you,” I say to Tanya, and jump out of the car, dodging what looked like a major going-for-the-landing open-lip pucker.
God, I’m an asshole. Who wouldn’t want some of
that
?

I turn to the streetlight. It doesn’t sputter. I sigh, tap the flamingo, and open the door.

Here’s Jakey.
I feel my eyes get buggy.

Christ. I’ve got to lay off the caffeine.

Thirty-One Paying Debts

Thursday, 6:19 p.m.

Six nineteen. Six times nine is fifty-four minus one is fifty-three. OK.

The table is set. The house smells like heated Styrofoam and boiled meat. I hear the beep of the microwave. Dad puts a plastic plate with plastic food in front of Kasey. She carefully scoops out the food on her plate so the mashed potatoes and peas are parallel to each other with the supposed turkey breast on top. It looks a little like a shrine.

Dad smiles at Kasey and sits next to her. I feel like I’m interrupting something. Like sitting down will shatter the normalness.

I don’t belong. One foot in, one foot out.

“Hey,” I say, dropping my backpack by the clock. “I’m starved.”

Dad motions to the microwave—billions of invisible waves bouncing off each other to heat the plate of food. Pots bubble on the stovetop. The oven has two pans baking. The rice cooker, Crock-Pot, and vegetable steamer are plugged in. Everything else smells better than the microwaved plastic.

It beeps and I take it out, plopping the tray on the table, sitting across from Kasey. When I peel off the plastic, the steam burns my fingers, “Shit!”

Dad looks up, glowering.

“Excuse me. So, um, what’s with the Food Network here?”

“Mom didn’t put the meat away. It defrosted. Dad and I have been cooking since he got home because you can’t refreeze meat or you’ll die of Ebola. We’ve prepared pot roast, pork chops, ground chuck, chicken, beef stew, pork sausage, and . . .” She looks at Dad.

“Turhamken.”

“Yeah. But we didn’t cook the turhamken. It’s just in the fridge. When everything’s done and cooled, we’ll freeze it. Then for the next month, every meal we eat will be defrosted and nuked.” Kasey forks her peas, one by one. “And you wonder why I prefer Papa Murphy’s.”

Dad smiles when he looks at Kasey, like she’s the thing he’s done right.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask, trying to swallow the powdery potatoes.

“In bed,” Kasey says.

“Oh.”

“Since, like, before I got home.”

I look down at my plate—the pea juice running into the potatoes. “Oh.”

“Mr. Hartman phoned,” Dad says.

I wait for the blow. But that’s the thing. He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t go into some kind of speech about fiscal responsibility—economy of time and money. It’s like making a fist but never throwing the punch. The tension is always here, just never the release.

Growing up, Luc only ever got the release before his dad left. Mera and I used to help him pretend that it was all right. And I wish they could help me pretend today.

If you can’t see blood, it doesn’t hurt.

Inhale. Wait for Saturday. After Saturday everything will be right.

Time stands still until Dad continues to talk. Kasey’s waiting, her fork suspended over the last few peas on her plate. Four.

I look away from her plate and stare down at mine.

“Mr. Hartman called. Something about you and Mera getting trapped in a walk-in freezer?” Dad says.

“Yeah. It’s no big deal. Some old guy was there and opened the door up for us.” I steady myself against the dining-room table, squeezing its edge so nobody can see how much I’m trembling.
Shake it off. Fuck
.

“And if the old guy hadn’t been there?” Dad asks.

What if?

Dad plays too.

“You two could’ve gotten hurt. You could’ve died.”

I look at Dad. He looks angry. Or is that concern?

“You’re not gonna sue or anything?” I can’t imagine Dad doing the whole lawsuit thing.

“No. But I’m not happy with the situation and Mr. Hartman knows it. There’s absolutely no reason for you to be doing their job. I understand,” he continues, “why you were running late. But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.”

Exhale
. “Yeah. No big deal.” I almost tell him how freaked out I was, how it reminded me of the night Mom left us alone. I just want him to be my dad sometimes. “I’ll tell you next time.”

“There won’t be a next time, Jacob.”

“Yeah. You know what I mean.”

Dad nods. We eat the rest of dinner in silence, crumpling up our used trays in the garbage. Kasey rinses her plate off and puts it in the dishwasher. Dad ruffles her hair, checking on the various food concoctions. The steam fogs the windows.

“We’ll take care of the rest of the food, Dad. So you can get to work in the garage,” I say.

Dad looks at me.

I nod.

He pulls three timers off the counter and sets them on the table. It’s like listening to a time bomb countdown symphony—except nothing will explode in the end.

Dad heads to the garage, leaving Kasey and me on cafeteria duty. We pull out our homework. For a while there’s nothing but the sound of our pencils scribbling across the page.

Tick-tock, tick-tock
.

The timers are out of sync. I pick them up and shove them in the couch cushions.

Kasey stares at me.

“They’re distracting,” I say.

“You’re so weird.”

“Because I don’t like the sound of the timers?”

“Weird-o,” she mutters, showing incredible restraint not tapping into her “crackers” category.

“Yesterday, we established my weird is mysteriously cool,” I say, and cringe because I can hear the shrill note in my voice. Being me is
not
cool, and I think Kasey must know that. How can she not?

Plus since yesterday, I can’t get rid of the webs—it’s harder to, anyway. I just need a few days and things will go back to normal. It just hasn’t been this bad for a while. I need Saturday, the game, the win. Three. Perfect number three.

“Now it’s just irritating,” she says.

I swallow and say, “K, I’m just kind of distracted, I guess.”

“Whatever,” she says. “Mr. Count-to-a-Thousand-Hold-Your-Breath-Before-Leaving. It’s not like Dad asks that much of you. It’s really shit you spent the grocery money on some toothpick chick at a burger joint. I’ve been stuck cooking since three o’clock this afternoon because said groceries defrosted.”

“Mom said she’d put the meat away,” I say.

“Yeah. Mom says a lot of things, doesn’t she? Just like you.”

“Sorry.” I push my hair out of my eyes and tuck it behind my ears. “Really. I am.” She can’t even begin to imagine how sorry I am.

I think she can tell I’m pretty run down because she sits next to me. “So who’s the lucky girl?”

“What girl?”

“Burger-joint-grocery-money girl.”

“Tanya Reese.”

“Tanya Reese? Tan-yeah Reese?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s . . . ” Kase says.

“She’s what?” I ask.

“You know. Like, do you
know
her?”

“
Know
her? In that biblical knowing way? Or in the way we were in Mr. Nutting’s fourth-grade class together. She used to sell Girl Scout cookies,” I say, surprised I’m defending Tanya.

“Well, what kind of badge is she working toward now? Virgin crusaders? Are you her last good deed?”

“Kase.” I hold up my hand. “Don’t.”

She knows she’s crossed the line. “Sorry.”

“Fine.” I close my books.

“You got lots of homework?” Kase asks, breaking the silence.

“It can wait. It’s for Monday. So tell me about your day,” I say after swallowing down the knot that lodged in my throat, trying to bring the routine back.

Kasey complains about Mr. Gorski’s comb-over and how her friend Lisa has a crush on me which she’s totally pissed about because that’s not cool and breaks some kind of code the group has written up and signed. Then she mentions this party Mario Gomez is throwing this weekend. Mario’s place is famous for a massive loft upstairs, four or five storage closets, perfect for getting laid.

“No.” There’s no way I’m taking Kasey to the closest thing to a teenage brothel for her first rager.

“It’s for maintenance, Jake. Really. It’s not like I’m going to drink or anything. Plus it’ll be fun. I’m going with Jessica and Marcy. I’ll take my cell. C’mon. You’ve gotta back me up on this one.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Not at Mario’s.”

“It’s just a stupid party,” she insists. “The
whole school
is going.”

“I can’t be worried about that kind of shit this weekend. Another weekend. And I’ll go with you all. Just to hang out. But not now. I’ve been to parties up there, and it’s not a cool scene.” I haven’t actually been to parties there. But I’ve heard enough about them to know Kase shouldn’t go.

“You
owe
me.”

One of the buzzers dings from under the couch cushion. “Which one is this for?” I ask, pulling it out.