Crush (5 page)

“Church,” Kirsty whispered, as if embarrassed. “My folks were both hyper about the church back in Spokane. My mom has totally lightened up about it now, but…Ugh! It sucked. What about you?”

“We don't go to church,” he said. In fact, he'd probably only been in a church five or six times in his entire life. He attended two Sunday-school classes when he was like six years old, and after that it was just weddings.

“What about friends? I don't see you hanging out with anyone at school.”

“My best friend…”
Only friend
. “…goes to Melling.”
And he thinks you're hot
, Jonathan added to himself.

Jeez, what would David say if he found out he was walking Kirsty home? David had played it
totally cool at the bookstore, like he was just goofing about Kirsty, but what if he really liked her? Would he be pissed or something?

“Was he the guy I saw you with on Saturday?” Kirsty asked.

“I didn't think you even noticed us. But yeah, that's David.”

“Have you guys been friends a long time?”

“About three years,” Jonathan said. “This is the longest my family has lived anywhere, so it seems like a long time, but I guess it's not.”

Kirsty didn't reply. Instead, she looked upward, just like she did at the mall. She kept walking, her eyes directed at the sky.

Again Jonathan noticed she looked almost pretty, her face bathed in night, certainly not the eight David suggested but a good, solid seven. And again he noticed the odd feeling that came to him when he looked at her. It was almost like he had forgotten something but was on the verge of remembering it, a kind of vague recognition.

A gust of wind startled him out of his reverie, and he returned his attention to the sidewalk.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, because the silence was getting to him. It was a stupid
question, but he had to say something.

Kirsty lowered her chin and turned to face him. She wore a shy smile. “I'm just looking at the night,” she said quietly.

“Oh, okay.”

At Kirsty's house, a two-story brick place with big windows in front, they paused on the sidewalk.

“Thanks for walking me home,” Kirsty said, sticking out her hand.

Jonathan was relieved to see the gesture. For a couple of heart-stopping seconds, he'd wondered if Kirsty considered this chance meeting a kind of date, wondered if she might expect a kiss or something. He knew that was just his imagination going into hyperdrive during the quiet stretches of their walk, but still, he felt relief knowing nothing was expected of him but a quick joining of the hands.

He took her hand, squeezed lightly, and a shock, like static electricity, crackled along his palm.

Kirsty jumped a little and laughed again. “Magic,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah,” Jonathan replied, feeling more uncomfortable than he had all night.

“So, you want to get together again sometime?”
Kirsty asked. “For just like coffee or something. Not a date, I mean. It's just good to talk to somebody my own age.”

“Sure,” Jonathan said, though what he was thinking came closer to
I don't think so
.

“Cool,” Kirsty said. “Thanks again for walking me home.”

Then she turned away and walked toward her house.

In a second-floor window, Jonathan noticed a silhouette, the dark form of a woman peering out between two white curtains. Kirsty's mother, he assumed.

Still, the shadowy shape unnerved him, just as Kirsty herself had done. He took a step back on the sidewalk. At the end of the path, Kirsty opened her front door and stepped into the dark foyer.

Jonathan turned to walk home. He was already wondering how he would explain this encounter to David.

“You were scammin' on my woman?” David asked, mock anger edging his voice as it rolled over the phone line. “That's cold, brah.”

Jonathan laughed. He rolled over on his bed and stared at the ceiling, glad his friend wasn't really upset. “Yeah, well, I'm a chick magnet. They can't stay away.”

“Whatever. The important question is what did she think of me?”

“She thinks you're a god. Way out of her league.”

“True,” David said. “Too true. I knew she was way into me. SWIM, baby, SWIM. So, what's this Kirsty like? Tell me what I'm missing.”

That wasn't an easy question. Jonathan still didn't know what to make of the girl. She seemed nice, certainly not a geek, and no way was she stuck up. It was that feeling he had when he was with her—the sense that he was forgetting something—that totally messed with his head. And he knew it was probably just being full-on freaked out by speaking with a member of the opposite sex, a rare occurrence at best. But it wasn't like he thought she was hot. She didn't intimidate him in that way. He didn't really know what to tell David.

He settled for “She's okay, I guess.”

“I'm translating that to mean freak, and not the good kind.”

“No,” Jonathan said. “She's cool. I mean, I was all pissed off with Mom, so I bailed. Then I saw Toby the Scab at Perky's, reminding me why my life sucked so thoroughly. Kirsty just kind of showed up. It wasn't like anything was wrong with her. I just didn't have my mojo flowing.”

“Jonny Boy,” David said, “you have no mojo. I say that as a friend. You are mojo-impaired. You're mojo-less. You lack da MO…JO.”

“Like you're any better?”

“I am the Mojo Master. Kiss my ring, bitch.”

Jonathan broke up laughing. He could picture David standing in the middle of his room, one hand on a hip and the other extended, palm down, presenting his fingers and a ring.

“You're totally deluded,” Jonathan said.

“I paint pretty pictures of an ugly world. So, what's the story? Are you going to ask her out? Is Kirsty going to be Jonathan's she-slave or what?”

“No,” he said. “I'm not into her like that.”

“Good,” David said. “You keep feeding the undying flame of Emma worship, and I'll handle Kirsty. That way you won't get hurt when she realizes she can't live without the David.”

“She's all yours.”

“All is going according to plan.”

“You're disturbed,” Jonathan said.

“You don't know the half of it,” David replied.

 

Jonathan lay in bed, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. Unable to sleep, he thought about Kirsty, her plain face somehow more complete, more attractive at night, and he thought about Mr. Weaver. Since Kirsty was in his English lit class with Mr. Weaver (and they did talk about the guy a little), it wasn't a big stretch, this connection. It
was, however, strange. In his mind he was walking with Kirsty, listening to her speak:
I couldn't go in either…I didn't really like the people I saw…My dad scared them away…Strange so many people are out…after what happened to Mr. Weaver
. Then Jonathan pictured Mr. Weaver in his living room—he had no idea why; he certainly didn't know what the teacher's house looked like—and the pudgy Weaver was watching television, drinking a beer from a tall glass. The next moment Mr. Weaver was gasping silently, clawing at his face.
Strange so many people are out
…Then Mr. Weaver was outside, soaring through space, but it wasn't a pleasant flight. He scratched and kicked at the air, his mouth was open as if to scream, but no sound emerged. He hit high up on a tree, his body bending back slightly with the impact. He fell forward, arms and legs dangling, his body perfectly balanced on a thick tree limb.

Jonathan shook the reverie from his mind. It was just too unpleasant, so he decided to think about something else.

That was easy enough.

He thought about Emma O'Neil. Imagined holding her, and this time it wasn't just to comfort her
while she mourned their late English teacher. No, what Jonathan imagined was having met Emma by accident at the mall instead of Kirsty. He saw her smiling, almost mischievous face, hanging before the neon tubes of the ice-cream parlor.

She wore the short red skirt she'd worn two Mondays ago, the fabric smooth and tight to her hips. With the skirt she wore a snug white sweater with short sleeves, a top Jonathan had seen her wear half a dozen times, to breathtaking effect. She didn't say anything at first, just looked at him, noticing him. Finally.

Hey
, Jonathan said, as he had to Kirsty.

Hi
.

What's up
?

Just hanging out. I thought I might find you here
.

Emma stepped up to Jonathan and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned in close to place her lips against his.

Even imagining such a moment made Jonathan blush. He smiled to himself.

He shifted in the bed, rolled over to look at the window.

The wonderful image fled, and Jonathan froze.
Eyes open and staring. His heart beating fast.

A man-shaped shadow fell over the glass. Its darkness was deeper than the night. Somehow solid, it was framed between his open curtains. This wasn't simply a shadow though, because Jonathan could make out eyes, nose, and mouth. They seemed painted on the form. They also seemed furious with him. The lips moved silently, their edges low in a disapproving frown. The smoky eyes darted back and forth, scanning the interior of Jonathan's room.

Childhood fears of the bogeyman flooded back. He felt like a little boy, paralyzed by the knowledge that monsters did exist, and they lived close. This wasn't how he pictured the bogeyman, though. It looked more like the robe of the Grim Reaper, inhabited by a spirit instead of a skeleton. Whatever it was, it scared the hell out of him.

He closed his eyes, attempting to blink away this angry phantom, but it remained on the glass. Sweat popped out on Jonathan's neck. His pulse sounded in his head, a staccato thunder.

Against the glass the shadow rippled. It spread out like liquid, smearing the facial features, making them transparent, so Jonathan could see a corner
of the apartment complex through the form. With another rippling wave it rose, like a manta ray climbing through an ocean current.

Then it glided skyward and was gone.

Jonathan leaped from the bed. Every muscle and nerve sprang and sparked as if he'd been coiled up for hours. His fingers and toes tingled badly, and his stomach felt as if it were filled with ice water.

“Crap,” he said in a high whisper. “Crap. What was that?”

He paced the room, trying to burn off some of his nervous energy, hoping motion would bring some sense, some logical explanation to his frightened mind. He wanted to believe he'd been asleep. It was a dream. A nightmare. A trick of his overactive imagination. But no, he was awake. No foggy remnants of sleep were on him. There had been no moment of time unaccounted for.

He paced faster and ran his hands through his hair, scratching his scalp furiously to release a tingling shower of anxiety down his back.

Tuesdays were always quiet at the bookstore. Usually Jonathan liked it when the place wasn't busy, but tonight the time just seemed to drag. Everything was pretty well stocked and shelved and the few customers roaming through the store apparently knew what they were looking for, because he'd only had one older woman ask him to look up a title: Clive Barker's
Abarat
. They were sold out.

David was acting strange, adding to the night's unease.

On break they sat at the back of the café. David guzzled his coffee and barely said a word. Jonathan knew his friend was distracted, but he also seemed
frustrated, like he'd lost his wallet and was trying to figure out where he'd left it.

“What's up with you?” Jonathan asked.

“Mmmm…,” David hummed, looking into his nearly empty cup. “Nothing. Just tired.”

“Up all night planning world domination?”

“No,” David said. “Just had some things to take care of. Didn't sleep much.”

Jonathan debated telling David about his own sleepless night. He didn't have a clue how he would explain the shadowy thing in his window. There was no way to without sounding like a total loon, so he kept his mouth shut.

“How was school?” David asked, still looking in his cup.

“Good,” Jonathan said. And it was true.

Toby the Scab didn't show up for classes (Tia Graves probably wore him out last night), so Jonathan was spared a locker hug. It was actually kind of funny seeing Ox and Cade in the halls. They saw Jonathan coming, whispered to each other, shrugged. It was like they couldn't figure out what to do to their smaller classmate without Toby's direction. Jonathan found himself grateful for their limited imaginations.

“Did you see Kirsty?” David asked. Now he peered up from his dwindling coffee supply.

“Barely,” Jonathan said. “We said ‘hey' before class, but I didn't see her the rest of the day.”

“Really?” David asked.

His friend sounded cold and annoyed, as if he thought Jonathan was lying to him.
What the hell?

“Yeah,” Jonathan said, cautiously. “
Really
. What's going on, man?”

“Nothing. You're paranoid.”

David again looked up at him, or rather past him. For a second David's eyes lit up, then the spark in them was snuffed out. They went cold.

“Your girlfriend is here,” he said.

Jonathan turned, expecting to see Emma O'Neil stepping onto the mezzanine. Instead, he saw Kirsty Sabine, walking toward the table. She wore the long beige coat and tight black jeans with a plain white sweatshirt. Her hair was brushed smooth and pulled back into a neat ponytail. She smiled and lifted her hand in a low wave.

Jonathan nodded and said, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Kirsty said.

It was when Jonathan turned to introduce a pouting David to Kirsty that he understood his
friend was totally jealous. He was really into Kirsty, and it pissed him off that Jonathan had spent time with her, even though it was totally random.
Crap!

“Kirsty, this is my friend, David.”

“Hey,” David said. “What's up?”

“Just shopping.”

The silence that followed, filled with turmoil and discomfort, weighed a few tons, and all of them rested on Jonathan's shoulders like a couple of marble gargoyles. He looked at Kirsty and then back at David, then back at Kirsty, who looked totally confused and suddenly a little embarrassed.

“Do you need some help finding a book?” Jonathan asked. When he heard his own voice, it sounded full-on rude, so he quickly added, “Or do you want to hang here and have some coffee with us? We're only on break for another five minutes, but…”

“Coffee sounds good,” Kirsty said.

“I'll get it,” Jonathan said. “We get a discount.”

“Thanks. Black is fine.”

With that, Jonathan walked away, and the gargoyles shifted a bit on his shoulders, felt slightly less heavy. Maybe David and Kirsty would hit it off or David might discover he wasn't really inter
ested in her. Jonathan had to do something. David was his only friend, and there was no way he was going to sacrifice that, especially not for a girl he barely knew. Even if he were attracted to her, even if she were Emma O'Neil hot, David was a bud, and you didn't screw a bud over.

Jonathan felt better by the time he got Kirsty's coffee, which was actually free because Myrna, the café cashier, was a burnout and didn't want to calculate the discount and make change. He saw David and Kirsty talking. David was smiling. That was good. Very good.

He put Kirsty's coffee on the table. She thanked him.

“So what are you guys talking about?” he asked.

“David was just telling me how you two met.”

“Oh man, don't tell her that,” Jonathan said.

“I have to,” David explained. “The wheels are already turning and can't be stopped. It's a momentum thing.”

“It's an ass thing.”

“Perhaps we should let Kirsty decide.”

“I want to hear it,” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “Unless you'll be totally pissed?”

“Not
totally
,” Jonathan said.

“Well then,” David announced, “like I said, it was early in the school year, and Jonny Boy here had just transferred in. Back then, all of the cool kids used to go to this place called Coffee. Perky's wasn't open yet, and the place was just a few blocks from the school. In front of Coffee, there was this kind of patio with half a dozen tables, and the Specials—that's what the popular kids call themselves—well, they used to take over that area, and it became this orgy of coffee and cell phones and WiFi, like an office for kids whose job it was to be dickheads. Every day the Specials sent Naomi Mattis ahead to kind of reserve the area.”

“I totally forgot about Naomi,” Jonathan said. “God, she was their full-on slave. Whatever happened to her?”

“She's at Melling now,” David said. “She had about a million dollars' worth of makeover done, and the last operation, which was some kind of chin implant, went wrong. This all happened before I transferred, but people told me she looked totally Resident Evil there for about three months. Everybody slammed on her, but then when her face got fixed, she was excruciatingly hot. So she put together her own group of
Specials, and the nightmare continues.”

“So superficial,” Kirsty said. “Why do people have to make each other so miserable?”

“Because if people were happy,” David said, “advertising wouldn't work.”

“Kids would be jerks without advertising,” Jonathan put in.

“True,” David agreed, arching his eyebrows, giving his round face a strange, surprised expression. “But they now have a hundred new things to be jerks about. Clothes, palm devices, televisions, hair-cuts, cell phones—even water. If you don't have the latest, you're a loser and therefore a target. Advertisers know it. They want us to be unhappy so we'll buy their crap. It's totally documented. But I digress from my story.”

“Our break is just about over,” Jonathan said.

“He thinks he's going to be spared,” David said right to Kirsty.

She laughed.

“Anyway, the Specials were gathered at Coffee, another typical day for the rich and popular, when who should appear on the sacred patio?”

“Jonathan,” Kirsty said.

“Number-one answer,” David replied. He lifted
his cup and poured the last drops of coffee onto his tongue before continuing. “He was a gazelle wandering into a pack of lions.”

“They call that a pride,” Kirsty said. “A group of lions is a pride.”

Her remark startled David for a moment. Jonathan could see the confusion flash across his face, and he understood it. David was used to being the smartest guy in the room. He wasn't used to being corrected, and though he didn't seem angry about it, he was certainly perplexed.

“A pride,” David said. “Right. A pride. Anyway, Gazelle-Jonny wanders into the Specials' pride. And as they say on
Animal Planet
, there could be only one tragic outcome.”

“What happened?” Kirsty asked.

“They tore me apart,” Jonathan said, trying to make light of it, though the memory felt fresh and painful. He remembered those strange, cruel faces circling him—Toby Skabich, Ox and Cade, and a dozen others—asking him questions about where he lived, where he got his clothes, what bands he liked. Their expressions varied from mock interest to rude amusement, and under it all Jonathan felt the hostility of the Specials, felt
their ridicule and their superiority.

“It was like a game show of abuse,” David said, sounding a little too happy about it. “They'd ask him something like ‘Where'd you get those shoes,' right? Making it sound like they were really cool shoes and they wanted to buy a pair. Then Jonathan would answer and they'd all break up laughing.”

My cousin shops there, Tia Graves said. He loves it because it's close to the trailer park where he lives.

“God, that's so mean,” Kirsty whispered.

“Yeah, well, that's what the Specials are all about,” David said. “Anyway, next door to Coffee was this electronics store where they got all the new games at least a week before anyone else in town. I'd just picked up one of the
Silent Hill
games and was walking past Coffee when I heard all the laughing. And there was our poor Jonathan literally backed against a wall with all of these kids around him. He looked scared as hell. He was in over his head. We had geometry together, so I knew his name and I said, ‘Hey, Jonathan, come on, we're going to be totally late.' He didn't know what to make of that, but he saw his escape and he took it.”

“You saved him,” Kirsty said.

“I'm a hero like that,” David said with a laugh.

“Then what happened?”

“We went home and played
Silent Hill
for about seven hours.”

Embarrassed by the story, Jonathan felt the flush on his cheeks. He wanted to talk about something else…anything else. “Hey, we're way late getting back to work,” he said.

“Stewart's out back having a smoke,” David said. “It's all good.”

“Nobody says that anymore.”

“And yet, it was just said, which totally negates your argument.”

David's cell phone rang then. His ringtone, Johnny Cash singing “Hurt,” filled the café.

“Hello. Yeah, mom,” David said. “Who?…No way…Are you kidding? What happened?…How?…No, but Jonathan does. They go to school together…Are you sure?…Yeah, okay…OKAY! I'll come right home after work, don't freak out. You don't have to pick me up…Knock it off. Jesus…Okay…Okay. I'll see you at ten.”

David hung up the phone and set it on the table. He looked dazed. He kept blinking like he had something in his eyes, but the corners of his
mouth were turned up slightly. It was almost a smile.

“What?” Jonathan asked.

“They just pulled Toby Skabich out of the lake,” David said quietly. “It looks like he drowned.”

 

First Mr. Weaver and now Toby,
Jonathan thought.

Two of his high-school tormentors—two in a week—were dead. It was just too weird. And Jonathan felt surprisingly bad about it. Toby was a kid, and yeah, he was mean and rude and totally self-absorbed. But he was just a kid. He was familiar, a part of Jonathan's life, albeit a full-on unfortunate part. Same with Mr. Weaver. He was also part of Jonathan's life. A page in a book. A brick in a wall. An element mixed into the formula of Jonathan's being. Now, there was emptiness, the page torn, the brick removed, the formula incomplete.

Jonathan sat on the edge of his bed. His mom was on the phone in the television room, crying to her sister. His dad did
something
again. Jonathan didn't know what it was. He'd stopped paying attention a long time ago.

He stood up from the bed and went to the closed curtains covering his window. He wouldn't
pull them back, didn't want to see what nightmare might be waiting beyond the glass. He was nervous. He didn't know what to do or feel.

You thought about killing them.

So what? Everybody thinks about that kind of junk.

You won't be insulted in class again. You'll never get thrown into another locker. Your life just got a whole lot easier.

That doesn't matter.

It's all that matters.

Jonathan shook this disturbing voice from his head. It was late and he should have been trying to sleep, but after the dark phantom the night before and the news about Toby, he'd never get to sleep now. He wanted to take a walk, to get out of the house. His mother's teary voice bled into his room. But outside wasn't safe. Not these days.

Mr. Weaver was murdered and hung over a tree branch.

Toby was murdered…

You don't know that. He could have killed himself, put his perfect life behind him.

…and dropped in a lake.

It could have been an accident
.

But it wasn't an accident, and Jonathan knew it. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, the news would report that Toby had been murdered and discarded in the lake. No accident. No suicide. He knew it.

And he was afraid. Who would be next?