Jeremy Stone (9 page)

What Happened Next

Was we

got caught.

Two hours later,

Mr. McLeod had us called to the vice principal's office.

Our teacher sat there with his arms folded.

Ms. Goldworthy, the VP,

looked like she had eaten some bad yogurt.

McLeod kind of went into a rant. He was enraged at both of us.

Paper Clip looked meanly at me.

He thought I did this on purpose to nail

his ass to the wall.

Ms. G wanted to “get to the bottom of this.”

McLeod did too.

Jimmy was nowhere around.

The big question is, Ms. G said,

who copied from whom?

(You don't usually hear anyone actually use the word “whom” much anymore, I was thinking.)

Paper Clip sat sullen.

He was used to getting blamed for

things.

You could tell he had a strategy for

times like this:

don't own up to anything

and blame someone else

and say you are the victim.

Me, I confessed,

said it was me who cheated.

(Well, I did. I didn't know the answers. Jimmy had given them to me.)

Is that true? McLeod asked.

Yes. Absolutely.

I'm sorry.

Thomas looked baffled.

Ms. G nodded a kind of approval. Have you

cheated before? she asked.

No. never. (The truth.)

Why now? she wanted to know.

Well, I began, it was this whole European history thing. I kept wondering why we weren't studying

something more important.

(And I wasn't sure where I was going.)

Mr. McLeod suddenly looked up.

Oh, he said sympathetically, you mean like …

I sat silently.

Um, he continued, like the history of

y
our
people.

I nodded.

Then there was just this big load of silence

sitting on us all.

Thomas now nodded as well. He too acted like

we'd been cheated out of learning about the

true history of Aboriginal North Americans.

He'd become a Native rights advocate

in twelve seconds.

Well, Ms. Goldworthy finally said,

I think that if Jeremy promises

not to

ever cheat again

we should

put this behind us

and

we should all

move on.

Which we did.

I still got the F.

But I had turned the corner

with Paper Clip.

Pretty soon,

it would be time

to introduce him

to Jenson.

Caitlan in the Hall

She had heard I'd been called to the office,

grabbed me as I walked out.

Thomas turned and looked at her,

at me.

He looked baffled, befuddled, bewildered.

Jeremy, what's going on? Why were you in there with

Thomas?

What did he do now? Are you okay? Are you in trouble?

Did you try to kick his ass? I need to know.

I had lost my speech again, just then. She was tugging at my arm. All I knew was that Caitlan cared.

She was worried about me.

This girl cared. When I could muster enough oxygen in my lungs

I tried to explain.

That doesn't make sense, she said. You let him copy?

You took the blame? You covered for him?

Yes, yes, and yes. It was Jimmy's idea.

Jimmy. Who's Jimmy?

Well … sure, I opened up and told her about Jimmy.

It's all part of the plan, I said.

Truth is, I wasn't the type of person who made plans. Things happened or didn't happen. I just usually went along for the ride.

Jimmy begins with a J, Caitlan said to me.

So?

Jimmy, Jeremy, Jenson. Three names

beginning with J.

So?

It just seems curious, she said. Very curious.

Can you introduce me to Jimmy?

No, no, and no,

Jimmy insisted.

I guess not, I told Caitlan.

Why not?

I don't know. Jimmy says no.

He's only eleven

and shy around girls.

I noticed that Caitlan was wearing a long-sleeved blouse buttoned at the wrists.

How are you doing? I asked.

I'm hanging in there. But it's very dark inside.

Inside me, I mean.

What about Jenson?

Soon, I said.

I promise.

Soon. (Then we stopped walking.)

Did you hear about the earthquake in South

America? she asked suddenly.

No.

I saw the pictures on TV. It was awful.

Probably not a good idea to watch that stuff. There's a lot of trouble in the world. Hard enough to …

(She cut me off.) I can't help but watch.

I take in other people's pain.

It's what I do.

I had a couple of my own psychology textbooks of advice for her about that. Not the professional type of books, just the Jeremy Stone authored versions with advice like: don't go there, don't take on others' suffering unless you can do something about it, don't watch the news ever, don't increase your own darkness with the world's catastrophes, etc., etc.

I gotta go to physics, she said.

We're doing Einstein today. I love Einstein.

(At least that was positive.)

I wondered why she was taking physics. It didn't seem like a Caitlan thing to do.

I love Einstein, too, I said. I really like his hair

and his ideas.

She was walking away and I tried to keep up. For this brief instant, her darkness was gone.

Like someone

had switched on

a light in a very

dark room.

But

there

was

something

not quite

right about

mixing earthquakes

and Einstein.

Waiting for Paper Clip

I thought it would be better

if he came to me

rather than me trying to approach him.

It didn't take long.

He found me by the creek. I had just hauled out

an old truck tire

and was splattered with black, stinky muck.

He was alone. (No Tyler, no Robert)

You are one crazy, totally insane

piece of work, PC said.

I was rubbing black oily mud from my hands onto my pants. (Something about the feel of wet sticky mud on my hands though felt good, not bad. Something from a previous life maybe. )

I did what I had to do, I said.

Who made you do it?

So, for the second time

I explained about Jimmy.

He talks to you?

(Thomas seemed genuinely curious.

There was no hostility in him now—

a completely changed Clip.)

He was an old chum. From when I was little. And then he got sick and died.

And now he comes back to haunt you?

Not haunt.

What then?

Advise.

Oh. (Thomas didn't know

what to say next, I guess.)

I took the leap.

So does Jenson.

Who?

Jenson Hayes, you know?

A puzzled look again. Not a clue.

I was thinking of Jimmy's plan.

This was the next step right?

What should I do?

I put my muddied hand to my cheek and rubbed the

mud in.

But maybe it was too soon.

But it
had
to be soon. Caitlan would lose interest in

Einstein

and go back to watching earthquake victims and

thinking about Jenson.

I know what happened, I said.

I know why Jenson killed himself.

Who the fuck is Jenson?

(Some loss of cool on PC's part.)

Jenson Hayes, I repeated.

A kid in your class,

hung out with Caitlan.

I stay far away from that crazy bitch.

(He was rattled again.)

And I never knew anyone named Jenson.

Okay, I told myself. I pushed things this far. He doesn't want to own up. I could understand he was covering up what happened. Didn't want to get involved.

Thomas Heaney took a deep breath.

Jeremy, he said, go home and get cleaned up.

You look like you've seen a ghost.

Mud and Mom

My mom took one look at me. You got into a fight, didn't you?

No, I was at the creek.

Look at your face, your pants. Jeremy, sometimes I think you'll never grow up.

My mom found a towel, wet it, and started to clean

my face.

I didn't smell any cigarettes or booze on her breath.

When you were born, she told me, you arrived way too early.

I knew this story but did not want to stop her.

The doctors didn't think you'd live

and they kept telling me to prepare myself

in case you didn't.

But I wanted you to live so badly.

You were so tiny and in an incubator

and your father and I would stand there leaning over

and listen to your breathing—a faint gurgling sound—

and sometimes you would stop—I don't know what it was—

it was like you'd stop, you were giving up,

and I'd say, Please God, let him take

another breath.

And you did.

And then you were home with us,

not healthy, but home

and I promised God

I would

clean up

my act.

But I

didn't exactly

do that.

And

God

was

kind

anyway.

Now, go take a bath.

God in the Bathtub

I hadn't thought much about God for a while. But in the bathtub, with the hot water running in, I thanked God for allowing me to live as a baby. And I wondered where I would be now if I had not lived through those early premature days of being alive. Maybe I'd be a tree in a forest or a rock in a clean running stream. Or another person in another time and place. An Old Soul on his next adventure.

Maybe I had been close to death or actually died and come back all those times I stopped breathing. I held my breath now and slipped down into the warm bath water. I held my eyes tightly shut and waited for all the oxygen to burn up in my lungs and waited for answers to come.

But they didn't.

Only pictures:

the sun,

the light filtering green through spring leaves,

and then black space with a bunch of patterns of many colors.

I couldn't recognize the patterns exactly

but I think I saw symbols

like the ones my people

used to carve into rocks.

And then I saw

the sun again.

And surfaced and took

a deep breath.

And it was quiet in my head: I was alone.

No Jenson.

No Jimmy.

No Old Man.

Alone with my thoughts,

which told me

something

was not

quite

right.