Flip says that chaos dominates the world. That everything is made up of these things called fractals, which I don't understand, but Flip's brilliant, so I just believe him and he says that with fractals, the ending of something is completely dependent on how it starts. So what if ... What if I'd never bought the video camera? What if I'd never worked at the Burger Joint two summers ago? Would I still have ended up in that alley? And would the world still believe the great lie, maybe the ultimate Fool prank, that Kevin Ross is a hero?
I don't know. I'm not smart enough to know. But I think Leah would probably be dead, if that was the case. So do I have to bear the burden of my guilt to save her? Is that the price I pay?
My head starts to hurt from all of the thinking. Fortunately, Tit interrupts me.
"Who would you do?" he asks. He blows out some smoke and passes his cigarette over to me. The pot and beer are gone, and the two of us are down to two cigarettes, which we're sharing to try to make them last longer. Neither of us feels like getting up to look for the others to bum more smokes.
"What do you mean?"
"C'mon. Of the girls at South Brook. Who's in your top ten?"
I don't want to talk about this. I was enjoying just lying on my back in the cool grass, toked out of my mind on some other cool grass, watching God's billion eyes above.
Flip comes over. He's stone cold sober, which seems funny to me, so I start giggling and Tit joins in. "I'm driving Jedi and Speedo home," he tells us. "I'll be back for you guys in like twenty minutes."
Tit goes right back to the question as soon as Flip leaves: "Who would you do? C'mon, man."
"I don't know."
He laughs, spilling out smoke. "Sure you do."
"Doesn't matter what I think," I tell him. "I'm so damn ugly no chick is gonna look at me twice. Much less do me."
He turns to look at me. "You are an ugly son of a bitch. I'll give you that. You gotta do something about the zits. You wouldn't be so bad then."
"Whatever." Like it matters. My buzz is slipping away now. Damn.
"But let's pretend that some girl has lost her mind and wants to straddle the Kross-Town Express. Who do you want it to be?"
I shrug, which really doesn't communicate much when you're flat on your back.
"Come on, Kross. Tell me."
"Get off my back. You tell me."
"OK," he says, as if he doesn't care. "Number one is Michelle Jurgens."
"Oh, please! You can't say Michelle Jurgens."
"Why not?"
"Because everyone says Michelle Jurgens." It's true. Michelle Jurgens is sort of the Official Wank-Bait of South Brook High, a promotion from her previous role as Official Wank-Bait of South Brook Middle.
"So?"
"So, the whole point of making a list like this is to make it, like, individual, you know?"
"OK. Dina Jurgens." He grins.
"She graduated last year, you moron. She doesn't count."
"Fine. Kayla Meyer."
"Not bad."
"Now you."
"No. Keep going."
"I'll give you my top three. Kayla and then, uh, Lisa Carter."
"Lisa Carter? Really? I don't see it."
"Awesome ass."
"If you say so."
"And then, uh, Kyra Sellers."
"Who?"
"Kyra Sellers. You know. Sellers. Kyra."
"I don't know who the hell you're talking about."
"Junior. Wears all black ... Little piercing right here." He points to the corner of his mouth.
"Her?" Because now I know who he's talking about, and let me tell you—there is no less doable girl on the planet.
He sits up and shrugs, then flicks the butt of the cigarette off into the bushes. "Something about her ... So, what about you?"
Back to me.
"I don't want to do this."
"You have to."
"Says who?"
"I told you. Come on. I told you I want to nail Kyra Sellers. Come on."
"No." But he did tell me.
"Dude, is it a guy? Are you gay or something?"
"No!"
"Because I'm cool with that. With you being a fag and all. I don't care. But you gotta tell me the guy you want to do, then."
"Shut up, Tit."
"Because I can forgive being gay, but I can't forgive you holding out on me."
"It's just one," I say to him, slowly. I don't want to say it, but it's late and I'm tired and stoned and buzzed and at peace. And it's Tit. He's not just a Fool—he's my buddy.
Besides, God's watching me through the sky, and he wouldn't let me do anything too stupid, right?
"Leah Muldoon," I tell him. "And that's it. That's my whole list."
"That's your whole list?" he asks.
"Yeah." And maybe it's the pot, but I feel relieved to tell it, finally. I've kept it a secret for a long, long time.
"Leah? That's..." He shakes his head. "Just one? That's serious, then. That's not just wanting to nail someone."
I don't say anything. What is there to say?
"I mean..." He stops for a second. "It's just weird, man. I don't get it. You never even mentioned her before all this hero crap. At all. Do you even know her?"
"I have a bunch of classes with her." It comes out more defensive than I intended, but I don't care. It's true—before I saved her life, I had had maybe three encounters with Leah that you could call conversations. But it doesn't matter. I know all about her. "I know her," I tell him.
"OK..." He doesn't sound convinced.
"She wants to go to Syracuse," I say. "She takes ballet and she's in Drama Club and she thinks she might want to try it professionally, for a little while at least." I can't stop myself. It's like I'm suddenly reeling off this bizarre testimonial to Leah Muldoon. "Her parents have more money than God, but they make her pay for her own car insurance. Every Christmas, she volunteers at the Good Faith soup kitchen with her dad."
Tit stares at me. Oh, crap. What the hell did I do? Now he's going to ask: How do you know all that about her, Kross? That's what he's going to say. And then I'll have to tell him. I'll have to tell. God.
I lie there, perfectly still, waiting for him to ask. I wait and I wait and it doesn't come, thank God. Instead, he just says:
"Wow. You've got it bad, huh?"
I don't say anything. It's weird now, having someone else know. Having someone else know a part of it, at least.
"I guess it makes sense," he says. "You saved her life. So I guess that makes sense." He sounds like he's trying to justify it to himself. Like it doesn't really make sense, but if he keeps saying that it does, maybe it will.
But here's the thing: It didn't start with the rescue. No. It started long before that...
Chapter 9
Where it Began
THE VIDEO CAMERA IS—WAS—MY PRIDE AND JOY. It's the only thing I've ever really worked for in my life.
When Mom left, she told me to e-mail her all the time. She also said, "Be sure you take pictures of yourself and send them to me so that I can see you growing up."
This was right around the time that my face started losing the Battle of the Zits, so I wasn't too keen on taking lots of pictures of myself. But one day I got this idea: I thought to myself, What if I shot video of the things going on around me and sent that to Mom? I could make these mini videos and sometimes I would be in them, but otherwise it would be friends and stuff.
As soon as the idea landed in my skull, I became obsessed with it. I scrounged around in the apartment for something I could use. I figured there had to be at least one usable camera in all that mess, right? But no—of all the things Dad had scavenged and brought home, a video camera was not one of them.
I had just turned fourteen, and in this state you can work at that age as long as you have a work permit. So I bugged and badgered Dad until he let me get a job that summer. I think he figured I wouldn't get into trouble if I was working eight hours a day.
So I got a job bu
ssing tables and doing scut work at this burger joint called—I swear to God I'm not making this up—the Burger Joint. It was within walking distance of the apartment ... if you don't mind walking a lot. And I didn't.
If Dad thought I'd stay out of trouble, he totally didn't consider the Council. once they knew I had a job, they all started showing up for free food. I would smuggle them free-bies and get the cooks to screw up orders so that I could give the goofs to the Council. The owner—this big fat slob of a guy named Carl—never figured it out. He thought the Council was buying all of that food and was happy to see them around, so he didn't spaz out when I would take a few minutes and shoot the breeze with them.
Anyway, by July, I'd saved up enough money for a camera. I went to the library and got on a computer and found a cheap auction on eBay and sat on that sucker until I was the top bid, and next thing you know, I had a camera. I filmed everything. First thing I filmed was the apartment because I wanted to show Mom where I lived now, but Dad caught me and freaked out and made me erase it.
I carried the camera everywhere. I took it to work with me because I was spending so much time there. (I was only supposed to work eight hours a day, but Carl gave me extra hours if I wanted them and paid me under the table.) The Council would come in and goof off and I would film them and Carl called me the next Tarantino and that was all cool.
Everything was cool. For a while.
There's a time stamp on the tape, so I know exactly when it happened. When it started. It started at 2:36 p.m. on August third, two years ago. That's when my ... my interest in Leah began. I just didn't know it yet.
***
I found out the next day. I was zipping through the tape I'd recorded the previous day, going on fast forward, looking for anything I thought Mom would be interested in. I would save that part and kill everything else.
All of a sudden, the camera swung around, making me dizzy, then stopped dead. I hit "pause." The camera wasn't pointing at the Council or at anything interesting at all. What had I done?
I fast-forwarded a little bit more. It was just the same table in focus. What was I—?
Duh. I'm an idiot. I must have put it down. Yeah, I remembered now—I was tired of holding it, so I put it down on the seat next to me while I ate lunch with Flip and Speedo. I thought I'd turned it off.
Man, I probably wasted half the tape!
I fast-forwarded some more, just to see where it picked up again, or if at some point I stumbled over a clue and, y'know, turned it off. A few seconds later, someone came into the frame with a tray of food and sat down.
It was Leah Muldoon.
I hit play and the tape went back to normal speed.
I don't know why I hit play. She was just sitting there. It's not like she was doing anything interesting.
With the tape on Play, I could hear Speedo jabbering about his new PS3 controller and an occasional grunt from me and the background noise of the restaurant. I muted the TV.
Leah just sat there for what seemed a very long time. She picked at her fries.
I crept closer to the TV. For some reason, I looked over my shoulder to see if Dad had come out of the bedroom. I don't know why, but I suddenly felt like I was doing something wrong.
But I wasn't doing anything wrong, right? It's not like she was—I don't know—naked. or alone somewhere. She was just sitting there, eating. I hadn't done it on purpose—I thought the stupid camera was turned off.
Still, I kept my finger on the Stop button so that I could kill the tape fast if Dad showed up.
I watched her. She was in this weird kind of zone that I guess people get into when they're out in public but all alone. They forget that people can see them. She was just totally ... I don't know the word for it. What's the opposite of self-conscious? Un-self-conscious? That can't be it; that sounds stupid.
But whatever it is, that's what Leah was. It was wild, watching someone, being able to just...watch. Just to stare. Without worrying about being caught or being polite. At one point, she reached up with one hand and adjusted her boob. I'm serious. I swear she did that. She just did it really fast and she didn't even look down and she was grabbing a fry with the other hand at the same time! But right there in public, she just—wham!—grabbed her boob real quick and shooooped it into place.
Unreal. I bet people do all kinds of crazy stuff all around, all the time. And people just don't notice because it's too fast and there's too much other stuff going on. Except maybe sometimes you just happen to look up at the right second and you catch something.
And maybe sometimes you just happen to catch it on tape.
So that's where it started. Yeah. I kept rewinding and watching Leah over and over that night. It's not that she was doing anything exciting or crazy or sexy. It wasn't even the boob adjustment. It was...
I can't explain it.
I wish I could.
I want to.
It was like I missed Mom and Jesse so much, it was almost a physical thing. And when I watched that tape, the missing went away. Just a little bit. But it went away.
So I had to keep watching.
Chapter 10
Confession-or Not
OF COURSE, I DON'T TELL TIT ANY OF THAT. He rambles on about Leah for a little bit, comparing various portions of her anatomy to the girls on his list. The word "nice" is used a lot, usually stretched out to niiiiiiiiice, so that it doesn't sound, well, nice anymore.
I just lie there next to him and find myself caught in a moment of memory, that moment when I threw down my backpack and charged at the Surgeon. Maybe it's the pot. Maybe it's confessing to Tit. I don't know what it is, but for some reason the memory is really intense and I'm lost in it, in that endless moment of decision ... And then ... Throwing down the backpack...
I throw it down over and over and over.
I remember one of the cops coming up to me, afterward. He held my backpack by one strap and held it out to me and something made a noise inside and he said, "This yours?" and I nodded and he said, "Sounds like something broke in there."
"What?" says Tit, and I realize that I mumbled that last bit out loud.
"Nothing," I tell him.
That's when Flip gets back. Fam's with him. He leads us through the park, back to the entrance and the statue that stands there. He jumps up on the pedestal, wraps his arms around the statue, and dry-humps it for a little bit.
"You're soooo mature," Fam says.
"Don't be jealous, baby," Flip says. "I just gotta give her what she needs, you know?" He pulls back, slaps the statue on its ass, and says, "That ought to hold you for a while, huh, sweet cheeks?" before jumping down.
Chapter 11
How I Got Screwed Over
IT'S JUST ABOUT MIDNIGHT BY THE TIME I GET HOME. I creep into the apartment as quietly as I can. Dad's a pretty sound sleeper, but he'll be up in a couple of hours and I don't want to wake him.
As usual, Flip provided all kinds of sprays and lozenges and stuff to take the smell of beer and smoke and pot out of my clothes and my breath. He's always prepared like that. Just to be safe, though, I take off all of my clothes and stuff them deep into the laundry hamper. I'll do laundry tomorrow and Dad will never know.
I lie there on the sofa bed for a while, thinking of the broken camera under me, thinking of the tapes, thinking back to Flip's whole deal with fractals and how the end of a situation totally depends on its beginning. And I wonder: Is it all Mom's fault? Does it go back that far? I mean, if Mom had been here, I never would have bought the camera. I never would have accidentally filmed Leah. I never would have...
Been there.
Leah dies. But am I innocent? Am I guilt-free? Does it all come down to Mom?
When she left for California, I was thirteen, almost fourteen. So they let me decide where I would live and which parent I would be with. And you know what? That's total bull. Because it's so not cool to sit down a kid and say, basically, "Who do you love more?"
Especially when you do it the w
ay my parents did it. They sat me down and Mom did all the talking. I already knew they were getting divorced and that Mom was moving to California. I guess I thought Dad would move there, too. I don't know—maybe that's stupid. Maybe it's wishful thinking. I look back on it now and I think I was just in shock from everything. I wasn't thinking straight. I was thinking really, really crooked back then.
So Mom said to me, "Kevin, your father and I think you're old enough to make this decision. You know I'm going to California. We want to let you decide if you want to go with me to California or stay here in Brookdale with Dad."
I was thirteen, remember. The idea of picking up and moving across the country was scary. I would have a new school. I would have to make new friends, and—tell the truth—I wasn't very good at that. And who knew what it would be like in California?
Plus, I liked the townhouse we lived in. It was in a nice part of Brookdale. I could ride my bike all over the place.
"We might have to move," Dad said, popping that particular balloon. "I don't know yet. But we would stay in Brookdale and you would still go to South Brook."
That sounded good.
Mom chewed her bottom lip. "Honey, you don't have to decide right now if you don't want to."
I suddenly realized that my little brother was nowhere to be found. "Where's Jesse?"
"He's at Gramma's house for the day."
That was another reason to stay, I guess. Gramma Ross lived in Baltimore.
"What did he decide?"
A look passed between my parents just then. To this day, I don't know what the hell it meant. It looked like guilt and accusation and anger and resignation all mixed up and mashed into one big dripping wad of emotion.
"Jesse's too young to make this decision. He's only seven. He's..." Mom hesitated for a second. "We've decided ... your father and I, that is. We've decided he's going to come to California with me."
That pretty much decided it for me right there. My little brother could be a big pain in the butt a lot of times, but he was still my brother. We were a set. A pair. We were like peanut butter and chocolate, like Batman and Robin, like spaghetti and garlic bread. I took care of him. And he...?