I took off towards them, cursing the weed buzz that made me zigzag across the goddamned sand. The last thing I was fully conscious of doing was ripping the guy up from the ground with my left hand and swinging my right fist straight into the side of his face. The initial impact of my fist to his cheekbone hurt and felt awesome. When he didn’t go down right away, I hit him again. And again. And again. Until the euphoria and rage came together and spiked, and I sort of blacked out.
I broke most of the blood vessels in the top of my hand and fractured a couple of knuckles. I didn’t even know you could do that. My right hand looked and felt like hell and was in a splint. Other than that, there wasn’t a bruise on me.
The other guy suffered a concussion that bordered on a coma for a few hours. I could have killed him. I could have killed him, and I couldn’t remember doing it.
What I did remember: handcuffs. The backseat of a police cruiser. Getting booked at the station. A jail cell that smelled of BO and piss, but thankfully housed only me. Because I wasn’t in juvie. Seventeen-year-olds are tried as adults, so they go to regular jail. As I crashed from the weed and the fight, I started shaking and couldn’t stop.
‘Maxfield!’ an officer barked sometime later, and my head shot up. ‘Bail. C’mon, move your ass outta there – unless you’re wantin’ to stay.’
I scrambled up from the bench.
I expected to see Dad. He was there, but Charles Heller was next to him. I’d forgotten they were visiting for spring break. I hadn’t seen much of them while they were here. Hadn’t made the time.
In the back seat on the way home, I didn’t make a sound. All three of us were dead quiet. Instead of dropping us off and going back to his hotel, Heller followed Dad inside.
‘I need a shower,’ I mumbled, and no one objected.
When I turned the water off, I heard their voices through the cardboard-thin door.
‘You’re losing him, Ray.’ There was a pause, and I held my breath. ‘You’re my friend, and I love you – and because I love you, I’m going to tell you the truth. You’ve fucked this up from the beginning.
‘Cindy begged you to get him into therapy, and you chose not to. We begged you not to take him away from his friends – away from us – and move him halfway across the country, but you didn’t listen. He was in a private prep school and now he’s … he’s letting everything go. The fight tonight wasn’t his first, was it? And the drugs – there must be drinking involved, too. He’s using every method of escape he can. Because you did.’
Dad murmured something.
‘I know. But it’s not enough. He needs a goal. He needs to see worth in himself.’ Another pause. I swallowed, my eyes stinging. Heller’s voice lowered, and I couldn’t hear what he said. I left the bathroom, towel round my waist, and didn’t look at them – seated at the kitchen table – before closing myself into my pantry room.
I pulled on a pair of athletic shorts, which took three times as long with the use of one hand. It meant something to know Charles Heller cared about me. Didn’t change anything, but it meant something.
A goal. He said I needed a goal. Maybe it was time I gave up on school – my jaw clenched at the thought of giving Ingram that satisfaction – to work on the boat. If I didn’t end up in prison for the assault. I knew enough about bail to know I was only out until I got a trial date.
Funny, that out of all the fights I’d been in, the one I had good reason for would be the one that caught me. If Amber refused to testify, I was screwed. The guy I’d nearly killed was a rich college kid. He’d flashed enough cash last night to make Thompson’s dick hard – buying stashes of whatever we had and handing it out to his friends like Halloween candy. Guys his age who dressed like he did and drove Range Rovers didn’t come by money like that alone.
You got your wish, Grandpa, I thought. The boat would be my saviour. My future. My way out. It was better than prison. I closed my eyes. Better than prison. Wow, that’s fucked up.
The second my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep.
LUCAS
I couldn’t resist catching Jacqueline’s eyes for just a moment when she entered the classroom.
Her smile was tentative, unsure, and after last night, I couldn’t blame her. When I woke to find her leaving, I walked her to her truck and kissed her goodbye. Watching those tail-lights recede, I knew I could give her what she wanted, once I was free of the restrictions of being her tutor. I would be what she needed, and then I would let her go.
Because I was in love with her.
At the end of class, the blonde who’d been interested in Kennedy Moore earlier in the semester was asking me about my review session. I couldn’t remember her name. ‘It’s Thursday, regular time,’ I answered, watching Jacqueline pack up. Talking to that Benjamin guy, who flicked a glance my way, she rolled her eyes and looked at me, too.
I got a definitive answer to how much he knew about what was going on between Jacqueline and me when he batted his lashes and said, ‘I’ll take Hot Tutors for two hundred, Alex,’ as he left their aisle. Jacqueline full-on blushed as he hummed the Jeopardy! theme song, climbing the steps towards the exit. He grinned at me before disappearing.
Neither of us spoke until we were outside.
‘Does he, um, does he know? About …?’ My teeth grazed over the ring as she told me that her classmate was how she found out.
‘He’d noticed us … looking at each other. And he asked me if I went to your tutoring sessions.’ She shrugged, as if she was beyond it.
I could imagine that conversation and how she must have felt, after Moore’s betrayal, to be lied to again. ‘God. I’m so sorry.’ But words couldn’t make up for those lies, and I knew it.
We walked towards her Spanish class, silent and hunched into our jackets. My old friends in Alexandria would laugh and say this sunny, late fall day was shorts weather.
‘I noticed you the first week,’ I said then. Like a flash flood after an unexpected summer storm, I confessed everything – watching her in class and cataloguing her mannerisms, from tucking her hair behind her left ear to her musical fingers. I told her about the rainy day – her thank you, her smile, and how those two things affected me. I told her about my jealousy of Moore, before she ever knew me.
‘And then, the Halloween party.’
She went very still. We’d never discussed what happened that night – my view of it.
I admitted that I’d watched her leave. That I’d watched Buck follow her. ‘I thought maybe … maybe you two had decided to leave early together, without everyone knowing. Meet outside or something.’ My heart thumped beneath my ribs, revealing this failure to her – the fact that I’d been standing inside, debating following her at all, while a predator wound through the parking lot behind her.
As I suspected, Buck was more than a guy she just knew by name. He was someone she’d seen as a friend. ‘He’s my roommate’s boyfriend’s best friend,’ she said, no condemnation for me or my too-slow reaction that night in her voice. From my childhood, I recalled the symbolic gesture of absolution from the priest, and I felt she’d just given it to me.
In the same moment, we realized we weren’t surrounded by masses of fellow students any more. It was past the hour – she was late to class. ‘I have an A. I don’t really need the review,’ she said. I had an hour before my next class. I stared at her cold-reddened lips, running headlong into inappropriate territory. I wanted to kiss her, right here in the middle of campus.
‘You never did sketch me again,’ she said. She licked her lips, a small brush from the tip of her tongue, and by some miracle, I jerked my eyes away instead of pushing her into the bushes and taking possession of that mouth.
‘Coffee,’ I said.
I seldom stopped by the student union Starbucks as a customer. There was a line, but Gwen and Ron were a well-oiled machine.
‘Lucas,’ Gwen smiled tightly, refusing to look directly at Jacqueline. She was unhappy that her wise words had fallen on dea
f ears, no doubt.
‘Hey, Gwen. A couple of Americanos. And I don’t think you’ve met Jacqueline.’
Like an owl, Gwen swivelled her head to eye Jacqueline. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, her teeth clamped.
Jacqueline smiled back, as if my usually sweet coworker wasn’t bristling with frostiness. ‘Nice to meet you, Gwen. I love your manicure – so cute!’
Gwen’s nails were painted like wrapped, multicoloured Christmas gifts. They looked kind of hideous to me. But she turned her large, dark eyes to Jacqueline, enhancing the owl likeness. ‘Oh. Thanks. I did ’em myself.’
‘You did?’ Jacqueline held out a palm and Gwen put her left hand in Jacqueline’s for closer inspection while ringing up our order and swiping my card with her right. ‘I’m so jealous! I can’t paint even one colour on mine without making a mess. Plus, I play the bass, so I have to keep my nails too short to do anything fun with them.’
Thank God, I thought.
‘Aww, that sucks!’ Gwen said, won over. I was impressed. I was also glad Eve wasn’t working, because she distrusted compliments to the point that she regarded them as an attack.
Once seated at a table in the corner, Jacqueline brought up the fact that I wear glasses, prompting a legion of inappropriate musings, courtesy of my cruel, vividly detailed memory of the reasons I’d flung those glasses away.
I don’t want you to stop.
‘I could sketch you now,’ I said, and grabbed my sketchpad from my backpack as if it was a life preserver, meant to save me from drowning. I slid the pencil from behind my ear, balancing the pad on my crossed knee, and leaned back to look at her. She flushed like she could read my thoughts.
Read this, Jacqueline. My pencil swept across the page, and I envisioned my fingers sliding across her skin. I watched her chest rise and fall, as I had last night. She stared at my hands as they interpreted the curves of her body and converted them to lines and shadows on paper.
I imagined stretching her out on my bed, crossing her wrists above her head, as she was in the drawing on my wall. I would run my fingertips over her, applying no pressure. Light strokes only, raising the tiny invisible hairs, training her body to recognize my touch. To rise to it. She would hum deep in her throat, as she had last night, restless, especially when my fingers grazed over her thighs, starting at her knees and moving up.
Hell. Sketching her was a terrible idea.
‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked, in an attempt to distract myself.
‘High school,’ she answered.
Okay. That worked. She might as well have tossed her coffee at me. I assumed she was thinking about Moore until she said, ‘I wasn’t thinking about him.’
She asked what high school was like for me, and I saw those years in a series of flashes – Boyce’s unexpected friendship, Melody’s dismissal, the ache of losing my grandfather, Dad and his silence, the fights, the faceless girls, and Arianna, transforming my scars and skin into a narrative of loss. I’d changed my name when I left home, but I couldn’t disconnect from who I’d been so easily.
‘A lot different than it was for you, I imagine,’ I said. She asked how, and I told her the first thing that popped into my head – I’d never had a girlfriend. She seemed sceptical, but she couldn’t understand the boy I’d been. The partying and detached hook-ups, the hopelessness. In a few sentences, I told her about Amber, and that last fight – when rage hijacked my brain and my fists, and I blacked out. I told her about the arrest. I told her about Charles, and the way out he offered.
‘He’s like a guardian angel for you.’
‘You don’t even know,’ I said.
I sent Jacqueline the review two days before I would be giving it out in my session, after debating whether doing so crossed yet another ethical line. It was blatant favouritism. But what good was embracing my bad-boy side if I couldn’t play favourites?
She wrote me back and said it felt weird to get economics email from me, as if Landon and I were still two different people. She admitted that she’d almost recommended Landon as a tutor to Lucas – who seemed like a total slacker, never paying attention in class and skipping quizzes. I was glad she didn’t tell me this in person, because I laughed out loud.
She and Mindi had gone to the police station to file reports and press charges against Buck – legal name: Theodore Boucker III, which I found out when I was contacted by the detective. I gave my story of his assault on Jacqueline and our fight. Buck had informed his whole frat and anyone else who’d listen that he had consensual sex with Jacqueline in her truck, and was jumped by ‘homeless thugs’ after she drove away – though he failed to file an assault report with campus or city police.
Tomorrow was my last class with Jacqueline. Her econ final was next week, and the dorms would shut down for winter break the week after that.
She texted: After the final next Wednesday, then what?
I clicked the screen on and off. Then what? Didn’t she know how the bad-boy thing worked? There was no then what. I’d proven as much with too many girls to remember. Make out and then done, or head and then done, or fuck and then done.
Unlike everyone before and everyone after, I would worship and savour Jacqueline Wallace when she came to my bed. A first, then, for me. Make love and then done.
Finally, I texted back: Winter break. There are things you don’t know about me. I told myself I won’t lie to you again, but I’m not ready to put everything out there. I don’t know if I can. I’m sorry.
I didn’t expect an answer. I didn’t get one.
22
Landon
I woke to the smell of coffee. Weird, because Dad was almost always gone by the time I woke up. I couldn’t imagine he’d cancelled scheduled excursions to discuss my arrest – he never backed out on his clients.
I emerged to find Charles Heller sitting at the kitchen table, no Dad in sight. He had a legal pad in front of him, along with his laptop and a local phone directory. He sat back and glanced up at me as I walked out into the kitchen.
‘Landon – I’d like to talk to you, if you’re willing. I brought toasted bagels, and I just started a fresh pot of coffee. I’ll give you a few minutes to wake up, and then we’ll chat. All right?’
Frowning, I nodded and went to the bathroom, digging some OTC pain meds from the cabinet over the sink. I could barely get the childproof lid off. My hand was so swollen it looked like it belonged to a cartoon character, and it hurt like hell. Everything was awkward without the use of it, from brushing my teeth to getting clothes off or on. I pulled on a tank and board shorts – which I gave up and left untied.
After I slumped into the bench seat across from Heller, he scooted a bagel loaded with cream cheese and a mug of black coffee towards me. He removed his reading glasses and looked at me, his gaze open and persistent, searching my face, my eyes. I wasn’t used to such close examination from someone who gave a shit about me. I knew I’d disappointed him. The shame was a landslide, so quick and overwhelming that I was buried in it before I could run away.
Eyes dropping to the mug in my hands, I fought to keep from tearing up and waited for whatever he had to say.
‘I have a proposition, and you’re free to take it or not,’ he began. ‘What I’m about to offer you isn’t a gift. It’s a challenge. If you don’t want to take it on, no one can make you do it, and no one will try to. Understand?’
I didn’t understand, but I nodded, silent.
‘I’ve written a list of what I want from you. And next to it, I’ve written what I’ll do, if you do these things to the best of your ability.’ He pushed the legal pad towards me, and I stared at it as he narrated. ‘First: school. I want you to start going to class, every day, every class. I want you to do the best you can, because I want you to go to college. You’ll need to sign up for some challenging courses next year, to prepare, and you’ll have to work very hard at pulling your current GPA up, because you’ve dug yourself a big hole, Landon.’
I
wondered if he had any idea how bad it was. I couldn’t tell him.
‘Second: get a job. Any job. Something that gives you a paycheck, not cash from your dad. Something that gives you experience working for someone else. Third: quit the drugs and drinking. Drugs, entirely. Drinking – well, I’d be a hypocrite if I said I was making you swear not to touch a beer again until you’re twenty-one. But I want you to try, and I want you to keep control of yourself. And finally, I want you to enrol in taekwondo. If you’re going to fight, you need to know how to do it right, and you’re going to learn the reasons to do it, and more importantly, the reasons not to.’
I swallowed, and my first thought was that I couldn’t possibly do all of this. This wasn’t a challenge. This was impossible.
But I wanted to do it. I wanted to.
‘If you agree to do these things, here’s what I’ll agree to do: I’ll pay for the martial arts classes. They saved my ass and centred me as a young man, and I think they’ll do the same for you. Second, I’ll pull every damned string I can pull to get you probationary enrolment at the university.’ My eyes snapped to his. He worked for the best school in the state. ‘Barring that,’ he continued, ‘there’s community college. We’ve got a great one. You make a year of top grades there, and you should be able to transfer in. Either way, Cindy and I want you to come live with us. There’s an apartment over the garage housing a bunch of junk we don’t need. You’ll need to get a job to pay for tuition, but your housing will be covered.
‘I made a few calls this morning. I found a reputable dojang about twenty minutes away. If you accept my challenge, we’ll get you signed up today. I’ll take your signature at the bottom of this list as acceptance.’ He set a pen on top of the pad and stood. ‘Eat your breakfast and think it over. I’m going to go see Cindy and the kids off – they’re going on home today. I’ll be back in a little while.’