I knew I was being a selfish asshole, so I tried to make myself stop crying. But the harder I tried, the worse it got, to the point that I was choking and almost vomiting.
Jason pulled me to my feet and held me in his arms. I heard the door to my room open but then it closed again right after.
“Your mom is making sure I’m not strangling you or something, I think.”
I punched Jason in the gut. “Shut up! Stop saying stuff like that!”
“Oooph,” he said, exaggerating the effect of my abuse. “Man, do you work out? That’s quite a punch you have there. I’m scared. She should be checking to make sure I’m okay.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, so then I was laughing and crying at the same time. I lifted my head to look to him.
“You are such an idiot.” I stared up at his handsome face, loving that he’d come here in search of a friendship I thought I’d only imagined between us.
“And you are covered in snot. Stay right there.” He leaned over to grab some toilet paper.
I wiped my face on his shirt. “Not anymore.” Stepping back, I sniffed loudly and looked in the mirror. “Thanks for doing my hair.” Only three quarters of it was done, but I didn’t care. He’d done about ten of the curls and that was ten more curls than he’d ever done before.
He stood behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Thanks for being my friend.” His chin dropped to rest on the top of my head.
We stared at each other for a little while before he broke the silence. “You’re not going to kiss me again, are you?” he asked, making a face.
I laughed, turning to go out the door and pushing him away. “You wish.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me back. Time froze and the laugher fell away as he looked at me and spoke. The laughter was gone, replaced with a gaze so intense I could literally feel it on my body.
“Any time you want to change your mind about that, just let me know, okay?”
I couldn’t believe that he’d be serious about that, so I just laughed it off. “Yeah, okay, whatever.” My pulse wasn’t going to let me off that easy, though. It hammered away, sending my blood rushing through my veins along with a load of adrenaline. Did he mean what I thought he meant? That I could be more than friends if I wanted to be? And besides … what did it matter? It would be the biggest mistake of my life to go there, so I just wouldn’t.
I said that to myself like ten times to drill it into my head while I busied myself with dragging my desk chair back and then putting away all my hair stuff in the bathroom. This was no time to be thinking about kissing Jason, not with my bed and his prison sentence looming so closely.
Jason went back out to my room and was looking through my photographs on the computer when I finally joined him.
“Why do you have all these pictures?” he asked, looking at one featuring a former friend. “Were you there?”
“No,” I said, flopping down on my back on the bed, “some dickcheese photographer was, though, and I got his memory card and deleted everything on it.”
“Oh, okay. That makes no sense whatsoever.”
“He followed me from your house and tried to get into my front door to talk to us, and my father grabbed his camera from him and shoved him outside. Before we gave it back, I did a little CSI Miami on the memory card and voilà … I have the pictures and he doesn’t.”
“Hmmm …” Jason turned around and smiled. It seemed forced. “So, you want to come work-out with me?”
I gave him the stink-eye. “Was this all some elaborate plan to find yourself another spotter?”
“Damn … am I that transparent?” He stood up and held out a hand. “Come on. I do need a spotter. And you need to work on those spaghetti arms.”
I held up an unenthusiastic hand. “I just got my hair did. I don’t want to sweat. I’ll lose all my curls.”
“You look better without ‘em anyway. Come on.”
I shook my head as he helped me to my feet. “Not smooth at all, J-man. Not smooth. At. All.”
“Hey, some chicks can rock the natural look and some have to dude their shit up for hours in the morning. Just pity those other chicks, don’t hate the honesty.”
I laughed, searching through drawers for something to wear that wouldn’t look too awful when drenched in salty sweat. “You are really lucky …”
“…that I’m so good-looking. I know, you already told me about ten times. Are you ready to go yet?”
I abandoned my search and opened my door, shoving him out into the hallway. “I have to get dressed. Give me five minutes.”
He pounded down the stairs, and I quickly threw on my running shoes and my sweatpants from last year — the ones that magically fit me again since I’d lost some weight during my several-day mourning period.
As I was about to leave, my computer screen caught my eye. The picture showing was of Bobby wearing one of his righteous get-ups, not one of the photos from the reporter’s camera. I went over to shut the program down, and a window popped up asking me if I was sure I wanted to delete the four photos in the trash basket.
I frowned, wondering what the hell the ghost in my machine was doing now. Occasionally my computer had a mind of its own and randomly did shit to make me crazy.
Going into the trash folder I expected to find nothing, but instead there were exactly four photos in there, which made zero sense since I hadn’t deleted anything. I brought each of them up in turn and felt goosebumps coming out all over my body as I realized what they were.
All of them had Jason and that boy with the big afro in them. Every picture that the reporter had taken of that one boy had either magically ended up in my trash bin, or Jason had put them there himself intentionally; and I was pretty sure the ghost in my machine had nothing against afros.
I opened my mouth to yell down to him about it, but then closed it without saying a word. If he could be sneaky, so could I; and I had a feeling that I’d be able to get more answers if I didn’t ask him directly.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A LITTLE OVER ONE WEEK later, Jason dropped a bomb on me. After hanging out with him for nine solid days, after school and on weekends, I was in his workout room doing the last rep of a horrible leg exercise, and he started up this conversation about his case — a subject we normally avoided judiciously.
“My lawyer says that I have a one-in-ten chance of getting anything less than twenty-five years to life.”
The weights clanged down onto the rack as I lost all the strength in my legs.
“What?!” I was out of breath and freaked out, sending my volume way too high.
Jason turned around and lifted up some small barbells for my next exercise. “You heard me. One in ten. I’m pretty much doomed. But at least I won’t be getting a lethal injection. I’m looking on the bright side of things. The trial is supposed to start in a few months since all the investigation and exchange of evidence is finished. Apparently they’re fast-tracking everything. I could be in prison for my eighteenth birthday in February.”
I slowly turned sideways on the seat and stared at him. “How is it that you’re not curled up in a ball, crying on your bed right now? Cuz that’s where I’d be.” When your lawyer has that little hope for you, I was guessing there was none to be had. And all this time I’d been hoping for a miracle, for a lawyer like they have in the movies who uncovers some great piece of evidence and saves the accused from prison.
“I did that for about ten seconds, but then I quit.” He shrugged, his face devoid of emotion. “I mean, what’s the point, right? I did it. Do the crime, do the time. That’s the way the world works.”
I walked over and took one of the barbells from him. If I’ve learned anything dealing with Jason it’s that he does way better with a conversation or the act of me extracting information from him that he doesn’t want to share if I act like I’m otherwise occupied. I figured it was a side-effect of never having a real friend who paid him very close attention before. I worked
with what I had.
I pumped a few reps before beginning my prying campaign. “That civics teacher at school, Mrs. Davis, she said that if you had a witness it could help your case a lot. Could set you free, even.” I kept my eyes on the wall mirror, pretending like I gave a crap about my form when I was really just hoping he’d let his guard down and finally talk to me about that mystery person I absolutely knew had been in that room when he killed the coach.
Jason was always on me about form, about how I had to lift and lower the weights properly or I’d lose the full benefit of the workout. Blah, blah, blah. Today was no exception.
“Not so fast. Slow down. Use gravity…”
“…I know, I know, use gravity to aid the workout. Are you going to answer my question?”
“I didn’t hear a question, did you ask one?” He was playing dumb and we both knew it.
“I know someone was there,” I said with false bravado. Even though he’d proven to me about a hundred times that he really wanted to be a true friend to me, I still worried about saying the wrong thing and getting rejected again.
“There wasn’t. I swear.” This time he looked at me when he said it, so it sounded like the truth.
I let the weight hang by my side. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. It was just him and me in that office. No one else was around.”
“No one who could hear anything, maybe?”
He shook his head. “No. I went there early to …” He flared his nostrils and gritted his teeth for a couple seconds before finishing. “…I went there early. That’s it. We were alone.”
I put the weight on the ground and took him by the arm. “That’s not it, Jason, I know that’s not it.” I was begging him with my eyes to tell me the truth — the whole truth, not a piece of it like I always felt I was getting.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “My dad bought us some fried chicken for lunch.”
Saturday had become a ritual picnic day for us. Every time we sat down in Jason’s living room, that picture of the sun was there to keep us company. It always made a lump come up in my throat.
“Fuck the fried chicken. Are we friends or not?” I glared at him to drive home my threat. I was taking a risk, but one I felt was worth taking.
“Yeah, we’re friends.” I could tell he was on the verge of getting mad, but I pushed through anyway.
“Then be honest with me. Tell me exactly what happened, from start to finish, and leave nothing out.”
“Why? It’s not going to change anything.”
“Yes, it will.”
“I promise, it won’t.”
“You owe me, Jason.”
His back went up. “How so?”
“Because.” I put the other barbell down and gave him a double bicep flex. “I’ve been sweating and feeling sore for going on two weeks now and I have nothing to show for it. The least you can do is tell me the story.”
He reached up and felt my arm. “You’re getting stronger. You’re already lifting twenty percent more than when you started and your form is excellent.”
“If you say another word about my form again today I’m going to knock you out with your own weights.”
He laughed. “You’re a seriously violent woman, you know that?”
“That’s why you like me.”
Both our smiles kind of faltered as we thought about those words. Violence is what had brought us together, what ended up making us friends. The irony was not lost on either of us.
“Let’s eat some chicken,” he said, his voice softer and filled with regret.
“Yeah. We can talk about what happened at the picnic.”
He left the room with me following. “Anyone ever tell you you’re stubborn?” he asked.
“Everyone who’s ever spent more than a day with me, yes.”
“What did I do to deserve you in my life?” he asked as a joke.
I didn’t give him the obvious reply. You killed our high school football coach. That would have been too terrible to even joke about. Even after I knew the real story behind his death.
Chapter Forty
I WAITED UNTIL WE WERE digging into the potato salad Jason had made before I launched into my mission of getting to the bottom of things. That’s what I started to call it, because it felt like we were always swimming on the surface of this very deep shit ocean and the truth was somewhere down where the water was cold and dark, and well, full of turds or sharks maybe.
“Tell me what happened.” I shoved a giant forkful of salad into my mouth and didn’t bother to wipe off the mayonnaise that I could feel hanging out on the corners of my lips.
Jason leaned forward and swiped at my face with a paper towel. “You are such a slob.”
I waited for him to reply, ignoring his comment. We’d already come to the conclusion that I was a pig and he was there to clean up after me, and the arrangement suited us both fine.
He rolled his eyes and stared down at his plate, picking with his plastic fork among the bones and other scraps of food that remained there, as if finding just the right bite was critical to restoring happiness in his life.
“You’re just going to get bored. There’s nothing for me to say. You’ve read it all in the news.”
“No one has your story, Jason, trust me. And when they don’t have the story, they fill in the blanks with the most ridiculous stuff.” I didn’t tell him that people had conjectured that he’d had an affair with the coach’s wife, that he’d been accused of being mad about the coach having a nicer car than he had, that his former friends were saying that he’d always had a bad attitude towards the coach from the beginning of high school.
All of that crap was lies, obviously, since years of contrary stories had been in the news before the coach’s death. Jason had been the perfect football star — respectful, grateful, attentive, and dedicated. Only now that he was a murderer did he get to become a jealous, disrespectful, bitter adulterer. People are such assholes.
“Fine, you want to know, I’ll tell you. And you can go out there and tell all those reporters and they can print it up and sell a million papers, I don’t care.”
I stopped him by putting my hand on his arm. “People could tear my fingernails out and I wouldn’t tell them what you say to me.”
He looked down at my hands. “Are you sure that hasn’t already happened?”
I glanced at my hands, knowing what I’d see there. “So I chew my nails. Big deal. I’m upset over your situation and whenever I’m upset, my fingernails become very appetizing. Don’t change the subject.”
“You’re the one talking about torture.” He winked at me.
“No!” I pointed at his face. “The puppy dog winky eyes will not work on me today!”
“Today? Do they ever work on you?”
“No, especially not since you started growing that hellaciously awful hoo-hoo on your face.” I pointed at the beard that was becoming way too bushy for my taste. It was only about a half-inch long, but still … ew.
He laughed so hard he dropped his fork and flipped potato salad up at me. It landed in my hair.
I stared up at it and sighed. “First he lost his looks, then his coordination. It was all downhill from there.”
He reached over and took the salad out of my hair and then held his hand out as he stood. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, standing with him after putting my plate on the ground.
“Out to the clubhouse.”
“Clubhouse? Hmmm sounds interesting.”
I followed him through the kitchen and out into his garage. He opened up the passenger door of his Camaro and waited for me to get in.
“Are we driving somewhere?” This was a bad idea, and we both knew it. Reporters still camped out just at the end of the driveway and they were all prepared to follow Jason should he ever try to leave. He was free to go anywhere he wanted, so long as it wasn’t in public; they made sure of that.
“Do you trust me?” he
asked, shutting the door behind me.
“I’m in the damn car, aren’t I?”
My voice was muffled behind the closed window, but he nodded and then left me there, circling around the back of the car to get into the driver’s seat. The door slammed with a heavy thunk, and Jason put his hands on the wheel.
I looked first at him and then out the front window, staring at the inside of the garage door.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Nowhere. I just miss driving my car.”
I looked at him again. “Sucks being trapped in the house all the time, huh?”
“Yeah.” He laughed but it wasn’t happiness that came out with the sound. “I never thought I’d miss school so much.”
“I never realized how much school would suck without you in it,” I confessed.
He looked at me and gave me a sad smile. “Too bad we didn’t know how awesome this could be before, eh?”
“How awesome what could be?”
“Me and you. You and me.” He smiled like he was embarrassed.
I snorted. “Yeah, right. Like Brittney would have allowed that.”
He looked back out the windshield, his jaw jumping a little. He might have been angry, it was hard to tell because he didn’t say anything.
“So, are you going to tell me the story or not?” I was trying not to get excited about hearing the whole thing, but it was difficult. It wasn’t that I was interested from a voyeuristic sense; it was more that I had this ridiculous idea that I would be able to uncover some otherwise overlooked evidence that could help him. My superhero complex would not give up the ghost.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you. Just let me go back there and put it all straight in my head. I’ve been trying to forget it ever since it happened.”
We both let out a long sigh and faced the front of the car. The only sound we could hear was the ticking of his non-digital clock on the dashboard. I counted out a full two minutes in seconds before he started talking.