“That’s right,” Mr. Keenan said. “Figure they were hibernating or something. Nearly scared me half to death.”
Mrs. Keenan rolled her eyes and pressed her hand against her painful-looking bruise. Mashing a potato with the tines of her fork, she addressed the table. “Nick, we’re looking forward to having you stay over after Christmas.”
He reddened, remembering how his parents had foisted him off so that they could get away on a cruise between Christmas and New Year’s. Just the two of them, a second honeymoon, they said, although he wasn’t sure what was wrong with the first. The trip, he sensed, was intended as remedy for what had been broken over the years, but their attempts at rekindling left him out in the cold. They had given him the choice between a week with the Keenans or five days down in Florida with Nana and Pap. The spare bedroom at their condo in the retirement village was always hot no matter the temperature outside. Even Christmas was blazing. No snow, no friends. The endless afternoons. Dinner at five o’clock, in bed by eight. The nightly news, a game show with the television blasting full volume. Maybe you would like to do a puzzle? He loved his grandparents, but he’d rather be dead.
“Thanks again for having me. I’m happy to stay with you guys. And with Jack Peter.”
Across the table, his friend betrayed no emotion.
An idea jumped from Mr. Keenan’s brain to his mouth. “We could even get the old gang together during winter break. What were those boys’ names? Jip, you haven’t seen some of those guys since, what, second grade?”
Yes, second grade. Jack Peter had been an inside boy for over three years. Hadn’t been to school, rarely left the house. One by one, his few old friends had nearly forgotten about him, and they always gave Nick grief for continuing his strange friendship. Perhaps it would be better in Boca Raton.
“You boys will have the run of the place,” said Mr. Keenan.
A pair of eyes stared out at him from over Jack Peter’s shoulders. Mismatched askew eyes, the left larger than the right, pupils dark as holes, glowered at him. He nearly dropped his spoon. The giant face came into focus, a child’s pencil drawing taped to the refrigerator door. The portrait filled the entire page from side to side: a young boy with dark tangled hair atop a high bare forehead, a rudimentary nose, a slash of a mouth. He was primitive but intense, hatched and worked over, shadows radiating from the wild eyes. Nick could not resist the temptation to look more closely, so he rose from his chair and walked right up to the paper.
The drawing had a furious energy to it. There were no erasures, no signs of uncertainty, but rather the stray lines and swirls had been incorporated into its overall execution. A smudge ran the length of the jaw from the left ear to the chin, as though its maker was trying to soften the line and blur the edge. Though the picture looked similar to many children’s drawings, the boy on the page was animated by a different spirit, an air of unreality, that hypnotized Nick. As if the image had some power over him, life imitating art. He could not reconcile its skill with the impression he had held so long of his friend as simple, slow to talk or respond in regular ways, a boy who seemed much younger, more childish on the surface, yet there was a darkness to the drawing’s depth.
“Do you like it, Nicholas?” Mrs. Keenan called from her place. “Jack drew that. Completely out of the blue.”
Nick twisted his neck to look back at them over his shoulder. The boy in the picture kept watching.
Scraping his chair along the floor, Jack Peter inched around to face him, an intense expression in his eyes, flashing with a creator’s ardor. “Do you ever go swim in the ocean?”
“Of course I do. Don’t you remember? You and me used to go swimming all the time every summer. Not in the winter, but I still go swimming in the summer. When it gets hot.”
“People drown in the ocean. Ships crash on the rocks in a storm. The people get lost and confused in the dark, and they breathe in the water, and everybody drowns. Shipwrecks. Your mommy and daddy are going on a boat.”
Mr. Keenan laid his crust of bread over the top of his bowl of stew. “In the olden days, Jip, but not anymore. No more shipwrecks. The lighthouse on Mercy Point helps them steer clear. Now turn around and finish your dinner.”
Dutiful son, he scooched his chair back into position with his bottom, inch by inch. Nick took it as a signal to return to his place. “Who is that picture supposed to be?”
Jack Peter did not speak but instead tapped a finger insistently against his temple. He would not stop the jabbing attack, and it alarmed everyone at the table. He poked his skull so hard that Mrs. Keenan was forced to grab her son’s wrist to stop the compulsion. She strained against his strength, the veins and sinews piping along her forearm, her face colored deep red.