5
Landon
The fact that my grandfather and my dad didn’t get each other was weird, because they were like the same person born thirty years apart. I’d never noticed that before we moved in with Grandpa. Maybe because Dad had done everything he could to escape who he’d been, or who he might have been. He’d grown up here, in this house, on this beach, but he didn’t have my grandfather’s drawl, or any accent at all, really. Like he’d worked at obliterating it.
Grandpa quit school at fourteen to work the fishing boat with his father, but my father completed high school, left home for college at eighteen, and hadn’t quit until he had a PhD in economics. People in town seemed to know Dad, but he hadn’t lived here for over twenty years, and whenever we’d visited, he hadn’t hung out with any of them. Those people kept their distance now and he kept his, spending his days on the boat with Grandpa. I imagined them out there, all day, saying nothing to each other, and I wondered if that was how Dad and I would be. If it was how we already were.
He’d given away his nice suits before we moved – all but one. We left our furniture and electronics, dishes, cookware and his library of finance and econ and accounting books. I brought most of my clothes, my video games, some books and all my sketchpads – anything I wanted that was mine – but only what would fit into the car. Cindy boxed all the scrapbooks and framed photos, and wrapped Mom’s paintings with brown paper and lots of packing tape. She and Charles took some of them to their house.
Whenever we’d visited Grandpa before, it had been summer. I’d slept on a sleeping bag on the screened porch, or on the shabby, stale-smelling sofa in his living room – which was actually the only room in the house besides the kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom. I didn’t really think about where I would sleep until we got there, two days before Christmas.
A three-foot-tall fake Christmas tree sat on a rickety table in a corner window, looking as pathetic and unfestive as possible. Non-blinking, multicoloured bulbs were affixed to it. The only ornaments were a few actual candy canes, still in their cellophane wrappers and hooked over branches, a dozen shiny silver glitter-coated bells, and eight felt-enclosed school photos of me, from kindergarten through seventh grade.
There was no star. No angel. Nothing on the top at all. No gifts beneath. Just the plastic stand, sitting bare on the wood.
Our trees had always been tall and fresh, chosen at a Christmas tree farm twenty miles out of the city. Mom and Dad always let me choose the tree, and then Dad would pay the tree farmer before cutting it down and strapping it to the roof of our car, where it would hang out over the windshield in front and poke out from the back like a roof-mounted rocket. Last year, the tree I chose was so tall that Dad had to climb to the top of the ladder to circle the top branches with twinkly white lights and add the star.
The tree skirt Mom used looked like a tapestry – trimmed in gold braid and embroidered with gold-threaded words like Noel and Merry Christmas and Ho Ho Ho. There were always lots of gifts on top of it, and most of them said Landon.
I’d been spoiled, and though I’d been somewhat aware of the fact, it didn’t seem to matter, because every kid I knew was the same.
Grandpa grabbed a suitcase from my hand and turned to walk towards the kitchen. That was the moment I wondered where my room would be.
He opened the door to the pantry. Only, it wasn’t the pantry any more. The lower shelves had been removed, and a twin mattress and frame was somehow, impossibly, crammed wall-to-wall inside. From the ceiling, an overhead light hung on a chain – a three-bulb type of light usually found over a kitchen table. I recognized that it had, in fact, hung over the kitchen table the last time I’d been here, months before. The world’s most compact, narrow chest stood crammed into the entry corner. I had to shut the pantry door to open any of the drawers. There was no window.
I had become Harry Potter. Except I was thirteen and not magic, and my destiny, whatever it was, held no profound purpose.
‘Spruce it up or not – whatever you’d like. It’s just for sleepin’ and holdin’ your stuff. You aren’t obliged to stay in here.’ People as old as Grandpa forgot a lot of things, obviously. If he’d have remembered being a teenager, he’d have known we live in our rooms.
Grandpa was commonsensical, Mom always said. ‘He’s like your dad. They see the world in black and white.’
‘Why are they always mad at each other?’ I asked.
‘They aren’t really mad – just in a disagreement about what’s black and what’s white. Problem is, they’re fighting over something in between.’
Dad believed Grandpa was disappointed in him for leaving, instead of staying and working on the boat. I wasn’t so sure. Maybe Grandpa just wanted to be allowed to do what he wanted to do with his life, instead of being judged as not educated enough – not good enough.
‘So they’re fighting over the grey stuff?’
‘Yes, but more like – the colours. Grey tones in black-and-white photos are the coloured things in real life – the green grass, a pink scarf, a yellow rose. I think they sometimes don’t understand how much falls in the middle. How much will never be black or white.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe they’re artistically challenged. Like I’m math challenged. You know?’
I nodded. But I was comfortable with both, so I didn’t really understand.
Lying on my new bed, I stared up at the three faux-flame bulbs of the only light fixture in my microscopic room. The switch was on a cord that hung down the wall by the door. The fixture and arms were a sort of oxidized brass, but so corroded that I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to look like. Maybe the metal had been shiny once – like fifty years ago. Probably, brass wasn’t made to be this near the ocean and never polished.
I stretched my arms out to either side and touched the walls, then reached behind me and touched the third wall. The fourth wall was mostly the pantry door, with a tiny bit of wallboard around and above it.
Going up on my knees, I groped along one of the shallow shelves Grandpa had left attached to the wall and grabbed my iPod from its new home next to a stack of my sketchbooks. A few months ago, these shelves held canned goods and preserves and boxes of cereal and macaroni and cheese. There had been a basket of potatoes by the door that Grandpa called tubers, and a basket of onions next to it that I could still smell even though they’d been moved somewhere else – to a drawer in the kitchen, I guessed.
I shoved my earbuds in and dialled to a playlist of a new band I’d just discovered before we left Alexandria. They’d been local, getting some play on the college stations. I was thinking I might go see them, live. Now, unless they got really famous and started touring, I’d never see them. Even if they started touring, they’d never come here. No one came here.
I wasn’t sure what happened to the boxes of ornaments and decorations Mom dragged from the basement closet every year – the strands of lights, twistable green garland, velvet stockings and the advent calendar with its tiny hinged windows.
I hadn’t expected any gifts, but Grandpa gave me a pearl-handled pocketknife with a blade longer than my middle finger. It looked old, but well maintained and wicked sharp. Dad, having failed to remember to buy me a gift on a major holiday, handed me a few bills, and I stuffed them into my wallet without looking at them. ‘Thanks,’ I said to each of them, and then Grandpa pulled an ancient waffle iron from a low cabinet and a box of waffle mix and plastic jug of maple syrup from a high cabinet.
First Christmas without Mom, over.
I’d grown a bit more since summer but hadn’t been shopping for new clothes. I hadn’t had a haircut. Honestly, I sort of forgot about how I looked until the first day I had to go to a new school.
In this town, there was one elementary school, one junior high and one high school, all housed at the same address. Sort of like my private school back home – or what used to be home. Most of the kids here had known each other most if not all their lives, just like we had. Newcomers were mistrusted until they made friends or became outcasts. I knew this, but even so, I didn’t think about how it would apply to me, until it did.
My T-shirts still fitted okay, but my jeans didn’t. My shoes squeezed my toes. I’d outgrown my North Face jacket, and the sleeves of my hoodies were all too short. I tugged them down my arms until the knitted cuffs stretched out like too-wide mouths and stayed that way.
I wore my wide-banded watch and my rubber wristbands every day, relieved they weren’t banned here, because my teachers quickly decided that I was a delinquent. They wouldn’t have bent any rules for the introverted and possibly unstable new kid with ill-fitting clothes, too-long hair, and no desire to participate in class.
The other kids mostly agreed with the teachers.
In class, I took whatever seat the teacher pointed me to and did as little as possible. In the halls, I kept close to the walls of lockers, eyes on the floor, ignoring any insults or ‘accidental’ shoves. Sometimes I imagined myself reacting. I remembered the scuffles and shoving matches we’d had on the ice – the rush of putting an opponent face-first into the acrylic wall when he’d injured a teammate or talked a little too much trash. No skates or glassy ice beneath my feet, I could have smashed noses and popped shoulders from joints before most of these guys knew what hit them.
But then they’d know I gave a crap what they did to me. So I didn’t bother.
At lunch, I was sentenced to the outcast table with a couple of guys from my grade, Rick and Boyce, and a seventh-grade girl, Pearl, who slumped into her seat and read while hiding behind a head full of scraggly, dark hair and glasses. None of them were inclined to talk to me, but they didn’t toss bits of food or hateful comments, either, so I ate my lunch, as silent as I was the rest of every day, and then I pulled out my sketchpad and hunched over it. I’d learned to keep my backpack with me all day. Lockers weren’t secure, even though everyone was warned to guard their combinations. The supposedly confidential codes of those built-in locks had long since spread through the student body.
On my fourteenth birthday, I’d endured two weeks at a new school, and I had four months to go. Next fall, I’d move up to the high school. I had no delusions that it would be an improvement. Sometimes I stood on the weathered planks of Grandpa’s back porch and stared out at the water, wondering how long it would take to drown, and what it would feel like.
Like Christmas, I woke certain of no gifts. I wasn’t sure Dad or Grandpa would even remember, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to remind them.
Pulling the door to my pantry room open, the smell of frying pork and cinnamon greeted me. Most mornings, Dad and Grandpa were already gone when I got up. I’d emerge from my cocoon, get ready in the one bathroom we all shared and walk to school. January was chilly here, but nothing like what I was used to. Grandpa laughed when I asked if it ever snowed. ‘Once in a blue moon,’ he said. ‘Don’t hold your breath or blink.’
I missed the seasonal changes and the blanketing white from the window, but I wouldn’t miss trudging through it when the novelty wore off, or the bite of the wind slicing through my clothes and making my eyes water to keep my eyeballs from freezing over.
Dad was gone, but Grandpa was in the kitchen, sliding sausage links and French toast on to two plates. I usually ate cold cereal or microwaved a packet of oatmeal, so I didn’t waste time beyond mumbling a barely-awake thanks before grabbing a fork and digging in.
‘Thought we’d head over to the Thrifty Sense today,’ he said, and I glanced up, mouth full of toast and syrup. ‘You’re lookin’ like a scarecrow in them short pants. Unless that’s some sorta new fashion with your demo-graphic. I’m not exactly up on all the trends.’ He plunked his plate across from mine and angled a brow, waiting.
I shook my head in answer while confirming what day it was in my mind. Thursday. ‘But, school?’
He waved a hand. ‘Bah. They can do without you for a day.’ They could do without me every day. ‘I’m gonna call you in sick. We got some birthday shoppin’ to do.’ We shovelled a few bites in silence before he added, ‘Don’t suppose you’d go for a birthday haircut?’
I shook my head again, fighting the smile that pulled at the edge of my mouth.
He huffed a long-suffering sigh. ‘Thought as much.’ Patting a hand over his short, silver bristles, he added, ‘If I had it, I guess I’d flaunt it, too.’
I came home with several pairs of worn jeans and cargo pants, two pairs of grungy sneakers and battered-to-hell western boots, and a faded black hoodie. Nothing cost more than five bucks. Everything fitted.
Dad had come and gone while we were out, leaving a small case on my bed containing a dozen good-quality charcoal pencils in different degrees of hardness, two erasers, a sanding block and a sharpener. I recognized the case; it had belonged to Mom. Under it was a new sketchpad with finely perforated pages, the type Mom gave me for drawings I wanted to remove from the pad and display.
I pulled my tattered sketchbook from my backpack and opened it to a drawing of a seagull sitting on the hull of Grandpa’s boat. I spent the rest of my birthday testing the pencils, recreating the simple sketch and shading it until the seagull looked a little sinister – more like Edgar Allan Poe’s raven from a poem we’d read in English last fall, my first week back.
The raven had tormented a guy who was going crazy over the death of someone he loved. Everyone was supposed to write a short essay analysing the poem, but my teacher, staring at a point right between my eyes, gave me permission to choose something else, though I hadn’t asked to be excused from the assignment.
I chose an Emily Dickinson poem about the balance life keeps between bad things and good. I’d had thirteen years of good. I wondered if I would survive the thirteen bad required to pay for them.
LUCAS
A week or two into any given semester, overall class attendance falls off, especially in large intro courses like history or economics. This semester was no different. Unless there was a scheduled quiz or exam, the classroom exhibited an ever-changing pattern of empty seats. But Jackie, and her boyfriend, I admitted grudgingly, didn’t cut class. Not once in the first eight weeks.
Which made her first disappearance noteworthy, and the second – the very next class period – significant.
During a homework break, I checked Kennedy Moore’s social-media status, which now stated: single. Jackie’s profile no longer existed – or she’d temporarily deactivated it.
Holy shit. They’d broken up.
I felt like a complete dick for the jolt of straight-up joy that gave me, but the guilt didn’t prevent me from hypothesizing one more step: she’d stopped coming to class. Maybe she was planning to drop economics … at which point she’d no longer be a student in the class I tutored.
By her third absence, Moore was openly flirting with the girls who’d been fawning over him the past several weeks. The following week, Jackie missed the midterm. I waited for an updated status to come through the system, telling me she’d officially dropped the course, but it never did. If she forgot to officially drop by the end of the month, she’d get an F at the end of the semester.
I knew damned well she wasn’t my responsibility or my concern … but I didn’t want her to fail a class, in addition to whatever that douchebag had done to her by ending their three-year relationship. But after more than a week of scanning and dismissing every girl on campus remotely resembling Jackie Wallace, I started to believe I’d never see her again.
Francis gave me a How’d that get there? look as I lifted his butt off my buzzing phone.
It was Joseph, one of the full-time maintenance technicians at the university who scored me occasional extra income doing odd jobs on campus – usually legit contract labour, sometimes under-the-table cash. I wasn’t choosy; I’d take either. ‘Hey, man.’
‘Duuuude … you busy tonight?’ Stoned.
I shook my head. Joseph was fond of his recreational pharmaceuticals, especially at the end of a crap week of dealing with some of the more condescending academics, harried admins or bosses on power trips of their own.
‘Just studying. What’s up?’
Francis took advantage of my distraction, plopping his fluffy, twenty-pound body on top of my textbook and half my class notes. I shoved at him halfheartedly and he swiped my pen off the sofa in retaliation.
‘On a Friday night? Dude, you have got to stop that shit.’ This was a frequent assertion of Joseph’s. He knew I wasn’t going to change – he just felt like he had to restate his objection from time to time. ‘When are you going to live a little?’
‘Soon as I graduate, man,’ I promised. ‘Soon as I graduate.’
Sighing heavily, he turned to the purpose of his call. ‘I’ve got a little … proposition for you.’
If I had a best friend, Joseph was probably it. The weirdest thing about our friendship was the fact that we had only two things in common. First, our nearly identical tastes in music, and second, an affinity for compartmentalizing our lives, something we did with equal compulsion.
After spotting me alone at several shows last spring, he’d walked up and stuck his hand out. ‘Hey, man – Joseph Dill. Don’t you work on campus?’
‘Yeah.’ While we shook hands, I tried to place him. He wasn’t an engineering classmate, but he seemed a little young to be a professor. One of the slightly older students from one of Heller’s classes, maybe?
‘Campus cop, right?’ His tone wasn’t contemptuous, but it wasn’t complimentary, either.
I cursed that job for the millionth time, for all that those ten hours per week paid enough to cover nearly half my tuition. ‘Oh, uh – not really,’ I said. ‘I just write parking tickets. It’s a work-study position. Still have to wear the dumbass uniform, though.’
‘Ah,’ he nodded, sizing me up. ‘So … you’re a student.’
Though we inhabit the same small realm, maintenance and groundskeeping personnel don’t generally interact with students. He gestured to himself after the merest pause, stepping across that invisible border. ‘Building maintenance.’ He smiled. ‘Thought I’d buy you a beer and ask what are a couple hot guys like us doing going to concerts alone?’
I smiled, but it abruptly occurred to me that Joseph might be interested in more than a conversation, because my gaydar was blaring.
‘You’re legal, right?’ he asked.
‘Uh, yeah …’ Raising my red-banded wrist, I told myself this would be no different than turning down a girl when I wasn’t interested or in the mood – something I’d done often enough the previous three years.
‘Cool.’ After paying for two beers, he handed me one and clinked the necks before taking a long swallow.
I thanked him guardedly, not wanting to shoot him down before he asked a question.
He picked at his bottle’s label, finally coming to some conclusion. ‘So, my boyfriend is a musical-theatre guy. And f*ck if I wouldn’t rather be chased by starving zombies than be forced to endure Rent ever again. He has no problem getting a friend to go to that shit with him, thank Christ. I don’t have the same luck with my musical tastes in our circle of friends, ya know?’ He eyed me then, waiting for either confirmation or a prejudiced response.
Relieved, I smiled at the thought of this guy, who looked as if he’d be more at ease in a biker bar than a Broadway show. On the heels of that thought, a buried memory pushed to the surface – my father, standing awkwardly next to Mom at one of her gallery showings, clutching a fluted glass of champagne. Dad was a sports-watching scotch/rocks guy, not an art enthusiast. But he loved and supported my mother.
‘I don’t really know, but I can imagine,’ I said.
Joseph’s mouth pulled into a half smile, and we’d been friends since then.
‘Okay,’ I said now. ‘Proposition away.’
‘You, uh, have experience fixing AC systems, right?’
‘Yeah?’ I’d worked for Hendrickson Electric & AC my last year of high school, assisting old Mr H on hundreds of maintenance calls and repairs – but I’d never been in charge of diagnosing a disorder. After a year of working with him, he joked that I’d learned just enough to be dangerous, which summed up my level of expertise perfectly.
‘Here’s the thing. I just got an after-hours call to fix the AC at one of the frat houses. And dude, I totally forgot I was on call this weekend … and I am baked.’
I smirked. ‘You don’t say.’
‘Yeah … There is no way I should be operating heavy machinery. Like. My truck.’
‘That’s undoubtedly true.’
‘So I was thinking you could go do the job, and I’ll pay you – I get overtime for this shit. That way, I don’t get caught stoned on the job, you make some extra cash, everybody’s happy.’
Going to a frat house to identify and repair an issue with a major appliance that I might not know enough to fix wasn’t exactly an upgrade from sitting alone in my apartment. ‘Er. I don’t have the tools and equipment –’
‘Come over, take my truck – it has everything you need in the box. Those dumbasses won’t ask you for ID or anything. They just want their AC fixed. Why the emergency, I don’t know. It’s like seventy-five degrees out. Probably a party or something.’
I sighed. I didn’t want Joseph driving high or getting his ass fired showing up to make a campus repair while high and paranoid. Plus I could always use extra cash. ‘Okay, man. When?’
‘Uh. Now?’
The subterfuge included wearing one of Joseph’s official maintenance staff shirts – his name stitched in navy blue script into the white rectangle on the left side of my chest.
‘They probably need Freon or a wiring repair.’ He patted my shoulder and dropped the keys to his truck into my hand. ‘Call me if you get stumped. I’m stoned, not comatose.’
He was right about everything – the guys were gearing up for a party, and no one blinked an eye at me showing up in one of his shirts. Some guy answered the door and showed me that adjusting the thermostat didn’t change the temperature in the house. Luckily, Joseph was also correct about it being a simple wiring issue. The unit was close to twenty years old and would have to be replaced soon – but not yet.
‘Oh, man – sweet.’ D. J., the frat’s VP, threw his head back and closed his eyes, exhaling a relieved breath. ‘We blew a wad on this party. It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, but you never know around here.’
‘True.’ I loaded the tools into the box.
‘Thanks for coming out, Joseph.’ It took me a beat longer than it should have to realize he was speaking to me.
‘Oh, sure thing.’
At the door, he offered a folded twenty.
I waved it off. ‘No problem, man. All part of the job.’ The real Joseph was paying me fifty bucks for doing an hour’s worth of work, and I was apprehensive enough doing this at all.
D. J.’s brows drew together briefly, probably unused to a blue-collar worker turning down an offered tip. ‘Okay, well – if you’re free tomorrow night, we’re having this Halloween party.’
No shit, I thought. The whole house was decked out with imitation cobwebs and black lights and all the furniture had been pushed to the walls, freeing space for dancing or socializing in the centre of the main room.
‘It’s technically for students, but you’re obviously not old, and this one’s not Greek-exclusive, so stop by if you’re open.’
With effort, I kept from smirking. ‘Yeah, sure. Thanks …’ But no thanks.
Then I looked up and saw Kennedy Moore across the room, talking to another guy. That’s when it hit me – this was his fraternity. Jackie might be at this party, even if they were broken up.
Well, damn. Guess I was going to a frat party.
I’d spotted Jackie the moment she walked through the door. Even with the dark and the crush of bodies, I never lost sight of her in the crowd for long. She was dressed in red. Shiny, sparkly red. Perched on top of her head was a headband sporting two pointy red horns. A thin, forked tail was affixed to the back of her skirt, and it swayed behind her as she walked or danced.
Her legs were smooth and bare, and seemed longer than usual. Geometry suggested that her short skirt and impossibly high red heels were responsible for that effect, but no amount of math could lessen my visceral reaction to seeing her again – especially in such a mind-blowingly hot costume. That outfit on this girl was riveting to more guys than just me, though – as proven by how many asked her to dance. She either didn’t know or didn’t care, because nine times out of ten, she shook her head no.
She and her ex – and I was sure, now, that this was the case – remained apart as though they were polarized. He held court on one side of the room, and she made noticeable efforts to ignore him from the other.
I devised and discarded two dozen opening lines.
Hey, I’ve been watching you in econ class, which – I couldn’t help but notice – you stopped attending a couple of weeks ago. I hope you’re planning to drop, because then I won’t be violating campus not to mention personal ethics when I ask you out. Brilliant. And not at all creepy.
I think red just became my favourite colour. Lame.
I can tell you the square root of any number in ten seconds. So, what’s your number? Ugh.
I’ve never wanted to go to hell so bad. No.
Is it hot in here, or is it just you? Jesus Christ, no.
A couple on the dance floor were amusing everyone with an overdone drunk twerking demo – the only time I’d seen Jackie smile in the hour or so I’d been watching her. My view of her was blocked when a girl in cat ears and pencilled-on whiskers stopped right in front of me, peering over the rim of her cup. When I raised an eyebrow, she said, ‘Aren’t you in my econ class?’
One of the twerkers bumped into her, sloshing her drink on to her face. She lurched forward and I grabbed her arm to keep her from going straight to the floor. Turning, she shrieked, ‘Back off, skank,’ to the twerking girl, though it was the guy who’d bumped her.
When she turned back to me, the ugly sneer dissipated. She smiled prettily, like the past ten seconds hadn’t happened. Scary.
‘What’d I just say?’ She sidled closer and I dropped her arm. ‘Oh, yeah. Economics. With what’s-his-name …’ She snapped her fingers a couple of times, trying to remember, while I glanced over her head at Jackie, dancing with a guy wearing a long, dark cape. He laughed at something she said, showing off his white plastic fangs. There were at least a dozen vampires in attendance tonight.
‘Mr Keller?’ econ girl said.
‘Dr Heller,’ I supplied.
She smiled again. ‘Yeah, that’s him.’ She poked me in the chest with a metallic silver fingernail. ‘You sit on the back row. Not paying attention. Tsk, tsk.’
Wow. I have got to extricate myself from this conversation. ‘I’m actually the supplemental instructor for that class.’
‘The who-de-whaty?’
I looked down, pursing my lips. Christ. ‘The tutor.’
‘Ohhhh …’ Then she told me her name, which I forgot immediately, and launched into a monologue of enmity concerning the girl who’d bumped her. I didn’t know either of them, and I couldn’t have cared less about their blood feud, which concerned either a guy or a pair of shoes – I couldn’t determine which in my state of I don’t give a shit.
When I visibly located Jackie again, she’d pulled her bag over her shoulder and was heading out the back door to the concrete lot shared by several of the Greek houses. I’d come to the party hoping to see her, though I had no business stalking her like this. It was just as well I hadn’t asked her to dance or spoken to her. I could leave now, no harm done. Just follow her out the door and go home.
Except I’d squeezed my bike into a small space between a couple of cars out front. No reason for me to go out the back door.
Vampire guy had been watching the back door, too. He slung the cape over a chair and spat out the plastic fangs, shoving them into his front pocket. Exiting right behind Jackie, he didn’t seem rushed, but he wasn’t dawdling, either – like he had somewhere to be. Or someone to meet.