“Messy, slick; I’m going slow. It hasn’t been plowed yet. It shouldn’t be much farther. Sorry, I thought it was closer.”
I’m starting to feel anxious. Not really. A bit. It’s been a long night. The drive there, the walk around the farm, meeting his parents. His mom. What his dad said. His brother. And thinking about ending things this entire time. Everything. And now this detour.
“Look,” he says, “I knew it. Up there. I knew it. You see? That’s it.”
A few hundred yards ahead, on the right, is a large building. I can’t make out much beyond that.
Finally. After this, maybe we can get home.
HE WAS RIGHT IN THE end; I’m glad to see this school. It’s massive. There must be two thousand students who attend every day. It’s one of those big, old, rural high schools. I have no idea, obviously, what the student body is, but it’s got to be huge. And down such a long, narrow road.
“You didn’t think it would look like this, did you?” he says.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. Not this.
“What’s a school doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“There’ll be somewhere to get rid of these cups.” Jake slows the car as we pull up in front and drive by.
“There,” I say. “Right there.”
There’s a bike rack with a single-gear bike locked up and a green garbage bin up in front of a bank of windows.
“Precisely,” he says. “?’Kay, I’ll be right back.”
He grabs both cups in one hand, using his thumb and index finger as pincers. He knees open his door, gets out, and swings it shut with a loud thud. He leaves the car running.
I watch Jake walk past the bike rack toward the garbage can. That pigeon-toed walk, stooped shoulders, head bent. If I saw him for the first time right now, I’d assume his hunch was because of the cold, the snow. But that’s just him. I know his walk, his posture. I recognize it. It’s a lope, indelicately long, slow strides. Put him and a few others on treadmills and show me their legs and feet. I could pick him out of a police lineup based only on his walk.
I look through the windshield at the wipers. They make this motorized friction sound. They’re too tight on the glass. Jake’s holding the cups in one hand. He has the lid of the garbage can in his other hand. He’s looking into the bin. Come on, hurry up, throw them out.
He’s just standing there. What’s he doing?
He looks back at the car, at me. He shrugs. He puts the top back on the garbage and walks straight ahead, away from the car. Where’s he going? He stops at the corner of the school for a moment, then continues right, out of sight around the side of the school. He still has the cups.
Why didn’t he throw them out?
It’s dark. There are no streetlights. I guess there haven’t been since we turned onto this back road. I hadn’t really noticed. The only light is a single yellow flood from the school’s roof. Jake had mentioned how dark it is in the country. I was less aware of it at the farm. Here it’s definitely dark.
Where is he going? I lean over to my left and flip the headlights off. The lot in front of me disappears. Only a lone light for the entire school yard. So much darkness, so much space. The snow is getting really heavy.
I haven’t spent much time outside of any school at night, let alone such a rural one in the middle of nowhere. Who actually goes to this school? Must be farmers’ kids. They must be bussed in. But there are no houses around. There’s nothing here. One road, trees, and fields and fields.
I remember once I had to go back to my high school late at night. I was sometimes there during the first hour or so after school for events or meetings. That never felt much different from normal school hours. But once I returned after supper, when everyone was gone, when it was dark. No teachers. No students. I’d forgotten something, but I can’t remember what it was.
I was surprised the front door was open. At first I’d knocked on the double doors, assuming they were locked. It seemed weird to knock on the school doors, but I tried anyhow. Then I grabbed the handle, and it was open. I slipped inside. It was so quiet and deserted and the very opposite of what school was normally like. I’d never been alone in school.
My locker was at the other side of the school, so I had to walk along the empty halls. I came up to my English classroom. I was going to walk right by, but stopped at the door. All the chairs were up on the desks. The garbage cans were out in the hall, near me. A custodian was in there, cleaning up. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in there, but lingered anyway. For a moment, I watched him.
He had glasses and shaggy hair. He was sweeping. He wasn’t moving fast. He was taking his time. I’d never considered before how our classrooms were perpetually tidy. We came in every day for our lesson, occupied the room, and then left for home, leaving our mess behind. The next day, we’d arrive and the classroom was clean. We’d mess it up again. And the next day, all traces of our mess were gone. I didn’t even notice. None of us did. I would have noticed only if the mess had not been cleaned.
The custodian was playing a tape on a ghetto-blaster thing. It wasn’t music but a story, like a book on tape. It was cranked up so loud. A single voice. A narrator. The custodian was meticulous in his work. He didn’t see me.
THOSE GIRLS. THE ONES FROM the Dairy Queen. They are probably students at this school. Seems like a long way for them to come. But back where the Dairy Queen was must be the closest town. I flip the headlights back on. Where is Jake? What’s he doing?
I open my door. It’s snowing harder for sure, hard enough to land, melt, and wet the inside of the door. I lean out, squinting into the darkness.
“Jake? What are you doing? Come on.”
No answer. I hold the door open for several seconds, face in the wind, listening.
“Jake, let’s go!”
Nothing.
I close the door. I have no idea where I am. I don’t think I could point out my location on a map. I know I couldn’t. This place probably isn’t on a map. And Jake has left me. I’m alone now. By myself. In this car. I haven’t seen a single vehicle pass, not that I’ve been paying attention. But clearly no cars come down this road, not at night. I can’t remember the last time I was sitting in a car in an unknown place. I lean over to honk the horn, once, twice. A third, long, aggressive honk. I should have been in bed hours ago.
Nowhere. This is nowhere. This isn’t a city or town. This is fields, trees, snow, wind, sky, but it isn’t anything. What would those girls at the Dairy Queen think if they saw us here? The one with the rash on her arm. The raised bumps. She would wonder why we’d stopped here at this time of night, why we were at her high school. I felt for that girl. I would have liked to talk to her more. Why did she say that to me? Why was she scared? Maybe I could have helped her. Maybe I should have done something.
I imagine school isn’t a nice place for her. It’s probably lonely. I bet she doesn’t like being here. She’s smart and capable, but for various reasons prefers leaving school to arriving. School should be a place she likes, where she feels welcome. I bet it’s not. That’s just my feeling. Maybe I’m reading into things.
I open the glove box. It’s full. Not with the usual maps and documents. Balled-up Kleenex. Are they used? Or just balled up? There are lots of them. One has something red on it. Spots of blood? I move the Kleenex around. There’s a pencil in here, too. A notepad. Under the notepad are some photographs, and a couple of discarded candy wrappers.
“What are you doing?”
He’s leaning into the car, about to sit, red-faced, snow on his shoulders and head.
“Jake! Jesus, you scared me.” I shut the glove box. “What were you doing out there for so long? Where’d you go?”
“I was getting rid of the cups.”
“Come on,” I say. “Get in, quick. Let’s go.”
He closes his door, then reaches across me and opens the glove box. He looks in, and then shuts it again. The snow on him is melting. His bangs are messy and stuck to his forehead. His glasses fog up from the warmth of the car. He is pretty handsome, especially with red cheeks.
“Why didn’t you just throw the cups out in that garbage can? You were right there. I saw you.”
“It wasn’t a garbage can. What were you looking for in the glove box?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t looking. I was waiting for you. What do you mean it wasn’t a garbage can?”
“It’s filled with road salt. For when it’s icy. I figured there was probably a Dumpster back there,” he says, removing his glasses. It takes him a few tries to find a piece of satisfactory shirt, under his coat, to dry and defog his glasses. I’ve seen him do this before, dry his glasses on his shirt.
“And then there it was. The Dumpster. But I went a little farther. It’s a huge field back there. It just seems to keep going on and on forever. I couldn’t see anything beyond it.”
“I don’t like it here,” I say. “I had no clue what you were doing. You must be freezing. Why is there such a big school out in the middle of nowhere, anyway, with no houses around? You need to have houses and people and kids if you’re gonna have a school.”