“We have three hundred and ten dollars to spend this year, but we need to keep two hundred dollars in prudent reserve.”
“Okay,” said Sarah. “So we’ve got a hundred bucks to spend. I was thinking we should make it a Sadie Hawkins theme this year!” Her fake enthusiasm was grating; everybody knew she just wanted an excuse to force boys to slow dance.
“No,” said Shyanne, from her seat in the auditorium.
“You need to be called on,” declared Sarah.
“Shut it, Sarah.” Shyanne stood up, and pointed at Jake. He immediately began to blush.
“Who is that? Is that an elementary school student?” Sarah laughed, and the vice president rolled her eyes and began to apply cuticle cream.
And then Shyanne was dragging him onto the stage, while Sarah looked confused and slightly frightened.
Nobody else paid any attention until Shyanne wheeled the chalkboard out onto the stage, and Jake unrolled his sketches and scotch-taped them in place.
* * *
Triumphant, Jake walked home from school, his feet barely touching the ground. His head was filled with shopping lists, with the schematics of decorating a gymnasium, with his ten minutes of glory.
He entered his yard. Thankfully, he looked up from his reverie. A black bear sprawled on his porch, and it gnawed on one of Bert’s filthy boots. The bear was bald in patches, his snout disfigured by scratches that had become scar tissue. This bear was a survivor.
Jake raised his hands. The bear raised his head and looked up at him, curiously.
“I AM ERICA KANE! AND YOU ARE A FILTHY BEAST!”
The bear resumed eating Bert’s boot, until Jake threw his earth science textbook at it, and then the bear yawned and stretched and lazily walked into the backyard.
Keeping Score
Rachel was thankful that Jake hated math, and was terrible at it. He just didn’t care about solving for X, because he believed there was more important detective work to be done. He came in with his algebra homework for the last hour of Rachel’s shift, and they gossiped and speculated about Laverna, who had been spotted with Jim Number Three. There was also the mystery of Red Mabel, and why she had shaved her head. Jake assumed that it was head lice, but Rachel had it on good authority (and the rare sober authority, as it was not bar gossip, but discussed at AA) that the two Mabels had teamed up for some sort of project. Rachel was just grateful for Jake’s presence, serving him Shirley Temples until he was vibrating from sugar, and she often called Diane Savage Connor from the bar phone for assistance with the algebra problems that stumped them both. Rachel found herself missing softball, the sunburns, the furrowed scrapes on the knees, waking up in the morning so sore she could barely walk. She missed riding back from games with exhausted women, spent and silent, an easy quiet that could only exist among sisters, or veterans of the same war.