As for us, we needed the money.
“Maybe it could be good for you,” Janie said, but it was more like a question. A hope. “You should hang out with people more.”
Janie and Clay both bang this drum often. The give-people-achance thing. Which makes me want to scream.
It’s not like I’m completely antisocial. I just know the truth: Most people suck.
“You’re going to have to think on your feet,” Janie said. “I bet once you’re not so scary, those cheer girls will climb all over you.”
“Fringe benefit.”
She punched my arm. For a fourteen-year-old girl, she can really wallop. She brought her finger to her teeth and started gnawing off slivers of skin. “Just keep your head down and your powder dry.”
“Live to fight another day,” I finished.
“Right. You have to watch out for the girls as much as the boys, you know.”
As if I didn’t.
She scooted around the drywall partition to her side of the room. I heard the soft creak of her bed as she lay down. We quit talking. No doubt she was reading a library book, one of those happily-ever-after stories with a couple on the cover gazing at each other intensely. The kind where any problem’s solved by the last page.
Our two-story unit is in the center of Lincoln Green. One of the oldest buildings here. But since it’s one of two stories, Janie and I pretty much have the upstairs to ourselves, at least at night. My dad only comes to the second bedroom upstairs to sleep when the night has passed and gray light tinges the horizon.
I stared at the permanent moisture stain on the ceiling. Sometimes I see different shapes in it—a witch’s profile or something.
Tonight it just looked like a stain.
I thought about Michael’s cold house and the plush furniture. Imagined Michael and Cyndra cuddled in his room, a king-sized bed for a kid with a vintage Mustang. I imagined me in that bed with Cyndra. Her hot breath in my ear and my hand down her shirt or gliding up her impossibly long leg.
I flipped on my side and tried to think of something else.
The coffee can secretly stashed away—filled with a roll of bills. I imagined the roll doubling in size and tripling in value. The future and some city where Janie and I would live. Me with a job, acting as her legal guardian. Her in school and us living in some other government crap land, but not here. Not with him.
The Plan.
Repetitive clangs of the weight bench and grating laughter sounded outside. Music blared through the unit.
“Keep your head down and your powder dry. Live to fight another day,” I whispered. The mantra Janie came up with when I came back from juvie. She read it in one of her books, and neither of us understood about old-fashioned guns and gunpowder. We just liked the sound of it. Then I stopped talking to most people and started living it. I liked the idea of living to fight another day.
I imagined bloodied knuckles and the wet crunch of his breaking nose. Bending an arm behind his back until it dislocated the shoulder. A kitchen knife twisting into his muscled gut. I fantasized about buying a gun and holding it to his head while he slept. Red mist and blood pooling out of his ear like evil syrup.
The gun in my hand after. Still in my hand. Heavy and promise-filled.
After a while, I slept.
The next morning, Janie and I got dressed and out of the house. Some mornings, one of Dad’s buddies might still be awake or barely conscious, watching infomercials. Today the unit was silent.
I waited with Janie for her bus.
“Remember, you’re supposed to act like you’re with them, so that means eye contact, Jason. Probably talking some or at least making listening sounds,” she said.
“Mmmm.”
“Very funny.”
“I can handle it. Chill.”
Janie had to stretch to push my hair out of my eyes. She smiled. “I almost feel sorry for those cheer girls. They don’t have a chance.”
All I can say is Janie lives in a dreamworld sometimes. But if it makes her happy to imagine me covered in girls, well, I can go along with that. It’s not a bad thing to imagine, as far as things go.
After getting her on the bus to junior high, I walked to Clay’s. On the way I thought about what to say to him. How to explain the job with Michael. Which felt like a betrayal, even if Clay would understand.
I got to the slumpy, concrete steps and jumped up them. Knocked softly, because maybe Clay’s mom was already home sleeping.
“Okay,” Clay said from inside.
After a minute the door opened. Clay nodded, slapped a quick shake, and then he was out the door, locking it and turning around in a fluid motion that was still somehow the opposite of smooth.
“Jason, you’ve got to read this book,” he started, before I could even take a breath. “I think you’d like it. It’s about survival, and it’s about long odds and justice and how do you know the right thing. And how sometimes you know the right thing, but you can’t do it. And there are zombies, and that’s awesome. Okay, so they’re not really zombies, but they really should be, because anything that’s trying to eat you and is humanoid, that’s a zombie, right?”
But he wasn’t asking a question—he was inhaling.
“Sounds great,” I said before he could continue. “I need to talk to you.”
He shot a glance at me, and his steps shortened.
“I took a job,” I said. “It’s a secret, though.”
Clay started shaking his head. The words gathered behind his teeth.
“It’s not drugs,” I said. “It’s for Michael Springfield.” I explained about all of it. Michael picking me up and taking me to his house, Cyndra’s teasing, the thin-ass explanation that it was just to convey an impression to someone.
Clay wasn’t walking anymore. I stopped moving, too. Every now and then a car whooshed by us.
“Fifty dollars a day?” he exclaimed. Disbelief that was only for the reality that Michael, or anyone, had that kind of money. “That’s two hundred and fifty dollars a week, and that’s only if you work during school!”