Beast Page 22

  We have a few tapes of Dad. I watch them on holidays and my birthday. Not too often. Like if I watch the tapes too much, they’ll turn to dust because that’s what Mom told me when I went on a bender in the sixth grade. Even though we had them digitally transferred after that, I’m still afraid to take my chances.

  I boot up my computer to see him. The clips. Nothing movie length. Nothing longer than five minutes. But there he is, taking up the whole screen. Laughing. Talking, listening. Eating an entire ham in a time lapse and then dabbing his face with a napkin, pinkie up. The ones my mom shot are hilarious because the camera is aimed as high up as it can go and he chuckles because she’s still so tiny compared to him. But they love each other, that much is clear. This is why they can still communicate. It makes me feel disastrously whole. And then immediately empty.

  The clip of him I secretly did and didn’t want to see comes up. There’s his buddy goofing around in their frat house at college. Clear and brown bottles and empty red cups lie across the dingy old couch, the coffee table, and the windowsills, and even on top of the curtain rods. Greek letters on the wall. My dad takes up three-quarters of the couch, and his drunk friend tries to crawl across him, misses, and his ass breaks the window. Dad hollers with laugher and states, clear as a bell, “That’s so gay.”

  I pause the clip and rewind. Watch it again.

  Was it condemnation? Turn of (stupid) phrase? I can’t tell.

  I leave the screen frozen on his face, full of life and laughing at his friend’s rear end hanging out a cheap, single-paned window.

  In time, I turn it all off.

  I don’t know if I want to see this one when I turn sixteen.

  After Mom’s perked up long enough to throw a turkey into the oven, I check my phone because if I don’t, even on a major holiday, I will curl up in the fetal position. When I check my phone, I imagine a rat in a lab somewhere getting a little pellet every time I click. Today the rat is hungry. I look at the screen and blink. Four texts from Jamie. She wrote to me. I tamp down the leaping in my gut and pretend I don’t have all the anticipation of someone else’s Christmas morning.

  Hey, it’s me. I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas.

  I left you a present on your front step.

  If you take it inside and eat it, then you still think about us.

  J.

  I get up from the couch and head to the front door. The air is cold and sharp and floods the hallway as I pull it wide. On the front step, as promised, sits a little package wrapped inside a napkin. I peel back the layers. Inside is a pretzel.

  The street is still as death. No strange cars, no movement aside from an occasional gust. I look everywhere for Jamie, for her bike. I leave the house and hobble down the front walk, risking a lecture for leaving the door wide open, but Mom’s still too steeped in her seasonal depression to notice.

  I pick up the pretzel and it’s stone cold. Maybe Jamie waited until she was long gone before texting me.

  Dad. Now. Give me a sign now.

  I rub my arms and look around. I wait for a leaf to smack me in the head or a sudden storm to slam a tree into a telephone pole. Nothing. It’s quiet. Maybe there’s a delay between here and the afterlife. I decide to make it very formal.

  Okay. Here goes.

  Hey, Dad, it’s me.

  I need to know a relationship with this girl is okay because I feel like I’ve already screwed up by not talking to her and waiting for you and all the rest of it. But you’re my dad and you’re very important to me, no matter your current somatic state, so if you could please send me a sign in the next ten seconds. Preferably something I can’t miss, like a ray of sunshine at my feet or a transformer exploding. Your choice. I’ll be right here on the front step you carried Mom over when you first bought the house. I really like Jamie.

  There. I said it. I am officially coming out to you; now you know I like her. Tell me you love me. Tell me I’m okay. Tell me we’re okay. Give me your blessing.

  I count to ten and nothing happens.

  No sunshine. No overloaded electrical wires. No sirens, no fires, no fluttering leaves.

  I peel off a piece of the pretzel, almost exactly half. One half I put back into the napkin and the other half I bring inside the house. The front door is once again shut and locked behind me and I climb the stairs to my room, where I put the pretzel on my desk.

  When I get my sign, I’ll eat it. Even if I have to wait forever. Except I didn’t hear from my dad, so the pretzel sits.

  Maybe he’s busy.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I’m back in the old weight room. Go figure. But as far as stuff to do after school is concerned, it’s nice to be a part of something. The guys on the team that I’ve met so far seem real happy about next season, and now I have a whole new thing to worry about: sucking at football and letting everyone down. No pressure.

  My stomach freezes up when I think about it, but I’m trying to look at it like anything else school related. Go to class, do the work, study. So I’m sitting on a rank fold-out plastic mat and trying to touch my toes in the name of flexibility. This is seriously the worst thing ever. Well, almost. Debilitating confusion trumps all. And my dad still won’t give me a sign.

  I stretch forward as far as I can and graze my shin. If the dead harbor emotions, do they do it daily? Like, is my dad watching and going, Way to go, kiddo—those hamstrings are almost as loose as cinderblocks! or is he like radar, so he can only respond with direct contact from approved earthly residents? I’ve been beating myself up about this forever now, but I still can’t get over why Mom and not me? The train set is perfection, my grades are impeccable, I know the difference between an off-tackle and a slant. I should be every father’s dream son. Other than the obvious (he’s extra super dead), I don’t know why I can’t get one single frigging clear sign from above.

  People come in and out of the weight room all the time, so I don’t notice when the door swings wide, or even when someone sits on the same row of mats to stretch. “Want a towel?” JP asks.

  My head jerks toward him. “No.”

  “Look, I’ll show you a trick we learned at baseball camp.” He takes a towel, lassoes the balls of his feet, and holds on with two hands. “This works real good.” A few minutes pass, him bent in half and holding on to the towel, before he grunts with a finish and sits upright. “Here.” He holds it out to me.

  “Thanks.” I take it and put it down.

  Everything about him is round as a pill bug. All tucked in and hunched. “New Year’s came.”

  “Does that every year.”

  “What’d you guys do?”

  “Me and my nine thousand friends? Nothing.” Rub it in, asshole. You’re the guy everyone loves and you threw a huge party at your aunt’s house, and tons of people came and told you how awesome you are. Just like last year. I was there.

  “I meant you and your mom,” he says.

  “My mom? What do you want, JP?”

  His perfect hair shimmies as he shakes his head. “Just saying hi. Trying to.” He cracks his legs wide forty-five degrees and leans forward. “I hate this—it fucking burns.”

  “It’s not supposed to burn.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “If it hurts, you’re doing it wrong.”

  “Shit,” he says.

  “Are you being serious, or are you messing with me?” I ask.

  “See? You can’t even tell I’m for real, that’s how long it’s been. Come on, man, look, January came and went, and I made some resolutions. One of them is catching up with you.”

  I stare at him. “Whatever.”

  “I miss hanging out.”

  “That’s…nice.” If it’s sincere. I sneak another look at him. Maybe he is? He’s all slumped over and hangdog forlorn. Could be an act but I can’t tell. I honestly have no idea who he is anymore.

  JP gets to his feet, stretches his quads, one-two, and goes near the lat pull. “How does this one work?”

  “
You sit on it and pull the handlebar down.” Rocket science.

  “Let me see you do one.”

  “Nah, I got to stretch.”

  “Come on, help me out. Spot me. My coach says I need more power at the plate.”

  I don’t move.

  “My season starts in like two months. Help a fellow St. Lawrence Lion out.”

  “Fine.” I get my crutch and hike up to my good foot. One more day and I get this cast off my leg. Just one more day and I can take a real shower and a real bath. JP waits on the machine and I amble over and put fifty pounds of plates on. I have no idea what he can pull, so let’s start small. “You sit, like what you’re doing, yeah. Grab on, and pull down,” I say. “Bring your chest to the bar, like that, and keep your elbows pointed down. Pull from your armpits.”

  We go through the rest of the gym. I show him everything I’ve learned, all the form and stuff I’m working on. Lats, biceps, triceps, neck, stomach, and he does okay on all of them for his first pass. When he’s done, I actually freaking smile at him. Can’t help it. Old times sneaking in. Maybe the resolutions he made are working.

  I sign off with Coach Fowler and hit the locker room. JP massages behind his neck. “I’m going to be so sore tomorrow.”

  “You get used to it.” Popping my locker open, I stall at taking my clothes off the hooks. Years of him laughing at my back, my arms, my legs, you name it, ring in my ears. I seize the clothes and get dressed. Fuck it. Let him laugh. He’s right: things are going to change. When scouts come to St. Lawrence, they’ll be coming to see me. Not him, me. Starting left tackle, number sixty-five. The Beast.

  I slam the locker shut.

  When I get my crutches and stand, he’s there waiting for me. “What?” I grumble.

  “Nothing. Wanna go?”

  Maybe I am being a dick. JP and I leave the locker room and head toward the lobby. We tread silently through the dark mezzanine and down into the foyer by the double doors leading outside. It’s one of those days where the gray sky is blinding. No rain, no sun, but the threat of both. Light streams through the glass windows above the doors. JP punches the doors open. It’s like walking into a klieg light while my eyes adjust.

  My eyes water as I blink, scrambled rods and cones struggling to adjust.

  A voice I will know until my last living day gasps. “I don’t think I’m ready for this,” she says.

  “Jamie,” I say.

  Her bike clatters to the sidewalk.

  “Oh, good. You’re here.” JP skips down the steps, lighter than cotton candy, and slings an arm around her shoulder. “How was school?”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jamie’s eyes are as big as mine.

  We stand opposite one another in shock, my crutches shaking inside my hands. It’s her. I’m happy, I’m panicked, I want to hug her, I want to hide, but it’s too late now. We’re locked in the same square concrete grid on the sidewalk. She inches backward, wavering on her toes to run. The only thing that stops her is JP clamping her in place.

  His arm around her, her camera with a new purple strap. For Christmas? A present? I want to punch him into next week. “Are you two together now? What is this?”

  “Seriously? That’s the first thing you say?” she asks.

  I swallow a blob in my throat. “Hi, Jamie.”

  “We’re not going out.” JP releases her and they take a step apart. “We found each other.”

  “He found me,” Jamie clarifies.

  The weather changes and mist starts to fall. I want to wrap her up and breathe inside the crook of her neck, but I can’t. Those days are gone. Seeing her kick-starts every ache I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist and they explode all at once. My fists spasm and I have to squeeze them together like I’m clutching two Ping-Pong balls to my stomach. There’s so much I want to say to her, but all that fades like winter sunshine. I can’t bring back what’s gone. Jamie stands next to him, beautiful as ever. She catches my eye. We stare at each other a good, long minute.

  “JP and I are friends,” Jamie says.

  “I call bullshit. He wants something.”

  “Huh?” he says, all innocent.

  I ignore him and talk directly to Jamie because if I so much as see him in my peripheral vision, I might just go to prison after all. “JP never does anything without trying to get something in return. It’s the only thing he knows.”

  “Not anymore,” he says. “Like I told you in the weight room. New Year’s. I made resolutions.”

  A thousand pounds of shit in a JP-shaped bag. “Jamie, can I talk to you? In private?”

  “Not without JP,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you ‘what’ me, Dylan, because I swear to god, you’re lucky you have one person willing to fight for you, because I’m done.”

  “That’s not what you said,” JP whispers to her.

  “Yes. It is,” she shoots back at him under her breath.

  “But you’re here,” I say, stumbling with shock.

  “Yeah, she is because she’s fucking awesome as shit,” JP butts in. “Look, dude, you can be mad at me forever, but what you’re doing to her is frigging stupid. And like seriously, when you’re all straight up miserable like this, you’re a black hole of suck. You’re bringing down the whole school. One giant, kinda literally, downer fest. It’s obvious you like her, you’d do anything for her. Everyone knows it; we can all see it. Just get the hell over it and apologize for treating her so shitty so we can be all good again.”

  Fuck JP. She’s here, and I talk to her and her alone. “Jamie, you and I—”

  “There is no you and I!” she yells. “Did you know I couldn’t speak for days? How I fell to my knees in the shower and cried so long, my mom came in because she thought I drowned?” Jamie bites down so hard, dark purple dents dot her lower lip. “You have no idea how much I tortured myself over that stupid pretzel. Who eats half a pretzel? What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I should’ve never gotten that stupid thing. All it did was make me cry all over again.”

  “I didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “So you split it in half to mess with me? I didn’t know if you would call or not, if you wanted to see me, talk to me. Why did you only take half?”

  “I needed some time.”

  “If you need some time, then you sack up and tell a bitch.”

  “It’s just that—”

  “You’re all rambling on and on about the genesis of evil in cancer, like it’s some Nazi plague with its very own Hitler or something, and then you turn around and pretend we never happened?”

  I want to tell her about my dad. “I didn’t—”

  “Oh yes you did.” She hugs herself. “I thought there was more in you. I trusted you. But it turns out you’re ugly, inside and out.” Jamie tilts her eyes toward the precipitation and tucks her camera safe and dry into her bag. “This is a nightmare. I’m going.”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” JP jumps in front of her, stopping Jamie from picking up her bike. “You said you’d give me ten minutes and we have six more to go.”

  “What the fuck is going on?” I bark at him.

  Jamie walks a wide circle around JP and stands toe to toe with me. She reaches inside her bag and hands me a postcard, a black-and-white photograph of her lighting a piece of paper with Russian and Chinese and French and Spanish words scrawled all over it. The only one I recognize is amor, a smoky haze all around her head in a fog. I flip it over and read:

  Jamie McCutchen

  A One-Girl Show

  February 12–20 at Café Crossroads

  “I have a show coming up. You know, for all those photos of mine you never asked to see. Maybe once you get your head out of your ass, you’d like to come. JP paid for the mats, frames, and everything.”

  “Her photographs are amazing,” he says.

  “Wait, what? You’ve seen them?” For some reason this greatly pisses me off.

  “Hey, you had your chances. It’s
not like I was hiding the fact that I’m really into photography. JP at least showed an interest in what I do.”

  “JP did all that so you’d come today; do you not see how effed up that is?”

  Jamie stares a hole into my head.

  “Her pictures really are amazing, no joke. I just…I don’t know any other way,” JP says. “I had to do something. The past forever has sucked. Sue me, but I miss the old days.”

  “I don’t believe a word you say.” I want to spit, the taste in my mouth is so bad.

  “You really should hear him out. Of everyone here, JP is the only person willing to make it work with you.” Jamie goes to JP’s side and stands with him. “He’s a really good person.”

  “She’s a really cool girl,” JP says. “And the happiest I’ve ever seen you is when you were with her, even if it was just on that one day for like one minute. I thought if you saw Jamie one more time, you’d get a second wind or something.”

  “This isn’t a boat race. You’re only making things worse,” I say.

  “Oh, because you’re the hero in this scenario? Yeah, okay. Sure,” Jamie says.

  “You can be bought,” I tell her. “So you’re no better than me.”

  “Don’t try that holier-than-thou crap with me. You’re the one who went around breaking faces. I’d never ever go around beating people up for candy and controllers and whatever else.”

  “That was a long time ago. I don’t do that anymore.”

  “I can’t believe I fell for a bully.”

  “Whoa, hold on here. This is not how it was supposed to go down.” JP dances in between us, cutting the air up with his hands. “You were supposed to finally say all those things you were dying to tell him. He was supposed to say he was a dumbass and ask for forgiveness, and that’s supposed to ignite the flame, get some sparks back, so you guys are both happy and Dylan and I get to play video games and hang out again. I’m bringing you two together. That was the plan.”

  “That’s not what you told me, not even close,” Jamie snaps. “You said Dylan had a revelation and was too screwed up to text me. Obviously he had no idea I was coming.”