Darius
©2005 The Angst Guy
(theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent,
just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to:
theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: Imagine “Daria” with a Y
chromosome. What might have happened if the eldest child of Jake and Helen
Morgendorffer had been born a boy? Here is an alternate-history
might-have-been, or a parallel-universe might-yet-be, with all the fallout.
Author’s
Notes: This
story merits an R rating for strong language (f-word, etc.), intense family
conflict, sexual situations, and abuse issues.
This alternate-universe tale parallels events
in the first two episodes of the first season of “Daria” (“Esteemsters” and
“The Invitation”) under the assumption that Daria was born a boy instead of a
girl. No other initial changes were used, though chains of predictable
consequences have been worked into the story so that it has a flavor entirely
different from the known series. Cadet Michael Ellenbogen and Colonel Armstrong
of Buxton Ridge Military Academy (and the plot thread connecting them) are my
own inventions, but they elaborate on established themes from the original
“Daria” series.
This idea bounced around inside my
head for many months, and the chance to explore the effects of a single gender
change could not be missed. The story forced me to think a lot about what it
means to be a certain gender, and what it means in particular to be a man—a good
man.
While writing chapter three, it suddenly struck me that I
was listening to music that perfectly fit Darius and Jane as a couple:
“Rachel’s Song,” from the Vangelis soundtrack for the movie, Blade Runner.
If you have a chance to listen to this music, at least you will hear what I
hear when I think of the two of them. For Darius himself, a theme song is more
difficult to come by. The best fit, perhaps, is “Movement I,” from Vangelis’s El
Greco. I also listened to Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia”
about a million times to get into a really angsty mood for writing, but that’s
another story. “Going Under,” by Evanescence, also helped.
Acknowledgements: This story was originally
posted as two serial tales to the Sh33p’s
I wish to thank the following beta-readers,
in no particular order: Brandon League, Kristen Bealer, Thea Zara, Renfield,
MMan, Ray, James “CINCGREEN” Bowman, Renfield, Steven Galloway, Brother
Grimace, TerraEsperZ, Galen “Lawndale Stalker” Hardesty, Beth Ann, and Ranger
Thorne. They made the story much better than it was, and I am in their debt.
Thanks specifically to Thea Zara for
the “frog thing” with Brittany, to Brother Grimace for suggesting the gazebo
scenario in another story he wrote (the idea for which I stole without shame),
to Renfield for his invaluable suggestions on the Grand Canyon back story, and
Galen Hardesty for his epilogue ideas. Thanks, too, to everyone who asked for
more. It kept me going when things got hard, as they often did in writing this
very long tale.
*
Did I request thee, Maker,
from my clay
to mould me man? Did I
solicit thee
from darkness to promote
me?—
John Milton,
quoted by Mary Shelly at the beginning of
her novel, Frankenstein
“Now, listen,” said the businessman
as he drove his blue Lexus through morning suburban traffic, “I want you to
know your mother and I realize it’s not easy moving to a whole new
town—especially since we’re also adjusting to being a family again, right?”
The youth slouching in the back seat
of the Lexus knew his father was talking directly to him. The brown-haired
teenager wore black, from his short-sleeved shirt to his trousers to his dull
leather boots. He adjusted his glasses and continued to look out the window,
saying nothing.
“Darius?” said his father, glancing
in the rear-view mirror.
“Weren’t we always a family?” asked
the teenager, still looking out the window. “In theory, I mean.”
His father glared in the mirror, but
the boy missed it. “That’s not what I meant!” he snapped. “Listen up! What I’m
saying is, we’re going to give this togetherness thing another try. Darius, I’m
counting on you to show some respect and—Quinn, damn it, turn the radio down!”
“Please, let’s don’t talk! Okay, Daddy?” said the red-haired girl in the front passenger seat. “Let’s not fight right before school.” She looked back to include her older brother in her plea. Darius glanced at her and shrugged agreement.
“We’re not going to fight!” said her
father angrily. “I’m not, anyway! Any fighting that happens is up to him!” He
nodded toward the back seat. “I’m being reasonable. But we need to talk a
little, honey. It’s the first day of school for the two of you, together, in
almost three years. And we want to make it a great day, don’t we?”
Darius looked out the window with an
impassive face. Quinn gripped the book bag between her knees, her face tight.
She crossed her arms over her stomach and hunched forward as if holding it in.
“Darius?” said their father in a
loud voice, looking in the rear-view mirror.
“Sure,” said the brown-haired boy.
“Sure what?”
The boy sighed. “Sure, it’ll be a
great day.”
His father nodded in dark
satisfaction. “Damn right it will,” he said. “Don’t screw it up for everyone
this time, okay?” He turned the car into the broad half-circle leading to
Darius opened the side door and got
out, taking his time. He slung his backpack over one shoulder, shut the door,
and walked into the school without a word.
The day went quickly.
“Public school might take some
getting used to,” his mother had warned the night before. “You’re in with every
kind of student there is.” She was dead on about that. When he could, Darius
sat in the back of each class so he could see what sort of students he’d be
with for the next three years. He watched the girls in particular. Years had
passed since he’d been to a school with girls around. It surprised him to find
that he liked it. It was hard to concentrate on class work, having girls
around, but that was okay. He was smart enough to get by. The guys at Buxton
Ridge military school had talked about nothing else but girls when they had the
time. You want a wild time, said the guys, find yourself a wild chick. Party
girls were the best, the girls who drank a lot. They’d do anything and never
remember it. Some of the guys at the academy knew that for a fact.
Darius shook his head when he
thought of that. He was of a better cut than his former classmates. He didn’t
know if he had any appeal to the girls here, but if not, it wasn’t the end of
the world. Public school was different, but it wasn’t bad. It beat the hell out
of Buxton Ridge, also his dad’s alma mater. Darius could live out three more
years at Lawndale High easy. He’d have to watch himself, though; he didn’t want
to be jerked out of Lawndale High the same way he was jerked out of Highland
Middle School, back in Texas, and sent out of state to a military academy. It
was his only real fear.
Darius went home after his first day
of school thinking it would be far better than livable. Home early from his
consulting business, his father tried to pick a fight with him over finishing
his homework, but Darius wasn’t in the mood to yell back the way he once did. Maybe
that was why I was packed off to Buxton Ridge, he thought, because of
all the yelling. Dad couldn’t handle it and he flipped out big time. Who knows?
He’s always flipping out. After a moment, though, he remembered what had
happened at the
He shrugged and went to his room like his father told him, did his homework, and then checked out the local television channels while his parents screamed at each other downstairs. Unlike his sister, he kept the door to his room open, so he could hear the goings-on. It was important to know his parents were suffering. He didn’t want to miss it.
On the second day of school, a girl
caught his eye in history class—a slim, leggy chick dressed in black, with a
red jacket, old Army boots, and a vague air of hostility. She sat near the
middle of the room and drew in a sketchpad during every class in which he saw
her. Her short black bangs covered her face as she worked on her drawings with
single-minded intensity. Darius got the impression she was just making time,
waiting for graduation like he was. He liked that. He wondered what her name
was.
The girl glanced back at him once or
twice. Her eyes were the deepest blue Darius had ever seen. The second time she
looked back, he smiled at her. She smiled back but turned away and kept
drawing. He wondered if she was interested in him. He was certainly getting
interested in her. She wasn’t beautiful like so many other girls were, but she
had character and attitude, and it grabbed him. She was an undiscovered
continent, a whole world on two long legs. Darius wondered how it would feel to
run his hands through her jet-black bangs, whether that fire-engine red
lipstick would come off if he kissed her hard.
It wasn’t likely that he would find
out, he knew. She was a cool chick and undoubtedly seeing someone else.
During Phys Ed, Darius asked the
football coach if he could run a few laps around the track after school. The
coach didn’t mind. When the last bell rang, he waded through the flood of
students fleeing the campus, changed into his running clothes in the boys’
locker room, and carried his belongings out to the track. The air was warm as
he jogged. He was sweating in moments, but it felt good. He was not a fast
runner; endurance interested him most. Running gave him time to be alone.
Buxton Ridge had taught him that, among other things. He had no homework today
and didn’t have to be home with his parents again until five. His sister would
manage without him for a little while.
He began thinking about the leggy
chick. He’d never dated before, but he wanted to try it. The bad thing was, he
did not think he could stand the embarrassment if anything went wrong. It was
safer to keep people away and stay alone. His feet thumped against the track in
rhythm as he thought about it. He was safe—but missing out on life. Was that
what he wanted? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore, except for one
thing:
But he couldn’t go back there. Not
after everything that had happened. And he had Quinn to think of, too.
On his twelfth pass around the long
track, Darius saw the leggy chick in the red jacket walk out of a side door of
the school building. She glanced back and saw him. She stopped. He looked at
her, and she looked at him, and he knew it was time.
Breaking his jog, he walked off the
track in the leggy girl’s direction, picking up his backpack on the way. He had
no plan, no clear idea what he was doing. It didn’t matter. Meeting the girl in
the red jacket was all that counted.
“Hey,” Darius said as he walked up
to the leggy chick. He was soaked with sweat and knew he smelled of it.
She didn’t seem to care. “Yo,” she
said. “Did you mind if I watched?”
“Huh? Oh, it wasn’t that. I was done,
that’s all.” He gave her a nervous smile. “I’m Darius Morgendorffer. Weird
name, I know. I’m new here.” He glanced behind him. “Just running a few laps.”
“Darius,” said the girl, trying out
the name. “Sounds Roman.”
“It’s Greek,” he said. “My parents liked
history at one time, I think. Maybe they named me after Darius the Great of
Persia. I never thought to ask.”
What the girl did next—rather, what
she didn’t do—was important. She didn’t say, “Darius who?” or “Where’s
“Nah. Just like to run. Helps me
think, clears my head out.”
“I run for the same reasons,” said
Jane, “but I tell myself it makes me more creative, too. Don’t know if it
works, but it gets me out of the house.”
“You like being creative?” said
Darius.
“Yeah. I paint, sculpt, stuff like
that.”
“You’re an artist.”
“Or a bum. Hard to tell some days.”
“That’s cool.” Darius looked around.
They were alone. “Where you heading?”
“Home.” Jane waited.
“Mind some company?”
Jane smiled broadly, her wait over.
“If you don’t mind my company, sure.”
Darius looked into her blue eyes. It
was hard to think. “I’m all sweaty,” he said.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I get
sweaty, too. We have something in common.”
They set off together at an
unhurried pace. “You live close by?” asked Darius.
“A few blocks that-a-way, on
Howard,” said Jane. “I don’t have my license yet, and walking’s nice. Also, my
brother’s car tends to catch fire now and then. When it does, he borrows a van
from a friend of his and drives it a couple blocks until it breaks down.”
“Not much use for seat belts, I
see.” He pointed. “We moved in a few days ago over on Glen Oaks. Red brick
house.”
“Hmm, then we’ll pass your place on
the way to mine.”
Darius looked up at the blue sky,
then back at Jane. “Good day for a walk. Mind if I see you all the way to your
place?”
“You can come in if you want,” she
said, looking at the sidewalk instead of at him. “My brother’s home, but he’s
probably sleeping.”
“Big brother?”
“He’s twenty-one. Plays in a local
rock band, Mystik Spiral.”
“Haven’t heard of it.”
“Join the club.”
“I’m a big brother, too. My sister’s
Quinn. She’s fourteen. Long red hair, sorta cute. You may have seen her.”
“Yeah, in fact I think I did. She
had quite an entourage following her around.”
She said “entourage,” he
thought. A smart one. Smart girls
turned him on. “That’s Quinn, the popularity queen.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
Darius shrugged. “Eh, it’s okay.
Whatever floats her boat.”
Jane nodded. “So, what floats your
boat?”
He adjusted his glasses. “I goof
off. I read, run a little, watch TV, write.”
“Poems, novels, short stories,
plays?”
“Stories. I gave up on poetry. Don’t
have any ideas for a novel or a play yet.”
“You watch TV a lot?”
“No. Just ‘Sick, Sad World.’ I think
it’s on here—”
Jane caught his arm and pulled him
close as they walked. “I love that show,” she said in a deeper voice. “I never
thought I’d meet someone who liked it as much as I do.”
Her touch was electric. He could
smell her, too. She had a sweet flowery scent he couldn’t identify. A woman’s
soap, he guessed. His brain began to shut down.
With the few neurons he had left, he
checked his watch. “The show’ll be on in twenty minutes,” he said, and he
almost added, You want to come over to my house to watch it? He
remembered just in time that his father and mother might be home together this
afternoon. That would be bad.
“Come over and watch it with me?”
asked Jane. She still had a grip on his upper arm, just above the elbow. “
“
“Yeah. I’m the youngest of five. The
others grew up and ran off. Just me and Trent now, and sometimes Mom and Dad.
You wanna come over?”
“Sure,” he said, unsure if this was
a good idea. “That would be great.”
“Don’t eat anything out of the
refrigerator unless I clear it first,” Jane added. “Some of the food’s gone
bad, and some of it’s not really food.” She squeezed his bicep. “You work out,
right?”
“A little. Got in the habit at my
last school.”
“Where was that?”
He grimaced. “
“So you kind of dig the Army life,
is that it?”
“No,” he said. He forced the pain down.
“I was sent there.” He shrugged, uneasy now. “Tell me about yourself.”
“Don’t want me to ask about it,
right?”
He nodded. “Maybe another time.”
“Okay.” Jane’s hand squeezed the
muscles of his arm again. “Military school. I can’t complain about the results.”
“Were you helping some teachers
after school?” he asked.
“Me? Oh, no. I’m in a special class to build up self-esteem. I have to go for a few weeks.”
Darius almost stopped. “That
‘Self-Esteem for Teens’ workshop they were telling me about?” he said. “You’re
in that class?”
“Yup.”
“What, are you teaching it?”
Jane laughed. It was the most
beautiful sound he had ever heard. “Oh, no! I’m in it. I don’t pay enough attention in class, so the school shrink
thought I had problems.”
Darius gave Jane a long look. “The
school’s got its problems,” he said at last, “but you don’t.”
“Mmm,” said Jane, pulling him even
closer. “I can feel my self-esteem rising already. There it goes! Off like a
balloon!”
He smiled. They weren’t talking
about anything important, but every word she said was changing the world. “You
like to draw?” he said.
“I said I’m an artist. Wanna come up
and see my etchings?”
Darius felt a hot prickling on the
back of his neck. There were several ways to interpret her offer. “Sure,” he
said. “Catch some ‘Sick, Sad’ and check you out. Your drawings, I mean,” he
added quickly, turning red. “I can check out your drawings.”
Jane smiled as she walked, humming a
familiar tune.
He thought quickly. “That’s from
that movie about the ship, um, The Poseidon Adventure, isn’t it?”
“Yup. My favorite song.”
“I like it.” If she had hummed the
“Barney” song, he would have liked it.
He told her a little about his
family, Buxton Ridge, and his former home in
Darius heard the fighting half a
block away. He stopped to listen. Jane stopped as well. “Is that your folks?”
she asked softly.
“I’d better go,” he said, his face
lined with anxiety. “I should check on Quinn. She doesn’t handle this real
well.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be back out
for a while,” he said. “See you.” He hurried into the house and shut the door
behind him to keep the neighbors from hearing.
“What you think about it just isn’t
that Gah-damn important!” he heard his father shout as he came in the living
room.
“Where’s Quinn?” Darius called. “Is
Quinn here?”
His parents paused in their argument
to look guiltily at him. They had been fighting about him. He could tell.
“She’s gone over to a friend’s
house, Sandi someone,” said his mother. “She’s in some kind of fashion club.
She’ll be back at six. Why don’t you go out for a while, okay? Come back for
supper.”
“I’ll be back at six,” he said.
“You’ll be back when I tell you to
come back!” roared his father. “Gah damn it, you’ll show me a little respect,
or else!”
Darius fell silent and waited. He
wanted so much to give his father a taste of what he’d been dishing out for
nearly sixteen years—but I can’t be sent to Buxton Ridge again, Darius
thought, forcing himself to do nothing, I just can’t. Hold it in, hold it in
just a little while longer—
His father wiped his face with a red
hand. “Come back at five-thirty, and not a second later,” he said at last.
“Okay,” said Darius. “I will.” He
waved and left at a careful walk. He could hear his parents start up on each
other a moment before the front door closed behind him.
He walked back to Jane as if nothing
had happened, except that he couldn’t look her in the eyes. They walked in
silence until Jane began to tell a story about a local house where no kid ever
passed a test to graduate from high school and escape Lawndale, because of a
ghost that lived there. Her voice quavered, but it was a good story, and he was
grateful.
“You should be the writer, not me,”
he told her. She smiled and colored a bit. She bumped into him as they walked.
He put his arm around her waist to steady her. Violets, he thought—she
smells like violets. They walked like that all the way to her place.
Jane’s home was a pale yellow
two-story, obviously one of the older houses in the subdivision, with a
scraggly, overgrown lawn and a large, weird metal sculpture near the front
door. The mailbox said LAZE, the N having fallen over on its side. The front
door was slightly ajar. Random guitar chords drifted out. Jane went inside
first. “
“Kitchen, Janey,” came a deep, slow
voice. Jane motioned for Darius to follow her in. He shut the door behind him.
The house was moderately unkempt. The living room was dusty; pizza crusts and
used tissues littered the floor. The unplugged TV set was being used as an
extra table to hold a collection of small kiln-fired pots. All the furniture
fabric was threadbare, and the couch had holes in two cushions. A burnt spot on
the living room carpet showed where someone had tried to build a campfire years
earlier. A child had drawn on all the walls with crayons. The brilliant
drawings were still intact, though the wall paint was cracked and yellowed.
The kitchen wasn’t much better. It
had an off-white and stainless-steel décor popular in the 1960s and was more
littered than the living room. Flies buzzed around the dish-filled sink. At the
kitchen table sat a tall, lanky man in his early twenties, with calm dark eyes,
uncombed black hair, and a goatee. He stopped playing his guitar when Jane came
in, but his noncommittal gaze jumped to Darius.
“Yo,” said
“Darius. I’m her new parole
officer,” said Darius with a straight face.
“Didn’t know she had an old one,”
said
“That was two weeks ago,” said Jane.
She opened the refrigerator, took out the carton of Chinese food, and put it on
top of an overflowing garbage can. After pushing some of the refrigerator’s
contents aside, she took out a fast-food box of fried chicken and set it on the
table. “We can eat this while we watch the show,” she said.
“Dead on,” Darius said as he looked
around the room. “Cold fried chicken, the food of the gods.” The kitchen was
filled with homemade crafts—pots, wall hangings, painted pictures, landscape
and animal photographs, and small clay sculptures of monsters. The curtains
appeared to be handmade, too.
“
“Came in the mail,” said Trent, who
was playing his guitar again. “Forget when. Found it when I woke up a while
ago, and I didn’t know if it was impor—”
“Oh, bloody hell!” Jane
thrust the letter at
Jane threw the letter down. “They
sent this letter two weeks ago!” she shouted. “Didn’t you call Mom or Dad?”
“I don’t know where they are,”
“
“Lock up the house,” said Darius in
a flat voice. He was already on his way out of the kitchen, heading for the
front door. He checked the locks and found that only the knob lock worked—but
the knob was loose. He looked around as Jane came into the living room. “Grab
that wooden chair,” he said, pointing. “I can jam it under the knob and brace
the door shut.”
Jane did as he asked. “I can lock
the windows,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Lock everything
and pull the shades and blinds down, too.” He remembered entombing himself in
utility closets and his barracks room at Buxton Ridge, avoiding late-night
raids by drunken older cadets bent on tormenting the underclassmen. “They can’t
foreclose in this state if there’s no one here they can serve papers on. Weird
loophole. They have to go back and mail a certified letter, and if no one
answers in five business days, the foreclosure goes through. My mom’s a
corporate lawyer. She yells about this stuff all the time.” He laughed.
“Usually, she’s on the side of the people trying to foreclose.”
In minutes, Darius and Jane had
barricaded the entire first story of the house, even the kitchen and garage.
“That’s just what the bank people
will need,” she said firmly. “The house looks like no one’s home, but someone’s
upstairs playing ‘Come As You Are’ with the windows open. It gives the whole
thing away, all right?”
“Oh, man,” said
“Come watch TV with us in my room,”
said Jane. “We’ll keep the volume down.”
“Nah,” said
“Sure,” said Darius, waving. “We’ll
let you know if there’s been a hull breech and we have to send out a distress
beacon.”
“Hmmm,” said
Jane’s bedroom was that of a
tireless and devoted artist—not a dabbler, but the real thing. Paintings hung
from every wall, and an easel with a half-finished abstract work in oils was
set up next to her queen-size bed across the room. Dark blankets hung on nails
covered the far windows in place of shades. Sculptures in every medium lined
the shelves. Jane turned on the TV set at the foot of her bed as Darius walked
around, taking in the room and its myriad artistic contents.
He bent down and studied a
sheet-metal sculpture of a human reaching upward, jumping from a mountaintop.
“Damn,” he said, “this is really good.”
“You can stop working on my
self-esteem now,” she said, punching the channel-changing button. “School’s out
for the day.”
“I’m not kidding,” he said. He
crouched to look at the sculpture more closely. “I can’t believe this. Did you
weld this yourself?”
“Yeah.” Jane sat on the edge of her
bed, watching the tube. “You’re not saying that to get into my pants, are you?
‘Cause it’s working.”
He turned to her and waited until
she looked at him. “No,” he said. “I mean it. This is brilliant.”
She was the one who looked away
first. “Just a joke,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t go that fast, anyway.”
He looked at the sculpture, aching
to touch it. “It looks like this guy’s jumping, hands out, reaching for
something maybe he can’t see. I can feel the jump, the effort to get that
invisible thing.” He stood. “I wish I could do things like this.”
Jane swallowed. “Thank you,” she
said.
Someone knocked on the front door
downstairs. The sound echoed up from the staircase. Darius and Jane both froze.
After a moment, Darius glanced at his watch. It was four o’clock.
Jane got up from the bed and turned
the television set off. The knocking came again, much louder this time. Darius
went to Jane’s door and peeked out to make sure that
When Darius came back in the room,
Jane was near the door. They looked at each other and waited.
A minute passed. The knocking came
from the kitchen door next. Jane moved next to Darius. He put his arm around
her and pulled her close. Her head pressed against his shoulder, her mouth next
to his neck. “Don’t get in,” she whispered. “Don’t get in.”
The knocking came once more from the
front door, then did not return. Ten minutes had passed since the knocking had
started. It felt like hours had gone by.
“They’re gone,” said Darius softly.
“They can’t do anything for a week. Can you get your parents to get the
mortgage in?”
“I can forge a check,” Jane
whispered. “I’ll have it in the mail tomorrow.”
“That’ll do it. We won.”
“You won,” she said. “Thank you.”
And she kissed his neck.
He turned his head so his mouth met
hers.
Her hair was fine black silk and
smelled of violets. Her fire-engine red lipstick came off everywhere.
Quinn got home at five-forty that evening. Darius heard
her open the front door quietly, shut it almost as quietly, then run upstairs.
He sighed and turned off his computer monitor to hide what he’d been writing.
Sure enough, she opened his door and peeked into his bedroom before going to
her room. She wore her pink, midriff-revealing butterfly tee, too-tight jeans,
and sandals.
“Hi,” said Quinn. She looked pale. “How did—oh!”
“What?” said Darius, frowning at her.
All business, Quinn walked in and took Darius’s chin in
one hand, turning his face from left to right.
“Looking for my good side?” he asked in annoyance.
“Yeah, but it’s not good enough,” said Quinn. She rubbed
her thumb over a spot on his cheek. “Did Mom or Dad see that?”
“What?” Darius moved her hand away and got up, heading
out into the hall for the bathroom they shared. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” said Quinn under her breath. She
followed Darius into the bathroom and closed the door behind them, snapping on
the lights. She pointed to a lipstick mark on his cheek. Darius could see
Jane’s mouth perfectly. He groaned aloud. He knew better than to hide anything
from Quinn, but it still drove him crazy. She had a sixth sense about him that
he could not fathom. It wasn’t fair.
“You’ve got to be more careful,” said Quinn. She got a
washcloth and wet it under the faucet. “Dad would blow a fuse if he saw that.
Mom might blow one, too.”
“I can do this,” Darius grumbled, reaching for the
washcloth.
“Shut up,” said Quinn, pushing his hand away. “Hold
still.” As she wiped off his cheek, she said, “Who is she, Dari?” Her childhood
nickname for him was pronounced like “dairy.”
He looked angry and didn’t answer.
“Well, whoever she is, watch yourself,” said Quinn. “You
can’t go off and jump the first girl who looks at you. Use your head, okay? You
think everything else out. You’d darn better think this stuff out, too.”
“Christ, don’t lecture me! I don’t tell you who you go
out with.”
“That’s because you don’t need to,” said Quinn softly.
“Turn around. Come on, turn around! I can’t believe you actually got a
girlfriend on your second day in school. I’m going to have to change my opinion
of you.” She squinted at his face and neck, then nodded. “Okay, you’re good.
Make her clean you up next time. Or tell her to wipe the lipstick off her mouth
beforehand.”
“Cut it out.”
“Look, I know you don’t want to hear me say it, but
you’ve really got to watch it, you know?”
Darius swallowed back his anger. She was absolutely
right, which infuriated him all the more. Why was she always right? Why was he
always so clueless? “Whatever,” he said in defeat.
“I’d like to meet her,” said Quinn. “Not here, though.”
“What? Oh, jeez, Quinn!” Darius rolled his eyes and
opened the bathroom door, walking back to his room. Quinn followed him. He
sighed and sat down at his desk as his sister closed the door behind him. She
wouldn’t leave until she’d had her say. “What is it?” he said in surrender.
“Dari,” said Quinn, “I can’t take the fighting anymore.
This afternoon I went over to the house of a girl I just met yesterday, and I
got so scared thinking about coming home late, I threw up in her bathroom. I
don’t know if she’ll ever have me over again. It’s too much, Dari, and I can’t
take it. Please, if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. Don’t fight
with Dad anymore, okay?”
“I didn’t start a fight!” he hissed. “I didn’t
even have a fight with him, remember?”
“Well, don’t do anything to start one! I can’t
take it!” Her voice cracked.
This was the worst. He couldn’t stand to see her cry.
“Shhh! All right!” he said, angrier with himself than with her. “I won’t start
anything, I promise!”
“Good,” said Quinn, wiping her eyes. “Just be careful,
okay? I know how Dad gets when he thinks you’re challenging him, but just let
it go. It isn’t worth it.”
“All right, already!”
“Okay.” Quinn became more composed. “Oh,” she added in
her normal tone, “I meant it when I said I want to meet her. If she means
something to you, and I’d guess she does, then let’s get together.”
“Sure, whatever,” he mumbled, not sure if he meant what he
said. “Sometime, yeah.” He hesitated. “She’s all right. She’s cool.”
“Of course she is,” said Quinn. Footsteps sounded from
downstairs. Quinn turned, startled, and vanished from his room in a second.
Darius heard her door shut and the lock click only one second later.
“Quinn?” called their mother from the bottom of the
stairs.
“She’s in her room,” Darius called back. He raised a
finger and held it by the computer’s power button in case his mother came
upstairs. Better to make the system reboot than to let anyone read a story he
was working on. He hated that.
“When did she get home?” his mother called. “I was in the
bathroom.”
Darius glanced at his desktop clock, did some quick math,
and lied. “She got in early, fifteen or twenty minutes ago. She said she had a
good time.”
“I have to go back to the office for an hour or two to
clear up some paperwork about a case,” said his mother. “Your father’s meeting
with a client downtown. He won’t be back until late. I want the two of you to
stay home and be in bed by ten. There’s some frozen lasagna in the
refrigerator, or you can order pizza out. You hear me?”
Heavy sigh. “Sure, Mom.” He wanted to give a biting,
sarcastic answer, but any smart remark could set his parents off.
“Don’t call me unless it’s important. And call me, not
your father. He’s very busy.” His mother hesitated as if there were something
more she wanted to say, but she then opened the front door. It thumped shut
behind her a second later.
Darius waited a few moments longer, listening to the
silence that filled the house. He then got up and went across the hall to knock
on Quinn’s door.
“What?” she called after a pause.
“Mom and Dad are both gone,” he said. “Don’t call them.”
“Oh, right, as if. Can we have pizza?”
“I’ll call in the usual at seven.”
“Okay. Can you get me the cordless phone?”
Darius started to say no, but then thought of Jane. He
had her number now. “Can I call out for a few minutes first?” he said. “You can
have it after that.”
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t . . . oh, are you calling her?”
Darius went downstairs without a reply. Duh, he
thought, like that was a real brain-strainer. He got the portable phone
in the kitchen and brought it upstairs to his room. Quinn’s door was open. As
he walked into his room, she left her room and went into his again.
Darius looked at her in agonized frustration. “Quinn, can
I have a little privacy here?”
She seemed undecided. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go do my
homework, but see if I can meet her at school tomorrow.”
“Why? Why in the hell do you need to meet her?”
Quinn stared at him and didn’t look away. The
irresistible force.
“Fine!” he said, giving up. “Whatever! Just give me a few
minutes, then you can have the phone.”
“Okay,” she said. She walked slowly back to her room,
leaving her door open. Darius shut the door to his room and took the phone to
his bed. He dialed the number he had memorized and waited.
The phone rang seven times before someone answered it.
“Yo,” said a low, feminine voice.
“Jane?”
“Oh, hey. Darius?”
“Yeah. How are you doing?”
She laughed. “Fine since you left here an hour ago. Are
you home?”
“Yeah. The two wardens are out for the evening, and I’m
watching Quinn.”
“She needs a sitter?”
“It’s not that. I’m just here with her. It’s not like I’m
really babysitting or anything.”
“Do you and your sister get along? I wasn’t sure from
what you said about her.”
He sighed. “We don’t hit each other with bats most days.
We’re doing okay. Probably nothing worth writing about in a tell-all book
later.”
Jane’s slow breathing rose and fell on the other end of
the phone. “I’m really glad you came over today,” she said. “I think you saved
our house. I don’t know what I’d have done if we’d had to move out.”
He was pleased and relieved to hear this, but he shrugged
it off. “No problem. It was nothing. Hey, if you did get thrown out, you could
move in with us and share Quinn’s room. You’re an artist. You could do her
makeup.”
“Yeah, and
“On the other hand,” he said, his sense of humor fading,
“I doubt you’d like it.” He was instantly sorry he’d said that, but there was
no going back.
“What do you mean?” said Jane. “What’s it like there?”
He hadn’t expected she would ask, though in a way he had
hoped she would. He thought over his answer. “Sort of like one of those bad
disaster movies,” he said at last. “My parents fight a lot. We try to stay out
of the radioactive areas.”
“Oh.” A silence followed. “Can you get out much?”
“Oh, yeah. They usually want us back about six, but after
we’ve been in town a while, they might stretch that limit. Mom got Dad to—well,
anyway, I can go places after school, as long as they’re still in town. Quinn
wants to stay out after nine when dating, but she has to get past Dad on that
first. He’s been pretty strict—wait a minute.” He took the phone from his ear,
positive he’d heard a floorboard creak outside his door. “What is it, Quinn?”
The door to his room opened and his sister came right in.
“Is she on the phone?” Quinn whispered, pointing to the handset as she walked
over. “Can I talk to her?”
“Wha—no!” Before he could say or do more, Quinn
wrestled the phone from him. “Hello?” she said into the receiver, walking away.
“This is Quinn, Darius’s sister.”
“Hey!” He jumped off the bed, but Quinn bolted into her
room with a giggle and threw the deadbolt when she shut her door. Popping the
doorknob lock with a paperclip would be useless. He pounded on her door. “Quinn! Damn it, give me the phone! Quinn!”
It was hopeless, and he knew it. “Shit,” he said, and he
pressed his forehead against the door, feeling stupid. This was worse than
simple defeat—this was complete personal ruination. God only knew what she
would tell Jane. Since he’d gotten back from Buxton Ridge, Quinn had twisted
him around her little finger. It would be a miracle if he didn’t go insane in a
few more weeks. He pitied any guys she got for boyfriends. Those poor bastards
would be quivering jelly when she got her brightly colored fingernails into
them. Being her brother, he should be above all that.
But he wasn’t. He cared about her, which made him
vulnerable, and thus he was doomed.
He walked away and sat down at the top of the stairs.
Trying to listen in on the conversation in Quinn’s room proved impossible. He
felt more like Quinn’s slave than her brother. It wasn’t her abundant natural
cuteness, to which Darius thought he was immune. It was like she had some kind
of mind control over him. She knew he looked out for her and would never hurt
her, and she walked all over him as a result.
Well, he admitted, she didn’t really walk all over him
most of the time. Maybe. She just knew when to insert herself into Darius’s
life to make sure she wasn’t forgotten. He remembered how excited she had been
to see him when he got out of Buxton Ridge in June. She had been practically
glued to him for weeks after that. Things had settled down over the summer, but
today, she was just . . . since she’d seen that lipstick on his cheek, she was
. . . what was it with her? Was it the lipstick? Was it Jane?
Darius covered his face. He could just imagine Quinn
sabotaging things with Jane so she could make sure Big Brother would always be
there to serve her needs. Or, more likely, to make sure Big Brother didn’t get
into trouble and screw up things in the family. Didn’t she trust him? It wasn’t
fair. Nothing in life anymore was fair.
Quinn had changed a lot since he had been sent away to
Buxton Ridge. When he was shipped off, she was eleven and collecting Barbies
and accessories. When he got back, she was a taller, thinner Quinn with a
fashion model look but a shockingly fragile personality. Life must have been
hell for her without him around to run interference between her and the ‘rents.
If she was throwing up just worrying about getting home late, things were still
pretty bad inside her. Worse, he had no idea what to do about it. It didn’t
excuse her screwing up things with Jane, but if she didn’t get herself
straightened out, this would never stop.
Quinn’s bedroom door opened. She came out with the phone
in her hand. “Here,” she said without apology. “You’re right, she is cool. She
has to go, but she wants to talk to you for a moment first.” Quinn went back in
her room, leaving the door ajar.
Darius put the phone to his ear. “Jane?”
“Hey.” Jane’s voice was light and easy. “I had a great
talk with your sister.”
“Yes, she is quite the evil gremlin, isn’t she?”
“Nah. You know, she’s not at all what I thought she’d be
like. We’re going to meet tomorrow at school at lunch, about twelve-fifteen,
you and me and her. If you don’t mind, I mean.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun. I really want to meet her.”
Jane laughed. “She’s really lucky to have you around, you know.”
He wasn’t sure if he was angry to hear that or, secretly,
a little pleased. “I can’t imagine why. Look, I just wanted to talk to you for
a little while. Do you have to go?”
“Unfortunately, I do,” said Jane. “
“Fine,” he said in a sullen tone. “Don’t call after . . .
ten thirty. My parents might be home. Best not to get them started.”
“No problemo. And I promised Quinn I’d wipe you off next
time.” She snickered.
Darius reddened. “Jane,” he said, and he paused to think
of the one thing he really wanted to say to her. “I want to see you again.
Before the next Ice Age. After school tomorrow, if you have time.”
“Hey, you can walk me home from school anytime you want,”
she said. “And maybe next time, we’ll actually watch ‘Sick, Sad World.’ If we
can manage that. We missed their special on UFOs today.”
“UFOs,” he said. “I remember the one that brought Quinn.
I didn’t think she’d be staying for this long.”
“Oh, you like her, and you know it.”
“I like you, Jane.”
There was a pause. “And I like you, too,” she said at
last. “I like you a lot. I don’t know how you learned to kiss, being in an
all-male military school, but you kiss damn good. I hope it’s because you
practiced on your pillow. Look, I’ll call you back, okay? After Romeo here
finishes making up with Juliet, I mean.”
“Okay,” he said. “Listen, have a good night.”
“I already am,” said Jane. “Bye, Darius.”
“Bye, Jane.” The phone clicked, and the dial tone came
on. Darius turned off the phone and continued sitting on the top step, arms
resting on his knees, looking down the stairs and wondering what Jane and Quinn
had been talking about. Women—he would never figure them out. He got up and
went into Quinn’s room to give her the phone.
“What did you and Jane talk about?” he asked.
“Stuff,” said Quinn. She lay on her stomach on her bed,
reading a girls’ fashion magazine. “Now, shoo. I have to make a lot of calls.”
Darius went back to his room and shut the door. He locked
it this time and went back to his computer, turning on the monitor. The short
story he’d been working on swam into view, and he read the last few lines. They
sucked. The whole story sucked.
In disgust, he saved the document and shut down the
computer. He wasn’t up to finishing and editing the tale, which was about an
intelligent flesh-eating bacteria. The chaos over Quinn and Jane had ruined his
mood. Darius shook his head and thanked God he had not been born a girl. Who
knew what he’d be doing right now if he had been? He went to his bed, picked up
a book entitled, When Bad Things Happen to People Who Deserve It, and
began to read. It never failed to cheer him up.
This time, however, he couldn’t follow a single word. All
he saw in his mind was Jane’s face close to his. He remembered the soft touch
of her lips against his mouth, how the scent of her filled his head with
nothing else but the moment she was in his arms, when she was his.
After many long minutes, he put the book away and lay
back on his bed, looking at an interesting crack in the ceiling, and waited for
Jane’s call.
“I’ll bet you didn’t know,” said
Jane, pointing a chicken finger at Quinn, “that it’s not just Lawndale High
that does it. Every single high school in
“Does that have anything to do with
pesticides in the drinking water?” asked Darius. No one paid any attention to
him. He sat beside Jane at the cafeteria table, facing Quinn, but for all that
he might as well have been invisible.
“No way!” said Quinn to Jane. His
sister beamed like the morning sun. “Don’t they do anything else besides
football?”
“Oh, sure, lots of stuff,” said
Jane, “but football is played in yearly quarters. Lawndale High even has a
football team to play the other schools during the summer. It’s like a
religion, only the football fans are more fanatical.”
“That should be on ‘Sick, Sad
World,’” said Darius. “‘Football addiction: Can it strike your—”
Quinn cut in. “You know, I was
thinking about becoming a cheerleader, but they have only that one outfit, you
know? How fashionable is that?”
Jane waved away the idea. “You
wouldn’t like it anyway. I hear that cheerleaders are required to date only
football players.”
“And fail a reality test,” mumbled
Darius.
“Oh, no way!” cried Quinn, laughing.
“That’s so, like, restrictive! What it I wanted to date, like, some rich kid
who didn’t play—”
Jane drew a finger across her throat
and made the sound of someone’s head being cut off. “Off the team,” she said.
“They don’t allow it. They’ll repossess your pom-pom.”
Quinn laughed hysterically.
Darius sighed and checked his watch.
Twelve thirty-two. His new girlfriend and his sister were hitting it off like
gangbusters. What was next on the agenda—giving each other makeovers and going
shoe shopping together at the mall? He felt so far out of the loop, he didn’t
even know where the loop was.
Quinn wiped her eyes. “Oh, my God,
you are so funny! This has been great!”
“You have class in eight minutes,”
said Darius blandly.
“Oh, I know. I’m just having so much
fun. Whew!” She reluctantly got up from her seat. “I’d better get to my locker
and get ready for math.”
“Hey, quick question,” said Jane.
She pointed at Quinn’s face. “What color do you call that, your eye shadow?”
“What?” Quinn stopped laughing and
leaned close to Jane, her eyes wide. “Is it smeared? Is it running?”
“No, no, no!” Jane said quickly. “I
just like that color and wanted to know what it is. I’d like to use something
like that in a painting I’m doing, a portrait.”
“Oh, sure! Um, this part—” Quinn
pointed to the area below her eyes “—is your basic Perfect Peach, and the
eyelids are Desert Rose, with a dusting of Gold Starburst. I sometimes use two
colors together on the same spot to get a different effect, and maybe smear
them together, but these are pretty much right out of the box.”
“Desert Rose with gold,” said Jane.
“Thanks!”
“Oh, you’re welcome!” said Quinn.
“Dari, would you take my tray back? Thanks! Bye!” She waved as she hurried off.
Jane waved back, but Darius merely
lifted a finger and wagged it. He turned to Jane. “So, feeling enlightened
after your talk with the Zen master?”
“She’s got a fantastic color sense,”
said Jane with clear admiration. “It’s amazing. No wonder she looks so good.”
“Jane, we’re talking about makeup
here, not Rembrandt.”
“Color is color. Hey, are you going
to eat those fries?”
“All yours,” said Darius, pushing
his tray over. “I’m taking a five-minute break from fat.”
“You look glum.”
He shrugged. “I’m not glum,” he
said. “I’m . . . I’m . . .”
“Bull,” said Jane, her mouth full of
fries. “You’re pouting because Quinn and I are buds now and we don’t need you
anymore.”
“Except to carry your trays back.”
“Oh, get over your damn cheap self,”
Jane said cheerfully. “She worships you, you know?”
Darius looked Jane in the eye. “The
acoustics in here are bad. I thought you said—”
“She does. That’s why she wanted to
meet me. She needed reassurance that evil slut Jane wasn’t stealing away her
dependable but naïve big bro. That’s all that was up.”
“Excuse me? Naïve?”
“As far as women are concerned, yeah.”
Jane said it as a statement of fact, but without a trace of insult.
He looked away, mortified. Did both
Jane and Quinn know more about him than he did? Was there any justice in the
universe at all? Why was he even bothering to ask? “I wasn’t always that
dependable,” he muttered, changing the subject. “She and I used to fight a lot,
years ago when we were little kids back in
“That was before your dad sent you
off to that army school because he was fighting with you so much, right?”
“Yeah.” He then frowned and turned
his head to Jane, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t recall mentioning why I was sent
there.”
“Oh, Quinn told me all about it last
night. I’d sort of figured it out for myself, but she put the final pieces in
place.”
“What, did you tell you what kind of
underwear I wear, too?”
“No, but she did tell me she used to
make you carry her piggyback so she could pretend she had a pony. She said she
used to call you Tornado.”
Darius dropped his head in mock
shame. “I’m going to burn all of her scrunchies.”
“Dari,” said Jane, lowering her
voice, “Quinn is hungry for your acceptance. Maybe ‘desperate’ is a better
word. I think more than anything she wants to be sure you don’t forget her. I
can’t be more analytical than that, or I’ll lose my armchair psychologist’s
license.”
“How could I forget her?”
said Darius, looking at the table. “I mean, every time I turn around, there she
is, poking around in my life.” He sighed. “It’s not so bad, really, I guess. I
missed her a lot when I was at Buxton Ridge. I did a lot of thinking then about
her and me. A lot went on in her life while I was gone, and I think a lot of it
was bad. It really bothers me.” He looked off into space. “I can’t believe how
much she’s changed. She’s like a whole different person. The little Quinn who
wanted me to play pony is gone.” He broke off and swallowed.
“She is something, isn’t she?”
Darius nodded as he picked at the
remains of his food. “I don’t see why she needs my acceptance, though. She’s
friends with half the planet, and the other half just hasn’t met her yet. She
doesn’t have to do anything to be a boy magnet. Being popular is part of her
genetic code. I’m surprised the Fashion Club didn’t make her president for
life.”
“All that’s surface stuff,” said
Jane softly. “Surface stuff is easy. I’m guessing now, and maybe I’m poking my
nose into a place it doesn’t belong, but you’re probably the only person who
really knows her who doesn’t yell at her all the time.”
Darius stared at the tabletop and
said nothing. He had not thought of that. A pang of guilt shot through him for
all the times he had yelled at his sister. After a long moment, he
grimaced and checked his watch. “We’d better go,” he said, pushing back from
the table. “Mr. O’Neill’s probably dying to tell us about Hamlet’s self-esteem
problems.”
They stood and collected their
trays. Darius stacked Quinn’s on top of his own.
“Speaking of self-esteem,” said
Jane, “I’m getting out of that after-school class. O’Neill teaches it, by the
way.”
“How are you getting out?”
“Oh, I have all the answers to the
release test. I can take it at any time and drop the class.”
Darius stopped, almost spilling the
contents of both trays he carried. “You what?”
“Sure! I’ve taken this self-esteem
class six times before, mostly in my freshman year. It hasn’t changed a bit.”
Darius stared at her. “If you
could’ve gotten out,” he said, “why didn’t you?”
“Because having low self-esteem
makes me feel special.”
“I think that’s the heroin talking,
not you. No, seriously. Why didn’t you?”
Jane shrugged. “I didn’t have
anything else to do after school. No one’s at home most days except
“So, what are you going to do with
all your new-found free time?”
Jane smiled, not looking at him.
“Well, I thought I’d ask you for ideas. Got any?”
The rest of the week passed without
serious disruption, other than flare-ups between Darius’s parents. Friday
afternoon found Darius and Jane walking into Pizza King, reputedly a
better-than-average restaurant near the high school where many of the students
congregated.
“Great self-esteem speech at the
assembly,” said Darius to Jane, waiting for her to take a seat at the booth
he’d found for the two of them. “I liked the part at the end where you ran off
crying. That was Oscar material. It got my vote.”
“It’s what Mr. O’Neill gets for
making me get up in front of everyone and talk about how I beat negative
self-esteem,” said Jane. She picked up a menu, glanced at it, and threw it down
again. “I’m bloody starved.”
“Tut, tut, language.” Darius picked
up the menu and squinted at it. “You learn that in
“I learned it from my dad,” said
Jane. “He went to Wales for four months when I was a kid, and when he came back
he kept saying ‘bloody this’ and ‘bloody that’ when he was developing his
film.”
“You know, about the assembly
speech, you could have just faked laryngitis and gotten out of it.”
“Nah. I’ve got theater in my veins.
If it’s art, we Lanes do it.”
“Is sleeping an art? Say yes.”
“Some people think so.
“Hmmm. You wanna split a giant
pizza?”
“Sure. Let’s get the garlic bread,
too. They make fantastic garlic bread here. We’ll need extra napkins.”
“Okay,” said Darius, still reading
the menu. “My treat.”
“Let me split the bill with you.”
“Nah. Isn’t done.”
“Isn’t done by whom? I’ve got
money.”
Darius winced. “It . . . just let me
pay for it. I’m good.”
“Good you are, but is this
guy-always-pays thing something they drilled into you at the academy?”
Darius didn’t answer. A muscle tightened
in his cheek. He suddenly thought about things he had hoped he never would
again.
He sighed and put down the menu. Easy
way out, he decided. “I just don’t think about it when I can. I’m not like
Dad, going on and on about it. Mostly he tells me how it made him a man and all
that, but he complains about it at other times. His own dad forced him to go
there all through junior high and high school. Dad got to go home only on short
breaks.” Darius shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “My dad really
hates his own dad. He gets so angry when he talks about Grandpa Morgendorffer,
who’s dead now. I think Dad feeds me this line about how Buxton Ridge was good
for him just for my benefit, not that he really means it. It had a bad
reputation in the sixties and seventies. It was cleaned up after that, but it
was kind of a snake pit before then.”
“Ah,” said Jane. “Then—”
“Hey, I’m Artie,” said a voice
beside them. Darius and Jane looked up. A freckled, bucktoothed young man with
a weak chin and unkempt hair stood by the table in a Pizza King waiter’s
outfit. “Can I take your order?”
“Hi, Artie,” said Jane in a tone of
familiarity. “We’ll take an order of garlic bread and a giant . . . what sort
of pizza?” she added in Darius’s direction.
“I dunno,” he said. “This
Meat-Monster Special looks—”
“Do you know anything about UFOs?”
asked Artie out of the blue.
Darius looked up in confusion.
“What?”
“Artie—” Jane began in a warning
tone.
“You know, flying saucers, the
messengers from those in the Great Beyond,” Artie said with great earnestness.
“Back in 1947 in
“The Meat-Monster Special!” Jane
interrupted. “Definitely, the Meat-Monster Special! And two large Ultra-Colas!”
“Oh,” said Artie, writing this down.
“Okay. I’ll be right back unless I have to take out the garbage or something.”
As Artie walked away, Darius gave
him the eye. “He looks familiar.”
“He was interviewed on that ‘Sick,
Sad World’ episode on UFOs we missed on Monday,” Jane said. “I saw him in the
commercial bits. You probably saw him there, too. He works around
“
“What’s your Mom like?”
“Mom?” Darius looked at Jane. “I
dunno. I don’t feel like I know her really well. She’s driven, a workaholic.
Not real friendly, probably from fighting with Dad. She isn’t home much. She
used to get frozen lasagna in bulk and microwave it for dinner, but since we
got to
“You cook?”
“Sure. I run the microwave and call
for carryout. I’m experienced at dialing for pizza and Chinese.”
Jane looked thoughtful. “I imagine
that would get expensive.”
“Mom gives me extra money to take
care of Quinn when everyone else is out.” He played with the menu on the table.
“They don’t . . . never mind.”
“What?” said Jane in a low tone.
Darius looked around. “Oh, Mom and
Dad don’t like each other much anymore. Sort of like Hitler and Stalin didn’t
like each other much. They started off with this fake alliance, and then
everything unraveled and there was that long party at
“Are you talking about Hitler and
Stalin, or your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm.” Jane scratched her left ear
around the three silver-wire pierced earrings she wore there. “My folks aren’t
around enough for me to figure out what historical figures they’re like. I’d
have to say Dad’s like the Invisible Man, and Mom’s like one of those grown-up
hippies in the movies, the kind that can’t focus on the present, so I’d have to
go more with fictional models than historical ones.”
“So,
“With a little help from everyone
else. I wonder sometimes if I was the one who raised him.”
“Couldn’t have been too hard caring
for a guy who sleeps all day.”
“Exactly,” said Jane. “Exactly.” She
looked to one side. “Here comes our garlic bread. Oh, and there’s your sis and
the Fashion Banditos.”
Darius looked over as Artie
delivered their order. Quinn and three other girls her age were coming into
Pizza King. Quinn spotted Darius and Jane and waved, grinning. An attractive
brown-haired girl with a superior look glanced at the couple and scowled before
turning away. A thin Asian girl in a blue dress looked blankly at them before
following her friends to a table, and a brown-haired girl in pigtails waved at
Darius and Jane for a half-second, then looked embarrassed and ran to catch up
with the others.
“How special,” said Darius. “I bet
she raises their collective IQ by thirty points when they get together.”
“I bet that . . .” Jane began, then
shook her head.
“What?”
“Oh, forget it. I doubt they’ll ask
you for a date. They only go out with popular people.”
“Thank God,” said Darius, who wasn’t
in the least offended. “That’s all I need to do is date my sister’s friends.”
Jane cleared her throat.
“I didn’t mean you,” Darius
said with a wounded look.
“Heads up,” said Jane, looking over
Darius’s shoulder.
He turned to see Quinn walking over.
“Hey!” she said to Darius. “Listen, I have to ask you a favor—oh, don’t look at
me like that! I haven’t even told you what it is yet!”
“He’s crabby today,” said Jane.
“That time of the month.”
“It’s always that time of the month
with him,” said Quinn, playfully punching Darius in the shoulder. “Look, word
got out that one of the cheerleaders is having a big party at her house a week
from this Saturday. Can you talk to Mom or something and see if I can go over
and maybe stay out past nine? I need you to go to base for me.”
“To bat for you, you mean.”
“No, to ask Mom if I can stay out
till maybe eleven for once. Get with it, Dari.”
Darius sighed. “Were you invited
over?”
“Not really, but yes. See,
cheerleaders have to invite the whole football team when they have parties, and
so she had to invite these three guys on the team who keep asking me for dates,
so they asked me to go with them, but then they got into a fight over who was
going to—”
“Okay, okay! Stop! I’ll ask!” said
Darius. “I can’t promise anything, though. I’ll ask tonight.”
“Thanks!” said Quinn. “Isn’t he
great?” she said to Jane. Quinn punched him in the shoulder again before
walking off to her friends.
“She’s getting stronger,” Darius
mumbled, rubbing his arm. “I’ll have to cut back on her vitamins.” He looked
back at Jane. “I’ll bet I have to go along and chaperone her. Mom’s mentioned
that to me before. She wants to keep a close eye on where Quinn goes and who
she’s with. Probably afraid of a lawsuit.”
“You know, most parents around here
don’t mind if their kids are out for a bit. Take me, for instance. My parents
are in
“Beats me. Anyway, Mom and Dad have
a major ongoing discussion, to use the term loosely, about whether Quinn and I
are living up to their standards. Dad usually starts the discussion by yelling
about my—” He broke off suddenly. “Wait, sorry. Starting to channel Dad there.
Pick a topic for me, any topic.”
Jane sipped at her Ultra-Cola and
reached for a piece of garlic bread. “The topic is food,” she said. “Eat.”
Halfway through the pizza, Jane
raised a finger as she swallowed a bite of the Meat-Monster Special. “If you
have to chaperone Quinn,” she said, “would you like someone to chaperone you?”
“Who?” he said, confused.
Jane kicked him under the table and
stared at him with too-large eyes.
“Oh!” he said. “Uh, definitely!
Absolutely! And I can chaperone you, too.”
“We just have to get me invited
first.”
“Well, Quinn can’t go unless I go,
and I can’t go unless you go, so you have to go, right?”
“I hate to say this,” said Jane,
“but that kind of logic might actually work on a
Darius looked pained. “I hate
meeting people.”
“I can’t blame you,” said Jane, “but
this is for your sister. Go over there and beat your chest and throw things. It
works for chimpanzees.”
Rolling his eyes, Darius wiped his
hands and got up. “If I’m not back in five minutes—”
“—I’ll finish the pizza by myself,”
said Jane.
He walked over, looking as dull as possible.
“Excuse me,” he said to the blonde, big-breasted girl in the cheerleader outfit
and double ponytails, and the muscular, dark-haired guy sitting across from her
wearing a Lawndale Lions football uniform. “I—”
“Hey!” said the guy. “I’m the QB,
and this is my girl!”
“No doubt,” said Darius. “I wanted
to ask—”
“She’s taken, okay?” said the
football player. “Beat it.”
“Kevvy, wait!” squealed the
cheerleader. “Let him finish! He’s that new guy, okay? He doesn’t know how
things are done here!”
“Oh,” said the football player. He
motioned to Darius. “Go ahead and ask her out, and then I’ll tell you why you
can’t go out with her.”
“My sister said she was invited over
to a cheerleader’s party next weekend,” he said to
“Oh, that’s my party!”
“She’s the girl with the red hair,
sitting over there,” Darius said, pointing across the dining room. “She says
some football players asked her to the party, and—”
“Whoa, babe!” protested “Kevvy.” “It
wasn’t me! I’d never ask out a girl who was cuter than you!”
“What?” shrieked
Her boyfriend wasted no time in
running after her. “Wait! Babe!” he shouted. “Let me explain! It’s not what I
said it sounded like!”
Darius stood by their table,
watching them run out of sight past the pizzeria window. He turned around, saw
everyone looking at him, and walked back to the booth with Jane. “That went
well,” he said as he sat down again. He noticed Jane was counting out some
bills in her hand. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Paying for the meal,” she said.
“That was the best floor show I’ve ever seen. It was worth every penny.”
“Jane—”
“Shush,” she said, dropping the
bills on the edge of the table on top of the check. “Now, tell me your secret
for sowing discord.”
He thought carefully. “I try to be
myself,” he said.
“Crap. That sure won’t work for me.”
Quinn reappeared at their side.
“Wow!” she said to Darius. “What did you say to them?”
“He asked Kevin out for Saturday
night, but he wouldn’t let
“Ewww!” said Quinn. “Dari, we have
to work on your people skills.”
“I asked
“Oh, that’s fine.” Quinn turned to
Jane. “Don’t be jealous of him and Kevin,” she added. “It won’t last. It’s all
the fault of that military school, you know.”
“I’ll keep a stiff upper lip,” said
Jane.
“Goodbye, Quinn,” said Darius
loudly. “Sorry you had to run off so soon. See you next week during visiting
hours, and tell the staff hello from me.”
“Bye,” said Quinn. She started off,
then dodged back and punched Darius in the arm again before she left,
snickering.
Darius drummed his fingers on the
table, looking after her. “Tell me again how much I like my sister,” he said.
“Mmmgg,” said Jane, chewing a
mouthful of pizza. “Mgl bg mg zg’mtz zb’btz.”
He nodded and picked up a slice
himself. He wondered how he was going to present the party story to his mother
for maximum beneficial effect for Quinn—and, of course, for an evening out for
himself and Jane. The arguing might go on all weekend, but he couldn’t let it
get out of hand. It would have been a better weekend if he’d had his driver’s
license by now, so he could have driven Jane to Middleton for that UFO
convention on Saturday. He wouldn’t be sixteen until mid-November, though.
Maybe next year, if they were still together. He hoped they would be. Jane was
one of a kind. He’d never find her like again.
When Darius got home that evening,
his father was in the kitchen, mixing a pitcher of margaritas. The kitchen
smelled of tequila and limejuice. Darius walked in and knew it would be a
difficult night when he spotted the empty tequila bottle. His plans to talk
about Quinn and the party went up in smoke.
“It’s almost six,” said his father,
looking up. “When I was your age, my father made me get home every night at
five thirty, so I’d never miss getting home by six. Old Mad Dog, that’s what he
did.”
Darius nodded carefully and went to
the refrigerator.
“That it?” asked his father.
“Nothing for the old man?”
“Hi,” Darius said, looking his
father in the eye with one hand on the refrigerator handle. “Good to see you.”
His father grunted and returned to
stirring the margaritas. “Old Mad Dog would’ve beaten me good if I’d come home
and not been respectful to him.”
Darius took his hand off the
refrigerator. “How was your day?” he asked. It was a gamble, but an open-ended
question had a chance to derail an outburst—or trigger one.
“How was my day,” said his father.
“I’ll tell you how it was. I had two clients who didn’t show, one client who
showed and said no to my proposals, and one client who took my proposals home
to think about it. Didn’t call me back. That’s how my day went. Big waste of
time.”
A possible path appeared before Darius.
He took it. “You’re doing better than your father did, aren’t you?”
His father looked up. “Doing better?
I’m doing better than old Mad Dog Morgendorffer?” He grunted and looked into
the pitcher. “That could be. He was dead by my age now. Heart attack killed
him. I was already in
Darius opened the refrigerator and
looked inside. He took out a gallon jug of milk and shut the refrigerator,
walking over to the cabinets to get himself a glass.
“It did make a man out of you,
didn’t it?” said his father, looking at him.
Darius looked back when his father
spoke. The margarita glass his father held was now empty. Darius nodded. “Yes,”
he said.
“Yes, sir! You should say,
yes, sir, to me, like you did in school to those jackals running around
in their holier-than-thou drill uniforms! God, I hated them.” His father
refilled his glass. “Damned if I know where the salt is around here.”
Nothing remained to do but wait and
see where this went. Darius leaned against the countertop and ignored the milk
and glass behind him.
“What did you think about them?” his
father asked.
His son licked his lips. “The drill
sergeants and officers?”
“Of course!” yelled his father. “Who
the hell do you think I’m talking about? JFK and Camelot?”
Darius stared at his father for a
few moments. “They were just doing their job,” he said. They weren’t that
bad, he thought. It was the other students who sucked, but the staff was
mostly tolerable.
“Doing their job,” said his father.
“Doing their job, hell. They were jackals.” He pointed at Darius. “You know
what jackals are, don’t you? They’re these little doglike things that live in
the desert. They come out at night and attack wounded beasts, biting them and
running off until the prey can’t fight back anymore. They wait until it’s
almost bled to death, and then they close in for the kill. That’s what jackals
are.”
His father drained his margarita
glass and nodded sagely to Darius. “Don’t let that fool you, though. It made a
real man out of me. I’m proud of that school, proud my rotten old man sent me
there. He knew it would take a lot to make me a man, and he was right. I hated
him, hated him more than death, but he was right. I still hate him, but it was
the right thing to do. I know it now. And I was right to send you there, too.”
Darius heard a noise from the living
room. It was the front door opening, very slowly and quietly. Quinn. He glanced
at the clock in the kitchen. It was 6:04 p.m. She was late.
“You were right,” said Darius
loudly. “You were right, too . . . sir.”
His father looked at him in
confusion and a little anger. “What was that?”
“I said,” said Darius just as
loudly, hearing soft footsteps run upstairs, “you were right to send me there.
It did the right thing for me. I can go on with my life and . . . do the right
things now. It did make a man out of me.”
His father stared at him for a long
moment, then looked down at the pitcher of margaritas.
“Want me to help you find the salt,
sir?” Darius asked.
His father snorted. “It’s around
here somewhere,” he said. “Your mother hid it. She hides everything around
here. I can’t find anything. If I wanted to cook something, I couldn’t do it.
Just let her cook, then. See if I care.” He shook his head and looked around
the kitchen. “Bitch,” he muttered.
Darius opened a few cabinets, then
opened the one in which he knew the saltshaker was kept. He took it out and put
it on the counter in front of his father. “There you go, sir.”
His father stared at the shaker and
did nothing.
Darius turned and picked up the
milk. He took it back to the refrigerator and put it away. His hunger was gone.
“I have homework to do, sir,” he said. “Have a good night.”
His father nodded, still staring
down at the saltshaker.
Halfway across the living room,
heading for the stairs, Darius heard his father call for him. He sighed and
walked back, stopping in the kitchen doorway.
“I want you to know who gave you
your name,” said his father, pouring another glass from the pitcher. “That was
me.”
Darius waited. After a moment, he
realized a response was called for. “Thank you,” he said.
His father raised the glass. “It was
my idea. I wanted you to have a great name, so I named you after an ancient
king. I think he was Roman. I liked his name. Darius the Great. Your mother
said I could do it only if we could call you Daria if you came out a girl. Good
thing that didn’t happen.” His father chuckled. “Glad that didn’t happen. God
only knows how things would have gone then.”
“I like the name,” said Darius.
“Thanks.”
His father nodded. Darius turned to
go.
His father threw the glass at him.
It smashed into the wall by Darius’s face and exploded into a hundred shards
that sprayed across the room.
“Call me sir, God damn
you!” roared his father. “You call me sir! SIR!”
Shocked, Darius didn’t react right
away. He then slowly straightened and faced his father. How curious, he
thought, that he felt no fear at all—just an infinite tiredness and a vague
disappointment.
I can’t go back to Buxton Ridge
and leave Quinn here alone again.
“Thank you, sir, for giving me my
name,” he said.
His father stared at the huge splash
that ran down the wall by Darius, at the sparkling glass flung over the floor
in every direction. His face colored, possibly with shame, possibly because he
was angry and wished he had the drink back.
“Clean it up,” said his father,
looking away. “I’m going out somewhere where people respect me.” He walked out
of the kitchen through the laundry room, heading into the garage. The laundry
room door slammed shut behind him. After a moment, Darius heard the garage door
open, then his father slam the door on his Lexus and start it up.
He waited until he was sure his
father was out of the driveway before walking to the laundry room where the
vacuum sweepers were stored. He checked the garage and closed the garage door,
then grabbed a push sweeper and headed back into the kitchen with it. A shower
would have to wait until—
Quinn screamed.
Darius shoved the sweeper aside and
ran for the living room. Dressed in shorts and a long tee, Quinn was crying her
head off on the sofa, grasping one of her bare feet. Blood ran down her foot
and dripped on the carpeting.
“God!” said Darius. He started to
grab her foot, then realized he still had glass splinters on his hands and
arms. “Wait! Stay there!” He ran back in the kitchen, washed his hands off, and
ran back with the first aid kit and a dishtowel.
“Hold still!” he told her. He dabbed
at her foot, then grabbed it to keep her from jerking it away. “Hold still!
Just hold still! I know it hurts! Let me fix it!” He quickly picked out all the
shards of glass he could see, then wiped her foot with alcohol swabs and threw
them aside on the carpet. Quinn alternately shrieked and choked on her sobs, her
face bright red and streaked with tears. It took three large bandages to stop
the bleeding in different places on her right foot. He taped over the bandages
to make sure they wouldn’t come off.
Darius took his wet,
splinter-covered shirt off, then wiped his face and arms with the towel. “Come
on,” he said, putting his arms under Quinn’s thighs and across her back. “Let
me get you out of here,” he said. “There’s glass all over. I was getting the
vacuum to clean it up.”
Quinn nodded and put her arms around
him. She buried her face in his chest. He stood up with her and slowly took her
out of the living room, mounting the stairs with care. At the top, he carried
her to her room and then to her canopied bed. He checked her bandages. The
bleeding had stopped. He’d have to wash her foot later to make sure all the
glass was out of it, then put on some antiseptic. Her left foot seemed fine.
“I have to go downstairs and clean
up, okay?” he told her. “Before Mom gets home. You stay up here until I’m done,
all right?”
Quinn nodded. He reached over and
grabbed her princess phone and put it on her bed beside her, stretching the
cord out. “Here. Call one of your friends for a little, when you can. I can’t
get the cordless phone right now. I’ll be right back.”
He went downstairs and vacuumed the
living room and the kitchen, wiped off the kitchen wall, and checked for any
remaining glass. It took a half hour to finish. He put everything away, then
went back upstairs and checked on Quinn again. She lay back on her bed, an arm
over her face. She took her arm away to look at him. Her injured foot projected
over the edge of the bed.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
“My foot hurts a lot,” she
whispered.
“I have to shower off real fast.
I’ve got stuff all over me. You stay here. I’ll get you some painkillers.”
“Lock me in,” said Quinn. She didn’t
have to say why.
“Sure.” He punched in the knob lock,
then pulled her door shut until the lock clicked. He went down the hall to
their common bathroom. Twenty minutes later, he walked out with a towel around
his waist and his clothes wadded into a bundle inside a beach towel. He went to
his room and changed into a plain gray sweat suit he had used at the academy
for exercising. Sneakers on his feet, he went downstairs. No one was home. On
impulse, he vacuumed the kitchen and living room a second time, then checked
the refrigerator.
He realized then that he still
wasn’t hungry. Why he’d even bothered to look was a mystery. Habit, perhaps. He
picked out a container of fat-free fruit-filled yogurt for Quinn, got a spoon
and a bottle of ibuprofen, and went back upstairs. He popped Quinn’s doorknob
lock with a paperclip after telling her who it was.
They ordered Chinese. As she ate her
yogurt, Quinn rang up all her girlfriends in the Fashion Club using conference
calling, but she said nothing about the incident to any of them. Her voice was
as cheery as it ever was, talking about sweaters for the fall and clever things
to do with scarves. Darius locked her in her room again, then went back to his
own bedroom. He left the door open to hear the Good Times Chinese Restaurant
deliveryman knock downstairs.
As he sat down at his computer, he
realized he wanted to call Jane. It was Friday night. Other guys were out with
their girlfriends. He was home guarding his sister from his parents. He’d call
Jane when the food arrived, while Quinn was eating. If Jane was home, they
could talk. She’d said something about working tonight on a painting that was
bothering her. Maybe she wouldn’t want to talk. Sometimes she didn’t, and he
could handle that—but maybe she would want to talk.
What would he say? What would he
tell her about the evening? He shook his head. He’d say nothing, of course. It
was just another Friday night—better than some, worse than most because Quinn
got hurt. It was just another day.
“This is messed up,” he whispered.
“God damn it. This is just so messed up.”
He turned on his computer, let it
warm up, then stared at the screen—and turned it off again. Nothing was on that
he cared about. Over six billion channels, but nothing was on. The books on the
shelves, the CDs by his bed, the backpack with his homework—none of it
mattered. Nothing was on.
“This is so messed up,” he said. He
put his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, and waited for the deliveryman.
Awakened by his alarm, Darius
showered and made his way downstairs the next morning at seven o’clock. The
early start became a reluctant habit in military school, but getting out of the
house was a priority now. On this Saturday, his outfit consisted of a
black-and-white Nirvana T-shirt, black shorts, and worn but comfortable track
shoes.
As he descended the stairs, he heard
rustling noises from the kitchen and the chirp of the microwave signaling it
had stopped. His father would not be up until at least ten on weekends, so
there was nothing to worry about on that count. The problem now was entirely
different.
His mother was reading papers from
her open briefcase and drinking a cup of coffee when he walked into the kitchen.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Just a minute.” His mother frowned
at the papers to keep her concentration.
Darius went to the refrigerator and
got the milk, then picked out a box of cereal, a bowl, and a large spoon and
carried the whole lot over to the table. He glanced at his mother several
times, but she was focused on the paperwork. He was most of the way through his
first bowl of cereal when her cell phone went off.
“Helen,” she absently said into the
phone. “Hi, Eric.” She paused. “I’m looking at them now. I’ll be there in about
thirty minutes. It looks fine to me so far.” Pause. “Let me deal with that when
I get in. That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve already talked with the witnesses.
Okay.” She pushed a button to break the connection and lay the phone beside her
papers. Not once did she look away from her reading.
“I have to ask something,” said
Darius, putting down his spoon. “It can’t wait.”
His mother lowered her papers and
frowned at him. “What?”
“Quinn wants to know if she can go
to a party a week from today. I can go along to keep an eye on her.”
“Fine.” His mother lifted the
paperwork again.
“She wants to stay out past nine, if
that’s possible.”
“Darius,” said his mother, “I’m
trying to get through the paperwork for this case before I go in today, and—”
“I’ll stay with her,” Darius
interrupted. “We’ll be back before eleven.”
“Fine, fine,” she said, looking at
her papers with an annoyed expression.
“We’ll be out today, but not—”
She abruptly dropped her papers and
hammered the tabletop with her fist. “Darius, please! If I don’t get
this deposition right, I’m out of a job, okay? Can I have some time to myself
now? The money I make is practically all we’re living on! It’s for your own
good!”
He nodded and finished his cereal.
His mother gulped down her coffee, then grabbed her papers and stuffed them
into her briefcase.
“Tell Dad when you see him,” Darius
added as she got up from the table.
“Why can’t you tell him?” she
snapped.
“He doesn’t want to hear about
parenting issues from me.”
His mother looked furious, but she
bit back a reply. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it was. If you wouldn’t
fight with him so much, maybe he would listen to you, she might have said.
Or, I don’t have time to listen to all of this. You deal with it and let me
get this done, okay? This is more important than Quinn going to a damn party.
In any event, she said nothing and
strode out of the kitchen and into the laundry room, then opened the garage
door and slammed it behind her. A few moments later, Darius heard a car door
bang shut, the engine of the SUV start up, and the garage door open and close.
She wouldn’t be back until late. He knew the routine.
After finishing a second bowl of
cereal and two Pop-Tarts, Darius cleaned up the kitchen and went upstairs to
his room. He listened at Quinn’s door first and heard gentle snoring. She
usually got up at nine, but she rarely came out unless she was sure she
wouldn’t meet anyone. He thought about her injured foot and felt a rush of
guilt. If he’d been quicker with the vacuum or had thought to warn her, she
wouldn’t have walked right into the broken glass. Nothing he could do about it
now. She was able to get around before she went to bed, anyway. In a subdued
mood, he went to his room and began stretching for his morning run. It would
empty his mind and get the day going.
And today there would be a bonus. He
checked his watch to be sure he was on time. Whether his running partner would
make it out was another question. She wasn’t a morning person.
Ten minutes later, he walked out the
front door and set off. He picked up a steady pace heading west down Glen Oaks.
Few people were out this morning. It was one of those late summer days when
autumn makes its presence felt with a cool breeze and yellowing leaves. The prediction
was for rain that evening, but few clouds drifted overhead. The air smelled of
cut grass. A neighbor mowed her yard, a small dog yapped at a window, and
children called to each other on a nearby street. What the hell are they
doing up at this hour? he wondered.
Darius turned north on another
street, looking ahead for the turn left onto Howard Drive, Jane’s street.
Jane jogged slowly east on Howard
toward the intersection. Her hair was pulled back in a stubby ponytail, and she
wore a red T-shirt, red running sneakers, and gray running shorts with the
words LAWNDALE HS on one side. She turned and saw him, immediately breaking her
stride to walk. She covered her mouth and yawned, but grinned at him after
that. Darius crossed the street, trying to hide his smile.
“Why the hell are you making me go
running at this ungodly hour?” said Jane as he walked up. “I told you last
night I was going to sleep late.”
“Hey, you told me you’d try anything
once.”
“Don’t play your sick, twisted mind
games on me, Morgen—” Their lips met for a long kiss “—dorffer.”
His left arm went around her slim
waist. His right hand played with her silver earrings and stroked her left
cheek. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. “The sun comes up every morning just
to see you.”
“You’re blind even with those
glasses on,” Jane whispered back.
“I’ll use Braille, then,” said
Darius, and his mouth covered hers again.
She broke away after the third long
kiss. “We’d better run before I fall asleep standing here,” she said, yawning
again. “No offense. Where to?”
“You pick the path,” he said. “Show
me your usual route.”
“Hokay. Lezgo,” said Jane, and she
took off at a respectable jog heading back the way she’d come. Darius caught up
to her and they ran together.
A third of the way back up Howard,
Jane indicated a left turn, and they ran northward on
“How did your painting go last
night?”
“Ah, not so good. I’m working on
something new. It’s . . . I don’t know how to explain it. It’s sort of a
self-portrait series, I guess.” She ran a block before adding, “I don’t know
what else to say about it.”
“It’s a nonverbal thing.”
“Yeah, actually, it is. I can’t talk
about some things I’m doing, not because I don’t want to, but I can’t . . . I
can’t think of the words for it. I can see it in my head, but I can’t say it.”
She shrugged. “It’s art.”
“Oh, I got the go-ahead for Quinn to
go to that cheerleader’s party next week.”
“Was it a problem?”
“Getting permission? Nah, not this
time. It went fine.”
Jane nodded. They ran in silence
until they got to the tree line, then Darius followed Jane into the woods along
a yard-wide dirt path that appeared to be well used. The forest was quiet and
appeared to extend to the north for some distance. The path curved off to the
west before long and began a series of gentle ups and downs as it curved around
low rolling hills.
Thanks to his position behind Jane,
Darius soon became intrigued with her gray running shorts and the way her butt
jogged beneath the loose material. After he almost stumbled the third time from
not watching the path, he forced himself to look away.
“This is beautiful!” he called
ahead, catching a quick look at her rear end again.
“Isn’t it great?” she called back.
“I don’t really come out here that often by myself. My regular route is through
the subdivision, really. Didn’t mean to lead you astray. Much.”
“Do you get other people out here to
run with you?”
“Uh . . . not for running, no.”
“Sightseeing?”
Jane didn’t answer. After a moment,
she pointed to her right. Darius saw a large pond through the trees.
They jogged at a good clip for ten
minutes before coming to a fork in the trail. The right branch ran off to an
area where the trees grew sparse. Darius thought he saw a parking lot beyond
the tree line. Jane ran to the left, on into the trees. Darius looked back at
the parking lot and figured they would be curving around the entire lot instead
of running through it. That made sense. He hated running long distances on
blacktop and concrete. It killed his feet.
Gradually, Darius let his mind go.
The air was cool and the earthy smells refreshed his mind. He stopped glancing
at Jane’s athletic behind and instead watched the way the sunlight flickered
down through the thick leaves. He listened to blue jays screech and thrushes
whistle, and he was startled to see a deer bound across the path ahead of them,
disappearing moments later into the woods. Jane slowed to look back at Darius
with a broad grin, then forged ahead. Both were perspiring, but Darius felt
better than he had in weeks.
Rounding a low hill, Jane slowed and
pointed ahead. Darius looked. The path became arrow-straight for perhaps a
tenth of a mile ahead.
“Bye,” said Jane, and she was off
like a gunshot, legs flashing down the path. Stunned, Darius kicked it into
high gear behind her, but she was clearly in her element. Jesus Christ,
he thought, she’s a damn track star! He clenched his teeth and sprinted
after her with all he had.
It was hopeless. Jane could run like
a Greek goddess. She slowed and stopped at the end of the straightaway, where
the path took a curve to the right, and she waited for him with the smirkiest
smirk he had ever seen on another human being.
He staggered up a handful of seconds
later and threw himself down on a grassy patch by the path, flopping on his
back with arms and legs spread out. It was impossible not to pant.
Jane pretended to check a
nonexistent watch on her left wrist, making tisking noises. “Gosh, I’m sorry,”
she said, looking down at him, “but I have sex only with men who can catch me.”
Darius put a hand over his face and
groaned. “You are sick and evil,” he said, “and those are your good points. You
are the most wicked of all sick and evil dominatrixes.” He paused. “Wait,
what’s the correct plural of that? Let’s see. Um, dominatrices? Domina—damn
you! You’ve given me writer’s block!”
“And you call yourself a real
author.” Jane kicked him in the foot with a red sneaker. “Recite poetry for me,
weakling slave.”
“What? Oh, okay. Uh . . . ‘The sun
was shining on the sea, / Shining with all his might: / He did his very best to
make / The billows smooth and bright— / And this was odd because it was / The
middle of the night.’”
“That’s from that
“You’re the dominatrix. You’re
supposed to know.”
“Insolent. I should whip you, but
you’d probably like it.”
“Promises, promis—” Darius lunged up
from the ground and grabbed Jane by one leg, pulling her down on him as she
shrieked.
“You bastard!” she yelled,
wrestling with him. “You touched the royal me! I really am going to—” She burst
into peals of laughter and jerked violently. “Augh! Stop! No! Don’t tickle me
there! Augh! No, stop! No! Nottherenottherenot—no! No!
Stopstopstop—AAAAHHHH!” She became incoherent, wiggling on the ground as his
fingers worked into her sides and lower back.
“Stop fighting it!” he said, letting
go of her. “You’re getting all dirty!”
“You!” she gasped. “You got me
all dirty! I’m going to kick your ass! Who do you think you are? Who do—mmph!”
It was difficult to talk with their
mouths pressed so tightly together. They slowly rearranged themselves to lie
side by side on the ground, their legs interlaced. Darius rolled Jane so she
was slightly under him, encircled by his arms as they kissed.
After an eternity, they broke apart
for air. Darius kissed her face and hair, and smelled the way her body scent
changed from moment to moment. She was getting turned on. He knew he was, too,
but he was in no hurry. He wanted this moment of paradise to last forever.
“Cheater,” Jane gasped. “Go slower.”
“I am.”
“I don’t—” She took a deep breath.
“I don’t—mmm, wait a minute. Wait.” He pulled back until their faces were a
hand span apart. They were breathing like steam engines.
Jane swallowed and buried her face
in his soiled shirt. “Let’s not go too far,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry. I know
I’m really awful to bring this up right at this extra-special moment when we’re
practically—”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, and you’re drunk or stoned or
both. Maybe you really are blind.” She spit out a piece of grass, stuck out her
tongue to peer at the tip, and sighed, looking into his eyes. “What’s your
vision again?”
He took his glasses off and laid
them aside with care. “You look great,” he said, deliberately looking at a spot
in the forest away from her face.
“Oh, you ass.” She tried to push him
away.
“Slower,” he said. His fingers ran
through her silken black bangs and brushed out a leaf and a twig. The band
holding her hair in its ponytail had fallen out. He massaged the back of her
head. This seemed to calm her. Her blue eyes started to close.
“Slower, yes,” she whispered, “and
not . . . too . . . whatever.”
He bent his head and kissed her neck
and shoulder. The taste of her skin filled his mouth.
“I don’t care if you are blind,” she
said, eyes closed. “You’re a dynamite kisser—but I’m still faster than you.
Don’t forget it.”
He didn’t answer.
She stopped talking.
Darius came home alone just before
ten that morning. He ruffled his hair again to get more leaf fragments out of
it, then took off his muddy sneakers and went in the front door. The house was
quiet. He went upstairs and headed for the bathroom.
Quinn was already in there. Fully
dressed, she sat on the toilet with the lid down. She had taken the water-soaked
bandages off her foot and was inspecting the cuts on her heel and arch. Her
hair was still wet from the shower.
“Hey,” he said, stopping in the
doorway. “Can I see?”
“Yeah,” she said, then got a good
look at him. “Ewww! What did you do, roll in the dirt? Look at you!”
“I fell down a couple of hills,” he
said, kneeling and inspecting her foot. The cuts did not appear infected, but
he didn’t want to take chances. “Let me get cleaned up, and then I’ll put more
antiseptic on that. Or you can put it on if you want.”
“No, you,” she said quickly. “I
can’t stand it. It stings too much.”
“Okay. Let me shower first.”
Quinn got up and limped to the door,
but as she glanced at him something caught her attention. “Tell me one thing,
okay?” she said from the doorway.
“What?”
“Tell me the two of you are using
protection.”
Darius flinched and looked his
sister in the eyes—but only for a second. He looked away and peeled off his
T-shirt, throwing it on the tile floor. “Cut it out, sis.”
“You’ve got lipstick on your—”
He exhaled heavily, feeling his
self-control slip. “What we’re doing is no damn business of yours!” he hissed.
He still couldn’t look at her. He ran a hand over his face and felt like a
heel. What did Jane say about him being the only person who didn’t yell
at his sister?
“I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice.
“I’m just tired.”
“Dari?”
“What?”
Quinn tried to speak, but it didn’t
come. “Forget it,” she said. She turned to go.
“Quinn.” She stopped but did not
look back. “Quinn,” he said, “we’re not . . . we’re not doing it. I mean, we’re
not doing anything that would be a problem. We’re not. Man, I can’t even
believe I’m saying this to you.”
She nodded, then went on to her
room.
“I’ll be there in a little,” he
said, looking at the floor.
“Okay.” She left her door open.
He showered and was back in his room
in fifteen minutes. He’d forgotten to leave his own bathrobe in the bathroom
closet, so he had to borrow Quinn’s, which was mildly embarrassing but would
send Quinn up the wall if she found out. He hurriedly changed into a green Army
T-shirt, black jeans, and tall black-leather boots—his favorite hang-around
outfit—then returned both bathrobes to the bathroom, got the antiseptic bottle
and a bandage box and tape, and went into Quinn’s room.
“Wait,” she said, lying on her back
on her canopy bed. She grabbed a pillow and pressed it over her face with both
arms, then stuck her injured foot in his direction. He held her foot steady as
he put the medicine on. She jerked and screamed into her pillow each time he
touched her, even if it wasn’t with antiseptic.
“Quinn,” he said, putting down the
bottle, “as much as the idea of torturing you appeals to me, I can’t do this
with all the sound effects. Does it really hurt that badly?”
“Sort of,” she said, her voice
muffled under the pillow. “Not really, I guess. I thought if I just screamed,
it wouldn’t hurt so much. You know, like if you overreact to something, it
isn’t as bad?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of
that,” he said. “Did someone in the Fashion Club tell you this? Is this how
they handle morning bed hair?”
“No, dummy. It was in last month’s
issue of Waif. They were talking about stress or something, like if you
scream into your pillow when you’re totally freaked out, how that’s supposed
to—”
“Okay, enough. I get the idea. I
don’t think it works in this case, though.”
“How would you know? I’m not putting
that stinging stuff on your foot!”
He finished the task to the
accompaniment of several more low-volume shrieks, then wrapped up her foot
again. “Can you get around on it?” he said, getting up.
Quinn sat up and looked her bandaged
foot over. “Oh, shoot,” she said. “I can’t wear my sandals with that thing on.
I look like the Mummy.” She got up experimentally, steadying herself with one
hand on a bedpost and one on Darius’s arm. Any pressure on her foot caused her
to wince. She didn’t appear to be overreacting.
“Too bad we don’t have crutches,”
Darius said. “If we could get them in pink, they’d go with your shirt.”
Quinn took her hand away and punched
him solidly on the arm. “Yeah, that would look really super with my outfit,
though it is true that a good pair of crutches can jack up the sympathy
response in most guys. It’s a last-ditch thing, though.” She looked at her
injured foot. “This sucks. I wanted to go over to Sandi’s this afternoon and
try some of my blush on her, and I also wanted to show her that I don’t throw
up every time I go outside my own home. I’m on probation with the Fashion Club
until Sandi decides I’m mentally stable enough to join.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“She says they have standards, and
what good are standards if you don’t use them on people?”
“You can’t imagine the level of
irony in what you said,” said Darius, shaking his head in disgust. “Those twits
have more air in their heads than the Hindenburg, and they have the gall
to say you’re not mentally fit to join their ranks? You’re the only one of them
who has an IQ in the three-digit range.”
“Oh, you don’t understand,” said
Quinn.
“Yeah, I think you said something
about me not understanding—oh.” He winced. “Forget it.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, you mean what Jane told you the
other day about you being sort of naïve about women?”
He did a double take and stepped
back from her in shock. “Jane told you that?”
“Last night, yeah. She was right,
but I already knew it.”
“But you didn’t talk—” He blinked.
“You called her?”
“I can call her if I want!” Quinn
swung a fist at his arm, but he sidestepped and she missed. Off-balance, she
grabbed the bedpost, standing on one foot. “It’s not like you’ve got a lock on
her time, you dork! She’s my friend, too!”
“What the hell did you tell her?”
“Nothing about you,” she sneered.
“Not a lot about you, anyway. God, I don’t know what she sees in you.
She thinks you need a sense of humor, or more of one, but she says you have
potential.”
Darius stared at Quinn, aghast.
“Dari,” Quinn said in a different
tone, and she hopped close enough to him to grab him by the arm. She raised a
finger and poked him hard in the chest, looking him in the face as she spoke.
“When the two of you start doing it, you’d better get your butt to a drugstore
and get some protection. I got your little joke about falling down a couple of
hills this morning—real cute, like you must think I’m in kindergarten or something.
I know Jane will be smart about this stuff, but you’d better be, too. I swear
to God, if I find out you and she are doing it and you’re not being careful,
I’m going to kick you right where guys don’t like to be kicked, I swear I will.
You—Dari! Hey! Come back here! Dari! This is important! Damn it, I can’t chase
you like this! Hey, open your door! Don’t lock it! Dari!” She hopped up to his bedroom door in the hallway and grabbed
the knob, but she was too late.
Darius walked over to his bed as his
sister pounded on his bedroom door. He sat down on the edge and took off his
glasses to rub his eyes. It was bad enough that his sister and girlfriend were
spilling all of his innermost secrets to each other, but to have his
fourteen-year-old sister lecture him on birth control was just too much.
That she was right made it
intolerable. That wasn’t the point, though.
We didn’t do anything she should
be worried about, he thought. You can’t get a girl pregnant by feeling
her up her shirt. He fell backward on the bed and put the pillow over his
head to block out the sound of Quinn lightly hammering on the door with a
nonstop rhythm. And I wouldn’t do anything stupid to hurt Jane anyway. I
couldn’t do that. It would be totally insane to hurt her. She’s everything to
me. She doesn’t even want to go that fast when we make out, although what we’ve
starting doing is already making my head spin. All I know about what people do
when they love each other comes from reading sex manuals in bookstores or
watching those weekend movies at the academy theater. I don’t have any real
experience at love, and I’m sure not getting anything from my parents. I’m just
making it up as I go along, copying whatever I see that looks good. I don’t
know what people really do when they’re in love. I don’t even—
That was when a new thought entered
his head and erased everything else.
I love her. I love Jane. I really
do. Oh, shit.
He took the pillow off his head to
stop thinking about it. His head felt light and his ears rang, though it was
quiet except for Quinn’s drumming on the door. She stopped when he opened it.
“Can I come in?” she said.
He stood there for a moment, then
shrugged and walked over to his bed. She hopped in, closed the door behind her,
then sat down at his desk and wheeled his chair over to the bed near him.
“You’re worse than the Furies,” he
said without looking at her.
“Was that some kind of car or
something in a movie, or what?”
“Nothing. Just say what you’re going
to say and get it over with.”
“Hey.” She reached over and poked
his knee. “Listen. Mom and Aunt Rita and Aunt Amy have been talking to me about
sex since I was eleven. When you went off to military school, I—”
“I didn’t go there of my own free
will,” he growled, his face tight.
Quinn hesitated. “I know.” She
started to say something, then shook her head and went on. “When you were sent
away, Mom had Aunt Rita come over and take care of me for a couple weeks while
she and Dad went on this retreat and tried to straighten things out between
them. Aunt Amy took me for a while after that on weekends. Things were all
screwed up at home and—never mind. Anyway, what my point was, was that
everyone’s talked to me about sex since I can remember, but I don’t think
anyone’s talked about it with you, unless they had classes at—”
“Christ,” said Darius. He quickly
got up from the bed. Quinn grabbed his arms and pulled him back.
“Wait!” she said. “Just hear me out,
Dari! One minute, okay? That’s all!”
He sat down again and covered his
reddened face with his hands, elbows on his knees.
Quinn leaned down so her head was
close to his. “I know Dad’s not going to say it, and I’ll bet Mom won’t,
either. I care about you, Dari. All I want is for you and Jane to be careful. I
don’t care what you do. All I know is that I want us to stay together as a
family, and I don’t want anything to blow up that might cause—that might—you
know. I want Dad to get over his control thing, whatever’s making him do it,
and I want Mom to pretend like we’re really here, and that’s all I want. That’s
it, everything. If anything happened to tear us up as a family, I don’t think I
could handle it. Aunt Rita wanted to call child welfare about Dad, because of
that stuff that happened between you and him and—and everything when we were at
the Grand Canyon, and I had such a fight with her over it, you wouldn’t
believe. I’d never have seen you again if she’d done that. I want us to be a
family, do you understand? Do you get it? That’s—”
“I get it, I get it,” Darius said,
not looking up. “I know.”
“Look, I don’t even know how much
longer Mom and Dad are going to be together, you know? It scares the hell out—”
Darius looked up, startled. “What
was that?”
“Mom and Dad,” she said. “I don’t
even know if they’re going to stay together. They don’t even sleep together
much, you know? Dad was sleeping on the sofa half the time back in
Darius frowned. Her news disturbed
him profoundly. “He hasn’t been down there that much,” he said, his voice low.
“Dad only does that if he and Mom have had a fight. Jeez, Quinn, we just moved
to
“You haven’t been home with us that
long, just since the end of June. They weren’t together all that much before we
got here, and I’m afraid it’s getting worse. I keep telling Mom to—oh, skip it,
forget it. We’re way off topic. All I started out to tell you is that . . . I
don’t want to lose you again. That’s all.”
He sighed, all the air running out
of his lungs, and lowered his head.
Quinn reached over and took his
hand. He let her do it. He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze.
“I don’t want to lose you, either,”
he whispered. He choked when he said it. His eyes burned.
They sat in silence and listened to
the autumn wind outside the house.
“Don’t ask Jane about this morning,”
he added, wanting to change the subject. “Just don’t.”
A faint smile curved Quinn’s lips.
“Hmmm,” she said. “Okay.”
“I’m serious. Please stay out of
it.”
Quinn was silent.
“And for God’s sake,” Darius added,
“don’t tell me about your sex life, or I’ll go in the garage and drink
battery acid.”
Quinn giggled. “I don’t have a sex
life yet, so that’s easy to do. God, after Rita told me about her life,
I thought I’d join a convent and be a nunnery or something. Amy said Rita was a
one-woman traveling porn circus.” She shut her eyes and shuddered. “You can’t
even imagine what she’s been up to. You just can’t imagine.”
“I can’t, and I don’t want to hear
about it,” said Darius. “And you mean nun, not nunnery.”
“None of what?”
He squeezed her hand again and let
go. Though comforted by the contact, Darius’s mind reeled. What was all this
about Mom and Dad? How could they even be thinking about divorce? We just moved
together to
Except that Quinn is usually
right about people-related things.
Well, she isn’t right about this,
Darius decided. She couldn’t be.
“I’m going to check my e-mail,” he
said in a sullen voice.
“You okay with this?”
“I’m okay.” He reddened again.
Anything, he’d do anything to get away from this conversation. He thought of
Jane.
Does Jane love me, too?
He flinched and stood up. “I need
some alone time,” he said. “Need help back to your room?”
“Sure.” She got up and held onto his
shoulder as he led her out. “I’ll call Sandi and see if she can get her mom to
come by and pick me up. I hate doing that, but what can you do?”
“I’ll be in my room the rest of the
day.”
“As usual. Why don’t you go see Jane
or something?”
“She’s asleep by now.” Is she
thinking of me? “She doesn’t get up until noon or one on weekends. Today
was just something different.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Quinn.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Give it a rest.” He pulled her door
almost shut, leaving her to reach for her princess phone and make her cycle of
phone calls.
Do I really love Jane? Do I have
any idea what love is? How could I? What if she doesn’t want to see me again?
What if she doesn’t love me, and she wants to see someone else? How many other
guys has she taken into the woods with her to make out? Is she still seeing
them? What if she wants to break up? How could I handle being alone again after
I’ve finally found someone in my life I really care about? Does she even want
to share her life with me? Why can’t I figure all of this out? I should go out
somewhere and just get away. I have nowhere to go. Does Jane love me, too?
For a moment, lying there in the
woods, she had seemed so small in his arms. It was miraculous that so much life
could exist inside someone he could hold in his own hands. He had kissed her
forehead and her face and her hair and given thanks that she existed, that he
had found her, and that the world was forever changed.
He loved her. He knew it. But
nothing except the thought of losing Quinn could have frightened him more.
He shut the door to his room and found
his CD player. Putting on a particularly loud alternative rock band, he lay
down on his bed, put on the earphones and set the CD player to maximum volume,
and closed his eyes.
Monday morning found Darius walking
up to the door of the Lane home forty-five minutes before school began. The
weather was threatening rain, so he had a collapsible umbrella tucked under his
arm, the largest one he could find at home. The temperature was on the cool
side. He knocked on the door and waited.
“Just a minute!” came Jane’s voice
from inside. “
Darius looked around the
neighborhood. The sun was barely up, and most cars had their headlights on as
they passed by on Howard Drive.
The door opened. “Come on in,” said
Jane. She ran up the stairs and disappeared. “
“Need help?” Darius called.
“Can you go out in the garage and
see if my backpack is in
“On the way.” Darius left. He came
back a minute later. “Got it! It was in the back seat under a pizza box!”
“Great!” Jane’s feet pounded down
the stairs. She bounced up to Darius and gave him a heartfelt kiss.
“Lifesaver,” she said. “Are we late?”
“We’re fine,” said Darius, “but I
wouldn’t take the scenic route. It’s going to rain.” He held up his umbrella.
“Built for two,” he said.
“You think of everything,” said
Jane, who then leaned back and shouted upstairs, “unlike some people!”
They left, shutting the front door
behind them. It had not yet started raining. They held hands and felt the cool
wind on their faces.
“Sorry about the weekend,” said
Darius. “The part after Saturday morning, I mean. We couldn’t get out.”
“It wasn’t a total loss for me, anyway.”
Jane kicked at a pile of leaves. “My Muse decided to speak to me again Sunday
morning, and my painting is coming along. Um, I’m sorry if I made anything
worse when I called Saturday afternoon after I woke up. Your dad didn’t sound
too happy to talk to me.”
Darius grimaced. “It was a bad
weekend. Dad got up and interrupted Mom at the office, and it spilled over into
Sunday. The short form of it is, Dad’s angry with Quinn for wanting to stay out
late at that party next Saturday, Mom’s angry with Dad for being angry about it
and calling her at work over nothing, and then Quinn got dumped from the
Fashion Nazis Club for being unstable and unreliable, on account of having an
injured foot and throwing up once, and so on and so forth. On the good side, I
guess, Dad and I settled everything out yesterday afternoon. Quinn can stay out
to eleven at the party, but I have to be there with her. I also can’t have a
date with me, because then I won’t be able to keep an eye on Quinn. Quinn can
have a date, though. I think she has about twelve of them to that one party.”
“You can’t have a date? Where does
that leave me?”
Darius gave a dry laugh. “My parents
haven’t met you. We’ll go there together anyway.”
“Won’t that cause a problem?”
He shrugged. “My parents aren’t
going to the party. They won’t even be around. Dad will be at an out-of-town
seminar that weekend. Mom’s tied up in some big corporate lawsuit, and she
doesn’t care where we go or what we do, as long as no police, fire trucks, or
ambulances are involved.”
“Sounds like it’s party time, then.”
“Hope so. Dad thought you were one
of Quinn’s friends when you called, by the way—and not a friend of mine. I
don’t think he or Mom know about us. I thought about keeping it like that as
long as I can, but if the news gets out, it gets out. Whatever. Maybe it won’t
be a problem.”
Jane nodded. “How did Quinn take
getting dumped from the club?”
Darius hesitated. “Eh,” he said at
last. “She didn’t say anything right off. The club president called her and
gave her the official dump. I thought she was okay with that at first, but she
stayed in her room the rest of Saturday and didn’t eat dinner. I think it
really got to her. She couldn’t get around with her foot all bandaged up, and
it drove her crazy.” It was my fault she got hurt, too. I could have
prevented it. He tried to shake the thought away, but it wouldn’t leave.
“She hurt her foot from stepping on
a broken glass?”
Darius glanced at Jane, then nodded
in weary acceptance. “She told you about it?”
“She said it had something to do
with a fight between you and your dad and a broken glass, and she walked into
it at the wrong time, but you fixed her up.” Jane paused. “Dari, are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” he said. “The other
good news is that Sunday, some guys came by the house and took Quinn out for a
drive. It was sort of funny. There are these three football players whose names
begin with J, and they’re all in love with her. I think they want to start a
new religion with Quinn as the high priestess. They found another football
player who drives, and they all took her to the mall and bought her a lot of
stuff. She looked loads better when she got home. She’s talking about joining
the pep club now.”
Darius and Jane walked in silence
for a few moments.
“Jane,” said Darius, “what the
hell’s a pep club?”
“It’s got cheerleaders,” said Jane,
“but they’ve got other people in it and they do something else. It’s real
important, big stuff. I forget what it is, though. They fluff the pompoms,
maybe.”
A pained look crossed Darius’s face.
“So, my sister might become a cheerleader?”
“No, I think the pep club is in
charge of doing anything that perks up the sporting events. That means pretty
much anything you can think of, and I mean anything. Around here, football is a
god, so your comment about Quinn as a high priestess was on target.”
“Do I have to sacrifice a goat to
her, or what?”
“I’m sure she’d take monetary
donations.”
Darius rolled his eyes. “You have no
idea,” he said. “Or maybe you do, if she’s told you about her shoe and purse
collections.”
“You didn’t answer my other
question.”
After a long pause, Darius rubbed
his nose. “Quinn can walk this morning,” he said. “She kind of walks on the
ball of her right foot, but she can get around. The three J-guys are her escorts
for the week.”
Jane frowned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Darius, looking at
the sidewalk, “but I am wondering what joys the day will bring.”
“Quinn said that Friday night—”
“Nothing happened.”
“Hey! She said you had bits of glass
all over you when you were trying to get her foot—”
“It was nothing. Just let it go,
okay? I’m fine.”
Jane’s red lips became a long,
flattened line. “That’s not right. You should call someone.”
“You should—” he snapped, but he bit
off the rest of the sentence and jerked his face away from Jane. He took a deep
breath, feeling his face flush from the rush of anger. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Jane quietly. “I’m the
one who’s sorry. My fault for pushing it.”
They reached a corner and crossed
the street to another sidewalk. Rain began to splatter the concrete. Darius
stopped to put the umbrella up. He put one arm around Jane’s waist and held the
umbrella between them with the other.
“That was stupid of me,” he said.
“It was a long weekend.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed both of you, too.”
She rammed her knee into his butt as
she walked. “Oops,” she said.
“That’s not fair,” he said in a
wounded tone. “I read in Waif magazine that girls like to hear romantic
stuff like that from guys.”
“
“Hey, what did I do?”
“Everything,” she said, but she
didn’t seem angry about it.
They approached the Morgendorffer
house on Glen Oaks Lane. Darius fell silent, but he kept his arm around Jane.
The rain increased.
“We dissect frogs today in science,”
he said when they were well past the house.
“Put some cotton in your ears before
you go into class,” Jane advised.
“Why?”
“Cheerleaders.”
“Oh, right.”
They waited at the corner of Glen
Oaks and Nicoll Street for traffic to lighten so they could cross. Darius
turned his head and gave Jane a lingering kiss on the temple. “You smell good,”
he said.
“Really? What do I smell like?” she
asked, her voice deepening.
“Life.”
She turned to look at him. Her eyes
closed as her head tilted back. They missed two opportunities to cross the
street, and the rain blew under the umbrella over their legs, but they never
noticed.
Science class was all that Jane had
warned about. Janet Barch, an angry forty-something teacher, rapped on her desk
with a ruler for attention. “Class!” she screeched in a voice worse than dragging
a knife blade across sheet metal. “Today we’re going to study the internal
anatomy of the frog. We’re going to use male frogs of course, because
the female frogs have enough trouble with reproducing and carrying the entire
fate of amphibians everywhere on their shoulders, while the damn male frogs are
jumping around the pond humping anything that moves like so many worthless
little ex-husbands, may his miserable soul rot in Hell!”
Darius blinked and glanced around
the classroom, but no one else appeared disturbed by this rant. Indeed, most of
the class appeared bored. Several students yawned. Jane, who shared a lab table
with him, was sketching a picture her notebook of Barch chasing a panicked frog
with an axe.
Ms. Barch had several male students
hand out the trays with the dead frogs on them. Squeals of horror and despair
rose across the room—not all of them from feminine throats.
“Now, stop that!” Barch cried,
rapping the desk again. She pointed to a huge wall chart showing a frog with
its abdomen split open from throat to tail, displaying all of its internal
organs. “This is what I want you to have in your trays by the end of class
today—one slashed-open, stone-dead, nicely cut-to-pieces male frog. Are
there any questions? Good,” she said, ignoring the forest of hands across the
class. You have your scalpels on your table—and you over-muscled,
testosterone-addled androids of the masculine gender are not to use them for
anything except—”
The intercom crackled. “Ms. Barch,
please come to my office,” said Ms. Li, the principal. “We have a budgetary
problem we need to resolve.”
“We’re about to dissect frogs!” she
cried. “Can’t it wait?”
“It’s your budget. If you want to
use those same frogs again next year, go right ahead and stay in class.”
“Oh, fiddle,” Ms. Barch grumbled.
“I’ll be over. Very well, class, you’re all on the honor system while I’m
gone—and I want the girls to report to me if any of the boys fool around with
those scalpels! I can have you sent to prison for anything you try, you little
hooligans! Now, get to work! I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Ms. Barch left.
The door slammed shut behind her.
Low-order chaos took over in the
room. Some of the students gamely went ahead and began dissecting. Several
football players tried using their scalpels to play mumbly-peg on their frogs,
drawing cheers and shrieks from everyone around them. Everyone talked.
Darius and Jane looked at each other
and shrugged. They leaned forward and prepared to cut into their specimens.
Someone tugged Darius’s sleeve on
the side opposite Jane. He looked up.
“You’re a guy. Can you help me?”
said Brittany Taylor, the cheerleader he’d seen at Pizza King. She was as buxom
now as she was then, but her face was pale and her lower lip trembled. “I can’t
do this! Upchuck was supposed to be here to work on my frog for me, but he’s
late.”
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Darius
asked. Don’t look at her boobs! shouted a panicked voice in his brain. Don’t
look at her boobs! Don’t look at her boobs!
“Football practice,” she said, and
then she glared. “Or at least he’d better be if he knows what’s good for him,
and not under the bleachers making out with another cheerleader.”
Darius looked at Jane. She gazed
down at her frog, trying to hide a smile. He sighed and looked back at
“Okay!”
“So,” murmured Jane, making her
first incision, “you like the big jiggly ones.”
“Cut it out,” he whispered back.
“Guess I’d better go in for implants
if I want to stay competitive.”
“That’s not it at all. Stop it.”
“Just remember,” she said, pulling
open the incision in the frog with her tongs, “anything more than a mouthful is
wasted.”
His face got hot. “Jane, damn it—”
“Here it is!” said
“Okay,” he said, holding his scalpel
over his frog. “Just do what I do. First—”
“
“But maybe it doesn’t know
that!” she said, on the verge of tears.
Darius put down his scalpel. Next to
him, Jane hummed an old country music song that he recognized: “Your Cheatin’
Heart.”
“
“No,” she said, a little less pale.
“I want to be like my mom—my birth mom, not my stepmom—and be a movie star!”
“Your mom is an actress?”
“In
“Okay, hold that thought. Now, if
you want to be an actress like your mom, you’ll have to work with special
effects, right?”
“Okay,” he said, “suppose you were
in this movie in which you were a doctor or something, and it’s one of those
animal movies, like, um—”
“Jaws?”
said
Jane suddenly coughed to prevent
herself from laughing.
“No,” said Darius, “I was thinking
of a movie about a veterinarian.”
“Oh, I don’t watch war movies. Kevvy
likes them, though.”
Darius looked blankly at her for a
moment. “Oh,” he said, “not veteran. I meant veterinarian—an animal
doctor.”
“Oh, like Doctor Doolittle! I love
him! He saves kittens!”
“Right,” he said, pointing at her
frog. “So, let’s say this is not really a frog, but special-effects model in a
movie. You’re the heroic doctor who must operate on the world’s only talking
frog, only you’ll be working on this fake frog made of plastic. You pretend to
operate on the frog—” He pointed to the frog anatomy chart at the front of the
room “—by doing just what’s shown up there, and the camera people will take
great pictures of how intensely you’re working. This is your big moment.”
“One other thing we’ll do, though,”
Darius went on, “is what real doctors do in operating rooms. They talk about
stuff while they’re working, but they sometimes don’t talk much about what
they’re really doing.”
“What?”
“You ever watch ‘M.A.S.H.’ on TV?”
“A little. Is that the one about the
Vietnam War?”
“What I’m trying to say is that the
surgeons on that show talk all the time while they’re operating on people,
right? They do that because it takes their minds off what they’re doing. Lots
of doctors do it in real life.”
“Oooh.”
“Like this,” said Darius, picking up
his scalpel. “You remember my sister, Quinn?”
Darius cleared his throat,
interrupting her. “Anyway, Quinn tried to join the Fashion Club here, and you
know what happened?”
“They dumped her.” Darius gently
poked at his frog with the scalpel. “They let her join, and then they dumped
her. You know why?”
“Why?”
“She cut her foot on a piece of
glass last week, and they decided that wearing a bandage was unfashionable, so
they threw her out of the club. She was depressed about it all weekend. Her
foot hurt so much she could barely walk, and for that they screwed her over
good.”
Darius pointed to her frog.
“They did,” said Darius blandly.
“And they told her she was mental, because she had a virus for a couple of days
and got sick. It wasn’t her fault, but they humiliated her, and all she really
wanted to do was contribute something good to the school, because she really
likes Lawndale High.”
“She was really upset,” Darius went
on in a deadpan tone. “Luckily for her, the same football players who invited
her to your party—their names all start with J—”
“Jeffy, Joey, and Jeremy—I know
them.” She gasped. “They were the ones who asked Quinn over, and not my
Kevvy? Oh, no! I have to apologize to him for kicking him in the—”
“Finish your frog first,” said
Darius.
“Before you go,” said Darius, “my
sister was thinking of joining the pep club.”
“She wants to be a cheerleader?”
“No, no. She knows she can’t quite
reach your level there, but she has loads of school spirit, you know? She
really wants to help you and the other cheerleaders any way she can, and—”
“I’ll take care of it!” she said.
“The pep club would just die to get her to join up! They might even make her
president! No problem!”
“And can I bring someone with me to
the party?”
Darius subtly pointed to Jane. Jane
looked up, sensing the topic had shifted to her.
The look of astonishment on
Darius nodded. “Uh, yeah, I do.”
The chatter in the science lab
dropped to nothing. Everyone turned and looked at
“Can she come with me?” Darius
whispered, feeling his face burn.
“You bet! Come on over!”
“You haff done a goot chob,
Zigmund,” whispered Jane in a fake German accent. She went on in a normal
voice. “I’ll make you your own armchair psychiatrist’s license when I get
home.”
Darius looked down at his pristine,
undissected dead frog. He lifted his scalpel with a sigh. “I guess I’d better
get going before—”
“What have we here?”
screeched Ms. Barch, right behind Darius. He jumped and dropped his scalpel on
the floor. Ms. Barch took
“Ms. Barch,” said Darius in
desperation, “I swear that I wasn’t—”
“Were you dissecting
“No, ma’am! She knew how to do it!
We were just—”
“You were just trying to get into
her panties, is that it?” She pointed to the front of the room. “Go to the
board and write, ‘I will keep my degenerate animal lust to myself,’ fifty
times—or else you can go to the office, and I’ll call your parents!”
“Wait, Ms. Barch!” said Jane
earnestly. “Really, he wasn’t—”
“I’m not talking to you,
“Ms. Barch, no!” cried
“Quiet!”
yelled the teacher. “I’m talking to this hoodlum who wants to act like he’s
just had a midlife crisis and dumped his faithful wife so he can sew his wild oats
as if he were a teenager again! Go to the board, Mister Morgendorffer!”
Totally shamed, Darius picked up his
scalpel and put it on the lab table. I can’t be sent to Buxton Ridge again.
I can’t be sent away from Quinn, not ever. After a moment, he walked to the
front of the room and looked for a piece of chalk, then began to write.
When he got back to his lab table at
the end of class to get his backpack and books, he found two folded notes.
Everyone else had left the room for the next class. He opened the first note.
HOW COULD YOU BE SO NOBLE? it
read in Jane’s trademark all-capitals printing.
“Tom Sawyer,” he mumbled. He put it
away and opened the second note, written in a florid script with a purple felt
pen.
Did I save the talking frog?
it read.
“That was a tesseract you were
drawing, wasn’t it?” Darius asked Jane at her locker after art class that
Wednesday. “I couldn’t see from where I was. There were too many people around
me.”
“You shouldn’t have started telling
people about one-point perspective,” said Jane. “It’s like leaving milk out for
kittens. Pretty soon, you’re up to your butt in furry little monsters that pee
on your carpet and try to smother you when you sleep.”
Darius snorted with amusement. His
gaze wandered down Jane’s slim body.
She noticed that and smiled. “What
happened, anyway?” she asked. “I missed how that whole thing got started.”
He lost his smile. “My fault,” he
said irritably. “Brittany brought some other cheerleaders over to ask how to
draw Defoe’s cube model, then the football players came over, and it was
downhill from there. I couldn’t get anything done on my drawing with everyone
bugging me to help them on theirs. Then Ms. Defoe told me I could skip my own
drawing if I’d go around and talk about that perspective thing. I thought it
was the easy way out, but it just went on and on and on.”
“And you had explain it twice to
Kevin, you lucky dog.”
Darius rolled his eyes. “He still
thinks I’m trying to make it with
“Oh?” Jane looked at him with
concern. “And you still helped him?”
He shrugged it off. “It worked out
okay. He liked my help so much, he said he wouldn’t crush my head until after
the party this weekend. It was sort of weird. He even blames me for the news of
“Just what is it with you, anyway,
Morgendorffer?” said Jane. “Haven’t people suffered enough?”
Darius softly bumped his head against
a nearby locker door. “I feel like I’m doing everything half right and half
wrong all the time. I don’t mind helping a little, but when everyone wants you
to do their homework for them . . . well, I guess I could charge for it. Ten
bucks a page . . . no, forget it. I have to draw the line somewhere. Everything
after school is my own time.”
“Word gets around, you know,” said
Jane, closing her locker. “Everyone wants a helpful big brother, especially one
who works for free.”
“I should have stuck to my 1984-model
Big Brother personality.”
“I don’t think you have one,” said
Jane, setting off with him to American History. “You might be in danger of
becoming popular. Kinda scary, don’t you think?”
An attractive brown-haired girl
passed by them both in the hallway. Darius remembered that she was Sandi
Griffin, the president of the Fashion Club. She shot Darius a venomous look
that should have crippled him for life, then walked past without a word.
Startled, Darius turned to watch her
go. “Touchy, isn’t she?” he said.
“I take back that part about you
becoming popular,” Jane said, looking ahead as if nothing had happened. “Did
any of the cheerleaders ask you out after you helped them?”
“What? Jeez, no, of course not. They
ran off as soon as they could.”
“No problem, then. You’re just as
popular as the teachers are.”
He gave a single dry laugh. “So much
for my self-esteem. You didn’t answer my question about the tesseract. Where
did you pick up that stuff about hypercubes?”
“Oh, I saw a painting by Salvador
Dali in a book once, and he used an unfolded tesseract in it as the cross in a
Crucifixion scene. It caught my attention, so I looked tesseracts up on the
Internet and some other books. Kinda cool. I think I can make it work in my
head, folding it up in four dimensions, but that last fold is a bitch.”
“Are you planning to turn out any
four-dee sculptures?” He heard some students hurrying up the hall behind him, a
familiar sound at Lawndale High. He did not turn around.
Before Jane could answer, someone
jumped on Darius’s back. He stumbled forward, the wind knocked out of him.
Quinn’s laughter rang loud in his
ears. “Thanks!” she yelled, and she let go of him and jumped off. She skipped
down the hall ahead of him with a slight limp. Her long orange-red hair waved
like a battle pennant behind her.
“Thanks, dude!” said an excited male
voice behind him, and a hand slammed him in the middle of his back as Jeffy
hurried by.
The blow almost sent Darius
stumbling. “Ow!” he howled, a second before Jamie and Joey also happily punched
or smacked him as they ran past, following Quinn.
“You rule!” Joey called back,
waving.
“Word!” said Jamie, and the Three
J-Guys went around the corner Quinn had taken and were gone.
Darius stared after them. “What was
that all about?” he said, grimacing as he flexed his back.
“Beats me,” Jane said in surprise.
“They don’t count for popularity purposes, however.”
They reached the door to Mr.
DeMartino’s classroom, but Jane stopped before going in. “Oh, there’s something
I wanted to let you know,” she said, catching Darius by the arm. “Wait up.”
“What?”
Jane appeared anxious as she went
on. “Ms. Defoe asked me when I was leaving if I’d help out with her advanced
art class. It meets when Barch’s science class is going on. She talked about it
with Barch, who gave her go-ahead.” Jane coughed. “I, um—it’s not that I don’t
want to be with you twenty-four seven, okay? It’s just that this is a really
cool opportunity to—”
“I know,” said Darius. He felt his
stomach drop out, but he went on. “I understand. She must have gotten the idea
from me helping out in art today.”
“Um, no. Actually, she’d mentioned
something like this to me a week ago, but there wasn’t anything definite about
it until now.”
Darius nodded agreeably, though he
wished he’d heard about this earlier. He knew Jane was Defoe’s favorite student
and for good reason. “So, do you get credit for this? Is this like a teacher’s
aide position?”
“Yeah,” said Jane. “Extra grade
credits that should keep me at a C average when I get those math classes later.
Barch said I didn’t need this year’s science class to graduate, but I can’t
flunk any of the later science courses, or I’ll be in trouble in my senior
year. The changeover is just for this school year.”
Darius struggled for the right
words. “You don’t need me to okay it,” he finally said. He smiled, though he
didn’t feel it. “Go for all the gusto you can.”
Jane beamed in relief. “Thanks. I’d
kiss you, but DeMartino’s watching us.”
“I can wait.”
“Great!” Jane’s hand gripped his
bicep, and he followed her into class. I’m not losing her, he told
himself, but the fear remained. My whole family was taken away from me once,
or rather me from it, so anything could happen. I could lose it all at any
moment. It’s happened to others, it could happen to me.
He shook himself as he took his seat
next to Jane. Relax, said a voice in his mind. Fear no evil. You let
her be free to do what she wants. She won’t love you if she’s kept in a cage.
She’s an artist, for God’s sake—you knew artists were on the fringe, didn’t
you? Let her do her thing. You did right. Keep it going.
Darius swallowed, feeling hollow
inside. I hope I did the right thing, anyway. Please, let that have been the
right thing for us both.
He shoved his gloomy thoughts aside.
Mr. DeMartino was walking around his desk to face the class, a sure sign the
lesson had begun.
“Great EVENTS,” said Mr. DeMartino
in a voice that carried above the noise of papers rustling and whispers
exchanged, “sometimes turn on comparatively SMALL affairs.” His bad eye
enlarged notably when he emphasized words, which Darius found disturbing at the
same time it impressed him. The background noise in the room settled down to
nothing.
“We are at
Darius glanced to his right, where
an African-American student named Jodie Landon sat. Darius knew she was
brilliant, probably smarter than he was, though he suspected he was one of the
smartest kids currently at Lawndale High School. Jodie had straight As and was
active in more clubs and organizations than Darius could possibly remember. She
was every parent and teacher’s dream. The implications of DeMartino’s words
were brought home at once. Jodie sat and watched DeMartino’s every move.
DeMartino swung around, pointing to
a large, detailed map of a small town and the rolling countryside around it.
The map was labeled “
“Great EVENTS,” he repeated,
“sometimes turn on comparatively small affairs.” Silence restored, he began
pacing again.
“We’ll skip the details of the
battle itself to look at a pivotal MOMENT, one bloody fight among many on July
THIRD. We are at a hill called Little ROUND Top. All day, fifteen THOUSAND
Confederates attack Union positions on the hill. If the Southerners take the
HILL, they can drive into the Union army itself, winning the hill and the
Mr. DeMartino held himself
straighter. “The Union officer on the hill is a COLLEGE professor from
In the silence in the room, Mr.
DeMartino looked slowly about. “One moment in which one man must ACT, and all
the FUTURE lies in his hands! This is HISTORY. When some brain-dead imbecile
tells YOU that history is boring, that history is DEAD, you remember Joshua
CHAMBERLAIN, the college professor who caused a BATTLE to turn, and in so doing
SAVED the—”
The intercom squawked. “Damn it!”
muttered Mr. DeMartino, shaking his head. The class snickered in nervous
relief, the spell broken.
“Mr. DeMartino?” said one of the
officer staff. “Can you send Darius Morgendorffer up to see Ms. Li?”
“As you WISH!” he called, and he
nodded to Darius. Darius glanced at Jane, who shrugged and whispered, “Have
fun!” He got up, collected his backpack, and left the room. At the door he
glanced back and caught Jane’s smile, and then he walked into the empty
corridor to the office. It was useless to imagine what this was all about, so
he softly hummed a Springsteen tune, “Streets of Philadelphia,” and listened to
the echo of his boots on the linoleum.
He opened the office door and walked
in, his gaze crossing the room to rest on the tall man in the dark-green
military-style uniform on the other side by Ms. Li’s office. The officer’s
black nameplate said “ARMSTRONG,” and on his shoulders were silver eagles. Ms.
Li stood at the officer’s side, looking self-important. Darius came to a stop,
his hand still on the doorknob, mouth open and eyes wide.
Darius knew right then what it was
all about. His heart stopped.
“Mister Morgendorffer,” said the
uniformed man. His tone was steady but friendly.
“Yes, sir,” Darius whispered. After
a moment, he regained a little of his composure. “Welcome to
“Thank you,” said the man. He
indicated the door to Ms. Li’s office. “I’d like to speak with you for a few
moments. Your principal will be with us.”
“Sure,” said Darius, dazed. He knew
exactly what this was about. He couldn’t believe it. Swallowing, he walked
forward around the main office desk, aware that all the office workers and
students present were watching him. He waited for Ms. Li and Colonel Armstrong
to enter the office, then he walked in himself. Putting his backpack by the
door, he went to stand by a chair across from Ms. Li’s desk.
“Have a seat,” said the colonel.
Darius did, but he sat on the edge of the chair.
“I’m afraid I’m, uh, not aware of
the reason for your visit, Mister Armstrong,” said Ms. Li, seating herself at
her desk.
“Colonel Armstrong,”
corrected Darius automatically. He flinched. “I’m sorry, I spoke out of turn.”
“Young man!” began Ms. Li angrily.
The colonel’s chuckle cut her off. “Old
habits die hard, don’t they, Mister Morgendorffer?” he said with a soft smile.
The colonel’s gray eyes glittered.
“Yes, sir,” Darius said.
“I am a retired Army colonel, but
the title’s an honorific only, except to our students,” the colonel said to Ms.
Li. “My apologies for not calling ahead.” He ran a hand through his short gray
hair. “I’m making a swing through the area on a recruiting drive for our
school,
“We’ve had our eye on Mister
Morgendorffer since he got here,” said Ms. Li quickly. “He knows better than to
start any kind of . . . I’m sorry, what was that you said about, uh,
distinguished?”
“Darius Morgendorffer,” said the
colonel, looking Darius over, “was two years in a row the winner of our school
prize in academics, the Laurel of Archimedes. His scores in mathematics are
still unequalled, though we might get lucky with someone in our current fall
class. I was fortunate enough to hear his report on the Mirror of Archimedes
and see the demonstration. That was the most impressive thing I believe I’ve
ever seen from a student in all my years.”
“He—oh,” said Ms. Li, backpedaling.
“When I spoke with his mother a couple of weeks ago, I rather, um, got the
impression that Darius was sent to Buxton Ridge because of certain behavior and
disciplinary—”
“I don’t give a goddamn why our kids
come to us,” said the colonel tightly. “All I care about is who they become
once they reach us. Mister Morgendorffer is one of our best.” Looking Darius in
the eyes, he said, “You are much missed, son, even if you don’t happen to miss us.”
Darius felt like he was in a dream.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, and he left it at that.
“For what it’s worth,” the colonel
went on, “we cleaned the place up over the summer. Some of the out-of-control
students were expelled or put under restrictions. You’d find the place to be
rather different if you were to go back.”
“That’s good to know, sir.”
The colonel grinned. “You like it on
the outside, I can tell. Don’t worry about it.”
Darius took a deep breath and
nodded. And waited.
The colonel leaned forward and
looked at Ms. Li. “I’d appreciate it if nothing I said here today went beyond
this office, ma’am. There are strong legal reasons for my asking this.”
“Oh!” said Ms. Li. “Of course! We’re
nothing if not discrete!”
“Good,” said Colonel Armstrong. He
looked back at Darius. “There’s another inquest beginning into the death of
Cadet Michael Ellenbogen,” he said. “It’s a civil matter. I am allowed by our
legal counsel to inform you that you will likely be deposed on the issue within
the next month or two. I’ve already been in contact with your parents about it.
I called them this morning and talked with them individually for about a
half-hour each. There’s nothing you have to worry about. Just do whatever
you’re doing, and when the time comes, someone will call your parents or their
attorney and arrange the particulars for the deposition.”
Darius felt himself deflate. He had
been right. It was about Mike. “Who’s conducting the deposition?” he whispered.
“An attorney for Ellenbogen’s
parents,” said the colonel. “We don’t know anything more about it than that,
and if we did, I doubt we could say anything about it.”
“Darius was involved in another
student’s death?” asked Ms. Li in horror. She pressed herself back in her chair.
“No, ma’am,” said the colonel
testily. “Cadet Ellenbogen committed suicide. He was Mister Morgendorffer’s
roommate at the academy. He died this spring.”
Ms. Li stared at Darius. Darius felt
he’d become unreal, an imaginary thing floating through the room and watching
people interact around him without seeing him.
“You don’t know how sorry I am to
bring you the news,” said the colonel to Darius. “It can’t do anything but
bring terrible pain for you to even hear what I’ve said, but I want you to put
it aside as much as you can. It won’t take long, God willing, and then you can
put it behind you. I have every faith in you that you will do your duty and do
it well.”
“Thank you, sir.” Darius’s voice was
barely audible.
The colonel nodded and stood. He reached
into a pocket and produced a card, handing it to Darius. “This is my number at
the academy and for my personal cell phone. You call me at once if you have any
questions about anything. Would you do that?”
Darius nodded dumbly and got up from
his seat, taking the card. He glanced at it, then stuffed it in his pants
pocket. After a moment, he put out his hand. “It was good to see you again,
sir,” he said.
The colonel shook hands solemnly.
“And good to see you, too,” he said. “I am sorry it wasn’t under better
circumstances.” He turned to Ms. Li, who was also on her feet. “I’d best be
going,” he said. “I have a meeting in Oakwood in a couple hours, and I can’t
afford to miss it.”
“Certainly,” said Ms. Li, still
staring at Darius.
Darius didn’t look at her. He looked
down at the carpeted floor, then inhaled and looked at the school principal and
the commandant of Buxton Ridge. “Is that all?” he asked.
“That’s it,” said the colonel. He
looked at Ms. Li. “He’s a good young man,” he said. “He can’t be questioned by
anyone about this matter except the proper legal authorities, you understand.”
“Of course,” she said.
“And, again, no one is to know the
details of this meeting. If word gets out, it could cause considerable trouble
for everyone involved in the case, and it will drag the high school into it as
well.”
Ms. Li bristled at that. “I assure
you, Colonel Armstrong, that will never happen. Whatever secrets we have
here, we keep.”
The colonel gave Ms. Li a twisted
smile. “Of that, I have no doubt,” he said. He nodded to Darius. “Good day to
you, Mister Morgendorffer,” he said with warmth, and he left the room.
Darius looked back at Ms. Li.
Profoundly distracted, she waved at the door to dismiss him. He left but almost
forgot his backpack, picking it up at the last moment. The office staff peered
at him secretly as he left. No one dared look directly at him.
He found himself in the hallway,
walking back to class, but the corridor looked unfamiliar. Hardly aware of what
he was doing, Darius slowed to a stop and leaned against a row of lockers by a
window. He looked out at the trees and passing cars for a while, then closed
his eyes. Just like that the months fell away, and again he was walking into
his room at the academy on a cold, cloudy day in March, and what he saw as he
came in was as real to him now at Lawndale High School as it was when he saw
it, and it hung above his world like a dead sun, damned and eternal.
He heard his name called. Turning,
he saw he was in a hallway, like in a school. It was not the dormitory-like
barracks of Buxton Ridge. He felt disoriented. Where was he? What was he doing
here?
A girl with long orange-red hair ran
up to him, crying his name. She flung herself at him, almost knocking him down.
Her arms clamped around his neck, her feet hanging above the floor.
What? he said. He could
barely hear his voice.
They can’t take you, they can’t
take you back there, the girl cried into his neck. They can’t take you
away from me ever.
Confused, he clutched her to him.
Aching sadness filled his heart. Where am I going? he asked. Where—
He jerked, back in reality. Quinn
clutched him, bawling her eyes out.
“I’m okay!” he said loudly, but
without shouting. “It’s okay! Calm down!”
“They can’t take you!” Quinn shouted
in hysteria. “They can’t! They can’t!”
He tried to put a hand over her
mouth, fearful someone would hear. “Shhh! No one’s taking me anywhere!
Nothing’s happening! Calm down!”
“That army guy! He can’t take you
away!”
“Oh—no, he won’t do that! He came by
for a visit! It’s all right! He’s not taking me anywhere. Calm down! Please,
calm down, for the love of—”
“Don’t let them do it, Dari!”
“It’s okay,” he said in a lower
voice. “I love you. It’s all okay.”
“I love you, too,” she said,
coughing. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m staying, Quinn. He just came
for a visit. Don’t worry about it, all right? It’s okay now.”
Quinn sobbed into his shirt.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said to
her. “I’ll never leave you.” He still felt dizzy. “Let’s go sit down
somewhere.”
They went to the cafeteria. Lunch
was just starting. Darius explained that his old academy commandant was in the
area on business, but he came to
“He can’t take you back,” said
Quinn, her voice too high.
“Right, and he knows that,” said
Darius. He kept his voice slow and steady. “He’s okay, Quinn. I got along with
him pretty well. He’s a good guy. Don’t worry about him.”
“I was so scared. God, I was so damn
scared when I heard about it.”
He held her hand until her breathing
slowed and she sniffled less.
“So,” said Darius, “I guess someone
saw the colonel and said something, right?”
“Stacy Rowe,” said Quinn. Her voice
was hoarse. “She’s in the Fashion Club. She saw you in the office with that
army guy and she told me.”
Darius groaned. “Great, so the
Fashion Club’s screwing things up again.”
“No, she wasn’t doing anything
wrong,” said Quinn in a low voice. “She’s okay. I think she wants to be friends
with me.”
“Hell of a way to do it. Where were
you?”
“The girls’ room.” She sighed and
wiped her eyes with a tissue. “I was fixing my makeup. God, just look at me.”
“Where are you supposed to be now?”
Quinn checked her watch and exhaled.
“I’m almost late to a pep club meeting.” She turned to Darius quickly. “Oh, I
was going to tell you earlier, but I was in sort of a hurry. I’m the
president.”
Darius blinked. “President of the
pep club?”
“The Lawndale Pride Pep Club,” she
said. “Student President Quinn Anne Morgendorffer.”
“No fuh—uh, I mean, no way!”
Quinn gave a half laugh. “Yeah, way.
And watch your mouth.”
“Are those three J-guys in the club,
too?”
“No, dummy. They’re on the football
team. They’re sort of like my personal cheerleaders, you know? They’ve really
helped me out when I was down. They dragged my butt right up. I’m thinking of
giving them an official title, but we’ll see how it goes.” She blew her nose in
the tissue, then stuck it in a pants pocket. “I’d better go. Club’s waiting. I
look like crap, but a good smile covers almost everything.” She got up from the
table, as did he. “Thanks, by the way,” she said, sniffing.
“For what?”
“Brittany Taylor told everyone to
have emergency elections and vote me in as president. She said she heard about
my situation from you. The old president was sort of overwhelmed. I’m going to
put him in charge of fluffing the pompoms. He can handle that, I think.”
Darius smiled in relief. “So, you’re
better off now than with the Fashion Club?”
Quinn snorted and laughed. “You
could say that. I’ve got a twelve thousand dollar budget and fifty-six people
under me. Sandi Griffin can kiss my ass. Before the year’s out, she probably
will, too. That’ll be a Kodak moment.”
When her words registered, Darius’s
mind froze. “Good God!” he said in a strangled voice. “You’re kidding
me!”
“I owe it all to you, but don’t ask
me for a handout,” she said. “The money’s going for decorations, food,
uniforms, transportation, and parties, and I know you hate sports. I’d better
get Mom’s permission to stay out late for the away events.” Quinn started to
go, then came back and gave Darius another hug. “I’m sorry I flipped out,” she
said. “I just lost it.”
“It happens,” he said. He kissed her
on the forehead. “Go knock ‘em out, okay?”
She pulled away and lightly punched
his shoulder. “I will,” she said.
After she left, Darius looked at his
watch and realized he was supposed to have gone back to American History. It
would let out in five minutes, so it didn’t matter now. He elected to wait for
Jane in the cafeteria. Exhausted, he dropped into a chair and rubbed cold sweat
from his face with his hands. When he lowered his hands, he noticed that they
shook. He put his arms on the table in front of him, fingers interlaced to hold
them still, and watched the lunchroom doors for Jane.
Jane came in a few minutes later. He
got up and waved to her, but she saw him at almost the same moment and waved
back with a grin. Her grin faded the closer she got to him. He stood as she
approached, and they walked together to the lunch line.
“Hey,” Jane said softly, looking him
over. “What happened?”
“Oh,” he said, “my old commandant
came by from Buxton Ridge, Colonel Armstrong. He was in the neighborhood and
wanted to say hi. It was nothing.”
Jane didn’t respond. He looked up
into her blue eyes and instantly knew from her expression that she wasn’t
buying it.
He looked away. “Later, okay?” he
asked.
“Sure,” she said. She moved closer
to him. Her body pressed lightly against him from behind. They pretended
nothing was happening. He closed his eyes and felt his self-control slip away.
“I’m not hungry,” Darius said. “Sort
of lost my appetite in the office.” He stepped away from her. “I’m sorry. Too
much going on.”
“Let me grab an apple,” she said.
“We’ll go for walkies. I hear they’re repainting the bleachers at the football
field. Let’s check it out.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Two minutes later, they were walking
together across the high-school campus. A scrimmage game was being held on the
athletic field. Darius and Jane chose a section of bleachers not yet being
repainted and settled back in a spot upwind of the paint fumes, watching the
Lawndale Lions in action. Darius told her about Quinn’s new job.
“You’d think she could at least buy
you a new car,” said Jane, tossing her apple core into a trashcan. “I love
Trent, don’t get me wrong, and he’s been there for me lots of times, but
sometimes I wish he was a little more proactive, like with paying bills and
making sure the house doesn’t get repossessed. Quinn’s lucky as hell to have
you around.”
“I wonder about that sometimes,” he
said. He pointed to the field. “One thing I’ll say about Kevin—he ain’t bright,
but man, he sure can throw that ball.”
“Idiot savant. Amazing what they can
do.” Jane tapped her boot against Darius’s boot. “So, you were telling me about
the colonel.”
“Yeah.” He was silent for a bit.
“You’re going to want a new boyfriend soon.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Well, screw it, then.” He rubbed
his mouth, watching the coach give orders to the football players. “My dad sent
me off to Buxton Ridge just before I started seventh grade. He and I were
arguing a lot, about every day. I couldn’t do anything to make him happy. A lot
of stuff got said that shouldn’t have been said. He whipped me sometimes. His
dad whipped him, so it was good enough for me, too. It all sucked.” He exhaled.
“One day when we went on this family trip to the
They sat in silence. Kevin threw
another pass on the field and did a victory dance.
“Mom took Quinn and ran off to her
sister Rita’s. Dad took me home and signed me up for Buxton Ridge right away. I
left on a bus two days later. They put me to work at the academy until the fall
semester started. The first year I was there was hell for everyone. I was sort
of crazy, fighting everybody. I didn’t care anymore. I gave up.”
Darius stared at his knees as he
slouched back on the bleachers. “Colonel Armstrong and some of the staff there,
though, they didn’t give up on me. I fought them, but they got me straightened
out. When I was in eighth grade, I started doing pretty well again. I used to
like math and science and history and all that stuff, and they got me back into
it. I won some stuff. I missed Quinn a lot, but it was okay otherwise.”
He brushed off his knees and was
silent again for a minute. Jane waited.
“Ninth grade,” he said, watching the
field, “I got a new roommate, a kid named Michael Ellenbogen. Talk about irony.
His dad and my dad were at Buxton Ridge together, back in the sixties. They
hated each other. Michael told me his dad always thought my dad was a screw-up,
always complaining about everything and not listening to anyone. He wasn’t a
team player at all, had some kind of big stick up his ass about authority and
life and everything.” Darius gave a tight smile. “That’s my dad.”
The smile faded away. “Mike said his
own dad wasn’t any better. Drank a lot, beat up his wife and kids. Mike was all
messed up. He was doing drugs and everything. His dad sent him to Buxton Ridge
to straighten him out.”
“How old was he?”
“Thirteen. What was funny about it
was that he and I got along okay. You couldn’t really get to know him, but he
was okay. I liked him. He was smart.”
The silence drew out. Jane cleared
her throat. “What happened?”
Darius took a deep breath and let it
out. “He killed himself.”
Jane turned to him, her face
draining of color. Time passed.
“He hung himself in our room,” said
Darius. “I found him. Couldn’t do anything for him.” He leaned forward, hunched
up to rest his arms on his knees.
“When did this happen?” Jane
whispered.
“March. Middle of the month.”
“March of this year?”
“Yeah.” He thought. “Just over six
months ago.” He stared at the players, who were leaving the field. “I came back
from class and he was hanging there from the ceiling light. He’d taken off the
plastic dome and wound some neckties around the light bulb fixture. I held him
up until I could cut him down with a pair of scissors, but he was dead. You
could tell. That’s all.”
Darius exhaled, then slowly stood up
and stretched. “So, now there’s another investigation into it, and they’re
going to call me in for a deposition, ask me questions about it, and then his
parents are probably going to sue the living shit out of me and my parents and
the school and everyone else in the universe, just for the hell of it. The
colonel called Mom and Dad this morning, so I know they’re probably nuts by
this time and waiting to get hold of me when I get home, and I don’t feel like
doing anything anymore. I don’t know what’s going to happen or anything. You
should find another boyfriend.”
He looked down.
Jane was wiping her eyes and
breathing very hard.
He swallowed and reached down for
her. She sniffed and took his hand, then stood up. Her arms went around him and
his arms around her, and they pressed together as if they were one person.
“I love you,” he said, which wasn’t
at all what he had wanted to say.
“I love you, too,” she said, choking
back tears. “I don’t want anyone else.”
She smelled faintly of some kind of
flower, he noticed. Not violets or roses. He couldn’t place it.
“It’s not going to be any fun,” he
whispered. “Being with me.”
“Oh, shut the hell up,” she said.
She hugged him tightly. “We’d better go. I think we’re late for class.”
“Okay. Don’t tell Quinn any of this,
okay?”
“Doesn’t she know?”
“I don’t want her to know any more
than she might already,” he said, “though Mom or Dad will probably spill it all
anyway. Quinn’s scared to death I’ll be sent away somewhere again, and I don’t
want to get her any more wound up about it than she already is.”
“Okay.”
They walked back to the main school
building. No one was about. They were obviously late.
“What perfume are you wearing?”
“Something I borrowed long ago from
one of my sisters. It’s supposed to smell like crocus.”
“Crocus. Those little colorful
flowers that come up under the snow in the spring.”
“Yeah.”
“I like it.”
“I’ll wear it more often.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
They got to their English literature
class ten minutes late. Mr. O’Neill sighed when they walked in, interrupted in
the middle of reading Hamlet’s soliloquy aloud to the sleepy, post-lunch
classroom. He reached for the tardy slips on his desk.
“Sorry we’re late,” said Darius,
eyeing the tardy slips in O’Neill’s hand. “I was walking around thinking about
entropy when I realized that the negative, which is the nothingness of being
and the annihilating power both together, was itself nothingness, and I just
lost track of the time.”
Stunned, Mr. O’Neill dropped the
tardy slips. “Good Lord!” he gasped. “I imagine you would, thinking about such
weighty matters!” He looked at Jane. “Were you thinking about the nothingness
of being, too?”
“I’m painting a picture of it,” Jane
said. “It’s mostly black, but in different shades.”
“Goodness! Please, just take your
seats!”
“Thanks,” said Darius. “It’s so
depressing to deal with it all, you know.”
“I should think so! A little Hamlet
should cheer you up,” said Mr. O’Neill. He frowned at his book. “I’ll start
over again at the beginning.”
Several students groaned aloud.
“Mercy!” one of them cried. “Have mercy!”
Darius sat and listened to the “To
be or not to be” speech. None of it registered. He played with his pencil on
his desktop instead of taking notes, and he listened to Jane breathe beside
him.
Next to him, Jane sat with her
sketchpad open before her to a blank page. A pencil was poised over it in her
hand. She drew nothing.
Mr. O’Neill had just gotten to the
part about “the dread of something after death, / That undiscovered country
from whose bourn / No traveler returns,” when someone knocked on the door. He
sighed and set the book down, mumbling, “Excuse me!” to the class, then went to
find out who was there.
At the door were Darius’s parents,
Quinn, and the principal, Ms. Li. His mother spotting him right off and
motioned for him to come with them.
Darius looked at Jane, then slowly
got up and collected his things. She touched his arm before he went.
He went to the door and faced his
parents. “Let’s go,” he said.
“What’s going on?” asked
Quinn once they were out of the school building.
Darius made a shushing noise to her
under his breath. Before he could say more, their mother interrupted. “We’ve
got an appointment to see an attorney, dear.”
“What?” Quinn’s voice rose. “What
about?”
“Quinn,” said Darius in a low voice,
“it’s just—”
“Darius,” said his mother, “I want
you to shut up and stop upsetting your sister.”
“Mom, what’s going on?” Quinn’s
voice quavered. “Mom, talk to me!”
Darius glanced at his father, who
looked different for some reason. After a moment, he realized that his father
did not seem upset. In fact, the old man looked . . . pleased.
The four of them reached the
family’s blue Lexus, parking near the school entrance.
“Mom!” Quinn cried. “Tell me what’s
going on?”
“Damn it, Quinn!” shouted their
mother, spinning around, pointing at the Lexus. “Just shut up and get in the
car!”
Quinn’s face slowly scrunched up.
Tears streaked down both her cheeks.
Darius’s father unlocked the car.
After putting their backpacks in the trunk, Darius and Quinn got in the back
seat and buckled in. Darius reached over and took Quinn’s hand in his. She
bowed her head, biting her lips. Their mother got in the passenger seat and
almost immediately opened her briefcase and began rummaging through it. As
their father started the car, Darius saw his mother pull out a cell phone and
punch in a number. She put the phone to her ear and waited.
The sound of humming was in the car:
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” Darius realized after a moment that it was coming
from his father.
“Jake, please,” said his mother.
“I’m—hi, this is Helen Morgendorffer. We have an appointment at two. Right.
We’re on our way.”
Darius looked at his sister and
tugged on her hand. She didn’t look up. He leaned over to her. “We’ll be okay,”
he whispered. She made no sign that she had heard.
“Darius,” said his mother, snapping
the cell phone shut. “I warned you. Don’t make me have to say it again.”
He subsided and sat back, still
holding Quinn’s hand. His mother looked back and noticed. “Darius, let go of
her,” she said.
“Mom, I’m just holding her—”
“Let go of her, damn you!”
his mother yelled. “Keep your hands to yourself!”
“Helen,” said his father mildly.
Stung, Darius pulled his hand back.
Quinn immediately reached for his hand again.
“Quinn, stop it!” His mother turned
to her husband. “Jake, pull over. I want Darius to ride in front.”
“We’re in traffic, Helen,” said his
father. “Nowhere to pull over.”
His mother swore and gave Darius a
smoldering glare. “Just keep your hands to yourself! And stop that, young lady!
You keep your hands to yourself, too. We should have brought the SUV.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,”
said his father in a relaxed tone.
Darius’s mother turned around and
looked out the front window again, but she glanced back several times to check
on her children—always glaring at Darius.
What the hell is going on?
Darius wondered. Mom hasn’t gotten upset about anything like this in years.
He then remembered that his mother didn’t want Darius to touch his sister after
the big fight at
The rest of the ride passed in
silence. They drove through
“That one,” said Darius’s mother,
pointing. “DeMarcus and Rawlings.”
“I see it,” said his father, turning
the car.
Darius looked at Quinn’s white face.
She had shut her eyes. Her hands rested in her lap, clasped together with her
fingers interlaced. Only her lips moved. After a moment, Darius realized his
sister was whispering the Lord’s Prayer to herself. Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art
with me. . . .
When the car was parked, everyone
got out. Darius’s mother took Quinn and maneuvered her away from Darius as they
walked toward the building entrance.
“Mom?” said Darius, “what’s going
on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” said his
father, both hands in his pockets. He looked as if the family were out for a
stroll. “Everything’s peachy-keen.”
“Jake,” growled his mother. She
grabbed the door into the law office and jerked it open, walking through with
Quinn but letting the door fall shut behind her. It would have nailed her
husband in the shoulder, but he was quick and grabbed it in time.
“Damn it, Helen!” he said in a loud
voice. He was pissed, but still not up to his usual level of spite.
She ignored him and walked up to the
receptionist’s desk. Darius grabbed the door after his father walked through.
He noticed an elderly woman behind him, and he held the door open for her. She murmured
her thanks and walked on through the waiting room toward a back office.
Darius listened as his mother argued
with the receptionist about the appointment time. They were twenty minutes
early, and she wanted to be seen as soon as possible. “I’ve got to get back to
my own office,” she told the receptionist. “I’m sure you can appreciate just
how important that is. Just buzz him and let him know we’re here!”
“He’s not to be disturbed,” said the
middle-aged woman in a level, well-practiced tone. “He’s still with his one
o’clock client. Please have a seat, and he’ll be out as soon as he can.”
“I’ll have a talk with him about
this.” Darius’s mother walked across the empty waiting room to where her
husband and children were sitting in a row: Jake, Darius, Quinn. “Darius,” said
his mother, “go sit over on the other side of your father. I’ll sit next to
Quinn.”
Darius got up. A fight in a legal
office would a very bad thing, especially with both his parents acting so
weird. He wondered again what was really going on.
“Mom,” said Quinn firmly, “sit next
to me here. Darius can sit where he is.”
“Quinn, stay out of this,” said
their mother. “Move, Darius.”
Quinn reached out and grabbed her
brother by a pants leg with one hand. She patted the empty seat by her with the
other. “No,” she said. “Let him stay. You sit here.”
“Young lady,” hissed her mother,
leaning in close, “you are right on the verge of making serious trouble for
yourself! Now stop it! ”
“I don’t care anymore!” said Quinn,
glaring back. “What are you gonna do about it, huh?”
“Hey!” said Darius, feeling the cold
touch of fear. “It’s okay, Quinn! Look, I’m just moving over—”
“Don’t you talk back to me!” said
his mother to Quinn. “Don’t you dare talk back to me when I’m looking
out for your welfare!”
“You’re not looking out for anyone’s
welfare!” Quinn said in a loud voice, and she got up and walked toward the
seats on the other side of the waiting room, where Darius was just sitting
down.
Her mother grabbed Quinn by the arm
and jerked her to a stop. Quinn spun around and slapped her mother’s arm away.
“Don’t touch me!” she shouted.
“Jesus!” said Darius, leaping from
his seat. “Stop! Please stop it!” He heard a beeping noise from the
receptionist’s desk. He realized she had triggered a hidden alarm. Holy
shit!
Quinn dodged to avoid being grabbed
by her mother again. Darius stepped between them, hands up. Furious, his mother
struck him open-handed across the face, knocking his glasses off. “Get back in
your seat!” she shouted. “Sit down! Quinn, you get back here!”
Darius staggered backward, his face
on fire. He hit a row of empty chairs and sat down abruptly, holding his face
and staring at his mother in shock. Quinn grabbed his glasses from the floor
and ran over to give them back to Darius.
“Quinn!” shouted their
mother.
“Excuse me!” said a tall, portly man
in a business suit, walking into the waiting room. “Is there a problem here?”
Two other tall men in suits came behind him. They all looked like lawyers, but
without his glasses Darius found it impossible to tell. He blinked up at them
through tears in his eyes, but he stayed in his seat and carefully put his
glasses back on. Quinn sat down next to him and checked his face.
“I’m having difficulty with my
children,” said Mrs. Morgendorffer quickly. “Do you have a room where I can put
my son?”
“Certainly,” said the portly man.
“Right down the hall here. Which one of you wants to stay with him?” he added,
looking from Darius’s mother to his father.
To his astonishment, Darius realized
that his father had been completely uninvolved in the entire altercation. When
the portly man turned to him, his father made a wide-eyed, open-handed gesture
that clearly said, I have no idea what’s happening here, and I have no
control over it.
“Me,” said Quinn. “I’ll stay with
him.”
“My daughter will stay with me,”
said their mother, looking daggers at Quinn. “Jake, you stay with Darius.”
“Sure,” her husband said sourly. He
got up, making a face, and motioned for Darius to follow him.
Darius got up. Quinn got up beside
him. Darius noticed and turned to her. “Wait for me,” he said in what he hoped
was a quiet, confident voice. He wanted her to listen. This entire episode was
scaring the daylights out of him. “I promise I’ll be right back. Everything
will be fine.”
Quinn stared at him, then nodded.
“Okay,” she said. She gave him an impulsive hug, then sat down as Darius
followed his father out of the waiting room.
They were escorted down the hall to
a small storage room filled with shelves, each jammed with banker’s boxes full
of legal documents. Darius took a seat in a folding chair. His father sat in a
chair by the open door. “Any chance of getting a drink?” his dad asked the
lawyer who escorted them there.
“We have Cola Blast, regular and
diet, and Ultra-Cola, plus canned ice tea, fruit juices, or just plain old
coffee,” said the lawyer.
“Oh, coffee for me, then,” said Mr.
Morgendorffer.
“And you?” said the lawyer to
Darius.
Darius shook his head. “No, thanks,”
he said. He was thirsty, but too shaken to deal with it just yet. His fingers
were trembling and his face still ached from where his mother had struck him.
He leaned forward and put his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. Too much
had happened. It was time to regroup, but he just couldn’t do it.
What the hell just happened?
he thought. Quinn went off just like I used to do, when Dad was riding me
really bad years ago. And Dad just sat there! Why didn’t he do anything? Why
didn’t he try to stop Mom from freaking out? And what the hell is eating Mom,
anyway? She acts like I’m beating up Quinn or something! What’s happened? Is
something else going on here besides the deposition? Mom acted like I was
poisonous. Does she really believe that? Did the deposition do something to
her, or what? Is she snapping from stress? Are we all going crazy? What the
hell is going on?
A few feet away, his father sighed.
Darius looked up. His father was savoring a hot cup of coffee.
“Dad?” he asked.
“Hmmm?” said his father, lowering
the cup.
“Why are we here?”
“Legal stuff,” said his father.
“Is this about the deposition? About
my roommate at Buxton Ridge?”
His father shrugged.
“Come on, Dad! Don’t you know?”
“Just relax,” said his father, and
took a sip of his coffee again.
Darius’s head fell. He put his head
in his hands again, his palms mashing into his eyes. They sat in the room for
what seemed like an hour.
“Mister Morgendorffer?” said a
woman’s voice. “Mister Rawlings will see you now. Your wife’s already in the
room.”
His father got up and turned to
Darius. “Just wait here for now,” he said. “Amy should be by in a few minutes.”
“Aunt Amy?” Darius shook his head
slowly. “What’s she doing here?” Darius hadn’t seen his mother’s youngest
sister since he was in elementary school, back in
“She’s going to look after Quinn for
a little, till things calm down. I think she’s got a hotel room in town.
Helen’s paying for it.”
“Is something going on, Dad?”
His father shrugged. “Just stay here
and keep out of trouble,” he said. “We’ll call you.” He walked off with the
coffee cup.
Darius got up and looked down the
hallway. Seeing no one around after his father went into an office, he went
back to his chair and sat down again. He tried to get comfortable so he could
fall asleep, but it was impossible. The chair dug into his back. He finally put
his head in his hands again and just waited, thinking gloomy thoughts.
An age later, he heard a door open
in the waiting room and someone walk in with quick steps. He wondered if the
visitor was his Aunt Amy, or if he’d recognize her after all this time. Did she
still wear those big round-lens glasses and baggy sweaters?
“Hi,” he heard the visitor say—a
woman. “My sister asked me to meet her here, Helen Morgendorffer. Is she here
yet?”
“She’s with her attorney,” said the
receptionist. “Do you want me to call her out?”
“Could you, for just a minute?”
“Sure. Who should I say is here?”
“Amy Barksdale.”
“Okay. Just a moment.”
“Thanks.”
Darius almost got up and went out in
the hallway, but decided not to. If his mother was the one who had gotten in
touch with Amy, who knew what Amy thought of him now?
A door opened. “Oh, Amy, I’m glad
you’re here,” Darius heard his mother say. “I need to talk to you.” A door
shut.
“What’s going on?” Amy asked.
“Wait,” said his mother. Footsteps
came down the hall, sounding louder. They stopped abruptly not far from the
door to Darius’s room. A door opened. “Let’s go in here for some privacy. It’s
a conference room.”
It occurred to Darius that the
conference room might be adjacent to the storage room. He stood up and looked
at the wall that he guessed connected the two areas. Should he listen in?
The choice was a no-brainer, really.
He walked across the room and nervously stood by the wall, waiting.
A door shut on the other side.
“Helen,” said Amy, “what’s going on?”
“Darius is in trouble again,” said
his mother. “He’s going to be deposed next month about his roommate at that
military academy Jake had him sent to.”
“His roommate?” said Amy. “The one
who killed himself?”
“They’re still sorting that out.”
“Wait, what are you saying? You
think Darius had something to do with that?”
“I don’t know, damn it! I don’t know
what the hell’s going on! I’m about to go crazy and I don’t know what the hell
is going on anymore with him!”
“Well, don’t yell at me about it!
Don’t you believe Darius about this? I mean, the academy investigated the whole
thing and cleared Darius, right? Didn’t they? How could he have done anything?”
“Trouble’s been following him around
since day one. He’s taken after Jake in every way possible, and I’m at my wit’s
end. I don’t even know if I want him around anymore. Quinn’s starting to turn
out just like him, mouthing off at me and threatening me and just behaving like
a little monster!”
“Helen, listen—”
“We’re going to be sued, Amy! That
boy’s parents are going to find some way to claim that Darius either caused
their son’s death or contributed to it, and we’re going to be soaked for
millions! Millions, do you hear me? Can you possibly see what the problem is
now? What do I have to do to spell it out for you?”
“Do you know that you’re going to be
sued?”
“Why the hell else are they deposing
Darius? They’re going to sue the academy for sure, but they’ll go after us,
more than likely. They all do, everyone in that position would do it. They
don’t care.”
“Then, from what you’re saying, this
isn’t Darius’s fault.”
“He’s tearing us apart, and Quinn’s
suffering from it! Jake told me Darius broke a glass in the kitchen the other
day and didn’t clean it up, and Quinn stepped on it and cut her foot! He’s
totally irresponsible, and now he’s getting Quinn to be just like him, fighting
us at every step of the way! I will be damned in Hell if I’m going to have her
put us through all the trouble he’s put us through!”
“What are you planning to do about
Darius?”
“In the long run or short run?”
“Right now.”
“He’s going to talk to the attorney
about the deposition, but not in any depth in this meeting. This is just an
introductory thing, a hand-shaker. We’ll set up another appointment for him to
come back and talk about what’s involved in a deposition, how he should answer
the questions and all that. It scares me to death to think of what he might
say, but we can’t get out of it.”
“What could he say? I mean—”
“He could say he and his roommate
didn’t get along, they were enemies, he told his roommate to kill himself—come
on, Amy, can you possibly be any thicker?”
“I don’t have to take this. You can
fix your own damn problems.”
“Amy, wait! Amy! I need your help
with Quinn!”
A door opened, then there was a
pause. “What about Quinn?”
“Amy, shut the door.”
The door softly thumped shut.
“What?”
“Amy, Quinn listens to you. She
looks up to you in a way she doesn’t to me, thanks to Darius. Can you—I’m
trying to think of what you could do—can you talk to her? Can you see her on
weekends, just for a few hours for a while? Maybe take her out for ice cream
tonight or something.”
“How is she doing?”
“She was fighting me in the waiting
room here not half an hour ago, actually hitting me. I think Darius put her up
to it.”
“Look, I have to be honest with you.
Darius has never been a favorite of mine, but I can’t see him doing what you’re
saying he’s doing.”
“The apple doesn’t fall very far
from the tree.”
“What? What the hell’s that supposed
to mean?”
“He’s Jake’s son.”
“Helen, for the love of God, he’s
your son, too!”
A short silence followed. “I wish
I’d never had him, after all the hell he’s put us through. I wish he’d . . . I
don’t know, died, or I’d given him up for adoption or something. I’m worn out
worrying from all the shit we’ve been through over him.”
Darius stepped back from the wall.
He stared at it with vague astonishment, as if someone had just cut him in
half, but he had not yet felt the pain from the blow.
“My God, Helen, I can’t believe you
said that.”
“What, you want him? You can have
him. I’m sick of all this.”
“Have you talked to him yet about
the deposition?”
“No. We just got here. Jake and I
are talking with the attorney about our liability in case we get sued with the
school. It doesn’t look good. I guess if worse comes to worse, we can declare
bankruptcy. It depends a lot on what Darius says in the deposition, though if
that boy’s family wants to sue us, they’ll do it no matter what.”
“You’re supposed to just tell the
truth in a deposition, right?”
“There’s more to it than that, but
it’s the truth that scares me to death. I don’t know what Darius did to that
boy. He says they were friends, but who knows what the truth is?” A pause. “I’m
sorry, Amy. I’m just about to go insane. I have to get back in there with Jake
and go over a few more issues.”
“Where’s Quinn?”
“In the room across the hall. Darius
is down the hall that way somewhere.”
“Okay. I’ll drop in on both of them
and see how they’re doing.”
“Just look after Quinn for me, if
you would. Someone else is supposed to be looking after Darius. And don’t put
them in the same room together. I don’t even want him home with us tonight, but
the attorney says we have to go on like nothing’s wrong, for the sake of the
deposition. If we do anything like put Darius out of the house, it makes it
look like he might be out of control, and it gives weight to the other side’s
claims against him. We have to go on right now like nothing’s wrong.”
“So, he’s going to be with you
anyway, right? Until the deposition, at least?”
A long sigh. “Yes. I don’t know
about afterward. Jake’s just about beside himself with glee right now. He’s had
it in for Darius for years, and he’s screwed that boy up to the point that I
don’t think we can save him. You should have seen Quinn’s foot after she cut
herself.”
“I don’t get it. Why’s Jake so
happy, then?”
“Jake knew that boy Ellenbogen’s
father at the academy, and he hated him. I think he’s tickled to death that the
boy killed himself. He keeps saying, ‘Well, my boy’s still alive! Guess I
showed him who was the better father!’ I could puke.”
“God, Helen, are you serious? You
can’t be—”
“I’m divorcing him as soon as all of
this is over. I’m staying in
A long pause. “Well, it’s about time.
I think Jake’s the only thing that you, me, and Rita agree on.”
“Probably. I’m sorry I let it go
this long.”
“And Darius? What’ll happen—”
“Look, I have to go. We’ll talk
later. Just check on Quinn.” A door opened.
Darius turned like a robot and walked
back to his seat. He had a distinct memory at that moment of reading an
adventure book about a robot when he was a little boy, and how he had walked
around the house stiff-legged for days pretending to be a robot just like the
one in the book. Now he was a real robot, one without a heart or soul, and he
walked stiff-legged back to his chair and sat down. It was purely mechanical.
He felt nothing inside him.
Footsteps clicked down the hallway
and stopped at the door to the storage room. “Oh,” said his Aunt Amy.
Darius looked up. His aunt was
there, long wavy brown hair and all. Amy was looking into the room and staring
at the wall where Darius had listened in on the conversation. It was obvious at
that moment that his aunt knew the whole conversation with her sister had been
overheard. Behind her big, round-lens glasses, her brown eyes were enormous
with shock.
“Hi, Aunt Amy,” he said. He
remembered from his courtesy classes at Buxton Ridge that he was supposed to
stand when a woman came into a room, so he stood. “It’s good to see you.”
“Um,” said Amy, looking from him to
the wall and back, “good to see you, too.” She pulled down the hem of her baggy
beige-and-maroon sweater over the top of her jeans. “So, how have you been,
Darius?”
“Okay,” he said. “Did Quinn tell you
her good news?”
Amy looked blank, still reeling from
her discovery. “What good news?”
“She’s the president of the
Something slowly changed in Amy’s
brown eyes as she looked at Darius. “I’ll do that,” she said. “Are you okay?”
He opened his mouth but hesitated,
wanting to say so much. In the end, he said only what was important. “Please
take good care of Quinn for me, whatever happens.”
Amy blinked. “Uh, of course. I will.”
He nodded. “Okay. Thank
you.” After a moment, he swallowed. “It was good to see you again.”
Amy stared at him, then pulled back
from the door. “It was good to see you, too, Darius,” she said.
He nodded once more, then sat down
and looked at the floor. The robot was finished with its work and was shutting
down for the evening.
Someone slowly left the doorway and
walked back up the hall. Darius took off his glasses in a mechanical way and
put them in his shirt pocket, then leaned forward and covered his face with his
hands.
A door opened up the hallway. “Well,
hi!” said Aunt Amy, her voice echoing in the corridor. “How’s my favorite
niece?”
The previous owner of the
Morgendorffers’ house had remodeled one of the upstairs bedrooms to house her
schizophrenic mother (paranoid type: visual and auditory hallucinations,
delusions of grandeur, delusions of persecution—in short, the works). The room
had a light gray ceiling, medium-gray reinforced padded walls, and a wooden
floor painted brick red that smelled faintly of urine. Bars ran across the
windows to prevent the owner’s mother from trying to jump from the second floor
naked during the full moon to get the attention of God. A long metal support
bar ran across one wall near the door, allowing the mother in her last two
years of life to get out of her wheelchair and be walked down the hall to the
bathroom that Darius and Quinn now used. The owner had no money with which to
remodel the room after her mother’s death, so she sold the house as it was to a
family that needed to move in immediately. The schizophrenic’s bedroom was
morbid and depressing, an atrocity of interior design that would have been
greatly improved by blowing it up with dynamite.
Darius took it because he saw his
sister’s look of horror when she first peered into that room, and he feared one
of his parents might stick Quinn with it. Personally, he also thought it was
sort of cool to have a room once occupied by a psychotic. Being a guy, he had
not decorated much—a poster of William Shakespeare over his desk by the door, a
very nice edge-on color shot of spiral galaxy NGC 4565 (courtesy of the Hubble
Space Telescope) over the head of his bed, a blueprint of the B-2 stealth
bomber on the wall over the support bar, a large oval rug from their Highland
home that didn’t fit anywhere else in the house, his bed, and three small
bookcases overstuffed with new and used paperbacks and hardbounds picked up
from a variety of sources. A telescope, a boom box, a CD player with earphones,
and a computer were scattered around the room among articles of used clothing
and bathroom towels. More books were stored under the bed with the dust
bunnies. After checking with an electronics supply store, Darius was able to
locate a remote that worked for the color television set mounted on wall
brackets in a ceiling corner, and he watched “Sick, Sad World” lying on his bed
in the afternoons after school when he wasn’t with Jane. A good
ammonia-and-water mopping and a box of baking soda scattered over the floor
eliminated the urine smell almost entirely.
On the first day he moved his things
into his new room, Darius mused for half a minute over how a girl would have
decorated the place. Certainly, after she finished screaming, she would have
torn out the wall padding, put real curtains over the windows instead of beach
towels, carpeted the entire floor to hide that awful maroon color, and
repainted everything else. The wall bar would go, flower vases and mirrors and
fashionable dressers would come in, and the walls would be covered with
Guys2Guys posters. The violent rambling poetry carved into the closet walls by
the psychotic mother would have been covered over with wallpaper, and the
sawn-off bars in the windows—well, no more need be said.
This line of thought led Darius to
wonder for a few seconds more how the rest of his life would have changed if he
had been born a girl. Though he liked alternate histories, he did not waste
much time thinking about this as the very idea overwhelmed him, but he supposed
as a girl he would have gotten along better with Quinn—doing the sisterly
thing, as he thought of it. It was hard to imagine being friends with Jane, as
they really had so little in common—Jane being an artist, and Darius being a
writer—so they’d have ignored each other in school. Being so different, at
least they’d never have had to worry about dating the same guy. Darius’s
parents would probably not have wanted two girls, so life, as difficult
as it was, would surely have been even worse than now. As a girl, he would have
dressed better than he did as a guy, as women invariably dressed better than
any guys that Darius knew, and he (she) would be dating all the time and
shopping for wonder bras and planning her future wedding and standing at the
bathroom mirror every morning before school with Quinn, applying eyeliner and
blush.
Only in this time-space continuum,
he knew, would anyone in his place have kept a padded room like this. His room
was more than his castle—it was his safe and secure refuge from the world, at
least until Quinn banged on the door needing something.
Tonight, he lay on the floor looking up at a long, interesting crack in the light-gray ceiling. He had lost the will to get to his bed halfway across the room from the door. The faceless things reaching for him could not be kept away by the padded walls or nauseating décor. Quinn was still out with Aunt Amy, so she could not distract the demons’ attention, and neither could his parents, who had left the house for their respective workplaces to either catch up on missed projects in the evening hours (in his mother’s case) or sample a bottle of whiskey in a desk drawer and stare at the walls (in his father’s).
After half an hour lying on
the floor, Darius stirred and got to his feet. He moved in a daze, as if he’d
just received the walloping dose of Thorazine that the room’s former occupant
regularly got. His feet shuffled over the floor to one of his ramshackle
bookcases. At random, he picked a book off the shelf—Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris
, one of his favorite science-fiction novels. He flipped the book open to the
final page and read the first passage that met his eyes.
The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power
of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie,
useless and not even funny.
His
gaze ran down the page to the last words in the book.
I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.
The book flipped shut in his
hands, and he tossed it back on the shelf on top of the rest. He stared at the
book for a long while, then put on a light jacket and walked out of his room
and out of the house. It was about half past six.
When he left he did not have a clear
idea of where he was going. Sundown was over an hour away, and traffic was moderate.
He walked west along Glen Oaks in the direction of Jane’s house, but he did not
want to see Jane. When he reached
No one was on the path in the woods
when he reached it. It was still light enough to see. He was overdressed for a
long jog, but it was not important.
He saw a long, gnarled branch that
had fallen from an oak. When he reached it, he broke stride, picked it up, and
smashed it into rotting splinters against the nearest tree. He picked up the
largest of the pieces and smashed that to nothing as well, then walked on. He
seized a large rock from the ground and flung it as far as he could, then
picked up another branch and beat it on a sapling until both the sapling and
the branch were shattered.
He continued moving like this
through the woods, destroying anything he could get hold of with his hands.
Before long his palms were bleeding, but this was good. The pain took his mind
off everything he had heard in the law office a few hours earlier. Images from
across his life floated through his mind, and he gazed at them and tossed them
aside as he did the broken limbs and rocks he encountered on his way.
When he reached the long
straightaway where Jane had beaten him in their run, he ran again as hard as he
could to the end. He slowed down and walked the last few steps until he reached
the place on the ground where he had held Jane in his arms and realized the
miracle of her, and here he knelt and put down his head and cried.
Ages later, when his weeping had
subsided and he was merely kneeling and staring at the ground, he heard a noise
behind him. He knew it was some jogger who had happened upon him, and he got up
to walk off the path and be alone again.
“Darius?”
He turned. Jane stood there on the
path, about twenty feet away. He looked at her for a long moment, then wiped
his face with a bloodied hand and looked away. He had no energy left to run
from her, not that it would have mattered.
She took a step toward him.
“Don’t touch me,” he said, turning
toward her but not looking into her face.
“What happened?”
He shook his head. She started to
take another step toward him, but he backed up. “Don’t touch me,” he repeated.
“Why?”
“Just don’t.” He ran his fingers
through his hair. He was filthy, but he didn’t mind. It was as it should be.
“Quinn called and said you weren’t
home when she stopped by.
He shrugged, not looking at her.
“Please tell me what happened.”
“Call my Aunt Amy. She knows
everything. Ask Quinn. Ask someone, anyone, but just go away.”
She didn’t go away. Darius looked
down. He was still standing by the spot where he had held Jane.
“Quinn said she was staying the
night with her aunt,” said Jane. “They’re in a hotel somewhere around here.”
“Good.”
“What about you?”
“Go to hell.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” he said. He exhaled
heavily, and his strength left him. He sank to his knees again by the place he
thought of as sacred. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated. “My parents are getting
divorced, and Mom’s throwing me out after she throws out Dad. It just doesn’t
fucking matter. Just go away.”
Jane walked closer. He shook his
head and raised a warning hand. “Don’t,” he said. “I can’t take it.”
She knelt on the ground next to him.
He felt tears start to run down his
face. He wiped them off on his sleeve. Crying in front of Jane was the worst
thing imaginable. It was just wrong.
“I don’t want to be like my dad,” he
said. He felt very tired. “I can’t deal with it. I can’t deal with anything
anymore.” He wiped his face again. “If you loved me, you’d kill me. I wish to
God you would.”
A few moments later, he lay on the
ground, his head in Jane’s lap.
He told her everything.
“Don’t tell Quinn,” he said. It was
dark now. The woods sang, the crickets and night birds and cicadas in chorus.
“Don’t tell any of this to Quinn.”
Jane stroked his hair. “She already
knows,” she said. “Your mom’s voice carries, and the walls were like tissue
paper.”
He got home an hour later. As he
walked in the door, he heard someone in the kitchen. It was after nine.
He walked into the kitchen. His
father was pouring a glass of whiskey at the long center counter.
“You’re late,” said his father,
looking at the clock.
Darius walked around the counter
until he stood within two feet of his father. His bloodied, filthy fists balled
up, and he felt every muscle he had knot into readiness.
“Do your worst,” he said softly.
His father stared back at him,
whiskey glass in hand. Seconds passed.
His father started to raise the hand
with the glass.
Darius drew back his right fist and
waited. He was almost eye-to-eye with his old man now, and he could see how the
years had eaten his father away inside until nothing was left but the shell.
His father took a step back. The
amber liquid in the glass swished and spilled over his shirt front. He put the
glass down on the counter, his hand shaking.
They held their positions for a few
moments longer, then Darius lowered his fist. “All right then,” he said, and he
turned to go. He stopped, however, and he turned and walked back to his father.
The old man backed up another step. Darius picked up the whiskey glass and
emptied what was left of its contents into the sink, then put the glass in the
dishwasher. He took the whiskey bottle and emptied it out as well, throwing it
in the garbage under the sink.
“You throw something at me again,”
he said, turning back to his father, “and I’ll break your arm off at the
shoulder. And you ever hurt Quinn, I swear to God, you’d better run and never
stop.”
He waited until he saw understanding
in his father’s eyes, and then he left and went to his room to sit on the edge
of his bed and stare at the floor. He left the door open.
It was very quiet in the house that
night.
When his mother came down
for a quick cup of coffee the following morning, Darius was waiting for her at
the kitchen table, showered and dressed. His mother was startled because it was
5:31 a.m., and Darius did not normally get up for another half hour. The
coffeemaker was already turned on, filling the air with its aroma, and a pot
was full and ready.
Darius rose to his feet. He was
bleary from lack of sleep and truly dreaded starting this fight, but he
remembered what she had said about him and what she’d put him through.
“Good morning,” he said. “I need to
talk to you while Dad’s out cold in the guest bedroom.”
“I have to go to work now,” said his
mother in a tight voice. “I’ve got a ton of things to do today.” She had
trouble looking him in the eyes.
“It can wait,” he said steadily. “We
need to talk first.”
“Darius, for Christ’s sake, I don’t
have time to listen to this stupid—”
“When you divorce Dad, I want to
stay here with you and Quinn—until I graduate high school, that is. After that,
I’ll be out of your hair for good, if you want it that way.”
His mother stood stock-still, her
mouth falling open.
“You should also get a new
attorney,” he added, “one with thicker office walls.”
She closed her mouth, but her eyes
burned. “You want to stay here, is that it?”
He took a breath and nodded once.
“You can get out now,” she said, her
face hardening. “Get your things, get out, and stay out. You can go live with
your father. He can get out today, too.”
Hearing this from his mother
frightened him, but it was now or never. “When is the deposition?” he asked in
a loud voice. His throat was dry with fear, but he drove on. “Just a month from
now? What do you think they’ll ask me when I’m in there? What’ll I tell them?
Think about it, Mom! Think hard!”
Her expression changed from anger to
shock, and then to white-hot rage. She walked slowly over to her briefcase on
the kitchen table beside Darius and played with the locks. “That’s extortion,”
she said.
“I’m talking about me killing Mike!”
he said angrily, knowing he was now being recorded. “I’m talking about the kind
of family life I’ve had with you and Dad that’s screwed me up so much that—”
His mother made a sudden motion with
her hands on the briefcase locks halfway through his speech, gazing at him in a
fury. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Just stop it!”
Darius put out his right hand. A
taped-down bandage covered his palm. “Give me that cassette,” he said.
His mother stared at his hand, but
she remained motionless.
“Give me the cassette,” he repeated.
“I’m not kidding. Give it to me.”
A muscle twitched in her cheek. She
snapped open the briefcase, reached in, popped open the miniature tape recorder
inside, and threw the tiny cassette tape on the tabletop so hard it bounced
into the air. He barely managed to catch it with his injured hands, and then he
stuck it in his pants pocket, grimacing from the pain radiating from his palms.
“Do you want me to put you through
college and graduate school, too?” his mother asked through clenched teeth.
“That’s up to you,” he said. “I can
get jobs and put myself through if I have to, but Quinn—yeah. You’re going to
put her through the best schools on the planet, and screw the cost.”
Her glare deepened. “You have a lot
of nerve telling me that.”
“Well, you and I have something in
common there,” said Darius. “You have a lot of nerve saying what you did about
me yesterday. At least we both love Quinn, too. I want the best for her in
everything there is, and trust me, I’ll see that she gets it, any way I can.
Just like you would.”
“You care only about yourself. You
don’t care about anyone else but you.”
He glared, his self-control wearing
thin from exhaustion. “Dad broke that glass that Quinn cut herself on. I was
getting the vacuum to clean it up when she stepped in it. Ask Quinn.” He paused
and went on in a quieter tone. “I should have warned her about the glass first,
though. I’ll know better next time.”
“Jake said it was you.”
He snorted. “Did the whole kitchen
stink like tequila when you got home that night? Get with the program, okay?
You’ve trusted me to take care of her since I got back from Buxton Ridge, and I
have!”
His mother’s eyes flashed. “You’re
doing a rotten job of it. Your sister’s turning into a rebellious little—”
“You were driving her nuts last
night, not telling her what was going on with the lawyers!” Darius interrupted,
his patience near its end. “She was scared to death, and you wouldn’t talk to
her! She was fighting you, not me!”
“She doesn’t need to know everything
that’s going on!”
“She needs to know something!
You have to talk with her so she has something to hang on to! It’s not that
hard!” He forced himself again to lower his voice. “You spend literally all day
at the office, and I’m not going to roast you for it, but if that’s how you
want it, then I’m the one who has to look out for her, and I do! Amy and Rita
can’t ride in like the cavalry every single day. I helped get her that job as
president of the pep club at school. Did she tell you about that?”
For the first time that morning, his
mother looked confused. “You helped her do what?”
He slowly let out his breath. “Talk
to Quinn tonight. She’s got something she really wants to tell you. If you want
only the best for her, believe me, she just got it.”
His mother looked at him
reflectively, though her eyes still burned. “President of the pep club.”
“I swear,” he said, his voice
calmer. “Ask her when she gets home. I assume she’s coming home tonight, isn’t
she? Or is Amy keeping her for a few more days?”
“I haven’t decided.” She stared at
him coldly. “I’m really pissed about you holding the deposition over my head
for this.”
Just like that, he lost it. He
suddenly leaned close to her face as she recoiled. “My roommate killed
himself!” he shouted in a fury. “I had to cut down his body from where he
hanged himself in our room, and all you’re crying about is getting sued! The nerve of you! Then you
told Amy last night you wished I was dead, and then you went and hit me in
front of Dad, Quinn, and that office receptionist! They might even have it on a
security tape! I could go downtown to Carter County Child Protective Services
today and nail you to a fucking wall! I’d hammer you out with the CPS in a
heartbeat, except we need your goddamn paycheck! ”
His mother stepped back, a trace of
fear in her eyes. There was a long silence.
“You try hitting me again if you
feel really lucky,” he said. “That one yesterday was your freebie. Next time,
Quinn and I will take our chances with child welfare. Maybe Amy or Rita will
get us, but that’s a gamble. How lucky are you? You wanna find out?” Just
barely, he pulled back and stopped himself from ranting on.
She gave him another long, stony
look, then swallowed. “I’m sorry for what I said about you. I was at the end of
my rope with everything. I shouldn’t have said it, but I did, and I don’t know
what else to tell you except I’m sorry.” She sighed and looked away, shaking
her head. “It probably won’t matter what you say at the deposition, anyway,”
she said quietly. “I’m sure they’ll sue.”
“I’m almost sure they will, too, but
I can probably make the final judgment a lot better or a lot worse, depending
on what I say.” He gritted his teeth. “God, I hate doing this, I really do. I
feel like a total shit. Mike was a good guy. I liked him, and using him like
this is just—all I can say is, you earned it! Don’t you ever screw me over
again!”
She looked him in the eyes for a
long time. Neither flinched. “I don’t see how we’re going to make it work,” she
said at last. “I just don’t see it, you staying here after we’ve gotten off on
this foot.”
“You lived with Dad for years,”
Darius said, his voice lowering. “I’m a lot more reasonable than he ever was,
and you know it. I’m not dictating how to run the house. You’re in charge—but
you’re not throwing me out. Not yet. And I do care about Quinn. She’s my
sister, and I love her. You’ve got sisters, you know what it’s like.”
His mother snorted softly. “You are
your father’s son,” she said.
“Wrong,” he said softly. He pointed
at her, his eyes boring into hers. “I’m your son, through and through.
Congratulations, Mom.”
A moment passed. His mother’s mouth
twitched. She almost smiled. Almost. “Perhaps you are,” she said.
He grinned without humor. “This is
what family is all about: looking out for each other.” He stepped back and
rubbed his face. The grin vanished, replaced by exhaustion. “That’s all I’ve
got.” He dropped his hand. “Have a good day at work.”
She stared at him a moment longer,
then turned to leave.
“Don’t forget your briefcase,” he
said.
After she drove away, Darius turned
off the coffeemaker, emptied out the unused pot, and got a box of Pop-Tarts to
eat on the way to school. He checked on his father in the spare bedroom—still
snoring and likely to be massively hung over when he got up—then put on his
jacket and left the house. It was still dark out, the night sky over
He walked to Jane’s home in a cool,
light wind and sat on her front step, an hour early. After he took out the
Pop-Tarts, he found he couldn’t eat them. His stomach was cramped all to hell.
He put the box in his backpack again, then huddled down on the step and lay his
head on his crossed arms, resting on his knees.
Terrors assailed him. What if his
mother threw him out anyway? Would he really screw up the deposition just to
get her back? He thought he would at first, but now he didn’t know. It would be
an evil thing to do, without a doubt. Would that make him like his dad after
all? And what if he did have to go live with his dad? Was she really going to
throw his father out today? It made sense, now that she knew her plan was
discovered. What would his dad do? And what if his dad decided to take a punch
at him? Darius would have to turn his dad in to the CPS, and what would happen
then?
Darius was furious with his father,
but the thought of tearing up the family, even to save it, made him sick to his
stomach. He took off his glasses and tried to think everything out clearly.
Jane found him asleep like that on
the porch when she came outside an hour later. He woke up hearing someone
singing the opening lyrics to “There’s Got to Be a Morning After.”
“I’m hallucinating,” he muttered,
peering at Jane’s face and wondering why it wasn’t in focus.
“Let’s find out,” she said. “How
many fingers am I holding in front of your face?”
“You’re very funny,” he said in a
deadpan, staring at her upright middle finger. He remembered his glasses, put
them on, and stood up to stretch.
Jane kissed him when he was done.
“How long have you been out here?”
“I dunno,” Darius mumbled. “What day
is it?”
“September.”
“Stupid watch,” he said, frowning at
his bare right wrist.
“Your watch is on your left hand.
Are you okay? You look like the bad side of one of those ‘This Is Your Brain on
Drugs’ posters.”
“It was a long night. I feel lousy.
What time is it, really?”
“Same time I usually come out here
looking for you.”
“Oh. I got here an hour ago.”
“You’re going to tell me why,
right?”
“No. Forget it. I don’t even want to
think about it.”
Feeling lightheaded and not in the
best of judgment, he told her anyway as they walked to school. “I hardly think
anything’s really settled,” he said, “so don’t tell Quinn any of this—although
she probably already knows thanks to that telepathic link the two of you
share.”
“I think I’d better keep this stuff
to myself,” Jane said. “I don’t think even I believe it. And like you said,
it’s probably not over yet anyway. Sort of like that movie, Hell House,
where the ghost comes back after everyone thought it was dead and it starts
killing all those—”
“Oh, shut up. ” He yawned and
squinted at the passing traffic. “I should have drunk the damn coffee myself
instead of throwing it out. I just want to go back to sleep.”
“Let’s go in this gas station and
you can get an Ultra-Cola or something. And one for me. And a doughnut—no, two
doughnuts, a cruller and one of those glazed ones with sprinkles. Oh, look,
they have those gummy things!”
They had to hurry to make it to the
school before the first bell rang. They got to the door with three minutes to
spare. Before they went in, however, Jane grabbed Darius and pulled him back
into a corner near the entrance.
“What?” he said. “Okay, here, take
the bag of gummy things. I don’t like them anyway. They stick to my teeth.”
“Idiot,” she said, and she pulled
his face to hers.
“I love you,” she said when they
came up for air.
He put down the food sacks and held
her to him. He buried his face in her silky black hair.
“Crocus,” he whispered. “You are the
flower that ends the winter, the color that breathes, the sunlight on the face
of the world.”
“You are the blind one,” she said.
“And I’d better wipe you off, or Quinn will kick my butt.”
They went into the school together,
and the closing of the doors turned the cool autumn wind away.
Among other articles on the floor of
Jane’s bedroom closet that Thursday afternoon was a battered blue sneaker with
no mate. Darius stuck the shoe’s toe under the bedroom door, wedged it solidly
into place, and checked the doorknob once more. The doorknob lock was broken
and likely had been for years.
“I’ll go to a hardware store for a
new one,” he said, straightening again and tapping the knob with a finger. “Get
you a deadbolt, too, like Quinn’s.”
“Get me a what?” said Jane. She
banged on her television set with a fist, then pushed the channel button again.
“Door lock,” he said, walking over
to her bed. He had to step through a maze of oil-based paint tubes, scattered
on newspapers spread out over the hardwood floor. No painting was visible, but
he figured Jane either didn’t want it to be seen or it was drying somewhere
else in the house.
Jane banged on the television set
again as he sat beside her. “Why do I need a door lock?” she asked, frowning at
the TV picture. “
“Having no lock might be
inconvenient.”
“He knows to stay out of my room.”
“How about your mom and dad? Your
sibs? The meter reader?”
“Mom and Dad are still in
“Watch us or the TV?”
“Whatever.” She sat back on the bed,
her eyes on the TV. “Perfect. Don’t touch it. It’s been acting up lately.”
“Like its owner? Ouch!”
“Sorry. My elbow slipped.”
Their T-shirts and shorts were still
damp, and they both reeked of sweat from their after-school run. Jane pulled
the hair tie from her stubby ponytail, letting her shoulder-length black bangs
swing free, and tossed the tie into a corner of the room. Darius pushed his
running shoes off with his feet and scooted back on the bed to the pile of
pillows they’d built. Jane kicked off her shoes and climbed over beside him.
She nested against his chest, his arm around her shoulders, and they looked at
the foot of the bed where the TV showed the barf-green “Sick, Sad World” show’s
logo between their sock feet.
“He made the world’s largest origami
alligator out of hotel bed linens—but now the Hilton wants them back!” cried
the TV. “One big croc of sheet, coming up next on ‘Sick, Sad World’!”
“You doing okay?” Jane asked softly.
“I’m okay. Just tired.”
“It’s been a long week. I’m sorry it
was so hard for you.”
“It’s okay.” The scent of her hair
was distracting him from the TV. “I love you.”
She nestled closer to him. “I love
you,” she whispered. “The show’s starting.”
He kissed her hair. She looked up at
him with eyes of the bluest blue.
Five minutes later, Jane gasped and
licked her red lips. “I don’t know why we bother,” she mumbled.
“Hmmm?”
“Having the TV on at all. We’re
never going to watch this show.”
“Mmm.”
“Next time I’m out, maybe I’ll get a
T-shirt with a fur-lined bottom to keep my neck warm.”
“Mmm.”
“Not that I’m complaining or
anything.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m sorry I talk so much. I thought
you’d be the talker since you’re the writer. Everything in my head’s coming
right out my mouth. La la LA la la!”
“Mmm hmmm?”
“Yes, keep doing that. Just like
that. Keep going! Don’t stop!”
His fingers circled the smooth skin
of her stomach and toyed with her belly button before slipping southward under
the elastic waistbands of her running shorts and white cotton underwear. Her
thighs parted as she inhaled sharply.
The doorknob rattled and turned. The
door was then shoved opened an inch before the blue sneaker stopped it.
“What?” Jane shouted at her
older brother as she kicked her bra under her bed.
“Phone,” said
Jane groaned. “Crap, I forgot that I
turned the ringer off. No wonder we didn’t hear it.” She walked over and
reached for the white cordless phone at the head of her bed by the stereo
system.
“It’s Quinn,” said Darius, looking
at the floor. “I just know it.”
“Yo,” said Jane to the phone. “Hi.
Yeah, he’s here.” She handed the phone to Darius, then walked through the
oil-paint minefield to her closet by the bedroom door.
“What were you guys doing?”
“Watching TV!” Jane snapped. “What
did it look like?”
“It kinda looked like you were just
standing around,” said her brother.
Jane grabbed some clothes and
stalked out of the room past
While this was going on, Darius sat
down on the bed with the cordless phone. “What’s up?”
“Dari?” came his younger sister’s
voice over the line. “Did I
interrupt anything?”
“We were watching TV,” he said,
scratching the back of his head. He heard
“Were you watching the tube in her
living room or her bedroom? Did you have the door open?”
“Quinn,” he said tiredly, “just tell
me why you called.”
“Well, Mom called a few minutes ago
and told me not to go home for the rest of the week.” Quinn’s voice rose with
anxiety. “I think something’s going on, Dari. She talked to Amy for a while and
Amy made me go out in the hall, so I know something’s happening. Do you know
anything about this?”
Darius groaned and closed his eyes.
He could easily guess. The previous night, he had overheard his mother tell her
sister Amy that that she planned to divorce his father as soon as possible. Now
that she knew Darius had overheard the conversation, it was entirely likely his
mother had advanced the timetable and had already served his father with
divorce papers and some kind of legal eviction notice from the house, which was
in her name. Darius wondered how long it took to get a restraining order, which
she would undoubtedly toss onto the bonfire as well.
“Dari? Answer me!”
“Quinn,” he began, struggling for
the right words. “I’m not positive about this, but I think Mom started divorce
proceedings against Dad today. I’m sorry, I know—”
“Oh, shit!” Quinn yelled. He
heard her sobbing a moment later. His heart sank.
“Quinn,” said Darius, keeping his
voice calm. “Quinn, listen to me. Are you listening?”
She continued crying, but in a more
subdued tone. He took that as a yes. “Quinn, we both knew this was coming. I know
you knew it, okay? All I can tell you is that I love you, and I’ll do anything
I can to help you through this if that’s what’s really going on. You got that?”
“Okay,” she squeaked, still sobbing.
“You mean everything to me, Quinn.
You’re the best sister in the world. We’ll get through this, I promise you we
will.”
“Okay.” She coughed and sniffed, the
outburst largely passed.
“Are you with Aunt Amy? Is she
there? Put her on, would you?”
“Okay.” Bumping noises came through
the phone. A moment later, someone else picked up.
“Well,” said Darius’s aunt in
disgust, “whatever it was you told her, it seems to have done a good job of
screwing everything to hell and gone. Thanks loads.”
He held back his temper, but only
just. “Amy, did you talk to her about Mom getting a divorce from Dad?”
“Of course not! Who the hell gave
you the right to talk about it and upset your sister, anyway?”
“She already knew!” Darius said back
in a louder tone. “She heard everything that went on between you and Mom at the
law office yesterday, just like I did!” After a few seconds of silence passed,
he went on. “I talked to Mom this morning and told her I’d heard the whole
thing at the lawyer’s. From what she told me, she was going to start the
divorce today. Is that what’s going on?”
“You don’t need to know about
anything yet,” Amy snapped. “Just do what—”
“Damn it!” Darius got to his feet
and began pacing around Jane’s bedroom. “You and Mom are treating Quinn like a
little mushroom, keeping her in the dark and feeding her shit all the time!
Tell her the truth, would you? She can handle it!”
“You’re not her father!”
“And isn’t that a damn good thing,
now? Amy, do you really love Quinn? Tell me the truth! Do you care about her?”
“Of course I do! What the hell kind
of question is that?”
“Then trust her! She can handle it!
You don’t have to dump everything on her at once, but just trust her!”
He heard Amy exhale heavily. “Look,”
she said, “Helen asked me to tell you and Quinn not go back to the house today.
Quinn’s going to be with me for a while. I think Rita’s coming down for the
weekend, too.”
“Well, that tears it,” said Darius
in resignation. “She really is dumping him. She wouldn’t get all three of the
Fates together for anything else.” He wanted to say “Gorgons” instead of
“Fates,” but Amy would probably hang up on him. She read a lot, he recalled,
and she almost certainly knew Greek mythology.
“Stay out of it, would you?” his
aunt said in irritation. “Let us handle this!”
“Stay out of it?” He tried not to
shout, but he was furious. “My parents are getting divorced, we have to abandon
our house barely two weeks after we move into it, and you want me to stay out of it? Am I in this family or not?
What is it with you? Quinn’s my sister and I’m trying to help her like you’re
helping Mom! Stop trying to shut me out!”
Silence.
“Okay,” said Amy, still steamed,
“let’s drop it. Do you have somewhere to stay? I can’t take you in, we don’t
have the room here.”
Darius burst into sarcastic
laughter. “Of course there’s no room for me at the inn! Fine, look, all
I care about is that you take care of my sister. Where are you two staying,
anyway?”
“I’m not going to pass that
information along, if you don’t mind,” Amy growled.
“Oh, what, so I can’t tell Dad where
she’s at? Amy, I’m not the Antichrist. Give me a break! Can’t I get a phone
number for your room or your cell phone or something, so I can call you if I
need to?”
After a moment, Amy came on again in
a calmer tone. “I’ll think about it. Just tell me where you’re staying.”
“Where I’m staying?” Darius looked
around and realized Jane was standing in the doorway fully dressed, listening
and watching. “I don’t have any idea where I’m staying. I can’t go back to the
house until when?”
“Probably until after the weekend.”
A pause. “Quinn’s in the bathroom. Okay, listen to me. You spill this to Quinn,
and you’re toast, you got it?”
He shut his eyes and silently
counted to three. His mother’s two sisters had never been particularly friendly
with him before now. They both apparently thought he was too much like his dad,
whom they hated with a passion. “What?” he said through his teeth.
“Helen served your father with
divorce papers at his office this afternoon, and he apparently went ballistic
and pushed the server around, and now he’s downtown at the police station.
She’s having him thrown out of the house. He won’t even be able to collect his
things until after a cooling-off period this weekend. I think she’ll probably
get a restraining order, too.”
Darius let out his breath and sat
down on Jane’s bed again. “Is Dad under arrest? Is he in jail?”
“I don’t know. Helen took the day
off from work for this. She was going to do it later, but when she found out
you knew about it, she was afraid . . . she just thought it would be better not
to wait.”
“Well, I didn’t tell Dad,” Darius
said in a flat voice. “He obviously didn’t know it was coming, so there’s your
proof. I don’t happen like him very much, if you didn’t already know.”
“Okay, okay, already! Look, you need
to avoid him for a while if you can, particularly if he tries to see you at the
high school. Helen thinks he might try to get one or both of you to stay with
him as a bargaining chip or something.”
Darius gave a dry, mirthless
chuckle. “Like that would ever happen.”
“Quinn doesn’t want Helen and Jake
to break up. I don’t really know what she’d do if Jake tried to talk to her. We
have to be careful.”
“I know.” Darius felt the bed shift.
Jane sat close and gently put an arm around him. “Amy,” he went on, lowering
his voice, “I’m sorry I got all hot about this stuff, but I’m worried for Quinn
and I want her to get through this. I really appreciate you being there with
her. You’ll do a better job of getting her around than I could.”
A pause. “Thank you,” she said.
After a moment, she cleared her throat. “Quinn’s told me a lot about you, about
what you’ve done for her since you got out of military school. Look, Darius, I
think maybe you and I are getting off on the wrong foot. I didn’t like it that
you told her about the divorce coming, but you’re right, it’s all underway.
Given what Quinn’s told me about you helping her out with everything, though,
I—”
“Forget it,” said Darius. He didn’t
want to hear an apology, if she was leading up to one. “Just take care of her.
I don’t care about anything else. Mom wants to throw Dad out, fine, whatever. I
don’t have any more clothes, though. All the rest are in my room.”
“Well, you can’t go home. Stay away
from it completely. Helen’s there right now with . . . with some other people.”
He exhaled and stared at the floor.
His mother probably had rent-a-cops with her. It figured. His dad had a lousy
temper and was prone to stew about things forever and a day, particularly if
he’d been drinking. It was hard to say what he’d do.
“You can stay here,” Jane whispered.
Darius turned to her. “What? Amy,
hold on for a moment.” He covered the phone’s mouthpiece.
“You can stay here,” said Jane. “We
have lots of space. You can use my sister Penny’s room, down the hall. I think
Wind’s got some old clothes here, or
Darius stared at Jane. She tilted
her head and stared back, widening her eyes and looking innocent. “You have to
fix the lock on my door, after all,” she added.
After a long moment, Darius raised
the phone to his mouth again. He continued to look at Jane. “Amy, I can stay
with the Lanes. Did Quinn give you the number here?”
“Yes, I’ve got it. Um—” Amy cleared
her throat again “—Quinn said you have a girlfriend. Does she live there?”
Darius gave in to the inevitable. He
handed the phone to Jane. “My Aunt Amy,” he said. “May as well join the
“You can change in here,” said Jane,
her hand over the mouthpiece. She smiled.
He gave her a tired smile in return
but shook his head no. “Way too weird now,” he said, and he left the room.
Halfway down the hall, he noticed he was tracking brown spots from one sock.
He’d stepped in a puddle of burnt umber oil paint on his way out of Jane’s
room.
When he returned fifteen minutes
later after dressing and cleaning the hall, Jane was still on the phone. “Oh,
here he comes,” she said. “Yeah, good to talk to you, too, Amy.” She handed the
phone to Darius.
“I’m back,” he said, sitting down
again. “Sorry to break up the coffee klatch.”
“I’ll go ahead and give you my cell
phone number,” said Amy. “Got a pencil?”
Darius looked around but saw
nothing. “Pencil?” he whispered to Jane. She jumped from the bed and grabbed
one from a desk drawer with a scrap of paper, and Darius wrote down the number
Amy gave him.
“I was thinking,” Darius said as he
wrote, “that it’s probably better after all if you don’t tell me where you’re
at. I’d hate to say something out in public and have Dad overhear it. This will
be fine, as long as you’ve got your phone on all the time.”
“I always do.” A pause, then she
sighed and spoke in a low voice. “Darius, I was sorry to hear about your roommate
at the academy. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you to—”
“Drop it,” he interrupted quickly.
He fell silent, remembering, then shook it off. “I don’t want to talk about it,
but thanks anyway.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, Amy?”
“What?”
“If Quinn’s got some things she has
to do for the pep club, help her out with that, would you? If she’s busy, she
won’t have time to think about all this.
“Yeah, she was telling me about it.
She’s in charge of a pep rally tomorrow afternoon or something. I’ve never been
the school-spirit sort, and pep rallies gave me hives, but maybe I’ll do that.
And . . . and thanks for helping her get that job. She really likes being the
president, and I think the pep club likes it, too.”
“That’s our Quinn. Just get her
working on something. It’ll perk her up. She can handle things. Just let her
prove it.”
“Okay,” said Amy in a subdued tone.
“I’ll check in with you later. Hi to Jane for me. She sounds special. I hope to
meet her soon.”
He nodded. “We’ll save a seat for
you at the wedding on Sunday, no problem. If it’s a girl, can we name her after
you?”
“What?” Jane shouted. She
grabbed for the phone, but Darius kept it from her.
Amy laughed. “You almost got me with
that one,” she said. “Goodbye, Darius. I hope Jane lets you live.”
“Bye, Amy.” He pushed the button to
hang up the phone while Jane tried to wrestle him down. “We may as well get
up,” he said, resisting her efforts without a lot of trouble. He pulled up her
T-shirt as they wrestled and kissed her bare stomach, then relaxed. “I’m not in
the mood after all that.”
“Damn it,” said Jane. She let go of
him and flopped on her back on the bed. “You were really getting somewhere,
too, before
“Good to know it.” He took her hand
and kissed it. “Hungry?”
Jane growled like a great cat, her
eyes locked on him.
“Pizza, I meant.”
She subsided and got off the bed.
“Pizza will have to do,” she grumbled, then groaned aloud when she looked at
the TV. The end credits to “Sick, Sad World” were scrolling by. “Oh, damn
it!” she said, pointing. “We missed the second half of the show, about the
psychic lady with the huge boobs! It was perfect for you, too.”
Jane showed Darius the spare bedroom
that had once belonged to her sister Penny, and he put his backpack there,
dropping his running clothes in a pile beside it.
“Right next to my room,” said Jane.
“How convenient.”
“Not without a lock.” He stopped and
looked at Penny’s door. “This one’s got . . . three locks?”
“She sold pot in high school.
“Oh.” He flipped one of the two
deadbolts back and forth. “Problem solved. Maybe.”
On the way out of the house, Darius
gave Jane the gist of the conversation he’d had with Quinn and Amy. “Knowing
Amy and Rita,” he said, “they’ll take Quinn out to every five-star restaurant
and spa within fifty miles. Her weekend’s all cut out for her. She could
probably use the break.”
“I thought she was going to
“Well, you and I can, but I don’t
know if Quinn will make it. Maybe it’s better if she didn’t.” He pulled the
front door closed as they left the house. “I don’t know what’ll happen. I don’t
trust my dad to do anything smart. If you happen to see a dark blue, late-model
Lexus driving around, tell me right away—and don’t get near him. I don’t want
you involved in this.”
“You think he’d start a fight?”
Darius grimaced. “We’ve had enough
of them. Amy said he roughed up the guy who served the divorce papers on him,
so I dunno. You haven’t even seen him yet, which is worse. I wish you knew what
he looked like so you could avoid him.”
They walked a block, hand in hand,
before he spoke again. “How do your parents do it?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“Stay together without killing each
other.”
“Hmmm. Part of the secret is that
they don’t stay together. They usually run off to opposite ends of the
earth for weeks or months at a time. This thing to the A-name country is sort
of an exception, though I’d bet only one of them will come home, and the other
will stay a while longer or run off again.”
They walked another block before
Jane kicked at a pebble and said, “You or Quinn have told me practically every
awful secret you have, I think, so I guess it’s my turn. My parents aren’t
married. I mean, it’s a common-law marriage now, but they never made it
official. They’ve been together thirty-odd years, and every now and then they
pop out a new kid out of the kiln, between running off to the ends of the earth
on those artistic missions from God.”
“So, not getting married and not
seeing each other are the secrets to making a marriage work.”
“I don’t know. They smoke pot, too,
so maybe that helps.” After a pause, she added, “I don’t, in case you were
about to ask.”
Darius looked at her, but she was
looking at the ground. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close as
they walked.
Jane shook her head, then spoke. “My
oldest sister, Summer, she’s been married twice, but I think one of her kids
was with some guy she had a one-nighter with. Wind, my oldest brother, he gets
married now and then, but he always gets dumped. He’s one of those
hypersensitive guys who’s like a big soggy noodle of ‘feelings, nothing more
than feelings.’” She sang the last few words in an off-key voice, then went on
in a normal tone. “Penny, the one whose room you’ve got, she’ll never get
married. I wonder sometimes if she’s gay. She’s in
“Funny. Same with me, I guess.”
“I never knew how the Cosbys did it.
I used to think they were really married and that was their real family, and I
thought that was so cool. Then Penny told me they were just TV actors and they
were married to other people. Boy, was I bummed. I never believed in Santa
Claus, but I believed in the Cosbys.”
Half a block went by in silence.
Rush hour traffic continued to build on the streets.
“So,” said Jane, “you want to marry
me, or was that a joke, what you said on the phone?”
Darius gave a faint smile. “I’m
trying to remember the age of consent in this state. I think it’s seventeen.
Ask me next year on November eleventh.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “I guess we have
all those wild oats we have to sow first, though.”
“If you like wild oats,” said
Darius, “you can have mine. I’m not much for nature food.”
“Penny used to give me oatmeal for
breakfast before she drove me and Trent to school. I wouldn’t eat it until she
put food dye in it. I liked green oatmeal best.”
“You’re my green oatmeal, Jane.”
Jane leaned her head against his
shoulder as they walked. “That was almost romantic,” she said. “Better than
anything I’ve ever heard from anyone else. You know, I have to tell you
something. Almost every other guy your age, we’ll say sixteen since you’re
almost there anyway, none of them are like you. Or you’re not like them,
whatever. I don’t get it. You’re sort of like . . . older.”
“Older?”
“Mature. It’s kind of weird. Good
weird, not run-away-screaming weird.”
“Oh.” He thought a while. “Probably
from military school. I always looked up to the commandant, Colonel Armstrong.
I wanted to be like him. He had it all together. And the staff really put the
screws to you. You had to make choices all the time and live with what you
picked, and if you picked badly, you knew it. A lot of the other guys were
jerks, too, and you had to deal with them all the time. It was hard. I guess I
grew up some while I was there.”
“I don’t think I could do that, go
to military school. I’d run off in the first five minutes.”
“I tried that three times the first
month. It didn’t work. I’m glad it didn’t, now.”
Jane laughed. “We’re a weird couple,
you know?”
Darius grinned. “You’ve got a nice
couple. Nothing weird about them, though.”
Darius expected Jane would kick him
for that, but she didn’t. She looked away and didn’t speak for a few seconds.
“I was with this guy once,” she said, her voice low, but she stopped there.
He glanced at her. From her tone, he
guessed this part would not be good. “Go ahead,” he said after waiting a while.
“Some guys don’t like hearing stuff
about me being with other guys. Fooling around.”
He shrugged. “It’s up to you. If
it’s important, just tell me.”
“It’s not that important.” A muscle
twitched in her cheek. “I was with this guy last year. We were out in the
woods, sort of checking each other out.” She was silent a few steps more. “He
laughed when he saw my boobs. He said they weren’t worth the trouble of looking
at them.”
Darius took a slow, deep breath and
made mental notes about what he would do if he ever met this particular guy. “I
hope you kicked him where it hurt,” he said.
“No,” said Jane in a sullen tone. “I
ran off. It doesn’t matter.”
“Anyone I would know?” Darius asked.
His mouth was dry. He was thinking of breaking someone’s fingers, one by one,
with his bare hands. It would be fun.
“Forget it,” she said. “It was all a
big mistake.”
He filed away his revenge fantasy.
It could wait. He remembered something his literature instructor had said about
Shakespeare. “There’s so little beauty in the world,” he said, quoting, “and so
few who appreciate what beauty there is.”
“I think I look good, but I’m not
beautiful.”
“There is no beauty anywhere without
you.” It slipped out of his mouth, made up on the spot.
Jane slowed and stopped, so he did,
too. They stood by a small park with a lot of trees and grass; people walked by
on the sidewalk without looking at them.
His arms encircled her waist, and he
touched his forehead to hers. “You have your head together about everything,”
he said softly. “You’re smart, you’re funny, you do your own thing, and you
don’t care what anyone else thinks about it. You are the coolest person in the whole
world.”
“I know,” she whispered. When she
raised her head, his mouth found hers. She tasted like gummy bears. She’d eaten
a handful before they’d left her house.
He pulled away, about to say
something else or maybe kiss her again.
“Uh-oh,” she said. He opened his
eyes. She was looking to his right as if she’d seen something bad.
He turned and saw the dark blue
Lexus pulling up by the sidewalk right behind him. His dad was inside, glaring
at him as he opened the door, the car still running.
“Oh, fuck.” Darius caught Jane by the
shoulders and tried to direct her away. “Get out of here now. I’ll see what he
wants.” Jane didn’t move, staring at the Lexus with wide eyes. “I’m not
kidding!” Darius half-shouted at her. “Go!”
Startled, Jane took off, but she
didn’t run. She jogged away, then turned around and stopped when she was forty
feet into the park, looking back through the row of trees.
Darius took a deep breath as he
faced his father. The old man was livid. It was just like the old days, when
his dad came home from work, boiling for a fight.
“Do you know what your mother did?”
his father shouted as he rounded the car. “Do you know?”
Darius didn’t answer. He felt his
hands balling up into fists again, arms pulling up slightly to strike out.
“I asked you a question, goddammit!” his father shouted, stopping on the sidewalk
about eight feet away. Pedestrians immediately turned away, walking into the
street or through the park to avoid getting between the two of them.
“I haven’t been home today,” said
Darius in a level voice.
“You don’t about any of this? She’s
pulled the most goddamn stupid stunt of her fucking life! She got me served
with divorce papers and almost got me arrested! She’s trying to break up the
family! Didn’t you know she was doing this? You didn’t know anything about
this?”
Darius just waited and watched. He
knew everyone was staring at them, but that didn’t matter.
“Answer me! Are you covering up for
her? Are you a part of this shit, too, or are you just plain fucking stupid?”
“Take your pick,” said Darius, his
patience eroding swiftly.
His father’s look changed to pure
rage. He started forward with his right hand out like a claw, ready to grab his
son by the left arm.
“Don’t,” said Darius, half turning
without thinking about it. Presenting his left side to his father, he measured
out a haymaker with his right fist that would take his father down if it
connected at all.
His father stopped short, perhaps
sensing what would happen if he took another step. “Think you can take me on?”
the old man snarled. “I’ll beat you like you’ve never been beat.” He pointed,
his finger jabbing toward Darius’s chest. “I’ll teach you to laugh at me, you
cowardly little turd!”
Darius waited. It wasn’t worth
talking back. It would only distract him from laying the old man out if he took
one more step and tried to grab him.
“You ungrateful shit!” his father hissed, finger still jabbing at Darius. “I did everything I could to make a real man out of you, and you treat me like this. I hope you rot in hell! I should call that school and make them take you away for the rest of your life! I should call the police, better yet, and have you thrown in jail and let them beat the shit out of you, the other convicts. I think I will, in fact. How do you like that, boy? How