JASON “The Nobody”
Jason knows one thing for certain: he will never be as interesting as Agnes.
“And that’s how I taught my pet monkey to stop biting people.” Agnes takes back the little photo album from where it has been resting on Jason’s lap. “Want to see the scar from Mr. Fuzzbutt?” She pushes up her sleeve, but Jason shakes his head. Agnes shrugs.
“You’ve done so many things,” Jason says.
Agnes nods. “We only get one life, I figure. Why not live it? Be as reckless and joyful and curious as possible.”
“Reckless?”
Agnes smiles. “Acting without knowing what happens next. Maybe I wouldn’t have so many scars, but”—she looks around the colorful room full of treasures—“I wouldn’t have so many stories, either.”
“Mr. Hardy said we had to be here because we made reckless choices,” Jason says.
“How wonderful! A whole club of reckless story-makers! Would you like a sucker?” She plucks a lollipop from the bowl beside the bed and hands it to him. Mystery flavor.
“No, thanks,” Jason says.
Agnes shrugs, unwraps the candy, and tucks it in the corner of her cheek. Jason clears his throat. “Um, did you know that mystery flavor is just a mix of all the leftover flavors from other batches?”
Agnes pulls out the sucker and studies it for a second. Then she pops it back in her mouth. “I made a quilt once. Sounds kind of like that. Take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, stitch it all together, and you have something good.” She sucks on the candy, then pulls it back out, using it as a pointer to direct his attention to the patchwork quilt on her bed. “Next time, I’d probably skip that square, though.”
“Is that snakeskin?” Jason runs his fingers along the leathery square.
“Copperhead. Makes a great stew.” She sighs. “But they’re better left alone.”
“Heavens, no. I’m too careful for that. I just feel bad whenever I see it. It wasn’t bothering me none, but I killed it anyway, just to say I had. I was thinking about my quilt and about my lunch, and I saw the snake. Thought it’d fit the bill for both. But some things can’t be undone.”
“It’s just a snake,” Jason mutters, but the words are clumsy on his tongue.
“I think the snake probably feels differently. But I’m not sure, of course. My metaphysical studies never really panned out.” Agnes’s head tilts to the side as she peers into the hallway. “That girl over there, talking with Opal? Is she your girlfriend?”
Jason’s cheeks burn. He shakes his head and blurts out, “No!” Suddenly the words aren’t stuck in his throat. Here in this little room, with this woman who has seen and done so much more than anyone ever would’ve guessed, his words aren’t clunky and sharp. His words, for a second, are almost too slippery. “I’m not…” He stops himself, but new words trickle out. “I mean, I don’t even know…”
Agnes smiles, but not the usual older-person smile after an exchange like that—the ones that teachers give with a wink when they see a boy and a girl partner for a project, or the smile with the nudge-nudge Mom or Dad might give if they saw him sketching Ally’s portrait. It’s just a smile. “Tough, isn’t it?” says Agnes, now gnawing a little on the lollipop.
“What’s tough?” Jason asks.
Agnes throws a lollipop at Jason as she helps herself to another. This one’s peach flavored. She throws another—grape. “Waiting for feelings to happen when they just seem to come so easy for everyone else.”
Jason takes both lollipops and places them back in the bowl. His stomach is churning too much at what she’s saying, at what he might say, to even think about candy.
“And then”—Agnes laughs—“there are folks who just don’t know what they like, except that they don’t seem to have a taste for anything.”
Jason clears his throat. His head hangs forward, letting the curtain of hair hide his blazing cheeks. “They find out, though, right? I mean, at some point they figure out that they’re… I mean, what they like. They figure it out, right?”
Agnes shrugs. “I think who—I mean, what—you love is like embarking on an adventure. You can’t go until you’re ready. You can try to force it. See an empty patch in a quilt and fill it with something regretful just to have it complete.” Slowly Agnes unwraps another lollipop. She leans forward and presses smooth the waxy wrapper over the snakeskin patch. Then she pulls the other crumpled wrapper out of her pocket. She spreads that one next to it and nods.
Jason shuts his eyes, thinking about all the times he’s sketched Ally. He sketches her because he sees something in her; something about her makes him feel something. But what? Curiosity, maybe. He hopes it is because part of him likes her, as in likes her likes her. He worries he sketches her only because he’s lonely and sees that in her, too. Why can’t he be more like Wes? He seems to have it so easy, knowing just when to smile and what to say and how to be. Shame fills him, shame at not knowing what everyone else seems to have been born understanding.
“Or,” Agnes continues, “you can wait.” She pulls a pair of scissors out of the table drawer and clips the corners of the wrappers to fit the snakeskin patch. “You could give yourself that blank spot and not worry about it being blank. Maybe one day it’ll be filled up with something easy. Something expected. And it’ll feel just right. Maybe it’ll be something unexpected—a lollipop wrapper stitched into the quilt of your life. And that will feel just right.”
Agnes smiles as she grabs some tape and covers the snakeskin patch with the wrappers.
Jason nods. “Are we still talking about quilts?”
“Then again,” Agnes adds as if Jason hasn’t spoken, “maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll find your life is warm enough and you don’t need a blanket after all.” Jason ducks his head, trying to sort out Agnes’s words. The old woman leans forward in her chair, close enough that her breath rustles the hair hanging across Jason’s face.
Snip!
“What the—”
Agnes’s laugh cuts off his exclamation just as quickly as her scissors chopped off his bangs.
“I always wanted to be a hairstylist!” She claps.
“What did you do?” Jason gasps as he jumps to his feet. He rushes to the little mirror in Agnes’s tiny bathroom. The scream that rips out of him makes up for years of being too quiet. “No!” Jason’s hair hangs like it always does—straight and thick to the middle of his neck. That is, except for a blunt line across the middle of his forehead, which has been clipped neatly away.
Agnes appears behind him. She pulls the lollipop out of her mouth with a pop. “I could clean it up a little.”
“Clean it up a little?” Jason shouts. “I have a mullet!”
Agnes tilts her head. “Hey, now! You’re right. Back in the eighties I bought a Harley and—”
“Stop!” Jason yells. “Stop! I don’t want to hear about the time you were in a biker gang!”
“Well, not a gang. A group of motor enthusiasts,” she responds in the same cheery voice. She leans forward with the scissors in hand. Jason dodges her. “Let me just…” Agnes manages to snip another chunk of hair over his right ear.
A strangled sort of cry bubbles out of him.
“If you’d just sit still, dear!” Agnes guides Jason to sit on the closed toilet seat and then shakes out a towel around his shoulders. He realizes numbly that he’s whimpering. “My first haircut!” Agnes says. “Isn’t it exciting to try new things?”
A few snips and the whirl of an electric razor later and Jason’s mouth flops open and closed in front of the mirror. “I have to go.”
Agnes waves him away and starts sweeping up the hair in the bathroom with a handheld vacuum.
At Agnes’s doorway, he pauses. Ally is saying good-bye to Opal, too. He breathes out; part of him is surprised she hasn’t run away already.
Opal reaches below her mattress and cups something in her hand. She shuffles toward Ally, opening her hand and pressing something into the girl’s palm. Opal closes Ally’s fingers around the small object. A chain slips from her palm, and Opal tucks it back into Ally’s hand, placing a finger against her mouth. A secret. Her mouth, lopsided where it droops to the left, slowly forms silent words that Jason can just make out. For you.
Ally starts to open her hand, but Opal closes it again.
Ally nods and drops the object into her pocket without looking at it. Opal smiles and closes her door as Ally exits.
In the hallway, Ally tilts her head at Jason. She rubs at her eyes. “Jason?”
“Yeah,” Jason says, sighing. He rubs his hand across the back of his now stubbly head.
“When? How?” She reaches up to touch the longer swoop of hair going back in a crested wave from Jason’s forehead to blend with the shorter hair along the sides and back of his head. There’s a straight, sharp part where the longer hair begins, and while Jason’s hair used to swing in front of his face, now it’s gelled into position. He looks like he stepped out of a 1940s movie. “Is there a barber here?”
“No,” Jason says, then smiles.
Again Ally blinks.
“It was Agnes. She always wanted to cut hair and so…”
“You just let her?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Wow,” Ally says, then blinks at him.
“What?” Jason’s face flushes.
“You look—”
But whatever Ally is going to say next is cut off as Rex barrels between them.
“Is she holding a spatula?” Jason asks.
“Let’s go!” says Ally, already sprinting after Rex.