9. Four of Them

These are the things I miss.

I miss Brady swinging by my house and picking me up in the BMW convertible his parents gave him on his sixteenth birthday. Brady’s a year older than me but acts four years younger. He was always playing a new batch of songs he’d downloaded the night before, blasting them through outrageous speakers. He never understood the “album” concept and most of the time didn’t even remember the band’s name. Music in Brady’s car sounded the way it should: loud, fast, riotous.

I miss the Tremont brothers, Lenny and Luke. Fraternal twins and stand-up comics who would inevitably make me laugh within five seconds of seeing them. We’d hang out before class and during lunch.

I miss dear, sweet Mrs. Williams: always encouraging me with my writing and my reading even though I gave a good C-minus effort in her class. She was like the grandmother I never had. (Though I doubt she’d appreciate that, since she’s not that old.) I miss her smile and her gentle prodding. Even when I knew I should have done more, she was gentle, and she was so utterly consistent.

I even miss Trish. I miss the idea of what we had, though I still don’t know exactly what that was, if there really was a we. I think of her tears when I told her I was leaving. I think of how I laughed and asked her why she was crying, since she had broken up with me a couple of months earlier.

“I never thought we wouldn’t get back together, Chris. This is what couples do. They break up and then get back together. They don’t move out of state and leave the other forever.”

I miss my high school and the normalcy of everything. How I knew where kids stood and who they were. I miss the trends I knew and the path I was heading down.

Walking into Harrington County High, I realize I don’t have a clue. The kids passing me might be poor as mud or wealthier than Brady’s family. They might be kind or snotty or dorky or silly. They might be ten thousand things, but the fact is that every moment I walk by them, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Sixteen years wiped away.

The slate is clean.

Sometimes that can be a good thing, but in my case it just feels like a headache.

I’m heading to my first class when I see a familiar face.

It’s not the one I’m looking for, but I’ll take it.

“You’re here early,” Rachel says.

“I’m taking the bus now. Last week my mom drove me.”

“What? You don’t drive?”

“We left Illinois before I could get my license.”

“Ouch. That sucks.”

“You’re telling me.”

“I’d pick you up, but you’re the complete opposite way that I take.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

“You should get Joss to pick you up.”

“Maybe.”

“I can ask her for you.”

“No, that’s fine.” I glance around to see if Jocelyn is anywhere near.

“Hey—one thing Joss was asking about, but she’s far too proper to come right out and ask you. Well—proper isn’t the word. But I don’t want to say prideful, because she’s not, even if most of the school thinks she’s stuck up. They think Poe is too. Just because they don’t talk to everybody, you know?”

“What was she asking about?” I ask, lost in Rachel’s stream of consciousness.

“What’s your email address?”

I chuckle. “Don’t have one. We don’t have Internet.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Still trying to get used to it. Mom says we’ll get it eventually.”

“So like—there’s no way to email you? How about your phone?”

“I left it in Illinois.”

“Really?”

“Well … long story. I had a cell and busted it and my mom’s making a point by not getting me another. What do you need my email for?”

“Oh, I don’t. It’s just—well, look, I’ll let her tell you.”

“Jocelyn?”

“Yeah.” Rachel scans the crowded hallway. “Let me go find her. She usually gets here late. Hey—see you at lunch?”

“Sure.”

I wish I had stayed home.

I don’t talk with Jocelyn before or after either of our classes. Both times she slips in and out like a ghost. At lunch she’s quiet and distant. Rachel dominates the conversation as usual, and Poe seems irritable. As usual. I try some small talk, try to make some kind of connection, but it doesn’t happen.

Gym is the last class I have, and it’s spent playing tag football with a group of guys who act like they’re auditioning for the NFL. Back home I played soccer and ran track. This school doesn’t even have a soccer team. Football is the big deal here.

At the end of class, with the bell signaling the end of another wonderful school day, I choose to put my jeans and shirt back on since I didn’t get all sweaty. The locker room smells dank and old; the lighting is ancient, like it belongs in old army barracks. Just as I’m getting my duffel bag zipped up, I hear footsteps behind me.

There he is: Gus, with three of his henchmen, standing between me and the door.

He’s smiling.

Aw, man. Not now. Not today.

“I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

Gus’s cheeks remind me of the jowls of a walrus. Chunky black sideburns sandwich colorless eyes.

“Look, not today.”

“Got somewhere to go? Perhaps with one of your lady friends?”

I stand there, holding my duffel.

Gus is the biggest of the four. He’s an unhealthy big, fleshy and sloth-like. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t hurt me.

The one that makes me even more nervous than Gus is Ali, or Ollie, however the guy spells it. He looks as if he might be from South America, though I’ve heard him speak, and he sounds distinctly Southern. He’s the opposite of Gus: all muscle, not in a body-building sort of way, but in a hurting sort of way. He was playing tackle football when we were supposed to be playing tag. I got sidelined by his arm a couple of times, even though I didn’t have the ball. Imagine getting struck by a flagpole while riding a motorcycle. I still can feel the pain in my chest, and know I’ll have a couple of whopping bruises there this evening.

The other two guys are country bumpkins.

There’s a hallway leading back outside to the field, but the bumpkins go over to block it. Ali stands between me and the door to the school hall.

“What do you want?”

Gus laughs, then spits on the floor. “What do I want? You ask me now what I want?”

“I’m not looking for a problem.”

“Maybe you shoulda thought of that when you decided to help your little gay friend.”

I scan the locker room, but nobody else is around. It’s a long, narrow rectangle, and I’m in the middle of it. The showers and the stalls are behind me.

“What is this? Is this what new guys get?”

Gus steps closer. I can already see dots of sweat on his forehead. I don’t think they’re out of any kind of nervousness. I think the guy is a habitual sweater. The meat in his veins is squeezing to get out.

“What are you hoping to get out of Jocelyn?”

I was still thinking about Newt. Jocelyn’s name coming out of his mouth shocks me.

“What?”

“You like her?”

“Who says that’s your business?”

He’s now within an arm’s length of me. “This place is my business. Jocelyn is my business.”

“I’m not your business.”

Gus laughs, the tip of his tongue rubbing the bottom of his teeth. “You’re at the top of my list, boy.”

For a moment, I hover above this little clichéd high school scene.

I’m standing there, bag in my left hand, the big kid in front of me. Behind him to his right by the lockers stand the other guys I don’t really know. A little farther down toward the doorway stands Ali/Ollie.

Something comes over me.

I think it’s not wanting my face punched in or doused in a toilet or worse.

I dig my right hand into Gus’s throat and ram him backward with all the force a one-hundred-seventy-five-pound guy can muster. Gus definitely has a good forty or fifty pounds on me. He just stumbles and shuffles backward.

The momentum crashes both of us into Ali, who reaches out to try and grab his friend. Gus is too heavy and lands on his back, with Ali pulled down underneath him.

I do something I’m halfway decent at: hurdling. I vault over the two guys and reach the door.

It opens with ease, and I bolt down the hallway, past students looking at me with glances that ask what I’m doing.

I’m getting out of here with my face and my backside intact.

I reach the center of the square school and recognize the lockers nearby. I scan the area and find what I’m looking for.

I decide to take Rachel’s advice and ask for a ride. I can’t take a chance of running into Gus and his goons again.

“Jocelyn,” I call out.

For a minute I think she’s ignoring me.

Then she stops and turns.

And waits for me.