Kissing Donny Zurkus makes me go Gila monster. I want to lie in the sun and flick my tongue, and I want to swallow small animals whole. It’s both at the same time. He’s a jerk, but when we’re walking around, I feel monster big.
You don’t mind my hanging out with the guy who was the meanest to you. Sure, he’s a bully, but his mean is, like, kryptonite. People with power lose it around him. The loony bin was bad, but now I’m back, and all I can do is make these tapes, number them with Magic Marker. Mr. Hofmeister let me have the tape recorder from the library. No check out. Perks of being loony. And if my roommate walked in and heard me talking to you, she’d turn me in just like Alta. So, I wait till I know she’s in class. I don’t know if you’re listening. Give me a sign.
So, one time Alta saw me with Donny. It’s not that I saw her see us. I smelled her. Kind of. We were on the path back from the dining hall to her place, the only path, and me pressing Donny into the trunk of the tree, we took up the whole path. Somebody came toward us. Somebody turned and walked away. Flick. Flick. Gulp.
The weird thing about being back is no Jack. Gone the same two weeks I’ve been gone. If it were last year, we could have used two weeks together. Maybe we could have stayed two weeks in Rehoboth. Maybe we could have walked on the beach and cooked meals and taken showers together. Maybe we could have made up stories to tell people why both of us were away, but those stories, the ones we made up, they couldn’t possibly have been better than the ones that are happening this year.
Nobody told me Jack was removed. A loony bin is a separate planet. No space stations. No communication with earth. How could anyone think Jack touched Kyle? No way. Sure, I hurled the idea at Jack. Why not? I was like a grasshopper under stress. That’s what they do: vomit to discourage predators. My vomit was an accusation. It was a defense, not a truth. I vomited at Jack.
Jack is tiger swallowtail, yellow and black. He flew away from me, but he did the right kind of flying away. The teacher-thing, adult. He wasn’t creepy weird like my dad. He didn’t do me because he couldn’t go against his grain. That Asian honor thing. He was there for you, there in a way that no one else was: adult. Jack Song did nothing to you.