Is there sunshine on your side of the river /

’cause since you crossed there’s been nothing here but rain /

let the waters rise, let them sweep away the memories /

wash clean the ledgers of all we lost and we gained

 

“You’re late,” says my replacement tutor.

“Sorry,” I say.

My replacement tutor shrugs. “She said you would be,” he says.

“Josephine?”

“Yes.”

My replacement tutor is sitting in the spot where Josephine was when I first met her. He’s a skinnyish, solemn-faced kid who looks to be about thirteen years old.

“I’m only about five minutes late.”

He cocks his head slightly.

“She said I’d say that, too,” I venture.

He doesn’t respond, but I gather that I’d guessed correctly.

“Right,” I say. “I’m Austin.”

“I know. I’m Isaac. Isaac Kaplan.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I got the email.” Is he thirteen? Younger?

“I’m in college-level calc,” he says, either because he just read my mind or because I’m still hesitating in the doorway.

“That’s impressive,” I say. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen. Well, I will be soon.”

“Okay.”

“It’s math, not arm wrestling,” he says.

“You could probably beat me there, too,” I say, and toss my bag on the table and take a seat.

∗  ∗  ∗

It’s been two days since the show. I haven’t heard from Shane since then, and I haven’t tried to reach him.

I don’t know why I reacted like that in the bar. I just did. Everything had been so good, so perfect, and then it all broke and I hated Shane and felt like I was never going to stop hating him or being sad. It was worse because I was supposed to be happy​—​I had performed on stage, with my father, and everyone saw, and Josephine was there and she saw me and told me I was good, and all I was feeling was anger and darkness.

When I left the bar I was shaking so hard it was difficult to pilot my bike, the tears not helping much either.

I tossed and turned in my bed until five in the morning, feeling like the world had started and ended over the past twenty-four hours. Then I had a sweaty, fitful sleep, dreams of Shane and Josephine, a series of incoherent scenes and images with an unsettling musical score lurking underneath.

When the alarm woke me up, I was greeted by a thudding headache and exhaustion and my mom hectoring me, Where were you, where were you, all while I tried to eat breakfast and make a sandwich and get out the door.

I checked my email before I left and felt a burst of excitement and got angry at myself for feeling it: There was a new message from Josephine. Then I realized it was simply a forwarded message from Isaac Kaplan, who was agreeing to tutor me in her place. No extra message from her, nothing about seeing me perform, nothing.

We’re not actually friends.

I wrote back a longish email, deleted it, wrote a medium one, deleted it, wrote thx, then deleted that, too. Then I went to work, parking my motorcycle in a hidden spot so that Todd and Brad couldn’t once again use it as the canvas for one of their dog-poop-based art projects. Instead Todd used me as the canvas. “Hey, Methune!” I heard him shout, and when I was dumb enough to turn around I got my reward​—​SPLAT—​a hefty, pungent lump of art material square in the solar plexus.

“Bull’s-eye!” said Todd, high-fiving and celebrating with Brad. He was right, because I had chosen that day to commit the minor infraction of foregoing my Rick’s Lawn Care Service polo in favor of a faded The Who T-shirt. The one with the logo that looks like a target. A target that now had a big glob of dog poop smack dab in the center. It was one of my favorite shirts, but it stunk so bad that I just stripped it off and left it in some bushes and finished the day topless and sunburned.

When I got home, there was a note from my mom: she and Rick were at a movie, pizza in fridge. We need to talk.

Which, no thanks. I made sure to be in bed and asleep before they got home, or at least in bed with the lights off while I hid under the covers and thumb-barfed bad lyrics into my phone.

I called and texted Devon a few times. He finally texted me back: Can you f*** off for like a month? Except he didn’t use asterisks.

∗  ∗  ∗

Now I’m sitting with Isaac Kaplan. I’ll admit that I’d been sort of hoping Josephine would be waiting for me in the classroom this morning, despite everything. I have to give Isaac credit, though​—​he seems to know his stuff, and although it’s early on I’ve yet to catch a single eye roll from him as I fumble around.

I take a breather from the quadratic equation that’s taunting me from the page.

“Did Josephine say anything else about me?” I ask.

“She said you’d try to distract me from the lesson,” says Isaac.

“Right.” I try without success to refocus on the problem. “Nothing else?”

“Um . . .”

“Nothing about the concert?”

“She didn’t mention it, no.”

“Okay, right.”

I pick up my pencil again and tap it against the paper.

“Nothing?”

“No. Sorry.”

“Right. Okay.”

I go back to the problem, scribbling away, then pause again.

“We didn’t really talk that much,” he says, before I can start.

“Right.”

Scribble scribble scribble. A good thirty seconds go by while I advance the field of mathematics.

“Would you say that she knows herself?”

“Knows herself?”

“I mean, when you think of her, do you think, oh, she’s just some girl, or do you think, oh, there’s someone who’s complicated and knows herself and is comfortable with who . . .”

He blinks at me.

“Never mind.”

“Okay.” He looks meaningfully at the unfinished equation in front of me. I go at it again, or try.

“She didn’t say anything about me singing?”

“No. You skipped a step,” he says, indicating my mistake.

“Right. Okay.”

Tap tap tap with the pencil on the page.

“I think she hates me,” I say. “Do you think she hates me? She acts like she hates me. I think she hates me.”

“I think,” he says, “that I can teach this stuff pretty well but that I can’t make you care.”

“Jesus. How old are you again?”

We work the rest of the time in near silence. By the end of the session I think I’ve actually started to learn something. Then, after we’ve packed up and Isaac is about to leave the room, he pauses in the doorway and drops this: “She’s definitely not just some girl. And, you know, people have all sorts of reasons for the way they act.”

Then Morpheus Kaplan gives me a little salute and goes off to be Delphic elsewhere.

∗  ∗  ∗

I ponder that cryptic gem as I ride my motorcycle to the day’s lawn-mowing venue, and I ponder it while I’m cutting grass, and I’m still pondering it when Todd casually pushes me off a hillock into a waist-deep decorative pond. Huh, I ponder as I flounder to the surface and get my feet under me and then sink gently up to my ankles into the soft muck, I wonder what sorts of reasons Todd has for acting the way he does.

Then at the end of the day I find out.

∗  ∗  ∗

I find out because I forgot my Minnesota Twins ball cap on a rock by the pond. I left it there to dry after I splorched out of the water. I didn’t mind the rest of my clothes being wet​—​it was a hot day and it actually felt pretty good. Or so I kept telling myself, while also cycling through several different fantasies about how I was going to extract my revenge against Todd Malloy. Leading contender: I’m giving a show in front of 10,000 people, and for some reason Todd is there in the front row​—​something to do with him winning a surprise concert from a radio station or whatever​—​and I see him and I stop the concert (which he’s actually enjoying despite himself) and tell everyone, “See this guy? He is an awful person. SHAME HIM.” And they do, all 10,000 of them, jeering at him, and HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW, TODD MALLOY?!

I finished the day, my shoes still squelchy, and loaded my mower on the trailer, gave Kent his high-five (“Right on, bro!”), and realized that my cap was still on a rock about thirty miles from where I was. So I walked back across the lawn, dodging the swarms of early-evening gnats that hovered in pulsating clumps at head height, and retrieved my cap.

I took my time walking back toward the office building, a ten-story reflective glass cube surrounded by lawns and woods and mucky decorative ponds. The employees had apparently left for the day, the front parking lot entirely empty. Kent was gone. Todd and Brad appeared to be as well.

When I got closer, I started hearing voices. One voice, really​—​a man’s voice, angry, shouting. It was hard to tell where the ruckus was coming from, but it seemed to be from somewhere behind the building. Why was a grown man standing somewhere behind this deserted office building on a Thursday evening, shouting?

Ten seconds ago, I got to the corner of the building and peeked around it. There was a rear parking lot, just three or four cars parked here and there out toward the perimeter.

There was another car, a dark-blue SUV, more or less in the center of the lot, parked at an angle so that it partially covered about four parking spaces. The driver-side door of the SUV was open, the engine running.

In front of the car was Todd Malloy. In front of Todd Malloy was a man who looked like a larger and even meaner version of Todd Malloy, a man who had to be Todd’s father. And now everything makes sense.

It’s his yelling I heard and am hearing right now. He’s crowding Todd like a drill sergeant, face an inch from Todd’s, screaming at him, alpha-dogging him, just like I’ve seen Todd do to other kids. Todd’s doing the thing where you turn your head left and right and backpedal, trying to get away from his father without looking like he’s running away, and his father is unloading on him, screaming abuse, and it’s stomach-churning terrifying.

“YOU’RE GONNA BE A SMART-ASS TO ME? HUH??!!”

It’s all stuff like that. I’m frozen in place. I shouldn’t be watching this, but I can’t stop. I hate Todd Malloy, hate him, but I’m getting nothing out of this, only a sense of fear and nausea. Todd is helpless, a little boy, completely drained of all his power, and I feel sorry for him, ashamed to see him brought this low.

Then it happens. His father is bellowing at him, forcing him backwards, and Todd brings up his hands defensively and sort of places them on his father’s chest​—​not pushing, too scared to put any energy in the gesture​—​and his father bats his arms away violently, the noise a loud clap. This sparks a reaction in Todd, a burst of anger and aggression that blooms onto his face, his posture changing, fists clenching, and there’s a primal moment where his father recognizes the challenge and WHAM he punches Todd straight on in the face.

Holy crap.

Todd’s knees buckle and he staggers backwards, hands coming up to his face, and already there is blood pouring down his chin as he catches a heel on the asphalt and goes down hard on his ass. I’m jelly legged too, my chest heaving, heart thump thump thumping, and I flinch as Todd’s dad slams the door of the SUV shut and screeches away.

Todd is still sitting in the middle of the lot, holding his nose and sobbing. He tries to get up, but he’s too wobbly, and he sits down, then tries it again, and again. When he tries it a fourth time, getting into a sort of a football-lineman position before tumbling forward onto his face, I start walking over to him, not even sure why.

He’s still trying to get to his feet when I reach him.

“Stay down,” I say. “Don’t try to get up.”

Like I know what I’m talking about. I’ve never had to deal with someone who maybe just got a concussion from his massive dad. Now Todd is in a sitting position, knees up, one hand over his nose. His eyes are glassy, and I’m not sure he’s totally aware that I’m next to him. I stand there for what seems like five minutes, unsure of what to do​—​Put a hand on his shoulder? Call 911? Police? Fire? Ambulance? The principal?​—​and Todd stares straight ahead, holding his nose. Then, still not looking at me, he raises a bloody hand up toward me and slurs, “Help me up.”

He nearly pulls me to the ground as he labors to get to his feet, grabbing my wrist with his free hand, me leaning away and taking two staggering steps back to counterbalance his weight. When he’s finally up, I have to keep him from pitching forward, then steady him once, then again, until he waves me off with a limp hand and stands there, breathing in and out five or six times like he has to remind himself to do it. He wipes at his nose and looks at the blood. Only then does he look up at me, and the heavy locked gate to Todd Malloy is open for just a moment, a moment where we sort of acknowledge each other, where his eyes say, So now you know. Then he drops his gaze and turns away.

“I gotta get home,” he says. He takes a few uncertain steps in a random direction, then stops and looks around like a person trying to get his bearings in the middle of a forest.

“Maybe you should go to a doctor or something,” I say.

He shakes his head.

“I just gotta get home.”

“Won’t your dad be there?”

“No, he won’t come back for a few days now. That’s what he does.” He wipes again at the blood. “I just gotta go home.”

He’s still standing there.

“Uh . . .” I begin, not believing I’m about to say it. “Do you need a ride?”

∗  ∗  ∗

Which is how I end up with Todd Malloy sitting on the back of my motorcycle as I drive him home. He’s hugging me around the waist, either too stunned to be aware of just how weird this whole thing is, or aware enough of how stunned he is to know that he’d better hold on or he’s going to be tumbling along the concrete at thirty miles per hour.

He lives in a generic house in west Edina that’s only a few blocks from Josephine’s. When we pull up to the curb, he has a bit of trouble getting off the seat, then just starts walking across the lawn toward his front door without a word. After a few steps, he stops, though, and turns around. We regard each other for a moment. The customary fierceness is seeping back into his gaze, like he's remembering who he is. I can see it coming: You better not tell anyone, he’s going to say.

Instead, his voice quiet, he says, “Thanks.”

Then he turns to go inside.