VOLUNTEERING AT THE FOOD BANK was my idea—well it was Mindy’s idea, but I never planned to agree. It’s just I couldn’t think of a way to spring Jeff from his punishment other than a charity, sponsored by a church, and I get to see Jeff for the first time all week.
We follow Mindy past a series of offices—“Hi, Mr. Evanston” and “That’s Gladys, she’s always smiling”—back through a double set of doors into the warehouse, this huge space with hip hop blaring and all the employees and volunteers running around at top speed. They station us in the “Special Packaging” area off to the side by the dock doors, and our task is to load food into brown canvas bags for less fortunate families who need the assistance “our government refuses to provide,” according to Wanda, the white-haired woman who explains our duties in between wheezes and seems relieved Mindy arrived to take over her job.
“No fucking way,” Jeff says, straining to be heard over the music. “There’s more?”
One of the workers on a forklift drops off another pallet of bags at our station. I thought we were almost done because the bags were almost gone. Mindy advertised this would be more fun.
“Jeff, you’re putting one can of tuna in each container?” she says.
“Yeah.”
“You’re supposed to put two in, one of each kind,” Mindy says.
“Right.” He stops. “Wait, what?”
Mindy moves around me to teach Jeff how to count to two and she squeezes my arm as she returns to her spot. We spent all week at the lunch table sans Jeff—Mindy and Sharane and me—and it was the two of them talking and me eating real quick before escaping to assist Ms. Patterson on a research project in the library—cataloging which fiction gets borrowed the most, assigned readings or more contemporary stuff like Harry Potter, and it wasn’t interesting at all but at least I didn’t have to listen to Sharane ask every other second whether or not I’d heard from Jeff.
“Cyrus, have you ever done anything like this before?” Mindy says.
“Help people?”.
“No.” She laughs. “Work in a warehouse like this.”
She points at the rows and rows of pallet racking and the workers racing past on massive forklifts. The concrete floors are pressing at my shins and there’s a faint scent of sawdust mixed with exhaust fumes permeating the space.
“No, but this is what my dad does for a living,” I say. “I mean, he doesn’t work in a warehouse. He builds them. Not physically, but he works on the drawings of the design—the insides I think, not the building itself.”
“You have no idea what your father does, do you?” Jeff asks.
“He tries to tell me all the time but I zone out as soon as he mentions ‘gaining efficiencies.’”
I smile at Jeff but he just lifts another stack of fruit snacks from the crate behind us. I got my first text from him last night, after a full week of radio silence. I actually Googled “child abuse” to see if there was something I could do since I witnessed Roland punching Jeff. And I didn’t know if the cops would believe me or if I could talk to someone other than the police, but that was a wormhole I shouldn’t have entered and I had to close my browser before I started weeping.
“Where’s Sharane today?” Jeff asks Mindy.
“SAT prep,” Mindy says. “Her first week.”
“Oh,” Jeff says.
“I’ll tell her you asked,” Mindy says.
I guess Sharane didn’t get a text when he got back his laptop.
“So when’s the next practice?” Mindy says.
“I’m not sure,” Jeff says.
“I thought you were feeling better?” Mindy says.
He coughs a bit, for the “bronchitis” he told Mindy he had all week. The stepfuck found the Altoids tin while cleaning up the garage and now they’re talking about “rehab”—or “worse,” he messaged without context, and that’s when I suggested the Food Bank.
“I’m allowed to do this and church this weekend.” He hesitates. “That’s it.”
I straighten out my spine, tense from all the pressure of the hard concrete. I don’t know how people work here all day. Or help people. Mindy is a saint. I glance across to the docks where a large man in a trucker hat is arguing with white-haired Wanda.
“What about next weekend?” Mindy asks.
“We have a concert,” I say.
“Right,” Jeff says. “I almost forgot.”
“What concert?”
“Joyce Manor in Philly,” I say.
I lean onto the table because my legs have started to vibrate, like a shaky quiver sending signals from my calves through my quads to my spine. I ran forty-seven miles at cross-country this week and today is supposed to be my day off from physical activity.
“Did you talk to your dad about driving us?” he asks.
“Not yet,” I say because I haven’t thought about anything all week except the fight in Jeff’s garage with his stepfather. I postponed my date with Cody because I was too upset. “Can you go?”
“I’m going,” Jeff says. “Fuck him.”
Mindy looks confused.
“My stepfather’s an asshole,” he says.
“You’ve mentioned that.”
He hasn’t told me why he missed school all week but I assume it has something to do with the mark beneath his eye, because teachers ask questions, the way that teachers ask questions. And Jeff wouldn’t want anyone to know.
“You know, I could drive,” Mindy says.
Another worker has waded into the argument at the docks and now they’re pointing in our direction.
“You want to go?” Jeff says.
“Sure, why not?”
“You know Joyce Manor?” I say.
“Nope,” she says. “But how bad could they be?”
Mindy has done her best to forge the straight-gay alliance between us ever since my “coming out,” which feels like a lifetime ago but I think it’s only been a week. We haven’t talked at school, because we’re in class with other students or in lunch in front of Sharane, but she’s good with a secret and she’s been sending a barrage of one-line texts awash in sexual innuendo. She wants to FaceTime Cody with me.
“Well, we only have two tickets,” Jeff says. “But if it hasn’t sold out, that would be awesome, Mindy. Thank you.”
“Absolutely,” she says, her long black hair tied up with a blue-dotted bow behind her head. “I mean, we’re in a band together now. Right?”
Jeff leans back as Mindy leans forward and laughs. The overhead fans blow hot air into my eyes.
“You guys are a tough crowd,” Mindy says.
White-haired Wanda and the guy from the docks walk up to our station.
“Mindy, we have a problem,” she says. “Mr. McLaren says these orders went out already.”
“We shipped them yesterday,” McLaren says. He’s got a thick mustache and a thicker accent, like he’s from New York or New Jersey. “Who told you to pack these?”
“Mrs. Phillips left the packing lists at her desk,” Mindy says, fumbling through the sheets of paper spread around the table. She hands one of the slips to Wanda. Jeff keeps packing.
“Oh, I didn’t see that earlier.” Wanda speaks at a deliberate pace, inserting pauses between her words. “These have Friday’s date on them. Mrs. Phillips must have had a volunteer crew here yesterday.”
“That’s what I told you,” McLaren says. “You’re supposed to be in charge of the volunteers.”
“I am, but usually Mindy—”
“I’m sorry, Wanda, I didn’t look at the date,” Mindy says, leafing through the packing slips.
“It’s okay.” Wanda turns to apologize but McLaren isn’t paying attention. Jeff reaches across me to grab more cans.
“Hey kid, what are you, stupid?” McLaren barks.
“Excuse me?” Jeff says.
“Stop packing this shit.”
Jeff pauses mid-motion, in the frozen glare of the larger man.
“Mr. McLaren, you can’t talk to the volunteers that way,” Wanda says.
“Listen, you’ve got my people pulling pallets for these goddamn kids and now they have to put them back into storage and you know we’re getting charged overtime as it is.”
His voice is loud and his hands spin through the air with every word. Jeff drops a can of pasta sauce on the table beside me.
“You got a problem, kid?” McLaren says.
“Yeah, you need to chill the fuck out,” Jeff says.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” McLaren spits, stepping closer to our table.
“I didn’t come here to be yelled at for volunteering on a Saturday morning.”
“Well your ‘volunteering’,”—McLaren adds the air quotes—“just gave my men an extra hour’s work. Paid work. For your stupidity.”
Jeff steps out from behind the table, moving past me so fast the pile of bags tumble to the concrete. Wanda shouts through the radio.
“Kid, I will beat that smirk off your face, so help me God.”
Jeff steps forward and McLaren meets him, next to an empty pallet Jeff would need to stand on to even reach the chest of this massive asshole.
“Mr. McLaren!” Wanda screams.
“You ain’t worth my time, boy,” McLaren says, stepping back and spinning sideways, next to Wanda.
Jeff gives a two-handed shove at his back. McLaren turns, about to send Jeff sprawling across the concrete floors but some guy on a pallet jack speeds up to our station to save him. Wanda keeps screaming.
“What the hell just happened?” I say, hoping a lighter tone might help us figure out what the hell just happened. We’re outside on the curb by Mindy’s car. Waiting.
“Fucking asshole,” Jeff says. “He’s lucky they broke it up.”
“You realize he was twice your size, right?” I say.
He squints at me, the sun bright in his eyes. Steam rises from the pavement.
“He would have folded if I hit him, one smack and guys like that, they crumple. You can’t take shit from them, you know.”
A hot breeze blows through his hair and I reach out to touch his knee, the faded jeans against his hamstrings. I pull back before contact.
“They’ll walk all over you if you let them,” he says.
“We should apologize to Mindy. I hope she doesn’t lose her job over this.”
“It’s a volunteer job,” he says. “Who cares?”
“It means a lot to her.” He notices my hand in the space between us.
“Yeah,” he says. “Of course.”
Employees are starting to leave the building for lunch and Jeff’s eyes follow them. Waiting.
“That’s great if she can take us to Joyce Manor,” I say. “Do you think you can go?”
“I’m going, Cyrus,” Jeff says. “Why the fuck wouldn’t I go?”
“I thought—with your stepfather.”
He shakes his head and slams his fist into the curb. Sweat has formed in little puddles between his ear and his cheeks.
“I don’t care,” Jeff says. “He can’t rule my life.”
“No,” I say. I don’t know what else to say.
“I talked my father yesterday,” Jeff says. “I asked if I could live with him.”
“What did he say?”
I try not to panic but Florida is way too far from Dallastown not to be upset immediately.
“He said ‘no’.”
A group of warehouse workers climb into the car next to Mindy’s and Jeff waits until they pull away. My calves are cramping now that we’re sitting.
“He made up some crap about being between jobs and staying with my grandmother—temporarily—in a back bedroom of a tiny house, so there’s no room.” He turns to face me. “He sounded drunk.”
“Oh man,” I say.
“I just wanted to see if it was an option, you know. But I knew what he’d say.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re talking about sending me away, Cy.”
The curb is getting hotter the longer we’re sitting and I feel the burn through my shorts to my skin.
“New Bredford. That Christian school up near Harrisburg,” Jeff says. “It’s over an hour from here.”
“Are you serious?”
He nods, the moisture tumbling down his cheeks. The heat is so oppressive I can barely breathe.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know,” Jeff says, the sun reflecting off the blues in his retinas. “And this place is hardcore. From what I could find online—not on their official site, because from the outside it looks all normal and nice, but the kids who went there—those who survived—they posted all this shit on Reddit because it’s one of those ‘Kidnapped for Christ’ places that indoctrinates you in Jesus and has you speaking in tongues by the time you graduate. And they have all these rules and ‘obediences’—that’s the actual word they use—so you can’t do anything other than schoolwork and chores and church. Plus, there’s prayer circles and Bible study and drug counseling, I’m not even sure they have time to teach English and History.”
I’m not following with how fast he’s speaking but I don’t want to interrupt.
“Can you believe that shit?”
I shake my head.
“Cy, it’s like a teen prison run by Jesus freaks or a Brainwash Institute for all these smiling kids who get taught to obey if they don’t do a billion chores or whatever.” The bruise beneath his eye is more noticeable outside. “I can’t fucking go there.”
“No. That’s insane. All because he found the weed?”
“Yeah. Roland hates me. You know he hates me. And he’s trying to convince my mother to send me away.”
“I don’t know,” he says, dipping his head. The sweat drips along his cheek. “But she doesn’t hate me yet, I don’t think.”
He laughs, to himself, because none of this is funny and I hear the shuffling of shoes on the sidewalk as Mindy approaches.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she says. “I had to talk with HR and call Mrs. Phillips at home, it’s—” She looks over to Jeff and then to me. “It’s a mess.”
“Are we going?” Jeff says.
Mindy coughs and her eyes grow wide in the sunlight. I elbow him.
“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry, Mindy. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
“It’s fine, Jeff. It’ll be fine.” She sighs. “They’re not in the business of turning away volunteers. That jerk McLaren’s in a lot more trouble than me.”
“Good,” Jeff says. Mindy steps back from the curb.
“I’m sorry too,” I say.
“What did you do?” Jeff says.
“I brought you along.”
He laughs. It’s good to hear him laugh.
I don’t want to think about it, the way I know I’ll think about it, but I can’t survive high school without him. My life would end if he leaves.