Feeding the Fire

by Amy Waeschle

  Mr. Boudreaux gazed at her over his teepeed fingers. “You will share the parenting responsibilities of an egg, and each day it thrives earns you points. For poor parenting choices, there will be consequences.”

  Jessie opened her bag of chips and stuffed some of them into her sandwich, wondering about the kind of consequences Mr. Boudreaux had in mind for the bad parenting of an egg.

  “Who am I partnered with?” Jessie asked.

  “Your choice.” Mr. Boudreaux raised an eyebrow at her.

  Jessie munched quickly through the crunchy sandwich. She’d have to take the lead on this one, she thought. Some days Cam couldn’t find his own left foot. Jessie drained her juice until it made the hollow scraping noise she liked—her mom had always told her it was rude but something had to be done to break up the room’s silence. She glanced at the clock and quickly packed up her lunch.

  “I have P.E. next,” she said. The gym was on the opposite side of the school. “Can I go now?” Jessie threw on her backpack.

  She expected his beady eyes to pierce her the way they did in class. But he had removed his glasses and his look was different. Softer. Kinder.

  “When you are ready to talk about what you wrote in your journal,” he tapped the top of a journal she realized was hers. “I’m here, okay?”

  Jessie looked away.

  “You may go,” Boudreaux said.

  Jessie pushed through the door, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans.

  At the end of her two-hour Block class, Jessie sat waiting her turn for Miss Klein to check her props. All four doors of the Block classrooms had been propped open at the end of the eighth-grade hall, with kids moving freely between them, working in groups on the floor or hurrying off to the library.

  Miss Klein pulled up a vacant kid’s chair next to Jessie and perched her clipboard in her lap.

  “Okay, Jessie, show me what you’ve got,” she said over the noise of kids talking, assembling their displays and costumes, and visiting the row of computers.

  Jessie picked up her shield from under the table and Miss Klein marked it on her checklist.

  Without warning, Miss Klein jumped up to intercept a boy who was rummaging in her desk.

  When she returned, Jessie continued, “ . . . and I have a sword.” Jessie pointed to under her table to the large cardboard sword that she’d coated with silver spray paint and decorated with fake jewels she had found from an old Halloween project.

  A burst of laughter caught Miss Klein’s attention. She turned to a group of three girls clustered against the wall. “Keep it down, girls,” Miss Klein told them before nodding at Jessie’s sword.

  Then she was up again, dashing to intercept a kid using her scissors in an air duel with another boy, her long jeans skirt swishing loudly as she covered the distance there and back.

  “And I’m going to make this,” Jessie said when Miss Klein returned, pointing to the picture that showed Joan of Arc in a blue tunic. “Out of felt.”

  Miss Klein peered over Jessie’s shoulder, tucking her long brown hair behind her ear as she did so. Her eyes sharpened with concentration, then she nodded. “Looks good,” she said, making one final check on her clipboard before raising her voice at a girl who was halfway to printing a ream of paper.

  As soon as Miss Klein hurried away, something tapped her in the side of the head. Jessie looked up, scowling. Two boys had flown a paper airplane at her and were giggling. One of the boys was Grady Baker.

  Miss Klein barked out a reprimand and the boys went back to work.

  Jessie picked up the airplane, noticing writing on the inside folds. She opened it to a sketch of a naked girl with big, round boobs. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open, as if in some kind of trance. “Fuck me, daddy” was scrawled inside of a talk bubble hovering by her mouth.

  Jessie’s face filled with heat. She heard the boys burst into laughter.

  Back in fifth grade when she had stood up against B.J. Stoker for teasing Cam, her mom had explained that kids bully because “they feel small, so they pick on someone else to make themselves feel bigger.” The best way to stop the threat was to not be a target. Her mom said things like “hold your head high,” and “don’t stoop to their level.” Eventually the bully would move on to someone else.

  Then there was Zach, who had taught her how to throw a punch.

  But the boys kept giggling, and looking at her.

  Jessie crumpled up the paper and took it to the trash can. “Can I go to the library?” she asked Miss Klein who was helping a girl with her poster.

  Miss Klein nodded.

  Jessie gathered her things and burst into the hallway.

  Chapter 8

  Jessie

  Jessie lingered on her front porch, waiting for as long as she could in the hopes that Zach would show before she had to leave for school. Her empty stomach twisted tighter as she checked her watch again. She wanted to tell him about her math class at the high school.

  But he didn’t show.

  She left the house and skated up her street until it got too steep. Cam was waiting at his corner halfway up the hill and they fell into step towards school. The morning air was crisp and thick with moisture but Jessie could tell that the sun would prevail by afternoon. Which meant skating.

  “My mom’s hella pissed,” Cam said.

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Brock called.”

  They crested the top of the hill, both schools visible: the middle school on one side of the street, the high school on the other. If only she had Evan around to ask about her new teacher, Darnell. Was he cool? Strict? Funny? Old and boring? Where was his classroom? Where was the bathroom? Evan would have helped her.

  Jessie wrapped her arms around her chest but hated how it felt, so . . . cushy. She was wearing her favorite hoodie, a hand-me-down from Evan. It had that perfect broken-in softness and the black color was faded just enough on the outside. It fit over her chest but the sleeves were a little long.

  “Was it about Wax?” she asked. Mr. Brock was the strictest of the Block teachers.

  Cam tossed his head to clear the long bangs from his eyes. “I have to stick with Reginal Denny.”

  One annoying thing about this project was the rule to use equal parts Internet and books. “The guy who invented the drone plane? I thought you said there wasn’t enough information?”

  A kid they knew from their class passed by them with a subdued, “Hey.”

  Cam shrugged. “I’m meeting my dad in the city Friday. He’s taking me to the main library.”

  Jessie balled her fists. “So you can’t skate the hill bomb.”

  Cam looked away.

  She fought the urge to punch something. So many people acted awkward around her when Evan got messed up—not sure what to say or what not to say. Cam wasn’t like that. He and Zach were the only ones who didn’t ask, “How are you doing?” Or lately: “Any word from Evan?”

  She didn’t want to bomb Sixth without him, but she wasn’t going to stay home alone with her mom either.

  They entered the middle school and threaded the hall to their locker. They stowed their boards and lunches then Jessie slammed the door shut. Cam turned towards their homeroom; it took him a step to realize she wasn’t beside him. “Oh,” he said, his eyes flicking in the direction of the high school. “Right.”

  Jessie willed him to offer to go with her. Then she realized how stupid that was.

  “Well . . . see ya,” he said, turning away.

  Jessie tapped the locker with her toe. “Yeah.”

  Jessie crossed the street and entered North Kitsap High’s wide glass doors. Butterflies rammed her insides as she turned down the long hallway. She hugged her notebook, kept her eyes ahead, and tried not to flinch every time someone brushed by. Girls with curly hair and lipstick. Boys she remembered from elementary school but that were now so much taller they looked like totally different people. A pair of girls wearing what looked like pajama pants. At the end of the hall,
someone was playing a trumpet.

  Jessie read her schedule again to double check the room number then pulled open the classroom door. Every eyeball in the room watched her walk to the front. The teacher, a slight man with a sharp nose and twinkling eyes handed her a textbook and pointed to an empty seat in the row along the window, near the back. On her way there she noticed a familiar face and felt a current of energy tickle her insides: Jake Stefonacci. He was sitting in the middle of the middle row of desks, his arm in a sling. She wanted to ask how he’d crashed but the teacher was watching her.

  Jessie sat. The teacher gathered a paper from his desk. He wore a Western-style button-down shirt and the kind of stretchy, black pants that all old teachers wore, the thick kind with creases. He picked up his dry erase pen from the tray beneath the blank white board and turned to face the front of the class. The bell rang. He raised a bushy grey eyebrow and asked, “Have you ever wondered about the use of negative numbers in multi-step equations?”

  The class was silent.

  Jessie used her peripheral vision but did not see anyone passing notes or whispering to their neighbor. Or rummaging around in their bag for their notebook, book, pencil.

  Silence. Eyes facing forward. Pencils poised to take notes. Even Stef.

  Jessie swallowed. Quietly, she opened her notebook and slid the Hello Kitty pencil Miss Chapple had insisted she take from her pencil pouch. She snuck another sideways look at the rest of the class. Nobody with Hello Kitty pencils here. She swiftly exchanged hers for a plain green one instead.

  Jessie looked up at the board. Page 56 Mr. Darnell had scrawled in the upper left-hand corner. She opened her textbook and scanned the page. Equations. Okay, she thought, chewing her lip. I got this.

  Jessie copied everything Mr. Darnell said, and when he finally stopped, her index finger was cramping. He wrote out the assignment and went back to his desk.

  Jessie waited for more. The class remained silent except for the sound of pages flipping and erasers rubbing. The clock’s minute hand advanced with a hummm-thunk.

  She copied the first problem into her notebook.

  Then Mr. Darnell arrived at the edge of her desk, handing her a sheet of white paper. “Let me know if you need any help,” he said. His smile turned his pale cheeks into a pair of steep little hills. His breath smelled like lemons.

  In the far row, a student was waiting for help and Mr. Darnell moved in her direction, his thick black shoes making no sound.

  Jessie scanned the list of rules Mr. Darnell had left for her: No talking, no chewing gum, CELL PHONES MUST BE OFF or will be confiscated; a grid showed how they would be graded. Daily assignments = 5 points. Exams = 100. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS. She didn’t see anything about lunch detentions. Maybe they didn’t do that at the high school. Or maybe high school kids didn’t get in trouble for talking or passing notes. Not that she had anyone to talk or send notes to. She snuck a look at Stef. He was writing with his left hand while his right rested in the sling.

  She scanned the room for the pencil sharpener and located it bolted to a post in the back of the room. Did she need to ask permission to use it? She waited to see if anyone else left their seat. She cracked her thumb knuckle but regretted it when the girl next to her shot her a look of disgust. Mr. Darnell stood across the room, helping a student. Finally, she slid from her seat and walked to the back of the classroom, inserted her pencil into the sharpener, and grimaced at the high-pitched squeak her pencil made when she turned the crank. Were all pencil sharpeners this loud? She felt everyone’s eyeballs on her back, watching her screw it up on her first day.

  When she turned to go back to her seat she crashed into a tall, skinny boy with bright red pimples covering his forehead. His gaze did a quick down-up of her chest. She side-stepped him and hurried back to her seat, her cheeks hot with embarrassment.

  “So are you some kind of genius or something?” Stef said to her as they filed out of the classroom. Two boys were walking in the middle of the hall with long strides, one bouncing a basketball.

  “As if,” she said, surprised that he was talking to her. “It’s just for math,” she added. She glanced at his arm in the sling. “How did you crash?” she said.

  “The stairs. At City Park.”

  Jessie imagined Stef carving the big bowl at City Park, a rad skate park thirty-minutes south that nobody would take her to. Jessie hugged her notebook, but the roundness of her chest made her cringe. She didn’t even hug Zach anymore, it was too . . . soft. She felt like there were water balloons inside her shirt.

  She remembered the last time she’d hugged Evan was his Timberline graduation before Christmas the year before.

  Stef kept up with her easily.

  “There’s a hill bomb Friday night,” she said. “You going?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  A group of girls standing at an open locker caught Jessie’s attention. One was applying mascara with the help of a small mirror stuck inside the door. They all wore skin-tight jeans and flat, clicky shoes. One had her jeans rolled up above her ankle, exposing a banded tattoo. They were all giggling about something. The one applying mascara caught her eye in the mirror and turned sharply. She heard the girl say: “Oh my God I know that kid. She’s Evan’s little sister.” Jessie passed by and heard: “Oh my God you’re right!” Then: “I thought she was, like, still in kindergarten!”

  Jessie raced ahead and stiff-armed through the side exit door.

  Chapter 9

  Zach

  The only way Zach could dampen the emotions running hot through his brain was to get outside, either at the house or on a trail somewhere. So, yesterday, day off number one, he had worked on the siding until his shoulder muscles quit then ran until his legs were noodles. He slept hard, without a visit from the abused boy in The Grove. But he woke with an unspecified anger humming in the background of his thoughts.

  Dana.

  A good swell was running so he packed up his gear to meet Brody at Ipse Point. Maybe being in the water would give him a break from all the unanswered questions rattling around in his messed-up head.

  After the drive, he parked at the edge of the cobbled shore and wiggled into the arms of his thick wetsuit. Brody was already in the water so he lifted his surfboard from the top of his truck and picked his way over the ice-rimed beach logs to the strip of soft sand. After a surge of water receded, he plunged in and paddled hard for the outside.

  In the distance, a lump of water sped towards shore. It transformed into a wedge-like wave and broke, the lip tumbling on itself in perfect slow-motion. Zach stepped up his paddling and punched through the wall of whitewater, shaking his head clear of the cold as he surfaced. Surfers bobbed up and over the shoulder of rising swell like a pack of seabirds. One of the surfers took off on a wave, dropping in with a long, sweeping turn.

  “What took you so long?” Brody said once Zach joined him in the lineup. “You usually beat me here.”

  Zach tucked his fingers into his armpits. He should have worn his gloves—summer was definitely over. “I worked late at the house last night.”

  Brody’s ruddy cheeks glistened with beads of ocean water as they bobbed for a moment—Zach could feel Brody’s eyes watching him carefully. Zach didn’t need to hear Brody’s thoughts because he could hear them in his head—staying late at the house meant that he hadn’t been at Dana’s.

  The two of them slid onto their boards to paddle back into position; the strong current had already pushed them outside.

  The other surfers had taken waves, leaving the lineup empty, so he and Brody caught their breath.

  “Why didn’t you stay for Peer Support?” Brody asked.

  “You mean after that call to The Grove?” Zach asked. “I ran Marmot Pass instead.”

  Brody nodded. “Did it help?”

  “Immensely. Did Peer Support?”

  “Yeah. Though the whiskey I consumed last night may have also contributed.”

  They floated in silence
for a while.

  “I couldn’t get that kid’s eyes outta my head,” Brody said. “I kept thinking of Dylan. If anyone ever laid a hand on him like that . . . ” Brody dug at a blob of wax along the rail of his board. “Anyways,” he added, and straightened.

  “Anyways,” Zach echoed, forcing the idea of Brody’s six-year-old son hurt out of his mind.

  A set approached and Zach spun for the first wave, dropping in as the glassy, green face arched up to a steep slope. He punched to his feet and flew down the line, the surge of adrenaline pouring into his gut. He leaned out in a wide bottom turn and raced up to smack the lip, then soared down again for another pass. The wave pitched outward; in a split decision he ducked under. He got a glimpse of the tunnel-like view down the tube before the wave clamped shut, with him inside. After the spin-cycle he kicked hard for the surface.

  A spark of joy radiated from his chest as he paddled hard for the outside, but it quickly faded when Brody, who had caught the wave behind his, joined him wearing a worried gaze.

  “You and Dana ever talk . . . like that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, like . . . with a professional.”

  Zach frowned. “You mean a shrink?” Images of him and Dana in some office with some drippy little nerd asking them how they felt flashed into his mind. “No.”

  Brody shrugged his broad shoulders. “Just sayin’ it might be worth a go.”

  They reached the lineup and pushed upright.

  Zach watched Brody take off on the next wave. The sun shot from beneath a cloudbank in an intense burst, turning the surface of the ocean into a million shiny coins that both blinded and soothed him. He savored the warmth on his cheeks and eyelids but it faded as he thought about Dana. How long had it been since she stopped appreciating little things like sunshine on her face, or sparkles on the ocean? Now, everything went into The Search.