Giraffe People

by Jill Malone

  “They’re gorgeous,” she tells my father. “And this?” She unfolds the paper, stares at it for a long minute, then looks up at Dad. “Do they know?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Know what?” Nigel asks.

  “We’re going to Hawaii,” Mom says, handing the Army’s orders to Nate.

  “We aren’t,” Nigel says. “It’s supposed to be Alaska.”

  “In Hawaii,” Dad tells Nigel, “you can drive at 15.”

  “When do we go?” Nigel asks.

  “Dad reports August 1st,” Nate says. “I can’t wait to visit you guys.”

  “Me either,” Kelly and Jeremy chorus.

  “Which base?” Meghan asks. “Schofield Barracks?”

  “Aliamanu Military Reservation,” Dad says. “I’m assigned to the brand-new chapel there. I’ll give the inaugural sermon.”

  The first sermon in a brand-new chapel in Hawaii on your last assignment for the Army, assigned to a church again, exactly as you wanted. Seated on Dad’s right, I haven’t said anything. My atheist will be in Hawaii. That should soften the blow, right? But softened or not, it feels like a blow—sudden and unavoidable—and sets me reeling.

  “What do you think?” Dad looks at me.

  “I have to get ready,” I say, standing. “I need to be at the club in an hour.”

  We take the van; Dad lets Meghan drive all of us kids. The band hasn’t played at Board since January. Nate piggybacks Kelly indoors, her ankle wrapped in one of Nigel’s many ankle braces.

  I’m leaving. For real, with an expiration date and everything, I’m leaving Jersey this summer. Had I expected a reprieve? The Army to send my father an official letter: Colonel Peters, we’d like to extend your assignment at Fort Monmouth for another two years; enough time for your only daughter to graduate from high school. No doubt you are aware of how much the United States Army values stability and continuity and the lives of teenaged girls.

  When I join the guys backstage, Trevor says, “Peters, I think we should open with the new song. What do you think?”

  “I agree,” I say.

  Ernie shakes his head. “It’s such a naked song. We should build to it.”

  “What do you think, Joe?” I ask.

  “Tell her your idea, Trevor,” Joe says.

  “OK,” Trevor puts his hand on my shoulder and goes all man-of-vision on me. “You sing the first verse with just the bass. The guitars come in on Leave your arguments, and I lead in for the chorus. Yeah?”

  Open the show with a bass line. Me and a bass line. “We should try it,” I say.

  They nod.

  Mr. Hand introduces the band. On stage, a single light trains on me. From the crowd at my feet, the screaming has not let up. Everywhere I feel the shift of bodies, the movement amplified. I hold on to the mic.

  And then, Joe’s box-step rhythm:

  Pack your letters, and pack your suitcase

  Haul your furniture out of our place

  Take your books, take all your photographs

  Drag them anywhere and don’t look back

  Ernie climbs eight notes, and I drive beneath him. My voice a clear, warm growl, not at war, for once, with the thunderous drums. This could be my attic room, or Joe’s garage.

  Leave your arguments, leave all your pity

  As starter to burn our city

  When Trevor crashes into the chorus, I hear Ernie lick a counter-melody line.

  I won’t ask you to touch my skin.

  I won’t ask you to plunge back in.

  All we were, all we have ever been

  I’ll remember as golden.

  They all sing golden. I could weep they are so beautiful—these boys beside me. We back Ernie’s solo; he pulls the measures apart only to circle back to build better, more heartbreaking lines.

  It’s just a story—a fiction now

  A girl so loved, she glowed somehow

  I will wander these emptied rooms

  Dreaming of the life I knew

  If I could tell you what I have lost

  Would I feel less robbed?

  We repeat the chorus until the crowd joins us. The whole fucking place chants I’ll remember as golden. I’ll remember as golden. I’ll remember as golden.

  In the van, without stage lights or my guitar, I feel smaller: a reduction of Gig Girl, the boring aftermath. The rest of them go on laughing, and maybe they haven’t stopped since dinner. I wanted to stay with the band. We broke and loaded the gear in silence, and stood around while Joe and Trevor smoked. Comrades. The brothers I can’t tell about Hawaii.

  Kelly steps down from the van gingerly, then leans against Nate, up the walk to her doorstep. How many more nights do they have? Or any of us?

  Nigel scans radio stations. “This?” he asks, and no one argues.

  Beside me, on the backseat, Jeremy whispers, “In an hour?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “No?”

  “I’m exhausted,” I say.

  He peers at me in the dark, but doesn’t speak. Minutes later, in the street behind my house, he kisses me a light, final good-night, and I am nearly across the backyard, the screen door closing behind Nate and Nigel, when I realize that Meghan is still with us.

  “Why didn’t we drop you at the dorm?” I ask.

  “I need to walk. I’m so awake.”

  “Can I come?”

  “I thought you were exhausted.” She laughs.

  “Did you hear us?”

  “I heard.” She holds out her hand, and I take it, and fall in beside her. “The long way?” she asks. “Through the parade field?”

  “Sure.”

  The field is sodden, and the night chilled, though next week it’ll be April.

  “Will you visit?” I ask her.

  “I hope so.”

  “Will you miss me?”

  “Yes,” she says. She squeezes my hand. “Jersey for Hawaii isn’t a bad trade.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  She stops beside me, and points at the tree by the memorial. “Bats.”

  I see an indistinct, flitting shape. “Are there bats here?”

  “Right there,” she says.

  “I can’t tell.” My knees ache with cold. Anxious to keep walking, I pull her forward, my body strangely keen. “My atheist wrote me. He’s back home.”

  “On leave?”

  “Yeah. His next assignment is Hawaii—Kaneohe Bay.”

  “You’re kidding? See, you’ll already know people.”

  “Right. I can hang out with my pen pal, who happens to be in his twenties, and in the Marines.”

  “What is it you’ll miss?” Meghan asks.

  “The band, my friends, school—I might even miss Overhead—soccer, field hockey, our crummy house and the bugles and my attic and you and Jeremy and Bangs. My whole life. I’ll miss my whole life.”

  “Tropical beaches, a driver’s license, surfers, new friends, new teams, a new school.”

  “New doesn’t mean better.”

  “It doesn’t mean worse, either.”

  “I’m cold,” I say, and she presses her shoulder to mine, hurrying us through the empty field. I wish I’d brought Pepper, to have company on the walk home. “Brooks told us countless lives were saved because we nuked Japan. How can that possibly be true?”

  Meghan’s laugh is so huge and sudden that I actually shy.

  “Jesus,” I say, and punch her. “You scared me.” Practically bent in half, Meghan clutches her belly, and carries on laughing. “What’s so funny?” I ask. “She really said nuking Japan was a better option than going on with the war. I know it doesn’t sound true, but what if she’s right?” More laughter. She seems to be collapsing under the weight of it. “Seriously, where’s the comedy?”

  After some length of time, she gasps, “Where did that come from? We were talking about tropical beaches.”

  “I was thinking about beaches, and then Pearl Harbor, and kamikaze
pilots, and POW camps, and how crazy the war in the Pacific was; and when Brooks told us the thing about the nuking, I wanted to ask Dad, but I forgot, and when I remembered just now, I asked you instead.” Flustered, still not getting it, I look at her—as much as I can see in the near dark: her red wool jacket, a glint from her necklace and her eyes. “They’re all connected,” I say, almost defiantly.

  “Doesn’t your brain ever get tired?”

  It’s tired now, I’m tempted to say, but her tone surprises me.

  She takes my hand again. “Come on, crazy.” And eventually adds, “My father agrees with your teacher. Your father probably does too. For my part, I have no idea. Was it racism? Would we have nuked German cities? Was the war in the Pacific so different that you can’t even compare? Would the Japanese have gone on fighting until every one of them was dead? I don’t know. In a war filled with horrible atrocities, I’m not sure I understand any of it.”

  “Don’t worry. West Point will teach you all the right answers.”

  “I hope not. I’d rather learn to ask the sort of questions you do.”

  “Do you think I’m disloyal to you?” I ask.

  “When?”

  “With Jeremy?”

  “I don’t understand how any of this works, Cole. How can it be wrong when it feels like this?”

  We don’t reach her dorm until 2 in the morning. It feels as though we’ve walked for years, around the planet maybe. I don’t want to let go of her hand, or the night. I don’t want to be afraid anymore.

  “Come on,” she whispers. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “You’ll only have to drive back.”

  “Don’t argue. You’re always arguing.”

  “I am not.”

  “Hush,” she says. “Just this once, shut up and do as you’re told.”

  Turgid. Swollen; distended; tumid. Adj. Oh my god, tumid?

  Only midway through warm-ups, and our team is completely demoralized. Somehow, since we climbed from the bus, the following information has found its way to us: Point Pleasant Boro has nine returning seniors, an undefeated record, plans to play their second string and still annihilate us, and is led by a superstar—recruited to play for some exclusive club when she was eight—of such skill that she currently has her pick of full-ride scholarships to prestigious universities. If we doubt the truth of any of these statements, you'd never know from our sloppy shots on goal, our errant passes, or our crushed expressions.

  The whole ride up here, Kelly was all Spanish Inquisition. She kept asking if Nate had talked to any of us about the two of them coming for a visit next Christmas, or if he’d said anything about which colleges he’d applied to. Would they at least be on the East Coast together? And if the two of them did come to visit next Christmas, would they be allowed to sleep in the same room if they stayed with my parents, and did I think Nate was sorry to leave? The bus drove on and on as though nobody suffered.

  When we finally ran out onto the field, I wanted voltage and elegance. Instead, every one of us sucks, and mostly now I just want to sneak back to the bus for a quick nap. So, of course, I step into Amy Kent’s path, and catch a soccer ball with my face. Sometime later, years possibly, when I open my eyes, I see sky and three worried faces.

  “I didn’t see you,” Amy Kent says as Renee and Kelly bend down to examine me. “Your face. I’m so sorry.”

  “Am I bleeding?” I ask, afraid to touch my nose.

  “No,” Renee says.

  Kelly brushes her fingers along my right eye, down the bridge of my nose, and along my cheekbone. “That’s gonna be some bruise.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Amy Kent says again. “Seriously.”

  I touch my face. Check my hands afterward for blood. Renee and Kelly pull me up, and pat my back. Aside from the stinging, I feel fine. “I’m OK,” I tell Amy.

  We take wild shots on goal with the rest of the team, until we see a tall black girl waving to us from the sideline. “What’s up, kids!”

  “Jayna!” Renee and I run over. Seven of the basketball girls have come to cheer us on. Dressed in MRHS letterman jackets, they’re huge and imposing; their presence alone kicks something into us.

  “Ya’ll look like shit out there,” Jayna says. “We drove forty minutes to watch ya’ll look like shit?” She leans closer to me. “What the hell happened to your face?”

  “Soccer ball,” I say.

  The girls laugh. And Denise Jordan, the one who replaced me as point guard, says, “I don’t like to say you deserve it, but you mighta had a black eye coming.”

  “What’d you say?” Renee asks.

  Denise Jordan slaps my arm. “She knows I’m playing.”

  “You all through playing,” Renee says.

  Nobody says anything. In the silence, we watch the other team drill. Three girls weave and pass toward the goal; after they score, the next three weave and pass. They’re like paramilitary units.

  “Scrawny little things,” Jayna says. “Don’t look like much to me.”

  “They are scrawny,” Renee says, her voice low and almost wondering.

  The refs whistle captains to the center of the field, and we join our team for the last few minutes of warm-up.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Becky Shrader says. “Jesus. Your face.”

  I touch my eye. My face has the same weird feeling you get after shots at the dentist.

  Renee squeezes my arm at the elbow and tells Becky, “One of those scrawny girls over there did it.” She points at the other team. “Kicked a soccer ball right into Cole’s face. On purpose.”

  “What?” Becky glares at us, and then at the other team. “You fucking hear this?” She tells the girls around us Renee’s story.

  “Those scrawny little things are dead,” Renee tells me as we hustle over to Coach Robins. “I’m even a little sorry for them.”

  As sweeper, I should be attacking with the forwards, but for most of the game, I hang back with Kelly and defend our goal. Renee scores three times in the first half. She seems to glide across the field, dance past the defenders, and guide the ball into the net as though the whole thing were choreographed. My right eye has swollen shut. At halftime, me and my legendary injury get benched with an ice pack.

  Mom and Meghan squeeze in behind me on the bleachers.

  “What happened?” Meghan asks.

  “I took a ball to the face.”

  “When?” Mom asks. She has her hand under my chin, and swivels my face around to examine the bruising.

  “During warm-ups,” I say.

  “Does it hurt?” Mom asks.

  “It’s kind of numb actually.”

  Nigel leans between them and says, “It’d be so cool if you got a black eye.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “super cool.”

  After halftime, Point Pleasant Boro scores almost nonstop and beats us 8–3: our first loss all season.

  I ride home in our van, everyone else rehashing the game, the almost possessed way their team moved the ball, and the nightmarish twist of the second half. Lackluster—this loss, and my attitude, and I think I’ve never been so tired.

  When Jeremy sneaks over, I still have seven Geometry problems to solve.

  “I can barely see it,” he tells me.

  “You’re sweet,” I say.

  “Tell everybody you got into a fight at a gig.”

  “Anything sounds better than getting friendly-fired with a soccer ball.”

  “I had kind of a weird night too,” he says.

  “Weird how?”

  “My dad’s been reassigned. Effective July 1st, they’ll be in Fort Benning.”

  “Won’t you go as well?”

  “I thought we’d have more time. Half the summer anyway.”

  “Mom says we’re leaving the Saturday after school ends,” I say. “She just told me.” This isn’t true. I’ve known for several days, but I haven’t told him. I thought we’d have more time too. “Will you go to Georgia?”

  “I
don’t know.” Jeremy wears red sweatpants and a long-sleeved white t-shirt with a giant rooster logo on it. Whenever he wears some goofy t-shirt, it’s always a hand-me-down from Mike. Stretched beside me on the bed, with his head tucked in his palm, he plays with my hair. “What happens afterward—you leave and I leave—and then what?”

  I can’t imagine any of it. Not the leaving, or the separation. I can’t imagine living on an island in the Pacific. Of all the lousy ways to finish high school, that’s the lousiest. Why not send me to Alcatraz?

  “We could write letters,” I say.

  “Great. Pen pals.”

  “Maybe we should talk about something else.”

  “Yeah.” He stands. “Maybe I should go.”

  I grab his hand. “Why are you mad?”

  “When does it end? When do we get to be normal? I thought, once high school was over, I’d be free. Now you’re leaving the country, and I have no idea where I’m going to be, and you don’t even care. You’re talking about being pen pals. Have you already picked out my nickname? The Lutheran? The preacher’s son? The first?”

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “We never get to keep anything. Never. Temporary quarters, and temporary friends, and temporary schools, and we lost so much time this winter. Now it won’t be months we’re losing, it’ll be years. I’ll go years without you. Years. Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? You won’t even be on this continent.”

  He throws himself on the bed again, and covers his head with a pillow. I would touch him, but I’m afraid. I wonder if his skin will burn me.

  When he sits up, his face is wet. “I won’t even know what your room looks like.”

  “Just as crappy as this one,” I say, “unless the movers break something.”

  “I love everything in this room,” he says.

  I should comfort him, but I keep thinking about how much I hate this furniture, these paintings of mossy rocks and scrawny streams, every one of these ornate lamps. And I still have my math to finish.

  At lunch the next afternoon, Kelly and I are alone at the table when Stacy Masteller joins us.