The Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

  Nothing doing.

  "Hi, Bo. I'm Jade." I peer back at him.

  "Jade?" the boy says. "Wow, that's really pretty."

  Heat rises in my cheeks. God, don't blush. Please don't blush. Okay, I'm blushing. I think I'm flaming red. Blushing is so unfair. Might as well wear a sign: WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS

  TO ME.

  He doesn't offer his own name. The conversation stops. Awkward silence. Well, that's it.

  "And you?" I have to at least know this. Just this--his name.

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  "Oh," he says. He seems startled. "Sebastian. Sebastian Wilder."

  Awkward silence again.

  "Well, I'd better be going," I say.

  "Yeah, I better get this guy fed. He's got maybe twenty minutes before he goes ballistic."

  "Good luck," I say.

  "Maybe we'll see you again," he says.

  "That'd be great," I say. "I could show you around."

  "Sure," he says, but he doesn't seem sure. Maybe I'd gone too far. Shit, I'd gone too far.

  "See you," he says. "Maybe tomorrow." I hadn't gone too far. Okay, I hadn't. I'd done fine.

  "Bye," I say. "Bye, Bo."

  No response, not that I'm expecting one. I walk away, am almost down the path, when behind me I hear a small voice: "Ba-ba." Bye-bye.

  I smile. I refrain from doing what I really feel like doing-- leaping and hugging things. Hugging and shouting and doing good deeds for people for the rest of my life. Joy spirals through every part of me, spins and sparkles, lifts up my heart and makes everything look right. Jake Gillette is in the parking lot with his skateboard again, racing over a new ramp, and even his parachute looks bold and majestic.

  "Cool skateboard!" I shout, and Jake smiles and does another leap for me. I pass Total Vid. Titus looks out, and this time I wave. He raises his pinkie and thumb in the Hawaiian "hang loose"

  greeting. The world--it sits in the palm of my hand. It's all mine, if I want it.

  Mr. Chen is getting out of his car, coming home from work.

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  "Hi, Mr. Chen," I say. I hear the singing in my voice.

  "Hi, Jade," Mr. Chen says. He sounds surprised. He holds his briefcase and a clump of mail.

  "Have a good evening!" I say. The day is one of the most monumental and spectacular in the history of days. I have met the red-jacket boy. And he did not have a wedding ring.

  I see the letter on the kitchen counter when I come home, an acceptance to the University of Washington, just a ten-minute drive from home. Mom has already opened it.

  "Did you see that, honey?" she shouts from the living room.

  "I see it."

  "You don't sound too excited. This is wonderful. God, I'm so proud of you."

  "I am excited." I am. Everything is working out beautifully. The best school in the state, a red-jacket boy. I'm not sure why I feel this small, grating annoyance. The sense of something being scraped against something else. Maybe I'm just pissed she'd opened my mail. I tell my backstage mind to shut the hell up. I don't want anything to intrude on the happiness I'm feeling. Soaring, red-jacket happiness.

  "Well, it's no surprise, though, with your grades. Bring it here so we can read it together."

  She has her feet up on the couch, a book open on her knees. She sits up to make room for me and I sit beside her.

  "You've got your whole life ahead of you. Wow. God, I'm a greeting card," she says.

  "At least not, 'Sorry for your loss.'"

  "Really. It's corny, but it's true. Can you believe we're looking at this? A letter from college?"

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  "I know. Freaks me out."

  "I'm sure. This is huge. Dad hasn't seen it yet," she says. "He's getting changed for dinner. He'll be so pleased."

  I hand her the letter, check out the book she is reading. "The Life and Times of Alexander Hamilton?"

  "It's interesting. Quit with the look. It really is."

  "Since when do you read history?"

  "I read history," she says. "Mr. Dutton recommended it. It's fascinating. I couldn't put it down.

  Did you know he was illegitimate?"

  "Mr. Dutton?" I say.

  "Alexander Hamilton! Not Roger."

  Roger?

  "Oh. Wow," I say.

  "Pretty shocking for those days . . .," she says.

  She's missed my sarcasm. I turn it up a notch. "Now I understand why you're reading a"--I check the back of the book--"682-page book about the guy."

  Mom does this thing with her mouth that reminds me of the time Dad took Oliver and me to a trout farm, just after we'd caught the poor targets, pulled them out of the water, and laid them on the dock.

  I don't have time to follow this up, because Dad's voice booms from the direction of the kitchen.

  "Should I be taking this out?" he yells.

  "Oh, shit," Mom says. "Dinner. I forgot." She tosses aside my acceptance letter and leaps up. I follow her into the kitchen. Dad is wearing an oven mitt with smiling vegetables on it, and he's holding a pan. The vegetables are the only things smiling. There's a small dark item the size of my fist in the center of the pan.

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  I crack up. "Was that a roast? Toasted roast. Toasted miniroast."

  "I didn't even smell it burning," Mom says. "It's supposed to cook slowly, but probably not for ..." Mom checks her watch. "Oh, my God. Three and a half hours. " She chuckles and so do I.

  Dad sets the pan down on the stove with a clatter. He seems pissed. Big deal, so she forgot. You know, give her a break, for God's sake. In the last ten minutes, I've been annoyed at her for opening my mail, and at him for being mean. When Oliver comes downstairs to help me set the table, I'm so glad to see him, I sock his arm. It's one of those times where you look for someone to like just so you don't hate everyone.

  At dinner, Oliver chews his roast dramatically. It's pretty impossible--a piece of tire that had self-destructed on the freeway would have been easier. "Okay, all right," Mom says. She is half grinning, too, because, really, it's pretty funny. But Dad actually spits an attempted chunk of beef into his napkin and then shoves his plate away. He's being a real ass, if you ask me.

  "I guess reading comes before dinner," he says.

  Mom ignores him. She scoots her rice around with the edge of her fork. She doesn't apologize (good), acts as if no one has spoken. She puts a mouthful of rice in, then looks up and meets his eyes. She's daring him to say more--her eyebrows are raised in a silent statement of Anything else you care to say? They stare at each other for a moment, saying a thousand unsaids. Oliver has gotten very still. I'm not sure he's even breathing. The silence crawls around into the corners of the room, scary-movie-music style, something-bad-about-to-happen. I count the syllables in Reading comes be/ore dinner and end up on my

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  pinkie on the second try. Finally, the silence is more than I can take.

  "Oh, my God, I forgot," I say. My voice seems loud. It's better than the silence, though, better than them staring like animals about to fight. "Coach Bardon called yesterday. He cancelled practice tomorrow. Good thing I remembered! Work or something." Mom's head pops up. She looks at me. Her eyes ask the question, and my eyes answer. She rubs the bridge of her nose, hides her smirk behind her hand. She's pissed enough at Dad to go along.

  "I don't understand why he took the position if he's never going to show," Dad says.

  "Well, don't say anything to him about it," Mom says quickly. "He's a volunteer. They're never appreciated as it is. Boy, don't I know."

  "I never said I was going to say anything to him. I'm not going to say anything to him. I just don't think he should volunteer if he's never going to show. It's a lousy lesson to teach the team. That's his third cancellation."

  Oliver kicks me under the table.

  "He's obviously a busy man," Mom says. "Who also has a life besides sports practice."

  "We're all busy people," Dad says. "If this continues, I'm talking to the league, vol
unteer or not."

  Oliver kicks me again. After dinner, Mom mouths You're good! as we get up from the table. I snag a piece of Oliver's sweatshirt. "Let's get out of here."

  "Okay," he whispers.

  "I'm starving. Dairy Queen? Something with butterscotch."

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  "Ice cream like Mrs. Cartarett's hair," he says. Mrs. Cartarett was his kindergarten teacher. She did have that hair--tall, with a curl on top.

  We take Milo, too. He hates the feel of the leather seats of Mom's car, so he gathers himself up and perches on the carpeted mound of the side armrest, tail up, butt against the window and mooning every car we pass. Every time we turn a corner, he balances against the curve like some surfer in Riding Giants. Gnarly hot doggin', Milo. Bitchin'.

  A few moments later, Oliver and I are happily clutching our pink plastic spoons.

  "Don't ever say I don't take care of you," I say.

  That night, I lie on my bed and look out my window, into the darkness. It's supposed to be sunny and clear tomorrow, one of those rare February tastes of spring, and so the stars are out, getting ready. I replay my conversation with Sebastian-- Sebastian!--a thousand times. I watch the white and red lights of an airplane move across the sky. I am soaring, too, like that plane, so full of hope that for once I don't think of the weight of its metal, hanging improbably in midair, the impossibility of that. No, instead I wonder about the people up there. I wonder who is reading a magazine, who is fishing around in their purse for a stick of cinnamon gum, who is quieting a baby. I wonder where they are all heading. I think not of wings falling from the sky, but of wheels touching down, just as they should. The airplane landing. One piece, whole. I think of the doors opening, revealing a new place--a place so bright and welcoming it would make you blink.

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  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Animals who are bored in captivity will think of ingenious ways to amuse themselves. A chimpanzee will pretend to get his arm stuck in the bars of his cage, or will hang by his teeth from a piece of string he's found and spin around. One lion realized that if he urinated at a certain angle, he could spray his visitors and make them shriek . . . --Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

  American Government is group anesthesia. It's so mind numbingly dull that I stoop to counting the ceiling panels and the floor tiles. After that, I watch Jason Olsen flick pieces of pencil lead, trying to hit the bottom of Alicia Watanabe's shoe. He actually succeeds once, and I have to refrain from clapping. Of course, Mr. Arron isn't teaching us the fascinating, page-turning, and dinner-burning excitement of Alexander Hamilton's illegitimacy, so who can blame me.

  I bolt out of there, but so does everyone else, and we jam up the doorway like cattle moving toward the slaughterhouse. Or Calculus, rather--same thing. After that, Jenna drives me and Hannah and this other new friend of Hannah's, Kayla Swenson, to McDonald's for lunch, and even that model of fast-food frenzy seems slower than a stationary bike on a freeway. I am so looking forward to getting to the zoo later that time has turned slow and oozing.

  "I really liked the rest of the campus, and then the tour's 115

  almost over and I have to go to the bathroom," Jenna tells us. "I go in there, and I'm washing my hands, and I see this sticker on the tampon dispenser. It says something like, 'The apostle Paul says to let the love of Jesus Christ guide your every action.'"

  "Every action?" Hannah says.

  "That's just it," Jenna says.

  "On the tampon display?" Kayla says. "That's just twisted." The weatherman was right about the day's weather--it is crisp and blue but still February cold, which doesn't stop Kayla from wearing this tiny skirt that barely covers her ass, thanks for sharing. Kayla is a cheerleader, so ass showing is part of her regular daily routine, same as some people brush their teeth.

  "I'm just thinking that maybe the student population there isn't as serious as they should be,"

  Jenna says. She crumples up her fries bag, wipes the table with napkins even though we haven't spilled anything.

  "Isn't that a good thing?" Hannah says.

  "Yeah, you know, I don't see how you're going to have any fun at a Christian school," Kayla says.

  "Depends on what kind of fun. There are lots of different kinds of fun," Jenna says.

  "Fun fun," Kayla says. Her Coke straw has lipstick on it. "Guy fun. Party fun. Drinking fun."

  I'm staying out of this. It's the whole culture of all-consuming nowness I try to avoid. Ever present and screaming its message in the halls, on television, on everyone's personal web pages.

  Do me, I'm yours. I'm part of the counterculture who actually thinks about the future. Subversive activities are always best kept a secret, so I keep my mouth shut. I take the lid off my milk shake, watch the blob of ice cream come sliding

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  down the cup, heading for a collision with my face.

  "You guys just don't get it," Jenna says.

  "Isn't it time to go?" Kayla says. "I don't have a watch."

  I open wide, slide in the ice cream, aim the lid back on the cup, and get up. "Yeah, we better get back."

  Jenna is silent on the ride back, but it doesn't matter, because Hannah and Kayla don't shut up the whole way.

  It goes something like this:

  Kayla: I'm just about to go into the dressing room, and I turn and there's Chad, and I just about have a heart attack because I haven't seen him since all that, and I just freeze, and of course he still looks so hot, and then I say to Melanie, 'Let's get the fuck out of here,' and I just get in line with what I've got because it looked great on the hanger and if I put it back and come back later I know it's gonna be gone, so I buy it and now I've got this pink shirt and it's got this elastic right here . . .

  Hannah: Ugh.

  Kayla: I know it. But, shit--Chad.

  Hannah: I'm a sucker for guys with sexy eyes. And Chad ...

  Kayla and Hannah: Has sexy eyes! (laughter)

  The whole time, Jenna is breathing out her nose like a cartoon bull about to charge. I'm biting my tongue, because I'm trying not to remind Hannah that she's not a sucker for guys with sexy eyes, she's a sucker for guys with any eyes at all.

  I am starting to get that vaguely irritated feeling again, that sense of fingernails scraping down my internal chalkboard. We are friends, it seems, simply because we've always been friends.

  Like Milo and his blankie, Flora and her tire. My friends are a habit, same as the way I always put my socks on before I put on my pants.

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  "Great, Abe. Everything's terrific." I'm hoping to make this quick. My weekly appointment and I can't cancel without my parents finding out and it being a big deal. If I hurry out of there, I'll still have an hour or so with the elephants, and a chance to see Sebastian.

  Abe taps his pencil, just waits. I know he does it so I'll fill in the blank space between us with words. I know it, but, shit, it always works.

  "Terrific, really. You know, except for my parents' having a long-distance relationship even though they live in the same house."

  "You think they might be growing through some changes?"

  Another Abe-ism. "Are you a vegetarian, Abe?"

  "No. I've tried. But I can only go about three days before I'm craving some huge juicy cheeseburger." He lets out a little groan of carnivorous pleasure.

  "When you say things like 'growing through some changes' you sound like a vegetarian. I don't think they're growing so much as about to kill each other."

  "I didn't say growth doesn't hurt." Another thing he says often. So often, in fact, he has a poster on one wall: ALL NEUROTIC PAIN IS CAUSED BY THE AVOIDANCE OF REAL PAIN--

  JUNG.

  "Can you kill with silence?"

  "Oh, yeah. Absolutely," Abe says. "How do you feel about that silence?"

  "Makes me nuts. All the unsaids are like a heavy-metal band playing at some higher vibration only me and dogs can hear."

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  "And you manage th
e stress how?"

  "I get out of the house. The volunteering's been great." No way am I going to tell him more right then. I look up at the clock in his office.

  "Attacks?" he asks.

  "Just an almost-once, but I'd had a cup of coffee, which was stupid." Coffee is not my friend. It gets me feeling agitated and looking around for a reason why.

  "Are you late for your plane?"

  "What?"

  "You keep looking at the clock."

  "Oh. No. It's just. . . I'm going to meet a friend."

  Abe smiles. Taps the damn pencil.

  "I'm kind of . . . looking forward to it."

  "Jade?" Abe says.

  "Yeah?"

  "Go. Get out of here."

  I have my mom's car, which is great, because I basically have this traveling freshening-up station.

  Don't get me wrong--I'd never put on makeup while I'm driving or anything like that, because I could just see me running over some bicyclist and killing him because I had a mascara wand stuck in my eye. No way in hell. Just the idea of it makes me want to unwrap a cough drop, quick.

  But as soon as I park, I swipe on the travel-size deodorant I keep in my backpack and put on a little makeup. I want him to accept me as I am, but I want to look good too.

  I change into my overalls, and notice that Onyx isn't in the elephant house. I go around out front, look for her saggy old self in the enclosure. No Onyx. Maybe she's just out of range, 119

  but I get this little seed of worry. I find Damian in his office. "Good afternoon," he says. "Hi," I say. "Where's Onyx?" "You didn't hear."

  "Oh, no." I have a sick feeling. My stomach rolls up, sinks in sadness preparation.

  "Chai charged her. She's being treated. She's all right."

  Relief. All right. All right meant not dead. It hit me then with tidal-wave, lightning, hurricane force--how much I cared for them. The devastation I'd feel if something happened to one of them.

  What we risk when we invest in one another.

  "What happened?"

  "Baby Hansa. Onyx was being aggressive with her. Butting her, shoving. Mama Chai was furious. It was a dangerous situation for Elaine, who was there. And Hansa. I was just on the phone with Point Defiance. She'll have to be moved if this continues." Point Defiance--the zoo in Tacoma. "They'll take her, but Onyx is suffering. More rejection--is that the answer? I think not.