“Jubilee?”
This time it’s clear as the bell on the gas station door, and I stand perfectly still, hoping I am invisible, or that the person saying my name will think they’re mistaken, that they’ve got the wrong person.
“Jubilee!” It’s a statement this time, a confirmation.
I turn my head slightly toward the voice, my insides a jumble of screws that have all been turned a rotation too tight.
My eyes are drawn directly to the mouth that formed my name. I’d know that mouth anywhere. I used to stare at it in school—so much that at times I wondered if I might secretly be a lesbian. But in the end, I realized it wasn’t my fault. She knew how to draw attention to it. Constantly licking her lips, as if she were always searching for a crumb at the corner of her mouth that was just slightly out of reach. I spent hours in the mirror trying to lick my lips like that, but I always looked like a camel whose tongue was too big for its mouth.
Now her lips are formed into a wide smile—so wide that I’m afraid her lips might crack, if it weren’t for the layers of thick, gooey gloss holding them together.
Her hair, which used to shine all the way down to her mid-back, now stops just below her chin and is swingy, but other than that she looks the exact same.
Madison H. There were three Madisons in our class, so we identified them by their last initial, but Madison H. was the only one who mattered.
She nods, and I realize I’ve said her name out loud.
“Jubilee Jenkins,” she says, never breaking her grin. She’s now within spitting distance of me and my hand reflexively squeezes the handle of the pump tighter.
I watch her eyes take me in—my black sweatpants, my gloves, the gas can I’m holding limp at my side like a cumbersome handbag—and I’m sixteen again, wishing I could be more like her.
“I heard that you had . . . um . . . moved,” she says, her eyes darting down and to the left. I wonder what the real rumors were. That I died, joined a traveling circus, entered some top secret government research program. When we moved to New Jersey and I started Lincoln High School as a freshman, the only saving grace was that I had the chance to start over—to be somebody new. Aside from the faculty and school nurse that we met with before school started, I didn’t have to tell anyone at Lincoln High about my condition. So I didn’t. And as far as I could tell, the teachers kept it a secret. But that didn’t stop the stares and whispers and speculation in the hallways and during class.
“Nope,” I manage. My voice is soft, shaky, and I’m as embarrassed by it as I am by my appearance.
She stares at me, as if waiting for something more—an explanation of what I’ve been doing for the past nine years—and the same panic I felt with the cashier begins to creep in: Where do I look? What do I do in the silences? What if I laugh at something that’s not funny?
“Well, I’m divorced,” she says with a little giggle, as if she’s just told a corny knock-knock joke. “Trying to get back out there in the dating scene, but it’s not so easy with three kids.”
My eyes bulge, even as I direct them not to. Perfect, pretty, popular Madison H., who was probably voted most likely to be a famous reality TV star—or at least marry one—is a twenty-eight-year-old divorcée with three kids?
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It’s my mom’s voice. I don’t think I’m mean enough to take joy in other people’s misfortunes—even if that person is Madison H.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “About your, um”—I clear my throat, hoping that will force it to become louder, less shaky, more normal—“divorce.” It doesn’t.
She waves her hand at me. “Oh, it’s fine. Those high school romances aren’t meant to last a lifetime. Should’ve listened to Nana about that.”
High school romance? “So . . . you mean . . . you married . . .” I search for my tongue in my mouth and try to make it form the name, but I am the very definition of speechless. Unable to speak. His name, at least.
“Donovan, yeah.”
She says it so easily, so casually, as if she’s telling me something irrelevant, like that she had muesli for breakfast.
I try to repeat his name, to see if it is that easy. If it just rolls off the tongue.
It doesn’t.
“You didn’t know that?” She cocks her head. “Aren’t you on Facebook?”
I shake my head no, hoping I’m giving the impression that I’m better than Facebook and not that I belonged to it for a total of three weeks and the only person who friended me was a man whose profile wasn’t in English. It may have been in Russian, but I’m not sure—I’m not great at differentiating between the various Slavic languages. In short, I closed my account.
“Well, anyway . . .” She eyes me up and down—her gaze resting on my gloves for a second longer than anywhere else—and I cringe again at my appearance. “What are you up to?”
I clear my throat as my brain scrambles to answer her.
“I ran out of gas,” I say. “And I need it.” That was stupid. Of course I need it if I ran out. “I mean—I, um . . . I’m looking for a job.”
“Get out!” she says, and she moves her hand as if she’s going to tap me right in the arm with her bloodred manicured hand but then stops at the last second. I flinch anyway, and it’s an awkward moment.
“Sorry,” she says, her extra-wide grin reappearing, “but we’re losing our assistant at the library and maybe that’s something you’d be interested in?”
The library? Madison H. is a librarian? A vivid memory barrels its way into my mind—Madison H. in English lit our junior year loudly complaining that Huckleberry Finn was too hard to get through: “Why can’t they just use real English?”
“So you work . . . at the library?”
“Oh God no,” she says. “I’m in real estate—well, I just got my license to be a Realtor. But I’m on the board of the library. Donovan thought it would be good for me, with him being in line to be president at the bank when his dad retires, blah, blah—not that any of that matters now.” She titters again. “But it’s fine. It’s a good experience.”
I nod, the word “Donovan” striking a chord in me again, vibrating through my whole body. And then I’m lost in the tidal wave of memories his name—and seeing Madison H.—conjures.
“Jubilee?” Madison says. I blink. Her voice is quiet, subdued.
“Yeah?” I say, struggling to meet her eyes. The humiliation is so acute, so fresh, it makes me want to sprint all the way home, leaving my bike, my handbag, the gas can, everything parked in front of the glass door at Wawa.
“Why are you doing that, that thing with your hands?”
I look down and see that my right fingers are methodically tapping the wrist that’s attached to my hand holding the gas can. I wonder how long I’ve been doing it.
“No reason,” I say, heat rising in my cheeks. I give my head a shake, a futile effort to rid myself of the past. “So, um, I don’t have any résumés with me. Can I send you one? For the library thing?”
Her eyes brighten. “You’re interested?” she says. “That’s great. Don’t worry about the résumé.” She pulls out her cell phone from the purse hanging off her shoulder. “Just give me your number and I’ll put in a word for you. I’m sure they’ll call you.”
I nod again and enunciate the digits that correlate with my house phone.
“Great,” she says. “Well, it was really good to see—”
“Why are you doing this for me?” I know it’s rude to interrupt, but the question is burning the insides of my mouth and I have to release it.
She shrugs, as if she doesn’t know what I mean, but her eyes shift, betraying her. “It’s a good coincidence,” she says. “You’re looking for a job, and I know a place that has one.”
But we both know it’s more than that. If you could open our brains and reveal our thoughts, I’m sure we’d both be thinking of the same moment, in the same courtyard that, try as I might, I can’t ever forget—the moment when Donovan kissed
me. I thought we were alone, until a gaggle of kids came charging around the corner, pushing one another and laughing and shoving money toward Donovan—payment on their bet. Madison was one of them, though I don’t remember her laughing. Her face was long, serious, and the last one I saw before I passed out. And I always wondered, if she wasn’t there to laugh at me like the rest of them, why was she there at all?
four
ERIC
A YEAR BEFORE OUR divorce, Stephanie and I went to see her priest for counseling. It wasn’t my idea. When she suggested it, I countered: “How can he help us? He’s never been married.” But as with many of our arguments, I lost. In one of the sessions, she complained that I was too negative.
“I’m just realistic,” I said. Still, wanting to do what I could to save our marriage, I took Father Joe’s advice and tried putting a positive spin on things.
Sitting across from the guidance counselor and principal at Aja’s new school, I catch myself doing it now. Aja went to school for six whole weeks without getting into trouble. He’s not a troublemaker, per se. Or at least, he doesn’t mean to be. But schools take everything so seriously these days.
“Did you hear us, Mr. Keegan?” says the guidance counselor. She introduced herself when I walked in, but now I can’t remember her name. It sounded like a candy bar. Hershey? “Aja threatened to blow him up. We take threats like that very seriously here.”
I sigh and rub my hand over my face. After deciding in September that curtailing my caffeine intake while simultaneously starting a new job was a bad idea, I promised myself I would try again in earnest in October. That’s why this morning—two weeks into the month, but still technically October—I gave up my habit cold turkey, And now, the beginning of a monstrous headache is lurking directly behind my eyes. It’s starting to feel like a poor decision. “Yes, I’m aware,” I say. “But I doubt he threatened anyone. He’s not exactly menacing. Look at him.”
Aja’s sitting in the chair next to me, his bony shoulders hunched over, his feet swinging below his bent knees—too short to graze the ground. He has headphones on, and he’s staring intently at his iPad, tapping the screen furiously with his fingers, but his face looks so, well, not intimidating. I pull one of those godforsaken earbuds out of his ear and he looks up at me. “Aja, did you threaten to blow someone up?” His large eyes grow larger. He shakes his head.
I put the earbud back in, resisting the urge to sneer at the guidance counselor.
“I threatened to blow up his book bag,” Aja says loudly, unable to modulate the decibel level of his voice due to the video game sounds infiltrating his ears. He turns his attention back to the iPad.
“You what?”
The principal and Mrs. Hershey look at me with their overly concerned yet smug faces. Something explodes in a fiery burst on Aja’s screen.
“Yahtzee!” he yells. I hope they can’t see what he’s playing.
He looks back up, as if he’s just realized that that’s what we’re here for. “It didn’t work, though,” he says, and turns back to his game.
“Obviously, he’s joking,” I say, glaring at Aja. “He didn’t have any explosives on him, did he?” I feel confident that he didn’t, but I pause just to be sure.
The principal gives a small shake of his head, and relief floods through me.
“So, how could he possibly blow up something?”
“Mr. Keegan, we have to take every threat seriously,” says the principal.
“Well, it’s not exactly a threat if he didn’t have any of the required materials to follow through on it. And anyway, what about that guy?” I direct my thumb and their attention at the giant fifth-grade kid sitting on the other side of the glass window from us. “He didn’t just threaten Aja, he assaulted him.”
“Yes, well, we’re dealing with Jagger. But right now, we’re talking about Aja,” says Mrs. Hershey.
“Jagger? His name is Jagger?”
She ignores me. “Given Aja’s . . . er, background. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take some precautionary measures.”
“His background?” Here it comes.
She glances down at the top paper in the thick manila folder she’s holding. “Yes.” Her eyes flit to Aja. “Aja, could you step out of the room for just a minute?”
Aja doesn’t hear her. I tap him gently on the arm and he pulls out an earbud. “Aja, head out into the hall. I’ll be there in a minute.” He pauses his game, stands, and walks to the door. “And stay away from that Jagger kid,” I yell after him.
The door closes behind him and I look back at Mrs. Hershey.
“Specifically, we’re concerned about the schizotypal personality disorder,” she says.
I roll my eyes. “He’s never been formally diagnosed with that. It shouldn’t even be in his records.”
The principal, who hasn’t said much during this meeting, clears his throat. I look at him, waiting for him to chime in, but he doesn’t.
“Look, he doesn’t meet the requirements for that, that . . . disorder—or for the autism spectrum or grand delusions, or any other label you people have tried to stick on him in his short life. He’s just a kid! A regular freakin’ kid.”
OK, to be fair, I know Aja’s not regular. But, really, who is? That Jagger kid isn’t exactly your typical fifth grader, either. And I’m not taking Aja back to some psychiatrist just so he can be drugged out of his mind again. My head is throbbing in earnest now and I massage a temple with two fingers. They really should offer coffee at these things.
“Let’s calm down now,” the principal says in his deep baritone. “We’re just going to give everyone a few days to cool off.”
“You’re suspending him. That’s what that means, right?” Damn it. Even though I’ve been at work for five weeks, I’m still the new guy trying to set an example for my team—not to mention we’re slammed. There’s no way I can take off.
“We think that’s best for everyone right now,” he says.
“How is not going to school the best thing for Aja?”
He continues as if I haven’t even spoken. “And then we can discuss seeking a more . . . appropriate behavioral monitoring plan for Aja. Perhaps he’d do better in a different classroom environment.”
“If you’re talking about some kind of special education, you can forget it. Aja is one of the most intelligent kids in your school. Hell, five minutes ago, he was the most intelligent person in this room. By far.” I nod my head in the direction of the folder the counselor is still clutching. “Look that up in his chart.”
I stand up and leave without so much as a good-bye and let the office door swing shut behind me. Aja’s sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room from Jagger. I glare at the giant kid as I tap Aja on the shoulder. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
On the walk to the car, I can almost hear Dinesh in my ear. Well done, mate. Fuck ’em all. Let’s get a pint.
No, that’s what he would have said if I had told off an annoying coworker, or Stephanie in the thick of our divorce proceedings—but the administration of his son’s school? Dinesh never would have done that. He would have charmed them with his muddled British accent and smoothed things over in less time than it took me to sit down.
I don’t know why he chose me to be Aja’s guardian. I do, in the sense that I was the only logical person, geographically. His wife Kate’s parents, with whom she wasn’t all that close to begin with, still live in Liverpool, and Dinesh and Kate wanted Aja to be raised in America. And Dinesh’s parents didn’t let the modern metropolis of their home in London influence their belief that Dinesh should marry the Indian girl of their choosing. They stopped speaking to him soon after he informed them of his engagement to Kate.
Dinesh and I met in college, when we were put on a group project together in a business management class. I was already married to Stephanie, and I was taken, as most people were, by his devil-may-care attitude toward life in general. Maybe I was jealous of it. But I also became quickly ann
oyed at his propensity to debate every opinion that arose in the course of our project. We got into a blowout argument over the correct branding strategy for the fake cereal company we were managing together, and just when I thought I was going to explode in anger over his irrationality, he started laughing, chucked me in the arm, and said, “You win, mate. Let’s go get a pint.” It was all a game to him. Debating. Being the devil’s advocate. Getting people ruffled and then just as easily smoothing things over. And getting a pint was his solution for everything.
Four years later over another beer, he told me Kate was pregnant and joked that having been the best man at his wedding, I’d inherited the role of godfather to his soon-to-be-born son, with the responsibility of stepping in if anything ever happened to him. We clinked glass mugs and I promptly forgot about it, because what would ever happen to Dinesh? He was invincible.
Until he wasn’t.
“What are we having for dinner?” Aja asks me when we get in the car. For a second, I swear I can hear Dinesh’s voice in his. Aja only has a trace of a British accent—a small part of his dad that he carries with him like a coin in his pocket. And he sometimes interjects words like “quite” and “actually” into his sentences, making him sound even older than he already does with his advanced vocabulary.
“Dinner? We’re not talking about dinner, Aja,” I say. “You’re in big trouble.”
“Why? I didn’t do anything,” he says.
“What do you mean you didn’t do anything? You threatened to blow someone up!”
“Not someone, a book bag,” he says.
“Fine, a book bag. You can’t do that, Aja. And now you’re suspended for three days, and I have to go to work. You’ve got to stop with all this telekinetic explosion stuff.”
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