Later:
The girls went off to the bathroom. The television over the bar was showing a commercial with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, which prompted Don, Chuck, and me to have the obligatory sports conversation. Was Jordan really the best ever? Don’t look at his points, look at his shooting percentage. And what about our own pathetic Knicks? It’s too bad Ewing’s ego can’t play center instead of him. At least the Yankees look good for next year again. Don told us about how he played football in college. “I mean, I’m not saying I was the greatest, but I was good enough in high school to get a partial scholarship to Indiana. So I’m playing there freshman year, doing all right, you know? Nothing to write home about, but I’m starting to develop some real ability. Anyway, we’re at practice one afternoon having a scrimmage, you know, white shirts and colors, and I’m running long for a pass, and my foot comes down on something funny, twists my ankle all out of whack, rips a bunch of ligaments.” He made a circular motion with one hand, a kind of italicized et cetera symbol while chugging on his beer with the other. “Turns out some guys had been drinking on the field the night before and someone left a beer can. That’s what I landed on.” He frowned and shook his head sadly, as if reliving the injury. “You just don’t expect, in a program like Indiana University, to have fucking beer cans on the field during practice. It’s not professional.” Chuck and I nodded in drunken agreement. “I mean Jesus, a beer can …”
Later:
McAvoy’s was packed. The song playing on the jukebox was Madonna’s “Crazy for You,” and everyone was on the floor for a slow dance. I wrapped myself around Lindsey, her right leg planted firmly against the inside of my thigh, her head bumping softly against my chin as we danced, like a boat tied up at the dock. A few couples away, Chuck was dancing with the girl who thought Pearl Jam was an old band. She nuzzled his neck while he whispered to her, running his hands provocatively up and down her sides. On the opposite side of the small dance floor, Alison was dancing companionably with Don, her back to us, her head resting on his shoulder in quiet meditation. Her hair hung down behind her, covering his hand which rested on her back. I saw him move his hand out, looking at the hair spilling over his fingers as if he couldn’t believe it was really there. He let it drop against her back and unconsciously brushed out the loose tangles with his fingers, a gentle gesture that seemed, for no apparent reason, to express a profound sadness within him. For a moment, it felt like college again, and I closed my eyes, trying to submerge myself in deja vu. I inhaled softly, smelling the uniquely familiar combination of beer, smoke, sawdust, and shampoo and for a moment the illusion was complete. But then the song ended and Third Eye Blind came on, singing “Semi-Charmed Life,” as nineties as you could get, and Chuck’s date began churning and gyrating with delight, waving her hands and letting out a whoop as her decade reasserted itself, and the moment was gone.
Later:
McAvoy’s was closing and we were all too wasted to drive. I suggested asking the reporters for a ride home since they would no doubt follow us there anyway, but when we got outside we found that they’d called it a night. Deputy Dan was sleeping in his car across the street, and we decided to let him be. Eventually Paul, the guy who worked the door, offered us a lift home. We all piled into his old blue van, which smelled of yeast and coffee. Don declined the lift, explaining that he was staying at an inn down the block. There were handshakes and hugs all around, and Don promised he’d be out to see us tomorrow. We watched him from the rear window of the van, waving wistfully at us until we turned the corner. The benches in the van weren’t bolted too tightly, and they rocked every time Paul accelerated. Only after he’d dropped us off did it dawn on me that we were only three. Chuck and his new friend had disappeared.
The next morning I staggered into the kitchen, queasy and dehydrated, to find the girl Chuck had been hitting on last night sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, eating a hard-boiled egg and thumbing through a Sharper Image catalogue. “Hi,” she said, her voice reverberating off my eardrums like they were rubber. I muttered a hello, and shoved a mug under the coffee maker. Bart Simpson stared up at me from the side of the mug, recommending that I not have a cow. My brain seemed to be struggling with the urge to burst out of my head and find a dark, quiet cave to crawl into.
“Hangover?” she asked brightly. I couldn’t tell if it was her mouth or my head that needed a volume control. Probably both.
“Thanks, I’ve already got one,” I said, sitting down in the chair across from her, holding my mug in both hands as if I could somehow absorb the coffee quicker that way.
“Ha ha,” she said, taking a dainty little bite out of her egg.
“Where’s Chuck?” I asked after a long sip.
“Who? Oh, he’s sleeping like a dead man.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“Hardly,” she said with a lascivious grin.
“I don’t think I caught your name.”
“Jenna.”
“I’m Ben.”
“Hi,” she said, rather pointlessly. “What happened to your face?”
“I was born like this.”
“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” she exclaimed and then, getting it, giggled. “Oh. Very funny.”
We sat in silence for a moment, I sipping my coffee intensely, she taking ridiculous little bites from her egg, holding it between her thumb and forefinger as if she were afraid she might crush it. “Who the hell buys these things?” she said, and for a second I wondered if she meant the egg, but then I saw that she was indicating one of the gadgets in the catalogue, a key chain/pepper spray/laser pointer. I decided the question had been rhetorical. The next one wasn’t. “Say, Ben, do you think you could give me a lift?” I saw some egg yolk caught under the metal barbell running through her tongue, and the reason for her peculiar little bites became clear.
It was still pretty early, and the media camped out across the street were still shivering over their first coffees of the day, so we were able to get into Chuck’s car, which he’d somehow managed to drive home last night, and out of the driveway before they could scramble to their cameras. The steering wheel felt like an icicle in my hands, and my chest muscles contracted in the cold air. “Jesus, it’s cold,” I hissed, turning the heat up full blast, which served only to blow a jet of frigid air into my face. Jenna giggled and waved at the reporters, twisting around in her seat until they were out of view. “Cool,” she said, plopping back down in the passenger seat.
“I can’t believe Chuck drove home,” I said. “He was pretty wasted.”
“I drove,” she said proudly. I didn’t bother pointing out that she’d been drinking, too. Jenna pulled some makeup out of a small leather knapsack and began applying it, pulling down the sun visor to use the mirror on it. When she was done, she cracked the window and lit up a cigarette. She leaned over and proffered the pack to me, shrugging when I declined and tossing it back into the knapsack. “It’s here, on the right,” she suddenly said.
“What, the high school?” I said.
“Yep.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Everyone thinks I look older,” she said boastfully.
“Older than what?”
“What?”
“Please tell me that you’re eighteen.”
“Okay. I’m eighteen,” she said with a smirk.
“Really?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t think your parents missed you last night?”
She dismissed my concern with a carefree wave. “I was sleeping at a friend’s.”
“Well, I guess that’s sort of true.”
“You don’t tell and I won’t.”
I pulled over to the curb, staying well behind the buses that were parked in front of the school letting out a seemingly endless flow of students, who broke ranks as soon as they exited the buses, mixing effortlessly into the youthful chaos of the school’s front yard. Despite the cold, no one seemed
to be in a rush to get inside. Why try to be older, I thought to myself, when you could still be here.
“Thanks for the ride, Ben,” said Jenna, leaning over and planting a warm kiss on my cheek. “You’re the best.” In one fluid motion she was out of the car and strolling toward the school gates. Feeling oddly paternal, I watched as she bounded gracefully up the three stairs and in to the front yard, where she turned to give me one final wave before the crowd consumed her.
When I pulled into the driveway, the reporters were back at their posts across the road, cameras and microphones in hand. There seemed to be more of them than yesterday, all packed into the barricaded area. I noticed a number of men holding still cameras with large telephoto lenses and judged them to be freelance photographers. The paparazzi had arrived. I drove by them with my windows closed and pulled into the driveway. I hoped for Chuck’s sake that none of them had gotten a good view of Jenna. I heard the sound of a bouncing ball and looked up to see Jeremy standing in the driveway. Taz sat on his haunches on the grass behind the basketball hoop, his attention alternating between furiously cleaning his front paws and alertly watching the reporters below. Jeremy was wearing a hooded sweatshirt under his windbreaker, which must have made it a bit difficult to shoot. As I stepped onto the court I could hear the faint clicks of the cameras from down on the road, and I wondered what they were going to do with pictures of me.
“Hi,” Jeremy said.
“Hi yourself.” He passed me the ball and I tossed in a lay-up. I felt my bruised muscles groan in protest, but it felt good to move. “Still playing hooky?”
“I guess.” He took my pass and put in his own lay-up, which rolled lazily around the rim before falling through the net. “Did you really do it?” he asked me.
“Do what?”
“Kidnap Jack Shaw. They’re saying on TV that you all kidnapped him.”
“Do I look like a kidnapper?” I asked him, stopping my dribble.
“No.”
“Jack’s my friend.”
“So why are they all here?” he indicated the press down on the street who, for lack of anything else to do, were idly snapping a few pictures of us.
“Listen,” I said, turning him away from the telephoto lenses. “If you had a friend who was in trouble, wouldn’t you do anything you could to help him?”
“You mean if he was on drugs?”
“Okay, yeah. If he was on drugs.”
Jeremy thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, I guess so. But I wouldn’t kidnap him.”
“Well,” I said, sitting down on the ground. “What if you knew you could help him, but he was so messed up he wouldn’t let anyone help him. So messed up that you were worried he might die before anyone helped him?”
“He was really that messed up?”
“He was. And we were desperate, because we thought our friend might die.” It occurred to me that Jack was Jeremy’s idol, and I hoped I wasn’t ruining that for him. The kid had been through enough disappointments already.
“So you brought him here to help him?” Jeremy asked. “To get him off the drugs.”
“That’s right,” I said. “But don’t tell them that.” I pointed to the reporters.
“So where is he now?”
“That,” I said, pulling myself up to my feet, “is the question.”
“You don’t know?” he asked, shocked.
“He escaped,” I confessed.
“And that’s when they found his wallet?”
“Yep.”
Jeremy took the ball and tossed it in the air thoughtfully. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“I hope not, but we’re all really worried about him.”
There was a pause. “Tonight is Halloween,” he finally said.
“Is it really?” I said, surprised that I wasn’t aware of it.
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to trick-or-treat,” He said.
“The mask,” I remembered. “You never found it?”
“Nope. Besides, my mom won’t let me go out alone, and my sister doesn’t want to go.”
“You can come over and hang out with us if you want.”
He looked up at me. “Are you going to dress up?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“It’s Halloween,” Jeremy admonished me. “You’re supposed to dress up.”
“That’s the law, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you come over for dinner and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll have to ask my mom.”
“Okay.”
We heard a rumbling sound and looked down the road to see a white school bus pull up to the front of the house. The doors opened and a slew of teenagers began filing out and onto the roadside where the press was camped. Most of the kids were girls, in jeans and jackets, but I noticed a handful of boys scattered throughout the mix. Deputy Dan came running over, waving his hands in frustration, but the kids seemed to be ignoring him for the most part. The last kids to get off the bus were carrying sheets of white oak tag, which they handed out to a few of their peers. The members of the media scrambled to their cameras and began filming and interviewing a number of the teenagers, who seemed only too happy to comply. From where Jeremy and I were standing, we could make out the writing on the oak tag. Bring Back Jack; We’re praying for you, Jack; and simply Where’s Jack? In all, I counted about thirty kids.
“What are they doing?” Jeremy asked.
“It looks like they’re going to hold a vigil,” I said. Deputy Dan had now run back to his car and was jabbering excitedly into his radio. The media, grateful for something to do, were swarming around the kids now, searching for faces and sound bites to put on their next transmission.
“What’s that?”
“They’re going to stay there until Jack turns up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it beats school.”
“They’re going to get pretty cold.”
We stood there for a little bit watching the scene on the road as if something might happen at any second, but for the most part the kids just seemed to be standing around. The problem with vigils is that, aside from actually being there, there isn’t really a whole lot to do. Some stood, some sat on the ground, some smoked, some huddled for warmth. After a few minutes the reporters lost interest and went back to the warmth of their vans to await further developments. After a minute more, Jeremy and I went to our respective houses to do the same.
There are doubtless many ways to react upon learning that you may have inadvertently committed statutory rape. I wasn’t sure what Chuck’s way would be, but I had a feeling it would be something extreme. Either furious denial or complete indifference. And then there was the not unreasonable possibility that it wouldn’t be news to him, that he’d known all along that she was in high school. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I knew I wasn’t in the mood to hear the justifications that would come, regardless, so I elected not to mention the high school to him. Besides, my impression of Jenna was that she had certainly done this sort of thing before and seemed perfectly happy about it, so I didn’t think she’d make any trouble for Chuck.
I found him sitting at the kitchen table eating a bagel and drinking coffee while flipping through Carmelina’s local paper. He didn’t seem remotely hung over or concerned that Jenna was nowhere to be found. His ease with the one-night stand bespoke a long-standing familiarity that made me suddenly feel sorry for him. I wondered if he ever got lonely.
“Are we in there?” I asked.
“Front page.” He said it with a mouth full of bagel, so it came out “mom mage.” He finished chewing and said, “It’s pretty even-handed though. They’re making a much bigger deal about Jack’s wallet than about us. All it says is that the sheriff questioned some friends of Jack’s vacationing in the area. It doesn’t draw any conclusions. Maybe things are dying down a little.”
“Look out t
he window.”
“What?”
“Just look.”
He got up and walked over to the living room window. He stood there looking out for about thirty seconds. “Holy shit,” he finally said.
“Exactly.”
“Where’d they come from?” he asked, as I joined him at the window.
“I don’t know, maybe the local high school.”
We watched as one of the guys turned on a boombox and began shuffling in place. Two girls in skintight leggings and sweatshirts jumped up and began dancing with wild abandon, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be dancing on the shoulder of a road in the middle of the day. They were probably dancing to keep warm, and it must have been working because one of the girls removed her sweatshirt and tied it around her waist, never once stopping her hip-grinding motion. Chuck whistled appreciatively and said, “Dude, you gotta love high school girls.”
Don Allender showed up around lunchtime. By then the crowd had swelled to over fifty kids who had nothing better to do, and Deputy Dan had been forced to set up additional barricades at the foot of the Schollings’s lawn to keep them from crossing the street and running up to the house. Alison and Lindsey had awakened with hangovers even more severe than mine and were sitting in the kitchen with the lights out, hydrating themselves by alternately sipping coffee and cold water. Chuck and I were watching the crowd from the living room when Don arrived, ignoring Deputy Dan’s urgent protests as he pulled his rented car into the driveway behind Chuck’s. It was starting to look like a Ford dealership out there. We watched him emerge from the car in his freshly pressed navy suit and flip his badge for Deputy Dan. A small conversation between the two men ensued, with a good deal of frowning on the part of Deputy Dan.
Plan B: A Novel Page 26