Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me

by Gae Polisner

  Anyway, when Hankins announced we’d be reading the play aloud in class, I was shocked when Max volunteered to read for Tom. Like everyone else, I figured Max Gordon was in class because he thought he could fly under the radar in some mindless elective. But it was the opposite. Max would volunteer to read aloud for every play, every sonnet, and he seemed to know half of them by heart. And when I got picked to read for Laura, well, that was in February, and after that, everything between Max and me had escalated.

  But now Max stands in my living room ogling my mom, and he’s picked up the book, and they’re suddenly going on about Kerouac and how brilliant he was, and so Max seems way more Jim than Tom Wingfield, and all I want is for my mother to shut up, and Max to go home, and this whole nightmare with my mother to be over.

  Part II

  The courtship dances of some male butterflies

  may appear aggressive, but they are merely intended

  to drive competitors away.

  MID-MAY

  TENTH GRADE

  The last of the late buses pulls out of the circle revealing no Max, no dirt bike, just a vacant front lot with the sun flooding down onto the concrete, bleaching its already-faded gray to near bone white. Only the ring of baby poplars the school’s Sierra Club planted last year on the center mound offers any shade, casting shadows onto the white, an occasional breeze making their leaves rustle up and dance, before falling still.

  I walk to the stone wall where I always sit to wait for him, and peel off my sweater and drape it across my bare thighs, letting the warmth spread down my shoulders and back. It’s seriously hot for this time of year, at least in this unshaded spot.

  I glance at my phone, but there are no texts. It’s almost 3:00 p.m. Max should have been here ten minutes ago. Sometimes I get tired of feeling like he forgets I’m alone here, friendless, waiting on him.

  Or maybe it’s better that he’s late, leaving the school grounds mostly empty, and fewer people to witness his public displays of affection.

  The heavy steel doors burst open releasing the cavernous darkness of inside into the sunlight. Probably a lingering teacher, still gung ho on being present and available after school, even though all the clubs are basically over.

  My stomach sinks when Aubrey walks out with Meghan and Niccole. They’re huddled together talking and laughing like co-conspirators.

  That used to be us.

  If they short-cut to the exit, they’ll keep their distance, but if they stay with the curve of the walkway, Aubrey will pass right in front of me.

  She doesn’t turn, but I know she sees me. Maybe I’ll call out, be the one to break the rules of whatever this dumb game is we’ve been playing. Try to be friendly. After all, it’s partly my fault, all this weird distance between us. I’ve been too caught up with my own stuff—Mom and Max and everything. And my feelings were hurt when Aubrey first started spending more time with those girls and ditched our planned spring elective schedule to have more classes with them than me. And not just Hankins’ class, but Forensics instead of Environmental Studies. Suddenly they all had five classes together and Aubrey and I only had two. Both of which those girls are also in. So, I backed away, latched on to Max. Maybe more than I should have.

  “Hey, Aubs!” I call softly, before I can overthink it. But they’re already past me, veering off the path, and by the time I call her name a second time, more loudly than before, they’ve reached the end of the driveway, the two metal gates that cars can’t slip through after a certain hour, but bodies easily can. “Never mind,” I add without waiting. “Have a good night.” Only then does Aubrey turn and give me a halfhearted wave.

  “Oh, hey, sorry! I didn’t see you there,” she lies. “We’re studying for Stout’s test if you want to come.”

  My heart does this little flip at the possibility, but my brain knows better. She’s being polite. There’s no way she wants me to join. Even if she does, the other two girls don’t. They make it clear, Niccole leaning in to say something, then throwing her head back in an exaggerated laugh, and Meghan tugging at her arm.

  I cut my eyes up to the blue sky, the white puff clouds drifting by. No need to go where I’m not wanted. Besides, Max will be here any minute. So how come tears spring to my eyes?

  “Thanks!” I call. “But I’m good.”

  At that, Niccole laughs a second time, and Aubrey slaps her arm, and then they’re in motion again, the occasional burst of laughter drifting back like a knife in my direction.

  I lie back on the wall, and stare up at the clouds. When we were in middle school, Aubrey and I once spent a week trying to grasp all the things we didn’t understand about the world. Like why the sky is blue, or clouds are white when water is clear, or how sound can travel through telephone wires, or be wrangled and contained when there are no wires at all? Or how the ocean stays in the places it stays instead of all that water spilling over the edge? We knew the answers would be things like the scattering of molecules, or because gravity holds it there, but we really wanted to understand how.

  But, after days of trying, I still found the answers impossible to comprehend. Each explanation only led to more questions of why or how. Like, the sky is blue because when sunlight reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, its light is scattered in all directions by the gases and particles in the air. And blue light is scattered more than other colors because it travels in shorter and smaller waves. But why are those waves shorter, and why does that make it so those are the waves we see?

  It all seemed random to me—to us—and ridiculously hard to hold on to, and for the next few days after that, I felt sad and depressed, until Aubrey decided our next mission was to learn all of the movies that were made into TV shows and I forgot about the more obtuse questions altogether.

  I sit up and glance at my phone. Max should have been back twenty minutes ago. I hoist my backpack onto my lap, and rummage for the folder with the US History study packet, my mind wandering to Max, to the money, to my mother. To my father’s text message that appeared like kismet a few days ago:

  Idea: How about you visit this summer when school is out?

  Last chance. I’m home for good in September.

  How could a month on the beach in Malibu possibly be bad? Think about it!

  I stared at his words, my thoughts racing. I could make this work. Tell a few lies. Say I’m flying in, but travel with Max instead, have him drop me off at LAX when we get there.

  Yes. Maybe. Good idea! I wrote back, my heart thrumming with excitement. After all, this was a sign, right? This would make everything possible.

  So how come I still hadn’t mentioned it to Max?

  I slip the packet from the folder. We have a unit test tomorrow, and I’m seriously behind. I turn to the first page, called “The Road to World War One,” to the cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt with his walrus mustache and round glasses, and the caption Big Stick Diplomacy underneath. But already my mind is back on Max, what it might feel like to have a whole bunch of days alone with him. Just the two of us, on the back of his bike, headed to California. No more Mom and her craziness; no more Nana and her forced cheerfulness; no more Aubrey pretending to give a crap.

  Max and me, alone. Two people in love doing whatever we want to.

  I put the folder down and lie back again, my mind drifting away from the hard, confusing things to Max and his lips and his hands, and how it feels to have them on me.

  My gut lurches at the sound of a car—not Max on his dirt bike—and a horn honking. I roll my head to the side in time to see a shiny red Mustang convertible, circa 2003.

  Ethan, swinging around the empty bus circle in my direction.

  LATE AUGUST

  SUMMER BEFORE TENTH GRADE

  The U-Haul is already in your driveway when I get there. You insisted I come, insisted I be there to say goodbye to your brother.

  And why wouldn’t you insist? You have no idea my heart is breaking.

  Ethan emerges from the house, carrying armfuls o
f blankets, pillows, his tennis bag, sneakers tied together and hung over his forearm. His eyes dart sheepishly to mine when he sees me.

  “You’re just in time to help, JL!” you call happily, waving me over, enthusiastically.

  Ethan doesn’t say a word.

  And you? You don’t have a clue.

  How could I begin to tell you?

  MID-MAY

  TENTH GRADE

  The car stops, idles. The driver-side window rolls down.

  “That you, Markham?”

  I don’t move a muscle. My heart bangs hard in my chest, a crush of emotions nearly obliterating me. Excitement. Panic. Embarrassment. The air, already warm, grows thick and oppressive.

  The car is Mr. Andersson’s old one, his prized baby he saved for the day Ethan got his license, and let him take to U Penn after he made dean’s list his first semester. In it, at the curb across from where I sit, Ethan squints up at me, into the sunlight.

  “Hey! It is you, right?”

  Does he have to keep asking? Who does he think it is?

  I try to smile, but it’s forced like some plastered-on Joker’s grin. The memories rush back: his basement, the orange chair, the game of chicken in the pool … Images I’d tried to forget, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to.

  He lowers the passenger-side window the rest of the way and says, “It is you. I thought so,” and he gives a big smile, like it’s all okay. Like it’s all normal, when it so totally isn’t. Like none of the things that happened mattered. Good old, reliable Ethan. Aubrey hadn’t told me he was back already. Why would she have? We barely speak. And, anyway, even if we did, why would she think I’d care?

  “Hey, Ethan,” I finally manage. I sit up and swing my legs over the edge but don’t move off the wall. He can come to me if he wants. And he won’t. I used to think he would, but I don’t anymore.

  “That’s it? ‘Hey, Ethan’? I don’t see you for months and that’s all you have for me? I came to collect my sister, but it’s better to find you waiting here.”

  I’m not waiting for you, jerk, I want to say, but I don’t even know why I’m mad at him. He was leaving for college, and I’m his sister’s best friend. So, he left, and didn’t turn back. What was he supposed to do? Besides, I’m with Max now.

  Still, that it all seems light and easy for him bothers me, when everything since that night has been hard for me. The feeling bad. The guilt. The missing him and not being able to tell.

  Until Max came along and helped me forget everything.

  “You mad at me?” Ethan cups a hand to his eyes to block the sun and waits, but I sit mute, because I don’t know the answer to his question.

  Am I mad at him, or something worse than that?

  Crushed.

  Heartbroken.

  But not anymore. I have Max. Whatever happened with Ethan is ancient history.

  LATE AUGUST

  SUMMER BEFORE TENTH GRADE

  “Saturday night,” you say. “It’s going to be ah-mazing.”

  “And you’re sure we’re invited?” I ask, tentatively.

  “Of course we are. It’s my brother. Combo graduation–bon voyage party.”

  You tell me to come early, so we can plan our outfits and mix-and-match bikinis—not that the slew of graduated seniors will give a crap about us, fresh out of ninth grade. But you’re giddy with excitement. It’s not like your parents normally allow this stuff, turning a blind eye to the keg they know Ethan plans to hide in the bushes.

  “It’s weird,” you say. “I think my father is helping him. They’re not themselves, my parents. Either of them. It’s like they’ve gone all soft because he’s leaving and they want his last few days at home to be super-fun.” You roll your eyes. “As if my parents could ever be the cool ones.”

  But your mom is sure trying. By the time I get there at six, she’s drinking wine and dancing around the kitchen in her long, striped pool cover-up to the music Ethan already has blasting in the yard, trays of mini hot dogs spread across the kitchen counter.

  “No chance she’s awake past ten p.m.,” you whisper, as you sneak me past the kitchen and up the stairs to your room.

  * * *

  By 9:00 p.m., the party is in full swing, the music so loud, I can’t believe the neighbors haven’t called the cops. Then again, everyone knows and loves your brother, don’t they? Eagle Scout, honor roll, varsity tennis champ, Ethan Andersson.

  You and I walk out to the backyard. It’s thick with bodies, sweaty guys in swim trunks playing volleyball with girls in skimpy bikinis, couples against trees making out, kids in the pool. Still others who have wandered off to the basement to play Ping-Pong and video games.

  I barely recognize your mom’s perfectly manicured yard with its tent and tables and streamers and lanterns and mostly catered food, even a giant ice sculpture of tennis rackets crossed over each other, lit in purple and blue that, much to your father’s later unhappiness, intentionally or unintentionally, doubles as a luge for shots of Jack Daniel’s poured from bottles hidden in various spots around the yard.

  At the moment, the luge is unattended and your dad is happily chatting with two pretty girls, your mother in the chair next to him, sipping what might be her third or fourth glass of red wine.

  “Jesus, they’re lame, way to ruin a party,” you say, grabbing my hand. “On the other hand, now’s our chance,” and you pull me toward the kitchen, closing the sliding glass door behind us. Leaving me there, standing guard, you fetch a bottle of red wine from the fridge, pour two big paper cups, hold the bottle under the tap for a second, and swirl it around before shoving it back in behind others on the shelf. You summon me with a raised cup, and I raise my eyebrows in response, so you add, “Hopefully they’ll be too wasted to even notice.”

  * * *

  Up in your room, we sip at the wine and change into our new bikinis we bought for the occasion—one purple and white stripes, the other green paisley—and we each take half, and admire ourselves, tipsy opposites, in the mirror.

  You cup your chest in your hands, push up, and say, “You look bigger; maybe I should take the striped top,” and without missing a beat, I whip it off and hand it to you, and you strip off your bottoms and we switch, so that now we’re opposites once again, smiling at each other in the mirror.

  “You really would do anything for me, wouldn’t you?” you say, and I bust out laughing, though I’m not sure why. It’s like a bunch of mixed emotions are swirling inside me and coming out as uncontrollable laughter: I feel happy and giddy and excited and nervous and guilty and sad all at the same time. Maybe it’s the wine. You do another spin, locate your cup, and down the rest impossibly fast.

  “Finish yours, too,” you order. I oblige, and lie down next to you where you’ve collapsed backward on your bed.

  “I love you, JL,” you say, finding and holding my hand, and stretching one foot up in the air, your blue-polished toes pointed toward the ceiling. “Hey, remember that?” You draw a circle with your toes around a shadow of splatter on the ceiling.

  “Mr. Popper’s Pepsi,” I say. “Our TV commercial phase.”

  You drop your leg and laugh. “Mr. Popper’s Pepsi will pop your taste buds wide open,” you say, putting on the too-perky voice you used that day. “Personally, I prefer it!”

  “Pop one today!” I say, extricating my hand from yours to pretend to pull a pop-top can open in the air above me. “And that’s when I jumped down from the bed and…” I make an explosion with my hands. “Who knew soda could reach that far?”

  “We were so scared, remember? But my parents never found out.”

  I close my eyes and smile. The wine is making the room spin a little, the dizziness mixing with good memories of us little, doing dumb, carefree things. It feels like so long ago since I felt like a kid, like you and I could be light and silly, and play pretend. The real world and high school have been so much harder.

  “Should we go down?” I ask, my brain skirting for the firs
t time since I got here to Ethan, where I promised I wouldn’t let it go. “Aubs?”

  You don’t answer, and I nudge you. “Aubrey!”

  But you’re asleep. Snoring deeply.

  * * *

  Your parents are no longer in the chairs by the pool and I didn’t pass them in the kitchen, so maybe they’re watching a movie in the living room, or upstairs. Or maybe they went to bed. But doubtful with the party still going on.

  There are way more people out here than earlier when we headed up to your room. I feel stupid without you, unsure what to do. Maybe I should go home. Thoughts of Ethan noticing me, or caring if he did, are all but vanished. I’ve already spotted him—off in the corner laughing with a pretty brunette with a better body than I’ll ever have, named Carly Witherspoon.

  My heart sinks. Even her name is sophisticated.

  Emboldened by the buzz from the wine, I walk over to the keg and hold a red Solo cup under the tap, my eyes scanning for your parents, who would likely kill me, or at least send me home, which wouldn’t be the worst thing. What’s the point of staying here, anyway?

  “Can I see your ID?” There’s a hand on my shoulder and I startle, but it’s just Dante Darby, who you have a crush on.

  Did you know he would be here?

  My eyes shoot to your window, but the lights are still off, how I left them. I wonder for a brief moment if I should run back up and try to wake you.

  “Hey, Dante,” I say, staring down at the trickle of liquid in my cup. “Aubrey crashed on me early. It was probably the wine. Anyway, I was just thinking how I should probably go home.”