Jex Malone

by C. L. Gaber

  I was trying to calm Billy down, just like I do with Dad. That got him even madder. He said all of this stress was my fault and maybe we should just take a break for a while because clearly I’m having a hard time “managing the situation” and that any girlfriend of his had better make him “priority number one or else!” That sounded like a threat, didn’t it?

  Can you believe it? He’s the one who can’t manage to get me home in time even though he knows how much trouble it causes. He doesn’t even care. He’s even said things like, “If you want to be with me, you have to figure out your situation.”

  Now what’s that supposed to mean? I think he’s losing interest, and then what am I going to do? I can’t imagine life without him. I don’t care what Dad says or does … I’m not losing Billy, because I would die if I did.

  I have to take a real break. This is just too intense. Even if I get past the fact that I’m holding a diary that belonged to a girl no one has seen in thirteen years and we’re reading her private thoughts about all these awful things, what she lived through is almost too much. I wasn’t planning on it being so—so personal.

  I draw in a deep breath and keep going.

  Dear Diary:

  It’s been a few days since I’ve written, sorry. Things are so messed up right now. He’s just being horrible and I don’t know what to do. Last night he grabbed me by my arm and twisted it. Hard. I have a huge purple mark that has really started to throb.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, today in PE that nosy Miss Sandy was at it again. She saw my arm and was totally asking me a million questions. I told her I fell against the door, but she kept looking at my arm and said, “No, it has been twisted because the bruise goes around. If you had fallen, it would be black and blue in just one spot.”

  God, why don’t people leave me alone? Lillian was really worried about me. But she reminds me that every great artist has had it hard at some time in his or her life and he or she uses that to become better. She’s right, I do feel better when I’m working on a new drawing or painting. I can forget about all the other things going on and just concentrate on getting the picture to look just right.

  So that’s what I am going to do. I’m not going to cry, I’m going to draw a really pretty picture and see if that helps my mood. I’ll do one of my little white dream houses with the meadow and Cooper walking in the flowers.

  “Wait!” Nat shouts, startling us all. “Does it say ‘he’ or does it say a name? Who is the ‘he’ she’s talking about?”

  “It doesn’t say,” I answer, rereading the sentence just to make sure. “She doesn’t say who hurt her. What’s freaking me out even more is that it was Sandy who noticed the bruise. Sandy! My dad’s, uh, Sandy. How weird is that?”

  “Do you think Sandy knows who hurt Patty?” Deva asks. “Sounds like she was more than a big snoop, and really cared about her kids. She might know something.”

  “If she did know something, she would have immediately told the police when Patty disappeared,” I said. “She would have been the first to tell what she knew. She lives to be helpful and informative.”

  “Good point,” Deva agrees. “Go on.”

  Dear Diary:

  Oh, you are not going to believe this! Miss Sandy Butt Into Your Business sent me to the school psychologist (a.k.a the mind control master) who asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about—as if?

  He asked if someone was hurting me purposely and I said “no” and got out of there. Fast. I was so embarrassed that I ditched school for the rest of the day and came home. Melissa is totally freaked out because she said our fourth-period biology teacher was looking for me and now I bet the principal is going to call my parents.

  Great—call my parents, because they are going to make this better? Adults are so clueless.

  “See, there’s your answer,” I add, continuing to read.

  Dear Diary:

  I am so grounded for leaving school. Dad is blaming this all on Billy and he doesn’t believe me after the tenth time that I’ve told him that Billy had nothing to do with it. Billy is furious at me too and started yelling on the phone that this is distracting him from his training and that if he isn’t in perfect shape by his senior season, he’s never going to get a scholarship. Now I can’t go see Lillian either because Dad has it that I can’t even leave my room except for school and meals.

  Everything is just closing in on me. I’ve never seen Dad so mad and now he’s downstairs drinking and tossing the empties in the trashcan so hard that it’s like he wants me to hear the glass crashing. When I came down for a glass of water, he started ranting again about my sorry future—yeah, I know. I’ll never amount to anything. I’ll end up marrying that loser. I’ll have a loser life. I just wonder how it can be more loser than this life.

  My head really hurts. I think there’s a dent in the wall, too, from where Dad punched it. This is all Miss Sandy’s fault.

  “Well, Patty and I had one thing in common—we both really don’t like Sandy very much,” I think to myself.

  Dear Diary:

  Day Two of being grounded. This means I have to go straight to school, where I have to go to all of my boring classes, then an hour of in-school suspension in study hall for ditching, and then straight home. No going to Melissa’s house, no seeing Billy or Lillian, and I can’t go to the mall or to the movies. I’m just hanging out in my room watching old reruns and thinking it would be so great to live in one of those perfect sitcoms or anywhere but here.

  Their problems on TV are totally nothing and their little town seems so cute and everyone is weird but nice. Why isn’t real life like that?

  So on top of everything else, now Mom is mad at me too. She says she can’t take the tension in the house anymore and would leave if she weren’t pretty sure Dad would just come after her anyway. I think deep down she really loves him and wants to see him better, but I don’t know why she thinks it’s my fault that he’s so messed up. I didn’t have anything to do with that, and poor little Cooper really is the victim of all of us here. I’m at least old enough to not do things that I know are going to make him mad.

  On top of everything, Melissa is mad at me because now that I’m not in biology she has no one to help her do her homework and maybe she could have gotten by with a C-, but now she’s definitely going to fail. Her grades are so bad, she may even have to leave school and just go get her GED. It’s not like she’s going to college anyway—of course, I’m probably not either since there’s very little chance of higher ed or art school with everything going on. There is also very little chance I’m going to get a decent score on my college boards. Better get working on that beauty school application—that would be funny, if it weren’t so sad and true.

  Dear Diary:

  Okay, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do because it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve had any privacy to write anything. My dad thought I was spending too much time in my room, so he took what was left of my door off the hinges. Can you believe that? So for the past week, like every ten minutes, someone is in here.

  Haven’t told you lately, but I still hate school. It’s so horrendous. I don’t know if I can make it to graduation. My grades are okay, but it seems like every ten minutes someone at the school is on me for something.

  I’ve gotten study hall twice from Miss Sandy because I don’t want to dress down for gym anymore. I was tired of her staring at me while looking for bruises. The last time I dressed down, she stood like two feet away looking at me. So creepy. The weird thing was I actually had a bruise from wrestling with Cooper, but of course, no one is going to believe you when you say your little brother kicked you while you were tickling him.

  Melissa seems to be holding back in telling me something. I think she’s dating some older guy; she seems to be gone a lot and doesn’t tell me where she’s going. Not that I can ever get out of this house anymore.

  The other day I was stuck in the house listening to the radio and this gir
l I swear was Melissa called up the dedication line and requested “You Were Meant for Me” by Jewel and sent it out to her secret love. My Melissa swears it wasn’t her. But I’d recognize her voice anywhere.

  I just can’t believe she wouldn’t tell me who he is. Why, why, why is everyone around me such a pain in the butt? I think I must be going crazy or something.

  Sandy and Melissa again.

  Neither one of them could be trusted.

  I keep this to myself.

  Dear Diary:

  Sorry I’ve been gone again. Real bad things going on at home. No time to write. And something so weird is going on at school. Melissa has turned into Miss Meanie Friend. She hates Billy and keeps telling me how he’s not good for me and how he’s just going to hurt me someday.

  You should see the looks they, as in Billy and Mel, give each other at lunch—pure hatred. I guess she’s just jealous that I can’t spend as much time with her as I used to, but she could totally have a real boyfriend and not some older-guy whatever if she wanted one. She’s so pretty, and when she wants to be she can be so nice. She’s worse about Billy than my dad. She calls him Giant Loser Boy.

  You’d think that your best friend would be supportive if things weren’t going well with your boyfriend and you were really trying hard to fix things. But she’s just really hateful. Lillian says it’s probably that she’s just jealous and upset. I’m trying to work on my relationship with Billy and it’s taking so much of my attention. What am I going to do?

  Dear Diary:

  It’s been a really, really long time since I’ve written anything in here. Today was the last day of the school year and I was so glad for it to be finally over. This was the worst year ever and the whole day I kept thinking this was supposed to be the best year ever. I don’t even know what happened and how it ended up going so wrong.

  Billy and I are still together, but barely. Technically, I am still grounded for being caught skipping school, even though I barely have to come up with a creative excuse to explain why I’m not coming straight home from school.

  I spend a lot of time at the library—if you know what I mean. Luckily, I have the good grades to prove it if I need to. The library is a good place to hide away from my parents, although I’m not sure they’ve ever actually been in a library and would never think of going there to look for me.

  Melissa and I are back on. I know she’s probably tired of having us hang out at her house all the time, but that’s the only place I can see Billy. At least he seems to be getting along with Melissa and she’s finally stopped nagging me so much about breaking up with him.

  All of a sudden, she suggested we all meet at her house when I was supposed to be at the library, and Billy and Melissa seemed to be okay with each other again—so weird.

  She still won’t admit that was her request on the radio—and I’m going to let it slide.

  I spent the entire end of the year avoiding that awful Ms. Sandy too—I don’t have PE next year, so I am done with her forever. I don’t know where she gets off sticking her nose in everyone’s business. Every time I passed her in the hall she gave me a look like she knew what was going on in my life, and I just wanted to puke.

  The last months of school were awful. Teachers kept looking at me all worried and somehow it got around that Billy was banned from my house, so the cheerleaders pretty much took that as he was single again. I don’t know how many notes I saw in his books that they’d written him—I hate how those girls draw little smiley faces to dot the i’s in their names. So stupid. I don’t know what he tells them—I think he tells them that we are just friends, but not really dating anymore since we don’t go out in public together anymore.

  He got invited to a ton of end-of-the-year parties at people’s houses and went without me because he said it would get back to my dad. Not like my dad actually travels in social circles with the jock kids’ parents, but I didn’t want to argue with him. He seemed pretty sure I didn’t really need to go … for my own good. Right.

  I could have lived without everyone giving me pathetic looks at school—you know, the kind of looks that say your boyfriend has totally moved on and you are clearly the last to know.

  Thank God Melissa is still my friend. She’s pretty good about getting me to not care about anything because that’s pretty much the way she lives her life. I did get a little bit of a break because my grades were really good from all that study time. So now, I can see Lillian again. We’ve spent hours just talking. I am so lucky to have her as a real friend. Sorry, Mel.

  So still no car, which means no job this summer. I guess I can start working on my college application essays and maybe work on getting early admission and a good scholarship offer. I’m sure there are special scholarships for girls with really pathetic lives, aren’t there?

  I can’t believe my senior year is going to be here soon. Everyone at school is talking about how much fun they are going to have this summer hanging out together and maybe going away to the lake where their families have vacation homes. Some kids are getting to go to Paris and London this summer, and I don’t have anything to do other than babysit Cooper while Mom is at work at the grocery store.

  I guess that’s fine, but I can’t wait for the day when I get to plan a big fun trip somewhere. Billy has a job this summer working at a tire store. He says all that heavy lifting will help him stay in shape for football and with his gym workouts, he’s going to be bigger and stronger than ever.

  He didn’t get any interest from colleges his junior year, so the best he can hope for at this point is maybe playing for a community college or maybe just getting a walk-on opportunity if he can actually get into a college. Not too hopeful about that, unless I write his admission essays for him. I’m going to have a lot of work to do this summer doing both my applications and his. I still think everything would be perfect if we could just go away to school together. Then we could finally be a real couple and get far away from those cheerleaders.

  Speaking of cheerleaders—hands down the worst moment of the school year came as we were getting ready to finally leave and Miss Sandy came up to me and touched my arm like she’s my mom or something and said—I swear these were her exact words—“If you need anything at all, you can always call me during the summer.” Then she handed me this little business card with her name and home phone number on it. Who has cards with their home number on them? I didn’t know what to say, so stupidly, I said “thanks” and then I could hear these girls standing by the lockers laughing at me. It must be her personal mission to make me seem as lame as possible in a school where everyone already thinks I’m a complete loser. She must have taken a class somewhere on how to ruin her students’ lives.

  She has no idea what my life is like. Billy keeps telling me he needs me, that he can’t make it without me, and he gets really, really mad whenever I talk about going to college. I know things have been really hard on him. And just when I think that I really love him and want to make it better for him, he does something to erase all of it for me. He once told me he should just find someone without all the rules and regulations—which was really mean since he knows no one suffers more from my dad than I do.

  I said, “Fine, let’s just break up once and for all and you can just date cheerleaders, which is what you really wanted to do all along.” (Who are we kidding here!) Oh my God, he got so mad. He told me I couldn’t break up with him, that I wasn’t allowed. He was so mad—but different from when my dad is mad. No screaming. He just had his fists in tight balls like he was going to haul off and hit something (me?) really hard. His jaw was clenched so hard I could actually see the muscles in his jaw. It was awful and scary, and immediately I told him I’d never be the one to break up with him, and that if he wanted to end things he’d have to do it.

  Dear Diary (Written Later That Night):

  You know what’s even sadder? When Mom and Dad get into their fights, she’s always saying she’s going to leave and Dad always says, “You don’t
leave me. I leave you.” And then, of course, she stays. I know it’s because we don’t have any money to go anywhere, or very far. Or at least not far enough that Dad wouldn’t just come get us. He is the one with the car, after all.

  All I know is that it’s finally summer, and as long as I can keep this whole thing about being at the library going, at least I can have an okay summer with Billy and Melissa. We need to find Melissa a boyfriend because it’s so weird just to have the three of us hanging out.

  Okay, better get some sleep and be ready to babysit Cooper tomorrow. Got some Barney to watch with him—yippee for me! I can’t believe I just wrote all that—good thing I have a nice safe place for you to hide where no one will ever find you!

  I stand up and stretch because my muscles are killing me. It’s almost three in the afternoon and I feel like I have been reading for hours. Everyone else looks exhausted, too. I look at where my hand is resting in the notebook as a thick bookmark and see there are only a few pages of Patty’s looping handwriting left to go.

  Nat and Cissy are strangely quiet while I take out a notepad and begin to scribble down a few thoughts under the heading of “Things to Do.”

  Number one: Figure out who this Lillian person is and where she is now. She had to know what was going on. But why didn’t she show up in the police report? Did the cops even know about someone Patty considered one of her two best friends? Did they know she had two best pals? She must have gone to high school with her, I decide. Maybe Lillian was a senior.

  Number two: Figure out where Billy and Melissa are and pray that they’re still living somewhere nearby. Something tells me they knew more than what they said at the time to the cops after Patty vanished. Could they have been threatened or were they just scared?