by Scott Kelly
Funny, that.
The school work we ‘bad kids’ were given consisted of a giant pile of homework from our collective classes, if the teachers even remembered to send it. With no directions or assistance, the assignments were best used as projectiles.
As for the students, well, it wasn’t exactly like Kingwood High. This place was temporary, and you were pretty likely to meet someone who would punch you for no reason. Friends were rare.
My first month, I talked to one guy—the guy who looked most like me. Geoff Harper. His shirt read I can’t believe I shaved my balls for this, and he smelled so much like weed, I thought he somehow constructed a bong out of his own body.
We’d said five or six things to each other. Getting right along.
Geoff turned to me; I made sure to be cool enough not to notice. “I hate this place. Let’s get stoned.” He flashed a tightly rolled joint from beneath the desk, out of the teacher’s view.
My life wasn’t going at all like I’d planned. I wanted to be in school—in normal school, with Nora and my friends. David gave me an important assignment, and I needed them. If I was going to tag someone, it wouldn’t happen here.
So, every day at lunch, I’d sneak off with Geoff and get high. Certainly helped to pass the time. When your whole life is shit, well…sometimes you have to make your own fun.
“Whenever homeless people ask me for money,” Geoff said as he lit the joint, “I tell them I would love to help, but I am a Scientologist, and it’s against my religion to give to the needy.”
“Why do you not want to give money to homeless people? It’s just change, man,” I said, inhaling a thick, hot stream of smoke. “Don’t be greedy.”
“That’s not why,” Geoff said. “I just hate Scientologists.”
Getting to know Geoff confirmed what I suspected from the moment I met him: he was like me. His parents split up and neither wanted much to do with him; my new friend lived off the good will of a relatively wealthy uncle. As such, Geoff had his own place. The apartment was a total dump, but being there made me feel like a king. We drank beer and smoked in safety.
Before long, being his friend made life at Hope High something I might even survive.
We made a habit out of getting high together pretty often. Screw it, I figured. I’m already in the bad kid’s school. Might as well be one.
Something insidious about it all. What was happening to me? It was stupid, I knew. Not stupid to be doing what I was doing, getting high—that was just making the best of my boring situation. But the whole place was under this cloud of ease, of laziness. No challenge, no expectations. Hope High was a holding pen, purgatory for the hopeless. I was adrift in the mundane.
19. Virgins
Now
“You’re avoiding my question, Jacob,” Mr. Aschen says. “You still haven’t answered—what happened with David? Did he really let you decide his fate?”
I sigh.
*
Senior year, October
Weeks passed in a fuzzy yellow haze. Or, they must have, because I was there when it happened—or so I’m told. My witnesses, however, were unreliable.
I’m not gonna lie; David was pretty much out of mind. Not on purpose, but—just trying to survive. Without the Six, without Eureka, things got stagnant. No reason to try. The slippery slope of the stupid.
To make matters worse, I never saw the Six. So for a minute one Monday morning, I witnessed a bit of truth—truth so surprising, I wasn’t sure if it was real or a hallucination. Always my trouble with the truth.
It started as a peculiar sensation of being watched while I crossed the parking lot. I turned to glimpse a familiar presence, partially obscured by giant movie starlet sunglasses and ribbons of long, dark hair. A girl in black dress, with a face I’d assumed was done with me. A face that brought me nothing but trouble.
Seeing her made me think again; made me care. Did being ‘it’ matter? Did anyone still want to play? And if so, did they want anything to do with me?
So I turned around and kept walking across the parking lot. Been lying so long, I forgot what the truth was, really.
The next day, the eyes watched me again.
On the third day, a note on my car read: Help me.
On the fourth day, I searched for her and she was gone.
On the fifth day, I walked up behind her car and tapped on the glass, trying to scare her. That didn’t work, so I just sat down in Emily’s passenger seat and asked what she wanted.
“I want you, of course,” Emily said. “I need your help.”
“I thought you were in school.”
She giggled. “I am. Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Miscreant, like you’re one to judge. Are you high? Jesus, that’s new.”
“Yeah, well, things change.” I leaned back and put my feet on the dash.
“That’s the name of the game. Speaking of which…” Emily put her car in gear and started driving away from the school.
“Wait up,” I said. “I need to be in class. They’ll call my dad.”
“Too bad,” she said with a smile. “I want you to get me high. I’ve never been high.”
No point in complaining; she was going to get her way, and it’d just make me look weak. “Turn right here.” I directed us to a familiar waterfall, a place I’d discovered while exploring with the Six.
“I’m bored,” she said. “And I don’t mean like, I can’t think of anything to do. I mean, like, this chronic, soul-crushing boredom. It won’t leave me alone. Just want to bash my head into walls, Jacob. Every day for the foreseeable future looks exactly the same. My life just…doesn’t feel right.”
“Yeah? How?”
“School, this, everything.” She took her hands off the wheel and motioned around the car. “It’s just so—I don’t know. What’s the point? I can see my future, Jacob.”
“See your future?”
“Yeah. It’s laid out flat. You know…college, get a degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, work, get married, make babies, die. Right? But I don’t want that. I don’t want anything like that.”
“That’s the way life’s supposed to work.”
“And that’s like—the best possible outcome! Christ. I’ve missed you. Things aren’t the same. No one will ever see me like David does, like you all do.” She took a deep breath. “And look at you,” she continued. “You’re doing great.” No sarcasm. “You don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks, do you? You do your own thing. Sexy. Plus, I know a secret.” She pressed her lips together and grinned. A hand snaked up the back of my neck; long fingernails raked over my scalp, sending ripples of pleasure down my arms and legs.
We stopped at my favorite spot, a secluded little patch of land on the corner of a farmer’s property. ‘Private Property’ signs were posted everywhere, but I’d never seen another human being here. The waterfall stood short and fat, ten feet of channeled water.
We got out of the car and walked over to a rocky embankment next to the pond where the falls emptied. I pulled the tiny metal pipe and bag of weed from the side of my shoe and sat on a large, flat rock. She sat across from me and we took turns puffing out of the pipe, sucking down deep breaths of acrid smoke.
Emily was new to this. She coughed on her first time, like everyone did—the giggles started soon after.
Strange, being more experienced at something than Emily. She’d always been a step ahead of me, always been able to screw with me, embarrass me, and tease me. For once, our positions got reversed.
“So, you mentioned a secret?” I asked.
“Oh, c’mon. I know David tagged you. This isn’t fair. You can’t…you can’t keep Eureka to yourself. You gotta let us play, Jacob.”
But, hadn’t David left me to decide?
“Do you want to?”
“Yeah, I want to. I’m here, aren’t I?” She giggled.
Could taste her lipstick on the pipe. I put the weed away before she got too far gone to talk.
Emily s
lid forward, crawling across the rock we shared until she sat beside me. My nervous system scrambled from the pinprick sensations of long hair brushing against my arm.
She didn’t stop coming closer. An arm slid over my body, so that Emily lay across my lap, looking up at me. Lips came close; her thin tongue slipped from between them, playfully licking mine. “This ‘tagging’ thing, it’s for kids,” she whispered, reaching into her purse and presenting a condom. “How about we try something a little more intimate? I’d say I still get to be ‘it.’”
I was a virgin, though not for lack of trying. And here was Emily, offering herself to me for no particular reason.
My pulse pounded on my eardrums. I leaned forward, touched her lips with mine. She smiled; I felt it through my lips, like dancers and hips. We kissed.
This couldn’t be real. It seemed so forced, so planned. Okay, yeah, I wanted to sleep with her. Who wouldn’t? But this was too fast; I needed time to think. My body was a quivering mess.
She moved in, kissed again—harder. I pulled my mouth away from her sucking grasp. “What’s really happening here? I haven’t seen you in forever.”
Emily leaned back, nonplussed. “I just don’t fucking like it. No one knows me, all right? No one is playing Eureka, no one cares, and worse—I don’t care. About anything. Make me care, Jacob. Save me from this boredom.”
A strong wind blew across the mundane. We were moving again.
She giggled again and tilted forward. Our lips almost touched; we hovered an atom’s width apart. She was waiting for my decision.
I leaned forward and kissed her, hard. “Tag,” I mouthed into her lips.
Emily’s fingers curled into my hair, pulling me down until I lay flat and watched the clouds above. She climbed on top of me; warm thighs gripped my bare stomach.
Something voyeuristic about doing this in the middle of the day on the farmer’s private property. No one around for miles, and we’d hear any cars coming. The sun shone close, breathing down our necks. My skin burned; sweat dripped down my forehead.
Emily seemed intent on giving the birds a show, lifting her dress and tossing it aside, revealing milky, pale skin and a black lace bra, which dropped next.
Probably not her first time. I tried to pretend it wasn’t mine.
Emily attacked me with hungry hands and a thirsty mouth. Biting, licking, scratching, clawing, sucking. At least half of it felt good. She seemed to be on some recorded track, like she knew to do this for five minutes, then that, as though a director gave instruction as he filmed us. I suspected she’d done a lot of video research.
My senses were alight. The sun seemed to sear the surface of my brain; every sensation registered raw and real.
As she ripped my last article of clothing away, my last shield against her, passion overtook me, and I wanted to do anything to make her feel good. I might swallow her whole if she’d let me.
And for those moments, I loved Emily. Loved her in the way that included my genuine dislike of her. During the act, emotions sprung up in me I knew didn’t belong. For some reason, I wanted to convince her somehow, she might be loved—I might fix her.
I, Jacob Thorke, wanted to help someone. Not only help her—save her.
Emily enthralled. Mouth open, deep panting breaths, hair splayed wildly, rogue strands shining like beams of light in the sun. All warm mouths, awkward fumbling, tight places.
Afterward, when we lay naked and panted to catch our breath, sharing a cigarette and wondering how we would act after we got back in the car—this was when I started thinking again.
The warmth left me. Noble notions of saving Emily and the unimpeachable cache of mercy and love were floating down the stream in a condom. For a moment, it seemed I might have made something magical out of a barren situation.
When we finished, things had changed. I knew her; witnessed some part of her that was forbidden. Emily wasn’t as cool as I thought she was; not as invincible as she pretended to be. The way the pale-skinned beauty got dressed again, avoiding eye contact, seeming to shrink within her own body. Suddenly, Emily was real. An actual girl with insecurities and vulnerabilities. Not just a living piece of performance art.
Should I feel guilty? But, who used whom?
I prepared to comfort her, but she spoke first. “Thanks. You’re no David, of course, but that wasn’t totally bad.”
Gut punch. I stared into the water. Of course—she wouldn’t have sex with me if she wasn’t going to ruin it by telling me she’d also had sex with David, and he was better.
“Don’t make this weird,” she said, lighting another cigarette. “It’s about the game, that’s all.”
All that passion, gone—now, just cold water. Numb. Then again, what had I expected? To have a relationship with Emily? Movie dates and walks on the beach?
Even more troubling—what drove Emily to seek me out? To sleep with me? How much was David involved? At that moment, I could blame the death of David Bloom on my inferiority complex.
20. Hate in healthy doses
Now
“How devoted to David was Emily?” Mr. Aschen asks.
“No idea,” I say tonelessly. “She was having sex with him. Hell, David might’ve been the only person on Earth Emily didn’t act superior to.”
“So when you say David let you decide the fate of Eureka, did he really? Or did he ask Emily to make sure you tagged someone, knowing you had feelings for her?”
I press my lips together. Not my favorite thought: could Emily be so shallow she’d take my virginity because David asked?
“There’s more to the story, though. Let’s talk about what led to his death. Let’s talk about Eureka.”
“I have a very hard time wrapping my mind around the game. I can’t think of a single reason to go along with David’s experiment, other than to impress David.” He leans forward, elbows on knees. “It seems like Eureka makes you give up the things that make life worth living—a family, romance, a job, building a foundation! Those are the things I treasure in life, Jacob. I just can’t…” Mr. Aschen holds his chin in a gnarled hand, skin like bark. “Personally, I think Eureka is a tool David used to earn your devotion. The game unbalances you, makes you look for direction.”
“I disagree. Eureka was easy to start playing,” I explain. “You get one turn at life, and you’re more or less assigned a role from the start. Some people get a pretty nice life. We got a bad one. But, the idea should be true for anyone. If this is your one opportunity at life, isn’t the ultimate homage you can pay to God, or even to yourself, to explore every facet of life? Isn’t that a nobler ideal than raising a family? There are plenty of families. Maybe if you live in a time or a place where life means something, where you’re fighting in a war or rebuilding after one, or something with some narrative…but here in America, here and now, life has no point for us. So why not do the best thing possible, and just explore?
“Could everyone play Eureka? No, society wouldn’t function. But should everyone who can play Eureka, do so? I don’t know. I don’t know. But me and mine, much as I can hate them, I know: we are the result of all this quality of life that has taken the place of the actual quality of your life. But, you do have some parts right—you have to be a little selfish to play Eureka. You have to be willing to disappoint the people around you, because that’s part of breaking their hold on you. So, maybe I’m a sociopath, or a narcissist, or whatever you said David was.”
Mr. Aschen leans back, shoulder against the wall. He leafs through the manila folder of notes, perhaps looking for inspiration to launch a counterattack. After a moment of staring at nothing in particular, he lurches forward.
“Nothing is wrong with you, Jacob. You care about other people, no matter how hard you try to deny the fact. You’re a healthy, normal, intelligent young man. If anything, out of your whole crew of misfits, you care most—and they used that against you. You’re looking for acceptance, and David managed to convince you he was the only one who should provide i
t. You’re a smart kid. I can’t understand why you don’t apply the same intelligence to look at your life objectively and see David controlled you. Look past the narrative—look at the math. The numbers don’t lie. At the end of the day, you’re still here defending David, after everything that went wrong, even though he’s dead. You’re here, under arrest, facing prison, and out of some sort of loyalty to him, you won’t tell us what happened.”
“I’m telling you what happened. David died because we started playing Eureka again. After I tagged Emily, she tagged someone else.”
*
Senior year, October
I sat inside our small trailer and flipped across the six channels we got through an aluminum-foil-enhanced antennae. Nothing but sports, which I didn’t like. Why did they have to keep competing every year? Couldn’t they just figure out who the winners were, and call it quits?
I was lost. Emily pulled me out of the mundane just long enough to take what she needed, and then she dropped me back in. She had the tag; I wasn’t even ‘it’ anymore. The game was my last link to the Six, now that everyone was split up. Would they forget about me?
So, when a light knock rapped across the trailer door, I felt a bit blessed. A girly knock, weak and anxious—a knock from someone who might bolt at any second. Definitely not Emily.
I rushed to the door before my dad lumbered up and scared my guest off, but found he hadn’t woken anyway. From the timid nature of the knock, I secretly hoped Nora would be at my door. I smoothed my hair before opening our trailer to the world.
Cameron. Not at all who I’d expected. More strawberry than blonde, her hair curled downward in complex ringlets. She wore a long, green coat made from loose-knit wool and underneath that, a black sweater and blue jeans. Every inch of flesh covered.