Recycler
Page 21
“I know,” he says.
“Stop saying I know!”
“I’m trying to apologize.”
“I don’t want your apology.”
“But you just said—”
“I don’t care what I said. Stop apologizing. What are you, a saint all of a sudden?”
“I feel really bad,” he says. “Do you think she’ll forgive me?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
My hands ball into fists. “You really are an ass,” I say. “You know that?”
“I don’t know why you hate me so much,” he says. “She doesn’t hate me.”
I back away from him.
“Where are you going?” he says. “Wait, I have, like, a million questions!”
While still backing away, I hold up my finger warningly. Then I turn around, rush to the door, and grab my coat. Right before I leave, I hazard a glance back at Larson. He mouths the words “I’m sorry.”
I fling the door open and get the hell out of there.
What is going on in the world anymore?
Ian Larson is a dickhead ass-face skeleton with dust bunnies the size of cats. He’s not supposed to come through in the end and apologize for being a dickhead ass-face skeleton.
God, that makes me mad!
I’m able to sustain this anger most of the way home. But I take a small break from it to buy a large pizza from the good place with the mean lady to take home with me.
When I get to the park, those same drunks are smoking cigarettes on a bench while having a spirited argument. I’m tempted to jump in and take sides just to do something with this anger, but I don’t speak Polish.
It’s a cold, cold night and the streets are mostly empty. Eventually the anger dissipates, and I realize it was a convenient distraction from the agony of Ramie’s absence, but it’s not sustainable. In the end, I might have to accept that Larson is a decent guy after all. Shouldn’t there be a silver lining involved in that revelation? Something about the world being a kinder place than Jill and I previously suspected? Why does it merely annoy me?
As I turn the corner onto Edgar Avenue, I begin to dread the approach of my empty apartment. Then I notice someone sitting on the front steps. His shoulders hunch forward against the cold, and he has a big blue duffel bag next to him.
My pace quickens.
Seeing me, he stands up.
I break into a sprint, then stop at the foot of the stairs. Guess who’s sitting at the top, looking down at me.
Go ahead, guess. Come on, take a guess. Oh, forget it.
It’s Tommy Knutson!
“Jack!” he says, like he’s surprised to see me showing up at my own apartment. Then he walks down the steps toward me. “I’ve been calling for an hour. Don’t you guys still have the same cell phone?”
I have to pause here to admit something sort of embarrassing. I’m so happy to see Tommy Knutson it’s taking all of my willpower (and testosterone) to resist jumping up and down and squealing like a little girl.
“Is it okay if I crash here?” he asks. “I spent my last dime on that plane ticket.”
“Defo,” I say. I hand him the pizza box, then march right past him and pick up his duffel bag. “Come on.”
He follows me up the stairs. “I had to get the subway from JFK,” he says. “Do you have any idea how complicated that is?”
“Actually, I do.”
When we get inside, I bring his bag to Ramie’s room. “You can sleep in here,” I tell him. “Don’t mind Mannequin. She’s cool. If you want, I can move her to my room.”
Tommy looks around the mostly empty room. “Where’s Ramie?”
“London,” I say.
“Oh.” He looks at me, expecting more.
But I don’t feel like giving him any more right now. Not on that subject. “So, did you come because of that message from Jill?”
He nods. “I wanted to surprise her.”
“Oh, she’ll be surprised all right. Hey, do you need a shower or anything?”
“That would be awesome,” he says.
I show Tommy how the shower works and get him some towels that are freshly folded if not exactly clean. Then I hit the kitchen and start doing some “maintenance.”
When Tommy emerges from Ramie’s room showered and dressed, he looks like a new man.
“That is a seriously good shower,” he says. He cocks his head to the side. “Are you wearing a girl’s scarf?”
“It’s an ascot,” I say.
He nods; then his eyes drift to the pizza box on the coffee table.
“Hungry?” I ask.
“Starved.”
I bring some paper towels over to the coffee table, and we sit on the couch and silently scarf for a few minutes.
“So,” I say. “Life on the road. Thumbs up or down?”
Tommy shrugs and wipes some sauce from his mouth. “Surprising,” he says. “Enlightening. Productively lonely.”
“Is that a poem?”
He laughs. “So you’re all right, then? I got really worried when I got that text from you.”
“I was just lonely,” I tell him. “Plain lonely. Not productively lonely.”
“I hear you,” he says. He points to the window. “Hey, I think it’s snowing. Want to go up to the roof?”
“It’s kind of cold,” I say.
He laughs. “You and Jill,” he says. “Cold is a fact of life. You’re from Massachusetts. When are you going to accept that?” He grabs his winter coat from the arm of the couch. “Come on. The view’s amazing.”
“I know.” I get my coat and follow him out. “I live here, remember?”
When we get to the roof, I realize I haven’t been up there since that time Ramie and I put on a sex show for the neighbors. The chair remains where we left it, broken and windblown into a corner.
Tommy heads straight around the water tower to look at the view of Manhattan. I follow him.
“Man,” he says. “I don’t care how long you live here, you could never get blasé about that view.”
“Eh,” I say. “Bunch of tall buildings, bunch of noisy people.” I admit it feels pretty cool to act blasé about it. I stick my hands in my pockets and bounce on the balls of my feet to stay warm. The Manhattan skyline is pretty enough I guess, but I prefer the look of the snow. The streetlights make it sparkle, and the whole city seems to have hushed just to watch it.
“What are you guys doing for Christmas?” he asks. “Are you going home?”
“Probably,” I say. “I guess it’s up to Jill. What about you?”
“I have to convince my mom to buy me a plane ticket back to San Francisco so I can pick up my car. I left it at my cousin’s.”
“Or,” I say, “you could just sell the car and stay here.”
He looks at me.
“You know,” I say. “Or whatever.”
He nods mysteriously, then looks at the skyline again. “I like that idea,” he says. “Hey, thanks for the pizza. Sorry I’m so short on cash.”
“No worries,” I say. “It’s on Jill. She’s rolling in it these days.”
“Yeah?”
I nod.
Tommy rests his elbows on the roof ledge. “I really missed you guys.”
I rest my elbows on the ledge next to him. “Yeah, we missed you too.”
Tommy’s eyes wander over the expanse of the Manhattan skyline, which still sparkles like a strand of jewels. I hope he does stay in Brooklyn. It’ll be fun showing him around.
“Hey, Tommy?” I say.
“Yeah?”
I watch the glistening snowflakes falling downward to disappear. “Sorry I was such a jerk,” I say.
“You weren’t a jerk.”
“Yes I was.”
He shakes his head. “You were …” He narrows his eyes as he thinks about it. “A work in progress.”
“Oh yeah?” I say. “You mean, like a half-sculpted statue of David?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’
s exactly what I meant.”
He’s being sarcastic, but I like the idea. A colossus of manhood, that’s me. “Hey, do you think I’m average-looking?”
He looks at me and laughs. “Jack, trust me. There’s nothing average about you.”
“But you mean that in a good way, right?”
He nods, then we both return to looking at the glistening things before us.
It seems impossible that I ever disliked Tommy Knutson. What’s to dislike? He’s a prince. For my money, he’s the only guy in the world who’s worthy of Jill’s heart. I wonder if he knows that, or if I should tell him.
If this were Jill and Ramie, they’d have a long, teary confession about how wrong they were to be mean to each other and how friends have to always always forgive each other when they’ve acted like jerks. Then they’d hug and wipe their eyes and laugh and stuff.
Not Tommy and me. We just stare at the sparkling things before us. I’m grateful he’s my friend, and I feel foolish for not knowing he was all along. But I’ll never say these things to him. I don’t think I have to. I’m pretty sure he knows.
After a while we head downstairs, eat some more pizza, then hit the sack.
Before I kill the light, I think about how excited Jill’s going to be when she wakes up to find him there. It’ll be like Christmas coming early.
Hey, by the way, Jill, you’ve done a lot of cool things since we moved to New York but there’s one thing you got wrong. There’s no point in trying to separate love from sex. Maybe some people can pull it off, but you and I can’t. For us, they belong together. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m saying this as your brother. I’m looking out for you, kid. You’re not a sex machine. You’re a love machine. When you give your body to Tommy Knutson, your heart’s going to be there too. It’s okay. He’s worthy of it. So go for it, coyote or no coyote. And don’t worry about me. I can handle it. I can handle a lot of things.
I pull the cord on the poodle lamp and slide down between the covers. As I watch the snow pile up on the windowsill, I realize I don’t have to work so hard to become something more than Ramie’s boyfriend. I already am more than that. I’m a brother. I’m a friend. I’m even a son.
I’m pretty good at it too. In fact, I’m the best brother, son, or friend you could ask for.
I’m Jack McTeague, for crud’s sake.
When I die, people will know my name. They’ll say, that was Jack McTeague. He was Amazing and Wonderful. He was a Colossus of Manhood. Oddly, he had no birth certificate. Nevertheless, he was here.
Man, was he ever here.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Mallory Loehr for her sharp insights, Jill Grinberg for her wise guidance, Scott and Justine for advice and support, Altered Fluid Writers Group for their depth of commitment, and the ‘craft crew for camaraderie and snacks.
LAURENMCLAUGHLIN grew up in the small town of Wenham, Massachusetts, about twenty miles north of Boston. After college and a short stint in graduate school, she spent ten “unglamorous” years in the film industry, both writing and producing, before abandoning her screen ambitions to write fiction full-time. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her photographer husband and is currently working on her next novel.
You can find Lauren’s Web site and blog at
www.laurenmclaughlin.net.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Lauren McLaughlin
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McLaughlin, Lauren.
(Re)cycler / Lauren McLaughlin. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When eighteen-year-old Jill opts to move to New York with Ramie rather than take a road trip with her boyfriend Tommy, all of their relationships are shaken up as Jack, the boy she turns into for four days each month, finally has the chance to get to know himself.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89292-9
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Sex—Fiction.
4. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M2238Rec 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008043456
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - August 19 Jill
Chapter 2 - September 7 Jack
Chapter 3 - September 12 Jill
Chapter 4 - October 4 Jack
Chapter 5 - October 9 Jill
Chapter 6 - October 21 Jack
Chapter 7 - October 26 Jill
Chapter 8 - November 17 Jack
Chapter 9 - November 22 Jill
Chapter 10 - November 13 Jack
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright