Joe Read online

  “What’re you reading?”

  I looked up from the book, into the eyes of the student who’d entered a moment ago. The class wouldn’t begin for another fifteen minutes, and we were alone. The boy had turned around in his desk to direct the question. I recognized him from my philosophy class. He was also one of the students who liked to share his works aloud when the teacher allowed it. He was pleasant-faced with blond hair and brown eyes. The word “jock” came to my mind, though I don’t like to stereotype people, but even those who claim this can’t help it when they see a person and a word pops into their head. I’d heard his poems, though, and he was a decent writer, which in my mind suggests at least a sound intelligence. Stereotypes again. I swear it’s a learned behavior.

  I had to think for a moment before I recalled the title of the book I was reading. Normally I carry a book around with me wherever I go. If I end up getting a minute to myself, I read. Though you would think this would suggest that I do not wish to converse, there is always someone who will ask what I am reading. No matter how many times this happens, I am always caught off-guard by it. The question is always the same, yet I have to think about the answer because I am on to a new book every two or three days. What’re you reading is almost always followed by two other questions. What is it about? And, is it any good? Unless they’ve read it or heard of it before, which leads to a whole other conversation.

  I flipped the book to its cover out of habit. Looking down at it, I read, “They Thirst, by Robert McCammon.”

  The boy’s mouth turned down. “What’s it about?”

  My lips pressed together, half stutter-induced, half amused smile. “It’s a t-true vampire s-st-story,” I said.

  “True?”

  “I mean that-that-that the va-vampires are real vampires. It’s a genuine huh-horror story. The vampires ah-aren’t…nice.”

  “Is it scary?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Read me the first line?”

  I opened to the first page. I didn’t like conversation because of my limits, but I liked other readers who wanted to discuss books. “Tonight, there were demons in the hearth,” I read, smiling a little at the way the words fell so easily from my mouth. It was a big part of why I loved reading,

  The boy grew silent and his brow furrowed. “It good?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll have to read it. I’m Michael.”

  “Joe,” I said.

  “Do you write?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve never heard you read anything to the class.”

  I shrugged. “I duh-duh-do it for me,” I said.

  He smiled. “A true writer. I like to write too,” he said, and his smile expanded, “but I like for others to hear it.”

  “I know. Your wuh-work is good.”

  “Thanks,” he beamed.

  Two other students entered the classroom, a boy followed by a girl. I knew the boy; his name was John, and we shared two classes as well. I’d come to consider him a friend, just one of those people you have in class for a semester and become fond of but will probably never see again after the class ended. He was of Asian descent, with straight black hair that fell nearly to his waist and fingernails that seemed almost as long. He was what some would call different, but then, so was I, and though others tended to give him odd looks, I had decided I liked him.

  John took the desk next to mine and began pulling supplies out of his backpack. Michael gave me a smile and turned back toward the front of the class.

  “You write those four poems?” John asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, luh-last night. Did you?”

  He snorted. “Yeah, in the class before this one. What kind of writing instructor thinks that any real poet can produce four good poems in two days? She’s so stupid. Oh, and that was really shitty of Professor Johnson to call you out like that this morning.”

  John was a Lit major, like me, and the two classes we shared were this one and the one before it. What I liked most about John was not that he didn’t talk much, but that he talked so much that I didn’t have to. I smiled. “Yeah. I guh-got-got a little embarrassed.”

  John laughed. “No shit. You were all like ‘s-s-s-s-sorry, muh-muh-muh-Ma’am,” he teased.

  I laughed in return. This was another thing about John that I found refreshing. He didn’t pretend that he didn’t notice my stutter. Other people will listen to what I say and try to act as though my speech impediment doesn’t make them uncomfortable, and while some really didn’t mind, most did. It makes them feel the same way as when they see someone with an enormous deformity on their face. They can’t ignore it, and yet it would be considered rude to mention it. John had no such qualms.

  “I only s-st-stutter when yuh-you’re around because those-those-those fingernails are so duh-distracting,” I replied.

  John thought this was hilarious. Watching him laugh made my heart sink. This was what college life should be, jokes and laughs and carefree. I looked around the classroom, which was now pretty much full. The teacher hadn’t arrived just yet, and everyone seemed to be in light moods. They were all so young, so full of life. Why shouldn’t their outlook be light?

  Because I knew that it wasn’t.

  One of the greatest mercies of life: not knowing what’s going to happen next.

  Chapter Six

  John

  “So what are you about to do?” John asked.

  Joe shrugged. “Go huh-home, I guess.”

  John looked over at the strange girl as he walked alongside her. Her raven hair fell in a way that blocked most of her face from view, but between the cracks of it he could see the odd silver-blue color of her eyes, even as they stared downward. John had found the girl interesting the moment he saw her, not beautiful or pretty, but interesting. He supposed that was because he was strange himself, and birds of his feather were rare. Mostly, though, her otherness had an allure.

  “Hey, check this out,” John said, removing a small orange ball from his pocket. He held his right hand out in front of him and set the orange ball atop the back of his outstretched hand. His left arm returned to his side. He rolled the ball up his forearm, balanced it there, and rolled it back down, then repeated it twice more. “I’m not that good at it yet, but I will be,” he continued, returning the orange ball to his pocket.

  “Pretty cool,” Joe replied.

  John smiled. She thought he was pretty cool. He wasn’t used to talking to girls, but this semester had been going really well for him in that area. He’d not only made friends with the strange-eyed, interesting girl beside him, but he’d gotten a pretty little lab partner in biology as well. Claire, her name was. Now, there was a hottie.

  “Huh-hey, I puh-parked over there. See ya,” Joe said, splitting off down the path toward the east-campus parking garage. John thought she seemed to be in a hurry for some reason. She’d seemed anxious all day, in fact.

  “All right,” he replied. “Hey, you okay?”

  Joe was already twenty feet in the opposite direction, her back to him. She turned her head a little, but didn’t look back. “Yup. Good,” she said.

  He watched her walk away for a moment, then turned back around and headed off. John didn’t own a car, so he went to the bus stop. It was a pleasant day out, summer already creeping in when it was only the middle of April. He enjoyed his walk across the campus, because UMMS was an extraordinarily beautiful place. Most of the large buildings were made of stone, which were set in rolling fields of plush green. The walkways were all freshly paved, and Missouri hardwood trees cast large areas of shade where students took lunches and naps and played guitars or studied. The University owned all the land surrounding the campus buildings as well, and there were lovely Victorian houses that served as homes to professors, fraternity and sorority houses and offices for the teachers and staff. So yeah, the walk wasn’t so bad.

  John slowed as he passed a group of freshman girls dancing on the lawn beneath an old oak tree, a
nd felt the cell phone stuck in the front pocket of his Levis vibrate against his leg. He continued walking and fumbled the phone out of his pocket. When it was free, he checked the caller ID on the screen to see who it was. The area code was 312. He didn’t even know where that was, let alone anyone who lived there. Curious, he hit the green answer button.

  “Hello?” he said.

  There was silence on the line, but he thought he could hear someone breathing. He tried again. “Hello?”

  Still no answer. John sighed, about to hang up. Then: Hello?

  The voice was small and hesitant, a woman’s voice. John didn’t notice it, but he had stopped walking, and students on their way home were swerving around him, a bit annoyed that he was standing in the middle of the walkway. For several moments he just stood there, the phone pressed to his ear and his mouth hanging open, unaware of how he, with his pin-straight black hair that fell past his waist and his circle-shaped glasses, must look. It was if he had seen a ghost…or heard one.

  “Hello?”

  That voice again, a little louder and with more confidence. He swallowed hard. Someone walking past bumped his arm, mumbled an apology that John didn’t hear, but the little push at least got him walking again. His mind, however, was stuck. He had heard it twice, that voice. He hadn’t imagined it.

  He forced a word through his lips, the only one he could think of, because he was all of a sudden terrified that she might hang up. “Jodie?” he asked. His voice came out in just a whisper, and he hoped to God that she’d heard it, because he wasn’t sure he could speak again. Saying her name felt strange, as he had not spoken it, nor heard it spoken, in over six years. But it was familiar all the same. Very familiar. Sort of like a precious thing that you lose in the house somewhere, and never find again until years down the road when you are packing up to move to a new house. Yeah, kinda like that.

  She had heard him. “Yeah, Johnny, it’s me,” her voice said, and John exited the sidewalk and plopped down on a bench, unconcerned about missing the early bus home.

  “Jodie?” he repeated.

  He heard her giggle, just as she used to do when they were younger, except her laugh was deeper now, throatier. He wasn’t even sure how he had known that it was Jodie. But then again, how could he not? Wasn’t this exactly the moment he had been waiting for for over six years?

  “Yeah. How ya been, Johnny?”

  He heard himself answer, and thought that his voice sounded odd giving his usual, knee-jerk response to this question. “Good. How ’bout yourself?”

  Over the line, all the way to the mystic land of 312—wherever the hell that was—he thought he heard her sigh. “I been good,” she said, and paused. Then, “I’m coming into town soon, actually, and I was wondering if you might want to meet up… have a drink or something?”

  His answer flew through his lips as though rocket-fired, way too quick for him to do a damn thing about it. “Hell yeah!” he all but shouted.

  Roses bloomed behind his cheeks, and people passing by gave him a slightly strange look and continued on their way. He was grateful that at least she couldn’t see him. When he heard her laugh again, that deeper, throatier version of what he remembered so clearly, of what he’d replayed over and over again these past six years on the nights that, no matter how much he tossed and turned or masturbated or read, he could not shake his thoughts of her, made his heart seem to tug itself together again, but his stomach was in his shoes.

  “Okay,” she said. John thought he heard another sigh. Of relief? He couldn’t tell. “What do you got goin’ on on Monday?”

  John had school on Monday, and work, but his automatic response was, “Nothing. Monday? Nope. Nothing going on on Monday.”

  Jodie laughed again, and the long hair on John’s head seemed to tingle with joy. “Okay. I get in at eight pm and I’m driving from the airport. You want me to pick you up?” she asked. “Could be there at like nine. That okay?”

  John reached up to scratch his face, realizing only when his fingers touched wetness that a few tears had escaped his eyes. He quickly cleaned them off with the sleeve of his green army jacket.

  “I mean, you don’t drive, do you? I don’t mind picking you up.”

  He realized he hadn’t replied. “No, I don’t drive,” he said. Of course she knew that. Jodie had seen John after his car wreck his freshman year of high school. She had taken care of him, really. She just had no idea how very much. Even still, he hated driving. “Yes,” he continued. “Pick me up. Pick me up on Monday. I—” He cleared his throat. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Me too. I’ll see you then, Johnny.”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you then,” he said, and then he hung up.

  John sat on that bench for the next half an hour, even though it was going to cause him to miss the early bus and not get home until after the sun had set. It didn’t matter. The day was so warm and the birds were whistling sweet music in his ears. Jodie was coming home. He just couldn’t believe it. Jodie was coming home and everything was going to be all right.

  Come Monday, after a day of classes and work, he would get to see her again, to hold her maybe, to hear that laugh of hers again. And, maybe, just maybe, it would help to erase his last sight of her, where tears had streaked down her face and she had called out and then she was gone. That was how he remembered the girl he had fallen in love with, and now the woman that girl had become was coming back, and she wanted to see him.

  He sat on the bench, under the warm sun, which seemed to him to be shining just for him—when truly it was utterly indifferent—and felt as though he was in a fairytale and everything was going to be all right. Yessir and holy schmokes. It would be all right.

  Come Monday, that was.

  What he didn’t understand was that life was no fairytale, and there is often no smoke before the fire.

  Chapter Seven

  Claire

  Claire sat watching the smoke dance and float out the window, feeling pangs of envy. What a wonder it must be to move so freely, to let the wind take you, to dance away with it. She was not a stupid girl, but she was a pretty one, so the former was often presupposed. But, she was smart enough to know that she had spent most of her life feeling trapped.

  Mid-terms were coming up. She should be studying. That is what everyone expected her to be doing. Instead, she was smoking. Not cigarettes, though she had a half-empty pack of Marlboro Reds sitting in the desk drawer beside her. No, she was smoking the good stuff: pot, weed, marijuana.

  Claire was not a social smoker. She preferred her solitude. In fact, no one she knew was the wiser about her smoking habits. They couldn’t know. Not even her “friends”. What would they say?

  She knew. They would shake their heads and insist on an intervention. Her parents would be the worst. They would be ashamed, claim they never saw it coming. Not their Claire. It had to be her new friends at college, bad influences. It couldn’t be Mike and Mary Hoffken’s daughter. Their little Claire was a good girl. She knew her place. She had goals.

  It’s my own darn fault, she thought. One side of her mouth pulled up. She was so groomed that she didn’t even dare use a curse word in her own head. Fuck that, she thought next. Now she laughed out loud, choking a little on the smoke in her throat.

  “You gonna pass that or choke on it?” someone behind her said.

  Claire turned. Her older sister, Nikki, was standing in the doorway to Claire’s bedroom, her right shoulder braced against the side of it. She knows, Claire thought. She knows and she still loves me.

  Nikki did know about Claire’s smoking. Nikki knew almost everything about Claire. Almost everything.

  Claire held out the hand with the joint in it. Nikki took it and smiled. “Shouldn’t you be studying?” Nikki asked, taking a deep drag.

  Claire sighed and shrugged. “I guess. Shouldn’t you be passed out somewhere?”

  Nikki cracked a smile. “Funny. I told you, I’m working on this new story. It’s driving me fuc
king crazy. It’s gonna be a whole damn book, and a good one. People are going to love it.”

  Nikki passed back the joint. Claire took it. “You’re going to try and sell it?”

  “Hell, yeah. I’m telling you, if they would just read it, they’d like it. I know it. I’ve never felt this way before. I’ve got only about a quarter of it left to write.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I sell that shit and keep writing. You can retire.”

  Claire laughed. That was Nikki. Big dreamer. Nikki was the one their parents expected to screw up. She was the one they were always shaking their heads at and demanding that she do something with her life. Nikki was like the smoke: free, beautiful and dangerous. She did what she wanted and was fine with her decisions. Claire was the good one, Nikki the black sheep. Claire envied her.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? That’s fine. No one believes me,” Nikki added.

  “No. I do believe in you. If you stick with it I’m sure you can do what you’re saying.”

  Claire knew that Nikki needed to hear that. They’d had this same conversation several times over the past couple months. Nikki had decided she wanted to be a writer for a living. Their parents had all but laughed in her face when she told them. A pipe dream, they’d called it. A waste of her time. They wouldn’t keep paying for her to live in the apartment with Claire if she didn’t step up and start being serious about life. Why couldn’t she be more like her sister?

  Right, Claire thought, more like me. Caged and whistling sweet music.

  Claire began stuffing her books into her backpack. “I’ve got class in an hour. I better go in a minute.”