Joe Page 8

  Into the quiet sounds of the night, he laughed out loud to himself, tipping his plastic chair back and resting his feet on the railing of the balcony. If a passerby were to see him sitting this way, so calmly and casually, they would not see the cloud of insanity that was floating in his mind. Hell, Danny himself couldn’t see it.

  He was not dull, for all too often stupidity and insanity do not walk hand in hand. He was smart enough to know that he was angry all the time, but only sane enough to be able to grasp one emotion; hate. The question now was would he be able to accomplish the little embellishment to his plan, the one that he had come up with today? The question was: Was he a smart enough psychopath to be able to teach himself how to build bombs? Danny had no experience with the matter, but he did have the motivation of a starving tiger.

  He considered waiting a year or two to carry out his acts. In fact, the reason he was unable to sleep tonight was because he kept bouncing the decision around in his head. The longer Danny waited to do his deeds, the smarter he would be and the more he would learn. The longer he waited, the more money he could earn to fund said deeds. It was a damn good thing that Danny couldn’t wait.

  You know what it was? It was the Glory of it all. The entire world would hear his name. But, it was not the fame that Danny sought. No, it was the Fear. When the reporters and students and parents and teachers and all the other assholes spoke of him, they would feel that Fear in the pit of their stomachs. They would try to understand, but it would be impossible, and that which we cannot understand, we fear. It was such a sweet word to Danny, when he thought of it, all seemed oddly right with the world.

  He truly believed that he was a Higher Being than the rest of them, and they needed to know it. They should be hiding their daughters and locking their doors. They should be cowering when he passed by. They should be taking his orders. They should be crawling at his feet like the insects they were. Better yet, they should all just die.

  Danny laughed out loud again, and the sounds of the night mingled with the sound of his defective soul’s glee. Then he began humming the tune of an old Jimmy Buffet song. A glance at his digital watch told him that it was five o’clock in the morning. Friday Morning.

  Only three days left.

  Chapter Sixteen

  John

  “Shit, this is due in three days,” John said, slapping the bill down on the kitchen table.

  His mother gave him a sharp look, but John knew that she didn’t speak English well enough to know that he’d used a foul word. His father just sat in his chair at the table and continued sipping his hot tea. He spoke no English at all.

  John switched to his native language—Mandarin—to tell his parents that if they didn’t pay two-hundred and eighty dollars in three days, their water would be shut off. His parents passed a look at each other that answered his next question for him. They didn’t have the money.

  “Shit,” John repeated.

  He was still missing two of the textbooks he needed for school, and had just saved up enough money to buy them. Now, it was a choice between the books or the water, and though it was obvious which one he would choose, it still seriously sucked. He didn’t blame his parents, not really. They had come here from China when he had been a baby, in hopes that he would have a better life with more opportunities. The problem was that both of them had been living in America for over eighteen years, and neither had bothered to learn the language or the culture.

  His parents shopped at a Chinese market, ate at Chinese restaurants, watched Chinese movies and so on. His mother had a job cleaning rooms in the city at a motel which was run by a Chinese man, and his father worked as a cook at a Chinese take-out place. They had no interest in learning English, and they had made that rather clear with their stubbornness over the years.

  This put an enormous amount of pressure on John, and was a strong portion of the reason that he was so socially awkward. Outside of his home, he had grown up with nearly all American people. By the time he was out of elementary school he was better at speaking English than Chinese. He had fallen into the culture as well.

  Well, not entirely. His straight black hair hadn’t been cut in years, and it fell all the way down his back. His fingernails were so long that he could dig up a garden with them. He carried rings and balls and cards in all of his pockets so that he could perform his slight-of-hand tricks wherever he went. He didn’t make friends easily. He said the wrong things. He wore clothes that only he thought were cool. By all rights, John was strange. He didn’t know any other way to be, and helping his parents had occupied most of his free time for his entire life.

  It was an early Friday morning for John, as the majority of his mornings were. He was nineteen years old now but had never bothered with getting his driver’s license. He wouldn’t have been able to afford a car anyhow. But, this meant that he had to take the bus to and from UMMS five days a week to get to school, which was forty-five miles from his home. Next semester he would try and get all of his classes on two or three days. By bus it took him an hour and a half each way to get to the university and back. Between that, taking care of his parents, working at the pet shop and keeping up with homework, he was exhausted all the time.

  His father told him to remember to pick up some milk at the corner store on his way home. John sighed his frustration but didn’t argue. Some things would just never change. His biggest dream was to get out of here someday, to leave this place and never look back. His parents had made college a condition of his continuing to live under their roof, and John was beginning to wish that he had decided not to go. He wanted nothing more than to travel from place to place, performing his tricks for people on the street, and earning a modest living that way.

  On his walk to the bus stop, John thought back to his childhood, remembering a time when he had been taking this very same walk to the bus stop for middle school. Even though it had happened over six years ago, John still spared thoughts for the incident every time he had to take this walk.

  He had only been thirteen years old at the time, but just as socially awkward as he was still was today. The details of it all had begun to fade, and yet the effects had placed a large stepping stone in the path that made John the way he was. It had left him bitter, and he was too bitter to even know it.

  The girl’s name was Jodie. The incident that ended it all was finally beginning to unglue itself from his mind, but the first time he set eyes on her would never leave him. The way her curly blond hair stuck out from her head, as though gravity from the sky were pulling it upward, still made him smile. The memory of her sea-green eyes reflecting the light from the sun still made his heart flip. Her pink-and-blue flowered dress, the small scar just above her right knee, the single dimple of her left cheek. He remembered her so very clearly.

  Jodie was the reason that he had not taken scissors to his hair for six years. He was growing it in memory of their love, but it had never been theirs, not really. It had only been his.

  The girl had been sitting on her porch as he passed by on his way to the bus stop that morning. When he saw her he knew immediately that she was new to the neighborhood. To this day he didn’t know where his courage to wave to her came from, but when she smiled and waved back the hair on John’s head tingled. That’s why he had stopped cutting his hair. At one time, a girl named Jodie had made it tingle.

  Jodie was John’s first real friend, and the two walked to and from the bus stop every day together. Jodie understood John’s humor. She didn’t seem to mind as much as everyone else that he was strange. She was one in million, and beautiful too.

  Then the incident happened, and John never saw Jodie again. He hadn’t heard from her in over six years, not since that day–not until she had called him yesterday.

  The two had been on their way home from school when Jodie reached out and took John’s hand in hers. “There’s something I want to try,” Jodie said, looking at John from underneath her golden lashes.

  “Okay,” John said
, his hand warm with hers inside it, “I’m in.”

  Jodie giggled. “You haven’t heard what it is yet.”

  John shrugged. “What is it?” he asked.

  The two had reached the front of Jodie’s house, on the sidewalk where they split ways every day. She glanced back at her house and studied it for a moment, then, she turned back to John. “Close your eyes,” she said, turning him by the shoulders so that he was facing her.

  For a brief moment, a small-enough second that he hoped she didn’t notice, all he could do was stare at her. Jodie had become his best friend, and the reason he never missed a day of school. She didn’t mind walking to the same off-beat rhythm that made John seem weird in everyone else’s eyes. Jodie was innocent. They both were. They were only thirteen.

  The thing that Jodie did next remained the single best memory in John’s mind to this day. Jodie leaned in and kissed him.

  The day wasn’t particularly beautiful. In fact, it was a little windy outside, rays of sunshine only breaking through the clouds at infrequent shifts. Fallen leaves floated their way down the sidewalk, their soft scraping sound the simple soundtrack of the moment. But, the world may as well have been coated with thick cotton, blotting out all that there was except John and Jodie.

  It wasn’t a long kiss, really just their lips pressed together gently for a tiny moment that would last a lifetime. John would give anything to go back to that moment, to seize it and take up quarters in its grasp. That was the moment when everything changed for him. It was one of his defining moments, a pillar holding up the man that John was becoming.

  He remembered the angry shout that sheared through the soft cotton momentarily falling over the world. The next thing he remembered was Jodie being torn away from his touch. He hadn’t known at the time that that would be the last time he touched her. He didn’t know that it would be the last time he even saw her.

  The next thing John saw was a dark flash of light, and then searing pain cut across his face. Jodie’s father must have been watching from a window, because he was dragging Jodie away now, having punched John in the face and broken his nose. John had lain on the sidewalk in agonized silence, too shocked to right himself. Jodie had screamed and cried the entire way to the house, and that was the worst part of it. When he looked back and thought about the incident, that part was always the toughest. John’s parting glance of Jodie, as he slowly turned his head to the side on the hard pavement, the blood streaming down into his mouth now flowing into his ear, had been at a scared thirteen-year-old girl, tears racing down her face and the wind slapping her hair. Just once, if John remembered correctly, before Jodie’s dad slammed the door, she called out John’s name.

  And that’s how he still remembered her.

  For two weeks John had walked by Jodie’s house on his way to the bus stop, never losing hope that she would come out of that front door her dad had dragged her through, waiting anxiously to see her golden hair and sweet smile. But, by the end of that second week, on his way home from school, John’s world crumbled to ashes and settled at his feet.

  It was a Friday. He could remember that because he had hoped that Jodie would come outside over the weekend. He thought things would go back to normal, because at thirteen he couldn’t see how else things could go. But Jodie hadn’t returned to school, and he had been growing increasingly worried about her over the last two weeks. What happened shouldn’t have shocked him so much, but it did.

  John stopped on the sidewalk in front of Jodie’s house, the soles of his sneakers attaching themselves to the concrete on which he stood. For a tiny moment he didn’t understand. Well, he pretended not to understand. He stared at the sign in the front lawn, refusing to accept what it meant.

  In front of Jodie’s small, yellow house there was a realtor’s sign that read: FOR RENT. John actually fell to his knees right there on the sidewalk as his brain processed the message. He looked up at the house that had held the girl who owned his heart. The blinds and shades had been removed from the windows. The patio furniture, an old porch swing and a chipped, wooden chair were absent as well. The birdbath was gone. The beat-up Chevy was gone.

  Jodie was gone.

  He was too young to have learned that that is how change often worked, rapid and unexpected, and it socked him in the gut with all the power of a first fall. John sat on his knees in front of her house for an hour that day, just staring at it. He didn’t cry, because that was not how he dealt with things, but staring at the cicada shell of a house filled him with loss so deeply that he was forever changed. John never cut his hair again. He never kissed another girl.

  Six years later he sat on the bus, staring at his hands, thinking about Jodie. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since her call yesterday. Over the last six years he had gotten good at forcing thoughts of her out of his mind. He had allowed her memory to fade as much as it would, as good as it gets. Those memories were old, though. Jodie wasn’t a little girl anymore, and all the things he had tried so hard to forget about her were flooding back to him and swimming like sharks in his mind.

  What if she didn’t find him attractive? What if she looked completely different from what he remembered? What if she was married? What if, what if? Too many damn what-if’s.

  He wouldn’t admit it, but he was scared to see her. Things had changed since she had left. He changed when she left.

  In fact, he had changed the moment she left. Because that is how it works. Rapid and unexpected.

  Most of us wouldn’t know it, but this is a gift.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Eric

  He wanted to go get her something, but when you’ve never met someone it’s hard to pick out a gift. Eric supposed that because his daughter was only six years old, she would like a toy or something, but the more he thought about what to get her, the more he panicked. He knew nothing about her. He had missed so much.

  Stabbing a paper cup with his metal trash-grabber, he opened the trash bag he held in his other hand, plucked the cup from the nail at the end of the stick, and tossed it in the bag. The sun hadn’t fully risen yet, but there was just enough daylight to see by. Cars whizzed by him on both sides of the median he was cleaning on Highway 71. The grass was thick here, up past his knees. Since he had been doing this community service–three years now–there had only been a handful of times when the vegetation had been trimmed. He wondered why the litter needed to be removed when they didn’t even bother to cut the grass.

  Eric woke up at 4:30 AM, Monday through Friday, to complete his community service. He worked from 5:30 until 9:30. Then he went straight to school from there. From school he would go to work, and from work he would get back to his studio apartment at eight o’clock, have a microwave dinner, and go to sleep. His days since being released from prison had been hard and long, but he had no complaints.

  Nothing was worse than going back there. He took nothing for granted.

  “Hey, Toni?” Eric called.

  Toni, one of people Eric met when he began doing his community service, stabbed a soda bottle and lifted his left arm to check his watch. “S’only seven in the mornin’, my friend. We ‘bout halfway there,” Tony said.

  Eric sighed and continued filling his trash bag. He didn’t mind paying his debt to society, but he wished that his tasks could be less busywork and more something that would occupy his mind. He had spent three and a half years left with nothing but his thoughts, and he’d found that he couldn’t stand to be alone with them. Life was better and much easier when he kept moving. There were too many bad things that he preferred to leave hidden within the recesses of his mind.

  But, in the middle of the highway, as the sun was just beginning to show and the world was still dark enough to keep your eyes comfortable, everything was too reminiscent of that night. That night that changed everything. The night of the accident.

  As he skewered another improperly disposed item, he replayed the events of that night in perfect order. You always remember the
rapid change. You usually remember it perfectly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eric, six and a half years ago

  “Don’t go,” Jenny said, tugging on the bottom of his shirt from her spot on the bed.

  Eric kissed her on the forehead and smiled. “Got to, babe. The streets are calling me.”

  Jenny sat up, rubbing her belly, which was just beginning to swell. Her face was scrunched up in concern. “You have to stop this shit, Eric. Things are different now. We’ve got a baby on the way.”

  Eric sat down beside her on the bed, taking her hand into his own. She was so cute when she was concerned. “That’s exactly why I gotta hustle, babe. We’re gonna need a lot of money to raise a baby,” he said.

  Jenny threw her hands up. “Do you even hear yourself, Eric? That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The baby needs us to be there for it. You can’t be here if you’re in jail.”

  Eric struggled not to roll his eyes. He loved Jenny very much, but he had heard this shit too many times before, from everyone. No one complained, though, when he paid to get their cars fixed or their rent when they were behind. His mother and Jenny were always telling him to quit hustling, but they had no problem with reaping the benefits.

  “I’m not going to jail. I’m just going down the street. I’ll be back in an hour. I’ve only got a few runs to make.” He grabbed her car keys off the nightstand.

  Jenny crossed her arms, offended that he was blowing her off. “You know what you are, Eric?” she asked.

  Eric pulled a hoodie over his head. “What’s that?”

  “Someone who always has to learn things the hard way,” she said.

  Eric stopped and turned back to face her. “You know what you are?” he asked.