Breakaway (2 page)

“So, Jordie,” Mario said, “that girl Cheryl. I saw you talking to her at the funeral.”

“Seriously?” I asked, giving Jordie a pained look. “You were hitting on girls at my sister's funeral? Damn, man,” I said with a shake of my head.

If fucking with Jordie were an Olympic-qualifying event, Mario and I would have gold and silver medals. We never messed with Chick. He was too sensitive and was always the first to come to the defense of whoever was being singled out for mistreatment. Even though most people knew never to fuck with Chick because of me, he still got picked on and bullied when I wasn't around. But Jordie was fair game. Since he had gotten a car for his seventeenth birthday and was waiting to hear about early acceptance to Dartmouth, Jordie had become almost impossible to be around. He was so consumed with his future, how every choice, every test grade, could have some devastating impact on his life plan. Jordie had so much going for him—money, good looks, supportive family—that I figured anytime Mario and I could give him some self-esteem-reduction therapy, it was just helping him out.

Jordie was stricken at my comment, like I was really upset he had been hitting on girls at Syl's funeral, and looked back and forth between Mario and me questioningly. “I wasn't hitting on her. I was just talking to her. She approached
me,
” he said defensively. “Why? Do you … I mean, you don't think she's into me, do you?”

“You mean, because of your looks?” Mario asked. “Absolutely not. But for your money? Yeah, maybe.”

“You guys are dicks,” Jordie said, finally catching on to the fact that we were messing with him. “Cheryl's family has plenty of money. She doesn't need mine.”

“She does look expensive,” Mario said.

“I'd be careful with that girl,” I said. “She knows how to look out for number one.”

“Yeah, well, nobody asked you, so stop talking,” Jordie said. “Anyway, Jaz, you're the one who's going to be getting the serious strange. I must have had fifty girls asking me about you this past week, since Sylvia died.”

“Me too.” Chick, rejoining the conversation abruptly, had been lost in his own head for a bit, the way he got sometimes when his mind wandered to places most other people's didn't go. “Girls were asking me about Jaz. Wanting to know where he hangs out and whether he's dating anyone.”

“Congratulations,” Mario said then flicked his cigarette butt toward the parking lot. “You've hit the big time. You'll be like a celebrity until everyone remembers they only give a fuck about themselves.”

“Hey, Jaz, you want us to stick around?” Jordie asked.

“Nah,” I said. “You guys have suffered enough. You go ahead.” Since I knew they would stay if I asked, I didn't really need them there.

“I can drop you guys off on my way home,” Jordie said.

“You guys go ahead,” Mario said as he settled onto the stoop beside me. “I'm going to hang for a bit.”

Mario and I sat in silence and watched Jordie and Chick walk to Jordie's car. It wasn't until you saw Chick walking beside someone as healthy and athletic as Jordie that you really noticed how stunted and wilted he was. It was several minutes after Jordie's car had disappeared behind the next apartment building that I broke the silence.

“I couldn't touch that casket,” I said. “I couldn't stop thinking about her—I mean her actual body—being in that box. Creeped me the fuck out, man.”

Mario just nodded in understanding as he tossed a pebble across the sidewalk.

“Everyone at the funeral probably thought I was a total freak,” I said and rested my forearms on my knees, one hand grasping my opposite wrist. I squinted into the sun as it set over the roof of the neighboring building.

“Who gives a fuck what anybody thinks?” Mario asked. “She was your sister.”

“Yeah, I know. I don't give a shit.” And it was true. In that moment, I didn't really give a shit about anything.

CHAPTER TWO

I knew I couldn't avoid it forever, would eventually have to go interact with people who had come for Sylvia's funeral. Mario followed me back inside the apartment. I knew he would stick it out to the bitter end, even if he was dying to get out of his suit and tie as much as I was.

Though I knew it was spotlessly clean in our apartment, everything looked shabby and worn next to the neatly pressed outfits people wore. The sofa bed was put away but it was still kind of weird to have a bunch of people, who were really just strangers to me, sitting where I slept.

Aunt Gladys and some of Mom's friends from work had spent the day before the funeral cleaning the apartment and getting ready for company. Everybody had come back to our place to eat after the funeral. Neighbors had been coming by all week with food and Aunt Gladys had gotten some deli platters from the Safeway. That seemed weird to me too. People bring a whole bunch of food over to the house and then we have to feed them after the funeral, clean up their mess.

Mom was in rough shape, had been crying nonstop for the past week, and wasn't even really able to greet the guests who came to offer their condolences. Many times over the past week I had thought about touching her in some way, putting my arm around her or something to offer her comfort, but lately I had gotten the sense that she didn't really want me around. Like maybe she wished that it were me who had died instead of Sylvia.

We hardly ever had company. Sylvia never brought her friends home because she was too ashamed of our living conditions, and since the television was in Mom's room, we usually kept the sofa bed out. When Sylvia's dad still lived with us we had a four-bedroom apartment and I had my own room. Now I used the living room, so if we did have people over, it made the situation kind of awkward, like now, when it would be obvious to anyone that there were only two bedroom doors. Maybe people would think Sylvia and I had shared a room.

At first people had just stood around the edges of the room, talking in whispers like we were still in church. No one wanted to dive straight for the food. Everyone held back, trying to be polite, but I could see them all looking at the spread. There were heaps of sandwich meat and cheese and some of those baby quiches. You'd have to eat two dozen of them just to get a decent mouthful, so I left those alone.

Our little apartment was so crammed with people, it was impossible to get to the bathroom, which was constantly in use anyway. I was standing there with Mario, thinking about how badly I had to piss when Alexis, Sylvia's best friend and a Wakefield cheerleader, showed up with her mom and dad. She looked like a doll dressed in a charcoal gray dress with her black hair pulled back in a severe bun, her face clear of any makeup.

Sylvia had been a cheerleader, and the members of the squad had kept a vigil at the hospital while Sylvia languished in her coma. The cheerleaders had gotten special permission to take turns missing school so that Sylvia was never alone. I had gone to the hospital a few times to visit Sylvia, but always at times when I knew I wouldn't run into any of her friends. As immediate family I was allowed to visit Sylvia after visiting hours, but I never could stay in the room with her very long. I spent most of the time I was at the hospital drinking really terrible coffee in the cafeteria.

“Hi, Jason,” Alex said with a sniffle.

She looked older than I would have expected. Just a week ago she had seemed like a little kid to me; my kid sister's silly little friend. Now she looked like a young woman, and not a bad-looking one either. She startled me by leaning over to give me a hug, and she held on to me while her whole body shook with sobs.

“I miss her so much,” Alex said, the words riding the crest of a sob. I didn't know what to say or do so I just rubbed her back with one hand while trying to hold the other one steady so I wouldn't spill my drink down the back of her dress.

Finally I got away from her and made it to the bathroom. I stayed in there for a while, so people probably thought I was taking a dump. Actually I was sitting on the bathroom floor, my stomach aching with such sharp pains that I had to gasp for breath at times. I could feel the cool of the tile through my shirt, but beads of sweat still formed on my forehead and upper lip. After what seemed like forever I started to feel better and splashed cold water on my face.

I studied my reflection in the mirror to see if I needed to shave. It had been a few days but since Mom didn't say anything, I didn't bother shaving before the funeral. I didn't really like to let my beard grow in, because even though my hair was dark brown, my beard grew in looking almost red. It looked stupid, dark brown hair with a reddish beard, so I never even tried to grow a goatee.

When I left the sanctuary of the bathroom the living room was so choked with people that I slipped into Sylvia's room just to avoid the crowd. In Sylvia's room, with her stuff scattered around, her clothes still hanging in the closet, it felt like she wasn't dead, just out with her friends or at cheerleading practice. Like any minute she'd come walking in the door and start yelling at me for being in her space.

The mattress groaned in protest as I sat on the edge of her twin bed. There was a jumble of trophies and ribbons on the dresser—swimming, cheerleading, gymnastics. Sylvia had been a cheerleader since she was in ninth grade, the only freshman accepted to the squad the previous year. I reached over to pick up a faux-bronze trophy with a miniature cheerleader on top. I wondered what kind of trophy you could get for cheerleading. Best pom-pom handling?

The inscribed plaque at its base was from Sylvia's cheerleading camp—
BEST TEAM SPIRIT
, it said. The irony of that made me smile a little. It was a joke I could have shared with Sylvia, pointed out the irony to her and she would have gotten the humor in it right away. The only person, other than maybe Mario, who would have found it funny and not told me it was a sick joke. Thinking about that, that I would no longer have one of the two people who actually got me as a person, made my gut tighten again, and another wave of pain passed through my core.

“Jason?” Mom was standing in the doorway. She was swaying almost drunkenly from side to side. She hadn't been drinking, had just been a little unsteady since Sylvia died, as if one of her limbs had been amputated and it had ruined her balance. I almost wished she
would
start drinking. Maybe it would make her sleep more, instead of staying up crying all night, every night.

Her long auburn hair had started to unravel from its braid. She was only thirty-six, young to have a son who was a senior in high school, and I had gotten used to the fact that men looked at her the way men shouldn't look at a mother with two kids. But now she was so disheveled, her face drawn with lines of worry and fatigue, she bore almost no resemblance to the woman I knew.

After steadying herself with the wall she tottered over to rest her hand on my shoulder. She gripped my shoulder with a strength I didn't know she had, her body weight straining the muscles in my neck.

Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks and she reached to take the trophy from my hands. “She was such a beautiful girl, Jason.”

“I know, Ma.”

“There are some people from school who just got here. You should go and talk to them,” she said.

“I don't really feel like talking,” I said.

“I know. I know.” She bent her head close to mine and hiccoughed a little sob as she put her arms around my shoulders. My skin itched with discomfort. I waited for as long as I could, until I thought the hug had lasted long enough, before I shrugged my shoulders gently to break the embrace.

“I guess I'll go see who's here,” I mumbled, and left her sitting on the bed, holding Sylvia's trophy, tears dripping into her lap.

CHAPTER THREE

Aunt Gladys tried to talk me out of going to school the next day. I didn't tell her that if I were going to miss school, it definitely wouldn't be so I could sit home with Mom and watch her cry more.

“Your mother's very fragile right now, Jason,” Aunt Gladys said.

Yeah, no kidding.

“But maybe it would be better for you to get things back to normal as soon as possible.” She smiled encouragingly, as if she understood me. As if there were anything to understand.

I have always been amazed by how far saying nothing can get me. If I just shut my mouth, usually people find their own way to agree with me and I don't have to do any work at all.

I knew I would have to endure unwanted attention at school because of Sylvia. She had been a cheerleader and a total brainiac, so it wasn't as if she could die and people wouldn't take any notice. I think they had plans to plant a tree or something and put a plaque next to it with her name on it. It was hard for me to imagine a gesture that could be any more meaningless.

Alexis was waiting by my locker when I got to school. Her long hair was loose and it hung around her shoulders in shiny blue-black curls. She was hugging her books against her chest and staring up at the ceiling while she waited.

“Hey, Jaz,” she said as I dumped my backpack on the floor.

“Hey, yourself,” I said.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“I think so.” I said it real smart-like but she didn't even notice. As if she would be the one I would talk to if I needed a shoulder to cry on.

“Good. Listen, I didn't get much of a chance to talk to you yesterday. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to get together after school?”

“What for?” I asked.

She shrugged and leaned her head against my locker. “To talk. I don't know. You could come over to my place and we could just hang out or something.”

“I've got practice.”

Alex shook her head. “No, they canceled all the extracurricular activities today out of respect for—well, you know. There's going to be a memorial in the auditorium during last period to talk about Sylvia.”