Jane Two (18 page)

Kevin never practiced and he never lost all summer—no one ever even came close to him. He waved, he won, and then he left.

“Next swimmers, on your marks!” The announcer's voice boomed for the beginning of another race, and the sudden crack that sounded its start rang in my ears, not like a starter's pistol but like a shotgun.

Kevin was the coolest kid I knew…and he was my friend.

Summer didn't wait for me or Jane or anyone—it just kept on going. Burbling along, Jane sightings poolside, swim meets, more Jane sightings with her Frisbee, with 95s and without, catching critters in The Ditch with Steve McQueen and Firefly, concerts, family, and making money on balls and mowing lawns with my push mower. Mr. Milan's grass hadn't been cut in quite a while, so when I saw him out there the next time sitting beside his wife's empty chair, I stopped and offered to cut his grass. He didn't respond. I guessed he was drunk like Lew Hoagie, what for all the Miller cans piled up in the grass. So I went home feeling I should tell my mom, but I didn't say anything and instead just fueled the mower.

S
ummer ended when Kevin blew his head off. They said he climbed down into The Hole, stuck the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth, propped the butt against the wall, and hooked his big toe in the trigger loop. And pushed.

Kevin had never asked for it back, so I was listening to his “Free Bird” under headphones in my bedroom waiting for Grandaddy and Mamau to come by for supper. Still, I could hear a girl crying out in our kitchen. At first I thought my parents were reprimanding Lilyth for some shit she had pulled. They weren't. My door was open a crack and I saw Magda hugging Lilyth, and both were sobbing, and Lilyth was hyperventilating. Mom and Dad were huddled around them. I heard everything, even the stuff I didn't want to hear. I remember every sound and smell from that night, not like it was yesterday, but like it's today. I could not stop my ears from hearing, but I found that I could move farther away. I withdrew from the crack in my door and slowly pushed myself back into the corner of my bed against the wall, still looking out the crack. Behind me, my P-51 Mustang's thread gave way suddenly, and the baddest of all propeller planes crashed to my floor. My eyes were already filled up as I picked up its broken wing and carried it over to my bed, where I sat with my back against the wall rolling its landing gear against my leg. Occasionally I glanced back up through the crack trying to square up with an emotion that had never introduced itself before. Steve McQueen never left my side. He always knew. He followed me the next day when I rode my Schwinn straight to The Hole.

The fog draped thin gossamer across the playing fields as I approached, and morning dew shimmered on the grass, giving it a fairy-tale quality in the morning sunshine. The crack in the earth was cordoned off as a crime scene, and cop cars and investigators were everywhere. Kevin's Plank and the Firebird remained right where he had left it. Steve McQueen ran to The Hole and peered down and barked, but I could not get too close. I didn't understand. I couldn't. Magda's new boyfriend had gone in planning to smoke dope down inside the cavern deep beneath the opening of The Hole. He said he had found parts of Kevin spattered all over
Hustler
centerfolds that were stuck to the walls. He said it was impossible to tell who it was. I always wondered what that must have been like, barely squeezing your body down that long, dark crevice that zigzagged, sometimes even having to exhale and compress your lungs just to squeeze through a space too tiny for yourself, until you finally came out in a small, pitch-black, dirt room…and then you light a match. It took the forensics team the entire next day to get all the pieces of Kevin out of The Hole. Then the authorities flooded it with truckloads of piped-in cement and The Hole was no longer a bottomless threat.

Kevin had left a message on the hood of his Firebird in white spray paint:
I was based on a true story.

As the funeral procession passed with all their headlights on, I hid up in my giant bean tree in the front yard long after my mom had called me to come down and eat something. The branches were so wide I could even sleep up there without falling out. Mortality stymied me, and I just did not know how or why death existed at all. I valued life so strongly. What he did made no sense to me, and it still doesn't. Kevin was contemplative, morose, on drugs, somewhat mad, maybe sad, more scary than sad. Maybe he'd had bad parents. I didn't know. But the fact that you can just decide to take your own life, it didn't compute. The realization that we are temporary horrified me, and fear engulfed me as my young mind tried to extrapolate the possibility of death to my own parents and Grandaddy and Mamau and Steve McQueen. And all the while I remained up in that bean tree watching the cortege pass, Steve McQueen sat below me, waiting. My sister later said they played “Free Bird” at the funeral and that it was a “happy” service “on account a'the fact that that's the way Kevin was…HAPPY.” Though, I kept thinking, well, he killed himself for a reason, and I had to wonder if it was on account of some shitty thing Lilyth said to him. Maybe he found out about her going with different guys, or she told him he was a retard one time too many. I just sat up there pondering in that bean tree perfectly still watching the cars go by and watching Mr. Milan's two aluminum lawn chairs nestle into the weeds, and I could not stop those fucking tears. Kevin was a cerebral dreamer who spoke in metaphors, high a lot, pot-speak, THC vernacular, too-long pauses, but he thought about what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, unlike most people. He loved the music I loved. He picked my sister—why, I could never comprehend—and called her The Mythical Creature.

I stayed up in that tree for two full days. I finally came down when Mom said Steve McQueen could not sleep without me. Lilyth was in the shower taking forever, so I left Kevin's “Free Bird” eight-track on her mattress. That's when I saw Kevin's obituary peeking out from under Lilyth's pillow with a brochure about a birth clinic and another about an orphanage in a convent. I tried to read fast, but Lilyth turned off the water before I could get far.

The obituary read, …
the late Mr. and Mrs. R. K. G. were professional swimmers who trained the deceased
… Since it said that his parents were late, I guessed Kevin's parents were just delayed, not able to get there fast enough to help him not kill himself. I wondered if he had nice parents. The obit included a quote that had been the family motto:
I know of no pain so great that I would exchange even existence for its removal. Training hurts but it prolongs life, so bring on the pain.
I guessed Kevin did not agree with his family on that. Obviously something was hurting him and he wanted it to stop. The last thing I read before I heard the sink running and Lilyth gargling was that Kevin
is survived
… I thought maybe someone had made a mistake, maybe Kevin was not dead and it was someone else's brains that spattered the pages of
Hustler
in The Hole. Until I got to the next line, and my heart twisted. It read, …
by an elder stepbrother and swim coach, from a first marriage, Randall
… The sink faucet squeaked off, and I stuffed the papers back under Lilyth's pillow. As I shut her door behind me out in the hall, Lilyth exited the bathroom with a towel on her head.

“Get away from my door, shit head.”

I pointed at my bedroom door and followed my finger. In my room, I stared blankly at the dogfight on my ceiling as my fighter planes swayed gently in the warm morning breeze wafting in, without a Mustang to ensure victory. Now I understood why Coach Randall was so cool. Kevin was his little brother.

I woke up to my mom yelling that peanut butter pancakes were on the table. I sat up slowly, knowing that I would be excited about those pancakes on any other day. But then it didn't matter anymore when I realized that Firefly had probably already eaten most of my breakfast anyway. I was pulling up my drawers when Lilyth knocked before she stuck her head around the corner of my door, first time ever without barging in when I was in my underwear. I didn't know what to expect. She had been so weird since Kevin's suicide. I almost missed her being mean to me, just so she wouldn't be so sad anymore. Lilyth held up the eight-track of Lynyrd Skynyrd, with
Kevin
scratched on it.

“Did you leave this on my bed?” I nodded. Lilyth looked like she might break down, then finally she thanked me and turned to leave. She was different somehow. Sort of radiant.

“Hey, Lilyth?”

She stuck her head back around the door. “What?”

“If you told Kevin you were gonna have a baby, he woulda smiled, 'cause I know he loved you. You can borrow my records if you want.”

For once Lilyth was silent, walking inside my bedroom and closing the door quietly. I was afraid she might come back to her old self and smack me. Instead, she sat on my bed.

“Thanks, ya little butt-hole, how'd you know?” And there it was. She was pregnant with Kevin's baby. I smiled, but I was scared for her. I was scared for the baby. She could not even manage her own life, much less an infant's. I told her that she could name him after Grandaddy. Charlie. But that she'd have to find a girl name if it was a girl.

“Charlotte,” Lilyth said plainly, accepting her situation. “And, shit head. Don't tell Mom and Dad.” She stood up, then sat right back down. “You'll always be right here, you promise?” I nodded, yet unaware that promises are like babies, easy to make and harder to deliver. “Thanks, Mickey.” And that was our truce. Though it was only the beginning of the school year, Lilyth and I were, for the first time in our lives, well prepared for the holiday season of thanks and peace and
nice
and
fine
. “Peace,” she said, and flashed me a Kevin peace sign as she closed my door behind her.

My sister was a heartless mystery to me, who now had two beating inside of her. She was more or less nice to me through the holidays, and I started to trust that she would stay nice. Our truce was monumental. But the day after Christmas, its tinsel magic ebbing away, Lilyth deliberately cut the tassels off my Sting-Ray. Our truce ended. Life as I had known it continued, on guard, looking over my shoulder, except when Lilyth went away.

When I walked into the kitchen, Firefly was holding up his bowl to my mom for another serving of Cream of Wheat. He devoured it before the gob of Nutley margarine melted and he did not even mix in the brown sugar heaped on top.

“Mywan nolettuce foot moogar abuttarina reena weep,” he said.

“Lawrence, you need to breathe between bites, darlin'. I have no idea what you just said!”

“His mom don't let him put sugar or butter on his Cream o' Wheat.”

“Oh, okay, well, ya'll better git for school before the rain starts!”

Firefly and I biked past the Milans' two empty aluminum lawn chairs that remained in tall grass. There was still no sign of either Mr. or Mrs. Milan. I raced Firefly to school past Jane's old house. The new people didn't keep it so nice, and I couldn't wait to tell Mrs. Bradford in homeroom. Before we got to the first intersection, Firefly stopped and threw up just as the sky started to open, then parked his butt on the sidewalk for a spell with his chin propped up in his hands right there in the rain.

“We're gonna be late, man. C'mon, it's first day.”

Finally he looked up at me. “Summer should go till Christmas,” said Firefly, spitting out a piece of something disgusting.

“The heat, or the no-school?”

“Probly just the no-school.” Firefly wiped his mouth with his clean pressed shirt. “You wanna stop at the Utotem, and get a Coke?”

“You just threw up.”

“Belly's empty now. Please, I'll never make it till lunch.” At the Utotem, Samir gave us two Cokes even though we offered our leftover golf ball money.

“Don't tell the man my boss I give you free. Now, I play you very, very, very new song, Mic-mic!” While we drained our Cokes, Samir played us Melanie's song, about what I'm sure were someone else's roller skates, but I could only see Jane's. Jane had a pair that she had painted psychedelic patterns in purple, green, and yellow. “What is means, Mic-mic? You have new key? I have new skate?”

I promised Samir I would come back by real soon 'cause we were nearly late for school. The Coke's sugar high prevented me from slowing my pedals, and I left Firefly in the dust that was turning to mud in the fresh rain. But I waited for him out in front of the school as I stared at The Pole. Up that flagpole was my conflagration, and her hung 95s. As we locked our bikes to the rack by our new homeroom window I peeked in, planning to wave to Mrs. Bradford, but instead, a dour woman was talking to Emmalyne. I asked Firefly if he knew who the lady was, and he peeked in to see.

“Dunno. Substitute teacher, I guess.” Firefly scratched his fresh blood-orange buzz cut.

Dread grew as I hovered by my homeroom door. There was no sign of Mrs. Bradford, and the new woman was not leaving my homeroom. Everyone sat in their rows, quietly inhaling nothing but dread. Firefly and I sat closest to the bike racks, and Trent and Clatterbuck sat next to us. A sheet of paper on every desk except mine added to the gloom. The bell rang. I glanced under my desk for a matching paper, but nothing.

“Good morning, children. My name is Maude Totter. Yes, I am your principal's wife.” Her tone was like we were doomed heathens. Heads turned as we asked each other if she could possibly be the same person we knew a year ago before Mrs. Bradford became our new homeroom teacher. There was no way, I thought, no way in hell this was Miss Flinch.

“She's eyeballin' you, Mic.”

I shushed Firefly and studied the plump, grumpy woman's face. Her voice was like a violin played with untrained hands, just wrong, ripped and ragged.

“Some of you may remember me as Miss Flinch. Well, children, now you may address me as Mrs. Totter.” What had happened to her? She was so nice before, and pretty. Now she was just angry and washed out. “You will find a written code of conduct on your desk from your principal, which y'all should have read by now, unless you've already neglected to follow the rules.”

The new Mrs. Totter pointed to the blackboard behind her, which read:
There is a sheet of paper on your desk. READ IT!

“Please take this time to read and reread the rules. These rules are given to every student, and posted on every hallway bulletin board,
lest you forget
.”

God, I hated that term. Again, I looked around on the floor for my sheet of paper. The new Mrs. Totter busied herself while everyone but me was pretending to read, bowed in silent prayer against The New Dread. I raised my hand, but the new Mrs. Totter was not looking, so I put my hand back down.

“Miss Flinch, er—Mrs. Totter, sorry, I didn't get…”