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Authors: James Ryan Daley

BOOK: Jesus Jackson
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Twenty-six

I was quickly coming to the conclusion that this whole school thing just wasn't for me. Sure, I had tolerated it, more or less, in elementary school; I had gritted my teeth and put up with it through middle school. But this high school thing (and especially
this
high school)—this was just not happening for me. I had pretty much succumbed to doing nothing more than sitting with my head in my hands through all of my classes, and I probably would have skipped out after lunch, had I not happened to step into the cafeteria line right behind Ms. Cassie St. Claire.

She was talking to some girl in front of her, so she didn't notice me right away, which was fine with me, as I was more than a bit nervous after what happened at her house. For a moment, I considered sneaking away. But before I could try it, Cassie turned her head, and caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye.

She snapped her head around, meeting my eyes. “Jonathan. Hi!”

The girl in front of her peeked to see who Cassie was talking to. Then, realizing it was me (a.k.a. the Dead Kid's Brother), she quickly began inspecting the boneless rib sandwiches.

“H…h…hey,” I stuttered.

She looked down, fidgeting with the hem of her plaid skirt. “Hey, Jon,” she said, then paused: a very awkward, seemingly endless pause. “Look, I'm really sorry about the other night. I really don't know what got into me. We were just in my room and I was feeling really comfortable and then I just remember thinking that you looked really cute as you were saying something, and now I can't even remember what you were saying, but anyway I must have liked it because I kissed you even though I know I shouldn't have and that it was totally inappropriate so I'm sorry. Okay?”

The girl behind Cassie turned slightly away from the rib sandwiches, clearly eavesdropping.

“Umm. Wow.” I had expected Cassie to be at least a little angry about my abrupt departure, so this caught me off guard. For a few seconds, I was speechless.

“Say something.”

“Well, actually I was going to apologize to you, so now I'm sort of at a loss for words.”

“Why were you going to apologize to me?”

“For taking off like I did.”

“Oh, no,” she said emphatically, touching her hand to my arm. “Don't apologize. You have so much going on, and then I do that…it was probably just overwhelming. You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Well, I guess Tristan was right after all, I thought. And now that Cassie had taken care of about ninety percent of what I wanted to say to her, there was just one thing left. “So, would you have any interest in trying it again…except this time without the homework? I mean, I still have to do all that homework eventually, so it would be nice if you could help, but I mean, some other time…we could just, maybe—”

“Sure.” She leaned in close. “That would be great.”

“Um, is tonight okay?”

“Oh no,” she said. “Tonight won't work. I've got Meghan Beauregard's sweet sixteen tonight. Tomorrow, though.”

Dammit, I thought. Tristan was getting Alistair out of the house tonight. I had no idea if she could make it work for the next day. “Oh…”

“But, wait…why don't you come?” she asked.

“Oh, I don't know about that.” I could feel my face getting redder by the second. I was going down in flames. “I mean, I wasn't even invited.”

“That doesn't matter. Meghan thinks you're awesome. She told me so. And besides, you'd be my date.”

“Um…”

“Do you own a suit?”

“A suit?” This was getting out of hand.

“Or at least a sports jacket?” She was clearly growing more excited by the second. “It's a formal, but most of the guys will just be semi-formal, so you can be either.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said.

She frowned.

“I mean, yes,” I said. “I do. Lots of them. It…um…it sounds great.”

By this point we'd reached the cashier, and I realized that I hadn't actually taken any food. So I grabbed one of the infamous “Rib-B-Q” sandwiches just so as to not draw attention to myself. Cassie paid for her salad, I paid for my sandwich, and then she spun around, grabbing my elbow and widening her eyes as soon as we were both past the lunch lady. “Oh, I forgot,” she said. “Meghan has a limo for all her close friends. It's supposed to be huge, so I'm sure she won't mind one more. We'll pick you up around seven, okay?”

“Super.”

“Great,” she said. “Try to wear some blue. That way, you'll match my dress.” And then she strode off to her table full of gaggling girls, who all, within a second of her sitting, turned in unison to look at me with painfully assuming smiles and miserable giggles floating about their eyes.

I threw my rib sandwich on the table directly across from Henry. He looked up at me. “I'm sorry,” I said. “And just to show you how sorry I am, I'm going to eat that rib sandwich.”

Henry cracked a tiny smile, then quickly suppressed it. “Whatever.”

I sat down and began talking anyway. “I've got a problem.”

But Henry just pretended not to hear me.

“I said I've got a problem.”

Finally, he relented, but only slightly: a glance at my face, a curt nod.

“Alistair's going to be out all night tonight—Tristan's making sure of it—and I'm stuck going to a sweet sixteen party with Cassie.”

“Sounds awful,” he muttered.

“Funny. The point is I don't know when I'm going to get another opportunity like this to find some actual evidence on Alistair. I really don't want to waste it.”

Henry nervously glanced around, as if looking for an escape from the conversation. But he didn't go anywhere, of course, perhaps realizing that I was the only person he'd ever spoken to in the whole cafeteria. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. Give me the details.”

So I filled him in on the conversations with Tristan and Cassie. He sat focusing and frowning very seriously, the way he always did, and it made me happy to have him back. It's funny, I'd been considering Henry more of a project partner, or a business associate, than a friend, but as I looked around that cafeteria I had to admit that we were really in the same boat; he was the only friend I had in that room, too.

Anyway, when I was done relating the events of the morning, Henry shook his head and stared straight into my eyes. “You do realize that you only have one option, don't you?”

“What?”

“You have to get her to invite you back to her house, and into her room…after the party.”

“That's insane. It'll be late, her mom will never let her have somebody over, especially a boy.”

“Well, if her parents won't let her, then you'll have to get her to sneak you in.”

“Oh,” I said, finally taking a bite of my rubberized rib sandwich. “And how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

Henry's cheeks reddened a bit. “I think you're asking the wrong guy.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

And so we sat there in silence until the bell rang, forced by a mystery into wondering what most guys our age spend most of their time thinking about for no reason at all: how does a guy like me convince a girl like that to take me back to her room?

Not surprisingly, we didn't come up with much. Henry suggested I buy a corsage, which I thought was a pretty good idea, but that's about as far as we got. All I came up with was that I should probably consult Tristan, which was exactly what I did as soon as the last bell rang at 2:15.

I found her in the senior hallway. I pulled her aside, and quickly told her about Cassie and the sweet sixteen. She seemed a bit apprehensive, though, glancing left and right and over my shoulder. I asked her, “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said, putting on a sunny smile and looking me right in the eyes. “Hey, why don't I just come by tonight? I can, um…help you get ready. We can talk then.”

It seemed a bit odd, but probably helpful. “Sure. Okay.”

“Great,” she said, turning quickly into the flow of the hallway. “See you then.”

***

When she did arrive that night, Tristan was quite a bit calmer, and I was already mostly dressed.

She appeared at the door of my room, took one look at me and said, “Oh you can't wear that.”

I checked myself out in the mirror. I'd done what I thought was a decent job of not looking overly dressed up, while still maintaining the requirements of formal attire: khaki pants, white button-down, casual brown shoes. “What's the matter with me?”

“Where do I begin?” she said, clearly having to hold back her laughter. “First of all, that shirt is three sizes too big. It makes you look like a cotton garbage bag. Secondly, you're wearing khaki pants, and thirdly, they're pleated. And are those really the nicest shoes you have?”

“Umm…”

“Where's your closet?”

“Over there.” I pointed toward the back wall of my room, and proceeded to look again, though now with a bit more disgust, in the mirror.

She rummaged around for a minute, and then said, as I thought she might, “There's nothing in here.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Come here, and stand up straight.”

“Okay.” I did as I was told.

She put her hands on my shoulders, my waist, turning me around, seeming to mentally measure me. Finally, she said, “No, it won't work.”

“What?”

“Ryan's clothes.”

“No.” I sighed. “I'm a little too short.”

“But your mom bought him so much nice stuff…designer jeans, beautiful suits, expensive shirts. Didn't she ever get anything like that for you?”

“Um, sure, but I never wear any of it.”

“Well, where is it all?”

“You can try the hall closet, where we keep the towels and stuff.”

She ran out into the hall, and after a few seconds started to “ooh” and “ahh” like a little girl at a parade. She burst back into my room, carrying three or four shopping bags overflowing with clothes. “Jonathan! How can you just let all this stuff sit in shopping bags? These are some really nice—and expensive—clothes!”

I glanced over at the ripped jeans and old t-shirt I had been wearing all day. Honestly it had always been a sort of battle-of-the-wills between me and my mom. She'd buy me these clothes, I'd tell her that she was wasting her money, and then she'd grit her teeth and swear that I would wear them someday. “I don't know…they're not really my style,” I told Tristan.

“Well, they are tonight,” she said.

What happened then was nothing less than torture for me, though I'm quite sure it was some of the most fun Tristan had had in a while. She'd hand me an outfit, I'd go put it on, come back, and she'd say something like. “Fabulous, but not quite fabulous
enough
,” and then send me back with more clothes to do it all over again. When she was finally satisfied, she finished it off by spiking my hair with some mousse from my mother's bathroom, and then stood me up in front of the mirror, clearly quite proud of her accomplishment.

I looked at myself, thoroughly uncomfortable with the outfit: a tight-fitting, blue button-down shirt, designer jeans, and a pinstriped blazer. I grimaced. “Everyone's going to think I'm gay.”

“Everyone's going to think you're hot.”

This, I had to admit, was a novel concept. Sure, I'd occasionally been referred to as “cute” by the girls in my middle school (or at least the ones who recognized my existence at all), but
hot
…well, that was a new level for me entirely.

“Whatever,” I said.

“I'm serious,” she said, messing up my hair a bit more. “You look really, really hot.”

“You're just biased because I look like Ryan.”

The second these words left my lips I knew they were a mistake. Tristan was being so jovial, so carefree, so normal, but it all ended abruptly with the mention of my brother's name. You could literally see the smile sour on her face, until she swallowed it like a pill.

Tristan turned away from the mirror. “It's almost seven,” she said. “I should be getting out of here. You wouldn't want your hot date seeing an older woman in your window.”

“Right,” I said, as she grabbed her purse and made for the door. “Hey. Any last words of advice on how I can seal the deal tonight?”

She paused in my doorway, and looked at me with an expression that I can only describe as somewhere between affection and fear. “Yeah, just find a quiet moment and stare at her with those big blue eyes until she kisses you.” She let out a quiet chuckle. “It always worked for your brother.”

Twenty-seven

The limo arrived at a few minutes past seven, and I walked out to greet it with no small amount of apprehension. After all, Tristan was biased, no matter what she might have said. And clothing aside, I was getting into a limo with a bunch of relative strangers, with the mission of getting a girl to take me back to her parents' house at God-only-knows what hour of the night, in what may prove to be the last attempt to find proof that my brother was murdered.

Needless to say, the pressure was on…

As it turned out, the limo ride wasn't so bad at all. I didn't know if it was the clothes, or the spiky hair, or my lame attempt at self-confidence, or the simple fact of the social resurrection of the Dead Kid's Brother (in truth, it was probably the combination of all these), but for the first time in years (or maybe more) I didn't feel like all of the other kids were looking at me like I was some kind of freak. And after a few minutes, I was finding myself feeling more and more comfortable, more and more at ease—probably what most people call normal. Sure, there was a part of me that felt a little fake, a little put-on, especially when I laughed at some joke that clearly wasn't funny, or agreed with some ridiculous opinion on pop music or TV that, underneath, made me simultaneously want to laugh and choke myself on a corsage. But it didn't really bother me; not the way it usually did. I didn't let it get under my skin.

And then we arrived at the party.

As soon as the limo pulled off the main road, we found ourselves on a long straight driveway, lined on either side by these gargantuan oak trees, forming a kind of arch over the road. We passed a sign that read, “Goldcliff: a Rutherford Estate,” and within seconds the limo swung around and we found ourselves face-to-face with the façade of this mansion that made the nicest house in my neighborhood seem like a doublewide trailer. The whole thing looked as if made of white marble and gold, with intricate seraphim-covered porticos, cherubs eating grapes and figs over the doorways, and ironwork gargoyles guarding the roof, and huge arched windows that let you see clear through the house out to the ocean beyond.

We were the first to arrive, of course, and the girls all ran in, yelling and laughing, to check out the ballroom. But I hung back a bit, taking my time. I watched Cassie through the giant front windows—she looked amazing in her little blue dress, curled hair falling over bare white shoulders—and I strolled up slowly to the front entrance, giving myself a chance to really take it all in. I didn't know if it was a psychic premonition or gut instinct or just some kind of nervous nausea, but I felt, right at that moment, like I was on the verge of something big—some kind of monumental change in myself or in my life. What I couldn't figure out about it, though, is whether I should jump right in, or run screaming for the exit.

Perhaps I should preface all of this, though, by giving an example of how every other party or dance or other such social gathering I'd ever been to had gone down. It always happened sort of like this:

I would get the invitation or announcement or whatever and promptly announce to anyone who could possibly care (a.k.a. my mom and Ryan) that I would not be attending. My mom, understanding as she always was, would send in the RSVP or buy the ticket or whatever, and then announce that I had no choice but to go or face some sort of dire consequence. Ryan would plead my case, to no avail. I would inevitably give in, and go on to arrive at the party/dance/whatever hideously over- or under- or just plain badly dressed, bearing a gift when one was not necessary, or forgetting a gift when one was. After three minutes I'd run out of fingers and toes on which to count the number of people trying (unsuccessfully) not to laugh at me, and proceed to spend the rest of the time hiding in the bathroom and/or lobby and/or bushes, until Ryan (and since he got his license, it was—thank God—always Ryan) picked me up, consoled me, and somehow managed to get me to tell my mother that I had a great time.

So anyway, I thought this night could not possibly be any worse than all of my previous experiences.

And things were looking up, in a nice, tame sort of way…that is, until all of the people arrived. Now, while I would've liked to have believed that it was my attitude, my phony confidence, or at least the fact that I had the beautiful Cassie on my arm, I knew quite well that the reaction of the crowd was neither more nor less than the inestimable repercussions of the Dead-Kid's-Brother effect. Because as soon as that ballroom filled up, it became very clear that I had become something of a minor celebrity.

I couldn't walk to get a glass of punch without thirteen people patting me on the back, smiling, shaking my hand, or introducing themselves. Almost every time I found myself within earshot of an unaware couple, they'd say something, at some point, like “Can you believe Jonathan Stiles is here?” or “I know, he's so brave” or “He looks so much like his brother. Just…littler.”

It was only after getting over the initial shock of my presence that people started to approach me in earnest, and in large numbers. Usually a group of four or five would kind of sidle up to me at once, and a spokesman for the group would say something like, “Hey. You're Jonathan Stiles. It's really cool that you're here.” And then everyone would nod in agreement and I'd nod, too, and say, “Thanks. It's, uh…a cool party.” And then the spokesman would say, “Totally. Meghan's the best. Hey do you swim (or play golf, or lacrosse, or act, or write poetry, or whatever) 'cause at Soren, we have this awesome team (or club, or choir, or whatever) and you should totally join.” And then I'd look around at all of the other people in the group, who'd all nod enthusiastically, echoing their spokesman with “Yeah” and “Definitely” or “You really should” and “That would be really cool.”

Of course, I never had one iota of interest in joining any club, or team, or other extra-curricular activity, so I would just smile and nod, tell them it sounded like fun, and then excuse myself to use the bathroom.

The strangest thing about the night, though, was just how revolting I
didn't
find it all. I should have, clearly; after all, nearly every syllable of every word of acceptance and praise I received was fake, or contrived, or based solely on the fact that, amazingly, I had both (can you believe it?) really nice clothes
and
a dead brother.

But I've got to be honest: I just didn't care that much.

It was just too much fun, too much of a fantasy, twisted as it was. No matter what anyone tells you, even the darkest, Gothest, freakiest loner-outcast wants, on some level, to be the life of the party, the most popular kid in the room. Maybe not permanently, maybe not as a lifestyle or an identity, but for a night. Yes—every one of us. Absolutely.

It did all start to get a bit overwhelming after a while. And after a few hours of such incessant mingling I had to step outside to get some air. I'd been dancing (surprisingly without embarrassing myself…I think) and I could feel the sweat beading under my collar. So I took off my jacket and leaned over the railing to catch a bit of the ocean breeze. I didn't even notice that Cassie had come outside until she was just a few feet behind me “Well, you certainly have a way of blowing away a girl's expectations,” she said.

I turned quickly, startled. “Oh, hey. What do you mean?”

She sauntered over and leaned against the railing beside me. “First it was the clothes,” she said, smiling a little as she glanced at me through the corners of her eyes. “That was a huge shock.”

I laughed. “Right.”

“And then there was the fact that you actually smiled and talked and joked with everyone in the limo, which was also a pleasant surprise.”

“Thanks.”

“And then we get here to the party, I go to get one glass of punch, and when I turn around you're practically the guest of honor. You've got a new group surrounding you every five minutes, everyone here is talking about how cool you were when they talked to you, you're tearing it up on the dance floor…and don't think I haven't noticed the way those girls in there are all looking at you. Even the seniors!”

At this, I had to laugh. “I really don't know what you're talking about.”

“Sure,” she said, sliding down the rail a few inches, leaning her body into mine. “So what happened to that brooding, anti-social atheist kid I asked out at lunch today?”

Taking the cue, I put my arm around her shoulders and looked back into the party. “Don't get too excited. He's just playing along. He'll be back.”

“What if I want him back now?”

“I don't think he'd survive very well at a shindig like this.”

“So then let's get out of here.”

I leaned my head back and turned, looking her in the eye. “And go where?”

“My mom is out. Let's go back to my house. The limo can get us there and be back long before Meghan needs it.”

I have to pause here for second to explain something. Since we had arrived at the party, I had barely once thought about why I was really there in the first place. Not only that, but once I was quite abruptly reminded of the reason, and by its success, no less…I wasn't sure how to feel about it. After having dreaded the party all day, I actually felt sad to leave—and (I have to admit this) sort of guilty that it had all been a big lie.

But this only lasted a second; a moment's hesitation. The thought of really finding some solid evidence on that hard drive—something real, something I could use—not to mention being in a limo alone with Cassie…well, it was clearly worth passing up a few more hours of my Cinderella story.

“But how do we get through the party without calling attention to ourselves?”

“Simple,” she said, pulling away from me and hoisting her right leg over the railing of the verandah. “We don't. Follow me.”

A few steps through the grass, a shuffle through some bramble bushes, and we were safely in the limo. The driver, God bless him, had the good sense to put up the divider without even having to be asked.

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