Jesus Jackson (7 page)

Eleven

There have been few times in my life when I have felt more foreign, more incredibly
different
than I did every day after school at St. Soren's. Like every other school, the final bell heralded a great rush of students into the hallway, a great wave of relief and expectant freedom on their faces. But at St. Soren's I never shared in that relief, that freedom…and, if anything, I seemed to dampen it in everyone who laid eyes on me. I was a wandering freak show, a great big human-shaped sign that read “Pity me,” “Feel sad for me,” “Pray for me.”

And I didn't even have the courtesy to force a brave smile, to thank them for their prayers.

So it was for more than mere convenience that I had Henry meet me behind the school, instead of at my locker or on the steps. And by the time he came bounding out of the doors, his tiny frame dwarfed by his gargantuan backpack, he seemed to have given up any reservations about our plan. He practically skipped up to greet me.

Dropping his bag on the ground at my feet, he reached into the outside pocket and pulled out a handful of plastic sandwich bags. “Here,” he said, handing a few to me. “We'll need these to collect evidence.”

“Where did you get all these?”

He raised an eyebrow, slyly. “I told the lunch lady I was diabetic, and needed to break up my Twinkie into a bunch of little portions.”

“Good idea.” I chuckled. “You know, a little weird, but good.”

“Thanks,” he said, clearly quite pleased with himself.

“So, what now?”

Henry took off his little wire-frame glasses, wiping them on his shirt. His eyes scanned the horizon. “First we should go to the scene of the crime. There probably won't be much there, but it's worth a shot.”

“Alright then.”

So we started off down the path toward the ravine. Maybe it was because I knew Ryan's last steps had gone through the woods, and not down the path, but it didn't hit me that I'd be standing in the exact spot where my brother actually died until we were right there, at the edge, where he fell.

And then the reality of it all hit me. There was no mistaking the exact point where Ryan went over—the path only opened directly onto the ravine for about three or four feet, which was now blocked by a makeshift wire fence and covered with police tape. The moment I saw it, all the blood rushed out of my head; my eyes welled. I sank to my knees.

Henry, who'd been almost giddy with anticipatory excitement, seemed to instantly realize, in a great avalanche of understanding, the unbelievable magnitude all of this had for me. He averted his eyes, and mumbled something like, “Uh, um…well. Do you need, I mean…is there anything, uh…are you alright?”

I was not all right. Not even close. All of my imaginings from the morning—all of my theories and visualizations about the fall—were now overwhelming me. I tried to breathe, failed, and whispered, “I'll be fine. It's just, you know, kind of a lot to take in.”

Henry fidgeted for a second and then began to poke and prod around the foliage on either side of the path. I sat, silently watching him, until he first let me in on what he was doing.

“So, what we're looking for here is anything out of the ordinary. The problem is that almost everything is out of the ordinary, because you had so many cops and paramedics and everyone else in here poking around for so long.” He made his way a little further down the path. “Maybe, though, if we can locate the exact spot that Ryan got onto the trail, we can trace his path back to the spot where we last saw him.”

It was actually quite comforting, listening to Henry add a little logic to the situation. It gave a certain weight, grounding, to my flight-prone emotions. I struggled to my feet. “What do you mean, exactly?”

“I mean, the police assumed that Ryan had jogged down the path the same way that we came in, so they would have only looked for clues along the side of the path. But we, on the other hand, know for a fact that Ryan must have come straight through the woods, at some point breaking through the bushes along the side of the path, which would leave a noticeable amount of broken twigs, ruffled leaves, maybe even a few—”

Henry sank into a squat, poking his nose almost all the way into the dirt.

“A few what?” I asked.

He lifted a large, brownish oak leaf, revealing some seemingly random indentations in the dirt underneath. “Footprints.”

“Oh.”

Without a second's pause, Henry pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of the footprint, and began measuring angles in the mud with a green plastic protractor. He made a few complex algebraic calculations (about what, I have no idea) and then snapped his face toward mine and said, “Size 10 or 11 cleats. Nike, I think. Sound familiar?”

I felt the hairs rise along the back of my neck. “Those are Ryan's shoes. They're a ten and a half.”

Henry did not look surprised. “Well, this is where he came through.”

“So what do we look for now?”

“Now we trace it back to the clearing.” And with that, Henry made a circle around the bush, and began to crawl on his hands and knees just past the edge of the path. I wanted to help him out, really, but I just couldn't take my eyes off the break in the brush where Ryan came through, and the line of police tape where he went over. I pictured a hundred different scenarios—each more horrid and violent than the last—and in each one, Ryan was fighting for his life, struggling against Alistair and his fuckwad friends, as they dragged him, kicking and screaming, to the precipice.

Finally, when Henry had made it most of the way to the clearing where the fight had happened, he cut off my awful thoughts. “Oh boy. You should come see this.”

“What is it?” I asked, hesitating to catch up.

“Most of the ground back here is covered with pine needles and grass.” He pointed around the woods. “So you're not going to find much in the way of footprints. But over here…” He walked a few paces deeper into the woods. “Over here there's a small patch of soft dirt, and look what I found in it.”

Henry's discovery was pretty damn clear, even from where I was standing. In that little patch of dirt was a distinct set of footprints, obviously cleats, and perfectly formed down to the company logo.

And it was clearly from a different person than the one we had seen by the ravine.

“Holy shit.”

Henry ignored my shock as he began circling the footprint, taking pictures of it with his phone, and scribbling down his measurements and calculations. A sudden uneasiness washed over me, and I had to turn away, take a walk. When I came back, Henry said, “Well, it's an Adidas, about an eleven or a twelve.”

Henry seemed to be waiting for some kind of acknowledgement or encouragement to continue, but I couldn't quite bring myself to say anything at all. This whole idea, to investigate on our own, seemed brilliant a few hours ago, but now was bringing me far closer to Ryan's death than I was even slightly prepared to handle.

But I knew I couldn't give it up. After all, we'd made progress, probably even beyond what the police had. “Okay. Good,” I said, struggling to get out the words. “So now all we need to do is match the footprints to their owners and take it to the police?”

Henry was too involved in his newfound cop role to notice my persistent desperation. He said, “Well, I'm afraid it's not that simple in this case. A few footprints alone probably won't convince anybody of anything. We need to trace these back to the ravine, hopefully find a few clues along the way, and then use whatever we come up with to create some kind of a narrative.”

“A narrative. Right.”

“When we do bring all of this to the cops, we need to have a story to tell them, backed-up with some actual hard evidence that reconstructs all of the events from the time we left until the moment that Ryan was pushed into the ravine.”

A wave of dizziness and disorientation hit me, forcing me to stop and steady myself. “Sounds like a plan.”

And so Henry began his unbelievably unhurried crawl through the woods. Seriously, the kid was moving at the breakneck pace of about three feet per minute. He'd move one arm, push up his glasses, press his face into the ground, peer at a patch of dirt or broken twig for a minute or more, take a picture of some invisible detail with his phone, and then move another limb to do it all again.

After about twenty minutes we still hadn't made it all the way back to the ravine, and I was about ready to scream. But right then Henry's hand darted at the ground. He brushed a few leaves and some dirt to the side, snapped his head around and said, “Look at this.”

I hurried over. In his open palm was a large, dirt-covered, chunky silver ring, with the words, “St. Soren's '14” on one side, and an engraved picture of a football on the other.

“It's a ring,” I said, stating the obvious.

Henry reached into his pocket, retrieving a plastic sandwich bag. “Not just any ring—a class ring.”

“With a football on it…”

“Exactly. You get them junior year, customized with your favorite activity, class, or whatever.”

We both stared at the find, while Henry turned it over in his fingers; there were no initials or inscriptions. “So we just need to find the football player without a ring on, and we've got them. Right?” I asked.

“It won't be that easy,” Henry replied. “Not everyone buys a ring, and the people who do don't necessarily wear them all the time. Some people frame them, some give them to their girlfriends, some wear them on a chain, and some just leave them in the box.”

“Ah.”

There didn't seem to be anyplace else to look for clues, just a patch of pine needles between us and the clearing. I said, “So what do we do?”

Henry sat cross-legged on the ground, mindless of the mud and dirt. He placed his backpack in front of him and arranged three plastic bags in a straight line on top of it. He picked one up, put the ring inside, and said, “We need to find out who bought this particular ring. There have to be records, if not at the school then at the ring company. I'll look into it, but if I can't find anything, the police can always subpoena the ring company's records later.”

This sounded reasonable. “Alright.”

“Meanwhile, I also found this,” he said, lifting a second plastic bag.

From where I was standing the bag just looked empty. “Is there even anything in there?”

Henry stood up and brought it closer, so I could see what was inside: a little triangle of rubbery, dimpled white fabric, maybe an inch across, with some strands of blue and orange thread stuck to the back of it. Two of the triangle's sides were straight and met at a perfect right angle, while the third side was jagged, as if it had been ripped from the corner of a larger shape.

“That linty stuff on the back looks like the school colors,” I said.

“It
is
the school colors. I pulled it off of a prickle bush about twenty yards back.” He examined it more closely. “But what's this rubbery stuff?”

“I'm not sure,” I said, trying to view it from a better angle. Then it came to me. “It's a number! From a football jersey! Or at least it's a piece of a number.”

Henry's eyes opened wide. “Yes! Yes, that's it exactly!”

“But what number is it?”

“Impossible to tell from this piece. But all we need to do is look at each of their jerseys, and find the one with the hole.”

“Exactly. But how do we get close enough to do that? It's got to be a pretty small hole.”

Henry put the plastic bags in his backpack. “I don't know. We'll have to give that some thought.”

We began the slow trudge back up to the school. I was feeling such a crazy mix of emotions—triumph, sadness, excitement, nausea, fear—that I couldn't quite tell if I was about to burst out laughing, crying, vomiting, or all three.

I looked up at the huge stone crucifix towering above the school, and it came to me—a way we could get close enough to the football team.

“I've got it,” I said.

“What?”

“Yeah, yeah…it could totally work.”

“What is it?”

“We've got to go to that party.”

Henry went white. Whiter than a cloud, whiter than a sheet, like a blank piece of paper painted white under a bright light. “That what?”

“That keg party. Friday night. The one Alistair
invited
us to. Every Friday night before a weekend game, the whole football team wears their jerseys to the keg party up by the radio tower. I saw Ryan leave for it a hundred times.”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Yes you do,” I said, putting my hand on his back as we came up to the parking lot, just outside the football field. “You're in high school now. You go to parties. Just don't forget to bring your little plastic bags.”

Twelve

The first thing I had to do was get someone to take us to the party. The radio tower was about three miles north of town, at the top of a tall hill just off the side of the highway. Walking there was really not an option; skateboarding would be far too difficult (and I assumed impossible for Henry); and of course I couldn't ask either of my parents to take me. So for the whole bus ride home, I was trying to figure out how to scrounge up enough money for a cab, and wondering if it was really such a good idea to blow my last twelve dollars on Jesus Jackson.

Thankfully, though, the solution to my problem was waiting for me at home, right in my own kitchen: Tristan Mitchell, Ryan's three-year girlfriend and one of the only seniors at St. Soren's that I had ever actually spoken to before that day. As soon as I walked in the house and saw her standing at the counter, red-eyed and puffy-cheeked and drinking a cup of hot tea with my mother, I knew that I just had to ask, and she would oblige.

The hard part would be the timing. Tristan was right in the middle of what appeared to be an extremely emotional conversation with my mother, and I clearly couldn't just barge in and ask her for a ride to a keg party. On top of that, after seeing the looks of her—she was a mess: totally devastated—it seemed a bit doubtful that she would be planning on going to any kind of party for quite some time.

So I decided to wait it out. I took a seat on the living room couch in between the kitchen and the front door, where she'd have to pass before leaving, and pretended to read a magazine, waiting for them to be done. Unfortunately, this turned out to be quite a while.

I always hated our living room. That is, I always hated that particular living room—the new one, bought and decorated after my parents' divorce three years prior. Our old one, in our old house, was what a living room should be: a cozy, somewhat cramped hodgepodge of comfortable furniture, knickknacks, family photos, a coffee table covered in unread magazines and books and perhaps a solitary sock, all centered around a television that was on more than it was off. It had a greenish old carpet that you could spend a whole Saturday morning on, eating sugar cereal and watching cartoons in your pajamas, feeling just as comfortable as if you'd never gotten out of bed.

The new one couldn't possibly have been more different. Like the entire house, it looked as if it were copied inch for inch out of a home-decorating catalogue. Everything matched—the curtains with the sofa with the armchair with the painted trim around the outside of the fireplace—and nothing was comfortable. You couldn't sit anywhere without messing up some perfectly arranged pillow, you couldn't put anything on the coffee table without a coaster. The floors were hard and dark and smelled like pine, and besides, there was no more television, since it'd been relegated to an only slightly more comfortable “den.”

The odd thing was that my mother had never been even remotely like that before the divorce. Sure, we had nice things and a nice house, but never in such a desperately “perfect” way. Never to be showy. Since the divorce, though, it was as if that house was the only thing my mom had left to cling to or to define herself with. Like losing a husband could be somehow negated by gaining a prime piece of real estate.

As I sat in that living room listening to my mother and Tristan cry in the kitchen, all I could of think was: What is she going to find to make up for losing a son?

Anyway, after about half an hour, my mom finally left the kitchen, walking right past the couch where I was sitting without noticing me at all.

“I'm home,” I said.

She turned quickly, startled. Her eyes and face were red; her makeup smeared. But the moment she saw me she turned on her brightest, whitest, fakest smile. “Oh, Jonathan. I didn't hear you come in. How was school? Are you hungry? Would you like me to make you some dinner?”

“Mom,” I said. “You don't have to be like this. You can—” But she didn't let me finish.

“I know…I'll make you beef stroganoff,” she exclaimed, smiling even more brightly than before. “That's your favorite. Just give me a minute to freshen up.” And with that, she turned on her heels and began to bounce up the steps.

“That's
Ryan's
favorite,” I said quietly.

She stopped abruptly, turning halfway back toward me with a strained look of only half comprehension. “Oh. Was it? Well maybe just meatloaf in that case.” And then she bounced the rest of the way up the steps.

I rose slowly off the couch and approached the kitchen door. Tristan was sitting on a stool at the counter, leaning over her cold cup of tea, wrapping her hands around the mug as if it were still warm. She didn't notice me there, so I coughed from the doorway. When she looked up, I said, “Hey, Tris.”

“Jonathan,” she said meekly. “Come here.”

I walked over to her, and she stood up to greet me, wrapping me in a big hug and tousling my hair. “How are you doing?” she asked. “You hanging in there?”

For some reason this struck me as a very odd question, though clearly it shouldn't have. But the thing is, I felt sort of fine, at the moment. I wasn't depressed, or angry, or anything so severe. I was so consumed with thoughts about how Ryan died and what he believed about God and getting a ride to the party, that I don't think I could have made myself feel sad even if I wanted to.

I knew, however, that I had to play the part of the grieving brother if I wanted to get that ride, so I gave her my best puppy-dog eyes, looked at the floor, and said, “Not great.”

“I know,” she said. “Me neither.” Then she hugged me again.

After a minute or so, she pulled away. “So I hear you went to school today.”

“Yeah, I did. It was…weird.”

“Well, it's kind of a weird place.”

I nodded.

Her eyes were sad and swollen. “This is such a terrible way for you to start high school.”

She had no idea. “Yeah well…” I said. “There's this huge memorial on the front steps. Did you see it?”

“Yeah, I've been over there a lot.”

“Did Ryan even know all of those people?”

This made her laugh a bit, but only for a second. “Yeah,” she said. “He was really popular.”

“I never met any of them. The only friends of his I knew were you, the twins, and Jake.”

Tristan sat back on her stool, staring down into her cup. “You know, he didn't really hang out with Jake or the twins much anymore.”

I thought about it for a second, realizing that, in fact, I hadn't really seen them for a while. “Why not?”

Her eyes shifted around the room. “I don't know. They've been growing apart for years.”

“Was it because of Alistair and those guys?”

Her eyes darted up at me. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked, a slight quiver in her voice. She stared at me intently, seeming almost afraid of what my answer might be.

For a moment, I considered telling her everything, the whole story: what happened behind the school, Jesus Jackson, my investigation, Henry, everything.

But I didn't. I decided to play dumb for the time being. It seemed the safer way to go. “Um, nothing. I just heard him talking about hanging out with those guys. That's all.”

Tristan still seemed wary. But I made my best attempt at a sadly innocent, slightly confused face, and she softened. She said, “Ryan kind of switched his whole group of friends, and Alistair and company were part of the new one.”

“Oh. I didn't know.”

“Yeah, well. It happens.”

“What did you think of that? Do you trust those guys?”

“Trust them?”

“I mean, did you like them? Did you like hanging out with them?”

She looked off, over my shoulder. “They're fine. They were Ryan's friends, so you know…they became mine.”

“I guess it just never occurred to me that he would have
so many
friends,” I said, trying desperately to think of a way to broach the subject of the party. Luckily, Tristan did it for me.

“Well he did,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “But I'm sure you'll get to know them all, sooner or later. At least his real friends.”

“Who are the real ones? Are they the people responsible for this God stuff all over the school?”

She laughed a bit. “Maybe some of them. It is a Catholic school, you know, Jonathan.”

“Sure, but Ryan was no Catholic.”

She looked confused. “What do you mean? What else would he be?”

“Well, he's…” But I stopped myself. She seemed honestly surprised that I would ever consider Ryan to be anything other than a perfectly normal, good Catholic kid. “Tristan, did you and Ryan ever really talk about, like, God and stuff?”

“No,” she said, with a bit of a laugh, as if talking about God was an even crazier idea than not believing in him. “I mean, we had Theology together in tenth grade, I think. But we never just sat around chatting about Jesus.”

I decided to drop the subject. Clearly, whatever Ryan truly thought about religion since he started at St. Soren's, he never felt the need to share it with Tristan. So I mumbled something about Ryan being a spiritual guy and then searched my mind for a good way to ask her for a ride to the party.

“About those real friends,” I said. “Actually, I was wondering if you were going to the party Friday night. I mean, I know there's usually something going on at the radio tower before a big game, and I was figuring that lots of Ryan's friends would be there, and it might be nice just to be around people.”

“Oh, I don't know, Jon. I wasn't really planning…”

I said nothing. I just gave a half-hearted nod and began to shuffle out of the room.

I barely made two feet toward the door. “Okay, okay. We can go up there, for a little bit. It'll probably be good for me. You know, to get out.”

I turned my head, just slightly, over my shoulder. “Do you think we could bring my friend Henry along? Just, you know, for support?”

“Of course,” she said, though now with a twinge of uneasiness in her voice. “Of course.”