Sean Griswold's Head (5 page)

I'd started sleeping with it under my pillow. I don't know why. I know it's weird and probably creepy treating an old shirt as a teddy bear. Maybe my stalker tendencies were stronger than I thought. But it helps me fall asleep, and it's there when I wake up crying in the middle of the night.

PFE

January 25

Topic: A Flow Chart on Sean's Head

Sean seems like a pretty clean guy

Meaning, he's always decently dressed (he matches, his clothes aren't stained and fit him well)

And he smells good, so he obviously bathes

Or showers. No fifteen
-
year-old guys bathe

And his nails are trimmed and his hair's cut and styled too

SO HERE'S THE BIG HEAD QUESTION OF THE DAY

Why are there random hairs growing on his neck like dandelions in sidewalk cracks?

It makes no sense that a guy who thinks to wear deodorant and clip his fingernails is unaware of neck hair

How does it not bother him?

Shave it, Sean! Pay a visit to your barber

If not for you, then for everyone who spends at least one period a day systematically investigating your head

Jac's mom is just leaving when I arrive for our Saturday sleepover. After pausing for the customary compliment, this time on her turquoise dress exhibiting cleavage bigger than Sean's head, she mentions to Jac that she might be crashing at a “friend's” house. This from the woman who used to wear Christmas sweater vests and serve mini sausages at Parents Against Profanity meetings. But that was before her husband traded her in for his office assistant, who Jac knew pretty well because she used to babysit Jac. Back when the assistant/girlfriend was in high school. Which was, like, six years ago.

“You like my mom's new Botox fix?” Jac asks as we pass through the hideously ornate house, a bronzed fairy leering at us as we go.

“It wasn't bad,” I lie.

“Whatever. It makes Joan Rivers look natural.” She snorts. “Let's get on the computer. I feel like doing some self-Googling. I just hope Mom hasn't posted pictures of me again calling me her little sister. I'll die.”

Jac leads me into her safari-themed room complete with a zebra wall, lit candles, and exotic pillows thrown around her canopied bed. I blow out the tiny flames and turn on the ostrich-feathered lamp instead. Jac's always wanted to date a firefighter. If she keeps those candles burning, she might just get her wish.

We've transitioned out of most of our childhood rituals, but for some reason the sleepovers have stuck. Sometimes we'll include a few girls from our various circles, but introducing other people can be risky. In seventh grade, Cailee Murphy brought some nasty vodka and Jac drank most of it before wobbling out to the living room to yell at her dad. Who, of course, wasn't there. I don't know what I am capable of being peer-pressured into after the week I've had, so I'm relieved it's just Jac and me tonight. We can be silly and stupid and not care.

“That shirt is huge on you.” Jack nods at my dad's Sixers shirt that I've now taken to wearing as pajamas.

“Oh. It's comfy.”

“Isn't that your dad's?”

“Yeah. I just grabbed it on my way out. I need to do laundry.”

“You could wear one of my shirts if you want.”

“Um … I'm good.” I shrug.

Jac nods knowingly. “I used to wear my dad's shirts after …”

The end of the sentence hangs in the air and we both look away.

“Computer?” she asks.

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Good idea.”

We order some takeout and spend the better part of the night looking up ourselves and everyone we know, getting lost in the chain the Internet creates. Our best find—a guy with my same name is wanted in three states. We think it's so hilarious that the next morning we download a picture of me and spend the rest of the day figuring out how to merge pictures together so we could put my face on a prisoner's body. I look fabulous as a three-hundred-pound Hungarian man.

Then Jac gets the idea to do the same thing to a picture of Sean. We look up his mom's website again, scrolling down to the “Family First” section. There's a photo of Sean from about fourth grade, the year after we first had him in our class. He's sitting on a beach with the sunlight behind him, grinning as he holds up a large seashell.

“Whoa, look at that thing,” Jac says.

“Yeah, it's a big shell.”

“Not the shell. That huge cut on his head. Have you ever noticed it before?”

I squint at the computer screen. Sure enough, there is a jagged wound running down his left temple. Hello, big gaping hole in my research. How did I not notice that? “That's weird. I don't remember him having a cut that bad. You'd think we'd remember that. Wonder what happened.”

“It looks like someone sliced him open. Maybe he got knifed.”

“How many fourth graders get knifed?” I ask.

Jac shrugs. “Remember, we don't really know him. He could be a gangbanger. Or a spy.”

“Or he could have fallen off his bike.”

Jac taps the screen with her green lacquered fingernail. “Well, we're going to find out what happened. It's bound to be a good story.”

“What, you're going to Google fourth-grade knifings?”