Crush

“Jonathan,” Kirsty said.

“Number-one answer,” David replied. He lifted his cup and poured the last drops of coffee onto his tongue before continuing. “He was a gazelle wandering into a pack of lions.”

“They call that a pride,” Kirsty said. “A group of lions is a pride.”

Her remark startled David for a moment. Jonathan could see the confusion flash across his face, and he understood it. David was used to being the smartest guy in the room. He wasn’t used to being corrected, and though he didn’t seem angry about it, he was certainly perplexed.

“A pride,” David said. “Right. A pride. Anyway, Gazelle-Jonny wanders into the Specials’ pride. And as they say on Animal Planet, there could be only one tragic outcome.”

“What happened?” Kirsty asked.

“They tore me apart,” Jonathan said, trying to make light of it, though the memory felt fresh and painful. He remembered those strange, cruel faces circling him—Toby Skabich, Ox and Cade, and a dozen others—asking him questions about where he lived, where he got his clothes, what bands he liked. Their expressions varied from mock interest to rude amusement, and under it all Jonathan felt the hostility of the Specials, felt their ridicule and their superiority.

“It was like a game show of abuse,” David said, sounding a little too happy about it. “They’d ask him something like ‘Where’d you get those shoes,’ right? Making it sound like they were really cool shoes and they wanted to buy a pair. Then Jonathan would answer and they’d all break up laughing.”

My cousin shops there, Tia Graves said. He loves it because it’s close to the trailer park where he lives.

“God, that’s so mean,” Kirsty whispered.

“Yeah, well, that’s what the Specials are all about,” David said. “Anyway, next door to Coffee was this electronics store where they got all the new games at least a week before anyone else in town. I’d just picked up one of the Silent Hill games and was walking past Coffee when I heard all the laughing. And there was our poor Jonathan literally backed against a wall with all of these kids around him. He looked scared as hell. He was in over his head. We had geometry together, so I knew his name and I said, ‘Hey, Jonathan, come on, we’re going to be totally late.’ He didn’t know what to make of that, but he saw his escape and he took it.”

“You saved him,” Kirsty said.

“I’m a hero like that,” David said with a laugh.

“Then what happened?”

“We went home and played Silent Hill for about seven hours.”

Embarrassed by the story, Jonathan felt the flush on his cheeks. He wanted to talk about something else… anything else. “Hey, we’re way late getting back to work,” he said.

“Stewart’s out back having a smoke,” David said. “It’s all good.”

“Nobody says that anymore.”

“And yet, it was just said, which totally negates your argument.”

David’s cell phone rang then. His ringtone, Johnny Cash singing “Hurt,” filled the cafe.

“Hello. Yeah, mom,” David said. “Who?…No way…Are you kidding? What happened?…How?…No, but Jonathan does. They go to school together…Are you sure?…Yeah, okay…OKAY! I’ll come right home after work, don’t freak out. You don’t have to pick me up…Knock it off. Jesus…Okay…Okay. I’ll see you at ten.”

David hung up the phone and set it on the table. He looked dazed. He kept blinking like he had something in his eyes, but the corners of his mouth were turned up slightly. It was almost a smile.

“What?” Jonathan asked.

“They just pulled Toby Skabich out of the lake,” David said quietly. “It looks like he drowned.”

First Mr. Weaver and now Toby, Jonathan thought.

Two of his high-school tormentors—two in a week—were dead. It was just too weird. And Jonathan felt surprisingly bad about it. Toby was a kid, and yeah, he was mean and rude and totally self-absorbed. But he was just a kid. He was familiar, a part of Jonathan’s life, albeit a full-on unfortunate part. Same with Mr. Weaver. He was also part of Jonathan’s life. A page in a book. A brick in a wall. An element mixed into the formula of Jonathan’s being. Now, there was emptiness, the page torn, the brick removed, the formula incomplete.

Jonathan sat on the edge of his bed. His mom was on the phone in the television room, crying to her sister. His dad did something again. Jonathan didn’t know what it was. He’d stopped paying attention a long time ago.

He stood up from the bed and went to the closed curtains covering his window. He wouldn’t pull them back, didn’t want to see what nightmare might be waiting beyond the glass. He was nervous. He didn’t know what to do or feel.

You thought about killing them.

So what? Everybody thinks about that kind of junk.

You won’t be insulted in class again. You’ll never get thrown into another locker. Your life just got a whole lot easier.

That doesn’t matter.

It’s all that matters.

Jonathan shook this disturbing voice from his head. It was late and he should have been trying to sleep, but after the dark phantom the night before and the news about Toby, he’d never get to sleep now. He wanted to take a walk, to get out of the house. His mother’s teary voice bled into his room. But outside wasn’t safe. Not these days.

Mr. Weaver was murdered and hung over a tree branch.

Toby was murdered…

You don’t know that. He could have killed himself, put his perfect life behind him.

…and dropped in a lake.

It could have been an accident.

But it wasn’t an accident, and Jonathan knew it. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, the news would report that Toby had been murdered and discarded in the lake. No accident. No suicide. He knew it.

And he was afraid. Who would be next?

From The Book of Adrian, Wed. Oct. 12:

Look at me. Look at me, the pretty ones shout. Like birds ruffling their colorful feathers to draw attention, those blessed with fine bone and skin parade about as if they controlled the genetic material randomly bestowed upon them. They deride those not so blessed. Express false pity. All the while absorbing adoration like a drug.

And they need that fix. They long to be wanted. Though unless they approve, they ignore completely the source of this regard, wholly uncaring of the damage total indifference does.

Isn’t that right, Emma?

7

Thursday morning, Jonathan stood at his locker. It had already been two days since Toby’s body was found. Jonathan stared inside at the stack of books and notepads absently, wondering what it was he needed. He felt lost this morning. Distracted. Entering the school was like entering a funeral home, the faces of Toby’s mourners surrounding him. Everyone looked so sad. He hadn’t attended the candlelight vigil for the boy last night. The service was held at the city park on the far side of the lake, and he had no way to get there. Even if he had managed a ride, he didn’t see how he could attend the bully’s vigil without feeling like a total hypocrite.

Instead he’d stayed home and studied for tests in geometry and English lit, both of which were being given tomorrow. He’d talked to David on the phone for a while and gone online briefly to look up some information on Shakespeare, but mostly he’d just read through his notes and checked the textbook. Studying hadn’t been easy. Concentrating on anything was tough these days.

Mr. Weaver. Toby.

Damn.

“Hey, Jonathan.”