darius
©2010 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: Imagine Daria with a Y chromosome. What might have
happened if the eldest child of Jake and Helen Morgendorffer had been born a
boy? Here is an alternate-history might-have-been, or a parallel-universe
might-yet-be, with all the fallout.
Author’s Notes: This story merits an R rating for strong
language (f-word, etc.), intense family conflict, sexual situations, and abuse
issues.
This alternate-universe tale
parallels events in the first two episodes of the first season of Daria (“Esteemsters” and “The
Invitation”) under the assumption that Daria was born a boy instead of a girl.
No other initial changes were used, though chains of predictable consequences
have been worked into the story so that it has a flavor entirely different from
the known series. Cadet Michael Ellenbogen and Colonel Armstrong of Buxton
Ridge Military Academy (and the plot thread connecting them) are my own
inventions, but they elaborate on established themes from the original “Daria”
series.
This
idea bounced around inside my head for many months, and the chance to explore
the effects of a single gender change could not be missed. The story forced me
to think a lot about what it means to be a certain gender, and what it means in
particular to be a man—a good man.
While writing chapter three, it suddenly
struck me that I was listening to music that perfectly fit Darius and Jane as a
couple: “Rachel’s Song,” from the Vangelis soundtrack for the movie, Blade
Runner. If you have a chance to listen to this music, at least you will
hear what I hear when I think of the two of them. For Darius himself, a theme
song is more difficult to come by. The best fit, perhaps, is “Movement I,” from
Vangelis’s El Greco. I also listened to Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of
Philadelphia” about a million times to get into a really angsty mood for
writing, but that’s another story. “Going Under,” by Evanescence, also helped.
Acknowledgements: This story was originally posted as two
serial tales to the Sh33p’s
I wish
to thank the following beta-readers, in no particular order: Brandon League,
Kristen Bealer, Thea Zara, Renfield, MMan, Ray, James “CINCGREEN” Bowman,
Renfield, Steven Galloway, Brother Grimace, TerraEsperZ, Galen “Lawndale
Stalker” Hardesty, Beth Ann, and Ranger Thorne. They made the story much better
than it was, and I am in their debt.
Thanks
specifically to Thea Zara for the “frog thing” with Brittany, to Brother
Grimace for suggesting the gazebo scenario in another story he wrote (the idea
for which I stole without shame), to Renfield for his invaluable suggestions on
the Grand Canyon back story, and Galen Hardesty for his epilogue ideas. Thanks,
too, to everyone who asked for more. It kept me going when things got hard, as
they often did in writing this very long tale.
Finally, the ultra-cool Stereo Hifi font that so looks like the Daria logo on TV is ©1997 by Cathy Davies. Thanks!
*
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
to mould me man? Did I solicit thee
from darkness to promote me?
—John Milton, Paradise Lost,
quoted by Mary Shelly at the beginning of
her novel, Frankenstein
“Now,
listen,” said the businessman as he drove his blue Lexus through morning
suburban traffic, “I want you to know your mother and I realize it’s not easy
moving to a whole new town—especially since we’re also adjusting to being a
family again, right?”
The
youth slouching in the back seat of the Lexus knew his father was talking
directly to him. The brown-haired teenager wore black, from his short-sleeved
shirt to his trousers to his dull leather boots. He adjusted his glasses and
continued to look out the window, saying nothing.
“Darius?”
said his father, glancing in the rear-view mirror.
“Weren’t
we always a family?” asked the teenager, still looking out the window. “In
theory, I mean.”
His father
glared in the mirror, but the boy missed it. “That’s not what I meant!” he
snapped. “Listen up! What I’m saying is, we’re going to give this togetherness
thing another try. Darius, I’m counting on you to show some respect and—Quinn,
damn it, turn the radio down!”
“Please, let’s don’t talk! Okay, Daddy?” said the red-haired girl in the front passenger seat. “Let’s not fight right before school.” She looked back to include her older brother in her plea. Darius glanced at her and shrugged agreement.
“We’re
not going to fight!” said her father angrily. “I’m not, anyway! Any fighting
that happens is up to him!” He nodded toward the back seat. “I’m being
reasonable. But we need to talk a little, honey. It’s the first day of school
for the two of you, together, in almost three years. And we want to make it a
great day, don’t we?”
Darius
looked out the window with an impassive face. Quinn gripped the book bag
between her knees, her face tight. She crossed her arms over her stomach and
hunched forward as if holding it in.
“Darius?”
said their father in a loud voice, looking in the rear-view mirror.
“Sure,”
said the brown-haired boy.
“Sure
what?”
The boy
sighed. “Sure, it’ll be a great day.”
His
father nodded in dark satisfaction. “Damn right it will,” he said. “Don’t screw
it up for everyone this time, okay?” He turned the car into the broad
half-circle leading to
Darius
opened the side door and got out, taking his time. He slung his backpack over
one shoulder, shut the door, and walked into the school without a word.
The day
went quickly.
“Public
school might take some getting used to,” his mother had warned the night
before. “You’re in with every kind of student there is.” She was dead on about
that. When he could, Darius sat in the back of each class so he could see what
sort of students he’d be with for the next three years. He watched the girls in
particular. Years had passed since he’d been to a school with girls around. It
surprised him to find that he liked it. It was hard to concentrate on class
work, having girls around, but that was okay. He was smart enough to get by.
The guys at Buxton Ridge military school had talked about nothing else but
girls when they had the time. You want a wild time, said the guys, find
yourself a wild chick. Party girls were the best, the girls who drank a lot.
They’d do anything and never remember it. Some of the guys at the academy knew
that for a fact.
Darius
shook his head when he thought of that. He was of a better cut than his former
classmates. He didn’t know if he had any appeal to the girls here, but if not,
it wasn’t the end of the world. Public school was different, but it wasn’t bad.
It beat the hell out of Buxton Ridge, also his dad’s alma mater. Darius could
live out three more years at Lawndale High easy. He’d have to watch himself,
though; he didn’t want to be jerked out of Lawndale High the same way he was jerked
out of Highland Middle School, back in Texas, and sent out of state to a
military academy. It was his only real fear.
Darius
went home after his first day of school thinking it would be far better than
livable. Home early from his consulting business, his father tried to pick a
fight with him over finishing his homework, but Darius wasn’t in the mood to
yell back the way he once did. Maybe that was why I was packed off to Buxton
Ridge, he thought, because of all the yelling. Dad couldn’t handle it and
he flipped out big time. Who knows? He’s always flipping out. After a
moment, though, he remembered what had happened at the
He shrugged and went to his room like his father told him, did his homework, and then checked out the local television channels while his parents screamed at each other downstairs. Unlike his sister, he kept the door to his room open, so he could hear the goings-on. It was important to know his parents were suffering. He didn’t want to miss it.
On the
second day of school, a girl caught his eye in history class—a slim, leggy
chick dressed in black, with a red jacket, old Army boots, and a vague air of
hostility. She sat near the middle of the room and drew in a sketchpad during
every class in which he saw her. Her short black bangs covered her face as she
worked on her drawings with single-minded intensity. Darius got the impression
she was just making time, waiting for graduation like he was. He liked that. He
wondered what her name was.
The girl
glanced back at him once or twice. Her eyes were the deepest blue Darius had
ever seen. The second time she looked back, he smiled at her. She smiled back
but turned away and kept drawing. He wondered if she was interested in him. He
was certainly getting interested in her. She wasn’t beautiful like so many
other girls were, but she had character and attitude, and it grabbed him. She
was an undiscovered continent, a whole world on two long legs. Darius wondered
how it would feel to run his hands through her jet-black bangs, whether that
fire-engine red lipstick would come off if he kissed her hard.
It
wasn’t likely that he would find out, he knew. She was a cool chick and
undoubtedly seeing someone else.
During
Phys Ed, Darius asked the football coach if he could run a few laps around the
track after school. The coach didn’t mind. When the last bell rang, he waded
through the flood of students fleeing the campus, changed into his running
clothes in the boys’ locker room, and carried his belongings out to the track.
The air was warm as he jogged. He was sweating in moments, but it felt good. He
was not a fast runner; endurance interested him most. Running gave him time to
be alone. Buxton Ridge had taught him that, among other things. He had no
homework today and didn’t have to be home with his parents again until five.
His sister would manage without him for a little while.
He began
thinking about the leggy chick. He’d never dated before, but he wanted to try
it. The bad thing was, he did not think he could stand the embarrassment if
anything went wrong. It was safer to keep people away and stay alone. His feet
thumped against the track in rhythm as he thought about it. He was safe—but
missing out on life. Was that what he wanted? He didn’t know. He didn’t know
anything anymore, except for one thing:
But he
couldn’t go back there. Not after everything that had happened. And he had
Quinn to think of, too.
On his
twelfth pass around the long track, Darius saw the leggy chick in the red
jacket walk out of a side door of the school building. She glanced back and saw
him. She stopped. He looked at her, and she looked at him, and he knew it was
time.
Breaking
his jog, he walked off the track in the leggy girl’s direction, picking up his
backpack on the way. He had no plan, no clear idea what he was doing. It didn’t
matter. Meeting the girl in the red jacket was all that counted.
“Hey,”
Darius said as he walked up to the leggy chick. He was soaked with sweat and
knew he smelled of it.
She
didn’t seem to care. “Yo,” she said. “Did you mind if I watched?”
“Huh?
Oh, it wasn’t that. I was done, that’s all.” He gave her a nervous smile. “I’m
Darius Morgendorffer. Weird name, I know. I’m new here.” He glanced behind him.
“Just running a few laps.”
“Darius,”
said the girl, trying out the name. “Sounds Roman.”
“It’s
Greek,” he said. “My parents liked history at one time, I think. Maybe they named
me after Darius the Great of Persia. I never thought to ask.”
What the
girl did next—rather, what she didn’t do—was important. She didn’t say, “Darius
who?” or “Where’s
“Nah.
Just like to run. Helps me think, clears my head out.”
“I run
for the same reasons,” said Jane, “but I tell myself it makes me more creative,
too. Don’t know if it works, but it gets me out of the house.”
“You
like being creative?” said Darius.
“Yeah. I
paint, sculpt, stuff like that.”
“You’re
an artist.”
“Or a
bum. Hard to tell some days.”
“That’s
cool.” Darius looked around. They were alone. “Where you heading?”
“Home.”
Jane waited.
“Mind
some company?”
Jane
smiled broadly, her wait over. “If you don’t mind my company, sure.”
Darius
looked into her blue eyes. It was hard to think. “I’m all sweaty,” he said.
“I don’t
mind,” she said. “I get sweaty, too. We have something in common.”
They set
off together at an unhurried pace. “You live close by?” asked Darius.
“A few
blocks that-a-way, on Howard,” said Jane. “I don’t have my license yet, and
walking’s nice. Also, my brother’s car tends to catch fire now and then. When
it does, he borrows a van from a friend of his and drives it a couple blocks
until it breaks down.”
“Not
much use for seat belts, I see.” He pointed. “We moved in a few days ago over
on Glen Oaks. Red brick house.”
“Hmm,
then we’ll pass your place on the way to mine.”
Darius
looked up at the blue sky, then back at Jane. “Good day for a walk. Mind if I
see you all the way to your place?”
“You can
come in if you want,” she said, looking at the sidewalk instead of at him. “My
brother’s home, but he’s probably sleeping.”
“Big
brother?”
“He’s
twenty-one. Plays in a local rock band, Mystik Spiral.”
“Haven’t
heard of it.”
“Join
the club.”
“I’m a
big brother, too. My sister’s Quinn. She’s fourteen. Long red hair, sorta cute.
You may have seen her.”
“Yeah,
in fact I think I did. She had quite an entourage following her around.”
She
said “entourage,” he thought. A smart one. Smart girls turned him on. “That’s Quinn, the
popularity queen.”
“Sorry
to hear it.”
Darius
shrugged. “Eh, it’s okay. Whatever floats her boat.”
Jane
nodded. “So, what floats your boat?”
He
adjusted his glasses. “I goof off. I read, run a little, watch TV, write.”
“Poems,
novels, short stories, plays?”
“Stories.
I gave up on poetry. Don’t have any ideas for a novel or a play yet.”
“You
watch TV a lot?”
“No. Just Sick, Sad World.
I think it’s on here—”
Jane
caught his arm and pulled him close as they walked. “I love that show,” she
said in a deeper voice. “I never thought I’d meet someone who liked it as much
as I do.”
Her
touch was electric. He could smell her, too. She had a sweet flowery scent he
couldn’t identify. A woman’s soap, he guessed. His brain began to shut down.
With the
few neurons he had left, he checked his watch. “The show’ll be on in twenty
minutes,” he said, and he almost added, You want to come over to my house to
watch it? He remembered just in time that his father and mother might be
home together this afternoon. That would be bad.
“Come
over and watch it with me?” asked Jane. She still had a grip on his upper arm,
just above the elbow. “
“
“Yeah.
I’m the youngest of five. The others grew up and ran off. Just me and Trent
now, and sometimes Mom and Dad. You wanna come over?”
“Sure,”
he said, unsure if this was a good idea. “That would be great.”
“Don’t
eat anything out of the refrigerator unless I clear it first,” Jane added.
“Some of the food’s gone bad, and some of it’s not really food.” She squeezed
his bicep. “You work out, right?”
“A
little. Got in the habit at my last school.”
“Where
was that?”
He
grimaced. “
“So you
kind of dig the Army life, is that it?”
“No,” he
said. He forced the pain down. “I was sent there.” He shrugged, uneasy now.
“Tell me about yourself.”
“Don’t
want me to ask about it, right?”
He
nodded. “Maybe another time.”
“Okay.”
Jane’s hand squeezed the muscles of his arm again. “Military school. I can’t
complain about the results.”
“Were
you helping some teachers after school?” he asked.
“Me? Oh, no. I’m in a special class to build up self-esteem. I have to go for a few weeks.”
Darius
almost stopped. “That ‘Self-Esteem for Teens’ workshop they were telling me
about?” he said. “You’re in that class?”
“Yup.”
“What, are
you teaching it?”
Jane
laughed. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. “Oh, no! I’m in it. I don’t pay enough attention in
class, so the school shrink thought I had problems.”
Darius
gave Jane a long look. “The school’s got its problems,” he said at last, “but
you don’t.”
“Mmm,”
said Jane, pulling him even closer. “I can feel my self-esteem rising already.
There it goes! Off like a balloon!”
He
smiled. They weren’t talking about anything important, but every word she said
was changing the world. “You like to draw?” he said.
“I said
I’m an artist. Wanna come up and see my etchings?”
Darius
felt a hot prickling on the back of his neck. There were several ways to
interpret her offer. “Sure,” he said. “Catch some Sick, Sad and check you out. Your drawings, I mean,” he added
quickly, turning red. “I can check out your drawings.”
Jane
smiled as she walked, humming a familiar tune.
He
thought quickly. “That’s from that movie about the ship, um, The Poseidon
Adventure, isn’t it?”
“Yup. My
favorite song.”
“I like
it.” If she had hummed the “Barney” song, he would have liked it.
He told
her a little about his family, Buxton Ridge, and his former home in
Darius
heard the fighting half a block away. He stopped to listen. Jane stopped as
well. “Is that your folks?” she asked softly.
“I’d
better go,” he said, his face lined with anxiety. “I should check on Quinn. She
doesn’t handle this real well.”
“I’ll
wait for you.”
“I don’t
know if I’ll be back out for a while,” he said. “See you.” He hurried into the
house and shut the door behind him to keep the neighbors from hearing.
“What
you think about it just isn’t that Gah-damn important!” he heard his father
shout as he came in the living room.
“Where’s
Quinn?” Darius called. “Is Quinn here?”
His
parents paused in their argument to look guiltily at him. They had been
fighting about him. He could tell.
“She’s
gone over to a friend’s house, Sandi someone,” said his mother. “She’s in some
kind of fashion club. She’ll be back at six. Why don’t you go out for a while,
okay? Come back for supper.”
“I’ll be
back at six,” he said.
“You’ll
be back when I tell you to come back!” roared his father. “Gah damn it, you’ll
show me a little respect, or else!”
Darius
fell silent and waited. He wanted so much to give his father a taste of what
he’d been dishing out for nearly sixteen years—but I can’t be sent to Buxton
Ridge again, Darius thought, forcing himself to do nothing, I just
can’t. Hold it in, hold it in just a little while longer—
His
father wiped his face with a red hand. “Come back at five-thirty, and not a
second later,” he said at last.
“Okay,”
said Darius. “I will.” He waved and left at a careful walk. He could hear his
parents start up on each other a moment before the front door closed behind
him.
He
walked back to Jane as if nothing had happened, except that he couldn’t look
her in the eyes. They walked in silence until Jane began to tell a story about
a local house where no kid ever passed a test to graduate from high school and
escape Lawndale, because of a ghost that lived there. Her voice quavered, but
it was a good story, and he was grateful.
“You
should be the writer, not me,” he told her. She smiled and colored a bit. She
bumped into him as they walked. He put his arm around her waist to steady her. Violets,
he thought, she smells like violets. They walked like that all the way
to her place.
Jane’s
home was a pale yellow two-story, obviously one of the older houses in the
subdivision, with a scraggly, overgrown lawn and a large, weird metal sculpture
near the front door. The mailbox said LAZE, the N having fallen over on its
side. The front door was slightly ajar. Random guitar chords drifted out. Jane
went inside first. “
“Kitchen,
Janey,” came a deep, slow voice. Jane motioned for Darius to follow her in. He
shut the door behind him. The house was moderately unkempt. The living room was
dusty; pizza crusts and used tissues littered the floor. The unplugged TV set
was being used as an extra table to hold a collection of small kiln-fired pots.
All the furniture fabric was threadbare, and the couch had holes in two
cushions. A burnt spot on the living room carpet showed where someone had tried
to build a campfire years earlier. A child had drawn on all the walls with
crayons. The brilliant drawings were still intact, though the wall paint was
cracked and yellowed.
The
kitchen wasn’t much better. It had an off-white and stainless-steel décor
popular in the 1960s and was more littered than the living room. Flies buzzed
around the dish-filled sink. At the kitchen table sat a tall, lanky man in his
early twenties, with calm dark eyes, uncombed black hair, and a goatee. He
stopped playing his guitar when Jane came in, but his noncommittal gaze jumped
to Darius.
“Yo,”
said
“Darius.
I’m her new parole officer,” said Darius with a straight face.
“Didn’t
know she had an old one,” said
“That
was two weeks ago,” said Jane. She opened the refrigerator, took out the carton
of Chinese food, and put it on top of an overflowing garbage can. After pushing
some of the refrigerator’s contents aside, she took out a fast-food box of
fried chicken and set it on the table. “We can eat this while we watch the
show,” she said.
“Dead
on,” Darius said as he looked around the room. “Cold fried chicken, the food of
the gods.” The kitchen was filled with homemade crafts—pots, wall hangings,
painted pictures, landscape and animal photographs, and small clay sculptures
of monsters. The curtains appeared to be handmade, too.
“
“Came in
the mail,” said Trent, who was playing his guitar again. “Forget when. Found it
when I woke up a while ago, and I didn’t know if it was impor—”
“Oh, bloody
hell!” Jane thrust the letter at
Jane
threw the letter down. “They sent this letter two weeks ago!” she shouted.
“Didn’t you call Mom or Dad?”
“I don’t
know where they are,”
“
“Lock up
the house,” said Darius in a flat voice. He was already on his way out of the
kitchen, heading for the front door. He checked the locks and found that only the
knob lock worked—but the knob was loose. He looked around as Jane came into the
living room. “Grab that wooden chair,” he said, pointing. “I can jam it under
the knob and brace the door shut.”
Jane did
as he asked. “I can lock the windows,” she said.
“Yeah,”
he said. “Lock everything and pull the shades and blinds down, too.” He
remembered entombing himself in utility closets and his barracks room at Buxton
Ridge, avoiding late-night raids by drunken older cadets bent on tormenting the
underclassmen. “They can’t foreclose in this state if there’s no one here they
can serve papers on. Weird loophole. They have to go back and mail a certified
letter, and if no one answers in five business days, the foreclosure goes
through. My mom’s a corporate lawyer. She yells about this stuff all the time.”
He laughed. “Usually, she’s on the side of the people trying to foreclose.”
In
minutes, Darius and Jane had barricaded the entire first story of the house,
even the kitchen and garage.
“That’s
just what the bank people will need,” she said firmly. “The house looks like no
one’s home, but someone’s upstairs playing ‘Come As You Are’ with the windows
open. It gives the whole thing away, all right?”
“Oh,
man,” said
“Come
watch TV with us in my room,” said Jane. “We’ll keep the volume down.”
“Nah,”
said
“Sure,”
said Darius, waving. “We’ll let you know if there’s been a hull breech and we
have to send out a distress beacon.”
“Hmmm,”
said
Jane’s
bedroom was that of a tireless and devoted artist—not a dabbler, but the real
thing. Paintings hung from every wall, and an easel with a half-finished
abstract work in oils was set up next to her queen-size bed across the room.
Dark blankets hung on nails covered the far windows in place of shades.
Sculptures in every medium lined the shelves. Jane turned on the TV set at the
foot of her bed as Darius walked around, taking in the room and its myriad
artistic contents.
He bent
down and studied a sheet-metal sculpture of a human reaching upward, jumping
from a mountaintop. “Damn,” he said, “this is really good.”
“You can
stop working on my self-esteem now,” she said, punching the channel-changing
button. “School’s out for the day.”
“I’m not
kidding,” he said. He crouched to look at the sculpture more closely. “I can’t
believe this. Did you weld this yourself?”
“Yeah.”
Jane sat on the edge of her bed, watching the tube. “You’re not saying that to
get into my pants, are you? ‘Cause it’s working.”
He
turned to her and waited until she looked at him. “No,” he said. “I mean it.
This is brilliant.”
She was
the one who looked away first. “Just a joke,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t
go that fast, anyway.”
He
looked at the sculpture, aching to touch it. “It looks like this guy’s jumping,
hands out, reaching for something maybe he can’t see. I can feel the jump, the
effort to get that invisible thing.” He stood. “I wish I could do things like
this.”
Jane
swallowed. “Thank you,” she said.
Someone
knocked on the front door downstairs. The sound echoed up from the staircase.
Darius and Jane both froze. After a moment, Darius glanced at his watch. It was
four o’clock.
Jane got
up from the bed and turned the television set off. The knocking came again,
much louder this time. Darius went to Jane’s door and peeked out to make sure
that
When
Darius came back in the room, Jane was near the door. They looked at each other
and waited.
A minute
passed. The knocking came from the kitchen door next. Jane moved next to
Darius. He put his arm around her and pulled her close. Her head pressed
against his shoulder, her mouth next to his neck. “Don’t get in,” she
whispered. “Don’t get in.”
The
knocking came once more from the front door, then did not return. Ten minutes
had passed since the knocking had started. It felt like hours had gone by.
“They’re
gone,” said Darius softly. “They can’t do anything for a week. Can you get your
parents to get the mortgage in?”
“I can
forge a check,” Jane whispered. “I’ll have it in the mail tomorrow.”
“That’ll
do it. We won.”
“You
won,” she said. “Thank you.” And she kissed his neck.
He
turned his head so his mouth met hers.
Her hair
was fine black silk and smelled of violets. Her fire-engine red lipstick came
off everywhere.
Quinn got home at five-forty that
evening. Darius heard her open the front door quietly, shut it almost as
quietly, then run upstairs. He sighed and turned off his computer monitor to
hide what he’d been writing. Sure enough, she opened his door and peeked into
his bedroom before going to her room. She wore her pink, midriff-revealing
butterfly tee, too-tight jeans, and sandals.
“Hi,” said Quinn. She looked pale. “How
did—oh!”
“What?” said Darius, frowning at her.
All business, Quinn walked in and took
Darius’s chin in one hand, turning his face from left to right.
“Looking for my good side?” he asked in
annoyance.
“Yeah, but it’s not good enough,” said
Quinn. She rubbed her thumb over a spot on his cheek. “Did Mom or Dad see
that?”
“What?” Darius moved her hand away and
got up, heading out into the hall for the bathroom they shared. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” said Quinn under her
breath. She followed Darius into the bathroom and closed the door behind them,
snapping on the lights. She pointed to a lipstick mark on his cheek. Darius
could see Jane’s mouth perfectly. He groaned aloud. He knew better than to hide
anything from Quinn, but it still drove him crazy. She had a sixth sense about
him that he could not fathom. It wasn’t fair.
“You’ve got to be more careful,” said
Quinn. She got a washcloth and wet it under the faucet. “Dad would blow a fuse
if he saw that. Mom might blow one, too.”
“I can do this,” Darius grumbled,
reaching for the washcloth.
“Shut up,” said Quinn, pushing his hand
away. “Hold still.” As she wiped off his cheek, she said, “Who is she, Dari?”
Her childhood nickname for him was pronounced like “dairy.”
He looked angry and didn’t answer.
“Well, whoever she is, watch yourself,”
said Quinn. “You can’t go off and jump the first girl who looks at you. Use
your head, okay? You think everything else out. You’d darn better think this
stuff out, too.”
“Christ, don’t lecture me! I don’t tell
you who you go out with.”
“That’s because you don’t need to,” said
Quinn softly. “Turn around. Come on, turn around! I can’t believe you actually
got a girlfriend on your second day in school. I’m going to have to change my
opinion of you.” She squinted at his face and neck, then nodded. “Okay, you’re
good. Make her clean you up next time. Or tell her to wipe the lipstick off her
mouth beforehand.”
“Cut it out.”
“Look, I know you don’t want to hear me
say it, but you’ve really got to watch it, you know?”
Darius swallowed back his anger. She was
absolutely right, which infuriated him all the more. Why was she always right?
Why was he always so clueless? “Whatever,” he said in defeat.
“I’d like to meet her,” said Quinn. “Not
here, though.”
“What? Oh, jeez, Quinn!” Darius rolled
his eyes and opened the bathroom door, walking back to his room. Quinn followed
him. He sighed and sat down at his desk as his sister closed the door behind
him. She wouldn’t leave until she’d had her say. “What is it?” he said in
surrender.
“Dari,” said Quinn, “I can’t take the
fighting anymore. This afternoon I went over to the house of a girl I just met
yesterday, and I got so scared thinking about coming home late, I threw up in
her bathroom. I don’t know if she’ll ever have me over again. It’s too much,
Dari, and I can’t take it. Please, if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for
me. Don’t fight with Dad anymore, okay?”
“I didn’t start a fight!” he
hissed. “I didn’t even have a fight with him, remember?”
“Well, don’t do anything to start
one! I can’t take it!” Her voice cracked.
This was the worst. He couldn’t stand to
see her cry. “Shhh! All right!” he said, angrier with himself than with her. “I
won’t start anything, I promise!”
“Good,” said Quinn, wiping her eyes.
“Just be careful, okay? I know how Dad gets when he thinks you’re challenging
him, but just let it go. It isn’t worth it.”
“All right, already!”
“Okay.” Quinn became more composed. “Oh,”
she added in her normal tone, “I meant it when I said I want to meet her. If
she means something to you, and I’d guess she does, then let’s get together.”
“Sure, whatever,” he mumbled, not sure if
he meant what he said. “Sometime, yeah.” He hesitated. “She’s all right. She’s
cool.”
“Of course she is,” said Quinn. Footsteps
sounded from downstairs. Quinn turned, startled, and vanished from his room in
a second. Darius heard her door shut and the lock click only one second later.
“Quinn?” called their mother from the
bottom of the stairs.
“She’s in her room,” Darius called back.
He raised a finger and held it by the computer’s power button in case his
mother came upstairs. Better to make the system reboot than to let anyone read
a story he was working on. He hated that.
“When did she get home?” his mother
called. “I was in the bathroom.”
Darius glanced at his desktop clock, did
some quick math, and lied. “She got in early, fifteen or twenty minutes ago.
She said she had a good time.”
“I have to go back to the office for an
hour or two to clear up some paperwork about a case,” said his mother. “Your
father’s meeting with a client downtown. He won’t be back until late. I want
the two of you to stay home and be in bed by ten. There’s some frozen lasagna
in the refrigerator, or you can order pizza out. You hear me?”
Heavy sigh. “Sure, Mom.” He wanted to
give a biting, sarcastic answer, but any smart remark could set his parents
off.
“Don’t call me unless it’s important. And
call me, not your father. He’s very busy.” His mother hesitated as if there
were something more she wanted to say, but she then opened the front door. It
thumped shut behind her a second later.
Darius waited a few moments longer,
listening to the silence that filled the house. He then got up and went across
the hall to knock on Quinn’s door.
“What?” she called after a pause.
“Mom and Dad are both gone,” he said.
“Don’t call them.”
“Oh, right, as if. Can we have pizza?”
“I’ll call in the usual at seven.”
“Okay. Can you get me the cordless phone?”
Darius started to say no, but then
thought of Jane. He had her number now. “Can I call out for a few minutes
first?” he said. “You can have it after that.”
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t... oh, are you
calling her?”
Darius went downstairs without a reply. Duh,
he thought, like that was a real brain-strainer. He got the portable
phone in the kitchen and brought it upstairs to his room. Quinn’s door was
open. As he walked into his room, she left her room and went into his again.
Darius looked at her in agonized
frustration. “Quinn, can I have a little privacy here?”
She seemed undecided. “Okay,” she said.
“I’ll go do my homework, but see if I can meet her at school tomorrow.”
“Why? Why in the hell do you need to meet
her?”
Quinn stared at him and didn’t look away.
The irresistible force.
“Fine!” he said, giving up. “Whatever!
Just give me a few minutes, then you can have the phone.”
“Okay,” she said. She walked slowly back
to her room, leaving her door open. Darius shut the door to his room and took the
phone to his bed. He dialed the number he had memorized and waited.
The phone rang seven times before someone
answered it. “Yo,” said a low, feminine voice.
“Jane?”
“Oh, hey. Darius?”
“Yeah. How are you doing?”
She laughed. “Fine since you left here an
hour ago. Are you home?”
“Yeah. The two wardens are out for the
evening, and I’m watching Quinn.”
“She needs a sitter?”
“It’s not that. I’m just here with her.
It’s not like I’m really babysitting or anything.”
“Do you and your sister get along? I
wasn’t sure from what you said about her.”
He sighed. “We don’t hit each other with
bats most days. We’re doing okay. Probably nothing worth writing about in a
tell-all book later.”
Jane’s slow breathing rose and fell on
the other end of the phone. “I’m really glad you came over today,” she said. “I
think you saved our house. I don’t know what I’d have done if we’d had to move
out.”
He was pleased and relieved to hear this,
but he shrugged it off. “No problem. It was nothing. Hey, if you did get thrown
out, you could move in with us and share Quinn’s room. You’re an artist. You
could do her makeup.”
“Yeah, and
“On the other hand,” he said, his sense
of humor fading, “I doubt you’d like it.” He was instantly sorry he’d said
that, but there was no going back.
“What do you mean?” said Jane. “What’s it
like there?”
He hadn’t expected she would ask, though
in a way he had hoped she would. He thought over his answer. “Sort of like one
of those bad disaster movies,” he said at last. “My parents fight a lot. We try
to stay out of the radioactive areas.”
“Oh.” A silence followed. “Can you get
out much?”
“Oh, yeah. They usually want us back about
six, but after we’ve been in town a while, they might stretch that limit. Mom
got Dad to—well, anyway, I can go places after school, as long as they’re still
in town. Quinn wants to stay out after nine when dating, but she has to get
past Dad on that first. He’s been pretty strict—wait a minute.” He took the
phone from his ear, positive he’d heard a floorboard creak outside his door.
“What is it, Quinn?”
The door to his room opened and his
sister came right in. “Is she on the phone?” Quinn whispered, pointing to the
handset as she walked over. “Can I talk to her?”
“Wha—no!” Before he could say or
do more, Quinn wrestled the phone from him. “Hello?” she said into the
receiver, walking away. “This is Quinn, Darius’s sister.”
“Hey!” He jumped off the bed, but Quinn
bolted into her room with a giggle and threw the deadbolt when she shut her
door. Popping the doorknob lock with a paperclip would be useless. He pounded
on her door. “Quinn! Damn it, give me
the phone! Quinn!”
It was hopeless, and he knew it. “Shit,”
he said, and he pressed his forehead against the door, feeling stupid. This was
worse than simple defeat—this was complete personal ruination. God only knew
what she would tell Jane. Since he’d gotten back from Buxton Ridge, Quinn had
twisted him around her little finger. It would be a miracle if he didn’t go
insane in a few more weeks. He pitied any guys she got for boyfriends. Those
poor bastards would be quivering jelly when she got her brightly colored
fingernails into them. Being her brother, he should be above all that.
But he wasn’t. He cared about her, which
made him vulnerable, and thus he was doomed.
He walked away and sat down at the top of
the stairs. Trying to listen in on the conversation in Quinn’s room proved
impossible. He felt more like Quinn’s slave than her brother. It wasn’t her
abundant natural cuteness, to which Darius thought he was immune. It was like
she had some kind of mind control over him. She knew he looked out for her and
would never hurt her, and she walked all over him as a result.
Well, he admitted, she didn’t really walk
all over him most of the time. Maybe. She just knew when to insert herself into
Darius’s life to make sure she wasn’t forgotten. He remembered how excited she
had been to see him when he got out of Buxton Ridge in June. She had been
practically glued to him for weeks after that. Things had settled down over the
summer, but today, she was just... since she’d seen that lipstick on his cheek,
she was... what was it with her? Was it the lipstick? Was it Jane?
Darius covered his face. He could just
imagine Quinn sabotaging things with Jane so she could make sure Big Brother
would always be there to serve her needs. Or, more likely, to make sure Big
Brother didn’t get into trouble and screw up things in the family. Didn’t she
trust him? It wasn’t fair. Nothing in life anymore was fair.
Quinn had changed a lot since he had been
sent away to Buxton Ridge. When he was shipped off, she was eleven and
collecting Barbies and accessories. When he got back, she was a taller, thinner
Quinn with a fashion model look but a shockingly fragile personality. Life must
have been hell for her without him around to run interference between her and
the ‘rents. If she was throwing up just worrying about getting home late, things
were still pretty bad inside her. Worse, he had no idea what to do about it. It
didn’t excuse her screwing up things with Jane, but if she didn’t get herself
straightened out, this would never stop.
Quinn’s bedroom door opened. She came out
with the phone in her hand. “Here,” she said without apology. “You’re right,
she is cool. She has to go, but she wants to talk to you for a moment first.”
Quinn went back in her room, leaving the door ajar.
Darius put the phone to his ear. “Jane?”
“Hey.” Jane’s voice was light and easy.
“I had a great talk with your sister.”
“Yes, she is quite the evil gremlin,
isn’t she?”
“Nah. You know, she’s not at all what I
thought she’d be like. We’re going to meet tomorrow at school at lunch, about
twelve-fifteen, you and me and her. If you don’t mind, I mean.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun. I really want
to meet her.” Jane laughed. “She’s really lucky to have you around, you know.”
He wasn’t sure if he was angry to hear
that or, secretly, a little pleased. “I can’t imagine why. Look, I just wanted
to talk to you for a little while. Do you have to go?”
“Unfortunately, I do,” said Jane. “
“Fine,” he said in a sullen tone. “Don’t
call after... ten thirty. My parents might be home. Best not to get them
started.”
“No problemo. And I promised Quinn I’d
wipe you off next time.” She snickered.
Darius reddened. “Jane,” he said, and he
paused to think of the one thing he really wanted to say to her. “I want to see
you again. Before the next Ice Age. After school tomorrow, if you have time.”
“Hey, you can walk me home from school
anytime you want,” she said. “And maybe next time, we’ll actually watch Sick, Sad World. If we
can manage that. We missed their special on UFOs today.”
“UFOs,” he said. “I remember the one that
brought Quinn. I didn’t think she’d be staying for this long.”
“Oh, you like her, and you know it.”
“I like you, Jane.”
There was a pause. “And I like you, too,”
she said at last. “I like you a lot. I don’t know how you learned to kiss,
being in an all-male military school, but you kiss damn good. I hope it’s
because you practiced on your pillow. Look, I’ll call you back, okay? After
Romeo here finishes making up with Juliet, I mean.”
“Okay,” he said. “Listen, have a good
night.”
“I already am,” said Jane. “Bye, Darius.”
“Bye, Jane.” The phone clicked, and the
dial tone came on. Darius turned off the phone and continued sitting on the top
step, arms resting on his knees, looking down the stairs and wondering what
Jane and Quinn had been talking about. Women—he would never figure them out. He
got up and went into Quinn’s room to give her the phone.
“What did you and Jane talk about?” he
asked.
“Stuff,” said Quinn. She lay on her
stomach on her bed, reading a girls’ fashion magazine. “Now, shoo. I have to
make a lot of calls.”
Darius went back to his room and shut the
door. He locked it this time and went back to his computer, turning on the
monitor. The short story he’d been working on swam into view, and he read the
last few lines. They sucked. The whole story sucked.
In disgust, he saved the document and
shut down the computer. He wasn’t up to finishing and editing the tale, which
was about an intelligent flesh-eating bacteria. The chaos over Quinn and Jane
had ruined his mood. Darius shook his head and thanked God he had not been born
a girl. Who knew what he’d be doing right now if he had been? He went to his
bed, picked up a book entitled, When Bad Things Happen to People Who Deserve
It, and began to read. It never failed to cheer him up.
This time, however, he couldn’t follow a
single word. All he saw in his mind was Jane’s face close to his. He remembered
the soft touch of her lips against his mouth, how the scent of her filled his
head with nothing else but the moment she was in his arms, when she was his.
After many long minutes, he put the book
away and lay back on his bed, looking at an interesting crack in the ceiling,
and waited for Jane’s call.
“I’ll
bet you didn’t know,” said Jane, pointing a chicken finger at Quinn, “that it’s
not just Lawndale High that does it. Every single high school in Lawndale
County plays football all year round.”
“Does
that have anything to do with pesticides in the drinking water?” asked Darius.
No one paid any attention to him. He sat beside Jane at the cafeteria table,
facing Quinn, but for all that he might as well have been invisible.
“No
way!” said Quinn to Jane. His sister beamed like the morning sun. “Don’t they
do anything else besides football?”
“Oh,
sure, lots of stuff,” said Jane, “but football is played in yearly quarters.
Lawndale High even has a football team to play the other schools during the
summer. It’s like a religion, only the football fans are more fanatical.”
“That
should be on Sick, Sad World,” said
Darius. “‘Football addiction: Can it strike your—”
Quinn
cut in. “You know, I was thinking about becoming a cheerleader, but they have
only that one outfit, you know? How fashionable is that?”
Jane
waved away the idea. “You wouldn’t like it anyway. I hear that cheerleaders are
required to date only football players.”
“And
fail a reality test,” mumbled Darius.
“Oh, no
way!” cried Quinn, laughing. “That’s so, like, restrictive! What it I wanted to
date, like, some rich kid who didn’t play—”
Jane
drew a finger across her throat and made the sound of someone’s head being cut
off. “Off the team,” she said. “They don’t allow it. They’ll repossess your
pom-pom.”
Quinn
laughed hysterically.
Darius
sighed and checked his watch. Twelve thirty-two. His new girlfriend and his
sister were hitting it off like gangbusters. What was next on the agenda—giving
each other makeovers and going shoe shopping together at the mall? He felt so
far out of the loop, he didn’t even know where the loop was.
Quinn
wiped her eyes. “Oh, my God, you are so funny! This has been great!”
“You
have class in eight minutes,” said Darius blandly.
“Oh, I
know. I’m just having so much fun. Whew!” She reluctantly got up from her seat.
“I’d better get to my locker and get ready for math.”
“Hey,
quick question,” said Jane. She pointed at Quinn’s face. “What color do you
call that, your eye shadow?”
“What?”
Quinn stopped laughing and leaned close to Jane, her eyes wide. “Is it smeared?
Is it running?”
“No, no,
no!” Jane said quickly. “I just like that color and wanted to know what it is.
I’d like to use something like that in a painting I’m doing, a portrait.”
“Oh,
sure! Um, this part—” Quinn pointed to the area below her eyes “—is your basic
Perfect Peach, and the eyelids are Desert Rose, with a dusting of Gold
Starburst. I sometimes use two colors together on the same spot to get a
different effect, and maybe smear them together, but these are pretty much
right out of the box.”
“Desert
Rose with gold,” said Jane. “Thanks!”
“Oh,
you’re welcome!” said Quinn. “Dari, would you take my tray back? Thanks! Bye!”
She waved as she hurried off.
Jane
waved back, but Darius merely lifted a finger and wagged it. He turned to Jane.
“So, feeling enlightened after your talk with the Zen master?”
“She’s
got a fantastic color sense,” said Jane with clear admiration. “It’s amazing.
No wonder she looks so good.”
“Jane,
we’re talking about makeup here, not Rembrandt.”
“Color
is color. Hey, are you going to eat those fries?”
“All
yours,” said Darius, pushing his tray over. “I’m taking a five-minute break
from fat.”
“You
look glum.”
He
shrugged. “I’m not glum,” he said. “I’m... I’m...”
“Bull,”
said Jane, her mouth full of fries. “You’re pouting because Quinn and I are
buds now and we don’t need you anymore.”
“Except
to carry your trays back.”
“Oh, get
over your damn cheap self,” Jane said cheerfully. “She worships you, you know?”
Darius
looked Jane in the eye. “The acoustics in here are bad. I thought you said—”
“She
does. That’s why she wanted to meet me. She needed reassurance that evil slut
Jane wasn’t stealing away her dependable but naïve big bro. That’s all that was
up.”
“Excuse
me? Naïve?”
“As far
as women are concerned, yeah.” Jane said it as a statement of fact, but without
a trace of insult.
He
looked away, mortified. Did both Jane and Quinn know more about him than he
did? Was there any justice in the universe at all? Why was he even bothering to
ask? “I wasn’t always that dependable,” he muttered, changing the subject. “She
and I used to fight a lot, years ago when we were little kids back in
“That
was before your dad sent you off to that army school because he was fighting
with you so much, right?”
“Yeah.”
He then frowned and turned his head to Jane, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t
recall mentioning why I was sent there.”
“Oh,
Quinn told me all about it last night. I’d sort of figured it out for myself,
but she put the final pieces in place.”
“What,
did you tell you what kind of underwear I wear, too?”
“No, but
she did tell me she used to make you carry her piggyback so she could pretend
she had a pony. She said she used to call you Tornado.”
Darius
dropped his head in mock shame. “I’m going to burn all of her scrunchies.”
“Dari,”
said Jane, lowering her voice, “Quinn is hungry for your acceptance. Maybe
‘desperate’ is a better word. I think more than anything she wants to be sure
you don’t forget her. I can’t be more analytical than that, or I’ll lose my
armchair psychologist’s license.”
“How could
I forget her?” said Darius, looking at the table. “I mean, every time I turn
around, there she is, poking around in my life.” He sighed. “It’s not so bad,
really, I guess. I missed her a lot when I was at Buxton Ridge. I did a lot of
thinking then about her and me. A lot went on in her life while I was gone, and
I think a lot of it was bad. It really bothers me.” He looked off into space.
“I can’t believe how much she’s changed. She’s like a whole different person.
The little Quinn who wanted me to play pony is gone.” He broke off and
swallowed.
“She is
something, isn’t she?”
Darius
nodded as he picked at the remains of his food. “I don’t see why she needs my
acceptance, though. She’s friends with half the planet, and the other half just
hasn’t met her yet. She doesn’t have to do anything to be a boy magnet. Being
popular is part of her genetic code. I’m surprised the Fashion Club didn’t make
her president for life.”
“All
that’s surface stuff,” said Jane softly. “Surface stuff is easy. I’m guessing
now, and maybe I’m poking my nose into a place it doesn’t belong, but you’re
probably the only person who really knows her who doesn’t yell at her all the
time.”
Darius
stared at the tabletop and said nothing. He had not thought of that. A pang of
guilt shot through him for all the times he had yelled at his sister.
After a long moment, he grimaced and checked his watch. “We’d better go,” he
said, pushing back from the table. “Mr. O’Neill’s probably dying to tell us
about Hamlet’s self-esteem problems.”
They
stood and collected their trays. Darius stacked Quinn’s on top of his own.
“Speaking
of self-esteem,” said Jane, “I’m getting out of that after-school class.
O’Neill teaches it, by the way.”
“How are
you getting out?”
“Oh, I
have all the answers to the release test. I can take it at any time and drop
the class.”
Darius
stopped, almost spilling the contents of both trays he carried. “You what?”
“Sure!
I’ve taken this self-esteem class six times before, mostly in my freshman year.
It hasn’t changed a bit.”
Darius
stared at her. “If you could’ve gotten out,” he said, “why didn’t you?”
“Because
having low self-esteem makes me feel special.”
“I think
that’s the heroin talking, not you. No, seriously. Why didn’t you?”
Jane
shrugged. “I didn’t have anything else to do after school. No one’s at home
most days except
“So,
what are you going to do with all your new-found free time?”
Jane
smiled, not looking at him. “Well, I thought I’d ask you for ideas. Got any?”
The rest
of the week passed without serious disruption, other than flare-ups between
Darius’s parents. Friday afternoon found Darius and Jane walking into Pizza
King, reputedly a better-than-average restaurant near the high school where
many of the students congregated.
“Great self-esteem
speech at the assembly,” said Darius to Jane, waiting for her to take a seat at
the booth he’d found for the two of them. “I liked the part at the end where
you ran off crying. That was Oscar material. It got my vote.”
“It’s
what Mr. O’Neill gets for making me get up in front of everyone and talk about
how I beat negative self-esteem,” said Jane. She picked up a menu, glanced at
it, and threw it down again. “I’m bloody starved.”
“Tut,
tut, language.” Darius picked up the menu and squinted at it. “You learn that
in
“I
learned it from my dad,” said Jane. “He went to Wales for four months when I
was a kid, and when he came back he kept saying ‘bloody this’ and ‘bloody that’
when he was developing his film.”
“You
know, about the assembly speech, you could have just faked laryngitis and
gotten out of it.”
“Nah.
I’ve got theater in my veins. If it’s art, we Lanes do it.”
“Is
sleeping an art? Say yes.”
“Some
people think so.
“Hmmm.
You wanna split a giant pizza?”
“Sure.
Let’s get the garlic bread, too. They make fantastic garlic bread here. We’ll
need extra napkins.”
“Okay,”
said Darius, still reading the menu. “My treat.”
“Let me
split the bill with you.”
“Nah.
Isn’t done.”
“Isn’t
done by whom? I’ve got money.”
Darius
winced. “It... just let me pay for it. I’m good.”
“Good
you are, but is this guy-always-pays thing something they drilled into you at
the academy?”
Darius
didn’t answer. A muscle tightened in his cheek. He suddenly thought about
things he had hoped he never would again.
He
sighed and put down the menu. Easy way out, he decided. “I just don’t
think about it when I can. I’m not like Dad, going on and on about it. Mostly
he tells me how it made him a man and all that, but he complains about it at
other times. His own dad forced him to go there all through junior high and
high school. Dad got to go home only on short breaks.” Darius shifted in his
seat, looking uncomfortable. “My dad really hates his own dad. He gets so angry
when he talks about Grandpa Morgendorffer, who’s dead now. I think Dad feeds me
this line about how Buxton Ridge was good for him just for my benefit, not that
he really means it. It had a bad reputation in the sixties and seventies. It was
cleaned up after that, but it was kind of a snake pit before then.”
“Ah,”
said Jane. “Then—”
“Hey,
I’m Artie,” said a voice beside them. Darius and Jane looked up. A freckled,
bucktoothed young man with a weak chin and unkempt hair stood by the table in a
Pizza King waiter’s outfit. “Can I take your order?”
“Hi,
Artie,” said Jane in a tone of familiarity. “We’ll take an order of garlic
bread and a giant... what sort of pizza?” she added in Darius’s direction.
“I
dunno,” he said. “This Meat-Monster Special looks—”
“Do you
know anything about UFOs?” asked Artie out of the blue.
Darius
looked up in confusion. “What?”
“Artie—”
Jane began in a warning tone.
“You
know, flying saucers, the messengers from those in the Great Beyond,” Artie
said with great earnestness. “Back in 1947 in
“The
Meat-Monster Special!” Jane interrupted. “Definitely, the Meat-Monster Special!
And two large Ultra-Colas!”
“Oh,”
said Artie, writing this down. “Okay. I’ll be right back unless I have to take
out the garbage or something.”
As Artie
walked away, Darius gave him the eye. “He looks familiar.”
“He was
interviewed on that Sick, Sad World
episode on UFOs we missed on Monday,” Jane said. “I saw him in the commercial
bits. You probably saw him there, too. He works around
“
“What’s
your Mom like?”
“Mom?”
Darius looked at Jane. “I dunno. I don’t feel like I know her really well.
She’s driven, a workaholic. Not real friendly, probably from fighting with Dad.
She isn’t home much. She used to get frozen lasagna in bulk and microwave it
for dinner, but since we got to
“You
cook?”
“Sure. I
run the microwave and call for carryout. I’m experienced at dialing for pizza
and Chinese.”
Jane
looked thoughtful. “I imagine that would get expensive.”
“Mom
gives me extra money to take care of Quinn when everyone else is out.” He
played with the menu on the table. “They don’t... never mind.”
“What?”
said Jane in a low tone.
Darius
looked around. “Oh, Mom and Dad don’t like each other much anymore. Sort of
like Hitler and Stalin didn’t like each other much. They started off with this
fake alliance, and then everything unraveled and there was that long party at
“Are you
talking about Hitler and Stalin, or your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm.”
Jane scratched her left ear around the three silver-wire pierced earrings she
wore there. “My folks aren’t around enough for me to figure out what historical
figures they’re like. I’d have to say Dad’s like the Invisible Man, and Mom’s
like one of those grown-up hippies in the movies, the kind that can’t focus on
the present, so I’d have to go more with fictional models than historical
ones.”
“So,
“With a
little help from everyone else. I wonder sometimes if I was the one who raised
him.”
“Couldn’t
have been too hard caring for a guy who sleeps all day.”
“Exactly,”
said Jane. “Exactly.” She looked to one side. “Here comes our garlic bread. Oh,
and there’s your sis and the Fashion Banditos.”
Darius
looked over as Artie delivered their order. Quinn and three other girls her age
were coming into Pizza King. Quinn spotted Darius and Jane and waved, grinning.
An attractive brown-haired girl with a superior look glanced at the couple and
scowled before turning away. A thin Asian girl in a blue dress looked blankly
at them before following her friends to a table, and a brown-haired girl in
pigtails waved at Darius and Jane for a half-second, then looked embarrassed
and ran to catch up with the others.
“How
special,” said Darius. “I bet she raises their collective IQ by thirty points
when they get together.”
“I bet
that...” Jane began, then shook her head.
“What?”
“Oh,
forget it. I doubt they’ll ask you for a date. They only go out with popular
people.”
“Thank
God,” said Darius, who wasn’t in the least offended. “That’s all I need to do
is date my sister’s friends.”
Jane
cleared her throat.
“I
didn’t mean you,” Darius said with a wounded look.
“Heads
up,” said Jane, looking over Darius’s shoulder.
He
turned to see Quinn walking over. “Hey!” she said to Darius. “Listen, I have to
ask you a favor—oh, don’t look at me like that! I haven’t even told you what it
is yet!”
“He’s
crabby today,” said Jane. “That time of the month.”
“It’s
always that time of the month with him,” said Quinn, playfully punching Darius
in the shoulder. “Look, word got out that one of the cheerleaders is having a
big party at her house a week from this Saturday. Can you talk to Mom or
something and see if I can go over and maybe stay out past nine? I need you to
go to base for me.”
“To bat
for you, you mean.”
“No, to
ask Mom if I can stay out till maybe eleven for once. Get with it, Dari.”
Darius
sighed. “Were you invited over?”
“Not
really, but yes. See, cheerleaders have to invite the whole football team when
they have parties, and so she had to invite these three guys on the team who
keep asking me for dates, so they asked me to go with them, but then they got
into a fight over who was going to—”
“Okay,
okay! Stop! I’ll ask!” said Darius. “I can’t promise anything, though. I’ll ask
tonight.”
“Thanks!”
said Quinn. “Isn’t he great?” she said to Jane. Quinn punched him in the
shoulder again before walking off to her friends.
“She’s
getting stronger,” Darius mumbled, rubbing his arm. “I’ll have to cut back on
her vitamins.” He looked back at Jane. “I’ll bet I have to go along and
chaperone her. Mom’s mentioned that to me before. She wants to keep a close eye
on where Quinn goes and who she’s with. Probably afraid of a lawsuit.”
“You
know, most parents around here don’t mind if their kids are out for a bit. Take
me, for instance. My parents are in
“Beats
me. Anyway, Mom and Dad have a major ongoing discussion, to use the term
loosely, about whether Quinn and I are living up to their standards. Dad
usually starts the discussion by yelling about my—” He broke off suddenly.
“Wait, sorry. Starting to channel Dad there. Pick a topic for me, any topic.”
Jane
sipped at her Ultra-Cola and reached for a piece of garlic bread. “The topic is
food,” she said. “Eat.”
Halfway
through the pizza, Jane raised a finger as she swallowed a bite of the
Meat-Monster Special. “If you have to chaperone Quinn,” she said, “would you
like someone to chaperone you?”
“Who?”
he said, confused.
Jane
kicked him under the table and stared at him with too-large eyes.
“Oh!” he
said. “Uh, definitely! Absolutely! And I can chaperone you, too.”
“We just
have to get me invited first.”
“Well,
Quinn can’t go unless I go, and I can’t go unless you go, so you have to go,
right?”
“I hate
to say this,” said Jane, “but that kind of logic might actually work on a
Darius
looked pained. “I hate meeting people.”
“I can’t
blame you,” said Jane, “but this is for your sister. Go over there and beat
your chest and throw things. It works for chimpanzees.”
Rolling
his eyes, Darius wiped his hands and got up. “If I’m not back in five minutes—”
“—I’ll
finish the pizza by myself,” said Jane.
He
walked over, looking as dull as possible. “Excuse me,” he said to the blonde, big-breasted
girl in the cheerleader outfit and double ponytails, and the muscular,
dark-haired guy sitting across from her wearing a Lawndale Lions football
uniform. “I—”
“Hey!”
said the guy. “I’m the QB, and this is my girl!”
“No
doubt,” said Darius. “I wanted to ask—”
“She’s
taken, okay?” said the football player. “Beat it.”
“Kevvy,
wait!” squealed the cheerleader. “Let him finish! He’s that new guy, okay? He
doesn’t know how things are done here!”
“Oh,”
said the football player. He motioned to Darius. “Go ahead and ask her out, and
then I’ll tell you why you can’t go out with her.”
“My
sister said she was invited over to a cheerleader’s party next weekend,” he
said to
“Oh,
that’s my party!”
“She’s
the girl with the red hair, sitting over there,” Darius said, pointing across
the dining room. “She says some football players asked her to the party, and—”
“Whoa,
babe!” protested “Kevvy.” “It wasn’t me! I’d never ask out a girl who was cuter
than you!”
“What?”
shrieked
Her
boyfriend wasted no time in running after her. “Wait! Babe!” he shouted. “Let
me explain! It’s not what I said it sounded like!”
Darius
stood by their table, watching them run out of sight past the pizzeria window.
He turned around, saw everyone looking at him, and walked back to the booth
with Jane. “That went well,” he said as he sat down again. He noticed Jane was
counting out some bills in her hand. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Paying
for the meal,” she said. “That was the best floor show I’ve ever seen. It was
worth every penny.”
“Jane—”
“Shush,”
she said, dropping the bills on the edge of the table on top of the check.
“Now, tell me your secret for sowing discord.”
He
thought carefully. “I try to be myself,” he said.
“Crap.
That sure won’t work for me.”
Quinn
reappeared at their side. “Wow!” she said to Darius. “What did you say to
them?”
“He
asked Kevin out for Saturday night, but he wouldn’t let
“Ewww!”
said Quinn. “Dari, we have to work on your people skills.”
“I asked
“Oh,
that’s fine.” Quinn turned to Jane. “Don’t be jealous of him and Kevin,” she
added. “It won’t last. It’s all the fault of that military school, you know.”
“I’ll keep
a stiff upper lip,” said Jane.
“Goodbye,
Quinn,” said Darius loudly. “Sorry you had to run off so soon. See you next
week during visiting hours, and tell the staff hello from me.”
“Bye,”
said Quinn. She started off, then dodged back and punched Darius in the arm
again before she left, snickering.
Darius
drummed his fingers on the table, looking after her. “Tell me again how much I
like my sister,” he said.
“Mmmgg,”
said Jane, chewing a mouthful of pizza. “Mgl bg mg zg’mtz zb’btz.”
He
nodded and picked up a slice himself. He wondered how he was going to present
the party story to his mother for maximum beneficial effect for Quinn—and, of
course, for an evening out for himself and Jane. The arguing might go on all
weekend, but he couldn’t let it get out of hand. It would have been a better
weekend if he’d had his driver’s license by now, so he could have driven Jane
to Middleton for that UFO convention on Saturday. He wouldn’t be sixteen until
mid-November, though. Maybe next year, if they were still together. He hoped
they would be. Jane was one of a kind. He’d never find her like again.
When
Darius got home that evening, his father was in the kitchen, mixing a pitcher
of margaritas. The kitchen smelled of tequila and limejuice. Darius walked in
and knew it would be a difficult night when he spotted the empty tequila
bottle. His plans to talk about Quinn and the party went up in smoke.
“It’s
almost six,” said his father, looking up. “When I was your age, my father made
me get home every night at five thirty, so I’d never miss getting home by six.
Old Mad Dog, that’s what he did.”
Darius
nodded carefully and went to the refrigerator.
“That
it?” asked his father. “Nothing for the old man?”
“Hi,”
Darius said, looking his father in the eye with one hand on the refrigerator
handle. “Good to see you.”
His
father grunted and returned to stirring the margaritas. “Old Mad Dog would’ve
beaten me good if I’d come home and not been respectful to him.”
Darius
took his hand off the refrigerator. “How was your day?” he asked. It was a
gamble, but an open-ended question had a chance to derail an outburst—or
trigger one.
“How was
my day,” said his father. “I’ll tell you how it was. I had two clients who
didn’t show, one client who showed and said no to my proposals, and one client
who took my proposals home to think about it. Didn’t call me back. That’s how
my day went. Big waste of time.”
A
possible path appeared before Darius. He took it. “You’re doing better than
your father did, aren’t you?”
His
father looked up. “Doing better? I’m doing better than old Mad Dog
Morgendorffer?” He grunted and looked into the pitcher. “That could be. He was
dead by my age now. Heart attack killed him. I was already in
Darius
opened the refrigerator and looked inside. He took out a gallon jug of milk and
shut the refrigerator, walking over to the cabinets to get himself a glass.
“It did
make a man out of you, didn’t it?” said his father, looking at him.
Darius
looked back when his father spoke. The margarita glass his father held was now
empty. Darius nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“Yes, sir!
You should say, yes, sir, to me, like you did in school to those jackals
running around in their holier-than-thou drill uniforms! God, I hated them.”
His father refilled his glass. “Damned if I know where the salt is around
here.”
Nothing
remained to do but wait and see where this went. Darius leaned against the
countertop and ignored the milk and glass behind him.
“What
did you think about them?” his father asked.
His son
licked his lips. “The drill sergeants and officers?”
“Of
course!” yelled his father. “Who the hell do you think I’m talking about? JFK
and Camelot?”
Darius
stared at his father for a few moments. “They were just doing their job,” he
said. They weren’t that bad, he thought. It was the other students
who sucked, but the staff was mostly tolerable.
“Doing
their job,” said his father. “Doing their job, hell. They were jackals.” He
pointed at Darius. “You know what jackals are, don’t you? They’re these little
doglike things that live in the desert. They come out at night and attack
wounded beasts, biting them and running off until the prey can’t fight back
anymore. They wait until it’s almost bled to death, and then they close in for
the kill. That’s what jackals are.”
His
father drained his margarita glass and nodded sagely to Darius. “Don’t let that
fool you, though. It made a real man out of me. I’m proud of that school, proud
my rotten old man sent me there. He knew it would take a lot to make me a man,
and he was right. I hated him, hated him more than death, but he was right. I
still hate him, but it was the right thing to do. I know it now. And I was
right to send you there, too.”
Darius
heard a noise from the living room. It was the front door opening, very slowly
and quietly. Quinn. He glanced at the clock in the kitchen. It was 6:04 p.m.
She was late.
“You
were right,” said Darius loudly. “You were right, too... sir.”
His
father looked at him in confusion and a little anger. “What was that?”
“I
said,” said Darius just as loudly, hearing soft footsteps run upstairs, “you
were right to send me there. It did the right thing for me. I can go on with my
life and... do the right things now. It did make a man out of me.”
His
father stared at him for a long moment, then looked down at the pitcher of
margaritas.
“Want me
to help you find the salt, sir?” Darius asked.
His
father snorted. “It’s around here somewhere,” he said. “Your mother hid it. She
hides everything around here. I can’t find anything. If I wanted to cook
something, I couldn’t do it. Just let her cook, then. See if I care.” He shook
his head and looked around the kitchen. “Bitch,” he muttered.
Darius
opened a few cabinets, then opened the one in which he knew the saltshaker was
kept. He took it out and put it on the counter in front of his father. “There
you go, sir.”
His
father stared at the shaker and did nothing.
Darius
turned and picked up the milk. He took it back to the refrigerator and put it
away. His hunger was gone. “I have homework to do, sir,” he said. “Have a good
night.”
His
father nodded, still staring down at the saltshaker.
Halfway
across the living room, heading for the stairs, Darius heard his father call
for him. He sighed and walked back, stopping in the kitchen doorway.
“I want
you to know who gave you your name,” said his father, pouring another glass
from the pitcher. “That was me.”
Darius
waited. After a moment, he realized a response was called for. “Thank you,” he
said.
His
father raised the glass. “It was my idea. I wanted you to have a great name, so
I named you after an ancient king. I think he was Roman. I liked his name.
Darius the Great. Your mother said I could do it only if we could call you
Daria if you came out a girl. Good thing that didn’t happen.” His father
chuckled. “Glad that didn’t happen. God only knows how things would have gone
then.”
“I like
the name,” said Darius. “Thanks.”
His
father nodded. Darius turned to go.
His
father threw the glass at him. It smashed into the wall by Darius’s face and
exploded into a hundred shards that sprayed across the room.
“Call me
sir, God damn you!” roared his father. “You call me sir! SIR!”
Shocked,
Darius didn’t react right away. He then slowly straightened and faced his
father. How curious, he thought, that he felt no fear at all—just an infinite
tiredness and a vague disappointment.
I
can’t go back to Buxton Ridge and leave Quinn here alone again.
“Thank
you, sir, for giving me my name,” he said.
His
father stared at the huge splash that ran down the wall by Darius, at the
sparkling glass flung over the floor in every direction. His face colored,
possibly with shame, possibly because he was angry and wished he had the drink
back.
“Clean
it up,” said his father, looking away. “I’m going out somewhere where people
respect me.” He walked out of the kitchen through the laundry room, heading
into the garage. The laundry room door slammed shut behind him. After a moment,
Darius heard the garage door open, then his father slam the door on his Lexus
and start it up.
He
waited until he was sure his father was out of the driveway before walking to
the laundry room where the vacuum sweepers were stored. He checked the garage
and closed the garage door, then grabbed a push sweeper and headed back into
the kitchen with it. A shower would have to wait until—
Quinn
screamed.
Darius
shoved the sweeper aside and ran for the living room. Dressed in shorts and a
long tee, Quinn was crying her head off on the sofa, grasping one of her bare
feet. Blood ran down her foot and dripped on the carpeting.
“God!”
said Darius. He started to grab her foot, then realized he still had glass
splinters on his hands and arms. “Wait! Stay there!” He ran back in the
kitchen, washed his hands off, and ran back with the first aid kit and a
dishtowel.
“Hold
still!” he told her. He dabbed at her foot, then grabbed it to keep her from
jerking it away. “Hold still! Just hold still! I know it hurts! Let me fix it!”
He quickly picked out all the shards of glass he could see, then wiped her foot
with alcohol swabs and threw them aside on the carpet. Quinn alternately
shrieked and choked on her sobs, her face bright red and streaked with tears.
It took three large bandages to stop the bleeding in different places on her
right foot. He taped over the bandages to make sure they wouldn’t come off.
Darius
took his wet, splinter-covered shirt off, then wiped his face and arms with the
towel. “Come on,” he said, putting his arms under Quinn’s thighs and across her
back. “Let me get you out of here,” he said. “There’s glass all over. I was
getting the vacuum to clean it up.”
Quinn
nodded and put her arms around him. She buried her face in his chest. He stood
up with her and slowly took her out of the living room, mounting the stairs
with care. At the top, he carried her to her room and then to her canopied bed.
He checked her bandages. The bleeding had stopped. He’d have to wash her foot
later to make sure all the glass was out of it, then put on some antiseptic.
Her left foot seemed fine.
“I have
to go downstairs and clean up, okay?” he told her. “Before Mom gets home. You
stay up here until I’m done, all right?”
Quinn
nodded. He reached over and grabbed her princess phone and put it on her bed
beside her, stretching the cord out. “Here. Call one of your friends for a
little, when you can. I can’t get the cordless phone right now. I’ll be right
back.”
He went
downstairs and vacuumed the living room and the kitchen, wiped off the kitchen
wall, and checked for any remaining glass. It took a half hour to finish. He
put everything away, then went back upstairs and checked on Quinn again. She
lay back on her bed, an arm over her face. She took her arm away to look at
him. Her injured foot projected over the edge of the bed.
“How’re
you doing?” he asked.
“My foot
hurts a lot,” she whispered.
“I have
to shower off real fast. I’ve got stuff all over me. You stay here. I’ll get
you some painkillers.”
“Lock me
in,” said Quinn. She didn’t have to say why.
“Sure.”
He punched in the knob lock, then pulled her door shut until the lock clicked.
He went down the hall to their common bathroom. Twenty minutes later, he walked
out with a towel around his waist and his clothes wadded into a bundle inside a
beach towel. He went to his room and changed into a plain gray sweat suit he
had used at the academy for exercising. Sneakers on his feet, he went
downstairs. No one was home. On impulse, he vacuumed the kitchen and living
room a second time, then checked the refrigerator.
He
realized then that he still wasn’t hungry. Why he’d even bothered to look was a
mystery. Habit, perhaps. He picked out a container of fat-free fruit-filled
yogurt for Quinn, got a spoon and a bottle of ibuprofen, and went back
upstairs. He popped Quinn’s doorknob lock with a paperclip after telling her
who it was.
They
ordered Chinese. As she ate her yogurt, Quinn rang up all her girlfriends in
the Fashion Club using conference calling, but she said nothing about the
incident to any of them. Her voice was as cheery as it ever was, talking about
sweaters for the fall and clever things to do with scarves. Darius locked her
in her room again, then went back to his own bedroom. He left the door open to
hear the Good Times Chinese Restaurant deliveryman knock downstairs.
As he
sat down at his computer, he realized he wanted to call Jane. It was Friday
night. Other guys were out with their girlfriends. He was home guarding his
sister from his parents. He’d call Jane when the food arrived, while Quinn was
eating. If Jane was home, they could talk. She’d said something about working
tonight on a painting that was bothering her. Maybe she wouldn’t want to talk.
Sometimes she didn’t, and he could handle that—but maybe she would want to
talk.
What would
he say? What would he tell her about the evening? He shook his head. He’d say
nothing, of course. It was just another Friday night—better than some, worse
than most because Quinn got hurt. It was just another day.
“This is
messed up,” he whispered. “God damn it. This is just so messed up.”
He
turned on his computer, let it warm up, then stared at the screen—and turned it
off again. Nothing was on that he cared about. Over six billion channels, but
nothing was on. The books on the shelves, the CDs by his bed, the backpack with
his homework—none of it mattered. Nothing was on.
“This is
so messed up,” he said. He put his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, and
waited for the deliveryman.
Awakened
by his alarm, Darius showered and made his way downstairs the next morning at
seven o’clock. The early start became a reluctant habit in military school, but
getting out of the house was a priority now. On this Saturday, his outfit
consisted of a black-and-white Nirvana T-shirt, black shorts, and worn but
comfortable track shoes.
As he
descended the stairs, he heard rustling noises from the kitchen and the chirp
of the microwave signaling it had stopped. His father would not be up until at
least ten on weekends, so there was nothing to worry about on that count. The
problem now was entirely different.
His
mother was reading papers from her open briefcase and drinking a cup of coffee
when he walked into the kitchen. “Good morning,” he said.
“Just a
minute.” His mother frowned at the papers to keep her concentration.
Darius
went to the refrigerator and got the milk, then picked out a box of cereal, a
bowl, and a large spoon and carried the whole lot over to the table. He glanced
at his mother several times, but she was focused on the paperwork. He was most
of the way through his first bowl of cereal when her cell phone went off.
“Helen,”
she absently said into the phone. “Hi, Eric.” She paused. “I’m looking at them
now. I’ll be there in about thirty minutes. It looks fine to me so far.” Pause.
“Let me deal with that when I get in. That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve already
talked with the witnesses. Okay.” She pushed a button to break the connection
and lay the phone beside her papers. Not once did she look away from her
reading.
“I have
to ask something,” said Darius, putting down his spoon. “It can’t wait.”
His
mother lowered her papers and frowned at him. “What?”
“Quinn
wants to know if she can go to a party a week from today. I can go along to
keep an eye on her.”
“Fine.”
His mother lifted the paperwork again.
“She
wants to stay out past nine, if that’s possible.”
“Darius,”
said his mother, “I’m trying to get through the paperwork for this case before
I go in today, and—”
“I’ll
stay with her,” Darius interrupted. “We’ll be back before eleven.”
“Fine,
fine,” she said, looking at her papers with an annoyed expression.
“We’ll
be out today, but not—”
She
abruptly dropped her papers and hammered the tabletop with her fist. “Darius, please!
If I don’t get this deposition right, I’m out of a job, okay? Can I have some
time to myself now? The money I make is practically all we’re living on! It’s
for your own good!”
He
nodded and finished his cereal. His mother gulped down her coffee, then grabbed
her papers and stuffed them into her briefcase.
“Tell
Dad when you see him,” Darius added as she got up from the table.
“Why
can’t you tell him?” she snapped.
“He
doesn’t want to hear about parenting issues from me.”
His
mother looked furious, but she bit back a reply. It wasn’t hard to imagine what
it was. If you wouldn’t fight with him so much, maybe he would listen to you,
she might have said. Or, I don’t have time to listen to all of this. You
deal with it and let me get this done, okay? This is more important than Quinn
going to a damn party.
In any event,
she said nothing and strode out of the kitchen and into the laundry room, then
opened the garage door and slammed it behind her. A few moments later, Darius
heard a car door bang shut, the engine of the SUV start up, and the garage door
open and close. She wouldn’t be back until late. He knew the routine.
After
finishing a second bowl of cereal and two Pop-Tarts, Darius cleaned up the
kitchen and went upstairs to his room. He listened at Quinn’s door first and
heard gentle snoring. She usually got up at nine, but she rarely came out
unless she was sure she wouldn’t meet anyone. He thought about her injured foot
and felt a rush of guilt. If he’d been quicker with the vacuum or had thought
to warn her, she wouldn’t have walked right into the broken glass. Nothing he
could do about it now. She was able to get around before she went to bed,
anyway. In a subdued mood, he went to his room and began stretching for his
morning run. It would empty his mind and get the day going.
And
today there would be a bonus. He checked his watch to be sure he was on time.
Whether his running partner would make it out was another question. She wasn’t
a morning person.
Ten
minutes later, he walked out the front door and set off. He picked up a steady
pace heading west down Glen Oaks. Few people were out this morning. It was one
of those late summer days when autumn makes its presence felt with a cool
breeze and yellowing leaves. The prediction was for rain that evening, but few
clouds drifted overhead. The air smelled of cut grass. A neighbor mowed her
yard, a small dog yapped at a window, and children called to each other on a
nearby street. What the hell are they doing up at this hour? he
wondered.
Darius
turned north on another street, looking ahead for the turn left onto Howard
Drive, Jane’s street.
Jane
jogged slowly east on Howard toward the intersection. Her hair was pulled back
in a stubby ponytail, and she wore a red T-shirt, red running sneakers, and
gray running shorts with the words LAWNDALE HS on one side. She turned and saw
him, immediately breaking her stride to walk. She covered her mouth and yawned,
but grinned at him after that. Darius crossed the street, trying to hide his
smile.
“Why the
hell are you making me go running at this ungodly hour?” said Jane as he walked
up. “I told you last night I was going to sleep late.”
“Hey,
you told me you’d try anything once.”
“Don’t
play your sick, twisted mind games on me, Morgen—” Their lips met for a long
kiss “—dorffer.”
His left
arm went around her slim waist. His right hand played with her silver earrings
and stroked her left cheek. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. “The sun comes up
every morning just to see you.”
“You’re
blind even with those glasses on,” Jane whispered back.
“I’ll
use Braille, then,” said Darius, and his mouth covered hers again.
She
broke away after the third long kiss. “We’d better run before I fall asleep
standing here,” she said, yawning again. “No offense. Where to?”
“You
pick the path,” he said. “Show me your usual route.”
“Hokay. Lezgo,”
said Jane, and she took off at a respectable jog heading back the way she’d
come. Darius caught up to her and they ran together.
A third
of the way back up Howard, Jane indicated a left turn, and they ran northward
on Bernstein Way. “There’s a running path through the woods ahead,” she said.
“I circle around the mall on the other side, then come back down Tomasik to get
into the subdivision again. I think it’s about three miles.”
“How did
your painting go last night?”
“Ah, not
so good. I’m working on something new. It’s... I don’t know how to explain it.
It’s sort of a self-portrait series, I guess.” She ran a block before adding,
“I don’t know what else to say about it.”
“It’s a
nonverbal thing.”
“Yeah,
actually, it is. I can’t talk about some things I’m doing, not because I don’t
want to, but I can’t... I can’t think of the words for it. I can see it in my
head, but I can’t say it.” She shrugged. “It’s art.”
“Oh, I
got the go-ahead for Quinn to go to that cheerleader’s party next week.”
“Was it
a problem?”
“Getting
permission? Nah, not this time. It went fine.”
Jane
nodded. They ran in silence until they got to the tree line, then Darius
followed Jane into the woods along a yard-wide dirt path that appeared to be
well used. The forest was quiet and appeared to extend to the north for some
distance. The path curved off to the west before long and began a series of
gentle ups and downs as it curved around low rolling hills.
Thanks
to his position behind Jane, Darius soon became intrigued with her gray running
shorts and the way her butt jogged beneath the loose material. After he almost
stumbled the third time from not watching the path, he forced himself to look
away.
“This is
beautiful!” he called ahead, catching a quick look at her rear end again.
“Isn’t
it great?” she called back. “I don’t really come out here that often by myself.
My regular route is through the subdivision, really. Didn’t mean to lead you
astray. Much.”
“Do you
get other people out here to run with you?”
“Uh...
not for running, no.”
“Sightseeing?”
Jane
didn’t answer. After a moment, she pointed to her right. Darius saw a large
pond through the trees.
They
jogged at a good clip for ten minutes before coming to a fork in the trail. The
right branch ran off to an area where the trees grew sparse. Darius thought he
saw a parking lot beyond the tree line. Jane ran to the left, on into the
trees. Darius looked back at the parking lot and figured they would be curving
around the entire lot instead of running through it. That made sense. He hated
running long distances on blacktop and concrete. It killed his feet.
Gradually,
Darius let his mind go. The air was cool and the earthy smells refreshed his
mind. He stopped glancing at Jane’s athletic behind and instead watched the way
the sunlight flickered down through the thick leaves. He listened to blue jays
screech and thrushes whistle, and he was startled to see a deer bound across
the path ahead of them, disappearing moments later into the woods. Jane slowed
to look back at Darius with a broad grin, then forged ahead. Both were
perspiring, but Darius felt better than he had in weeks.
Rounding
a low hill, Jane slowed and pointed ahead. Darius looked. The path became
arrow-straight for perhaps a tenth of a mile ahead.
“Bye,”
said Jane, and she was off like a gunshot, legs flashing down the path.
Stunned, Darius kicked it into high gear behind her, but she was clearly in her
element. Jesus Christ, he thought, she’s a damn track star! He
clenched his teeth and sprinted after her with all he had.
It was
hopeless. Jane could run like a Greek goddess. She slowed and stopped at the
end of the straightaway, where the path took a curve to the right, and she
waited for him with the smirkiest smirk he had ever seen on another human
being.
He
staggered up a handful of seconds later and threw himself down on a grassy
patch by the path, flopping on his back with arms and legs spread out. It was
impossible not to pant.
Jane
pretended to check a nonexistent watch on her left wrist, making tisking
noises. “Gosh, I’m sorry,” she said, looking down at him, “but I have sex only
with men who can catch me.”
Darius
put a hand over his face and groaned. “You are sick and evil,” he said, “and
those are your good points. You are the most wicked of all sick and evil
dominatrixes.” He paused. “Wait, what’s the correct plural of that? Let’s see.
Um, dominatrices? Domina—damn you! You’ve given me writer’s block!”
“And you
call yourself a real author.” Jane kicked him in the foot with a red sneaker.
“Recite poetry for me, weakling slave.”
“What?
Oh, okay. Uh... ‘The sun was shining on the sea, /
Shining with all his might: / He did his very best to make / The billows smooth
and bright— / And this was odd because it was / The middle of the night.’”
“That’s
from that
“You’re
the dominatrix. You’re supposed to know.”
“Insolent.
I should whip you, but you’d probably like it.”
“Promises,
promis—” Darius lunged up from the ground and grabbed Jane by one leg, pulling
her down on him as she shrieked.
“You bastard!”
she yelled, wrestling with him. “You touched the royal me! I really am going
to—” She burst into peals of laughter and jerked violently. “Augh! Stop! No!
Don’t tickle me there! Augh! No, stop! No! Nottherenottherenot—no! No!
Stopstopstop—AAAAHHHH!” She became incoherent, wiggling on the ground as his
fingers worked into her sides and lower back.
“Stop
fighting it!” he said, letting go of her. “You’re getting all dirty!”
“You!”
she gasped. “You got me all dirty! I’m going to kick your ass!
Who do you think you are? Who do—mmph!”
It was
difficult to talk with their mouths pressed so tightly together. They slowly
rearranged themselves to lie side by side on the ground, their legs interlaced.
Darius rolled Jane so she was slightly under him, encircled by his arms as they
kissed.
After an
eternity, they broke apart for air. Darius kissed her face and hair, and
smelled the way her body scent changed from moment to moment. She was getting
turned on. He knew he was, too, but he was in no hurry. He wanted this moment
of paradise to last forever.
“Cheater,”
Jane gasped. “Go slower.”
“I am.”
“I
don’t—” She took a deep breath. “I don’t—mmm, wait a minute. Wait.” He pulled
back until their faces were a hand span apart. They were breathing like steam
engines.
Jane
swallowed and buried her face in his soiled shirt. “Let’s not go too far,” she
mumbled. “I’m sorry. I know I’m really awful to bring this up right at this
extra-special moment when we’re practically—”
“You’re
beautiful.”
“Yeah,
and you’re drunk or stoned or both. Maybe you really are blind.” She spit out a
piece of grass, stuck out her tongue to peer at the tip, and sighed, looking
into his eyes. “What’s your vision again?”
He took
his glasses off and laid them aside with care. “You look great,” he said,
deliberately looking at a spot in the forest away from her face.
“Oh, you
ass.” She tried to push him away.
“Slower,”
he said. His fingers ran through her silken black bangs and brushed out a leaf
and a twig. The band holding her hair in its ponytail had fallen out. He
massaged the back of her head. This seemed to calm her. Her blue eyes started
to close.
“Slower,
yes,” she whispered, “and not... too... whatever.”
He bent
his head and kissed her neck and shoulder. The taste of her skin filled his
mouth.
“I don’t
care if you are blind,” she said, eyes closed. “You’re a dynamite kisser—but
I’m still faster than you. Don’t forget it.”
He
didn’t answer.
She
stopped talking.
Darius
came home alone just before ten that morning. He ruffled his hair again to get
more leaf fragments out of it, then took off his muddy sneakers and went in the
front door. The house was quiet. He went upstairs and headed for the bathroom.
Quinn
was already in there. Fully dressed, she sat on the toilet with the lid down.
She had taken the water-soaked bandages off her foot and was inspecting the
cuts on her heel and arch. Her hair was still wet from the shower.
“Hey,”
he said, stopping in the doorway. “Can I see?”
“Yeah,”
she said, then got a good look at him. “Ewww! What did you do, roll in the
dirt? Look at you!”
“I fell
down a couple of hills,” he said, kneeling and inspecting her foot. The cuts
did not appear infected, but he didn’t want to take chances. “Let me get
cleaned up, and then I’ll put more antiseptic on that. Or you can put it on if
you want.”
“No,
you,” she said quickly. “I can’t stand it. It stings too much.”
“Okay.
Let me shower first.”
Quinn
got up and limped to the door, but as she glanced at him something caught her
attention. “Tell me one thing, okay?” she said from the doorway.
“What?”
“Tell me
the two of you are using protection.”
Darius
flinched and looked his sister in the eyes—but only for a second. He looked
away and peeled off his T-shirt, throwing it on the tile floor. “Cut it out,
sis.”
“You’ve
got lipstick on your—”
He
exhaled heavily, feeling his self-control slip. “What we’re doing is no damn
business of yours!” he hissed. He still couldn’t look at her. He ran a hand
over his face and felt like a heel. What did Jane say about him being the only
person who didn’t yell at his sister?
“I’m
sorry,” he said in a low voice. “I’m just tired.”
“Dari?”
“What?”
Quinn
tried to speak, but it didn’t come. “Forget it,” she said. She turned to go.
“Quinn.”
She stopped but did not look back. “Quinn,” he said, “we’re not... we’re not
doing it. I mean, we’re not doing anything that would be a problem. We’re not.
Man, I can’t even believe I’m saying this to you.”
She
nodded, then went on to her room.
“I’ll be
there in a little,” he said, looking at the floor.
“Okay.”
She left her door open.
He
showered and was back in his room in fifteen minutes. He’d forgotten to leave
his own bathrobe in the bathroom closet, so he had to borrow Quinn’s, which was
mildly embarrassing but would send Quinn up the wall if she found out. He
hurriedly changed into a green Army T-shirt, black jeans, and tall
black-leather boots—his favorite hang-around outfit—then returned both
bathrobes to the bathroom, got the antiseptic bottle and a bandage box and
tape, and went into Quinn’s room.
“Wait,”
she said, lying on her back on her canopy bed. She grabbed a pillow and pressed
it over her face with both arms, then stuck her injured foot in his direction.
He held her foot steady as he put the medicine on. She jerked and screamed into
her pillow each time he touched her, even if it wasn’t with antiseptic.
“Quinn,”
he said, putting down the bottle, “as much as the idea of torturing you appeals
to me, I can’t do this with all the sound effects. Does it really hurt that
badly?”
“Sort
of,” she said, her voice muffled under the pillow. “Not really, I guess. I
thought if I just screamed, it wouldn’t hurt so much. You know, like if you
overreact to something, it isn’t as bad?”
“I don’t
think I’ve ever heard of that,” he said. “Did someone in the Fashion Club tell
you this? Is this how they handle morning bed hair?”
“No,
dummy. It was in last month’s issue of Waif. They were talking about
stress or something, like if you scream into your pillow when you’re totally
freaked out, how that’s supposed to—”
“Okay,
enough. I get the idea. I don’t think it works in this case, though.”
“How
would you know? I’m not putting that stinging stuff on your foot!”
He
finished the task to the accompaniment of several more low-volume shrieks, then
wrapped up her foot again. “Can you get around on it?” he said, getting up.
Quinn
sat up and looked her bandaged foot over. “Oh, shoot,” she said. “I can’t wear
my sandals with that thing on. I look like the Mummy.” She got up
experimentally, steadying herself with one hand on a bedpost and one on
Darius’s arm. Any pressure on her foot caused her to wince. She didn’t appear
to be overreacting.
“Too bad
we don’t have crutches,” Darius said. “If we could get them in pink, they’d go
with your shirt.”
Quinn
took her hand away and punched him solidly on the arm. “Yeah, that would look
really super with my outfit, though it is true that a good pair of crutches can
jack up the sympathy response in most guys. It’s a last-ditch thing, though.”
She looked at her injured foot. “This sucks. I wanted to go over to Sandi’s
this afternoon and try some of my blush on her, and I also wanted to show her
that I don’t throw up every time I go outside my own home. I’m on probation
with the Fashion Club until Sandi decides I’m mentally stable enough to join.”
“You’re
kidding me.”
“She
says they have standards, and what good are standards if you don’t use them on
people?”
“You
can’t imagine the level of irony in what you said,” said Darius, shaking his
head in disgust. “Those twits have more air in their heads than the Hindenburg,
and they have the gall to say you’re not mentally fit to join their ranks?
You’re the only one of them who has an IQ in the three-digit range.”
“Oh, you
don’t understand,” said Quinn.
“Yeah, I
think you said something about me not understanding—oh.” He winced. “Forget
it.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, you
mean what Jane told you the other day about you being sort of naïve about
women?”
He did a
double take and stepped back from her in shock. “Jane told you that?”
“Last
night, yeah. She was right, but I already knew it.”
“But you
didn’t talk—” He blinked. “You called her?”
“I can
call her if I want!” Quinn swung a fist at his arm, but he sidestepped and she
missed. Off-balance, she grabbed the bedpost, standing on one foot. “It’s not
like you’ve got a lock on her time, you dork! She’s my friend, too!”
“What
the hell did you tell her?”
“Nothing
about you,” she sneered. “Not a lot about you, anyway. God, I don’t know
what she sees in you. She thinks you need a sense of humor, or more of one, but
she says you have potential.”
Darius
stared at Quinn, aghast.
“Dari,”
Quinn said in a different tone, and she hopped close enough to him to grab him
by the arm. She raised a finger and poked him hard in the chest, looking him in
the face as she spoke. “When the two of you start doing it, you’d better get
your butt to a drugstore and get some protection. I got your little joke about
falling down a couple of hills this morning—real cute, like you must think I’m
in kindergarten or something. I know Jane will be smart about this stuff, but
you’d better be, too. I swear to God, if I find out you and she are doing it
and you’re not being careful, I’m going to kick you right where guys don’t like
to be kicked, I swear I will. You—Dari! Hey! Come back here! Dari! This is
important! Damn it, I can’t chase you like this! Hey, open your door! Don’t
lock it! Dari!” She hopped up to his
bedroom door in the hallway and grabbed the knob, but she was too late.
Darius
walked over to his bed as his sister pounded on his bedroom door. He sat down
on the edge and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. It was bad enough that
his sister and girlfriend were spilling all of his innermost secrets to each
other, but to have his fourteen-year-old sister lecture him on birth control
was just too much.
That she
was right made it intolerable. That wasn’t the point, though.
We
didn’t do anything she should be worried about, he thought. You can’t
get a girl pregnant by feeling her up her shirt. He fell backward on the
bed and put the pillow over his head to block out the sound of Quinn lightly
hammering on the door with a nonstop rhythm. And I wouldn’t do anything
stupid to hurt Jane anyway. I couldn’t do that. It would be totally insane to
hurt her. She’s everything to me. She doesn’t even want to go that fast when we
make out, although what we’ve starting doing is already making my head spin.
All I know about what people do when they love each other comes from reading
sex manuals in bookstores or watching those weekend movies at the academy
theater. I don’t have any real experience at love, and I’m sure not getting anything
from my parents. I’m just making it up as I go along, copying whatever I see
that looks good. I don’t know what people really do when they’re in love. I
don’t even—
That was
when a new thought entered his head and erased everything else.
I
love her. I love Jane. I really do. Oh, shit.
He took
the pillow off his head to stop thinking about it. His head felt light and his
ears rang, though it was quiet except for Quinn’s drumming on the door. She
stopped when he opened it.
“Can I
come in?” she said.
He stood
there for a moment, then shrugged and walked over to his bed. She hopped in,
closed the door behind her, then sat down at his desk and wheeled his chair
over to the bed near him.
“You’re
worse than the Furies,” he said without looking at her.
“Was
that some kind of car or something in a movie, or what?”
“Nothing.
Just say what you’re going to say and get it over with.”
“Hey.”
She reached over and poked his knee. “Listen. Mom and Aunt Rita and Aunt Amy
have been talking to me about sex since I was eleven. When you went off to
military school, I—”
“I
didn’t go there of my own free will,” he growled, his face tight.
Quinn
hesitated. “I know.” She started to say something, then shook her head and went
on. “When you were sent away, Mom had Aunt Rita come over and take care of me
for a couple weeks while she and Dad went on this retreat and tried to
straighten things out between them. Aunt Amy took me for a while after that on
weekends. Things were all screwed up at home and—never mind. Anyway, what my
point was, was that everyone’s talked to me about sex since I can remember, but
I don’t think anyone’s talked about it with you, unless they had classes at—”
“Christ,”
said Darius. He quickly got up from the bed. Quinn grabbed his arms and pulled
him back.
“Wait!”
she said. “Just hear me out, Dari! One minute, okay? That’s all!”
He sat
down again and covered his reddened face with his hands, elbows on his knees.
Quinn
leaned down so her head was close to his. “I know Dad’s not going to say it,
and I’ll bet Mom won’t, either. I care about you, Dari. All I want is for you
and Jane to be careful. I don’t care what you do. All I know is that I want us
to stay together as a family, and I don’t want anything to blow up that might
cause—that might—you know. I want Dad to get over his control thing, whatever’s
making him do it, and I want Mom to pretend like we’re really here, and that’s
all I want. That’s it, everything. If anything happened to tear us up as a
family, I don’t think I could handle it. Aunt Rita wanted to call child welfare
about Dad, because of that stuff that happened between you and him and—and
everything when we were at the Grand Canyon, and I had such a fight with her
over it, you wouldn’t believe. I’d never have seen you again if she’d done
that. I want us to be a family, do you understand? Do you get it? That’s—”
“I get
it, I get it,” Darius said, not looking up. “I know.”
“Look, I
don’t even know how much longer Mom and Dad are going to be together, you know?
It scares the hell out—”
Darius
looked up, startled. “What was that?”
“Mom and
Dad,” she said. “I don’t even know if they’re going to stay together. They
don’t even sleep together much, you know? Dad was sleeping on the sofa half the
time back in
Darius
frowned. Her news disturbed him profoundly. “He hasn’t been down there that
much,” he said, his voice low. “Dad only does that if he and Mom have had a
fight. Jeez, Quinn, we just moved to
“You
haven’t been home with us that long, just since the end of June. They weren’t
together all that much before we got here, and I’m afraid it’s getting worse. I
keep telling Mom to—oh, skip it, forget it. We’re way off topic. All I started
out to tell you is that... I don’t want to lose you again. That’s all.”
He
sighed, all the air running out of his lungs, and lowered his head.
Quinn
reached over and took his hand. He let her do it. He gave her fingers a gentle
squeeze.
“I don’t
want to lose you, either,” he whispered. He choked when he said it. His eyes
burned.
They sat
in silence and listened to the autumn wind outside the house.
“Don’t
ask Jane about this morning,” he added, wanting to change the subject. “Just
don’t.”
A faint
smile curved Quinn’s lips. “Hmmm,” she said. “Okay.”
“I’m
serious. Please stay out of it.”
Quinn
was silent.
“And for
God’s sake,” Darius added, “don’t tell me about your sex life, or I’ll
go in the garage and drink battery acid.”
Quinn
giggled. “I don’t have a sex life yet, so that’s easy to do. God, after Rita
told me about her life, I thought I’d join a convent and be a nunnery or
something. Amy said Rita was a one-woman traveling porn circus.” She shut her
eyes and shuddered. “You can’t even imagine what she’s been up to. You just
can’t imagine.”
“I
can’t, and I don’t want to hear about it,” said Darius. “And you mean nun, not
nunnery.”
“None of
what?”
He
squeezed her hand again and let go. Though comforted by the contact, Darius’s
mind reeled. What was all this about Mom and Dad? How could they even be
thinking about divorce? We just moved together to
Except
that Quinn is usually right about people-related things.
Well,
she isn’t right about this, Darius decided. She couldn’t be.
“I’m
going to check my e-mail,” he said in a sullen voice.
“You
okay with this?”
“I’m
okay.” He reddened again. Anything, he’d do anything to get away from this
conversation. He thought of Jane.
Does
Jane love me, too?
He
flinched and stood up. “I need some alone time,” he said. “Need help back to
your room?”
“Sure.”
She got up and held onto his shoulder as he led her out. “I’ll call Sandi and
see if she can get her mom to come by and pick me up. I hate doing that, but
what can you do?”
“I’ll be
in my room the rest of the day.”
“As
usual. Why don’t you go see Jane or something?”
“She’s
asleep by now.” Is she thinking of me? “She doesn’t get up until noon or
one on weekends. Today was just something different.”
“I’ll
bet.”
“Quinn.”
“I
didn’t say anything!”
“Give it
a rest.” He pulled her door almost shut, leaving her to reach for her princess
phone and make her cycle of phone calls.
Do I
really love Jane? Do I have any idea what love is? How could I? What if she
doesn’t want to see me again? What if she doesn’t love me, and she wants to see
someone else? How many other guys has she taken into the woods with her to make
out? Is she still seeing them? What if she wants to break up? How could I
handle being alone again after I’ve finally found someone in my life I really
care about? Does she even want to share her life with me? Why can’t I figure
all of this out? I should go out somewhere and just get away. I have nowhere to
go. Does Jane love me, too?
For a
moment, lying there in the woods, she had seemed so small in his arms. It was
miraculous that so much life could exist inside someone he could hold in his
own hands. He had kissed her forehead and her face and her hair and given
thanks that she existed, that he had found her, and that the world was forever
changed.
He loved
her. He knew it. But nothing except the thought of losing Quinn could have
frightened him more.
He shut
the door to his room and found his CD player. Putting on a particularly loud
alternative rock band, he lay down on his bed, put on the earphones and set the
CD player to maximum volume, and closed his eyes.
Monday
morning found Darius walking up to the door of the Lane home forty-five minutes
before school began. The weather was threatening rain, so he had a collapsible
umbrella tucked under his arm, the largest one he could find at home. The
temperature was on the cool side. He knocked on the door and waited.
“Just a
minute!” came Jane’s voice from inside. “
Darius
looked around the neighborhood. The sun was barely up, and most cars had their
headlights on as they passed by on Howard Drive.
The door
opened. “Come on in,” said Jane. She ran up the stairs and disappeared. “
“Need help?”
Darius called.
“Can you
go out in the garage and see if my backpack is in
“On the
way.” Darius left. He came back a minute later. “Got it! It was in the back
seat under a pizza box!”
“Great!”
Jane’s feet pounded down the stairs. She bounced up to Darius and gave him a
heartfelt kiss. “Lifesaver,” she said. “Are we late?”
“We’re
fine,” said Darius, “but I wouldn’t take the scenic route. It’s going to rain.”
He held up his umbrella. “Built for two,” he said.
“You
think of everything,” said Jane, who then leaned back and shouted upstairs, “unlike
some people!”
They
left, shutting the front door behind them. It had not yet started raining. They
held hands and felt the cool wind on their faces.
“Sorry
about the weekend,” said Darius. “The part after Saturday morning, I mean. We
couldn’t get out.”
“It
wasn’t a total loss for me, anyway.” Jane kicked at a pile of leaves. “My Muse
decided to speak to me again Sunday morning, and my painting is coming along.
Um, I’m sorry if I made anything worse when I called Saturday afternoon after I
woke up. Your dad didn’t sound too happy to talk to me.”
Darius
grimaced. “It was a bad weekend. Dad got up and interrupted Mom at the office,
and it spilled over into Sunday. The short form of it is, Dad’s angry with
Quinn for wanting to stay out late at that party next Saturday, Mom’s angry
with Dad for being angry about it and calling her at work over nothing, and
then Quinn got dumped from the Fashion Nazis Club for being unstable and
unreliable, on account of having an injured foot and throwing up once, and so
on and so forth. On the good side, I guess, Dad and I settled everything out
yesterday afternoon. Quinn can stay out to eleven at the party, but I have to
be there with her. I also can’t have a date with me, because then I won’t be
able to keep an eye on Quinn. Quinn can have a date, though. I think she has
about twelve of them to that one party.”
“You
can’t have a date? Where does that leave me?”
Darius
gave a dry laugh. “My parents haven’t met you. We’ll go there together anyway.”
“Won’t
that cause a problem?”
He
shrugged. “My parents aren’t going to the party. They won’t even be around. Dad
will be at an out-of-town seminar that weekend. Mom’s tied up in some big
corporate lawsuit, and she doesn’t care where we go or what we do, as long as
no police, fire trucks, or ambulances are involved.”
“Sounds
like it’s party time, then.”
“Hope
so. Dad thought you were one of Quinn’s friends when you called, by the way—and
not a friend of mine. I don’t think he or Mom know about us. I thought about
keeping it like that as long as I can, but if the news gets out, it gets out.
Whatever. Maybe it won’t be a problem.”
Jane
nodded. “How did Quinn take getting dumped from the club?”
Darius
hesitated. “Eh,” he said at last. “She didn’t say anything right off. The club
president called her and gave her the official dump. I thought she was okay
with that at first, but she stayed in her room the rest of Saturday and didn’t
eat dinner. I think it really got to her. She couldn’t get around with her foot
all bandaged up, and it drove her crazy.” It was my fault she got hurt, too.
I could have prevented it. He tried to shake the thought away, but it
wouldn’t leave.
“She hurt
her foot from stepping on a broken glass?”
Darius
glanced at Jane, then nodded in weary acceptance. “She told you about it?”
“She
said it had something to do with a fight between you and your dad and a broken
glass, and she walked into it at the wrong time, but you fixed her up.” Jane
paused. “Dari, are you okay?”
“Yeah,
fine,” he said. “The other good news is that Sunday, some guys came by the
house and took Quinn out for a drive. It was sort of funny. There are these
three football players whose names begin with J, and they’re all in love with
her. I think they want to start a new religion with Quinn as the high
priestess. They found another football player who drives, and they all took her
to the mall and bought her a lot of stuff. She looked loads better when she got
home. She’s talking about joining the pep club now.”
Darius
and Jane walked in silence for a few moments.
“Jane,”
said Darius, “what the hell’s a pep club?”
“It’s
got cheerleaders,” said Jane, “but they’ve got other people in it and they do
something else. It’s real important, big stuff. I forget what it is, though.
They fluff the pompoms, maybe.”
A pained
look crossed Darius’s face. “So, my sister might become a cheerleader?”
“No, I
think the pep club is in charge of doing anything that perks up the sporting
events. That means pretty much anything you can think of, and I mean anything.
Around here, football is a god, so your comment about Quinn as a high priestess
was on target.”
“Do I
have to sacrifice a goat to her, or what?”
“I’m
sure she’d take monetary donations.”
Darius
rolled his eyes. “You have no idea,” he said. “Or maybe you do, if she’s told
you about her shoe and purse collections.”
“You
didn’t answer my other question.”
After a
long pause, Darius rubbed his nose. “Quinn can walk this morning,” he said.
“She kind of walks on the ball of her right foot, but she can get around. The
three J-guys are her escorts for the week.”
Jane
frowned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m
fine,” said Darius, looking at the sidewalk, “but I am wondering what joys the
day will bring.”
“Quinn
said that Friday night—”
“Nothing
happened.”
“Hey!
She said you had bits of glass all over you when you were trying to get her
foot—”
“It was
nothing. Just let it go, okay? I’m fine.”
Jane’s
red lips became a long, flattened line. “That’s not right. You should call
someone.”
“You
should—” he snapped, but he bit off the rest of the sentence and jerked his
face away from Jane. He took a deep breath, feeling his face flush from the
rush of anger. “I’m sorry.”
“No,”
said Jane quietly. “I’m the one who’s sorry. My fault for pushing it.”
They
reached a corner and crossed the street to another sidewalk. Rain began to
splatter the concrete. Darius stopped to put the umbrella up. He put one arm
around Jane’s waist and held the umbrella between them with the other.
“That
was stupid of me,” he said. “It was a long weekend.”
“I
missed you.”
“I
missed both of you, too.”
She
rammed her knee into his butt as she walked. “Oops,” she said.
“That’s
not fair,” he said in a wounded tone. “I read in Waif magazine that
girls like to hear romantic stuff like that from guys.”
“
“Hey,
what did I do?”
“Everything,”
she said, but she didn’t seem angry about it.
They approached
the Morgendorffer house on Glen Oaks Lane. Darius fell silent, but he kept his
arm around Jane. The rain increased.
“We
dissect frogs today in science,” he said when they were well past the house.
“Put
some cotton in your ears before you go into class,” Jane advised.
“Why?”
“Cheerleaders.”
“Oh,
right.”
They
waited at the corner of Glen Oaks and Nicoll Street for traffic to lighten so
they could cross. Darius turned his head and gave Jane a lingering kiss on the
temple. “You smell good,” he said.
“Really?
What do I smell like?” she asked, her voice deepening.
“Life.”
She
turned to look at him. Her eyes closed as her head tilted back. They missed two
opportunities to cross the street, and the rain blew under the umbrella over
their legs, but they never noticed.
Science
class was all that Jane had warned about. Janet Barch, an angry forty-something
teacher, rapped on her desk with a ruler for attention. “Class!” she screeched
in a voice worse than dragging a knife blade across sheet metal. “Today we’re
going to study the internal anatomy of the frog. We’re going to use male
frogs of course, because the female frogs have enough trouble with reproducing
and carrying the entire fate of amphibians everywhere on their shoulders, while
the damn male frogs are jumping around the pond humping anything that moves
like so many worthless little ex-husbands, may his miserable soul rot in Hell!”
Darius
blinked and glanced around the classroom, but no one else appeared disturbed by
this rant. Indeed, most of the class appeared bored. Several students yawned.
Jane, who shared a lab table with him, was sketching a picture in her notebook
of Barch chasing a panicked frog with an axe.
Ms.
Barch had several male students hand out the trays with the dead frogs on them.
Squeals of horror and despair rose across the room—not all of them from
feminine throats.
“Now,
stop that!” Barch cried, rapping the desk again. She pointed to a huge wall
chart showing a frog with its abdomen split open from throat to tail, displaying
all of its internal organs. “This is what I want you to have in your trays by
the end of class today—one slashed-open, stone-dead, nicely cut-to-pieces male
frog. Are there any questions? Good,” she said, ignoring the forest of hands
across the class. You have your scalpels on your table—and you over-muscled,
testosterone-addled androids of the masculine gender are not to use them for
anything except—”
The
intercom crackled. “Ms. Barch, please come to my office,” said Ms. Li, the
principal. “We have a budgetary problem we need to resolve.”
“We’re
about to dissect frogs!” she cried. “Can’t it wait?”
“It’s
your budget. If you want to use those same frogs again next year, go right
ahead and stay in class.”
“Oh,
fiddle,” Ms. Barch grumbled. “I’ll be over. Very well, class, you’re all on the
honor system while I’m gone—and I want the girls to report to me if any of the
boys fool around with those scalpels! I can have you sent to prison for
anything you try, you little hooligans! Now, get to work! I’ll be back as soon
as I can.” Ms. Barch left. The door slammed shut behind her.
Low-order
chaos took over in the room. Some of the students gamely went ahead and began
dissecting. Several football players tried using their scalpels to play
mumbly-peg on their frogs, drawing cheers and shrieks from everyone around
them. Everyone talked.
Darius
and Jane looked at each other and shrugged. They leaned forward and prepared to
cut into their specimens.
Someone
tugged Darius’s sleeve on the side opposite Jane. He looked up.
“You’re
a guy. Can you help me?” said Brittany Taylor, the cheerleader he’d seen at
Pizza King. She was as buxom now as she was then, but her face was pale and her
lower lip trembled. “I can’t do this! Upchuck was supposed to be here to work
on my frog for me, but he’s late.”
“Where’s
your boyfriend?” Darius asked. Don’t look at her boobs! shouted a
panicked voice in his brain. Don’t look at her boobs! Don’t look at her
boobs!
“Football
practice,” she said, and then she glared. “Or at least he’d better be if he
knows what’s good for him, and not under the bleachers making out with another
cheerleader.”
Darius
looked at Jane. She gazed down at her frog, trying to hide a smile. He sighed
and looked back at
“Okay!”
“So,”
murmured Jane, making her first incision, “you like the big jiggly ones.”
“Cut it
out,” he whispered back.
“Guess
I’d better go in for implants if I want to stay competitive.”
“That’s
not it at all. Stop it.”
“Just
remember,” she said, pulling open the incision in the frog with her tongs,
“anything more than a mouthful is wasted.”
His face
got hot. “Jane, damn it—”
“Here it
is!” said
“Okay,”
he said, holding his scalpel over his frog. “Just do what I do. First—”
“
“But
maybe it doesn’t know that!” she said, on the verge of tears.
Darius
put down his scalpel. Next to him, Jane hummed an old country music song that
he recognized: “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”
“
“No,”
she said, a little less pale. “I want to be like my mom—my birth mom, not my
stepmom—and be a movie star!”
“Your
mom is an actress?”
“In
“Okay,
hold that thought. Now, if you want to be an actress like your mom, you’ll have
to work with special effects, right?”
“Okay,”
he said, “suppose you were in this movie in which you were a doctor or
something, and it’s one of those animal movies, like, um—”
“Jaws?” said
Jane
suddenly coughed to prevent herself from laughing.
“No,”
said Darius, “I was thinking of a movie about a veterinarian.”
“Oh, I
don’t watch war movies. Kevvy likes them, though.”
Darius
looked blankly at her for a moment. “Oh,” he said, “not veteran. I meant
veterinarian—an animal doctor.”
“Oh,
like Doctor Doolittle! I love him! He saves kittens!”
“Right,”
he said, pointing at her frog. “So, let’s say this is not really a frog, but
special-effects model in a movie. You’re the heroic doctor who must operate on
the world’s only talking frog, only you’ll be working on this fake frog made of
plastic. You pretend to operate on the frog—” He pointed to the frog anatomy
chart at the front of the room “—by doing just what’s shown up there, and the
camera people will take great pictures of how intensely you’re working. This is
your big moment.”
“One
other thing we’ll do, though,” Darius went on, “is what real doctors do in
operating rooms. They talk about stuff while they’re working, but they
sometimes don’t talk much about what they’re really doing.”
“What?”
“You
ever watch ‘M.A.S.H.’ on TV?”
“A
little. Is that the one about the Vietnam War?”
“What
I’m trying to say is that the surgeons on that show talk all the time while
they’re operating on people, right? They do that because it takes their minds
off what they’re doing. Lots of doctors do it in real life.”
“Oooh.”
“Like
this,” said Darius, picking up his scalpel. “You remember my sister, Quinn?”
Darius
cleared his throat, interrupting her. “Anyway, Quinn tried to join the Fashion
Club here, and you know what happened?”
“They
dumped her.” Darius gently poked at his frog with the scalpel. “They let her
join, and then they dumped her. You know why?”
“Why?”
“She cut
her foot on a piece of glass last week, and they decided that wearing a bandage
was unfashionable, so they threw her out of the club. She was depressed about
it all weekend. Her foot hurt so much she could barely walk, and for that they
screwed her over good.”
Darius
pointed to her frog.
“They
did,” said Darius blandly. “And they told her she was mental, because she had a
virus for a couple of days and got sick. It wasn’t her fault, but they
humiliated her, and all she really wanted to do was contribute something good
to the school, because she really likes Lawndale High.”
“She was
really upset,” Darius went on in a deadpan tone. “Luckily for her, the same
football players who invited her to your party—their names all start with J—”
“Jeffy,
Joey, and Jeremy—I know them.” She gasped. “They were the ones who asked
Quinn over, and not my Kevvy? Oh, no! I have to apologize to him for kicking
him in the—”
“Finish
your frog first,” said Darius.
“Before
you go,” said Darius, “my sister was thinking of joining the pep club.”
“She
wants to be a cheerleader?”
“No, no.
She knows she can’t quite reach your level there, but she has loads of school
spirit, you know? She really wants to help you and the other cheerleaders any
way she can, and—”
“I’ll
take care of it!” she said. “The pep club would just die to get her to join up!
They might even make her president! No problem!”
“And can
I bring someone with me to the party?”
Darius
subtly pointed to Jane. Jane looked up, sensing the topic had shifted to her.
The look
of astonishment on
Darius
nodded. “Uh, yeah, I do.”
The
chatter in the science lab dropped to nothing. Everyone turned and looked at
“Can she
come with me?” Darius whispered, feeling his face burn.
“You
bet! Come on over!”
“You
haff done a goot chob, Zigmund,” whispered Jane in a fake German accent. She
went on in a normal voice. “I’ll make you your own armchair psychiatrist’s
license when I get home.”
Darius
looked down at his pristine, undissected dead frog. He lifted his scalpel with
a sigh. “I guess I’d better get going before—”
“What
have we here?” screeched Ms. Barch, right behind Darius. He jumped and
dropped his scalpel on the floor. Ms. Barch took
“Ms.
Barch,” said Darius in desperation, “I swear that I wasn’t—”
“Were
you dissecting
“No,
ma’am! She knew how to do it! We were just—”
“You
were just trying to get into her panties, is that it?” She pointed to the front
of the room. “Go to the board and write, ‘I will keep my degenerate animal lust
to myself,’ fifty times—or else you can go to the office, and I’ll call your
parents!”
“Wait,
Ms. Barch!” said Jane earnestly. “Really, he wasn’t—”
“I’m not
talking to you,
“Ms.
Barch, no!” cried
“Quiet!” yelled the teacher. “I’m talking
to this hoodlum who wants to act like he’s just had a midlife crisis and dumped
his faithful wife so he can sew his wild oats as if he were a teenager again! Go
to the board, Mister Morgendorffer!”
Totally
shamed, Darius picked up his scalpel and put it on the lab table. I can’t be
sent to Buxton Ridge again. I can’t be sent away from Quinn, not ever.
After a moment, he walked to the front of the room and looked for a piece of
chalk, then began to write.
When he
got back to his lab table at the end of class to get his backpack and books, he
found two folded notes. Everyone else had left the room for the next class. He
opened the first note.
HOW
COULD YOU BE SO NOBLE? it read in Jane’s trademark all-capitals printing.
“Tom
Sawyer,” he mumbled. He put it away and opened the second note, written in a
florid script with a purple felt pen.
Did I
save the talking frog? it read.
“That
was a tesseract you were drawing, wasn’t it?” Darius asked Jane at her locker
after art class that Wednesday. “I couldn’t see from where I was. There were
too many people around me.”
“You
shouldn’t have started telling people about one-point perspective,” said Jane.
“It’s like leaving milk out for kittens. Pretty soon, you’re up to your butt in
furry little monsters that pee on your carpet and try to smother you when you
sleep.”
Darius
snorted with amusement. His gaze wandered down Jane’s slim body.
She
noticed that and smiled. “What happened, anyway?” she asked. “I missed how that
whole thing got started.”
He lost
his smile. “My fault,” he said irritably. “Brittany brought some other
cheerleaders over to ask how to draw Defoe’s cube model, then the football
players came over, and it was downhill from there. I couldn’t get anything done
on my drawing with everyone bugging me to help them on theirs. Then Ms. Defoe
told me I could skip my own drawing if I’d go around and talk about that
perspective thing. I thought it was the easy way out, but it just went on and
on and on.”
“And you
had explain it twice to Kevin, you lucky dog.”
Darius
rolled his eyes. “He still thinks I’m trying to make it with
“Oh?”
Jane looked at him with concern. “And you still helped him?”
He shrugged
it off. “It worked out okay. He liked my help so much, he said he wouldn’t
crush my head until after the party this weekend. It was sort of weird. He even
blames me for the news of
“Just
what is it with you, anyway, Morgendorffer?” said Jane. “Haven’t people
suffered enough?”
Darius softly
bumped his head against a nearby locker door. “I feel like I’m doing everything
half right and half wrong all the time. I don’t mind helping a little, but when
everyone wants you to do their homework for them... well,
I guess I could charge for it. Ten bucks a page... no, forget it. I have to
draw the line somewhere. Everything after school is my own time.”
“Word
gets around, you know,” said Jane, closing her locker. “Everyone wants a
helpful big brother, especially one who works for free.”
“I
should have stuck to my 1984-model Big Brother personality.”
“I don’t
think you have one,” said Jane, setting off with him to American History. “You
might be in danger of becoming popular. Kinda scary, don’t you think?”
An
attractive brown-haired girl passed by them both in the hallway. Darius
remembered that she was Sandi Griffin, the president of the Fashion Club. She
shot Darius a venomous look that should have crippled him for life, then walked
past without a word.
Startled,
Darius turned to watch her go. “Touchy, isn’t she?” he said.
“I take
back that part about you becoming popular,” Jane said, looking ahead as if
nothing had happened. “Did any of the cheerleaders ask you out after you helped
them?”
“What?
Jeez, no, of course not. They ran off as soon as they could.”
“No
problem, then. You’re just as popular as the teachers are.”
He gave
a single dry laugh. “So much for my self-esteem. You didn’t answer my question
about the tesseract. Where did you pick up that stuff about hypercubes?”
“Oh, I
saw a painting by Salvador Dali in a book once, and he used an unfolded
tesseract in it as the cross in a Crucifixion scene. It caught my attention, so
I looked tesseracts up on the Internet and some other books. Kinda cool. I
think I can make it work in my head, folding it up in four dimensions, but that
last fold is a bitch.”
“Are you
planning to turn out any four-dee sculptures?” He heard some students hurrying
up the hall behind him, a familiar sound at Lawndale High. He did not turn
around.
Before
Jane could answer, someone jumped on Darius’s back. He stumbled forward, the
wind knocked out of him.
Quinn’s
laughter rang loud in his ears. “Thanks!” she yelled, and she let go of him and
jumped off. She skipped down the hall ahead of him with a slight limp. Her long
orange-red hair waved like a battle pennant behind her.
“Thanks,
dude!” said an excited male voice behind him, and a hand slammed him in the
middle of his back as Jeffy hurried by.
The blow
almost sent Darius stumbling. “Ow!” he howled, a second before Jamie and Joey
also happily punched or smacked him as they ran past, following Quinn.
“You
rule!” Joey called back, waving.
“Word!”
said Jamie, and the Three J-Guys went around the corner Quinn had taken and
were gone.
Darius
stared after them. “What was that all about?” he said, grimacing as he flexed
his back.
“Beats
me,” Jane said in surprise. “They don’t count for popularity purposes,
however.”
They
reached the door to Mr. DeMartino’s classroom, but Jane stopped before going
in. “Oh, there’s something I wanted to let you know,” she said, catching Darius
by the arm. “Wait up.”
“What?”
Jane
appeared anxious as she went on. “Ms. Defoe asked me when I was leaving if I’d
help out with her advanced art class. It meets when Barch’s science class is
going on. She talked about it with Barch, who gave her go-ahead.” Jane coughed.
“I, um—it’s not that I don’t want to be with you twenty-four seven, okay? It’s
just that this is a really cool opportunity to—”
“I
know,” said Darius. He felt his stomach drop out, but he went on. “I
understand. She must have gotten the idea from me helping out in art today.”
“Um, no.
Actually, she’d mentioned something like this to me a week ago, but there
wasn’t anything definite about it until now.”
Darius
nodded agreeably, though he wished he’d heard about this earlier. He knew Jane
was Defoe’s favorite student and for good reason. “So, do you get credit for
this? Is this like a teacher’s aide position?”
“Yeah,” said
Jane. “Extra grade credits that should keep me at a C average when I get those
math classes later. Barch said I didn’t need this year’s science class to
graduate, but I can’t flunk any of the later science courses, or I’ll be in
trouble in my senior year. The changeover is just for this school year.”
Darius
struggled for the right words. “You don’t need me to okay it,” he finally said.
He smiled, though he didn’t feel it. “Go for all the gusto you can.”
Jane
beamed in relief. “Thanks. I’d kiss you, but DeMartino’s watching us.”
“I can
wait.”
“Great!”
Jane’s hand gripped his bicep, and he followed her into class. I’m not
losing her, he told himself, but the fear remained. My whole family was
taken away from me once, or rather me from it, so anything could happen. I
could lose it all at any moment. It’s happened to others, it could happen to
me.
He shook
himself as he took his seat next to Jane. Relax, said a voice in his
mind. Fear no evil. You let her be free to do what she wants. She won’t love
you if she’s kept in a cage. She’s an artist, for God’s sake—you knew artists
were on the fringe, didn’t you? Let her do her thing. You did right. Keep it
going.
Darius
swallowed, feeling hollow inside. I hope I did the right thing, anyway.
Please, let that have been the right thing for us both.
He
shoved his gloomy thoughts aside. Mr. DeMartino was walking around his desk to
face the class, a sure sign the lesson had begun.
“Great
EVENTS,” said Mr. DeMartino in a voice that carried above the noise of papers
rustling and whispers exchanged, “sometimes turn on comparatively SMALL
affairs.” His bad eye enlarged notably when he emphasized words, which Darius
found disturbing at the same time it impressed him. The background noise in the
room settled down to nothing.
“We are
at
Darius
glanced to his right, where an African-American student named Jodie Landon sat.
Darius knew she was brilliant, probably smarter than he was, though he
suspected he was one of the smartest kids currently at Lawndale High School.
Jodie had straight As and was active in more clubs and organizations than
Darius could possibly remember. She was every parent and teacher’s dream. The
implications of DeMartino’s words were brought home at once. Jodie sat and
watched DeMartino’s every move.
DeMartino
swung around, pointing to a large, detailed map of a small town and the rolling
countryside around it. The map was labeled “
“Great
EVENTS,” he repeated, “sometimes turn on comparatively small affairs.” Silence
restored, he began pacing again.
“We’ll
skip the details of the battle itself to look at a pivotal MOMENT, one bloody
fight among many on July THIRD. We are at a hill called Little ROUND Top. All
day, fifteen THOUSAND Confederates attack Union positions on the hill. If the
Southerners take the HILL, they can drive into the Union army itself, winning
the hill and the
Mr.
DeMartino held himself straighter. “The Union officer on the hill is a COLLEGE
professor from
In the
silence in the room, Mr. DeMartino looked slowly about. “One moment in which
one man must ACT, and all the FUTURE lies in his hands! This is HISTORY. When
some brain-dead imbecile tells YOU that history is boring, that history is
DEAD, you remember Joshua CHAMBERLAIN, the college professor who caused a
BATTLE to turn, and in so doing SAVED the—”
The
intercom squawked. “Damn it!” muttered Mr. DeMartino, shaking his head. The
class snickered in nervous relief, the spell broken.
“Mr.
DeMartino?” said one of the officer staff. “Can you send Darius Morgendorffer
up to see Ms. Li?”
“As you
WISH!” he called, and he nodded to Darius. Darius glanced at Jane, who shrugged
and whispered, “Have fun!” He got up, collected his backpack, and left the
room. At the door he glanced back and caught Jane’s smile, and then he walked
into the empty corridor to the office. It was useless to imagine what this was
all about, so he softly hummed a Springsteen tune, “Streets of Philadelphia,”
and listened to the echo of his boots on the linoleum.
He
opened the office door and walked in, his gaze crossing the room to rest on the
tall man in the dark-green military-style uniform on the other side by Ms. Li’s
office. The officer’s black nameplate said “ARMSTRONG,” and on his shoulders
were silver eagles. Ms. Li stood at the officer’s side, looking self-important.
Darius came to a stop, his hand still on the doorknob, mouth open and eyes
wide.
Darius
knew right then what it was all about. His heart stopped.
“Mister
Morgendorffer,” said the uniformed man. His tone was steady but friendly.
“Yes,
sir,” Darius whispered. After a moment, he regained a little of his composure.
“Welcome to
“Thank
you,” said the man. He indicated the door to Ms. Li’s office. “I’d like to
speak with you for a few moments. Your principal will be with us.”
“Sure,”
said Darius, dazed. He knew exactly what this was about. He couldn’t believe
it. Swallowing, he walked forward around the main office desk, aware that all
the office workers and students present were watching him. He waited for Ms. Li
and Colonel Armstrong to enter the office, then he walked in himself. Putting
his backpack by the door, he went to stand by a chair across from Ms. Li’s
desk.
“Have a
seat,” said the colonel. Darius did, but he sat on the edge of the chair.
“I’m
afraid I’m, uh, not aware of the reason for your visit, Mister Armstrong,” said
Ms. Li, seating herself at her desk.
“Colonel
Armstrong,” corrected Darius automatically. He flinched. “I’m sorry, I spoke
out of turn.”
“Young
man!” began Ms. Li angrily.
The
colonel’s chuckle cut her off. “Old habits die hard, don’t they, Mister
Morgendorffer?” he said with a soft smile. The colonel’s gray eyes glittered.
“Yes,
sir,” Darius said.
“I am a
retired Army colonel, but the title’s an honorific only, except to our
students,” the colonel said to Ms. Li. “My apologies for not calling ahead.” He
ran a hand through his short gray hair. “I’m making a swing through the area on
a recruiting drive for our school,
“We’ve
had our eye on Mister Morgendorffer since he got here,” said Ms. Li quickly.
“He knows better than to start any kind of... I’m sorry, what was that you said
about, uh, distinguished?”
“Darius
Morgendorffer,” said the colonel, looking Darius over, “was two years in a row
the winner of our school prize in academics, the Laurel of Archimedes. His
scores in mathematics are still unequalled, though we might get lucky with
someone in our current fall class. I was fortunate enough to hear his report on
the Mirror of Archimedes and see the demonstration. That was the most
impressive thing I believe I’ve ever seen from a student in all my years.”
“He—oh,”
said Ms. Li, backpedaling. “When I spoke with his mother a couple of weeks ago,
I rather, um, got the impression that Darius was sent to Buxton Ridge because
of certain behavior and disciplinary—”
“I don’t
give a goddamn why our kids come to us,” said the colonel tightly. “All I care
about is who they become once they reach us. Mister Morgendorffer is one of our
best.” Looking Darius in the eyes, he said, “You are much missed, son, even if
you don’t happen to miss us.”
Darius
felt like he was in a dream. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and he left it at that.
“For
what it’s worth,” the colonel went on, “we cleaned the place up over the
summer. Some of the out-of-control students were expelled or put under
restrictions. You’d find the place to be rather different if you were to go
back.”
“That’s
good to know, sir.”
The
colonel grinned. “You like it on the outside, I can tell. Don’t worry about
it.”
Darius
took a deep breath and nodded. And waited.
The
colonel leaned forward and looked at Ms. Li. “I’d appreciate it if nothing I
said here today went beyond this office, ma’am. There are strong legal reasons
for my asking this.”
“Oh!”
said Ms. Li. “Of course! We’re nothing if not discrete!”
“Good,”
said Colonel Armstrong. He looked back at Darius. “There’s another inquest
beginning into the death of Cadet Michael Ellenbogen,” he said. “It’s a civil
matter. I am allowed by our legal counsel to inform you that you will likely be
deposed on the issue within the next month or two. I’ve already been in contact
with your parents about it. I called them this morning and talked with them
individually for about a half-hour each. There’s nothing you have to worry
about. Just do whatever you’re doing, and when the time comes, someone will
call your parents or their attorney and arrange the particulars for the
deposition.”
Darius
felt himself deflate. He had been right. It was about Mike. “Who’s conducting
the deposition?” he whispered.
“An
attorney for Ellenbogen’s parents,” said the colonel. “We don’t know anything
more about it than that, and if we did, I doubt we could say anything about
it.”
“Darius
was involved in another student’s death?” asked Ms. Li in horror. She pressed
herself back in her chair.
“No,
ma’am,” said the colonel testily. “Cadet Ellenbogen committed suicide. He was
Mister Morgendorffer’s roommate at the academy. He died this spring.”
Ms. Li
stared at Darius. Darius felt he’d become unreal, an imaginary thing floating
through the room and watching people interact around him without seeing him.
“You
don’t know how sorry I am to bring you the news,” said the colonel to Darius.
“It can’t do anything but bring terrible pain for you to even hear what I’ve
said, but I want you to put it aside as much as you can. It won’t take long,
God willing, and then you can put it behind you. I have every faith in you that
you will do your duty and do it well.”
“Thank
you, sir.” Darius’s voice was barely audible.
The
colonel nodded and stood. He reached into a pocket and produced a card, handing
it to Darius. “This is my number at the academy and for my personal cell phone.
You call me at once if you have any questions about anything. Would you do
that?”
Darius
nodded dumbly and got up from his seat, taking the card. He glanced at it, then
stuffed it in his pants pocket. After a moment, he put out his hand. “It was good
to see you again, sir,” he said.
The
colonel shook hands solemnly. “And good to see you, too,” he said. “I am sorry
it wasn’t under better circumstances.” He turned to Ms. Li, who was also on her
feet. “I’d best be going,” he said. “I have a meeting in Oakwood in a couple
hours, and I can’t afford to miss it.”
“Certainly,”
said Ms. Li, still staring at Darius.
Darius
didn’t look at her. He looked down at the carpeted floor, then inhaled and
looked at the school principal and the commandant of Buxton Ridge. “Is that
all?” he asked.
“That’s
it,” said the colonel. He looked at Ms. Li. “He’s a good young man,” he said.
“He can’t be questioned by anyone about this matter except the proper legal
authorities, you understand.”
“Of
course,” she said.
“And, again,
no one is to know the details of this meeting. If word gets out, it could cause
considerable trouble for everyone involved in the case, and it will drag the
high school into it as well.”
Ms. Li
bristled at that. “I assure you, Colonel Armstrong, that will never
happen. Whatever secrets we have here, we keep.”
The
colonel gave Ms. Li a twisted smile. “Of that, I have no doubt,” he said. He
nodded to Darius. “Good day to you, Mister Morgendorffer,” he said with warmth,
and he left the room.
Darius
looked back at Ms. Li. Profoundly distracted, she waved at the door to dismiss
him. He left but almost forgot his backpack, picking it up at the last moment.
The office staff peered at him secretly as he left. No one dared look directly
at him.
He found
himself in the hallway, walking back to class, but the corridor looked
unfamiliar. Hardly aware of what he was doing, Darius slowed to a stop and
leaned against a row of lockers by a window. He looked out at the trees and
passing cars for a while, then closed his eyes. Just like that the months fell
away, and again he was walking into his room at the academy on a cold, cloudy
day in March, and what he saw as he came in was as real to him now at Lawndale
High School as it was when he saw it, and it hung above his world like a dead
sun, damned and eternal.
He heard
his name called. Turning, he saw he was in a hallway, like in a school. It was
not the dormitory-like barracks of Buxton Ridge. He felt disoriented. Where was
he? What was he doing here?
A girl
with long orange-red hair ran up to him, crying his name. She flung herself at
him, almost knocking him down. Her arms clamped around his neck, her feet
hanging above the floor.
What?
he said. He could barely hear his voice.
They
can’t take you, they can’t take you back there, the girl cried into his
neck. They can’t take you away from me ever.
Confused,
he clutched her to him. Aching sadness filled his heart. Where am I going?
he asked. Where—
He
jerked, back in reality. Quinn clutched him, bawling her eyes out.
“I’m
okay!” he said loudly, but without shouting. “It’s okay! Calm down!”
“They
can’t take you!” Quinn shouted in hysteria. “They can’t! They can’t!”
He tried
to put a hand over her mouth, fearful someone would hear. “Shhh! No one’s
taking me anywhere! Nothing’s happening! Calm down!”
“That
army guy! He can’t take you away!”
“Oh—no,
he won’t do that! He came by for a visit! It’s all right! He’s not taking me
anywhere. Calm down! Please, calm down, for the love of—”
“Don’t
let them do it, Dari!”
“It’s
okay,” he said in a lower voice. “I love you. It’s all okay.”
“I love
you, too,” she said, coughing. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m
staying, Quinn. He just came for a visit. Don’t worry about it, all right? It’s
okay now.”
Quinn
sobbed into his shirt.
“I’m not
leaving you,” he said to her. “I’ll never leave you.” He still felt dizzy.
“Let’s go sit down somewhere.”
They
went to the cafeteria. Lunch was just starting. Darius explained that his old
academy commandant was in the area on business, but he came to
“He
can’t take you back,” said Quinn, her voice too high.
“Right,
and he knows that,” said Darius. He kept his voice slow and steady. “He’s okay,
Quinn. I got along with him pretty well. He’s a good guy. Don’t worry about
him.”
“I was
so scared. God, I was so damn scared when I heard about it.”
He held
her hand until her breathing slowed and she sniffled less.
“So,”
said Darius, “I guess someone saw the colonel and said something, right?”
“Stacy
Rowe,” said Quinn. Her voice was hoarse. “She’s in the Fashion Club. She saw
you in the office with that army guy and she told me.”
Darius
groaned. “Great, so the Fashion Club’s screwing things up again.”
“No, she
wasn’t doing anything wrong,” said Quinn in a low voice. “She’s okay. I think
she wants to be friends with me.”
“Hell of
a way to do it. Where were you?”
“The
girls’ room.” She sighed and wiped her eyes with a tissue. “I was fixing my
makeup. God, just look at me.”
“Where
are you supposed to be now?”
Quinn
checked her watch and exhaled. “I’m almost late to a pep club meeting.” She
turned to Darius quickly. “Oh, I was going to tell you earlier, but I was in
sort of a hurry. I’m the president.”
Darius
blinked. “President of the pep club?”
“The
Lawndale Pride Pep Club,” she said. “Student President Quinn Anne
Morgendorffer.”
“No
fuh—uh, I mean, no way!”
Quinn
gave a half laugh. “Yeah, way. And watch your mouth.”
“Are
those three J-guys in the club, too?”
“No,
dummy. They’re on the football team. They’re sort of like my personal
cheerleaders, you know? They’ve really helped me out when I was down. They
dragged my butt right up. I’m thinking of giving them an official title, but
we’ll see how it goes.” She blew her nose in the tissue, then stuck it in a
pants pocket. “I’d better go. Club’s waiting. I look like crap, but a good
smile covers almost everything.” She got up from the table, as did he. “Thanks,
by the way,” she said, sniffing.
“For
what?”
“Brittany
Taylor told everyone to have emergency elections and vote me in as president.
She said she heard about my situation from you. The old president was sort of
overwhelmed. I’m going to put him in charge of fluffing the pompoms. He can
handle that, I think.”
Darius
smiled in relief. “So, you’re better off now than with the Fashion Club?”
Quinn
snorted and laughed. “You could say that. I’ve got a twelve thousand dollar
budget and fifty-six people under me. Sandi Griffin can kiss my ass. Before the
year’s out, she probably will, too. That’ll be a Kodak moment.”
When her
words registered, Darius’s mind froze. “Good God!” he said in a strangled
voice. “You’re kidding me!”
“I owe
it all to you, but don’t ask me for a handout,” she said. “The money’s going
for decorations, food, uniforms, transportation, and parties, and I know you
hate sports. I’d better get Mom’s permission to stay out late for the away
events.” Quinn started to go, then came back and gave Darius another hug. “I’m
sorry I flipped out,” she said. “I just lost it.”
“It
happens,” he said. He kissed her on the forehead. “Go knock ‘em out, okay?”
She
pulled away and lightly punched his shoulder. “I will,” she said.
After
she left, Darius looked at his watch and realized he was supposed to have gone
back to American History. It would let out in five minutes, so it didn’t matter
now. He elected to wait for Jane in the cafeteria. Exhausted, he dropped into a
chair and rubbed cold sweat from his face with his hands. When he lowered his
hands, he noticed that they shook. He put his arms on the table in front of
him, fingers interlaced to hold them still, and watched the lunchroom doors for
Jane.
Jane
came in a few minutes later. He got up and waved to her, but she saw him at
almost the same moment and waved back with a grin. Her grin faded the closer
she got to him. He stood as she approached, and they walked together to the
lunch line.
“Hey,”
Jane said softly, looking him over. “What happened?”
“Oh,” he
said, “my old commandant came by from Buxton Ridge, Colonel Armstrong. He was
in the neighborhood and wanted to say hi. It was nothing.”
Jane
didn’t respond. He looked up into her blue eyes and instantly knew from her
expression that she wasn’t buying it.
He
looked away. “Later, okay?” he asked.
“Sure,”
she said. She moved closer to him. Her body pressed lightly against him from
behind. They pretended nothing was happening. He closed his eyes and felt his
self-control slip away.
“I’m not
hungry,” Darius said. “Sort of lost my appetite in the office.” He stepped away
from her. “I’m sorry. Too much going on.”
“Let me
grab an apple,” she said. “We’ll go for walkies. I hear they’re repainting the
bleachers at the football field. Let’s check it out.”
He
nodded. “Okay.”
Two
minutes later, they were walking together across the high-school campus. A scrimmage
game was being held on the athletic field. Darius and Jane chose a section of
bleachers not yet being repainted and settled back in a spot upwind of the
paint fumes, watching the Lawndale Lions in action. Darius told her about
Quinn’s new job.
“You’d
think she could at least buy you a new car,” said Jane, tossing her apple core
into a trashcan. “I love Trent, don’t get me wrong, and he’s been there for me
lots of times, but sometimes I wish he was a little more proactive, like with
paying bills and making sure the house doesn’t get repossessed. Quinn’s lucky
as hell to have you around.”
“I
wonder about that sometimes,” he said. He pointed to the field. “One thing I’ll
say about Kevin—he ain’t bright, but man, he sure can throw that ball.”
“Idiot
savant. Amazing what they can do.” Jane tapped her boot against Darius’s boot.
“So, you were telling me about the colonel.”
“Yeah.”
He was silent for a bit. “You’re going to want a new boyfriend soon.”
“Let me
be the judge of that.”
“Well,
screw it, then.” He rubbed his mouth, watching the coach give orders to the
football players. “My dad sent me off to Buxton Ridge just before I started
seventh grade. He and I were arguing a lot, about every day. I couldn’t do
anything to make him happy. A lot of stuff got said that shouldn’t have been
said. He whipped me sometimes. His dad whipped him, so it was good enough for
me, too. It all sucked.” He exhaled. “One day when we went on this family trip
to the
They sat
in silence. Kevin threw another pass on the field and did a victory dance.
“Mom
took Quinn and ran off to her sister Rita’s. Dad took me home and signed me up
for Buxton Ridge right away. I left on a bus two days later. They put me to
work at the academy until the fall semester started. The first year I was there
was hell for everyone. I was sort of crazy, fighting everybody. I didn’t care
anymore. I gave up.”
Darius
stared at his knees as he slouched back on the bleachers. “Colonel Armstrong
and some of the staff there, though, they didn’t give up on me. I fought them,
but they got me straightened out. When I was in eighth grade, I started doing
pretty well again. I used to like math and science and history and all that
stuff, and they got me back into it. I won some stuff. I missed Quinn a lot,
but it was okay otherwise.”
He
brushed off his knees and was silent again for a minute. Jane waited.
“Ninth
grade,” he said, watching the field, “I got a new roommate, a kid named Michael
Ellenbogen. Talk about irony. His dad and my dad were at Buxton Ridge together,
back in the sixties. They hated each other. Michael told me his dad always
thought my dad was a screw-up, always complaining about everything and not
listening to anyone. He wasn’t a team player at all, had some kind of big stick
up his ass about authority and life and everything.” Darius gave a tight smile.
“That’s my dad.”
The
smile faded away. “Mike said his own dad wasn’t any better. Drank a lot, beat
up his wife and kids. Mike was all messed up. He was doing drugs and
everything. His dad sent him to Buxton Ridge to straighten him out.”
“How old
was he?”
“Thirteen.
What was funny about it was that he and I got along okay. You couldn’t really
get to know him, but he was okay. I liked him. He was smart.”
The
silence drew out. Jane cleared her throat. “What happened?”
Darius
took a deep breath and let it out. “He killed himself.”
Jane
turned to him, her face draining of color. Time passed.
“He hung
himself in our room,” said Darius. “I found him. Couldn’t do anything for him.”
He leaned forward, hunched up to rest his arms on his knees.
“When
did this happen?” Jane whispered.
“March.
Middle of the month.”
“March
of this year?”
“Yeah.”
He thought. “Just over six months ago.” He stared at the players, who were
leaving the field. “I came back from class and he was hanging there from the
ceiling light. He’d taken off the plastic dome and wound some neckties around
the light bulb fixture. I held him up until I could cut him down with a pair of
scissors, but he was dead. You could tell. That’s all.”
Darius
exhaled, then slowly stood up and stretched. “So, now there’s another
investigation into it, and they’re going to call me in for a deposition, ask me
questions about it, and then his parents are probably going to sue the living
shit out of me and my parents and the school and everyone else in the universe,
just for the hell of it. The colonel called Mom and Dad this morning, so I know
they’re probably nuts by this time and waiting to get hold of me when I get
home, and I don’t feel like doing anything anymore. I don’t know what’s going
to happen or anything. You should find another boyfriend.”
He
looked down.
Jane was
wiping her eyes and breathing very hard.
He
swallowed and reached down for her. She sniffed and took his hand, then stood
up. Her arms went around him and his arms around her, and they pressed together
as if they were one person.
“I love
you,” he said, which wasn’t at all what he had wanted to say.
“I love
you, too,” she said, choking back tears. “I don’t want anyone else.”
She
smelled faintly of some kind of flower, he noticed. Not violets or roses. He
couldn’t place it.
“It’s
not going to be any fun,” he whispered. “Being with me.”
“Oh,
shut the hell up,” she said. She hugged him tightly. “We’d better go. I think
we’re late for class.”
“Okay.
Don’t tell Quinn any of this, okay?”
“Doesn’t
she know?”
“I don’t
want her to know any more than she might already,” he said, “though Mom or Dad
will probably spill it all anyway. Quinn’s scared to death I’ll be sent away
somewhere again, and I don’t want to get her any more wound up about it than
she already is.”
“Okay.”
They
walked back to the main school building. No one was about. They were obviously
late.
“What
perfume are you wearing?”
“Something
I borrowed long ago from one of my sisters. It’s supposed to smell like
crocus.”
“Crocus.
Those little colorful flowers that come up under the snow in the spring.”
“Yeah.”
“I like
it.”
“I’ll
wear it more often.”
“I love
you.”
“I love
you, too.”
They got
to their English literature class ten minutes late. Mr. O’Neill sighed when
they walked in, interrupted in the middle of reading Hamlet’s soliloquy aloud
to the sleepy, post-lunch classroom. He reached for the tardy slips on his
desk.
“Sorry
we’re late,” said Darius, eyeing the tardy slips in O’Neill’s hand. “I was
walking around thinking about entropy when I realized that the negative, which
is the nothingness of being and the annihilating power both together, was
itself nothingness, and I just lost track of the time.”
Stunned,
Mr. O’Neill dropped the tardy slips. “Good Lord!” he gasped. “I imagine you
would, thinking about such weighty matters!” He looked at Jane. “Were you
thinking about the nothingness of being, too?”
“I’m
painting a picture of it,” Jane said. “It’s mostly black, but in different
shades.”
“Goodness!
Please, just take your seats!”
“Thanks,”
said Darius. “It’s so depressing to deal with it all, you know.”
“I
should think so! A little Hamlet should cheer you up,” said Mr. O’Neill. He
frowned at his book. “I’ll start over again at the beginning.”
Several
students groaned aloud. “Mercy!” one of them cried. “Have mercy!”
Darius
sat and listened to the “To be or not to be” speech. None of it registered. He
played with his pencil on his desktop instead of taking notes, and he listened
to Jane breathe beside him.
Next to
him, Jane sat with her sketchpad open before her to a blank page. A pencil was
poised over it in her hand. She drew nothing.
Mr.
O’Neill had just gotten to the part about “the dread of something after death,
/ That undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns,” when
someone knocked on the door. He sighed and set the book down, mumbling, “Excuse
me!” to the class, then went to find out who was there.
At the
door were Darius’s parents, Quinn, and the principal, Ms. Li. His mother
spotting him right off and motioned for him to come with them.
Darius
looked at Jane, then slowly got up and collected his things. She touched his
arm before he went.
He went
to the door and faced his parents. “Let’s go,” he said.
“What’s going on?” asked
Quinn once they were out of the school building.
Darius
made a shushing noise to her under his breath. Before he could say more, their
mother interrupted. “We’ve got an appointment to see an attorney, dear.”
“What?”
Quinn’s voice rose. “What about?”
“Quinn,”
said Darius in a low voice, “it’s just—”
“Darius,”
said his mother, “I want you to shut up and stop upsetting your sister.”
“Mom,
what’s going on?” Quinn’s voice quavered. “Mom, talk to me!”
Darius
glanced at his father, who looked different for some reason. After a moment, he
realized that his father did not seem upset. In fact, the old man looked... pleased.
The four
of them reached the family’s blue Lexus, parking near the school entrance.
“Mom!”
Quinn cried. “Tell me what’s going on?”
“Damn
it, Quinn!” shouted their mother, spinning around, pointing at the Lexus. “Just
shut up and get in the car!”
Quinn’s
face slowly scrunched up. Tears streaked down both her cheeks.
Darius’s
father unlocked the car. After putting their backpacks in the trunk, Darius and
Quinn got in the back seat and buckled in. Darius reached over and took Quinn’s
hand in his. She bowed her head, biting her lips. Their mother got in the
passenger seat and almost immediately opened her briefcase and began rummaging
through it. As their father started the car, Darius saw his mother pull out a
cell phone and punch in a number. She put the phone to her ear and waited.
The sound
of humming was in the car: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” Darius realized
after a moment that it was coming from his father.
“Jake,
please,” said his mother. “I’m—hi, this is Helen Morgendorffer. We have an
appointment at two. Right. We’re on our way.”
Darius
looked at his sister and tugged on her hand. She didn’t look up. He leaned over
to her. “We’ll be okay,” he whispered. She made no sign that she had heard.
“Darius,”
said his mother, snapping the cell phone shut. “I warned you. Don’t make me
have to say it again.”
He
subsided and sat back, still holding Quinn’s hand. His mother looked back and
noticed. “Darius, let go of her,” she said.
“Mom,
I’m just holding her—”
“Let go
of her, damn you!” his mother yelled. “Keep your hands to yourself!”
“Helen,”
said his father mildly.
Stung,
Darius pulled his hand back. Quinn immediately reached for his hand again.
“Quinn,
stop it!” His mother turned to her husband. “Jake, pull over. I want Darius to
ride in front.”
“We’re
in traffic, Helen,” said his father. “Nowhere to pull over.”
His
mother swore and gave Darius a smoldering glare. “Just keep your hands to
yourself! And stop that, young lady! You keep your hands to yourself, too. We
should have brought the SUV.”
“We’ll
be there in fifteen minutes,” said his father in a relaxed tone.
Darius’s
mother turned around and looked out the front window again, but she glanced
back several times to check on her children—always glaring at Darius.
What
the hell is going on? Darius wondered. Mom hasn’t gotten upset about
anything like this in years. He then remembered that his mother didn’t want
Darius to touch his sister after the big fight at
The rest
of the ride passed in silence. They drove through
“That
one,” said Darius’s mother, pointing. “DeMarcus and Rawlings.”
“I see
it,” said his father, turning the car.
Darius
looked at Quinn’s white face. She had shut her eyes. Her hands rested in her
lap, clasped together with her fingers interlaced. Only her lips moved. After a
moment, Darius realized his sister was whispering the Lord’s Prayer to herself.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil, for Thou art with me....
When the
car was parked, everyone got out. Darius’s mother took Quinn and maneuvered her
away from Darius as they walked toward the building entrance.
“Mom?”
said Darius, “what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s
going on,” said his father, both hands in his pockets. He looked as if the
family were out for a stroll. “Everything’s peachy-keen.”
“Jake,”
growled his mother. She grabbed the door into the law office and jerked it
open, walking through with Quinn but letting the door fall shut behind her. It
would have nailed her husband in the shoulder, but he was quick and grabbed it
in time.
“Damn
it, Helen!” he said in a loud voice. He was pissed, but still not up to his
usual level of spite.
She
ignored him and walked up to the receptionist’s desk. Darius grabbed the door
after his father walked through. He noticed an elderly woman behind him, and he
held the door open for her. She murmured her thanks and walked on through the
waiting room toward a back office.
Darius
listened as his mother argued with the receptionist about the appointment time.
They were twenty minutes early, and she wanted to be seen as soon as possible.
“I’ve got to get back to my own office,” she told the receptionist. “I’m sure
you can appreciate just how important that is. Just buzz him and let him know
we’re here!”
“He’s
not to be disturbed,” said the middle-aged woman in a level, well-practiced
tone. “He’s still with his one o’clock client. Please have a seat, and he’ll be
out as soon as he can.”
“I’ll
have a talk with him about this.” Darius’s mother walked across the empty
waiting room to where her husband and children were sitting in a row: Jake,
Darius, Quinn. “Darius,” said his mother, “go sit over on the other side of
your father. I’ll sit next to Quinn.”
Darius
got up. A fight in a legal office would a very bad thing, especially with both
his parents acting so weird. He wondered again what was really going on.
“Mom,”
said Quinn firmly, “sit next to me here. Darius can sit where he is.”
“Quinn,
stay out of this,” said their mother. “Move, Darius.”
Quinn
reached out and grabbed her brother by a pants leg with one hand. She patted
the empty seat by her with the other. “No,” she said. “Let him stay. You sit
here.”
“Young
lady,” hissed her mother, leaning in close, “you are right on the verge of
making serious trouble for yourself! Now stop it! ”
“I don’t
care anymore!” said Quinn, glaring back. “What are you gonna do about it, huh?”
“Hey!”
said Darius, feeling the cold touch of fear. “It’s okay, Quinn! Look, I’m just
moving over—”
“Don’t
you talk back to me!” said his mother to Quinn. “Don’t you dare talk
back to me when I’m looking out for your welfare!”
“You’re
not looking out for anyone’s welfare!” Quinn said in a loud voice, and she got
up and walked toward the seats on the other side of the waiting room, where
Darius was just sitting down.
Her
mother grabbed Quinn by the arm and jerked her to a stop. Quinn spun around and
slapped her mother’s arm away. “Don’t touch me!” she shouted.
“Jesus!”
said Darius, leaping from his seat. “Stop! Please stop it!” He heard a beeping
noise from the receptionist’s desk. He realized she had triggered a hidden
alarm. Holy shit!
Quinn
dodged to avoid being grabbed by her mother again. Darius stepped between them,
hands up. Furious, his mother struck him open-handed across the face, knocking
his glasses off. “Get back in your seat!” she shouted. “Sit down! Quinn, you
get back here!”
Darius
staggered backward, his face on fire. He hit a row of empty chairs and sat down
abruptly, holding his face and staring at his mother in shock. Quinn grabbed
his glasses from the floor and ran over to give them back to Darius.
“Quinn!”
shouted their mother.
“Excuse
me!” said a tall, portly man in a business suit, walking into the waiting room.
“Is there a problem here?” Two other tall men in suits came behind him. They
all looked like lawyers, but without his glasses Darius found it impossible to
tell. He blinked up at them through tears in his eyes, but he stayed in his
seat and carefully put his glasses back on. Quinn sat down next to him and
checked his face.
“I’m
having difficulty with my children,” said Mrs. Morgendorffer quickly. “Do you
have a room where I can put my son?”
“Certainly,”
said the portly man. “Right down the hall here. Which one of you wants to stay
with him?” he added, looking from Darius’s mother to his father.
To his
astonishment, Darius realized that his father had been completely uninvolved in
the entire altercation. When the portly man turned to him, his father made a
wide-eyed, open-handed gesture that clearly said, I have no idea what’s
happening here, and I have no control over it.
“Me,”
said Quinn. “I’ll stay with him.”
“My
daughter will stay with me,” said their mother, looking daggers at
Quinn. “Jake, you stay with Darius.”
“Sure,”
her husband said sourly. He got up, making a face, and motioned for Darius to
follow him.
Darius
got up. Quinn got up beside him. Darius noticed and turned to her. “Wait for
me,” he said in what he hoped was a quiet, confident voice. He wanted her to
listen. This entire episode was scaring the daylights out of him. “I promise
I’ll be right back. Everything will be fine.”
Quinn
stared at him, then nodded. “Okay,” she said. She gave him an impulsive hug,
then sat down as Darius followed his father out of the waiting room.
They
were escorted down the hall to a small storage room filled with shelves, each
jammed with banker’s boxes full of legal documents. Darius took a seat in a
folding chair. His father sat in a chair by the open door. “Any chance of
getting a drink?” his dad asked the lawyer who escorted them there.
“We have
Cola Blast, regular and diet, and Ultra-Cola, plus canned ice tea, fruit
juices, or just plain old coffee,” said the lawyer.
“Oh,
coffee for me, then,” said Mr. Morgendorffer.
“And
you?” said the lawyer to Darius.
Darius
shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said. He was thirsty, but too shaken to deal
with it just yet. His fingers were trembling and his face still ached from
where his mother had struck him. He leaned forward and put his head in his
hands, elbows on his knees. Too much had happened. It was time to regroup, but
he just couldn’t do it.
What
the hell just happened? he thought. Quinn went off just like I used to
do, when Dad was riding me really bad years ago. And Dad just sat there! Why
didn’t he do anything? Why didn’t he try to stop Mom from freaking out? And
what the hell is eating Mom, anyway? She acts like I’m beating up Quinn or
something! What’s happened? Is something else going on here besides the
deposition? Mom acted like I was poisonous. Does she really believe that? Did
the deposition do something to her, or what? Is she snapping from stress? Are
we all going crazy? What the hell is going on?
A few
feet away, his father sighed. Darius looked up. His father was savoring a hot
cup of coffee.
“Dad?”
he asked.
“Hmmm?”
said his father, lowering the cup.
“Why are
we here?”
“Legal
stuff,” said his father.
“Is this
about the deposition? About my roommate at Buxton Ridge?”
His
father shrugged.
“Come
on, Dad! Don’t you know?”
“Just
relax,” said his father, and took a sip of his coffee again.
Darius’s
head fell. He put his head in his hands again, his palms mashing into his eyes.
They sat in the room for what seemed like an hour.
“Mister
Morgendorffer?” said a woman’s voice. “Mister Rawlings will see you now. Your
wife’s already in the room.”
His
father got up and turned to Darius. “Just wait here for now,” he said. “Amy
should be by in a few minutes.”
“Aunt
Amy?” Darius shook his head slowly. “What’s she doing here?” Darius hadn’t seen
his mother’s youngest sister since he was in elementary school, back in
“She’s
going to look after Quinn for a little, till things calm down. I think she’s
got a hotel room in town. Helen’s paying for it.”
“Is
something going on, Dad?”
His
father shrugged. “Just stay here and keep out of trouble,” he said. “We’ll call
you.” He walked off with the coffee cup.
Darius
got up and looked down the hallway. Seeing no one around after his father went
into an office, he went back to his chair and sat down again. He tried to get
comfortable so he could fall asleep, but it was impossible. The chair dug into
his back. He finally put his head in his hands again and just waited, thinking
gloomy thoughts.
An age
later, he heard a door open in the waiting room and someone walk in with quick
steps. He wondered if the visitor was his Aunt Amy, or if he’d recognize her
after all this time. Did she still wear those big round-lens glasses and baggy
sweaters?
“Hi,” he
heard the visitor say—a woman. “My sister asked me to meet her here, Helen
Morgendorffer. Is she here yet?”
“She’s
with her attorney,” said the receptionist. “Do you want me to call her out?”
“Could
you, for just a minute?”
“Sure.
Who should I say is here?”
“Amy
Barksdale.”
“Okay.
Just a moment.”
“Thanks.”
Darius
almost got up and went out in the hallway, but decided not to. If his mother
was the one who had gotten in touch with Amy, who knew what Amy thought of him
now?
A door
opened. “Oh, Amy, I’m glad you’re here,” Darius heard his mother say. “I need
to talk to you.” A door shut.
“What’s
going on?” Amy asked.
“Wait,”
said his mother. Footsteps came down the hall, sounding louder. They stopped
abruptly not far from the door to Darius’s room. A door opened. “Let’s go in
here for some privacy. It’s a conference room.”
It
occurred to Darius that the conference room might be adjacent to the storage
room. He stood up and looked at the wall that he guessed connected the two
areas. Should he listen in?
The
choice was a no-brainer, really. He walked across the room and nervously stood
by the wall, waiting.
A door
shut on the other side. “Helen,” said Amy, “what’s going on?”
“Darius
is in trouble again,” said his mother. “He’s going to be deposed next month
about his roommate at that military academy Jake had him sent to.”
“His
roommate?” said Amy. “The one who killed himself?”
“They’re
still sorting that out.”
“Wait,
what are you saying? You think Darius had something to do with that?”
“I don’t
know, damn it! I don’t know what the hell’s going on! I’m about to go crazy and
I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore with him!”
“Well,
don’t yell at me about it! Don’t you believe Darius about this? I mean, the
academy investigated the whole thing and cleared Darius, right? Didn’t they?
How could he have done anything?”
“Trouble’s
been following him around since day one. He’s taken after Jake in every way
possible, and I’m at my wit’s end. I don’t even know if I want him around
anymore. Quinn’s starting to turn out just like him, mouthing off at me and
threatening me and just behaving like a little monster!”
“Helen,
listen—”
“We’re
going to be sued, Amy! That boy’s parents are going to find some way to claim
that Darius either caused their son’s death or contributed to it, and we’re
going to be soaked for millions! Millions, do you hear me? Can you possibly see
what the problem is now? What do I have to do to spell it out for you?”
“Do you
know that you’re going to be sued?”
“Why the
hell else are they deposing Darius? They’re going to sue the academy for sure,
but they’ll go after us, more than likely. They all do, everyone in that
position would do it. They don’t care.”
“Then,
from what you’re saying, this isn’t Darius’s fault.”
“He’s
tearing us apart, and Quinn’s suffering from it! Jake told me Darius broke a
glass in the kitchen the other day and didn’t clean it up, and Quinn stepped on
it and cut her foot! He’s totally irresponsible, and now he’s getting Quinn to
be just like him, fighting us at every step of the way! I will be damned in
Hell if I’m going to have her put us through all the trouble he’s put us
through!”
“What
are you planning to do about Darius?”
“In the
long run or short run?”
“Right
now.”