“This place is totally littered with signs,” she said, walking a step ahead of me. “All these boring townies aren’t going to know what the hell is going on. They’re going to be checking their bodies for hives!”
Around us, orange lights were coming on in the front windows of houses. Chimneys were spouting smoke, chalk white against a blue-black sky. Our shoes scraped over the tiny jagged crystals of the salted sidewalks.
“Do you think we should have included the date of the performance at least?” I asked.
“No way!” she said. “That’s the whole point. Once you have everyone talking, then you put up the next batch of signs that tells everyone where to go. They’ll follow like cattle. It was actually a good idea. Don’t second-guess it.”
It was hard not to be infected by Meredith’s spirit. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and her eyes were watery. She hadn’t had time to apply her makeup before we went out that day, and her face looked friendlier somehow. Less severe. She slowed down to let me catch up, and then reached a hand over and pushed up my hair.
“You have to put fresh hair spray in this,” she said. “It won’t just stay up. You know that, right?”
“I’m still deciding if I like it,” I said.
I was wearing Jared’s clothes for the second day in a row. A pair of jeans too tight and short for me, and a T-shirt under my coat that said “Minor Threat.”
“Well,” she said, “you have to decide one way or the other. Or you just look like you don’t shower.”
We were getting closer to home now, which is how I was starting to think about it. Home. Our bodies were near one another. And I felt a little of that mysterious quality returning from the night before. I suppressed a quick guilt-flash. Jared was just going to have to understand that it was possible to have two friends. Before the last month, there hadn’t been anyone. Now there were two people who cared enough to speak to me. I felt Meredith reach out for my hand. It was ice-cold when I took it.
I knew better than to try to make any overtures as the numbers on Ovid drew closer to the Whitcombs’. I was learning how to be quiet at the right time. It was so easy to spoil a moment. All it took was a wrong word or gesture and that tender quality vanished in a blink. You cleared your throat too loudly. You actually said what was on your mind. Or a tall redheaded kid rounded a corner when you least expected him and said: “Hey, Meredith.”
I saw him first, but Meredith was first to let her hand drop to her side.
“Hey,” she said.
I hadn’t noticed right away, but he was trailing an old dog, a rust-brown canine on a leash. It nosed at the base of a bare tree.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” said the guy. “I keep getting your message.” I looked at him closely and saw he was trying to grow a beard of some kind. The patches of wiry orange hair waved to one another from opposite sides of his chin.
“I haven’t really been taking phone calls,” she said.
“What? Did you find Jesus or something?”
He grinned, exposing a dental apparatus I hadn’t remembered. I took a step toward him, but before I could say anything, his dog raced around and started barking at me. Its mouth clapped open and shut wildly, sending deafening bursts of noise right into my face. The guy tugged his choke collar.
“Dude,” he said, laughing. “You should have seen your face just now.”
I looked at Meredith. Her hands were thrust in her pockets.
“We need to go,” I said.
“Whoa, hey!” said the guy. “Is this the same guy from that night? Hey, man. No hard feelings. I hope you were okay. No bruises, right, bro?”
He punched me in the shoulder. I looked down at his dog. It was still eyeing me, probably biding its time for a second attack. I walked around the canine, keeping a wide berth. I hoped Meredith would follow. She did not.
“You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
She reached down to pet the guy’s dog, ruffling the fur on its neck. I could only watch for a couple of seconds before I had to turn away. It was just another block to the house, but I suddenly wished I could transport myself there somehow. I’d just close my eyes and when I opened them again I’d be in the kitchen, sitting back at the table. Then the day could start over again. When Meredith came down from our night together, I’d say, “Enough, Meredith. You can’t confuse people the way you do. I won’t take it! I won’t!” I was talking out loud to myself. Behind me it was already too dark to tell what was happening between her and the redhead. I reached a palm up and tried to flatten my hair. It wouldn’t go down all the way. I could feel stray pieces sticking up in the wind. I had one flyer left and I felt it, folded in four, in my pocket. I entered the dark house.
I thought, at first, that mother and son were still resting, but then I heard a faint murmur from the kitchen. I walked through the living room and up to the doorway where the carpet met the tile. I saw Janice with her back to me. She had the telephone pressed to her ear, and she was pulling at a long strand of her hair. Her index finger looked like a corkscrew with those dark locks wrapped around it.
“I just told you, they said he didn’t show up in the database,” she said. “I talked to the woman for over an hour.”
I assumed, at first, that she was in a conference with the hospital.
“Well then, don’t,” she said. “But you said he was still on your insurance and I didn’t have any reason to . . .”
She tugged at her hair and began pacing. I ducked back a step, trying to stay out of sight. Her fingers squeezed the top of a chair. Suddenly, she pushed it hard against the table. It crashed into the scuffed protruding lip.
“Maybe if you’d seen him, you’d be more worried. Okay? But don’t tell me how worried I should be! You don’t get to say anything because you don’t know a thing about this!”
Her voice cracked; it sounded like she was about to cry. I knew now who she was speaking to. “Yeah, that’s great. I’ll see if the church can swing it.”
She yanked at her hair.
“Or maybe I’ll just find a new husband. I’ll go to one of those . . . those speed-dating things. Two minutes, let’s see. What can I tell you? I have two children that hate me. One of them is . . . just be quiet! One of them almost died the other night. And I’m a part-time Youth Group director who has insomnia.”
She was breathing hard now. “No, you can’t.”
I heard a distant grumble through the receiver.
“Because he’s resting!”
She turned around suddenly and seemed to look right at me. My heart stopped. But she didn’t acknowledge me at all. It was as if I didn’t exist.
“Yes,” she said, quieter now. “
Really
. This isn’t a conspiracy.”
I saw her mouth open, ready to speak again.
“Well, he sleeps a lot. The kid is tired. But I’ll tell him you called. Just don’t keep promising to visit because you know I won’t allow it and you’re just breaking his heart.”
I wondered if she was even aware of what she had just said.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
I took a step toward her.
“Sure,” she said. “All right. Send the forms. That sounds just perfect. Okay. Yep. Good-bye.”
She looked at the phone like she was surprised to still find it in her hand. Then she slammed it down. I thought for sure it was going to fall off the wall, but it stayed on somehow, and Janice didn’t move. She closed her eyes and took a few long slow breaths. Gradually her hands unclenched. She let them drop to her sides. Then she walked over to the counter, where the Whitcombs kept their mysterious snack foods. She tore open a big bag of potato chips and stuck her hand in the bag. But she didn’t remove a chip. She didn’t do anything at all. She just stayed completely still with her hand deep inside a package of chips.
I walked into the kitchen, trying to be silent. I moved right behind her toward the stairs. I thought she hadn’t even noticed me, but then the chip bag crinkled.
“Don’t say anything to him,” I heard.
She didn’t look at me.
“I won’t.”
I moved past her, and I heard her slowly crunch a potato chip as I climbed the staircase to Jared’s room. I wanted to wake him up and tell him everything, swear him to secrecy. But I couldn’t. Maybe it was the expression on Janice’s face. Or the way her voice had sounded on the phone. But I knew it would be a betrayal. Instead, I stopped in front of his door and pulled my last poster out. I unfolded the paper and spread it over the pale wood. Then I took my new staple gun out of a coat pocket.
Ka-thunk!
It wasn’t quite centered, but there it was on his door. THE RASH IS HERE! I sat down and leaned against the opposite wall, trying to steady myself. I felt like I’d been holding my breath for the last fifteen minutes. Now, I finally let it out.
THE RASH REUNITED THAT NIGHT AROUND TEN P. M. I was sitting at the foot of Jared’s bed and we sealed the deal by spitting into our palms and shaking. We didn’t tell anyone. It was best to keep it secret for the time being, Jared said. Janice had told him earlier that the talent contest was off. If he couldn’t take care of himself, then he couldn’t make his own decisions about activities. She said he was deliberately sabotaging her efforts to get him back in school. Jared didn’t want to talk about any of that, though. He wanted to talk about the band.
“Of course I think it was kind of a dick move to take promotional action without me,” he said, lying back on his pillow. “But I’m also in the tricky position of admiring your balls.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I tried to sound upbeat, but I couldn’t shake Janice’s voice from my head.
“From now on, you consult me before any marketing campaigns,” he said. “Remember, I made the T-shirts. I have the ideas. I know how I want to brand us.”
“I know.”
“Good. So don’t get cocky. This isn’t a pissing contest.”
There was a knock at the door and we both turned around. Mrs. Whitcomb opened the door. She looked surprisingly put together since the last time I’d seen her, but her eyes were slightly red. She glanced from me to Jared. She was holding an armload of books.
“Sebastian, time to go downstairs,” she said. “Jared needs to start his study hour.”
“Study hour?” said Jared. “What the hell is that?”
I got up from the bed and wandered toward the doorway.
“I contacted the principal at your school last week. There are some big things you need to catch up on.”
She made right for the bed and deposited the books where I had just been sitting.
“We didn’t talk about this,” said Jared.
“We’re talking about it now,” she said. She stood right over him. “Do you want to fall back a grade after everything you’ve been through? I’m not going to let that happen. You need to take some responsibility and start thinking about the future, Jared!”
She was yelling now, her eyes wide. “This thing is not going to ruin your life! And it’s not going to define your life! Not while I’m around.”
I wanted to leave, but I was afraid I’d draw more attention to myself if I moved. Instead, I stayed glued to the black carpet.
“I get it,” said Jared. “But I just got home from the hospital.”
“I’ve been babying you,” Janice said, softer now. “And now I see what the consequences are. You act like a baby and almost get yourself . . . killed. Well, things are going to change. Starting tonight. One hour of study. Next week it goes up to two. We can’t just sit around waiting for bad things to happen anymore!”
Jared was speechless. He seemed to have been driven farther into bed by his mother’s words. He reached over and pulled up a book.
“Geometry,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“That’s what the book is for.”
Jared nudged up his glasses. “Yeah, but when you’re in school you have teachers. I can’t figure this out with just a book. It’s not possible.”
“Well . . .” said Janice.
Her nerve was faltering already. There was a long silence in the room. Jared stared at the cover of the book. He turned it upside down. Then he turned it around, and I saw the cover. A neon pink tetrahedron sat on a cobalt background. I immediately recognized the book. I had read it easily three times over, by the age of ten.
“I can teach him,” I said.
I was nearly in the hall, and they were surprised to hear my voice. They turned and stared at me.
“I can do it,” I said. “Nana’s specialty as an architect was spherical geometry. Geodesic domes are actually wonders of geometry. They’re based on a shape called the icosahedron. It’s a twenty-sided polyhedron, and each side is an equilateral triangle.”
I wondered how much longer I should keep going. I decided on one more statement. The closer. “I’ve solved every problem in that book,” I said.
It wasn’t quite true. Nana had aided me with many of them. But it was true enough.
“Damn!” said Jared. “I told you he was some kind of fucking genius, Mom. I told you he was king dork.”
Janice was still watching me. “Language,” she said.
I looked Janice Whitcomb in the eyes. “I’d like to do something for you,” I said. “I’ve just been additional trouble so far. I understand that. But I can make sure Jared understands this book.”
“Yeah,” said Jared. “Let him do one thing, Mom. God! Just give him this!”
“Jared, be quiet,” she said.
She looked back at me. “You can’t do the work for him. I want him to be caught up. You teach. He solves the problems.”
“He will,” I said.
“And you have to stay focused during study time. You need to work quickly. There’s a lot to get through before Christmas break. That’s when I want him back in class.”
I saw Jared shift uncomfortably in his bedsheets. I could tell he was nearly ready to raise an argument. I jumped in to cut him off.
“We’ll get through it,” I said. “But we need something from you.”