It was Jake’s first trip to the emergency room. His Mother had thrown her thick tan wool coat over her house coat and slippers and actually drove the Chrysler Town & Country that Big Jake had bought her because she complained that the Dodge Dart was too small and made her feel unsafe. Jake sat on the cold vinyl seat holding his hand wrapped tightly in an ice cube-filled towel. Kay sat in the backseat inhaling cigarette after cigarette and trying vainly to concentrate on a Word Search. Jake could feel his stomach recoiling at the mélange of the dull pain from his hand and choking stench emanating from the rear of the wagon.
He sat patiently through the entire four hour ordeal, reassured that the pain was just a trade off for the sharp crystal clear feeling of fulfillment he was enjoying. He rose up against unjust tyranny and struck a blow for the common man. He replayed the fight in snippets, reveling in the efficiency with which he’d dispatched his foe. He reviewed the look he had received from the Coach. ‘Thatta boy, Kid. We could use a man like you on the team’, Jake heard the Coach-In-His-Head say. He had done this to entertain himself for there were no small toys or games in this adult waiting room. And, there was no large fish tank in sight.
He was calm when the doctor set his hand, pulling his finger and snapping it back into its correct position. The nurse who wrapped his hand with gauze had engaged him in small talk.
“You get in a fight?”
Jake replied, looking straight into her clear blue eyes. Her dark hair was parted on the side and it swept around her face; framing its soft features. She didn’t look like the nurses at the pediatrician clinic. They were all significantly older and greyer than this nurse. They wore pastel cardigans over their dingy uniforms. She wore a pristine white tailored uniform that showed off her figure; curving in under the swell of her breasts and out again at the rise of her hips. The sight of her made Jake feel excited like he’d never been before. He was euphoric and tingly all over.
“I’d hate to see the other guy”; she said bending down to catch his gaze. She placed her hand gently above his knee. “Did you win?”
“Yeah, I think so”.
The nurse patted his lower thigh twice.
“Doctor’ll be right in to apply your cast”, she removed her hand and padded off through the drawn screen. Jake breathed in deeply and rhythmically to stave off his rising excitement.
* * *
“You kicked ass”, Jenny Piper whispered across the row to Jake. Jenny was a shorthaired varsity swimmer, which, at least in Clayton, was a euphemism for ‘lesbian’.
This was one of the many comments he had gotten the next day. He came to school and immediately kids buzzed around him. Girls asked to sign his cast. And they did, dotting their eyes with little hearts and smiley faces. The boys recounted the fight, embellishing moments and adding things that weren’t even true. By the end of the day, the accepted rumor would be that Eddie spent the night in a coma at William Beaumont Hospital with a penny lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. Throughout the entire morning before first period, well-wishers accosted Jake. Boys would walk up to him and show him their open palms and say ‘Slap me five’. Others would return to Jake the pennies they had picked up after the fight, saying ‘You’ll probably want these back’. By the first bell, he had twice as many pennies in his locker than he’d put in the sock in the first place.
About ten minutes into first period, a voice came over the loudspeaker above Mr. Goicha’s desk.
“Stan?”, Terry the temp from the junior college came on.
“Yes”, Mr. Goicha replied.
“Will you send Jake down to the Principal’s office?”
A harmonic chorus of “Aaaawwwwwww” rose from his classmates’ throats.
“Right away”, he said and the speaker buzzed out.
* * *
Principal Bertram, affectionately called Butt-Ram by all the boys in the school, was seated in his office, hands behind his head, chair leaning slightly back on its spring, his feet crossed at the ankle. He looked as if he’d just been given a promotion to the School Board or a very satisfying blowjob. Jake assumed by the tousled hair and the general sleazy demeanor of Terry, the junior college temp sitting at the reception desk, that it was probably the latter. Butt-Ram and Vice Principal Luther probably laughed with each other in the faculty bathroom, saying that they had to hire her because “she gave, er , took great dictation”. Jake could hear Mr. Luther’s braying jackass of a laugh in his head.
Eddie was seated in the last of the row of four chairs along the wall. He was gesticulating grandly, like a used car salesman and mumbling phrases like ‘discount prices’ and ‘at cost’. Jake knocked on the open door and Butt-Ram sat up straight.
“Come in, Jake”, Butt-Ram said pointing to the bank of chairs along the wall.
He sat in the seat furthest from Eddie and closest to the door.
“Jake, I’m sure you know why I called you both here this morning”, Butt-Ram leaned forward in his chair and pulled a cigarette from the pack on his desk. He flicked his table lighter and lit the tip. “Do you know why you’re here?”
The boys nodded and the lecture began. Eddie didn’t once look at Jake the entire speech. Butt-Ram paraphrased the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and The Bible in his homily on Non-Violence. Jake thought he’d even quoted a few protest songs from the 60's, but couldn’t be sure. He used the repression of the black man and his grace and determination in not resorting to violence to put down that repression as a testament of exemplary behavior. His refrain was just a riff on his same tired motto. “Turn the other cheek and you’ll make a difference”. Jake was amazed at Butt-Ram’s ability not only to denigrate the Black Man’s struggle by grossly over-simplifying it but also to distill it into a political slogan. Jake was probably the only white freshman in Clayton to have read Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice and his thoughts were screaming for a chance to bust Butt-Ram’s ass with a few choice quotes. Jake was silent, though, simmering at the audacity of the Principal’s theme. The message he was sending made Jake wince with disgust. ‘Rejoin the Fold’, ‘Toe the Line’, ‘Conform to the Status Quo’, ‘Obey’, or else. Jake realized that Butt-Ram was spouting party line rhetoric. Butt-Ram was being a good Kapo, trying to get his charges back in line so they could be controlled.
“Now, I want you to apologize”, Butt-Ram leaned back in his chair. “Jake?”
“I’m sorry”, Jake mumbled. He had already crossed his second toe over his big toe and reveled in the fact that what he’d just said didn’t count.
“Good. Now don’t you feel better?”, Butt-Ram asked. “Do you accept, Edward?”
Eddie looked over at Jake with mock sincerity. Jake saw that he was acting. He knew it. He wanted to jump up, pointing his cast-covered hand and scream “Faker” at the top of his lungs, then continue the pummeling he started yesterday afternoon. Butt-Ram was an imbecile if he couldn’t see through Eddie’s little sympathy-reaping charade. Jake stared into Eddie’s eyes, one of which had swollen to almost closing and turned a deep purple from Jake’ blow. This visible injury lent credence to his performance.
“I accept”, Eddie said in a low, halting tone. He cleared his throat and sipped a little water from a cup in his hands.
“Let this be a lesson for you, Jake. You’re excused”, Butt-Ram turned back to Eddie and picked up a pad of paper and a pen. “Where’d you say your Mother worked?”
“It’s an Apple distributor”, Eddie replied. “Like I was saying, she could get a bulk order for probably very close to wholesale. Computer, monitor and printer. The whole package”.
“Really. Could you write down your phone number?” Butt-Ram handed Eddie the pad.
“The Apple Classic is the top of the line. It’s much better than IBM. Easier to use, too”.
Jake paused at the door.
“See Terry for a pass on your way out”, Butt-Ram said never turning his attention away from Eddie’s sales pitch.
* * *
Last bell came and went and Jake traipsed back to his locker. Alex and Scott stood silently by their lockers. Neither one looked up from their task. They had sold out their friend for a pardon for themselves. They had misjudged Jake's resolve and their plan had backfired. Had Eddie beat Jake soundly, their pre-fight deal would've spared them. But, with Jake's victory, their safety hung in the balance; tottering on the eventuality of Eddie's reprisal for their part in the plot. They retrieved their respective coats and exited the building with out so much as a ‘Hey’ or a ‘Can I sign your cast’. Jake popped the lock on his locker and a white piece of paper flitted down from the air vent in the door to the floor. He picked it up and read it.
Jake,
I’m having people over to my house for a
party. My parents are going to be out and
we’ll have the whole house. 1157 Ticonderoga.
See if you can score some of your sister’s
boyfriend’s killer weed. See you there.
Dana
Jake had been invited to a girl’s house. To a party at a girl’s house. Perhaps, no it was too much to ask for, Jodi might be there. Jake reread the note, stuffed it into his jeans and floated out to his waiting bicycle.
* * *
He parked his bike around the back of the house at 1157 Ticonderoga next to a bunch of other bikes and walked to the back door of the Cortez house. It was a moonless, cloudless night. He could feel the approach of winter in every breeze. He pulled the collar up on his Dad’s corduroy fleece-lined jacket and rapped on the door. He heard steps plodding up the basement stairs. The shear, embroidered curtain was pulled back to reveal Dana’s face, floating brightly in the dark around her. She pulled open the inner door and the outer door sucked tightly into its frame. She hit the latch and opened it.
“Come on in”, Dana said as she blocked the chill with the heavier inner door.
Jake stepped inside. It was warm and the smell of incense wafted up from the basement. The lights were dim down there and they flickered. ‘Candles’, Jake thought. He now knew that he hadn’t walked into just any party. This was a special party. This was a party that he’d, up until now, only heard rumors of. He was frightened and titillated at the same time.
“Did you bring the pot?”, Dana asked.
Jake reached into his upper coat pocket and produced three slightly-larger-than-pinner-sized joints. The Lions hat he’d bought tapped him out. So, he’d taken the change that he’d got from the kids at school and combined it with a few returnable bottles to come up with three dollars. He bought the joints from his sister Denise who looked at him with a mixture of pride and shame. Pride at him growing up and getting older, shame that she had indoctrinated him as another member of the family that smoked pot behind their parents’ backs.
* * *
He was 11 years old when he first tried pot. Kay and her asshole boyfriend Chuckie, Denise and Dean and Jake were all coming back from seeing a matinee of The Rose, the Bette Midler quasi-biopic about a Janis Joplinesque singer who died of a drug overdose. They had piled into Kay’s big white Ford Elite and immediately lit up. Jake was sitting near the rear window on the driver’s side, looking out at the passing traffic. He ignored the ritual passing of the joint as if it were a sacred rite that he had not yet grown up enough to engage in. He ignored it until Dean had absent-mindedly nudged him.
Jake turned and saw Dean looking the other way engaged in a French toke with Denise. Jake looked at the joint. Tendrils of thin smoke lifted and twirled from its tiny red coal. It was beckoning him; calling him to partake in its untold pleasures.
Come. Dance in the moonlight with the Wolves of the Sky. Feel the joy of the ones who’ve gone before you. Breathe in the Spirit of your Elders. Become one with them, one with the Universe.
Jake took the joint and quickly brought it to his mouth. He drew his hit in and held it passing the joint back to Dean; who took it back with his accustomed nonchalance.
“Your brother’s a little High-On”, Dean said to Denise as he toked.
Denise gazed over at Jake. It was the first time she’d looked at him with that familiar look of Pride/Shame.
* * *
“Cool”, Dana said as she turned and bound down the stairs into the orange glow of the basement. As she went Jake could hear the low hum of the first cut off Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
The basement was filled with the remnants of furniture that mostly likely was the living room furniture from 1973 to 1978, but had since been relegated to the basement where it would remain until Dana went to college or the living room was remodeled, which ever came first. There was a burlap sofa across the West wall of the room; its fabric was awash in orange and gold stripes. Around its base was a thin chrome strip. This strip was repeated on the loveseat that sat along the other wall. There was an orange vinyl Eames Chair rip-off with a broken arm lolling at its side. It was stuffed ungracefully in the corner next to a stand-up ashtray in the shape of a small pot-bellied stove. There were giant throw pillows strewn across the orange and gold shag carpeting; most of which were of an Aztec or Indian motif. The walls were, of course, paneled; except for one wall, which was covered in smoked mirrors with tiny gold veins traversing its murkily reflective surface. To the left of the mirrored wall was a door Jake thought must’ve led to the laundry room. To the left of this was, Jake would later find out, a closet.
Most of the boys were sophomores. Out of the group, Jake only recognized Brian Tashman. Denise use to baby-sit his little sister. Jake would go with her and swim in their pool. Sometimes even engaging Brian in a game of pool basketball, which Brian always won. He would spike the ball splashing Jake in the face to signify his victory. Brian was an up and coming bad ass, replete with black Ted Nugent T-shirt and white Adidas hi-tops. He was lounging on one of the throw pillows, the back of his head resting between the thighs of Shelly Bergen, the blow-dried pretender to Farrah Fawcett’s throne.
“Hey, Jake. Long time, no see”, Brian put his hand out and Jake tapped it lightly with his broken hand. Noticing the cast Brian added. “Whoa, you’re fucked up”.
Jake stepped through the lounging bodies on the floor and made his way to the Eames chair. Aside from a couple of boys in the corner, telling jokes to one another, the place was surprisingly mellow. At regular intervals, one of the girls would bolt up and grab another girl and take her into the laundry room. From behind the door Jake could hear phrases like ‘No Way’ or ‘Get outta here, really?’. Occasionally, he would hear ‘I don’t think I’m ready’ said low and fast. He would look at the guy to whom the girl belongs and feel sorry for him. The girls would come out and return to their places giggling like, well, schoolgirls.
“Jake. Spark it up”, Dana said as he took off his coat. “Here”
She tossed him Zippo with the letters D-M-C engraved on the lid. She was probably trying to pass the lighter off as her own, but Jake knew her Mother smoked and that her name was Delores. He clinked the lid back and struck the wheel. Blue flame popped into being and settled into the wind grate, peeking its gold head above it like a small child in a playpen. Jake brought the lighter to his mouth and cupped the flame with his cast.
“Cool”, Brian said pointing at the large AC/DC Stu Watkins had drawn down the length of his cast. Brian traced the letters, his finger rising and falling over the uneven surface.
“Yeah”, Jake exhaled passing the joint to Brian. He turned toward the sound of a creak on the stair and saw who he’d thought and even prayed would be there, who he’d came to see.
Jodi was radiant. She was wearing tight blue jeans that hugged her slight hips. She was bare foot and her toenails flashed a shimmery pink that matched the color of her tight T-shirt. Jake caught his breath when he read what was written across it.
Bright reflective letters spelled out the word “BRAT”.
Jake smiled at her as she turned her gaze toward him. She tiptoed through the lounging teenflesh and stood before him.
“Mind if I sit on the floor between your legs?”, Jodi asked.
Jake nodded and watched her steady herself on his knee as she knelt to the shag floor.
“Does that hurt?”, Jodi said turning the cast gingerly in her hands.
“Not anymore”
The haunting melody of “Comfortably Numb” rolled out of the speakers setting the score to the dance of the silently shifting, flickering light of the room.
* * *
“Who wants to play a game?”, Dana said turning down the music and ‘shushing’ the giggling throng of girls seated along the wall. She had spent the better part of the last two songs scribbling furiously on small pieces of paper. Jake had had a passing thought that the marijuana had sparked her to either create some very intense haiku or blueprint plans for a rudimentary bong.
Dana grabbed Denny Ellison’s Tigers hat off his head and up ended it. She swiped the scraps of paper off the table and into Denny’s hat. She stood shaking the hat as if she was standing at a range making Jiffy Pop popcorn.
“These are all the names of all the boys in this room”, Dana explained. “Each girl will draw a name from the hat and the lucky couple will pick a song and spend the entire song in the closet doing whatever they want to do”.
Dana leaned into Sherry Dugan’s ear and whispered something. Sherry nodded in agreement as Dana addressed the rest of the room.
“Sherry will pick first”.
Sherry put one hand over her eyes and the other in the hat, making a big production out of it. She swirled it around for a moment then pulled out a slip of paper.
“The luck guy is...?”, Dana announced.
Sherry finished, “Doug Hansen”.
Doug, a strapping young man in a grey sweatshirt with a very fierce wolverine growling across the front, leapt up from his seat and stepped toward the closet. He gallantly opened it for Sherry.
“Super Freak by Rick James”, Doug said. The boys in the room howled with laughter and encouragement and were nearly shouted down with the girls’ cries of ‘Oh, Please’.
The needle popped and hissed as Dana set it down on the record and the couple entered the closet.
Jake sat in stunned silence mulling over what he’d gotten himself into. He was in a situation that was fast becoming very uncomfortable for him. He could excuse himself to the bathroom to buy himself some time, but sooner or later he would have to face the music, literally. He ran his fingers through his hair and leaned back into the chair. Jake thought of how appalling it was to be engaged in this kind of behavior. When he examined it down to the core of its ritual, it was just organized date rape. He began to worry that the girls were getting the short end of the deal here. He had always thought that the boys were basically takers when it came to matters of sex. This was because he thought that boys really had nothing to give. It was the girls that held all the power and all the mystery. It was up to them whether they allowed the boys in on their secrets. The fact that through the process of the draw, a girl would be forced to divulge their deepest most cherished secrets to some boy she didn’t even care for. He looked around the room to decide which of the girls he’d want to be stuck in the closet with in the event that Jodi didn’t pull his name from the hat. He scanned their rouged and powdered faces for a glimmer of attraction. None came.
Then he thought of what would happen if Jodi chose someone else’s name. How would he react to one of the other guys spending the next 5 to 7 minutes behind the door with the girl of, if not his dreams, definitely his thoughts? He looked at the boys’ faces. Each and every one was filled with lustful desire. Their lips were slick with drool, their eyes bulging with their fevered fantasies. Soon he was seeing images of Jodi nude bucking wildly into the crotch of a faceless boy as he took her from behind. He slammed his eyes shut and thought of dead puppies. His brother Craig had given him this sage piece of advice. ‘Think of dead puppies, it’ll do the trick’. It didn’t. He thought of a pile of dead puppies and was momentarily struck with a profound sadness. Then the puppies came to life and then he thought of how puppies were made. Soon images of dogs going at it flashed across his eyes. This was soon replaced with the image of Jodi nude except for a dog collar bucking wildly into the crotch of a boy dressed in a Halloween costume that made him look eerily like Ralph the piano-playing dog from The Muppet Show. He opened his eyes and began to breathe deeply, trying to make his thoughts clearer. He had to calm himself. He began to try to remember the Presidents of the United States in order.
By the time he reached into his memory to retrieve the name James K. Polk, the music had stopped.
The closet opened and Doug stepped out. The boys renewed their howling. Doug’s mouth was smeared with a shimmer of lipgloss. He was no longer wearing his sweatshirt. His navy tank top showed off his smooth hairless biceps. He shielded his eyes from the light of the room with the back of his arm, exposing the veins that ran down the length of his forearms. Sherry came out from behind him sheepishly adjusting the buttons on her blouse and running her hand through her hair. She reached down and held Doug’s hand, crossing one bare foot over the top of the other.
“Jodi, you’re next”.
Jodi leaned back and pushed herself up, supporting her weight with Jake’s knee. She made her way to her cousin and reached into the hat.
“The next lucky guy is...”
Jodi blushed, adding, “Jake”.
Jake sat in the busted orange chair rocking his head back and forth and breathing in and out rhythmically, oblivious to what had just been said. That was until Brian Tashman kicked him in the shin.
“Yo, Shit fer brains. Yer up”, he yelled.
Jake looked over toward Dana and saw Jodi standing next to her pushing her hair back behind her right ear. He had seen her do that when she gave him her number at the Embassy. He had committed to memory every nuance of the movement. The slow ascent of the hand. The light brushing of the upper cheek with her fingertips. The hair gathering against her hand. The slight rise as it went over her tiny simple-gold-hooped ringed ear. The flash of palm as she completed the process, her hair resting in a gentle curve behind her lobe. He ached at the sight of her in the flickering candlelight.
He rose from the chair supporting his weight on the left armrest. He hopped through the bodies on the floor and stood next to the closet.
“Stairway to Heaven”, he said calmly and firmly.
The room fell silent. The girls in the room sighed and looked at each other. The boys nodded their approval, smiling knowingly at Jake.
Jake knew it was the right choice. Not only was it the right choice, it was the perfect choice. Sure, some greedy assholes might get smart and request “Inna Godda Davida” or “American Pie” or the interminable “Alice’s Restaurant” just to guarantee enough time to do his dirty work. Some boys might even, as Doug had, had chosen something with a funky bass line that throbbed in time with your heartbeat. The groove would be hard to resist and the girl’s body would move in spite of herself. But, “Stairway” was the real shit. It was the greatest rock and roll song of all time, bar none. It was slow at first, light and almost folksy. That bought you points from the girls who like slow songs. The lyrics were ethereal and evocative. This added to the mood. The choice of this song showed maturity, sensitivity and good taste in music. Plus, it rocked out toward the end of it, which would cover the noise of your moaning and grunting if you indeed did get lucky. Doug Hansen was kicking himself for not picking it.
Jake opened the door for Jodi and she stepped in. The guitar started in and Jake shut the door behind him, enclosing them both in black.
“So”, Jake said.
“So”, Jodi said.
“What do you want to do?” Jake was always polite.
“Why didn’t you ever call me?”
“My Mom made me wash my hands for dinner the minute I got home. I’m sorry”. He knew it was a lie by it was white and tiny and the truth would’ve made him look pathetic and cast aspersions on her character. The path of least resistance ruled again.
“You could’ve asked Dana for the number”.
Jodi’s face was swimming into view, slowly. There was a thin slit of light shining up from the bottom of the door. Slight grey German Expressionistic shadows played across the left side of her face. Her left eye glinted like oil in the dark.
“I’m sorry”.
“That’s okay”. She leaned into Jake’s chest and he steadied himself on the Hoover vacuum to his left. He folded his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. She tilted her head up to him and her lips parted like a tiny flower that glistened with dew. He leaned his head down and they met, just lips at first, then tongues.
He slid his hands down to the rise of her hips and she slid hers under his shirt. She caressed his flesh beneath the warm pads of her hands. He leaned back to the wall of the closet.
“Can I”, Jake whispered.
She leaned back and took his left hand. She guided it under her shirt and it slid beneath the letter ‘B’. Their eyes had adjusted enough to see each other in the half-light. Her soft skin was warm under his palm. He slid his hand toward the center of her chest and felt her heartbeat drumming against the pads of his fingers. Sliding his hand down her belly and around to the small of her back, he leaned into her welcoming face.
“I’m glad it was my name on that piece of paper”.
Jodi giggled and turned her eyes away. Jake tried to chase her face with his gaze, but she turned and buried it into the arm of a wool coat hanging from the bar at the rear of the closet.
“What? What’s so funny?”
Jodi looked up at Jake. Her eyes were happy little slits. Her smile pushed her cheeks into round balls. Like she had a secret she was dying to tell. Mischeviousness looked so good on her. She murmured a muffled giggle.
“It was blank”, Jodi said.
“What was blank?”, Jake returned, puzzled.
“The piece of paper. It was blank. We got to pick whoever we wanted”.
Jake was stunned for a moment and then a warm realization fell over him like a wool afghan. Of course they chose. Of course they had it all planned out. These were girls he was dealing with. They were better at this because they had more to give and consequently, more to lose.
“I chose you”.
Jake was momentarily saddened that it wasn’t Fate that had thrown them together into this musty closet to fumble around trying to learn this new exotic and mysterious dance. His sadness melted at the thought that the truth was actually better than his imagined Romanticized cliché.
They kissed once more as the song ended.
The door opened and the warm bright light burst in. Jodi grabbed Jake’s left hand and stepped out first. Jake followed her into the light.
* * *
He rode home in the cool dark, pedaling slowly and aimlessly through the streets. He got Jodi’s number, on paper this time, and put it in his wallet behind his WRIF ‘DREAD’ card. As he coasted along, Jake tossed over the emotional turmoil of the past few days in his mind. He had come within an inch of being a non-entity for the rest of his high school career, springing from the shackles of a repressed-- both psychologically and socially--awkward boy and rushed headlong, devil-may-care into his waiting teenhood.
Jake drifted up the driveway and parked his bike next to the pile of bricks that had broken his sister’s leg that summer day. He stood and looked into the cloudless sky. Turning toward the grass, he wandered out into the back yard.
The North Star shone like a rich woman’s engagement ring. He twirled around a bit, neck craning, and took the rest of the sky in. Orion the Hunter chased the Sisters of the Pleiades across the inky black while Taurus snorted in reverence to his Queen, Cassiopeia. Jake lay down on the moist grass and stared into the field of bright pinpricks against the blue-tinged ebony void.
He reached into his jacket, pulled out the remaining joint and lit it. The scent wafted across his nose, rubbing its woody, earthy body around the walls of his nostrils. He held his smoke and slowly let it loose. It folded onto itself as it rose into the stars and dissipated.
Jake’s mind wandered, peeking into his depressing past, hurtling back to cold mornings huddled by the heat register with his mothhole-ridden woolen blanket. Back to hot summer days running until his legs were loose and rubbery, dousing his hot neck with cold water straight from the duct-taped hose by the side of the house. His mind called up memories, marching them past Jake’s mind’s eye in neat rows. There was the singing in the kitchen, his family breaking out the Reader’s Digest Family Songbook and belting out tunes like “Dinah Won’t You Blow (Your Horn)”, “Ja Da, Ja Da” or “Toorah Loorah Loorah”. There was the monthly trips to Farmer D’s fruit stand in Romeo, sitting in the back seat of the rusting 1967 Lincoln Town Car with suicide doors on a warm day, juice from a plump Red Delicious apple running down his chin. There was even the Christmas when he got his racetrack set. It was the only thing he got that year and he played with it until the controller raised a blister on his index finger. He switched to the middle finger and kept racing the silver car around the black plastic oval, eyes bright with unmatched glee.
None of these memories could compete with how he felt at this moment, at this time. He breathed in the last of he smoke and flicked the tiny brown buttlet into the dark of the backyard. He watched its orange trail until it blinked out. He gazed at the stars whirling slowly over him. Jake was now completely at ease with who he was and where he was. He had fixed something that had been broken in him or had broken something that had held him back from being who he truly was meant to be.
Jake lay there thinking that he had, by some mysterious accident, become one of the Accepted Ones, The Chosen Ones. With one violent rebellious act he had proven his worth and was allowed into the upper levels of suburban society. Somehow his unwillingness to buckle under had granted him entry into the world he’d always glimpsed from the outside.
He laid there smiling at the great practical joke he’d played on them. He had performed like a star. He had fulfilled and surpassed everyone’s expectations. He glided effortlessly into their ranks without attracting any stares or raising any suspicions.
He lay in the cool wet grass, laughing lightly to himself; amused by his ability to pass himself off as one of their own.
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