Character, Driven Read online

  “Cliff!”

  I raced into the living room. She was pointing at the TV, her face half ghostly. I picked up the remote and rewound the news to the start of the story, which opened with a scene of wrecked cars and blanket-draped bodies on the westbound side of Route 46. One car had a clearly recognizable PROUD RISMORE MARCHING BAND PARENTS bumper sticker. It turned out a freshman from our school, along with his whole family, died in a car accident on the way back from a trip to Connecticut. I didn’t really know any of them, but they lived in our neighborhood.

  Sometimes the bad news starts circulating the day after it happens.

  When this one kid who’d been real sick—and I feel like a piece of crap for not remembering his name, but it would be cheating for me to Google it or make one up—anyhow, when he stopped coming to school, nobody thought much about it. He was out a lot. Often for weeks at a time. But a couple kids were talking one morning, maybe two weeks later, about how they’d heard he’d died the night before. They didn’t have all the details, but they had the essential fact. He’d died.

  Sometimes, the bad news takes its time showing up.

  When Nola wasn’t in class on Monday, pretty much nobody noticed except for me, and I mostly missed her for the warmth of her contact and the fuel she supplied for my daydreams.

  She was out Tuesday and Wednesday, too. This was especially weird, given how Lucas had been out the week before. He was back now, with a large bruise under his left eye, and an obvious depression in his heart. We exchanged glances and nods, like weary soldiers who were veterans of the same war, and survivors of a terrible battle, but we never talked about what had happened that weekend.

  Lucas reappears; Nola vanishes. Life is full of coincidences that mean nothing until we force them to fit the theories that make us feel good about the secret order and patterns of the universe, or make some sense of the senseless. I guess it’s human nature to try to create fear-free symmetries. Of course, in this case, the simplest theory was that I caused people seated near me to miss school. Sometimes, simple equals stupid.

  So, Nola wasn’t in school on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. As if in testimony to her level of invisibility, the first rumors appeared on Thursday. Sifting away the variations and discarding the wildest fragments of misinformation and absurd speculation circulating the hallways, the basic story going around was this: She’d taken a whole lot of pills from her parents’ medicine cabinet last Sunday. There’d been a note. She was in a coma. She was pregnant. One of our teachers was the father of her child. She was going to die.

  Confirmations and refutations trickled in, validating or eliminating the various components of the rumor. The pill part was true. So was the note part. I didn’t learn the contents until later. I’m fat and ugly. Nobody likes me. I’m sorry. I can’t stand myself. Please forgive me.

  When I heard about those last written words of hers, I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. I liked you, Nola. I would have been thrilled to go out with her. Even if she didn’t want me to touch her.

  And here is where I will rip my chest open right in front of you and reveal the darkness of my heart. Or drop my soiled shorts to the ground and show you the depth of my shittiness. Upon hearing Nola might be pregnant, I experienced the following stream, or sewer, of consciousness: She was pregnant. That means she had sex. So maybe, if we’d gone out, she would have had sex with me.

  So there it is, laid bare. I can take even the most tragic news and find a way to use it to fantasize about my needs. About getting laid. I have a feeling most guys function that way, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about my own twisted, selfish, lust-grubbing thoughts in the midst of this tragedy.

  I tried to understand how Nola could feel so unliked, and so unlikable. She was really cute. She said she had a boyfriend. Maybe they broke up. Maybe he was one of those guys who liked to put girls down. I hoped not. She deserved to be adored.

  I should have wrapped my arms around her. I should have pulled her close and told her how sexy she was, how hot and desirable. I should have ripped my attention away from the unattainable Jillian and tried to pursue the near-at-hand and right-against-my-shoulder Nola.

  I tried to find any sign of her tortured self-image in our brief conversations. There was nothing. No clue how I could have gotten her to go out with me. No clue how she felt about herself.

  … to see ourselves as others see us …

  The coma part was true, too. Sadly, she didn’t die. I say sadly, because she didn’t really live, either. She existed. Her heart beat, unaided. Her lungs worked, with help. Her brain, her mind, her self, had moved on. For what it’s worth, the pregnant part was bullshit. As, obviously, was the pregnant-by-teacher part.

  I hit the weight room after school. Nicky was there.

  “Did you know her?” he asked.

  “Sort of,” I said. “She sat next to me in Calculus. She was pretty quiet.”

  “You never know what someone is thinking,” he said.

  I searched my memories again, to see what clues Nola had scattered in my path. “You’re right. I guess we all have stuff going on in our heads that nobody has a clue about. So what do you do? How do you find out what’s on people’s minds?”

  “Ask them,” he said.

  “And if I asked you what you were thinking, would you tell the truth?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Me either.”

  I grabbed a barbell and started doing curls. We didn’t talk much more, but I was glad Nicky was there. And I think he was glad I was there. But I didn’t ask him.

  I never heard anything more about what happened to Nola.

  As I said, I didn’t find out about Nola until Thursday. I was hit with another interlocking, meaningless coincidence on Friday.

  We were outside the front entrance, waiting for the morning bell, and talking about how glad we were that we didn’t take shop class. Mr. Xander had returned earlier in the week and had been pretty much shouting at everyone nonstop since then. There was a patina of somberness cast across our moods, with the news about Nola so fresh in our minds. None of us wanted to talk about death, so we settled for talking about someone who’d escaped it.

  “Ever think the cops will figure out who messed around with the wood supply?” Robert asked.

  “I’ll bet it was Clovis,” Jimby said. “He’s mean enough.”

  Robert and Butch looked at me. “Could be,” I said. “But we’ll never know for sure.” I didn’t want Jimby to have information that could get him hurt.

  We drifted back into silence for a bit, until Robert said, “I can’t believe he came to school today.” He tilted his head toward the left.

  I looked that way, wondering who in the crowd he was talking about. But then, scanning past the crowd, I realized who he meant. Lucas was walking toward the school, like he would on any other day, his backpack slung over one shoulder. But it was as if he had some sort of dark cloud about him. As he approached people, they reacted in a variety of ways. Some stiffened, like a heartless person does when passing a homeless panhandler on the street. Others seemed to grow limp, like they’d been doused with a bucket of sadness. But nearly all of them reacted to Lucas in some manner, except for Clovis and his crew, who were too busy punching each other and emulating hyenas.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “You didn’t hear?” Robert said.

  “Nope. I spent all evening in the stockroom. We were doing inventory.” That was the one time I had more work than I could handle. I ran a short list of possible bad news through my head. I hoped he hadn’t gotten into trouble with the cops while attempting a better escape from home.

  As I was reviewing my mental list of downfalls, Robert confirmed my first, worst, and saddest choice. “His dad died. Dropped dead last night. Bang. Heart attack. Dead before he hit the floor. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  “Ouch,” I said. I pictured the ruddy anger-spewing face of Lucas’s father and imagined cl
ogged arteries bulging to bursting from the pressure of rage. His sudden death was not surprising. Though it was still shocking, in a distant sort of way. We’d met only that one time—and it had been less than pleasant. But there’d been enough of an interaction to make the news of his death more personal to me, and more real.

  No man is an island.

  But some are volcanoes.

  I pulled my mind away from my tenuous connection with the man and returned it to the impact this had on Lucas. “That sucks.”

  “Does it?” Robert asked.

  Good point. I thought back to the day less than a week ago when I’d seen Lucas get punched in the face and dragged off by his dad. Lucas was probably better off now. But having your dad drop dead like that—it had to suck in some ways. Even if, in Lucas’s case, it was also a relief. And, not to get too deep into spirals of analysis, but I’d have to think that if Lucas felt relief at his dad’s death, that would make him feel guilty. Toss in the guilt he probably felt for being a source of stress in his dad’s life, and you’ve got a hornet’s nest of bad feelings stinging you.

  Shit. Sometimes a guy just couldn’t win.

  “I hope he had a ton of life insurance,” Butch said.

  As Lucas continued his walk, I realized he’d pass right by me. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see him, or skitter off before he got here. I had to acknowledge his existence, if not his pain. What can you possibly say to a guy whose abusive father just dropped dead? Hey, what’s up? A dozen fragments of conversation rolled through my brain. All of them sucked. It was better to just nod and keep my mouth shut.

  Lucas moved closer. His head was down. That would make it easier. But right before he reached me, he looked up. Our eyes met.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Nothing.”

  And then he walked on.

  Courage in Profiles

  ROBERT AND I headed into town after school. I needed to get my mom a present for Mother’s Day. Robert had done his shopping already, but he was happy to help me spend my money. Butch was going to meet us after she finished a makeup test. That was good, because Robert’s taste in gifts was even worse than mine.

  Parking was scarce around the Green, so he left his car in the student lot, and we walked. When we swung left onto Jefferson at the top of Vorhees, Robert said, “I can tell right where I am with my eyes closed.”

  “For sure.” The first block had some of Rismore’s older stores. Most had been there from way before I was born. I closed my eyes as I passed Drago’s Shoe Repair. The mix of leather and shoe polish was unmistakable. Two shops over, Alexander’s Modern Barber Shop, which had been in the same spot for at least fifty years, wafted the scent of talcum powder and hair tonic out the door. After a scentless stretch of shops, mid-block, we passed Jim’s Deli. Right before the end of the block, the mouthwatering air of Alfredo’s Pizza wafted over us.

  There was a large department store across from the Green, on the southwest corner, and two small gift shops on that same block. We went into one of them, the Plucked Ptarmigan. The place had a lot of high-priced small stuff I would normally never look at, like napkin rings and candleholders. But I was really just killing time until Butch showed up.

  As Robert and I cruised an aisle with silk scarves and knitted hats, I noticed the store owner was following us. She’d been behind us in the previous aisle, too. That was strange. Clerks usually ignored me, even when I stood there and stared at them, waiting to be offered help. When I looked at our stalker, she turned away and made a show of adjusting one of the scarves.

  “Hey,” I whispered to Robert when we reached the end of the aisle. “You go down that way. I’ll meet you at the other end.”

  I pointed to the left. He gave me a quizzical look. But then he glanced toward the owner, nodded, and went to the left. I went down an aisle to the right. Sure enough, the owner followed Robert. As you may have deduced by now, though I’m personally too immersed in my own racial identity to be aware of what might or might not telegraph it, I’m white. Robert is black, with just enough stray Dutch genes scattered through his background, thanks to distant ancestors on his father’s side from Saint Martin, to allow him to make the occasional hilarious cocoa or chocolate joke. The funny thing is, at some point each summer, if I’m doing a lot of yard work, my skin gets just as dark as his.

  I rejoined Robert at the end of the aisle. “Let’s get out of here.” I tilted my head in the direction of the owner, caught her eye, raised my voice, and said, “She’s totally profiling you.”

  Robert flashed me a grin. “Of course she is. I have a handsome profile.” He cocked his head at a stylish angle.

  I was going to correct him, but I saw in the expression that remained after the grin faded that he knew far too well what I meant. As for the owner, she’d given up all pretense and stared right at the two of us. I had a feeling she was seconds away from screaming for help.

  I raised my voice. “There’s nothing but crap in here. Let’s go.” Then, at a volume meant just for Robert, I added, “That sucks.”

  “It does,” he said. “But when something happens all the time, you get used to it.”

  “That doesn’t make it right,” I said. “You should steal something, just to teach her a lesson.”

  “But then she would be right about me,” he said.

  “It would still be wrong of her.” I pushed open the door. “Let’s wait for Butch on the Green.” I didn’t feel like doing more shopping right now. If another merchant followed Robert. I was pretty sure I’d start shouting even louder.

  As we stepped outside, Amanda, the captain of the cheerleading squad, squeezed past us, along with her friend Kimberly.

  “I’ll bet they never get profiled,” I said.

  “They have nice profiles, too.” Robert had locked his eyes on them, through the glass door. “I like their rearfiles even better.”

  I followed his gaze. The two were definitely attractive. Kimberly went up to the manager, who smiled at her. They talked for a moment. Then the manager nodded and led her down an aisle at the far right of the store.

  “Whoa,” Robert said. “Check this out.” He pointed to the left.

  “Been there. Done that,” I said. “I am not as endlessly obsessed with every female who walks by as you seem to be.”

  “No, you’re just obsessed with one. But that’s not what I’m talking about.” Robert clamped his hand on top of my head and turned it so I was looking toward the left side of the store.

  “Am I that obvious?” I asked as I watched Amanda, who had split off from Kimberly, take several scarves from a display and slip them inside her shirt.

  “It’s like you’re wearing a sign with a big scarlet J on it,” he said.

  Wonderful. “Do you think it’s obvious to her?”

  “No. I think you’re safely invisible,” he said.

  Even more wonderful. I turned my attention back to the thievery unfolding on the other side of the window. “She’ll probably blame you when she discovers the scarves are missing,” I said.

  I was sort of joking, but I could see Robert’s jaw clench. A whole scenario flashed through my mind. The owner called the cops. She described Robert. Maybe even mentioned his accent. Luckily, my imagination also offered a way to derail that particular train of thought.

  I pushed the door back open, pointed to the left, and called, “Amanda, those are beautiful scarves you picked. You should buy both of them.” I didn’t wait to see what happened, but I was pretty sure Amanda was reaching down her shirt to retrieve the scarves. And, yeah, I savored that image in my mind in slow motion.

  We crossed the street and grabbed a bench.

  “Thanks,” Robert said.

  “Anytime.”

  When Butch showed up, she vetoed the department store and dragged us down a side street to a placed called Déjà Too Cool that made everything out of recycled material. To my relief, the owner greeted us pleasantly and then turned her attent
ion back to the customer at the register. I didn’t sense even a hint of distrust.

  “It’s all from local crafters,” Butch said. “Hey, this one is perfect for your mom.” She held up a bracelet made of tiny silvery frying pans and plucked chickens. “It’s recycled aluminum. Maybe some of it started out as foil that was used to cook chicken. Wouldn’t that be a perfect cycle of life?”

  As I stared at it, she laughed and put it back. “Kidding.”

  “I knew that.” I stood aside and let her hunt.

  Several minutes later, she zeroed in on a small, pretty bracelet made of copper wire that had once carried cable TV signals but was now woven in an intricate lacelike pattern, threaded through tiny polished semiprecious gems. “This,” she said.

  “That?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It complements the color of her favorite blouse.”

  “My mom has a favorite blouse?” I asked.

  Butch responded with a prolonged sigh. But she was right—the bracelet was a good choice for my mom. And it was in my price range.

  As we were leaving the store, Robert put his hand on my shoulder. “Let it go,” he said.

  “Let what go?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said.

  He was right. I knew what he meant. I was still angry about the woman at that other store. I thought about ways to get even with her, or to do damage.

  “I’m not sure I know how,” I said.

  “Picture an angry person,” he said. “Someone who is mad about everything. Someone who is never happy. Someone who takes every insult to heart, and hates the world. Someone who enjoys being a victim. Is that who you want to be?”

  “No,” I said. “Definitely not.”

  “Then let it go.”

  I tried.

  Out of Concert

  THE MACK AND Mary concert was on Saturday, the weekend after Lucas’s father died. Mom and Dad went out that evening, to some kind of seminar on investing in stocks for retirement, so I didn’t even have to leave the house and pretend to go to the concert. They weren’t really interested in investing, and right now we really didn’t have anything to invest, but the evening included a free meal. Around the time the music would be starting at the college, I headed out back to sit at the table and feel sorry for myself. I hoped, at least, that Ms. Ryder was enjoying the show.