Character, Driven Page 15

  “Why?”

  “So she’d feel guilty. Then we’d get to know each other and fall in love.”

  But I hadn’t been mocked—or axed. Instead, it looked like I’d been invited to brainstorm a meaningful interaction of objects in a still life. Objects I seemed to have inspired.

  I stepped to her side and studied the painting. I was close enough that I could hear the slow rhythm of her breath. I forced myself not to look at her, and tried to focus on the question. Though I feared the great blankness would continue to block my creativity, an idea came to me easily enough.

  “I’d have the chick eating the blossoms and laying cherries,” I said. “Sort of a recycling thing.”

  Oh, crap. That was kind of crude. Hey, why don’t you make your bird shit out some fruit? That would be sweet-ass bitchin’ awesome! What a great way to ruin our first conversation.

  Jillian laughed. “That’s not quite what I had in mind. But it’s definitely creative.”

  I felt like the governor had lifted me, personally, from the electric chair just as the switch was being thrown. Jillian had acknowledged my creativity. We were playing ball in my court now. I grasped the thin tendrils of confidence that were drifting through my spine.

  “Being creative is easy,” I said. “Execution is hard. I can see amazing things in my mind when I look at a canvas.” I froze again. That sounded too much like I was bragging. “Maybe not amazing. But interesting.”

  Jillian waited for me to go on. I finished my thought. “I just can’t make them look the way I want. I don’t have that gift. You do.”

  “Give it time,” she said.

  I’d given it years. I didn’t bother saying anything. It seemed that art, craft, athletics, or any other area that involved mind–body cooperation, required some sort of skill that nobody could teach you. The way Robert’s dad could prune a tree. The way Paul could play the keyboard. The way Ms. Ryder could keep control of a classroom. The way Doc Watson could play the guitar. Even the way my mom could make a loaf of French bread. They might have been taught some of the tricks or basic techniques, but there was something they could do that most people couldn’t. They were born that way. I guess it could be summed up as natural talent. A gift. Jillian had that sort of skill with art. She could render an object in astonishingly lifelike detail. I felt it would be far easier for her to learn to add imagination to her existing skills than it would be for me to add her kind of talent to my imagination.

  But maybe that was just because, for me, imagining things was pretty easy. I almost couldn’t stop my mind from doing it all the time. Was that my skill? Did I have a natural talent for seeing things in creative ways? Or was this another example of not seeing things clearly at all. Oh, man—I was actually wondering whether my ability to judge my ability to see things was flawed. This could fall into a recursive death spiral of introspection.

  I guess I spent too much time lost in thought as I stood at Jillian’s side, because she returned to her work. I lingered, trying to think of something clever to say. But I was afraid I’d do more damage by spewing half-formed suggestions than I would if I slipped away in silence. Or, worse, hovered beside her in silence. Patricia’s classification of my social standing still haunted me.

  I backed away from Jillian. But we’d had an actual conversation. Jillian and I had talked—briefly—and I’d managed not to say the wrong thing or release the wrong fluid.

  As I headed toward my easel, I fought the urge to look over my shoulder and ask, You’re not stoned, are you?

  No. Of course she wasn’t stoned. Ours had been a stone-cold-sober conversation. But I was buzzed. I took a seat, stared at my blank canvas, and tried not to make too big a deal over what had just happened. Had this been middle school, I would probably have already started planning our wedding. Now, as a high school senior, I realized our conversation meant a lot less to her than it did to me.

  I also realized I’d found an answer I hadn’t been looking for to a vital question I’d asked last night. A question that I realized had hung from my neck until now, pulling me down.

  Why bother to keep living?

  Because, if I’d splatted to an abrupt ending last night at the base of the Saint Simon’s bell tower, like a garbage bag full of beef stew, I never would have had this conversation with Jillian.

  Doing Nothing Well

  THE NEXT MORNING, Jillian smiled at me when I walked into Calculus. By the time it dawned on me that the correct response was to smile back, she’d already turned her attention to the front of the room, where Mr. Yuler was firing up a slide on the smart board.

  Don’t make a big deal out of it, I told myself. That wasn’t easy. My mind launched into a frantic hunt for ways I could move our relationship forward.

  I could buy her something! That was a great idea. What would be a perfect gift?

  A snake, you asshole.

  Yeah, get her a bruise-blue waterlogged snake. Who wouldn’t love that? Be sure to spend all your money on it, loser.

  Okay, that was my rational side trying to remind me that my wooing efforts had led to nothing pleasant during the past six years.

  How about doing nothing?

  I’d been doing nothing in all sorts of ways for most of my life. The problem was that I burst out of inactivity and performed some stupid action just often enough to ruin the solid foundation that doing nothing had built. I thought about how, over the years, a half dozen other objects of my lust and interest, none significant enough in my halting interactions with them to mention individually, had been scooped up by more active suitors while I did nothing.

  Maybe the key wasn’t exactly doing nothing so much as avoiding doing the wrong thing.

  The problem came down to that very distinction—I had no clue what was right and what was wrong.

  But I knew what was right and what was left.

  I glanced toward either side of me. Nola’s empty seat might have remained full if I’d done something. I could have asked her out.

  But she had a boyfriend.

  So? Maybe she’d offered me an opening when she complained about him. Maybe he hadn’t treated her very nicely. Maybe he was the one who’d told her she was fat. Maybe every moment of shoulder contact was a great big whopping hint jammed in my face, and a hope on her part that I would step up to the plate and ask her out. Maybe I was just too insecure, clueless, and socially inept to realize what was happening. So I’d done nothing. If I’d responded, would she still have tried to kill herself? There was no way to know.

  On my other side, there was Lucas. He’d acted boldly. But not smartly. If he’d done nothing, his father might still be alive. But would he have been better off? Unlike my aborted and ill-advised bell tower dive, Lucas’s thwarted escape might have been the right move, if only he’d done a better job of actually escaping. I had no idea how bad his life at home had been. He’d kept that well hidden. But it had been bad enough for him to attempt a drastic solution.

  These contemplations occupied me all the way through Calculus class. When the bell rang, I sprang from my seat so I could walk near Jillian. Or maybe even walk to Physics with her.

  Do nothing.

  I gripped the desk and watched her walk to the door, hoping she’d glance back—and fearing that any such glance would turn me into a pillar of sweat. She didn’t look my way.

  Butch tapped me on the shoulder. “I think somebody likes you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “I saw the smile she gave you.”

  “It was nothing,” I said. Though I hoped I was wrong.

  “It was something,” Butch said.

  I waited until Art to take a shot at doing more than nothing. After Jillian got settled at her easel, I walked over to her and said, “Hi.”

  That single word was terminated with a small intake of breath, as if I had half-choked on an apple seed. The gasp was provoked by the memory that I’d used the same approach with Nola in the hallway outside Calculu
s class, after the first time she’d leaned on me. Following which, I had done nothing.

  I clenched my teeth and tried to accept the likelihood that I wasn’t carrying around some sort of monosyllabic curse that caused everyone I greeted to attempt some form of self-destruction. In my universe, there was no such thing as curses.

  “Hi.”

  She spoke back, using exactly the same word, though hers was dipped in honey and dusted with brown sugar.

  The ball had been lobbed into my court. Easy, slow, drifting up and then dropping in a perfect parabolic arc.

  Every time I ever tried to smash a lob to put away a point on the tennis court, I drove the ball into the net or out of bounds.

  Lob it back.

  As I tried to think of something that was safe without being inane, she spoke again. “That album you brought in…”

  “Southbound?” I said.

  “That was my stepfather’s favorite CD.” Jillian’s eyes drifted away from me, as if she were seeing into the past. She smiled like she’d heard an amusing joke.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “He didn’t like ‘The Riddle Song,’ either,” she said.

  “I think Ms. Ryder is unique in that respect,” I said. “It takes a special nature to love those lyrics.”

  “I’d have to agree.”

  I realized why the background she’d painted looked so familiar. It was the same shade of green as the Southbound cover. “So you like that music?” I asked. “I mean, the rest of the album.” It would be so super awesome if we had something personal in common. There were a couple other Doc Watson albums in the crate. I could invite her over to listen to them. Imagine that—Jillian and me, sitting on the cool concrete floor of the basement, shoulder to shoulder. I nearly lost her next words as I nibbled at that image and contemplated whether it would be better to play each album through from start to finish or skip around.

  “I liked my stepfather’s music as much as you like whatever music your parents constantly played when you were little,” she said.

  “Got it,” I said. My deflation at the loss of a common bond was balanced by the realization that we were having another conversation. I had the strange feeling I was hovering above my body, observing myself engage in a social interaction. “But if you hate the music, why did it get your attention?”

  “My stepfather was a good man,” she said. “He played the guitar. He even played some of those songs.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t help noticing the “was.” But I didn’t press for details.

  She picked up her brush. “I should get to work.”

  “Me, too.” I sat down at my easel and started sketching out a space scene of a vast universe filled with tiny stars and two large, glowing suns caught in orbit around each other. I myself glowed through the rest of the period. Yeah, we’d done nothing more than exchange a handful of sentences. But we’d talked. And I hadn’t destroyed the magic of the moment by saying something stupid.

  Right before the period ended, I turned toward her again and said, “No baby?”

  “What?” She stared at me as if I’d said something stupid.

  “You have the cherry blossoms and the chick from the song,” I said, figuring she’d misheard me. “I just realized you need to add the baby.” I didn’t mention to her that, in my version, the baby would be eating chicken.

  “I’m not good at babies,” she said.

  “You did an awesome Buddha,” I said. “If you can do that, you can do a killer baby. Just make him a lot younger. Buddha looks pretty young, already. He’s sort of ageless. Or you could do a back view of the baby, so you don’t even see the face. That’s the hard part.” I realized I was starting to babble.

  I guess Jillian had picked up on that way before I did, because she didn’t even bother to answer me before she scurried out. I couldn’t blame her. After she left, I saw she hadn’t put her brushes away. As I cleaned the brushes and capped her paints, I played back my words, wondering whether I’d said something stupid. Maybe she just didn’t want any more suggestions. I know I don’t like people telling me what to add to my art, or how to change the stuff I write for English.

  At lunch, as I listened to myself contribute my small share of the conversation during those rare moments when both Butch and Robert paused for breath, I wondered why it was so easy to talk with them, and with Jimby or Nicky (who had taken to joining our lunch table at times), but so hard to talk with Jillian.

  Maybe all I had to do was treat her like them.

  But that was impossible. They were my friends. She was—What? My obsession? My passion? My goal in life? It all seemed so tricky. One moment, she wants my ideas. The next, she’s not interested.

  Still, this was a new concept, and one worth exploring. Treat her like a friend … even if I desperately wanted us to be much more than friends. I kept my eye on the cafeteria entrance the whole period, but Jillian never showed up.

  After school, I was in my room, folding my laundry, when I heard a knock on the front door. Then I heard Dad shift out of his war-room chair. I guess he was getting it. That was fine. I wasn’t expecting anyone to drop by.

  “Cliff!” he shouted a moment later.

  He offered no further explanation or message. When I went down, I found Jimby standing on the porch. Dad had walked off, leaving the door open, without inviting him in.

  I stepped outside. “What’s up?”

  “I wrote it!” he said, thrusting out a handful of notebook paper. “Read it. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. Let’s go around to the backyard.”

  We went and sat, and I read Jimby’s short story.

  “Wow,” I said when I was finished. It was hard to speak. My throat felt funny. I took a breath, swallowed a couple times, then managed to kick out three more words. “This is great.”

  I’d expected something about zombies or dinosaurs. But he’d written a story about a boy, James, who was born badly deformed. James used his hands to propel himself around the school on a cart made from three skateboards fastened side by side. Most of the kids made fun of him or ignored him. He was really smart, but they couldn’t see past his deformity. Then, one day, there was a fire. The halls filled with smoke. Everyone was terrified. But James, who was close to the floor, stayed calm and led his classmates to safety.

  “This is very good,” I said.

  “Really?” Jimby said.

  “Really. It’s great. I love the way that what everyone thought was his weakness turned out to be his strength.” I paused to consider my next words. He’d done an amazing job. But there were a couple things he could do to strengthen the story. I wanted to give him some tips, but I didn’t want him to see them as criticism, and I didn’t want to do any of his work for him. I also needed to make sure I didn’t step on his voice. This story was all his, unmistakably so for anyone who really knew him, and it needed to stay that way. “Definitely a great story…”

  “You aren’t just saying that, are you?” he asked.

  “No. I read a lot of stuff. I just read a whole book of awesome stories. So I know what I’m talking about. This is good. How did the fire start? You don’t mention that.”

  Jimby scrunched his face a bit, then shrugged. “I don’t know. It just started.”

  “What if—?” I stopped. I wanted to suggest that one of the kids who tormented James had started the fire. But I needed to stay clear of telling him what to do. “Some of the kids in the story are pretty mean.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like Bovis Bunt. He’s terrible.”

  I waited for him to give my hint more thought.

  “He did it!” Jimby shouted. He grabbed my arm with both hands. “Yeah. This is great! I got it. I’ll have Bovis start the fire. Then he gets saved by James and feels sorry for being such a big, mean, stupid bully.”

  “That’s perfect,” I said. “I love it. You’ll make the story even stronger.”

  “Bovis gets burned first. And all his hair burns off.
But James still saves him.” Jimby snatched the story from my hand. “I gotta go.” He rushed off toward his house, then spun back and said, “Thanks for the help, Cliff. You should be a teacher!”

  “Yeah, right…” I waved. “Catch you later.”

  Hah. Yeah. Me, a teacher. That put a smirk on my face. I thought about our short-lived and short-tempered Government substitute, Mr. Strawbroke, being torn to pieces by a class full of thugs. Or Mr. Tippler yelling at us and then going out to get smashed. Or Mr. Xander, who inspired enough hatred that he’d almost been killed. But then I thought about brainstorming with Jimby for plot ideas and guiding him toward ways to strengthen his story. I thought about Mr. Piccaro’s passion for novels, Ms. Gickley’s efforts to teach me patience, and Ms. Ryder’s enthusiasm for making Government less puzzling and more interesting.

  My smirk faded. But the thought remained. Me, a teacher …

  Syncongruenicidence

  LIKE A FRIEND. Conversation. Talking. Casual. No agenda. No expectations. Talk. Chat. Just like that.

  Damn, now my stream of consciousness was spewing out unintentional hack rhymes. But my plan was solid. I waited until Art, when we could talk without distractions or interruptions. Fourth period seemed to take four days to arrive, but I was finally there, seated by my easel.

  I decided to try starting a conversation from my home court. As Jillian walked past me, I said, “You told me you didn’t like your parents’ music. So, what do you like?”

  “Lots of stuff,” she said. “Especially Mack and Mary.”

  “Holy shit!”

  I flinched at my own outburst. But Jillian seemed more startled than offended.

  “I love them,” I said, racing toward an explanation. “They’re awesome. The best group ever. Their new album is a total killer.” Slow down. I was in danger of splattering her with my enthusiastic fanboy gushing, along with an inevitable spray of saliva.

  “They are definitely awesome,” Jillian said. “They played at Saint Jasper’s a while back.”

  “Did you go?” I asked.