V. H. King's Ink

Five AM.  The hood of night has yet to be pushed back by the dawn.  Snow-choked clouds cover the stars.  Eventually they will lower, letting go of their water.  A half hour passes, silences interrupted by gurgles and gargles.  Ten more minutes tick by, and then he gets up. 

The first part of Yana’s daily routine requires getting dressed, brushing his teeth, and grabbing his backpack.  He buckles himself in the passenger seat without his mother having to ask.  She asks about what he learns in school.  She doesn’t ask about his friends.  That’s what the Parent-Teacher Association is for. 

Six A. M. Exhaust fogs over yellow flashers.  She doesn’t tell him to have a good day.  He doesn’t slam the door.  The window cracks on the driver’s side door.  Her eyes flick to his.  He thinks he can hear the click, but he knows it’s her lighter.  I’m doing this for you, her eyes say.  

“Eat a good lunch.”

She blows him smoke instead of a kiss.  Brake lights blur.  The sedan shudders through the intersection.  Yana doesn’t have to knock or ring the bell.  Mrs. Watson is holding the door open, a bagel in her other hand.  He thinks she has shaving cream on her face, but then he realizes it’s cream cheese.

“Justice isn’t up yet.”

Yana nods.  He goes to the kitchen.  Mrs. Watson goes to her office, munching.  Jessie rolls over in bed, blinking in the dark.  His pillow smells like toasted bread. His mother’s high heels make the floor sound hollow.  Honey-glow fills the doorway, a peek-a-boo of sunshine before shadows return. 

Jessie sits up.  Yana sits beside him, shoulder to shoulder.  They snack in silence.  It’s easy to eat breakfast bars in the dark.  It’s harder to clean up the crumbs.  Yana shakes out the blankets while Jessie goes over to his closet. 

“100% chance of rain today,” he said, poking through the hangers.  “Was it raining when you got up?”

“It won’t rain at a hundred percent,” Yana said, standing next to him.  “Scattered sprinkles.  No thunderstorms.”

Their fingers brush.  Jessie slides his fingers into the spaces between Yana’s.  Like the perfect fit of a bowling ball.  Jessie rarely managed a strike, unless it was baseball.  Yana bent his elbow and kissed the back of Jessie’s hand.  Jessie shivered.

“You always do that,” Yana said. 

Jessie shrugged.  Yana kissed his cheek and then left to pick through the fridge for leftovers. 

When he gets out to the kitchen, shoelaces dragging, there are peanut butter sandwiches and bananas in brown paper bags on the counter.  Mrs. Watson comes clacking through the hall, clutching her purse and keys.  Yana follows her out first, Jessie trailing behind. 

“How’d you sleep, Jus?”

If not brothers, people often mistook Yana and Jessie for cousins.  They were close, people said.  They were always together.  People had a way of assuming that they were related somehow.  They asked Mrs. Watson about Yana—whether there was some sort of arrangement, or a reason why she seemed to take care of him as much as she did her own kid. 

Yana squeezes his hand again as they pile in the back seat, backpacks between them.  They listen to the same recording every day on the way to school.  Mr. Danvers was impressed when he could recite Shakespeare in the third grade.  Mrs. Timms had cried when he’d recited the monologue for the fifth-grade talent show.  (Performed, she’d told his mother.  Have you ever thought about getting him into theatre?)

Jessie stares out the window, lips moving silently.  Yana hasn’t let go of his hand.  Jessie is glad for this.  He wishes his mother would stop calling him by his father’s name.  He can’t tell her that, for the same reason he can’t stop shivering when Yana touches him. 

“Don’t forget I’ve got that six-thirty appointment this evening, and it’s all the way in Springfield.  I need you to be here at two-fifteen, stat.”

“Why can’t we just go to Yana’s?”

That’s not an option and you know it, his mother’s eyes say.

“We can walk from the bus stop,” Yana says.  “We’ll go back to the house.”

“No ordering pizza for dinner.  There’s some chicken and broccoli casserole in the fridge—just heat it up in the oven for an hour.  I left instructions on the counter.”

Jessie is always slightly embarrassed by this part.  Not the dinner instructions—he almost wished he could learn more, but she was territorial when it came to cooking.  The getting dropped off at the curb part.  The unfolding from the car, the slinging his backpack over one shoulder, the grabbing his lunch sack with his other hand.  Worrying that a pocket was left unzipped and his homework would somehow blow away, or that he’d mismatched his shoes, or that his shirt was inside out.  Yana appears on the sidewalk like magic, unruffled. 

They walk inside.  Jessie doesn’t meet his mother’s eyes, but he can imagine what they say.  He can almost hear it, even, because she said it the first time he’d come back to school.  The rest of the world had gone silent.  He wasn’t sure if he heard anything else all day.  But Yana touched his hand, like he does now, and somehow he thinks he might be brave enough.  Strong enough to do what his mother said.  Make your father proud.

---

“You’re walking like you hurt something,” Mrs. Watson says.

 “Something hurts,” Jessie mumbles. 

He doesn’t look at her.  She doesn’t say anything about the appointment.  He thinks she’ll still be able to make it, since it’s the middle of the day.  He hopes she won’t try to stay home and babysit him.  The drive home is short.  Silent.  Torture. 

Yana’s hand slides around his waist, steadying him when he gets out the car.  Jessie doesn’t look at him either, but the frayed cuff of Yana’s zip-up catches his eye. Dark blue, but faded almost colorless from so many wears and washings.  Just like he is.  The thought comes out of nowhere, with a sudden urge to cry.  Jessie coughs instead and pauses on the front porch.

“I think I’m gonna sit outside a minute,” he says.

“You know where the kitchen is and how to clean up.”

His mother is gone a moment later.  Jessie waits until he’s sure she’s deep in her office, nose in another stack of papers.  He looks up at the sky.  A lighter shade of not-quite-blue, thanks to the clouds.  Birds chirped everywhere, fluttering in the branches, but he couldn’t see them.  He sighed and let his eyes fall back to the sidewalk. 

Yana’s hand didn’t leave his waist as they walked down the block.  At first Jessie thought someone might see them and think it was weird.  Then he thought about the pressure of Yana’s hand, and the warm feeling in his stomach, and decided he didn’t care.  Cars rumbled by, crossing the double-yellow lines to avoid scraping the old junkers angled awkwardly against the curb.  A nerve twisted in the back of his neck.  Jessie winced and turned his head.

Two blocks away, the grass field was mostly deserted.  The mid-forty-degree weather wasn’t so great for outdoor play, but Jessie couldn’t stand being inside.  He lowered himself onto a bare patch of ground—home base, when they played kickball in May, before summer baseball. 

“See?” Yana said, holding his palm up after sitting beside him.  “Only sprinkles.”

“One-hundred percent rain,” Jessie said, half-smiling.

“Are you okay?”

Jessie frowned, unsure how to answer.

“I shouldn’t be mad at her, should I?”

 “You can be mad at her.”  Yana shrugged, leaning back with his palms flat in the grass.  “But it might not change anything.”

“That’s the stupid thing.”  The frown turned into a glare, and he covered his face with his hands.  “No matter how I feel, nothing changes.”

“I think all adults are like that.”

“Do you think adults have feelings?”

Yana considered for a while.  Jessie scratched the back of his neck where is collar was getting damp.  The sprinkles were less intermittent now.  He drew his knees up, looking at the dreary field.  How many days until the grass would be bright green?

“They have rules,” Yana said.

“What?”

“They don’t care about their feelings because they have rules.  They think if they follow the rules, then everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”

“Is that why they make us follow rules?” Jessie asked.  “Is that why we always get in trouble?”

“We’re different.” 

Jessie doesn’t know if Yana means the two of them, or all kids in general.  He wonders if it might be both.  He and Yana get talked about all the time.  It used to be just Yana—and not even Yana, but more so his mom. 

Then the other kids started talking about Yana more, and then Jessie because the two of them hung out together.  Now they both got talked about, for all sorts of reasons and rumors that were half true and half not.  Before Jessie could ask, Yana sat up, crossing his legs pretzel-style. 

“Fitz shouldn’t have pushed you,” he said, brushing dirt and tiny bugs from his palms.  “It was a mean thing to do.”

“It’s whatever,” Jessie mumbled.

He still had detention.  He was lucky he didn’t get suspended, but he didn’t see why he was being punished.  It’s not like he’d asked to get shoved down the stairs.  Concrete ones at that, and into the alley by the dumpster.  Was that why people sued other people?  Because they got blamed for stuff that wasn’t their fault? His dad would have known the answer. 

“I don’t want to tell her,” he said a little while later.  “She’ll make a joke about it.  That he bruised my ego or something.”

“Did he?”

“I miss my dad.”  Jessie shook his head, but the words kept coming.  “And I hate that she calls me Justice.  That was our thing—me and my dad’s.  Not hers.  She always laughed—“

The rest gets lost.  He hadn’t meant to say any of it in the first place.  It was more than he wanted to think about.  More than he wanted to feel.  He buried his face against his knees, grabbing his elbows.  Thinking about what he didn’t want to think.  Feeling what it hurt too much to feel. 

Wishing with all his might that he could hear his mother laugh again and not hate her for it.  Wishing that things weren’t so normal.  Because if nothing was really wrong, that meant there was something wrong with him.  He should be grateful that at least he’d known his dad.  Loved him.  Liked him and gotten to hang out with him and have inside jokes. 

Droplets trickle down his spine.  The coolness, along with the mist floating across the field, is soothing.  He feels like he has a fever.  Maybe he got infected from something in the trash.  Or maybe you’re the infection.  The thought feels heavy, like an irrefutable fact.  Like seeing his father in the casket, even though he could still feel his hand on his shoulder.  Except that had been his mother’s hand, and when he’d realized that, he’d shoved her away and screamed in her face.  The thought is as heavy as the silence in the church, the stares from people who couldn’t possibly understand… 

He can’t quite push any of it away.  The thoughts, the feelings, the memories.  Jessie holds his breath, tries to imagine complete silence.  Stillness.  The farthest dark of space, where there was absolutely nothing.  Except maybe his father’s smile, and the way he looked like he was playing dress-up in his judge’s robe even though he was a million feet tall.  A black robe that looked soft, even though his father had said it was hot and itchy. 

Black, and not grey like the suit, or blue like the coffin, or green like the fake grass by the grave.  Black and perfect.  Quiet.  Peaceful.  Yana shakes his shoulder, offers him a hand.  Jessie stands, gingerly, and starts toward his mother’s house.  That’s how he thinks of it now.  It’s not home anymore.  He doesn’t think anywhere will be home again.  Except, when he’s with Yana, things are different.  Like one day, life might be okay again. 

“Wrong way,” Yana says.

Jessie turns back around, raising an eyebrow. 

“What?  Why?”

He didn’t really want to go back anyway, but it was better to get the humiliating part over with.  The misery would last longer.  Maybe forever.  Yana poked his arm, pulling him out of his thoughts. 

“Let’s get ice cream.”

“It’s freezing out.”

A sudden shiver makes Jessie stutter the words.  He doesn’t know if it’s because of the weather or because Yana touched him.  He tries not to think about it, tries not to feel it—not yet.  Not until he can enjoy it, and hold on to it for a bit. 

Yana does a rare thing.  The transformation is incredible, and Jessie always thinks it’s like a secret superpower.  Yana could be on all the school brochures for the studious kid who takes his classes seriously and gets the best grades.  People joked about it from time to time. 

Jessie thought Yana deserved to be on the cover of Teen Vogue or Cosmopolitan or one of those other magazines the girls were always squealing over.  Because when Yana smiled, his freckles formed cinnamon constellations and his eyes crinkled just a little and his jaw shifted, rearranging his face into a super star’s. 

All of a sudden, Jessie was close enough to smell the peppermints Yana always kept in his pockets.  He shifted, too scared to aim for Yana’s lips or cheek, his mouth grazing the top of Yana’s ear.  A spear of pain, hot and somehow loud, lanced through his left leg.  He toppled and Yana caught him.  Quick, like it was choreographed or something. 

“Stupid,” Jessie said, laughing at himself. 

You’re a supernova.  Jessie hoped he didn’t say that part out loud, but he thinks the last word might have snuck past his lips.  When he manages to look up, Yana’s face is back to normal.   Serious.  Older, somehow. 

There’s a soft look in his eyes, though.  Sort of like concern, but not the embarrassing way adults kept looking at him once they found out about his dad—like he was a kitten stuck in a drain.  No you’re not, Yana’s eyes seem to say.  You’re not stupid, you’re a person.  Jessie looked away, drawing in another breath to steady himself. Holding on to Yana’s thin arms, which are somehow stronger than his own. 

“Ice cream sounds good,” Jessie says.  “Mom won’t let me have any once she grounds me.”

---

The scream stuck in his throat.  Jessie heaved breath after breath, still blind despite the bedside lamp, hand scrambling through the sheets.  The mattress shifted.  Arms encircled his shoulders.  He pressed his face into Yana’s chest.  Leaning into the silence, reaching for the steadfast calm that never left his best friend.  His boyfriend, maybe.  The most important person to him, whatever you called that. 

“It was you.”  Jessie’s voice shook, rib cage rattling.  “It was you, it was you.”

Yana didn’t know what he was talking about, of course.  Yana just held him, and his silence seemed to say, you are not alone.  Jessie didn’t think he would be able to go back to sleep, regardless of how calming Yana’s presence was.  At least he wasn’t crying.  Maybe he would finish the algebra packet—it was in his history folder.  He remembered now, because he’d had spare time after his test.  Had he gotten the bonus question right?  Had he even answered it? 

Jessie tried to remember what the bonus question had been.  Anything to keep from seeing Yana’s face, whether in front of him or behind his eyes. A glass shower, broken windshields, crumpled metal.  And Yana caught between, flat on his back.  His legs doused by windshield wiper fluid and antifreeze and whatever else was under the hood.  Yana looking up at the sky, eyes as grey as the clouds, while rain started to fall.