Page 7 of Fade into You
I’m shaking my head no, but the words coming out of my mouth are “Okay. I guess.”
JESSA
When I get in froman afternoon of sifting through B-side albums at Media Play, Mom’s on the kitchen phone, letting something that might have been salmon burn as she twirls the cord in her hand, watching it ravel, unravel, then pop back into the tight rubberized curl it remembers. I remember Mack ripping the previous phone out of the wall and socking Dad in the face with it. Dad told her to leave the house; Mom later told him we should never make Mack feel unwelcome in the home. Currently Mom’s playing perfect housewife with her church friends.
“Oh yes, Deirdre, she’s likely camping for the weekend, just wanted to check if Andrea went with her… yeah, it’s incredible Andrea got that scholarship to Cornell.”
She winces, wishing her imperfect Mack was anything like Andrea. Wishes she wasn’t fishing for her daughter’s location, trying to find out if she’s haunting her old high school crew, pretending to be more than the unpredictable phantom she is now. Mom likes to tell the other church ladies Mack’s taking agap year for travel. Gap year my ass, Mack can’t get more than a mile from our home without trouble. She’s not the kind for college. She’s barely the kind for life. Plus, Andrea and her old friends are a dead end. Mack has a new class of friends—I like to call them Jack and Coke. She’s definitely self-medicating, and Cornell-bound scholarship students don’t disappear for days on end in whatever wild masochistic ride Mack will take them on.
I’ve got three early applications out, but Mom’s not saying much about me to the other side of the phone. The church ladies stopped asking after me once I came out. It’s been years since I let her drag me to the Baptist Hall of Horrors, as I used to call it. My leaving the church was mutually agreed upon between me and the ministers, who just wanted to get back to teaching the same useless lessons without me complicating things for them.
“Of course, Deirdre, I can make the dessert for the women’s brunch,” she murmurs, and my mouth waters at the promise of the seven layers of sin that are her magic cookie bars. One good outcome of Mom still attending church in spite of it giving up on the rest of us. To think of it, though, I haven’t heard her pray in years other than saying “Jesus Christ” under her breath when Mack makes a real mess of things. I think pretending to her church that we’re the Beavers or whatever that damn TV family is helps her deal.
“Mail, Mom?” I shout, and she waves at me to hush, but the September issue ofRolling Stonegets delivered today and no god-fearing baking bitches are getting in between me and the pages of that musical liturgy. “Mooooooooomm.” I drag it out, and shecovers the mouthpiece with her hand and whispers, “Your father has it in the garage.”
I grab a Tab from the fridge, crack it, and walk out back. Falstaff lopes up to me, all slobber and kisses and white hair just ready to destroy my black pants. “Ugh, down, Falstaff! Down!” His huge paws smear my Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt with streaks of red clay mud, once again proving Mom right that we should have gotten a smaller dog. Pyrenees mix my ass; he’s a freaking yeti. I push him down and distract him by chucking a tennis ball deep into the shitty woods—so named ’cause no one in our family is willing to pooper-scoop the woods behind the house and Falstaff has made it… unbelievably narsty.
When Falstaff takes off, I sneak into the garage behind the house. We have never parked a car here, but this is where Dad parks himself—especially when he wants nothing to do with anyone. It’s cool in the garage, even though the day has some heat to it. He’s got the wall AC blasting, and I hear a few dozen fans from all the machines. The wall is lined with computers and mismatched motherboards and hard drives, half of them running, the other half waiting for his deft hands to fix them. He’s been in the insurance game for years, but Dad loves the new computers and that everyone seems to be getting into the technology but most know nothing about them. He sees a possible way out of the office and the chance to tinker on machines. He’s happy video killed the radio star.
I try to grab the magazine and go—it’s the live review issue and I see the Woodstock ’99 cover and want to get into what Rage did—I mean, Kid Rock likely sucked balls as always, buthow did they balance Jewel with DMX? Inquiring minds need to know.
“Jessamine!” Dad seems in a good mood, but I see an angry red scratch down his forearm that wasn’t there yesterday,
I walk to his bench, and he’s got an old tan box of a computer running green lines of code against a black screen—gibberish to me, but his seemingly native language these days. “I got an email from your school, they’re putting in more metal detectors?”
I cringe, thinking about how much earlier I’ll have to wake to get past whatever prison security system they’re putting in.
“Guess the first set wasn’t enough,” I quip, not actually feeling that brave. We’d lost a lot of freedom at school since April, when two kids in trench coats shot up Columbine.
“Seems a bit much, Jessamine, especially for one fluke incident.”
I feel like a traitor to my anti-establishment views, because the new rules and measures have almost been a comfort…. No one talks about it, but everyone is a little scared now. Fluke or not, I feel like we tend to look a little sideways at the weirder kids. I get some looks myself, since I’m pretty far from prom queen. Dad wouldn’t understand it, though, so I just grumble “Jessa” under my breath, knowing he hates my nickname. Says it hides my uniqueness. I usually assure him the bright blue Manic Panic dye job will keep me unique, but the one time I suggested a Bad Religion tattoo might assist in the unique department, Mom overheard and lost her shit in a very epic way. They will never know if I ever do get tattooed.
He taps out another line of code and hits enter, and thecomputer starts whirring like a helicopter about to take off. Turning around to finally look at me, he says, “Well, just make sure you look over the list of prohibited items. I think they banned lighters and pocketknives now.”
“Sure, I’ll take my Swiss Army special outta my rucksack, Dad,” I say, rolling my eyes but making a mental note to keep my Zippo in the glove compartment.
“Hey, it’s all fun and games until you get another suspension.” He’s back to the screen, which is now shooting out a myriad of gibberish. I thought we weren’t going to bring that up again, the day when I slammed Jonnie Barton against a locker for calling me a dyke in the halls. Little wimp reported me and I got three days’ enforced vacation.
“No knives or lighters, Dad. I’m good unless they start banning us from reading magazines,” I say, waving theRolling Stoneat him.
“Magazines aren’t reading!” he calls out as I leave, pointedly ignoring him.
I dig into the new issue, finishing my notes to self, underlined and written in the columns just in time to grab a piece of the pizza Dad ordered. (Mom’s fish was officially declared a burn victim.) I call Dade right at 9:01 because the minutes are free on my so-called emergency cell, and I can hear him chewing on something crunchy (probably Cheetos) and watching something on TV (probably a Romero or Tarantino movie). “Yeah,” he says through his snack.
“Got my room set up.”
“That’s nice.” In the background I hear someone let loose aWilhelm scream. Romero. If they aren’t dead, they’re gonna be a zombie soon.
“More than nice, Mack blasted outta here last night and I’ve had an amazing afternoon of catching up on all things music-adjacent in my badass new private room.”
“That sucks.” Another scream. He’s giving me the two-word responses, so not Romero, definitely video games and likelyResident Evil. He’s too occupied to even realize that me having a quiet afternoon is agoodthing.
“Am I bugging you?” It’s irritating that he’s not interested in the attic room. I think it’s a deal, maybe not a big one, but it’s worth at least a few more words.
“Sort of,” he says. Two words, another scream. Something screams inside me, too.
“Well, are we still on for Six Roots tomorrow?”
