Kindred (18 page)

“I hereby sentence you to five consecutive life terms,” he announces. I hear a muffled response from the spectators, but I don’t turn to look. He bangs his gavel five times, the booms echoing oddly in my ears. “Jason Way, for the crime you have committed, for the blight that your presence is on society, for the threat you will always pose wherever you are, you will be locked away in a cell for the rest of your natural life.”

I turn to look at Jason. His expression hasn’t changed, and I realize this is the outcome he expected. What heinous crime has he committed? In what is part lecture, part sermon, Judge Bender continues.

“Deviants like you force the rest of us to put up walls. You force us to take steps to enforce the most basic, fundamental laws common to all God-fearing societies. The repercussions of your actions will reverberate through our town, our state and our country.” My brain is racing, trying to figure out what
this means. Is this a vision of the future? Is this what I’m supposed to save Jason from? “One day, after many, many years of contemplation,” the judge thunders, “you will face a judgment greater than mine. And when you do, may God show greater mercy on you.…” My mind is struggling to think. What did he do? When will this terrible crime happen?

As if the power that brought me this vision can tell I’m no longer paying attention, or perhaps because I’ve seen all I need to see, as suddenly as it all began, it’s over. I’m back in Emmett’s bed, the sheets tangled around me like ropes, my heart pounding like I’ve run a race.

I flop back on the bed, gasping for breath. I frantically try to think. Jason’s only a teenager, a surly, maladjusted boy, true, but not a vicious one. What horrible crime could he possibly commit in the near future? What can I do to stop him?

But the drug is still in my system and it pulls me under. I fight it, but my thoughts grow more and more sluggish. Against my will, my body relaxes. My eyelids droop. And my racing thoughts fade to nothing.

W
HEN
I
WAKE AGAIN
, the afternoon sun is streaming through a gap in the curtains. I lie still for a moment, blinking at the ceiling, assessing how I feel. I slowly sit up and look around the room. As always, there’s nothing to show that my vision wasn’t some painkiller-induced nightmare. Except that I do know better now. I feel sick to my stomach. Someone has given me a swift kick in the pants. Clearly, I’m not doing enough and that needs to change.

I chew on a fingernail, wondering what to do. What with my new diagnosis, the vision, my lack of success in getting to know Jason and Mo butting in, I’m at a loss for what to worry about first. When my stomach grumbles, a more immediate concern becomes clear. I’m starving.

It’s been thirty-six hours since I’ve had a solid meal, and I’ve had nothing to drink all day. So I’m not only hungry, I’m
parched as well. As I swing my legs over the side of the bed, I notice a glass of water on the nightstand. I gulp it down, the cool water sliding down my throat.

Wearing the same loose drawstring pants and soft cotton shirt that I wore to the procedure, I pad downstairs in bare feet, holding the empty glass. I find Emmett in the small kitchen tucked behind the shop. We’re both surprised to see each other, but he recovers first, coming to take the glass from me and carefully looking at my face.

“I’m okay,” I say.

“You slept for so long I called the doctor. He said if you didn’t wake up by three to call back. It’s five minutes till.”

At the mention of the doctor, I frown a bit. I’m not ready to deal with that yet. I wish the morning’s news were a bad dream I could brush away. But then again, my bad dreams can’t be brushed away either, so it’s really hopeless.

“I’m starving. Are you cooking something?”

He accepts the change of subject. “I figured you’d want something easy on the belly. Do scrambled eggs and toast sound all right?”

“Mmm, tasty.” My mouth waters at the thought of food. “Can I help?”

“Sit and watch,” he says, heading to the fridge and pulling out four eggs.

“I can do that.”

I sit at one of the two stools beside a tiny round table and watch him. Like with everything else I’ve seen him do, he’s wonderfully competent in the kitchen. In clean, quick
movements he cracks the eggs with one hand, whisking them with the other. With his back turned to me and his attention focused on the eggs, I take this moment to get another good look at his tattoos. I can’t seem to get enough of them. I could ask about them, but I don’t. If I ask questions, then he might too.

He plates the steaming eggs next to golden toast and places the dish in front of me. He then sits down with his own plate. I like that he made some for himself too. I hate eating when other people aren’t.

I ask about the shop. We make small talk. We eat our food.

“Saw your buddy Jason yesterday,” he says. “Hanging out with Mo.”

At Jason’s name, the eggs curdle in my mouth. It takes an effort, but I swallow them.

“Really?” I say casually.

Had Mo spent all of yesterday with him? I’d been so relieved that Mo wasn’t in the apartment that I never thought what he was up to. A part of me thinks that I should give Mo the benefit of the doubt. If Mo gets Jason to open up, then I’ve a better chance to break through as well. And unlike me, Mo might not have any ulterior motives in getting to know Jason better. But I can’t deny that I’m uncomfortable with this new friendship. I am worried for Mo, but also scared of what he could do. It’s hard to think of him as an adversary, yet until I know where Mo stands with the devil, I can’t trust him. And now that I know Jason’s on the brink of a horrible crime, Mo’s
interest in Jason is even more disturbing. I push away my plate. I’ve only eaten half my portion, but my stomach is uncomfortably full and I’ve lost my appetite.

“I’ve been asking around a bit,” Emmett continues. “Your buddy Jason is an interesting character. He goes to Warfield, did you know that?”

I nod. All the paper’s interns come from Warfield. Hamilton has a very well-respected public school system, something the town is quite proud of. But despite this, Warfield is where anyone with any aspirations to the town’s upper class sends their kids.

“I thought that was strange. Jason’s not exactly a Warfield poster child,” Emmett continues. Which is so true, and something that I hadn’t really thought about. Warfield students are all rich preppies, usually driving brand-new Mustang convertibles or giant Dodge Rams. Not to generalize, but they all seem to have that subtle superior smirk that suggests they are secretly laughing at you. Jason, with his hip-hop clothes, snarky manners and awful hair, is as out of place with the Lacoste crowd as a plastic spork at Williams-Sonoma.

“Maybe he’s there on scholarship,” I say, getting interested despite my grim mood.

“But the scholarship kids at Warfield are unreal,” he says. “They’re either athletes, world-class athletes—Warfield has sent two kids to the Olympic trials—or they’re brainiacs, scary-brilliant kids. Doing college physics in the tenth grade. One girl published a novel. They’re so smart it’s ridiculous. And then we have Jason.…”

He lets that hang in the air.

“He might be really smart,” I say. “He got the newspaper internship.”

Emmett gives me a look.

“Some geniuses have very poor social skills. It’s the whole social IQ thing, totally separate from intellectual IQ.”

Again Emmett gives me a look.

“Okay, fine,” I say. “He’s a jerk. He’s not athletic, he’s not scary smart. He doesn’t come from a rich family. What’s he doing at Warfield?”

“Exactly,” Emmett says, with a smug smile that says I’m finally catching on. “So it turns out, he’s not there on scholarship. They don’t waste them on losers. His mom pays full tuition. And she’s a mail carrier.”

“Wait, how much is tuition?” I’d assumed it was crazy high, but maybe I was wrong.

“Fifteen grand a year.” Okay, so I wasn’t wrong. My university didn’t cost that much.

“Ouch.” I think for a minute. “And how much does a mail carrier make?”

Emmett makes a face. “Forty? Fifty a year?”

I think about what it would mean to have your mom spend more than a fifth of her income on your high school tuition.

“I bet she has high hopes for her son,” I say. I don’t know if it’s some lingering effect of the drug or knowing what’s in store for Jason, but I’m suddenly crystal-clear on Jason’s situation. “I bet she’s always telling him that he’s going places, don’t you think? Can’t you just hear her say that he’s going to be someone really important one day?”

“And I bet his schoolmates prove to him every day that she’s wrong,” rumbled Emmett. I think about my vision and Jason’s future. I don’t like where this is heading.

I glance at Emmett, wondering for the first time what sort of person he was in high school, which group he belonged to: goth, jock, druggie, nerd, prep—he doesn’t fit in any easy category. It’s hard to imagine him being bullied, but there’s a bitter, knowing tinge to his voice that suggests otherwise.

“So let’s assume he’s an outcast,” I say, following this train of thought. “A total loser, letting his mom down. Maybe he hates her for putting him where he doesn’t belong, for expecting all these things of him that she never expected from herself.…” I’m thinking out loud, hardly censoring my words. “Does he hate her or does he just hate himself? How am I supposed to help him? What am I supposed to do for him?”

“Why do you have to do anything?” Emmett asks.

My obsession with Jason perplexes him. I shouldn’t have said so much, and I can’t think of a good explanation. Looking down at my hands, I see the outline of the tape that held the IV from this morning. I rub it self-consciously.

“This morning, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s,” I say. He thinks I’m changing the subject, but really I’m not. “The doctor kind of thought that’s what’s wrong with me, so I’ve been reading about it before this procedure. It’s an autoimmune disease. It means my body’s immune system has gone nuts and is now attacking me. In my case, it’s attacking my colon, shredding it, destroying it. But it could attack any part of my digestive system. If we can’t find the right medicine to stop it, my own
immune system will kill me. There is no cure,” I huff with silent, bitter laughter.

Emmett stays perfectly still, listening intently, like he’s scared to spook me.

“So I’ve been thinking a lot about our bodies, how complicated they are, how there’s so much we don’t know about how things work, why things work the way they do. And I’ve been thinking about God. We don’t really think about how much we owe to God—I mean, our existence, our lives, our bodies. People used to think that when things went wrong, when disease came, it was God’s will, His punishment. And now we say it’s a virus or it’s genetics or it’s pollution. But maybe it’s all the same thing, you know?”

He doesn’t nod or shake his head.

“It sounds crazy. I think you have to be sick, you have to be scared, before you can move past this religion of science we all grew up with. But why is it that even when there are known carcinogens in a certain area, not everyone gets sick? When there was the plague and medicine was as primitive as could be, not everyone got sick, and of the sick, not everyone died.” He doesn’t answer, and I talk faster so he can’t interrupt. “Maybe God
does
have something to do with that. And if that’s the case and you’re sick, maybe you have an obligation to try and figure how to right any wrongs you might have done. How to uncross God, how to appease Him. How to be worthy of His gifts.”

I risk a glace up at him and he looks so sad. I ball up my napkin, twisting it in my lap. Slowly he reaches out and
covers my tightly clenched hands with his. His hands are warm and heavy, and they still my nervous wringing. I swallow a lump in my throat.

“I don’t believe God works that way,” he says softly. “I don’t think He uses our bodies to punish us, to whip us in line like mules.”

I start to say something, but he continues.

“If I had to guess, I’d say we disappoint Him very often. Though after so many centuries, maybe He’s lowered His standards a bit.” He shrugs. “Maybe not. I don’t know. But if you believe in free will, which I do, then God has to let us stumble along blindly, making our choices, reaping their fruit. If there is some kind of a reckoning—punishment for bad choices, reward for good ones—it’s in the afterlife, not here.

“I’m sorry that you’re sick. I’m very, very sorry,” he says, touching my hair softly. “But when we get sick, that’s just living in this imperfect world. That’s molecules and DNA and bacteria doing what they’ve been programmed to do, and it’s up to us to bear it and fight it and hopefully triumph over it.

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to buy God’s indulgence, to earn a pardon or early release for good behavior.”

I rise from my seat and his hands fall away. I swipe at the tears spilling down my face.

“You’re wrong,” I say, my voice nearly strangled with tears. “I did something wrong and then I got sick. If I do something right, this will go away.” My chin is quivering like mad. If I open my lips again, the only thing that will come out will be bawling howls of miserable fear. So I button them tight and don’t look at the pity I know is on his hard face.

He accepts the end of the discussion, and silently we clear the dishes. As I gather my things for him to drive me home, he says one last thing:

“Everyone has burdens and everyone has made mistakes, Miriam.”

“Yes,” I say. “I know.”

I can’t afford to make another one.

E
MMETT DROPS ME OFF
at my empty apartment. Mo’s out again.

While I’m not telling my parents about the colonoscopy and diagnosis, I feel an urgent need to hear their voices.

I call my mom first. But after the preliminary “I’m fine, and how are you?” I find myself hoping for better answers.

“I think I’m having a crisis of faith,” I say.

“Are you doubting God’s existence again?” my mother asks. In the family lore, I break out crying at age seven at the dinner table. “It’s the monkeys! How can there be God if we come from monkeys? Which is it? Adam or Koko?”