The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen (7 page)

“What?”

“We’re both onlies.”

I looked at him blankly.

“I’m an only child; you’re an only child.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Once he was gone, I had to sit down.

In Port Salish, Mom had an entire wall devoted to family photographs: Jesse, tall and skinny and brown-haired like Mom, and me, short and stocky with bright red hair like Dad, burying Dad up to his neck in sand at the beach; Jesse, Mom, and me around the fire on one of our camping trips;
Jesse and me and Dad holding up an enormous salmon we’d caught fishing; plus all the ugly school portraits that tracked us through the years.

Dad and I haven’t unpacked those pictures yet. They’re in our storage locker downstairs. In fact, unless you know about the shoebox, there’s hardly any evidence in our apartment that Jesse ever existed.

This is fine by me.

After all, if your brother is dead, you technically don’t have a brother anymore.

So I guess I didn’t lie to Farley when I said “Yeah.”

I
am
an only child. Jesse saw to that.

11:00 p.m.

INTRIGUING FACT:
Cremations were done as far back as the Stone Age. They just burned their corpses on open fires.

These days, most cremations are done in computer-controlled steel ovens. I know because I’ve read all about it online. A body is put into a coffinlike container made of particleboard, then slid into the chamber like a really big roast beef or something. Temperatures reach around 1000°! The corpse takes about one and a half hours to burn.

When it’s all done, about three to five pounds of bone fragments remain. Those bone fragments are put into a “cremulator,” a machine that grinds them into ashes.

Some people buy a nice urn to hold a loved one’s ashes. Other people sprinkle them into the ocean, or under a special tree. Some, like “Star Trek” creator Gene Rodenberry, have their ashes shot into outer space. Seriously, he did that.

Jesse’s ashes are under my dad’s bed.

I guess that makes us sound like awful people. But, really, we have no idea what to do with him. Put him in an urn and stick him in the living room, so we have to be reminded of him and what he did
every single time
we’re in there? No, thanks. Sprinkle him in the ocean, so he can be eaten by fish? So that maybe a tiny bit of Jesse could be served to me one night in my salmon? No way. Bury his ashes in a cemetery? No. Jesse was mildly claustrophobic; that would be cruel.

So, for now, he lives under Dad’s bed in a shoebox. It’s kind of like purgatory, I guess. Not heaven, not hell, but a place in between.

Come to think of it, I guess we’re living in purgatory, too.

Cecil was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt today. He’s a walking, talking hippie stereotype.

“I was worried about you when you didn’t show up last week,” he said once I’d sat down.

“I wasn’t feeling well,” I lied.

“If you can’t make it, leave a message with the front desk, okay?”

“Okay.”

Then he put his feet up on the desk. His big toe poked through a hole in one of his purple-and-yellow striped socks. He tented his hands under his chin and looked at me intently, waiting for me to “start the dialogue.” (“Start the dialogue” is another one of his favorite expressions.)

The thing is, I was one step ahead of him. In last period, I’d made a list of topics to discuss, so that it would look like I was opening up; but they were safe topics, things that wouldn’t give him an opportunity to ask leading questions about IT. So I told him about the Reach For The Top Team (“Great that you’re getting involved, Henry, great”), and I told him a little bit about Farley (“Holy Moly, you have a friend already! Fantastic.”). Then I told him about the Crazy Lady.

“She’s missing a lot of her teeth,” I said. “And she
sings these made-up songs.… Her voice is terrible. And her guitar is plastic. It’s from a dollar store.”

“She makes you uncomfortable.”

“She makes me
sad
. I keep thinking, was she always like this? Or did something happen to her along the way? Maybe she has a husband somewhere, and kids. Do they know where she is? Do they know she’s lost her marbles?”

“Some people fall through the cracks in the system.”

“Well, they shouldn’t. There shouldn’t
be
any cracks.”

“No. There shouldn’t.” Then he leaned forward in his chair and looked me in the eye. “Henry, your mom is in good hands.”

I felt a flash of anger. “Who said anything about my mom? I’m telling you about the Crazy Lady!”

Cecil means well. But he keeps trying to find meaning in things that have no meaning.

I suspect that he’s smoked a lot of pot.

“Have you started writing in your journal yet?” he asked, changing the subject.

“A little,” I said. “But only ’cause you said I had to.”

“I didn’t say you had to. I just thought it might be helpful.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s dumb.” I was still feeling mad about the Crazy Lady.

“No one’s forcing you to do it, Henry.”

“Then maybe I’ll stop.”

“Okay. If that’s what you want.”

“You have no idea what I want.”

“I didn’t say I did.”

“Well, good. Because you don’t.”

“What
do
you want?”

I want time to rewind back a year. I want to change the course of history.
I want to change what I did the night of April 30
.

“I want our session to be over because it’s boring and you’re stupid,” I said.

If I’d hurt his feelings, he didn’t let it show. He just said, “Okay. I’m going to grant you your wish.” He stood up. “Bye, Henry. See you next week.” Then he started sorting through a bunch of papers on his desk, acting like I wasn’t even there.

Not very professional, if you ask me. I bet he’s going to charge the province for the whole hour, too, even though we had a full ten minutes left.

I should write his bosses a letter and tell them to dock his pay.

3:00 a.m.

I just had
both
of my recurring nightmares. Call it a two-for-one special.

In the first dream, I’m hiding in the yellow tube slide and I can hear Jesse’s cries. Then that one morphs into the second dream, and I’m suddenly at the scene of the crime, and I can’t figure out who I should help first.

Half the time, I pick Scott. I use SpongeBob SquarePants Band-Aids to try to stop his bleeding, and no matter how many I use, the blood keeps pouring out of his chest.

Half the time, I pick Jesse. A piece of my brother’s head lies on the corridor floor, by a bank of lockers. It’s a neat break, like a piece from a porcelain doll. I gently pick it up. I line up the piece of his head that I’ve found with the part that is still on his body, trying not to look at his brain, which is on full display. Then I pull out a bottle of glue and glue my brother back together.

“Thanks,” Jesse says with a smile, “You’re not such a worthless turd after all.”

Then his smile falters because the glue doesn’t hold. It’s like the nightmare version of “Humpty Dumpty.”

At the end of Home Ec today, Mrs. Bardus announced that we would be starting a new unit next week. “Cooking and nutrition,” she said. “There aren’t enough cooking stations for you to work on your own.”

I knew what she was going to say next, and I dreaded it. I tried to adopt a nonchalant, preoccupied look as she said, “Please pick a partner. Let me know who you’re working with on your way out.”

As the new kid, I knew my status. I was on the lowest rung of the ladder. So I waited patiently, figuring that when the other kids were paired off, I’d get the person on the second-lowest rung. My money was on Paula Peters. She’s super shy, and her shoulders always have a dusting of dandruff. But she was snapped up right away by the girl sitting next to her.

Then I noticed that I wasn’t the only one aiming for a nonchalant, preoccupied look. Alberta was, too. She tugged awkwardly on the sleeve of her oversized man’s suit jacket, which she wore over a knee-length T-shirt and a pair of thick red-and-black polka-dot tights. She wasn’t approaching anyone, and no one was approaching her.

This surprised me. I’d just assumed she had a ton of friends.

Kids were pairing off fast. And I must have had a
temporary brain fart because I suddenly heard myself saying, “Alberta, would you be my partner?”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatevs.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Duh.”

“Would you just say yes or no?”

“God! Yes, okay? Quit bugging me.”

Rude.

We wrote haiku in English today. They’re super-short poems, unrhymed – first line, five syllables; second line, seven syllables; third line, five syllables. Because it was Valentine’s Day, Mr. Schell asked us to write one that reflected the occasion. I got nine out of ten.

Here’s the one I didn’t submit.

I was at my locker this morning when Farley burst through the doors at the end of the hall. “Guess what! Guess what!” he shouted as he tore up to me, so that every single person in the corridor turned to look.

“What?”

“Guess!” He set his briefcase down. He was so excited, he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

“Farley. How can I possibly guess –”

“The GWF is coming to Seattle! The GWF is coming to Seattle!” Spittle was forming fast and furious at the corners of his mouth.

A tingle of excitement shot up my spine. “When?” I asked.

“April 30
^th
.”

I almost fell over. April 30
^th
was the anniversary of the night of the Other Thing. I swear I could suddenly smell plastic and pee.

“Tickets start at twenty bucks US, but I think we should try to get good seats, right?” Farley was saying. “The best seats!”

I couldn’t answer because my tongue felt thick and heavy in my mouth.

“Imagine seeing Vlad the Impaler live! Imagine seeing the Great Dane! Imagine seeing Vlad drop someone with his Double Ax Handle!” Farley linked his hands together and spun around, swinging his arms to demonstrate –

And hit Troy square in the back.

At first, Troy looked more shocked than angry. “What the hell, ’tard?”

’Tard. That was one of Scott’s favorite insults, too. It’s what he called my brother whenever he got tired of Ballsack.

Suddenly I was back on a sidewalk in downtown Port Salish, walking with Jesse. It was two summers ago, and Jesse was in a good mood because he’d just ordered a workout bench and weights from the Sears Outlet with money he’d saved from mowing lawns. I was in a good mood because I was only eleven going on twelve, and it was still fun to hang out downtown with my older brother.

“I’m going to start pumping iron,” he said to me. “I’m going to get muscles as big as the Great Dane’s.”

“Can I pump iron?”

“Maybe. Only if I’m around.” His mind was whirring. “I’m going to buy a punching bag next. Or maybe I’ll take karate lessons. I wonder how long it takes to get your black belt.”

“Why do you want your black belt?”

He didn’t answer my question. “Want to get some ice cream? My treat.”

I remember thinking what an awesome brother I had.

Then Scott drove by with some of his friends. Like everyone else, I knew about the nickname Scott had given Jesse. I knew Jesse hadn’t had a great first year in high school. But until that day, I didn’t understand how bad it was.

“Hey, it’s Jodie’s brother,” I said.

Jesse’s face went blank. He grabbed my hand and started walking faster. “Don’t make eye contact,” he said.

The car slowed down. Then Scott yelled out the passenger window, “Hey, Jesse! Ya ’tard!” Something came sailing out the window. It was a half-full can of Coke, aimed at Jesse’s head.

The can just missed its target. It landed on the sidewalk in front of us. Coke splashed onto Jesse’s pants as the car squealed away.

We didn’t go for ice cream. We just walked straight home. I remember that Jesse was really embarrassed. And I remember that I was embarrassed, too, because I suddenly
knew with total certainty that my brother was not cool. My brother was the kid the other kids made fun of.

I think that was the day I stopped looking up to him. I think that was the day I started to feel a little bit ashamed of him.

It was hard to write those last two sentences.

Anyway.

I’d buried that memory really deep. So the fact that it was playing itself out in my head all of a sudden, in full Technicolor, really knocked the wind out of me, and maybe that’s why I didn’t try to stop what happened next. Troy grabbed Farley and got his buddy, the one named Mike, to hold open Farley’s locker door. “You ever touch me again, Slant-Eyes, you are dead.” Farley was squirming and shouting, “It was an accident! I swear!”

Troy shoved Farley into his locker. Mike slammed the door shut. Farley kept shouting; it was just a little more muffled. The one named Josh clicked Farley’s lock into place. Then the three of them sauntered away, laughing.

I’ve seen kids get stuffed into lockers on TV shows and in movies, but never in real life. It didn’t look as funny in real life.

“99-10-12!” Farley yelled through the slats in the door. “99-10-12!”

It took me a few seconds to realize he was shouting his locker combination. I finally unfroze and spun his lock around. I yanked open the door. Farley stepped out, adjusting his glasses.