#4books

“Well… I suppose you should come in,” Allison said, clasping her hands together and flashing a professional smile. “Put your bags down, you can unpack tomorrow. It’s already late.”

I put my suitcase down near the door. The room was painted dead white, and the carpet was the color of mush. I swallowed hard. “Thanks?”

“Okay, I can drop you off at a restaurant, or you can—” It suddenly turned over in her head that I had said something. “Excuse me?”

I glanced around, feeling dumb. “Thanks for letting me in your house.”

I didn’t feel like thanking her. I was uncomfortable and I wanted to run down the street behind the social worker. The whole setup looked empty, like someone just barely lived in it. The living room was one couch and a TV on the floor. The dining room was one folding table and one chair. There was a faint smell, something unpleasant under cheap air freshener, like a hospital.

Allison raised her eyebrows. “Well, aren’t you polite. I wouldn’t have thought it, looking at that scowl.”

I wasn’t scowling. “I’m not scowling!”

She scoffed and reached a hand out to touch me, but I stepped back. “Don’t touch the hair. ...Please,” I ground out, remembering that this person was now in charge of me.

It’s difficult to imagine how angry I was when I first met Allison, but I was. I was an asshole to most adults because most adults were assholes to me. She seemed nice, but in a long enough time frame, everyone’s an asshole.

Allison coughed politely. “Alright, easy. I’m going to lay down the rules of the house, and you’re going to listen.”

These are the rules you live by if you live in Dr. Allison’s house.

Allison can make up as many rules as she wants.

Don’t go in the basement. Allison works in the basement and she hates getting interrupted.

You sleep in the attic, because it’s far away from the basement. Do whatever you want in there as long as you keep it clean.

Allison is a terrible cook. Buy frozen dinners and learn how to cook for yourself. You can eat out on weekends.

Seriously, don’t go in the basement. Doesn’t matter if it sounds like she’s in trouble. She’s got it.

If you aren’t grounded, you can go out. Leave a note on the fridge, though.

I was leaning on the wall next to the door, and Allison was sitting on the couch. I didn’t want to sit on the couch. I wasn’t sure of my boundaries.

“So,” she continued. “It’s late. I can take you to a restaurant, or you can go to bed.”

I had spent all day sitting on a plane. I hadn’t had dinner.

Allison’s pickup truck was fading purple, and smells like cigarettes. She said it was secondhand. I believed her, because she didn’t seem like a smoker.

Neither of us talked in the truck. I was looking out the window the whole drive.

By fifteen, I’d assumed I knew everything there was to know about adults. Allison seemed like an upright, uptight woman—an unsentimental foster parent who only wanted that sweet, sweet government money. I felt done for already.

Going out of Mobile, I couldn’t see much, but I could hear the spray of water hitting the side of the causeway. We passed three or four elaborate-looking seafood restaurants, but they were nigh-empty. The problem, Dr. Allison said, is that it’s not close enough to the football field.

“They like football out here. Even in the summer, the high school football teams play, and because there’s not much else to do, other people will show up and watch. It’s novel, really.”

Meanwhile, I was sinking lower and lower. Allison had been introduced to me as some kind of scientist doing important robotics research. That sounded stressful—stress that could get taken out on me, if I wasn’t careful. I continued choking my words back, chewing on the little plastic bits of my hoodie strings.

She turned off the main road and into a series of cramped, winding roads through some kind of shopping outlet. We stopped in front of some restaurant with fading, flickering red block letters reading “Goose Palace.”

“Alright. Get yourself some dinner.”

It was nine at night, and I was standing in front of Goose Palace. For some reason, the place was packed with teenagers—I didn’t even think there were this many people in town. I could hear someone singing, muffled, “for he’s a jolly good fellow.” From inside, I could see sets of eyes staring at me.

“Where’d all these people come from?”

Allison raised her eyebrows, almost disapproving. “One of the football games just ended. I assumed you would like to be introduced to your peers. ...I could drive you home if you want.”

“No, no, it’s good! It’s good.”

Her expression was difficult to read, like most expressions. “Alright. I’ve got some business to attend to down at the lab, so I’ll be back in about an hour. Don’t be afraid to call.” She frowned, and I swallowed hard. “And get those strings out of your mouth.”

The purple pickup puttered out of the parking lot. I was left sputtering at my strings.

Goose Palace is an unstuffy, dark little Chinese restaurant, swarming with kids and lit with red neon signs. A bunch of whooping football players were loitering in one corner. It’s the town’s PG-13 biker bar.

A few big guys started murmuring as I came inside, saying stuff like “who’s this fucker” and “what does he want” and “when did Allison get a kid.” Was something wrong? A few continued looking out the window, their eyes following the pickup truck.

I really like that restaurant now, but I didn’t at the time, because half of the clientele was staring at me trying to figure out what kind of asshole I thought I was, and the other half was still yelling about football. So this was already a huge disaster.

But here’s the problem: I wasn’t raised in a barn. I wanted to wash my hands before I ate.

The booth I got ended up being really far away from the bathroom, so I had to muscle my way through the sweaty crowd to get to it. When I got inside the cramped bathroom, I splashed water in my face until I felt drowned enough to quit kicking myself.

My hand habitually went to my neck. I had a thing about taking my own pulse when I was anxious, and I would stand there for a minute, trying to bring myself down to a resting heart rate. In hindsight, it didn’t help much, since sometimes I got stressed trying to make myself stop stressing.

I was about to walk out the door when I realized there were splashing sounds in the room that weren’t me.

I turned around slowly. The stall behind me was locked, but I could hear laughter and bubbling noises in there. I glanced down. Four guys were in the stall, one of them on his knees in front of the toilet. Oh, fuck.

I knocked on the stall door. “You okay in there?”

They all went quiet, then I heard gasping. “Yeah, we’re fine, our friend here’s just sick, is all.”

One of them kicked toilet boy in the shin and whispered “tell him you’re fine, Jacob.” All I heard out of him was some wheezing and sputtering. I didn’t like this.

“I’m coming in there.”

“Oh no, you better be coming out! ...Wait.”

I stuck my legs under the stall door and pulled myself in.

Bad idea—I was now in a bathroom stall with three football players.

One of them screamed, and I heard the loud crack of my glasses breaking before I even knew what was happening. But that’s all I got, because somehow I had it in me to find and unlock the stall. As soon as the door opened, every attacker in the stall fucked off into the restaurant.

Still in shock, I turned and looked at toilet boy. He was still doubled over, coughing like a drowned rat. I gave him a good thump on the back. “You okay?”

He kept coughing, and I went to put a hand on his shoulder. He grabbed my wrist before I could do so. “I’m fine,” he said in the most gravelly, un-fine voice I’d ever heard. “I just need a moment.”

“...You don’t think they’re gonna come back?”

“I don’t suppose they’ll do anything to us—or you, at the very least… Anyone plumb crazy enough to crawl into a bathroom stall isn’t worth it to them.”

“Oh.” Well, if there was any chance that I could make up my bad impression, it was gone now. “Can I get you a paper towel… Jacob? It’s Jacob, right?”

Jacob coughed one last time and spit. “That’d be nice.”

I went and got him a big sheet of paper towel to dry his hair with, and offered him my hand. He took it and got up… and up… and up.

Now that I could get a good, blurry look at him and his jacket, I realized Jacob was also a football player.

I don’t know how I was looking at him, but it couldn’t have been a good look, because his ears went red. “Um… yeah,” he mumbled. He walked over to the mirror and started washing toilet water out of his hair. “I’m guessin’ you’re from Velma.”

“No, I’m from Chicago.”

“Chicago? What the hell’re you doin’ here?” Jacob sounded distinctly southern, in a way I’d later find I could never nail down for myself. I would always try to imitate him and he would just shake his head, saying I sounded like a white man with a stick up his ass.

“I’m, I’m moving in.”

“Hm. Your family’s here for Airbus?”

“Something like that.” I paused. “So…”

“It’s none of your business.”

“I wasn’t gonna ask.”

Jacob took the paper towel and started wiping his sopping wet face, dabbing at his bleeding lip. He was beat up, probably a lot worse than I was.

Just then, I got a text. Then I realized I couldn’t read it for shit.

My nose wasn’t broken when I was punched, but my glasses were a lost cause. They’d snapped at the bridge, and both lenses had been trampled by everyone who’d left the stall.

After a moment, Jacob stopped and looked at me. “I’m fine, dude. I can take it from here.”

“Uh, there’s actually something I want to ask you…”

“Well, spit it out, Chicago.”

“Can you read this?” I showed him my phone.

Jacob opened his mouth to say something, noticed the bits of my glasses strewn on the ground, then closed it. He squinted at the text. “It’s from… Dr. Allison. ‘Problem at the lab. Can you walk home? I’m going to be stuck here for a few hours.’”

“Shit, I can’t. I wouldn’t know where I’m going.”

“Is there someone else you can call?”

“No, it’s just me and Allison.” Jacob chewed his lip thoughtfully as I continued: “Do you know any local taxi companies—?”

“Do you want a ride?”

I paused for a while. I must have had a bad look again, because Jacob said: “It’s the least I can do, you know. Because you saved my ass.”

“I…” If I walked, then I would be in a strange neighborhood at night, without my glasses. Not to mention that I still had to get my dinner, and the football team would almost definitely jump me if I were alone. “Yeah, why not?”

We figured we were both hungry, and that nobody would bother us if we sat together. Jacob looked socially pathetic, but he was still a whole lot of dude, and I was sure I would be eternally branded the Crazy Toilet Guy™, but at least no one would fuck with me.

The ideal football player looks like an all-American boy. Jacob looked like somebody who mugged all-American boys in a dark alley. Maybe the black eye was part of it (lord knows how that happened), maybe the piercings was part of it (earrings, nose stud, the whole works), but mostly he was just moody-looking. If Allison thought I was scowling, she should have gotten a load of this guy.

“Nah, they were already staring when I first came in…” I was looking out the window, pretending not to notice the gawkers. The outlet looked creepy, though I imagine it looked better in daylight. I thought of the people who were whispering Allison’s name. “Does it have anything to do with Dr. Allison?”

Jacob jumped a little, as if stabbed. “Why’d you think that?”

“Well,  you seemed surprised when you read my texts. Come to think of it—thank you,” I said to the waitress, who put two drinks down. She, too, gave me a bit of a stink-eye. “—everyone seems to know who she is.”

Jacob took some sugar packets from the little tray on the table and started dumping them in his drink. I eyed the reddish-brown drinks cautiously—I had been getting my food while the waitress was at the booth, letting Jacob order drinks for both of us. He looked at me, lit up with curiosity. “What’s she to you?”

“Eh, she’s my mother,” I said evenly.

“You call your mother by her last name?”

“Fostered.”

“Oh. Like… real recently?”

“Yeah, how’d you guess?” I took a tiny sip of the drink. It already tasted like sugar. I couldn’t understand why Jacob was putting more in it.

“Sweet tea.”

“What?”

“The drinks. You were starin’ at ‘em like they were gonna bite you,” he chuckled, low. Masculine. I made a note to work on my laugh. “But Dr. Allison has a strange reputation in this town. We know maybe one thing about her, and it’s that she’s a doctor.”

“Robot scientist. Roboticist?”

“Really?”

“It’s what the social worker said.”

“Man, I knew she had to be doin’ somethin’ with all that sheet metal. My dad works at Lowe’s,” Jacob added. “Her neighbors swear up and down that she’s an organ trafficker.”

I picked at my dumplings uncomfortably—and there’s something strangely comforting about how, no matter where they are or what the sign says, Chinese restaurants will always serve dumplings. “Why?”

“Uh, foreign people showing up at her doorstep with briefcases. Strange noises from her house at night. General weirdness. But mostly because she don’t talk to anyone.”

“What, that’s an issue?”

“Ev’ryone knows ev’ryone in Cottonport. Nobody knows Allison—‘cept you, I suppose.” He got very quiet. “How is it?”

“The sweet tea, or Allison?”

“Both.”

“The tea’s sweet. Allison’s… I don’t know. I haven’t been there long enough to really have an opinion,” I admitted.

The waitress came back with the check and two fortune cookies. I was glad that I was at a buffet, otherwise she might’ve spat in my food. I looked over the restaurant again. The other teenagers had gotten bored of us, and instead, their eyes were on two women in suits speaking to the cashier. Local lesbians, I guessed.

I offered to pick up the check. At the same time, Jacob offered to pick up the check. “Dude, seriously, let me handle it, you’re already putting up with the town witch—”

“You were in a toilet when I met you, you don’t get to feel sorry for me—!”

“Lemme be nice to you!”

“Never!”

This was the first in what would prove to be a friendship full of arguments.

We ended up splitting it halfway. I still think I should have covered the whole check, especially since I got an extra box for Allison. Maybe if I gave her enough food she’d let me keep my kidneys.

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah, I’m awake.”

“You’ll have to tell me where to turn.”

Sitting in Jacob’s car was way more calming than I thought a ride with a stranger would be. It helps that his car looks like a mom car. You know those cars that you always see a million of at a carpool? That exact car.

I racked—wracked? Raked? I can never get those words straight—my brain, trying to remember where my house was. “Uh, turn left here.”

I’m not a fan of the suburbs at the best of times, but when I see a quiet neighborhood at night, my fight or flight instinct goes off. It was pitch dark, except maybe one or two streetlights. It was dark in Jacob’s car, too, but a nice dark. Allison’s takeout box burned in my lap. I hoped she liked fried rice.

Jacob kept driving down the winding roads as I tried to direct him. The poor guy, he was doing his best, but I wasn’t paying attention on my way in the first time. We were both thinking that we were lost but we were also both too busy wallowing in social anxiety to voice that.

We had been driving for about ten minutes when I looked at something on the side of the road and said “what’s that.”

At that point I knew we were Lost As Fuck, because this street had some odd houses. I knew what a McMansion looked like, but these weren’t really big enough to be mansions, they were just… Mc. But as much of a hot mess as these houses were, I was focusing on the moving light on top of the house.

“What’s what—wait,” Jacob said, slowing down. “What is that?”

It looked like somebody was waving a flashlight on the roof, though it was too dark for me to make out anything else. “Fuck if I know. You’ve got the good eyes.”

Jacob stopped the car and stared at the roof for a good moment. The syrupy light calmed down, apparently done with spinning around. “Is that—oh my god, it’s Rebecca!”

I squinted at the roof, still seeing nothing. “Who’s Rebecca?”

“The only person who’d climb onto a roof in the middle of the night, that’s who.” He covered his mouth, his eyebrows coming together. “Damn, what’s she even doing here?” He asked himself. “I thought her dad moved to Tacoma.”

Then the flashlight was aimed at the car. Jacob ducked like it was a gun. “Get down!”

I automatically bent over as far as the box would allow, and only afterwards did I realize I had no clue what this was about. “What? What’s going on?”

The beam was pointed through the car window. From the distance, I heard a girl shouting: “Jacob? Is that you?”

Jacob shushed me. “You can’t let her know I’m here!”

“I know you’re in there, silly, you left your headlights on!” Rebecca drawled. She also had an accent, but it was softer, I think? She sounded like that Gone With the Wind chick, which I think she’d find ironic.

Jacob groaned, sat up, and rolled down his window. “Don’t mind me, Rebecca, I’m just passin’ through!”

“Who’s that?”

“None of your business!” I peeked out the window, and immediately got a face full of light. “Hey! Don’t let her see you!”

“Oooooooooh! You got a boy in there!”

“No I don’t!”

I covered my eyes and squinted at the roof, but the nighttime was the wrong time this time. “Hey, roll down your window, stranger!” she shouted.

I looked to Jacob, but he had his head in his hands. I rolled the window down. Rebecca nodded her flashlight in approval. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, you don’t look familiar. Are you new in town?”

“Uh, yeah,” I called out.

“You want a brownie?”

“I… what?”

“I got some brownies, do you want a couple? Consider them a housewarming gift!”

“Do not,” Jacob hissed.

I was super confused now. “Hey, what’s up with this girl?” I asked Jacob.

“She’s just creepy. Don’t talk to her,” he whispered.

“I figured, she’s yelling at us from her roof. But how does she know who you are?”

“I was the top linebacker, a lot people know who I am.”

It didn’t explain the overly-familiar friendly rudeness, or how she knew what his truck looked like, or how he recognized her from so many yards away—but Jacob was close-lipped, and pumping him for answers would be stupid.

There was only one question that I could get a real straight answer on. “But does she have, like… drugs?”

“What? No!” Jacob sputtered. “...W—why? D’you want any?”

Hm, Rebecca was weird and possibly troubled. Sounded like my kind of company. So I grabbed some stuff and got out of the car. “What’re you doin’?!” Jacob demanded, getting out of the driver’s seat.

“Going to meet the crazy roof girl. Hold my box.”

“See, Jacob? Some people know how to have a good time,” Rebecca chortled.

“You mind your own goddamn business, Rebecca!” Jacob yelled at the roof.

“There’s a ladder by the wall here,” she continued, pointing her flashlight at a spot on the grass. “You don’t have to stay, you can just grab you a brownie.”

I started towards the spot, only to be stopped in my tracks. I turned and saw Jacob holding the hood of my sweatshirt. “What are you doing?!”

“What are you doin’? This ain’t your house! We’re trespassing,” he snapped. “You know what could happen? We could get arrested!”

“Bad things can happen every day, you ding-dong. I could get herpes every time I walk outside! That doesn’t stop me from living my life!”

“That ain’t how herpes works.”

“You don’t know what I do in my free time!” I spotted the shape of a ladder leaning against the building. Great!

I think a lot about that ladder. I guess Rebecca put it there, but she could have gone out the window to get on the roof. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have taken her offer. How different would my life turn out if I had?

Anyway:

I started climbing up the ladder, and Jacob was basically scurrying behind me. “If you don’t come down from there, you’re gonna be walkin’ home!”

“Cool.”

I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined it was turning red. “Fine! Stay here, see if I care!”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m drivin’ off, and you’re either gettin’ arrested or draggin’ yourself into one of Rebecca’s dumb shenanigans! I’m tired of enablin’ ev’ry mildly quirky boy that says hello to me!”

“Then drive off.”

“I am, asshole! Good evenin’!”

I heard him storming off behind me. He wouldn’t be gone for long, I had his car keys.