Jon picked up the phone as it rang for the seventh time, eyes fixed not on the receiver he was lifting up but the video cassette—once again, nothing but a video cassette—resting on the floor, just where he had dropped it when the phone rang.
“ . . . uh,” Jon said, suddenly unable to remember the word hello. “Um . . . ”
“Jon? Is that you? Are you still up? Did I wake you up?” it was Megan. There was a clear tremor in her voice. She was upset about something. Of course she was, why else would she be calling Jon at eleven o’clock at night? “Jon?”
“Yeah. Here. Just. Uh.” Words didn’t want to connect and come out of his mouth. What should he tell her? That he was asleep? That his mom was home? That he was playing video games? Or that the ghost of Dr. Bernhard had sent himself to Jon in the form of a possessed video cassette?
Amazingly, Jon found himself wishing he was not having to have this conversation right now.
“Jon, can I come over? I know it’s late, I just need to get out of here. Mom and Larry are just . . . they’re going to kill each other. I can’t take it. I’m sick of it. I just want to get out.”
“I . . . “ Jon started. Then, he couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth next. “This isn’t really a good time.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. There was some vague awareness in the back of Jon’s head that Megan wasn’t stupid, and had a good idea of just how bad a thing Jon had for her. And “no, don’t come over to my house late at night where we will be all alone together” was not the answer she was expecting. In fact, it wasn’t the answer, under any circumstances, he would have expected to give. But, there it was. “Maybe tomorrow?” he followed up, hopefully.
“Oh God, oh god,” Megan almost sobbed. “Oh God. I can't call John—the other John. His parents would kill both of us. I can’t call my cousin Colleen, she’s out of town. Oh God. I can’t take this any more. I wish I had a gun. I wish I had a gun.”
“Start walking, I’ll meet you,” Jon said, reversing himself. First, no matter what this thing was, he couldn’t do that to her. Second, he couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this. To maybe spend the night alone with Megan? Unless she started spitting sparks and unfolding secret panels when he touched her, he couldn’t miss that. Great danger or not, the tape could wait.
So, what about the tape? Did he tell Megan about the video cassette? Should he show her? Was it dangerous? Was it really from Dr. Bernhard? Was the old coot really dead? Even if it was from him, couldn’t it still be dangerous? How well did he really know the old guy? He pushed at the video cassette with his foot. Apparently, he hadn’t known him very well at all, Jon thought. I am afraid you are in tremendous danger, the head had said. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.
Boy, that didn’t sound good.
“Oh God, thank you, Jon. Thank you. I’ve got to get out of here.” Jon could now make out noises behind Megan’s voice. Yelling. Loud yelling. Saying, from what little he could make out, some truly terrible things. Thank you, God, I’ve just got my mom, Jon thought. And she’s usually not even home.
“I’ll see you in a few minutes. I’m out of here now.” There was a click of the receiver from her end, and Jon put the phone down. He shook his head. He hadn’t been home from school twelve hours yet, and already it looked like summer was going to be something very different from what he had been anticipating. I am afraid you are in tremendous danger. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it.
Jon grabbed the tongs, and carried the video cassette back to his room. On the off chance his mom showed up while he was out, it would probably be best not to have the tape lying there where she might pick it up. Then, he put the tongs and the oven mitts back in the kitchen. He grabbed his key and ran out the door, slamming it behind him.
It was a beautiful night. The evening air was cool and the breeze was blowing. The sky was clear, and the moon was a brilliant white. A million stars sparkled against the black of space. The wind smelled like summer. The leaves rustled in the trees—it was the sound of summer. The sound of the world talking to him. And Megan was on her way to meet him.
That, and the old guy he’d hung around with some and who loaned him some books had sent him some sort of possessed video cassette. Which had warned him that he was in tremendous danger.
And she’s going to be, too, Jon’s mind told him. Danger you’re going to put her in.
Jon turned the corner and walked briskly towards Avalon, the street he’d probably end up meeting Megan on. Well, what was he supposed to do? Tell her she had no place to go and he could do nothing for her while her parents were threatening to kill each other? No, no, no, that didn’t work. He’d stick the video cassette in his closet, and that would be it until she left. She didn’t have to know, and he could get back to it sometime in the morning, after she went home. In the meantime, she might be staying the night. With him. Alone. How cool was that?
Jon looked at the houses as he passed by, mostly smaller one story houses but also some larger two-story homes. Dr. Bernhard’s house was the other way down Avalon. Don’t you dare go to that house, Jon’s mind almost screamed at him. Don’t even think about it!
No, no, no. He wasn’t going to go to his house. It’s being watched, he thought. They’re watching it.
Okay. That was enough. He wasn’t going to go to the house. He wasn’t going to tell Megan about the video cassette. He’d investigate the video cassette further in the morning, but that was it. He wasn’t going to go to Bernhard’s house. Especially if he really was dead, that’d just be creepy. Hopefully the video tape—or, he thought giddily, Dr. Bernhard’s translucent, disembodied head—would shed some light on what danger, beyond being sent to a mental institution, he was actually in.
He could make out another figure a block away, coming toward him. As they approached each other, it became clear it was Megan. She picked up speed as they got closer, and Jon couldn’t help but notice how her breasts bounced under her t-shirt. She’s not wearing a bra, he thought. Holy shit, no bra! And she had to know what Jon was seeing as she was running toward him. Had to.
He picked up his pace a little, too, but mostly was transfixed by the image of Megan, bathed in the glow of the yellow-orange street light above her, the wind blowing her long, auburn hair as she moved toward him. Suddenly, he panicked. Should I just stop? Should I hug her? Should we shake hands? They had never really hugged, after all, and he didn’t want to do anything stupid or awkward.
Megan flew into him, almost knocking him down, and threw her arms around his neck, pressing her face against his chest. He could feel her nose on his collar bone. He could feel her hot breath through the thin fabric of his shirt. Her chest was heaving, breasts pressing against his ribs. Well, that solves that, he thought.
She also smelled like someone had poured a beer on her head. And that explains that, he thought. Megan had alluded to the amount of beer and liquor her parents kept in the house, and how sometimes it was the only way she could deal with them. She had clearly been dealing with them a lot, this evening.
“Thank you, Jon. Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do right now if you hadn’t said yes.” Her voice was muffled as she talked into his shirt. He could feel the breath of every word. Her hair was in his face. It was a beautiful reddish brown, and almost glimmered under the yellow of the street lights, though it wasn’t quite as soft as he had imagined. It was actually a little stiff, like extremely thin strands of straw. And, boy, did she smell like beer. Beer and cigarettes. The flowers and rain smell she usually had at school had been smothered. Completely. Not quite his fantasy. But, he thought, a lot closer to his fantasy than he had any right to expect to come.
Again, he thanked God that he had a single mom who let him be a latchkey kid. Sometimes very late into the night. If the situation had been different, and Megan had actually been able to call Johnny Two and go see him, that’s probably what she would have done. Or, if she had been able to call any of the other guys she hung around with at school she would have, because hang around with them she did. In two years, when they were all in high school and the other boys had cars and late night curfews, would Megan Kincaid be in Jon Edmonds’ arms, pressing her breasts against him, her hot breath against his skin? Not frickin’ likely.
After a few moments, even the smell of beer and cigarettes didn’t seem so bad.
Megan lifted her head, her eyelids heavy, her eyes red. She had clearly been crying. She was clearly drunk. She parted her lips and for one brief moment, Jon thought she was going to kiss him. His mouth went dry and his heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t brushed his teeth since that morning! His breath had to be terrible. And would she kiss with her tongue? That had always been his fantasy, but suddenly the idea was terrifying. He didn’t know what you were supposed to do with your tongue in another person’s mouth. What was the etiquette? Should the boy or the girl go first?
“You are a sweetheart, you really are,” she said, breaking away. No kissing. He had read that wrong. Bizarrely, Jon found himself relieved. “I don’t know what I would have done. If I had to stay another minute. I’d rather kill myself. I’d rather die.”
“Christ, Megan, don’t say that. Move out or run away or something. Don’t talk like that. You’re the most wonderful person I know.”
“Aw, Jeeze, Jon, you’re so sweet,” Megan replied, pinching Jon’s cheek. Hard. From heaving breasts and her nuzzling her head in the hollow of his neck to getting pinched on the cheek. He was strangely relieved about not having to kiss her, but moving from passionate embrace to getting a pat on the head like a precocious nephew was not the right direction.
“You’re so lucky. Just your mom. And she’s gone all the time.” They started walking back towards Jon’s house. “My folks. Sometimes I wish they were dead. And I hate it. I hate it that I think like that. I hate it that they make me think like that. I wish they’d get a divorce.”
Jon nodded. They both had friends with good families. Johnny Two’s parents had been married for twenty years. They were pretty strict on him—about where he went, when he had to go to bed, when he had to do his homework and so on. But they loved him, and they got along with each other. Jon was fine with just having half a parent; the alternative, gauging from both the behavior of his father and the sorts of people his mom would occasionally bring home after they had been dating for a while—or, sometimes, since that afternoon—would have been much worse. Megan’s family was a pretty good example of “much worse”. Sometimes he envied the whole family-sits-down-to-dinner” gig that Johnny Two had. How much time they invested into holidays and family vacations. How much time they all spent together. But so much better to live without that than to live with what Megan had.
“They tell me they stay together for me and Carla but it’s not for us. It's not for me. I think they hate me. They hate me and they don’t know they hate me. Do you know what I mean?” Megan took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. They were Marlboro Lights. At Jefferson Middle School, Marlboro Lights were the cigarette of choice. Megan took one and held the pack out to Jon. He really didn’t smoke, but he didn’t want to get another pinch on the cheek as if he were a small, precocious child. He took a cigarette. Megan took out a Bic lighter, and, hand cupped around the flame, expertly lit her cigarette as the wind kicked up.
“Here,” she said, taking Jon’s cigarette and lighting it from her own. She puffed on it, and handed it back to him. Jon put the cigarette into his mouth. It seemed like something intimate had just happened between them, but he wasn’t quite sure what. Simpler than kissing, though.
“Shit,” Jon said, shaking his head sympathetically. If you didn’t know what to say, a rueful shit, with a little sympathetic head shaking, could fill in the gaps nicely.
“Shit is right. My life is shit. That house is shit. They are so much shit.” The tremor was back in her voice. “So much bullshit.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke into the night air. Jon stuck to short little puffs, trying not to cough.
“I’ve got to get out of there. I’m not going to make it through the summer. I can’t do another summer. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You can come over to my house, whenever. Sorry about tonight, I was just busy when you called and . . . I didn’t mean to sound like I was trying to blow you off.”
“Shit, Johnny. You guys are so good to me. I got no right to expect you to come running to meet me in the middle of the night or let me stay at your house.” Jon watched as she took another deep drag on her cigarette. He wondered how such a beautiful girl—such a beautiful woman—could say something like that and seriously mean it. Especially in that light blue t-shirt and no bra. Who wouldn’t run to meet her in the middle of the night? And, good Lord, if it was an option, what red-blooded American male wouldn’t let her stay at his house? He just hadn’t quite been himself when she called.
“And I’m sorry I called you out of the blue like that.” She shrugged, her breasts following her shoulders, pulling against the fabric of her t-shirt. “Hey, at least I’m not wearing a bra, huh?”
Jon stopped in his tracks. He blushed furiously. He had been staring at her chest. And he was busted. He hadn’t meant to, it had just sort of happened. “I—uh—I was—I was—” he stuttered.
“Damn, I’ve never seen anybody turn that red.” She laughed, the first time he had heard her do it in weeks. “You’re ears are just red as tomatoes.” She laughed again. “I know I’ve got boobs. It’s okay. Most girls do. Just remember,” she continued, taking his chin in the hand that was also holding her cigarette and pulling his head up, “the face is up here. This is the part—” She hiccupped. “This is the part you talk to.”
She slurred the last part, her eye lids drooping heavily. Yes, her face was up there, and it was clearly drunk. Maybe she won’t remember, he thought hopefully, still red as a beet.
She put her cigarette in her mouth, and they started walking again. “You’re cuter than I remember,” she said. “Come on, hold my hand, you pervert,” Jon felt his cheeks flush again, as she grabbed his hand. She really did seem to be taking it in stride, but he couldn’t help feeling like a creep.
She swung their hands back and forth dramatically while flipping her cigarette between thumb and forefinger with the other, occasionally taking a puff as they walked. “Yeah, I know I’ve got big boobs,” Megan said, nonchalantly. “My mom has ‘em. Her mom had ‘em. I’m supposed to be in tenth grade. I got held back in sixth grade because the school messed something up, and my parents—hell, they wouldn’t think of trying to fix it. So, I did sixth grade twice.”
Jon nodded. He knew that part. He took a drag on his cigarette. A deep one this time. He coughed, but not badly.
“Don’t kill yourself there, smokestack,” she said. “You know, you guys. You and the other John. You’re just the best. You guys love me more than my mom and dad ever did. Why is that? Why do people I meet at school care about me and my own parents don’t? Do I suck that bad?”
“I don’t know,” Jon said, thankful the conversation was going to move away from Megan’s boobs. She had seemed all right with it, but he was still mortified that he had been standing there, staring at her chest. Something was definitely haywire with the teenage hormones. This had to be abnormal or something. “Some people are just stupid. And sometimes those stupid people are our parents. Maybe it’s just luck. John—the other John—has good parents. Yours suck. My mom is all right and my dad stinks, but he’s on the other side of the country. It’s not just you.”
“I dunno. It’s just so hard to know, when you’re in it everyday. Sometimes it sure feels like me.”
They turned the corner off Avalon onto Cheshire. Jon’s house was just three houses down. And his mom’s blue Dodge Diplomat was parked in the driveway.
Megan blanched. “Oh no.” She took a drag off her cigarette, the tremor back in her voice. “Oh God.” She stared and his mom’s car like she had wandered into a graveyard and stumbled across and open grave with her name on the marker. “What do I do now?” she whispered. Her lower lip trembled.
Jon thought for a moment. “I don’t think she’d call your parents,” he said, and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t. But she wouldn’t, say, let them stay in his room alone all night, either. “But better safe than sorry,” he continued. “Go around to the back. You’ll have to get through the bushes and they are kind of prickly but I’ll just open the window and let you in. I gotta let mom yell at me for being out this late, then she’ll go to bed and she’ll be out of it. She’s got a yoga class or something on Saturdays—I don’t ever see her in the mornings. She doesn’t make breakfast or anything.”
Megan nodded, taking another drag off her cigarette, but she still looked nervous. “Cool,” she said. “You’re sure, right? I don’t want her finding me and calling me parents. I’ll sleep outside—”
“No, no, she’ll just go to bed and that will be it. She, like, never comes in my room. She hates how messy it is. Oh, yeah, sorry, my room is a mess.”
“Oh, hell then, I’m going home,” Megan laughed. Still, she looked nervous. Her eyes were wide open and aware. It was clear, again, why she had picked Jon to call instead of anybody else. Because Jon was the only person she knew with almost no parental issues. Thanks to his sister’s summer classes, no sibling issues either; those could often be worse than parents. But, that was why Megan had chosen him for this late night rendezvous. That, and she didn’t completely hate him.
He nudged her towards the back gate as they approached his house, but she was still staring at the car, eyes clear and alert and not even a glimmer of a smile.
Man, Jon thought. Her parents are such a mess she hates the very idea of parents. Of any parent. Even Jon’s mom, who was about as innocuous as they came. “Just wait by my window. Give me, like, ten minutes. At the most.”
“’kay,” Megan said. “Don’t leave me out here all night.”
“No way,” Jon said, and, seeing her turn cautiously around the corner in the darkness of their postage stamp of a back yard, Jon went to the front door and pushed it open, breathing heavily. “Mom!” he yelled. “Thank God!”
Doreen Edmonds dropped her books. Her blond hair was teased in the front and feathered in the back. It looked to Jon like she had maybe sprayed glitter in it. She had on purple eye shadow. She was wearing four fat bracelets around each wrist and huge golden hoop earrings. She had her long white Benneton sweater over her blue jean miniskirt and orange blouse. She was dressed like the girls at Jefferson Middle School. Aw, Mom, come on. Jon thought. What are you going to do next? Put Quiet Riot posters up in your room? You’re forty frickin’ years old.
Doreen looked up at Jon, startled. Her lips were bright red and her mascara was running. Another one of those nights, apparently. Instead of picking up her books—she had, no doubt, gone out after class with somebody, again, and it hadn’t worked out—she pulled the sweater around her. For the same reason she had it on in the first place. Jon never gave her shit, but he could tell she didn’t want him to see her dressing up like she was sixteen years old and desperate.
If you’re ashamed of what you’re doing, what kind of guy do you think is going to go for that? Jon asked in his head. But he thought he probably knew the answer. Somebody like Jackson Edmonds, the sperm donor that had provided the necessary fertilization for Stacey and Jon in first place. That’s who. Fortunately for Jon, guys like Jackson Edmonds were attracted to the Doreen Edmonds of the world when they were twenty years old, not when they were forty. No matter how they dressed. Not one of her boyfriends had lasted more than four months in Jon’s entire life. Given what he had seen of them, John judged that to be a good thing.
“Jon, where were you?” Doreen asked, with an almost white-nuckled grip on her sweater. “You know I don’t like coming home and you’re not here.”
Jon was still breathing heavily. “Sorry—” He breathed in and out pointedly. “—mom. I—” In and out. “—I was programming on my computer and I heard a loud noise, like, five minutes—” Deep breath. “—five minutes ago.” In and out. “It was like a car crash. A skid and—” In and out. “—then a crash. And you weren’t home and I thought it—” Deep breath. Slow exhalation. “I don’t know what I thought. Just, you weren’t here and it was getting late and sometimes you’re tired when you’re driving home—” Deep breath. “--and it’s dangerous out on Friday nights. So I ran out to see and I couldn’t find anything, so I ran back—” one last deep breath. “—and you were home. I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh,” Doreen said. “That’s okay.” Now, she turned around and then bent over to pick up her books. She put her books back up on the side table near the door, and moved away from Jon, towards the living room area. She casually turned on the standing lamp in the corner and turned off the overhead lights.
“I guess you get scared too, sometimes.”
Oh, Mom, if you only knew the half of it. “Next time I should leave a note,” Jon said. “I was only out for five minutes. I know it was late, I just got worried. Paranoid, I guess. It’s stupid.”
“No, no,” Doreen said. “I worry about you, too, kid. I know I’m gone a lot. It’s just, being a single mother, having to pay all the bills, having to raise to kids—”
“Never getting paid your alimony,” Jon volunteered.
Doreen raised her hand, flipping it out at Jon, as if she were Vanna White introducing a new vowel. “Thank you! Barely get a dime. He doesn’t remember half the holidays. The few times he ever has shown up, it’s unannounced, out the blue–”
Doreen lurched over to Jon. She hugged him, awkwardly. Good Lord, he had thought Megan smelled like beer and cigarettes. Doreen smelled like she had taken a bath in cheap gin and rubbed dirty ashtrays in her hair. “Sorry, guy, I don’t need to be talking about your dad like that with you.” As if she hadn’t been talking about Jackson Edmonds exactly like that with Jon since Jon could remember. It was why Jon had brought it up—it was, nine times out of ten, a sure-fire way to direct attention off of himself and onto Jackson. “Anyway, it’s late, and I’ve got my business networking seminar tomorrow—”
“I know, I’m tired, too,” Jon said. “Mind if a listen to some music in my room for awhile? I don’t want to keep you up.”
“No, that’s fine, once I hit the sheets I’m dead to the world.” Doreen moved towards the bathroom. “Well, I’m going to shower. I’ve got yoga after the networking seminar, and then I’ve got to get to the grocery store, so I might not see you until tomorrow night. You want I should make you something for dinner?”
“Nah, I’m good. I’m going to hang out with Johnny Two tomorrow and we might get something to eat at the mall. Carla—you know, Megan’s sister—she might drive us.”
“Okay. Well, you be careful. I worry about you, kid.”
“I know you do, Mom. I’ll be careful, promise. ‘Night.”
“’Night.” Doreen disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door. A moment later, he heard the shower come on, pipes rattling and squealing. Plenty enough noise to mask getting Megan in through the window.
Jon drew a deep breath. Now, it was time to bring a real, live girl into his bedroom. Where she would probably stay. All night. Jon swallowed hard. In so many ways his life, which had never felt simple to him, seemed destined to become enormously, irreversibly more complicated over the next few days. And yet . . . would he throw the tape away and pretend he had never gotten it? Would he send Megan away, explaining he had more important things to do? That he had to keep his summer open for learning programming and playing video games?
I might have to forget about learning assembly language, he thought, looking at the TRS-80 Color Computer in front of the television. And then he went into his bedroom and closed the door.
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