The House of Tomorrow (26 page)

“I don’t believe this. What a betrayal. What a supreme fucking betrayal. I’m the one who saved you, Sebastian,” he said, “if you don’t remember. Not her.”

Everyone in the room was listening now.

“I’m the reason you’re in an awesome band. I’m the reason you have a home right now. You were just some freak from a dome! And now you choose Meredith. What were you doing the other night when you were supposed to be upstairs, huh? I trusted you, you Judas!”

Jared was walking away now. His mother tried to stop him, but he shrugged off her hand and walked right out of the Recreation Room. He turned around one last time before leaving. “Oh,” he said. “And you’re completely out of the band.”

He slammed the door behind him. Once he disappeared, every pair of eyes in the room turned toward me at once. Janice stood, flabbergasted. Meredith looked surprisingly calm. Finally, the small girl who had fastened the blindfold to Meredith spoke up.

“What band?” she asked me.

The whole Youth Group waited for an answer.

“Jared and I are in a band,” I said.

“You mean you
were
in a band
,
” said the first beam-walker.

“Correct,” I said.

“I didn’t know you were musicians,” said the girl.

I watched the doorway where Jared had stood only seconds ago.

“We’re not,” I said. “We’re The Rash.”

THE MEETING ENDED EARLY. JUST LIKE THE PREVIOUS one. Another Youth Group spoiled. A team of helpers dismantled the beam, and everyone left without a post-activity discussion. A tin of oatmeal-raisin cookies sat on a table unopened.

“Any idea where he went?”

I turned around to find Janice behind me.

“Mrs. Whitcomb,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”

She closed her eyes and didn’t respond for a moment. Then she sat down on the gray folding table. She tore open the plastic band around the tin of cookies and set it aside. “Of course,” she said, selecting a cookie. “Just like you didn’t intend to steal an instrument from this church. It’s interesting what we intend to happen and what actually happens.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve worked here for four years,” she said. “I have every church possession memorized. You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

“Why didn’t you mention anything?”

She took a bite of her cookie and wiped some crumbs from her lips.

“I’m considering it a loan,” she said, mouth full.

“A loan.”

“Sebastian,” she said, “it is a mother’s destiny to be lied to. Do you realize that? People lie to their mothers. That’s the way the world works.”

I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

“I lied to my mother. Jared lies to me at least once a day. I don’t know what he lies about, but I can see it in his face.”

She grabbed another cookie from the tin. “Here,” she said, holding it out.

I took it, and watched the crumbs fall to the carpet.

“He’s all I think about,” she said. “It’s not healthy. I know that. I try to turn it off, but it’s impossible. From the time when I wake up in the morning to when I go to bed, I think about everything that’s going on with him. I scan him for symptoms. I try to judge his mood, his social progress. Everything. I know it’s unfair to Meredith.”

“And to yourself,” I said.

She took another bite and raised her eyebrows.

“And that,” she said.

She looked down at the disassembled balance beam.

“It was so much easier when they were babies. I could handle that. It was so simple. There’s this little person, and you just have to hold it, and feed it, and change its diapers. And you can even do other things when it goes to bed.”

“It?” I asked.

She smiled. “That’s the way I used to think of Meredith and Jared when they were babies. Just tiny things. Its. I was terrified of being a mother both times. I felt like I was too young. Now I see how easy I had it. I still had room to think about other things back then. I still thought about myself.”

I took a bite of my cookie. It was hard as a rock.

“Now,” said Janice. She waved her arm over the room. “Now I have this.”

She hopped off the table like a child, and pushed her hair over her ears.

“I hate to break it to you, but it’s not what I dreamed of.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It just felt good to be a part of something after Jared’s illness. And I can teach here. I know it’s not the same as being a real teacher but . . . you know. It’s something.”

She looked out into the hall. “You can borrow the guitar, Sebastian,” she said. “Just keep an eye on him for me. Can you do that?”

I chewed another bite of cookie, swallowing what felt like sand.

“Now go look around the church,” she said. “I’ll check outside.”

She waited for me to catch up to her and we walked side by side for a few steps. She put her arm around me, for only a split second really. Then she removed it and we split paths. I headed into the hallways of Immanuel and Janice walked outside without her coat, a half-eaten cookie still in her hand.

Around the children’s classrooms, I felt that inexplicable sense of trepidation creep back into my body. God was in every church. That’s what Janice had said at Youth Group. I couldn’t stop wondering: if he’s here, where is he hiding? I looked in the small window of each classroom door, half expecting to see the Holy Spirit, floating around over a bulletin board. But all I could see was darkness.

I thought about the band while I wandered the short hallways. I wanted to tell Jared that he couldn’t make decisions for both of us. But I knew better. It was his band. He needed me, but he could find someone else if he ever dared to make another friend. I started singing “Stupid School” to myself as I wandered, but I couldn’t get the tune right.

“Why, teacher, why,”
I sang out.

My voice was still soft and unsteady.

“Why, teacher, why!”
I tried, louder.

“Not here,” said Meredith.

I looked behind me in the hall. There was nobody there.

“Hello,” I yelled. “Meredith?”

Next to me was the boys’ bathroom. I heard Meredith’s voice again, quieter this time. “I said you can’t do this here,” she said.

She was in the bathroom. With a guy. My whole body sank. I took two steps to the door. I inched it open just enough to look through. I saw her standing up over somebody. She met my eyes and took a step to the side. It was Jared. He was breathing heavily, taking a drink out of a small wax cup.

“You need to get up,” said Meredith. “I’ll help you to the van.”

“Give me a minute, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

Her voice was soft and composed. I’d never heard her speak that way to Jared before. She reached down and pushed the hair out of his eyes. He didn’t protest.

“Jared . . .” I said. I walked inside.

“Not now, Judas,” he said. He sipped loudly.

“I’ve cleared up our little misunderstanding,” said Meredith. “We need you to go get Mom.”

“Mom?” I said.

“Janice,” said Meredith.

“Meredith doesn’t want your bod, Sebastian,” said Jared. “It’s the sad truth. You’re too skinny. Not her type. There will be no”—he burped—“romancing in the near future.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Meredith looked at me severely, making any possible argument on my part irrelevant.

“I don’t see you moving,” she said. “Someone needs to get Janice.”

Jared looked up at me for the first time.

“I think I’m having a rejection,” he said.

I stared dumbstruck.

“Fine,” said Meredith. “I’m going. You stay here, Sebastian. Just sit with him. Get him anything he needs!”

She cruised by me and started into a run by the time she reached the door. She swung it open and was gone in seconds. Jared handed me his empty cup and I filled it with cold water from the tap. The fluorescent lights above reflected off the laminate floor.

“What happens when you have a rejection?” I asked.

“Your body goes after the new organ. It involves the immune response. Now just sit down and shut up,” he said.

He was shivering a little now, breaking out in a cold sweat. He removed his glasses and stuck them in his pocket. His eyes looked much smaller.

“Actually,” he said, “I changed my mind. Talk to me.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything,” he said.

“Everything I know about is boring,” I said.

“It’s okay. You’re a boring person. Just talk.”

He smiled with his jaw clenched. And I suddenly remembered something and stuck my hand in my back pocket. I was wearing the same pants from the night in the dome, and right where I left them were the photographs I had removed from Nana’s album. There were three in total, each one discolored and faded.

“Look,” I said. “I found some pictures in the dome.”

I handed him one of the photos.

“Who are those people?” he said. “Nineteen eighties porno stars?”

I snatched it back immediately.

“Okay,” he said, trembling. “I didn’t mean it. Let me see. Give it back.”

He took the picture again and looked closely at it.

“These are your parents, aren’t they?” he said.

He held up the first shot. It was a picture that had been taken outside in the backyard of our old ranch home in a small town east of North Branch. My parents were standing beside a tree. It was the only tree in the front yard. My dad wore a shirt with a V-neck and his chest hair came out in dark tufts. He had a long mustache and a pair of caramel-tinted sunglasses on. My mother stood next to him in a strapless dress, looking caught by surprise. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, even in the weathered picture.

“My mom used to lift me up to the little perch in the tree,” I said. “She’d hold me up there long enough to get a look, then I’d scream and she’d put me back down.”

“Did your grandmother tell you that?” asked Jared.

“No,” I said. “I remember.”

I flipped to the next shot. They were sitting on the lawn, on a red-and-blue-checked blanket. “My dad mowed the lawn with a pair of gardening shears. It was so small he could accomplish the entire task by hand. In the summer, there were fireworks in the park down the street. We could see them from our patch of yard.”

I moved to the third shot. My parents were lying on a double bed and a baby was curled up asleep between them. The baby was me.

“What’s that thing?” said Jared.

He laughed. Then he stood up and ducked quickly into a stall. He heaved and I heard his vomit land in the toilet bowl.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Man,” he said. “There’s something about Youth Group. It just has this effect on me every damn time.”

He chuckled to himself and then threw up again. I looked down at the picture of myself as an infant while I waited for Jared. My father’s hand was holding on to my bare foot. His thumb was pressed against my big toe. He was kissing the back of my shirt.

“Hey,” said Jared.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Your mom was pretty,” he said.

I looked at her, lying next to me in the photo. She was smiling. Her eyes were closed this time. “Thanks,” I said.

“Can I tell you something,” Jared said. “A secret.”

I didn’t answer him. My eyes were locked on the picture.

“I haven’t been taking my medicine,” he said.

My eyes leaped up.

“What?” I yelled.

I felt my mouth go dry. He heaved again.

“What do you mean, Jared? Today?”

I stood up and rushed to the door of the stall. And that was the moment Janice and Meredith returned. They burst through the door, Meredith first. Both of them looked at me like I’d done something to Jared. I just pointed toward the toilet and stepped out of their way. My face must have said everything. They rushed past me, straight to the stall door. On the way, Janice knocked the photos from my hand with her elbow, and they whisked into the air. I tried for one moment to catch them, but they all went in different directions, and I was left standing, looking at my parents on the floor.

“Jared,” said Meredith. “Keep your eyes open!”

On my knees, I peered through the stall door and saw Meredith holding him like a doll. Her inky eye makeup was running down the side of her face. She kissed Jared’s wet hair.

“Pick him up,” said Janice.

She turned around. “Sebastian,” she said.” Please. We need you!”

I managed to grab only the photo of myself as a baby. Then I ran to the bathroom stall and picked up Jared’s legs. The soles of his canvas sneakers brushed across my chest. He was unconscious, humming something to himself. What was he humming? His laces were untied. I thought his shoes might fall off. I watched them carefully. We all started running. I recognized the tune he was mumbling just as we made it to the van: “Teenagers from Mars.”