This Beautiful Life (16 page)

Jake wanted to point out the flyers to Henry but was afraid to say anything. Dr. Zizmor smiled rigidly down at him from above Henry's head. Dr. Zizmor's eyes were too small, like slits. The skin beneath his brows but above his lids hung down over them like theatrical drapes. If he was such an expert, couldn't he tighten that?

“Whoa,” said Henry when he saw Jake. “Dude, check out your coiffure.”

Jake's hand went up instinctively to feel his buzz cut. He'd forgotten about his hair. Every time he looked in the mirror he didn't recognize himself, for about a million reasons, this being one of them. Also, the fact that the past two weeks had completely altered him, a little like psychic plastic surgery.

That, too.

“Henry,” Jake said.

“Dude,” said Henry.

The subway took off and Henry surfed the center of the car. James sat down across from Jake and a little to the right. His backpack sprawled out on the seat next to him.

“I'm sorry,” Jake said. “I didn't know. I should have realized, but I didn't. I'm an idiot,” he said. His voice was kind of shaking when he said it.

He'd been rehearsing this for some time in his room. It was like the minute he saw Henry, he plugged himself in.

“You are an idiot,” Henry said.

Henry looked at his brother, then back to Jake. Then back to James.

James said, “You forwarded it. You all did, Hen. For all their trash talk, Luke and McHenry, too. I'm the only guy smart enough to do nothing.”

Henry recoiled a little at this; more than anything, he hated to have his intelligence insulted.

“Nothing, but jack off to it,” said Henry.

James gave Henry the finger.

“I'm not the pedophile in the family,” said James.

“Excuse me, but the taker of
my
virginity was two fucking years older than us.”

“She was a real
cougar
, bro,” said James, his voice dripping sarcasm. “C'mon, we both know she just didn't want to go to college with her hymen still intact.”

No one said anything for a while. Bent-legged, Henry rode the swaying subway car like a skateboard.

Then Jake said it again. “I mean it, Henry. I am totally, completely sorry.” For a minute, he thought about getting down on the filthy train floor on his knees. He was a freak! An aberration. His voice sort of shook then. God, he thought, please don't let me cry. Please God, not that, too.

Maybe Henry heard the vocal tremor, because he turned away from Jake, but spoke to him. Like he couldn't bear to look him eye to eye. Henry spoke to Jake while staring at his own reflection in the subway window.

“Dude, I was glad for the three days off.”

Oh my God, Jake thought, I love Henry! I have never in my life loved anyone more than I love Henry, and I never will again. Not my wife, not my kids, not anybody. This is the most I can humanly love.

Jake put out his fist, and after a second Henry saw it reflected in the subway window, and turned around and bumped it. Then he swung down onto the seat next to Jake.

“Three days?” said Jake.

“Yeah, I've been back for like a week.”

Henry had a week more than Jake outside and in the world. He was so lucky!

“What's it like? School. I mean what's it going to be like to be back?” Jake said. “For me?”

Henry thought for a moment. His eyebrows were like twin caterpillars crawling across his forehead. They met in the middle and rubbed noses.

“For you? Well, pretty much for us, everyone was like we were assholes, but also just boneheads. Some girls spit at us in the hall, you know lesbians and feminists, but most everybody else gets it. Nice girls. Sluts.”

“Daisy's world-famous,” James said from across the aisle.

“I know that,” said Jake.

“Plus, we've all had to go to these assemblies on sex and communication, plus Henry's got shrink sessions—my mom's furious about that,” James said.

“She's going to try to get Dad to pay for it,” Henry said. “Good luck.”

The raw shock of sunshine. The boys blinked like newborn puppies in the daylight as the train exploded out of the tunnel and rose up onto the elevated line. They were almost out of Manhattan now.

“You,” said Henry, pointing his finger at Jake, “you're like either a martyr or a murderer, a creep or a sex fiend, a deviant, a sociopath, or just another casualty. To some you're like a hero. Zach Bledsoe says you epitomize the burden of the young American male. He thinks you're the total injured party. ‘A supreme exemplification of the double standard,' he says, or maybe it's the reverse double standard?”

He looked to James then.

“Beats me,” said James. “I don't claim to understand Zach Bledsoe.”

“To some,” said Henry, clearly enjoying his own oratory, “maybe you're a fatality or maybe you're a nasty man-whore. I even heard one girl call you ‘unchivalrous.' ”

“Unchivalrous?” said Jake.

“Yeah, dude,” said Henry. “You know, a cad. You're a lout, a yob, a boor.”

“True enough,” Jake said.

“Who was the girl?” said James, picking his nose. He was bored, but interested.

“Audrey,” said Henry.

W
hen Jake got to school it was all a blur of backslapping and glares. One of his teachers, Mr. Carmichael, welcomed him back wholeheartedly when Jake entered the Chem lab.

“The whole thing has been blown out of proportion, if you ask me, Jake,” said Mr. Carmichael. “You kids are just kids—kids on steroids. The technology put you all on steroids. But nobody asked me, did they? Nobody ever asks me anything. Not my wife, not you students, nobody in this whole goddamn universe gives a good goddamn about what I think or about what I have to say.” Then he handed Jake the ten days' worth of assignments and handouts he'd missed. No one else was that nice. His Deconstructing America co-teacher, Ms. Hemphill (the other one, the pregnant one, was out having her baby), wouldn't address him, even when Jake raised his hand. At lunch, in the cafeteria, Jake was a total superstar. Kids crowded around him. Zach Bledsoe pushed through the crowds to sit next to him.

“What they don't understand is that we live in a postsexualized world,” Bledsoe said. “You are the embodiment of the contemporary male, sought after, hunted down, and then, once chewed up and spit out, they say you exploited her. Men of the world unite!” said Bledsoe.

“Shut up,” said James.

“Postsexual?” said Henry. “Whatever that is, I don't have it.”

Everyone laughed. Jake included.

Zach Bledsoe reddened. His man-boobs shook with rage, or maybe it was excitement, Jake wasn't sure. You could see them rattling around inside his Jay-Z T-shirt, like hamsters in a cage.

“You want to know what I think?” said Davis.

Everyone wanted to know. Everyone always wanted to know what Davis thought; he was such a stand-up guy and everyone liked him.

“I think Daisy took control of the situation. I think that's what the parents can't stand. So she was sexy on-screen…”

“Sexy? You call that sexy?” Jonas said. “I lost my boner watching that thing.”

“You lost it fifty times?” James said.

Jonas smacked him upside the head, but gently.

“You know what I mean,” Davis said, looking from one boy to the other. “She did what people used to do in private in a way that got really fucking public.”

“With a baseball bat?” said Bledsoe. “People do that?”

“You know what I mean,” said Davis. “And what's the shame in that? I mean if everyone suddenly goes public…”

“My mom said something like that in the cab on the way back from my lawyer's,” Jake said.

“You got a lawyer?” said Jonas. He nodded his head in approval. “That's cool, dude.”

Davis said, “That's the future.”

“Kids having lawyers?” said Jonas.

“No, being public. Being out in the open. The whole world knowing. So if everyone does it, will anyone care? I mean, a couple of weeks later, do we even care?”

“My mom cares,” said Henry. “Colleges care.”

“I care,” said Jake.

“My dad says Daisy will never get a job now,” Jonas said. “And my mom says she'll never get married.”

“Look at Monica Lewinsky,” said Jonas.

“Look at what?” said James.

“She never got married and it wasn't even this bad,” Jonas said. “That's what my mom says. Plus, she got really fat.”

No one said anything.

“You know what I mean,” said Davis, although they didn't really. They didn't seem to, that is. Jake knew he didn't totally get it himself.

“I mean, if you take away the disgrace factor,” said Davis, clearly getting exasperated, “won't all the girls be Daisies?”

“Let's hope so,” Jonas said.

Everybody laughed. Jake did, too.

O
n Friday, Rachel Potter asked Jake out. Rachel Potter was one of the hottest girls in his grade and one of the most popular. She had all this great curly blond hair. She came up behind Jake as he was crossing campus on his way to the gym.

“Hey, Jake,” said Rachel, her hair singing in a cloud above her shoulders, like each spiral was a voice in a chorus. She had angel hair, Rachel, and she was wearing a little flouncy blue miniskirt, a filmy white blouse, boots on bare legs. She couldn't have been hipper.

He was surprised she knew his name. Except now everyone did. So he wasn't. He was formerly surprised in the moment, not now.

“Hey, Rachel,” said Jake.

She walked alongside him.

“It really sucked what Daisy did to you,” she said. She smiled at him as they walked down the brick path across the grass.

“Yeah, well,” said Jake. He wasn't sure if Daisy actually did it to him or he to her or Daisy to herself, but he liked Rachel's spin.

“I mean, you didn't ask for it, did you?” Rachel said. She kind of leaned into him when she asked the question, and he noticed that her eyes were very, very blue. Almost as if there were holes in her head and he was seeing the sky behind her. Or mirrors, mirrors at two intersecting forty-five-degree angles reflecting the blue above. Like her eyes were a light box.

“Ask her for what?” said Jake. “The email?”

“To dance for you like that,” said Rachel.

“No,” said Jake. “I didn't ask for it.”

“But did you like it?” said Rachel.

Did he like it? This was never a question anyone had asked him before. He'd been surprised by it, he'd been shocked by it, he'd been excited by it, when he'd first seen it; it felt like icy water, really icy water, with actual shards of ice in it, had been coursing through his veins, so cold and spiky. He'd gotten hard. He'd gotten proud. He'd been appalled, scared; he'd wanted to show off.

“I don't know,” said Jake.

“I like to dance,” said Rachel. She looked him in the eyes when she said that.

Jake's cheeks flushed hot.

“You're so cute, Jake,” said Rachel. “You're blushing.”

“I am not,” said Jake, but he was. He could feel the rising heat.

“Okay,” said Rachel, “you're not,” but she was smiling then. Smiling in a teasing way, gentle, not mean, inviting.

“Text me if you want to hang out sometime,” she said.

“Okay,” said Jake.

And then she said, “I have to go to Latin,” and she veered off down another path.

T
he weekend he spent at home doing homework. Catching up on studying for his exams. His parents wouldn't let him out of the house. There was only one more week before finals. Jake was glad for the work. It kept his mind off everything except the sheer panic of trying to master all the stuff he'd missed, plus whatever he hadn't understood from before. His mom had made his first shrink appointment. It was for Wednesday after school, and his mom, looking up from her computer, had said that maybe he might enjoy it. She'd said she herself had liked going to a shrink, which she did back in the day, before she'd married his father. She said Jake's going might inspire her to go again, too. She said all of this to be encouraging, obviously.

“I don't want him to think of it as punitive,” Jake heard her whisper to his father, who didn't seem to care if Jake saw it as punitive or not. His dad was too preoccupied with work. With getting back in. He spent most of the weekend on the phone. On email. He was making his case through back roads or something. Something smart and canny and strategic. Something dadlike.

They parked Coco in front of the TV all weekend. They anesthetized her. His mom even let Coco play video games for hours on her laptop; that is, when his mom wasn't on it herself. No one even made a motion to take Coco to the park. Jake wouldn't have been surprised if they dosed her juice with Benadryl. They let her skip African dance and ballet; they seemed to forget about it. It wasn't even clear if anyone ever made her take a bath. It's almost like it's just us again, Jake thought, and Coco is a boarder.

On Monday he saw Audrey down the hall, the back of her, that tiny butt, those tight black jeans, those magical gold slippers. He started to walk faster to catch up with her, when he saw Luke turn the corner. Audrey took one look at Luke and turned the other way. “C'mon, Aud,” said Luke. He started going after her. Jake hadn't seen Luke yet; he was afraid to see Luke, and he didn't want Luke to see him. “Audrey!” he heard Luke call after her. So Jake hung back in the hallway, taking a step or two in reverse when Rachel Potter caught his elbow with her hand.

“You're going the wrong way, Jake,” she said. She slid her hand down his arm and crooked her elbow in the hook of his elbow. “You've got math now, right?”

“How do you know?” said Jake.

“C'mon, I'll escort you,” she said. She started walking him forward. “I looked up your schedule online.”