Four
Jack and Paul come over the next morning, right after breakfast. Jack is here to plan. Paul is here because, according to him, watching me and Jack plan is more interesting than staying home alone on a Sunday morning.
Jack and I sit on my bed, and Paul lies sprawled on the floor, his arms and legs flung so far apart he looks like he’s stretched on the rack, awaiting torture. Leo is there too, of course, scowling out from his poster.
“Is that comfortable?” I ask Paul.
“I’m meditating,” he replies.
“That’s not—”
Paul holds a finger to his lips and says, “You’ve got your ways, I’ve got mine.”
I don’t argue. I meditate, though I’m not exactly a committed Buddhist like Mom. I’m not proud of this, but I kind of half-ass it when it comes to religion. I blame this on having an Eastern Orthodox Christian for a dad and a Zen Buddhist for a mom. I like to excuse myself by saying I’m confused, which I honestly was as a kid. You’d be confused too if your dad ate steak and your mom didn’t and your living room contained pictures of patron saints as well as a toddler-size statue of the Buddha and if you spent the week of Christmas going to candlelight church services and meditation nights at the Zen Center.
So yeah, I was a confused kid, but now that I’m seventeen, the only real explanation for my half-assery is that I’m lazy. I keep telling myself I should get my crap together, because if there is one thing all religions agree on, it’s that half-assing is reprehensible. There’s no way I’ll reach enlightenment this way, and there’s this Bible verse I heard a long time ago at an Easter service that’s freaked me out ever since: “But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!”
So. My point: I suck in the religion department and therefore have no right to tell Paul how he should meditate.
“I’ve already written up something,” I tell Jack, turning my laptop screen for her to see. “I worked out everything last night.”
Jack glances over the Word document, lifts a brow. “You sleep at all last night?”
“Five hours.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Jack taps her nail on the screen and reads.
Jack: Reply to Twitter and YouTube questions.
Tash: Reply to Tumblr and e-mail.
Jack: Post on all platforms, thanking fans for engagement.
Tash: Send thank you e-mail to Taylor Mears.
Jack snorts. “Really? You think Taylor Mears cares?”
“She cared enough to mention us on her vlog.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s what she does for a living: finds new content and mentions it. She doesn’t expect a gold-leafed thank-you note every time. She’s probably already forgotten about us. Anyway, it seems kind of . . .”
My face darkens. “What?”
“Like we’re kissing her ass.”
“You don’t even have to write it. It’s my job.”
“But it’s a pointless job. You should ax it.”
“No.”
“Uuurgh, fine, whatever.”
From the floor, Paul says, “Thank-you notes are sweet.”
“See? Paul thinks thank-you notes are sweet.”
Jack says, “Paul eats grape jelly on pizza, which makes all his opinions invalid.”
We return to the list, where I’ve typed, Joint Effort: Finish script, solidify filming dates this summer, brainstorm new project to keep up momentum.
Jack laughs, which, coming from Jack, isn’t a particularly happy sound. It’s on the sinister side, like she’s laughing at the pain of her enemies. She pulls her purple hair into a sloppy bun atop her head, still laughing.
“ ‘To keep up momentum,’ ” she quotes through the laughter. “Jesus, Tash. This isn’t a business venture.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” I say, irritated. “Film is an art, but it’s also a business. We could get money from this. Not just from a Kickstarter, but if we, like, monetized ads. And we have to keep people interested. If we don’t, it’ll be worse than never getting discovered. We’ll be a flop.”
Jack leans against the wall, eyes dim and unperturbed. She yawns. “You stress out way too much. We literally just got famous overnight. We’re allowed to take our time figuring it out.”
“But I’ve already figured it out,” I say, raising my voice. I hate when Jack gets like this—apathetic and unreachable. “I stayed up until four figuring it out.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you to do that. I thought we were going to plan together .”
Jack and I did technically agree to do that, so all I can say is, “You’re being really negative.”
Jack quirks her pierced brow. “Um. Have you met me?”
“I mean you can’t shoot down my ideas unless you have alternatives.”
“Okay. My alternative to writing Taylor Mears is not writing her . My alternative to going all type A on this is chilling the hell out .”
This is not how I envisioned our meeting going. I expected Jack to be grateful I’d already written up a game plan and to agree that it was smart and fair. I expected Jack to be supportive. So really, have I met her? There’s no way Jack—the real Jack—would ever behave that way. No matter how many times we get into one of these spats—me pulling toward organization and Jack pulling toward chaos—I can never fully wrap my mind around how Jack can be so infuriatingly . . . chill .
I don’t want to fight on a Sunday morning, so I retract my claws and press on.
“We’ve written out tentative filming dates for the end of summer,” I say, scrolling to the second page of the Word doc, “but I think we should go ahead and set those times in stone. We want to make sure we have solid commitments from the whole cast. With a bigger audience, we can’t afford to miss an upload.”
Jack has closed her eyes, and her head is tilted against the wall. “We can afford to miss whatever we want to miss. People take hiatuses, midseason breaks. Sometimes there are technical difficulties. It’s going to be fine.”
My claws are coming back out, and I can’t control them this time. I’m a werewolf under the light of a full moon.
“Okay, you always say ‘It’s going to be fine,’ but you know who makes it fine? Me. It’s fine because there’s always a plan. Because I think through the logistics. I know you suck at leading, but don’t bash me when I’m the one doing all the work.”
Jack opens her eyes. She straightens up. “You’re doing all the work. Wow, all that footage must just edit itself then. And I guess next week you’ll be saying you’re the one who wrote the best novel of all time, huh? Tolstoy who?”
“That’s not what I meant. Come on.”
“Whatever.” Jack crawls off the bed. “I’ll leave you here to do all the work, shall I?”
She slams the door behind her.
Paul says, “Hmm.”
I get down from the bed, a pillow in hand. I nudge Paul in the side.
“Move over,” I say. “I’m meditating too.”
Paul flops onto his stomach, creating a whole body’s worth of space. I drop the pillow and settle the edge of my butt on it, then cross my legs and compose myself.
“Do I need to leave the room?” Paul asks.
I shake my head, turning my palms upward, touching thumbs to index fingers.
“Okay,” says Paul. “I’ll just be quiet.”
So Paul is quiet, and I begin a loving-kindness meditation toward Jack, because at the moment I want nothing more than to punch her, hard, in the face. I follow the usual routine, which my mom first taught me when I was ten. First, I steady my breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth. Then I focus on the cutest animal I know: a cocker spaniel puppy. I feel affection and unconditional tenderness toward the puppy. Then I concentrate on those emotions, and I transfer them slowly, steadily toward Jack. I wish Jack nothing but good. I wish her peace.
Over five minutes later, I’m still pissed, but it’s lessened from a boil to a simmer.
“Were you picturing Jack as a puppy again?” Paul whispers.
I made the mistake once of telling Jack and Paul how I do my loving-kindness meditations, and Paul responded like it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. He still thinks it’s way funnier than it is.
“They say you should never go into business with your friends,” I say.
“That’s stupid. Lots of friends have gone into business together. Lewis and Clark. The Wright brothers. Uh. Siegfried and Roy.”
“You’re stretching it.”
“Well, maybe. But you two aren’t even in an actual business. You make art. Art is all about collaboration.”
“She drives me crazy.”
“You drive her crazy. That’s why it works.”
I sink onto my back. I turn to Paul, whose face is half mushed into the carpet.
“We don’t drive each other crazy,” I say.
“What are you talking about, Zelenka? I hate your ever-loving guts.”
“Ha.”
Silence settles on us, along with the dust motes I can make out in the light streaming from my open window. I inch my left hand across the carpet and take Paul’s hand captive. Our fingers slip into familiar slots and bend together. We’ve held hands like this since we were kids, before it was weird. And it isn’t weird, even now. I mean, it would be with any other guy. Anyone but Paul.
I ask, “When do you register for classes?”
“Couple weeks.”
“Do you know what you’re going to take?”
“Yeah, it’s all a bunch of basics first semester. They want to make sure I can spell and add, which is . . . up for debate.”
“Hey, stop.” I knock my ankle into his.
When it comes to school, Paul is constantly talking himself down. So okay, yes, he was held back twice, in first and fifth grades. No, he doesn’t have a stellar GPA or scholarship-worthy scores on his admissions exams. But Paul applied to BCTC , Lexington’s community college, like it was his only option. He wouldn’t even consider the possibility that he could cut it at UK , let alone go somewhere out of state.
Paul won’t leave Lexington because of his dad. Mr. Harlow scared everyone four years ago when the doctors discovered the beginnings of prostate cancer during his annual physical. The doctors said they were lucky to have spotted it early, and they immediately put Mr. Harlow through the appropriate procedures and treatments.
Everything after that happened the way I’d seen it happen in movies: Mr. Harlow began to look sickly and wilting, and he didn’t leave the house for long periods of time. All the Harlow family’s friends rallied around them with prayer chains and favors and casseroles. Mrs. Harlow shared several sobbing phone calls with my mother. My dad fixed a ton of meals. And then, one day, the doctors came back with the joyous news that Mr. Harlow was in remission.
What the movies didn’t prepare me for was the effect all this cancer stuff would have on Jack and Paul. It was toughest with Jack. She’s always been sullen, and sometimes it was hard for me to tell when she was actually sad. I would be sitting on the bed with her for minutes before I noticed the tears streaming fast down her face. That was the year Jack first dyed her hair—a shocking half-and-half of pink and orange. I was surprised Jack went that route. It was so . . . predictable. But Jack didn’t seem to care that she was fitting into everyone’s expectations. Jack’s never really cared what anyone thinks, to the point that whenever she suspects someone like a teacher actually has a good opinion of her, she’ll sabotage herself by cussing in class or purposefully failing a test. I’ve seen the pattern again and again, since elementary school, but it got especially bad when Mr. Harlow was sick.
With Paul, it was more obvious—the fear and uncertainty. He isn’t the kind of guy who’s afraid to cry or hug in public. So I had a better idea of how bad it was for him.
I saw the months of Mr. Harlow’s hormone therapy rip Paul from the inside out—his faltering smiles and space-out moments the telltale signs of internal bleeding beneath. I hugged Paul a lot that year. I found that even when I was trying to comfort him, he hugged back in a way that made me feel like the comforted one.
Even after the good news, Paul wasn’t all smiles with the rest of us. He told me later, when Jack wasn’t around, that he had a bad feeling.
“It’s going to come back,” he said.
I was so shocked I could only robotically blurt, “The doctors say his chances are really good.”
“I know, but I can’t shake the feeling it’s going to happen again, right when it shouldn’t. On his birthday, or Jack’s wedding day, or over Christmas break. It always happens when it shouldn’t.”
And while I had difficulty picturing Jack ever agreeing to a traditional wedding, I couldn’t argue with the rest of it. Mr. Harlow received his diagnosis right when he shouldn’t have, the week after he’d been given a demanding promotion at work and three days before Thanksgiving. But then, is there ever a time when horrible things like that should happen? What’s an opportune time for bad news?
“I never thought I’d leave Lexington,” Paul told me. “I’ve never felt restless to get out like I guess you’re supposed to when you’re in high school. Now I know I won’t leave. I can’t.”
I didn’t agree with his reasoning, but I didn’t feel I had the right to say so.
I do, however, have the right to tell Paul to stop beating up on himself. I stare at him when he doesn’t reply to my reprimand. Again I hit his ankle with mine, this time harder.
“Your teachers are going to fall in love with you,” I tell him, squeezing my palm against his. “You are the perfect student. Always attentive. Always asking questions.”
“Stupid ones. What are you even saying? It doesn’t matter that I suck at homework and tests so long as I dazzle my professors?”
“No. But a lot of grading is subjective. Sometimes teachers nudge your grade up because they like you.”
“And you know this because . . . ?”
“Because I know things .” I use a dramatic whisper that’s supposed to be mysterious but comes out as just plain disturbing.
“You can be so fucking scary sometimes,” says Paul. “Scarier than Jack.”
“When you grow up and become a freelance graphic artist,” I say, because this really is Paul’s plan, “I am going to buy a lot of burner phones, and I am going to prank you every week. With impossible commissions. Or a scary whisper or two.”
“I look forward to that.”
I flop up into a sit, feeling more rag doll than seventeen-year-old collection of flesh and bone.
“I should find Jack,” I say.
Paul nods his nose into the carpet. “Right. Let’s find Jack.”
He pops to his feet and offers me the same hand I was holding, hoisting me up with such gusto that I fly forward a few steps to the door.
It doesn’t take long to locate Jack. She’s sitting at the kitchen island eating the first of two open-faced peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Paul has a severe peanut allergy, and the Harlows choose not to keep any peanut products in their house, which means Jack is constantly snacking on peanut butter when she visits.
“My kryptonite,” says Paul, noting the sandwiches and hanging back by the fridge.
I screech out the stool next to Jack and sit down. I take the second of her sandwiches, bite off a piece, chew, swallow.
I say, “I’m sorry. I know you do a ton of stuff.”
“I know you know,” sniffs Jack. Then, “Did you picture me as a fluffy puppy?”
I wipe peanut butter off my lower lip. “So fluffy.”
“Look,” she says. “I’m cool with how you divvied things up. I’ll do my half, and if you want to write some sycophantic letter to Taylor Mears, be my guest. I just . . .” Jack taps the edge of her plate, rotates it forty-five degrees. “I’m not letting this take over my life. Art does that: takes over people’s lives. Maybe you’re cool with it, but history shows some of the best artists were total assholes to the people around them. Like Tolstoy. And I’m not going to turn into that. I’m not going to abandon my family to go out into the fields of rural Russia and live like a peasant.”
“That’s good to hear, because I worry about that every night: Will Jack run off to Siberia?”
I ignore the slight to my man Leo, because that is not the point of this conversation.
Jack gives me a disgruntled look. I return it. We’ve made nice.
“There’s one more thing,” I say. “We should talk everything through with the cast. Next Sunday’s an all-cast day, so that works out.”
Jack snorts. “Ten bucks says George has already written his Golden Tuba acceptance speech.”
Paul says, “I think I’m getting hives.”