CHAPTER ONE
"Brian, did you get a chance to say goodbye to Claire?" Allison is twirling a green leaf between her fingers as she and Brian walk down Howard Street.
"Yeah, I did, yesterday right before they left for the airport."
"It's too bad your parents wouldn't let you come to the going away party. Claire missed you. Andy and I did too." She tucks the leaf behind her ear.
"I should have told my parents the party was a Latin Club meeting."
They pause to let a car pass before crossing over to the 7-11 where Brian opens the door for Allison.
"Was Bender there yesterday to say goodbye?"
Brian begins sorting through penny candies on the bottom shelf in the candy aisle. "No, not when I was there."
"That shit!" Allison almost yells this, twisting a package of pixie stix so hard it pops open. The sticks fly out and Allison squats down to collect them.
"What did he do?" Brian hands her a stick that landed by his feet.
"He didn't go out to dinner with her, he didn't go to the party, and he didn't say goodbye yesterday."
"No wonder Claire looked so sad. I thought she was just sad to be leaving."
"She's going all the way to California and he can't say goodbye! Andy is only going to Wisconsin and he said goodbye." Their last conversation was a hard one, but not unexpected. Andy couldn't see a long distance relationship working when for all they knew they might be divided for four years.
Brian leads the way to the checkout counter holding a handful of candies, and pays up in silence. He knows the gist of the conversation and seems uncomfortable.
Allison slams the pixie stix onto the counter and impatiently holds out a dollar bill. "He is a coward!" The clerk looks alarmed but she doesn't care. She sticks out her hand for the change.
"He knows she can't promise anything and he didn't want to hear it from her, so he's making her miserable!" She snatches the change away and pushes the glass door open with a shove. "I'm glad he's graduated too and we don't have to see his cowardly face at school." If Bender had shown up right that second, she would have punched him.
After their idyllic summer, the five breakfast club members are going their separate ways, Andy and Claire to college, John Bender to whatever it is that John Bender does, and these two left behind in school, Allison as a senior and Brian as a sophomore. At least they have each other and don't have to return to pre-breakfast club isolation.
The first day back at school, Allison heads for the lunch table the five of them used to sit at, then realizes it makes no sense for two people to sit at such a large table. She sees Brian's wave then, and wends her way to the table where Lester, Tom, Ken, and Richard sit. Brian has negotiated a place for her at the geek table.
The guys seem shy and it is obvious her presence intimidates them, so she goes into full basket case turtle mode, pulling into herself so that she is barely noticeable. It's a trick she has and she attributes it to her study of Indian meditation.
They return to enjoying their in-jokes of the Latin, physics, and math clubs without paying much attention to her and she is content to observe their high spirits and enjoyment of each other's company after a summer apart. Richard is obviously the joker and has two french fries hanging out of his nose. Lester laughs so hard he snorts his milk. A tiny smile plays at the corner of her mouth, but not big enough to remind them of her presence. She and Brian exchange looks.
Life isn't so bad, even with three of the five gone. They are no longer alone. Last year John and Andy made it clear that any rough housing with Brian would involve a wrestling hold and a switchblade, so Brian is enjoying a stress-free reunion. Everyone knows Andy is gone, but the idea that John Bender might show up to exact vengeance at any time has cowed the ringleaders of the bullies. It's open season again for Allison and the catty rich girls, as there is nothing Claire could do from UCLA, but she no longer cares very much about their whispers and pointed looks —not when she has Brian.
After school Allison and Brian meet as usual by the gym and start walking home together. Brian's middleclass house is on the way to Allison's fancy condominium. They stop at the 7-11 to stock up on penny candy and pixie stix, then part ways.
Allison continues into the edge of the northern heights. Claire's house is firmly in the center of the affluent Shermer neighborhood, while Allison's mother's condo clings to the outskirts. She lets herself in and hears her mother's voice; she's talking on the phone as usual.
With no homework from the first day of school, she is free to pass her time any way she chooses. Last year, she would go to Andy's house and stay until it was his dinner time. Now, with Andy gone, she is left to amuse herself again. She goes to her large sketchbook she reserves for special projects and opens it to her group portrait of the breakfast club, drawn from a snapshot taken on the last day of school last year.
Andy has on his letterman jacket and his arms folded like a tough guy, John is wearing his sunglasses and jean jacket, Claire leans on John, and Brian and Allison are kneeling below.
After a while, Allison closes the book on her memories of a perfect summer, hunger calling her away. Her mother is now in the shower, where she spends half her time. If she's not showering and grooming, she's on the phone. If she's not on the phone, she's with her boyfriend. Allison digs through the cabinets and comes up with a jar of marshmallow fluff and an unopened can of Hershey's syrup. She carefully spreads a slice of bread with fluff, drizzles it with syrup and completes her sandwich with another piece of bread on top. Snagging a banana, she heads back to her room, where she turns on the college radio station.
Eating her sandwich, she finds she is lonely for the first time in months. No Andrew to call, no group to meet, no anticipation of another planned outing. She explores this loneliness, sensing how different it is from her loneliness before the breakfast club. Before, she was sunk in a perpetual fortress of solitude with no hope of any change. The difference now, she decides, is that she knows where her next human contact will be coming from and is secure that it will come. She'll see Brian tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.
She and Andy decided not to torture themselves with phone calls; that would only continue the pain of separation and delay the adjustment to life without each other. Like ripping a band-aid off all at once, rather than by increments. She wishes she could find out if he arrived okay, if his new roommate is a good guy, if he likes his new coach. Instead she sighs, finishes her sandwich and starts on the banana.
The next Friday, according to public radio, will be a meteor shower, starting at eleven. Allison tries to talk Brian into sneaking out of the house to accompany her on a stargazing mission, but he declines, so she readies to go by herself. Brian would approve of her stargazing spot even less than the time, as she plans to trespass on the public golf course to the east of Shermer.
It takes a good twenty minutes of brisk walking to get there, but she is away from the city street lights now. She ducks under the simple chain strung across the maintenance entrance and enters the course.
Navigating under the bright stars becomes easier as her eyes adjust. She finds her secluded spot unoccupied, a waist-high broad, flat stone tilted at the perfect angle for looking at the sky. She climbs up and settles herself with her purse cushioning her head.
After an hour or so, suddenly she is aware that someone else is on the golf course. She stays still, trusting her disappearing in plain sight trick will save her from detection. The figure is advancing steadily across the grass, a tall bulky shape. She keeps hoping they will turn aside, but they do not deviate. Soon the man (because it is definitely a man) is coming straight at her, no chance to escape discovery. He stops next to her, looking down and says "Allison, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?"
It's Bender. Giving up her position of concealment, she sits up so that her legs dangle over the edge, and he boosts himself up to join her.
"I'm watching the meteor shower. It was shitty of you to let Claire leave without saying goodbye." No preamble, she's too mad to be polite.
"She doesn't care. She's going off to LA, what does she care about me?" Bender's resentment is clear.
"She DOES care. You didn't let her say how much she cares. If you refuse to talk to someone they can't say they care, can they?"
"Well, she's gone now." He's resting his elbows on his knees, head down. "I'm not good enough for someone like her."
"No, that's not true."
"Yeah, she's better without me."
"If you keep feeling sorry for yourself, I might start agreeing with you."
"But her parents have all that money, and she can go to college. I can't do any of that. I'm going to get a job at the paper mill. I couldn't be with someone like her."
"Maybe you can't go to UCLA, but you can go to Northbrook Tech. And there's nothing wrong with working at the paper mill. It's good money."
"Could you see Queenie washing my clothes after I get home from work, smelling like Milton? Can you even see her driving through Milton?" He sounds angry now.
"I would hope you would do your own laundry."
He ignores this. "No, she's too good for me."
"You're holding her family against her. She can't help the family she was born into."
This seems to give him pause.
"Andy didn't leave me behind because he was too good for me. He left because he had a good opportunity with that scholarship. Claire has a good opportunity at UCLA. That doesn't mean she doesn't care about you or that she's better than you."
"But you're not from Milton."
"Half my family lives in Milton!" Allison yells this in frustration. She jumps down from the rock. "When you insult paper mill work and Milton, you're insulting my whole father's side of the family!"
"Really?" His surprise is obvious.
"My father worked his way through Northbrook Tech., then got a scholarship for UIC. Most of my uncles still work at the paper mill, so don't pretend to be poor. I know how much they make."
Bender subsides.
"You keep pulling that card, acting like you're poor."
"But we are; my father drinks up half his check."
"That's because he drinks, not because he does blue collar work. Some rich guys put half their pay checks up their nose. It's not just people who work in factories."
He stands up and leans against the rock with his head bowed, his back to Allison. In a low voice he says, "She used to run her fingers through my hair. I'd put my head in her lap and she'd touch my hair."
Allison realizes he's crying. John Bender crying? Keeping her voice soft, she says, "That's because she cared about you."
"No one ever touched me like that."
"I feel the same way about Andy."
They both lean against the rock in silence for a while.
"You and me, Bender, we've both been handed the raw end of the stick with the families we were born into, my father dead and my mother ignoring me, your dad hitting you. But we can't let that stop us from caring about people. It hurts when they leave, but don't mess up what you and Claire had by pretending to not care about her, pretending she doesn't care about you."
Doing something she has never known him do before, Bender says, "You're right."
"Well, let's call Claire. You can tell her."
His head snaps up. "No way!"
"Why not?"
"I can't."
"You just told me."
"It's almost one in the morning, I can't call her now." Allison can tell he is grasping at straws, trying to invent reasons to dodge doing it.
"She's on pacific time. It's only 10:45 there."
"I don't have her number."
"I do."
"We don't have a phone."
"There's a pay phone at the golf course club house. C'mon Bender, do it. You'll feel better."
Allison gives him the number and some quarters she finds at the bottom of her purse. She walks off and sits on the club house steps and looks up into the sky, the meteor shower at its peak.
Fall and winter roll by. The anniversary of the breakfast club finds Allison and Brian studying in the city library.
"We better go, Brian," Allison whispers. The large clock over the circulation desk reads 5 o'clock. Brian's books and papers are spread far and wide and it takes him a while to pack them up. Allison is standing with her arms full, purse slung over her shoulder while Brian fusses with his last few papers, finally stowing the folder neatly in his bulging knapsack.
They both wrap their scarves tightly as it is a windy night, cold and damp. The moon is rising huge and yellow.
"Mrs. Dillard's final essay is killing me. The calculations involved in lunar eclipse are crazy. Why did I take astronomy?" Brian bemoans his lot.
"I wrote about the historical names of the moons when I had Mrs. Dillard. No math. This is the Lenten moon, tonight." She's always loved the night sky.
"Mom's picking us up, dad's working late. You want to come for dinner?"
"No, I'm working on a picture tonight." She doesn't add that she will be moon gazing as well, at the golf course as usual. Brian disapproves of her trespassing.
As Mrs. Johnson drops her at home, Allison notes her mother's car is gone. When she opens the door into their living room, the room is empty. No furniture. One lamp is resting on the carpet. This fact refuses to compute. How can all the furniture be gone? Why? Did someone steal it? She finally crosses the threshold, accepting what her eyes are telling her. She moves into the dining room, also empty, as is the master bedroom. She finds the note on the kitchen counter.
The rent is paid. You can live with your Aunt Selma. I'm sorry.
It isn't even signed.