Chapter Three
Jesse looked up at his ceiling as he awoke, instantly missing his old room. At home – his old home – the walls had been plastered with his posters of rock bands and comic book characters, and he could have told a story about every inch of the place.
Here's where I banged my head when I was nine, he could have recalled. And here's where the marker never quite came off when I decided I should draw a mural when I was five.
It's not as if his aunt's house didn't hold any memories for him at all – he had spent a great deal of his childhood visiting on the occasional weekend, running through the halls and being warned to not use his watergun in the house.
He could remember playing with Deanna and the other kids in their adjoining backyards, now, something he hadn't thought about in years.
"I call Silver Snakes!" Deanna proclaims as she climbs up the ladder and reaches the top of the slide.
"Okay, okay, well I get… the purple parakeets," a boy chimes in.
"I choose Jesse!"
"You always choose Jesse – you like him," the boy replies.
"Shut up!"
"Okay, okay – I choose Ricky."
"You always choose Ricky," Deanna mimics annoyingly, "You like him!"
The argument turns into a mini-brawl, with Deanna and the boy both weakly slugging each other before both fall down the slide.
"Betcha can't climb all the way up the net in a minute, Dee," Ricky chimes in.
"Betcha I can."
Deanna never can.
Jesse never can, either.
Jesse decided he needed to start making this room more his own. Once Jenny said it was okay – he didn't want to get thrown out on the street his first day here – he could tack up some posters (or maybe tape them up) and see if he could change the color of the room from white to something more interesting.
Because right now it all looked pretty fucking depressing.
He rolled off of his bed and opened his door, peeking his head into the hallway before knocking on the next door over – his aunt's room.
"Hey, Aunt Jenny?" he called. "You okay?"
The door opened a crack, a moment later, and Jenny stuck her head out, smiling at him.
"Yes, Jesse, I'm fine. If you want to go out, that's fine – I'll be all right. Could you come back by three to take me to my doctor's appointment, though? I'm not really so up to driving these days."
Jesse felt a pang of guilt at the words. He needed to keep his head on straight now, for his aunt. He couldn't just go ahead and be the screw-up that his parents were convinced he was.
"Sure, Aunt Jenny," Jesse replied quickly. "I'll make sure I'm back by three. Thanks."
He waved in her direction and then went out the door. He only had a week left to do what he wanted before he had to go back to at least pretending to give a shit. Better make the most of it while it lasts.
Jesse wasn't sure why he even bothered going to school, anyway. It wasn't as if any of the teachers actually expected him to learn anything. He had always been the kid in the back, writing down joke answers instead of actually learning the material. He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, and stern talking-to's from his not-particularly-motivated guidance counselors the previous year hadn't cleared anything up.
But none of that was important now – he was on his way over to Badger's. Badger, whose real name was Brandon Mayhew, was a drop-out from neighboring La Cueva High School – famous for being the alma mater of Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Neil Patrick Harris. Badger had made it to tenth grade before he had just stopped coming in; he had declared to Jesse later that he had decided school just wasn't on his "wavelength".
The two had met through one of Jesse's good friends at J.P. Wynne, Kayla Smits. Kayla was dark-haired, half-Mexican, and a knockout. She also had absolutely no romantic interest in either Jesse or Badger, which seemed to increase the amount of time that both wanted to spend around her, seemingly in the vain hope of changing her mind. How she had originally met Badger had been lost to time, but the three quickly became part of a group that smoked weed behind the local mall and played pool in Badger's basement on weekends.
Jesse made it to Badger's in record time. He could have driven it, but it seemed faster just to walk – it was only about six blocks away, after all. And he needed the wind in his hair, the sun on his scalp… he couldn't quite explain it, but he needed it just the same.
He rang the older boy's doorbell and waited, sticking his hands into his pockets. Badger had his own place, which was nice – it was an apartment that his parents paid the rent on, in the dim hopes of keeping their son out of trouble. They didn't seem to have much success, especially given that in the entire time Jesse and Badger had been friends – best friends, maybe even – he hadn't seen Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew once.
Kinda like my parents, Jesse thought bitterly, but then he corrected that – that wasn't quite true. Badger's parents just don't care. Mine do care, but hate me.
Badger appeared at the front, opening the door and waving Jesse inside with a sway that indicated that whatever was the flavor of the day, pot or booze, Badger had already dipped into it.
"Hey, Jesse, man."
Jesse walked on to the hardwood floor, smiling at his friend and looking around. Kayla was there, standing next to her best friend, a girl named Gia. She was pretty in her own right, a busty Italian girl with curly black hair and a sharp smile.
"Hey, Jesse," both of the girls sang out.
"Hi," he replied, "'sup?"
"Where you been?" Badger inquired. "I haven't seen you in, like, a hot minute." Jesse rolled his eyes.
"I've been around, man. Just… you holding?" He gestured with his hand, and Badger waved over someone out-of-sight from the back of the room.
"Don't you ever think about anything else other than weed, Jesse?" Gia asked with a grin. "I mean, come on. How do you expect to get anywhere in life?" Kayla snickered.
"Jesse's just gonna get by on his good looks," she retorted. "He's gonna be a male model."
"What good looks?" Badger asked, snorting. The figure who Badger had gestured to appeared, and Jesse recognized him as Levon Shads, another classmate from J.P. Wynne. He was very tall for an eighteen or nineteen year old (or whatever he was), at least sixty-four or six-five, rail-thin and caramel-skinned, with a shaved head. "Hey, Levon," Badger asked, reaching out to grab a joint from Shads' hand without preamble, "D'you think Jesse could get by on his good looks?"
"Nah, man, you scare the girls away," he replied jovially.
"Ah, fuck it," Jesse retorted, taking the joint from Badger and helping himself to a toke. This is what life needs to be right now, he thought to himself, just this simple. Nothing else.
