John woke up when he heard his window creak. He sat up in bed, his jeans creasing into his thighs and watched as Rachel climbed into his room, her blond hair falling down and forming a curtain as she bent her head and pulled one leg free. She walked inside and didn't shut the window. Stepping quickly she came to the bed, slapped him (if it were any other girl John would have hated to admit it hurt but this was Rachel, who had slapped him enough times to know the amount of force to use so it stung and the way to cup her hand so it made the whipped sound) and sat down, crossing her arms and facing the window. "Ellis saw your dad pull up. Why the hell didn't you call us?"
John shrugged. "How've you been?"
"Strewth, I'm seriously fucking pissed off at you Saint John. Evan. Allerdyce. And don't give me that crap about how much you hate your name cause I don't want to hear it right now. I was convinced for a year that your dad chopped you up into tiny pieces and buried them in your yard. You could have wrote, you could have called, you could have sent pigeons or smoke signals or developed telepathy and you did none of them. Your mom took off- you know what its like to have someone take off and not tell you and you can't call us! What the fuck is wrong with you?" She turned and faced him. John leaned against his wall. The breeze from outside was drifting in. It smelled salty, though the ocean sand was a mile and a half to the east away, on the rich side of town, near the stores and downtown.
"I'm sorry. I just, I thought maybe they were checking your guys' email or something. Dead set." She still stared at him. He sighed and leaned forward, kissed her cheek, a peace offering. "Your parents will kill you if they know you're out."
"So I won't tell them." Rachel sounded sullen but he knew by the slight blush in her cheeks that she was at least willing to discuss putting a 'no more slapping for the night' rule into effect.
"Right." John contemplated running his fingers through her hair and leaving them to rest on her shoulder. She'd probably try to bite him because she definitely wasn't blushing that much. For some reason that made him think of Bobby and John felt the corner of his lips spasm slightly. "How've you been?"
She shrugged. "Ellis is still a dag and popular, Marc is still filming everyone and hanging out with those annoying tech kids."
"What about you?"
"I dunno. Met a couple decent politic-minded blokes. You might like 'm. Where've you been?"
"Around. Went to America. Antarctica. Didn't think he'd find me there." Rachel hugged him. She climbed under his sheets and her hair spilled onto his pillow.
"I'm glad you're back, no matter how selfish that makes me." John slid down and wrapped an arm around her. He kissed her cheek again and tried to pretend she was Bobby. It hurt, so he told himself it was Rachel and tried to sleep, mimicking her breathing.
It didn't work.
He imagined drawing Bobby a comic book, having it open with this panel- his ex girlfriend lying asleep and him awake. Hey Bobby, did I ever tell you about the people I left behind? They weren't all shits like my father- I had some friends. Yeah laugh Bobby go ahead. I do have some social skills. Here would be a panel, a photograph.
That's Rachel. We dated for a while but I dunno. I guess we were better off friends or being platonic or something. She's a vejjo and dyes her hair red sometimes (even though she always spells 'dyes' wrong) because she likes 'Run Lola Run'. A slide show of Rachel substituted for Franke whatshername. There's Marc who I met in second grade because he ate one of my crayons- red violet, not violet red for whatever difference that made to him, and had to get his stomach pumped. I think for a while I thought about dating him but I didn't. No one, not even him, knows what sex he's really into but he doesn't care. He'll date anyone anyway. A page for Marc now, walking down the halls with his damn video camera, making guys and girls blush, or out with that drag queen he dated for a while, or that beautiful senior girl he dated freshman year with the blonde, blonde hair who liked to wear his boxers rolled up to school, with T-Shirts that slipped around her skin, who broke up with him a few months after they started going out. Maybe I watched them together more times than I needed to or wanted to, and maybe it made me feel like I really knew her sometimes, the way she held onto his touch after he left the room.
And then Ellis. I've lived next door to him since we were five. We trained his dog that he got when he was ten. High school, no, not even high school, junior high came, and suddenly everyone realized how funny he was. I don't do funny. But you know that. We used to fight a lot and then we realized it was pointless because neither of us are moving. He's the only one, other than you, I ever told about my dad slapping me around. A segment for Ellis now, sleeping over and watching John get dragged out of his room. Sitting up in his blankets and sweatpants, hearing John's dad hit him, drunk. I think I punched him first and then told him because he wouldn't back down.
How's that Bobby? It's not Joe or Andy or Adam Kubert, or Mike Dringenberg. It's me. It's what I didn't tell you. It's what I didn't tell anyone.
John tried to breathe in Rachel's scent again, a bit like lemon iced-tea. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, Rachel's hair was wrapped around his neck. He checked the clock and shook her shoulder. She mumbled something. "Wake up. You have time to run home before your parents realize you're out." Slowly she got up and he lay there watching her put on her shoes. She raised a hand as she swung a leg out his window.
"See you in school?"
"Yeah."
"See you other than that?"
"Yeah." She gave half a smile and went out the rest of the way. John didn't know whether to get up or what. Should he make breakfast? Pretend nothing had ever happened and register himself for school? He lay there, caught between possibilities, wishing he could just fall back asleep.
His father came in for a moment. "Wake up. Made breakfast." John sat up and his father left the room before he could get a good look at him.
It was pancakes. The kind you buy frozen but he had made something and maybe that counted; it had before John went away, before even his mother or Spencer took off, as a peace offering or an end to an argument. He could see the pizza box from last night in the corner, and knew there was a greasy spot on the tile from where the cardboard had touched, maybe making some abstract design. If he were Jack Smith, maybe he'd pry up the tile, spray paint around the grease (like a stencil), and call it 'Wasteland' or something. "So you've got to be registered." John nodded. "Take you after this."
"I could do it. If you don't want to take off from work."
"I called in." His father ate for a few minutes to signify a change in conversation. "Do you need new clothing." It was a statement. A scale.
"I don't know. I'm pretty sure my T-Shirts and stuff will fit."
"I'll take you to get some jeans. After school." John nodded.
"Thank you." His father finished eating and left John with the dishes.
"Today we welcome to the world of literature John Allerdyce. He's-"
"They know who I am." Without being told John took a seat in the back of the class and concentrated on the plastic wood whorls of the desk, trying to ignore eyes. A fist tapped the top of his desk, the knuckles written on in black pen again, and John saw Marc. "Hey." John nodded. "Were."
"What?"
"Were. Who you were." John nodded again and Marc faced forward.
Hamlet sucked. This much John clarified in 45 minutes. All talk, no action, no balls. The announcements came on the loud speaker and Marc turned to John. "Where'd you go?"
"America."
"No shit." Marc smiled. "My guess was you headed back to the Netherlands to look up Spencer." John remembered the nearly-two years in Amsterdam for a moment; his cousin with his wide, gap-front-tooth smile and omniscient video camera who came back with them to Australia, to attend secondary school there. Marc had always begged to stay over his house when Spencer was around, before he took off and didn't come back or call or contact under the pretext of film school in London. John couldn't blame him because, after all, he had done the same thing, two years later. "What'd you do?" John shrugged.
"Nothing really." Nothing he could say here. Or say at all, really. 'I was at a mutant school in New York run by this paraplegic who still sounds English when he's yelling at you in your head because by the way, he's a telepath. There I learned how to manipulate flame and turn my self into a Bunsen Burner. That's where I met this really nice and really hot Bostonian who could turn his body into ice. Plus, I could always count on him to finish off my food, especially any and all desert and help me with my Chemistry homework because we weren't just learning how to fight against anti-mutant terrorist groups and how to save the world, but also to become educated young people ready to face the defiantly non-mutant world with a diploma.' That was probably too much information. "What have you been doing?"
"Filming." John laughed.
"Beyond that."
"Impregnated some animals, eaten some babies, couple grand plots to assassinate world leaders and subsequently take over their countries. Raised a farm of koala babies to sell on the black organ market. Nothing all that important."
"Schemes fail?"
"Yeah. But did they look good on paper."
"That's what counts. Sister still ripping the arms off of Ken dolls?"
"Yeah. Supposed to have some kind of reading in a few weeks. Want to go?" John mimed playing the bongos.
"Sure she could use some hecklers."
"She deserves it."
"Still haven't recovered from the War of '99."
"I still have sand in my boxer drawer. What's your next class?"
"Er, History."
"With Ms. O'Connell?"
"Yeah. Why, you got it?"
"Mm hmm." The bell rung and they walked out, stopping so a copy of "Hamlet" could be pressed into John's hand.
"Hey John!" he heard some say and he turned. A blond girl approached him, in sleeveless hoodie and low cut jeans. He didn't think she was wearing a shirt under the sweatshirt. Whatever bought you friends, he thought and looked down at his own clothes. Jeans and a T-Shirt over another tee, framing the hems of his sleeves with color. "Remember me? Kelly?' John nodded, not because he did remember, and he sort of did but not to the extent where if she mugged him he'd be able to ID her, but because she wasn't the girl you could say no too. "Well, I'm glad you're back. I'll see you around, ok?" She smiled and walked off.
John turned. "Didn't know I was so missed." He let himself smile for a moment. Ignoring the fact he didn't really like girls and was currently still lusting after earlier said Bostonian, it was kind of impressive to have a girl other Rachel acknowledge his presence.
Marc pushed his shoulder. "You probably had shit in your teeth."
Lunch was weird. He could tell that since he'd been gone Rachel, Marc and Ellis hadn't made the biggest effort to sit with one another or exist on each other's plane. He had never thought himself as anyone's tying string, more of a floater who ate lunch sometimes and slept in the library other times, or snuck into the art room. But not a reason for four people to share a Quad table. They hadn't always, someone was usually off with other friends, or brought them to the table but it was the Four of them, really. With a capital 'F'. They were the group and everyone else just bystanders. At least to John.
But they were the only ones at the table, for a little bit anyway. Poking through their lunches, or rather, John watching them poke through their lunches and debating whether it was worth the effort to attempt to remove the soda and sandwich from his op-shop book bag and ingest it, or better to just wait for Rachel to hand over whatever piece of fruit was slipped into her lunch. "So, John have you painted anything recently?" He looked up from his hands and took the orange, shoving his thumbnail in and starting to peel it.
"I don't paint anymore. I stopped when my mom left." They all looked at him. "I don't." They nodded and he went back to worrying off that small strip of skin from his lip with his teeth, separating the fruit from the rind. They knew he didn't paint. He had told them countless times and just because he hadn't been around for a while didn't mean that changed.
"Yeah well, do you have anything?" asked Marc.
"No!"
"Bull shit," muttered Ellis, in a way that any one else would have called it speaking without enunciation but for Ellis is was mumbled enough to be a mutter.
"What the hell do you mean, bull shit? I stopped. No more. That means I haven't painted anything recently. Not yesterday, not after she left."
"No one's buying that. Not even you." Ellis was almost glaring at him and Rachel wasn't really meeting his eyes at all, but then, when he had ever met any of their eyes, truly? Not for a long time.
"Screw you." Kelly came over to their table then, and Marc smiled. She brought some of her friends. And then some of Ellis's mates, a few rugby players, the kind that if you didn't say the joke right, you could kiss your ass good-bye. John ate the orange and then left the table. He had spoken to some of them but it wasn't him they wanted to see. He finished out the period curled up in a library chair, drawing his pencil over the pages of a sketchbook, only letting it touch when he could truly see what he wanted, drinking his soda, leaving the sandwich to stew in the bottom of his bag.