Chapter 12 Jessa
JESSA
I’ve scrounged every loose magazine I can find around the house, and the mix of bright Wired covers with their techy glow, vomitous pastels of Good Housekeeping, and the occasional chunky Reader’s Digest form a discordant palette for the zine I’m supposed to be working on for journalism.
On Friday, Bird was all business in journalism.
It seemed like something was bothering her.
I wondered if it was me, if I did something.
So when she told me I had to brainstorm concepts, and that we’d both bring samples of ideas to our next class on Monday—far too organized for my usual last-minute approach to projects—I agreed.
I could tell she wasn’t in the mood for our usual banter I’m finding I like, so I just decided to do what she said.
And to my surprise, now I’m actually doing it.
There’s cooler pictures in my own mags, but I refuse to sacrifice my well-worn collection of Rolling Stones.
There are some fold-out ads I pull that don’t have articles on them, and I see at least a few decent images there.
I guess I can go to the library and make copies of some of my fave covers…
but the fifteen cents a page seems a bit steep when I’ve been spending most of my allowance on going out with Dade, Kayla, and Bird in order to perform interference with the gnarly couple.
So far, our presence hasn’t put a damper on their libido, so I’m hoping Bird has some magic tricks for me.
When I went to ask Dad for his old copies of Wired, he was deep in some computer’s programming, the blocky white font spelling out jumbled commands in digital language against the black screen.
I’d rather learn Greek, which Dad has suggested to me before, but it’s a Papadopoulos tradition to remain clueless about our heritage—one I plan to follow.
“Hey, Jessamine, how goes it?” he said, half paying attention to my entrance, eyes not leaving the screen.
“Jessa,” I murmured.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Look, can I have some of your old magazines for a school project?”
“Sure,” he said, finally breaking eye contact with the code. “But it’s Saturday, why aren’t you out with Dade?” Man, he knows how to hit the sore spots….
“He’s going to some homecoming thing with Kayla and has to get ready.” I didn’t mention I wasn’t invited.
“That sounds fun. Why didn’t you go as a group with that other girl you’ve been hanging out with? If I give you a tenner, will you call her up? Double-dating is still hip the last time I checked.” He waggled his eyebrows at me in a goofy way, and I was horrified at the suggestion.
“Ugh, Dad. Homecoming is so dweeby! And Bird is Kayla’s friend, we’re just doing a project together, which I need to start if I wanna catch a show at the Touchstone tonight.”
I didn’t mention that Dade and I had broken our yearly tradition of ordering our weight in pizza, watching prom-themed horror flicks, and mocking the douches at homecoming all dolled up and awkward.
It felt weird lying, or withholding. I mean, Dad is usually cool with all truths.
He was even cool when I came out. Said it’s natural with dolphins and penguins, so why not me, too?
But I didn’t want anyone—even Dad—to know Dade had chosen to spend a Saturday without me, not bothering to invite me along to the stupid dance.
Saturdays were ours: days for movie marathons at the dollar-fifty theater, days for watching him play through the latest games, days to go catch local music, days to dream of living in New York in a tiny apartment to chase even bigger dreams, days to exist together when school wasn’t around and I could be me and he could be him.
“Well, I can’t justify paying for another rock concert that will destroy your hearing, but if you wash Falstaff, you can still have the tenner.” And Dad was already back to his code.
“I’m cool, Tuck lets me in no cover, and a soda is seventy-five cents.”
“Tuck sounds like a nice guy,” he murmured, and pointed to a stack of magazines on a table. “Feel free to grab whatever you want.”
Tuck is a nice guy. He works the door at Touchstone, and if I give him a break from working the door to hit the bathroom and slam a couple of shots, then he lets me in.
Even if the show is over twenty-one. He’s a pipeline to my music experience in our city.
There are three venues: a small jazz space called the Funky Blue Note, which is always twenty-one and over, the massive Motorola Pavilion, which is only good for the annual Weenie Roast lineup of alt-rock bands, and the Touchstone.
The Touchstone is an old house that was gutted and turned into a venue.
It’s dirty, run-down, and home to all the new bands looking to play a set.
It’s a kind of home for me too. I couldn’t wait to be back in the smoky haze, feeling the thump, thump of bass in my chest, sweaty bodies anticipating the hook, ready to slam into the music with a chorus of pent-up energy from the week.
I looked at the stack of magazines topped with an issue that said in big block letters LIGHTS OUT with Learning to Love Y2K in small letters between. I’d heard Dad murmuring about this, but it seemed kinda stupid.
I picked up the issue and flipped it to show him. “How bad is this Y2K shit, anyway?”
Dad let out a big sigh and pushed away from his desk, actually rotated his chair to face me. “Well, that all depends.”
Figured I wouldn’t get a straight answer.
“Depends on what?” I egged him on. After all, I did have all day.
“Well, in order to save memory, programmers drop the nineteen from dates in the twentieth century, and when the year turns over from 1999 to 2000, the computers will think it’s actually 1900.”
“So will they cease to exist? Are they going to revert to gears and wood? I don’t see the issue of what date they think it is.” For the amount of press it was getting, Y2K seemed pretty lame.
“Not exactly,” he said with a chuckle. “A lot of the programs depend on the right date to work. Turning back time is a lot like, well… okay, so if you see the screen here, I’ve got commands that start with C://, right?”
Maybe I should have been less inquisitive. I nodded to pretend I got it.
“If I change this C to a D or Z, it will make the whole line of code not work. And then a whole program could crash, data could get corrupted, and—”
“Nerds will be without their access to Duke Nukem.”
He smiled; it was good to see him smile. “Or hospital programming could go down, creating an issue with organizing patient intake, banks could lose electronic records and money in electronic forms could get lost or misdirected, and what about the astronauts?”
“Astronauts?”
“You don’t think those spaceships hit space without using computers, do you?
Our electric grid, our commerce, everything depends on computers somewhat these days.
If Y2K takes out the power grid, we’ll literally be in the dark, and historically, Americans don’t do so well with that. Riots and whatnot.”
Anxiety, my old friend, started to climb up in my throat.
Maybe that government oversight panel I saw on the news was important.
Maybe this was something I needed to add to my constantly growing list of fears.
Maybe we should get a bomb shelter. Maybe I should prepare Falstaff and myself for the apocalypse.
Hell, Dade had shown me enough zombie movies that I could probably use them as a primer.
“Can you just turn the computers off and on again and it works?”
“Not so simple, Jessamine. A reboot won’t work, but a lot of people, including me, are working on fixing the code. If everyone does their job, then the lights should stay on.”
“That’s good,” I said, hoping people would do their jobs. But a new anxiety crept in, and it was time for the real truth.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Mm-hmm?” He was already back in his code, saving the world, I guess.
“Mack is talking about rebooting herself. I think she’s not doing so well. Maybe it’s time to talk about a hospital….”
“Mackenzie had a bad night, she’s stabilizing. Your mom’s got her taking her meds again,” he said, sounding less sure than his words.
“We both know Mack can hide her pills, Dad.” He wouldn’t look at me. I was bringing out the dirty family secret. I was saying the quiet part out loud. “I think it’s getting bad again.”
He just sighed deeply and stared at his screen. We both stayed frozen for a minute, me hoping he’d listen this time. Him probably hoping I’d just leave. “Jessamine, I will keep an eye out. You shouldn’t be worrying about this. Leave it to me and your mother.”
He might as well have slammed the door in my face.
We both knew the conversation was over. For a second I felt this wave of anger and it pushed my hands to tremble, my eyes to tear up, and a scream to shove up my throat, begging to come out.
But I couldn’t let it. Rage, it’s another sign of manic depression.
If I went off, what if it was the first dip down the same coaster as Mack?
What if letting go once allows the thoughts and feelings I have inside to take over?
I’m made of the same stuff as her, only difference is I’ve got a warning to hold back.
So I held back. I grabbed the magazines and headed to my room in the attic, which is still not far enough away from this shitshow to keep me safe.