36. Jude
36
JUDE
The kid was leaning against the wall in front of the high school when we pulled up in the Rover. He looked younger, more unsure, than the other kids streaming out of the building, and I felt a pang of sympathy for him.
High school fucking sucked. Even for someone like me, who had probably seemed on top of the world, who’d had Rafe and Nolan to have my back. It was just confusing and scary and fucked-up in a million ways. Everybody said they were the best years of your life, but I’ve always thought that was fucked too. Who wanted the best years of your life to end when you were eighteen? You wanted four great years followed by sixty years of mediocrity, or worse, misery?
Nah, those people — the ones who said high school was the best time of your life — had watched too many movies from the 80s. They’d started to see their own experience through the rose-colored glasses of memory. They’d forgotten the agonizing insecurity, the terror of wondering whether you were normal, the complete and utter lack of control over your own life.
I saw it all in the slump of Matt’s shoulders, knew it was probably worse for him by the way no one stopped to speak to him on their way out, the way the other kids looked past him, like he was a piece of furniture or a tree in the landscaping.
“Want me to go get him?” Nolan asked from the passenger seat.
Rafe had gone ahead to the river to set up the kayaks and our gear.
“Nah,” I said. “Give it a minute.”
Honking would embarrass him.
He raised his head, looked around, then spotted the Rover. We hadn’t told him what we’d be driving — my bad — but the Rover, with its tinted windows and custom rims, wasn’t a typical car for Blackwell Falls. That honor belonged to the motorcycles driven by the Blades and Barbarians, the tricked-out Civics and Mustangs driven by the street gangs, the minivans driven by the moms and dads.
Nolan lifted a hand in greeting from the open passenger-side window and Matt pushed off the half wall and started toward us.
He was almost to the car when I saw a trio of swaggering jocks home in on him. I wasn’t even surprised when one of them — a guy in jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of four-hundred-dollar shoes — shouted over the crowd.
“See you tomorrow, freak!”
His two bros laughed, but not everyone was amused. A girl with long brown hair scowled at them and said, “Assholes,” while a guy in a sports jersey glared daggers at them.
Matt flushed beet red. It always sucked to be embarrassed but it sucked more to be embarrassed in front of your friends, and while Nolan and I weren’t exactly Matt’s friends, I was guessing he didn’t want to seem like a loser in front of us.
He opened the door to the back seat, tossed in his backpack, and got into the car.
“Hey,” Nolan said.
“Hey,” Matt said.
I was glad Nolan didn’t mention the assholes who’d been teasing Matt — that would only make Matt more embarrassed — but I stared hard at the douchebags as they crossed the street in front of the Rover and was heartened when the biggest one, the one who’d yelled at Matt, met my gaze, then moved faster across the street like he was scared.
Yeah, you better hurry, you little asshole .
The thought made me feel sick, because once upon a time I’d been a little asshole too. Maybe I hadn’t shouted random insults at people minding their own business, but I‘d been careless with other people’s feelings, had hidden my own insecurities — that I didn’t measure up, that I’d never be a real man unless I was like my dad and Luke — behind a fuck ton of contrived BDE.
Fuck. I didn’t know what was worse: being a little asshole or growing up and having to admit you’d been a little asshole.
I looked at Matt in the rearview mirror, eager to get away from Blackwell High, which was starting to feel like the Ghost of Christmas Past, a place where I really didn’t want to linger. “You ready to hit the water?”
“Yeah,” Matt said. "I packed my shorts in my backpack like you said.”
“Awesome.” He really was a nice kid.
Like Lilah.
They deserved better than what they had — at home and everywhere else.
He typed something into his phone, then looked up. “Where’s Rafe?”
“Getting the gear to the river,” Nolan said as I pulled into traffic. “That way we can get in the water faster, before it gets too cold.”
The sun was setting later now, but it got cold fast when it dipped behind the mountain, and it wasn’t hot enough during the day yet for the nighttime temps to feel like relief.
“Did you text Lilah?” I asked. “Let her know we got you?”
He nodded. “When I got in the car. She’d freak out otherwise.”
There was a hint of frustration in his voice, one I understood, but now I had another view.
Lilah’s view.
“She cares about you, that’s all,” I said. “Wants to make sure you’re cool. You’re lucky actually.”
“Lucky?”
I had my eyes on the road but could tell from the tone of his voice that he thought I was dumb as shit.
“Yeah. You have a good relationship with your sister. She cares about you, worries about you. My older brother probably wouldn’t notice if I dropped off the face of the planet.”
I glanced at the mirror, saw the surprise in his eyes. “You have an older brother?”
“Yep, and he’s a real tool.”
Matt laughed. “I guess you’re not close.”
“Not even remotely,” I said, pulling off Main Street and onto the road leading up to the mountain. “He’s a suit.”
“A… a suit?”
“He works in an office, with my dad actually,” I said. “They’re both business guys, money guys working behind four computer screens each, staring at the stock market ticker all day.”
“You didn’t want to work with them?”
I laughed. “No.”
“And that’s why you’re not close? Because you’re different?”
“That’s not why. It’s because they have no respect for our differences, no respect for me and who I am. And you can’t be close to people who don’t respect you, people who don’t see you.”
He was quiet after that, and I hoped I hadn’t said too much. It wasn’t my job to teach Matt anything, to guide him in any way. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to lie to the kid.
Rafe was waiting by the river, three kayaks lined up on the bank. Normally we’d all take a single, but he’d brought one of the doubles this time so one of us could take Matt, which would be safer since he’d never kayaked before.
“Yo,” Rafe said when we pulled up. He was shirtless over board shorts, his feet clad in the flat river shoes that kept them from getting chewed up by the rocks at the bottom of the river. A pile of gear sat on the ground next to him. “Ready to ride?”
Everything was a ride for Rafe. The waves in the ocean, the wind when he jumped out of a plane, the rapids in the Blackwell River.
Life.
He rode everything like a rogue wave. The wilder and more dangerous the better. He wasn’t the navel-gazing type, so I doubted he’d connected the dots, doubted he knew it was about his dad, an alcoholic who’d beat the shit out of him and his mom.
“Ready to roll.” Nolan looked at Matt. “You want to change?”
He looked uncertain, and I realized he probably wasn’t used to undressing in front of strangers, or anyone for that matter. I thought he might be one of those kids who changed for gym in one of the bathroom stalls and felt a fresh wave of sympathy for the kid.
“You can go behind one of the trees if you want,” I said. “We’ll wait here and gear up.”
He looked relieved, and he unzipped his backpack, pulled out the red basketball shorts he’d been wearing when Lilah and Nolan had picked him up at the deli, and disappeared into the trees.
Nolan and I used the time to strap on our life vests and stow the dry gear loaded into waterproof packs in the noses of the kayaks.
“You dropped off the truck?” Rafe asked, pulling his life vest over his head.
“On the way to get the kid,” I said.
Nolan and I had left the pickup at a trailhead downstream where we’d pull the kayaks out of the water.
Rafe lowered his voice. “He okay?”
I nodded. “A little nervous maybe. And some kids were giving him shit at school.”
Rafe’s eyes hardened. “Did you punch the little fuckers in the face?”
Nolan sighed.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t punch the little fuckers in the face.”
I didn’t tell him that I’d wanted to because that would only validate his ever-present rage, and that was the last thing he needed.
“Why not?”
“Because we didn’t want to get arrested for assaulting a minor,” Nolan said.
Matt reappeared wearing his shorts and carrying his jeans. “Don’t you know how to swim?”
Rafe barked out a laugh. Lilah obviously hadn’t told the kid we’d been SEALs. “We know how to swim.”
“Then why are you wearing life jackets?”
Rafe picked up the fourth life vest and walked toward Matt. The kid flinched, like he wasn’t used to being touched, when Rafe put it over his head and started tightening the straps.
That was the thing most people didn’t understand about the military. It was full of a bunch of hoo-yah macho bullshit, but it was also intimate. You pissed next to the guys in your unit. Sometimes you shat next to them too. You helped them on — and off — with gear. You sat as close as lovers inside tanks, airplanes, Humvees.
“Because we want to have fun, not end up with our heads smashed against the rocks and our lungs full of river water,” Rafe said, double-checking the straps. “If you fall out of the boat, you’re going to get tossed around by the rapids. You might hit your head, like Jude did that time. Get carried downstream. The vest will help you keep your face out of the water until we can pull you out.”
Matt turned a shade paler. “Am I going to fall out?”
“Probably not,” Rafe said.
“Probably not…” Matt echoed.
Rafe slapped his back. “Don’t worry. If you fall out, just remember to roll onto your back.”
“Roll… onto my back?”
“Yeah, and for fuck’s sake, hold your breath until your head’s above water.” Rafe put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. “Don’t worry, dude. We got you. You’re going to have fun.”
Rafe’s words were uncharacteristically patient and comforting. Who would have known Rafe would make a good… dad?
Big brother?
Either way, my mind was kind of blown, but I guess it shouldn’t have been, because if there was one thing I’d learned about Lilah, it was that somehow, she kept finding ways to make us better men.
It wasn’t her job. But here we were.