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Beene family very well before Jackson's
accident, as I had just moved in with Dad about then, but according to Melissa,
Jackson used to be "normal looking." I was glad he wasn't normal looking
anymore. His hair was a straggle of colors, dark with dyed streaks of blond. He
was unshaven and rumpled; his eyes looked as if he hadn't slept in a while. At
least they had that red-rimmed intensity you get when you've stayed up late and
talked about things that matter.
    "Goddamn it, you freak--" Melissa began, but
Jackson had already shut the door. I could hear him moving about in his room,
and I wondered what he was doing. I'd never been inside
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    his room before--the door was usually shut---
and right then I had the strange urge to see what it was like.
    Melissa had given up. "My mother told him if he
wasn't going to go to college he had to get a job or move out, so at least he
won't be around much after next week. He's getting his own apartment at the end
of the summer. Got it picked out and everything, but hey, as long as it's far
away from me. Can you believe the Hotel Delgado hired him? As a waiter, as if you want him touching your food. How desperate can you get? I swear, I'd
like to get him back out on that mountain and give him a second chance at
getting lost."
    I didn't say anything. I didn't want to get in
trouble with her again by pointing out what I've noticed--that the people who
use those expressions like I Swear and Over My Dead Body are
usually weenies who, past their moment of bravery, crumple at a barking dog.
Real tough guys don't swear, they just do.
    Finally I said, "Let's get out Kale Kramer's
hat. We can try it on and make fun of ourselves."
    "Are you kidding?" she said. You'd have
thought I suggested snatching that little shoulder pad the pope wears on his
head and dancing naked with it on. So instead we just talked about Kale Kramer
for a while, and then Diane called
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    up the stairs asking Melissa to help her drag
the branch back outside until she could discuss the matter with Larry. I sat in
Melissa's room, looked at last year's yearbook, and read the message she didn't
want me to read from Andrew Houseman, which was no big deal except for the fact
he said she was real sweet, which is the same thing he wrote in mine.
    Bored, I peeked out into the hallway. Jackson's
door was half open, and he seemed to be gone. I pushed open the door with my
fingertips. I could hear Melissa and Diane and the bang of the screen door as
they struggled to get the branch outside. I went into Jackson's room.
    It smelled like a guy's room, if such a thing
is possible. At least, it smelled different than my room or Melissa's--thick
somehow, steamy. The room had managed to escape Diane's decorating, and so it
looked like a real person actually lived there. On the floor, a pair of Jockeys
had found their soul mate, a white undershirt, and the two of them were rolled
together in an intimate ball. The desktop held a scattering of sheet music and
scrawled notes on paper scraps, a book tided Poets Of The United Kingdom, a tube of ChapStick, and a chain necklace with a slender silver vial that
Jackson usually wore around his neck. Three shelves above the desk held more
books, a jar of pennies, and high school soccer trophies. It seemed funny now to
think of Jackson playing an
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    organized sport on a high school team, and he
must have thought so too: the golden heads of several of the frozen players now
sported odd items like a wad of gum and a tiny knit cap that made the player
look ready for winter despite his stiff golden shorts. One player had a man's
ring dangling from its forever-kicking foot, like it was a halo that had fallen
and was about to be flicked back up into place.
    I crouched down by the phone and lifted it from
its receiver. Where he had held it near his face it smelled like soap. I
listened to the dull tone for a minute, then hung up. A floppy phone book was on
the