Possible happiness, p.8
Possible Happiness, page 8
The Willow situation stayed weird for a few days. For one thing, Eric had stopped taking the usual subway-surface car in the mornings that week, and though he and Jacob both took the Broad Street line from Central in the afternoons, making small talk that was pretty small, Eric all of a sudden wasn’t getting on the subway-surface at City Hall with Jacob; he was walking home instead. It was like a three-mile walk. So that was uncomfortable.
But things resolved themselves on Thursday morning. That was when Willow officially made Finn her selection, a selection that became clear to everyone when she started lying in the hallway with her head back in his lap. It was like that was the international signal of dating, Jacob thought.
Willow did stop him in the hall that day once the Pack had gone in its various directions toward class. He was walking along, sort of saying to himself Tammy, Tammy, Tammy when someone grabbed his arm, and it was Willow. “I was hurt when you stopped calling me,” she said. Her eyes were a little narrowed, which made them seem less enormous than usual.
Jacob went through a strange cascade of feelings. There was a bit of automatic recognition that Willow was a very pretty girl, but that was quickly washed out by guilt, and that was quickly swept away by irritation. “I’m sorry,” Jacob said, with fading sincerity. “You didn’t seem like you were interested in talking to me.”
Willow searched his face for something, and apparently didn’t find it. “Well, everything’s good now,” she said brightly, and she gave a big smile and touched his arm again and kind of flounced away down the hall. Jacob watched her go, shaking his head. He could imagine Leron shaking his head, too, and saying something about big-eyed girls—and he could imagine Tammy saying something about lunatics.
Things got back to normal with Eric immediately; as soon as Willow’s head hit Finn’s lap the subway-surface car was back in business. They rode home together debriefing about various things. Mostly they talked about classes and other minor things, but eventually Eric said, “Boy. Finn and Willow, I guess, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. “It seems like it.”
“Yeah.” Eric looked out the window at the subway walls going by. And then, after a minute, “Do you think everyone’s gonna keep hanging out?”
Jacob felt a jolt of anxiety at that question. “Why not?”
Eric shrugged, still looking out the window. It was like he was trying not to make eye contact. “I dunno. I mean, maybe those two are gonna do their thing, and you and Tammy are gonna do your thing, and—but I guess Tammy and Willow are friends, so there’s the four of you, anyway, now that Willow’s not upset anymore. And maybe Willow’s other friends. The girls. But everybody else?”
“What are you talking about?” Jacob asked. Though—he realized as he asked—he already knew.
Eric finally did make eye contact. He blushed a little and said, “About this week. I mean, the way I was….” He gestured with his hands at the thing he was trying to say.
Jacob did feel annoyed about the whole experience, but he looked at Eric’s obviously sorry-for-real face, and he shrugged it off. “Big-eyed girls,” he said. “What can you do?”
Eric laughed gratefully and clapped him on the shoulder. “My man,” he said.
It’s funny, Jacob thought, what it means for things to go back to normal.
The next Saturday the Pack went back to Revival, but only after going to South Street first. Finn had the idea that they needed to gear up, and also that they just needed to make South Street part of their lives.
First they went into Mystic Market, which was kind of isolated over near Broad Street. Jacob had never been aware of the place. What it turned out to be was this funny store with shelves full of potions and elixirs and stuff—but all of the labels admitted that it wasn’t really magic. Like there was “alleged invisibility formula,” and “so-called truth serum,” and “purported love potion.” There were curses and magic powders and protective runes and all kinds of other things, and they were all covered in disclaimers.
“It’s like someone was running a perfectly good fake stuff shop,” Jacob said to Tammy as they browsed the shelves, and then she finished his thought: “But then a lawyer showed up,” she said.
“Totally,” he said.
She waved at him with a supposed monkey’s paw. “I might or might not be waving at you,” she said. “I have to consult my attorney.”
Jacob wondered what it’d be like to work at Mystic Market. The guy behind the counter seemed like he was tired of everything, and particularly tired in advance of this group of teenagers who were now picking up all the stuff in the store and not buying any of it. Jacob did think about getting the “possible happiness syrup”—his mother had been kind of down for the last week, like she sometimes was, particularly in November—but knew it was silly and wouldn’t have wanted to talk to the others about why he was getting it, so he put the bottle back on the shelf.
Tammy noticed. “That one’s probably booze,” she said. And he laughed.
After Mystic they roamed east, to the busier part of South Street, which was jammed with cars cruising one way slowly alongside the foot traffic and people going in every direction on the sidewalk. The air, Jacob felt, was full of momentum. Why hadn’t he ever come here at night before? Because of his habit of never going anywhere or doing anything. But maybe that had been taken care of now—new friends, maybe a girlfriend, even. Was that his happiness syrup? He put his arm around Tammy as they walked, and she bumped his hip with hers in a fun way. Up at the front of the group were Finn and Willow, also in an arm-around situation, and between the two couples were the other four Pack people.
“Who do you think’s next?” Tammy said, nodding at the rest of them.
Jacob shook his head. “What do you mean?” he said.
“For a pretty clever guy,” Tammy said, “you sure can be a doofus. Well, it’s going to be Eric and Char, for sure, and it’s going to be Brian and Alice.”
“Really?” Jacob said. He looked at them, all those theoretically loose parts, but actually there was something in those pairings—Brian and Alice were talking seriously about something right then, and Eric and Char were making plans. And Tammy had been able to see it. For her, loose parts didn’t have to stay loose. He held her closer.
“Definitely,” Tammy said. “I just don’t know which one’s gonna happen first.”
“Huh,” Jacob said.
And so maybe that was the answer to Eric’s question about whether they were all going to keep hanging out. If four disconnected guys all ended up dating four girls who had already been friends, did that make a group? Jacob, his arm tight around Tammy, hoped it did.
They went into a couple of shops—Zipperhead and Skinz—where the music was loud and rough and immediately there was that same atmosphere of possibility, where bad feelings could become active and angry. Also where there were long jewelry cases of spider earrings and skull necklaces and spiked leather bracelets, and a thousand black T-shirts of different kinds. And in these places they did buy things. Char found a black dress and she and Willow picked out boots, and Brian got a black bandanna that he tied around his head. Alice bought a plain black T-shirt, and Eric got one, also black, with a picture of a bust on it, colored all kinds of colors, under the words New Order. Jacob, meanwhile, fretted for a minute about money—he was really going to need another job—but eventually chose a Joy Division T-shirt (again black) with a kind of mountain range on it, because it wasn’t very expensive and looked cool even if he didn’t know what Joy Division was. But Finn saw it and said, “Yeah. Definitely.”
At the counter, looking at Jacob and Eric, the cashier said, “You guys are like before and after.”
Jacob didn’t know what to make of that, so he said, “Yeah.”
Tammy came up to him, holding spiked hoop earrings up to her ears. “What do you think?” she said.
Jacob thought she was the cutest person he had ever seen. And then he said it. “You’re like the cutest person I’ve ever seen.”
For that, she kissed him right there in the store. “You sap,” she said. When she was done, she said to him, “You should get your ear pierced, too, while we’re here.”
Jacob only thought about that for a second. Or more it was like he took a second to savor it, to enjoy the fact that he was definitely going to get an earring. He did still have money from the zoo in his pocket, after all. Then he went to the right counter, where it said you had to be eighteen or have parental permission. He knew his father wouldn’t have approved of something like this, and he wasn’t sure about his mother. The guy who had the hole puncher, or whatever it was, looked Jacob over suspiciously. “I can vouch for him,” Tammy said, even though she was actually a few months younger than Jacob was. And the guy shrugged and took the money for the ear-punching. It wasn’t too bad, the price. The man used a ball-point pen to put a dot on Jacob’s left earlobe, and said, “Is that where?”
Tammy gave a thumbs-up.
Jacob expected it to hurt, but it really didn’t. And Tammy nodded with satisfaction when she looked at it, her spiky earrings wobbling in the light. “Very cool,” she said.
He checked himself out in the mirror. “I look like a badass.”
“You are a badass,” she said.
They all put their new stuff on as they got it, so that by the time they were done with both shops, they were completely ready for Revival. They hit the street and headed up toward the club. Jacob felt electric.
“Yo, Jake—what was that ‘before and after’ thing?” Eric said to him as they walked. This time everybody was all mixed together, rather than two couples and the rest.
“I don’t know,” Jacob said.
“You guys don’t know these bands at all, do you?” Finn said.
Eric and Jacob had to admit they didn’t.
Finn laughed. “Well, Joy Division—” he pointed at Jacob’s shirt—“became New Order—” pointing at Eric’s—“when the lead singer of Joy Division killed himself.”
“Seriously?” Eric said.
Jacob was too surprised to say anything.
“Yup,” Finn said. “He checked himself out. Ian Curtis. He was like twenty-two or twenty-three.”
Before and after.
Jacob—he put one foot in front of the other and thought about the fact that he was wearing a shirt from a band called Joy Division whose lead singer had killed himself. Knowing that thing about the guy—Ian Curtis—changed things. In a way, the way it felt, it was almost like he wasn’t wearing a shirt at all, but was naked instead. But everybody around him kept walking, and he did too. The conversation moved on. Tammy found him and put her arm around his waist. That was nice. That was definitely nice. They all kept walking, off toward the club, toward the storm cloud.
At Revival, in the middle of the thunder and lightning, he stomped and threw himself around, tried to become the storm cloud, and kissed Tammy whenever he got the chance. Also from time to time he touched his pierced earlobe, which had become a little tender after the fact.
11
His mother was surprised by the earring. It took her a while to notice at breakfast the next morning; she seemed slow and tired and distracted as she got them both Kix cereal and bananas. “Oh,” she said, spotting the earring. She went to the refrigerator and came back without anything, as if she were confused, even though milk would have made sense. And then, “Aren’t you supposed to ask my permission before you do something like that?”
“You have earrings,” he said, though her ears were bare right then. She was dressed plain for work.
“But you’re my baby,” she said.
Jacob got up to get the milk for both of them and smiled what he hoped was a charming and childlike smile. “Can I, Mom?”
She reached out and touched his ear. “My baby,” she said. “There’s a hole in my baby.”
In general, November was always a difficult month for his mother. She said it was the light, the way the days got short. She said it seemed like there were fewer possibilities. And things hit her harder, and she was more tired. Exhausted, sometimes. It was in November when his mother was especially likely to say to Jacob, “Tell me something funny.” And he would roll out jokes and funny stories from his life, and things he made up—it didn’t matter as long as it got her to smile a little. Which sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t. There were times when November was just stronger than he was.
By the middle of the school week, everything was the way Tammy had predicted: Eric and Char were together, and Brian and Alice were together. The new couples didn’t do heads in laps, though; Eric sat leaning back against the lockers and Char sat in front of him and leaned back on his shoulder. And Brian and Alice just sat next to each other. There were multiple ways to do it, as it turned out.
“We should go on a date, Jake,” Tammy said one morning. She was looking up at him, playing a little with the stud in his ear. “Like, just the two of us.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. “That sounds great. Like the movies or something?”
Tammy nodded, satisfied. “Maybe Sunday,” she said. She turned her head a little, sat up, and looked at Jacob’s legs. “You should get some new jeans, by the way,” she said. “These ones are really tight on you.”
Jacob blushed. He wasn’t wearing the new jeans that he got for Eric’s party, and these old ones didn’t fit that well anymore. Only the one new pair really did.
“It’s like you’re wearing spandex,” Tammy said, and then she settled her head back down.
That comment made him feel pretty stupid, but he managed to come back with, “Well, that’s what superheroes wear.”
“Ooh,” she said. “Good response there.”
That was the one thing about Tammy: she definitely had an edge. Like, she was hilarious, and she had a sharp eye for funny things around her, but sometimes when it was pointed at him, Jacob felt the sting of it. If his hair was a mess, for example, which it often was, she might say something about that. Or if one of his own jokes fell flat, she’d point it out with a “nice try, babe.” That kind of thing. Usually he would find a way to banter back, which she definitely liked, but sometimes he would protest, and she would say, “What? It’s just a joke.” And he would try to find words for what bothered him exactly, and all he could come up with is, “I guess I’m just sensitive.”
Which he was. It was strange: even in the midst of all the good stuff that was going on in his life, Jacob still had these moments—maybe he would be up alone, studying, and hadn’t talked to any of his friends for a few hours, and he would feel a keen howl of loneliness; or he would walk down his street and suddenly wonder whether he belonged there; or he would just wake up feeling a sense of being disconnected from the world. That lone coyote again. These moments happened unexpectedly, and not because of anything big—maybe he’d see a broken window as he walked down the street or he’d see somebody get shamefaced after they got an answer wrong in class and he would just find himself wondering why things were the way they were.
The moments really were just moments, instead of—well, looking back, he could see how he’d lived a lot of his life before the Pack with these kinds of feelings. Weekend nights, where feelings like this would creep up whenever the TV show he was watching went over to commercials. Long stretches that he couldn’t get out of. But maybe there was an antidote now—if stuff like that hit him, he could just make a phone call or get a call, or see one of these awesome people in his life, and all the questions would probably fly away for a while. And Tammy, who seemed like someone who wouldn’t put up with feelings like that if they happened to her, could especially help, at least when she wasn’t being too sharp.
The weekend started with Pack nights. On Friday they went back to Revival and danced until they were exhausted and sweaty. In a way it was him and Tammy alone—there was some significant making out—but also it was the Pack in full force. Even though everyone was coupled up, the group danced close together, grinning at each other, teeth flashing in the strobe light, hooting and hollering. It was like the opposite of being at the bottom of the swimming pool; it was like fighting his way to the top. And afterward they spilled out onto the front steps, practically steaming they were so overheated, and laughing about nothing in particular, or just the fact that life was good. Jacob kissed Tammy under the streetlight, his hands in her damp hair.
On Saturday the Pack met up in Old City to see the movie Henry V at the Ritz. Jacob had read some Shakespeare for school, of course—they’d gone through Macbeth in Mrs. Hudson’s class that fall—but he’d never actually seen any, and he was surprised at how exciting the movie was. When the main character—Henry—gave the St. Crispin’s Day speech to rally his troops, Jacob almost wanted to grab a sword and join the battle himself. And then during the courtship scene between Henry and Kate, he and Tammy snuggled up together over the armrest.
“Good sir Jacob,” Tammy said to him in a kind of British accent.
“Fair lady Tammy,” he said back.
Afterward, full of energy, they all walked and then ran through the streets of Old City, yelling out lines from the movie that they were probably remembering wrong, bothering the various respectable people strolling, at one point running out onto the lawn across the street from the Bourse—a big open field right there in the city!—and flung themselves down in the grass, looking up at the clouds that were sharp and real in the moonlight. Jacob, panting, held Tammy’s hand, feeling like there was something deeply important about being there under clouds that you could see at night.
