Dream Boy

October 1993

Murderer.

It’s a word that no normal fifteen-year-old can live with, yet it has hounded Jake since Rusty McKenna died. He struggles to get up that Monday morning, that word floating in the air, toxic. He thinks: is this fair? As if he doesn’t have enough problems. His Sony Walkman, for instance, is missing. It’s not on the bedside table. Not in his rucksack of cassette tapes. He throws open the window, but the white tainted sky keeps its mouth shut. Jake Walker holds his head as if it’s about to fall. Too early for a headache. It’s hard to think when the walls are literally inches from your face. He had complained to Doug about it, the smallness of his room. After all, he’s no longer a six-year-old kid frightened of wide open spaces. But Doug, in his infinite wisdom, even added that antique oak cabinet he had acquired from some garage sale. He planted the whole immoveable thing right beside the door. Now you couldn’t open the door without hitting the bed. The simplest tasks have become tedious. To take a shit and reach the bathroom at the end of the hallway, he has to wade through the untended debris of his life: cassette tapes, dirty sweaters, a misplaced sock. And that’s only to cockroach from the room. It’s much easier at night, when he’s dead tired from the day’s insults. He’d open the door only halfway, and dive into the bed, picturing Kurt Cobain by the tail-end of one of Nirvana’s gigs, swan-diving into the adoring crowd, outstretched hands capturing him frantically. Jake hits the tumble of pillows as the crowd roar in his ears, screaming for an encore of Smells Like Teen Spirit. He lets himself sink into the welcoming darkness. He buries his face in between the pillows and blanket and the books and his cassette tapes and he just stops caring. Easy to forget where you can and cannot go. Easy to let bone-gnawing weariness snuff you out.

Doug? He yells. My Walkman’s gone. You seen it? He hears a distant grunt, a door slamming from far away. Doug?

Outside, on the hallway with its worn-down wooden bannisters and faded wallpaper, Jake’s enemy is not the lack of space but voices—ones that scream at him in his moments of dark candor: murderer.

He closes his eyes as he splashes his face with cold water. Murderer. And he’s not even sixteen yet.

How could he have known? He was asleep; it was a dream. And because he had hated Rusty so much—hatred that first took root when Rusty peed on his shoes in the boys’ room more than a year ago—the dream easily turned into a nightmare. A nightmare that became real—too real that Rusty’s death put everything in his life into terrible oh-mother-of-God focus, as if his family’s own slaughter years ago was not enough. Jake has tried to live with all his demons the best he could. And yet.

Rusty’s death has made him ask: what if I die, too? It’s so easy to die. His parents, brothers, his sister Jackie—they all died on a morning like this. What if he descends the stairs and he just dies? What if he’s standing here in this little bathroom, staring at the hair-line crack on the sink while he soaps his face, and he just drops dead? Would that feel deserved? Like some judgment long in coming? He lets one accusation slip through the foam in his eyes: you killed him, Jake. You’re no different from the monster that slaughtered your loved ones.

Would his death make Doug feel rotten? Doug with his There’s a reason for everything and Turn the other cheek. Once Jake found Doug in the kitchen with a dead bird. The bird was on the table, its stiff feet pointed to the ceiling. It’s not dead, Doug said. Jake poked it with a finger. It quivered, one foot clawing the air, like a spasm. Why is it here? Jake asked, but not that he really needed to know. Doug said, It swooped in through the window and hit the wall. Even birds make mistakes.

People, like birds, make mistakes. So turn the other cheek. There’s a reason for everything.

But he couldn’t turn the other cheek for Rusty. If he could have, he would have. His face in the steam-clouded mirror returns the stare: Perhaps he deserved it?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Not exactly sunshiny things to brood over on a Monday morning. Jake couldn’t help it, that’s the problem. His brain doesn’t have well-defined partitions: all bad memories go here, singing birds and what-not go here, statements of hope go here. It’s not clean and neat like that. A muddled mess, more like, a tangle of good things blood-soaked on the edges by the bad, bleak ones. He could think of Claire—Perfect Claire—and while he basks in the nice feelings associated with her, in the periphery hover all the hard feelings. All kinds of them, each one pulsing like a fresh wound.

Last night, Rusty was there again, hanging out in the edges of where he surveys people’s dreams, reminding him of his crime. Jake tried to look at other things. For example, he touched Ciara Davis’ dream orb—this was against Rule No. 1: Never hijack the dreams of people you personally know—but Jake’s knuckles were white from gripping his feet and turning himself into a little ball. Ciara was strolling down the red carpet—her favourite dream—in some movie premiere in which she was the star. Jake inserted himself in it: a swarm of paparazzi, all carbon copies of a bearded version of Jake, snapping up photos of Ciara just when she tripped on the carpet. But there he drew the line; it was important. Ciara tripped on the carpet and all Jake did was make the paparazzi take photos; he stopped the crowd from laughing and pointing insulting fingers at her. Anything that could red-shift her dream into a full-blown nightmare, of which Jake would be responsible. Jake waved a hand and the crowd became silent. He sensed Ciara’s emotional anguish spiking up, about to spear through the ceiling of her consciousness, and Jake morphed into Brad Pitt, offering Ciara a hand, a long-stemmed rose in the other, flashing that million-dollar smile. That calmed her down and stopped her from waking up. She continued her time in dreamland, even giggling as she slept. All safe and happy and without fear. But in the far back of the crowd, in the layer where light interspersed with darkness, Rusty McKenna quietly stared at him. Judging him. Never letting him go.

Jake returns to his room and surveys the sordid landscape. He takes a deep breath. He remembers: last night, he was listening to U2’s Achtung Baby. He recalls nothing after that. So maybe… He sticks his head under the bed. In the enveloping darkness, the Walkman stands upright, the red LED still on. It must have slipped when he dozed off sometime between Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World and Love Is Blindness. Most probably in the vicinity of Acrobat. He mentally calculates and arrives at the inevitable conclusion: the batteries must be nearly dead by now. He grinds his teeth as he reaches out for the Walkman: there goes a week of oblivious bliss. He could have gotten a few days’ worth of juice more out of those batteries. But now—where would he get the fortitude to survive even a day of school without music blaring in his ears?

He fishes it out of what Doug refers to as a cesspool: a baseball glove, a broken trumpet, more books. Maybe Doug is a Turn the other cheek kind of person, but he’s not Cleanliness is next to Godliness. He doesn’t seem to care for anything else except dwell in ancient glories and watch after-dinner Westerns, a few fingers of scotch in his hand. Once, when Jake asked to transfer to another school after Rusty’s death, Doug merely looked at him, as though he understood the reason why. Doug made phone calls. One morning he went out and didn’t come back until late that night. He told Jake the news: You’ll be attending Camden High from now on. Everything has been arranged. Just like that. No questions. Not that Doug doesn’t like talking. He does, especially when the subject of law and order is touched upon. Or when a young Clint Eastwood is on TV wearing that poncho and that wide-brimmed hat that hid half his face, and Doug just felt the need to expound on why Clint is one of the finest men the world has ever seen. But when Doug doesn’t speak—when he dismisses Jake with a grunt or a shrug of the shoulders—Jake knows it’s best to shut up.

The prospect of school tastes like medicine, bitter but necessary. He has transferred to Camden High to get away from Rusty’s memory, as though actual distance mattered. As it turned out, even the new school provided no solace. Like before, kids would march behind him, asking each other, Do you smell poop? They saw through him, figuring him out as soon as he sat in class on that first day: the strange one, the freak, the weirdo. The boy who would not fight back. Who kept to himself, humming out the silly songs in his head. The one that sent all the other kids to opposite poles: either they want to push him into the trash bin or ignore his existence entirely. Except Claire Rivers. Claire was different. She turned her head to look at him as Miss Masterson announced his name, the boy who had just transferred from some school on the other side of town, and smiled. In a world that groaned from the weight of this sad state of affairs, that smile was the rarest beam of light.

Jake has always wanted to say: I'm not weird or strange. What others detect as his smallness, it's just the confusion. The question why constantly throbbing in the core of his soul and never finding an answer. It’s his biggest secret, and others could not access it, if only to understand his strangeness. Especially not Spike, a nineteen-year-old man-child in a universe of fifteen-year-old boys. Spike who’s so dumb he couldn’t graduate from high school. His greatest achievement in life is driving a spanking new red Chevy pick-up truck, which only magnifies his status among the younger ones. Spike recently has taken a fondness for making Jake’s life hell. Jake wonders where he might draw the line this time. At night before he sleeps, he tells himself this: I will not hurt anyone, anymore, as long as I live. But more and more, as Spike does these little hurtful things to him every single day—the verbal abuse, the humiliation at the cafeteria, the undeserved slaps on the head on the hallway, the occasional choke-hold by the lockers that sometimes gets too painful—Jake’s conviction to never repeat the same mistake gets watered down by the build-up of hate. He’s a small, young man—he hasn’t seen much but pain and loss. It takes little to make him hate something so much. And yet, he tries. He tries so hard to respect the line, to never cross it.

Besides, there’s the prospect of seeing Perfect Claire later at school—even from a safe distance—which sends a jolt in his heart. There’s joy in it. And it’s a good thing; these days, he’s willing to trade anything just for a little joy. He wonders if Doug had prepared a semblance of a breakfast before he left; he just doesn’t have the appetite for cereal. He would love something greasy and sinful, like several slabs of bacon. He needs the energy. Today, he’d see Perfect Claire again. He missed her. Many times he had thought about visiting her in the past weekend, but he fought the desire and buried it deep in the subsoil of what passed as his waking life. He could not risk scaring her away. Not this time. Not this Claire. She’s the only sun in his life right now, and by God if she’s taken away Jake feels he would totally lose it. And that’s what frightens him the most—whatever power he has, he doesn’t feel a hundred percent in control of it. It’s a monster in his mind that waits for its time, and Jake’s afraid—he actually feel its utter reality in his guts—that once something happens with Claire—his sun beam, the light at the end of this long tunnel—the monster would take hold of him and stomp out of the dark recesses of his mind like an enraged beast and fulfil the evil that lay in Jake’s subconscious, like what it did to Rusty.

Jake listens to the minute sounds of an empty house as he trudges down the stairs. Doug must have left very early, probably to meet old friends. On the dining room table is a plate of fried bacon that looks like it has been there for a while. This will do. Anything but cereal. He savors the quiet solitude—a glance up at the kitchen clock tells him he still has half an hour—as he allows the briny, meaty taste of animal grease and meat crunch in his mouth. He washes it down with ersatz orange juice—lately, it has been all Doug could afford since his retirement—before dutifully going through the morning’s ablutions. These are quiet moments that are best left to mindfulness—he tries to inhabit the present just to escape his past. He focuses on brushing his teeth, for example, staring at his reflection on the mirror, noting the smallest things as though they were so important. The new toothpaste produces a lot of foam, and he brushes his teeth in quick strokes just to see it lather more fully, the resulting foam beard making him giggle. Lately, these have been his sources of mirth, however shallow. Jake takes what he can get.

Camden High School is only a few blocks away, and Jake bikes all the way to the school gate. He has always avoided school buses, which in themselves are a micro-breeding ground for bullying that is separate from what happens in the school yard. He has learned early in life that his frail physique, his pale, longish face, the way his eyes water at the mere suggestion of violence makes him an easy target, and so he has gone to great lengths to avoid crowds or gatherings, especially when bigger kids are around. He remembers Rusty McKenna as he turns to the left in the final block toward the school—he closes his eyes for a second, muttering to himself, Don’t go there. He summons Claire’s pretty face to inhabit his mind; he starts feeling good. He actually feels all right as he rides past the school’s gate, as he chains the bike to a metal rack, as he strides into the school’s main hallway.

He puts on the earphones and slips into the Walkman the first tape his hand finds. He presses Play and to his surprise, it still works—probably the batteries’ last hurrah.

…Feel like trash, you make me feel clean

I’m in the black, can’t see or be seen.

Baby, baby, baby, light my way.

Jake’s actually humming the song, and he doesn’t realize he’s been doing it out loud until a heavy hand slaps the back of his head and he turns around, startled, to see Spike’s flaring nostrils staring down at him, with those corncob teeth, mouthing out the words, Don’t you know this is a No Singing Zone? Spike points to his crotch: And what’s that?

When Jake looks down his fly is open. Laughter explodes. He straightens up and clears his throat: there’s only so much humiliation you can take. And yet. He smells Spike’s food-breath that no musky body spray could mask. He decides: not today. He zips up his fly with as much panache he could muster, and walks on.

Hey. Spike’s voice rises in pitch.

Jake hums. Baby, baby, baby light my way.

Hey. Spike grabs him by the hair so hard Jake almost falls down on his back. Don’t turn your back on me, you dumbfuck.

Jake clutches his head; his scalp burns in pain. You are such a girl, he mutters.

What the fuck did you say?

You’re like a girl. Grabbing my hair like—

Before Jake finishes, Spike slaps him across the face hard, his thick, calloused hands bearing the impact of a jackhammer. What an achy-breaky sensitive fucking girl, this idiot—is what Jake thinks, his last mental act of defiance, as the world spins out of control and his vision blacks out.

TWO

The world recedes into shades of gray and black and Jake descends into the vacuous pit of memory. Angry voices, snorts of mockery, they all seem to happen somewhere else, in the far distance. When he opens his eyes, he’s a small child again, peeping into a tiny hole and watching his own life unravel one bloody petal after another. There’s the six-year-old version of himself, walking home from school. He had waited for his Mom, but she failed to show up. And in his simple one-and-one-equals-two mind, he thought: home is near, why not walk home? After all, he had done it many times before. So he walked and walked and walked, but on Darby Street, a block away from his house, he encountered something so fascinating: a butterfly so large the sight of it took his breath away. It stood precariously on an exposed root of a huge leafy tree, slowly moving its wings, warming up for a long flight. The six-year-old Jake was seized by an overwhelming desire to possess it—this beautiful thing might never happen again in his life (and indeed, considering what he’d discover barely an hour after this encounter, it was a pretty spot-on reckoning), and he wanted it to be his, at all cost. The child pounced upon the butterfly, but it deftly fluttered away, as though blown by the wind. Jake followed it as it flew from tree to tree, from bush to bush. He followed it patiently, hoping for it to grow weary and just fall into his waiting palm. Jake would lose track of time and place—only him and this beautiful thing mattered, and the more he followed it, the further his desire intensified. Then something strange happened: the butterfly landed on the concrete sidewalk right before him, its wings slowly flapping. Like it had suddenly decided I’ll wait for you. Jake’s heart jumped, and he jumped upon it, too. But the butterfly was quicker; the boy found himself on the ground, his knees scraped and bleeding, and his first impulse was to cry.

You won’t catch it that way, said a voice, and when Jake looked up, he saw a police officer, his kind face looking down at him.

Jake whimpered, holding a bleeding knee as though it explained everything.

Say, where’s your mother? the policeman said. Jake said nothing. Do you know where you live?

Jake nodded, if too eagerly, the butterfly no longer in his thoughts.

The man offered his hand. Let me take you home, he said, your mother must be worried sick by now.

Jake took the man’s hand and they walked. Occasionally, he’d look up at him, and the policeman would smile. There was some gray in the policeman’s hair, and his moustache was gray, too. He had a big belly and his hand felt rough, like sandpaper. But there was a twinkle in his eye that Jake saw and recognized; even then Jake could see what mattered. Jake could see what a person had that deserved his trust. When they arrived at their doorstep and nothing stirred in the house even after the policeman knocked many times, he looked at Jake weirdly. Are you sure this is where you live?

Jake nodded.

The policeman looked at him and sighed. He knocked again. And again, the same stony silence answered back. He turned the door knob and found it unlocked. He pushed it, and the door creaked open. The silence that greeted them had a sinister quality. Anybody home? It was dark inside, and it was at this point when Jake also felt strange. Where were his parents? His brothers and sister? Where was everybody? From where they stood they could see broken furniture. His mother’s tall vase lay on its side in the hallway. There were shards of glass on the floor, books strewn everywhere. The policeman looked at Jake and fought off the urge to repeat the question. Wait here, he told Jake, before gingerly stepping into the house with his gun in his hand, finger on the trigger. He kept repeating, Hello! Anybody home? Nothing. Jake peered into the doorway of his own house and saw the look on the policeman’s face as he gaped at something in the kitchen. Jake heard him mutter, Oh, my God! The policeman was looking around and he kept muttering Oh, my God! Jake tried to step inside but the policeman held out his hand and yelled, Don’t go in here! He took out his radio and began talking into it, asking for what Jake heard was immediate assistance. The policeman came out and held his shoulders and asked him if he had uncles or aunties or any other relative. Jake shook his head. Then the policeman stared at his face for a long time and hugged him, whispering, It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay, boy. And it was weird because before that moment, Jake had never seen a policeman cry, whose name he’d learn to be Doug, and who would later let him live with him out of kindness and pity.

Those were the long-ago moments Jake retrieved from his memory as he lies there on the shiny tiled floor of the school’s hallway, trying to make sense of what just happened. He opens his eyes and a face emerges from the blur. A hand—the scent is familiar, and it instantly sends his heart fluttering—touches his cheek.

Are you all right? the pretty face says.

He stares at her in disbelief. It’s jarringly strange to flit from one ugly moment—populated by an asshole named Spike—to a glorious one, where an angel like Perfect Claire gives her full attention to your aches and pains. I’m…I’m fine.

He stands up; the slap no longer hurts, but he winces just the same, just for effect. She hesitates. I saw everything, she says. I’m sorry about that.

Jake blushes; does she mean she’d also seen his fly open? The least he wanted to begin this day is serve as the object lesson for how not to be at the receiving end of a bully’s undeserved rage. He is acutely aware of how ridiculous the whole scene must appear to her. She must think how spineless he is, a wimp. He sighs, brushing imaginary dust off his shoulder. It was a misunderstanding. Spike was just— he smiles gingerly and looks around for potential snitches—disgustingly insane. I was just letting him have his way because you can’t fight with crazy. He twirls a pointing finger in the air and rolls his eyes.

He merely slapped you, she says, "and you fainted."

Yeah, that was… That was… He coughs nervously; he couldn’t look into her big, beautiful eyes, which are just too stunning that he could easily get lost in them. That was an act. Yes! An act.

Bullshit, Claire seems to say with the way she tilts her head, gazing at him. Thankfully, she doesn’t say it out loud. She shrugs. She tucks a tendril of hair behind an ear. I’m just glad you’re fine, that’s all. She stands up and walks away.

Jake stares at her receding figure, his mouth hanging open, still trying to come to terms with the fact that the girl he has been admiring from a distance in these past months actually spoke