Lisa Unger - Fragile

“Do you ever talk to Travis?” she said when he didn’t answer her.

“Don’t,” he said. “I didn’t mean-”

“You feel it, too. I can see it on your face. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Stop it.” He put the vehicle in gear and started to drive. “Pull yourself together.”

Jones and Travis Crosby had never been friends, exactly. No, never that. But something magnetic and irresistible drew them together over and over, either in conflict or in complicity.

Travis’s dad was the Hollows police chief, a grim and sour man who retained his post for almost thirty-five years. During his tenure, crime in The Hollows was well below the statistical average. And revenue from parking and moving violations was higher than anywhere else in the state. But his cruelty, his rages, were well known. And everyone knew that Travis got the worst of it.

Jones’s father, before he disappeared just shortly after Jones’s thirteenth birthday, had worked at the dairy just out of town, a family farm where kids would ride their bikes to the ice cream shop on summer afternoons or for the questionable entertainment of cow tipping on moonless nights. Once upon a time, town legend held, their fathers had been friends. But some rift had placed a distance between the two families. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, or because of some unspoken, shared hatred of their fathers, Travis and Jones wound up killing time together now and again. Almost always getting into trouble when they did.

That afternoon, lacrosse practice had gone late. They were in the play-offs the following weekend, and the coach was busting their balls every afternoon. Jones walked to his car in the near dusk, legs shaking, feeling light-headed from exertion. He didn’t see Travis sitting on his hood until he was just feet away.

“Nice ride,” said Travis.

“Birthday gift from my mom.” It was a restored ’67 Mustang, fire-engine red, mint condition, custom stereo and speakers. Jones loved it but was embarrassed by it, by the attention it drew, by its cherry shine. He hated it a little, too, because of how she lorded it over him all the time. Aren’t you lucky to have a mom who would buy you something like that? You better be nice to me. Don’t leave me like your father did .

“Must be nice to be filthy fucking rich.”

Jones gave a little laugh. Nobody in The Hollows was rich, not back then. A few new residents were building nice houses in the hills. But people who came from The Hollows were descended from German settlers-they were peasant stock.

“My uncle restores antique cars,” Jones said. “I don’t think it cost that much. Just a lot of hard work on his part.”

Travis gave a slow nod, ran his hand along the hood. “Seriously, man. It’s nice.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I get a ride?”

Travis still bore a red half-moon scar under his eye from the beating Henry Ivy had given him at the homecoming game. It seemed to have humbled him a bit, that beating. Jones, like everyone at Hollows High, was glad for it. Travis was a bully and an asshole. Though Jones couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the guy, too. It was the ultimate humiliation to get beaten down in front of the whole school by someone who had previously been regarded as the biggest geek on Earth.

Jones nodded his chin toward the car and walked over to pop the trunk. They both dropped their lacrosse gear inside.

He often thought about how normal everything was that afternoon, how right everything was with the world. They were just two ordinary kids. Each had his sets of problems; both were children of dysfunction. But it was a cold, pretty evening. They were well exercised, sober, healthy. They weren’t aimless or needing to blow off steam. They were both tired from school and practice, and Jones couldn’t wait to get in the shower. Any other day, each would have been home within the half hour. Jones would have eaten with his mother, then gone to his room to do homework-because if his grades fell, he couldn’t play.

But as they pulled out of the school parking lot and made the left turn to go home, they saw a late bus stop briefly in the distance, then start moving on its way. And then they both saw her, her thin form weighted down by a heavy backpack, a violin case in her hand. Sarah Meyer walked with slow determination.

“She walking?” asked Travis.

“Looks like it,” said Jones. He didn’t know her at all. Once he’d walked past the music room and heard her practicing. It didn’t sound that great to him; he wasn’t sure what the fuss was all about.

“You know what I heard about her?” said Travis. He’d dropped his voice low though they were alone in the car.

“What?”

“That she gives great head.”

Jones laughed, but at seventeen, just the thought of it caused his crotch to ache a little. Of course it was a lie. Because Travis was a liar, always making up the craziest shit just to get a reaction.

“No way.” Sarah was a small girl, skinny, with fine, mousy brown hair, forever clad in corduroy pants and some girlie sweater her mom had obviously picked out. She had this distracted air about her; even in class he’d sometimes notice her staring out the window, daydreaming.

“I’m not kidding. She sucked Chad Donner off under the bleachers after school last week.” Travis let out that hoot of laughter he was famous for, was getting himself all excited.

“Whatever.”

“He said she liked it. Loved it. No, no. He said she was crazy for it.”

“Shut up, Travis.” Jones regretted giving him a ride. This happened all the time. He’d find himself hanging out with Travis and wondering why he didn’t remember from the last time that he didn’t like the guy at all.

“What? You don’t believe me? Let’s ask her.”

By the time they reached her, Sarah was just about to turn off the main road and head up the unpaved drive that led to her house. It was nearly a mile long, running first through a field and then into a thick wooded area. Wasn’t she scared, Jones wondered, in the gathering dark? She didn’t seem to be, her shoulders square, her pace steady.

“Slow down, slow down,” said Travis, as he rolled down the window.

Then, “Hey, Sarah,” he called. “Want a ride?”

• • •

But Jones didn’t allow himself to blame Travis for what had happened on that very normal evening. There had been decades to marvel at the minutiae, the little things that had led them all there: if Jones hadn’t dawdled in the locker room, reluctant to go home to his waiting mother and endure her smothering attentions-or if he’d lingered longer; if Travis’s car hadn’t been in the shop; if Sarah hadn’t missed her bus; if Melody hadn’t come strolling up from her place to meet Sarah on the road, having seen her from her bedroom window.

But there was another part of him, too, that suspected none of it could have been altered, that no matter what any of them had done that day, they all would have arrived together at the same point in time. That there was no way to have avoided the moment when their unique combination of energies, desires, and fears unified to create something awful.

Thinking that kept him from remembering that he was the one with all the power, literally the one in the driver’s seat. All he would have had to do was keep going, endure whatever ribbing Travis had to offer up. Aw, you always were a pussy, Cooper . He could have ignored Travis’s directive and taken them both home. Except he didn’t.

Henry Ivy got suspended for a week because of the beating he gave Travis Crosby. But he didn’t care. It had been a long time in coming. Travis had been terrorizing him since middle school. Looking back now, as a school counselor with a master’s degree in childhood development, Henry saw what a troubled kid Travis had been, could even muster some compassion for him. But at the time, after years of humiliation-tray dumping, towel snapping, locker graffiti (Henry Ivy is a faggot, gay boy, cocksucker) , once a bloody nose in gym class after Travis threw a football in his face-Henry only saw him as a tormentor. He didn’t know why; he’d never done anything to Travis. Travis had merely pegged Henry as an easy target, one unlikely to retaliate, and with a kind of lackluster determination took whatever opportunity presented itself to make a fool out of him.