Dianne Salerni - The Eighth Day

“Fine,” said Jax, walking past the chair and out of the kitchen with his plate. He wasn’t going to stick around to eat with Riley and A.J.

His bedroom was dark and cramped, with only one window. A wallpaper border circled the room, patterned with hound dogs wearing Confederate-flag bandannas. When Jax had moved in, Riley said the place had come that way when he rented it. “Change anything you want,” he’d suggested.

But Jax hadn’t put any effort into redecorating his room, because he wasn’t staying long. That’s what he’d thought four months ago, anyway.

He flung himself onto the bed and rested the paper plate on his stomach. At first, he stared at the ceiling while he chewed, but eventually his gaze wandered around the room. The trombone he’d given up playing was still propped against the wall. Nearby was the telescope he’d gotten last year and lost interest in after one use. His dad had complained long and hard about that.

Then Jax turned his head toward the photos on the bedside table. There was an old picture of Jax as a preschooler on his mom’s lap, taken just before she’d gotten sick, and another of Jax and his father at the Grand Canyon last summer. Jax was smiling crinkly-eyed into the sun, while his dad had put up a hand to shade his eyes.

Why’d you do this to me, Dad?

If Jax had swallowed the hot dog whole, it couldn’t have choked him worse than his own anger.

Jax knew the accident hadn’t been his dad’s fault. Someone, a drunk driver probably, had run his father’s car off the road, causing it to plummet downhill and into the Susquehanna River. That person—whoever he or she was—had been the sole focus of Jax’s anger until Riley Pendare had shown up and stolen him away from the only family he had left.

In the days after his father’s death, Jax had been taken in by his mother’s cousin, Naomi, and her husband. He hadn’t known them really well before the accident, but they were family, willing to give him a good home. Then Riley had appeared at Naomi’s with an affidavit, claiming to be Jax’s guardian. “Rayne Aubrey signed the guardianship of his son over to me,” he’d told them, crossing his tattooed arms across his chest. “This document says so. In the event of his death, I’m supposed to take custody of Jaxon Lee Aubrey.”

Naomi called on a friend of the family for help, a lawyer who came to the house and hammered Riley with questions and received little satisfaction from his answers.

Who was Riley Pendare to Rayne Aubrey? Son of an old friend.

Why had Rayne Aubrey chosen Riley Pendare, eighteen years old and a stranger, as a guardian over his late wife’s cousin?

Riley had been particularly uninformative here. “It was his wish.”

But one answer had been more upsetting than any other.

“When?” Naomi had demanded. “When did Rayne make this arrangement?”

“Three weeks before he died” had been Riley’s reply.

The lawyer thought the whole thing was ridiculous—Riley was too young and the situation too strange—and suggested they call Child Services to schedule a court hearing. Jax hadn’t liked the sound of that, but it was better than letting this tattooed stranger take him away. Then Riley had a private word with the lawyer, gripping his arm and pulling him aside, out of everyone’s earshot. The lawyer called Naomi over, and Riley spoke quietly to her, too, putting his hand on her shoulder.

The next thing Jax knew, everyone had changed their minds. The lawyer said Jax would have to live with Riley while waiting for the hearing, and Naomi agreed it was necessary. “It’s just for a little while,” she promised him. Jax watched in horror as his belongings were piled into the truck Riley had arrived in—which didn’t even belong to him. Turned out he’d borrowed it from A.J. to pick up Jax for the five-hour drive to this little town in western Pennsylvania.

It was during that long, silent drive that Jax’s knot of anger began to grow larger. He found there was plenty to spare for Riley Pendare—and his own father.

ON JAX’S THIRTEENTH BIRTHDAY,Billy Ramirez tossed him an apple in first period. “Don’t say I didn’t give you anything.”

Jax caught the apple. “Thanks.” It was probably the only birthday present he would get.

“We should throw a party. Do you think Riley will let us have one at your house?”

“I don’t know who would come.” Jax hadn’t made many friends, partly because he kept telling himself he wasn’t staying and partly because this school was so much bigger than he was used to. Jax had come from a small neighborhood school where he’d known all his classmates since kindergarten. Now he was bused from Riley’s town to a consolidated megaschool servicing five different townships. In seventh grade alone, there were more than four hundred students. They included kids like Giana Leone, who came from wealthy McMansion neighborhoods, and wannabe thugs like Thomas Donovan, who was at that moment eyeing Jax’s apple as if he wanted to swipe it.

“I don’t know if Giana would come,” Billy said cheerfully, “but I’m not afraid to ask her.”

“Who said I’d want you to?” Jax had smiled at the girl one time and Billy wouldn’t leave it alone. He hoped Giana, sitting across the aisle, hadn’t heard. He was pretty sure the snort behind him meant that Thomas’s sister, Tegan, had heard. Jax glanced over his shoulder, but Tegan had her head bent over last night’s homework, trying to finish it before the teacher passed by. She looked just like her twin brother, with a freckled face and carroty-orange hair. Jax didn’t even think Tegan had her own wardrobe. She always wore the same oversized hoodies and baggy jeans as Thomas.

“Ask Riley tonight,” Billy whispered.

Jax sighed. He didn’t believe Riley would let them have a party. Riley liked his privacy. When Jax had moved in, there hadn’t even been internet.

“How can you not have internet?” Jax had demanded on his second day in the house.

“Don’t want it.”

“What, are you like from the Middle Ages?”

Riley barked out a laugh. “Ha! Funny.”

“You have cable.”

“I like TV. What I don’t like is giving anyone with an internet connection the ability to hack my computer.”

That was the most paranoid thing Jax had ever heard. He stood there, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, holding the ethernet cable to his computer. There was nowhere to plug it in. “I need it for school.”

“Use the public library.”

Jax was surprised Riley even knew what a library was. “I hate this place, and I hate you!” He flung the cable down, and since that wasn’t satisfying, he shoved a box of books off the desk he’d been given in an alcove off the kitchen. “Why couldn’t you leave me where I was?”

Riley said nothing.

Jax kicked a chair over, stormed upstairs to his ugly room, and slammed the door.

The following day, when Jax came home from school, he found Riley underneath the desk with a toolbox. “Hey! What’re you doing to my computer?”

“Hooking up your internet,” Riley replied, screwing a jack plate into the wall.

Jax hadn’t thanked him, and Riley hadn’t stuck around to be thanked. They’d never spoken of the incident again, although Jax overheard A.J. mention it once.

“I can’t believe you got him internet. Living dangerously, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, probably. But I know how he feels.”

After school on his thirteenth birthday, that internet connection brought Jax a very brief email from his cousin, Naomi:

Happy Birthday Jaxon. Wishing you the best from Naomi, Ted, and the kids.