Kristopher Jansma - The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

“Are those Julian’s parents?” Shelly asked. The resemblance was undeniable. “And who is that? His sister or something?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. “I’ve never met her.”

She frowned a little, so I clarified, “I mean, I don’t think Julian has a sister.”

Evelyn was schmoozing with some alumni on the other side of the room. I wrapped my elbows around the chair arms and lodged my hands deep into my pockets, fearing my legs might propel myself over to her without warning.

“What’s wrong with you?” Shelly asked.

“Just trying to get comfortable,” I replied with a shrug, keeping my arms where they were.

But just then, Professor Morrissey crossed directly over to us. His owlish face was as darkly lined as it had been on the day of Sokol’s little speech in our class, and he looked me in the eye.

“Do you have a moment? Julian’s asking if he can speak with you privately. We’re having a bit of a dilemma.”

Happy to get away from Shelly and from Evelyn’s line of sight, I followed Morrissey down the hallway to our old classroom. Sokol was standing inside the door of the payphone booth, yelling excitedly in Czech into the receiver.

“Random House bought his novel,” Morrissey explained tersely, as we skirted the exuberant man.

“I thought you’d said they turned it down?”

He expelled a long, wavering sigh. “They had. Until Haslett & Grouse said they wanted it. Then S&S got in. Finally Random wound up paying almost twice as much for it as they would have before.”

Morrissey seemed crankier than I’d ever seen him, so I let it go. From the looks of Sokol staggering down the hall, the man’s success hadn’t stemmed his drunkenness, but he did look much less miserable.

In our old classroom, Julian was sitting at his usual place at the table, staring up at the raised windows again, now half covered with snow.

“I can’t do it,” he said with no trace of hysteria. He said it plain, like a fact. Like the truth.

“What? Read? What’s the big deal? I think your parents are here… ”

Julian groaned. “The dean’s probably trying to weasel some sort of donation out of them. Christ!”

“Evelyn’s here, too.”

“Fantastic. You can sleep with her again , then,” Julian snapped. Professor Morrissey made an awkward noise of surprise, then rapidly apologized and stepped outside.

“I didn’t realize you’d mind,” I said. Though we’d never discussed it explicitly, my understanding had been that Julian was not exactly interested in the opposite sex, much to the disappointment of the girls in our class.

He waved his hand dismissively, as if this were all well beside the point.

“I can’t do it. I can’t read the story,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, taking a seat across from him. Julian’s breath reeked of whiskey, and I wondered if it was Epiphany whiskey, or if there even was such a thing.

“Because,” Julian mumbled, “it’s all true. My great-great-grandfather really did steal a lump of gold from this mine in Australia. When I was little, my grandfather told me the story. He showed me the half of the nugget that never got sold. I’ve seen it.”

So Julian hadn’t simply pulled this story out of pure imagination. It wasn’t slanted — not even one half of a degree. Somehow this comforted me.

He went on: “It’s like our biggest, darkest family secret. Everything we have today is on account of a low-life thief and murderer.”

This muttered confession caused me an unreasonable amount of joy, for which I immediately felt the blackest kind of guilt. Maybe he wasn’t really better than me; maybe he just had a more sordid history to draw from.

“So why the hell did you write about it?”

He gave me a look, as if to say, You know .

He’d written it for the same reason that I’d written mine. Out of sheer desperation. Out of competition. Each in an effort to top the other, we’d driven ourselves to this. Julian had created an atomic bomb of a story, which, if detonated, would mushroom cloud his parents’ lives and probably his own inheritance. It was the same thing I had done, I’d realized. Made a little bomb all my own.

“Read something else then. Read one of the other ones. They were all good.”

Julian shook his head, starting to pull himself together. “I burned those all weeks ago. You’re going to have to do it. Morrissey said he’ll let you read yours.”

My heart began pounding.

“I can’t,” I said quickly, looking at my toes.

“Why not?” Julian snapped.

Of course I wanted to read it — I wanted to badly. But not with Shelly there. Not with Evelyn there. I’d been in such a rush to finish my story that night that I hadn’t bothered to change anything. There was no thin veil of fiction to save me. Even if I changed the names on the fly, there was the description of my dorm room. And of a girl in a leopard-skin hat. And the title, “The Trouble with Ibsen.” I couldn’t change that. If I read the story, Evelyn would know all the secret things I’d thought about that night. How I was sure that I loved her even though I barely knew her. Plus, I’d shatter Shelly’s glued-together heart in front of her classmates, some alumni, and every professor in our department. It would be the worst thing I’d ever done.

“Why don’t you want to read it? Christ, you didn’t write about me , did you?”

“No!” I assured him. “I wrote about Evelyn.”

Julian’s drawn face suddenly cracked into a smile. “Well,” he said. “Very nice.”

Morrissey peeked in. “Boys? I need someone. Now.”

Julian looked at me — waiting, to see if I was willing to do what he could not. Without his parents, Julian would have practically nothing. I had practically nothing already, yet I’d never done anything truly cruel before. Sleeping with Evelyn had been wrong, of course, but it had seemed like a victimless crime. It wouldn’t be so victimless if I stood up there now and detailed that crime to the well-dressed and waiting crowd. And to Shelly. I studied Julian’s face — annoyed but resigned. He could afford to wait for the next contest, or the next — but I knew that I might never again get this chance.

So I nodded. Julian’s smile widened, and I took a few deep breaths while Morrissey retrieved a copy of my story from his office and got Sokol off the phone.

From the side doorway I looked out into the crowd as Morrissey urged the attendees to take their seats. Shelly sat there quietly chewing on her hair, wondering when I’d be back. She had no idea what was about to happen. As if that wasn’t enough to make me sick, Evelyn was now sitting just three rows ahead of her, looking quite bored. As Sokol came to the podium, to wild applause, I studied the man’s face carefully. The hugeness of his self-satisfaction was all but blinding. The sacrifice of eighteen years of his life had just been validated. The crowd adored him and all he’d done.

“I’m sorry to say that our contest winner, Julian McGann, has unfortunately become ill and will not be able to read his story, ‘Just Before the Gold Rush,’ tonight. Instead, we have another story called… uhm … ‘The Trouble with Ibsen.’”

I looked out at the darkened audience and caught Evelyn’s gaze. She looked back at me, and her eyes, for the first time since we’d met, suddenly widened. She was not bored now. Then, with one smooth movement, she slipped the hat off her head and tucked it into her purse. Then she looked up, almost eagerly. We weren’t running lines anymore. Something vicious and fun was about to take place. Something unexpected was about to happen, for a change.

“Yes, sorry, that’s ‘The Trouble with Ibsen,’ written by the runner-up in our contest! Ladies and gentlemen, if I may introduce… ”