Jessie and Ethan

Me and Jessie ended our shift at the same time.  We came in with the light so bright outside and the sky so blue, but when we came out of the store, our breaths made clouds and we were still cold under our jackets, which were open and maybe that's why we were still cold.  It didn't matter though, because all the cool kids had their jackets open, or half-open, and we wanted to be cool kids.  

But who were we kidding?

“What do ya wanna do, Jessie, the night’s still young.”

“Let's throw rocks at the dumpster behind the bowling alley,” she said. 

I said, “I'm hungry, let's get something to eat first — at least.” 

She said, “How 'bout we go to the bar on Crossing road.  You get fries for half off with your drink.”

“Cool,” I said. 

“Cool,” she said.

Earlier that day she drove to work while I walked to work.  The store was only a quarter mile from where I lived, which was in the basement of my parents' home. She lived pretty close by the store too, but her mom lets her use the car all the time since she herself uses another car.  Jessie lives with mostly her mom.  Her dad comes and goes when he feels like it. She doesn't see him that much and neither does her mom, and that's the way things are in her home.  

With me, I live in the basement and pay a small rent because my parents want me to learn how to be responsible before heading off to college, but I tell them all the time that I don't want to go to college and that college wasn't my thing.  But you know, I think my parents are in denial because they keep asking me “Have you sent out the applications yet? Have you heard from any of them?”  I just roll my eyes and tell them “To hell with college!” And I go down to the basement and draw sketches of things I've seen that day: an oddly shaped rock, or a wild bush, or some old lady customer at the store that I rang up, or someone's shoe.  I do this all from memory.

Why? 

I couldn't say.

I do it to pass the time, and for other reasons that even I don't know. 

We used Jessie's car to get to the bar on Crossing road.  “You got your fake ID, Jessie?” 

“Sure do, you?”

“Yup.”

Jessie liked to drive twenty miles an hour over the speed limit because she couldn't stand things being so slow.  Once we were driving out to the marina, and there was a slow school bus in front of us — a block of yellow testing her patience.  But it was no match for her see, ‘cause Jessie crosses the double yellow lines and passes the bus, and goes back on our lane just in time before a Mercedes comes our way in the opposite direction honking like a wild one.  We laughed and gave each other high fives. That one was a rush.
            Jessie parked at the handicap space and pulled out her dead grandmother's blue handicap sign and placed it on her rear-view mirror.  “Check!” she said.  We got out of the car and walked up to the bouncer and showed him our IDs.  He believed us because we looked pretty old for our age.  I’m big with more fat than muscle I admit, but with a pretty cool beard.  Jessie’s tall for a girl with some muscle on her bones, and she hardly wears make-up, which made it seem like she was older than if she wore too much make-up, which would mean that she was trying too hard to look older than she really was.  But all this was coincidental.  She never wears makeup because it makes her face itchy, and I hate shaving because then I'd be shaving all day as my hair grows pretty fast.  Things have a funny way of working out all right for us when it comes to getting into bars.
            We sat at a high table and ordered our drinks: two Budwisers.  The fries were half-off like Jessie said.  We dangled our legs, long though they were, over the high seats and giggled as we talked.  We talked about a lot of things.  She would complain to me about her parents — how her mother was always sleeping around and the same was true with her father.  Me, I complained about how my parents are always pressuring me to go to college.  I told Jessie about how I've got three other siblings who can carry on the deed of continuing onto higher education.  But she told me, “I think you should go to college.  At least you've got a future.”

I said, “well you do too.” 

“No, Ethan, I'm not smart.  You know that.  And besides — hey have you ever heard of a caste system?”

“You mean like the one Mrs. Bourbon was talking about?”  I asked. 

“Yeah, the idea that you were born into whatever class you’re in. Like if your parents are rich, then you'd be rich too.  Or if your parents were poor, you'd be poor too.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, see, your parents went to college and your siblings already ARE in college.  That means that you're going to college too, whether you like it or not.  That's just that, pretty boy.”

“But what about you?”

“Me? Forget about me.  My mom would never set foot in a college, and my dad was practically raised by wolves.  He's as hairy as one, anyway.  Hey, like you.”  She grabbed a chunk of my beard and pulled on it gently, but I shooed her hand away.  “Anyway, the both of them sleep around with everyone in town.  I mean they both know that about each other, they just don't say it out loud.”

I scrunched my face as she looked down at her dangling feet.  “How do you know they're sleeping around?” 

“Trust me, Ethan, if you lived in my house, you'd just know.  Kind of like how dogs can sense danger, or when a storm is coming.”

We ordered another round of Budweisers.  Fries, nice and oily.

“Anyway, I'm not as smart as you think, Jessie.” 

“What are you talking about, Ethan?  You got a C+ in biology, a B- in math and a B- in English.  That spells smart to me.  Better than my string of F's.” 

“Well, Jessie, that's because you don't study.” 

“Ain’t got time to study,” she said.

“You're a kid, just like me.  What do you mean you don't have time to study?  I mean, hell we got a job, but that's only a couple times a week and that's nowhere close to a full time job.”  Jessie shrugged her shoulders and darted her eyes away from mine.  “Say, you hiding something?”

“You think I am?”

“Sounds like it, Jessie.”

We ordered another round.

“Let's move to a booth,” Jessie suggested, under her breath.  I knew then that a secret was about to slip from her mouth.  I also knew that this meant I was going to get myself involved in something I might soon regret, or at least regret hearing. 
We got our drinks and sat at a booth in the corner of the bar that was more dimly lit than the rest of the place.  It was beginning to get a little rowdy as we were pushing eleven-thirty at night.  It's time for the drunkards to come along and for the real money-making to begin.  The booth we sat at smelled like hand-sanitizers and the coasters were circular white cardboard paper.

“You promise not to tell?”

“I promise.” 

“Ethan.”

“I promise, I promise.”

“You know how in school we always joke about how Loosey Lucy must be a prostitute because of the way she rides her skirt up all the time, and her boobs are hanging out, flip-flopping everywhere?”  My pants got tight at the thought of her; Lucy has a reputation for being very attractive indeed. 

“Yeah, what about Loosey Lucy?” 

“Well, she ain’t the only one giving herself away.”

My jaw dropped.  “No way, Jessie.  You? But why?”

“Hey gotta make some extra cash somehow, and it's something that I'm a natural at.”

At that moment, I imagined Jessie in some cheap motel with this guy, smelling of beer, like the beer we were drinking (not even of legal age yet and we were drinking it, drinking it all down with the oily, salty fries).  I imagined he had the five o'clock shadow on and had a huge belly and his hair was all greased up, and he was somewhere clinging onto Jessie like a dog and sounding like one not a few miles away from where his wife and kids were.  Maybe they were even having dinner or waiting for him.  I didn’t even realized I was wincing at the thought of this before Jessie spoke and broke this horrible train of thought.

“Hey, don't judge me, college boy.”

“I'm not going to college!”  A few people looked at me when I yelled that, but I didn’t care.  “Let’s get out of here.”  

I stood up, chugged the rest of my beer and left it at the table with my share of the bill. Jessie did the same thing, then ran to catch up with me by the door.  She put her arm around my shoulders.  “Hey, what's the matter, Ethan, what gives?”  I didn't know what to say to her.  I didn't know if I was angry, confused or sad.  My feelings were all mixed up and the beer wasn't helping at all. I was beginning to get sick to the stomach.  All I could think about was Jessie bending down for some stranger in an alley, or in a car, or in an abandoned building or in someone's house.

The night seemed warmer than when we first got out of work, which now seemed like eons ago.  Or maybe it was the alcohol coursing through my body making me feel hot.  We got in the car.  I didn't say anything and neither did she.  We drove into the night, hearing our own intense breathing and the whole car smelled like beer, beer, beer, and secrets exploded and smoke and suffocation and something stinging so hard up our noses and mixing with our brains, our minds, which were linked.  

“The reason I told you Ethan, and no one else, is because you're my friend — my best friend — and I don't wanna ever keep anything from you.”

“Well, as your friend –

“What?”

“– As your friend, I'm saying that I don't want you doing it anymore.”

“My parents do it.  They just don't get paid.”

“To hell with your parents!  Is this what the caste system is all about?  To hell with the caste system!  Look, if I go to college, you gotta promise me you’ll stop selling your body.  We got a deal?”

“Well, it’s my body, I can do what I want.”  That’s when I knew we were stuck — the classic agree to disagree because I knew she had a point.  But something still didn’t sit right with me, and I don’t know if that was the case with her.  Like did she enjoy doing this? Or was selling her body a last resort kind of thing?  To this day, I still ask myself why I didn’t ask her.  Things may have been different if we talked about it.

But we sat in silence as we drove on.  The road back home seemed longer now and lonelier.  Darker for sure, but also hopeless.  Jessie and I had known each other for a long time.  When I first saw her, she was in diapers and so was I.  We used to play hide-and-seek together all the time, to the point where it was pointless to play because we knew where all of our secret hiding spots were.  She was my first true friend and probably my only true friend.  It wasn't that I was jealous that she was "seeing" other guys.  (Selling your body hardly counts as ‘seeing’ other guys.  I mean, it’s not like you’re dating them.)  I felt that our friendship and our strong bond and our long talks at night under humid summer skies, or over the phone with the rain pelting on the windowsill on a damp day – well they just didn't add up to . . . to . . . .

“What you thinkin’ about, Ethan?”

“I don't know.”

The truth was, I didn't know what they all added up to.  I knew for a fact that this point in our lives where we were supposed to go our separate ways and start careers and start our real life was scary as hell and we weren't ready, even though we looked old enough and were old enough and we were going to graduate this June. 

We weren't ready — and I’m not saying that while simply shrugging my shoulders.  This is a stone cold fact, and honestly it’s terrifying.

Suddenly I felt like we did something wrong, like we missed a class or two about how to be a grown-up and how to let go of our childhood, our school days that we hated so much, but surprisingly clung onto at the end of it all. How is it that we were expected to change and blossom just because we were seniors with seventeen year old blood running through our veins, and our seventeen year old brain and our seventeen year old heart and our eyes that didn’t change much since we were kids. 

How?

“Jessie, why can't things be the way they were?”

Jessie didn't answer the question.  She sat, staring blankly at the winding road, void of any street lights.  I stared at her, thinking about how much has changed since we were both kids.  She got taller and more robust and her boobs — now I see them as something other guys might use for their own desires, like me thinking of Loosey Lucy (oh God, I’m one of them), never minding the fact that Jessie herself was a free spirit who knew the life that was dealt to her and knew what to do with it; she knew also the life that was dealt for other people and she saw with a funny eye other people's potentials.  She was good at reading people, but I think . . . I think she read herself wrong.

Suddenly I saw something glisten on her face and that's when I realized she was crying. She was crying so much, she started to sob and shake and jolt.  “Jessie, I'm scared too!”  I yelled, but she kept shaking and crying violently.  Her arms swayed the steering wheel and the car started to swerve on this dark road where there was no one else around except the two of us, both now on the same wavelength.

But it was too late.

“Jessie stop the car. JESSIE, WATCH OUT!”  I yelled, as the headlights shown on a tree.