Desert Boys Read Free Page B

“I can’t get the thought out of my head that he wouldn’t have wanted me there.”
    Watts laughed. “Probably not. But isn’t that your cue?”
    â€œDo you remember that Muslim girl in high school?” I said. “The one they did the TV special on?”
    â€œYeah, for sure. Did you guys meet up? Wait, are you with her now ?”
    â€œNo, no,” I said. “I’ve just been thinking of Karinger’s interview. Where he shocked us with his sheer humanity. Remember that?”
    â€œYeah,” Watts said. “Too bad it didn’t make a difference.”
    I’d remembered Karinger’s self-righteous but heroic speech, but I’d forgotten the rest of the story. Less than a week after the televised special, the girl in the headscarf was enjoying the lunch her mother had packed for her that day (a peanut butter sandwich, of all things), when she was pinned down by a group of six female seniors, who proceeded to spray-paint her white scarf red and blue. She rolled up to avoid both the fumes and the beating she presumed (understandably but incorrectly) was coming. According to Peter Thorpe’s follow-up report, she elected to be homeschooled for the remainder of high school. The six girls, who’d each been handed a five-day suspension, were initially also banned from attending senior prom. After a community petition gathered enough signatures, this additional ruling was reversed.
    â€œI really believed Karinger’s speech was going to convince everyone on campus to leave her alone,” I said. “I went home that night and wrote this extremely sentimental note about growing up. About being proud of your friends, as opposed to just enjoying their company.”
    â€œSounds like you,” Watts said. “You still carry that note around, don’t you?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I’m not that sentimental.”
    The truth was, of course, I’d been even more sentimental. Years after I’d written it, after what turned out to be our last conversation, I slipped the note into Karinger’s backpack. My hope was that he’d stumble upon it after I’d gone home, understand its significance, and return to me, his best friend, inspired to make me proud again.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Watts. “I bet you still have it.”
    â€œTell me about the baby,” I said. “Tell me about your godson.”
    But then my phone pinged, and I saw the name— LLOYD BOOKSTORE —on the screen. I told Watts I’d call him back in a few minutes, but I ended up talking with Lloyd for a long time, an hour and a half, and meeting up with him that night at a bar, and by the time I got home, Watts may or may not have been at work or asleep, and I didn’t want to bother him either way, so I turned off my phone and went to bed.
    *   *   *
    For the boys, there had never been in their midst a girlfriend — a young woman with the power to transform the priorities of a young man fundamentally—until Jackie Connolly pressed her cornsilk lips against the forehead and cheek and mouth of their friend Karinger. This was their junior year: the rattle of 2003, as Karinger would say, the fangs of 2004.
    That Karinger, the only one with a girlfriend, was also the only one of the three who had a car seemed to the others not to be a coincidence. Earlier that year, Linda Karinger had purchased for her son (and, she specified, for her daughter to inherit) a royal blue 1988 Ford Mustang. If it weren’t for the daily rides to and from school—not to mention the joyrides on the weekends—Kush and Watts might have resented Karinger for his “sick ride,” as they, without irony, called it. As it was, Karinger’s successes felt entirely like theirs to share.
    Until, of course, along came Jackie Connolly.
    She was beautiful in the way people call the desert beautiful, which is to say that