Jesus Jackson Read Free Page B

from me and Henry, was a textbook—a math textbook; trigonometry—on top of which was piled a small (though significant) dusting of white powder.
    We stopped in our tracks. To be honest, my first instinct was just to smile and keep walking, as if nothing were odd about the whole scene. But Henry, being the spaz that he was, made the intelligent and judicious decision to scream like a little girl, yell, “Shit! Drugs!” and run madly back toward the school.
    Then everything started to happen very fast. One of the football players—this hulking blond giant with squinty little eyes—yelled, “Get him!” which caused a different hulking giant to literally pick Henry up and throw him in the dirt, while yet another one started frantically dumping the coke (or whatever) into a tiny plastic bag.
    I tried to make a run for it, but someone screamed, “Alistair, look!” to the squinty-eyed blond one, who promptly jumped at my legs, taking me out below the knees.
    And then, a second later: there he was—Alistair—his face mere inches from mine. His hands were on my throat and he was growling: “This all never happened, you understand? You were never here, you never saw this, you’ve never seen me before—get it? get it? get it?”
    I was struggling to breathe. I jerked my head to the left and saw Henry getting similar treatment, but from an even bigger asshole.
    â€œYeah,” I tried to whisper. “I get it. Sure.”
    Alistair was enraged, furious, and scared. His eyes were bloodshot and dilated and jerking all around. His whole body shook as if possessed. He screamed, “What?!? What?!?! Do you get it? Say it louder, if you get it! Say it louder!”
    Well, I could barely breathe at that moment, so being loud was not an option.
    And it was right at this point that I first thought about Ryan. He was a football player, after all; he’d know these kids; he could help me. Silently, I wished for him to appear. I pictured him strutting through the brush, in full football gear, as big as the biggest one of these guys (Ryan was over six feet tall—nearly a foot taller than me). He’d kick the first one right off of Henry, smack the second to the dirt, throw the third against a tree, and then take Alistair by the neck….
    A few seconds later, just as I felt myself coming dangerously close to losing consciousness, my wish came true…sort of.
    Ryan did come strutting through the brush, in his full football gear…but not the way I hoped. He was stumbling more than strutting, dazed and flushed as if he’d just been crying or running or both. And he was scratching furiously at his right nostril.
    He squinted at me, confused, mumbling, “Now what the fuck is this, Al?”
    Alistair leaned back, revealing me to my brother. He said, “A couple of little shit freshmen. The Chinese one was about to run for a teacher.”
    It seemed to take a moment for Ryan to figure out who I was, and that Alistair was getting ready to beat me senseless. But as soon as he did, Ryan pounced. He jumped on Al, ripping him off of me and throwing him to the ground. He started swinging his fists into Alistair’s face and stomach and ribs and throat. Al flailed his arms, trying desperately to block and push Ryan away. And then the biggest one of the shitheads—who had been holding down Henry—jumped right into the middle of it, yanking at Ryan’s hair and his jersey and his neck. Ryan pushed Alistair’s face into the dirt and stared straight into my eyes. He said, “Jesus, Jonathan. Take your little friend and get the fuck out of here.”
    These were the last words my brother ever said to me.

Three
    It’s strange. For the rest of that day, I went over and over what happened back in those woods, but I never once thought about the worst and most shocking part of it all: the moment when Ryan first appeared in the brush, scratching his