the page can contain. Ms. Harrison left us for a while to go get doughnuts and drinks as we were doing fine on our own as she saw it.
As soon as Jacob got there and I saw him, I knew something was not right. His face was red, he was laughing, and he couldn’t control his movements like he usually does. A boy of such smooth presence in the world had become a teetering doll. It couldn’t have been clearer. He was drunk.
As I was taking him in, he pulled a flask out of his plaid shorts. “VODKA!” he screamed. A bunch of people took turns on the flask.
Jacob prowled around like the animal he was at this point. In some primal state, he started communicating with everyone as if they were the animals their essences exuded. He purred at Keira, who I was surprised to see drank from the flask, too. He lifted her onto a car while he kissed her, and a team of seniors sprayed them with the hose. They rolled in soapsuds. It was a triumphant, filmic moment—where the winners win, and are beautiful, and to keep the scales balanced and the cinema interesting, the losers must lose.
Everything from here followed in slow motion. Jacob grabbed his crotch in a display of manly pain and hissed wildly at James, who is, indeed, a snake. He grunted at Sara like an ape and then started moaning like he was a sick, dying animal; he pranced like a peacock amid a laughing gaggle of geesey-girl cheerleaders. For a second, I saw Keira look annoyed with Jacob, but I could tell, even she couldn’t stop the force that was Jacob at this point. All his charisma was focused on putting on this show, and it was not going to be stopped.
He barked cruelly at Heather, as if she were a dog, but she bit back, and he slumped away whimpering. Right then, I thought to retreat, too, but I stayed. Who knows why. But I guess I wanted what was coming for me. He darted in my direction and stopped in front of me. Everything stopped. I had this feeling one other time in my life. Both times it was like I knew something very terrible was going to happen to me, and the wheels of the universe slowed down just a bit, so the impact of what was about to occur could be survived, if even just barely.
Jacob smiled slowly . . . and then, very deliberately, with crazed energy . . . he moo’d. “Moooooooo. Mooooooooo! Moooooooooooooooo!!!!”
I have no idea how anyone reacted, but I imagine they all laughed. Everything, the whole world hadn’t come up to speed yet. I had loved Jacob for who knows how long, but a big fraction of my life, and here he was giving me the most honest communication he had ever given to me, and it was . . . disgust. The alcohol had erased all social constraints, and the God’s honest truth was screaming around the parking lot.
It didn’t matter that he thought I had cool eyes. It didn’t matter that he had said he would rather touch me than drink toilet water. None of what I thought mattered did. I was wearing a bell around my neck. I was being led up the winding path to the slaughterhouse, unaware of the truth that always was before me. I was a fool to have ever thought, even for a second, otherwise. Deep down, in a true, ugly place inside of him, he thought that I was a cow. I thought I was, too, but I saw then, that so did the world, even someone I loved who I kept making excuses for. The truth, with all its edges, cut its way out.
He moved away from me and jumped like a jackrabbit over to one of his friends, who is a known whore. He just kept moving and my head started swimming. No one changed anything. They didn’t stop washing, they didn’t stop spraying or laughing or talking or seeing. At least it seemed that way to me.
I was lost in an internal episode of my own creation. Inside me, my heart was breaking in a way I hadn’t known was possible, which was ironic because I thought when I was thirteen it had shattered completely, on that fucking bullshit horrible night when I offered no protection. But no, my heart just cracked like an earthquake then, fragile and splintered