Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,23

tried to kill my father a few weeks ago, you know,” Elizabeth whispered to Sue and Renata.

Renata admitted she’d read about it in The East Hampton Star.

“He should be grateful that he’s going to school instead of prison.” Elizabeth hoisted a tray onto her arm and walked away.

Since I’d never spoken to Jack, I could not really rise to his defense. But I figured that at least I ought to tell him how I felt about what I’d heard. You sort of have an obligation to tell someone that he can trust you more than he can trust his own sister.

No one offered Jack a hand as they prepared to leave. I held his chair for him as he stood, and I followed him to hold open the door.

“Good luck, Lady Evangeline,” Mr. Fleming thundered above his wife’s head as she crossed the vestibule to join him. “Though I don’t expect you’ll need it.”

Jack swung past with his body hanging far over his crutches. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and I went with him into the corridor, which seemed to confuse everyone, including me.

Mr. Fleming winked knowingly. “Meet you outside, son.”

“Sorry about that,” Jack said when they left. “He’s a dick.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him, feeling shy to be the object of his eyes. Inside the enamel blue rings were specks, little stars twinkling. “So when do you get your cast off?”

“Thursday,” he said caustically, dragging the word out. He looked to the ground. Without lifting his head, his eyes returned to mine. To say he was handsome was not quite right, not quite enough: the look in his eyes was transcendent. On the restaurant radio was that Wings song “Maybe I’m Amazed.”

We watched the cars race down Napeague stretch.

“You should come over sometime,” I said.

“What time do you get off?”

I said at five.

“All right,” he said, moving off, “see you at six.”

“Wait,” I called. “You don’t know where I live.”

He paused at the door. “By the tracks,” he said. Then he left, his compact frame ticking gracefully between shiny pale crutches.

People always asked why I went out with him. I just liked him better than anyone else. He didn’t have that ballooned chest or stiff-shouldered look other boys had. Jack was skinny, but fluid, loose in the legs, and, though he was careful with me, the chances he took with himself were real. One night when he, Dan, and Smokey Cologne were out of pot, they smoked oregano leaves and drank codeine cough syrup. On a dare, Smokey did a shot of Downy fabric softener and had to get his stomach pumped. After the hospital, they came to my house and dove kamikaze-style off the back of the couch until Dan broke his nose and they had to go back to the hospital. Jack had tried peyote in New Mexico and LSD at the Roxy during a George Thorogood concert—a rockabilly nightmare, he’d said. He’d snorted speed and done cocaine. He hated coke. “I end up smiling all fucking night,” Jack complained.

It didn’t really bother me if he got high. His was like a body without skin, and he had to desensitize himself. I didn’t mind the way he predicted his own disappointment, calling everything pointless and existence senseless. I just figured it was a way to protect himself. The only truly threatening thing I ever noticed about Jack was his surplus of confidence—a tremendous ego is a dangerous thing in someone so gloomy. He could not be persuaded away from his blackest convictions, and anyone who disagreed with him was part of the whole fucking problem to begin with. Though I would never ever have told him so, Jack was very much the son of his father.

“We were sleeping in an open field,” Jack said as we stepped forward with the movie line. “In Montana. After dawn we heard a weird whooshing sound.”

“A UFO!” I said. Jack and I had seen one at Albert’s Landing once. It looked like twin pods, like a salt circle pinched at the center.

“No, almost. A hot air balloon,” he said. “Hovering. Like a rubber rainbow. We jumped out of our sleeping bags and ran after it, all of us naked.” Jack would’ve made a good Indian. He could make fire with a magnifying glass and sleep naked on mountains in the cold. He could tie knots you could not escape from.

“Girls too?” I asked.

“Two for Amityville Horror,” Jack told LizBeth Bennett, who was working in the box office. She tore two pink tickets off