Karissa

Best Friend (Forever Means Forever)

"McCutcheon?" Karissa breathed when I parked outside the juvenile detention center. She looked terrified and about to cry.

"You have to trust me, ok," I told her firmly as I held her, "and know that I'd never do anything to hurt you. There's a good reason for this, I promise. I wouldn't be taking you here if it wasn't relevent and it didn't mean something."

Inside we went through standard visitation procedure - though it was new to her. She clung to me the whole way.

"Hi, Mrs. Van Horn." She always dressed up to come and see him, whether it was a nice blouse and slacks or a two-piece suit.While I'm sure she meant well, he and I both missed the past where she wore jeans and big T-shirts around the house, hair slopped back in a ponytail, or, if she was feeling ambitious, a loose, messy, braid. Now she smiled at me, the lines around her mouth caused by stress and sadness and too much worrying about her baby.

"Hi, honey. It's nice to see you a day early." Well, that solved the mystery for Karissa of where I slipped off to on Sunday afternoons. She could have just asked my parents, but they didn't talk about it. Dad didn't really approve. I'd been lectured more than once and asked, then told quite firmly, to give it up, but they just didn't understand.

"You brought someone? Are you a girlfriend or just a girl friend?"

Karissa was almost hiding behind me (I found her shy-little-girl act unbearably sexy).

"Just a girl that's a friend. We live in the same house because my mother.... is sick." The mysteriousness of Karissa's mother was something I was frustratingly clueless about. Sometimes she would take my car and go away for a few hours, but she never spoke about it and almost got angry with me if I ever asked, so I just skirted the subject.

Max was already waiting in the visitation room. He'd gotten his hair cut, and it looked nice (but I always secretly missed the mowhawk he'd worn in middle school, though I could see how it could be a reminder of the past that he didn't want himself to dwell too much on. He'd done that at the beginning of his seven-year sentence, and it had just gotten him stuck in a practically-suicidal bog of depression. He was better now; he was used to juvie after two years. Now he got up and hugged me (which I was never really used to, since when you're in middle school, and you're a popular guy, you really don't touch your guy friends, save a slap on the back after a good sports game or faux fights. It looks gay. Max and I, though...we had the sort of brother's bond that we could slip in the occasional embrace when our friends weren't there without it being weird.

"How's school," he asked me, a nice, safe, same-old question "I miss school." Max was getting his GED, but I knew it wasn't the same, as he'd said this before.

"School's great. We're nearing the end of the semester, which is kind of nice, because I have AP Lit with Beaumont - "

Max's eyes brightened, and I didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't like the old days so much anymore, where we terrorized Jesse endlessly and provoked Dominic into fights when we knew he'd promised his mother that he wouldn't get tangled up in all that mess and let his temper steal him away.

"I saw his movie. It was pretty good, actually...and everyone here was kind of jealous I knew an actual movie star, especially some of the guys who think Jesse's cute."

My face must have shown my feelings.

"Don't worry, 'Cutch - they leave me alone. And I could fight 'em off. I'm tough." He flexed those muscles that prison boredom had spawned, and I wanted to laugh.

Our conversation reached a pause at one point, and Max looked past me, his eyes catching on Karissa. I can't explain the look that was on his face.

"Oh, 'Cutch," he breathed, "You brought a girl. I miss girls." What a shame it was, being a fairly attractive, witty, decently athletic, teenage boy with racing hormones and being locked up in a building full of other sexually charged teen males and no women whose hair you could play with or soft lips you could kiss. Poor Max, missing out on the best years of teen dating. He'd be 21 when he got out, if he didn't get probation (though both his mother and his foxy female lawyer were thinking that he would - Max didn't push the system; he did his homework, and behaved, not getting into fights, because he really wanted out.) Karissa had been awfully uncomfortable earlier, but now she smiled at Max, those pleasant, docile, manners front and center.

"I'm Karissa." She put out her hand for him to shake, unsure if it was ok, and Max took it, like she was giving him something foreign.

"I thought you weren't real at first," he babbled, "and I was just hallucinating, but then I realized that if you were just a fantasy, you'd probably have come in riding on a tiger with nothing but a feather boa around your neck and rhinestones strategically glued to your body." He looked apologetic as he said it, and Karissa relaxed a little instead of getting offended. She could realize that Max's imagination went a little wild from the lack of females, and I was sure she knew he was harmless, and horribly lonely. These visits were the pinnacle of his week; he saw his mom every day, or almost that, but my busy life kept me from being so frequent, though I often wished I could be. It would be so nice to have him at school now - Max wouldn't have turned on me like the others.

"Does she know why I'm here? And are you two, like...together?" 'Together', with this added inflection, I knew, meant hooking up, and so I shook my head no for both.

"I set fires. Buildings - not people...well...." He sounded half embarassed, half proud.

"Even McCutcheon's had his foray into flame."

 and I had to jump in and cut him off. I didn't want Karissa hearing this story. She'd never understand how far our hatred had reached in those days.

"In middle school, we did some things I'm not proud of now -" I started, but Max nailed me with those eyes, tougher and colder and more adult than they used to be.

"Why don't you just tell her, 'Cutch? I'd be glad to get it off my chest, and it's not like we got in trouble for it, or anyone else knows, 'cuz they never told. We burned Dominic and Jesse, ok? They were eavesdropping on a personal conversation,  we wanted to protect our reputation....It was a joint idea. But if it makes it any better, if I got the chance to go back and do it again, I wouldn't...and 'Cutch wouldn't either. Sometimes I hear Jesse crying in my nightmares."

No one if our old gang but me would understand this empathetic side of Max that he'd tried so hard to shield when we were younger, but was secretly valuable in juvie, where sometimes you needed someone who was capable of understanding how you felt...and I suddenly realized I could never admit that sometimes when I was incapable of sleeping, Jesse's sobs rang in my ears. It was a massive guilt trip that I was usually able to drown out, but until then, I felt like a terrorist. Karissa's phone buzzed softly in her purse, and she dug it out and answered.

"Your parents are wondering where we are and could we please come home for dinner?"

"You'll both come back?" Max asked hopefully, and Karissa nodded, smiling.

"I'd be happy to." She gave him a quick hug (which I'm sure made Max's month). turned and followed me out.

Does anyone know anyone who could make me a good cover for this? If you do, it would be greatly appreciated. I'll dedicate this chapter to you....