The Brandywine Prophet

6.7 Batten Clamps

Every weekday morning, eight o’clock sharp, Chase’s phone woke him up with a beep and a buzz telling him that he received a completely original, get-ya-through-your-day text from Janie. Sometimes she gave him a reason why she liked him. Sometimes she told him about a dream. Sometimes she outlined her plans for her day and Chase would write it down so he could visualize her in her surroundings. Her AM stretch routine started thirty minutes before he had to get ready for school. “I like those thirty minutes,” she said once. “I like thinking about my boy all warm in bed.”

Chase enjoyed them too. Though he really liked to sleep, his body’s internal alarm always predicted Janie’s text and began the wake-up process early. Fading between dreams and consciousness, those waking moments were dedicated to memories of their night on the catwalk and he hugged the pillow between his legs. He imagined touching her. Not the “Carter” kind of touch. Janie told Chase everything about that pervert and the things he whispered to girls at recess and his rise with Tracy to “middle-school power-couple” at Janie’s expense. No, Chase wasn’t like that. He wanted to touch her hand. He wanted to touch her face. He wanted to feel her cheek against his and those thoughts mixed and melded into a mental collage that carried him through his day.

To Janie, other boys were just that: other boys. Her new confidence and air of pleasant superiority masked the scar on her face and the “other boys” became satellites in constant orbit when she walked in the lunchroom. They passed her handwritten notes with hopeful anxiety and Janie accepted them with a smile then tossed them, unopened, in the foot of her locker. When a lab partner kissed her smooth cheek one Friday afternoon, Janie slapped his face, then apologized and explained that she already had a boyfriend.

From 8:45 to 2:30, Chase dissolved into eighth-grade oblivion. He had friends, three or four, but they weren’t very nice.

Afternoons brought a quick call and a dozen texts. Janie’s dance lessons consumed three full hours, four days a week. Chase filled the time with homework, friends or odd jobs at the Sparkle Motion warehouse. Whether he was repairing a string of lights on a fiberglass backdrop, or implementing last-minute changes in the programs, technology helped them stay connected.

Six-hundred-and-eighty miles apart, but Janie’s moon was Chase’s moon and their mutual orb burned with enough energy to mend the distance. With eyes and lips buried in her pillow, Janie whispered her hopes and desires into the electronic receiver and lost her secrets in the labyrinth of Chase’s mind. The foundation of her trust began on that late catwalk-night when she confided in him the speaker secret. Chase never uttered a word after that date, keeping his vow to lock his lips and throw away the key. Now, Janie told him things that she wouldn’t divulge at the craziest sleep-over or the most intense game of Truth or Dare: fears about her parents and gossip about the neighbors.

“Something’s wrong with Hyde and Miss Kayla,” she said one night in June. “They act so happy, but they’re not.”

“How can you tell?”

“Introverts are observers. This scar may be ugly, but sometimes it lets me see inside people. I don’t think he likes her anymore.”

Another night, Janie spoke about her father’s accident. “When the bandages come off, his fingers will be different. They’ll have scars and they probably won’t work. I like that. I like that he’ll have scars.”

One fear stood above the rest. “My parents don’t talk anymore,” she said. Goose-down muffled her monologues and Chase pressed his ear to the phone to better hear her tearful voice. Whether or not he could decipher every word, he would tell her that he was with her, that his arms were around her, that his breath was in her ear instead of the phone. He whispered words of encouragement, of adoration, of gratitude.