Everybody's Fool

6 | Meeting Wes

MEETING WES

"Normality is a paved road:

It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow."

Vincent van Gogh

■

"NEW GIRL," Mark said by way of greeting, arriving at our table. He held the paper plate out. "Alison wanted me to bring you this. Kind of like a little welcoming gift to–" He suddenly stopped.

"Still picking on girls, Bradley?" Josh Ericson said in a voice that made me think of cooling iron.

Mark's hand was still outstretched.

"Ericson," he said serenely. He straightened up a little bit, pulling his shoulders back. "Well. I guess some things don't change, huh?"

"Funny, isn't it?" Josh looked down at the plate in Mark's hands and then his eyes slanted towards me for the briefest of seconds. I couldn't understand the look in them.

Moving past Mark, Josh put his tray down on the table and sat in the seat across from me. I stared at him. There was the faintest hint of a flush to his skin and his eyes – what little I could see of them – were glinting with some kind of suppressed emotion. Anger, bitterness – I couldn't tell. Next to me, my brother was trying very hard to appear disinterested.

"Is there something you wanted, Bradley?" he asked.

"Oh, no, I'm just dropping something off from Alison. A little welcoming gift..." the plate was suddenly deposited on the table in front of me. "Pretty impressive, don't you think?"

It wasn't a slice of pizza.

It was a drawing of a girl – me, I realized – with masses of black hair sprouting all over the place and globs of cheese and pepperoni glued to the overly large face, which had been smeared with pizza sauce. Huge, cork-bottle glasses had been drawn over the small beady eyes and in curly letters, rude phrases had been scribbled in little thought bubbles all along the edges of the plate. The caricature wore no clothing and the body proportions were obscenely large. My vision blurred a little.

"You've got to be–" Jake started to say. Then he was out of his chair. "What the hell? Are you kidding me?"

Everybody was looking now.

Mark started to back away, his hands up. He was laughing. "Chill out, man, it's just a little friendly hazing."

"Friendly? How about a friendly knock to that ugly face of yours?"

"Ooh," went the cafeteria collectively.

"Yeah, maybe next time, man." Mark called back, not perturbed in the least. He was already at his table.

My brother cursed beneath his breath – something we never did, thanks to our mother and a bar of soap – and sat back down. I stared at the table, seeing nothing.

There was a long minute of tense silence at the table. Nobody said anything, and I contemplated all the different ways this could have played out if Jake hadn't forced me to come here. My face felt like it had been leached of color and my heart was pounding a very erratic tune, so loud I wondered if anybody could hear it. From Alison's table, I heard a roar of laughter.

Anger flared in my chest. I picked up the plate with the caricature from hell and stood up.

"Marli, where're you going?" Jake asked.