Just Friends (17 page)

“You know, if Sal wasn’t sick, he’d’ve come with me – and he wouldn’t be so grumpy about it.” Ramona strides ahead of him.

Sal?

“Are you saying you asked Sal before you asked me?” he calls after her, but she’s scrambling up onto the golden dumpster like the pro that she is and doesn’t seem to hear.

Josh watches her poke through the things within reach for a few minutes, then repeats his question. “Did you ask Sal to help you before you asked me?” He’s not sure why that bothers him – especially since he didn’t want to come in the first place – but it does.

Ramona doesn’t look around. “No. I didn’t have to ask him. He offered.”

“He did?” That wasn’t like Sal. The only thing that would get him out of bed before noon on a Saturday would be an early breakfast meeting with one of his favourite directors. “He actually volunteered to do this?”

“Yes, Josh, he volunteered.” She looks over her shoulder at him. “Which is more than you did. And he would’ve come, even with a fever, but his mother wouldn’t let him out of the house.”

“What’s up with that?” It must be the play. Sal’s grown obsessive about it, the way he does. That explains a lot. Besides Sal inviting Ramona to join them on film nights. Josh often sees Sal in the Moon and Sixpence, talking to her. Which would be odd if they weren’t both so involved in saying bye, bye to Birdie. Not Sal talking to Mo – that wouldn’t be odd – but that he’s talking to her in her mother’s store is. If there is anyone more nervous of Jade Minamoto than Josh, it’s Sal. Every time she sees Sal she starts yammering about “his people” – convinced that they were Mayan even though he’s told her a dozen times that the Salcedos came from Spain. Why would he risk another lecture on the great, doomed city of Chichen Itza to talk to Ramona when he doesn’t have to? But the play explains it. Josh understands that. What he doesn’t understand is why it irks him that Sal’s around Ramona so much. She was his friend first. “I can’t believe he offered to help you collect garbage today. That’s not like Sal. He once left Ajay five blocks away from his home in the rain because it was in the opposite direction from his own house.”

“Maybe he’s changed.” She turns around, a plastic bag filled with coloured wire in her hands. She looks at him as if Sal may not be the only one who’s changed.

“I guess he has.” And then, even though he knows he sounds like he’s about three years old, adds, “Only you didn’t use to be so chummy.”

“So? We got to know each other better from working on the play, and now we are so chummy. You know, like you and Capistrano.”

Somehow, from Ramona’s mouth, “Capistrano” sounds like “offal” or “pig’s lips”.

“She has a boyfriend now, remember?” says Josh as Ramona disappears into the dumpster. “He keeps her pretty busy.”

Ramona’s head appears over the rim. The hat she’s wearing looks as if whoever knitted it was drunk at the time. It’s a patchwork of colours decorated with loops and balls and twists. Making the whole experience of foraging behind the hardware store even more surreal. “I do remember she has a boyfriend, Josh. The Un-incredible Hulk.”

“What?” How is it so much happens in the world that he knows nothing about? “You mean you met him?”

“You mean you haven’t?”

“Not yet.” Although sometimes he feels as if he has. Jena never stops talking about him. Simon did this… Simon said that… Simon thinks… Simon doesn’t think… Simon wants to… As far as he can tell, Simon is everything that Josh isn’t – popular, athletic, handsome, tall. And to prove that there is no end to Simon’s outstanding qualities, the General loves him. Simon Copeland is the boyfriend of the General’s dreams. Jena said it was like Simon was his long-lost son. (In contrast to Josh, whom, had he been a Capistrano, would have been left out on a mountain ledge in a blizzard at birth.) About the only things Josh doesn’t know about Simon Copeland are his shoe size and the colour of his toothbrush. Casually, not really very interested but consumed with curiosity, he asks, “So what’s he like?”

She gives him a look – the look of someone who is already tired of the conversation. “I didn’t really get to know him in a deep and intimate way, Josh. He came to pick Capistrano up from a meeting and she introduced him to the group. You know, ‘Hey, everybody, this is Simon.’ It didn’t give us a real chance to bond.”

She ducks below the top of the dumpster again.

“But you think he’s un-incredible.”

Her voice rises about the filthy, green bin. “I’m pretty sure that’s a minority opinion. Especially if you’re him. But, like I said, I didn’t have a chance to give him an in-depth psychological assessment. Anyway, I only said he was the Un-incredible Hulk because he’s big but he isn’t green. Rumour has it that he’s an awesome football player.”

Conscious that if anyone does come into the car park they’re going to think he’s talking to a dumpster, Josh says, “That’s what I heard.”

“Then it must be true. Anyway, I guess he’s okay,” says Ramona’s disembodied voice with all the enthusiasm of someone choosing a pair of white socks. “If you like that kind of thing.” She pops up again. “I need your help. See if you can find something to stand on.”

He drags a garbage can over to the side of the dumpster and climbs on top. If it were any less stable he’d be on the ground. He takes hold of the edge of the container and peers over. She has hold of a large box; there are two more beside her.

“Tiles!” she shouts as someone else might shout
Gold!
“Linoleum tiles! Isn’t this fantabulous? And they’re all different colours and patterns. I can make the buildings and streets mosaics. It’ll be incredible.”

“I thought you were making a model of Parsons Falls not Philly or Barcelona.”

“It’s an art project. Remember? In art you’re supposed to use your imagination.”

He is using his imagination. He’s imagining himself heaving the tiles out of the dumpster and breaking his neck. “Aren’t those boxes kind of heavy?”

“Yes, Joshua, they are kind of heavy.” The loops and twists and balls on her hat all bounce with vexation. “That’s why I need your help. I’ll hand it up to you. You grab the end and balance it on the rim. Then I’ll climb over and you can pass it down to me. We should be able to manage it together.”

Josh looks at the box. Warily. Balefully. What if it’s even heavier than it looks? What if it slips out of his control?

“What if you do it sometime this morning?” prompts Ramona.

He grabs the end. The box is even heavier than it looks. And treacherously unwieldy. To add to his difficulties, gravity is against him. As is the garbage can beneath his feet. Although this is something he’s never actually done, he feels as if he’s trying to guide the Eiffel Tower over a wall while standing in a rowboat on a choppy sea.

“It might be faster if you used two hands,” suggests Ramona.

It might also be the end of his precious young life.

“It’d be even faster if I used four,” snaps Josh.

He is concentrating so hard on trying to steady the box and not topple over that it isn’t until he hears his name being called from somewhere other than the dumpster that he realizes someone else has come into the car park.

“Josh? Josh, is that you?”

He knows that voice. Of all the parking lots in all the world, she has to come to this one. Now. Not a half-hour from now; not tomorrow. Right at this very moment in time. Shutdown. He stops breathing; every cell in his body locks. What could he possibly have done to make Fate hate him so much?

“What are you doing?” shouts Ramona from inside the bin. “Why did you stop? I can’t hold it like this.” Gravity is against her, as well.

Instead of answering Ramona, he looks behind him.

“Oh my God, Josh! It is you!”

And, as if twisted Fate has outdone itself to bring them together at this time and in this place, it is, of course, Jenevieve Capistrano standing behind him. This time he’s pretty sure that she’s laughing at him, not with him. Next to Jenevieve Capistrano, holding her hand, is Simon Copeland. Of course. Who else would it be? Simon is definitely laughing at him.

“Josh!” There is an unusual note of panic in Ramona’s voice, but Josh doesn’t hear it. “Josh! I can’t hold it!” But all Josh hears is Jena asking him what he’s doing hauling garbage out of the container.

The next thing he hears is the box hitting the ground. To prove that even when everything’s going wrong miracles can happen, he manages not to fall on top of it.

It is Simon who helps him up.

“Wow, I never thought we’d run into you like this,” laughs Jena. “Talk about weird!”

Does she mean him, or just that they’re in the car park behind the hardware store on a Saturday morning?

“So you’re Josh,” says Simon. “I didn’t expect to see you climbing into a dumpster. I thought your speciality was trees.” He is not only outrageously good-looking; he has an easy confidence that is almost palpable – and that makes him doubly attractive. Even Josh can see that. Much as he’d prefer not to. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Polite. Friendly. Even to someone who just fell off a garbage can.

“Really? I haven’t heard anything about you.”

Simon looks as if something cold just slapped him in the face, but Jena laughs. “He’s joking,” she says. “Didn’t I say he’s really funny?”

“Oh, he’s hysterical!” Suddenly Ramona vaults out of the dumpster, landing neatly on the ground beside them. The poster girl for the benefits of Ashtanga yoga. “I haven’t stopped laughing all morning. It may kill me.” She gives Josh a look as pointed as a needle. “Especially when he let the box go.”

Josh isn’t sure whether the stunned silence following Ramona’s arrival is because it is so sudden and dramatic, or because, as tall as Simon, she seems to tower over all three of them in her bizarre hat, wearing a too-large man’s tweed overcoat, striped leggings and motorcycle boots. He isn’t sure what she looks like, but there’s a good possibility that it’s nothing from the planet Earth. Even Josh, with his ponytail and wearing his gathering-garbage clothes (his oldest jeans, the sneakers Charley Patton uses as scratching mats and a jacket that was in the way of a toppled can of red paint) looks normal in comparison; Jena and Simon look positively dressed up.

Jena breaks the silence “You two met the other day?” she says, making it a question. “At the drama club meeting? Ramona Minamoto. Simon Copeland. Ramona’s our costume designer.”

Simon, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Ramona since she catapulted into their midst, says, “Costume designer.” He nods, considering the implications of this information. “Is that why you were in the dumpster?”

“No. My trusty companion and I were looking for stuff for my art project. What about you two? Hot date in the car park before the stores open?”

Once again, only Jena laughs. “We’re meeting some of Si’s friends for breakfast.”

Simon had let go of Jena to help up Josh, but now he takes her hand again. “And we better get a move on, baby. You know I don’t like to be late.”

As they walk away, Ramona says, “Speak of the linebacker and he shall appear.” She looks over at Josh. “So now you met him.”

“Yeah, now I met him.” And Simon met Josh. “He seems okay.”

“No, he doesn’t. I’ve changed my mind.” She makes a that-doesn’t-taste-right face. “
Baby!
I hate guys who call girls ‘baby’. It’s diminishing. It’s better than ho, but not a lot.”

Josh isn’t listening. He watches Simon and his baby – talking and butting against each other like playful horses – disappear out of sight.
Be glad for her
, he admonishes himself.
Look how happy she is!
But all he can think is:
it should have been me
.

People
live on the frozen tundra. People survive penal colonies, years of solitary imprisonment and concentration camps. People live through wars, disease, famine and personal tragedies that could make the mountains cry. When you think about it like that, what’s Simon Copeland compared to the Black Death, slavery, the Trail of Tears, concentration camps or Stalin’s Gulag camps? Not even a minor irritation, really. He’s just a good-looking boy who can tackle. Some day he’ll be a lot less good-looking and he’ll be lucky if he can walk, never mind tackle, because of old football injuries. Who’ll be laughing then? With these thoughts firm in his mind, Josh gets used to the idea that Jena has a boyfriend. More or less.

Hope is an odd thing. Looked at logically, hope is no more than a wish that things turn out well or get better. Whatever we do – get in cars, climb mountains, walk down the street, eat junk food, sail across the Atlantic in a kayak, play roulette – we do because we trust that everything will be all right; hope so. That the car won’t crash, that we won’t fall off the mountain, that we won’t be struck by lightning, that we won’t destroy our body, that we won’t be lost at sea – that we’ll win. If we knew for certain that we’d die in an auto accident, disappear into an abyss, have a heart attack in the parking lot where we stopped for ice cream, drown, or lose every cent we had, we wouldn’t do any of those things. Indeed, if we didn’t live in hope more than in reality, few of us would bother getting up in the morning.
What’s the point? We’re all doomed
.

Josh may have accepted the fact of Simon, but he was still holding on to the hope that he could sit Simon out. Okay, he told himself, Simon made it through the first-date test, and on into the second and third dates and official boyfriend status, but how long could it be before some fatal flaw surfaced? Eventually, Simon would blow over like a storm cloud and the sun would shine on Josh once more. But then he met Simon, and Hope became ill and began to fade fast. Even Josh could see that Simon is pretty terrific (if you like that kind of thing). Pleasant. Friendly. Personable. Simon likes who he is, so everybody else likes him too. If he knows insecurity it’s as something that happens to others. Simon is the teenager adults love – popular, talented, a genuine all-rounder. The kid they want their children to be. No problems here. No dark depths or unpleasant surprises. No doubts about his future, either. They can imagine the man he’ll grow into and they like him, too. Simon is the anti-weird; the boy you can rely on to do what you think he should. No wonder the General loves him. No wonder Jena thinks the centre of our solar system has shifted from the sun to the star linebacker of Smittstown High. Every new thing Josh hears about Simon adds a new symptom to Hope’s malady. Headache. Fever. Difficulty breathing. Arrhythmia. Dizzy spells. Nausea.