Afterward by Jennifer Mathieu Read Free Book Online

and then a few days later my mom asked me if I would like to see Jesse. I wasn’t sure what to say. Part of me wanted to see him. Just to be around someone my own age again. The last time I’d been around any other teenagers was with Bennie and Narciso. After Marty finally let me outside, I ran into them when I was taking out the garbage, and I guess you could say we became friends. We played video games, mostly. Sometimes we skateboarded around the apartment complex or smoked a little weed or walked over to Taco Bell. Bennie and Narciso were one of the few not-so-messed up things in the most messed up part of my life.
    Part of me was scared to see Jesse. That it would just be really weird, and neither one of us would know what to say. But I knew it would make my parents happy to see me being normal, having a friend. I thought it might make me feel happy, too. So I said, Yes. Jesse can come over. And a few days later, he did.
    He looked so different. He was almost a foot taller than me, and the Afro that used to jump out a good few inches from his skull was cut super short. He looked like he’d been lifting weights or working out or something. Basically, he looked like he could beat up my dad.
    â€œHey, man,” he said when my mom and I opened the front door. He gave me a big, toothy smile, and for a second he was eleven-year-old Jesse again.
    â€œHey, man,” I said back. And after a couple of awkward seconds he reached out to me and I reached out to him and we gave each other a hug. Quick and one-armed and with a pat on the back. I used to give hugs like that to Bennie and Narciso.
    That first time he visited, Jesse and I mostly played video games while my mom came in to check on us every five seconds. She even made us those Totino’s Pizza Rolls like she did when we were in fifth grade, and after we ate them, he told me he had to get going.
    â€œI work at that frozen yogurt place next to the Tom Thumb,” he told me. “Got my license last week, and I’m saving up for a used car.”
    â€œThat’s cool,” I said, still trying to put together the idea that Jesse Taylor is old enough to drive a car. It was like he was some grown-up, and I was a kid. Then it hit me that I was old enough to drive a car, too, and for a second something came over me so strong and so heavy I’d wished he had never come over at all and that I could go upstairs and hide or scream in my room.
    But mostly it was okay to have him over, and he showed up every couple weeks to play video games. Then today, like two weeks after my sixteenth birthday, he shows up with some Mountain Dew, our favorite soda. Or at least it was when we were kids.
    â€œHappy late birthday,” he says to me, holding up the six-pack.
    â€œHey,” I say, and I smile as big a smile as Jesse’s.
    What I’ve liked the most about hanging out with Jesse is that we haven’t really had to talk to each other. A few times I’ve asked him how tenth grade is and what some of the friends we’d had in common are up to, and he’s asked me about starting online school and having a tutor, but mostly we just get swallowed up by the enormous couch in the family room and play video games. We’ve hung out enough that my mom has stopped hovering around us and standing in the kitchen like she’s making lunch when she’s obviously trying to overhear whatever we’re saying. Because basically we’re not saying anything to each other except for talking about the game we’re playing. We just zone out. I like it.
    I’m good at the video games. It’s maybe the one thing I did with Marty that I didn’t hate. And it’s all I did, some days. While he was at work and after he let me out of the closet, I was able to move around inside the apartment. I played game after game like I was willing myself to disappear inside one of them.
    Once I got home, I wondered if I would want to still play,