The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein

Author:Sarah Braunstein
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

1

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those tub-thumpers.”

This is how she greeted him. It was Jade Grant, behind the Come & Go. Paul had come here for a cigarette and found her sitting against the dumpster, her legs pulled up to her chest, a massive fountain drink between her knees. She chewed on its straw like on a piece of licorice, her pale, narrowed eyes suggesting a boredom so habituated it had become mere accessory. Her posture and baggy shirt hid her stomach.

It was rumored that Jade—daughter of Thomas Grant, the abortion nurse—was pregnant.

“They’re so devastatingly clean, aren’t they?” she said. “From West Liberty Baptist is my guess. Jabbering self-righteous fools. They claim they want to help. To help! The filthiest stuff comes out of their mouths, filthy, mean as hell, but they’re always showered and powdered and perfumed and I’m sure that lady douches twice a day.”

Then she said, “You’re Paul, right?”

So she knew his name. They had only one class together, algebra, but never spoke—she sat with Kitty and Frick, passing notes and exercising the smallest muscles of her face with various expressions of disdain. Mr. Winslow was scared of the pretty girls, let them pass notes and look as disdainful as they wanted, but if a boy did the same, or an awkward girl, he was all over them. Jade was the best student in the class. That she knew Paul’s name—though it wouldn’t be his name for long—sent a wave of pleasure through his body, a shiver along his spine like a breeze on some unbearable summer day. Beetle got terribly hot. But he wouldn’t ever have to spend another summer here. He reminded himself of that.

“Right,” he said, “Paul.” But it was really “Paul,” not Paul. That’s how he thought of himself now—in quotation marks. As soon as he got on the bus he’d take a new name. He wasn’t sure who’d he become. Pierce? Patrick? He felt, despite himself, attached to the P. It was “his” letter, the first one he’d learned as a boy. P would be the very slightest connection to his mother. No. Forget his mother. But he’d keep P anyhow. He liked its force—he wanted more force, needed more, could not relinquish the little he had. Percy?

“I’m Jade,” she said, and then smiled to imply she knew he already knew it. You couldn’t not know it.

They were sixteen.

The smell of soggy cardboard drifted from the dumpster. He felt too warm, too loose. Spring did to the world what a hammer’s claw did to a nail. He said, “We’re in algebra together.”

“Those West Liberty freaks followed me from school. It’s not the first time. Jabbering self-righteous fools. Keep an eye out, will you? I have the feeling that woman carries a gun. If they come down that alley, say something. A code word. Rooster. Say rooster and I’ll run.”

He couldn’t read her tone; she spoke mockingly, as if they shared a history of facetious chatter behind the Come & Go, but he saw a rigidity in her body, tension in her shoulders, and sensed she wasn’t joking.

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