It had been a privilege. That was painfully obvious now.
The week went by, then the weekend. Jordan had gone back to work at the paper, and he came home with two pieces of startling news: first, he told Jake that Demeter Castle was spending thirty days in a facility off-island where she was being treated for alcoholism. Then, two days later, he came home to say that Hobby had gotten Claire Buckley pregnant, and the two of them were having a baby in March.
Jake accepted these bulletins with close-lipped, wide-eyed wonder. He’d been away for less than two months: was it really possible that things could have changed so dramatically in his absence?
On Monday Jake had to go to school. That was the deal.
“I’ll drop you off,” Jordan said.
“I’ll ride my bike,” Jake said.
“Jake.”
“I’m serious. I’ll ride my bike. I’ll be fine.”
“Hey,” Jordan said. He clapped Jake’s shoulder, and Jake thought, Oh no, not the shoulder thing again. “I know you’ll be fine,” Jordan told him.
He wore a pair of the jeans that Penny had written on, and he wore the sneakers that Penny had written on. His father regarded the jeans and the shoes with suspicion, and Jake saw his point and thought about changing into something else, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He wanted to wear Penny + Jake 4ever because his reality would, in some way known only to his heart, always be Penny + Jake 4ever, even when he was an old man, married to someone else for decades, with children and grandchildren. He decided it was better just to announce this, as if he were a walking billboard, than to hide it away.
He locked his bike at the rack in front of the school. Kids were clustered together, he could hear them talking, and as he swung his backpack over his shoulder and headed for the front door, he heard the conversations stall, then quiet down, then completely stop. He was wearing a pair of his father’s sunglasses, Ray-Ban Wayfarers, so he looked like Tom Cruise or some other old-time movie star, and he figured it probably took people a few minutes to realize it was him. He didn’t look at anyone directly. He just wanted to get inside, see Mrs. Hanson in the front office, get his locker assignment and his class schedule, and go to school.
He was about ten steps from the front door when he heard a shriek.
“Jake?”
He turned, despite the time he had put in at home rehearsing not reacting to this kind of thing. It was Winnie Potts. Of course. She’d straightened her brown curly hair, and it had blond highlights now. She was wearing a white top that pushed her boobs up and out. She looked older and sexier. It was her senior year, and Penny Alistair was no longer an obstacle to Winnie’s goal of being the Queen Bee of Nantucket High School. Jake thought about how high school was two things. It was school-he would learn calculus and read Macbeth and The Canterbury Tales-but it was also a social universe with its own rules and hierarchy. How he would have loved to get a hall pass from this second aspect, how he would have relished just being able to go inside and learn and then, at the end of the day, go home, eat pizza with his dad, talk about current events, read his assignments, and go to bed!
But this just wasn’t possible.
“Hey, Winnie,” he said.
“Oh. My. God!” she said. “I thought you were never coming back. I thought you’d moved away for good. I mean, you moved to Australia, right?”
“I did, sort of,” he said. “But we’re back now.”
She crushed him in a bear hug that she executed with her elbow and her bosom. “I. Am. So. Psyched. You’re. Back.” She pulled away and eyeballed him. “Are you doing okay?”
“Sort of, yeah,” he said, though already he felt his eyes burning, and he was grateful for the sunglasses.
“So you’re still pretty hung up, then?” Winnie said. She pulled away and sniffed. “I see you’re wearing the jeans.”
Still pretty hung up, Jake thought. Well, Penny hadn’t been dead for even three months yet. Maybe Winnie had forgotten about her, maybe she had come to terms with the accident, maybe Winnie, like so many other teenagers, had been cursed, or blessed, with a short attention span. She had been saddened by Penny’s death, but it was old news now, and she was moving on.
Jake pulled away from Winnie, but she didn’t seem to notice. She whipped out her phone and began madly texting. Probably broadcasting the news of his return. In ten seconds everyone would know.
There was a song that Zoe used to play on the cassette deck of her Karmann Ghia called “Uncle John’s Band,” and the first line went like this: Well the first days are the hardest days, don’t you worry any more. Jake sang this to himself as he moved through the halls, fielding amazed and inquisitive Hey man’s from his classmates. Some kids’ names he’d completely forgotten. He tried to focus on the school part of school-the Calc, the Physics, the A.P. European History. The teachers, at least, did their best to act professional and nonchalant-or possibly they really were professional and nonchalant. They, after all, were adults, with mortgages and children, and aging parents, and water heaters that needed replacing. They were nice people and good citizens; they all knew that Penny had died and that Penny had been Jake’s girlfriend, and maybe they even knew that Jake had spent the summer/winter in Australia, but they didn’t feel inclined to take Jake’s emotional temperature-they were too busy and consumed with their own worries to meddle much in others’ lives-and for that, Jake was grateful.
On his way from European History to his elective, Personal Narrative, which was a sort of creative writing class (and one he was greatly looking forward to), he felt a hand on his shoulder. He feared for an instant that his father had popped into school to check on him, but when he turned, he saw the principal, Dr. Major.
“Jake,” Dr. Major said. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks, Dr. Major,” Jake said.
Dr, Major smiled at Jake kindly. His blue eyes watered behind his glasses. Was he going to cry? Dr. Major was known around school as the ultimate good guy, sometimes too good a guy to do some of the more difficult tasks his job required. Kids who got suspended often got their sentences commuted by Dr. Major. He believed that kids, more than anything, needed adults to listen to them. This openhearted approach worked out for the most part; the students of Nantucket High School felt protective of Dr. Major and generally tried not to let him down.
“How was your trip?” Dr. Major asked.
“It was weird,” Jake said.
Dr. Major tilted his head. The head tilt was his signature gesture, a cue to let kids know he was listening. Jake didn’t want to be the recipient of Dr. Major’s head tilt. Kids were streaming past them like water around two rocks. This wasn’t the time or the place for Jake to detail the oddness of his time in Australia.
“I can’t explain it,” Jake said. “Not right now, anyway.”
“Fair enough,” Dr. Major said. “Well, I have to say, this school isn’t the same without Penelope.”
Jake nodded once, sharply. “Right. I know.”
Dr. Major clapped Jake’s shoulder again. “I just wanted to tell you…” Here he trailed off, and his eyes filled, and Jake had to look away rather than see the man cry. “… If you ever need a place to take a moment away from everyone, you’re welcome to sit in my office. As you know, I’m rarely there.”