Possessing Jessie Read online

  “I said get in!”

  “Go to hell.”

  “God damn it, Sis, get in this car.”

  “No.” Jessie started to walk away along the dark, grassy edge of the road.

  Jason threw the Mustang into reverse and cut her off, still swearing at her. “Dumb-ass, I can’t just leave you out here. Get in the damn car!”

  “No.”

  He stared at her. “Jessie, what’s with you?” he asked almost as if he were the one pleading now. “You PMSing or something? I’ve never seen you like this.”

  Because she had never before felt so helpless, so desperate for control. “You get out and give me the keys.” Since he had lowered his voice, she lowered hers. “I’ll drive us home.”

  “No way.” He grinned at her, friendly again. “I came out here to set the world’s record going around Dead End Bend, and I’m gonna do it.”

  “Jason, no!” She wasn’t crying anymore. She felt too dry with terror to cry.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Jessie, don’t get your panties in a bunch.” Jason swung back into the car. “You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to. Just stay where you are.”

  “Jason!”

  “Stay put. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Don’t go!”

  “Chill out, Jessie! I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

  So as he sped off, Jessie stood at the side of the dark road, hearing the roar of his motor become more and more distant, trying to tell herself it would be all right; he was a good driver, even driving fast; he would be back–

  Then she had heard the scream, scream, screaming of the tires, and the sickening, shattering sound of the crash.

  But the tape in her head wouldn’t rest there. It kept playing. Blurry, out of sequence, sometimes soundless, sometimes migraine-loud, but never stopping. The police and ambulance sirens shrieking, the lurid lights. But before that must have been the blackness and running, running down the hill in the dark toward Dead End Bend, telling herself her brother was all right, he had to be all right, they would take him to the hospital and make him better. Running, running so hard she could hardly breathe, but still the tears flowed. She had left her cell phone in her purse in the car, and how could she have been so stupid? She had to get to the cell phone and call 911 so Jason would live–Jason had to live.

  The red Mustang had crossed ten feet of gravel shoulder and another six feet of grass to climb the biggest oak tree. Like a rumpled, mutant circus pony, it stood on its hind wheels, headlights shining into the sky, dashboard lights on and dashboard alarms peeping like little frogs. Jessie found Jason not in the car but under it, his arm sprawled on the mossy ground as if he were sleeping, the strong tendons of his fingers and perfect bend of his wrist, so beautiful, like a sculpture by Michelangelo.

  They said she found her purse hanging from a limb of the tree, but she remembered only holding the cell phone in her hand and pressing the 9, the 1, and the 1. The police must have taken her away before the firemen lifted the car off Jason. She remembered riding in the back of the police car, and it felt right: she should go to jail; it was all her fault, telling Jason to go get killed. She remembered waiting in a room at the hospital, but it was like black-and-white TV, no colors, and more policemen bringing her mother in and Jessie stood up but her mother looked right through her as if she weren’t there. At first there was no sound. Then someone turned the sound on. Jessie heard herself sobbing. She heard her mother saying very calmly and firmly, “No. There’s been a mistake. No, my son is fine. He’s just gone away for a little while. He’ll be back.”

  Days following, still black and white. Mom saying the same thing as she signed papers, the same thing to the undertaker. To Jessie she said nothing, sitting but not looking, not listening, as Jessie tried to tell her what had happened. Mom was just going through denial, the pastor from church told Jessie. The first of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Jessie herself seemed to have skipped straight to depression.… Stripping off her nail polish, scrubbing away every speck of color as if it were a sin, then clipping the fingernails short. And crying, crying all the time.

  The kids from school stopped by to take Jessie with them when they placed the white wooden cross in front of the oak tree. They talked of Jason, memories of Jason, the time he had gotten a girl he met at an out-of-town dance to autograph her bra for him to keep, the time he had stretched clear plastic over the locker-room urinals, the time he had gotten all his friends to pad the ballot box so Jessie’s poem won the contest, the time he had made a bet with Coach and lost and had to wear a ribbon in his hair. And then he had somehow swiped a pair of Coach’s big baggy plaid boxer shorts and run them up the flagpole to get even.

  They laughed and cried. They put pictures of Jason on the oak, and the tree was already so terribly wounded by the car that Jessie could hardly bear the blows, bang, bang, bang as they hammered the nails in. She knew the tree would die, too. Some boys nailed up a wrestling-team sweatshirt, while the girls piled angel dolls, teddy bears, baseballs, stuffed rubber-faced monsters, flowers and letters, all sorts of gifts for a ghost around the cross that stood near the twisted roots of the tree.

  Jessie had nothing to leave at the shrine. Her offerings were in her head. Several times at the hospital and the morgue and the funeral home she tried to see Jason’s body. People wouldn’t let her without her mother’s permission. Mother wasn’t talking. The autopsy was private. The casket was closed. Jessie never did get to see her dead brother, say good-bye. She wept on Alisha’s shoulder amid flowers that had no colors and no fragrance.

  Mom did not shed a tear.

  Dad was not there. How could her father, her dead brother’s father, not be there?

  How could Mom not cry, not cook, not eat, not sleep, not speak? How could she just sit as if she were waiting for someone?

  Colors and fragrances came back. How could they do that?

  How could Jessie get up two days after the accident and go back to school? How could days go on? How could school go on?

  But that was last week, Jessie told herself, determined to silence the replay in her mind. That was last week. Things were different now, because she couldn’t stand it, wasn’t going to stand it anymore, and she was going to make things different. She had already started to make things different.

  Chapter Four

  At lunch, Alisha saw Jessie at a table by herself. Okay, Jessie wasn’t one of the popular crowd, but she was nice, and she normally ate with some of the B-list girls plus maybe some debate-team nerds or computer geeks. But now this thing, Jessie dressing up like her dead brother, had everybody freaked.

  Including Alisha, some. But too bad. Get over it, she told herself as she took her tray and went to sit with Jessie.

  She liked Jessie better than just about anybody she’d ever met. Jessie had a rare kind of goodness: Jessie did not care whether a kid was a prep, a jock, a punk, a goth, or a scrub. She had the brains of a prep, but she didn’t wear preppy clothes, just okay clothes from Wal-Mart or somewhere. She didn’t belong to any of the cliques. She didn’t fit in or not fit in; she was just Jessie. She didn’t care whether anybody was Jewish or Creationist or Catholic or pagan or whatever, or whether they were gay or bi or straight. She just didn’t think that way. Alisha knew that when Jessie looked at her she never once thought “Black.” They were just Alisha and Jessie together.

  Alisha had been Jessie’s best friend for long enough to know that Jessie might be too good for her own good. Too good, for instance, to realize what a selfish, manipulative–making her cover for him when he ditched school, sweet-talking her into doing his science projects, persuading her to pay for getting his hair done–what an ego-on-smelly-feet toe fungus her brother was.

  Or used to be. Jason was dead. Which would not have bothered Alisha a bit, if it wasn’t for Jessie, heartbroken. Taking it so hard.

  And now, so weird.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” Ali
sha said as she sat down. “That’s one hell of a hairdo.”

  Jessie seemed out of focus at first. It took her a moment to look up and try to smile. Alisha saw tears in her eyes and knew she had to be careful. Crying at the funeral was all right, but Jessie would hate it if all the kids here at school saw her bawling.

  So Alisha started to eat, complaining, “They cut this stuff into bricks and they call it spaghetti?”

  Jessie smiled. “It’s no worse than some of the casseroles the neighbors have been bringing.” Her soft voice sounded tired.

  “You’re not eating your lunch. Have you been eating at all?”

  Jessie didn’t answer. She had that out-of-focus look again, and it was as if she hadn’t heard.

  “Jessie?”

  “Um.” Jessie managed to tune in. “Sorry. Accident keeps going through my head like a bad movie.”

  “Ow. That must be hard.”

  “It has to go away sooner or later. What did you ask me?”

  “Whether you’ve been eating.”

  “A little. Alisha, I’m really getting worried about my mom. She’s not eating at all. Not one bite.”

  Alisha checked Jessie’s eyes. No tears, just a wide, dry desperation.

  “And I don’t think she’s sleeping,” Jessie went on, “and I don’t think she’s cried yet. At least not that I can tell.”

  Weird. During the divorce, Mrs. Ressler had cried for months.

  “What does she do, then?”

  “Just sits, and I get the feeling she’s waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “I can’t imagine! Maybe she’s lost her mind!”

  Alisha just smiled without remarking that some kids were saying the same thing about Jessie. “She’s had an awful shock, that’s all.” Jessie’s mother was nice, in Alisha’s experience, and baked awesome frosted brownies, but Mrs. Ressler didn’t seem real strong, what with her back problems and nerves and everything. “She should go to the doctor. Get some pills.”

  “She won’t. Since the funeral, she’s not talking to anybody.”

  “Not even to you?”

  “No. Well, not until this morning, when I put this getup on.”

  So that’s what this is about, Alisha thought with an old anger she kept quiet because it was futile. Jessie, the smartest kid in class, yet always in her brother’s shadow. Jessie trying for her mother’s attention.

  “Jessie,” Alisha said gently, “that’s kind of sick. I mean, just because she’s taking it hard doesn’t mean you have to–”

  “She won’t look at me!” Jessie interrupted. “She won’t let me touch her or hug her. If I try to talk to her, she won’t …” Jessie’s voice started to break up, and tears pooled in her eyes.

  “Okay,” Alisha said softly. She reached over and laid her hand on her friend’s twisting fist. “Okay, whatever, Jessie. Whatever you’ve got to do.”

  Chapter Five

  After school, Jessie did not feel like working on the yearbook or hanging around to listen in on debate club or see what was going on backstage, whether there was scenery being set up or kids making props. She didn’t want to talk with anybody. The text messages on her phone now said things like pervert, u r so rong, ur sick, stop rite now, sicko. Maybe she would not look at the phone anymore. She drove home, very carefully in the loaner car, parked on the street–there was no driveway, no garage–and walked up the short sidewalk into the little cream-colored house crowded among similar vinyl-sided houses, beige, powder blue, eggshell white. For the first time, Jessie didn’t want to live here, wanted to move somewhere else.

  As she closed the door, Mom’s voice called from upstairs, “Is that you, Sweetie?”

  “No, it’s me,” Jessie called back.

  Only silence answered her.

  The cold truth froze Jessie where she stood. Her response had been automatic, not conscious, never conscious until now: She was not “Sweetie” and never had been “Sweetie.” She was Jessie or, if her mother was angry with her, Jessica.

  Jason was “Sweetie.”

  This morning Mom had called her “Sweetie.”

  And God damn everything, Mom was going to call her “Sweetie” again. Pressing her lips together to stay strong, Jessie slipped back outside, then came in again, stomping this time instead of walking quietly, and making sure she slammed the door behind her.

  “Sweetie?” Mom’s voice floated down, anxious, from upstairs. “Is that you?”

  “Yo, Mud.” In a deep voice like Jason’s.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” House slippers pattered as Mom came running downstairs. “Did you have a good day? What would you like for supper?”

  “Whatever.”

  Mom made chicken with cheese sauce, Jason’s favorite. Jessie didn’t like it, but she didn’t say anything. She just ate it. Her mom was smiling. Her mom was eating. Her mom was talking to her. “How was school?”

  Jessie grunted just like Jason.

  “I thought you had wrestling practice today. Did you skip? How come?”

  Mom wanted her to go to wrestling practice? Jessie felt a twinge of panic, because Mom seemed to be taking the game a bit too far. Quickly, in her own voice, Jessie said, “I got an A on a calc quiz.” Jason took algebra, not calculus, and Jason never got an A.

  Mom stopped smiling. Or talking. Or eating. Without a word Mom got up and scraped the food that was left on her plate into the garbage disposal. Without looking at Jessie, Mom left the kitchen, trudged upstairs to her bedroom, and closed the door. After a moment Jessie could hear the sound, muffled by pillows, of her mother weeping.

  Mom hadn’t wept before, at least, not to Jessie’s knowledge. Maybe it was a good sign. But it sure didn’t feel good, listening. Jessie felt lower than roadkill. She’d made her mother cry.

  After what seemed like a long time, the sound of Mom’s crying stopped, but Mom did not come out of her bedroom. It got late. Jessie didn’t know whether Mom was sleeping or not, whether it would be all right to tell her good night.

  She tried not to think it, but she knew: Mom wouldn’t answer unless she acted like Jason.

  Finally, Jessie went to bed without saying anything. But she couldn’t sleep. She piled all of her stuffed animals into the bed with her, hugging her favorite, the fat yellow armadillo, as she pulled the pink plaid comforter up around her neck–but her eyes wouldn’t close. She stared at the shadows on her ceiling, feeling like there was a stone the size of her clenched fists lying inside her chest.

  The first time she looked at her clock, it said midnight. About the tenth time she looked, it said half past one.

  “Damn everything!” Jessie kicked and punched, sending her comforter and stuffed animals flying. She lunged out of bed, threw on Jason’s clothes because they were handy, picked up his Nikes, and in sock feet she sneaked out of the house. She sat on the front steps to put the shoes on.

  Under a cloudy moon she walked the mile to the cemetery. It was no creepier than any other lonely place at night. Daring each other to walk into dark graveyards was a game kids played to get scared when they didn’t have anything better to do. Stupid. Jessie had something better to do.

  She passed through the gate and heard it creak on its hinges. She heard a whispering, rustling sound like leaves in the breeze, but there was no breeze, and there were no trees.

  She didn’t care.

  Somebody had taken the wilted flowers off Jason’s grave. It looked raw and swollen, like a hurt place in the earth. Jessie sat on the red dirt and cried.

  “I–can’t–stand–it” she said, sobbing. She pounded the dirt with her hands, hitting Jason. But then she made herself stop, because it wasn’t his fault that she felt the way she did.

  It wasn’t his fault that she couldn’t forget him and the way he used to tease her by hiding her homework. The way he had raced her for the bathroom in the morning. The time he had dared her to sneak into an R-rated movie. The time he had talked Mom into letting her go to a pizza party when she was
supposed to be grounded.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen. It was an accident. It wasn’t his fault that he was so fun and bad and now he was dead.…

  Or was he?

  That moment, like a mist rising up from his grave, something embraced her like a soft blanket. Something made her feel not exactly good, but calmer. It made her feel like he was there.

  “Jason,” she whispered.

  Chill out, Sis, for God’s sake.

  “I can’t. Mom is–Mom’s a mess. She adored you. She worshipped you.”

  So what else is new?

  “She never loved me that way.”

  Yeah, yeah.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  You’re doing okay. Just relax.

  And in that moment she could relax. It was wonderful to be able to relax. She lay down on the soft grass, the soft grave, and when she left the cemetery about three in the morning, she felt comforted, as if she’d had a good conversation with a friend.

  When she got home, instead of going to her own room, she went to Jason’s. His sports posters leered down from the walls. His bed, hard and narrow under its army blanket, faced her like a monument, its surface smoothed faultlessly as usual by Mom that last morning of his life. Jessie yanked back the covers and lay down between the camouflage-patterned sheets she had always considered so ugly. Now it didn’t matter what they looked like; a faint scent of Jason still clung to them. With her head on Jason’s flat pillow, Jessie eased instantly into sleep.

  The next morning, late, when she finally woke up, she put on some more of Jason’s clothes. His 250 Club T-shirt, meaning he could bench-press that much weight. His blue plaid long shorts, the latest style. His Converse slip-ons, no socks, no shoelaces.

  Her legs needed to be shaved, but so what? She didn’t wear a bra, but again, so what? Her breasts weren’t very big. To heck with bras. She used Jason’s deodorant because she was in his room and it was handy. She grabbed Jason’s cell phone; same reason.

  She heard Mom moving around downstairs in the kitchen. She took a deep breath, knowing what she had to do. “Yo, Mud,” she called.