◆
I
Jaden and I have been friends for two months. He likes soccer, I do not. But we like each other, so we spend recess hunting for frogs. In the creek behind the swing set Jaden holds one in the bowl of his conjoined hands, peering at it silent. His eyelashes are long like mine. Later, he will wear glasses and his eyelashes will push against the lenses.
Outside of school, we see each other every Wednesday at seven pm on a baseball field and every Saturday at nine am at a different baseball field. “Go Jaden!” I shout when he is up to bat. He hits the ball off the tee and its rubber stem wobbles side to side.
After one game, my parents take a photo of us standing close on the field, arms around each other’s shoulders. They make two copies. I put mine on my dresser in a white frame between a picture of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith.
One of our games falls on his sixth birthday, and his mom asks mine if I can come over afterwards for a sleepover. My parents distrust sleepovers, but they stand apart and pray and finally decide this time is okay. His family may not be Mormon but they are religious.
In the evening when the game ends the sky is orange and pink and dim. Far off there are blue and black clouds like mountains.
Jaden and I chase each other on the bleachers clattering large and hollow under our plastic cleats, under the white lights of the field.
“Lehi.”
I look down from the height of the bleachers. Jaden looks at my mom, then me, as I skip down the steps and run unevenly to her. She tells me Jaden’s mom will give me a bath and that it’s okay.
My parents give Jaden’s mom a piece of paper with their phone number. They reach down to hug me, kiss me, tell me to be good. They walk through the parking lot to their car, turning to wave. The three of us walk to a blue minivan.
“Are you guys excited for pizza?”
“Yeah!”
“Oh yeah!”
We are side by side in the back seat. The cup holders have gum and wrappers in them.
“But before we can eat we have to take baths. Jaden, you will go first, okay.”
Jaden doesn’t respond. He is looking out the window at the yellow lights in the passing homes, at the orange streetlights on the hydrangeas and Bradford pear trees, the neat lawns.
“Jaden? You will take a bath first, okay.”
He turns. “Okay.”
We pull into the steep driveway of the redbrick home, the garage door rattling open.
“Go show Lehi your room and then meet me in the bathroom. And then pizza!”
Jaden and I scramble up the staircase on all fours, like little bears.
“This is my room,” Jaden says confidently. We stand just inside it, watching. I am absorbing all the ways it is like and not like my own room.
“Look at this.” He turns off the lights and points at the ceiling. Constellations of green plastic stars glow above us.
“Wow.” I am warm and safe.
He turns the lights back on. “This is my closet.” Opening the double doors, he shows an orderly clothes rack and a floor littered with plastic toys. My closet has one door.
“Jaden!”
He looks at the door, grabs underwear and shorts from a plastic shelf in the closet, a t-shirt from a white plastic hanger.
I am alone now with the toys and the plastic stars pale and empty in the overhead light. I look at them intently, keep my eyes on them as I back away to the light switch I find by touch, running my hand along the doorframe and wall. I turn the light off again.
“Wow.” I let my eyes fall out of focus, so the ceiling loses its color and popcorn texture, becoming as dark and as big as a night sky. I climb onto Jaden’s bed and start jumping, grabbing at the ceiling.
I hop, reach towards the ceiling, grasp at the stars but clutch only air. I bend my knees low and picture a slinky contracting, and then I jump. My hands scrape the ceiling and white powder rains down, covers my eyes and face. I cough and rub my eyes, hide my face in my shirt. I can feel the powder in my hair, see it on my shirt, lit a ghostly green by the faint plastic stars. I brush it away and hop off the bed to turn the light on. I return to the bed to inspect the ceiling. It has little bumps all over it, little white bumps like dippin dots or painted raindrops. I feel that if I scrape it enough, I can remove all the little mounds, all the flaky white.
When Jaden returns with his chestnut eyes and wet eyelashes and clean gym shorts I am still at work on the ceiling. He flicks the light switch and the stars are emptied.
“Hey”
“Hi.”
“Mom’s ready for you.”
I jump down from the bed and move toward the doorway, peek my head out. There is a yellow light from an open door at the end of the hallway, spilling right to left.
Jaden points. “It’s just right there.”
I walk down the hallway, dragging my feet against the carpet. It feels good.
Jaden’s mom is using the toilet as a chair. My clean clothes are folded by her feet.
She smiles. “Are you ready?”
The bathwater is running.
“Okay.”
She rises and turns off the water, then returns to her seat. “You can get in now. Let me know when you are finished washing your body and I can help you wash your hair, okay?” I nod and walk towards the tub. I turn around. She is facing the door.
I take off my clothes and leave them crumpled where I stand, then step in the tub.
I look around, inspect the different soaps and shampoos. Strawberry, cucumber, cantaloupe. I want to use them all.
“Are you almost ready?”
“I’m almost done.” I am using the mango body wash now.
Jaden’s mom walks over a minute later. She picks up my clothes and puts them in a plastic grocery bag, then kneels on the fuzzy blue bath mat by the tub.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
She is rubbing shampoo in my hair when Jaden walks in.
“Hello?” he says, standing still.
Jaden’s mom turns around, and Jaden sees me.
“You’re naked!” He says it smiling. His face is high and bright with disbelief.
I am lost.
“Go Jaden!” She says, sharp.
His eyes stay on me, then her, then he turns and closes the door.
◆
II
“Jaden Lewis.” I have been looking at the back of this head for five minutes, as the teacher calls out our names.
“Here.”
“Lehi Miller.”
“Here.”
Jaden turns around, eyes pleased but calm. He is controlled and far away.
◆
We sit like that, close by, for all of Ninth Grade World History, leaping from Egypt to Greece, Rome to the renaissance, the French revolution to the world wars. We speak rarely. He looks calmly at me with the beginnings of a smile and sometimes I return a hello, and the classroom goes dark, then glows blue with the light of the projector, the daily documentary flickering on the wall.
Two or three times we work on a group project outside of class. We make a video about Pyramus and Thisbe. We interview a Vietnam veteran. Our planning emails are concise, and we are focused as we work.
◆
And then the staid rhythm catches, shortly after the start of tennis season.
On game days I wear tennis clothes and sneakers to school. I want to get to the warmup as quickly as possible, and I fear the talk in the locker room, and I want everyone to know I am on the tennis team.
It is our first home game, and I’m wearing my proud apparel. I take my seat in the classroom.
“Why are you dressed like that?” Jaden asks, looking up and down with the same steady almost-smile.
“I have a tennis game today.”
“Oh!”—a soft staccato. He turns away.
◆
“Do you change your socks,” he asks another day, his eyes fixed on my feet.
“No.” I wear khaki or argyle or navy-blue socks to play tennis. That’s what I have.
“Those are church socks. You need athletic socks.” He pinches his, white and Nike emblazoned.
“They work fine.” I am liking seeming strange. I am wondering what kind of church he goes to.
“They don’t absorb sweat well. Your feet will get stinky. You’ll have stinky feet.”
The lights switch off and he turns to the wall.
And the next week he comes to class with a gift. “Here.” He hands me a six-pack of white Nike socks, then a six-pack of black Nike socks. He is furtive and quick and I match him.
“Thank you.” I drop my eyes and my socks in my backpack.
◆
The class ends, the socks stay. I wear them to tennis in the spring, camping in the summer, cross-country in the fall.
When school starts again, I see Jaden in the mornings in the cafeteria, reading a book or doing his math homework before the bell. Sometimes my cross-country practice and his basketball practice end at the same time, and we wait under the same shade in the pavilion, him with his teammates, me alone.
◆
It’s a hot day near the end of my senior year. I’m walking through the school parking lot with Brady when we see a blue sedan pull out and smack its rear bumper into the car behind it.
Students are getting out of their cars to see what’s going on. Craning their necks. The school cop is walking across the lot. The sun is glinting off car hoods. I see Jaden and his little brother get out of someone’s minivan. He catches me looking and I wave.
“You know Jaden?” Brady asks, looking too.
I’m surprised. “Yeah, we went to elementary school together. How do you know him?”
“We’re in health together. He’s funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s kind of witty.”
“Oh yeah. He’s funny.”
“We should invite him to lunch sometime.”
I didn’t realize that I could invite Jaden to anything. Like that was something I could only do in the past.
◆
“So Bojangles?” Brady turns to look at me beside him, then Jaden in the backseat.
I scrunch my lips and nod.
“Let’s go to the new one,” Jaden says.
“It’s pretty far.”
“But it will be faster because there won’t be other people.”
The new Bojangles is identical to the old. It’s in a shopping center like all the others. The windows are clean and tinted dark. There is newly lain grass in square patches. It is healthy and green in soil that is healthy and black. There are tree saplings strung with cord to keep them growing straight, their trunks wrapped with plastic orange flagging tape. In places there are clean pine stakes stuck in mulch. Some buildings already have signs. JOHNNY’S PIZZA, SPORTSCLIPS, FIVE GUYS. Others are bare, and we see through the glass their unfinished floors covered in gravel.
We pull into the lot and Brady turns off the car.
“Brady can you go in to get the food,” Jaden asks from the backseat. It is quiet after the music and wind.
“What?”
“Can you go get the food while Lehi and I wait in the car? I have to tell him something.”
I look at Brady and shrug with my face. I look at Jaden but his eyes are away.
“Sure, what do you want?”
After we’ve said, Brady hops out of the car in a wild graceful way. Jaden watches him enter the Bojangles, then climbs into the driver’s seat.
“Can I take off your shoe?” The words are steady but soft, a tentative knock on a door, and his eyes are steady and flat as his mouth.
“Okay.”
I extend my right leg over the center console. My calf rests there and my shoe dangles in the air above his lap. He takes my shoe in his hands without meeting my eyes and begins picking at the laces.
Then my shoe is off and he’s peeling back my white sock. And there is my foot in his hand.
He looks at me. “Can I suck your toe?”
“Okay.” And my toe is warm in his mouth.
It is still there when Brady opens the door.
“Hey!” Brady pauses. “What’s going on?”
“I was sucking Lehi’s foot.”
“Oh,” says Brady. He just looks around.
Jaden puts my sock back on, then my shoe. I tie it.
“Let’s go.”
◆
III
Lehi’s Mission Week 12
Ola familia e amigos !
This past week was good. My new mission companion Elder Connor is great. As far as old investigators go, Carlos and Julianna are pretty good. They have some reservations about the church but also seem excited. Me and Elder Connor kind of had a jolt on Friday. We went by to see how they were doing and when we walked in you could immediately sense something wasn’t right. The Spirit wasn’t there and you could feel the tension between them. We started talking a little and Carlos was really shut off and not participating. I said you seem down Carlos what’s wrong? He began talking about how he didn’t know if he still wanted to marry Julianna anymore and he’s not even sure if he loves her. I couldn’t believe it. I just sat there thinking we’ve got to try to understand this and figure out what’s happening and then resolve it. Both of them began criticizing each other and it felt like everything was falling apart. Elder Conner gave a strong testimony about the importance of marriage and families and how before big changes there will always be tribulations. They’d been arguing with each other a lot. It was a blessing that we came by exactly then because if not I think it would’ve gotten much nastier. We watched a Mormon Message video called Enduring Love and used it to talk about the challenges and blessings of marriage. By the time we left they were laughing with each other and a lot more peaceful. You could feel the Holy Ghost come back into the house and Carlos even mentioned being excited about converting! It’s amazing that any time before great changes come to people there are always great trials.
So to wrap up let me tell you about a food experience. We were eating at a church member’s house and as we were eating I thought this meat tastes a little odd, but I figured it was all the spices. When we left Elder Conner asked me how I liked the figado. I said what’s that and he said cow liver! I said I didn’t realize that’s what it was but I had been thinking the meat tasted a little odd! It wasn’t bad just a little funky. I like other meat better but would eat it again.
It’s great that BYU is playing super well. And seems like a good day’s work at the lake Dad! Thanks for sending the quotes Mom.
Love you guys. Eu amo vocês!
Do Brasil com amor,
Elder Miller
And then I start reading it over.
Elder Conner is writing his family at the kitchen table and I am outside peering at the screen of the clunky Lenovo, amid the laundry strung on the balcony. White underwear, white t-shirts, white dress shirts, black dress pants.
I am on the third paragraph when I get a new email. It’s subjectless, but there is his name.
Hey. Do you still use this email?? I am back in town for break and wondering if you wanted to meet up if you are too? My number is 919-850-4829.
I look through the screen door to the kitchen. Elder Conner is busy at work. I type Jaden in the Gmail search bar. A few old emails come up and I find our Greek Myth Project.
While the video downloads, I tidy up. I put my pencils in my pouch and zip it shut. I close my planner and put my Livro de Mórmon on top. I wipe a speck of beans off the cover and shift in my seat.
And then there I am. Me and Jessica Gardner. We wear bedsheets wrapped like togas and stand on either side of a cardboard wall. I lean to a hole in the wall and whisper. Jessica presses her ear to the hole in a caricature of stealthy listening. Then she is whispering and I am listening.
The scene has just changed and there is Jessica and Jessica’s dog covered with ketchup standing before a Bradford pear tree. Jessica points at her dog, clasps her hands to her cheeks and flees, letting her scarf flutter and fall behind her. There is a cut and the dog is gone. I am entering the frame, approaching scarf and tree and miming worry, when I hear the glass door squeak.
“Hi Elder.” I quickly minimize the video and pull up my inbox.
“I just finished my letter. Are you almost ready?”
“Yeah gimme five minutes and I’ll put on my tie.”
He gives me a thumbs up and turns back inside.
I drag the dot on the playback bar, skimming my suicide and Jessica’s discovery of my body and Jessica’s suicide.
Now we are standing before the tree looking into the camera, and Jessica’s dog passes back and forth, barking. We curl our hands forward in invitation.
And then Jaden trots out from behind the camera, briefly filling the entire screen before growing small as he nears us. He grabs my hand and the three of us bow while the dog scurries out of the frame. When we rise Jessica opens her mouth and sets off after the dog, and Jaden and I just stand there like we’re stuck.