Page 9

On the day he died, he left all his belongings with his body to keep things from getting more complicated than they’d needed to be: Sunglasses. Keys. A half pack of spearmint chewing gum. His wallet, containing his driver’s license, seemed like an especially important thing to leave for whoever found the vacated corpse sprawled there on the sticky club floor. But his phone held every connection he had left to the living world, and in a moment of weakness, he took it. Of course, no one bothered texting dead men. Once the news got out and the Facebook notifications from people tagging Jack in farewell posts dried up, the phone went silent. But every once in a while, Jack found himself scrolling through his contacts, lingering on one in particular, thumb hovering just above the number with no reason to press it. It was the only time he bothered getting the phone out from the pocket of Margaret’s laptop case these days. Except that right now it was ringing.

The Eagle’s face slowly rose above the cubicle wall like a nosy meerkat, furry brows and receding hairline giving his position away. Jack swiveled his chair and dug out the ringing phone, curling over the device as he hit answer, as though his hunched position would muffle his voice.

“Uh, hello?” he half whispered down the line. When he dared shoot a glance over his shoulder, The Eagle’s hands had joined his head above the wall, aiding in raising him up on his toes for a better vantage point.

“Jack.”

Jack’s borrowed heart hit the narrow rib cage surrounding it with such force that he jolted backward in spite of himself, his chair tipping precariously with the motion, one front wheel airborne. Jack shifted forward, sending himself hard back to earth in every way.

The voice that seeped with an unsteadying steadiness down the line was one Jack hadn’t heard in more years than he’d let himself count. He found himself wondering if The Eagle could hear how his heart raced, how his breathing suddenly came fast and shallow. He had to say something. Something that wouldn’t raise suspicion in either his colleague or the person on the other end.

“Yo,” was what he came up with.

A brow ticked subtly upward above the cubicle wall. Jack tried to ignore it.

“I mean, yes?” he said carefully.

He heard muffled voices from the other end, indicating there were other people there. Then, “We need to talk.”

“Okay,” said Jack, too eagerly. “Yeah. Right. Where?”

“Eli’s.”

“Okay.”

Before he could say anything else, a click sounded, and another dial tone blared in Jack’s ear. He pulled the phone away and looked behind himself just in time to watch The Eagle quickly clamber back down into his own cubicle. Jack knew he didn’t sound like Margaret right now. And right now, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He opened the Recent Calls tab on his phone and found the caller ID at the top, half convinced he’d hallucinated the whole exchange. The name glowed softly back at him on the screen. Then, Dale’s report still in Wingdings, he packed up and left the office.

6

Leaves

October 1999

Jack did not have a stomachache. What he did have was a gift for dramatics and a half-empty cup of banana pudding under his bed that looked remarkably like vomit when spewed across a planet-themed bedspread accompanied by gagging sounds.

It was just after ten a.m. and Jack was spooning the last remnants of a fresh pudding cup onto his tongue as he lounged on top of the fresh bedding his mom had laid out for him. She’d left for work soon after, which would usually be Jack’s cue to lay siege to his castle, but today he was on a different mission. Breakfast complete, he flopped onto his perfectly healthy stomach and grabbed the phone receiver from its Garfield-shaped cradle on his bedside table. The phone had cost him twenty-five cents at a garage sale, which he’d dug out of the school vending machine when no one was looking. It was from that phone he’d made all his most pressing business calls.

Eli picked up on the second ring. Jack knew Eli was out of school for a dental checkup that morning. It was the main reason Jack had played hooky himself. That was one of the first life lessons Jack had ever learned: if you want to win the game, you have to think several steps ahead of the other players. He pressed the hard-earned Garfield phone to his ear. He was already winning.

“Eli,” he crooned down the line, twirling the phone cord around his index finger.

“How’d you get out of school?” Eli asked, a hint of reluctant awe clinging to the edges of his words.

“Banana pudding.”

“Okay,” said Eli. “What do you want?”

“Ol’ Mrs. Sullivan still offering ten bucks for someone to rake her leaves?”

“Nah, some high schoolers down the street already got there.”

“Shit,” said Jack, for only the fourth time in his nine years of life. The word still felt a bit strange on his tongue. “Well, leaves are always falling.”

“Yeah.”

“So it wouldn’t hurt to go by there and ask.”

“I guess.”