Candy Everybody Wants

‘So far,’ Jayson said, ‘you’re not helping matters.’

‘Since when did you think you were like other people?’ Toni asked. She had a point. ‘You’ve always known you were different. I can’t see why the fact that other people know it now, too, should change anything.’

Jayson got goose pimples. His mother was right.

‘If you weren’t different from them, how could you become a celebrity?’ Toni continued. ‘There’s only…what…a couple hundred celebrities in this world?’

Jayson was going to correct her by pointing out that he’d just seen a special CBS presentation of Night of a Thousand Stars, but he didn’t want to stop the soothing lull of her voice.

‘And none of these other hicks around here are gonna be celebrities,’ Toni continued, ‘so of course you’re perverted to them.’

Jayson listened as his mother flicked her Bic to light a fresh menthol. In the few seconds of light from the flame he looked up and saw the soft roundess of her cheeks. He wanted to lean up to kiss her, but her speech was like a lullaby and he found his eyes drooping shut.

‘I don’t know much about showbiz, Butter Bean,’ he heard her say as he dropped off to sleep, ‘but it seems to me like all you gotta do is find the applause and go stand in front of it.’

Seven (#ulink_184196a7-b176-5279-a914-767532cc51cd)

Terri Wernermeier was growing more and more apoplectic at the increasing amount of time Tara was spending at the Blochers’. Most nights Tara fell asleep on the floor of Jayson’s room, but since Terri was too terrified of Toni and Franck to knock on the front door to retrieve her, Tara wound up spending the night at the Blochers’–going to school the next day in the same clothes she’d fallen asleep in.

Eventually, no doubt at Terri’s urgings, Detective Philip Unsinger started calling Tara over to the picnic table to take part in Jayson and Willie’s court-mandated ‘rap sessions.’ The first time Unsinger included her, Tara amused herself by pretending to listen raptly to Unsinger’s ‘Life Lessons,’ tsk-ing loudly whenever one of Unsinger’s obviously fictional wards went from ‘God to Odd,’ and whose body was inevitably found ‘violated and broken, face down in the gutter’ of some large city. After two months of examples like these, Jayson finally asked Unsinger if any kid he’d ever worked with had actually survived.

After sitting and nodding along attentively to Unsinger’s rambling, Tara would try to outdo herself when the time came to ‘trade in’ a bad behavior for a piece of Unsinger’s toxic sugarless candy. At first her trade-ins were only mildly shocking. She would convince him that she’d give up her two-pack-a-day cigarette habit for the candy. Then, over time, she upped the stakes. Unsinger never caught on to her exaggerated sins until the sixth session, when she tearfully told him that she’d ‘trade-in her membership to the Lac LaBelle S&M Swinger’s Club for something in a cherry flavor.’

When Unsinger caught on that Tara was mocking him, he ceased ‘counseling’ her. This, surprisingly, seemed to disappoint Tara. ‘He was entertaining,’ she told Jayson, ‘in a creepy, jacking-off-in-his-car-by-the-playground way.’

Neither Jayson nor Tara saw much of Trey. His after-school athletics meant that he didn’t take the bus home with them anymore. On the rare occasion he was home before supper, he would leave quickly afterwards, driven off by junior and senior level friends into nights filled with what Jayson and Tara imagined were sepia-toned high school memories in the making.

Jayson was grateful that Trey was more or less absent from his life. He wasn’t sure what they would say to each other now that Trey had exposed him.

The night of the Oconomowoc High School Homecoming Dance, Jayson and Tara were sitting in their usual spot in front of the television in Jayson’s room, watching an hour-long special episode of One Day at a Time. Jayson had long ago given up wishing he had a perfect mother like Florence Henderson or Shirley Jones. Now he’d be more happy with a sassy single mom like Bonnie Franklin. He’d even live in the ghetto with the stalwart Esther Rolle. He wasn’t sure what the ghetto was, but it seemed very homey in a hardscrabble way.

Franck’s head appeared in Jayson’s doorway just as Ann Romano had an overly dramatic breakdown over her oldest daughter’s new druggie boyfriend. ‘Dammit, Julie!’ It was the first swear word heard spoken on television

‘Are you coming with me to pick up Willie from the dance?’ Franck asked.