Joe by H.D. Gordon Page A

becoming.
    He remembered the angry shout that
sheared through the soft cotton momentarily falling over the world. The next
thing he remembered was Jodie being torn away from his touch. He hadn’t known
at the time that that would be the last time he touched her. He didn’t know
that it would be the last time he even saw her.
    The next thing John saw was a dark flash
of light, and then searing pain cut across his face. Jodie’s father must have
been watching from a window, because he was dragging Jodie away now, having
punched John in the face and broken his nose. John had lain on the sidewalk in
agonized silence, too shocked to right himself. Jodie had screamed and cried
the entire way to the house, and that was the worst part of it. When he looked
back and thought about the incident, that part was always the toughest. John’s
parting glance of Jodie, as he slowly turned his head to the side on the hard
pavement, the blood streaming down into his mouth now flowing into his ear, had
been at a scared thirteen-year-old girl, tears racing down her face and the
wind slapping her hair. Just once, if John remembered correctly, before Jodie’s
dad slammed the door, she called out John’s name.
    And that’s how he still remembered her.
    For two weeks John had walked by Jodie’s
house on his way to the bus stop, never losing hope that she would come out of
that front door her dad had dragged her through, waiting anxiously to see her
golden hair and sweet smile. But, by the end of that second week, on his way
home from school, John’s world crumbled to ashes and settled at his feet.
    It was a Friday. He could remember that
because he had hoped that Jodie would come outside over the weekend. He thought
things would go back to normal, because at thirteen he couldn’t see how else
things could go. But Jodie hadn’t returned to school, and he had been growing
increasingly worried about her over the last two weeks. What happened shouldn’t
have shocked him so much, but it did.
    John stopped on the sidewalk in front of
Jodie’s house, the soles of his sneakers attaching themselves to the concrete
on which he stood. For a tiny moment he didn’t understand. Well, he pretended not to understand. He stared at the sign in the front lawn, refusing to
accept what it meant.
    In front of Jodie’s small, yellow house
there was a realtor’s sign that read: FOR RENT. John actually fell to his knees
right there on the sidewalk as his brain processed the message. He looked up at
the house that had held the girl who owned his heart. The blinds and shades had
been removed from the windows. The patio furniture, an old porch swing and a
chipped, wooden chair were absent as well. The birdbath was gone. The beat-up
Chevy was gone.
    Jodie was gone.
    He was too young to have learned that
that is how change often worked, rapid and unexpected, and it socked him in the
gut with all the power of a first fall. John sat on his knees in front of her
house for an hour that day, just staring at it. He didn’t cry, because that was
not how he dealt with things, but staring at the cicada shell of a house filled
him with loss so deeply that he was forever changed. John never cut his hair
again. He never kissed another girl.
    Six years later he sat on the bus, staring
at his hands, thinking about Jodie. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since
her call yesterday. Over the last six years he had gotten good at forcing
thoughts of her out of his mind. He had allowed her memory to fade as much as
it would, as good as it gets. Those memories were old, though. Jodie wasn’t a
little girl anymore, and all the things he had tried so hard to forget about
her were flooding back to him and swimming like sharks in his mind.
    What if she didn’t find him attractive?
What if she looked completely different from what he remembered? What if she
was married? What if, what if? Too many damn what-if’s.
    He wouldn’t admit it, but he was scared
to see her. Things had