If Jack's in Love by Stephen Wetta Page A

It demonstrated clearly that she outclassed us. I could handle “impertinent,” but Stan didn’t possess my scholastic talents and he resented it when people put on airs. I looked to see what he was thinking, but he only stared at her from behind his sunglasses.
    â€œIt’s just a question,” he told her. “If you smoke with me I was thinking we might have some fun.”
    â€œYou haven’t told me your name,” she said.
    â€œIt’s Gaylord.”
    Why did he say that?
    Anya laughed, unwilling to believe anyone would be named Gaylord.
    Suddenly a voice called from the rear door.
    â€œAnya, what are you doing?”
    It was Lovey!
    â€œNothing, I’m talking!” she shouted over her shoulder.
    â€œI have to go,” she told us.
    â€œMeet me tomorrow at the creek,” my brother said.
    â€œWhat creek?”
    â€œJust cut through. It’s on the other side of the hill.”
    â€œAnya, who are you talking to?”
    â€œI have to go.”
    â€œI’ll be at the creek at three,” Stan said.
    She walked off in her sandals and tight shorts and my brother watched her from behind with his low-class insolence.
    I wanted to get out of there. Lovey was on the back porch standing on her tiptoes so she could see us, and here was my brother in possession of marijuana. And no doubt Reedy was at large, poking his nose into everyone’s business. What if Lovey went inside and called him?
    We returned to the creek and hung out until my brother came down some.
    I was monitoring his high with great anxiety. He made me promise not to tell Mom and Pop he was on drugs. And I didn’t tell them. But I wanted to. And the next day he went without me to the creek. He was there at three in the afternoon. He waited for a while, and just when he was about to give up Anya came brushing through the woods from the street side. She told him that if she’d entered the woods from the yard her mother would have seen and called her back.
    Stan passed her a joint and she toked on it like she’d been using drugs all her life.
    He told me about it that evening. After they got high they made out for a while and he felt her breasts.
    I was stunned. I figured my brother had been setting himself up for a fall. I thought he was making coarse, untrue assumptions about Anya, and about girls in general.
    I was wrong.

7
    MY BROTHER HAD PICKED UP some of the new hippie expressions, like “far out,” “outasight,” and “dig it.” A few of these had already gained wary currency in our neighborhood; others were provided by the groovier television shows. Only recently Stan had hollered, “Sock it to me, baby!” and dashed across the room to sweep my mother in his arms. “Give me a hug, foxy lady! Come on, you sexy chick, hug me tighter!”
    I marveled at his brazenness. Who else ever told their mother she was sexy? I mean, wow. The boy had charm—sometimes. (Poor Mom would accept flirting wherever she found it, except from Mr. Harris at the Ben Franklin.)
    Stan had the longest hair in the neighborhood, maybe in town. Hair length was a contest among the boys in the neighborhood; most lost out when their parents lugged them to the barbershop. But Pop, he was indifferent to the controversies other dads raged about. He just didn’t care that much, and Stan’s hair kept on growing. When you saw hair as long as his it was on garage band record covers or maybe on the hippies out in San Francisco. It wasn’t typical in our town, and it drew stares of disapproval whenever we passed by in our smashed-up Ford. “Doesn’t that just show you,” the old folks would say. “You can’t expect people with a car that looks like that to control their teenagers.”
    During the course of the year Stan grew his hair so long he almost wasn’t allowed to graduate, even though the principals were eager to get rid of him; but after he