aloft. Goddamn. Has someone lit a fire underneath our water tank? I want to yell at my parents for this. Finally iteases to a lukewarm stream. It’s the best I can hope for. I splash water on my face, rub my neck. I wash myself thoroughly with granite soap. It feels good to scratch and scrape at my skin. I don’t mind that it hurts me a little.
And I sit. Head bowed and whirring. Dripping. Ashamed of the lack of meat on my body. I’m skin and bones all the way down. It’s the gangly body of a kid. No bumps and curves or lines and scars. Nothing like Jasper Jones.
I linger. It’s cooler in here. And to be honest, I’m nursing a distant urge to cry. I still feel tired. And angry and sad. Kind of the way I get when I’m on the cusp of a cold or something. Sad and weird. My belly is tender. It’s like I’ve been shaken and pounded and stretched. I want to cradle my head in my hands, but I don’t. I won’t. I’ll blub if I do.
My head whirls.
What if it really
was
Jasper Jones? What if he did this? What if he killed Laura Wishart? What if he killed her and I said nothing? Could I go to jail? Could he really have hanged that girl in that quiet clearing? The notion seemed so implausible in his company, but how well do I know him, really? He could have been feeding me bullshit the whole time. It could have been him all along. I dig at my ear with a knuckle.
But then why on earth would he seek me out? It makes no sense. There’s no chance anyone would enact a murder and then go find a witness. That’s just stupid. So he can’t have. Surely.
But aside from that, I trust him. I really do. And not because I have to. I think he’s probably the most honest person in this town. He has no reason to lie. He has no reputation to protect. Last night I never suspected him of pulling the wool. Not once. The way he talks to you, it’s like he’s incapable of being deceitful. He says things with such conviction that you’re sure he believes them to be true. It’s just a feeling you get.
See, most people you meet, they’ll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they’re lying even before they’ve started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the morebrazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don’t even matter. Like my dad with his comb-over, or my mum with her russet hair dye. Or when my dad insists he enjoys the challenge of teaching Corrigan kids to love literature, or when my mum assures her sisters in the city that she loves it down here, and no, it’s not too hot at all; it’s just lovely, it’s a wonderful community. I don’t know. Maybe they just get so used to it they don’t even notice. Maybe it’s like a creeping curse and the more you do it, the easier it gets. What’s amazing is that they think they’re fooling anybody.
Yes. I think Jasper Jones speaks the whole truth in a town of liars. I can tell. See, it’s these lies that precede him, these foggy community fibs that I’ve been led through: they’re the source of these niggling doubts in my head. I mean, if it were Jeffrey Lu who’d woken me last night to lead me silently to that awful scene, I wouldn’t doubt his story for a moment. I wouldn’t even question him. So why should it be different for Jasper Jones?
I hoist myself out of the bath, restless and heavy. And I don’t feel much cleaner than when I sat down.
***
When I tentatively enter the kitchen, both my parents pause and eye me suspiciously, brows raised. This is how they demand an explanation without asking for it. For a brief, horrible moment, I think they know something. Perhaps my mother has already inspected her trampled gerbera bed and noticed the fingerprints on the dusty glass louvres of my window, instantly surmising with her uncanny facility to accurately persecute without evidence that I must have been out all night with Jasper Jones, that I’ve seen and done something terrible, that I’m in all kinds
And I sit. Head bowed and whirring. Dripping. Ashamed of the lack of meat on my body. I’m skin and bones all the way down. It’s the gangly body of a kid. No bumps and curves or lines and scars. Nothing like Jasper Jones.
I linger. It’s cooler in here. And to be honest, I’m nursing a distant urge to cry. I still feel tired. And angry and sad. Kind of the way I get when I’m on the cusp of a cold or something. Sad and weird. My belly is tender. It’s like I’ve been shaken and pounded and stretched. I want to cradle my head in my hands, but I don’t. I won’t. I’ll blub if I do.
My head whirls.
What if it really
was
Jasper Jones? What if he did this? What if he killed Laura Wishart? What if he killed her and I said nothing? Could I go to jail? Could he really have hanged that girl in that quiet clearing? The notion seemed so implausible in his company, but how well do I know him, really? He could have been feeding me bullshit the whole time. It could have been him all along. I dig at my ear with a knuckle.
But then why on earth would he seek me out? It makes no sense. There’s no chance anyone would enact a murder and then go find a witness. That’s just stupid. So he can’t have. Surely.
But aside from that, I trust him. I really do. And not because I have to. I think he’s probably the most honest person in this town. He has no reason to lie. He has no reputation to protect. Last night I never suspected him of pulling the wool. Not once. The way he talks to you, it’s like he’s incapable of being deceitful. He says things with such conviction that you’re sure he believes them to be true. It’s just a feeling you get.
See, most people you meet, they’ll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they’re lying even before they’ve started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the morebrazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don’t even matter. Like my dad with his comb-over, or my mum with her russet hair dye. Or when my dad insists he enjoys the challenge of teaching Corrigan kids to love literature, or when my mum assures her sisters in the city that she loves it down here, and no, it’s not too hot at all; it’s just lovely, it’s a wonderful community. I don’t know. Maybe they just get so used to it they don’t even notice. Maybe it’s like a creeping curse and the more you do it, the easier it gets. What’s amazing is that they think they’re fooling anybody.
Yes. I think Jasper Jones speaks the whole truth in a town of liars. I can tell. See, it’s these lies that precede him, these foggy community fibs that I’ve been led through: they’re the source of these niggling doubts in my head. I mean, if it were Jeffrey Lu who’d woken me last night to lead me silently to that awful scene, I wouldn’t doubt his story for a moment. I wouldn’t even question him. So why should it be different for Jasper Jones?
I hoist myself out of the bath, restless and heavy. And I don’t feel much cleaner than when I sat down.
***
When I tentatively enter the kitchen, both my parents pause and eye me suspiciously, brows raised. This is how they demand an explanation without asking for it. For a brief, horrible moment, I think they know something. Perhaps my mother has already inspected her trampled gerbera bed and noticed the fingerprints on the dusty glass louvres of my window, instantly surmising with her uncanny facility to accurately persecute without evidence that I must have been out all night with Jasper Jones, that I’ve seen and done something terrible, that I’m in all kinds
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