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Clay Jensen sighed as he watched his son absently pushing his food around his plate. It was a disturbing sign. “Anything you want to talk about, Andy?” he asked, taking another helping of green beans.
“No. I’m fine.” Sandy blond hair shook as the sixteen year old continued fidgeting. “Everything’s fine.”
“Okay.” Silence fell as the pair continued with dinner. The small eat-in kitchen seemed cavernous. “I, uh, got a call from the school today…”
Andy’s fork dropped, clattering against the china plate. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“Yeah. Fuck.” At his father’s comment, the boy snapped his head up. A pair of blue eyes goggled at Clay, who sat his own utensils off to the side. “You know, if you needed a day off, you could have just said something.”
“Like what, Dad? Oh, some assholes are giving me crap, so I need a mental health day?” Andy snorted. “Yeah, like you’d just sign off on that…”
“Better a mental health day than finding out my kid’s skipping class four out of five days this week,” Clay countered.
“It’s gym class, Dad,” The younger Jensen pushed himself away from the table. “Like anyone gives a shit about gym class.”
“Okay, granted. Gym class sucks. But why do I get the feeling that’s not all of the story?” Clay’s hands fidgeted against each other. It was a telltale sign he was getting agitated or upset. “And please define ‘assholes’.”
“I don’t know…assholes. Jock shit.” Andy’s head hung limply, trying to escape his father’s scrutiny.
“I’m guessing that’s where the bruise on your face came from?”
A certain look crossed Andy’s face. Clay knew it as the one that told him Andy was pissed that his old man had figured out a secret he was trying to keep. “I swear, Dad, it was nothing.”
Clay rolled his eyes. “Fine. It’s nothing. But if it’s nothing, then show up to class.”
“Like I’m gonna need gym class to do anything in life!”
“Andrew Justin Jensen…” Clay started, and then took a deep breath. “Okay. We’re done now. Clean up the dishes, put stuff away. When you’re finished, come into the living room a minute.”
Sullenly, Andy began clearing the table. Clay walked over to the living room where he stopped and touched a portrait of himself with an attractive blonde woman. She had beautiful blue eyes, a gorgeous smile, and seemed very happy standing next to a younger Clay. “I dunno, Allie,” he whispered, tapping the photo frame a little. “I always wondered when the shit would hit the fan.” Clay’s face, still youthful despite his forty-five years, scrunched in frustration. He sighed. “I’m kind of glad you’re not here for this part.”
Moving farther into the room, Clay stopped next to another photo. It was of a young man in a light blue letter jacket leaning next to a shady tree. Green eyes, dark hair that threatened to curl a little and a heartrendingly magical smile looked back at him. “Jesus, Justin,” Clay murmured. “I really miss you right now. So much.”
“I know, Clay,” a little voice replied, in the back of Clay’s mind. “But you’re doing a great job with him. By yourself, too. I mean, shit.” As Clay looked at the old photo, he swore Justin’s smile quirked just a bit. “Single parenting isn’t easy. I should know.”
“Oh, because you had first-hand experience with kids?” The eldest Jensen brother knew he was having a conversation with a ghost – or, rather, a figment of his imagination – but it was times like this he really wished that he had been able to help Justin fight his illness all those years before. It was stupid, but having even a fantastical construct that resembled his brother to talk with was comforting at times.
“No. But Amber was a single parent.”
“She was a shit parent.”
“True. She was.” Clay swore he heard a sigh. “But see? I mean, Andy’s doing good. Grades are decent. He’s coming along on that guitar of his…”
“Yeah. Every single night.” Clay smirked a little. Allison had been into music. He had encouraged Andy to join the band once he hit high school, and he was doing pretty well. The fact that he was taking private lessons from Zach Dempsey didn’t hurt.
“And there haven’t been any…catastrophes…since he hit Liberty, have there?”
“No, thank God.” Clay rolled his head as he exhaled. “I’m learning that Mom and Dad were pretty much saints when we were Andy’s age.”
“Well, they took me in, Clay. I mean, I was pretty fucked up.”
“We were both fucked up.”
“Yeah. We were.” A small silence fell. “If he’s saying jocks are the problem, maybe you can get him to talk about it?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure,” Clay snorted. “Obviously you haven’t been paying attention the last few months.”
“Late practices, loss of appetite, bruises, all that shit? Nope, haven’t noticed a thing.”
“Sarcasm is not an attractive trait in a ghost.”
“But you love me anyway.”
Clay sighed. “Yeah. I still do.”
“Maybe…” The air tickled the back of Clay’s neck. “Maybe you should tell him.”
“About?”
“About us. About Hannah. About all of it. Well, maybe not all of it…”
“Good call, Justin. Because I want my kid knowing about…that.”
“But the Hannah stuff, the me stuff? Clay, I think it’ll help. Maybe give him some perspective.”
“You think so?”
“Clay,” Justin’s voice chided, “all Andy knows is that you had a brother, and that he’s dead. You’ve never really told him about me.”
“Maybe…” Clay clicked his tongue. “Maybe I wasn’t ready.”
“Kid’s dealt with losing your mom, never knowing his own mom…I’d say he’s pretty acquainted with loss.”
“Not like Hannah. Not like you.”
“Mine are a dime a dozen, Clay. Okay, maybe not AIDS, but, y’know, cancer…tumors…that SARS or COVID shit…”
“Please don’t remind me. That sucked. At least you didn’t have to deal with that.”
Clay sighed. “True. But it’s a conversation I gotta prepare for.” At that, he picked up his phone, keyed in a couple of contacts, and sent a Gordon Lightfoot text: Hey. It’s me. Need help. Anyone have video, recordings, photos of Justin? Things I don’t have? I need to have a chat with my son…
“Dad?”
Clay looked up. His phone buzzed, but he wisely set it aside. “Yeah?”
Andy’s lip quivered as he stood near the living room couch. Clay knew it was a nervous tic of his son’s. “I’m sorry. I’ve been having some trouble at school.” The boy flopped onto the beaten couch, pausing to collect his thoughts. “I guess…some of the jocks…they’re being assholes.”
“Define ‘assholes.’”
“Roughing up Nate Down. Stealing his art stuff, breaking his shit.” Clay nodded. He was familiar with Tyler and Estela’s son, seeing as he was a close friend of Andy’s. “Coming onto Rhiannon Christopher, even though she’s clearly a lesbian. Like they can change her mind about it or something. The things they say about her…” the boy shuddered. “And before you ask, yes, we’ve reported it. Foundry’s gotten on their asses, but…”
“…it’s like a slap on the wrist?”
“Kinda? I mean, getting thrown off a team, detention…that shit matters, but they just pop up on another one. City league or some shit. Like they just wiggle their way out of it. And they won’t stop.”
Clay looked at his son, catching his gaze and holding it. “And they came after you?”
“I…I called them out. In the middle of the quad. Told them they were fucking assholes, going after Nate and Rhiannon. I know they’ve gotten to a few of my other friends too, but Nate and Rhiannon get it worst.” Andy sighed. “Josh told me they were gonna come after me, but…”
Clay nodded. Josh Standall-St. George was Andy’s best friend. The two were thick as thieves. “And Coach St. George is on the warpath, but…I mean, Cameron Silvernaile has most of those idiots wrapped around his finger…
“Ah, yes. The Silvernaile kid.” Loren Silvernaile had replaced Barry Walker as the wealthiest and most influential man in town, but as far as Clay was concerned the Silvernailes were cut from the same cloth as the Walker men. Old Miss Walker still ran her yoga studio downtown, and she had actually hired Clay to design a new building so that she could expand her offerings. It paid well, and Miss Walker had actually turned out to be a relatively decent lady. Clay swallowed a little at the thought of his old nemesis, and consoled himself with the fact that at least Bryce Walker was forever out of the picture.
“So…yeah.” Andy’s eyes closed, and his face became a mask of determination. “Apparently they thought beating on me was a good way to set an example or something.”
“They being…”
“Football team.”
Clay chuckled without mirth. “At least it wasn’t the baseball team.”
“Say what?” Andy looked at his father, perplexed. “Why would the baseball team want to beat the shit out of someone?”
The elder Jensen took a deep breath. Okay, Justin, he thought, taking a seat next to Andy on the couch. Here we go…
Later that night, Andy sat on the edge of his bed, staring at a photo on his phone. It was of his father and his Uncle Justin, standing with a group of their friends. Andy could pick out Nate’s dad along with both of Josh’s, and even Mr. Dempsey was in the photo. It was taken just before his Uncle Justin had gotten sick.
“Justin wanted us to take the photo. And it was an undertaking.” His dad had worn a sad smile as he’d talked downstairs earlier. “Alex and Justin…they weren’t close. Zach – Mr. Dempsey – and I weren’t either. But we all had our connections to each other. And in our own way, we were very close.”
Andy’s eyes had settled on a beautiful mixed-race girl, much like his friend Rhiannon. “Her name is Jessica,” Clay had said. “And she was the love of your Uncle Justin’s life. Half of the messed-up things he got into, he got into because of her.”
The youngest Jensen had seen the photos of his Uncle Justin around the house. Sometimes he swore his dad talked to them. But aside from knowing that he had lived with them a short while before dying of illness, Andy knew very little about him. He’d tried bringing the topic up one Thanksgiving, just before his Noni Jensen had died, but the looks on his family’s faces clearly said it was a rough subject for them, even after nearly thirty years. The fact that his dad was even talking about his brother now meant that shit was pretty serious.
“I did a lot of messed-up things at your age, Andy,” Clay Jensen had told his only child. “I mean, a lot of messed-up things. Things I haven’t talked about in…God, years.”
“Like what?”
“I skipped class. Got caught with weed. Tried ecstasy and didn’t like it.” His dad’s hands fidgeted a little. “I was a character witness in a court case. The first girl I loved committed suicide, and I went off the deep end a while.”
“Like, committed?”
“At one point, yeah. My senior year of high school. Foundry can tell you all about it.”
“Whoa. Principal Foundry’s been there that long?” Andy had been impressed.
“Yep. I was even arrested for murder at eighteen.”
Andy had sat up at that admission. “Arrested? Murder? You?!”
Clay had nodded. “I made an enemy of the equivalent of your Cameron Silvernaile. I wanted him to admit he’d raped my friend, and Justin’s, so…” Andy had watched as his dad had shrugged. “…I went to the guy’s house. Double athlete – football and baseball, six inches taller and fifty pounds of muscle on me, and I let him beat me almost to death as I recorded him giving a half-assed admission to what he’d done to my friends. A year later, someone killed him, and all the evidence made it look like I’d done it. I didn’t have much of an alibi, and so…”
“But you got off…”
“Yeah. Seems someone else, another enemy of mine, killed him. That guy ended up dying in prison.”
“Jesus fuck, Dad.”
“Oh, and I started a riot.”
“No fucking way!”
“Yep. That girl Jessica, Justin’s true love? She was class president. I had a reputation as being a guy who got things done, made social changes. Some of the school’s policies were going a bit too far, and…”
“And?”
His dad sighed. “I looked at Jess, Jess looked at me, we looked at the front door, and next thing we knew the whole school followed us out of the building. It devolved into a riot later.”
“I just…wow. I mean, I’ve heard rumors that there was some kind of protest years ago…I just…”
“…didn’t know your old man made so much trouble?” Clay had chuckled. “It’s times like these I see a little of me in you. I had hoped you’d take after your mom. She was a fighter, but…nothing like me.” A small mischievous smile quirked over the elder Jensen’s face.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t start any riots. Or get arrested.” Andy had paused. “At least, not without good reason.”
“That’s all I ask, Andy,” Clay had said, ruffling his son’s hair as he had stood up from the couch. “Now, upstairs. Try and get some sleep.”
A few minutes later, a knock sounded on the boy’s bedroom door. “Just stopping to say good night,” Clay said, watching as his son sat on his bed, staring at the photo of his uncle.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, Andy?”
His son’s lips quirked. “Will you…will you tell me about Uncle Justin? I mean, more about him?”
Clay paused. His heart twinged a little at the thought of his long-dead brother. “Yeah. I will. But be prepared…I might cry. Like, a lot.”
“Okay. Thanks.” With that, Andy set his phone on his desk and climbed into bed. Clay closed the door behind him.
“Nice one, Clay,” a little voice said in the back of his mind. “And remember, you have help in telling him about me. Don’t…don’t be afraid to ask, okay?”
Clay smiled as he turned in. “I won’t. It’s figuring out where to start that has me worried…”