Free Call Me Jane by Anthea Carson Page B

in and with which you lit your cigarette.We didn’t know where it was. It had lit its last cig anyway, since Bill blew the thing out. So who cares? My mom just didn’t like anything incomplete. It drove her nuts, and she would nag you about it until it drove you nuts too.
    We waited a few minutes, and honked the horn a few times until Bill finally came out the front door. He was carrying something folded up in a black sweatshirt or coat or something. I moved to the back; he crawled in and shut the door, looking all around.
    “Drive!” he shouted.
    “Where?”
    “I don’t care! Anywhere! Drive to the lake! No, not a left here, not that lake. Go to the other one!”
    Lake Oshkosh, where there was a bridge with a stone railing. I remember as a kid we used to see groups of men at night fishing over the side of that bridge all the time, and the sidewalk would be lined with buckets.
    “Pull over!” he screamed.
    Lucy screeched to a halt.
    He threw something off the bridge that was folded up in that sweater, and then asked to be dropped off at a Pat’s Tap on Main Street.

FIFTEEN
    There was a girl in my pot throwing class. I nicknamed her Potty Mouth. Potty Mouth was a freak, not a punk. Freaks and punks had a crossover section, if you imagine a Venn diagram. She wore REO Speedwagon tees, and tried to convince me to name a shipwreck scene I’d painted “Riding the Storm Out.” This was every freak’s favorite song. I nicknamed her Potty Mouth because of a joke she told me one day while I gave her a ride home from pot throwing class. It was the filthiest joke I’d ever heard.
    Potty Mouth had long straight dark hair and a Kewpie-doll smile that didn’t go with her freak T-shirts.
    One other thing that stood out in my mind about her was her reaction when Lucy Bachus came running down the hall shouting, “Ziggy likes you! Ziggy likes you!”
    “What?”
    “I told him.”
    “You told him what?”
    “You know,” she said. She had her mouth open in one of those expectant smiles. Her eyes were all lit up.
    “No, I don’t.”
    “I told him you like him.”
    I stood there confused, and then I remembered what I had told her to throw her off the scent of me and Paul.
    “And do you know what he said?”
    Again, I just stared at her.
    “He said he likes you.”
    “He did?”
    “Yes! And he was really excited. He said, ‘Jane likes me?’ He was smiling. I asked him if he liked you. He said, ‘Yeah I like her,’ I said, ‘No, I mean do you like her.’ He said, ‘Yeah I like her.’” Lucy stood in front of me, grinning from ear to ear.
    Then Potty Mouth turned to me. “You mean that guy who got Sid Vicious elected homecoming queen?”
    “Yeah.” I smiled, but I wasn’t really smiling. It was like one of Raj’s smiles. About to fall off my face any second.
    “Oh God!” she winced.
    Then I winced.
    But at the same time, I felt tentatively happy. I did find myself thinking about him.
    “He’s ugly!” she said.
    I just blinked at her. I wanted to go back in the art room and throw pots with Mr. Simon.
    “But that parachute suit is cool!” she added, with a hopeful smile.
    I loved that shipwrecked painting I did. After Mr. Simon cleared it out of his case to make way for the next display, my dad put it in his office, down at the university.
    Potty Mouth wanted a ride home, so I gave her one. She loved speed. She called them Black Beauties. She offered me one, and of course I took it. I grabbed a few extra too, and put them in my pocket for Krishna. I dropped Potty Mouth home; she lived behind an ugly building and had to take the fire escape upstairs.
    “Black Beauties,” I told Krishna, when I made it to her room. I held out my hand. They were black, I think.
    “Sure I’ll take one. I’ll take two.” Krishna grabbed them and popped them in her mouth without a thought. She didn’t even need to wash them down with her half cup of cold coffee that stood on her desk by the red phone.
    I sat with my