Son of a Trickster

One morning, a week after putting Baby down, Jared considers not getting up—but he talks himself into putting his clothes on and brushing his teeth. He goes upstairs to get cereal, where two of the tenants are watching news in the living room. His mom appears and tackles him, sending his cereal flying as she insists that he fight back. Jared refuses, and she kisses him like a toddler. Richie then appears in the doorway, scowling, while the tenants laugh. He complains that Jared was eating his cereal, and now it’s on the floor, but Jared’s mom retorts that Richie won’t eat anything if he doesn’t shut up. Jared comments, “Mom, total overshare,” and Richie gives him a death glare. Jared knows that if they were alone, Richie would beat him up.

Some days after school, Jared’s elderly neighbors, the Jakses, pay him for some yard work and give him some food. Mrs. Jaks is Native from the northern part of British Columbia, and Mr. Jaks is Czech. On this day, Jared rakes their leaves and mows their lawn, helping Mrs. Jaks wrap her rose bushes in burlap before the frost gets too bad and dig up the potatoes and carrots. While they work, Mr. Jaks comes outside in his pajamas and asks for the car keys so he can go to work. Mrs. Jaks points out that they sold the car, and that Mr. Jaks is retired.

Jared then goes inside to get dinner, which he’s grateful for because he’s starving. At dinner, Mr. Jaks asks who Jared is in Czech, and Mrs. Jaks reassures him that Jared is a good kid. After dinner, they have blueberry dumplings, and Jared helps Mrs. Jaks do the dishes. Mrs. Jaks tells Jared that she wishes he knew Mr. Jaks before he got sick. Then, they all watch Wheel of Fortune together, and the Jakses both start to nod off. Jared is comfortable and is tempted to sleep there, but he says goodnight and locks the door behind him.

On Friday after school, Jared takes the bus to meet his friends Kelsey and Blake. They get high, douse themselves in Axe body spray, and play video games together at Kelsey’s house. After losing at Halo 3 against strangers online, Jared says that he has the munchies and goes off on a junk food run. He walks to the mall nearby, noticing a raven flying overhead as it snows lightly.

Jared likes hanging out with Kelsey, but Kelsey flunked out of most of his subjects, so they don’t have classes together. Blake was also close to being expelled, because he is a pyromaniac and set a dumpster fire in a construction site. Last year, Blake’s dad was also caught embezzling, and they lost their house and car. Whenever his dad got too angry, Blake slept at Jared’s. Sometimes, Blake and Kelsey make fun of Jared for being a nerd. Jared does get average grades, particularly because Nana Sophia gives him money for good grades. He keeps the money secret because his mom doesn’t like Nana Sophia—his mom believes that his dad’s family should be cut out of their lives.

At the mall, Jared is grabbing some snacks when he bumps into his mom’s ex-boyfriend, David. Jared’s heart starts thumping, and he reminds David that they have a restraining order against him. David dares him to call the cops, smelling the marijuana on Jared, but Jared threatens to call his mom. David points out that Jared is still hiding behind his mommy and then walks away. Jared goes to the bathroom and stays there until the mall closes, worried that David might come back. He then gets on the bus, scanning to see if David is tailing him, and gets off at the stop near his house.

As Jared walks home, a raven lands on the sidewalk in front of him, unnerving him. The raven speaks to him, telling him to stop dousing himself in Axe body spray and not to worry about David—David knows that if he touches Jared again, Jared’s mom will skin him alive. Jared thinks that he must be more stoned than he thought. The raven also tells Jared to keep this conversation to himself, as the raven has enemies and doesn’t want Jared to be more of a target than he already is. Jared thinks that the marijuana must have been laced with LSD, and that it’s been a weird day.

When Jared’s mom brought David home for the first time, she told Jared to be on his best behavior. Though his mom was very excited to be dating David, Jared didn’t like him at all—David’s smile never reached his eyes when talking to Jared. When he knelt down to show Jared how he could balance a baseball on his fingertips, Jared flinched away from him. And David only pretended to like Jared, “until the bitter, bitter end.”

Jared spends Saturday afternoon at Kelsey’s in the backyard. They play Sumo Worm, wrapping themselves in a roll of plastic wrap and wrestling each other in the snow. After that, they throw themselves down the hill in the yard, still wrapped in plastic, and Jared laughs wildly. Afterward, he takes the bus back to his neighborhood and helps Mrs. Jaks shovel the driveway. He also agrees to watch Mr. Jaks on Wednesday while she goes to a doctor’s appointment.

When Jared gets home, he joins the tenants for a beer, joking around until Richie comes home and grabs the beer out of his hand, saying, “Thanks, Useless.” Suddenly, the ground shudders, and hanging pots clang—an earthquake hits. When the house stops shaking, Richie tries to call Jared’s mom, but Jared says bitingly that she’s not worried about Richie. Richie tells Jared that he needs a beating the next day.

That evening, Jared’s mom comes down into the basement while Jared is playing video games. She kisses the top of his head before pulling him into a headlock, telling him that he should text her back after an earthquake. She then says that someone asked Richie if he could put in a good word with Jared to get marijuana cookies. Jared admits that he’s been baking a batch every now and then, and his mom says that he could get jumped for doing that, and Richie is pissed. She says that her performing oral sex on Richie is the only thing saving Jared from landing in the emergency room. Jared replies that he didn’t need to know that, and his mom insists that Jared start carrying a weapon to protect himself.

After Jared’s mom leaves, Jared grabs a beer from the fridge to get the image of his mom and Richie out of his head. He misses Baby Killer, knowing that normally when he felt down, she would put her head in his lap and look up at him. Jared gets another beer before bed as he hears the tenants partying upstairs. Then, Jared notices light from the laundry room coming through a small hole in the wall, and he sees the light disappear and another hole open up. When he gets up and peeks through the hole, the laundry room is empty. The next day, Jared patches the holes and doesn’t tell anyone what happened. He’s upset, though, that someone has been spying on him, and he thinks that people are basically good until they think they can get away with something.