The week after
The following week, a lot of safety awareness people came into the school. Will told him it was because of somebody called Wolfie.
Wolfie was a serial killer who had travelled across all the northern states, from coast to coast, picking on small towns to choose his victims. He would choose them solely because of their name. If their name meant lamb, he would kill them. He was giving the police the right runaround not just because of motive but with his profile. It kept changing. One month it was a religious fanatic, next month an abused child, and the month after that, a religiously fanatical, abused child.
Either way, they were sending people into schools and colleges to talk to the kids about safety and who they should call if they didn't feel safe under any circumstances. Joey felt like he was back in kindergarten for a second.
His ears pricked up though when he heard Will, on the desk next to him, whispering to a boy, with a round face, that Joey didn't know. It looked like they had been telling a story but were now arguing over the facts.
"No, no, no it was AJ who did that not-"
"AJ?" I joined in.
Will looked at him a little confused. "Yeah AJ. Astrea-Juno? Ringing any bells yet?"
Joey shook his head slowly. They carried on nattering away.
"He doesn't know AJ?"
"He's new."
"But everyone knows AJ."
"I guess."
Then the bell rang and everyone dispersed, Joey along with them.
***
He walked past the house everyday slowly, waiting to hear her laughter, replaying their words over and over in his head. So, this AJ girl was real? She wasn't just a figment of his imagination or a plaything of his schizophrenic mind? She was an actual human being and other people acknowledged her existence.
Tuesday… Wednesday… Thursday… Nothing. On Thursday, he found himself calling her name out quietly, but still loud enough, if she was there, to hear it. There were only like 5,000 people in North Bend, not even that, so she would have to show up at some point. He just had to wait. It was annoying and he didn't really like waiting, but he could do it. And it wasn't like it was a big thing for him to wait for. It wasn't a major inconvenience.
It was the Friday after that he went into the garden and saw her chasing a kitten around the garden. As soon as he went around the corner into the overgrown garden, the kitten dashed under a hole in the fence and she turned around to face him.
"It's you." She said with a judgy but slightly amused expression on her face. "You still think I'm not real?"
He shook his head. "You're real."
"What would make you think I'm not real anyway? What are you, like a schizo?"
Joey just stared at the ground, stirring his feet and swinging his bag further up onto his left shoulder.
"Oh." She paused for a second. "I'm sorry. I should just shut up. I guess we should probably start over?"
She held out her hand. Her whole mannerism was very blunt and Joey could tell she was one of those good-intentioned people who spoke before they thought.
"You don't talk much, do you?"
Joey shrugged. He never talked. It wasn't like he had anything meaningful to say half the time but especially after his diagnosis, he rarely spoke. One of the symptoms of disorganised schizophrenia is disconnected or disorganised, hence the name, thoughts or speech. Usually, it messed up the way he spoke and people made fun of him, or misunderstood him, so it was easier if he just didn't talk at all.
"Anyways… I'm AJ." Her hand was still outstretched towards Joey.
He slowly reached out and shook it. He didn't know whether he talk his hand away too quickly or too fast but he never tended to shake hands with people. "Joey."
"Joey? I never met a Joey before. Are you new? To North Bend? I don't think you're a tourist either. That's the school down the street's football kit right?"
She asked too many questions and spoke too fast, but Joey felt intrigued by her, her strange behaviour and apparent optimism.
"I moved just here." Crap. That was why he didn't speak. "Last week." He muttered more quietly. Thankfully, she didn't appear to notice.
"Joey. Joey. What's that short for?"
"Johan."
"Johan. Johan. What is that, like german or something?"
He nodded.
"I can speak German, right. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" She curled her lips in, trying to stifle a laugh, but slowly it started coming out, in bursts. Even Joey cracked a smile. "I know, I know, my accent was trash, Johan. You wanna sit down?"
She gestured to the patio beside her and went and sat down on it. She was still wearing the same t-shirt and shorts from last week but and her hair was done differently: just in one dutch plait that time. Joey slung his back onto the edge of the grass and kicked away the weeds from the area he was going to sit on.
"So, Joey… Wait, quick question. Does anyone call you John or Johnny?"
He hadn't actually thought about that. Luke had just started calling him Joey, just like how Joey had started calling Luke Luke instead of Lukah. It just caught on. Joey didn't really mind it but he'd just grown up with everyone calling him that; it wasn't like he got a choice.
"No one does. But I don't mind."
He didn't mind, at the end of the day. He'd never met someone he actually liked called Joey, but John? At least he had John Doggett, so, in that sense, it was a bit better than Joey.
She picked at a daisy on the floor, pulling off its petals one by one, then picking apart violently the yellow centre, till there was just a green stem left. Joey watched her, in detail, as she just talked some nonsense or other. Joey was trying to decide whether he should ask a question. But he was too nervous. He spent a second planning it out in his head word for word; no slip ups.
"So… AJ. Why y- do you… come here?"
"Here, here? I dunno. I guess I just like it. No one else comes and its just like my place where I just unwind and whatever else I do. I dunno how I discovered it. It was just a while back. But now I spend most of my free time here."
He would have asked her more about school and things, but he knew the questions would flip back onto him and he really was not in the mood for that.
"AJ?" He settled on. "Astrea-Juno?"
Biting her lip, she looked straight up at him. "Don't." Sighing, she continued. "Yeah, Astrea-Juno Vales. My parents… See, well, my mom chose the Astrea part, she used to believe that when people die, or whatever, their souls become stars. It's completely unscientific, I know, but, I guess it's just a way of coping, you know? I never realised or wanted to believe it until, until you know…" The light had left her eyes, and she was scratching the concrete with her recently cut nails.
"Until?"
"Until my mom… My mom passed on." Her voice was barely a whisper, and her eyes were distant and dim. They were almost black and they were cloudy, as she remembered. "Two years ago. Her name was Juno. That's why. I guess it was just a cute name before. Now its like a sort of remembrance. But I have the rest of my family. So I'm ok."
It sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than anything. She hesitantly smiled and quickly glanced back up at Joey.
"You know… When you lose someone, you want them to be someplace. Someplace better. It somehow makes losing them, well, easier. But, even the thought of them going to a better place doesn't always help because well, you just don't know. You have no guarantee that they're in that better place. But, somehow if you could see them… And they were in a place that would always be there, that would still be with you. Be visible almost all the time. Like stars. Even though it's completely ridiculous, having the ability to look up at the sky and think that's them… that's why it's such a powerful idea."
Joey stayed silent. He was thinking about Luke again. He hadn't thought about where Luke would be. Everyone said he was in a better place but Joey had ignored them. His parents believed in God but they weren't very religious. His mom was a little more religious than his dad but they still never went to Church or did anything like that. Talking about what happened after death, it had never happened in there household, not even when Luke was there. They usually stuck to school or American Football (and sometimes baseball).
"Sorry, that was pretty deep."
Joey was shocked at how open and relaxed she was. She hadn't even known him for five minutes and she was unrolling her lifestory to him.
"You lost someone, didn't you?"
Normally, people would feel obliged to say something, or a look would make them feel like they had to spill or unravel everything even when they didn't feel comfortable. Joey would've expected to feel like that, but, for once, he didn't. It just came out naturally.
"Yeah."
"Is that why you moved here?"
"Yeah."
"Who was it?"
Joey paused. He wanted to say it. He so badly wanted to talk to somebody; anybody who would just listen, anybody who he could trust to just listen. He grasped his walkman that was firmly in his pocket. He needed something to hold onto, to focus on and to anchor him. If he was going to talk, he had to do it clearly, and explain properly.
"It was brother. My brother. Luke. A crash. With his friendgirl. His girlfriend."
She sat patiently and listened to every word, every stumble, correcting him if he needed it, helping him, but not judging and not just being in need of gossip. She genuinely cared. And he explained everything, right down to Lahela's death in the hospital and her last words.
After everything, she had nothing to say for a while but 'I'm sorry' or 'That's so tragic'.
Eventually, she said: "Your brother. He sounded so nice. So young and full of potential. It's hard to know what to say or do. It's… it's just heartbreaking. I'm so sorry. It was like my mom, you know? This country is just so screwed up. My dad was fired from his job because he was black. Because he was black and the finance business he worked for, were cutting off staff, and they thought he would put people off. He would've taken them to court but they would've won and he would've lost his job anyway. We were already broke at that point, pretty much. Our savings had been depleted after some nutjob graffitied our car, so when my dad lost his job, it was… like a nightmare. A family of four… And my mom was ill. It was treatable but healthcare isn't free. So when the money stopped coming in, the treatment stopped. And, I had to sit there, knowing I could do nothing because of how crappy this stupid country is. God bless idiot America."
Joey froze. He saw anger in her voice; anger that made it quiver, but she never cried. Not once did a tear come to her eyes let alone fall. She explained to Joey that she'd wasted all her tears and she didn't think she would ever cry again. She had none left to cry. He told her that wasn't possible but she just smiled, and simply said 'It is'.