“It’s okay,” I say. “It feels a lot better.”
And it does. It’s still tender to the touch, but it feels like it’s three or four more days along the healing process. That’s about all Jared can do to non-cats, but it sure as hell takes the ache out of my ribs when he touches them and makes my nose feel a lot less like I’ve got an apple-sized cold sore on my face.
He’s always done this for us. Sports injuries, colds, headaches. He can’t quite get rid of them, but our doctors and parents are constantly amazed at how robust our immune systems are. He also can’t do anything about what’s wrong inside our heads – what’s in your head is still illness, but way more complicated than any muscle ache; those times he saves me from the loops, he’s just saving me as a friend, rather than a God – but he’s made a whole lot of other shit a whole lot easier.
But now here’s the thing: you may not believe this. You may not believe any of this, actually – about his grandma, about Jared, hell, about the indie kids or the vampires or whatever – you may think this is all down to my own mind making my body feel better because I believe that Jared can. But I don’t care what you think, not about these things anyway. If you don’t think they’re real or important or you think that we’ll all grow out of this nonsense, well, that’s not really my business. I can’t tell you what’s real for you.
But in return, you can’t say what’s real for me either. I get to choose. Not you.
Jared sits back in his seat, tired, and looks out into the fog. Mary Magdalene is sprawled in the back, purring like she’s just had the best sex of her life. There are other neighbourhood cats out there, too, tons of ’em, attracted by Jared acting Godly, which I guess is like a cat lighthouse. You can see their eyes reflecting the headlights from Jared’s car, and several have hopped up on the hood and trunk, all of them purring, some of them kneading their paws gently against the metal or the windows.
“I’ll try to sneak in to see Henna in the morning,” Jared says. “Though I’ll have to avoid her mom and dad.” He turns to me. “How did I get so unpopular among parents? I’m the kind of kid other parents are supposed to love.”
Henna’s parents have never said exactly why they don’t like Jared, but it’s easy to guess. There are rumours about Jared’s parentage that even Jared can’t keep from circulating, and if very religious Mr and Mrs Silvennoinen don’t actually quite believe them, the stories still leave a kind of residue that makes them nervous.
For my parents – or my mom, at least – the answer ’s a whole lot simpler.
“You heard about Mankiewicz?” I ask him.
“Oh, yeah. Here we go again.”
Mr Shurin has run against my mother in every single one of her elections. He’s lost every single one – the political demographic out here is never going to get him more than forty-five per cent of the vote – but he keeps on running. They’re in exactly the same district for everything, so he’s been up against her for the State House the four times she ran, both times for the State Senate, and now almost certainly again for Congress.
It’s occasionally made our friendship a bit strange. Well, strang er. But we’ve stuck it out, much to my mom’s annoyance. Mr Shurin is so nice it’d never occur to him that we could be anything but friends.
“I’ll bet Mel will vote for your dad,” I say.