Jacked Up Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Erica Sage

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged this book as follows:

  Names: Sage, Erica.

  Title: Jacked up / Erica Sage.

  Description: New York : Skyhorse Publishing, [2018] | Summary: Sent to Jesus Camp by his nonreligious parents, Nick gains a new perspective on his sister’s suicide and the secret he has been keeping about it, with the help of new friends and the ghost of Jack Kerouac.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018001603 (print) | LCCN 2018009408 (ebook) | ISBN 9781510730069 (eb) | ISBN 9781510730052 (hc) | ISBN 9781510730069 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Camps--Fiction. | Grief--Fiction. | Christian life--Fiction. | Brothers and sisters--Fiction. | Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969--Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S242 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.S242 Jac 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]--dc23

  Cover design by Kate Gartner

  Cover illustration by Pete Ryan

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3005-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3006-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  Interior design by Joshua Barnaby

  This is for you, Mom.

  I miss you like mad.

  SUNDAY

  Jack Kerouac was sitting cross-legged on the end of my bed. Again.

  “BOO!” he said.

  “I hate it when you do that.”

  “I didn’t scare you, Nicolas,” he said, skipping across my name and dropping the s. I rarely heard his accent, except at the end of some sentences. Or when he was cursing me up and down in French.

  He peered at me with his glacier-blue eyes and took a drag on a cigarette.

  “I asked you not to smoke in here,” I said, reaching for the cigarette. But there was nothing to grab. Not a cigarette, not a hand.

  “I opened the window,” Jack said.

  “My parents are going to think I’m sneaking cigarettes and giving myself lung cancer.”

  He looked at me, holding the cigarette loosely between two fingers. “Tell them the truth, then.”

  “Yeah right.” I picked up the cheap blue pen from my nightstand and the mini composition book underneath it, and wrote down the date. Jack Kerouac, the great American author, had been dead for fifty years, but this was the twenty-seventh time he’d visited me in three months. I put the notebook back.

  Jack looked over my shoulder at the radio on my dresser. It popped on and rolled across stations, settling on jazz. Always jazz. “I like this cat.” Jack bounced his leg across his knee. “Charlie Parker.”

  “Just don’t turn it up so high this time.”

  The music got louder, the saxophone crying like a lone bird.

  “Knock it off.” I turned around and jabbed at the off button. I sighed. “I thought you were going off to work on a new book or something.” At least, that’s what he’d said the last time, accusing me of taking up too much of his time, saying I didn’t understand anything about beauty or art, certainly not the truth! All I cared about was rules and correcting everybody. You’ll grow up to be a gawddamn editor one day! And then he stomped himself out in a fury, taking his near-empty bottle of whiskey with him.

  Now, he snuffed his cigarette out in the ashtray on my windowsill and rolled back onto my bed. “When are you going to take that down?” He nodded at the poster hanging above my pillows and began reading it aloud mockingly. “‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.’”

  “I’m not going to take it down, I told you,” I said.

  He propped his boot on the poster. “Gawddamn book,” he murmured, and ground the sole of his boot across his signature at the bottom like it was the butt of a cigarette. We’d been arguing about the poster ever since he showed up the night of my sister Diana’s funeral. I’d been scared shitless that first time—confronted by a brooding drunk man. But now I was just irritated because he wouldn’t go away.

  “Well, everyone else seems to love the book,” I said.

  “Poseurs,” he said.

  I’d never read On the Road, so I didn’t care so much about the book or the fact that Jack Kerouac, the guy who wrote the thing, hated the poster. All I knew was that it was “an American classic,” but not the kind teachers would ever assign. The kind teenagers read to piss their parents off and prove to the world how rebellious they were.

  My sister had given me both the poster and the book. I didn’t plan on reading the book, not even her paperback copy, the cover bent and rubbed pale by her hands after years of rereading. I didn’t care about the 1950s or the “Beat Generation.” I didn’t care about Jack Kerouac, some icon of nonconformity and road trips and wild nights. Some author who drank himself to death under the weight of his success, like every other literary great who put her head in the oven or a shotgun to his head. It was clichéd. Jack Kerouac and every teenager’s life-changing experience with On the Road was clichéd.

  But I wasn’t taking the poster down.

  Because I did care about my sister.

  I missed her like hell.

  I tried to shove Jack’s leg over to make room for myself on the bed, but lost my balance instead. There was nothing to actually shove.

  Jack smirked. I resigned myself to the edge of the mattress and tried to ignore him.

  He folded his hands behind his head, and I knew what was coming. “Is today the day?”

  “No. I keep telling you.” Why couldn’t it be someone funny like Mark Twain or Voltaire showing up in my bedroom? Why did it a have to be a moody, nagging alcoholic?

  “Confession is good for the soul,” Jack said.

  “Is that what your nuns at Catholic school said?” I mocked.

  The jazz clicked on again behind me. Maybe the same song, maybe different, but now the saxophone battled with a piano.

  I glared at him. “Or was it the Jewish kids at Horace Mann?”

  “Are you making fun of me?” He asked as the volume went up. “Or the Jews?” And up.

  “Don’t,” I hissed.

  And up.

  “Seriously, you’re pissing me off.”

  “Am I making you mad?” He winked at me, but without a smile. “The burning-madness of it.”

  The jazz blasted. I plugged my ears.

  Just then, my door swung open, my dad on the other side.

  The saxophone cried.

  My dad jabbed at the radio till he succeeded in turning it off. “We need to talk.”

  “I just like the song, it’s fine.” I insisted, “I’m fine.”

  “It’s jazz, Nick, not gangster rap.” He sighed. “Your
mom and I just need to talk to you.” He set his hand on my shoulder and led me out of my room.

  I turned around to f lip Jack Kerouac the bird, but he’d slipped out the window, the way he sometimes did.

  A few minutes later, my parents had me trapped in the living room, dreading whatever was coming next. They sat across from me on the couch, my mom’s legs tucked neatly against my dad’s, her hand in his, her eyes brimming with anticipation. It looked happy, this scene. It looked all Norman Rockwell. But I’d heard their arguments. I’d heard the blame. That’s what tragedy does to families. It holds a f lame to what binds you, and sometimes you learn what you thought were rods of steel are actually mere threads.

  I was the only thread they had left, and I knew how thin it was.

  I stared. I’d figured they’d pulled me out of my room to discuss the too-loud music, or the liquor bottle my mom had found the week before (I’d snuck it in for Jack Kerouac, of course), or just the fact that I’d holed up in my room for too many days.

  But no. We were on to Phase Three of the Fix-Nick-Quick Plan. If we could fix Nick, maybe that would mean this family wasn’t broken.

  But they didn’t know. They couldn’t know.

  “It’s already paid for,” my dad announced, like a sports commentator, all loud and certain. But he was rubbing his thighs nervously with his palms. This had clearly been my mom’s idea.

  Counseling had been my dad’s idea, back in April. And I’d done that. (We’d all done that.)

  But Jesus camp?

  How was a week with zealots going to cure my “depression,” as the psychologist had diagnosed it? (Isn’t everyone depressed when their sister dies? Does that need a diagnosis?)

  The prescription had been the doctor’s idea, back in May. And I’d done that too. (I think my mom was still doing that.)

  But I was not doing a wrathful God and his hobo-hippie son.

  “I don’t want to go,” I said, staring down at the brochure my dad had handed me.

  Eden Springs, the camp was called. WHERE HAPPINESS HAPPENS!

  “I’m already happy,” I said. “I’m fine.” And I cared about God as much as He cared about me, which didn’t seem like a whole lot.

  “Oh, honey.” My mom slid from the couch and squished into my chair next to me. “We know you’re happy, but we also know you’re sad.”

  “I’m fine, Mom. And besides, I can’t do a week with these people.” I f lipped open the brochure. “They’re not even real. Look at them. They’re like mannequins. It’s going to be me and a bunch of plastic dolls, like, praising the Lord or whatever. Like …” I straightened my arms and then bent them in perfect right angles at the elbows. “Like Barbie, you know? ‘Hallelujah,’” I said in a girly voice, lifting my arms straight into the sky. “‘Hallowed be thy name.’”

  My parents stared at me gloomily.

  “You know how you have to move Barbie’s arms and stuff?” I tried again. I lifted my arms straight this time.

  “We get it, Nick,” my dad said.

  My mom slid back to the couch with my dad. Side by side, they looked like an advertisement for a leading detergent. All pastel and khaki.

  “Look, we don’t even go to church,” I reasoned. Sure, there was a Bible in the living room. But it was on the top shelf, way out of reach, next to Beowulf, The Tao of Art, and a book of poetry by some Spanish guy. Like part of the foreign language section.

  The only reason our Bible was even on my radar was that I’d heard on the bus in elementary school that the Bible had swear words. I’d wanted to see a swear word printed out for the masses, so I’d looked for the part where Jesus rode in on an ass. And there it was.

  It turned out there were more swear words in the dictionary, though, so I’d ultimately opted to read that for more scandalous text.

  “Honey,” my mom started again. “We know you miss her. And we know this summer is going to be hard. If you can’t do your annual road trip with her, then—”

  “Then I can be with her in spirit?”

  She looked at me optimistically. “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Because you know she’s the last person in hell—”

  “Nick—” my dad chided.

  “—who’d go to church camp. They wouldn’t even let her, you know. Those people would not have even let her set foot on their campus. Or their revival tent. Or whatever.”

  “Well, yes, because it’s for high schoolers,” my mom pointed out. “She’s too old.”

  “She’s actually dead,” I snapped, and my mom winced. What was wrong with me? It was her daughter, for God’s sake. I softened my tone. “Look, even if she were in high school—and alive—she would never have gone.”

  “You’ll make new friends,” my dad recited.

  “Where’d you even hear about this camp?” I glared at them as realization dawned. “Charlotte.”

  Charlotte was my oldest sister. Throughout her teen years, she’d been that girl (i.e., a lot of boys got to “know” her, Biblically speaking). Then she’d gotten involved in some youth group, graduated high school, and moved to Nebraska, or some other f lat, dry state with rolling waves of corn and a high percentage of Republican voters. I’d lost track. She was cultish and hated anything with a rainbow on it (not post-Noah’s ark kind of rainbow, the gay-pride kind). I’m sure she didn’t even let her kids eat Lucky Charms, and it would have nothing to do with gluten.

  Both Charlotte and Diana had been in middle school when I was born, and they acted like extra moms when I was growing up. They’d treated me like their doll, painting my nails and putting me in tutus. I’m sure she’d since repented for encouraging cross-dressing.

  And, yes, once she’d gotten all religious Charlotte had tried to convert me. She’d dragged me to her youth group like a pet. At first it had been okay—what boy doesn’t like free peanut-butter Ritz crackers and endless cups of lemonade, and being the center of all his sister’s older friends’ attention? But pretty soon, I’d been forced to memorize verses and perform in skits. The day a bunch of youth group kids lowered me from a ceiling to be healed by Jesus—and dropped me—I was done.

  She’d never tried to convert Diana. No, Diana was clearly a lost cause. Not fit for the fold.

  The sad thing was, Charlotte had five kids. I had five nieces and nephews, and I’d never met them. She’d send pictures sometimes. Now and then she’d call our parents, but only brief ly. Nothing real.

  So, it had been me and Diana.

  And then she left me too.

  I took a deep breath and looked at my parents, who at least had the decency to look a tad bit contrite about the Charlotte factor. They knew my feelings about her—regret and creepiness.

  But she was still their daughter. “Honey, this camp was very good for Charlotte when she was hurting.” I hated it when my parents did this, when they justified Charlotte. When they defended her.

  “She wasn’t hurting, she was—” humping the whole town, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. We all knew she was “Charlotte the Harlot” at her high school.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll end up like Charlotte? I mean, what if I come back and think you’re devil worshippers too?”

  “That’s not how it works …” my mom sighed.

  “That is how it worked.”

  “Charlotte needed something. She found that something at Eden Springs.”

  She had found God. She had found justification to hate our sister. The rest of the family hadn’t been unholy enough in her eyes to hate, but we hadn’t been righteous enough to love either.

  “Wait,” I said, holding up the brochure. “Did you talk to Charlotte?” She hadn’t even come to Diana’s funeral. She’d called us maybe once in the months since Diana died. “Did you call her? Or did she call you?”

  My dad’s face folded up all neat. “It’ll be fun. End of discussion.”

  He wiped his palms on his khakis and stood up. My mom stepped toward me and touched my cheek. They b
oth walked out of the room.

  “Why would you listen to her?” I asked no one.

  But I thought I knew. Just to hear her voice. Charlotte and Diana were nothing alike, but their hearts beat the same blood. When you lose someone, you find the closest thing to that person and hold on.

  I left the house. I wasn’t going back to my room, where Jack would be waiting, broody and antagonistic. And I wasn’t going to sit with my parents. They’d always loved their daughters, but Charlotte had loved God and Diana had loved women. And Charlotte’s God did not love women who loved women. It was a love pentagon, which seemed appropriate given Charlotte was certain Diana was in hell. And my parents had thought they could love both of them anyway.

  My parents didn’t hate Diana. She was their daughter, pure and simple. But every time Charlotte had come up and they’d told Diana “just let it go,” or “she’ll grow out of it” (like she was a bed-wetting schoolgirl), it had been like arsenic.

  I walked around the garage, through the gap between the building and the neighbor’s fence. At the back of the yard stood a handful of tall fir trees that shaded a green Volvo.

  After my sister died, I had avoided the car, avoided the shadows where it sat altogether. After a while, I was able to walk by it, but I kept my eyes down, always staring at my feet. I didn’t want to look inside the windows. I was afraid of suddenly seeing her there—maybe what she looked like after she died in it, or what her rotting corpse would look like now. But I was also afraid of not seeing her behind the wheel. Where she’d always been.

  I snapped open the door and slid inside. Just me, the hollow silent interior of the car, and not even the smell of her anymore. Not the patchouli oil she wore or the coffee she drank too much of. It used to smell like her. In the way that clothes and bedrooms and anything smells like someone. The smell you especially notice when someone leaves.

  Diana bought the car when she’d turned sixteen, and she’d planned to hand the keys over to me on my sixteenth. I still had a year to go, but I didn’t want it anymore. It just sat in the yard under the dripping fir trees, the interior smelling of mildew, the rain slipping through the poorly sealed windows and the two little holes in the roof.