Page 43 of August Lane
“You’re welcome. But you’ll ruin all my efforts if you keep freaking out and disappearing. People are noticing. You can’t hide forever, Luke.”
She was right. Jessica’s lies would be easy for her father to verify, starting with the football suspension.
Next he’d speak to Luke’s teachers, who would probably get the district involved if they looked too closely at his poor attendance records.
Then came his worst nightmares: Ava’s drugs being discovered.
Her getting dragged away in handcuffs. Ethan being sent to some group home.
Luke would be powerless to stop it all from happening.
Every box he’d worked so hard to fit inside was collapsing. His reputation used to protect him, make people see him the way he wanted. It was naive to believe he didn’t need that anymore. “It’s hard being back,” he admitted. “Everyone wants me to be some guy I don’t even know anymore.”
Jessica slumped in her chair. “My mom walked in on me making out with Shirley last week.”
Luke stared with wide eyes. “The girl that’s obsessed with horses?”
She nodded. “It’s not serious. We were just fooling around, but Mom freaked out.
Started crying.” She tried to sound flippant, like it wasn’t a big deal, but he knew it was.
Jessica referred to her mother as her first best friend.
“When I reminded her that homecoming was this weekend, she said she didn’t trust me to make good decisions. ”
Luke thought of Ethan, and how long he’d had to hide who he was from their mother. Jessica had been forced into the exact situation his brother was desperate to avoid. He didn’t know how that felt. But Jessica looked like she was slowly drowning. “Your parents trust me, right? What if I took you?”
“To homecoming?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’ll help us both. People will see me out having fun like normal, and your parents will think you’re…” He trailed because he wasn’t sure how to phrase it.
“Still having fun like normal?” She smiled. “Let’s do it.”
The door opened again. This time it was August. Luke stood so quickly he nearly stumbled while trying to distance himself from Jessica. August kept her hand on the door, as if she didn’t plan to stay. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Luke wanted to laugh because the idea was ridiculous. He’d been waiting for her. But he knew how bad this looked. Jessica, the interloper, lounging in August’s chair like she planned to stay awhile. Luke felt like he’d been caught at the scene of a crime.
“You should go,” he told Jessica.
She ignored him and focused on August. “What’s for lunch?”
“ Jess. ” His voice was harsh enough to capture her attention. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
A tense silence followed. Jessica took her time sliding her backpack over her shoulder. When she finally left, August shoved a bagged lunch into Luke’s hands and sat in a wobbly chair to avoid the one Jessica had just abandoned. She started eating like nothing had happened.
Luke sat on the couch. “That wasn’t—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. You and I are friends . That’s all.” The way she said friends implied the opposite, that they were so much more. “Don’t do that whole, this isn’t what it looks like thing, because it’ll be embarrassing.” She glanced at him. “For you. Not me.”
Luke remained silent. All the feelings he was hiding had gummed up his brain. If he tried to speak, he’d say I love you, which was the last thing she’d want to hear, especially once she knew what he was doing for Jessica.
August stared at him, her expression growing colder the longer he remained silent. “You know she’s a terrible person, right? Please tell me you know that.” It sounded like she was begging him to prove he wasn’t a complete idiot.
“People are complicated.”
“Not her. She wants you back.”
“No, she doesn’t. And even if she did, I don’t want her.”
“But you’re going out with her Saturday.”
“It’s homecoming. I’m doing her a favor.” He wanted to tell August the whole story, but he didn’t want to betray Jessica’s trust. “I owe it to her” was all he said.
August balled her trash up and stood. “Why do you care so much what people think of you?”
Luke remembered what Jessica had said, how he needed to convince everyone he was fine. “Because I have to.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t understand, August.”
“Explain it to me.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Try!”
“Because I should!” Luke shouted. “Because it matters. Who are we if no one gives a shit about us?”
August pushed past him, rushing to the door. Luke grabbed her arm. “I was four when Ava started locking me in a closet as punishment. She’d spank me raw and then shove me inside to cry myself sick.”
August looked horrified. He clung to her as the story spilled out of him.
He’d never told anyone. Not even Ethan. “After a while, I realized it was the only time she didn’t put her hands on me.
So I started liking it. I’d seek out that dark when I knew she was mad about something.
I still do, like that night you found me at the fair.
” He looked around the dressing room. “You like this place for the same reason. Because it feels safer than what’s out there.
But this is the closet you let those people put you in. It’s your prison.”
August stopped speaking to him. He tried confronting her in the hallway, but she would dance around him, avoiding his eyes.
In English class, she sat on the opposite side of the room.
As the week went on, he grew more desperate, writing sloppy, rambling apologies and stuffing them in her locker.
She stopped coming to the dressing room, which hurt more than being ignored to his face.
She’d found a new place to hide and he wasn’t invited.
By Saturday, he was a wreck. The homecoming theme was Motown, and he was supposed to be Smokey Robinson, but the bridal shop had only two suits left.
One was too big, and the other was too small.
He’d chosen the big one, and the result was clownish and childlike.
Jessica’s corsage was white carnations, flowers that screamed lazy and last minute.
Shane rented a limo with a fully stocked bar. His parents were so hands off they’d probably handed him a credit card and looked the other way. Once inside, Luke grabbed a bottle of something and poured a shot without reading the label.
An hour later, he was gone. His body was a shell, and his mind was liquid, flowing toward the barrage of energy that greeted him at the gym.
The dance was voices, bodies, and heat, and Luke was into it for real, not just pretending.
He danced with Jessica, bumping and grinding, but didn’t actually see her because clarity was unnecessary.
They were all just existing inside a sweaty, feverish realization that all this was fleeting.
They got drunk and high. Jessica made out with her teammate in the bathroom.
Shane got rejected by the homecoming queen and cried about it on the dance floor.
Luke climbed onstage with the band and sing-shouted nineties covers until he was hoarse.
They’d been immortal these last four years. Tonight, they partied like they were dying.
Luke fell asleep when they returned to the limo. He was shaken awake by Jessica, who coaxed him toward the lobby of a Holiday Inn. “Why are we here?” he asked her.
“Because everyone else is,” she said, which was always enough for her. Jessica would miss the rapture if all her friends were going to hell.
“Oh,” Luke said. He needed a bathroom, and checking into a hotel room was one step closer to relief.
Thankfully their room was a double. Jessica laid on the bed in a cloud of purple taffeta. Luke shucked off his shoes. He groaned when his head hit the pillow.
“We could fuck if you want.” Jessica sounded bored by the idea, annoyed that she had to offer.
“I don’t want.”
“Because of August?”
He ignored the question. “You still have that Hennessy?”
“You drank it all. You drink too much.”
“You should mind your own business.”
Jessica sat up and stared at him. Luke started to apologize, but she cut him off before he could finish and said, “I like it when you’re mean. It’s hot.”
He sat with what she said, thinking about how hard he’d worked to be liked.
To be accepted. Then he thought about August and how eager she was for kindness.
How little of it they’d both had in their lives.
“I think you’re spoiled,” he told Jessica.
“I think you’re surrounded by people who love you, and you take it for granted. ”
She was quiet for a while. “Does she love you?”
He closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, even though he did. He’d realized it when he called her haven a prison. He had seen it on her face, an agonized breaking before she pulled away so hard and fast, he couldn’t stop her.
Being entrusted with something so powerful and fragile was scary. It was the same way he thought of August, with her gorgeous fire and poetic mind. She was his mountain on the verge of erupting.
“Are you in love with her?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I worry about you.” Jessica propped herself up on one arm. “You’re too trusting.”
“I trusted you.”
“Exactly. I cheated on you with Richard. Multiple times.”
“Shit, Jess…”
“Like you care,” she said with a hand wave. “You don’t even like sex.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh. So, you don’t like it with me. I take it back. You’re an ugly asshole.”
“Can we sleep?” He gave her his back and pressed his head into the pillow. “I’m tired.”
“Did you get her pregnant?”
Luke shot up. “What?”
“Lisa Strayer’s mom works in the office across from that women’s clinic in West Memphis. She said she saw Mavis taking August there a few months ago. It’s where they give abortions.”
“That’s not true,” he said quickly, then realized he wasn’t sure.
A few months ago, he barely knew her. A few months ago, she’d just broken up with Richard.
But then a memory surfaced, the three hundred dollars she’d used to help a friend, and he was so relieved that it spilled from his lips.
“No, if anyone had an abortion, it was her cousin. August just paid for it.”
“Saint Mavis Reed was pregnant?” Jessica laughed. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Believe what you want,” Luke said, lying back down. He closed his eyes and let a drunken sleep take him.
This Is Our Country : Podcast Transcript
Episode 12—“Jojo Lane”
August 21, 2024
[ cont. ]
Emma:
You had to be shocked.
Jojo:
Hell yeah, I was shocked. We were all shocked because it came out of nowhere. Big lies like that usually leave breadcrumbs, like whispers or blind items, stuff like that. But it was like he woke up one day and remembered he took credit for something he didn’t do.
Emma:
That’s exactly what that phone call felt like. He was so calm when he told me, though. He must have been thinking about it for a long time.
Jojo:
Weighing on his soul, most likely.
Emma:
Do things like this happen a lot? People taking credit for someone else’s work?
Jojo:
Sure, but it’s usually behind the scenes, wrapped in legalese to help them get away with it.
Luke’s problem was that he’d gone on that reality show and lied to the world before he had a record deal.
Country Star made that song part of his story, the Black teenager who cobbled together a massive country hit in his bedroom.
Emma:
Like Lil Nas X.
Jojo:
You know, I didn’t think about that, but yes. Oh, the industry loves that, don’t they? Magical musical negroes. It excuses them from actually nurturing talent and supporting our careers. Anyway, turns out none of it happened.
Emma:
Some of it did, right? He wrote the music.
Jojo:
Maybe. Memories can be kinder to us than we deserve.
Emma:
Did you know your daughter was a songwriter?
Jojo:
No. And you’re probably wondering how that’s possible, but she wasn’t living with me when all this happened.
Never said a word. Probably because she knew I wouldn’t approve.
I just wanted something else for her, something easier.
But my girl doesn’t do easy, and I respect that.
She knew how good she was. Have you heard the original version?
It’s on YouTube. What was Luke thinking, letting them ruin her work like that?
Probably that he didn’t care because it wasn’t his to begin with.
Emma:
It sounds like you don’t think he wrote any of it.
Jojo:
I’m saying men lie for one of two reasons. To get out of trouble they should be in or to get their hands on something they don’t deserve.
Emma:
Pivoting a little, why do you think this emboldened the people protesting your award? You’re not the one who lied.
Jojo:
Emma, you’re a smart woman. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here. But I’m about to hurt your feelings a little.
Emma:
[ laughs ] Okay, I guess I asked for it.
Jojo:
[ laughs ] You kind of did. Asking why I got blamed for Luke’s lie means you think there’s something logical in their argument, that those people are really concerned with the integrity of that institution.
If you can’t see the mental laziness of their bigotry, how they’ll grab any excuse to hate?
Maybe you weren’t the best person to write that article.