Henry Franks A Novel

six





His shirt glued itself to his skin within moments of leaving the house, and he was sure his deodorant had failed before the school bus even arrived. After standing on the sidewalk too long, the bottoms of his sneakers seemed to adhere to the concrete and the first step onto the bus was sticky.

Justine melted into the seat in front him. She fought with the window and gave up with it open almost an entire inch. The August breeze through the opening was hot against his face. Her brown hair was up, as always, exposing a great deal of tan neck all the way down to the straps of her tank top. One thin river of sweat began with a single bead at the base of her hair and disappeared down her back.

She fanned herself with her hand and then turned around to face him. “Think of ice,” she said. “Milk shakes, chocolate ice cream, snow. Have you ever seen snow?”

“No.” Henry shook his head.

“Really? We go up north to see family for Thanksgiving and it snows sometimes. Whose bright idea was it, do you think, to put plastic seats on a bus in Georgia? I’m sticking to the seat, here. Is that why you’re in jeans again?”

Henry shrugged and Justine, as usual, continued her monologue.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be in shorts through November at least. Then we’ll get a few weeks of fall, a week or two of winter, and then it’s summer again. So you’ve never seen snow?”

He shook his head.

“You weren’t on the bus yesterday afternoon.”

“It was Thursday.”

“I know. Tuesday, Thursday, Henry’s not on the bus home; same as last year. Why not?”

She rode half-turned in her seat, one arm curled around the backrest, the plastic piping on the vinyl biting into her skin. Her white bra strap slipped out from the white shirt. He couldn’t meet her eyes and kept looking at the strap.

“Doctor,” he said to her shoulder. His wrist itched as the medicinal mint smell of the ointment lingered on his fingers and around his neck.

“For your scars?” she asked. “I thought I should ask, but then, no, I figured, if you wanted to talk about it, you would. Of course, I told myself, ‘Justine, he doesn’t actually talk all that much. You should probably ask.’”

He tilted his head to the side, the way a dog looks at a human when spoken to, then covered his mouth to try not to laugh. It didn’t work.

“It’s a curse, my mom says.” Justine smiled. “There’s even a term for it.”

“There is?” he asked.

“It’s called a sense of humor.”

Henry shook his head and laughed, then went back to studying the way her white bra strap seemed to glow against her tan skin.

“So,” she said, “the scars?”

“I don’t remember,” he said, the words barely spoken out loud.

“What?”

“The accident.”

“Accident?” she asked, reaching her arm out, but she let it fall short without touching him.

He shrugged and turned to look out the window. “So they tell me.”

“I have a scar too,” she said as they pulled into the parking lot, pointing at her stomach, hidden by her tank top. “Appendix, when I was five. I don’t really remember it.”

“Might be better not to remember,” he said.

He looked at where her fingers lingered on her own wrist, right about where his own scars were. When he glanced back up, she was watching him.

“They’re only scars, Henry,” she said. “They don’t change who you are.”

With a shriek of brakes, the bus shuddered to a stop. One of her friends called her name and she jumped up and ran off the bus. Henry waited until almost everyone had left before standing up. It was sweat, he thought, not tears he was wiping from his eyes.

Just sweat.





Murder on Jekyll Island Has

Not Impacted Tourist Season

Jekyll Island, GA—August 14, 2009: Preliminary autopsy reports on the two boaters, Crayton Mission, 52, and his nephew Paul Wislon, 24, found on Jekyll Island on August 5 have, according to Brunswick Police Department spokesperson Carmella Rawls, ruled out drowning as the cause of death.

“We have opened up an investigation into the murder of Mr. Mission and Mr. Wislon,” Rawls stated in an impromptu press conference.

Assistant District Attorney Brian Winters gave a brusque “No comment” when asked if there were any leads.

FLETC, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, located in Brunswick, has provided logistical and material support to the investigation in order to locate the boat that Mission and Wislon were supposed to be on.

Wanda Mission and her brother, Jerome Craw, were questioned for background but neither is considered a suspect in the deaths at this time, according to sources close to the investigation.