Chapter Seven: Cleo and Donny

Among the friends I made that year, two stick out more then others. One’s name was Cleo. She was a beautiful girl, with hair as blonde as mine was red. Her eyes were deep; they reminded me of Steve’s in a way. They were wise too like she stood more about life then she needed to; as if she had suffered but she was making it work despite all the blows that life had handed her. I didn’t know much about her life though. She was kind of funny like that. She never spoke about her family or had anyone to her house.

Cleo’s family had money, and lots of it. Her father was some big shot in town. He had a lot of power. I think he was president of the bank, and he held some political office too. I don’t remember what it was. Cleo had her own car and the latest clothes. She was constantly buying little trinkets for her friends. She had people around her all the time; the superficial kind of friends that like you because you have money but if it all disappeared, they would be gone with it. Cleo hated them. She called them “leeches.” I had to agree. The funny thing about Cleo was that she never smiled. She was never really happy. I guess money can’t buy everything.

Cleo was different too. She was strange. When everyone else was dressing in poodle skirts and saddle shoes, Cleo was wearing designer jeans and baggy shirts. Maybe that wasn’t intentional though. She was so skinny that clothes just hung on her body. I think that intentional or not, Cleo was responsible for half the trends in clothing for many years to come. She covered her jeans in peace symbols and ocean waves, hand-painted. While all the girls were listening to Elvis and swooning, Cleo was talking about some young start-up group called the Beatles that she had heard while touring Europe last summer. She had also been to visit her cousin in California. There she fell in love with the beach bands and some new group called the “Warlocks.”

Cleo was kind of a free spirit. She was intelligent…extremely. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t accomplish if she set her mind to it. It seemed to me though if you tried to capture her spirit or hold her too close, she would fly off into the night on a pair of gossamer wings. You couldn’t cage her or pigeonhole her. She would not stand to fall to the whim of mediocrity.  Cleo was destined for greatness, somehow and somewhere. I liked her because of her differences while most couldn’t stand her because of them.

Grammy didn’t like her at first either. She just didn’t understand her. Grammy would always beg for me to find friends that were “normal.” I just told her that Cleo was as honest a friend as you were going to get. It was Cleo that was watching me while the others were ignoring me. She wanted to see what I was like, if I was the kind of person that she could be friends with. I passed the test with flying colors she told me. I never knew what the credentials for being her friend were exactly. She never did say. I was just happy to be counted.

Cleo was a year ahead of me in school. It was she who introduced me to Donny. She insisted I would like this guy. He was a senior like her.  He wrote poetry. He was a social misfit like us she would say. I didn’t know what she meant by that, and I didn’t ask. She brought Donny with her to the diner one day after school.

He stood about 6’1”. His hair was jet black and it ended with a totally untamable curl above his right eye. He had dark eyes, smoldering eyes. He had lips that pouted always, even when he was smiling. When I saw him for the first time, I remember thinking that I would love to kiss those lips. The thought set something inside me ablaze. I had never felt that way about a guy before. He smiled at me and reached out his hand for mine.  Our eyes met and I swear it was like Venus electrically charged the air between us. Well maybe not Venus. Venus is the goddess of love and I think the word for what I was feeling was lust.

We held our hands clasped together for a moment longer then was necessary I guess, because I soon felt the cold clamminess that I recognized as Joe’s paw rushing to intervene in our handshake. Joe shook Donny’s hand, but his eyes were on me. He was looking at me as if I had destroyed everything he liked about me in one single touch. I didn’t understand what I had done wrong but there must have been something. He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.

For the rest of the year and in that early summer that we were always together, the Four Musketeers: me, Joe, Donny and Cleo. Even if Cleo was busy, I always had Joe and Donny around. It seemed one was never there without the other. It was a shame really cause I had wanted to get to know Donny a little better, but it would be have to be without Joe. It was in the beginning of the summer though that a smaller disaster, but one all the same, struck home.

The school year did not fare as well for Jessie. When he went back after daddy died, it was as though no one wanted to be near him. He felt that everyone had abandoned him in his time of need. I thought it was because he had changed. Before Daddy died, Jess was carefree and fun, but daddy’s suicide seemed to have taken all the joy out of Jess’ life.  Grammy said Jess was afraid that he would wind up just like daddy. I think he blamed himself for daddy’s dying. Whatever the reason, Jess was not fun anymore. His football buddies were all about fun. They didn’t know what to make of their quiet captain. They didn’t know what to say or do to help him. No one did. Not even Cindy Lou.

Cindy Lou had been Jess’ girlfriend since high school had begun. It was a forgone conclusion that they would marry and settle down after school was out. I never liked her. She seemed artificial and she never was able to develop the brains that God gave her. Sometimes when she would blink, I would swear it was audible. I think it was the echo in her head; the cavern was that empty. Cindy Lou was interested in two things, her looks and Jess’. It meant so much to her to be going out with the most popular guy in school and the captain of the football team. But unfortunately, football season doesn’t last all year. Popularity can be a fleeting thing, especially if you change yourself just one little bit.

Two weeks before their big senior dance she announced that she was going with someone else. It “freaked her out” that she was dating someone whose father had died in such a violent manner. Jess was no fun anymore she said. So she was going to the dance with Tom Graham. In one swift moment, Jess had lost his best friend and his best girl. It sent him reeling into a deep depression. He almost didn’t graduate because he had let his grades drop so low.

On the night of graduation, Jess drank way too much. The local sheriff had no choice but to arrest him for public drunkenness when he stood outside of Cindy Lou’s house and sang Elvis songs to her window. Hell it must have been bad… Jess couldn’t sing when he was sober. Getting him out of jail near broke Grammy’s heart. It took him a few days to even go out in public again. And when he did, he drove to the nearest city where he signed his life away with the stroke of a pen. Jess came home that day in army greens. He was going to straighten his life out and that meant leaving behind this town and all the secrets that it held.