Things Change Read online

  teens Love THINGS CHANGE

  "I just wanted to tell you just how much I loved your book Things Change.

  It made me laugh, it made me cry, and most importantly it made me think."

  —Sarah, agefifteen, Connecticut

  "I loved Johanna in all of her nerdy glory before she met Paul. You actually captured an insecure teenage girl very well, and since I highly doubt you've ever been an insecure teenage girl, I was really surprised because Johanna could be someone at my school."

  —Amber, age sixteen, Pennsylvania

  "I'm a person who hates to read. I've only read about five books in the past eight years. When I saw this book, I read the cover and decided that this would be a book I would buy. I started reading, and I couldn't put it down . . . I stayed up until three in the morning just to finish it!"

  —Jen, age fourteen, New York

  "I just finished reading Things Change and I believe this may be one of the truest fiction novels I have ever read. My ex-boyfriend was abusive and, like Paul, always promised to stop. I enjoyed this book, and it will sit on my shelf forever."

  —Hannah, age sixteen, Nebraska

  "I just got out of a bad relationship where some of the things my boyfriend said to me were exactly like Paul. About five days ago, my best friends gave me the book Things Change. I hate reading. It just doesn't interest me. But I finished it in three days. I want to read it again so badly, but the way I have been talking about it, all my friends want to read it. So I'm passing it on."

  —Kaylee, age thirteen, New Jersey

  More praise for

  THINGS CHANGE

  A 2005 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers

  "A debut novel that is both forceful and cautionary."

  —Booklist

  "From the ironic title to the uncompromising ending,

  tension dragged me by the hair through Things Change by Patrick Jones. The details are revealed relentlessly and steadily, with each twist tightening the noose of obsession, neediness, abuse, and control There is humor here, but it's mixed with a darker seam, which I found intriguing. I don't think I'll ever listen to Springsteen the same way again."

  —ANNETTE CURTIS KLAUSE, author of Blood and Chocolate

  In his passionate first novel, noted librarian Patrick Jones examines the one constant in young adult lives: change! And he does it beautifully—with compelling insight; dramatic empathy; and unsentimental, tough-minded but sympathetic understanding. Things Change is a transformative reading experience, and I wouldn't change a word of it."

  —MICHAEL CART, former president of YALSA and author of My Father's Scar and Necessary Noise

  "The stakes for a young human being to come of age are always high, but in Patrick Jones's Things Change the stakes are mortal. It's an important novel for young readers—young women and men—and for their parents."

  —TERRY DAVIS, author of If Rock and Roll Were a Machine

  THINGS

  CHANGE

  PATRICK JONES

  To Dr. Erica Klein —P. J.

  Copyright © 2004 by Patrick Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in the United States of America in 2004 by

  Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

  First paperback edition published in 2006

  Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from

  this book, write to Permissions, Walker & Company,

  104 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Jones, Patrick

  Things change / Patrick Jones

  p. cm

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Johanna, one of the best students in her class, develops a passionate attachment for troubled seventeen-year-old Paul and finds her plans for the future changing in unexpected ways.

  eISBN: 978-0-802-72134-1

  [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Dating violence—Fiction.

  3. Emotional problems—Fiction. 4. Self-perception—Fiction.

  5. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J7242Th. 2004 [Fie]—dc22 2003057681

  Book design by Maura Fadden Rosenthal/Mspaceny

  Visit Walker 8c Company's Web site at www.walkeryoungreaders.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

  All papers used by Walker & Company are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  Thanks to teens in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and Mesa, Arizona, who read the manuscript; thanks to Jessica M., Renee V., Erin P., Sarah C, Amy A., Maureen H., and Diane T. for their help, and kudos to Brent, Patricia, and Ken "the Slack" Rasak for their invaluable contributions.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER EPILOGUE

  PATRICK JONES

  ONE

  "I want you to kiss me."

  Paul almost drove his black Firebird off the road when he heard those words come from my mouth. He pushed the blond hair out of his eyes as he turned to look at the lips that had just told him they wanted to be kissed. Turning the volume up on the CD player to push the loud, crashing sounds through the open windows and out into the cool September Michigan air, he stared straight ahead at the interstate before him, ignoring the question chasing behind him.

  I shifted in my seat, digging my short, well-chewed' fingernails into the upholstery. I pulled a deep breath into my lungs and prepared to repeat the statement. This was more difficult than the first time. It was like being knocked down by a punch, only to come back with, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?" I was being Daddy's perfect, tough little marine girl.

  "I want you to kiss me."

  Softer now. The words vanished into the silence as Paul ejected the CD from the player. The silence was broken by Paul slapping the senior-class ring jammed on his finger against the steering wheel as he pulled the car off the interstate onto the shoulder. I just stared at the floor of the car, wishing I could take it all back.

  "I'm sorry," Paul said gently, "but I don't want to kiss you." He
stared straight ahead at the taillights of the passing cars as they disappeared over the horizon. It looked like they were falling off the end of the earth.

  I wrapped my arms around myself as a chill shot through my body. I pulled my blazer tighter around me, trying to hold in any tears or hint of emotion.

  "I just—" Paul started, but when his eyes met mine, the words choked back in his throat. He reached over to jam the CD back into the player. I was desperate now. Before he could move away, I, this girl he barely knew, reached out and gave his hand a light squeeze. I wanted to touch him; I wanted him to want to touch me. I forced the final attempt from the back of my throat and the front of my heart.

  "Well, do you think you will ever want to kiss me?" I asked, choosing a tone that suggested amusement rather than disappointment or desire, trying to hide my desperation. I marked the end of the question by pushing the CD back into the player, turning the volume up to the max. I sat straight up in the seat, waiting, and bracing myself, for him to deliver the final blow.

  Paul slammed the car back into drive, squealed the tires, and sped back out on the interstate. When the car kicked up to eighty miles per hour, he let out a small laugh. He never took his eyes off the gray asphalt stretching out before him as he shrugged his shoulders and said, with a hint of a smile, "Well, Johanna, things change."

  TWO

  "Aren't you a little late, Johanna? You're supposed to call when you're going to be late."

  I had barely managed to get inside the door before my mother began her interrogation. It seemed when she spoke to me anymore, it was like Jeopardy: Her words always came in the form of a question.

  "Why were you late?"

  I focused my eyes on the carpet, hiding the fact I had dampened the sidewalk between the driveway and the front door with a few ounces of tears. "I had a student council meeting to cover for the school paper. I thought I told you."

  "So who gave you a ride home?" my mother asked, peering out the window while taking a deep drag on her cigarette.

  "Just someone from school," I said, the irony thick in my throat. Paul wasn't someone; he was the only person I had thought about all summer. I asked him for a ride home after the meeting, and as I had hoped, he said yes. If only he would have said yes to my second question.

  "What do you have to say for yourself?" she asked, a Sphinx­like question she would ask most any time I did something to displease her or my father.

  I didn't really know what answer she wanted from me. What I mostly knew was that I hated her tone, hated her freakish need to control me, hated the way she made me feel like I was stupid. But mostly I hated my fear that I would disappoint her and my father.

  "I don't like this at all," she said, the head shake followed by a frown announcing my failure.

  My brain was working overtime trying to answer, not her question, but my own: How can people who said they loved you all the time make you hate them as much as I hated my mother right now. It hadn't always been this way, but since I'd hit high school, she had turned into this queen of control.

  "Like I said, I'm sorry. I thought I told you," I replied, climbing up the first stair toward my room, trying to escape the inevitable showdown, which, of course, I never won.

  "Don't you walk away. I'm talking to you, Johanna Marie!" Once my middle name was announced, it was like my mother was throwing down the gauntlet. I stumbled backward off the stair.

  She stared me down. "If you're late, you're supposed to call, isn't that right?"

  I stood mute. It was so humiliating to be treated like a stupid child when I am one of the smartest girls in the junior class. I know that sounds terrible, but it's true. Still, there are plenty of things I am not. Just by looking at the other girls in school, I know that I'm not as beautiful as some of them or as good with boys. I'm not even that good when it comes to making friends. That was a social study I had been failing for three years—except for my best friend, Pam. So I just stood and listened to my mother's attack. I couldn't run. I couldn't hide. All I could do is tough it out and take it, but she wouldn't see me cry. I learned a long time ago that fighting back just made it worse.

  "Yes, Mother," I finally squeaked out in no more than a whisper. "I'll try to do better."

  "Trying isn't good enough, understand?" she asked as she dismissed me with her eyes and a cloud of white smoke.

  Lugging my overstuffed book bag behind me, I escaped up the stairs. I opened the door to my bedroom, tossed the weight of junior-year homework on the floor next to the bed, and dove facedown into my pillow. Within seconds tears were choking me. I was having trouble breathing, pulling the pillow tight against the side of my head to silence the sobbing and suffocate the hurt.

  I rubbed my eyes, and then licked my fingertips to taste the tears. My grandmother told me when I was a little girl that tears, just like the ice cream I love eating, have different flavors. There is a flavor for anger, one for sadness, another for hurt, and a sweet flavor for love. That was a flavor I had yet to taste in my short sixteen years. I wouldn't go hungry this night for want of any flavor, but running together, they all tasted bitter. My stomach hurt from crying; my nose was running; I was a mess.

  I reached down beside the bed and pulled up my stuffed book bag to find a tissue. All those books, all that knowledge, and all of it useless to me now. What I really needed wasn't in these books: I needed the formula to invent a time machine. Then I could go back in time and erase the past few hours from life—and from Paul's memory. I would still have a crush on him, but he wouldn't know it or care. Life would go back to normal: He wouldn't know I existed, and I would continue to exist stuck between the rock and the hard place, living between my feelings of wanting and waiting. Waiting and wanting.

  THREE

  Dear Dead Dad:

  It's Paul, again.

  I am sitting here with you all around me.

  I'm drunk, big surprise. I am dead drunk. You are just dead.

  I'm sitting here, like most nights so far during this, my glorious senior year, in the black cold of the white walls in room 127 of the Atlas Mini-Storage. I've got a six-pack, or what is left of it. I'm sitting here with my life, or what is left of it. Seventeen years old and you are five and a half years gone from my life and three years gone from this world.

  Sometimes I think I know everything. I just want to shout, kick, scream, and slam because I know it all, I want it all, I need it all.

  Sometimes, like right damn now, I just want to shout, kick, scream, and slam because I don't know anything. Stone-cold stupid, but not stone-cold sober.

  Bouncing back and forth is beating me down: like work, like school, like Mom, like this thing with this girl Johanna. So she wants to kiss me. I've been thinking about all the things I should have said. All the things I could have said. But I should have just asked her one thing: Why? If she's so smart, why would she want to kiss me? I am nothing.

  I wonder what she is doing right now. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure she's not sitting in the near darkness of a six-by-six mini-storage room, downing a six of Stroh's. The only light is this computer screen and a single bulb hanging overhead in this, my temporary shelter.

  Thanks to you, the shelter Mom and me live in is a trailer in the Garden Oaks Trailer Park, except there are no oaks, there are no gardens, there are just trailers. Temporary housing that no one gets out of. Is that what death does, Dad? Does it get your soul out of the temporary housing of your body? Is your body just another trailer?

  I am sitting here with you all around me.

  I always want to ask Mom why she kept your stuff. She has her reasons, but she never talks about them. She never talks about you at all. She saved most everything: your clothes, your tools, your music. That music saved me.

  I needed a part of you. I didn't know what part. Then I found it. I learned everything I needed to learn listening to your Springsteen CDs. I found you there. It is a regular father-and-son picnic in my head, with guitar, bass, and drum. LOUD. I thought
if I listened to the same music that I would get close to you. That I would know you. That you would know me.

  This is my secret life, here at the Atlas Mini-Storage. No one knows about it. I just lie to Mom. Tell her that I work until eleven, and then when I get off at nine, I get some beer if I can, and I come here. I want to tell Brad about it. I thought about bringing Carla here, and I dream of bringing Vickie here. I want to share it. But for now, it is our secret.

  No one else is ever here. I come in, punch in the secret code, get in the gate, punch in another secret code, open the front door, and then unlock the door to room 127. If Mom ever noticed the key missing, she never told me; but then we don't talk much anyway.

  She tries, I guess. When you left, she didn't know what to do. She cried a lot, especially when we lost the house. Then she found Jesus. She doesn't cry anymore, but she seems pretty clueless about life. About me. She thinks Jesus loves me. She thinks I'm at work. Well, I am.

  I am working out my life in the darkness of the Atlas Mini-Storage, in the light of a Dell computer and one lonely lightbulb, and under the power and the glory of the yeast and the hops of the Stroh's Brewing Company, Detroit, Michigan.

  The music is crashing into my ears, but mostly I hear silence. The buzz of the beer should be making me feel good, but mostly I feel lousy. I ask all these questions, but I get no answers. I want my father, but instead I have boxes of clothes and trinkets from your life. Just trinkets. I am sitting here with you all around me, but I don't know you and you don't know me.

  Well that, and Springsteen, and the beer, I guess, are the things we have in common because I don't know me, either. Only Brad knows me. After I dropped off that Johanna girl at her house, I called Brad and met up with him at our usual.