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Everything Jake. Summer Vacation: Part Three: The Flight #736 and #737 by Mike Rosenzweig Jake looked out the window as the plane left the Earth and headed for the stars, the feeling of the pressure of the speed and the weightlessness at the moment of lift-off intoxicated him. That was it, he loved flying. He grasped the Snapple bottle that now contained no Snapple and promised himself the first thing he's going to do is take a nice little flight around London when he gets there. It'll help me find Faith better, he thought. I can't wait. Kelly, meanwhile, when the moment of liftoff came, almost puked on his Converse All-stars. Black Converse, he figured, were probably the most uncoolest thing he could think of wearing to London in the summer of 2002. He knew why Jake picked him to go rescue Faith, but he really wasn't sure of what he was supposed to do. Blow smoke on the bad guy? Out wit him? Toss him dirty looks? The urge for a cigarette was now raging at full blast, Kelly took a little comfort in the fact that there was only seven hours and one ocean before the next fix. Maybe he would sneak into the bathroom, cut a piece of his hair, and smoke that. Wait, he remembered, I shaved all my fucking hair. Jake watched as the plane turned and he got to see the Rockaways. He wanted to see if he could see Manhattan, but some part of him didn't really want to. He couldn't remember if the Mets' were playing a home game but a bright spot on the ground sure did look like Shea, then he realized Shea was North, that he was probably looking at something else. I think I have to learn to read a map better, or, at least, learn what looks like what from up here. "Yo, Jake, quit getting' so close to the window, you'll fall out or someshit." "I'm not going to fall out, Kelly, idiot. I want to see what I can see before we go over the Atlantic, that's going to be all dark, y'know?" "You're weird." "Go to sleep or something, I'll call you when we get to Houston Street." "That reminds me, do you have any idea where we're going or what we're going to do when we get there?" "I have a small one, Kell." "What's that? Wait, lemme guess, find Faith and save her." "Yeah, how'dja guess? Hey, look, I think that's Belmont Stakes…" "They don't race horses at ten at night, Jake." "How do you know?" "I know everything. Hey, you have any of your CD's with you?" "Yeah, I managed to grab a couple before we had to split. Emenim, P.O.D., and, uh, Andrew W.K." "You really bought Andrew W.K.?" "Bought?" "That's even worse, Jake, you actually spent time to download it. That's the worst shit I've ever heard." "It's better than Dream Theater." "Nothing's better than Dream Theater." "Andrew W.K. is." "I'm going to throw you out of Big Ben." "Please, what's not to like about the WK?" "Every song is the same." "Same my ass. He's got an energy and a, I dunno, fire that you just can't help to ignore. WK, he makes you want to follow him into war, only because you know he'd die for rock'n'roll." "I think he's an alien." "Come on, Kelly, seriously…" "No, think of it, and I'm only half shitting you now. First off, his name is all wrong. It's like, some alien was monitoring Earth and only got it half right, see, if he was a real person, it would have been Andrew U.K." "Andrew U.K.?" "Yeah, it make more sense, even though the whole fact about having two initials as a last name irritates the hell out of me." "You're strange." "The second thing, have you ever read an interview or heard him talk?" "Yeah… well… no." "He.. how can I say this… he has to not be from this planet. Everything he says is laced with so many adjectives I actually feel embarrassed for him. I feel embarrassed for me. I feel emba-" "Okay, okay, so he's strange. That doesn't mean he's an alien. But, you know, with all the stuff we've seen…" "It wouldn't surprise me either, Jake." Jake looked out the window again and saw a big black nothing. Must be over the water, he thought, as they sat in silence. As he looked out into the darkness, he thought of how Faith must've felt, being held by some psycho, teleporting (Jake wondered what it even felt like to be teleported) in short jumps, first up high, falling, then up high again, falling, Jake shivered. A wave of doubt hit him like a tidal wave. What was he doing? There was no way he could save Faith by himself, which he figured he'd have to, dragging Kelly along because he didn't want to be alone with Mercy, even though she was his first choice. Why didn't he just let Jenkins help him? So he wouldn't go back to school, maybe it's a good thing to go to the training center Jenkins talked about. Teach him to be someone, so maybe he'd be able to help out in the ways the others couldn't. But now, here he was on a plane to England with a kid whose idea of a good time if a bhang hit and wre-- "Jake, snap out of it, man, you okay?" Jake snapped out of it, felt the wave of doubt melt as soon as he heard Kelly's voice. "Oh, uh, yeah, fine, why?" "It looked like you were about to cry, dude, when I know all you want to do is party hard." Jake smiled, then laughed. "Yeah, party hard." * * * Hector looked across the desk, his hands on his temples, rubbing them in counterclockwise motions. He had heard once that if you press your forefinger into your temples and rub for more than a minute any headache you might have would go away. While the pain it caused felt delicious, the headache was still there, and, he thought, it was just the beginning. "Did it work?" "No", Hector Egan answered. "Must be the other boy. Makes everything… slippery. Have we gotten any more from the girl?" "She still refuses to talk. For now. Try again, Hector, we need to see what the Bruno boy is really capable of." "Yes, sir, of course, I will try again."    
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EVERYTHING JAKE is TM & (C) 2000-2011 by Mike Rosenzweig. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
