Jason
Jason squats at the edge of the roof, his hands clasped in his lap, his feet the only parts of his body touching anything solid.
A couple weeks after he punches the mirror in the downstairs bathroom and gets driven to the hospital by Matuzewitz, Jason climbs on top of Jim and Jen’s apartment building and can’t get down. Tuz says Jason was tripping pretty hard at the ER that night and Tuz’s dad is a cop so he must have been sweating. You’re all gathered around, in the little strip of grass between the parking spaces and the wall. You can do it, Jen yells. C’mon, someone else calls.
Jason squats at the edge of the roof, his hands clasped in his lap, his feet the only parts of his body touching anything solid. His head is bowed, and his Walgreens box-dyed black hair hangs in front of his face in greasy locks. This doesn’t feel like the time his mother kicked him out of the basement and told him to find somewhere else to sleep. It doesn’t feel like when you all couldn’t get him to come out of the corner upstairs at Mark’s with the macaroni and cheese pot, crouched there, waving that spatula at everyone.
There isn’t a tree close enough to climb and join him. None of you understand how he got up there. But if he turns around and faces the wall, maybe he can hang on the ledge with his fingers and drop down into the grass feet first without hurting himself.
The toe of one of his cloth slide-on shoes from the Chinese grocery on campus slips off the edge, sending dirt and roof rocks into the air. You all gasp.
Jason scoots back from the edge. His shoulders rise. He stands up, straightens his posture, and pushes his hair out of his eyes. You silently watch, afraid to breathe. What did he take, you wonder. What has he drank tonight, you want to know but are afraid to whisper ask.
Jason who sleeps in the closet. Jason who will get Stephanie pregnant. Jason who once told you he wanted to be a pediatrician. Jason with the drumsticks, with the ninja stars, with the butterfly knife. Jason, you think, fly away. Jason, you hope, stay here.
Lisa Thornton is a writer and nurse. She has work in SmokeLong Quarterly, Bending Genres, Pithead Chapel and more literary magazines. She won the WestWord Prize in the flash fiction category in 2023 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology. She lives with her husband and son just south of Chicago and can be found on Twitter and Bluesky @thorntonforreal.
