Phillip was my friend. I sat behind him in class and he had wounds on the back of his neck that always looked to be in the process of healing but never did; his whole neck, a warmth to it that if you looked closer looked to be boiling. He didn't talk very often and his body carried about in a slightly limp demeanor; his recollection on my mind strangely calling about the movement of a slinky. We played in chess club together; I assumed he would grow into our little circle of friends. I was in my phase where I would watch the news everyday after school and looked down on people who chose to remain ignorant. I decided he was smart when I decided I was smart, but he was timid, and for that I think I liked him more.
Two girls started coming around to visit our games at lunch. It was nice to have cheerleaders, annoying girls that we could ignore. One was Phillip's girlfriend, the skinnier one, and her friend, after a few visits, it came to dawn upon me like that time she got up and blew me on the couch—the chubbier one—that they were there for me, too. I was uncomfortable at school and played flattered victim. Sometimes I'd get phone calls from the three of them; his girlfriend would say, Here, talk to Phillip. I had gone over to smoke weed with them, assuming the friend wanted to flirt around, and Phillip's girlfriend walked in on us afterwards. Jane seemed unsettled, revealing it was her friend's idea to follow me around.
I didn't want people to find out about Jane and me, because I had a reputation in my head of who I was, and those girls did not watch the news, all right? She had a pot party when her dad was gone, and I went over to her place and she had invited a couple more guys from around town. We sat around her bed smoking, and I was waiting, but one guy didn't hesitate and they were under the covers and I could hear her jacking him off. I walked out of the room while behind me the sheets were rustling; her townhouse was quiet and I noticed their carpet in the hallway. I walked down the stairs and closed the door behind me. Then I rang the doorbell as I left.
Sometime later prank calls started coming in. Phillip had told me before his girlfriend searched through the white pages to find my number. They would send Dominos Pizza to my dad's work and our house, and my dad would get enraged—they were rubbing it in my face. Jane wasn't her real name. That's what she called herself. It was really Golan. I called her a piece of meat—a familiar term as of late—over the phone when I would call them back that summer, all three of them laughing, Jane, the girlfriend, and Phillip.
