"Jake and the Price of Cool" was originally written as a short story, which was recently published in the Quercus Review out of Modesto CA. It has also been adapted as a short film screenplay, which will hopefully go to camera soon.
In the end, it was worse because I think I might have been partly responsible.
We all heard about the disappearance at the same time, about Chuck's kid. Chuck was one of the older students, doing painting mostly, and a bit of sculpture. He was married and had Jake, four years old and pretty great. Chuck brought Jake into class whenever we had special fund-raising things, and that's how I met him.
I participated in these events haphazardly, whenever it suited my convenience. It was kind of pathetic, really, the way the school kept conspiring to make all of us self-centered individualists — I mean, after all, we were art students — to cooperate on something innocuous, get us ready for the real world or something.
I admit, I have a problem with group work in any sense, but I'm damned if I'm going to be manipulated into working with other people for the sake of a few cupcakes or some popcorn.
Usually I cut out with my friend Steven, but this one time, I stayed. It was some goofy bake sale thing, and I let myself get roped in to help restocking the tables.
I guess it was fate, because I got to meet Jake. Something about him, I don't know what, made me deviate from my usual anti-kid stance, and I offered to let Chuck and his wife wander a bit on their own while I sat with him.
Jake. I think about him a lot, I guess. I mean, where did the name come from, for one thing. Cool name for a cool little kid. He was the Jake-est kid I ever met. It was like Chuck and — what's her name, his wife — had waited until he was old enough they could tell he was a Jake before they ever named him. I could think from now until the end of time and never think of a better one.
I ended up sitting in a corner of the hallway with Jake for, I don't know, like half an hour or something. Steven had cut school completely that afternoon, and, to tell the truth, I was kind of glad. I mean, he's a friend and all, but I couldn't imagine him having the patience to talk to a four year old for more than a millisecond.
I snuck Jake a couple of cookies, and we chatted about dinosaurs and dump trucks, you know, kid stuff. I felt so clean, like I'd been scrubbed from head to foot with the purest water in the world.
I tuned out that group of girls who dressed like tarts and hung around making goo-goo eyes at the guys – I didn't have any idea why they were even at a school like this.
I forgot about the loser know-it-alls who spouted off about what I should think was cool – oh, and my absolute worst nightmare: the fat kid who never talked to anyone, but always had his tape recorder going. This guy – utter loser. He used to follow me around when I first started school, but that only lasted until I told him, well, in foul language even for me, to just piss off.
With Jake that day, I let all of it fade away into so much white noise. I only thought about how nice it would be to be simple again, and innocent, and think trucks are the coolest thing ever.
When it was time for him to go home, Chuck thanked me, and it was nice, because suddenly I went from thinking of him as a great big no-talent dumb guy to a pretty great father and probably a nice person.
I wouldn't say the foundation was there for a great friendship or anything, you know; some guys you're never going to really want to look up. But — and I swear I thought this then, with no benefit of hindsight, but with a present sense of irony — I told myself, Chuck'd be a great guy to have around you in a crisis. No lie.
