The Book of Joe

disoriented, but more than anything, I’m flooded with an overwhelming sense of gratitude that he isn’t sick anymore, that we can go on being friends like in the old days. He looks at me somberly and nods slowly. “Joe.”
    “Yes.”
    He grins his old, cocky grin. “You have a phone call.”
    “What?”
    “Just listen.”
    I do, and sure enough I hear a phone ringing. And as soon as the realization hits that the ringing isn’t part of the dream, the dream vanishes and the phone wakes me up.
    I’m sprawled at my desk, my face glued to my arm with drool, my neck stiff from sleeping bent over in my chair. The room is filled with the soft hues and shadows of indirect sunlight. I’m mildly bewildered at having inadvertently slept so deeply at my desk, and still haunted by the vivid images of my dream. “It’s Wayne,” Carly says when I pick up the phone, and I wonder foggily how she knows, since she wasn’t in the dream at all.
    “What?” I say, sitting up slowly. “Carly? What time is it?”
    “It’s ten-thirty,” she says, her voice frantically urging me to get with the program. “Joe, Wayne’s on the roof of the high school.”
    I’m trying to understand her, but it isn’t computing.
    “Could you say that again?” I use my fingers in an attempt to manually rub the consciousness into my brain via my eyeballs.
    “Wayne’s on the roof of the high school,” Carly repeats impatiently. “We have to get over there.”
    “It’s okay. We always used to climb up there. He won’t fall.”
    There is a pause. “I’m not worried about him falling, Joe.”
    I stand up in my father’s den, now fully awake. “I’m on my way.”
    “I’m already in my car,” she says. “I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”
    “You don’t think he would really jump, do you?”
    “No, I don’t. But it would be just like him to want to surprise us.”
    The high school is already a mob scene when we pull up in Carly’s Honda, the students milling about in an energized frenzy as the faculty make vain, halfhearted efforts at crowd control. In the meantime, sheriff ’s deputies are attempting to erect wooden sawhorses to cordon off the area directly below the building’s cupola. A fire truck and a number of emergency vehicles are parked at random angles at the curb, and two local news vans with roof-mounted satellite uplink equipment have pulled onto the sidewalk, their crews hustling around the periphery of the school’s front promenade as they try to capture the chaos for the evening news. Up on top of the building, lying back against the cupola and smoking a cigarette, is Wayne. He’s too high up for me to make out the expression on his face, but he doesn’t appear poised to jump.
    The students are all staring upward in unmasked morbid fascination, talking and joking among themselves, thrilled by the unexpected drama and the resulting free period or two.
    Carly and I push and shove our way through the throngs of onlookers and then past the barricades, where Mouse stands in a huddle of emergency services workers, bullhorn in hand, looking tense and uncertain. “Dave!” Carly calls out to him.
    “Have you spoken to him at all yet?”
    He looks up at her with a frown. “No press past the barricades,” he says.
    “That’s Wayne Hargrove up there,” she says. “Let us talk to him.”
    Mouse considers us dourly. “I know who it is. He doesn’t want to talk. Now, get back there.”
    “Come on, Mouse, you know he’ll talk to me,” I say, which turns out to be a mistake, not only because I’ve accidentally called him by his old nickname but because he apparently hasn’t noticed me up until this point. “You!” he barks, his eyes widening. “If you don’t get your ass behind those barricades right now, I’ll book you for obstruction.”
    I start to argue, but Carly pulls me back behind the barricades. I try calling up to Wayne, to let him know I’m there, but he’s as oblivious to me now as he was in my dream earlier.
    “What now?” Carly says, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looks up at the roof. She’s wearing jeans and an avocado-colored blouse, her hair pinned loosely above her forehead by a brown leather barrette. This is no time to be realizing how lovely she looks, but as bad as the situation is, part of me is thrilled to be standing next to her like this, to be in it with her.
    “This way,” I say, grabbing her hand and steering her through the crowd. We work our way