He ran away the next week, leaving nothing but a new painting of a hand holding onto a grenade in the shape of a heart on the back wall of a local liquor store. Under it was sprayed I'll be back. We waited.
Sure enough, he was back in a month, right before school started. Going into the school year, we began to refer to him as Saint Jimmy, a name that he chuckled at every time he heard it. None of us was religious, and we were told that we were blaspheming, but that only fueled us. It was just another way we flipped off authority, and we loved it. Tré called him the "Jesus of Suburbia" one day, and I jotted down the phrase for later use.
I met my second girlfriend during the first few weeks of my junior year. For the life of me, I can't remember her name, but we all referred to her fondly as Whatshername anyway. Jimmy even took a liking to her, and her transition into the group was pretty seamless. She transferred from a school across town, and she was a junior as well. She and Jimmy were very similar in that I was always running to keep up with their antics. Whatshername gave Jimmy a run for his money when it came to rebellion, and they started having a competition to see who could end up in detention the most during that first semester.
Jimmy and Whatshername ended up tying by the time Christmas break came around, with a grand total of 57 each. We spent that short break playing street hockey and throwing dirty snow at each other, and between Whatshername and Jimmy, I was kept on my toes. That is, until Jimmy ran away right after Christmas. He had been having problems and fights with his dad, and without saying a word to any of us, he split. All he left behind was his boom box on my porch, but he kept the stack of demo tapes I had given him, so I knew he would be back.
Sure enough, three weeks back into school, Jimmy showed up. He was a bit of a legend now, like Huck Finn. Everyone's parents hated him for his bad influence, but to us kids, he was like the second coming of Jesus. Hence the "Jesus of Suburbia" nickname.
When he came back, we went out for a drive and I let him know that it really scared me when he left. He apologized, but I couldn't get him to promise me not to leave again, so I kept an eye on him and tried to make the point that he would be missed if he ever left for good.
