ONE
I first realized I loved Eric a couple hours after Mr. Owens died, when me and Eric found his body rotting in the park.
It was a late summer afternoon, the air warm and the sun a tiny ball in a sky so cloudless blue you could stare into it and watch it flicker back like static. Down the road, past bushes and the chain-link fence of a development site, someone’s truck radio hummed a bass line, a steady WHUM-whumwhumwhum rumbling through the earth. An older couple sat with their dog a ways uphill, throwing tennis balls at the tree line, where every so often a breeze would stir up a waft of stagnant lake water and dry grass.
For the most part, though, it was just Eric and me in the park, knee-deep in scratchy thorns, our hands sticky with blackberry pulp, our fingers stinging and sweet. Eric’s dad had come home early in a mood again, so Eric let himself in through my house’s back door, and I knew as soon as I saw him that he needed to make himself scarce for a while, so I suggested the park. It was a Tuesday, so there wouldn’t be anybody else there but the truckers and the old people. A scarce-making place.
We’d grabbed whatever we could find for containers on the way out: a stained plastic salad bowl for me, a pop cup from the recycling bin for him. Eric pushed ahead, grabbing berries and thorns by the dripping, bleeding handful, while I lingered back, threading fingers through the spikes to coax out a berry or two, so of course Eric stumbled out and saw Mr. Owens first.
That was how we’d always been. Him, a bulky and square-jawed brick of a kid, gritting his teeth to get everything done quick, then me, short and mousey and epileptic, playing it safe and watchful from a distance.
Mr. Owens’s body stood on the other side of a line of bushes, closer to the lake. He wore a button-up pajama shirt and matching pants, the kind that must’ve fit him at one point but now dangled off his joints like curtains. His hair hung in cottony wisps in front of his sunken face, his lips pulled back in focus, showing off recessed gums and stalactite teeth. All his own set, he’d told us once, owed to a lifetime of good air and bad whiskey, and he’d laughed a rasping mule laugh.
But he wasn’t laughing now, being dead and all. He muttered little half-phrases to himself instead: “C’mon, now...Git it...Jus’ a couple more...Damn it...” And he kept raising his hand to pick at a berry, pulling it off the branch, then he’d lose himself somewhere in the middle and he’d lower his hand again, dropping the berry to the dirt, and shuffle on to the next one.
We could tell right away he’d died on account of his eyes. When someone’s dead all the way, their eyes cloud over white and dry. But when they’re dead and haven’t realized it yet, their eyes go full dark, pupils blown way too wide, like a spooked deer trying to stare at everything at once. Their skin goes sallow and gray, too, their lips cracked and their joints all twitching and unsure like spider legs, but the biggest tell is always in those wide babydoll eyes.
Eric saw Mr. Owens first, and Mr. Owens stared back at him. I walked up behind Eric,
and I didn’t see anything at first but a scrap of pajamas, so I moved in to say hi. But Eric had more wary, protective instincts, and he put up an arm, and I stopped.
The second time I looked, I saw the eyes, and it clicked.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” Eric said. He grunted the word out between his teeth; Eric hated dealing with dead people.
“That’s Mr. Owens,” I said. “I know him. We used to help him with yard work. I didn’t even know he was doing bad. What do you think happened?”
“He’s old. Pro’ly just fell down the stairs or something,” Eric said.
I stepped closer, fascinated in spite of myself.
Sure, dead people like this happened all the time in the more rural parts of Kittakoop, near Eric’s house, where people just kinda lived off old factory water and fumes. I’d seen old folks there so messed up they looked like the really cheap apples in the school cafeteria, crispy red and two months expired, with texture like old paper.
But Dad and Mom had been paying for good water filters for at least five years now, even before there was a lawsuit and everyone got warnings in the mail from one of the old paper mills. All our neighbors drank filtered water and ate city groceries, and when they died they died proper, arms folded and eyes closed in the obituaries without any fuss at all, and they only looked crispy when caked up in makeup at their funerals.
Not like Mr. Owens.
“Musta been a bad fall. He’s already totally out of it,” I mused.
We kept our voices low out of some kind of respect. I didn’t know if Mr. Owens could hear us anymore, not if he was half as dazed as he looked, but it seemed rude to talk about him to his face. He tilted his head at us, smiling in a friendly, absent way, and we nodded back, polite-like.
I noticed his hands by then, covered in lines of reddish-black scratches and swollen marks, and I saw the top of his head seared red with sunburn. He’d been out here for a long while. A couple more hours, stuck in his loop of berry-picking, and both would blister and bleed.
So I glanced at Eric to see if he’d know what to do. Eric usually did, in that way of broke kids who’d raised themselves and hoarded every trick on the way. He knew how to get stains out of clothes, how to throw together a meal, how to patch up a scratch and keep moving like nothing happened.
Sure enough, he muttered: “Hey, Ian. Does he have anyone around here?”
Eric didn’t use my name unless something bad happened—not when he preferred shrimp and fluffy and suck-up—so I didn’t waste time with more questions. “I think so. His daughter works at the diner. I can call them and see if they can reach her?”
“Yeah. The top of the hill pro’ly has the best reception. Go on. I’ll watch him.” He reached out, pressing a hand to Mr. Owens’s arm, and he muttered to him in a soothing voice, all take it easy and it’s okay, sir, in a domesticated hospital room tone he must’ve gotten from me.
Uphill, that couple kept on playing with their dog, laughing at some old-people joke, and I realized the blackberry bushes must’ve blocked their view, same as it had for us. Same as it had for the radio-blasting trucker across the lot, still whumwhumwhuming away. It seemed rude, in a way, for all them to be laughing and playing music only a couple yards from Mr. Owens’s body. Disrespectful.
At the same time, it seemed wrong to ruin their moments, too. I took out my phone and hurried around them instead, looping a half circle across their part of the hill and toward the top. They didn’t look twice, even as I hit the top and crouched to catch my breath, lungs aching and medical bracelet jangling on my wrist like a reminder to breathe. Guys like Eric could run and shove and deal with dead people. Guys like me stayed safe and made phone calls.
Up here, I could see nearabout the entire park. The long stretch of gravel lined by chain-link fence, where tin-paneled shacks and rusted trucks sat idle for a construction project that had been going on as long as I could remember. The tree line, thick with dead grass and blackberry thorns matted
together like hair. Beyond them, the shallow algae bog we all agreed to call a lake. And beyond it, the cinder block backs of the gas station and the mall and the antique store.
Nearly the whole town.
My phone’s screen fluttered at a few bars, which would have to be good enough. I dug through its call history until I found the diner’s number from last Friday, when Mom and Dad went out and left my little sister and me a twenty for burgers.
On the other end, a woman’s voice picked up, crackling with static.
“Hilltop Diner, what can I getcha?”
I recognized that drawl, and I perked up. “Mrs. Bailey? It’s Ian.”
Her voice brightened, sharp and eager. “Ian! How are you, kiddo? How’s little Emma doing?”
“I’m fine. We’re fine. Look, um, is Ms. Owens working today?” My voice came too fast, pushed out in little huffs of breath from lungs still tight in my chest, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was nerves and how much of that was part of being sickly.
Behind me, the couple wrapped up their fetch game. They crouched by their dog, scratching his ears and back while the dog whapped its tail against the grass hard enough to send blades fluttering.
“Nah, she’s off the next two days. Won’t answer her phone for anything, either, knowin’ her. But, oh! That nice girl Monica is here. She lives nearby. I can ask her to drop off a message for ya?”
Damn it. The one day I needed help, and of course the only other disabled kid in town would happen to be there. Monica always jumped at the chance to look oh-so-useful and nice, waving her cane around like a cutesy Victorian orphan, and I bit back a smudge of petty envy. Ever since we were kindergarteners, every time I tried to do something useful, Monica was there, being way more useful, way more helpful, and twice as inspirational.
“That—yeah, if you
can. Tell her...um. That Ms. Owens needs to go to her dad’s house.” An understatement. I winced, glancing back toward the bushes. “He’s not...doing well.”
“Oh? Do you know what’s going on?”
“He’s—”
I cut off then, as I heard something wet and heavy thud below the hill, like a rock hitting water. It sounded wrong, too loud and too sharp and too meatlike, too close to where I’d left Eric alone with a dead guy, and my throat went dry at the sound of it. Even the oblivious old couple glanced up, their dog’s ears perked and legs braced wide.
“Ian?” Ms. Bailey asked, her voice crackling distortion at the edges.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I heard myself say. “Look, I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Okay, kiddo. What—”
But I’d already hung up by then and started racing back down the hill, never mind the aching lungs and jingling medical bracelet. The couple—dressed too warm for the weather, both with clear brown living-people eyes—watched me go, but their dog kept jumping up on their legs and panting, a low whine in his throat, pulling their attention away. With a dog like that, they’d find the body soon enough, I figured; in a town with maybe five hundred people, things always rolled around again to those who waited. Even dead things.
For now, though, I needed to make sure Eric was okay.
I reached the bottom of the hill and kept going, around the bushes and thickets of weeds, past where Eric had been standing and wasn’t anymore. Farther on, and I spotted a flash of his blue shirt and faded jeans, blackberry-stained, and I saw him standing by the bog we all called a lake, and I let out my breath in a relieved rush. He kept his hands tucked deep in his pockets, his thumb doing a nervous flick across the top of the old lighter he’d stolen from his dad. His shoulders were drawn—a workman’s shoulders already, broad-set and rigidly straight as the military buzzcut his dad gave him every summer to keep the lice away.
I stumbled to a stop
by him, skidding my sneakers across mud and reeds. Normally you could hardly tell the water from the grass this close—the algae across it spread out in a film, so the only way you knew there was water ahead was by how too-smooth and too-green it was compared to the ground. But something had broken up the film, rippling out in waves, and for once I could see a dark hole of clear water in the middle of it all, staring at us like a massive eye.
Mr. Owens wasn’t there.
I looked up at Eric. He watched the water.
I’d known Eric for nearly ten years by then. Since my family moved to Kittakoop, West Virginia, even; since I’d walked into daycare, a scrawny blond kid with a pale face and a medical list a mile long, and he and Monica had been the only other kids my age. I’d watched him grow from a chubby, angry little boy, throwing crayons and kicking shins, to a solemn teenager with farmer’s hands and a dark sense of humor.
I’d never once seen him look the way he did then. He seemed tired, yet serene. As if he’d found peace, somewhere in the water pooling around our battered shoes.
“It’s gonna be okay, Ian,” he said in this soft voice I hadn’t heard before, something paternal and sweet. “I took care of him. Thanks for calling.”
And I realized then what happened to Mr. Owens.
I stared into the eye of the lake. It rippled and wavered, the algae already shifting to cover up the gap.
A few more hours, and it’d be like Mr. Owens had never been pushed in at all.
“It happened quick. He didn’t feel anything, I promise.” Eric didn’t look at me; he kept his eyes locked on the water, on that disappearing eye where Mr. Owens wasn’t. Then he added, softer: “He didn’t even get a blister.”
That struck me. Eric wasn’t wrong—the hot summer sun couldn’t reach him down there, couldn’t touch his skin enough to blister it further. And he wouldn’t tear himself up on the thorns, either. Soon enough the bloat and rot in him would bob him back to the surface for that old
couple to find, sure, but not before he’d breathed in enough cold lake water to drown that last part of him and turn his eyes white.
I wondered if it felt like a relief. If some part of him, baking and bleeding out in the open sun, wanted nothing more than a cool dip in the lake. And I wondered if Eric knew that, muttering up at Mr. Owens with that hospital-soft tone.
Eric hated dealing with the dead, but he’d still given Mr. Owens a last moment of peace.
I reached out and I found Eric’s hand, and I gave it a squeeze. He squeezed back, not thinking about it, and both of us watched the water until it went still again, until the mosquitos picked up buzzing and the warblers darted overhead, rustling branches and scattering leaves.
Life has a funny way of moving on like that.
We walked back to the park, gathering our blackberries to go home. Up the hill, that old couple was still picking their way downward, their dog sniffing and whining at the end of his lead. Below the hill, that truck kept sounding out its steady bassline, WHUD-whudwhudwhud like a heartbeat.
Nothing changed. Not really.
Except that when we passed that old couple, Eric and I both nodded at them in the way you did in town when you saw a dead person, a flicker of eye contact and a grimace that said watch out over there, and they nodded back like thanks, bracing themselves in case it needed putting down like a rabid dog or a lame horse.
Except that Eric had already put Mr. Owens down, and he’d done it with caution and compassion and a low hospital voice, as gently as he could.
A kindness his dad would hate.
But I loved Eric for it.
I’d loved him for a long time, since we’d met at daycare as wide-eyed kids, overwhelmed at the world and itching to rebel against it. The word love itched at my winded lungs with every step back, begging to get said, rattling the bars of my rib cage with a violent self-importance that
was anything but sickly.
Nothing changed, but we did.
TWO
The itch to say I love you rattled inside me for the rest of the evening, around a tasteless taco dinner and mindless homework attempt, and all through a long night of waking up dry-eyed and sleepless every half hour.
I finally cracked around eight a.m., when Eric might be awake, and I sent him a text to meet me at the mall like I had something important to tell him.
What I was going to tell him, how and when and where, I had no idea about.
Eric, I love you. I don’t mean like a friend, I mean more than that. I want to...date you? Kiss you? Marry you?
Eric, I am IN LOVE with you. I don’t care if you’re a boy. I get if that ruins our friendship for you, and you want to leave forever and never look back—
No, that ain’t true, I wouldn’t get it. I don’t want to lose out on spending lazy summer days together like this. So if you don’t love me back, let’s both pretend I never said anything. Got it?
But...if you DO somehow love me back, maybe we could kiss? Just once, real quick. No one would have to see, promise.
I buried my head in my hands, scrubbing against my eyelids until my vision flared red. None of those sounded right. Even in my own head, I sounded hesitant and slow, the sort of person you could only love out of a strange sense of pity.
All this seemed like a bad idea, now.
Too late for that, I guessed. I’d already made it to the mall. I’d already sat down on the edge of the fountain, on plaster that smelled like chlorine and mildewed coins.
And he was already settled next to me, drinking pop out of a water cup, waiting for me to confess whatever big damn secret I had.
Once upon a time, the Kittakoop mall was somewhere important. It was built that way, with a long, wide hallway and a dozen off-shoot stores, with lush potted plants along the walls and speakers piping synth-pop Muzak overhead. Maybe it was built with the expectation that we’d grow into it, like little kids in hand-me-down clothes.
Nowadays, though, it sat half empty, its big hallway caked with dust in the corners and that same handful of Muzak songs cycling through static. The plants still looked nice, though their plastic threads had frayed at the edges and the glue showed through in spots. Half the stores stood
empty, their security grilles drawn and their insides a dark mass of cardboard boxes, while the other half cycled through brands every year or two: first a hair salon, then an insurance company, then a Chinese takeout place. Only the clothing store seemed to stay every year, a single corporate mass keeping the mall barely alive.
Every so often a person or two would mill past us, their footsteps echoing across the tile, and I watched them for the sake of something to do that wasn’t trying to find words. My eyes flickered from them, to my hands, to the scattered coins rippling under the fountain’s shallow pool behind us. The air-conditioning rattled, too cold and stale, cutting through the faded purple jacket I’d thrown on.
Beside me, Eric pulled out the battered lighter he always fiddled with when bored or restless. He lifted a tanned arm, exposing an inch of bare skin under the edge of his tugged-up shirt...and opened an eye to watch me.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s just...” I took a deep breath, let it out again. “It’s nothing. Never mind.”
And it could be nothing. It could be nothing, and we could both go home, and soon enough it’d suffocate under the weight of all that nothing, and the world would keep spinning round, and it’d be fine.
That’d be the safest option, too. No one could blame me for being too safe. We’d moved to West Virginia in the first place to be safe, because I’d had a grand mal seizure on the kitchen floor and suddenly the city was too full of strobe lights and flashing signs and alarms blaring DANGER, ALERT, EMERGENCY, everything the doctors told me to avoid.
I could imagine just about all those signs now. They sat on any path toward talking about my feelings, blaring and bright and not giving a whit about the medical alert bracelet on my wrist that said EPILEPTIC. ...
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