by Jenna Lehne
I run around the deck to the front of the house. An antique wooden ladder is leaning against the front of the house. It’s missing the bottom three rungs, making it nearly impossible to climb. Oliver must be getting desperate.
“I’m coming up, Oliver.” I grab the rung second from the bottom and try to pull myself up. My hand slips and an inch-long sliver buries itself in my palm. I let out a thirty-second-long string of swears.
“Are you okay?” Henry grabs my hand. “Can you still climb?”
“Give me a second.” I push my palm against my mouth and bite the tiny end of the stick. I yank it out and spit it on the ground. The small puncture throbs and pushes out dark red blood.
Henry tears a strip of his shirt off. “Give me your hand.”
“There are band aids inside you know,” I say, but I let Henry wrap my hand anyway.
“Yeah, but this is way more manly, so make sure you tell Peyton about it.” Henry knots the fabric. “Will you be able to climb up if I give you a boost?”
“I think so.” I grab the side of the ladder again.
Henry wraps his hands around my waist and lifts me up. I manage to get my foot in the bottom rung and it’s smooth sailing the rest of the way up. Once I’m on the roof, I lie on my stomach and brace the ladder. Henry pulls himself up easily and is on the roof a minute later.
Oliver is on the side of the roof that faces the mountain. He’s pacing back and forth, one hand constantly massaging his head.
“Olly?” I walk toward him slowly. “What are you doing up here?”
Oliver turns around to face me. His face is sweaty and blotchy. His eyes are moving so fast they’re almost vibrating. “I can’t find her, Murph. I looked everywhere. I checked out a few trails, but wildlife warning signs block them all off. She wouldn’t have ignored those. She would’ve come back. She’s not at the dock either. I came up here so I could see farther up the trails, just in case.”
“How about you step away from the edge?” Henry asks. “We can search the mountain from back here, bud.”
Oliver takes a step toward Henry. “I think something happened to Hayley. You guys know her. She wouldn’t leave me for this long. She knows I would freak out.”
I take Oliver’s hand and pull him away from the edge. “Teddy and Peyton are checking the lake road. Maybe she went looking for a cell phone signal. You know how wonky she gets if she can’t tweet.”
Oliver shakes his head. “No, no, no, you’re wrong. You’re all wrong. Something isn’t right.”
As if to illustrate how screwed up everything is, a giant raven swoops down from the sky. I duck, pulling Oliver down with me.
“Jesus,” Henry says. “Did you see the size of that thing?”
Oliver covers his head. “Is it gone?”
The conversation from the lake fills my head. Birds. Oliver is afraid of birds. And falling. He’s afraid of falling, and here we are on the roof.
“It’s gone,” I say softly. “How about you and I go back down to the ground. Henry will keep looking up here. We can go check the neighbor’s houses and see if she’s there.”
Oliver stands up shakily. “Okay, yeah, let’s go find my girl.”
I squeeze Oliver’s hand and we walk toward the ladder. A shrill caw comes from somewhere up above. Another raven dives down. This one brushes Oliver’s shoulder.
“Fuck!” He lets go of my hand and bats at the bird. Another swoops down. Its talons scrape against Oliver’s head.
I wave my arms and try to shoo the birds away. Another raven comes, and then another. And another. A dozen birds fly around Oliver and me, pecking and scratching us with their filthy beaks.
Oliver screeches and swings at the birds. Sweat and tears pour down his face.
“Get down!” Henry runs over, but there’s nothing he can do. The birds won’t go away. Henry yanks me down onto my butt. The birds don’t follow us.
“Olly, you need to stop flailing. They’ll leave you alone if you’re still.” I try to keep my voice calm.
Oliver stops striking the birds and covers his face. A huge raven, at least twice the size of the others, lands on his shoulders. It pecks at Oliver’s head, removing tiny tufts of his red hair. Oliver screams and grabs the bird. He throws it off of him, but it flies back and lands on his head. Oliver covers his face and runs. “Get off of me!”
“Oliver! No!” I jump up and run for him. I go to the left, Henry runs to the right. We need to keep Oliver away from the edge of the house.
The birds follow Oliver like a black cloud. His blood-curling screams rival the birds. One raven pecks his cheek, another clings to his hands. Blood drops down his head and splashes onto his shoulders. He starts to twirl around, punching and clawing at the birds. He’s so close to the edge; too close.
Henry makes it to Oliver first. He covers his face with one arm and grabs Oliver’s tank top with the other.
Oliver wrenches away from Henry. He stumbles back and his foot lands in the rain gutter.
I dive for Oliver, my stomach scraping against the shingles, but it’s too late. Three ravens smash into his face and Oliver takes another step back. He misses the gutter and topples backward, over the roof edge.
“No!” I scramble toward him.
As Oliver falls, the birds fly away. He crashes through tree branches before he lands headfirst on the stone driveway below.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I climb down the ladder as fast as I can, jumping from halfway down and landing on my knees. I crawl through the gravel toward Oliver, telling myself that he’s fine over and over again.
Oliver’s legs are still twitching. Tiny gashes cover his head, face, and neck. His hands are missing tiny, beak-sized chunks. Oliver’s head is twisted cruelly to one side, the top of it is completely flat. Bloodshot eyes are wide open, staring at the sky.
Henry falls to his knees beside me. He grabs Oliver and feels for a pulse. He shakes his head, a gesture that confirms what we already know.
Oliver is dead.
I stare at him. He’s not twitching anymore. “I thought there’d be more blood.” I turn away just as my breakfast makes a glorious comeback.
“We need to call 911,” Henry says.
“How?” I wipe my mouth and stand up. “There aren’t any phones.”
“What do we do then, Murphy?” Henry’s eyes mist up, but he blinks enough that no tears fall.
“We need to get him inside. We can’t just leave him out here.” I can’t stop walking. If I stop walking, I’ll sit. If I sit, I’ll think. If I think about my friend, dead on the pavement, I’ll cry. If I cry, I won’t stop.
“I’ll go find Teddy.” Henry wipes his face. “Are you okay alone?”
I stare at Oliver’s body. “I’m not really alone, am I?”
Henry touches my cheek before he leaves me.
He doesn’t come back right away. I walk around Oliver’s body, ready to shield Hayley from it if she comes back. I can almost picture her now, cellphone in hand, skipping down the road with a smile on her face. What is she going to do without Oliver? Tears prickle the back of my eyes. I can’t think about that now. I give Henry another minute before I go into the house. Voices echo up the stairs. I run down them and find Peyton struggling back into her romper. Teddy stands in the corner of the living room, his head hanging down. Henry is there too.
“What the fuck, Peyton?” Henry pushes his hands through his hair.
“We weren’t doing anything. God, Henry, relax.” Peyton crosses her arms over her chest.
“You were naked, Peyton. You were all over Teddy.” Henry slams his fist into the wooden log that acts as a support beam. The thin skin covering his knuckles is split open.
“Nothing happened, Henry. I tried and he shut me down. Are you happy?” Peyton stares past Henry and looks at me. “I know you must be.”
“Oliver’s dead.” I turn around and walk back up the stairs.
“What?” Peyton asks. “What did she just say?”
<
br /> I shut the front door just as Peyton starts to wail. I grab a sun-faded quilt off the porch swing and cover Oliver’s body. His hand is the only part of him showing now. I sit down next to him and thread my fingers through his. They’re still warm and pliable.
Teddy bursts through the front door. He hauls me to my feet and grabs my shoulders “What the fuck happened?”
I point to the roof. “Oliver was on the roof. He was looking for Hayley. We were going to come down but the birds came. These big, black ravens. They wouldn’t leave us alone, Teddy. Oliver got scared, so scared, and he just started running. He ran until he fell off the roof. Now he’s dead.”
Teddy pulls me forward and crushes me against his chest.
Peyton runs out next. Her face is covered in mascara smudges. She collapses near Oliver’s head. She reaches out and pulls the blanket back. She cries harder when she sees his blank, staring eyes. “What are we going to tell Hayley?”
Henry walks down the porch steps. “We need to find her first.”
“Then let’s go look for her,” Peyton hiccups.
“No,” I say. I step out of Teddy’s arms. “We need to bring Olly inside first. We have to clean him up before she sees him.”
Teddy nods. “Give me a hand, Henry?”
The boys carry Oliver’s quilt shrouded body inside. They carry him into the loft and lie him down on Teddy’s unused bed. I grab a bowl of warm water and a few washcloths from the kitchen. Together, Peyton and I clean Oliver’s scrapes and cuts. We gently straighten his head and close his eyes. We can’t do anything for the top of his skull.
“He looks…peaceful.” Peyton says before another wave of sobs wash over her. “What do we do now? Do we go to the neighbors?”
“We haven’t seen anyone all weekend,” Henry says. “I doubt anyone is there. We just need to wait for Hayley and somehow tell her Oliver is gone.”
My skin starts to crawl. “Can you guys take the first watch? I need to shower.”
“Sure,” Henry says. “Peyton and I need to have a chat anyway.”
“Maybe now isn’t the best time to talk about that,” I say.
“Why?” Henry is pale and trembling. “This day couldn’t possibly get any fucking worse.”
“Good point,” I say. “We’ll give you some privacy.”
I hold my hand out for Teddy. He grabs it and we make it to the bedroom before Henry starts to yell. I go directly to the bathroom and crank the hot water on.
“Do you want me to tell you what happened with Peyton?” Teddy leans against the doorframe of the bathroom.
“It really doesn’t matter,” I sigh. “I just need to get Oliver’s blood off of me.”
I hold my hands up. My palm is stained with my own blood but the tops of my hands and forearms are all from cleaning Olly.
“Okay,” Teddy says. “I’ll wait for you out here.”
“Thanks,” I say. I strip down and climb into the shower. The water is so hot it stings, but I don’t care. I grab Mom’s expensive body scrub and squeeze it onto my hands. I rub it all over my body until the water circling the drain turns pink. I forgot what overwhelming grief feels like. I let a few tears fall until the bubble of hysteria comes too close to the surface. I dry off and wrap myself in Mom’s robe. When I come back out, Teddy is lying on the bed.
“Hayley’s not back yet?” I grab some clean underwear and stealthily slide them on.
“Nope,” Teddy says. “I’ve been trying to listen for her, but all I can hear is Peyton and Henry duking it out.”
As if on command, Peyton hurls a string of insults at Henry. He returns the favor.
I step into a sundress and pull it over my shoulders. “Do you want to get out of here? We can grab a bottle and have a drink for Olly on the dock.”
“That is exactly what I want to do.” Teddy follows me out the bedroom door.
Peyton and Henry don’t even notice us. I grab a bottle of black licorice flavored liquor and we leave them alone to scream. My only hope is that they notice if Hayley comes through the front door.
“They’re really giving it to each other, eh?” Teddy takes my elbow and helps me down the stairs.
Even though I’ve been down these stairs literally hundreds of times, I don’t pull my arm away. It feels good to have someone taking care of me right now.
“I think this fight has been brewing for a few days now,” I say.
“I feel like a dick.” Teddy kicks his sandals off once we reach the dock. “I should have told Peyton to fuck off when she wanted to go down to the dock.”
I slip my flip-flops off and follow Teddy to the end of the dock.
“That would have made her try even harder,” I say. “Peyton either gets what she wants or gets caught in the process.”
“There wasn’t much to catch,” Teddy says. He sits down and dunks his feet in the water. “We split up to search the house. She yelled at me to go downstairs. She was already naked when I got down there. She threw herself at me not even a minute before Henry came back inside.”
“I’m glad nothing happened,” I say. I feel guilty for how relieved that makes me. Hayley just lost her boyfriend and here I am worrying about whether a guy I just met felt up my best friend or not.
“Me too. Anyways, we’re not here to talk about that.” Teddy twists off the bottle’s lid. “To Oliver.”
He swallows a mouthful and passes the bottle to me.
“To Oliver.” I swallow the sticky, strong liquid and close my eyes. We were all down here only yesterday and it already feels like a million years ago.
“I’ve never seen a dead person before,” Teddy says.
I open my eyes and take another drink. “I have.”
“Sam?” Teddy asks.
I nod.
Teddy lets out a soft string of curses. “You were in the car when it crashed?”
“When he crashed it.” I correct him and swallow more of the booze. I’m drinking to numb the pain of Olly’s death, but it’s working on Sam’s too. “Sam didn’t just get into a car accident. He killed himself, and me for a few seconds too.”
Teddy’s mouth falls open. “That’s so….”
“Don’t say it,” I say. “I hate it when people say that Sam was selfish. It’s not like he had a choice. If he had died in a plane crash, people wouldn’t mutter in the hallways about how selfish he was. They wouldn’t pat my arm and tell me how sorry they were that Sam decided to do that. He didn’t decide to do anything. Sure, he chose the way it was going to happen, but that was it. He was drowning. Every fucking breath was a struggle. Each day was a new Everest. Wouldn’t you get tired of climbing?”
“I don’t know what to say.” Teddy reaches for my hand. “I guess I’m trying to understand why he did it when you were in the car?”
“We got in a fight and I wouldn’t let him leave without me,” I say. “I miss him, but that doesn’t mean I’m not mad. I’m pissed, all the time actually, but I’ve learned to hide it. You have to. You figure out how to stifle the boiling rage like a tightly sealed, vibrating pot. I’m always on the brink of exploding, but I’m contained. Always contained.”
I let out a deep, long breath.
“The accident on the mountain must have brought it all back,” Teddy says softly. “And now Oliver.”
“Oliver felt like Sam. He was…still. Touching his chest was weird. I kept waiting for a heartbeat.” I stare out at the glass-like lake. It’s still early in the afternoon, but I can’t hear any birds. I don’t hear anything at all. Like Oliver, the lake is still. Teddy and I pass the bottle back and forth a few times, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I break the silence a few minutes later. “Did you ever notice how quiet it is out here?”
“Yeah,” Teddy says. “It’s kind of freaky. Having the lake to ourselves has been sweet, but I really wish there were people around. Especially now. We need to tell the police what happened. And Oliver’s parents.”
“Oh my God.” I bury my face in my hands. �
��His mom is going to be devastated.”
Oliver’s dad left when he was a kid, so it’s just been Olly and his mom. Though they didn’t really get along, the news was going to crush her.
“Maybe we should go check out other houses and see if they have a radio or something.” Teddy says. “Who knows, maybe Hayley stopped at one of the houses after her hike.”
“Oliver and I were going to check out the neighbors before he, uh, fell,” I say. “I thought Hayley might’ve been looking for an internet connection. She runs this organic vegan website and is always tweeting or blogging. I wouldn’t be surprised if she checked that first before e-mailing our parents for help.”
Teddy stands up and holds out his hand. “Well, let’s go find her then. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a truck or something.”
I stand up and stumble forward. Suddenly the hot summer air is pushing against me from all sides. I feel like I’m suffocating. Sweat beads on my forehead and my stomach turns. “Is it just me or is it insanely hot out?”
Teddy already has his shirt halfway off. “Does the temperature always spike like this?”
“No.” I look around the unmoving lake. “It doesn’t.”
Teddy unbuttons his shorts. “Would it be insanely disrespectful of us if we went for a quick dip?”
Sweat is already pouring down the back of my thighs. I might actually pass out if I try to climb the stairs like this.
“I don’t think we have a choice.” I pull off my clothes and dive in.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The cold water caresses my skin. It strips the sweat away the second I’m fully submerged. I kick along the bottom of the lake, enjoying the feel of the tiny bubbles against my hot skin. I break the surface face first, just like the Little Mermaid.
“This is incredible,” I groan. Something about the water just makes everything feel better. Good even. Only seconds into the lake and I’m having a hard time remembering why I’m sad. Sam and Oliver’s face flickers in and out of my head, but I can’t focus on it. The water is just too nice.
Teddy swims toward me. All signs of troubles are gone from his face. “I don’t remember the water feeling this good. It’s so refreshing.”
