They both left well after midnight, and I quietly put the jar back in its hiding spot downstairs. If I’m being totally honest, I should tell you that the ashes really didn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t looking at them as some haunting symbol of my former self. They weren’t like the score at the arcade—they had nothing to do with my old life. I didn’t feel the need to do something with them, to find them some special final resting place. That wouldn’t change anything about my situation. But to Kyle and Hatton, it was different. It’s like they instinctively needed to rid them from my life. That’s the thing about having friends like the two of them—sometimes they know what you need way before you realize it yourself.
The next night Cate called me on her way over. She said we had to clear the air and get some things straight. I knew that couldn’t be a good sign, but still, it was a chance to be alone in a car with her and I’d take it, no matter the consequences.
I met her in the driveway, and it felt a little like she was mad, like maybe she’d been rehearsing some long speech to deliver to me on her ride over.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. I just . . . we have to talk about what happened the other day.”
“Well, we don’t have to. I mean, we could just chock it up to science if you want.”
“That’s not funny,” she said, trying not to smile.
“Okay . . .”
“How was Christmas?” she asked, punching me lightly on the arm.
“It was good.”
“Your mom and dad must’ve been over the moon, I’m sure.”
“Over the moon? What’re you, fifty?” I laughed.
“Shut up.”
“They seemed happy, yeah,” I said. “It’s starting to feel normal again. Everything is sort of falling back into place, I guess.”
“About that,” she said. “I told Turner we’ve been hanging out. I had to. He thought it was just the one time, but I couldn’t keep lying.”
“What’d he say?”
“He was a little pissed at first. Of course he was. I would be too. Then he was glad I’d told him. He said if it was important to me that I see you, that we stay friends, then he was okay with it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Travis. He’s a really nice guy. I told you that. He just wants what’s best for me.”
“That’s all I want too.”
“I know. But the other night. You can’t just do things like that. You can’t just come at me like that and expect things not to be weird. You just came back from the dead, Travis, and as much as I’d like to put myself in your shoes and imagine what that feels like, I can’t. I just know there are certain things you can’t control that you just have to learn to deal with. The world isn’t going to end if you don’t get exactly what you want. Trust me, I know.”
“How do you know?” I was stunned at this suddenly serious tone she was using with me. Maybe a few days away had given her time to figure out what I was up to.
“Because until I lost you, every little thing seemed so important to me. Then you were gone, and I was left wondering why I’d given a shit about any of it. For me, the world became something completely different, and I had to just deal with it and learn to get over it.”
“How can you expect me to hear you say things like that and not feel the way I feel about you, Cate?”
“I don’t know, Travis. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Turner wants to meet you before we can hang out again. That’s cool with you, right? I don’t ever want to be the kind of person who keeps secrets from my husband.”
Husband? Wow. This was the first time I’d ever heard her say it. It took all I could do not to open the door and roll out onto the pavement.
She pulled down my street again, having just made a long loop around the block. As we got close to my house, I saw my dad walking out to his car and getting inside. It was eight in the evening.
“Hey, hang back a second, okay?” I said to her.
“Why?”
“Just . . . hang back, okay? Where can he be going this late?”
“Pick up dinner?”
“No. We already ate. Follow him.”
“Travis, we are not following your dad.”
“Please. You and I both know that his weird late nights are not okay. Something is up. I have to find out.”
So we followed him. And maybe Cate’s five years without me were a little more exciting than she’d let on, because I swear she was a pro at this. She even let him go through a stoplight or two and caught back up, so he wouldn’t notice us. After we tailed him for about ten minutes, he turned into an apartment complex called the Villas at Red Oak. It was a fairly generic place, one of those two-level faux brick and aluminum siding buildings with exterior doors that all look identical except for their shiny gold numbers.
“Shit,” Cate said, almost whispering.
“Pull in over there. I don’t think he’ll see us.”
We parked on the other side of the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the swimming pool and separated it from the parking lot. The pool was covered by a large gray tarp that had a puddle of dirty water collected in its center, making it sag. We peered through the fence to where my dad had parked and saw him walking up the metal and concrete stairs to the second level. Neither of us said a word. I imagined it twenty times before it could happen, some strange young woman opening the door and greeting him with a kiss or a hug or both. Maybe, I thought, she’d take his hand and lead him inside, and I’d never be able to look at him again without wanting to cry.
He eventually stopped at one of the green doors. I made sure to remember it was the seventh one from the left. Then he took a key out of his pocket, turned the lock, walked inside, and shut the door behind him. He never saw us. But that didn’t matter. We saw him. I saw him.
“I’m sorry, Travis,” Cate said.
“What am I gonna do?” I asked.
What was there to do? My father, the best man I ever knew, the most honest one too, was doing something I’d never thought in a million years he would do to my mother. And all I could wonder was how long he’d been doing this and how long he’d keep it up if I didn’t say anything. A big part of me wanted to call my mom right then. I thought it might be easier that way, if she just caught him in the act and then knew exactly why things had been so weird, why he’d been working late and on the weekends. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let her see it, and I knew I had to calm down before I could try to see it for myself. So I told Cate to take me home, and I cried the whole way. And she never said a word. She only gripped my hand that wasn’t really mine and listened to the sound of Jeremy Pratt’s heart breaking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
HEART BREAKING
How I managed to go a whole week without saying anything about what I’d seen, what I knew, is something I’m still not sure I can explain. They say when you’re in a state of shock, your brain has a way of detaching you from the world and everything going on around you. They say that once it’s over, you feel like you can’t remember huge chunks of time from days and days of your life. That’s not unlike how I was feeling the day I had to go back to school. It was January 2, a Wednesday. I remember that because everyone was complaining all day long about starting back in the middle of the week.
“They know we aren’t gonna do anything today, right?” Hatton whispered to me in class.
I didn’t answer. I was tapping my pencil on my desk and thinking about my dad turning that key and walking into that apartment. I was replaying it in slow motion, zoomed in. I could almost hear the sound of the key as it scraped against its matching metallic ridges.
“Travis? You okay?” he whispered again, poking at the back of my shoulder.
“I’m fine.”
I hadn’t whispered. I’d said it out loud as if the entire class were part of our conversation. Everyone turned around and looked at me, and Mrs. Lasetter stopped midsentence and glared right into my eyes.
“What was that, Tra
vis?”
“He said he’s fine,” this guy named Adam Murphy said from the front of the room.
I didn’t say anything. I just nodded my head and looked right at her. I wanted her to get angry. I wanted her to kick me out, to yell at me for interrupting the class. In the weirdest way possible, this is what I wanted more than anything right at that moment. I wanted to be separated from everyone just like my brain had been trying to do for days.
“Okay,” she said before turning to the board and starting an endless scribble of equations and notes.
After class Hatton followed me all the way to my locker and then the cafeteria. We got our food and sat down without either of us speaking a word. For a few seconds we had this sort of stare-down. I speared a shriveled grape from my fruit cup and twirled my fork in front of me. He opened his carton of chocolate milk and took a sip. One of us would break first. It was only a matter of time.
“Dude, what the hell is up with you?” Hatton lost. I knew he would.
“Nothing.”
“That’s a lie. You’ve been acting weird all day.”
“It’s nothing. Really. Let’s talk about something else, okay?”
“Okay. Here’s something: I’ve got some ideas for your ashes.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I was reading all about these crazy things people do with them. There’s some pretty bizarre shit.”
“Like what?”
“Okay. For instance, you can pay to have your ashes sent into space. Which is pretty cool. But it’s, like, a thousand bucks.”
“Pass.”
“Okay. Then there’s some people who can do a fireworks display using your ashes.”
“That’s disgusting. What if it falls down on people?”
“True. I didn’t think about that.”
“Yeah. Or it falls down into a cow pasture and the cows eat it, and then people are having Travis Coates Ash steak the next week. No, thanks.”
“What about having them pressed into a vinyl record? You can put whatever songs you want on it or even record a message. I thought that one was pretty cool.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“See, the problem here is that you’re alive. So, really, you don’t need to be memorialized in any special way, I guess. But I think we should find something to do with them, right?”
“For sure. I can’t have them in the house with me. It’s like saving a severed limb or something.”
“How willing would you be to get a tattoo?”
“Not very. Why?”
“They can grind up the ashes with tattoo ink and then . . . well, they’ll be with you forever.”
“Wow. No. You can get one, though. You have my permission to get a tattoo made out of my ashes. Go for it.”
“Don’t dare me, Travis.”
“I’m not kidding. I’ll pay for it.”
“I’m scared of needles.”
“Sure you are. Sure, sure.”
“Okay. Last one. I think this may be the winner, too. There’s a company that will use the carbon in your ashes to make two hundred and fifty pencils. They’ll even put a message on the side. Imagine, we can give everyone we know a little bit of old Travis!”
“I don’t hate it,” I said. “But I also don’t know why anyone would want a pencil made out of an incinerated disease-ridden body either.”
“I’ll keep looking. We’ll find something appropriate.”
“Maybe we should think more . . . globally. We could mail little Ziplock Baggies of ash to people all around the world and have them flush it down their toilets.”
“Now you’re just being crazy, Travis.”
As we began discussing the difference between “crazy” and “creative,” Matt Braynard approached our table and sat down beside Hatton. He even put one arm around Hatton’s shoulders, which made him flinch.
“Fellas,” he said.
“Matt,” I mustered. Hatton was silent. He was so silent, in fact, that I was afraid of what he might do.
“Can you guys hang after school for a few minutes today?”
“For what?” Hatton asked defensively.
“Well, as you know, I’m the president of the Christian Youth Club, and we’ve been working on a little project that I think you guys—especially you, Travis—might be interested in seeing.”
“What kind of project?” I didn’t trust this guy for a second. His hair was too perfect, gelled up in the front and forming a little wave to one side.
“A secret one. You’ll like it. Just come by, okay, guys? It won’t take long.”
He got up and walked away, but not before patting Hatton really hard on the shoulders. I thought Hatton might get up and tackle him, but he didn’t. He was Hatton Sharpe. His rage would have to stew internally.
“Do we go?” I asked.
“Up to you. I’d just as soon never see that guy again.”
“Me neither. I say no. In fact, I have an idea.”
“What?”
“Let’s leave right now. I don’t want to be here. This is pointless.”
“You want to skip class? We have no car, Travis.”
“I think Kyle’s still on break for the holiday. I bet he’d come get us.”
“We’ll get caught. We’ll get caught and I’ll have to repeat sophomore year, and my life will be over.”
“Hatton. Geez. If we get caught, we might get detention. We never do anything wrong. And I’ll take the fall for it. We’ll lie and tell them I had an emergency or something. It’ll be fine.”
So we didn’t go to chemistry but instead walked right out the front doors and stood at the corner of the parking lot to wait on Kyle. He’d answered on the first ring, said he’d go crazy if his mom asked him another question about his “lifestyle” or what kind of boys he was into, and that he’d be glad to assist two teenagers in breaking the law. Not one single person who walked by us in the parking lot asked us why we weren’t in class. Kids like us, you know, we just looked like we wouldn’t do anything we weren’t supposed to do.
“Gentlemen,” Kyle said once we were inside his truck. “Adventure awaits us.”
“Where we going?” Hatton was still nervous, gazing back toward the school as we drove away.
“Well, I’d suggest the arcade, but . . .” Kyle rolled his eyes, smiling.
“Funny,” I said. “I know a place.”
I gave him the address for the Villas at Red Oak, but I wouldn’t tell either of them why we were going. When we eventually pulled into the apartment complex, they both seemed really confused and pretty let down.
“This doesn’t seem fun at all,” Hatton said.
“Is this where Cate’s living now?” Kyle asked.
“No. Look, guys. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Oh God,” Kyle said, his tone one that I could remember well. I’d told him really bad news before, and I immediately felt terrible for misleading him.
“No, no. Nothing bad. I mean, it’s bad but not for you, I guess.”
“What is it? Why are we here?” Hatton was looking out all the windows like he’d still get caught skipping class across town.
“Last week Cate and I were driving up to my house, and we saw my dad leaving . . . and we followed him.”
“You followed your dad?” Kyle asked.
“Cate? You’re back with Cate?”
“No,” Kyle and I said at the same time.
“Just let me finish, okay? We followed him and we ended up here. Now, I know I’ve talked to both of you about my dad’s weirdness lately. Like, the late nights and the working on weekends and everything. Well, I think I figured out what’s been going on.”
“Is your dad a serial killer?” Hatton asked.
“Hatton!” we yelled.
“Cate and I sat here and watched him walk all the way up those stairs over there, take out a key, and walk into that apartment.” I pointed toward the door.
“Shit,” Kyle said
.
“I’m confused,” Hatton said. “Why’s your dad have a key . . . oh.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I need you guys to wait here for a few minutes while I go up there and settle this.”
“What?”
“My dad’s car is right there.” I pointed to his maroon SUV, which was parked in the exact spot as one week earlier. “He’s up there right now, in the middle of a workday, probably doing something I do not want to see, but I can’t let him keep this up.”
“Are you sure, Travis?” Kyle said. “Maybe you should talk to your mom first.”
“Nope. This is the only way. You guys just wait here.”
So I walked up the metal and concrete stairs, my hand gripping the railing. I came to the seventh green door from the left and stopped in my tracks. I turned around to look down at Kyle and Hatton, who were watching through the front windshield of the black truck. I thought at least if I had to lose someone that day, then I still had these two people. Then I braced myself, planted my feet in front of the door, and knocked. And I knocked hard. It couldn’t be ignored or missed. It meant business.
The door swung open, and Dad stood before me in a light blue T-shirt and khaki pants. His face was scruffy from a few days of not shaving, and his stance was weak, shoulders folded in a little with the realization of what was happening. His glossy eyes were fixed on mine, and his mouth was hanging half-open.
“Travis, what’re you doing here?”
“You answer first.” My voice was stern and cold.
“You should come inside.” He stood back, opening the door wider.
“No. I don’t want to come in there. Are you fucking crazy?” I was yelling now.
“Travis. I think you’re confused. Come inside, okay? Come inside and we’ll talk.”
“Where is she? Is she here? Is she in there? I want to see her. What’s her name?”
“There is no her, okay?”
“No her?”
“I’m the only one here. Now come inside.”
Confused, frustrated, and freezing, I followed him into the warmth of the apartment and took a seat on a gray sofa. The place was sparsely furnished with bare walls and empty coffee and side tables. A large TV had muted football playing on it. My dad took a seat on the edge of a recliner that rocked back a little, making this tiny squeaking sound that would’ve made me laugh if this had happened at any other moment in time.
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