by Rowan Massey
The swing went the other way and reached the edge. I startled at the sight of Zander making his way up the trail. I let the swing do it’s thing and take me back out. Again, I looked down and had my dark thoughts. He was standing at the spot where I had to get off, looking like he wanted to help me land if I needed it. I didn’t want to deal with him yet and I let the swing keep going one more time.
“You have to get off this time,” Zander told me, his expression serious. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”
Against my will, I was carried close to him again. I had to jump off or I’d be stuck. I reached one arm and leg out in preparation and made the jump, just barely, with Zander gripping me by the arm. I stumbled but didn’t fall to the ground. My shin hurt like a bitch.
I couldn’t look at him. I hated that he’d touched me. I walked away and leaned against the large trunk of the tree. Turning my back on him, I picked at the edges of the bark. From the corner of my eye, I saw him shuffling his feet towards me. He stopped a few feet from me.
“I was delivering flowers to your dad,” he said. “Probably his mysterious boyfriend sent them—”
“Zander,” I said through my teeth, remembering the shirts, “stop. You’re lying.”
He was silent, facing at an angle away from me and standing in a relaxed posture that I’d always thought was rehearsed. We allowed the sound of the wind to fill the silence for a while. When I spoke up again, I laid down the facts, counting them on my fingers. My voice was tight but I refused to cry.
“You told me I should put him on a dating site…” I started, “and then…I mean, you showed me you know how to lie. You really like lying, don’t you? Now you show up at my dad’s. Not in the delivery van, by the way—plain as day in your car. And then, I saw a text on his phone with your name on it. You had to have seen my pictures in the house and heard him talk about me, but he doesn’t know you know me or he would have mentioned it. And I’ve seen both of you…in each other’s clothes.”
He was nodding along, hands in pockets with his thumbs hanging out. He head was drooping to hide his eyes, but when he sensed I was waiting for his response, he looked at me, blinking as if he were confused.
“I didn’t want it to be like this…” he said.
“Just tell me what you’re doing with my dad, Zander.” My body was vibrating with anger and fear. If he would tell me what his motives were, I could start to deal.
His eyes squeezed shut and he was so tense his face was sweating more than I’d ever seen anyone sweat outside of a workout.
“I want to tell you everything,” he said, still with his eyes closed. “I have to talk to Clay first. Okay? Just give me that. I have to tell him myself. We’re going out to his old house tomorrow for the weekend. I can talk to him there, and when we get home, we’ll talk to you together, or he’ll talk to you probably. I don’t know. Please just don’t mention anything to him until then. Please.”
He opened his eyes, his expression pleading. I’d been expecting him to reveal himself to be a Machiavellian villain or something but he was only himself; a little nervous, a lot nice, just the same old Zan I’d been hanging out with for months.
As soon as I’d started putting all the clues together, I’d felt victimized, used, and scared of him. I didn’t feel any of that looking at him there in the woods. He wasn’t scary. He was scared.
“Are you two…you know…” I asked. It grossed me out and I didn’t want to say it. He had obviously just confessed to it but I wanted him to spell it out.
“Don’t worry about all that. Please, until we can explain it all.”
“Does he know how old you are?” I had to know.
He shook his head. “He thinks I’m twenty.”
I spun away from him and exhaled sharply. So it was true. There was only one reason he would lie about his age.
His footsteps were slow and soft behind me.
“Everything will make more sense in a few days,” he said quietly.
He walked past me and went back down the trail. I watched his stiff back until he disappeared behind the trees.
What if Zander was dangerous despite appearances? Did I want him around Dad, knowing what I knew? I didn’t know what kind of scheme he was running but I knew I didn’t want Dad to fall prey to it.
I took my phone out and considered calling Dad, but, not wanting to do anything rash, I put it back in my pocket again. Anyway, it wasn’t a discussion for text messages.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Zander Age 18
THE TREE ON gravity hill had a powerful aura swirling around it, colorful lights weaving through branches with the speed of urgency, the same lights I’d been seeing on and off since I hatched my big plan. The colors were brighter than the sun, shimmering and bouncing against the leaves. I tilted my head back as far as it would go to look up into the biggest branches. The lights were flowing out of the cracks and knots in bark. The tree was alive, clearly. It moved and whispered. What kind of animal was it? The way it branched out into the sky reminded me of my brain tumor. It was a mirror image of what was in my head. As soon as that idea entered my mind, the lights moved closer to me, straining to reach me, but unable to detach from the tree. I didn’t know if it was friendly or not, so I edged around it.
I was fixated on watching the mesmerizing show until I saw Lottie swinging among the colors, whooshing back and forth through bands of red and green and violet light as if nothing were there.
I didn’t like the way she was looking out into the air at the apex of each swing. Her body yearned out at the sky as if she was getting ready to fly off. I didn’t like the way she looked down either. Was the tree doing something to her? Were the lights that swirled around her head affecting her mind?
I was glad to get her onto solid ground, but she was understandably upset. She wrenched out of my grip as soon as she was safely on her feet. She turned and stood against the tree trunk. Colors flashed around her whole body, concealing her from me.
Trying to look at her was hurting my eyes. I had to look away. Out over the ridge, I witnessed something. Bridging out above the trees and houses, the lights continued in a long procession across the blue sky and under the white clouds, just like the aurora borealis, only during the day. They traveled in a long line so far into the distance that I couldn’t see the end of it. Why was the tree producing the lights? Where were they being sent?
The sensory overload made it hard to carry on a conversation. I was hot despite mild weather and my head was a fountain of sweat. My eyes teared up from the brightness. Despite all of that, I managed to defuse the situation with Lottie.
I was at my end game. I knew that. I’d imagined many endings and one of them was about to go down in family history.
I walked away from Lottie as soon as I could, but I stayed in my car waiting for her to leave the woods. I pretended to be talking on my phone and didn’t look at her as she came off the trail and got into her car. When she was gone, I headed back to the tree.
Some of the lights—the ones that were orange and blue and yellow—pulled themselves out of the crazy swirls that were going up and down the trunk. They reached for me like greedy fingers but they were limited. I held my hands out to my sides and slowly got closer until they lightly grazed my chest and stomach. I felt nothing on my skin, but it was real.
They hadn’t hurt Lottie and weren’t hurting me so I took another step closer, and another, until I touched the rough trunk and placed my hand on it.
I was engulfed.
Visually, it was overwhelming, but my sense of touch wouldn’t verify there was anything there. Of course, nobody can feel light touch their skin.
One of them flew into my eyes. I jumped back and swatted futilely at my face. The flashing kaleidoscope of color took over my vision. I was blinded.
A second or two passed in panic until I had the presence to back away from the tree. But it was too late. The lights showed me everything with a flourish. My inky
black brain tumor was set alight. I understood.
My life for so long had been mostly a cycle of feeling alright, feeling numb, and drowning in a murky soup of thoughts. And lately, to top it all off, there was something sliding around in my skull like a heavy tongue that licked at every moment and made it obscene. That wasn’t my fault. I knew that now. The lights would help me to see clearly, find truth in my memories, and become what I was always meant to be.
The colorful lights had been drawn to me because of the branching pattern of my tumor. I wished I could have lights in my head all the time, doing the opposite of what my tumor liked to do to me. I would never be confused, never be a fuck up again. I’d be whole, bright, and worthy.
I stood there for a long time with many thoughts going through my head. My life and all my lies, all my needs, all my mistakes, all my hurt—I saw it all as if from the eyes of a compassionate wise man who wanted to help. Then, with a smile, I realized that I was the wise man.
An undulating purple light showed me how I could have clarity that would last for life. I understood that if they weren’t tied to the tree, the lights would become tied to me. With the lights burning away every branch of the tumor until it was gone, I could live my life without being lost and angry all the time. If Clay saw that I was better and that everything I did had happened because of my tumor, which would be gone, my confession would be bearable for him to hear. He would forgive me and take care of me. If he didn’t want to go on being boyfriends, I would miss it, but it would be fine so long as I still had him as a dad and Lottie as a sister. I’d found my answers.
I left the lights for the shadows of the other trees and started gathering sticks off the ground. I would need a lot of it. Many of the sticks dead leaves on them that made my arms itch. There were a few deadfalls around and I managed to break some of the dry branches off of them by stomping them with my sneakers. I brought armful after armful to the base of the tree and propped the kindling up against the trunk. There were some low branches on the tree of lights, so I hoped it would catch fire easily enough. I took my button down shirt off, leaving my t-shirt on, and gathered bunches of dead leaves with it. After eyeballing the kindling, I felt like it needed some larger logs so I went out and found what could. I dragged one particularly heavy branch to it and rested it vertically against the tree.
I’d brought my lighter from the car. After wrapping my dirty shirt at the end of a stick, I set it on fire and used it to light the pyre in three places. The flames spread all the way around the tree quickly, and the large log caught fire easily, spreading the damage upwards to the twigs and leaves, which caught fire here and there. The smoke was already making me cough. Pulling my t-shirt up over my nose and mouth, I went to the tree swing and set it on fire just for fun. The fire ate through the rope in seconds. I watched the board drop down and disappear under a bush. The wood hadn’t caught fire but the rope was smoking.
I walked to the mouth of the trail but stopped to take in what the lights were up to. The rush of fire and color was overwhelming. It shot adrenaline and excitement through my limbs and put a lump in my throat.
Some of the swirly rainbow ribbons were hanging onto the tree for dear life, but as the fire climbed, they stopped flying around so desperately and floated outward, slowly leaving the tree entirely. A yellow one was drifting near. I ran to it, captured it between my hands like a beach ball, and it recognized my tumor. For a moment I was blinded again when it came in through my eyes, my brain was illuminated. I needed more. I kept running around, catching them until there were five hanging out on my tumor, their tail ends wagging around over my head and around my face.
The fire was becoming dangerous. I knew that, but I wanted to catch more. Branches were burning mostly on the limbs hanging out over the edge. The other half of the tree hadn’t caught fire as easily. The smoke was terrible, but there was so much color floating free. I needed it. I stayed away from the fire as much as possible and kept running around to greet and collect more color. With each color came more clarity, which meant I realized that I had just set a forest fire. I had to get out of the area as quickly as possible. There were a few forlorn lights still hanging around in the smoke, but I had all I needed.
I ran down to the car feeling like a new man. My eyes stung from the smoke and I couldn’t stop coughing. Once in the driver’s seat, I started to laugh and cough, laugh and cough. I’d committed a serious federal offence and I’d never felt better. Anything for Clay. I couldn’t wait to tell him I was cured. He’d be ecstatically happy for me.
As I drove away, everything was shiny and new. I had a huge grin on my face. I couldn’t help it. I was finally sane.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Clay Age 38
AFTER LOTTIE LEFT with her teenage drama to take care of, I double-checked the books I needed to read and review to make sure I didn’t miss publishing dates. I discovered two books wedged in behind the others. One was about what a therapist does when they need therapy, the other was about brain plasticity. I’d found books tucked away like that before. Anything even loosely related to mental health was getting hidden. I needed to talk to him about it. Things on our little trip to the country house should be pretty laid back and would hopefully make him feel safe enough to talk about why he’d been trying to keep me from reading them.
I put them back in their place and typed out their information on my laptop. It was a bad habit of mine to preoccupy myself with other things as soon as something became uncomfortable.
Before Lottie had disrupted us, Zander and I had been lounging around in my bed, talking about the trip, half-clothed and cuddling after some afternoon sex when Lottie texted me. I usually don’t pay any attention to my phone in the bedroom. I leave it on my desk before I enter my room as a matter of automatic habit in order to avoid fiddling with it in bed when I should be sleeping or getting up. But I heard Lottie’s tone and gave Zander a quick kiss on the cheek before getting up and going to take a look.
She was coming over. We had two minutes.
“What is it?” Zander asked. He stood naked in the bedroom doorway and had no doubt seen the panic on my face.
“Lottie. Uh…”
“Is she okay?”
“She’ll be here in a couple minutes.”
Zander spun around and went back into the bedroom to get dressed at record speed. I joined him, but it felt ridiculous. I should be able to introduce them. Maybe if I told Zander to relax and just come up when he was ready and they could meet each other… but he was already kissing me goodbye, running upstairs two steps at a time and letting the door slam on his way out. He didn’t want to meet her. That would be the second thing we would talk about on our trip.
The next day, we arrived at around eleven, having been in the car just over three hours because we kept needing to stop and let Remmy use the bathroom and stretch his legs. He never could keep his cool on car rides.
Overall, the drive had been pleasant. Zander brought his favorite music, I brought mine, and we made fun of each other’s taste. I took a chance and brought up the books he’d been hiding. He’d slouched in his seat, embarrassed.
“I just don’t want you to think of me that way,” he said. “I don’t trust any of that stuff. Some of it’s total nonsense. It’s not me. And anyway, I’m doing better. I think I’m cured.”
He said this last with a big grin on his face but I could only muster a sad smile. I doubted something so severe could just be cured.
He’d leaned toward me, wanting a reaction, saying, “Clay, I’m off meds now. I feel a lot better!”
So I did smile, even though I instantly worried about him not taking his medicine. I managed a one-armed hug while trying to drive.
“That’s good news,” I said. “We should celebrate. I brought wine and I’m going to make you some very fancy spaghetti.”
The spaghetti was the leftovers I’d brought along in a cooler. He laughed and smacked my shoulder then rubbed the spot in case it hurt. I ki
nd of loved it when he did that.
We’d been driving past farms for quite a while before we reached the house. Its long gravel driveway had weeds growing in it but there was no money to fix it. I always respectfully saluted the dog’s grave as I passed it in the yard. It still served as a reminder of lessons learned.
Pulling up in front of the house, seeing that it was a melancholy shadow of its former self, I mentally relented to all the arguments for its sale. The roof didn’t look especially good, and if it continued to need repairs and paint and so on, I would end up spending so much rent money on fixing it that it would stop being worth it. I had some ideas for expanding my website to try to make up for it in income. I wanted the full amount to go to Lottie and Lysander, which would mean contacting Lysander again. I’d already been drafting emails and leaving them unsent. I didn’t want it to look like I was using money to manipulate his choice not to meet, but I wanted him to have it. It would be tricky.
