We All Fall Down

by Natalie D. Richards

  Chase sneers at Theo. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “You want the full psychiatric report? ADHD, ODD… Shit, Paige, help me out. I’ve got to be forgetting some letters here.”

  My face burns, eyes hot with tears. “I’m done with you.”

  Theo shrugs. “Who isn’t done with me?”

  I’m walking past them when Chase barrels into Theo, a hard shove that bumps me sideways in my silly sandals. I suck in a sharp breath, and Theo looks at Chase like he’ll kill him.

  Or maybe like he’s jealous.

  Just like that, I get it. He touched my face on the bridge. My face.

  This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. But pieces are falling together, building a picture I can’t miss. Theo reaching for me on the bridge tonight. His face when I talked about Chase. The way he’s acting right now.

  Chase tries to stroke my arm with an apology. And Theo explodes.

  “No! Please no!” I say, but it’s too late.

  Time doesn’t slow down. Everything’s in fast-forward, the heel of my sandal sliding on slick wood. Chase reaching, Theo drawing back a fist. I move to pull someone away, to get between them. It’s the wrong time, wrong angle, wrong everything.

  Theo’s aiming for Chase. But I shove my way between them in that last second.

  The punch lands on my mouth. So hard I see a flash of white and hear the crack.

  My head snaps back and then forward. And then I’m on the ground. Theo’s screaming, cursing, Shit, shit, shit, Paige! No! My vision whirls, hands flying to my mouth.

  The pain smears the world into a pounding blur as I struggle to sit up. Chase has Theo on the dock, calling him every awful name, slamming his face over and over, but Theo just looks at me, eyes wide with horror. A thin keening comes next, stretching long through the air. It’s a terrible sound, and it’s coming from me.

  Chase screams to call 911. Footsteps are rushing. My mouth is full of copper and salt. Theo is crying, Chase’s knee across his back. Chase is punching him, but Theo is still reaching for me, fingers clawing at the dock.

  I open my mouth to say something, to stop the awful noise I’m making. Blood pours. Drips off my chin and hits my knees, my sandals. The pain keeps time with my heart, whiting out my vision one beat at a time.

  There’s a crowd now. A girl says she’s going to be sick. The cops are coming. A plastic chair is pushed behind me, and it’s cold when I sit down. Someone rips off a shirt and shoves it into my hands. I smell copper and salt and the river.

  I don’t know what he actually hit. My lips? My nose? Everything hurts. My jaw feels like it doesn’t close right. My mouth is full of blood and pebbles. I don’t know where they came from.

  Theo’s nose is bloody now too. Smeared with dirt. Chase tries to tell me it’s okay, but I can tell he’s grossed out by all the blood. He can’t look at me. And Theo can’t look away.

  I open my mouth to say something, to breathe, and I can feel those two little rocks rolling along my tongue. I spit them into my hand and lean back to look at them.

  They aren’t rocks. They’re teeth.

  Theo

  July 2

  The heat in Denny’s house is making me crazy. Well, crazier. I’m melting into the shitty pleather couch and leaving sweat smears on my phone screen. One window air conditioner is pumping cold, stale air in through the front window, but it’s not enough. I’m sweating playing video games, for God’s sake.

  Ohio Valley heat wave. That’s what the Weather Channel says. I’ve heard it eighteen thousand times today, because Denny apparently can’t take a shower or a shit or make a trip to the fridge without a meteorological update. I tried to share the virtues of other channels my first couple of days here, but since then I’ve let it play, watching women with very white teeth and manicured hands trace the swirls of jet streams and cold fronts across the continental United States.

  “Still looking like rain tonight?” he asks from the kitchen.

  “Starting at ten,” I tell him, though the time could have changed. I’ve actually had the channel muted since this morning.

  Denny clucks. “It’s going to wreck the fireworks Thursday.”

  “The front should move out by morning. Plenty of time to dry out.” I can’t believe we’re talking about this.

  “You know, I got a buddy with a boat.”

  I don’t say anything, just bang my thumbs against my phone harder, trying to keep my pixelated guy on his pixelated platform so I can win absolutely nothing and waste an assload of time doing it.

  “We can go out together,” Denny says when I don’t answer, aiming for casual and missing it. “Have a few beers.”

  I don’t remind him that there won’t be any beer for me. I don’t think Denny really expects me to stick to that promise. I don’t even think my parents expected it when I said it in the police station, cuffs still on, tears and snot running down to my damn chin. I guess words like charged with assault suck the wind right out of the parental trust sails.

  Not that the sails ever had wind. I’m the youngest of four boys and the most messed-up to boot. They’ve never known what to do with me. Mostly, we tiptoe around each other. They don’t kick me out, and I don’t burn down the house. It’s not the stuff of greeting cards, but whatever.

  “You should get out of the house,” Denny says.

  My video game guy dies again, starting me over. “I’m on house arrest.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass. It’s probation.” He says it like it’s a detention for skipping class. Maybe he sees it that way. I used to think Denny was cool—my uncle twin, the family always says. Now I want to pick at all that high school trouble he hints at. Was he as bad as me? Did he hurt someone too?

  My phone character falls again, tumbling end over end to a concrete sidewalk. It’s painless and bloodless. In other words, nothing like real life.

  I toss my phone beside me on the couch, but it’s too late. I’m already thinking of that night—Paige crying on a plastic chair, blood from her nose to the neckline of her sundress, her little glittery purse tangled under her feet. That’s what real life looks like.

  My fist and guts clench at the same time, and I scramble off the couch, spilling a soda and knocking over one of Denny’s ashtrays. I pick it all up, the can, the cigarette butts, pushing a wadded-up paper towel around the clutter on the coffee table.

  It’s too dark to see what I’m cleaning. We keep the curtains drawn tight in this room, a sad effort to block the heat of the sun. Eventually, I pitch the paper towel and empty the ashtray and call it good enough.

  “You all right out there?” Denny’s voice floats out of the kitchen again.

  I take a breath I can taste. Old smoke and soda syrup and somehow air conditioner too.

  “I’m good.” I’m not, though. There are ashes on my fingers, and my new meds are making me so jittery I can’t eat, but it’s not like I’m going to start skipping pills—

  A sound cuts in from outside, a weak cry with a shudder at the end.

  What was that?

  I cock my head toward the window. I still hear it out there. An animal maybe. Like a cat? Are there any cats around here?

  “Do you hear that?” I ask.

  There’s a scrape and bang of pans in the kitchen. Denny pokes his head into the living room, holding a half-burned sandwich. “Hear what?”

  “I don’t know. Like an animal?”

  His face scrunches like he’s trying to hear. “What kind of animal?”

  A dying one, if I had to guess. The hair on the back of my neck pricks up as I move from window to window, listening. It’s the same from all of them, faint and warbling, but definitely there. But what is it? A rooster? Maybe a kitten?

  Oh, shit. Could it be a baby crying?

  The sound fades abruptly, and I shake my head.
“It stopped. Maybe I’m hearing things.”

  Denny looks at me, and I look down, noting my rumpled cargo shorts and the paint-stained Carhartt shirt I didn’t bother to change out of after work. My fingers are cut up and shaking, and since I haven’t shaved since last Sunday, I don’t need to look in the mirror to know I look like shit. Sunburned shit.

  The cry winds up again, and I point at the window that seems closest to the sound, cocking my head because I know Denny will hear that. He has to. Everything about his face says otherwise, though. What the hell?

  “Maybe I was hearing the TV,” I offer lamely. I even shrug for good measure.

  Denny watches me for a minute longer, his jaw working like he’s trying to chew through a bit of gristle. “Look, Theo. You’ve been through—”

  I cough to cut him off, because wherever he’s going with this, I can’t follow. “You know, maybe you’ve got a point about me getting out of the house.”

  He nods slowly, still ruminating whatever armchair-therapist crap he was about to spit out. He must think better of it, because he adjusts his cap on his thinning hair and sighs. “Look, I know you need to stay out of trouble, but you’re like a different person. You need to cut loose.”

  “The last thing I need to do is cut loose,” I argue.

  “I don’t mean go out and rob a bank, but this new little goody-two-shoes habit?” He sighs like it’s a new little heroin habit. “I don’t know. All those pills you take.”

  “I’m not on drugs, Denny. They’re prescribed.”

  “I know, I know. But you’re eighteen years old. You can’t need that many pills at your age. Hell, I’ve never taken nothing in my life, and I’m almost forty.”

  “I’ve explained this. Things are different now.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe different isn’t good. You don’t even leave the house, kid.”

  It’s true. Other than following him from the house to our work site—and if we just got paid, Anita’s for lunch—and back again, I haven’t left. Not once in the two weeks I’ve been here.

  Out of the corner of my eye, the TV flickers. The forecast loop starts over, and out of nowhere—or maybe everywhere—I’m about to come out of my skin being in this dark, closed-in room in this house that needs more work than any of the jobs Denny ever lands.

  Whatever it is, it’s enough to push me out the door without a single thought beyond a wave at Denny as I pass.

  Outside, the sunlight hits me like a hard slap, and the heat is so lazy and sticky that I feel like I’m wading through soup. Maybe Anita’s is open—I could go for a milk shake. There could be somebody playing baseball down at the park. I could watch that.

  I pass Denny’s truck, ladders strapped to the top and loose screws and bolts in the bed. I’ll probably drive something like this for the rest of my life. Used to think I wanted to be a paramedic or a fireman. Then this chick at a career day at school talked about all the records, from grades to social media, that a prospective employer might look at. It was probably a don’t-text-nudes message, but still. I’m pretty sure they don’t hire firemen with hefty mental health treatment portfolios, let alone arrest records.

  The whining drifts around me again, and my feet stop. I’m halfway up the block, as I turn around and around, looking for the source of the noise. There’s something pretty desperate about that thin cry. Something creepy too.

  I follow it a little farther into the Village, over buckled slabs of sidewalk and past sagging front porches. Some houses hum with the efforts of hardworking air conditioners. Others are stuck with the buzz of box fans and shiny black carpenter bees instead.

  I cut north, toward the river and Anita’s Diner, the sound cutting in and out of different alleys, but it’s moving toward the river—going to water. Maybe it’s a power tool. An animal that sick wouldn’t be moving. It’d probably be dead.

  The little stretch of shops is quiet. Heat’s got everybody slowed down, I guess. A waitress who wastes far too many flirty smiles on me is locking the front door of Anita’s, across from the ramp up to the bridge.

  I don’t look at the ramp, and I sure the hell don’t look at the stairs that lead down to the docks. But it’s a small town, so options for a drink are slim. I cross the street, planning to con her out of a bottle of root beer, but she’s on her phone, putting away her keys.

  “Do you know how to get there?” she asks whoever’s on the other end of the line.

  I’m raising my hand to wave, so I don’t scare her, and she turns to me, cocking a hip out as she smirks. She gives a little half wave, still talking on the phone.

  “I know you’ll probably take a shortcut that adds ten minutes.”

  I’ve heard that before. Paige said that to me.

  My stomach twists, and I shake my head. No. It’s coincidence, or maybe I heard her wrong. Because that night was four months ago. It’s over now.

  The waitress looks at me, lips curving up. My stomach slides sideways, and there it is again. The hurt-animal sound. Like something sobbing. Or maybe laughing. My insides go cold, and I give the waitress a two-fingered salute and walk right on by.

  Back on the other side of the street—the bridge side—I swipe a sweat-slick palm across my forehead and try to breathe. To think.

  I’ve been inside too long. I’m losing it.

  I take a breath that is all river—water and fish and gasoline. I’m at the bridge ramp, and I’m not sure how. Or why. But I’m still walking, boots scraping across the cement.

  A soft, familiar beat with a whining guitar floats from the river. I can’t hear the animal anymore, but I can hear this. That song she loved about everything changing.

  Paige.

  Even thinking her name rolls chills up my back. I close my eyes, and that night is unleashed. The song grows louder, and memories skip wildly through my mind. Us in the car, on the bridge, on the docks. There were other people there, but Paige is all I see.

  Paige in her pretty sundress, smiling and smiling. Paige on a white plastic chair, bleeding and bleeding.

  I open my eyes, and I’m halfway across. I can’t be. I don’t remember walking out here. It’s all a blur of heat and memory, but here I am, perched fifty feet above the pumping vein of the Muskingum River.

  The music—that song—it’s everywhere.

  I lick my lips and push my greasy hair off my face while the song cries on about slow rides on long nights and everything changing, changing, changing. Things did change. This is as close to Paige as I’ve been since they led me away in handcuffs. She’s across the river, though, in the land of science programs, pretty brick buildings, and chemically treated lawns.

  I take a step back, warped wood catching my foot and half throwing me at the rail. Locks rattle, and my gaze drifts to the redbrick college buildings with bright-white trim.

  She’s somewhere over there, doodling in a notebook or using a microscope or solving a world problem. Shit, I don’t know. I only know she’s healed and away from me. And thank God for that.

  The song shifts to the chorus again, and I look up for speakers, look down too. Sound can be weird on the river—maybe there’s a band on campus. The chorus rises, and I forget about the speaker, think of Paige instead. I wanted to kiss her that night. What if I had? The music tears at my ears, thumps in my veins. Man, I hate this song. I fiddle absently with one lock after the next. Small one, round one, big one—

  My hand closes around hot metal, and the song cuts off.

  Just like that.

  It’s so abrupt that I curse, my voice loud in the sudden quiet.

  Someone shrieks behind me. I look back, spotting a trio of college girls. They’re young. Freshmen. Maybe even high school juniors on a program like Paige. But they aren’t like Paige. They don’t have freckles or wavy hair that flips up at the ends. They’re like every girl in every Ohio town, straight glossy hair, w
inged eyeliner and all.

  They cut their eyes away from me, and I look at my unlaced work boots. Try to shrink. They’re afraid of me, and I get it. I look like the kind of guy that might hurt a girl.

  Which is exactly what I am.

  I turn back to the railing, still holding the padlock. The girls move a little easier now, hopefully convinced I’m mostly harmless. I want to ask them if they heard the music, but I don’t. I listen to the retreat of their footsteps and the gurgle of the river instead.

  The sun is fat and drifting west, and there are no dying kittens or strange songs. It’s fine. I’ll call the doctor. Tell him something in my ADHD cocktail is off, and he’ll write a new list of prescriptions to make my hands shake and my brain settle.

  I turn the big lock over in my hand and uncurl my fingers. Reading the initials. I pull back, cocking my head.

  Because I can’t be reading that right.

  But I am.

  The initials are TQ and PVY.

  And I can’t think of one other set of names that would stand for except Theodore Quinn and Paige Vinton-Young.

  Paige

  The sun is delicious, shimmering off tiny ripples in the water. We should be collecting samples, but Melanie is stretched out on one of the wooden picnic tables, phone in hand and lips moving silently.

  It’s French. She’s been practicing some sort of speech she has to give to her online club all week. I don’t know how she juggles it. She’s in the Ecological Studies project with me, the French Intensive with a bunch of kids from back in Chicago, and she’s always messaging her school news group about content ideas for senior year.

  Melanie is twice as busy as I am, but done with everything in half the time. From her organizational skills to her perfect skin, I’m not sure if I should hate her or start a fan club.

  She pockets her phone suddenly and squints down at the river.

  “I miss the lake,” she says.

  “Hey, it’s still freshwater,” I say.

  She laughs and stretches her brown arms overhead. “I didn’t show you enough of the lake if you believe this mud strip is anything like it.”