Walking Through Needles

by Heather Levy

  Sam took a hot shower in her aunt’s huge bathroom, the black and white tiles as cold and sterile as the rest of the place. She ran her hand over her growing stomach.

  Eos.

  That was the name she had for the baby. The Greek goddess of the dawn, of new beginnings. But the baby wasn’t a new beginning. She was the end of everything, but Sam now knew for sure she wouldn’t be able to go through with an abortion even if she were allowed the choice. It’d be like killing a part of herself, a part of Arrow. She held the tears in, forced them down into the space she usually saved for Isaac, the space that felt pain but allowed it to wash over her and away.

  She got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around her body and hair. She walked into the red, black, and white living room, her aunt sitting on the blood-red couch talking on the phone. She saw Sam and stopped talking.

  “I have to go. I’ll call you back.”

  “Who was that?”

  Aunt Shelley smiled, nervousness flitting across her face. “No one, sweetie.”

  Sam’s heart fell to her toes.

  She knew. Her aunt had called her mama, and now everyone would know, everyone would find out about the baby and make her come back home, back to Isaac. She couldn’t hold the tears in again. She had cried too much over the last few days, so they were always right there, ready to surface.

  Aunt Shelley didn’t move from the couch, the phone sitting on her lap.

  “Sweetie…I’m sorry. You really should’ve listened to me.”

  Chapter 39: Sam, 2009

  For the longest time, Sam couldn’t move her body as she sat in her office. She pressed her eyes with her palms, the words Meredith said to her still repeating: Fucking baby killer.

  Tears didn’t come. Instead, pain settled deep and heavy in her chest, steadily simmering and growing into fury.

  Her workday finally ended. The sun’s light was waning by time she pulled up to her house. Her grass was getting too high, she noticed as she walked up to her front porch. A child’s singsong voice whizzed by her. She turned her head and saw a neighbor’s kid riding by on his bike.

  Then she lost it. She stood outside the front of her house sobbing, the rage and pain so great she thought she might die from it.

  When the neighbor kid rode by again, slower, Sam forced herself back to a somewhat calmer state. She walked her long driveway to the back of the house, opened her garage door and went straight for the lawnmower.

  Thirty minutes later, she was drenched in drying sweat, the grass bagged in plastic and sitting next to the curb, but the rage was still humming in her body.

  She went inside, fed Zeus, and took a quick shower, trying to talk herself out of doing what she knew she’d do the moment Meredith left her work. She told herself she should call Eric, let him know what Meredith said to her. He’d talk her out of going to Meredith’s place, which was exactly why she didn’t call him.

  Keys in hand, she grabbed her purse and cellphone and was about to sweep out the door when Zeus ran up to her, whimpering. She paused, looking down at his sad dog eyes, and scooped him up.

  She drove straight to Guthrie. It wasn’t until she pulled into the gravel parking lot of the apartment complex that a rush of anxiety made her question her decision. The front windows to Meredith’s apartment unit glowed a soft yellow. Someone was home, for sure.

  Sam reached for her cellphone, ready to shoot Eric a quick text letting him know where she was just in case things turned bad. She cussed when she saw her phone was dead. She lowered her car windows an inch, allowing a balmy breeze to flow in, and left Zeus in the car.

  She walked up the stairs to the unit, pushed down her nerves. She knocked on the door hard enough to redden her knuckles, trying to resurrect the fury she felt an hour before.

  The door cracked open a few inches, revealing a tall teenage boy, the wavy mop of honey-blond hair Sam wanted to reach out and touch, it was so much like Eric’s at that age.

  “Caleb?”

  He opened the door wider, leaning against the doorframe, casual but his stance told Sam he was wary.

  “Yeah. What do you want?”

  Any anger she had summoned evaporated. “Is your mother home?”

  “She’s out.”

  “With her boyfriend?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Could I come inside and wait for her?”

  Caleb scanned her again, his sullen expression eerily like Eric’s.

  “You’re the lady my mom yelled at that one day.”

  Sam heard Zeus’s whine spiked with an occasional yip coming from the parking lot. She knew she should leave, but there was too much she needed to ask Meredith.

  “Yeah, I’m helping your mom with a bank loan. It’s very important that I speak with her as soon as she gets back.” She quickly added, “The number she listed on her application isn’t working so I can’t call her.”

  The boy smirked at her, completely altering his demeanor to one reminding her too much of Isaac—charming, dangerous. It was like Caleb was suddenly interested in her.

  “You’re not a very good liar.”

  He opened the door fully and left the entryway, which Sam took to mean “come inside.” She shut the door and followed Caleb into a tiny living room with ancient green carpet. The furniture, a sagging beige couch and recliner, looked to be from Goodwill but the apartment was clean and a lot tidier than Sam expected from the place’s exterior.

  Caleb sat in the center of the couch, a video game controller next to him. She saw he had a game paused, the onslaught of attacking zombies frozen on the TV screen. The fact he didn’t immediately start playing again made her feel stupidly flattered.

  She sat on the recliner, and Caleb seemed disappointed she didn’t sit next to him.

  “So, what do you really want with my mom?” Caleb said after an awkward minute.

  “That’s for your mom and me to discuss.”

  He sank back into the couch, his expression so dramatic and sour Sam had to stop herself from smiling. She didn’t miss being a teenager, everything seeming so life or death. Her breath caught in her throat a second. Sometimes it really was life or death at that age.

  “Does my mom owe you money? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Does she owe a lot of people money?”

  Caleb appeared to roll the question around.

  “Sometimes.” He looked away from her, staring at the game controller.

  Sam felt sorry for the kid. Eric had told her about Vickie’s addiction issues, and it sounded like she had passed on the same issues to Meredith.

  “No, your mom doesn’t owe me money.”

  Caleb started to say something and paused. “Sometimes she has to borrow so she can go to the clinic for her medicine. She gets sick without it.”

  Sounded like Meredith was going to a methadone clinic. At least she was trying to stay sober.

  “She works a lot, though. She always pays people back.”

  Sam noticed his vintage-looking Misfits band T-shirt, which swallowed him. He seemed so thin, but she thought that of a lot of teens; she had a strong urge to feed him.

  “Can’t your father help your mom out with money?” Sam hated to ask it, but she wanted to see what the boy knew. Maybe Meredith had told him his father’s name.

  The look Caleb shot Sam said the answer was obvious. “I don’t have a father.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Where her own father was now, dead or alive, she didn’t know, and she told herself she didn’t care.

  Caleb reached for the video game controller, and Sam knew she was losing him. His thumb hovered over a button, ready to shoot zombies again.

  “What if I know who your father is?” she said, watching his face change from apathy to intense alertness.

  He set the controller down, not taking his eyes off her.

  “Are you fucking with me?”

  She already regretted the words making his eyes
drill into her. “No. I’m not.”

  What the hell was she doing? She didn’t know for sure who this kid’s dad was—Isaac or Eric—and here she was stirring hope in him that could just as quickly be dashed to nothing.

  “Caleb, I—I don’t know for sure.”

  The boy cradled his head in his hands. “You’re totally fucking with me, aren’t you?”

  “I promise, I’m not. My friend—” Friend? She didn’t know what to call him, but friend was far from accurate. “Eric Walker is his name, and I think he might be related to you.”

  Caleb looked up at her. “Is that why you came here? Was it really to see me? To tell me this?”

  She was already forgetting her true reason for coming, to interrogate Meredith. The mixed pain and hope in Caleb’s face struck her like a slap.

  She stood up, slung her purse over her shoulder. “Yes. It’s why I came, but don’t tell your mom.”

  “Who are you?”

  She was surprised he hadn’t asked her before. She heard him ask her again while she made a dash to the front door. She opened the door and slammed into solid muscle.

  “What the fuck?” A tall man with a shaved head and two full sleeves of tattoos sidled past Sam into the apartment and got a good look at her. “Who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you here?”

  “I—” Sam’s eyes darted to the doorway and there stood Meredith, holding an ice cream sundae in one hand, her cellphone in the other.

  Caleb, mouth agape, crept up near his mother, whose face was slack with shock.

  Meredith quickly composed herself and flashed a smile as huge and fake as her waitress smile. She turned to the man, keeping the smile.

  “It’s—it’s okay, babe. I know her.” She motioned for Sam to follow her outside. Caleb trailed them, but Meredith pushed the sundae into his hands and nudged him back toward the apartment, saying, “Extra nuts—like you wanted.” She added a playful but strained, “Get inside, boy, before it melts all over,” after he failed to move.

  Meredith shut the front door and followed Sam to the parking lot, her smile dropped along the way.

  “You better have a damn good reason to be here.”

  The anger and pain from earlier in the evening came back to Sam. “What did Isaac tell you about me, about what happened in Blanchard?”

  Meredith’s face was stone.

  “‘Baby killer.’” Sam whispered, fighting the cries wanting to escape again, surfacing in her voice. “Did Isaac tell you that? Did he?”

  Meredith’s hard expression fell. “No.”

  “Why did you say it?”

  Her eyes were wide and searching Sam’s face and then the ground.

  “I overheard them—Isaac and my mom—talking…about you.”

  Sam pushed the tears down, swallowed them, but her heart continued to hammer in her ears. “Your mom? What did they say about me?”

  “How you weren’t pregnant anymore,” Meredith said and paused. “And Isaac told me before why you went to Dallas, so I—I thought…”

  Sam felt like she was choking on her own breath.

  “He told you about me?”

  Meredith looked as sick as Sam felt.

  Sam wanted to collapse right there on the gravel. Vickie knew what happened in Blanchard, what Isaac did, but Meredith didn’t. If she had, she wouldn’t have said those hateful words to Sam. There was something else there, fuzzy, out of focus, but so close she almost caught a glimpse of it. Vickie knew, but what else did she know? She for sure saw Isaac sometime before the attack and his escape. Maybe she knew how he ended up dead and buried near the Blanchard farm.

  “So, you didn’t do it—when you went to Dallas?” Meredith asked.

  Sam glared at her.

  “No. I didn’t. Not that it matters.”

  Meredith looked down at the ground again.

  “But you don’t care what really happened, do you?”

  Meredith crossed her arms and glanced up at Caleb, who was watching them from the window.

  “You didn’t want to be dragged into this mess, right?” Sam said. “Don’t want police knocking on your door and looking too closely at your past, especially with you being clean now.”

  Meredith smirked, but she couldn’t hide the alarm in her eyes.

  “Are you fucking threatening me?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Isaac’s murder.”

  “I know.” Sam wiped away her tears.

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  “The truth. What happened in Anadarko, with your mom and Isaac, with Eric?”

  Meredith stood completely still, her expression blank. Then she slowly nodded to herself as if she were having a conversation in her head.

  “Fine,” she finally said after a long pause. “But you may not want to know it once you hear it.”

  Chapter 40: Arrow, 1994

  Arrow tried to ignore the yelling downstairs, but it was impossible. He didn’t know Grandma Haylin could get so loud, her voice effectively drowning out Jeri. They were fighting over Jeri sending his dad to get Sam from Dallas. The fighting started the night before when Sam’s aunt called and continued well after his dad left early the following morning.

  It was past dinnertime, his dad gone much longer than even Jeri could explain. Yet, she tried. Maybe they had a flat tire. Maybe they saw how late it was and stopped for a bite to eat. Maybe they couldn’t find a phone to call from.

  Arrow had skipped school that morning. He ate breakfast and left the house as usual, but he went to Sam’s favorite spot in the woods, the place where she loved to sketch. By lunchtime, the November cold had sunk into his bones, making him shiver all the way back to the house where he snuck inside, stopping by the kitchen for a sandwich before hiding in his room. It wasn’t long before Jeri and Grandma Haylin started back up with the shouting.

  The noise downstairs ceased, too sudden, he thought, to be natural, which made him leave his room to see what was going on. Maybe Sam was back. He went to the kitchen and saw Jeri slumped on the linoleum floor, crying, Grandma Haylin on the floor with her, rocking her like she was a child.

  “Is she okay?” Arrow said.

  Jeri jolted up from the floor and went straight for Arrow. She slapped him hard across the face, knocking him back into the refrigerator.

  “You did it to her!” Jeri screamed, shaking him as he tried to get out of her arms. “I know you did, I know you did it!”

  “Enough, Jeri Anne!”

  Grandma Haylin pulled Jeri back, freeing Arrow from his stepmom’s grip.

  “He didn’t do anything, you stupid, blind fool,” Grandma Haylin roared, and Jeri ran from the kitchen. A moment later, a bedroom door slammed shut.

  Arrow held his cheek, felt the raised skin from where Jeri slapped him. Grandma Haylin took him by the shoulders, looked up into his shocked face. She shook her head.

  “I told you I didn’t wanna raise no great-grandbabies.”

  Her disappointment went through him, and he wanted to tell her they had used the condoms she gave him but it had been too late. It didn’t matter now. It wouldn’t change her or Jeri’s feelings about him. It wouldn’t change the fact that his father probably already had a plan to get rid of the pregnancy and Arrow would have no way to stop it. He didn’t want to think about why his dad and Sam were delayed in getting back.

  Grandma Haylin touched his sore cheek, her labor-worn fingers softer than they appeared.

  “You better sleep with one eye open and that pocketknife of yours under your pillow, boy. She’s not going to protect you and, frankly, she might be the one you should be afraid of right now.”

  She left him in the kitchen. He stood there next to the refrigerator for a long time, his will to move gone. He looked down at his left forearm, at the bruises his father made when he tried to squeeze out the truth of where Sam went, but Arrow took the pain, swore he di
dn’t know. His father then said if anything happened to Sam, it was Arrow’s fault.

  He was right. It would be his fault, just like Meredith.

  Arrow opened the refrigerator door and, without pause, took one of his father’s beers. He twisted the top off and chugged it. He had never tasted beer before, never had friends brazen enough to steal any and he had been afraid to steal from his father until now. It wasn’t as bad as he expected. He took another from the fridge and drank it down as fast as the first. He decided to stop after the fourth. He buried the empty bottles in the trashcan outside and climbed the stairs to his room, his stomach empty but for the alcohol sloshing around.

  Arrow fell onto his bed and closed his eyes. His head swam from the beers, a gentle lapping that would rise into sharp, spinning terror until he opened his eyes again. Soon, he could keep his eyes shut without the lurching fear. His breath became an even stream, flowing in and out of him, drifting him into sleep.

  “Eric,” a voice whispered right into his ear.

  He opened his eyes, but no one was there. Lightning flashed outside and a crack of thunder followed. He looked around his room again and sat up. This wasn’t his room. It was Meredith’s bedroom, the room in the crappy Anadarko rental house. He could make out her Color Me Badd poster taped to the wall.

  A hollow scream tumbled into the room. Arrow got out of the bed and opened the bedroom door. Down the longest hallway he’d ever seen, he saw a dim light. He didn’t want to walk to it, but his legs moved him against his will. The light grew closer, the screaming louder, and then he saw her: Meredith on the square dining table in the kitchen. Something was holding her arms down, but he didn’t see anything or anyone around her. She was naked from the waist down, her legs spread obscenely wide, the pregnant swell of her stomach as pale as the light shining down on her. Thick blood streaked her thighs—from what, he wasn’t sure, but he was terrified for her. Meredith gazed at him, quiet and calm now.

  You have to kill her, she spoke to his mind, her lips motionless.