The Year They Fell

by David Kreizman

  I could barely see through the tears flooding down my eyes, but I became aware that Pop was arguing with a huge, bearded man just to my left. The bearded man ripped Platinum away from me and insisted that we leave now. Pop tried to bribe his way out of our ejection, but I was already halfway out the door. He finally caught up to me in the car, where I couldn’t stop crying. Crying for the first time since the crash.

  “We had a plan.”

  * * *

  Pop came out of Mom’s bedroom dressed for dinner. “What were you doing in there?” I asked.

  “Just looking for toothpaste.”

  “You shouldn’t be in her room.”

  “It’s like the land that time forgot, Bud. It hasn’t changed since the day I left this house.”

  I walked past him to shut the door, but Pop reached out and pulled at my collar. “Hang on. You’re a little crooked.” He stepped in close to re-button my shirt. As his thick fingers worked the buttons, I caught a strong whiff of his deodorant, the same musky brand he’d used my whole life. I closed my eyes and let it take me back to the days when he was carrying me on his shoulders and tossing me up in the air until my head brushed the leaves.

  “Listen, Bud,” he said, “I’ll be the first to admit I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I know I haven’t been around. Your mother, for all her faults … she loved the crap out of you. I’m never gonna be her, but I’m here, so … So you don’t have to go out with crooked buttons anymore, okay?”

  When we arrived at Dayana’s house, Nelson opened the door. He pulled Pop into a tight hug and kissed him on the cheek.

  Vanesa hovered behind him. “It’s been too long.” Pop grabbed her, too, but I noticed she didn’t hug back with as much force.

  I asked myself what it must be like for the three of them. Once, they had been part of a group like us. Eight friends. Now they were the only three left.

  I found Dayana in her room, scrolling through Instagram. She closed her laptop as soon as she noticed me. “Shit,” she said. “You look kinda strung out. Have you been sleeping?”

  “I’ve had to squeeze it in between school and my plane crash research. Pop has a ton of ideas for us, so I’m out of the house a lot more than I used to be. But I’m corresponding with Michael Boddicker from the NTSB. Archie and Josie are supposed to be collecting research on their parents.”

  Nelson knocked on Dayana’s door to tell us it was dinnertime. As we walked toward the small dining room, he patted me on the back. “It must be wonderful to have your papi home. He is very proud of who you have become. I have not seen him in many years, and he spent ten minutes bragging about all your awards and your score on the standardized testing.”

  How could that be true? Pop made fun of my awards. And how did he even know about my SATs? I never told him. Why didn’t Mom tell me that Pop was following what I did? Did she purposely keep him away from me?

  Pop’s eyes widened when Dayana walked into the room, playing with her purple hair and jangling her piercings. “Whoa,” he said. “Isn’t time something?”

  I barely ate any of the chicken or rice Vanesa served. They were good, but my mind was infected not only with ideas of who may have killed my mother, and confusion about Pop being here, but by the residual feelings brought on by having been embraced by a sexy, naked woman for the first time in my life. There was little space left for casual small talk at a dinner party. Luckily, Pop controlled the conversation with memories of the old Sunny Horizons days. Nelson kept up as best he could, but he was distracted by Vanesa, who seemed to be adrift in her own world.

  After dinner, Dayana’s parents went into the kitchen. When Vanesa carried plates to the sink, her hands shook and she almost dropped them on the floor. Nelson steadied her with a hand on the small of her back as he leaned in to whisper to her in Spanish. They lingered there for a moment. Something about that hand placed just above her waist reminded me of Archie and Josie touching elbows at the diner and of Platinum, pressing her glittery head against my shoulder.

  Nelson carried the tres leches cake to the table while Vanesa brought over cappuccino crunch ice cream.

  Pop stood up to help her scoop. “It’s good to see you guys like this,” he said. “I was always jealous of what you two had. Maybe it was because you didn’t come from here. Trial by fire and all that. Me and Jen … Well, the little things got the best of us. But after all these years the two of you are…” Vanesa quickly excused herself and floated away to the bedroom.

  Pop was confused about what had happened. “Did I say something wrong? I’ve been known to do that.”

  Nelson shook his head. “It is not your fault. We struggle like anyone else. But we are trying, right Daya?”

  Dayana pulled me up from the table and led me out to the backyard. It was a chilly night, but she didn’t seem to notice. She took out her vape pen, sucked in, and then offered it to me. I looked at the mouthpiece, which glistened from where it had touched her lips. I guided it into my mouth and sucked in. The vapor felt warm in my lungs and tasted like fruit punch.

  “Your dad doesn’t seem so bad,” she said, in between puffs. “I mean the stories are a bit much, but I was expecting him to be a real dickhole.”

  “He took me to a strip club last night. A girl with naked boobs hugged me and I started crying about my mother. I don’t think you’re supposed to do that, because we got thrown out.”

  Dayana burst out in a laugh. At first I thought she was making fun of me. The more I thought about it, though, the funnier it became. I started to laugh, too, and soon we were practically hysterical, leaning into each other to steady ourselves on the bench. She was next to me and I felt her energy rushing right into my body. All this energy traveling from her to me. So I pushed my face toward hers and kissed her.

  I hadn’t planned the kiss and I certainly didn’t know what to expect once our lips connected. Dayana froze there for what felt like minutes, but was likely only a second. Then she yanked her face away from mine.

  “Oh. Shit, I didn’t … I mean, was I sending…? I like you, Harrison. I mean, I think you’re like the weirdest person I ever met, and that’s saying a lot. But there’s this guy. Or there was this guy. And I just think you’re kinda messed up now and you don’t really know what you want. This would be a shitshow between you and me. Especially for you. I’m not … I wouldn’t be good for you. Sorry.”

  As Dayana stumbled through explaining why she never wanted to kiss me again, I desperately wanted to take back the last ninety seconds and erase it from my memory banks. Since I couldn’t do that, I took off. I didn’t say goodbye or thank the Calderóns for a lovely evening or explain to Pop why I had to go. I was just gone.

  Running down the street, brain circling in all directions, I clicked back into my research about the plane crash. Probabilities, evidence, equations. I cut through a yard and found myself rushing toward Archie’s house. I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Lights were on inside and I could hear footsteps, so I tried the door and found it unlocked. I walked into the kitchen, where Archie sat at the table, a ball of wadded-up papers in a pile in front of him. Other sheets, full of wrinkles and smeared with ink, were stretched out across the table. He frantically ran his hands back and forth over the papers, trying to smooth them out.

  “The door was open,” I said.

  A small, wiry kid with spiked hair walked into the kitchen and waved. “Hey. I’m Sam.” Sam grabbed a Gatorade from the refrigerator and headed back down the hallway.

  “Who’s Sam?” I asked.

  Archie finally looked up at me. “That’s my brother’s boyfriend. They’re tight.”

  “Oh. Good for him.”

  “He’s here whenever Lucas is. Seems to be helping him a lot.” I thought about what it would be like to have that … intimacy.

  “I kissed Dayana.” It’s not like Archie and I had ever talked about girls before. Or anything else.

  “You did? How’d that go?” he asked.

  “Bad,” I sai
d. “Really bad. She told me I’m the weirdest person she’s ever met.”

  “Dayana said that?”

  “I’m aware I’m different, but my mother used to say that … Never mind.”

  “You think a lot about what your mother said, don’t you?”

  I didn’t know how to respond. How could I explain? “She’s always in my head.”

  “Still?”

  Still.

  I picked up a crumpled paper from the pile and attempted to smooth it out. Most of the drawing was destroyed, but I could make out remnants of what it was: Josie sitting in class, a pencil tucked behind her ear. “What is all this?”

  “My life.” Archie couldn’t even look at the remains of his sketchbook.

  “How did it happen?”

  “Jack.”

  “Why?”

  Archie looked at the smeared Josie drawing. “I don’t know. He loves her.”

  “So do you, right?”

  Archie finally stopped smoothing out the papers and looked up at me.

  “Do you really believe that someone killed them?” he asked. “I mean, you actually think there was a conspiracy to take out Josie’s father and my dad by bringing down their plane?”

  “I haven’t yet reached a conclusion.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. Does it really even matter? They’re gone no matter what.”

  I don’t think he was ready for me to answer the way I did. “Nothing matters. Not grades or SATs or math awards. Look at this mess in front of you. You spent years drawing these incredible pictures and now they’re a useless mess of wadded-up paper. My mother dedicated her entire life to making me a success. But she only saw me become this.”

  “Then why are you working so hard on this investigation?”

  “Because it’s a problem that needs to be solved and that makes sense to me. I need to know the answer. I need to know why.”

  Archie thought about that for a long time. In the silence I could hear Lucas and Sam laughing in the other room.

  “I do, too,” he said. “I’ll help you. But only if it’s all of us. Because this happened to all of us.”

  “It did. I guess after all this time we finally need each other for something again.”

  “If you ask me, we never stopped.” He stood up from the table and gathered all of the papers into one large pile. Then he swept them up in his arms, walked over to the trash, and dumped them in. He took a long deep breath and turned to me. “Now what?”

  11

  ARCHIE

  It’s not like I decided to stop drawing; there just wasn’t anything to draw anymore. When I first went dry, I thought I was suffering from some kind of artist PTSD. Watching all those hours of work torn up was like seeing a loved one die right in front of me.

  A day went by without any drawings, and then a few more days. And then a whole week. Nothing but blank pages.

  I helped Harrison dig into the crash as best I could. Josie didn’t come around anymore. While Jack was in the hospital, we saw each other every day. But once Jack came back, she stayed close to home.

  I heard people saying that Jack was acting funky in class. Like he’d space out and the teacher would call his name five times before he’d notice. Or he’d suddenly have these really bad headaches and they’d have to turn off all the lights in the room. He was having even more trouble controlling his temper. That part I already knew. I’d escaped our last encounter without any bodily harm and I wanted to keep it that way. So I didn’t push it.

  How do you miss what you never really had? Before the crash, I understood what Josie and I were. What we weren’t. She had her life and I … had my drawings. I could live with that. I did live with that. Now she had her life and I … I just put my head down and kept going. I woke up in the morning and got dressed. Harrison had found the name of the NTSB investigator, Michael Boddicker, and every day we sent him an email with our latest research and theories. But my heart wasn’t in it. And I couldn’t draw a thing. I even stopped carrying my empty sketchbook. It felt wrong moving through the world without it. Like I’d lost a limb or something. But buying a new sketchbook and then wandering around holding a blank pad … It reminded me of this time I saw a guy walking through the park holding an empty dog collar and leash. Tragic.

  When someone dies, you start to mark your life by the big occasions that they miss. Mom and Dad’s anniversary. Mom’s forty-eighth birthday. And now I’d made it to Thanksgiving.

  Believe me, I tried everything I could think of to get out of going to Aunt Sarah’s suckfest. I summoned up all of my skills as an experienced liar. I tried medical excuses (stomach virus), school excuses (overdue paper), even legal excuses (meeting with a lawyer about Mom and Dad’s estate). Sarah refused to let me stay home. Just one year ago, she and Mom had the blowout to end all blowouts, and I wasn’t sorry when Mom said we were never coming to Sarah’s house again. Now Lucas and I would be there on our own. Sarah would pretend that she and Mom were best friends and that those fights never happened.

  And after dinner would be the Performance. At each family gathering, Sarah wrote, directed, and starred in a “musical production” for the holiday. She cast her kids and recruited Uncle Tommy and Dad as stage crew. There is no way to explain how brutal it is to sit five feet from your aunt while she sings love songs to her six-year-old son. I prayed she’d have the decency to cancel the show this year.

  Aunt Sarah and Uncle Tommy lived about twenty-five minutes away from us in a new development full of houses that all looked alike. On the drive, Lucas sat in the passenger seat and took control of the radio. He played the music so loud that I had to yell to be heard above it. Not that we had much to say. We hadn’t talked much since Mom and Dad died. I wanted to talk to him. Some days, I needed to talk to him. Like about Josie and the crash. Or about all the weird people sending me messages on social media. But Lucas didn’t need to talk to me. When he was home, he was with Sam.

  I was happy for Lucas. At least I tried to be.

  In the months after the crash, Sam was this vibrant energy in the house. He had a loud laugh and a nice singing voice and hair that stood up like it was reaching for the sky. Sam made Lucas lighter, happier. But I couldn’t stand to be around it. I know that’s a horrible thing to say. It was torture, especially once Josie stopped spending time with me. Lucas had what I needed more than anything: a boyfriend. I mean, I didn’t want a boyfriend. I wanted someone. Someone to talk to, someone to understand, someone to be close to. I wanted Josie. It’s like if you were a dog at the pound and they kept you in a crate all day long. All the other dogs had owners who came and walked them and gave them treats and tossed chew toys, but you stayed locked up while you watched them living their lives. Being that close would make you that much lonelier.

  The drive to Aunt Sarah’s filled me with nothing but dread. And without having my drawing to calm me down, I was a big ball of nerves. I asked Lucas to be my navigator, but he was texting so much that he missed telling me about the first four turns. I tried to be patient. He’d keep his head in the game for a few minutes, but then his phone would start blowing up again and he’d be tap tap tapping away, probably sending little love notes back and forth with Sam. When we drove past the exit off the parkway, I finally snapped at him. “Could you stop sexting your little boyfriend for like ten minutes so we can actually get there?!”

  Lucas put down his phone and stared at me with—what, pity?—in his eyes. “Sorry, bro,” he said calmly. “Take the next exit.” He didn’t get angry or defensive. Not a flicker. I couldn’t even have the ugly satisfaction of knowing I’d hurt his feelings. He wouldn’t call me jealous or homophobic or any of the other things I deserved. Why bother? I wasn’t worth it. He felt sorry for me. That’s the worst.

  Aunt Sarah greeted us at the car to tell us she’d invited several of her friends to join us. She wanted Thanksgiving to be “a fully supportive and inclusive experience” for us. As soon as she said the word “inclusive,” I knew who I’d fi
nd filling Mom’s and Dad’s seats at the dinner table. Aunt Sarah brought me and Lucas inside and introduced us to Harold and Kimberly Hunt, the young black couple who’d recently moved in across the street along with Jim and James, her friends from art class.

  Kimberly awkwardly hugged me. “It’s great to meet you, Archie. We’ve heard so much about you.” I didn’t have to ask what they’d heard. Luckily, the addition of the two couples meant that Lucas and I could hide at the kids’ table with our little cousins, Gregor and Emma. At least there, I wouldn’t have to make uncomfortable small talk about my “culture” while Aunt Sarah patted herself on the back.

  The kids’ table was covered in a brown paper tablecloth. Aunt Sarah brought over a large cup full of crayons to draw on the paper. “Your cousin Archie is one of the best artists in the world. He’s going to be famous one day! I bet he can show you guys how to draw some awesome turkeys!”

  As Aunt Sarah headed back to the kitchen, Emma handed me the crayon cup while Gregor barked orders. “I want a pilgrim and a Native American and a turkey, and they’re all in a car together and the car is really a boat, and it’s flying. Do that!” Gregor showed me where he wanted his masterpiece.

  Lucas was back to texting away on his phone.

  I stared down into the deep hole of the crayon cup. How do you explain artist’s block to a five-year-old? See, the thing is, Gregor, my guts were crumpled up and tossed in a puddle by a giant football player and since then I’ve lost my drawing mojo.

  “See, the thing is I don’t really do animals Gregor and crayons they’re not like my favorite drawing utensils ’cause it’s hard to get shading right and if you press too hard you end up breaking the crayon and the point gets all worn down and I don’t see a sharpener here and it’s just not like ideal and I think you two are expecting something great after your mother’s big buildup and well I haven’t been sleeping all that great and the person I was usually drawing she’s not even…”