by Chuck Wendig
“Don’t,” she cautioned. “Don’t. Don’t put this on me. Or on Nessie. Or even on Mom—”
“Your mother leaving…cratered me, Shana.”
“It cratered us all, Dad. It wasn’t just you. It hit us worse. You know why? Because sometimes married people, they grow apart. A husband is fucking around on his wife, a wife is done with her husband, whatever.” Tears burned at her eyes. “But they’re not supposed to be done with their children. They’re not supposed to just…up and leave.”
“She left us all, I know.”
“And maybe she left you because of all this. Because you’re not available. You’ve always got something, don’t you? I had to be Nessie’s parent because you couldn’t carry the weight. Who makes her breakfast and lunch every morning? Me. Who makes sure she’s not up too late with some weird experiment or watching Planet Earth for the three hundredth time or practicing some new watercolor bullshit—it’s me, I’m her parent while you’re…I don’t even know what you’re doing.”
“Shana, watch it.”
“You’ve got work. The farm. The cows. The market. You’ve got to fix that tractor or that barn door, oh, no, can’t help Nessie with her homework, can’t go with Mom to the store, can’t be there when people need your ass to be there.”
“You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t get to say these things—you’re just a kid, Shana, who doesn’t know a goddamn thing about life and work—”
“Fuck you!” she screamed, her voice run ragged, as if drawn over broken wood, collecting splinters that dug deep. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about what it’s like to live with you. You know what, though? You say you’re here to give me a place to sleep? Let me stomp that obligation of yours flat into the ground, Dad. I’m done.” With that, she started gathering up her meager things and tossing them into the backpack she already carried with her. “I don’t need you. I’ll sleep elsewhere.”
“Shana. You listen to me—you stop this right now. I demand that you quit doing this—you’re still my daughter and still a kid and—”
“I’m not a kid. I’m an adult, dipshit.” She saw the realization dawn on his face. “You didn’t even know I turned eighteen today. I knew it.”
Silence. He blinked. His lips worked soundlessly like the mouth of a dying fish.
“Your birthday is today,” he said, quiet, looking over his shoulder as the RV crawled along the road.
“That’s right. And you forgot.”
That last word, spoken like the thrust of a stabbing knife.
“I…everything’s been so crazy—”
“The correct response is, I’m sorry, Shana, happy birthday.”
“Of course, yeah, I’m sorry—”
He didn’t get to finish that statement.
The door to the RV popped open, and Pete Corley stepped in. His body—like a tangle of metal coat hangers all caught on one another—jangled its way inside. He looked rough and raw. It only made the manic grin on his face all the stranger.
Behind him, a crowd was following him. He gave them a wave and yelled to them, “Thanks, yeah, great! Excellent, found it, thank you, a thousand times, thanks. Just keep an eye on those boxes, will you?” Shana caught a glimpse of, as he said, a small teetering tower of boxes. He called back, “They’re a very important surprise. Okay? Okay, good.” With the back of his heel he kicked the door shut, wham.
Shana stared, irritated.
Her father stared, awestruck.
Pete snapped his bony fingers. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Yes,” Shana said.
“No,” her father said at the same time.
The rock star shrugged. “Uh-huh. Well, whatfuckingever. Hello! Hi. I’m Pete Corley, but you probably already know that unless you’ve been living in a Russian gulag for the last thirty-plus years.”
“I have all your albums,” her dad said, in awe. “Bootlegs, too.”
“Oh, a fan,” Pete said, the sour look on his face betraying his enthusiasm as entirely false. “How nice. And you—” He pointed to Shana. “I’ve been looking for you. You were smart. You saw that the cameras couldn’t get close and there you were, snapping pictures as that soldier kicked my bony ass. You were the architect of that artistry—you were like those gospel fellows who followed Jesus around. It’s because of you I got the attention I deserved—that, ahh, the whole situation got the attention it deserved. Because of you and I together, this shitshow ended.” Pete winked at her, gave her some finger-guns, pow pow. “I owe you one.”
“You owe me one new phone.”
“A new phone,” he said. “Done.”
Her heart skipped a couple of beats. “Wait, what?”
“I’ll replace your phone and I’ll do you one better: I’ll get you a proper bloody camera. Something real-deal with all the fiddly bits—lenses and…tubes and whatever it comes with. Name it.”
The words spilled out of her head like vomit from a drunk man’s mouth: “Canon EOS 5D thirty-megapixel DSLR and a Canon telephoto zoom lens with a seventy- to two-hundred-millimeter focal length.”
“To be honest,” he said, wincing, “ennnh, I won’t remember any of that, so howzabout I give you the money to go buy it. And if you want to instead just buy beer and drugs with it, I won’t tell anybody—” He winced even harder. “Wait, you’re the girl’s father, so I’ll definitely tell you, I’m sure? Again, whatever. It’ll all come out in the wash, as my mother used to say.”
“I…”
But Pete didn’t let her get a breath in. He then pointed to her dad.
“What’s your name?”
“Charlie. Charlie Stewart.”
“Mister Stewart, I am in dire need of a place to stay. May I crash here in your…recreational vehicle, at least until I summon my own digs?”
“Of course, absolutely, does that mean—are you coming with us?”
“With the flock? Of course. I think I’ve earned my Shepherd Badge.”
A nasty thought occurred to Shana. You’re just here for the attention. She’d thrown poor Marcy under the bus for exactly what Pete was doing right now. He wasn’t a real shepherd. He didn’t have anybody. Then again, he did help them. Maybe more than any of them could have, individually…she idly wondered if she should be giving Pete Corley the benefit of the doubt, but she just hated him so bad. He was an attention whore. A gangly drug-fed man-baby.
No wonder her father adored him.
Grr.
“You can take my bed,” Shana said, forcing a mask of unbridled sweetness to the front of her skull. “I’m sleeping elsewhere.”
“Shana,” her father said in a low voice, surely trying to stop her from ruining this precious moment for him. “C’mon—”
“No, no,” she said, waving him off. “You two bunk up, braid each other’s hair, whatever.” To Corley she said, “I’ll come back for that cash.”
“Excellent. Don’t go far, though!”
“Why?”
He clacked his teeth together in another frantic smirk. “Because you don’t want to miss the fireworks.”
* * *
—
AS IT TURNED out, Pete Corley meant real-deal fireworks.
Corley chose his launch point to be the top of Charlie Stewart’s RV. He rode it like the Beast that it was, standing astride the vehicle as he launched rocket after rocket. The man did his rock-star schtick with each—though he had no instrument, he pretended to wail on a guitar every time he sent one up into the open black. His arms spun and pinwheeled. He stuck his tongue out. Threw up the devil’s horns. The sky lit up in blossoms of fire—red, orange, blue, purple. Streaks of light staining the dark.
Booming, popping, crackling.
Shana used to love fireworks. She wanted to love these. But every time they went up, she couldn’t help but clench up
. They made her think of the gunfire from earlier. They made her think of the man with the gun at the parade, and even the gun in her own bag.
So, to soothe herself, she went through the crowd. She said hi to people like Aliya and Mia. Others, people she didn’t know, shepherds and camerapeople and some of the CDC techs who had little to do, all said hi to her, like they knew her. She supposed maybe now they did.
Eventually, she found who she was looking for.
Arav was standing alone, off to the side, staring up. The fireworks reflected in his eyeglasses. He wore a face of wonder. One she wished she mirrored.
When he saw her coming, he opened his mouth to say hi.
She didn’t let him.
She covered his mouth with hers.
Then she took his hand and led him away, into the dark, into the field. Through the rows of corn till there was no light for either of them.
Arctic Slammed with Record Temperatures
By Dave Geller, Associated Press
The data is in, and this past winter in the Arctic featured nearly no winter at all. Temperatures rose to an average of 12 degrees warmer than usual, with sea ice dropping to a record low. Scientists say the heat wave was unprecedented, and likely contributed to a number of extreme weather events in the past six months, including a series of so-called bomb cyclones that devastated New England…
JULY 4
Burnsville, Indiana
MATTHEW’S MOTHER HAD A SAYING, one he found usually true: Anything that happens after midnight is bad news. He didn’t buy that as a young man, of course: Though he never drank and never smoked, he still liked to romanticize the night. Moon in the sky, stars out, the wide-open expanse of nothing: It made him feel free and alive as the daytime never did. Just the same, his pastor at the time—Pastor Gil Hycheck, an apple-cheeked man with a soft voice and a nice guitar with a pearl inlay—put it more plainly: Night is when the devils are out, Matthew. They hide where you can’t see. They hide in long shadows and in the black sky above. And when you’re not looking, they learn to hide in you, too.
So when he came home at one o’clock in the morning and found Autumn sitting at the kitchen table, he knew that what his mother said was true. Nothing good happened after midnight. And soon he’d come to suspect that what Pastor Gil said was true, too.
“Bo’s asleep,” she said, soon as he came in.
He nodded. He was still a little fuzzy from the party at Ozark’s. Not drunk, he told himself. A little buzzy. But legal to drive, he was sure of it.
And the absurd thought hit him: Even if not, I had God on my side—the Lord surely would take the wheel if I could not. It was a terrible thought, and one that went against everything he believed about his role in this world: God, he knew, helped those who helped themselves. But wasn’t God also there to catch you if you fell? He shook the thoughts out of his head, like a horse tail waving away a cloud of flies.
He sat down. “You have fun at the party?”
“It was fine,” she said.
“I saw that—” Ozark gave you something, he was about to say, but he did not have to finish his thought. She pulled something out from underneath the table. It was a bottle of pills.
“It’s Xanax,” she said.
“Oh. I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“Ozark gave them to me.”
“Why?”
“He said he thought I looked tense.”
“Did you? Look tense?”
She offered a stale laugh. “I don’t know, Matt. I expect maybe I did because I sure didn’t want to be there. But what probably happened was that he knew I’ve been depressed and anxious.”
“How would he know that? You don’t think I told him—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I know you’re too embarrassed by it to go telling him that. It disappoints you too much. Bo probably said something, that’s how he knew.”
“Bo shouldn’t be saying those things to him.”
“That’s your takeaway?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Ozark Stover gave me pills, Matthew. Xanax. Not exactly heroin, maybe, but sure as hell not aspirin.”
Matthew sighed. His innards felt like the bottom of a cardboard box that had gotten wet: soaking through and falling apart. “I’m sure Ozark was just trying to be nice.”
“He told me there was more when I needed it.”
“That’s—again, I expect he was just trying to be nice.” He had cottonmouth now. His tongue and teeth felt dry as a sunbaked bone. “I’ll tell him you’re not going to take them.”
He reached across the table for the pills.
Autumn yanked them away and held them close.
“Oh, I’m taking them,” she said.
“What?”
Now she slid something else across the table. A paper. Mail of some kind. He snatched it up and stared at it, trying to parse its contents—
It was an overdue bill.
No, it was a notice of cancellation after an overdue bill.
Health insurance. Oh no.
“I went to the doctor the other day. Our insurance was canceled. I found that on your desk. You forgot to pay it. Not once. But a bunch of times. I guess you ignored it given all this…attention you’re getting now. Whatever.” She sniffed. “Besides, it’s not like you wanted me to get a new prescription anyway. Prayer is your medicine, after all. Prayer will banish an infection, exorcise depression, help regrow a lost limb with the power of God’s own sacred sorcery. Right?”
“You’re mischaracterizing my opinion,” he said, though that word mischaracterizing was a whole lot harder to say than he expected. Maybe I am a little buzzy, still. “I believe in science. I believe in using medicine to fight disease, I’m not some kook, I just don’t know that depression is always the disease people make it out to be—”
“Doesn’t matter. I have pills and I will take them. And if I need more, I’ll ask Mister Stover to give me some.”
“You shouldn’t take those.”
“Why?”
“I…you don’t know where they came from. Maybe they’re from Canada or somewhere.”
She faked a horror-movie shudder. “Oh no, the untamed wilds of third-world-country Canada. Who knows, maybe these pills are just beaver pelts and maple syrup.” Autumn rolled her eyes. She was mean right now. He didn’t like it. She kept on, too: “Biggest question you should be asking yourself, Matt, is where is he getting these pills, and why is he just giving them out? And even then, are you going to let him keep doing it?”
“No, of course not.”
“So you’ll say something to him.”
“I will.” He nodded vigorously, not even sure it was the right answer—did she want him to fight this?
“You’d risk everything for that? He’s given you a lot in these last few weeks. You’re his little preacher baby, he’s holding you up like you’re the cub in The Lion King. Will you bite the hand that feeds you?”
“I…”
His answer dissolved on his tongue like bitter medicine.
“That’s what I thought. Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said, standing up, “I’m going to go take one of these and go to sleep.”
Autumn rattled the pill bottle. Her smile to him was pinched and cold. He watched her leave, unsure of what to do or where to go from here. He told himself he’d say something to Ozark about this. He promised himself. And a man wouldn’t break a promise to himself, would he?
Take no pride in the body,
It will soon be mingling with the dust.
This life is like the sporting of sparrows,
It will end with the onset of night.
—Mirabai, “O My Mind”
JULY 4
Beacon, Iowa
THE FACT THAT THERE WA
S nothing romantic about it made it somehow more romantic, Shana thought. There was nothing manufactured. Nothing forced. Nothing except the desire between them, the ground below them, the night above. She led him out through the corn and they lay down between the rows—on the rough and uneven ground, with the bugs singing all around and the bats stitching the stars—and there they did the deed. Even now in memory it was all about the sensation of it: unforced exhales, hands roaming under clothes, the heat of the moment coupled with the chill of the night. She on top of him. Wind in her hair. Then for a while after they just lay there, her head on his chest, against his breastbone, his heart beating through the rush of blood in her ears. They talked for hours when it was done.
Eventually she asked him something that seemed improper, that she feared would puncture the mood, but she couldn’t hold it back. It burst up out of her:
“You think it was really my mom who emailed Nessie?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not privy to what’s going on there—but it doesn’t add up. Why would she do that?”
“No idea. Then again, I don’t know why she would leave us in the first place.”
“How’d she do it?” he asked. “Leave, I mean.”
“We were in the store and she just…went out the front.”
“And never came back?”
“Never came back. Never contacted us. Nothing.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t her.”
He said it, but she could hear that doubt in his voice. It was a doubt she shared. On the one hand, it didn’t add up. Mom was troubled sometimes, though she hid it pretty well. Even so, she didn’t seem to…hate her kids. On the other hand, she also was never really that close to her daughters, either. Always felt like she was keeping them at arm’s length. Like they weren’t even hers to begin with—like she inherited them, as if she were maybe just their stepmother instead of their real bona fide mom.
