We Now Return to Regular Life

by Martin Wilson

  Principal Rhone gives a speech, the players are introduced, each one running out like a hero. Everyone stomps their feet on the bleachers. Even I do, because I want to at least pretend to have school spirit today.

  After it’s over, we all empty out of the gym into the big hallway outside. Sarah has her arm around Nick. They’re shameless now. I see Madison staring over at me, and I look away. But she approaches.

  “Hey, you’re going to Montgomery, yeah?” she says.

  “No, I can’t,” I say.

  “Oh,” she says, looking disappointed. “I thought Nick and you guys were all going?”

  “They are. I’m not.”

  “That’s too bad,” she says.

  I look and see Sarah playfully swat at Nick, and he laughs and backs away and she starts chasing him around. I roll my eyes and look back at Madison, but she’s looking at them, too, but smiling, thinking they must be cute. When she turns back to me, she says, “You want to hang out sometime?”

  “Uh.” I look away, at Nick, then back to her. “I mean, I probably could,” I say.

  Instead of looking pleased, Madison’s smile wipes away. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” she says.

  “It’s just things are so busy now,” I say, which I know is lame because we’re all busy.

  I worry she’s about to persist, about to bring up something we could do together specifically, but she just turns and walks away. For a second I feel bad, and then I feel relief.

  Dad will be picking me up soon so I head to my locker. At the bottom of the stairwell, I glance down the hall and see Madison fiddling in her locker. Instead of going upstairs, I walk over to her. Almost no one else is around.

  “Hey,” I say. I expect her to be mad or something. But she just looks normal, like nothing happened just a few minutes ago.

  “Sorry about earlier.”

  She continues fiddling with things in her locker, like its contents are fascinating.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to hang out,” I say. “You’re really nice.”

  She lets out a little laugh. “What every girl wants to hear.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . like I said, I’m so busy—”

  “It’s okay, Josh. I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  She glances around, then lowers her voice. “I know you don’t like me. I mean, I know you don’t like me that way. I suspected for a while. Like, at homecoming, at the game, you kept staring over at that guy—the kid who went missing? You barely would look at me. And then, at the dance, you didn’t kiss me, didn’t even try. You spent the whole night looking at Nick, or glued to his side when he wasn’t with Sarah. I was like, what’s wrong with me? But I’m not stupid. I get it now. And I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  “Tell anyone what?” I say, my voice sounding all scratchy.

  She looks kind of embarrassed. “I still want to be your friend,” she says. “I just wish you had told me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I say. But my heart starts pounding, pounding.

  “I’m here if you want to talk about it,” Madison says.

  I feel my face catch fire. And then two loud seniors run by, banging the lockers with their hands, acting like jerks. So I walk away, fast, up the stairs, taking them two at a time, adrenaline carrying me. I get to my locker and fumble and finally get it open and then I just stand there, catching my breath, hoping my heart slows down. My phone rings. “I’m here,” my dad says.

  I walk outside, still sort of in a daze. I fight the urge to go back inside, find Madison. How did you know? How did I give it away? But I just stand there until Dad beeps the horn and waves.

  On the drive home, Dad asks the usual questions. And I answer the usual way. “Okay. School was okay. I’m okay.” But I’m not really listening to him. I’ve been so dumb. Afraid of myself. My own feelings. Of course I don’t like Madison that way. I’m different.

  “What are you thinking about?” Dad says.

  I look over. I could tell him. Mom too. But no one really needs to know. It’s like one more item in the Box. Things that give me happiness and comfort and peace, but which no one needs to see.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  ===

  The next day, Saturday, I’m back at Sam’s house, sitting on the patio while he draws me. Mrs. Manderson made us hot chocolate. I’m wearing my jacket, and Sam has gloves on, the kind that have holes cut out for the fingers. I don’t know why we don’t go inside, but he prefers it out here.

  Sam looks at me before he starts, like really looks at me, and I have to look away, because I wonder if he can see the truth about me in my eyes. Like Madison could. Does he know? Would he care? Soon he starts drawing, his pencil making soothing sounds across the paper. I just listen to the noises of the neighborhood. Cars going up the streets, a screen door slamming a few houses away. A mother yells for her kid. But overall it’s quiet. Too quiet. I don’t hear the pencil anymore. I look back at Sam. He’s stopped drawing and is sort of staring off like he’s prone to do.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  He nods. But he doesn’t start drawing. “I’m just a little tired. I don’t always sleep too good.”

  “That sucks,” I say, and I want to ask why, but I know. “We can stop if you want.”

  He doesn’t respond. He chews on his pencil, then just holds it there, on the paper. He’s staring ahead again. “It was about a month in. Or five weeks,” he says. “I tried to keep track of the days, but it was hard.”

  For a second I have no idea what he’s talking about, but then I realize where his mind has gone. Back to Anniston.

  “Russell woke me up when I was sleeping. He woke me up every few hours at night. I guess to mess with my head. Sometimes for other reasons.”

  He looks at me then, to see if I understand. Other reasons. And by this I know he means the abuse. I nod at him, while a knot seems to tighten in my chest.

  “That night, he told me to get dressed, to come with him outside. I hadn’t been outside yet. I’d been inside all that time. Tied up. Duct tape on my mouth for a while. But by then he’d stopped doing that.”

  By then.

  He pauses, maybe to see if he can continue. I nod again, slowly, giving the go-ahead.

  “He walked me out the door, through this courtyard. He told me to be quiet. ‘You tell people you’re Sam Hunnicutt if they ask. My nephew. My brother’s kid I’m taking care of.’ I could tell it was late. Most people were asleep. Most of the lights were out. I thought about screaming, but I didn’t. I was so scared.” Here his voice cracks a little, but he recovers himself and goes on. “He pushed me along up some steps, then into a parking lot. I saw his truck. It was red, not white. I guess he’d painted it. He told me to get in. I got in the backseat and laid down. ‘Put this on,’ he said, giving me a bandanna to wear as a blindfold.

  “He drove for a long while. It was late but I was too scared to be tired. The truck went up some hills, steep ones, then down some curves. I had no idea where we were going. Finally, he slowed down, pulled off onto a gravel road. I heard him curse and stop the car. ‘Stay here. Don’t try anything.’ He took the keys. But I wouldn’t have done anything. I was paralyzed. He got back in the car and drove on for a little bit more. Finally, he stopped.

  “‘Get out,’ he said. He yanked the blindfold off. I climbed out of the backseat. It was dark out, but from the moonlight I could tell we were in the woods, by some pond or something. You could hear bugs, a loud whirring sound. It felt good to be outside. To have the air on my skin. I’d been trapped in that apartment for weeks.

  “‘Sit down,’” he said, motioning to a spot of grass not far from the water. So I sat.

  “‘Lay back.’ I did as I was told. By then, I knew resisting would only make things worse. He sat down next to me. I closed my eyes and pre
tended I was somewhere else, like I always did. On a camping trip with my dad or at the beach with my family, at Gulf Shores. I could feel Rusty watching me, but not doing anything. I mean, I knew—I knew he’d dragged me out here for a reason. But then . . . Then I heard. . . . I heard crying. I opened my eyes. He was staring out at the water, just crying like a kid would, all messy and ugly. I shut my eyes again, because I didn’t want him to see me looking at him. I braced myself. I thought about Six Flags, eating cotton candy till my teeth hurt. Then I felt him move on top of me, still crying, and all of a sudden . . . I felt a pressure on my throat.” Sam stops, like he has a choke in his voice.

  “I remember opening my eyes, looking up at him. He was still crying, but I realized right away that he was choking me. My first instinct was to resist, but he squashed his legs on mine, and he was so huge, so strong. I felt like I was being pressed down by a boulder.”

  My hands are cold. I’m cold. I’m shaking.

  “I know this sounds weird, but right then I felt like . . . a kind of relief. He was going to kill me, but it was okay, because it meant that it was all over. All of it—it was going to stop. I’d go to heaven.” Right then a tear falls from Sam’s eye and he wipes it away quickly.

  “I felt myself losing consciousness. But then, I don’t know . . . I saw something.” He sits up in his seat. “Like they say, your life flashes before your eyes. And in that flash I saw Mom. And Beth. I saw them, sad and alone without me. In our house—in this house,” he says, looking behind him, then back ahead. “And I knew then that I had to fight. I don’t know where I found the strength. I was almost out of breath, and blacking out, but I fought. I started slapping him with my free hands. I kicked. I punched. And finally his hands were off my throat. He was off me. I started coughing. Throwing up. I rolled to my side and just gasped for air. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t dead. I rolled away from him. I tried to stand, but I felt too wobbly. I heard him stand up. I started screaming. He kicked me, yelled at me to be quiet. I balled myself up, but he came and yanked me to my feet. I thought—here’s where he’s going to finish the job. He held me by the collar of my shirt and stood in front of me, breathing heavy. His face was still wet with tears. He looked like a maniac.

  “And that’s when I started begging. Please please please. I was bawling. But I tried to calm myself down because he had to listen to me. He had to. I told him I’d stay with him. I wouldn’t run away. I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d do what he said—if . . . If he let me live.”

  The lump in my throat makes it hard to breathe, but I don’t let myself cry. Sam needs me to just listen. He has to let this out.

  “He put me back in the truck. He started driving away, back down the gravel road. He didn’t say anything for a while. I was surprised he hadn’t blindfolded me. He pulled over again, the car still running. I could tell his brain was still firing, he was still thinking about what I’d said, like could he believe me. He said, ‘If you try and leave, I’ll kill you. You got that?’ I guess I wasn’t quick enough because he yelled ‘Answer me!’ I said yes, I understood. I told him I wouldn’t, but I knew he still didn’t totally believe me. ‘I’ll kill you. But I won’t stop there.’ He took out his phone. ‘I’ll kill your mother, too.’ Then he flashed his phone at me, and there was . . . there was Mom. A picture of her leaving our house.” Sam stops and sort of lets out a high-pitched sob, before he gathers himself and wipes his eyes again. He sniffles, takes a breath. “I mean, part of me was so happy to see her. I didn’t have any pictures, and there she was. But then I realized that Rusty knew who they were, where we lived.”

  A cold chill creeps through me, thinking of it—Rusty, here again, in this neighborhood. Watching Sam’s family. Maybe watching me.

  “But that wasn’t the end,” Sam says. “Rusty said ‘And I’ll kill your sister.’ He flipped to another photo. It was Beth. She was standing somewhere, maybe at school. And Russell was smiling at me. He was enjoying it. ‘Yeah, that’s right. I know where they live. I know everything.’”

  Sam looks at me then. He wants to tell me something more but I can sense him hesitate. He takes another breath. “He put the phone away. ‘You got that?’ he yelled. I nodded, I was crying again, crying like crazy. ‘Answer me!’ he yelled. And so I finally said, ‘Yes!’”

  We both go quiet. The urge to reach out, hug Sam is so strong that I’m holding my breath. But what if his mom is watching, or Beth, or Earl? I move fast. I scoot my chair closer to Sam so that we’re only inches apart. I reach out and touch his shoulder and squeeze. “Sam, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you.” I don’t know what else to say—those are the only words that come close to how I feel, and they’re a mile off.

  “I can’t tell Beth any of that,” Sam says. “I can’t tell Mom. I can’t tell Earl. I can’t tell my dad. I could never tell them any of that.”

  No, think. No, you can’t. And part of me wishes I didn’t know any of this either. But it’s too late. I know it, and I have to know it.

  Mrs. Manderson comes out just then. “Aren’t you boys cold? You want some more hot chocolate?” She looks at us, smiling and cheerful, totally oblivious to what we’ve been talking about. Sam is facing away, probably hoping she doesn’t notice his eyes or read something else on his face. “Sam?” she asks again when we don’t answer right away.

  He closes the sketch pad and pulls it to his chest. He turns and smiles at her convincingly. Like he’s flipped a switch. It amazes me how quickly he can do this, and it makes me sad, too. “Sure,” he says, like nothing has happened, like he hasn’t just told me the most awful story in the world.

  CHAPTER 9

  Superman

  Beth

  It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. The bell for sixth-period finally rings. I get my duffel bag from my locker. For a while I just stand there, acting like I’m fiddling with something as the halls empty out. The bell rings again and I walk around, up and down the halls. No one stops me for a hall pass.

  About ten minutes later, I finally head to the locker room. It’s empty, as I’d hoped. I change into my soccer clothes—track pants, because it’s chilly out, a long-sleeve dry-fit shirt, my cleats. I tie my hair back. I also put on the ankle brace my physical therapist gave me, just to be extra safe. Then I leave and walk to the soccer field. Coach Bailey is already having everyone stretch. She turns and sees me and smiles.

  “Beth!” Darla shouts.

  I look over and flash her a thumbs-up, and she smiles and flashes one back. Ainsley waves. I look around and spot Chita, but she’s just staring ahead, focused on her stretching.

  “Your ankle good to go?” Coach asks.

  “Yep,” I say, and I lift my track pants and show her the ankle brace. “I have this just to be careful.”

  “Okay then. Good to have you back,” she says.

  Stretching hurts. I’m stiff—stiffer than the others. At one point, Coach Bailey comes and pushes down on my back and I groan, completing the stretch as far as I can take it. But it feels good to be out here, around my teammates, the cool air like a balm on my skin.

  After practice, Chita rushes off, clearly avoiding me. Not that I can blame her. Coach Bailey comes up to me as everyone clears out. “You’re doing well.”

  “A little slow,” I say, and I feel so done.

  “That’s okay. Don’t overdo it.” She pats me on the back.

  Ainsley and Darla are holding their bags, waiting for me, and we walk together toward the back parking lot. They know they don’t have to say anything. That we can just walk peacefully along. Like going back to the way things were.

  “Hey, Beth!”

  I stop and see Donal, chasing us down.

  Ainsley smirks at Darla. They walk on ahead, and I want to yell at them not to leave me. I still hadn’t told any of them about the kiss, but it’s like they know.

  “Hey,” Donal
says, running up, his red hair shining in the fading afternoon sun. He has a few tiny flecks of grass on his forehead, like green confetti. Even though it’s cold out, he’s in his maroon soccer shorts, with a tight black shirt on top that hugs his chest. He squints those blue eyes at me.

  “Glad to see you back out there,” he says.

  “Yeah, it’s good to be back.” I start walking again.

  “Did you have a good Thanksgiving?”

  “It was fine,” I say. “I saw my dad—he came down from Ohio.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  I don’t say anything, just continue to walk along.

  “Hey, can you stop for a sec?”

  I stop. He’s grinning, but I can tell he’s nervous because he’s cracking his knuckles. He was doing that when we were studying. Right before we kissed. I feel a pang of sadness. Something had been stirring inside me that day—maybe inside both of us—and then it all got shoved aside.

  “Do you want to, maybe, grab a—I mean, go to a movie sometime?”

  “A movie?”

  “Yeah, you know, a moving picture, with actors and explosions and car chases and all kind of fantastic stuff.”

  I want to smile and laugh. I want to say yes. But I know it’s not just a movie. It’s a date. The truth is that I’m behind in schoolwork. I’m out of shape on the field. And my family—Sam. These are the things I need to focus on. I can’t deal with anything else.Those feelings that stirred that day—well, it’s better to set them aside. I can’t even deal with them for now. “Um, a movie,” I say, stalling. “I mean, I have a lot going on right now.”

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to,” he says.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I say.

  “But you don’t want to,” he says, looking away. “Clearly.”

  I just stand there like an idiot.

  “I’m sorry that I kissed you that day,” he says. “It was a mistake.”