by Erica Boyce
I knew it was more likely she died in a car accident. She always insisted on driving. It was how I found out. She started down the wrong side of the road one morning after she took a sip from her thermos. I had snatched the cup out of its holder as she swerved, to keep it from spilling. Her face went from indignant to afraid when I smelled the sharpness of bourbon.
Or maybe. Maybe she got into something deeper in those weeks, something harsher. Maybe she died of an overdose. I wondered if it happened in a snowbank—she always did want to go to Colorado. Or was she in the sun in California?
I could’ve looked it up, I know that. I knew there would probably be news stories. I knew the descriptions to look for in the police blotters. But I couldn’t get myself to do it. As long as I didn’t know the details, the impossible sentence in her obituary could still be true. It could’ve still been sudden. And peaceful.
At night, in my head, she was there with me, looking for new projects on her phone or draped over my chest with her hair on my arm. It was like someone split open my torso and emptied it out, organ by organ, over and over.
After about a week, on the morning of her funeral, my cover job family sat me down on their living room couch and told me that something was clearly going on, and they didn’t know what it was, but I’d missed the last three feedings. They wondered if it had something to do with Claire. I’d told them she had to leave suddenly because of a family illness, but they seemed unconvinced. The wife suggested softly that I must need some time to cope with whatever had happened. She touched my knee as they told me they would welcome me back once I’d done whatever it was I needed to do.
When I was packing, I found a green woven bracelet under the bed. She’d made it on one of our longer drives, dirty bare feet up on the dashboard, one end of the cord looped around her toe as her fingers moved through the thread. As she worked, she had told me how she’d learned to make them at the expensive sleepaway camp her parents had made her go to.
I stuffed the bracelet into my pocket. Loaded my bags into my car, shook the husband’s hand. I’d been driving for an hour before I realized I was going west, toward Oregon.
I stopped at a strip mall twenty miles outside her hometown and bought the cheapest black suit I could find. By the time I reached the church, the polyester had scratched an angry line into the back of my neck.
Stepping through those heavy wooden doors was and wasn’t like every other funeral I’d been to. There were a few over the years that Claire and I had gone to because we didn’t want to be the only people in town who didn’t. We would stand in the back and watch as the parents dissolved over the course of the service, falling in on themselves. Claire would hold my hand, our palms glued together with sweat. When it was finally over, we would bust back out into the world and smile at each other. Not us, we thought to ourselves. We were alive and relieved.
This church was bigger and fancier than the others we’d been in, but there was the same dust in the air, the same faces gray with grief. I could almost forget where I was except for the oversized photo propped on an easel by the coffin.
It was Claire, all right. Claire at eighteen, her smile stiff, her senior school photo. She was in a white shirt with her hair smoothed down. It might’ve been the most recent photo her parents had. She said her parents weren’t really the type to whip out their cameras on Christmas. They preferred shiny, prepackaged studio portraits.
I stepped toward the back row of pews to find a seat and saw Lionel with another circler, Leslie, their outfits as stiffly new as my own. So he did know, then. Claire would’ve called him as soon as she’d left. Another hiccup for her to explain away, the circle always priority number one. And me a distant second. I slid in next to them.
The service began, the priest droning on about a woman he clearly didn’t care to remember. I couldn’t stop staring at her parents. They sat straight, shoulders square, her blond hair swept off her neck, his beard neatly trimmed. But as the priest began to talk about her new place with God, her mother raised one hand to her face and sank her head toward her husband, whose shoulders shook.
I clenched my hand around the bracelet in my pocket and pulled out my phone, found the most recent picture I’d taken of her. We’d just finished a feeding, and her cheeks were red and damp, head thrown back with glee. I spent the rest of the service trying to remember the sound of her voice.
* * *
As soon as it ended and people started to inch their way toward the front to pay their respects, the three of us slipped out the back door. I was glad for the rain on my face as Leslie sniffed and wiped at her cheeks. She turned to me and told me how she couldn’t even imagine my loss, her eyes darting sideways. I thanked her, hoping that would be enough.
Lionel adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said, “take all the time you need. And when you’re ready to come back”—Leslie touched his arm and started shaking her head, but he moved away—“we’ll find a suitable circler partner for you.”
The word suitable rang in my ears, louder than the church bells. I couldn’t imagine a more unsuitable partner than Claire, with her impatience and her grand plans impossible to execute. But I didn’t want to stand in a field in the middle of the night with anyone else. I told him no. I’d work alone now.
Lionel looked unconvinced. “Are you sure? It’s a hard thing to do by yourself. Harder than you might think.”
“Yup,” I said. It was better than screaming, What did she tell you? Where did she go?
He turned to Leslie, who was still pleading silently with him. After a long beat, he sighed and held out his hand. “Well then. You give me a call when you’re ready.”
I shook his hand, found it cool and rough. My throat was closing up, and the only thing I could say was, “Thank you.”
* * *
This is what I tell Nessa, my words echoing in the courtyard. I’m sure if I looked, there’d be tourists staring, wondering at their luck today to see some guy falling apart. I don’t look. I’m holding the bracelet tightly in my fist, and Nessa keeps glancing at it. I loosen my grip, finger by finger, and lay the bracelet down on the bench beside me. The threads have turned a worn olive color by now, and they’re fraying into nothing at the ends.
Nessa taps her fingers on her knee. “I’m…I don’t know. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t really seem to cut it.”
I try to smile. “It’s okay. Or it’s not, but— I know what you mean.” I nudge her with my shoulder. Somehow, I know my stories are safe with her. For a second, it’s unsettling, how comfortable I feel around this person I only met a few weeks ago.
Before I can think too hard about it, she squeezes my arm once and stands. “All right, well, I guess we’d better keep moving, right? Can I start driving again?”
* * *
I fall asleep immediately in the passenger’s seat and dream of nothing at all. I wake up to Nessa tentatively poking my arm. “I think you might want to hear this,” she says and turns up the volume on the radio.
“—simply impossible for patterns like that to be man-made. The symmetry is too complex to engineer. Not to mention the way the wheat stalks are bent—could not be replicated by humans or any machine we’re familiar with on our planet.”
I settle back into my seat and smile. Dr. Sherman, noted crop circle researcher. At our meetings, we affectionately call him “the ringmaster,” the person responsible for keeping the mystery alive. He’s devoted his life to proving we don’t exist. He’s constantly publishing articles and doing interviews about the alien masterpieces, introducing the world at large to our work. Once, Lionel approached him at a paranormal conference in Tucson and mildly suggested that the myth could be even stronger if he formed an alliance with the circlers. The two students Dr. Sherman was traveling with—disciples or handlers, it wasn’t clear—had to hold him back from punching Lionel in the face.
“Interesting
theory, Dr. Sherman,” the radio host says. “Actually, we’ve got somebody on the line here who’s got a totally different story. Mr. Haley? Are you there?”
“Yup, I’m here, Stacey. And please, call me Ray.”
My eyes snap open, and a sound escapes from my throat. Nessa glances at me.
“Ray, why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you told me when you called in this morning.” The host can barely contain herself. She knows what she’s about to unleash.
“Yeah, sure. I work for a financial planning firm here in DC. A big one, though you’ve probably never heard of it. And I know for a fact that circle in Maryland you’re talking about was not made by aliens.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and I resist the urge to rip the radio out of the dashboard with my bare hands. “It was made by me.”
Dr. Sherman huffs. “Excuse me, sir, but who do you—”
“And that’s not all.” Ray clears his throat. “What if I told you there was a secret society of people all across the country responsible for making every single crop circle you’ve ever heard of and a lot of ones you haven’t?”
Now, Nessa turns her head fully and looks at me. And she must not like what she sees, because she starts to pull over onto the dusty shoulder of the road. But just before she puts the car in Park, the host laughs. It’s that loud, honking, demanding laugh that all radio hosts seem to have, and after a few seconds, Dr. Sherman joins her.
“Wait, wait,” the host says. “I’m sorry. What? You guys, I swear this is unscripted. He did not bring that part up when I talked to him earlier. You’re saying there’s some underground club that just goes around making crop circles? I mean, I’m not saying I buy the whole alien thing, either”—at this, there’s a brief hiccup in Dr. Sherman’s chuckles—“but come on, man. What, do you have punch cards? A secret handshake?”
“It’s true. You can look it all up on YouTube,” Ray tries, but now the host is laughing again. He pushes on. “Look, you want me to name names? I can do that. There’s Li—”
“Whoa, hold on,” the host says. “The station won’t be happy with me if I let you list off people’s names. It’s a liability or something.”
“Liability? That’s bullshit. These people should be liable. Especially Li—”
The host hangs up on him before he can get any further, the dial tone droning until the sound engineer catches on and cuts the audio.
“Oops, I guess we lost him.” The host finally recovers herself. “Dr. Sherman, thank you so much for joining us. And now, back to the music,” she says over Dr. Sherman’s reply. “You’re listening to Stacey Monroe, Monroe’s Moves at Four, on WKCD.”
“Thank God they didn’t take that seriously,” Nessa says, turning the volume back down. “And hey, nobody’s listening to this radio station in the middle of nowhere at 4:30 anyway, right?”
“Right,” I say. Except that nowadays, there’s a good chance someone will find the audio file and upload it to their online compilation of Hilarious Radio Fails. And Lionel is definitely going to hear it then.
I reach for the bracelet, old habit, but my pocket is flat and empty. I left it lying there on the bench.
Chapter Nineteen
Nessa
When we reach Texas, a collection of empty sandwich wrappers and paper coffee cups rattles on the floor of the passenger’s seat, and Daniel is no longer talking about Claire. He seems slowly to have returned to himself, chuckling at my stories and answering my questions with multiple words at a time.
For a couple of days, I braced myself every time he laughed or when we walked into a fast-food place, waiting for his hand on me, for that odd warmth to run through me. Whatever made him reach for me in the caves must be gone now, though. He has not touched me once. I was certain I didn’t want him to, but there’s a sadness in my belly, a nervous bubble as we pass signs advertising half gallons of iced tea free with every bucket of ribs.
Maybe, though, my nerves are more about Charlie than Daniel. Now that we’re getting closer, I wonder if this was such a good idea. I probably should’ve called Charlie when we left Vermont to give him some warning.
* * *
Once, when we were in high school and Charlie was home from college on break, Shawn and I wrestled him out of bed on the night before his birthday. We’d come up with this plan the week before on one of our drives to the lake. We made him get dressed in an outfit I’d picked out: dark jeans he’d almost outgrown and a black T-shirt of his that I’d ripped when I borrowed it. He did all this while Shawn dangled one of the papers he was working on for class in an opened pair of scissors. Shawn stifled giggles as he whispered, “Do what we say, or Aristotle gets it!”
Charlie groaned the whole time, only stopping when we crept down the stairs and out of the house, obediently stepping over the creaky floorboards I pointed out. We hustled him into the back seat of the truck, and I tied one of Mom’s dish towels around his eyes while Shawn eased the truck back up the driveway, headlights off.
It took almost an hour for us to get to the city, Charlie’s pleas for mercy—or at least a location—getting more and more halfhearted as we went. Finally, we pulled up in front of the nightclub. I could barely stand still as I pulled his blindfold off, the bass line of his favorite song from his favorite punk band thrumming angrily through the crisp spring air.
He blinked at the band’s name on the marquee. I bit my fingernails, and his face fell a little. He smiled weakly at me and said, “Cool. Thanks, Nessa.”
“So, I know it’s a school night and you’ve got finals and everything, but it’s your birthday tomorrow, and you love this band, and I couldn’t let you turn it down.” It came out in a rush, and I gasped for air.
He raised one hand to the back of his neck, stabbing his fingers through the hair there, and I grabbed him by the elbow and towed him to the entrance. I plastered on my most winning smile as I flashed our fake IDs at the bouncer, but he was just a skinny college kid who barely glanced at us before nodding us in.
Inside, everything was dark, black walls and black floor. Even the stage had just a single spotlight on the lead singer’s sweaty head. I couldn’t understand the lyrics over his husky screaming and the insistent pounding of the drums and bass. Charlie was bobbing his head to the beat, and he walked with purpose into the thrashing mass of people at the band’s feet. I watched my brother melt into the crowd and wondered for a second if I’d ever find him again.
Shawn poked my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s find a spot at the bar,” he said.
* * *
The songs all sounded the same to me, one long, loud mash, so it was hard to tell how much time had passed when I told Shawn I was worried we’d made a mistake, coming here. “I mean, I thought he’d be psyched,” I said, drawing my finger through the beads of water collecting on the sides of my soda. “Maybe this just isn’t his scene. Maybe he only likes the music on CD.”
Shawn scanned the room as he drew a long gulp from his beer. “I don’t know about that,” he said, pointing over my shoulder.
I turned on my stool and there he was, Charlie, standing at the edge of the crowd. Another guy, small, light, and blond, was leaning in to yell something in his ear. As his mouth moved, Charlie’s whole face lightened, unfurrowed, his eyes wide. He spoke back, his hands moving to explain something, and I pretended I could hear him over the band. He leaned toward the guy, and I turned back to Shawn, grinning.
“Guess I was right after all,” I said. He rolled his eyes, then laughed like I knew he would.
* * *
“So, have you told your parents about your plans yet?” I asked as the band played its encore. Shawn had been collecting brochures for out-of-state colleges and storing them under his mattress, looking up financial aid packages on the family computer when no one was around.
He tilted his glass to inspect the remains of his beer.
“No. It’s a stupid idea anyway. They need me here.”
“But you can’t do that. You need to go!” I followed his eyes to my hand, clutching his forearm. “Sorry,” I said and pulled it back.
Shawn looked at me, squinting a little, and it made me uneasy. “Nessa,” he said, “do you—”
“Get the fuck off me, you motherfucker.” The scream drove straight through my neck.
I spun around. The people at the back of the crowd had turned away from the stage, staring at my brother as he stumbled toward the bar. Before I could register that he’d been shoved and that I was furious, Shawn’s stool clattered to the floor. He held the blond guy by the collar. The guy’s face was mean and twisted before Shawn punched it.
I flew off my barstool and toward the fight, threading my way through the crowd. Finally, I reached my brother and touched the shredded sleeve of his T-shirt while the bouncer hauled Shawn away from the guy, who was now clawing and flailing back at Shawn.
“What the hell,” I said. I couldn’t see Charlie’s face, but I felt him shaking.
“Let’s go,” Shawn said, ducking away from the bouncer’s pushing hands and herding us out the door. The blond guy spat on the sticky ground as we left.
Outside, Charlie’s face was blooming red.
“Jesus Christ. Are you—”
“I’m fine,” Charlie said, yanking out of my grip. “Where’s the truck?”
* * *
I drove home, Shawn asleep with his mouth open in the passenger’s seat and Charlie staring out the window in the back. Every time I looked in the rearview mirror, I found another way he’d been hurt in the light from passing cars.
We were almost home when Charlie cleared his throat and said, “There’s something I should tell you.”
“It’s okay,” I said, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “I already knew.” He glanced down into his lap, and I tried not to cry. “I’m so sorry, Charlie.” I never should’ve dragged him to that place.
