by Casey Hays
“Well, well, well. Sleeping Beauty… back from the dead.” She shakes her head. “I guess you forgot about our all-nighter plan?”
“Sorry.” I offer a weak smile and scratch at my head. “Did I… miss anything?”
“Of course you missed things.” She crosses her arms, eying me suspiciously. “Are you all right? You don’t look so well.”
I nod, a little confused. Jonas has already cleared the campfire, and other than the tent, a box of dishes, and my things, everything else is packed up. I knead my bottom lip with my teeth while Jonas rolls a last cord and stuffs it into a side pocket of the camera case. I slip my hands into my jacket pockets. My phone is inside one of them. I wrap my fingers around it.
“Did anything… funny happen last night?” I ask. “And by funny, I mean like… crazy weird?”
Jonas and Frankie exchange a glance.
“No,” Jonas says with a shrug. Cap on backwards, he smiles and leans in confidentially, whispering loud enough for all of us to hear. “And don’t tell Frankie, but I fell asleep too.”
She rolls her eyes; I swallow the bile that rises in my throat. I don’t feel so well. Wisps of images from last night mingle behind my eyes, and the scene before me seems too normal. It doesn’t fit my misgivings. I glance up at the sky. One billowing cloud watches us.
“I think… I must have had a dream, then.”
“That’s not surprising.” Frankie squats, hooking a plastic clip on the bag. “You slept like a rock.”
Some of the trees behind her look newly scorched. I squint, take a step around her for a better look. She follows my line of sight.
“Was there a fire?” I ask.
She skims the tree line. “No.”
Weird.
Inside my pocket, I twist my ring once and scan the lot. Jonas’s truck is in the same spot, but the motorcycle is missing. I bite down on the inside of my cheek, a chill coming over me.
“Where’s Kane?”
Jonas shoots me an odd look, and he and Frankie exchange another glance. He hones in on me with a suspiciously strange tilt of his head.
“Who?”
My blood catches fire.
“Kane,” I repeat. “O’Reilly? He’s only one of our best friends.”
He just stands there, this stupid, clueless expression on his face, which I return with an amused smirk.
“Okay. Very cute.” I cross my arms. “You look really authentic. Now where is he?”
Jonas’s face compresses with concern; it makes me uneasy. A half laugh escapes my lips. I turn a full circle, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Okay, Kane! You can come out now! Game’s over!”
Jonas and Frankie stare at me like I’ve lost my mind. When Kane doesn’t miraculously appear and yell “Gotcha!” before sweeping me up into his arms, it crosses my mind that maybe I have lost it. I don’t move at first. Jonas’s fingers clamp onto my shoulder, but I tug free and shove him in the chest.
“Where is he?”
“Jude—” He staggers back a step, shakes his head, and I fly through a carousel of emotions that range from fear to confusion to just plain anger.
“That’s just great!” I spin on my heels, tearing back through the entrance to the tent. “I guess he didn’t want to take me home, huh? Was that too much of a hassle for him? Did he have more important things to do?” I angrily stuff my belongings into my backpack and fling it over my shoulder. “And now what? He’s recruited you two to make me believe he never existed?” I storm out of the tent and meet Jonas face to face. He looks brilliantly dumbfounded. He must have rehearsed it all night. “So he’s come to his senses, just like I said all along. It was never going to work.”
Jonas’s mouth drops open. He’s seriously playing this thing out. I tug my phone out of my pocket.
“Okay. You two want to keep this up? I’ll call him.”
I turn on the phone, pacing while I wait for it to activate. Frankie and Jonas follow my movements, but they keep their mouths shut. They better. The screen comes to life, and I click on my favorites and scroll through my contacts to the Ks. I stop, scroll my thumb upward, then down.
Kane’s name is gone.
Frustrated, I manually dial in his number and hit speaker phone. It automatically sends a recurrent beeping. No service. So I send a quick text to the number instead. Instantly, I receive a reply: UNDELIVERABLE
What?
I try again. Same result. I press the end button, confusion warping all my thinking. Granted, the events of last night are fuzzy, and maybe they were only a dream, but this goes too far.
“It isn’t funny anymore,” I growl.
I press open my photo gallery to skim through my pictures. They’re gone. Every single one of them. The growl inside my emotions grows louder. I want to slap somebody hard.
“That’s it!” I glare at them both. “Which one of you deleted my pictures out of my phone?”
They both blink with jaws hanging. I shift my gaze to Frankie.
“You don’t remember what happened last night? You were with me.”
“What happened?” Frankie is wary of me; it’s written all over her face. She eyes Jonas. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
My fear traps me again. I swing my eyes toward the empty spot where Kane’s motorcycle should be.
“Why are you doing this?” I want to cry. A few tears even make an appearance, glistening on my lids. I plead with Jonas, focusing on him for an answer. His eyes stare back at me, wide and confused themselves.
“We aren’t doing anything, Jude.”
My fear melts back into anger. I can handle that emotion better. This is so wrong, and I’m not about to stand here like a fool piecing together all the fragmented parts for them so they can laugh at me later. I hike my backpack up a little higher and whisk around Jonas.
“Forget it.”
He turns. “Jude.”
I ignore him and trudge past his truck toward the road.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to walk for a while. You can pick me up on the way out.”
“Jude, that’s stupid.”
I keep walking.
“I don’t know what in the hell is the matter with you.” He flings the words at me… like I’m the one who’s in the wrong here. “But you better get it out of your system by the time we see you again.”
Whatever. I’m tempted to flip him off, but I rein in my aggression and keep moving. It is stupid, and I know I’ll be climbing into his truck before I’ve made it an eighth of the way to the interstate. I don’t care. Their little joke isn’t funny.
I’m so angry at Kane. Does he actually think something like this is a good idea for the start of our new relationship? I grit my teeth. He’s not going to like me very much the next time I see him.
The lake comes into full view, and I take the path around it toward the campground office. My feet carry me almost involuntarily because my mind is busy trying to collect all the events of last night and sort them into some kind of sensible pattern. I passed out; I remember this. I saw Kane right before… and he told me to take off my ring. I glance at it.
Why?
None of it makes sense. Kane looked strange… like… he was on fire. Confusion consumes me for a minute.
I shake my thoughts away. Maybe I had a migraine. That makes the most sense. I’ve had one before, with a bright light and lots of nauseating pain—the whole works. That would explain my passing out too. But does it explain how my ring ended up back on my finger? Or how my Glock was inside my pack, unloaded? Or—
I drag out my phone and rifle through the contacts again. I sigh. My friends are a bunch of jerks; that’s what I want to believe. Because that’s the easiest explanation. But they’ve never done anything like this, so the ‘why’ behind it all throws me a little, especially since Frankie is involved. This definitely isn’t her style.
I send Devan a quick text. YOUR BOYFRIEND IS AN ASS. IF YOU SEE KANE BEFORE I DO, TELL HIM HE’D B
ETTER RUN.
The rumble of the Tundra shakes the ground behind me and comes to a stop. I don’t look at either of them as I climb into the passenger seat and buckle up. Jonas eases the truck into motion just as Devan returns my text. I glance at it.
WHO?
Lips pursed, I face the window. The landscape glides past us, and I don’t say one word to anybody the whole ride home. I don’t have the energy right now.
Interlude
Thirteen
Thirteen. I thought that was going to be a big year. Turns out, it was the last year I ever wrote a poem. It went like this:
If tears could speak, what would they say?
Would they tell of a crying baby hungry in the night?
Or the joy of a soldier finally home after a long and dangerous flight?
Would they whisper in streams down the cheeks of a heartbroken mother?
Or sing with the voices of a couple exchanging vows with each other?
And you? What would your tears say?
Would they flood your heart with hope of a new beginning?
Or grieve at the epic loss of never winning?
My tear? It sits on the bottom lid of my eye trying to decide.
My birthday falls in May, and let me assure you, the last few weeks of seventh grade were all about the countdown. In fact, I spent several hours with a hot pink poster board and a ruler creating a perfectly proportioned calendar to hang on my wall. Every morning before breakfast, I marked a big fat X through one square.
I had my reasons for making such a big deal. I was about to become a teenager, which in turn meant womanhood was on the horizon. But also, my dad had been gone for almost six months, and I was finally coming to grips with this. I missed him like crazy, but I was coping in my own way. Heck, I still am. My progress is slow, but I’ve come a long way. At least, I like to tell myself this. Kane would not always agree.
But that year, I had a really good feeling about my upcoming birthday. So let’s get to the “why” behind it all.
You see, Mr. Great Depression had squeezed himself right into the vacancy my daddy had left in my mom’s heart, and I don’t exaggerate. He was a living, breathing being in our house, hanging on her shoulder like a bad friend who talks you into doing all the wrong things. He wasn’t shy about it, either. And unfortunately, he’s never left her side.
For a long time, he tried to play with me. He coaxed me out of the solid shell of protection I’d sculpted around myself, and he whispered in my ear. He told me lies: I would never be happy again; I would never stop missing my dad so much; my mom would never love me the same; it was my fault he was dead. Some days, I believed him with all my heart. Other days, I could resist. And I knew that if I could make it to thirteen—if I could master that threshold that moved me to the next level in this life—I could survive anything. Even Depression.
But my true desire was for Mom because she was in a far worse place. In my simple-mindedness, I thought my milestone would bring her happiness, and I wanted that for her. For months, she’d mourned, and time hadn’t seemed to heal even an ounce of her grief. Perhaps seeing her only child step over this threshold would begin the process.
Thirteen arrived right on time; my mom, however, completely forgot.
And so, my plan to move her toward the sunshine failed in the worst way. I was so sad, but I knew then just how low Mom had dropped. I carry that burden to this day. Because I’ve always somehow felt it was my responsibility to help her. To bring some joy into her life. I mean, I’m all she has left in this world. Who else will do it if not me?
This is a key reason why I take the lead. I pay the bills when she forgets; I go to the grocery store; I make sure the taxes get paid. Because deep inside, I want to believe that she will get better. I haven’t given up hope that one day I’ll see her smile reach all the way to the bottom of her heart again.
I rode my bicycle to Carson River Park with Kane that day. We lounged under the trees, our bikes propped against a trunk, and listened to the lazy flow of the river. It was warm, and the grass was already greening up pretty good. Kane’s bike had a little metal box attached to the front for carrying things. He lifted out a pink frosted cupcake with yellow sprinkles. Granted, it was squished on one side from all the bumps we hit on the way down, but it tasted delicious.
“What did you wish for today?” Kane asked. He braced his arms against the ground behind him and crossed his ankles.
Legs tucked beneath me, I nibbled on the side of my cupcake, wanting to make it last as long as possible. “I haven’t yet.”
“Oh.” His eyes skimmed the water. “Well, you better get on that. You only have until midnight. If you don’t make a wish, you’ll have bad luck until your birthday comes around next year, and you can wish again.”
I frowned at him. “You just made that up.”
“Are you sure?” He revealed one dimple, just slightly, before it disappeared. “Do you really want to risk it?”
I had to think hard about that one. As much as I’d wanted it, I hadn’t wished that my mom would get better. Because deep, deep down, I was afraid to wish for it. What if my wish didn’t work? No. I would rather not hope for something so concretely. It would be better to be surprised—to not know it was coming—than to stir your emotions up with waiting on a wish. I couldn’t do it.
I didn’t want to wish at all.
“So?” Kane nudged me with his elbow. “What’s it gonna be?”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to tell anyone your wish. Then, it won’t come true.”
He slid down to one elbow and looked up at me. “That only applies to strangers. You can tell your best friends.”
I laughed then. “I think you probably need to do some research on wishes.”
“Okay.” He fell to his back, propping his hands behind his head. “But sometimes, your wishes come true a lot faster if at least one other person knows about them.”
I finished my cupcake and stretched out beside him, propping my own hands behind my head. And we just laid there together, quietly staring up through the branches to the blue, blue sky.
“I wish the day would never end,” I whispered. Then I rolled my head to meet his gaze. He smiled.
“Gallagher, you just wasted your wish.”
I shrugged. “The day isn’t over yet, is it?”
He bounded to his feet and retrieved something else from his metal box.
“I got you something.”
I sat up; he dropped down beside me, a tiny, wooden box in his hand. He took me by the wrist and placed it in the middle of my palm. It was amber-colored with my initials, JEG, scratched into a lid that slid open toward one end.
“Wow. It’s pretty.” I ran my thumb over the letters.
“Open it.”
I glanced at him, then pushed it open. Inside was a shiny, silver key. It was plain with no teeth. Only a hole in the top middle for the keychain. I lifted it from the box and held it up. My reflection glinted at me from the flat surface. Kane watched me, anticipation seeping from him.
“What’s this for?”
“Well, keys open things,” he replied.
“Yeah?”
“So I thought you needed one.”
I lowered my hand, my fingers curling around the metal. “You thought I needed a key… that doesn’t open anything?”
He smiled, this clever, eye-gleaming smile that made me think he was about to hand me the most exciting revelation of the century.
“Oh, it unlocks something. And one day, you’ll know what.”
I narrowed my eyes, suspicion flooding in. “You aren’t going to tell me? What kind of a present is that?”
“A good one.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“You’ll thank me one day.”
He stretched out again, eyes on the sky. I stared at the thing in my palm a long minute before I replaced it inside the box.
“Thank you, Kane.”
“Yep.” A smirk of a smile s
ettled on his lips.
On that day, I just didn’t get it. I didn’t get it on my next birthday either when he asked for it back and returned it a day later with one tooth etched into the smooth side. I questioned him; he simply smiled and said I had to wait. So I’ve waited, and I’ve watched a new notch appear in my key every birthday.
Maybe I didn’t get it, but let me tell you… that summer when Jonas dropped me off, that key was the first thing I looked for.
Fifteen
I thrust open the door before the Tundra has even come to a full stop on my drive.
“Jude, will you talk to me?”
Jonas jerks the truck into park. Ignoring him, I slam the door and head for the garage. I flip open the key code pad and punch in the numbers. He exits the truck and follows me. The garage door slides open, revealing my Volkswagen Bug. Mom’s side of the garage is still empty.
“I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
I duck beneath the door before it fully opens. I don’t want to talk. I don’t trust anything.
“Go home, Jonas.
I shuffle to the inside door and shove it open. Hands on hips, he plants his feet on the drive and studies me.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I seriously think I should take you to the hospital. Did you hit your head last night? Could you have a concussion? I mean, you’re super disoriented.”
I exhale deeply. This is really getting old. “I did not hit my head; I do not have a concussion. And until you cut the crap, you can go home.”
I slap my hand against the remote button, and the garage door closes down on him.
Inside, I throw my backpack on the bar and race to my room. My keys are right where I left them, hanging on a hook above my desk. I grab them, shuffle through until I find it—the key Kane gave me for my thirteenth birthday right there on its own separate key ring. I run my thumb along the edge where four teeth have been etched throughout the years—proof that I’m not crazy.
With a huge sigh of relief, I clutch my keys in my fist and sink onto the edge of the bed. I’m exhausted, my back aches, and I could use some real food. I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Kane’s number. A woman’s automated voice greets me on the other end.
