Trigger

by Susan Vaught

  I struggled out of my seat belt, opened the car door, and got out, and I stood in our neat yard, which had been mowed up and down like a baseball field. The house stared at me. I figured if it had eyebrows, the one above my window would have gone sliding halfway to the roof. Even the house wanted to know the answer to that one question I couldn’t answer up and forward, down and backward, proud or lucky, very good duck or not.

  Jersey Hatch, why did you shoot yourself?

  chapter 2

  I have this dream where both legs work and both arms work and I don’t have any scars on the outside. I’m sitting on the edge of my bed in dress blues holding a pistol. Sunlight brightens the dust in my room and darkens all the places where I’ve nicked the walls and doors. My fingers tingle as I lift the gun to my mouth. It tastes oily and dusty as I close my lips on cold gunmetal—but I can’t. Not in the mouth. I’m shaking, but I lift the barrel to the side of my head. The tip digs into my skin. I’m thinking nothing but how it feels, and that my hand’s shaking, and that my room has so much dust in places I didn’t even know. Then I’m squeezing the trigger and looking at the dust and feeling my hand shake and thinking nothing and there’s noise and fire and nothing. Nothing at all.

  Only a dream, something I made up because I never remembered and not remembering almost made me crazy. I had the dream every night. Crazy. But I didn’t tell anybody. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell anybody, but there were lots of things I didn’t talk about, not even to the Carter shrink. Crazy. But now I was home and the dreams were right here and I had to go inside or I’d be stupid and unpragmatic and a big crazy baby. The five-year-old genius sucking his thumb.

  Mom went inside before I even got to the door. Dad followed behind me lugging my bags. I got my memory book, but I couldn’t carry the suitcases myself because of my balance. My left leg—it pulled. Sometimes I tripped on my foot. And my left arm, I kept forgetting it. Always bashing it into doorframes and chairs, which helped me trip over my foot a lot. That’s why the pictures made me cry.

  They were hanging right inside the front door, first thing, in the foyer. There was a boy in the frames, standing at attention in a marine R.O.T.C. uniform. He was dressed in football pads, going long. He was standing with a set of clubs on a green with a guy who stopped speaking to him long before he even pulled the trigger. The boy in all the pictures had wavy brown hair and no holes in his head and no holes in his throat, and I knew he was me—but he couldn’t be. So I held on tight to the memory book and my stomach hurt and I cried.

  Dad came up beside me and put down my bags. For a second or two, he pushed the first button of his sweater vest in and out of its hole—something I couldn’t do on purpose with lots of help. After a while, he put an arm around my shoulders.

  “Let’s go on upstairs,” he said in his I-support-you voice. “Be careful and use the rail.”

  I nodded and wiped my face off with my shirt. Tears smeared across the cover of my memory book, but the inked name on the spine didn’t run, not even a little. The pen on the dirty white string swung back and forth, back and forth.

  Dad looked like he wanted to say something, but he bit his bottom lip before picking up the suitcases and starting up without me. I stood there for a while, staring at the pictures and trying to breathe.

  The last time I had been here in this house, I shot myself.

  I actually … but no. I didn’t know that for sure. I might have shot myself. Still had my thoughts about that, but I sort of believed it. Dad believed it, because he said I used his gun, his pistol, from his bedside table, the one he kept to deal with thieves and murderers.

  Maybe Dad thought I was a thief and shot me. I could believe that easier than the story about me coming home from school, dressing in my uniform, loading a single bullet in Dad’s gun, sitting down on my bed, and blowing my brains out.

  I mean, a person would have to remember something if he did all those things, right? And he’d have to remember why. All I had were my dreams of sitting on the bed and feeling nothing at all.

  My eyes drifted over pictures. Before-boy. Jersey Hatch, prior to cleaning his own clock. Jersey-Before. J.B. I remembered him well, at least up until ninth grade. After that, things got a little patchy. R.O.T.C., golf, football … me. I did them all. And school and girls and everything. And these pictures, these were J.B. from two years ago. Do-everything J.B. I-want-to-be-a-lawyer J.B. Straight-A J.B.

  I was him. He was me.

  Not real, but he was real. Wasn’t he? I could see him, coming right out of the pictures, floating down, standing beside me, dressed just like me, only with no scars.

  My teeth hurt when I clamped them on my lip. I thought about my socks. Wished I could stuff a sock in my brain so it would shut up. The more nervous I got, the more I thought about socks. Socks and ghosts. Ghosts coming out of pictures.

  J.B., he sure looked like a ghost. Socks. His eyes seemed wide and bright and focused. The line of his jaw gave him a set, determined expression. J.B. was not a guy to give up. I couldn’t believe he’d put a bullet in his own head.

  “So why’d you do it?” I asked. “Socks.”

  “Do what?” Dad called down from my room.

  “Not you.” I pointed the memory book at J.B. even though Dad couldn’t see me do it. “I was talking to the ghost. Socks.”

  “Go upstairs, Jersey.” Mom’s quiet voice startled me out of the ghost-pictures. She was standing right in front of me, eyes wider than usual, holding a Diet Coke. “Help your father unpack.” Then, like she forgot the important part, “I’m proud of you for working hard to get home. Try to enjoy the day.”

  “Um, okay. Sure.” Sweat broke out under my shirt. I felt clammy and cold. Socks. It was time to go upstairs, to J.B.’s room, to where he tried to kill us. Why hadn’t I asked them if I could move into the guest room? I couldn’t ask them now, could I? Not with them acting so nervous and freaky. That might blow their minds. They might think I wasn’t ready and send me back.

  But going back might not be so bad. Socks. The therapists told me it was easier at Carter. Easier. Probably was easier.

  Before Mom could tell me to go up again, I faced the stairs. They looked really steep.

  Steps were hard for a one-footer like me, but I could hear the therapists in the back of my mind.

  Wah, wah, wah. It’s hard. So what?

  So what.

  The memory book tasted all plastic and salty when I crammed it between my teeth. I knew I’d need my hands. Strong one for the rail, weak one for the wall. Balancing as best I could, I moved my good leg up, then made my bad leg follow.

  Behind me, Mom walked away. I heard her footsteps, but they sounded like whispers, like she was tiptoeing. Or maybe it was the ghost in the air in front of the pictures. J.B., coming with me. Socks. I tried to go faster. Up, and up. Each thump sounded like an earthquake. Up, and up. Maybe I could outrun him. If I went fast enough, the ghost would have to stay downstairs.

  “Do it like the therapists said,” Dad yelled from the bedroom. “Good boys go to heaven. Bad boys go to hell. Good leg going up, bad leg after.”

  That’s how I remembered it. Good leg leads going up the stairs; coming down, bad leg leads. Up, up, up. Heaven, hell. Heaven, hell. Heaven … hell. I made it. Socks. Socks. The landing at the top of the stairs seemed like paradise, no matter which word got me there. Up and forward, and all that rehab perky stuff. Socks. I went fast, so maybe I left the ghost downstairs after all.

  “You did great.” Dad was standing in my doorway, toobig smile blazing.

  I pulled the memory book out of my teeth and tried to smile back, but I froze. Seeing him there, framed by that familiar wood facing, cedar against the white walls, it felt all wrong.

  No way that door was mine. Even though I could remember how the room should look inside, with trophies and posters from pee-wee baseball all the way through high school golf … one bed, blue spread … a rug with a big knit football—no. No! It wasn’t my room. It was
his. It was J.B.’s.

  My breath came short and sharp. My body didn’t want to move. Maybe if I went in there, J.B. would be waiting on that bed, holding the gun. He might kill us, and this time, he’d do it right.

  “Need help?” Dad sounded like a therapist. His whopper smile faltered, and I imagined the hospital van swooping down to pick me up and cart me straight back to the brick buildings and the OT and the big yellow banner.

  Up and forward. Up and forward.

  I slowed down my breathing and paid attention to everything around me, just like I had learned from the shrink at Carter. Familiar smells. Perfume, from my parents’ room. And aftershave. And leather, like footballs and golf bags and everything but socks. I didn’t think they made leather socks, at least not for regular people. Leather and footballs and aftershave with no socks. My room. J.B.’s room. He wouldn’t be waiting. J.B. was dead. Socks. The gun was gone, except for my dreams and the scar from its bullet on my right temple. Socks. The gun was gone. I wobbled down the hall using the wall until I was almost nose to nose with Dad.

  “Welcome home,” he said as he grabbed me into a hug. The floor creaked like it would break and drop us all the way back downstairs.

  Dad’s voice seemed strained, but the hug felt real enough. I hugged him back with my good arm, taking care not to whack him with the memory book. My bad arm was sort of crushed between us. I nearly lost my balance when he turned me loose, but he let me use his shoulder until I got steady.

  Still giving me that bizarre over-smile, he moved aside and I stepped into ghost-boy’s lair.

  The first thing I noticed was the bedspread. It was green, not blue. There was no J.B. ghost-boy wearing socks and no gun. Just a green bedspread. It should have been blue. Blue, not green. Why was it green?

  Dad must have seen where I was looking because he said, “Old bedspread was a waste. We had to chuck it. Sorry about this one. I tried to get your mother to buy something psychedelic, but she wouldn’t go for it. Do you like this one? Is it okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” I wondered why Dad was so jacked up about a bedspread. I wanted him to relax, to quit with the freaky smile. Socks.

  “We even got you a new mattress. But the rug, the football rug beside the bed, that was clean. You folded it and set it on the dresser, so it wasn’t—um, messy.” He scrubbed his hand across his beard stubble. “I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t be talking about that right now. It’s your welcome-home day.”

  Air faded from my lungs as if sucked by some beep-click-hissss machine gone insane. The rug on the dresser. I didn’t know that. No one had mentioned that before, ever, I was sure of it. Why would I—no! Why would J.B. do a thing like that? I mean, if he planned to die, why’d he care about some stupid rug?

  Because Mama Rush got it for us, whispered that Before voice, from way down in my mind.

  Oh, God. Socks and footballs.

  J.B. was real. He was upstairs and he was talking to me. The sweat came back double under my shirt, and I got so cold my teeth started to chatter. There was a ghost in my room, and it was going to kill me again, I just knew it.

  Dad put his arm around my waist and I jumped. “Jersey, are you okay? If this upsets you, you don’t have to stay in here.” He was talking so fast. “We can move you to the guest room. I guess we should have asked. I’m really sorry we didn’t think—”

  “No. I’m fine. Fine socks.” Except a ghost just whispered in my head, and that ghost, he used to be me, and he was going to kill me right next time, and I wanted my dad to shut up more than anything and go back downstairs and leave me alone. I felt like if I told him that, he’d break into twenty pieces.

  Jersey Hatch, J.B. called in a mean, mocking tone. Why’d you do it? Why’d you shoot yourself?

  I looked to my left and right really fast, but I didn’t see any ghosts. Great. J.B. was in my brain. I’d brought the ghost with me in my head.

  Why’d you do it? he taunted as my teeth clicked together.

  Of course, the answer to that question was the million-dollar prize, the whole contest give-away, the biggest of the big sock enchiladas. Why, exactly, did I put my father’s gun against my head and pull the trigger?

  It was a robbery, maybe. Or an accident. Maybe I had a car wreck.

  Bright sun through the window made me blink to be sure the scene was real, since “real” often turned left when I chased it. My life After reminded me of a bad geography video. North African deserts and stuff, with all the wind. I saw or heard something, finally got a fix on it, but siroccos blew sand across the landscape until everything got hidden again. Buried under two tons of yellow white dunes.

  Yellow white spots flashed in the eye that didn’t work anymore. Ghost spots, ghost sand. Just brief pictures in the dunes, like the ghost pictures on the wall downstairs and in the ghost in my head that had come upstairs to kill me. Pictures of sand dunes danced in my brain. Yellow mountains. Ripples and blowing clouds. God, first the house and socks, now sand dunes. I’d probably be thinking about sand for a month. The therapists told me it would be harder to think in the real world. That I’d have to try harder. Sand. I didn’t believe them. Sand. I wished I had.

  “Would you like me to stay, or would you like some time to yourself?” Dad let go of my waist and stepped away from me. He looked like he wanted to snatch me up and hug me all over again.

  “Uh—well.” My stomach heaved. Why did he want me to pick? Why was he acting so weird? “Sand. Some time to myself would probably be good.”

  I braced myself and stood still as a sand dune with no wind blowing.

  To my great relief, Dad didn’t touch me or fall apart. He just nodded and backed away until he reached the steps. It sounded like he ran down, I swear. For a full minute, I just stood there feeling like the man was scared I had a guillotine in my closet or something. Like I was the king of France waiting to chop off his head the first time he said something wrong. King Jersey. I snorted. What a joke. Sand dunes didn’t have crowns. Sand dunes didn’t have guillotines. Were there any sand dunes in France?

  My bad leg and arm started to ache, along with my head. Scar to scar, like always, the pain stabbed like knives, then spears. I lurched to the green-that-should-have-been-blue bedspread and sit on the edge.

  When the headaches came, the pain was awful at the start. The worst would pass if I relaxed. It would fade into a dull pounding and finish in a few hours and leave my head and neck sore. Nothing helped the headaches, and pain medicine made me fall and vomit, so that was out.

  God, my stomach hurt as bad as my head.

  I bent forward and held the memory book against my chest.

  This is where you did it, whispered J.B.

  My teeth clamped together.

  Want to write that in your stupid white book so the wind doesn’t blow it off your stupid yellow sand dunes? Go ahead and lie down. You probably fell sideways with your head on the pillow, since it’s to your left. Don’t you think that’s how you fell?

  “Shut up,” I mumbled. It was all I could do not to hit that pillow headfirst.

  What was I doing here? Why had I come back to this place? I should have stayed at Carter. No way was I ready for this.

  Lie down in the sand, King Jersey. The voice in my head was mine, but not mine. I blinked hard. The headaches always blurred my vision. Usually, I didn’t notice not being able to see out of one eye. Only sometimes, when I turned my head and saw something I didn’t know had been there. But now I noticed, since my good eye was blurring. The sun was going down, I could tell—but the light, it was still so bright. Like hammers against my eye. It made the dust bright. Dust and sand, sand and dust.

  My fingers tingle as I lift the gun to my mouth….

  I had folded the rug first. The rug Mama Rush gave me. I put it on the dresser so it wouldn’t get messy—

  “Stop it,” I said out loud, whacking my forehead with the memory book once, twice. The pain echoed between the scars. Those weren’t my memories. The dust and
tingling fingers, those were from a dream. The rug being folded, Dad had told me that a few minutes ago. I was filling in holes again, making dreams real and turning words into pictures.

  “Up and forward.” I lowered the memory book and held it tight against me. For a while, I rocked back and forth, feeling the football rug move back and forth under my sneakers. “Up and forward, up and forward, lucky proud king moron who could have had a duck. Socks and sand, sand and socks.”

  It was like a chant. I sang it to myself until the sharper pains got better and the toothache-throb started at my right temple. That I could stand—except I was so tired. I felt like I’d run home from Carter. Ignoring the whispers in my broken brain, I kicked off my shoes and let myself lie down, head on the pillow. My feet stayed on the floor because I didn’t have the energy to move them.

  When the pain let up enough, I opened up the memory book and stared at the To-Do List, letting the gray light show me my goals one more time.

  1. See Mama Rush and give her all the presents I made her.

  2. Talk to Todd and find out why he hates me.

  3. Pass the adaptive driver’s evaluation.

  4. Make decent grades.

  5. Take the ACT.

  6. Get a girlfriend.

  I repeated them three times, until I at least remembered the first one without looking. See Mama Rush. That was easy enough. She was right next door. All I had to do was knock and ask. If Todd answered, I might take care of the second one, too. Creak, creak, the floor was creaking. I could talk to Todd and ask—

  “Jersey!”