Lost Cause

by Callie Sparks

  Her head bobbed loosely, like a puppet’s. “Yes!”

  “Good. Now go inside and see Dad,” he instructed, holding the door open for her. She tottered toward the opening and struggled to crawl up the stairs on her hands and knees.

  We sped downhill, hardly having to pedal at all. The road to my home was so very steep that it caused all sorts of heartache in the winters. Streetlights and snowplows didn’t exist here. My parents had moved here expecting peace and quiet, but my father grumbled enough to ruin both of those things. For a deacon, he had a pretty dirty mouth, but it was all show. My dad was a total teddy bear, really, unless you were named Peasant Street.

  I rode in front of Noah. I called over my shoulder, “You think your mom would let you tube all the way to Lambertville?”

  “My mom’s dead,” he said. He had a cross, intense face, as if he was concentrating on the road ahead of him. “She died right after Sarah was born.”

  “Oh,” I said. I didn’t know anyone who had a dead mom. I wasn’t sure what to say. Something told me to change the subject. “How old’s Sarah?”

  “Four,” he said. “My dad’s getting remarried though. He’s building the house for his new wife as a wedding present.”

  “Oh.” I said again, relaxing. If he wasn’t going to break down in tears over it, neither was I. “She nice?”

  He shrugged. “She’s okay.”

  The Delaware River was a mile or so down that hill. Once we reached the bottom, we stopped for a caravan of Harleys on Route 29. The dark water was visible from there, behind a veil of leaves, and the banks of Pennsylvania stood quietly in the distance. The sound of rushing water from a canal lock captured Noah’s interest. When we crossed, we stared down into the cement fortress, watching the forceful cascade as it smashed against the mold-smattered walls. I threw my gum in there because it’d lost its taste and was getting too rubbery to blow bubbles with.

  The bed between the river and canal was nice and flat, perfect for riding bicycles. Because it had been a stormy June so far, the gray gravel of the canal bed was dotted with mud-puddles. The canal itself swelled slightly, though the water was as motionless as could be. It was the color of chocolate milk, and looked quite harmless. Because of my father, though, I knew better.

  At Bulls Island, we decided to park our bicycles and cast off. We both kicked off our sneakers. I peeled off my T-shirt, and Noah left his on. After plodding through thick, army-green mud to our ankles, we finally reached the river. The water was pretty frigid, but refreshing. I figured that once I got entirely wet, my body would adapt, so I waded quickly up to my waist, removed my glasses, and dove under. Immediately, under-water growths began brushing against my mosquito-bitten legs. The feeling was awful, shiver-inducing, so I quickly slid my backside into the hollow of my tube.

  Noah watched me timidly for a moment, and slowly followed. Because of his raging ear infection, he couldn’t get his head wet, so he carefully waded out to hip-level, and sunk rear-first into the center of his tube. “It’s so cold,” he whispered, breathing erratically as he settled in.

  This Noah kid was proving himself to be a complete wimp.

  But whatever. It’s not like I had any alternatives, and I refused to give Fate the last laugh.

  The gentle current began to carry us downstream, toward Stockton. I picked a giant scab on my knee, scratched at a few old mosquito bites, and watched as the blood trickled into the river. Satisfied, I dropped my head back as far as I could and stared at the cloud-heavy sky. It was the color of paste. The sun, which had made a dazzling appearance in the early hours of the morning, had obviously decided to call it a day. In the breeze, the leaves began to turn their pale green undersides to the sky. Whenever that happened, my father would always call our attention to it and say, “That’s a sure sign of rain.” And miraculously, he was always right.

  “Looks like rain,” I told Noah, who had goose bumps up and down his bony pale legs.

  His teeth were chattering. He held them still for a moment and said, “We should go in.”

  That’s what I’d figured, from wimp-boy. I followed him out, feeling deflated. I’d spent all my summers desperately alone. Despite him being kind of a wet blanket, he was someone. So when we had climbed back to our bicycles, I said, “Why don’t you come to my house? I have Netflix.”

  “What’s Netflix?” he asked me.

  He had to be kidding. I explained to him the many fine luxuries that Netflix offered, but he still seemed perplexed. He said that he rarely watched movies. The last movie he had seen was three years earlier, in the theaters. But here was the kicker: They didn’t even own a television.

  “Why not?” I asked him.

  “We used to. We got rid of it a few months ago. Annie thinks it makes you fat,” he said, quite seriously, sounding like a public service announcement. “She’s my dad’s girlfriend.”

  I couldn’t imagine the dull existence I would lead without television. Some Sunday mornings, especially in the winter, I would spend upwards of five hours with it. I’d sit glued to my parents’ leather sofa, covered in a quilt, watching show after show and wolfing down handfuls of Cheerios. I looked at my stomach. My limbs were stick-like, but my stomach had always protruded roundly and unabashedly from the center of my bathing suit. Hmm.

  Our clothes were full of river. They were heavy, sagged off our bodies, and clung to us in spots. I stood there for a moment, doing a little jig and occasionally shaking like a dog, hoping to dry some. When I pulled on my T-shirt, it immediately bonded to my skin. My hair matted against my forehead. Noah had kept his hair dry, but he looked as if someone had just poured a bowl of spaghetti in his lap. He held his arms straight out at his sides, as if practicing for crucifixion. Finally, he gathered the fabric from his T-shirt near his belly and twisted it tightly. A small stream of water fell to the ground and splattered noisily on the blacktop.

  That was when I noticed the bruise. He had lifted his T-shirt enough so that a small triangle of skin was visible near his navel. Right above the waistline of his shorts, near his ribcage, the beginning of a large, purplish swelling was visible.

  “Wow, what happened there?” I said. I intended to only point, but accidentally poked him in the stomach.

  He grimaced, and his face wrinkled. He quickly finished wringing out his shirt, and hastily covered the bruise. “Stupid of me, really,” he said, shrugging. “I wasn’t used to living in the trailer, and I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Fell off the top bunk.”

  “Nice job,” I told him, still inspecting his midsection. The white T-shirt clung perfectly to the curves of his body, and a faint outline of the welt was still visible. It wasn’t large, but it looked painful, and would probably have gotten a solid four on my Injury Scale. A rating of one was a paper-cut or tiny bruise, and ten was decapitation, or anything that resulted in death. I congratulated myself on anything above a five. My all-time high was a seven, when I was thrown head-first over the handlebars of my bicycle. My jaw was busted open, and I had to get forty-six stitches. I still have the scar.

  He smiled stiffly, straddled his bicycle, and simply whispered, “Thanks.”

  We ended up watching Star Wars, that first day. The weirdo’d never seen it. It was instant love for him, I think; I’d been enamored by it the first time I saw it, too, years before. It was just a movie, but it was our connection, our first one. I didn’t know it then, but I guess you could’ve called it the beginning of our force, the first of many strings that Fate had used to bind us together.

  #

  Noah isn’t that scrawny little thing anymore, the kid who’d have trouble doing battle with a stiff wind.

  He’d resembled his dad, then. But lately, I’ve seen him on the news countless times, and you’d never know the two were related. Yes, the ghost of that sweet little-boy face is there, the upward-pointing arrow curve of his eyebrows, the full movie-starlet lips, that sad-clown birthmark on his cheek, but there are other things, forei
gn things. The unfortunate crew-cut that bore several bald patches has grown thick and shaggy all over, in danger of covering his deep brown eyes. He has a pronounced jaw, riddled with dark stubble, and a scar over his eye.

  Noah looks like something I never thought he was capable of. Tough.

  Fate really can be a bitch, sometimes.

  I’d watched the last news program, rapt, creeping closer without realizing it, until my nose crackled with static against the television.

  He’d been at least a foot taller than the statuesque blonde in heels that had interviewed him for channel seven. His t-shirt stretched across his defined muscles now, instead of hanging loosely there, and those once-spindly arms now bulged in all the manly places, inked with tattoos that I wanted to get a better look at. I thought maybe they were the key to deciphering him, because where before I knew what he liked for dinner and his favorite ice cream flavor and that he hated the smell of rain, now he was nothing but a big question mark.

  And those eyes. The ones that were once sparkled with invincibility? Now, they seemed murky, heavy-lidded, guarded.

  So yeah. There’s more that’s different about him than the same. He scares me. He fascinates me. He’s taken just about every emotion inside me and thrown them in a blender set on liquefy.

  And it’s likely he doesn’t even remember me. Not after all he’s been through.

  Can my parents really blame me for dragging my feet?

  Chapter Two

  When did your normal life start to change?

  When my dad met Annie. She was, I guess a lot of people called her, uh, a trophy wife. She was fifteen years younger than him, well-turned out, I guess they call it—she’d been a model, you know, posing for the cover of Cosmopolitan a few years before and stuff, so she was used to that kind of life. My dad was plain and meek and had made a decent living as an architect, saved his pennies, you know? Oil and water, they were. But he was looking for a wife, and she was looking for a change in her lifestyle. They got serious right away.

  How did you feel about Annie at first?

  Fine. Good. Like I said, I’d been six when my mom died, so the memories I’d had of her were spotty at best, and Sarah’d only been a baby. We were all for a new mom-equivalent. And Annie was nice to us. She’d bring us candy and gifts and . . . Sarah immediately latched onto her, because she was so striking, like, someone you wanted to know. She’d walk into a room and no eye in the place could be torn away. We called her mom. I don’t think I’d ever been happier than the day I served as best man at my dad’s wedding. I was only ten, but I remember feeling important.

  So the house was built, and they got married, and you lived there together, in that extravagant home. Things were good?

  Yeah. They were even better than that.

  #

  Summer plods along, as usual. I like college, though the classes are hard. I’m getting more into my major—business— now that I’m going to be a junior, and it’s not easy, but I was never a great student. But I like being on my own, feeling grown-up for the first time in my life. Even if St. Bonaventure in Upstate New York is insulated from the real world, it feels like freedom. As great as they are, sometimes living with my parents after all that autonomy makes it hard to breathe.

  I work as a breakfast waitress at the Sticky Toad in Lambertville. Not to pay for school—just for fun money, since my parents cover my tuition, and well, most things in my life.

  I know. So much for actual freedom.

  I guess Noah and I still have that in common. His life was the illusion of a lot of things, too.

  On an overcast Wednesday, I get up with the sun that morning and hurry outside with my hair in a messy ponytail and my apron balled up in my fist. Our houses are far away enough and the trees thick enough now to insulate me from the remaining news crews that are still straggling outside. It’s been a week of relative quiet on our street. So far, I’ve been lucky to be able to pull out in my little Fiat and head down the hill without having a microphone thrust under my nose.

  When I pull out, I see Mr. Pollock outside, watering his lawn. He never sleeps. I wave and he waves back. He’s one of those hipster dads, who manages to rock suspenders and a floppy haircut. He works in social media and has a cute young wife and the two most adorable twin girls, Beck and Danner, whom I babysit. His family bought the Burns place, as it’ll always been known, when Mrs. Burns died two years ago.

  Other than our house, the Burns place, and Noah’s cabin, the street is narrow and twisty and dark from the leaf-cover. Make no mistake, it’s the forest that owns this street; our three houses are merely guests. I’m sure the Pollocks never bargained that Peasant Street would become the circus it’s turned into in the last few days.

  When I get to the Toad, I park in the employee lot by the dumpsters and rush in. The place is due to open any moment, and besides old Thelma, the owner, and Tom, her husband, who does the cooking, I’m the only employee. It gets crowded, not because it’s immensely popular, but because there are only five tables in the dining room, packed into the front dining room like Jenga tiles. The food is atrocious and the service used to be worse, until I stepped in. Thelma and Tom go to our church, and Tom finally convinced his eighty-year old, arthritic wife that she needs to stop limping her way from table to table and just play hostess, seated behind the podium.

  Thelma had a bit of a hard time relinquishing the reins to another employee, though. She’s proud and stubborn. She didn’t want just anyone helping out. But my father and Tom finally convinced her. And who could be more trustworthy and have a better work ethic than a deacon’s daughter?

  So far, it’s been three weeks, and she’s starting to soften. I think. I check my phone as I come in. Three minutes to spare. The screen door bangs behind me as I stuff the phone into my pocket before Thelma can look up and see it. Cell phones are obviously a big no—she calls them all rotten Apples, no matter what the make. She checks the clock and grimaces, likely upset that she can’t scold me for being late. “Good morning, Thelma,” I say brightly.

  She mumbles a hello and then says something about how nobody filled the salt shakers after last closing. Tom is greasing the grill, towel slung over his shoulder. He gives me a wave. “Well, hi, cutie!” he says, which makes me blush. Tom is the yin to Thelma’s yang.

  “Hi, Tom,” I say, sniffing the air to discern something other than breakfast grease. He offers me a tray of cold, day-old bacon, and I take a piece, because I’m starving, and also because . . . it’s bacon. “What’s the special?”

  He points to a bowl of thickening pancake batter. “What do you want it to be?”

  I don’t even have to think. “Banana walnut.”

  “You got it!” he says, as I skip out to the front of the restaurant, nibbling up the rest of my bacon. I tie my apron around my waist and wrestle the sandwich board out to the front of the sidewalk, then use some chalk to write Today’s Special on it in pretty script. Afterwards I draw a picture of a monkey holding a banana, to be cute. But when I inspect my work, I cringe. The monkey looks drunk and the banana looks like . . . well, I blush at the mention of what it looks like he’s doing with that banana.

  I wipe the dust off my palms on my apron and realize I left the eraser on the inside windowsill. I spring to standing and take a step back, right into a wall I was certain wasn’t there before. Flushing, then whirl around and come chin-to-chest with it.

  Yes, it has a chest. A very solid one. Not a wall, after all.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!” I mumble, stumbling backwards.

  He reaches forward and grasps my elbow, steadying me before I can trip into my artwork. My face blazes. Nice, Ari, you’d think you never owned a pair of feet before! I glance upward, but only for a second. Only long enough to see a stubble-covered chin, and above that, a smile that’s brighter than anything I’ve seen today.

  #

  Summers go by way too quickly when you’re young. Before I knew it, my mother was sizing me up for a n
ew pair of Wranglers and purchasing packages of loose-leaf paper and pencils by the cartload. The day after Labor Day, I slowly pulled on a polo shirt and my stiff new jeans and shuffled down the hill toward the intersection of Peasant Street and Route 29, carrying a sack-lunch and a deflated backpack. Noah and Sarah were already at the bus stop, and I called, “Yo, dudes!” to them as I approached.

  “Hey,” Noah said, balancing a pencil-box and a grease-stained paper bag against his chest. His lunch bag was full to the point of splitting, and the corner of a juice box was poking out from the tear.

  We’d spent quite a few hours together that summer. He and Sarah would come over to my house often, since the trailer was pretty crowded. We’d play Pay Day and Mousetrap, or watch Netflix. I’d proudly gotten him hooked on the entire Star Wars franchise.

  Sarah was wearing a frilly yellow dress and ruffled socks, and wearing a crown on her head of wilting dandelions. Her eyes were wider than the Sahara, and she was trembling a little and tightly clutching her yellow book-bag. Noah bent down and stared into her eyes. “Sarah, trust me, it’s fun! You’ll learn the alphabet, and they have a lot of toys. More toys than preschool, even.”

  The wrinkles disappeared from her forehead. “Really?”

  He nodded, and that seemed to calm her.

  The school bus rumbled toward us, red lights flashing. When it stopped, the doors swung open, and Noah grabbed Sarah’s hand and helped her up the three giant steps. She moved tentatively down the aisle, staring at the cold, unfamiliar faces of the older children. Noah slid into an empty seat and planted her down beside him on the forest-green vinyl.

  “Hey, Ari!” a chorus of voices sang from the back of the bus. Claire Keenan, Jacy Stark, and Mari Palmer waved to me. The bus started moving again, so I stumbled into a seat near them.

  “What’s up? How was your summer?” I asked them, though I really didn’t want to know. That ol’ bitch Fate had given each of them obscenely rich parents and million-dollar houses on prime river-front property. They spent their vacations in exotic wonderlands, while poor chumps like me were forced to derive their kicks from tubing in a muddy river.