by David James
“We don’t!” We do. “I really just don’t know. Maybe I’m tired from not sleeping well. Lately, it’s like the entire day I worry about what I’ll dream about that night. And then, when I finally get to bed, I drift off hoping it will be different and it never is. Everything comes crashing down in my dreams; they’re so vivid and real and there’s always blood. Always nightmares and mist. Death and fire. And then I see Kate today and I’m not even safe during the day!” I felt my eyes burn. I ran my hands through my hair. “They go together, I think, Kate and the nightmares. I just wish I knew what everything meant.”
I leaned back in the chair, rubbed the sweat from my hands on my jeans, and waited. I expected Tyler to talk, wanted him to, but he was silent.
For a moment, I was numb with waiting.
And then Tyler’s voice cut me deep: “Do you think this has more to do with Kate, or that one year ago today your Dad left?”
I felt my throat close. I breathed, “What?”
Tyler gazed out the window on the wall near his bed. He looked captivated by the view, so I looked too, seeing the rain that had started to pour just as we had reached the Little’s was now beginning to calm. The sky, dark gray, was pierced with the softness of an evening sunset.
I wished it would storm.
I caught my reflection in the window; all I could ever see was him, not me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”
For a while neither of us moved. Then, without warning, Tyler sat up on his bed and leaned back on his elbows.
“Okay, Calum,” he started. “I’ll say this as many times as you need to hear it because I’ve known you since before I knew what friendship was. You’re my brother. No one understands us when we talk and we argue all the time. So, just listen.”
I opened my mouth.
“Ah!” Tyler pointed at me. “Listen.”
He breathed in, slow as death, then pushed all the air out of his body. His voice became low, deeper than before so it was no more than a whisper. Still, somehow, it screamed. “You need to understand that as much as you look like your Dad, you will never be him. I’m not gonna lie and say you don’t kind of look like him, but that’s it. That’s where you and him end. I know you get freaked out when you look in a mirror because the first person you see is him. But when anyone else does, there isn’t anyone but you.”
He tried to smile, but I could see the color of his eyes grow light with worry. I felt my own become pointed, could feel the anger feed my heart so it pumped through my veins.
“You don’t understand! I get so angry sometimes it’s like I’m truly going to turn into his son one day.” I flew up. My fingers tore through my hair, pulling the ends so some broke away. My teeth hurt, clenched tight together. Everything was raw, about to break. “Am I so like him that I don’t even have a hope to be me? One day, I might hurt someone just like he did!”
I wanted to scream.
I opened my mouth, but suddenly caught sight of my reflection in the window again. In this light, with twilight pushing against the clouds outside and the rainwater holding on to the window, I was twisted into the man I never wanted to become. Now, I looked more like him than ever.
My shoulders sagged down, life seeping out of me until I could barely stand. I fell back into the chair. I pressed a finger against my eye so hard it hurt. So hard maybe I would never see my reflection again.
My head fell. I sniffed, felt tears run down my throat, and whispered to Tyler, “I’m broken. I don’t even know who I am. Sometimes I have moments when I feel strong enough to be me, but other times I just see someone else. ”
He didn’t move, and I didn’t look at him. When he spoke, his voice was a hushed breath of quiet confidence, and I found myself wondering why he cared enough to say: “I know you were hurt. I know your Mom was. But no one is coming back to hurt you again. Trust me when I say that you worrying about this, about hurting someone just like your Dad hurt you, means that you will never even get close to that temptation.”
I felt chills run up and down my back, hints of one thought I could never forget: He cares. Tyler cares about me maybe more than anyone.
He continued, “And I know you’ve been worrying about all this for a while now. For a year I’ve seen you get slowly more anxious the closer we got to today. But I want you to know that your past can’t come back to hurt you anymore, and if you don’t want to, you will never become your father. You get to decide who you will be. It’s your life, not anyone else’s. So, let’s worry about Kate instead of things we have no control over, because that crazy bitch made your day a living Hell today!”
Without wanting to, I laughed. Tyler grinned.
“Thanks,” I said. “She was wasn’t she?”
“A real killer,” he said laughing. “You should have seen how many times she was looking at you in the halls. It was intense!”
“Seriously! Every time I looked up she was staring at me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “She couldn’t keep her eyes off you. And, by the way, she kept cracking her knuckles whenever you walked by. Sounded like somebody wanted some action!”
I frowned.
Suddenly, the whole thing wasn’t so funny.
“Like action in a funny way.” He paused when he saw my face. And then, as if it were, he asked, “Too much?”
“Too messed up,” I said.
Outside a crack of thunder sounded; one final boom, shaking my heart, to make the air thick with worry. One crash to bend our laughter into doubt. Our voices sounded too loud in the room, with nothing but our hearts to beat out the noise.
Tyler said, “What was up with her threatening you? It’s kind of scary when you think about it.”
I didn’t want to think about it.
“Let’s stop talking about this, Tyler,” I said.
He shook his head. “No way! I mean I kind of want to figure out what she’s all about, don’t you? She just comes here out of nowhere and is so cold and distant towards everyone, especially you. Someone like that has something to hide.” He scratched his chin. “I bet she has a secret past. Maybe she was kicked out of her old school. Maybe she faked all her records and really is the Bloodletter like everyone thinks.”
I asked, “How is it possible that you and Tanya have never gotten together?”
He gasped. “What if Kate’s a spy?”
“Maybe she’s just the new girl at a different school and doesn’t know anyone,” I said.
He waved his hand. “No, that’s not it and you know it.” He grabbed a baseball off the floor and, tossing it up at the ceiling, rolled onto his back. “Something’s off. Don’t you think there’s something odd about her?”
I felt my throat clench. A bristle of cold fell over my head and down my back: Is there a way to hate someone so much you can’t stop thinking about them?
I felt the words before they sounded, felt them crawl up my throat and spread like mist, uncontrollable and dangerous. True. “I think maybe she’s lonely.”
Nothing but the smack of the baseball against Tyler’s hands sat between us. It was a moment set in perfect hesitation, like the eye of a storm.
I looked up at Tyler, and found myself overwhelmed by everything I wasn’t. Tyler was in a different league than I was. Running back of the school’s football team, he looked the part. He was built, buff and tall, so much so that his shirts strained under the pressure. His short, brown hair was never done, but somehow looked perfectly styled and artfully messy. He was proud, but not overtly so; his confidence was something I was jealous of.
I asked, “Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?”
“What do you mean?” he wondered.
“Do you ever feel like you just don’t fit in with everyone else? Not in an unpopular kind of way... It’s like I was made different, or something. Sometimes I catch myself not saying anything because I’m too buried in my head, thinking.”
I took a breath and focused on my hands. “I look around an
d see all these couples and perfect families. Like yours. And you know I love your family, but they’re so happy and mine is just... not. I mean, isn’t life supposed to get better by the time you’re seventeen? At school everyone is dating someone, everyone has those moments when they’re in complete bliss, hand-holding and kissing and smiling, and I just haven’t had that. I don’t know if I ever will.”
Tyler was gazing out the window when I looked up.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Calum” Tyler said, quietly. “Not everyone is like that. I don’t feel like I fit in all the time. Why do you think I’m always playing football or baseball?”
I shrugged. “You’re popular, Tyler. You’ve always done those things. They’d be lost without you.”
Tyler sat up straight and threw his hands up in the air. “But that’s just it! It’s me that would be lost without them.”
My chin lifted. “You’ve got the perfect life, Tyler. Don’t you get that? You could have any girl you wanted. You could have anything.”
The laugh that shot out of his mouth was high, crackled. “That’s exactly my problem! Every day I see my parents looking so happy, so complete with only each other. That’s what I want. So I go to school and date and try to fit in. But I haven’t found that right person yet, that one I want to be with forever. I have never ever felt butterflies when I kiss. I’ve never felt any kind of heart-stopping emotion, no racing pulse. Nothing. I can’t feel anything. That’s why I date so much; why I haven’t settled down. It’s because I’m dead inside.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I just want to feel. Have a kiss that changes me, ya know? I’ve heard so many times before that I’ll know if I love someone the moment I kiss them, that it’ll feel like a million tiny sparks shooting straight to my heart. I want that, Calum.”
I asked, “You think you can tell if you love someone from a kiss?”
“I think you know you love them before,” Tyler said, “but I think a kiss is what seals it. You can see into someone's soul through their eyes, Calum, but you can touch their heart through a kiss.”
Confusion ran through me, like shadows moving swiftly through night. How was Tyler feeling like this? How, when he had everything I wanted, did he make it sound like he had nothing at all?
“Just because you haven’t found the right person yet doesn’t mean they won’t come around,” I said, though I didn’t know if I believed it. “Your parents are lucky. You can’t let yourself down now because you haven’t fallen in love yet. We’re in high school. I mean, c’mon.”
He sighed letting his hands fall. “Yeah, I know. I know. I just want it.”
For a moment, silence was the only noise.
“I know,” he repeated quietly. “I just feel pressure sometimes, from everyone.”
“Me too,” I said. “It feels impossible to be who everyone thinks I am when I can’t even figure out who I am alone. Like I’m living day by day, right where they want me to be, but lost and unsure as to where I’m going or who I am.”
On his bed, Tyler smiled. “Exactly.”
He picked up the baseball again and tossed it to me. I caught it, one handed.
“You know,” he said. “Maybe we just need time to let it all work out.”
I sighed. “I know. It’s not that easy, though.”
“Maybe that’s why we want it so badly.”
~
I breathed in the aroma of family as Tyler and I walked down the stairs; the air smelled as though even it had been made from scratch.
“Tyler, could you grab the napkins from the kitchen? And Calum, the ketchup’s in the fridge,” Mrs. Little called to us from the dining room.
“Honey?” Mr. Little asked his wife. “Do we have any pepper, by chance?”
“Calum! Pepper, please,” she called to me.
“Thanks, dear,” I heard Mr. Little say.
“Don’t thank me, thank Calum. And tomorrow you’re cooking dinner. I don’t recall having a name tag on my apron that says ‘Betty Little: Chef, Maid, Slave’.”
I laughed just as Tyler rolled his eyes. I put the pepper and ketchup on the table and sat down next to Tyler.
Mr. Little smiled at me. “Thanks, Calum.”
“Welcome,” I said. “Everything looks great, Mrs. Little.”
Tyler elbowed me, snorting. “Suck up.”
“Thank you, Calum,” Mrs. Little said. Her eyes slanted down, but she smiled as she said, “It’s nice that someone appreciates this.”
Mr. Little reached over to squeeze her hand. “I do, dear. I was just testing you.”
She kissed him, cupping his face with her hands. Her wedding ring glinted in the false light of the room, the gold band making the diamonds shine with yellow verve. “Sure you were.”
“So, should we leave you two alone or what?” Tyler said as he passed me a napkin.
“You always were funny,” said Mr. Little.
“Funny looking!” Kendra erupted when she came into the room. She was wearing a pink ballet tutu and a gold crown. Red lines streaked from her lips, covering her face in broken lines of lipstick.
Mrs. Little covered her mouth. Her eyes laughed, but she held her voice steady. “Honey! What happened?”
Tyler couldn’t keep it in. “You look like you got in a fight with a drag queen and lost.”
I kicked him.
“Tyler,” warned his dad.
“She does!” he laughed.
“What’s a dwag qween?” Kendra asked as Mrs. Little dipped a napkin in her glass of water and wiped the lipstick off.
“Nothing,” Mrs. Little said, looking at Tyler. “You look very pretty.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I love your crown, Kendra. Are you a princess today?”
She beamed. Her face was still lined pink, but Mrs. Little had let her go. “I’m a pwincess. Will you be my pwince?”
Tyler groaned. “Oh, man.”
“Of course,” I said, trying to keep from laughing. “But why don’t we play after dinner. I’m starved!”
Kendra nodded again, her face falling to serious. “Mom! Hungwy!”
Mrs. Little rolled her eyes, and I saw a bit of Tyler there. “Was there a memo sent out that I forgot to read? Something about treating your mother like a slave?”
“You didn’t get it?” Tyler asked.
“I read it last Tuesday, I think,” Mr. Little said, rubbing his finger on his chin, pretending to think.
“No,” said Mrs. Little. “I must have missed it.”
Mr. Little passed me the rolls and grinned. “It was a gem of a memo.”
“I learned a lot,” Tyler said, breaking his roll in two. “Did you know that you’re also supposed to make us dessert?”
“Is that so?” Mrs. Little said.
Tyler shrugged. “And there was something in there about giving the oldest child extra allowance.”
“And the best friend,” I said quickly.
Mrs. Little put her hands on her hips and threw her mouth open in mock horror. “Calum Wade! I expected better from you!”
Kendra giggled. “Pwince Calum!”
The table burst into laughter.
Then, as though a cold breeze had blown in from the living room, we heard the news report from the television:
...more than yesterday. It seems as though the Bloodletter is not slowing down, and his nightly attacks are becoming more common than ever. Although the Lakewood Hollow Police Department is not willing to give any new information, our sources say that as many as twenty new victims have been abducted since last night. Of course, no bodies have been found, and because the LHPD is not allowed to file a missing persons report for twenty-four hours, the community is at a loss. Still, we are being told not to panic as nothing has been confirmed as murder. The LHPD is urging citizens to maintain a normal lifestyle...
My throat burned dry. I reached for my glass of water too quickly and it fell, sending a river across the table and over the edge.
In my mind,
the water turned red. And as it disappeared off the table I could only think of one thing: Blood and gone.
Mrs. Little cleared her throat. “Okay. Let’s forget about all that and be grateful we’re together for the moment.”
I wished I knew how to forget-
anything.
“Calum, sweetie. How is it?” she asked as she blotted away the spilled water. “Do you have enough to eat?”
My voice cracked. “Yes, thanks.”
A melody of classical music peddled its way into the dining area from somewhere beyond.
“Mom,” Tyler sputtered through a mouthful of salad. “Do we have to listen to this stuff?”
“Atmosphere makes the meal, Tyler,” she replied. “Besides, you used to love Chopin.”
“You did,” agreed Mr. Little. “I remember you used to take those piano lessons. They were all you could talk about.”
“No way,” said Tyler. “I don’t remember that at all.”
“I remember you did!” I said, laughing. “You used to sing all your classical songs when you came over. You even tried to get me to take lessons. Something about forming a band called the ‘C and T Piano Posse.’ I was supposed to write the lyrics for our songs. You would not let up about that.”
“And I still agree with myself. You should have taken those lessons with me,” he said. “And you always are writing in one notebook or another. The ‘Piano Posse’ could have been awesome.”
“Posse,” Kendra giggled.
“Those were the days,” Tyler said.
“Oh, please,” said Mrs. Little. “We had to bribe you to go. Candy, chips, anything to get you to the studio. That was back when we thought we were helping you out by getting you involved in something musical. It was supposed to help with your learning skills, math and whatnot. It was in all the books.”
“That was until we saw you throw a ball,” Mr. Little said, and stuck his fork out to make a point. “That, and when we heard you sing all bets were off.”
“I could sing a mean version of Twinkle, Twinkle,” Tyler said. “Even my teachers said so.”
“Uh...” I started.
“I’m going to have to go with you on this one, Calum,” Mr. Little said, chuckling. “You son, like myself, were not blessed with the gift of song.”
