Wild and Crooked

by Leah Thomas

  “Coulda been a setup, even,” I say, almost wanting to believe it.

  Phil nods. “Many people had reason to dislike the Spence crowd. What if this was all part of an elaborate vendetta?”

  But if that’s the case, we’ll never solve this, Scooby gang or not. And there’s something in my bones that says otherwise. Dad wouldn’t take the fall for a drifter. He wouldn’t hide a body for a drifter, wouldn’t go to prison for a drifter. No matter what the truth is, it’s a lot closer to home. But which home? Mine, or Gus’s?

  The black clouds are returning. Gus eyes them uncomfortably.

  “Kalyn, can you help us get the van out of the mud? I need to go home.”

  “What, right this minute?”

  He looks at me. “After we clean up, I mean. I have some questions for my mom. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

  By the time we’re done it’s late in the afternoon. Getting the van unstuck takes some doing, but after a little kitty litter and a lot of pushing, we free it from the mud and they wave goodbye.

  I’m already waiting for the phone to ring.

  GUS

  ON THE WAY home, the rain returns with a vengeance. The Death Van’s wipers can hardly keep up, and when Phil drops me in the driveway even he seems troubled. Home looks so very big, and unapproachable, almost.

  “I mean, cinematically speaking, weather like this doesn’t bode well for you.”

  The sunniest weather in the world wouldn’t make this easy. “Wait here for me?”

  Phil shrugs. “As you wish.”

  Inside, the living room couch is vacant.

  The guest room is empty. The kitchen is too, and so is Mom’s office on the opposite side. Her laptop’s clamped shut. An abandoned, white-ringed cup of coffee chills on the desk.

  I peer through the curtains at the backyard, just in case Tam is venting her feelings on the flowerbeds. Apart from rainwater rippling in new puddles and those radioactive blades of grass bending under heavy droplets, there’s no movement.

  I can feel my whole body tensing, chest and arms and legs and heart, too.

  “Mom? Tam?”

  I can’t hurry up the stairs. I have to take my time. No running in tombs, kids!

  I’m breathless when I reach the landing.

  There’s an inexplicable stack of flattened moving boxes leaning against the hallway bannister. My stomach knots.

  My parents’ bedroom door is open. The bed’s unmade, the flowery quilt shucked and bunched at the foot of the mattress. When I step inside, the air feels icebox cold. The closet is gaping and so are some of the drawers.

  Thump.

  Something shifts on the other side of the wall.

  Someone is in my room.

  Mom and Tam have been murdered. It’s not a rational thought, but I can’t help it.

  I pull a heavy, framed Dad from Mom’s nightstand. This one shows him snowmobiling with friends. Mom’s arms are wrapped around his waist. I wonder if Gary Spence is grinning under one of the other visors.

  Thud.

  I move slowly. I imagine a thousand things I wish my treacherous brain would block with branches. Mom splayed on the bed with her mouth slit at the corners, blood dripping through the mattress; Tamara stuffed in my closet between my polka-dotted raincoat and my overalls.

  The floor doesn’t creak. The carpet barely rustles.

  My door is open just a crevice.

  I peer inside.

  I see very, very still shoulders.

  Mom’s washed her hair. She’s balanced on my bed in an absolutely striking outfit. Her prized Vivienne Westwood blazer, usually reserved for author conferences. A pair of black, sharp-toed Fluevogs poke out from beneath the hem of her tailored pants. Mom looks nothing like her usual flowing self, buttoned up like this. I want to be relieved she’s not vegetating, but it’s wrong. Mom’s wearing someone else’s sharper skin.

  “Hey, sweetie. How’s the abyss today?” Mom smiles like this morning’s catatonia never was. Her makeup can’t hide the veins in her eyes.

  I don’t answer.

  “I should have asked permission before coming into your room. I wanted someplace quiet.”

  “Um.” The whole house is quiet. I don’t ask about the boxes leaning against the banister, because obviously my exodus to the guest room is beginning at last. It’s another something I can’t process. “Sorry about . . . ​leaving. Today. Sorry about yesterday, too.”

  She waves a dismissive hand. “I don’t blame you for wanting out. Gus, if driving away meant escaping, I’d have raised you on the road in a caravan.” Mom yanks a constructed box closer. It’s filled with my shoes. “You should keep these downstairs. It’s rude to wear shoes in the house. We’ve both fallen into bad habits, haven’t we?”

  We haven’t bothered with the “no shoes indoors” rule since Tamara moved in.

  “Mom. Where’s Tam?”

  She glances at the Dad who watches me sleep. “Tam will be spending some time away. With her family.”

  “We’re her, we are, the. Her.” Why can’t I say it? All these questions I wanted to ask, and they’ve left me stranded in the woods.

  The boxes aren’t for me moving downstairs. They’re for Tam moving out.

  “It’s not permanent, sweetie. She’s just upset. I met with Grandpa Ellis today. He’s going to help us.” Mom scoots over. “Come sit by me.”

  I can’t holler words she won’t hear. Like a good seven-year-old, I go crawling to my mother. Sitting feels like falling. I drop the snowmobiling Dad between us.

  “God, that’s an awful one.” Mom pulls her finger across the glass. “I can’t believe he convinced me to ride that thing. In my defense, I didn’t know I was pregnant. But it was still a choice. I didn’t think enough about my choices back then, Gus.” She’s looking right through me. “A single choice can make all the difference.”

  “Mom . . . ?”

  Her eyes refocus. “Let’s both really take the day off tomorrow, okay?”

  I’ve got thoughts about that, trapped behind other thoughts. “Grandpa Ellis hates us. Why is he going to help us?”

  Is it because Tamara’s gone? I hope not. I hope there’s no universe in which Mom would choose that scowling bastard over Tam.

  “He doesn’t hate you.” She rests her head on mine. “He wants you to be safe; we have that in common. He’s called that attorney again. We’re putting together an entire team. I don’t want you to worry, Gus. Gary Spence is never getting out of prison. I promise.”

  If there are words for the turmoil taking place inside my brain, I can’t find them. There’s been a hurricane. I can’t clamber over the tangled debris.

  Mom stares at the picture; why can’t I ask who the other people were? “You’re almost as old as James ever was now. A junior already.”

  As if that’s a reminder I need. I focus on climbing over just one thought.

  Something about the box of shoes—­

  No, not that. I try again.

  “Mom, maybe . . . ​maybe we should let them do the retrial. If, um, Kalyn. I mean. If he’s guilty. We’ll just prove it for sure.”

  The temperature drops. “We know he’s guilty. Gary Spence loathed your father. He drove him to his filthy junkyard and shot him in the head, Gus.”

  She never speaks this bluntly, unless I’m on the settee and she’s on the sofa. And I realize that maybe what she’s doing is trying to shove more trees down in front of me.

  I speak a heresy: “Mom. What . . . if he didn’t?”

  Mom clenches her jaw. “Do you think your whole life is a lie? My whole life?”

  “I don’t . . .” The box of shoes plucks at me again. Mom, did you know him?

  “Please.” She climbs to her feet. “Please enlighten me. Tell me about the innocence of a felon you’ve never met. Tell me what his daughter told you. I’m sure I’ll change my mind about the evil man I knew.”

  I didn’t even ask, and she said it anyhow. “You knew Kalyn’s da
d?”

  “I knew him enough,” she says stiffly.

  So why was I raised believing they’d barely brushed shoulders? “Was he friends with you? With Dad?”

  Her eyes widen. “Did she tell you that? I’m all ears, Gus!”

  All ears? I might as well not have a mouth, for all the listening she does.

  “I’ve spent all day being told I don’t know what I know, but go on!”

  How many times is someone called evil before it’s true?

  “We couldn’t even have an open casket, but you think he deserves a second—”

  “Would you please let me talk!” I scream.

  Mom gapes. “I’m not stopping you.”

  But I’m breaking through a dozen branches at once; I’m an avalanche. “You are! You go—you are—you stop me all the time! You don’t let me think, you don’t listen. You don’t care what I have to say!”

  Her face contorts. “Do you want to repeat that?”

  The box of shoes—one pair is missing. “Mom. Where are my Docs?”

  “I threw them out.”

  “But those are—they were mine.”

  “You shouldn’t be wearing shoes like that. You shouldn’t be sleeping upstairs. And you shouldn’t be going to school tomorrow.”

  “You can’t treat me like I’m—I’m seven!”

  “What do you think school will be like?” She’s angry now, but not at me. “Gus, you try to embrace the world, and it slaps you down. Again and again!”

  “I’m seventeen.”

  “I am your mother. I took care of you when you were a baby, and yes, when you were seven, and all the years before and after. You can bet your life that I’ll take care of you for as long as I’m here. Seven or eighty-seven: it’s inconsequential.”

  Mom might speak like Phil to win her arguments. But the way someone speaks doesn’t determine the value of what they’re saying. Kalyn talks with a twang, but she’s cleverer than most people. I may use the wrong words. It doesn’t make me wrong.

  Details aren’t inconsequential. The fact that Mom knew Gary Spence, the fact that Gary and Dad were friends, that’s not inconsequential, and DNA evidence isn’t inconsequential. Innocence isn’t inconsequential.

  I make myself stand. I’ll never be as tall as she is, but I want to be closer to eye level. “I am going to school tomorrow. You don’t get to lock me in the tomb with you.”

  “Damn it, Gus!” Mom spins around, and it’s like those clothes have made her brittle, like the loss of her softness extends beyond what she’s wearing. “You are the only child I’ll ever have, and if that means I’m overprotective—well, Gus, being overprotective isn’t something I’m ashamed of. Jesus, are there reasons to hover.”

  She tosses the picture frame onto the bed, and it slides onto the floor. “I know I’m not well. I know that. I’ve got the prescriptions to prove it. But you wouldn’t be well either if you saw—if you went through what I—no. Gus. You would be worse in every way.”

  I am shrinking, aging backward as she cries.

  “Can you imagine having a baby at your age? I couldn’t. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. I did it anyhow. I just did it.”

  “Why?” A single choice, my brain supplies. A single choice can make all the difference. What choice haunts Mom?

  She blinks. “ ‘Why,’ Gus?”

  “Why did you have me?” My brain’s decided to clear away an enormous stump, one that’s always been embedded in me, one I wish I could uproot forever. “You could have gotten an abortion.”

  Mom gives me a look so raw and horrible that it stops my breath.

  She retreats without stepping away, flattening her shirt, squaring her shoulders. She holds out a hand. “Give me your phone.”

  I pass her my phone.

  Mom closes the door. I slump back onto the bed.

  In the span of forty-eight hours, I’ve broken and mended two friendships, met and abandoned an idol, smoked pot, lost one parent to moving boxes, cut my mother deeply.

  I plan to stand up. By the time I actually put the plan into motion, my room’s dark. A new storm rages outside, battering the windows.

  I tap the touch lamp, bringing light back to my crypt. I stare at the snowmobiling photograph, wondering what memories have been blanked out of our lives.

  A single choice, or many of them?

  I’m still lost in the woods, staring right through the glass, when a stone shatters my bedroom window.

  KALYN

  IT’S KINDA AMAZING, how the entire world can shift while you’re watching a screen.

  After Phil and Gus depart, I go inside to find Grandma on the couch, but she’s not watching the Food Network anymore. It’s the news, dogging our lives as always.

  I’m expecting the usual slew of speculation and fake updates on the Spence/Ellis case. What I’m not expecting is footage of Jefferson High and the chief Gaggler.

  “Eighteen-year-old Garth Holden, a senior at Jefferson High, is almost the same age James Ellis was when he was shot and killed by a classmate. He’s only a year younger than Gary Spence was when he went to prison for the crime.”

  The camera pans to the parking lot behind the football field. Preppy kids are milling about, painting posters and holding tarps up to hide trailers and wagons.

  “Our field reporter, Anne Lemire, spoke to Garth after school. WKZ was already at Jefferson High, interviewing the student council, who are busy putting the final touches on their floats for tomorrow’s homecoming parade.”

  Bullshit. Reporters aren’t often allowed near schools or minors, but the parade would be a good excuse. No way Garth Holden stayed after school to make parade floats. He must have arranged this interview.

  I let out a satisfied hoot when the camera reveals Garth. His nose is bulbous from Phil decking him yesterday; the skin under his eyes is swollen and purple. He looks damn near bee-stung to death. The reporter puts the mic in his face.

  “You go to school with Gus Peake, the only son of the victim?”

  “Yeah, we’re good friends. Gus is having a hard time with all this. And considering all the challenges he’s had to face—”

  “He suffers from cerebral palsy, is that right?” Anne Lemire interjects.

  He doesn’t suffer from it. That’s just Gus. I wish Willy Wonka would invent a way to punch people through TVs.

  “Gus is one tough little guy. Always smiling, keeps his head up. But the truth is, he’s really broken up.” Garth puts on a sad face. “I’m worried about him, you know?”

  “I imagine this must be gut-wrenching.”

  “Yeah. And Gus . . . ​he’s making bad choices, you know? Skipping school—”

  “Hypocrite!” I screech.

  “—maybe trying drugs and stuff, I don’t know.”

  “You gave him that joint!”

  “Hear, hear!” Grandma cries.

  “He’s hanging out with some bad people.”

  The anchorwoman chimes in while the audio over Garth and Anne Lemire is muted. “It took some encouragement, but Anne convinced Garth to elaborate.” We’re treated to footage of Anne and Garth walking side by side around the football field, gesticulating as they talk. “More developments after the break.”

  I mute the TV, because if there’s one thing worse than bullshit news it’s lame-ass car commercials that try to make death machines look sexy.

  “Well, Grandma, it’s a real bullshit news day.”

  I bet I know what the developments are, and only the gossips are gonna like it. Well, that’s half the town. Garth Holden, wreaking his petty revenge by ruining my life.

  I’m on the edge of the couch, a human cliff-hanger, sucking Grandma’s cigarette.

  After one last commercial advertising a double-headed toilet brush, we’re back to tonight’s bullshit news.

  “Before the break we spoke to a young man named Garth Holden, who shared revelations relating to the ongoing Spence/Ellis murder case. Back to you, Anne.”

&nbs
p; The newly risen wind whips Anne’s hair up something fierce, just as it shakes Grandma’s walls. “Revelations is right, Jennifer. Take a look.”

  The screen switches back to Garth.

  “You’re worried Gus might fall in with a bad crowd?”

  “He already has. Gus made friends with the daughter of his daddy’s murderer.” The way he says it, adding a country accent to seduce his hometown, is so rehearsed. “Fell in love with her, maybe.”

  Oh, if I could tan his hide. What, you stick a guy and a girl together and automatically they’ve gotta be in love? Seriously, what year is it? No wonder we’re all stuck on an ancient murder case. People can’t get over their outdated notions.

  “—an outlandish accusation, but Garth shared compelling evidence.” Now we’re looking at a photo, fresh off the fucking presses. I’d give Garth props for his photography, but I’d rather give him an impossible third black eye.

  There’s me with my arms around Gus, holding him up in the pouring rain with the Taurus beside us, captured in the frame like the one in the infamous photo that made the 1989 papers. My face is blurred out, but the vicious Moms of America will recognize my dress without trouble. Anyone at Jefferson High will recognize my pumpkin hair.

  Gus isn’t holding me, but the way I’ve got his head nestled against my neck, you’d think he’s sucking my blood. It’s that gross and intimate, and even if I know the truth, anyone might assume we were caught making out.

  And Garth cropped Phil out of the photo.

  I fucking hate the trickery of it, how we’re all being literally framed, but this development is not actual news for me. We never get a say in how we’re depicted.

  But hell, is it even legal to air pictures of minors?

  And while we’re on it, do they have permission to show all of Gus’s pictures? Maybe his family gave it years ago, to win a case they’d already won. How fucked is that, when you think about it? I mean, you know no one asked Gus for permission.

  All these adults failing kids. It’s blood-boiling.

  “Turn on my baking program,” Grandma demands. I bat her hand away.

  To add insult to injury, WKZ flashes the old wedding photo beside the new photo.