Bombshell

by Rowan Maness

  “Gates were open,” he mumbled, walking away.

  We took the pizza to the backyard and sat in the grass in the middle of a circle of tiki torches.

  More stars were out. From the bare brown hills beyond the subdivision came the howl of a lone coyote. I saw Kit react to the sound, so I knew it was a real one. Not my coyote, the shape-shifting trickster god. Believer’s minion.

  Stay away.

  We ate, and Kit told me about how he decided to follow his brother and move from Chicago to Phoenix. He made an allusion to a girl he’d broken up with recently. He talked about meditation and I did not make any jokes about it.

  He said people kept telling him he needed to move the band to LA, and he knew they were right, but he didn’t know if he was brave enough. He said every time he thought about getting a manager or recording an album he froze up.

  “Just fake it,” I said. “Pretend you’re a brave person.”

  “Huh,” Kit said.

  “That’s as good as being one.”

  We went inside, and Kit waited on the couch while I went upstairs. I stopped by my room to brush my hair and dab jasmine oil on my wrists.

  This is what girls do. This is all normal. You’re doing normal girl stuff.

  I grabbed Dylan’s guitar from his bedroom and brought it down so Kit could play it for me.

  But when I crawled over to him on the couch and kissed him again, he pulled away.

  “Joss—”

  Something had changed.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Wait. Seriously?”

  “I don’t think we should.”

  “Seriously?” I repeated.

  He cleared his throat. “Not because I don’t want to. It’s just that—I can tell you’re not telling me something.”

  “What? Are you psychic?”

  “I have this thing about honesty.”

  I stood up, folding my arms, angry now and confused.

  “I mean,” he went on. “Like when I met you at that party. You were cagey on your phone. Then you sent me a text that was clearly meant for someone else. And at the concert it was almost like you weren’t even there. I don’t know. I just—”

  He sighed. “I really like you. And I’m cool with just hanging out. But if we’re going to do more, then I’ll need total honesty.”

  I couldn’t help laughing a little.

  “That’s funny?” Kit asked.

  “You like honesty, meditating, moms, you don’t want to fuck me—is this some kind of performance art?”

  He stood up.

  “I’m just saying. I’d want it to be just you and me.”

  I was glad the room was dark. I was blushing, all at once ashamed and angry for being made to feel that way by someone I barely knew. That Kit’s instincts were spot-on made it even worse.

  He got up to leave. “Think about it.”

  But I was thinking about Max, how he’d wanted to send Anna a birthday present once. I figured out how to have the package routed to a mailbox place down the street from Xavier, and picked it up there. Lingerie, the kind he imagined a girl like Anna wore. Peter sent flowers to Amelia twice, bouquets delivered to an apartment address I made up. He’d even put money down on an engagement ring for her. There were many other gifts. I told myself I was accepting them as a kind of experiment.

  I stood still as marble while Kit put on his jacket. At the front door he stopped and looked back.

  “I’ll text you,” he said, and was gone. I wanted to yell Don’t bother! or What’s the point? but a sound echoed from the kitchen.

  My phone, rattling against the counter.

  I went to it, knowing.

  George: I’m outside your house

  George: Emma

  George: Hello?!

  George: HELLO?

  George: I’m ready just tell me when to do it

  I ran to the front door and locked it.

  A barrage of new texts, loud as bullets—

  Believer: You’re going to have to learn how to deal with the consequences of your actions.

  Believer: I’d suggest calling the Atlanta PD.

  Believer: But it might already be too late.

  Believer: More blood on Joss Wyatt’s hands.

  There were two long floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the door. I wanted to check to see that the gate was shut, but I was sure that if I looked out, someone would be standing there. George, in two places at once—outside the innocent real Marchands’ house and outside mine. Or Peter, reincarnated.

  Not them.

  “You,” I said.

  Me.

  I looked out.

  The gate was open.

  The coyote was standing just beyond it.

  Come down from the mountains. Not lost, not hungry.

  He stepped closer, and I watched him materialize. I miraged him. He walked into the porch light and stood on his hind legs. He saw me. I ran.

  I ran into the Dream Palace.

  CHAPTER 14

  A low-resolution Google Street View image of 458 Edgeworth Court is projected on the walls of Emma’s room. I recognize it. I looked it up once. The biggest house in the neighborhood, the cleaning lady’s car parked in the driveway.

  It’s night. If it’s 10 p.m. in Arizona, it’s midnight in Georgia. Ron’s asleep in his bed. And Emma? Emma is here. In a grainy, two-dimensional facsimile of the middle of her street, watching George’s truck pull up to her house.

  He steps out, stuffs a gun in the baggy waistband of his jeans.

  “No, George!” Emma calls. He doesn’t turn to look. He moves along the surface of Edgeworth Court, outlined against the picture like a fly on a window screen.

  Emma tries to reach him again, screaming.

  “It wasn’t me!”

  George turns.

  “I didn’t text you. I didn’t tell you to come kill Ron. That was someone else.”

  “But you want to be with me?”

  “No! I mean, it’s complicated—”

  He raises the gun.

  Like Peter. He’s going to shoot himself like Peter.

  “Please go home, George. Promise me. I’ll explain everything in the morning.”

  George isn’t pointing the gun at himself. He is pointing it at Emma.

  “You don’t love me?”

  At first I think the sound is radio static.

  It’s cicadas. George’s voice is thrumming with them.

  The whole scene fractures, skipping into horizontal bars–

  I back away, slamming the door shut on Emma’s room. Running again, down the hallway this time, past doors with lights shining through the cracks, shadows crossing. Impatient shadows.

  Make us real. Make us real. Make us real.

  All my women are arranged around the pool in the courtyard. Motionless on lounge chairs. There’s murky water in the pool now. It looks like tar, and at first I think that’s where the smell is coming from.

  Then I notice their bodies. Soured, rotting.

  I look at the face of the one nearest to me.

  Rosie.

  James’s Soft Robe, the dream girl with my face.

  A lizard scurries past and slithers into the pool.

  • • •

  When I came to, I was barefoot, standing on the six-foot wall that separates my backyard from everyone else’s. I looked around and determined I was halfway to Shane’s house, teetering precariously on a cinder-block ridge five inches wide.

  I stepped forward carefully, clutching my phone in one hand, arms extended for balance. Trying not to think about what might have happened if I’d fallen. I felt deeply seen, like I’d spent the blackout being strung up and inspected. Touched without knowing it.

  Where had the time gone? I could picture myself climbing on top of the covered Jacuzzi, scraping my knees against the rough wall. But I was watching from across the backyard, one body in the midst of a silent, angry crowd.

  Was there, at this
very moment, an army of avengers, a legion of the lied-to, marching toward Silver Creek Road? Moving invisible through the resolute night, like the cicadas with their white-noise screeching?

  Moving along the grid of backyards, through parcels with varying arrangements of swing sets, pools, and barbecue pits until I got to Shane’s. Plastic toy detritus created angular hills in the dark. I jumped down onto the soft grass behind a sun-bleached playhouse.

  Me: I’m in your backyard come out immediately

  There was a text conversation between George and Emma on my phone, time-stamped ten minutes earlier.

  Ten minutes?

  The things they were saying in the Dream Palace. George persuaded into ending his mission. Emma telling him not to respond to any texts that came from a blocked number. The real George and Emma would never know how close he came to hurting them.

  “Oh God,” I said out loud, reeling, drooping, letting my head loll between my legs. I felt a tickle at my ankle and jerked away from a cricket hopping out of some bushes. I remembered Shane was always careful with bugs, stopping his bike to move caterpillars off the sidewalk.

  Then he was there, groggy and puffy from sleep. I hugged him, so tight it was more like a cling.

  I didn’t have to tell Shane that sometimes I felt with Catholic sureness that I’d brought on my dad’s death by manifesting doom, by dwelling, like a witch, in the world of jinxes and lies and letting them control me until, finally, they crossed over into real life.

  Shane helped. I knew he would. I told him everything that happened after Kit left my house. Instead of a bug on the sidewalk I was a girl on a wall. He got me down. He took me inside. His parents and all the noisy siblings were asleep.

  I hadn’t been to his house in ages, but it was still familiar. Same posters and furniture, new books and bedspread.

  Shane sat at his computer and looked around for a while, while I sat there not saying anything, occasionally glancing at my phone to make sure there weren’t any new texts.

  “Do you think I’m responsible for Peter?” I said.

  “No,” he replied immediately, which I thought betrayed his real opinion.

  “I’ve asked that before, huh?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “I’m checking police feeds to see if anyone got murdered in Atlanta,” he said, not seriously, but not kidding, either.

  “Don’t joke,” I said, stomach all acid, suddenly thirsty. I gulped down the glass of water Shane had poured for me.

  “I’m waiting for you to go to sleep on the couch so I can pass out.”

  “I’m losing time,” I said, cryptic on purpose.

  “Joss.” Shane sighed. “Just go to sleep. I put blankets in the living room.”

  My phone buzzed.

  I looked at it—a new e-mail, from James. I scanned the first sentence and relaxed when I was certain he hadn’t been contacted by Believer too.

  “Who is it?” Shane asked.

  “It’s okay,” I said, leaving his room. “You’re right. I’ll go to sleep.”

  Rosie,

  We found each other. That’s the hardest part.

  Now I get to put my arm around you, go with you to a party, walk with you on the beach. I want us in Our Bed together, naked, deciding where we’re going to go for breakfast, or what movie to see, or where to play miniature golf. (Do you like miniature golf? Is that what it’s called?)

  How does Sunday sound?

  Sending a song, like you asked.

  —James

  He linked to a song, and it was perfect. I listened to it on repeat, phone pressed against my ear, cocooned on Shane’s couch, until I fell asleep between the lyrics, each word a symbol, a salve, a sign.

  • • •

  “Joss, wake up,” said a little voice.

  I grumbled.

  “Jossie, you have to wake up.”

  I was already awake. My sleep was fraught with nightmares, and the clanging of pots and pans had started at five thirty.

  “Ella,” I said. “Joss is awake. But Joss needs sleepy time for a little bit, okay?”

  Giggling.

  “It’s Eden!”

  Shane’s youngest siblings are five-year-old twins.

  “Eden,” I said. “You gotta leave me alone, kiddo. I’m not well.”

  “You’re mean! Mean Joss!” But she gave up.

  A few minutes later, Shane’s dad shouted, “Bacon, eggs, pancakes!” A stampede charged through the living room—the twins and the two other boys. I covered my head with a pillow and tried to stay as still as possible.

  I must have dozed off, because the next thing I heard was Shane’s voice. He was on his phone, pacing around.

  “No. She heard a noise at her house, so she came over.”

  Leah Leary.

  “She was alone—yeah—no—I guess not.”

  He laughed. “Okay, yeah. See you later. Yeah, you too.”

  I wondered if Leah Leary had just said I love you.

  I folded the blankets and left them in a neat stack on the couch, then found Shane in the kitchen, dressed and ready to go.

  “Oh,” he said, looking at my wrinkled dress. “Right. I guess we need to stop by your house.”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  We picked at the leftover breakfast spread. Pancakes cut into squares and soaked with syrup, microwaved sausages, cold scrambled eggs on cartoon-character trays.

  “Thanks for letting me sleep here,” I said, getting it out quickly.

  He mumbled “Sure,” and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

  I rifled through a basket on the kitchen table—loose playing cards, My Little Pony figurines, old copies of People magazine addressed to Brenda Tatum, a remote control with the batteries missing. And a book, all the way at the bottom.

  Vonnegut—must be Shane.

  “Is this a good one?” I asked, holding it up for him to see.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’d like it.”

  “I don’t know about Vonnegut,” I said.

  “What have you read?”

  “Nothing. I just don’t know about him.”

  Shane scoffed and drank the orange juice all in one sip. He slammed the cup down on the counter and made an exaggerated ahh sound.

  I opened the book—The Sirens of Titan—to a random page and skimmed a few paragraphs until the name of one of the characters caught my eye.

  Waltham Kittredge

  “What’s your opinion of portents?” I asked.

  “You mean like auguries?”

  “It’s really more like omens, specifically,” I said.

  “So you’re talking about presages?”

  “Signs.” I nodded.

  “Prognosti—” Shane stumbled. “Prognosticats? That can’t be right.”

  I laughed, feeling relaxed for the first time in a long while, despite the chaos surrounding me.

  • • •

  The gate was open at my house, and the neighbor’s wind chime played a few creepy notes as Shane and I walked through to the front door.

  It was locked, and I didn’t have the keys.

  “Shit,” I said, cupping a hand against one of the big windows, looking inside. The cat walked by, then came back and sat down, staring at me with tranquil, unblinking eyes.

  “Psst, psst,” I called to her. “You want food?”

  She padded closer.

  “Open the door, Ferris,” I urged her. “You can do it. Use your tiny little paws.”

  “You want food, you open the door.” I started a chant. “Open, kitten; open, kitten; open, kitten.”

  Ferris yawned and licked the fur on her chest.

  I turned around to see where Shane had gone, and while I wasn’t looking, the dead bolt turned.

  It worked!

  But it was just Shane, holding the cat.

  “Patio door was wide open,” he said disapprovingly.

  I nudged past him and went upstair
s. I wiped off old makeup and rinsed my legs and feet in the bathtub. I brushed my teeth, changed into my uniform, stuffed various papers and folders into my backpack.

  My laptop was in the closet, screen saver swirling. I tapped the keyboard, waking it. The Tumblr. It must have been the last thing I’d looked at. Nothing new posted since last night. I checked its history and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. When I minimized the browser window, Emma’s folder was gone, deleted like Anna’s. All that digital ephemera delivered back to the aether as charred sacrifices.

  I met Shane in the kitchen. He’d fed the cat and taken the pizza box in from the backyard. He was holding a green prescription bottle.

  “Oh,” I said. “Kit must have left that.”

  “He was over last night,” I explained, off Shane’s confused look. “Before everything. You can keep it, I guess. Whatever.”

  The house phone rang.

  “You get it,” I instructed Shane, scared of who it might be.

  He picked it up.

  “Hello?” He listened for a while, then smiled. “Hey, man!

  “It’s Dylan,” he whispered to me.

  “Dylan!” I said, ripping the phone away from Shane.

  “Hey,” said my brother. I hadn’t heard his voice in months. We never talked on the phone.

  The connection was bad.

  “This is probably costing a bunch,” he said. “I couldn’t get Mom’s cell.”

  “She’s in Tucson,” I said.

  “Tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “I’m coming back,” he said, like I should have known.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Soon. I’m trying to get a flight. . . .” He trailed off, vague as always.

  “Okay.”

  There was a pause.

  “Everything good?” Dylan asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll tell Mom.”

  “Cool.”

  “Dylan,” I said, before he could hang up. “I’m really glad you’re coming home.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Marco? Marco!”

  Trevor crept toward the deep end of the pool with his eyes shut, arms outstretched, bumping against a floating inflatable doughnut.

  Rhiannon tiptoed behind where I was sitting at the pool’s edge, dripping wet.

  “Polo!” she called out. Trevor changed directions, groping toward the sound of her voice.